Current affairs

This afternoon the monthly Salon discussion group that my wife and I are part of gathered in a member's living room. Right away, a topic of conversation sprang up, because it was at the top of everyone's mind. Should President Biden withdraw from the presidential race? We spent about an hour talking about this. The discussion was vigorous. Everybody had something to say about the question. And in the end there was a clear consensus. All eleven of us felt that Biden should withdraw.  Everybody in the group is a Democrat, though naturally we disagree about many political subjects. The…

There's no doubt that Elon Musk is a brilliant guy, arguably a genius, who deserves a lot of credit for his accomplishments with Tesla, Space X, and other business pursuits. I've been a happy Starlink customer (a Space X offering) since it's early beta days, and it's enabled us to trade our crappy 7 Mbps copper phone line DSL for a snappy 250 Mbps satellite broadband here in rural south Salem, Oregon. But Elon Musk has gone from being fascinating to annoying. Not to everybody, because a big cause of my annoyance with Musk is what he's done with Twitter…

We live in strange times. Sure, all times are strange in their own way, but 2024 in the United States is shaping up to be among the strangest years, politically speaking, in my more than a half century of following political issues closely. No cameras are allowed in the courtroom, so we have to rely on sketch artists Yesterday and today the news was full of how Stormy Daniels, porn star/adult film actress, testified for the prosecution at the criminal trial of Donald Trump, ex-president. That in itself is damn strange.  For it's the first time an ex-president has had…

I'm happy for Ukraine. This embattled nation, which has been bravely fighting the unprovoked Russian invasion since February 24, 2022, has been waiting for more American aid for months due to dithering by House Republicans.  But today Ukraine had something to celebrate: $60 billion in aid. It took Democrats to get the aid bill across the House finishing line, first by supplying votes needed to have the bill move out of the Rules Committee, then by supplying votes needed to have the bill approved by the full House. The vote breakdown is a mark of shame for the 112 House…

It's time. Way past time, actually. For the good-for-almost-nothing House Republicans to show that they're not completely useless by finally getting off their GOP butts and passing the Senate bill that has much needed aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan this coming week. A lot of damage already has been done. Ukraine is running out of artillery shells, ammunition, air defense missiles, and other essential military gear needed to fend off the Russian invasion of their country. All because of Republicans. The GOP used to be the party that stood up to Russia and wanted the United States to defend…

I have a friend who was born in Germany. She tells me that in Europe, almost all power lines are buried. She can't understand why here in Oregon, so many power lines are strung along wooden poles -- a "technology" dating from the 1800's when telegraph lines used the same approach. After every major disastrous weather event in our area, such as the high winds and freezing rain that caused massive problems in the Portland area recently, along with freezing rain that decimated the Eugene area, there's calls for our power companies (PGE and Pacific Power, mainly) to do a…

We live in an age of extremism. Our politics is marked by right-wing and left-wing, with little room left for moderates in the middle. "Whose side are you on?!" is said with an accusatory exclamation mark, since too often it is unthinkable for someone to be on both sides; you've got to choose one or the other. This is why I admired an essay in the November 6 issue of TIME by Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, "The world's job during the war." Harari says that while currently both Israelis and Palestinians are too filled with pain to…

This evening the suspect in the killing of 18 people in Lewiston, Maine and the wounding of 13 others was found dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot. Robert Card had suffered from mental illness, having been hospitalized for two weeks last summer. Reportedly he had been hearing voices. Well, while Card likely had some form of schizophrenia, what he has in common with the rest of us is substantial, for we all hear voices inside our head: our own. Card's voices may have told him that other people were out to harm him, so he needed to kill as many…

Here in blue Oregon, we're fortunate to have avoided the absurd laws in some red states, such as Florida, that make it very difficult, if not impossible, for teachers to talk about racism.  Obviously this head-in-the-sand approach doesn't do anything to combat racism. It just prevents open discussion that could reduce racism. Last year I came across an article in Scientific American that cites psychological research in concluding that it's best for students to engage in honest talk about racism. The article appeared in the November 2022 issue, though apparently it was published online in August. That issue has been…

My wife and I have vacationed on Maui many times. We love the island. The town of Lahaina has a special place in our hearts. Front Street in Lahaina was a delightful place to visit. We'd go there most evenings during our stay to shop, people-watch, see the art in the many galleries, eat. The atmosphere was like nowhere else we'd ever been. Now much of Lahaina has been destroyed by the wind-stoked wildfires that have killed 53 people on Maui. This screenshot from the video below shows the destruction. The three minute video was really painful for me to…

Today we learned that the five men who were on the Titan, a submersible craft that was on its way to the wreck of the Titanic, are dead after the Titan imploded under the tremendous pressures in the ocean depths. The good news is that the five men must have been killed instantly. I and countless others had been having waking nightmares about their slow death from lack of oxygen as they sat on the ocean floor 12,500 feet from the surface. Now it appears that the submersible imploded at the same time its mother ship lost contact with the…

Thanks to the Salem-Keizer Proletariat substack writer, who on June 8 published "Keizer marks Pride Month with powerful call to do better," I learned about a moving example of speaking truth to power by McNary student Nevaeh Music -- who addressed the Keizer City Council at the invitation of Mayor Kathy Clark. Below is an excerpt from this post. Music is Clark’s youth appointee to the city’s Community Diversity Engagement Committee - the only youth position in Keizer city government with committee voting power. Clark indicated Music was invited to speak to the Council about Pride Month. But it was…

Memorial Day is about recognizing the ultimate sacrifice for our country: losing one's life. That deserves a lot of praise. But so do lesser sacrifices ordinary Americans perform every day to make things better for their fellow citizens. That's who I want to honor today. Not just those who have died fighting for the United States, but everybody who engages in actions large or small for the greater good. What happened to me while grocery shopping last week got me thinking about this. I was in a checkout line at the south Salem Fred Meyer. The clerk had scanned my…

It's usually good to talk through your mental health problems rather than keeping them bottled up inside of you. Today the Salem City Club did just that, albeit from a policy perspective, in a program called Oregon's Many Mental Health Crises. The not-so-cheery news is that Oregon ranks 49th out of the 50 states in the prevalence of mental illness and access to care. So for sure, we've got a mental health crisis.  State Representative Rob Nosse started things off by talking about how the legislature is trying to fix things. He's chair of the House Joint Committee on Behavioral…

Until Elon Musk bought Twitter and started acting like a right-wing maniac, I had a favorable opinion of Musk. Sure, he had some annoying quirks. That comes with being one of the richest people on the planet. But overall I viewed Musk as an eccentric genius who was doing good things for the world. He made Tesla into a great company, jumpstarting the electric car revolution sorely needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  And his SpaceX company has made great strides in developing innovative advances in rockets, including booster stages that can land themselves and be reused. SpaceX also is…