Posted inCurrent affairs

Federal spending hasn’t risen much during Obama’s presidency

Well, one more Republican untruth has been demolished by facts. Contrary to widespread belief (including me, I have to admit), federal spending has increased much less under Obama's leadership than under the last four presidents -- including Reagan. Check out Rex Nutting's excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch, "Obama spending binge never happened." Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree. As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.” Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregon judges should be appointed, not elected

I have no idea why Oregon voters, or those in any state, should be electing judges. There has to be a better way to fill vacancies on the Oregon Supreme Court than to have voters, most of whom are clueless about both the judicial system and the qualifications of candidates, electing judges. Last Tuesday in Oregon's primary election, the best qualified candidate, Timothy Sercombe, got the least amount of votes among the three candidates. So the other two, Portland attorney Nena Cook and Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Richard Baldwin, will face off on the November ballot. A likely reason for this…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Are you better off today than when Mitch McConnell said…?

Listening to POTUS (great political talk programming) on satellite radio recently, a caller had a great response to the usual Republican line, "Are you better off today than four years ago, when Obama was elected president?" He said the question should be: Are you better off today than two years ago, when Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president"? The biggest problem our country has is Republican obstructionism. The not-so G.O.P. dislikes Obama and his policies so much, it seems that Republicans would…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Marijuana

Marijuana rolls into center of Oregon Attorney General race

Ellen Rosenblum would be a much better Attorney General for Oregon than Dwight Holton, not least because of her respect for our state's voter-approved medical marijuana act, which Holton almost certainly would continue to undermine -- notwithstanding politically-inspired attempts to downplay his previous attacks against the act. I hope she wins tomorrow in the Democratic primary. Rosenblum is the choice of progressives, while a poll showed that Holton is favored only by the most conservative Democrats. A few days ago I got an email from a US News and World Report editor who wrote a story analyzing the impact marijuana…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Thanks to Obama, I’m going to stop saying “that’s so gay!”

Yesterday I was thrilled to learn that President Obama has come out (so to speak) in favor of gay marriage. This is a good move ethically as well as politically.  Homosexuals are people too, Mitt Romney and fellow gay-bashing Republicans. Recognizing the obvious will energize Obama's base, and it won't cost him many votes since homophobes already plan to vote against him. Eugene Robinson ends his column on this subject with: Politically, Obama may have taken a big step toward reclaiming the future. The magic of hope and change that suffused his 2008 campaign has dissipated after 40 grueling months…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Economic austerity humorously ridiculed in Fiore animation

Austerity to bring about prosperity is a ridiculous economic idea. So I liked how Mark Fiore makes fun of this notion in his News in a Nutshell animation, "Assaulting Austerity," or: "Why events an ocean away matter to you." Check it out. You'll never again believe Mitt Romney or other Republicans who say that cutting spending and jobs in a recession is the way to... here's the joke... get more spending and jobs! (Not that you ever should have believed them.) Hilarious. Or it would be, if right-wingers weren't so serious about pursuing wacked-out policies that would only benefit the rich.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

European Union is a success, no matter what U.S. conservatives say

With the French elections happening today, Adam Gopnik's "Vive La France" piece in the May 7 The New Yorker is timely reading.  Like so much else in the magazine, it's wonderfully written and soundly reasoned. The piece touches on a question that baffles me: why conservatives/Republicans in our semi good-old USA have such a distaste for European social democracies. Those nations do a lot of things better than we do. Like health care. Modern transportation. Making it possible to move up the economic ladder. Providing essential social services to all of their citizens. At the end of his essay, Gopnik…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Heartland Institute compares global warming believers to “murderers”

As if we needed more proof that anti-science global warming deniers are wackos, here it is: Well, when facts, reality, and 98% of the world's leading climate scientists aren't on your side, it looks like the global warming deniers are reduced to disgusting fearmongering and personal insults. Here's what part of the Heartland Institute's press release announcing the billboard campaign said: May 3, 2012 – Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too. Heartland’s first digital…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

So true: Republicans are the problem in American politics

Thank you for saying it, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann. The Republicans are the problem. These respected centrists (Ornstein is with the American Enterprise Institute; Mann with the Brookings Institution) have written a terrific piece in the Washington Post that's based on their forthcoming book. It's clear, truthful, undeniable. One major political party in the United States has gone wacko, and it isn't the Democratic Party. Below are some of my favorite parts of the essay. The mention of habitual Republican use of the filibuster, something new in Senate politics, is right-on. Why does the media say "The Democratic proposal…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Global warming deniers are “merchants of doubt”

Facts are facts. Cigarettes cause lung cancer. Coal-fired power plants cause acid rain. Fossil fuel emissions cause global warming. There's scientific consensus on the causes of lung cancer, acid rain, and global warming. Unfortunately, there also has been, and still is, a systematic effort to spread lies about these serious problems. In her book "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming," historian Naomi Oreskes documented how this happened. A review says: Merchants of Doubt might be one of the most important books of the year. Exhaustively researched and documented, it…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Get high on Rosenblum to be Oregon A.G., not Holton, fellow Democrats

The more I learn about Dwight Holton, candidate for Oregon Attorney General in the May 15 primary, the less I like him. Ellen Rosenblum seems like a much better choice.  Holton, during his stint as United States Attorney for Oregon, tried to undermine our state's medical marijuana law. It irks me how the Obama administration is raiding medical marijuana providers around the country, desperate to take away a drug that relieves chronic pain and helps cancer sufferers feel better. So why would Oregon want to elect somebody who supports a crazy federal law which equates marijuana with heroin and erroneously…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Obama vs. Romney on energy: Obama wins!

There's lots of reasons to vote for President Obama rather than Mitt Romney this November. Lots. Here's one area where Obama triumphs over Romney, big-time: energy policy. The world is running out of fossil fuels (fossils take a long time to form, so we're using up oil and coal hugely faster than more is being created, but the Republican Party doesn't seem to know this basic fact). Other countries, like Germany and China, are avidly pursuing profitable alternative energy sources like wind and solar. Obama recognizes that even though oil and coal will be part of our energy future for…
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

What modern women want… spanking and submission?

A blindfolded woman, bright red lipstick, with the title of the Newsweek cover story above her right breast: "The Fantasy Life of Working Women: Why Surrender is a Feminist Dream." Looking at the issue I thought, "This is why print magazines are going to survive. Glad I've stuck with our Newsweek subscription after The Daily Beast took it over." The old Newsweek wouldn't have had such a provocative article. Kudos to the new Newsweek. Many of the online comments on the story appear to be from feminists who aren't surrendering to the notion that what successful, powerful, confident, independent women…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Glaciers are still shrinking from global warming

Almost always, truth runs deeper than a single shallow newspaper story. Especially when the subject is global warming, a subject that has been studied in depth by climate scientists. This morning Google News led me to a Christian Science Monitor story, "Global warming mystery: some Himalayan glaciers getting bigger." Yes, but only some. And not a lot bigger. Then I came across another more inclusive story in the Guardian by Jonathan Bamber, director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre, "The glaciers are still shrinking -- and rapidly."  With glaciers and ice sheets covering such a diverse range of latitudes (from the tropics…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Why conservative Supreme Court justices are wrong about the mandate

My respect for the four most conservative Supreme Court justices has gone down a lot this past week, now that I've been able to learn how their supposedly top-notch legal minds view the Affordable Care Act's mandate that every American have health insurance. A cartoon by Politico's Matt Wuerker sums up the absurdity of how Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito seem to be viewing the mandate issue. Columnist (and economist) Paul Krugman made pretty much the same point as cartoonist Wuerker in his column, "Broccoli and Bad Faith." Let’s start with the already famous exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Fox News gets positive about Chevy Volt

It must have been my recent blog post that convinced Fox News it should stop lying about the Chevy Volt and get behind an all-American car that has won both the North American and European Car of the Year awards. Because this Steve Doocy interview strikes a whole different tone from the Volt-bashing that's been going on at Fox News. Oil-loving conservative Texan Lee Spieckerman of Spieckerman Media started off by saying that Fox News commentators have had "a fetish for demonizing the Volt," then went on to explain why the Volt is such a great car. I love Fox news,…
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

Reality doesn’t register in the Republican brain

Yesterday Amazon delivered Chris Mooney's new book, "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science -- and Reality."  I've only read a few pages so far, but I can tell that I'm going to like it. And not just because Mooney agrees with how I see the two major political parties, Republicans being way more reality-denying than Democrats.  I want to understand why Republican science-deniers do what they do. Like all human behavior, they really can't help themselves. Something in their brains causes them to look upon facts in decidedly unfactual ways.  Us liberals will be ineffective in…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

U.S. justice system locks up way too many people

In some areas the United States may truly be exceptional. But our health care and criminal justice systems suck, big time. We should learn from other countries who do a much better job keeping their citizens healthy and safe. In health care, we spend twice as much as other industrialized nations, yet our health status indicators are below average and forty or fifty million Americans are uninsured. Crazy. The Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction. A single payer health care system, a.k.a. Medicare for All, would be a leap in the right direction. Our criminal justice…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

“Stand Your Ground” laws are absurdly dangerous

The more I read about the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17 year old, by a neighborhood watch volunteer who followed the black boy around his neighborhood, looking for an excuse to play policeman even though he was told by a 911 responder to stay put in his car, the more absurdly dangerous "Stand Your Ground" laws look to me. And many others. Like a former Miami police chief.  Police officers are trained to de-escalate highly charged encounters with aggressive people, using deadly force as a last resort. Citizens, on the other hand, may act from emotion and perceived…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Crazy March weather points to global warming

This morning my wife and I had to cope with five inches of snow on the ground here in rural south Salem (Oregon). It was weird. I've lived in Oregon for forty-one years. Can't remember a time when the blooming daffodils were crushed by so much snow. Because our newspapers couldn't be delivered, over breakfast I read a story about the spring storm in the Oregonian online. Turning to the comments, I saw predictable comments along the lines of "Ha, ha, Al Gore is wrong. Can't be global warming if the Willamette Valley got record-breaking snow for this time of…
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