Posted inCurrent affairs

Ukraine’s Yulia Tymoshenko: a hot national leader

I don't usually pay much attention to politics in Ukraine. But when I saw a photo of the country's prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, for some (obvious) reason I became enthralled with her.She's in a runoff to be the next Ukrainian president. I'll be rooting for her. All I need to do is glance at her opponent to tell that Yulia is hugely hotter more qualified.  In contrast with our own female politician hot babe, Sarah Palin, Tymoshenko actually has some brains and competence. Wikipedia tells me that she graduated with an honors degree in economics and was president of United Energy…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregon Measures 66 & 67 elicit anti-tax lies

My wife and I have happily mailed in our "yes" votes on Measures 66 and 67. I love to pay taxes. They're the largest contributions to the general good of society (Oregon, United States, world) that we make each year.These tax measures would slightly increase the amount of money high income Oregonians, and some corporations, pay. If they pass, Oregon still will have one of the most favorable tax burden on businesses. Currently, even with the new taxes, we're #14 among the 50 states. Download State business tax climateSo it's ridiculous for the No on 66/67 crowd to claim that…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Rudy Giuliani forgets 9/11

Unbelievable: Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City on September 11, 2001, forgets the attacks. Rudy Giuliani claimed Friday that were “no domestic attacks” during George W. Bush’s presidency....“We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” he said, forgetting not only Sept. 11  but also the anthrax mailings to congressional offices and media outlets.Giuliani should be ashamed of his idiocy. And apologize to the relatives of those who died on 9/11, which he has forgotten.
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Money market account redemption hysteria

A friend recently emailed me some links that warn of impending financial disaster. He noted that I don't often write about economics, which is true. So I took a look at a couple of the sky is falling posts and will report on my impression of them. Which is, in a word, yawn. I don't feel a pressing need to invest in an umbrella to protect against sky pieces.My first stop was "Is the US Goverment Preparing the Lifeboats for the Next Financial Disaster?" I guess this title is supposed to be critical of the (misspelled) government. But isn't it…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Dick Cheney is a liar (as if that’s news)

Not only a liar, a pants on fire liar. That's how the independent fact-checking PolitiFact rated Cheney's claim that President Obama won't admit the nation is at war against terrorists. I wish Cheney would go back to doing stupid things while hunting, like shooting a friend, instead of shooting his mouth off with completely erroneous idiocies.
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Airport screening is scarier than a terrorist attack

Ah, deja vu all over again. There's an attempted terrorist attack on an airplane. Whatever method was used, the not-so-brilliant authorities figure will be used again. So innocent passengers have to suffer through screening procedures aimed at preventing an attack that has already happened.Because the latest attack happened near the end of a flight, now passengers on international flights have to stay in their seats for the last hour.Idiotic. Irritating. Insane. You can bet that if the attack had occurred in the first hour of a flight, that's when the non-geniuses in charge of airplane security would have ordered people…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

How depressed should a progressive be about health care reform?

It's looking like the Senate health care reform bill won't have either a public option or Medicare buy-in for people under 65. That's disturbing. It sure isn't what I and other progressives expected when Obama was elected president and the Democrats won solid majorities in both houses of Congress.I was looking forward to change I could believe in. Not change that I have to try to talk myself into feeling somewhat good about through the therapy of this blog post.This morning I clicked in succession on two of my favorite political web sites. Over on FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver opined that…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Climate scientist emails show no fraud

Yes, I was right! Three weeks ago I said that the climate research email hack shows global warming is real, because the furor over the stolen messages was a big ado about nothing.Now AP reporters have read every email repeatedly. They discussed what the emails mean with experts in climate science and scientific methodology.The AP found that the emails show pettiness, not fraud. Scientists are human, just like the rest of us. They get irked at global warming deniers who try to play fast and loose with facts. Otherwise, the emails show that climate change science is solid. No big…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Global warming: Sarah Palin wrong, scientists right

Gosh, what a choice. Should I believe Sarah Palin, who says that global warming is a fiction, or the world's top scientists and scientific organizations, who say that it is a fact?I'll go with science, since Palin has lousy credentials when it comes to facts. She doesn't believe in evolution either, which makes her take on global warming even less credible.Yesterday my daughter asked me what book she should get me for Christmas. I told her, "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity" by James Hansen, a NASA scientist…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Global warming deniers show craziness of conservatives

Conservatism used to be intellectually respectable. As a teenager in the early 1960s I regularly read serious stuff by William F. Buckley and other deep thinkers in National Review. My mother was a die hard Republican. I shared her commitment to conservatism until I went to college. Back then, there wasn't any conflict between "conservation" and "conservatism." But now, right-wingers have a well-deserved reputation for being anti-scientific, dedicated not to reasoned arguments and facts, but to shrill sound bites with no substance.Today the Copenhagen summit on climate change kicked off, encouraged by the EPA's conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten public…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Anti-tax zealots show disdain for Oregonians

Talk about un-compassionate conservatism. A front-page story in today's Salem Statesman Journal reports that the group opposing modest increases in taxes on Oregon corporations and high-income individuals is blissfully unconcerned about...Prisoners being released, teachers being fired, in-home care for seniors being slashed, newly hired state troopers being laid off, and other cuts in essential services that will hurt people in this state."If these measures do not pass, the world as we know it will not come to an end," said Pat McDonald of Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes.No, Pat, your world of big business lobbyists won't be affected. You'll get a…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Climate research email hack shows global warming is real

It looks like the stolen emails from a climate research center at the University of East Anglia are a classic example of "the dog didn't bark." That is, the big news from this peek into the private professional correspondence of climate scientists is that there is no big news. Yawn: the appropriate reaction to finding out that scientists get irritated at global warming deniers who refuse to face facts, and talk about the best ways to get across the message that global climate change is for real.One of the first and best reactions to the email server hack came from…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Portland police can’t handle a 12 year old girl

You'd think that members of the Portland (Oregon) police force would be embarrassed that several of their brethren weren't able to handle a combative 12 year old girl. An officer shot her at close-range with a beanbag gun, even though several men had her down on the ground and were trying to wrestle her into submission.But no, per usual the police union is all upset that Officer Christopher Humphries, who shot the girl, has been suspended pending an investigation. Humphries also has been disciplined for his role in the death of an unarmed mentally man. Watching a security camera video…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

U of O squashes great “I love my ducks” video

Quack! That's the sound of an offended Oregon Duck football fan, who's turned off by the Rose Bowl buzz kill inflicted by the university when it demanded that a great student-made video be removed from the Internets. Of course, this heavy-handed attempt at censorship didn't succeed. I just watched the video on the Oregonian web site, where sports columnist Ken Goe correctly says that the University of Oregon got it all wrong. I Smell Roses @ Yahoo!7 Video Goe tells the sad story of how this video got squashed because -- horror of horrors! -- the Oregon Duck mascot appears…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Health

“Health, Money, and Fear” shows weakness of reform bill

Last night I listened to a couple of Oregon physicians nail what this country needs to do to solve our health care problems. In short: a single payer system, Medicare for all.They convinced me that in many ways the health care reform bills being considered by Congress are going to move us in the wrong direction. I'd already had misgivings about this legislation; now I'm as worried that it will pass as that it will fail.Salem's Progressive Film Series, a class act, showed "Health, Money, and Fear" yesterday. You can watch the entire movie at OurAilingHealthCare.com. It was made by…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Abortion rights get screwed by health care reform

Ridiculous. The health care reform bill passed by the House last weekend doesn't allow an abortion to be part of a benefit package bought by anyone who gets a government tax credit to help pay for the insurance.Put another way:Abortion would not be paid for in plans offered by a government-run insurance system. Also, people who took federal subsidies to buy insurance would not be able to use the money to buy such coverage.It's enough to make this progressive scream. Aaaarrrrrggghhh! And I'm not even a woman, nor a man of child-bearing capability.Along that line, I got a vasectomy before…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

How disappointed should progressives be about Obama?

It's another election day, albeit a rather low-key off-year one. I'm getting flashbacks to 2008, when it seemed like everything was going to be just fine now. With Obama our president for the next four years, wouldn't we get the change that we'd be wanting for the past eight? The way things have turned out so far, mostly not.Nothing Obama has done to date excites me the way his campaign did. Arianna Huffington nailed this theme in today's "Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning Versus the Timidity of Governing." She made me think, right on, sister!Indeed, reading the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Cougars benefit Oregon’s environment — no reason to kill them

Wrong, wrong, wrong. That mantra kept being repeated in my increasingly irritated mind as I read Bill Monroe's call to kill more cougars in last Sunday's Oregonian.Monroe is an outdoors writer. But it's obvious that he doesn't know much about cougars, including their beneficial effect on ecosystems and how non-dangerous they are to people.Last week my wife and I went to a presentation at the Salem library by Oregon State University professor Bill Ripple called "Linking cougars to butterflies." As a Statesman Journal story said, cougars and other top predators are essential for a balanced natural environment.(Here's a PDF file…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Blue Cross of Oregon trying to stop health insurance reform

Just when I thought Regence Blue Cross of Oregon couldn't irritate me further -- after many years of double-digit premium increases, after trying to deny my plan-switch application because of two minor preexisting conditions -- they're now part of an effort to scuttle health care reform.Deeply irritating. I emailed Regence yesterday, telling them that this subscriber of theirs wasn't happy that health insurers have emerged as the top foe of reform efforts.I note that you are a member of AHIP, which is actively trying to stop health care reform efforts. Do you support AHIP? If so, you certainly don't represent…
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