Current affairs

Ooh, ooh! Please let it be true! National Enquirer cover: "Sarah Palin's DARK SECRETS! Affair that nearly ruined her career" Well, it won't be nearly, if this turns out to be true. The Enquirer had the goods on John Edwards way before anyone else did. Naturally the McCain campaign is calling the story a "vicious lie." That's always the first response, so I don't give the denial much credence. I like the National Enquirer's response: "The National Enquirer's coverage of a vicious war within Sarah Palin's extended family includes several newsworthy revelations, including the resulting incredible charge of an affair…

Ah, just the thing to liven up a Labor Day. The blogosphere is buzzing with the notion that Sarah Palin's recently born child isn't really hers. This possibility took a hit when it was announced that her 17 year old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant – since some speculated that the baby was Bristol's. Portland blogger Jack Bogdanski is on the story. His first post today was "Another web page connected to the Sarah Palin scandal disappears." This is curious. If there's nothing to the not-Sarah's-baby speculation, why would photos of her pregnancy and the baby's birth be disappearing? Bogdanski's follow…

It's too bad that Republican V.P. candidate Sarah Palin is wrong for America on so many issues. Creationism: favors teaching it. Global climate change: denies humans are a cause.Abortion: rejects it even in cases of rape or incest.Polar bears: who cares? Because…she's hot! (To my 59 year old eyes, she's a youthful 44 year old babe.) And she's been right on a few things -- like her admitted use of marijuana, including inhaling, when pot was legal in Alaska. If Joe Biden's brain could be put in her body, that'd make for a much more attractive Obama administration. Unfortunately, this…

Once you contribute to the Obama campaign, you've got a daily email friend. Sometimes I find the requests for additional donations off-putting. Not today. They wanted me to max out our pre-nomination giving (deadline is midnight tonight). At first I wasn't sure whether we could afford it. But then I thought of watching Obama's historic nomination by acclamation yesterday. Many black delegates to the convention were moved to tears. How far this country has come, they told a CNN reporter. Oh, yes. For sure. Laurel and I were talking last night about the civil rights movement in the '60s, which,…

Waiting for Hillary Clinton's big moment at the Democratic convention tonight, I'm trying to get my head around this question: how could any of her supporters be for McCain (or not vote) rather than be for Obama? It's crazy, just the thought that someone who is for a woman's right to choose and universal health care (to name a few of Clinton's progressive positions) would cast their lot with a pro-Bush Republican who vows to stack the Supreme Court with justices who will undo Roe v. Wade and pursue a half-assed market-based health policy. Yet today the New York Times…

OK, go ahead and call me a flip-flopper. I call it "changing my mind." Joe Biden looks good to me now as a V.P. pick, after I trashed him in a one-liner a few days ago. That smile will take down the ticket. Talks too much. Yawn. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. At least, based on what I saw of Biden at his big introduction in Illinois today. I liked what he said; I liked how he said it; I liked the energy he brought to the Obama campaign. Regarding his smile and loquaciousness, I read in a David Brooks column:…

Figured I need to put up my pithy reactions now to whoever Obama picks for his vice-president candidate, since I don't function early in the morning very well, and I suspect the announcement will come in the a.m. tomorrow or Friday. Instant emotional reaction counts more than considered reason. So here's what my snap feelings will be under each V.P. scenario. Joe Biden: That smile will take down the ticket. Talks too much. Yawn. Evan Bayh: Super-yawn. Wake me up after Obama wins. Tim Kaine: Wow, a governor with little experience to go with a senator with little experience. Yuck.…

Being a blogger prone to grandiosity (is there any other kind?) I'm assuming that Barack Obama is checking out the Internet at the moment, looking for some last minute advice on his vice-president selection. Glad to oblige. I'm a big Obama supporter. I must be, because I get almost-daily emails from the campaign thanking me for my contributions and asking for more. Until recently I felt really good about Obama's chances in the general election. Now, not so much. McCain has been skillfully portraying him as an out-of-touch celebrity snob who doesn't want to drill for more oil and wouldn't…

I've always had a tire gauge in my car, way before Barack Obama made it a symbol of how we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We're so close – the tire gauge and me – I've been able to channel its thoughts about the recent attempt by John McCain and his Republican know-nothings to belittle the importance of keeping tires properly inflated. "Obama's right!" My tire gauge has a high squeaky voice befitting its slim stature. But I can make out these words just fine. It's a fact: proper tire pressure on the nation's cars would have much…

It's hardly news when right-wing talk radio spews forth erroneous information. But since I'm on a mini-roll on this subject, having pointed out the murderous insanity of Michael Savage, et. al. recently, there's a special delight in catching Victoria Taft (a local Portland, Oregon talk show host) in one of her frequent blab first and check facts later moments. Yesterday Taft was going on and on about how a CBS News report said that Al Qaida's #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been killed or severely injured by a recent United States missile strike. Taft praised American special forces, talked about what…

Darn. My outrage over a front page story in today's Oregonian about a proposal to require every bicycle rider to wear a helmet has been cut short. There's no better blog subject than my righteous indignation (RI). So it was sort of disappointing to learn that state Sen. Floyd Prozanski has backed off his notion of an Oregon adult bike helmet mandate (those under 17 already are required to wear one). Sounds like other bloggers beat me to the RI. The Eugene Democrat says he's still all in favor of helmets. In fact, he says he survived a bike crash…

Right off the bat I suspected that the man who killed two people in the Unitarian church shooting would be a devotee of Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. And I was right. I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but when the news reports said that Jim Adkisson railed against the Unitarian Universalist congregation for being "liberal," including its advocacy for gay rights, I recalled all the hate speech that spews daily from the right-wing blabbermouths. Savage is the worst of these nuts. He's off his rocker, yet has the gall to write a book called "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder."…

I'm really enjoying how McCain and Bush are squirming, now that the Iraqi prime minister has endorsed Obama's timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from his country. They've been chanting the mantra "no timeline, no timeline" for so long, and bashing Dems at any mention of setting a date for withdrawal, it's become almost a sacred policy position. Yet Bush also has said that the U.S. goal is to have Iraq stand on its own. So neither he nor McCain can publicly chastise Nuri al-Maliki for expressing ideas that mesh with Obama's. But al-Maliki surely has gotten an earful privately from…

I'm a Libra. I like balance (though I don't believe in astrology, I'll unashamedly use it to make a point). So I think it's great that Obama is moving more toward the middle of the political spectrum, now that he's secured the Democratic presidential nomination. A few days ago I read a great column in the Portland Oregonian by some woman whose name I can't remember. I'd be quoting it like crazy, but my wife took our newspapers to the recycling center today, screwing up my blog post research. Regardless, I'll unashamedly use the columnist's ideas as if they were…

I'm trying to get my head around the current craze for screaming "Flip flopper!" at political candidates who change their minds. Hey, flip flopping works for me when I make pancakes. They don't cook as well when you cleave to consistency and let the batter lie where it lays until one side is burnt and the other is half done. Obama's remarks on Iraq have stimulated the latest media flip flop feeding frenzy. Oh my God! A presidential candidate is open to adjusting his policies based on new information and further thought! Can we trust him?! Shouldn't his ideas remain…

Having failed to achieve the asphaltization of Oregon through Measure 37, now that Measure 49 has been approved by an overwhelming majority of voters, Oregonians in Action is up to new deceptions. And, not coincidentally, fund-raising. Someone who knows that my wife and I are interested in water issues sent us a June 13, 2008 mailing from OIA. It's filled with Dave Hunnicutt's usual over-the-top hyperbole. Last year I wrote about the lies Oregonians in Action was telling about Measure 49. So it isn't a big surprise that OIA is spewing half-truths and untruths about a couple of well-related bills…

This was a good way to start the first weekend of summer. First, my political soul, rubbed raw by seven plus years of brushing up against Bushian irritations, was soothed with the balm of fall election anticipation. My visit to the intriguing FiveThirtyEight site (that's the number of electors in the electoral college) was spurred by a Newsweek article about its founder, Nate Silver, a baseball statistics geek. Having honed his skills in successfully predicting baseball outcomes, Silver has turned his attention to politics. Currently he's projecting that Obama will win 334 of those 538 electoral votes. The betting line…

As someone who's been a disenchanted employee, and also a whistle-blower of sorts, I don't get how White House defenders are trying to discredit former press secretary Scott McClellan's tell-all book. They're saying that McClellan is "disgruntled," as if this defuses his explosive criticisms of the Bush administration. Well, yeah, of course he's disgruntled. He feels like he was lied to. Along with most of the rest of the country. It's been framed as a choice between being (1) a great American, or (2) disgruntled. How about changing the "or" to "and"? Scott McClellan is a great American and disgruntled.…

Way to go, Oregon pagans, freethinkers, humanists, Buddhists, Wiccans, agnostics, atheists, and sundry other spiritual iconoclasts. You did a lot to give Obama a big win. From CNN: Obama also won big in another category: among those voters who say they do not have a religion, or have another religion outside of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism. Nearly 30 percent of Oregon Democrats said they were not religious and those voters went for Obama by 21 percentage points, 60 percent to 39 percent. And among those voters who listed "other" as their religion, a group that made up 10 percent of…

Thanks to Blue Oregon, I now better understand how my state can be so politically contradictory. We've voted for the option of assisted dying if we're terminally ill. That sounds progressive. We also handily approved a ban on gay marriage. That sounds conservative. A nifty analysis of the state's voters ("Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking Prius-driving lesbian commune?") casts light on how we can swing both ways. [Personal note: this Salem resident does drink lattes and drive a Prius. However, I'm not a lesbian.] It turns out that liberal Oregonians are really liberal, and conservative Oregonians are really conservative. Based…