Posted inCurrent affairs

Here’s Nate Silver’s predictions for key Oregon and national races

For political junkies like me, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com web site is a treasure trove of election prediction delights. It's beautifully designed, statistically sophisticated, and a good way to learn statistical principles without actually taking a course. In this post I'm going to share how Silver looks upon some key House, Senate, and Governor races, naturally with a special focus on Oregon races. First, though, here's some tweets that Silver shared today: So the lean/likely zone for Nate Silver is between a 60%-95% chance of a candidate winning. And the toss-up zone is when no candidate exceeds a 60% chance of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Investing

Great 2018 investing analysis: “Do facts matter anymore?”

In these Trumpian times it often seems like we live in a post-truth world where reality is whatever someone wants it to be. But investing is one area where facts can be ignored for a while, but eventually always come back with a vengeance. So when I saw that our investment advisor's most recent quarterly musing about how things are going both internationally and here in the United States was titled, "Do facts matter anymore?," I read it more closely than I usually do.  Since I'm pretty sure this analysis only goes to clients, I've blacked out the name of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Health Living with a catheter

Between the black and white of suicide, there’s a gray area

The recent suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade have gotten people talking about the problem of taking one's own life. That's good.  But I don't feel like we're talking about an important issue that is almost a taboo topic: the gray area between (1) the black badness of people killing themselves when there are better options available to them, and (2) the white goodness of people taking control of their death when they are suffering and only have a few months or less to live. What I see as a gray in-between area is when a person considers that…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Trump passed 3,000 lies this month. That’s horrific.

Everybody lies. Sometimes. A little bit. But Donald Trump lies to a degree that far surpasses any other president, and indeed most human beings in general, aside from pathological liars such as psychopaths.  I have to give the Washington Post credit for having staff with the fortitude to chronicle Trump's lies since he took the oath of office. On May 1 the Post reported "President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims so far." In the 466 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Police need to give up the “21-foot rule” and other dangerous myths

It was great to see a recent story in the Portland Oregonian, Officers get new de-escalation training, which de-bunked the myth that police officers need to keep someone with a knife at least 21 feet away from them, because supposedly "a person with a knife within that distance can stab you before you can shoot." This never made sense to me, as I noted in a 2010 post, "Why I'm bothered by another Portland police killing."  The transient, Jack "Jackie" Collins, was intoxicated and threatening people at Hoyt Aboretum. After Walters knocked on the restroom door, Collins came out. Pretty…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

March For Our Lives, Salem — photos, video, commentary

Here's photos, a video of a moving song, and some commentary on today's uplifting March For Our Lives rally at the Capitol. The organizers estimate a crowd of 3,500, which seems believable to me. I enjoyed taking photos of people with creative signs that had great messages. We've got to act to prevent more mass shootings. Repeat: GOT TO. Click on the image below to see the Adobe Spark page I made.
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

“How Democracies Die” advises against hardball tactics with Trump

Well, it wasn't the most fun reading I've ever done, not by a long shot, but today I finished "How Democracies Die" by two professors of government at Harvard, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. A basic message of the book is summarized in the final chapter: When American democracy has worked, it has relied upon two norms that we often take for granted -- mutual tolerance and institutional forebearance. Treating rivals as legitimate contenders for power and underutilizing one's institutional prerogatives in the spirit of fair play are not written into the American Constitution. Yet without them, our constitutional checks…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Why calling shooters “mentally ill” won’t reduce school massacres

Following the most recent school shooting in Florida that resulted in 17 deaths, Trump and the NRA are resorting to their usual blather about mental illness being the problem, not guns.  This is crazy.  The United States doesn't have more mentally ill people than other countries with vastly fewer school shootings. What distinguishes our country is the number of guns we have. With around 4% of the world's population, we have about 48% of the world's guns. Also, most school shooters aren't really mentally ill. My wife is a retired psychotherapist. She understands mental illness. And she understands that most…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Seventeen young lives cut short. We need a real culture of life.

Four days ago seventeen people were shot to death at a Florida high school, fourteen students and three staff. It infuriates me that there's any debate about what needs to be done: ban the AR-15 and other assault rifles along with high capacity magazines, and strengthen background checks for all gun purchasers.  More could be done, of course. But this is a good place to start. The surviving students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School understand this. They're pressing hard for gun control legislation.  Shut up and listen! That’s the message seething students have for President Trump and other gun-friendly lawmakers,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Early spring on our property shows need for Oregon cap-and-trade bill

Global warming is real. We humans are causing it. Urgent steps need to be taken to reduce carbon emissions. These three facts are borne out by some photos I took a few days ago of how vegetation is leafing out much earlier than usual on our ten acres in rural south Salem, Oregon. We've lived here for 28 years. This is really unusual plant behavior for February 4. The green shoots screamed to me, Global warming is making us do this! Now, I'm old enough (69) and have lived in Oregon long enough (47 years) to run the risk of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Bridging our Divide meeting was a mind-opening experience

I'm a left-leaning atheist. Last night I had pleasant interactions with a Christian conservative. That was the goal of the Bridging Our Divide meeting at the IKE Box: to get people to listen to those with differing political views with empathy, respect, open-mindedness. Here's part of how the Bridging Our Divide web site describes their mission (they're based in Portland, but hold meetings around the country): Bridging Our Divide is working to promote constructive dialogue across political and ideological divides by creating forums for conversation.   Our work is focused on hosting Community Dialogue Events and Common Ground Debates in various…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Moderation in the pursuit of justice is a virtue. Usually.

Today I came across a letter written by Martin Luther King while he was in jail. It criticizes "white moderates." That got me to thinking about Barry Goldwater's saying about moderation. Interestingly, King and Goldwater seem to have something in common, though their political views were very different. King: First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

2017 Salem Women’s March in words, photos, videos

Wow, in the course of writing about the 2018 Salem Women's March, which looks like it will be a Womxn's March for reasons I'm unable to fully fathom, I just realized that I never put up a blog post about the 2017 Women's March.I must have been so eager to share the Adobe Spark page I made of that event -- words, photos, videos -- on Facebook, that I forgot to do the same in a blog post.  So... enjoy. It's fitting that I'm doing this on Christmas day, since the 2017 Women's March was a huge gift to Salem.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

“Intersectionality” can be dangerous left-wing tribalism

I'm a liberal. Which is why I support liberalism. Meaning, in this context, open-minded discourse about the nature of reality where all views are welcomed, so long as they're backed up by reason and facts.  The interesting thing is that liberals can act in illiberal ways. Of course, so can conservatives. But it's more shocking and surprising when liberals try to shut down discussion of certain topics because they've bought into a dangerous tribalism that views one side, their side, as possessing all goodness and truth, and the other side as being all bad and wrong. Recently I had a…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Everybody should be able to talk about anything (just about)

We live in strange times. They got a bit stranger for me yesterday, after I wrote a post on my Salem Political Snark blog, "Salem should have another Women's March, not a Womxn's March." Among other things, I talked about how using Womxn rather than Women didn't seem to be a wise idea, especially since the 2017 Salem Women's March was a huge success, and people thinking of attending the 2018 event would be confused by a word that is both unpronounceable and unfamiliar. I said: My biggest concern, though, is how featuring "Womxn" in the name of the event…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Gun nuts are like children playing with light-sabers (but more dangerous)

I'm hugely enjoying Kurt Andersen's book about how our country became the world's #1 purveyor of kookiness. "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire" is filled with right-on observations. Andersen chronicles our nation's love affair with fantasy from 1517 up to the near-present -- which is where I am now in the book.  Today I read the Gun Crazy chapter. The following excerpt is one of the best descriptions of gun nuttery I've ever come across. Andersen is a hunter and gun owner, so this makes his characterization of gun wackos even more believable. Andersen writes: One set of fantasies has had…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

“Mingling of the Tribes” effort could help to heal divisiveness in Salem

I don't know if this is a great idea, a crazy idea, a great crazy idea, or some other variety of idea (such as, worthless). I just keep envisioning the notion of a citywide Mingling of the Tribes effort here in Salem that would bring people together in these divisive times to better understand our differences and foster respectful communication, while having fun in the process -- without trying to force agreements. Back in March I took my first blog post crack at this idea in "Salem should have an annual political roast: 'A Mingling of the Tribes.'" Nationally, politics is…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Hey, Congress, don’t take away my state and local tax deductions

These days the Republicans in Congress and the White House are adept at doing stuff that irritates my sense of fairness. But usually it doesn't directly affect me. Or at least, not much. For example, attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act upset me because of the horrendous impact this would have on millions of people who have insurance through Obamacare. Yet since I'm on Medicare, repeal wouldn't have meant much to me personally. The tax reform efforts that are making their way through the House and Senate committees are different, though. One thing that grabs my attention is the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

More misguided cougar and wolf hysteria strikes Oregon

Oh, my! Lock the doors and keep the children inside! A cougar may have killed a house cat in Seaside, Oregon. So all student activities at Seaside Elementary School were moved indoors.  Which is ridiculous, because while cougars may kill cats (so will dogs, of course, and much more often), a cougar has never killed a human in Oregon.  As I said in "Danger warning! -- people and dogs sighted in Salem park," what Seaside school authorities really should be concerned about are adult men and family dogs roaming around near the playground. I've done some research to quantify the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Apple wanted a credit check via Equifax. I paid cash for an iPhone 8 instead.

Screw you, Apple. I love you dearly for the beautiful devices you make. I've owned lots of Apple computers, tablets, printers, and phones ever since the Apple II+ with a floppy drive came into my life way back when. But when I got to the very end of the ordering process for an iPhone 8 plus today, wanting to purchase it through the Apple financing program that I used to buy my iPhone 6 plus, I got a message that there was a problem with my credit. I was pretty sure that I understood what the problem was. When this…
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