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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Posted inCurrent affairs Travel

Highway 20 fire closure on Santiam Pass raises arson suspicions

So many wildfires are burning in the Cascades and central Oregon. Today a fire started just south of Highway 20 in the Potato Hill area between the Santiam Junction (of highways 20 and 22) and the Hoodoo ski area.  Bend's KTVZ reports: A new wildfire prompted closure of U.S. Highway 20 west of Santiam Pass and a second closure near Suttle Lake Tuesday afternoon, hours after three new brushfires erupted around the Newberry National Volcanic Monument south of Bend, one prompting evacuations of Lava River Cave and the Lava Lands Visitor Center, authorities said.Willamette National Forest officials said the fire…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Science

Trump’s transgender policy is unscientific and unfair

A few days ago President Trump unleashed another ridiculous Twitter storm, this time about transgender people serving in the military. On Wednesday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that “after consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.""Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” Trump added. “Thank you." Not surprisingly, these short sentences are filled with lies. …
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

I don’t like the Fourth of July because I’m super-patriotic

Patriotism is way over-rated. At least, the way this word usually is defined makes it highly limiting: love for or devotion to one's country.  OK. I love the United States. I'm devoted to this country. I also love... My neighborhood, Spring Lake EstatesMy city, SalemMy county, MarionMy state, Oregon.My country, United States (as already mentioned)My continent, North AmericaMy planet, EarthMy galaxy, Milky WayMy universe, which let's call UniverseSo I'm super-patriotic. I love and am devoted to so much more than just my country. Celebrating Independence Day (today!) by focusing on the American flag, fireworks, nationalism, our military, the Founding Fathers (no…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Philosophy

Common facts are the bedrock of democracy — which Trump is blasting away at

There's a lot of reasons to detest what President Trump is doing to our country. What's most concerning, though, isn't any specific outrage -- destroying health care, denying global warming, tearing apart the social safety net -- but his general attack on shared reality. If people can't agree about the basic nature of the world we all live in together, it isn't possible to even discuss the problems we face, much less agree about what needs to be done about them.  About a week ago I wrote about "On Tyranny," a little book that packed a big punch. This is…
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

“On Tyranny” is a disturbingly great read for these Trumpian times

On Tyranny by historian Timothy Snyder is a small 126-page book that I read in about ninety minutes. But it's impact on me was huge.  Yes, good things come in small packages. And in this case, only cost $5.26 (from Amazon).  Snyder never mentions Donald Trump by name. But his frequent references to "the president" make it clear about the tyrant he's warning us about.  This is the most astounding thing about Snyder's book: that he wrote it.  Now. After Trump's election. To alert Americans to the danger of tyranny arising in our liberal democracy that, until recently, was generally…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Publicly defend your incompetent president, Trump voters

With every passing day, Donald Trump's astounding incompetency to serve as President becomes more obvious. His lies, blunders, and disrespect for the office he won with the aid of Russian meddling in the 2016 election make it perfectly clear that Trump is on track to be the worst president in our nation's history. His dismal approval rating, 43% as of yesterday, is an accurate reflection of the low regard most Americans have for our Idiot In Chief. By comparison, Barack Obama had an 62% approval rating by March of his first term in office.  I proudly voted for Hillary Clinton.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Let’s make Salem an island of sanity in an increasingly crazy country

We're one week into four years of a Trump presidency. If the trend line of Crazy continues, it will be so far off the charts I'm worried our United States will disintegrate into a tangled mass of splintered humanity, with most people saddened, angered, and frustrated, and a minority cheering the arrival of whatever disastrous future Trump's barely-there mind envisions for our country. When I wake up in the middle of the night and start worrying about what kind of hellscape awaits our nation, the only thought that calms my frazzled psyche is this: Here in Salem, we can be…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Family

Clinton’s election-eve campaign speech reminded me of how far women have come

Driving home from my Tai Chi class tonight, my election-obsessed brain caused my fingers to choose the MSNBC button on my car's satellite radio rather than the Chill or Classic Vinyl music stations that ordinarily attract me. I heard President Obama's voice.  He was speaking at one of Hillary Clinton's final campaign events, a 40,000 person rally in Philadelphia. Obama was inspiring. Obama strongly urged people to get out and vote tomorrow. Naturally, for Clinton. Then Clinton took the stage. You can hear part of what she said in the video below. What moved me was how positive she was,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Follow FiveThirtyEight and PredictWise to stay presidential-poll sane

For political junkies like me, it's easy to go a little (or a lot) crazy during the excruciatingly long presidential campaign season -- becoming joyful when a chosen candidate (Clinton, in my case) is ascendent in the polls, and despondent when a downturn happens. Here's my advice about how to handle this: Follow the best poll analyzer around, FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver's operation. After he left the New York Times, Silver and Co. branched out into analyzing sports and other areas. But politics, not surprisingly, is his emphasis at the moment. I follow FiveThirtyEight on Twitter and enjoy his highly competent…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Melania Trump’s plagiarism shows why Donald would be a horrible president

If anyone needed a reason to oppose Donald Trump's presidential ambitions, the debacle of his wife's plagiarized speech at the Republican Convention last night sure offers up a good one. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain -- which apparently doesn't include Donald Trump -- that Melania Trump borrowed from Michele Obama's 2008 speech at the Democratic Convention where her husband won his first presidential nomination.  The New York Times has a clear comparison of the Trump and Obama speeches in "Questions Over Melania Trump's Speech Set Off Finger-Pointing." Here's the more extensive example of plagiarism. (click to enlarge)…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Five reasons to vote “No” on $82 million Salem Police Facility bond

I like the Salem Police Department. I don't like the City of Salem's proposed $82 million "supersized" plan for a new police facility. Likewise, I can support our armed forces and still oppose wasteful military spending.I've made an Adobe Spark web page that lays out five good reasons to vote NO on the $82 million bond measure that will be on the November ballot. Plus, a bonus reason. Scroll down and click to see it. Tonight I'm planning to testify during the public comment period at a City Council meeting where, almost certainly, approval of the bond measure referral will…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Bernie Sanders’ revolution is turning into a whimper

Oh, Bernie. This Hillary supporter wants so much for you to recognize the reality that she will be the Democratic presidential candidate, not you.  And then to work hand-in-hand with Clinton and the Democratic Party to (1) defeat Donald Trump in November, and (2) bring about the progressive policies that you so ably championed during your campaign. But this tweet by Mark Murray, the senior political editor for NBC News, neatly expresses how your revolution is turning out at the moment: Not with a bang, but with a whimper Ouch! Biting, yet true.  A story in today's New York Daily…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Tough to know what to do about mass shootings in United States

I wish I had a realistic answer to stopping mass shootings in this country. I wish somebody did.  But here we are again, 50 dead and 53 wounded in an attack on a gay nightclub, the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States, and no realistic answers are apparent. Depressing. The problem is with that word, realistic.  Because it's pretty obvious why this country has way more gun killings than any other nation: we have way more guns.  We're not going to get rid of all those guns, though. No way. Not going to happen. Australia was…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Sanders needs to do “Golden Rule” thing, now that Clinton is presumptive nominee

Today is historic. The New York Times headline says it all. Hillary Clinton Has Clinched Democratic Nomination, Survey Reports. Hillary Clinton became the first woman to capture the presidential nomination of one of the country’s major political parties on Monday night, according to an Associated Press survey of Democratic superdelegates, securing enough of them to overcome a bruising challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders and turn to a brutal five-month campaign against Donald J. Trump. Almost eight years after she ended her campaign against Barack Obama before a crowd with many teary women and girls, Mrs. Clinton signaled the news to…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

I’m an Oregonian who votes by mail. Everybody should.

It's a no-brainer is an overused phrase. But it sure fits when it comes to vote by mail. In 1998, Oregon, where I live, became the first state in the country to conduct all elections by mailed ballots. Since, Washington and Colorado have followed suit. (Coincidentally, or maybe not, along with Alaska these three states also are the only ones to legalize recreational marijuana. So not only can residents of Oregon, Washington, and Colorado vote in the privacy of their own homes, we can also do so while smoking pot. Sweet!) Having moved to Oregon in 1971, I've experienced both…
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Posted inBooks Current affairs

“Listen, Liberal” is a must-read book for progressives

I'm finding my progressive views being challenged by Thomas Frank's new book, "Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" He's the author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?" which took shots at Republicans. Now he's aimed his considerable rhetorical and intellectual skills at Democrats. To great effect.  I'm about halfway through with the book. Though I'm still a Hillary Clinton supporter in this year's presidential primary contest, I can now better understand why Bernie Sanders' supporters feel like the Democratic Party has screwed over ordinary people.  I couldn't resist peeking at the last pages of…
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