Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

I’m not worried about Southern Oregon land use pilot program

The headline in today's Salem Statesman Journal story said, "Pilot program loosens grip on land use plans." Subhead: "Door opened for southern Oregon counties." Well, yeah. But the door isn't open very far.  As I noted in a blog post last March, Governor Kitzhaber's executive order and the legislature's appropriation of $550,000 to support regional land use planning looks to me a lot more like political expediency than a significant policy shift. So if HB 4095 was unnecessary and didn't even get a hearing in the joint Ways and Means Committee, why was $550,000 in general fund taxpayer money allocated…
1
Posted inSalem

Salem “cougar” is almost certainly a cat

Lock the doors! Keep children inside! Armor up your Chihuahuas! A cougar has been spotted in a south Salem residential area! Except... the animal almost certainly is a cat, notwithstanding the uncritical acceptance of the cougar sighting by Statesman Journal reporter Dan Bender. (Note to Bender: "sighting" is when you see something; "siting," the word you used, is when something is positioned somewhere.) This is a real cougar. This is the "cougar" spotted lying on some groundcover during daytime in the backyard of a south Salem home. Comments on the KATU story are decidedly (and appropriately) skeptical about this animal…
No Comments
Posted inCurrent affairs

Weak jobs report points to Republican failings

Not as many jobs were created in May, 2012 as were expected. This is bad news for the unemployed. But Obama isn't to blame, notwithstanding Republican glee over the misery of Americans without a job. As I noted before, the question to ask is whether the United States is better off after the past several years of Republican obstructionism, where the #1 goal of the G.O.P. has been to stop Obama from winning a second term. So it doesn't make sense to blame Obama for a weak recovery, since after the 2010 election he hasn't been able to get key…
2
Posted inCurrent affairs Writing/Weblogs

Reality is respected on this here blog

Reality is a wonderful thing. Actually, the only thing. Show me something that isn't real, and I'll say "You've shown me nothing." And that's what some commenters on this blog want to do: pretend they've got a fact in their hand when all they possess is an empty palm of subjectivity.  Which, I'll admit, is something real. But reality comes in two main varieties, communal/objective and individual/subjective. Both are wonderful, admirable, essential, inescapable. It's when an attempt is made to pass off one as the other that I, as moderator of this blog, rule "No way!" Global warming and Obama's…
2
Posted inCurrent affairs

Alan Simpson trashes Republican extremism in Zakaria interview

Alan Simpson is a Republican who was a Senator from Wyoming for 18 years. He's an appealingly crusty, straight-talking guy. He's the sort of conservative who now is looked upon by super-far-right Tea Party types as -- gasp! -- a moderate. Today I enjoyed listening to a podcast of his recent interview on Fareed Zakaria's GPS program. He appeared with his fellow co-chair of what's often called the Simpson-Bowles (or Bowles-Simpson) commission, Erskine Bowles.  (Full transcript can be read on the CNN site.) Simpson strikes me as a much more reasonable version of Ron Paul. Equally blunt, but without the…
5
Posted inHome life Salem

Crazy Shirts model spotted at Salem dog park!

OK, let's add "Aspiring" at the start of the title for this blog post. Because right now I am not an official model of Crazy Shirts clothing. But after Crazy Shirts executives see today's Salem (Oregon) dog park photo shoot, I expect a modeling contract will be in the mail. (One negative omen, though: Crazy Shirts seems to be age'ist in its current choice of clothing models. On the positive side, there's a dog in this photo of a 2012 photoshoot.) My own photoshoot was spontaneously organized by my wife, who asked for my iPhone after I cajoled Family Dog #2, Zu Zu, to…
1
Posted inHome life

Innocent bee swarm…or something more sinister?

Maybe I've read too many mystery novels, and watched too many junky murder movies. But... I'm worried that there's more to this bee swarm than meets the eye. Especially since the swarm is right at eye level, on a branch overhanging a trail that Family Dog #1 and I walk on often. As soon as I drove home yesterday and got out of the car, Laurel excitedly asked me if I had my iPhone with me. "Of course," I said. "Good. There's a bee swarm on the trail to the creek. My phone's battery is dead. I want you to…
5
Posted inEntertainment Humor

Creative Portland marriage proposal gets Storm Large’s “fuck, yes”

Since I'm a big fan of Storm Large, I wish I could obey her Twitter tweet. My good friend Amy just got engaged, and..no pressure, boys...but this is how the fuck you do it. http://vimeo.com/42828824  However, I'm already married. And my proposal to Laurel some twenty-three years ago was horrible, compared to how the marvelously creative guy who put together this lip-sync'ed marvel did it. Very Portlandia'ish. When I proposed to Laurel, it was so half-assed Laurel wasn't sure what I was saying. "Are you asking me to marry you?", she said. "Yes," I told her. Not exactly the stuff romance…
No Comments
Posted inHome life

Why we sold our Nissan Leaf and bought a Chevy Volt

Goodbye, dear Leaf. I had mixed feelings about seeing our Nissan electric car loaded onto an auto transport trailer a few days ago. The car was on its way to a new owner in eastern Washington. It needed a lift, given the Leaf's 100 mile range. I was happy to have sold the Leaf, since the Chevy Volt that we ordered to replace it is on a train at the moment and should arrive in a few weeks. Yet I enjoyed the Leaf and was sort of sad to see it go. (As described below, my wife felt differently.) After…
11
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…
2
Posted inHome life

Ignoring chainsaw safety tips pays off for stupid me

Sometimes doing a bunch of stupid stuff can add up to something sort of smart, like how multiplying two negative numbers produces a positive result. Yesterday I broke quite a few chainsaw safety rules. But if I hadn't ignored all of them, I probably would have gotten hurt. Chain saw stupidity... let me count the ways. (1) I stood on the top of a folding ladder while using the chainsaw.(2) I held the chainsaw high over my head while cutting.(3) I did the work with nobody else close by. (4) I failed to consider how a branch could snap back after…
6
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…
1
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…
2
Posted inHome life Travel

“You look like Richard Branson.” Nice compliment.

Though I'm irked at Hawaiian Airlines for dropping its non-stop Portland, Oregon to Maui flight, on our return from Honolulu a few days ago a Hawaiian employee made me feel really good. I'd forked out an extra $70 for two seats in an exit row, where I'd stretched my legs in comparative comfort for the five hours it took to cross the western Pacific. As we started our descent into Portland, a flight attendant sat down in the jumpseat that faces backwards across from the exit row. Looking at me, she said, "I've been thinking for the whole trip that…
2
Posted inEntertainment

“Real-life Barbie” does appear to be a real woman

When I came across mention of a real-life Barbie on my Twitter feed, naturally my curiosity was aroused. I've always thought Barbie was hot (though my most ardent attraction is to a more mature, yet similarly curvaceous comic strip character, Blondie). A 21-year-old girl, who has become an internet sensation in her home country of Russia, claims on her blog to be the most famed woman on the Russian-language internet. Valeria Lukyanova's doll-like features, long blonde hair and 'perfect' body make her look like a real life Barbie.In fact, with her tiny waist and large breasts, she bears such a resemblance to the…
No Comments
Posted inHome life Salem

Hawaiian Airlines drops non-stop Portland-Maui flights, so we drop Hawaiian

Most likely, yesterday we took our last flight on Hawaiian Airlines. For about twenty years we've flown direct from Portland, Oregon to Maui. In January 2012 Hawaiian dropped non-stop Portland-Maui flights.  So my wife and I are going to drop Hawaiian. We had lots of frequent flyer miles accumulated through our usually-annual flights to Maui, supplemented by our habitual use of a Hawaiian Airlines VISA card, which gave us one mile for every dollar charged. This year we used up almost all of our frequent flyer miles to buy "free" tickets for a flight to Maui that required a plane change in…
12
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…
3
Posted inSalem Sustainability

1000 Friends of Oregon urges Salem to preserve Sustainable Fairview

Today the Salem City Council has a choice to make: preserve cutting-edge Green zoning requirements for the highly touted Sustainable Fairview mixed use development, or show once again why Oregon's capital deserves it's nickname, "So-lame." I'm not wildly optimistic, given the Salem Planning Commission's disappointing go-ahead to Simpson Hills, LLC that would allow it to build a bunch of average apartments on what should be an exceptional piece of property. But if the City Council listens to those in the know, as opposed to those with the biggest short-term profit motive, it will stick with the Sustainable Fairview Master Plan.…
No Comments
Posted inHumor Salem

My (cynical) ideas for a Salem, Oregon city slogan

Yesterday Michael Rose, a business reporter for the Statesman Journal, asked in a Twitter tweet, "What would be a good city slogan for Salem Ore.?" Oh, great question. My mind is cynically-inclined when it comes to describing Salem's positive qualities, or more accurately, lack thereof. So it didn't take me long to respond to Michael with quite a few suggestions. Waking up this morning, after my brain had unconsciously incubated additional embryonic seeds of cynicism, I came up with some more. This is my current Salem city slogan oeuvre. Salem, the blandburger sandwiched between Portland and Eugene's spicy buns Salem, after you…
1
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…
10