Posted inSalem

“Salemia” intro looks more interesting than Salem

Ever since I heard about this video production I've been excited about "Salemia," our capital city's response to "Portlandia," a television series about Oregon's metropolitian centerpiece of hip, sustainable, cutting-edge coolness. Which doesn't describe Salem in the slightest. Our convention center attracts groups like Center for the Enthusiastic Appreciation of Paint Drying. The most frequent diagnosis at the Salem Hospital E.R. is acute episode of Chronic Boredom Syndrome. But we do have some talented film makers in the personages of Mike Perron and David Jenkins, who recently teased our Salemia-starved appetite with a one minute intro to the production.  …
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Rick Perry is off to a rocky start with God

Here's a terrific piece about Rick Perry's reliance on religious fundamentalism rather than facts when it comes to governing, "Rick Perry's Unanswered Prayers." Doesn't seem to be working for him. A few months ago, with Texas aflame from more than 8,000 wildfires brought on by extreme drought, a man who hopes to the next president took pen in hand and went to work:“Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obama should be willing to crash and burn

I want to see President Obama jet high into the political skies with his afterburner on full blast. Then, he needs to dive bomb the warring factions in Congress with every weapon at his disposal. Like I said before, Obama has got to become more extreme, crazier, committed, dangerous. If he crashes and burns, fine. I'll strongly support him up to and through his 2012 electoral destruction -- so long as he starts to fight hard for what most of the American people want: balance, moderation, centrism. Polls show that a majority of the public favors raising taxes on the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

What’s most irksome about the S&P downgrade

Today I invested 18 minutes of my life in watching a self-serving video on Standard & Poor's "CreditMatters" multimedia web page. I was curious to see how two high-ranking executives defended their downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. As I watched David Beers, Standard & Poor's Global Head of Sovereign Ratings, and John Chambers, Chairman of the Sovereign Ratings Committee, I got increasingly irritated at them. They struck me as detached, rich, overly self-confident Wall Street types who enjoyed being fed canned questions by another S&P employee. I'd already read the S&P report that described the downgrade, so didn't learn…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Unvarnished truth about the S&P downgrade

There's nothing like going to the source. Politicians are trying to spin the S&P downgrade of the federal government's credit rating in all sorts of self-serving ways. I recommend taking a few minutes to read the short (eight pages) report for yourself. You might be as surprised as I was to see how the unvarnished truth about how this corner of Wall Street views our nation's finances. Here's a link to a PDF file of the Standard & Poors Research Update, "United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered To 'AA+' On Political Risks And Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative." (Or…
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Posted inHumor

People with American flags are terrorists

My wife and I get a lot of emails from conservatives and other right-minded folks who want to alert us to threats against America. It's amazing what we've learned from these messages. I had no idea how far along Obama, Congressional Democrats, and other progressives are in their plans to destroy the United States. Did you know that the health care reform bill allows Obama to form a private army? Oh, its true. It must be, because I heard about this through the Internet. Well, we're grateful for these alerts. Now we want to do our part to keep America…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

My favorite stock market crash headline

"Stocks plunge on fears of global turmoil." So says a banner New York TImes headline on its web site. Um, here's an idea for the world's stock markets. Why don't you hold off on crashing 4-5% in a single day, like you did today, until there really is global turmoil? Because you're producing the global turmoil that you're afraid of when the S&P 500 drops 4.8%, and other markets act similarly. So tomorrow investors will be even more afraid of the global turmoil that their fear today helped create, likely leading to more maket declines. Whatever economist came up with…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obama and the Dems need to get more extreme

President Obama, Senator Reid, Representative Pelosi -- here's what this proud progressive wants you to do from now on: Get freaking crazy! Become as extreme on the left as Republicans are on the right. Act like you'll never compromise your revenue-raising, social program-preserving principles. Yes, it was just two days ago that I blogged, "Maybe Obama is the centrist president I long for." I still believe that. But after further reflection I've come to agree with what E.J. Dionne said in a column that I quoted. Obama’s advisers are said to be obsessed with the political center, but such a…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Maybe Obama is the centrist president I long for

This weekend should have been relaxing. It's almost August. Oregon is warm, dry, and sunny. Staining decks isn't my favorite activity, but I enjoy the simple manual labor. However, for the past few days I've been running to my laptop every hour or two and checking on the progress of the debt limit negotiations. Now that our investments have crawled back to within spitting distance of their value prior to the Big Crash, I'm not wild about a major market downturn -- which likely would happen if Congress and the President don't get their act together and avoid a totally…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

The U.S. is about to get a balanced budget catastrophe

The House Republicans appear to be poised to pass a bill that would forbid increases in the federal debt limit beyond six months from now unless Congress sends out to the states for ratification a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This will never happen. There aren't enough votes in the Senate, and maybe even the House (two-thirds), to approve the amendment. And I predict that if the federal debt limit isn't raised by August 2, as appears increasingly likely, American voters will be horrified by the prospect of a balanced budget amendment -- dooming this foolish proposal forever. Why?…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obama needs to “take the 14th”

I'm hoping that soon we'll have another constitutional slogan that will become as well known as "pleading the Fifth" -- take the Fourteenth. The Fifth Amendment provides a right against self-incrimination. To many, including me, the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes the president of the United States to do what is necessary to protect the validity of our nation's public debt. A month ago I was arguing for this, inspired by a fictional -- but today, all too believable -- speech that Garrett Ebbs wanted Obama to give if debt limit negotiation talks broke down. It ended with: I regret that the…
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Posted inRecreation

“Into the Wild” — a great Oregon horse adventure

My wife and I can't stand "nose to tail" trail rides where the horses are on automatic pilot and walking is the only equestrian gait we get to experience. But Jahn and Sheila Hoover's Into the Wild Equine Adventures are, well, a whole other animal. They offer real horse rides in the Monument Peak trail system in the Santiam State Forest near Gates (a few miles north of Mill City), which is about an hour from our home in Salem, Oregon. Today we took advantage of a Groupon deal and went on a 2 1/2 hour ride with two women…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Boehner is a fool to walk away from debt limit talks

This progressive says, "Thank you, House Republican leader John Boehner. You just served up a juicy political victory to President Obama by throwing a hissy fit and walking away from the debt limit negotiations yesterday." If Boehner had accepted Obama's deal, which was tilted toward Republican positions, lots of Democrats (including me) would have freaked out. As Jonathan Cohn's cogent analysis in The New Republic points out, Obama was poised to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in ways that would have hurt seniors and poor people. This also would have taken away a powerful argument that Dems are eager…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

My Apple quandaries: upgrade to Lion? buy MacBook Air?

Oh, Apple, you're making life difficult for me. Decisions... decisions. This is summertime. Living should be easy. But I've spent the past few days wondering (1) whether I should upgrade my MacBook Pro from the Snow Leopard to Lion OS, and (2) if a MacBook Air would be a nice early birthday present from me to myself. First quandary first: it's scary to install a major operating system upgrade. Before I switched back to the Mac world I was traumatized by Microsoft's Windows "improvements." (The quotation marks are necessary because installing a supposedly new and improved operating system sometimes would…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

Kudos to CardRescue — it saved my deleted videos

A few weeks ago I did something really stupid. I was happily engaged in shooting some videos with my Sony camera for a DVD that would show my granddaughter, Evelyn, some beautiful Oregon scenery and how her grandpa/grandma hike along the Metolius River. Then, even though I have a 8GB camera card, the camera stopped working and an error message popped up on the screen. "Out of storage," or something like that. Damn, I thought, we're only halfway through this hike and I want to show Evelyn some shots of what is coming up next. I decided to delete some…
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Posted inEntertainment

Soccer’s penalty kicks need booting

I have a plan to fix soccer ("football," in the non-United States world). I'm uniquely qualified for this, because I know next to nothing about soccer, and until today I'd never watched an entire match on TV without fastforwarding through the boring parts. Which for me, has been every part except for the thirty seconds before and after a goal was scored, which means I'd end up watching just a few minutes of a 90 minute match. But this afternoon I got drawn into watching the entire Japan vs. USA 2011 Women's World Cup final, all 120 minutes of the…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Why men and women talk in different party clusters

First, let's deal with that word "why" in the title of this post. I haven't bothered to research what other people have to say about my subject -- the phenomenon of men and women gravitating into separate groups at parties, where male and female conversations often head off in drastically different directions. Hey, I'm a man. So I'm going to act in accord with what I told a woman last night who wanted to join five guys (of whom I was one) having an interesting talk about world affairs. She sidled up next to me and said, "It looks like…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Republicans out of touch with Americans on debt limit

Great analysis by Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight. He supports what I've been saying: Republican "fundamentalism" about refusing to consider any additional federal revenues for any reason is way beyond how the majority of Americans feel. The average Republican voter, based on this data, wants a mix of 26 percent tax increases to 74 percent spending cuts. The average independent voter prefers a 34-to-66 mix, while the average Democratic voter wants a 46-to-54 mix. ...But the House Republicans are very unlikely to capitulate on their no-tax pledge. And Democrats have little reason to capitulate either: they are on the…
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Posted inHome life

In praise of a certain insanity

"This is insane... this is insane... this is insane." That was my mental mantra in the early afternoon today, after I'd been using my DR Field Mower for about an hour on our toughest patch of untamed tall grass, brush, and an ungodly number of trees that Laurel and I planted years ago in the midst of the grass and brush, each of which requires maneuvering the heavy walk-behind mower around it. Like I've said before, it's hell. Also, heaven. There’s a point when my mowing hell turns to heaven. It’s when my shirt is soaked through with sweat, the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Religion is the cause of our debt limit problem

The more it looks like the United States is heading for a political and financial train wreck over raising the federal debt limit, which has to be done pronto to avoid a massive panic in the stock and bond markets, not to mention drastically increasing the government's future borrowing costs, the more I put the blame for this fiasco on religion. Why? Because Congressional Republicans who are "negotiating" with President Obama and Democratic leaders are acting like thou shalt not raise taxes is a divine decree rather than a ridiculous pledge cleverly engineered and promoted by Grover Norquist, a decidedly…
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