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May 31, 2009

The American Taliban reacts, begging the "waterboarding" question

A suspect has been captured following the murder of abortion-provider George Tiller. Upon reading about it I thought I'd surf around and see how the right-wing is reacting to the whole thing. So far many seem to be studiously ignoring the issue. Not that I can blame them. But there is some commentary out there that is revealing.

Freepers seem to so far be expressing approval of George Tiller's murder and justifying it with religious terminology, as Kos Diarist JMA notes. In fairness, there is some dissent being expressed. But that appears to be the exception rather than the rule.

Kos Diarist danceattakjg shows that FOX News readers are also expressing approval of Tiller's murder.

Little Green Footballs denounced Operation Rescue founder Terry Randall's public statement:

Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue states, “George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller’s killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

“Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.”

Operation Rescue itself issued this statement:

“We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down,” anti-abortion group Operation Rescue said in a statement on its Web site. “Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller’s family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.”

Which of course is mostly just double-talk. The assertion that Dr. Tiller was a criminal who needed to be "brought to justice" undercuts the mealy-mouthed claims of disapproval of his murder.

Patterico Pontificated a very astute observation:

Whoever did this is a fool. Not only does this hurt the anti-abortion cause and go against Christian teachings, but it validates the recent report warning of conservative domestic terrorists.

Indeed it does!

As far as I can tell it seems that those who are politically conservative because of ideological reasons are condemning this murder, while those who are conservatives because of religious beliefs (i.e., the American Taliban) are either expressing outright approval or are indirectly inferring approval.

So how 'bout it, conservatives? Should this captured suspect be waterboarded? Given the nature of his statement, should Terry Randall be waterboarded? Surely the FBI has a list of anti-abortion individuals and groups who are monitored on the basis of their potential to commit violence and murder for the cause. Should a new wing be set up at Gitmo and let the interrocations commence?

Update: Andrew Sullivan - O'Reilly's Target Shot Dead In Church

Posted by Kevin at 02:43 PM |

May 30, 2009

And She Looks So Lifelike In It, Too

Some wags over in Minnesota are making the story of US Rep. Michelle "One Hoot Short of a Smalley" Bachmann (R-The Moon) into a comic book:

FALSE WITNESS! THE MICHELE BACHMANN STORY is the thrilling, behind the scenes look at the seedy, hairy, loathsome underbelly of the career of of one of America's most notorious right-wing nuts and demagogues! This is that one that TELLS IT ALL--it leaves NOTHING TO THE IMAGINATION! It's all there, the global conspiracy to end American freedom, the apocalyptic last days of human kind, the lesbians in the bathroom, the threats, the vengeance, the Bush-kissing, the sordid lies, Satan, Jesus Christ, the flying imams--

It seems such a thing would be redundant, yes?

Here, too, also: More at the Minneapolis City Pages.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:25 PM |

May 29, 2009

Terrorists Are Really Cookie Monsters

Jean Caranahan @ FiredUp! Missouri introduces us to what has fast become known as "cookieboarding":

When interrogators discovered that Jandal was diabetic, they knew his weakness. They whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies for him, using an artificial sweetener. “We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him … So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures,” Ghosh wrote. Yep, in no time, Jindal was babbling pleasantly, proving once again that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

I checked the calendar. April 1st was two months ago, so this isn't one of those jokes. Apparently.

I'm not saying Jean Carnahan is necessarily lying or punking anyone, but things have gotten way too wierd in America to take anything on face value anymore. I'd like some corroboration on this, just sayin' as J. Random Citizen.

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:58 PM |

Savory Bread Pudding recipe

I am a serious foodie and for me cooking and eating are two sides of the exact same coin. I absolutely love both, but not necessarily in equal measure. What I love is cooking a new dish in anticipation that it will be relished by whomever I serve it too. Other than that I'm middling about cooking. It's okay. I'm good at it and I like doing what I'm good at. So there is that aspect of it. But it's really the pleasure that will (hopefully) be savored by those who eat whatever it is that drives me and serves as my primary reward.

A cherished friend who knows that I collect cookbooks gave me a copy of The Tillamook Cheese Cookbook for my birthday last month. Right away I noticed a savory bread pudding recipe in it which instantly had my curiosity up. But I wasn't excited about the Southwestern flavoring scheme. So I hunted through and found one of the many "Mac & Cheese" recipes which had a flavoring scheme which I thought would be well suited to a savory bread pudding and sorta combined or drew inspiration from the two recipes.

Here's what I came up with:

(Complete recipe after the fold)

These quantities are mostly suggestions. Some of it I measured and some of it I didn't. I tend to cook that way and have tried my best to come up with measurements which reflect how much of which ingredient I actually used.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter
2 cups chopped sweet onion
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/2 teaspoons powdered sage (reserve 1/2 of it)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper (reserve 1/2 of it)
1 1/4 teaspoons sea salt (reserve 1 teaspoon)
7 large eggs
3 cups cream or half-and-half
2 1/2 cups cubed acorn or butternut squash (1/2 inch cubes)
1/2 cup chopped bacon (already cooked but not too crispy)
10-12 cups cubed day-ld French bread (largish cubes)
2 1/2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese (reserve 1/2 cup)
2 cups shredded Mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400 F. Butter large lasagna pan.

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until soft. Stir in the garlic and cook for an additional 3 - 5 minutes. Stir in half of the powdered sage, half of the black pepper and 1/4 teaspoon of the sea salt. Set aside to cool.

Whisk the eggs and cream together in a large bowl. I cheated and used my mixing machine with the wire whisk attachment. Add the remaining powdered sage, black pepper and sea salt and whisk until thoroughly mixed.

Arrange the bread cubes in the lasagna pan until the bottom is covered and the pan is about 2/3 filled. Spread the onion, garlic and spice mixture, the chopped bacon (I wanted to use dried pancetta but couldn't find it last night), the cubed squash (I used acorn) and 2 cups of the shredded sharp Cheddar cheese over it. Roughly mix it all up. Give the whisked eggs and cream mixture one quick whisk to make sure the spices and salt are evenly dispersed and then pour that over the mixture in the lasagna pan. Mix it all up, making sure that all of the crusty bits of bread get some moisture. Spread it out evenly and sprinkle the shredded Parmesan cheese over the top. Over that evenly spread the shredded Mozzarella, and lastly sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of shredded sharp Cheddar cheese evenly over the top.

Cover it with foil and bake at 400F for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake an additional 15 minutes. Lower the temperature to 300F and bake for the remaining 15 minutes.

-----------------------------------------------------------

This is REALLY tasty!! I was pleasantly surprised at how complimentary the flavors of the acorn squash and bacon are. My gut sense was that they'd at least go together but I sorely underestimated just how well. It's a match made in heaven, I swear!

Posted by Kevin at 04:23 PM |

May 28, 2009

Why Not Kitz?

I read the buzz that Dr. John's considering another run at the Gubnership with quite a bit of skepticism.

I think Randy at Ridenbaugh has the right of it though. There've been ample chances for Dr. J. to aspire to powerful office, chances he could have won. He's remained pretty popular in Oregon, is my understanding. With a Democratic Lege at his back, he could be a pretty powerful force.

I was as surprised as anybody when I found out that while Oregon term-limits Gubners to two terms, that's just in a row; a Gov could take a time-out term and then see if the State don't want him again.

I mean, what's our options on the Republican side? Mannix (snicker)? Mr T? (please, stop) Atkinsson? (no, please, seriously ... )

But whether he actually will run? Again I agree with Randy. But put in my own words: I'm a-keepin' my powder dry.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:41 PM |

Freeze means freeze!

After Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's rejection of a full settlement freeze, Secretary Clinton said yesterday that President Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions."

Tell President Obama you support his "Freeze means Freeze" stand.

Posted by Kevin at 01:46 PM |

Your Constitutional Right To Use The Toilet, Denied

Overheard on the Thom Hartmann show: Apparently a big reason why the word privacy was never included in the Constitution is, when the document was written, privacy meant using the commode – or the privy (pronounced priv-a-CEE and priv-EE, respectively).

Thom's never wrong, yo.

It's unfortunate, really. Can you imagine how awesome it would be if denying a bathroom break was a contravention of a Constitutionally-granted right?

Wow.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:56 AM |

May 27, 2009

The Sotomayor Racism Bassackwards Principle

It truly is a messed-up world we live in when this kind of man:

Can call this kind of woman:

... a racist, does it with a straight face, and doesn't get called out for the cynical, manipulative B.S. artist that he is.

The thirty-two words that about to be drilled into everyone's skulls for the next news cycle or two are these:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

It's the kind of cherry-picked 'gotcha' that convervatives love to hang their hat on. They should be careful though, lest that peg becomes a petard that lifts them in turn.

Here's a page where you can grab hold of that petard. Of course, the point is is that the word got out, and Know-nothings nationwide have already clasped it to their breasts.

Just to let you know, you don't have to be one of them.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:16 PM |

May 26, 2009

Deadbeat dads and murdering moms?

I was reading the Oregonian's piece on the chaotic background of the parents of the boy and girl who were apparently tossed off the Sellwood bridge by their mother. And one of the commenters to the piece claimed that "it is common knowledge that women are the leading abusers and murderers of children in US families." I dismissed it as a biased rant but then I noticed on the very next line that the person had left a URL as supporting evidence.

Surprise, surprise, surprise... Straight from the federal HSS Administration for Children and Families:

Posted by Kevin at 05:53 PM |

Within legal boundaries?

Christopher Harris was at the wrong place at the wrong time, just going about his business at approximately 1 a.m. when he was mistakenly identified (from across the street, in the darkness of night) as a participant in a bar altercation. For unknown reasons Harris fled and King County Deputy Sheriff's wearing dark-colored tactical gear (dark gear, dark of night...) gave chase. Here's what happened:

At the 00:08 mark is when Harris appears in view, running perpendicular to the wall on the east side of the Cinerama Theater in Seattle. By the 00:10 mark Harris is no longer running and has slowed down and is turning towards Deputy Paul. Notice Harris bringing his arms up as he appears to be coming to a stop - apparently in anticipation of being physically assaulted by Deputy Paul. It is unknown whether he knew he was being chased by a Sheriff's Deputy or whether he thought he'd gotten caught up in some random crime by a huge guy wearing dark cloths.

At the 00:11 mark Deputy Paul shoves the hesitating Harris backwards... both of Harris' feet appear to leave the ground due to the force of Deputy Paul's shove and Harris hits the concrete wall behind him with his head appearing to impact the wall at the same time that his lower back finally succumbs to gravity and hits the floor in obedience to Newton's gravitational arc. Harris suffers life-threatening head injuries and apparently enters a coma at this point or shortly thereafter.

At the 00:15 mark Deputy Paul initially grabs the unconscious (i.e. UNRESISTING) Harris and appears to bounce his head on the floor from a very short distance. Deputy Paul then grabs Harris' left arm and yanks Harris perpendicular to the wall, bouncing the unconscious Harris' head onto the floor again but harder this time. Deputy Paul then grabs Harris again, apparently intent on turning the unconscious Harris over onto his stomach so that he could be handcuffed, bouncing the unconscious Harris' head on the floor yet harder still.

The King County Sheriff's department says that Deputy Paul used permissible force.

If I shoved someone into a wall with that kind of force and then proceeded to bounce his unconscious head off the floor several times you can bet that I'd be in jail right now facing assault charges with homocide charges pending, depending on whether the guy pulled through or not. As yet Harris remains in critical condition in a coma at an area hospital.

(hat tip: for those who can't afford free speech)

Posted by Kevin at 03:24 PM |

Looks Like Some Advertiser Needs A Hug. Or A Diaper Change

Today in Disingenuity and Reciprocal Pwnage: BlatherWatch, the esteemaable radiohound from That City Up North, gets a good talking to by an advertiser who paid for ads on a station that carried a victim of cranio-rectal impaction, Jay Severin.

BlatherWatch brings the pwnage.

You advertise on a station that broadcasts hate and fear, you're saying either you agree, or at least, you don't care.

What'll be your pleasure?

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:15 PM |

Bob "Mr T" Tiernan: Continuing To Be A Pitiable Fool

A few posts ago I wondered aloud if the Oregon GOP had been doing anything worth mocking commenting on lately. Ever since the election, things have been a mite quite over there.

Thanks to Kari at BlueO, who delivers in abundance.

First of all, did you know that Oregon has the second-lowest business state and local taxes in the country? Bob "Mr. T" Tiernan doesn't, or if he does, he doesn't care. His performance withal was a shibboleth-laden diatribe stuffed to the tip-top with strawmen from thirty years of Republican misrule. In contrast, the performance of Oregon Senate Majority Leader Mary Nolan of Portland was a model of clarity (the whole thing can be seen at the link provided at BlueO; it was on the KGW public affairs program "Straight Talk".

Mr. T, you're supposed to pity the fool, not be the fool who needs to be pitied.

And, echoing Kari: did you know that Oregon has the second-lowest business state and local taxes in the country?

Yes, it's true. Oregon has the second-lowest business state and local taxes in the country!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? While we all are watching YouTube and Hulu, the Oregon GOP is stil tuned into That 70's Show.

In closing his article, Kari muses:

The Oregon GOP thinks Bob Tiernan is the guy to lead 'em out of the wilderness. Puh-leeze.

That is a perfect thought.

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:54 PM |

Well, At Least Teh Queers Can't Get Married

California reached a turning point where it failed to turn.

Maybe I'm just a shtoopid prole and all, but I don't quite follow how referenda that change the constitution to restrict rights from our friends and neighbors based on an arbitrary standard can ever be confirmed as constitutional.

But then again, anti-miscgenation laws used to be alright too.

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:47 PM |

RNC Sotomayor Talking Points EPIC FAIL

In my very last discourse, I cynically provided a list of words you could blenderize to get the Republican tune the Mighty Wurlitzer was going to strike up in their typical shallow attempt to make Sonia Sotomayor look like The Bad Guy.

Heh, I neednt've bothered. According to The Hill, someone let one of the Young Republicans Club do the emailing again:

Whoops. The Republican National Committee (RNC) has apparently inadvertently released its list of talking points on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Included on the released list were a few hundred influential Republicans who were the intended recipients of the talking points. Unfortunately for the RNC, so were members of the media.

D'oh!

Go to The Hill and read them. A few minutes spent now will save you a lot of soul-searing reading of Tighty Whitey Righty blog reading later.

Their whole brain is a list of talking points. It's a wonder it took so long for Democrats to beat them.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:39 AM |

It's Sonia!

President Barack Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court today was the odds-on favorite, Sonia Sotomayor.

To those of us on the left: let the debate begin.

For those of you on the right: cry havoc, activist judges, and let loose the dogs of character assassination. Judging (heh. you see what I just did there?) by putting "Sotomayor" in teh Google, you've begun already.

For those of you who know the right's been hating on her and don't want to do things that make you throw up in your mouth a lot (like cruising RedState or BackPageMag or PowerTools) then just take the following words, mix them up in a bag, pull them out in any order and you'll have your righty critique: activist, judge, second amendment, european, socialist, communist, experience, liberal, ultra liberal, to the left of Che, eats babies.

For those of you who like to settle for more than just truthiness, HuffPo has a nice little abstract though.

Not the worst pick to replace Souter, is my opinion.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:17 AM |

Flag dedication and raising in Forest Grove

Forest Grove dedicated a massive new flag and flagpole yesterday in commemoration of Memorial Day. I took copious pics but like an idiot I set the resolution on high and the files were way too massive to upload via the backside of the PK blog platform. I'd already made plans to spend the rest of the day at the beach with my daughters and the oldest's boyfriend. So it wasn't until I got home in the evening that I had a chance to try to figure out a way around my earlier mistake.

After the fold, a conventional travelogue in my usual manner.

Forest Grovians gathered from far and wide to witness the event. Notice the Eastern foothills of the coastal mountain range in the background. We're right on the Western edge of the Tualatin Valley.



The flag is just about to be hoisted.



Rigging the top of the flag in preparation for hoisting. Notice the huge green bag just behind the base of the flagpole. The flag is in that bag.



The flag is going up.



Going up some more. The flagpole is over 100 feet high, but I'm not sure of the precise height. The flag itself is 30 feet high and 60 feet wide, but this biggest flag will only fly on special occasions. There are two smaller sizes - one that will fly the rest of the time and an extra small one that will fly during severe weather and which is designed specifically to stand up to high winds.



In the center of the pic, Mayor Kidd and City Councilman Johnston observe after the speechifying is overwith. They're actually on the nearer side of a bypass road from the rest of the crowd in the background, but it's really hard to tell from this pic.



Per proper etiquette for Memorial Day, the flag is at "halfmast". Technically. As you can see it's actually almost two thirds of the way up but the flag is so massive that if it were at precisely halfmast then the bottom of it would be perilously close to the ground. So the decision was apparently made to hang it so that at rest the flag is centered halfway down the flagpole.



It takes a pretty stiff breeze to unfurl a 30 x 60 flag...



Naturally, there were lots of veterans on hand to witness the occasion.



Old Glory, extra large size.

Posted by Kevin at 10:07 AM |

May 25, 2009

GOP Mockery Swing-and-Miss, With Extra Added FAIL

Nicked from the always-excellent Top Ten Conservative Idiots feature on Democratic Underground, we get this ham-handed attempt at satire:

Memo to the GOP: the second Obama administration starts in January of 2013, not 2012.

Hope that helped, and you're welcome.

Nice to know all those Intarweb seminars y'alls are having are paying off with teh Google and teh Facebook and LOL and ZOMG and flavens! But keep the Young Republicans Club away from teh Photoshop, yes?

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:32 PM |

The Deep Thought Guested On The View

It's gone to the point where I'm actually getting acutely embarrassed for Elizabeth Hasselbeck

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:14 PM |

The Character Assassination of Seymour Hersh

Have you heard the latest? That, according to an interview referenced by a Pakistani newspaper, investigative journo Seymour Hersh said that the late Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto was murdered under orders from then-VP Dick Cheney?

Makes for fabulous blog content. One problem though.

It ain't true.

But the point is, the cat's out of the bag, and it's gone ubiquitous. The damage is done.

The interview, where Bhutto's name is never even mentioned once, can be perused here.

And if that's not good enough for you, at conservative outlet The American Spectator, writer Philip Klein corrects the record:

On Monday, I posted an report from a Pakistani news site claiming that Seymour Hersh went on Arab TV and accused Dick Cheney of ordering the asassination of Benazir Bhutto. I updated it soon after when Hersh denied he made those comments. This afternoon, I was able to take a look at the actual interview he gave, and it's now clear he never made the accusation, or even mentioned Bhutto.

And even makes a half-hearted attempt at exculpation:

But obviously, I should have treated the Pakistani report with more skepticism.

Obviously.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:54 PM |

We'll Be Seeing Christ On A Cracker Any Day Now

Today in Crazee: A Missouri woman finds a Cheeto™ that seems to resemble Jesus on the Cross.

Or a donkey's head. Your call.

Give them credit for this: at least they aren't putting it up for sale on eBay. Yet.

Actually, it does look like Jesus on the Cross.

If Jesus was a giant Cheeto.

That would simplify Communion quite a bit.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:23 PM |

Remember.

In memory of all those who died so that we can enjoy what freedom we can fight for and what happiness we can pursue:

Thanks.

And for those of you who need a little laugh in these dark times:

There ya go.

(Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by user bluedaisy at sxc.hu; manatee from this flickr page).

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:36 AM |

May 23, 2009

D'oh!

Retired Catholic Archbishop Rembert G Weakland:

We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature.

Yes. Well.

I can see why that one would be a conundrum, yes.

With a world view like that, I can't understand why Catholic membership in the USA is contracting. I mean, this stuff sells itself!

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:09 PM |

Larry Taunts Happy Fun Commssioner Leonard

If I may be a little presumptuous here, Oregonian community blogger Larry Norton apparently sees the same Randy Leonard that I do.

That both is a comfort and a sadness. I enjoyed Randy's snub-nosed attitude before he started figuring he was Mr. Baseball Stadium and tromped over the Lents to instruct them on acceptable ways of responding to the city figures that you elect to serve you.

Larry also drills down and figures out that where the city sees a clear public want for a stadium in Lents, the waters in reality are rathermore muddy. It depends on who you ask:

But, compare their article with one from the Oregonian in March: "For a dreamy six months or so, the residents and business owners of the outer Southeast Portland neighborhood allowed themselves the tantalizing anticipation that a Triple A baseball stadium would land in their beloved Lents Park."

Say what? Did something change or did the Oregonian talk to the wrong people. This may not be the case in Lents, but my experience in Old Town is that the neighborhood association can be the wrong place to get a true feel for neighborhood opinion.

Some business sage once said to me "the trick to getting what you want is never asking a question without knowing what the answer is before you ask".

That's making more and more sense as time, tide, and baseball stadia go by. It's hard to feel positive about something that's going to gobble up a bunch of public money if you don't think your city council is being entirely straight with you, is willing to tell you an acceptable truth, and then only listens to the answers it likes to hear.

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:49 PM |

Ask Not For Whom The Sellwood Bridge Fee Tolls

... it tolls for thee:

County commissioners could vote in October at the earliest to approve a fee for the project, under the amendment. No public referendum is required. The fee would end when bonds for the bridge project are paid off, Kafoury said.

The idea of a new vehicle registration fee for Multnomah and Clackamas counties to help raise money to replace the Sellwood Bridge makes a certain amount of sense. Multomah and Clackamas are the two counties whose economies and transportation systems are most directly affected. Complete loss of the Sellwood would mean the only Willamette River crossing south of the Ross Island Bridge would be the Abernathy ... about twenty miles upriver in the O.C.

What it would do to the not-so-economically-favored (on whose backs most taxes and fees land these days anyway) who have to drive to work (TriMet's good, but there's major room for improvment in the Sellwood area, as far as I'm concerned) and whose finances are on the edge as it is is anyone's guess. I'm assuming it won't be pretty.

They'd better approach this with as much caution as a cement truck crossing the Sellwood.

They don't have to put it up for a vote, FWIW (check the article linked above)

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:39 PM |

This Deep Thought Has Been Waterboarded And Agrees It's Torture

Have the Oregon GOP done anything worth mocking commenting on lately?

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:23 AM |

They Seem Obseessed With Her. In The Bad Way.

Seriously, I can't figure out whether the RNC wants to destroy Nan Pelosi or get into her pants.

I mean, this stalking behavior is getting way creepy.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:20 AM |

Yeah, It Kinda Is Torture. No, Make That It REALLY Is Torture

I'm late to the ball on this one (I have to work for a living, yo) but by now it's all over the intarwebs: the noted conserva-shockjock Erick Muller actually got waterboarded, under controlled conditions, as a test to see how long he could hack ('scuse) it.

He lasted but six seconds.

Muller, known by the nom de guerre "Mancow" (all the decent radio aliases apparently spoken for) is a syndicated talker/shocker who has a reputation for conservatism and on-air stunts that get him in trouble (it must be said, though, that I appreciate what he did to Fred Durst that one time. I've always said Limp Bizkit was overrated. Anyway.)

It's reported that Mancow manned-up in a demonstration at his radio station designed to prove that waterboarding wasn't torture – or if it was, it wasn't all that bad, I guess.

"It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke ... It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back... It was instantaneous... and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture," Rachel Wiener of the HuffPo quoted him.

He didn't want to say it. But he did. He had to. He experienced the subtle joys of simulated drowning.

Now, I'll give Mancow credit for having bigger stones than Sean Hannity did, who said he'd do it for charity but hasn't yet been brave enough to take the ... well, plunge, which should surprise no student of arrogant bullies.

It's way past time for this argument to move on to what I think is the real question – are we as a nation cowed enough to think that we have to do this to protect ourselves? It has been done in our name; that ship has sailed (I sure have way too many opportunities to use that phrase lately). Some still advocate its use, despite a chorus of warnings that it does no good, and that an America that believes in truth and justice and an America that tortures its adversaries are mutually exclusive things.

Still, it's a welcome dose of happy schadenfreude to see someone who didn't think simulated drowning was so bad admit that it is indeed that bad. The grudging in the admission is just a bit extra happy.

But at least Mancow had the courage to put his air supply where his mouth was?

And Hannity?

Olbermann gave ten large to Mancow's favorite charity. The offer to Hannity has been rescinded (link features video pwnage).

And so it goes.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:58 AM |

Oregon lege: gender wars, take 1,925,856,012

SALEM -- A young woman at a college party gets drunk and blacks out. Then she's raped.

Oregon is one of 18 states where prosecutors and courts are allowed to consider how she became intoxicated. Did she drink too much? Did somebody slip a drug into her beer?

It matters because, under current law, if a woman is incapacitated by her own actions, the person accused of attacking her could be charged only with sex abuse in the second degree and not with the more serious crime of first-degree rape or sex abuse, which carry mandatory minimum prison sentences.

A bill generating much debate in the Legislature would change the law so that it wouldn't matter how a rape victim became vulnerable to attack.

"The question is, did she consent or not," said Rep. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis. "Nothing else should matter."

Well, that's poorly worded by Rep. Gelser. What she means is, "did she give INFORMED consent or not." A blackout is not unconsciousness. A person in an alcoholic or drug-induced blackout can verbally agree to all sorts of things. It's just that they won't remember any of it.

What if the young man is also in an alcoholic or drug-induced blackout? Apparently that's irrelevant to this legislation. Which is why this is bad legislation.

The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment is all about guaranteeing equality under the law. This legislation proposed by Rep. Gelser doesn't even attempt to do that. If an incapacitated young woman isn't fully responsible for her choices and actions while incapacitated then neither is a young man. Anything less than that makes a mockery of our most cherished notions of "justice".

Perhaps this'll reveal the depth of my idealistic naivete but I look forward to the day when BOTH genders cease attempting to use the law to punish the opposite gender. Either one believes in the concept of equality under the law or one doesn't. There is no middle ground.

Posted by Kevin at 08:18 AM |

May 22, 2009

It's Not Censorship, It's Just "Less Free" Speech

Today in Doublethink: Liberty University, founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell (I trust he needs no intruduction) has ironically banned the Liberty U's Democratic Students Club.

We are not surprised. Dismayed, but not surprised.

Liberty University's Republican Students Club is still in business.

We are really not surprised at that.

Even the Liberty U College Republicans see the value of having an opposition (as reported by the Liberty U Champion):

The College Republicans Public Relations Director Melinda Zosh sees this organization as a great opportunity for politically engaged students to gain experience in an open forum of discussion on the issues.

“You can’t have College Republicans debating each other,” Zosh said. “Now we can have an open forum where the College Republicans and the College Democrats can debate the issues.”
Zosh thinks it is important to have both a College Republicans and a College Democrats on any academic university.

And so it goes.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:33 PM |

My New Hobby

Reminding journalists that it's "Democratic", not "Democrat".

Please, those of you in the media, if you're going to want some of us to take you seriously again, you need to take your Luntz-English/English-Luntz Dictionaries off your desk and toss them on the ash-heap of history, where they belong.

You can insult me all you want.

Please don't insult my intelligence.

It's not harmless, and it's not OK.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:29 PM |

Fort Worth: Absolutely Smitten With Us

Fort Worth is over the moon about our transit.

Chris Smith at Portland Transit reacts with a (slightly) jaundiced eye.

It's understandable actually, what with the service cuts TriMet is phasing in, it's easy to forget that, even with that level, we're still a hell of a lot better off than other places. And our SUPERTRAINS* kick ass.

* apologies, Atrios.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:55 AM |

Leading By Example

Today in Bad Taste: Mary Kay Latourneau (and Mr Mary Kay Latourneau) to host a "Hot for Teacher" night at a Seattle nightclub.

I wish I were kidding.

This will be the third one.

I wish I were kidding.

At least the queers can't get married though, so we have that anyway.

(hattip)

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:45 AM |

No Deep Thought Left Behind

Instead of teaching to the test, why don't we come up with a whole new, innovative system, using a system of benchmarks known a "grades" (I suggest A, B, C, D, F) and then call it good if we get more "A's" this year than last year?

And if we get less "A's", instead of reducing funds to the troubled schools, we increased them?

I'm just thinking inside the box here, I know.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:38 AM |

Ouch.

$388 Megabucks to be cut from State Budget, including 83% of the budget for homeless youth and runaways and 38% of the budget for in-home care for the senior and disabled.

Here's the article at the Statesman Journal ... read it if you have the courage.

Be sure you're sitting down.

You might want to contact your legislators.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:28 AM |

Dept. Of That Ship Has Sailed, Michael Steele Division

RNC "Chair" Michael "Never Played Bass for the Bangles" Steele, FOX News, May 19th:

They can contemplate all they want to, but the reality is if they want a figurehead chairman you can have a figurehead chairman, but it won't be Michael Steele.

Why not? It already is.

The RNC and Michael Steele: The gifts that just wont. stop. giving.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:14 AM |

May 21, 2009

About Kris v Adam

I wasn't going to blog about this but after reading Lyndsey Parker's post about how America got it wrong by voting Kris Allen in as the season 8 American Idol I've changed my mind.

I only watched a few of the Idol contests but invariably I came away with two favorites: Adam and Kris. That they ended up the final two contestants just means that I've got good taste. ;-)

Here's the thing - America didn't get it wrong. As KISS guitarist and (sometimes) vocalist Paul Stanley reportedly said after Kris won, they're both winners. I don't believe that either one is better or more talented than the other. They're different! They have different styles! Deal with it!

For what it's worth my honest assessment is that Adam would be much more fun in a live concert while Kris's voice will probably come across better over the radio. But I expect both of them to make it in the big leagues.

One thing is certain in my mind: BOTH of these guys are more talented and capable of lighting up the charts than almost ALL of the previous season winners.

Posted by Kevin at 01:20 PM |

Not "Democrat Socialist"? That's A Relief!

It's just "socialist tendencies" now, which would be a cool name for a rock band, yo.

H/T to HorsesAss Seattle, who links to the The Hill article that covers this episode of GOP intellectual self-pleasuring, with a first paragraph where Reid Wilson reports that (emphasis mine):

Republican National Committee members on Wednesday seriously tempered language labeling national Democrats a "socialist" party, shelving a proposal that could have caused the GOP embarrassment.

Could have? Man, that train has totally left the station.

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:32 PM |

Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Commissioner Leonard

Destined for the Great Moments In Town Hall reel: Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard, taking the dog'n'pony show on the on-then-off-then-on-again for Lents minor-league baseball stadium (and why you will like it, dag), clumsily trys to play the east side against the west side, and then takes on a snotty 71-year-old who hasn't gotten the memo that the duty of a citizen in Portland is to sit there, exhibit acceptable behavior, and like it.

With that sort of PR going on, I can't understand why Lents isn't crazy about the stadium either. It ought to sell itself.

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:22 PM |

Is That The New Euphemism For "Enhanced Interrogation" Then?

Senator James Imhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, says one thing Gitmo detainees get that you don't is a free colonoscopy for the asking.

I kind of wish I was joking here.

For reference's sake, every last county in Oklahoma voted majority GOP last election. Just pointin' that out.

No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:11 PM |

GOP Twit EPIC FAIL: Slavery Apparently Okay

According to Media Matters (whom, the more Bill O'Reilly hates, the more I love), the GOP really has lost its "taking out of context" skills.

A Twit sent on Twitter (that's the kind of twit I actually meant in the headline, although it works on that other level too), went thus:

RNC: as he prepares to deliver remarks in hall that holds the constitution, flashback obama: "constitution flawed" http://bit.ly/tFL7O #RNC [Twitter, 5/21/09]

As explained on MM, the "flaw" in the Constitution was slavery.

The thumbnail on the Twit? Michael (Not the Ex-Bangle) Steele. A black man, in case people weren't taking notes earlier. At that point, my head kinda asploded.

Now they're just making fun of him.

Meantime, a small earthquake went through Springfield Illinios today; premliminary reports from seismographs have pinpointed the epicenter.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:36 AM |

Wyden's Health Care Idea: Does Not Appear To Be Full Of Win To Me

The idea of converting my employer provided-insurance to part of my wages and then having me buy my own health-care with it just seems even more b0orken than the way we do it now.

Hell, if the AFL-CIO, UFCW, and AFSCME are lining up against a dependable Union-friendly Democrat to oppose something he's trying to do, this has got to be a bowser.

I didn't like it when Bush tried it. Just because it's a Demorcrat advocating the plan doesn't mean I'm going to change my mind.

You okay, Mr. Wyden? I just don't get what you're trying to accomplish here.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:37 AM |

May 20, 2009

Stay Out, Yankee!

The Onion: Texas Constructs Border Wall To Keep Out Unwanted Americans.

Seems a bit too much work. Just being Texas is enough to keep me away.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:28 PM |

Star Trek 2.0

Up until now, this is the only blog in the noosphere that hasn't reviewed Star Trek, and I figured I'd better ante up before they revoke our player's club card.

Yes, it is everything you've heard it was. This was a gleeful and well-done adventure/origin story. It looked good, the F/X should win an Oscar™, the acting was perfect, and the casting was right on.

And I'm also hoping that Zoë Saldana has an opening for a pasty dude in her entourage, because I am so there for that.

Anway, and seriously, I loved the audacity of the concept when I heard it; a Star Trek time-travel driven story that finally doesn't suck, spawning a second ST canon which has all the niftyness of the first one and honors the Great Bird as it should, but also won't have the problem of trying to make sense with the crazy-quilt that is Star Trek canon to begin with.

All the original characters are there in a different take that gets everything right though. Jim Kirk as the lover/adventurer/risk taker/fool, Dr McCoy as the dyspeptic sage, Spock with new emotional depth that didn't exist before (but makes sense with the characater), Scotty as the most brilliant goofball you ever saw ... Chekhov almost stole the movie later on.

What impressed me most of all, though, was the way the story and the acting paid all sorts of homages, and included everything you expected a real Star Trek story to include, but none of it was forced in. When Jim Kirk, Academy cadet, was bedding a green-skinned girl, it just worked as a thing of the story, but you realized that if there were no green-skinned sex kittens, then it wasn't really Star Trek after all. And when Karl Urban's Leonard McCoy growled "are you out of your Vulcan mind?", it was a natural thing within the story but also reminded you fondly of DeForest Kelly.

Nothing at all was gratuitous – not even the appearance of Leonard Nimoy's "Spock Prime". In the past, Trek seems to have used time travel as a ham-handed plot device to prove a point (much like the holodeck, which I also dispised), but it was done with such a deft touch I didn't mind it at all.

It's a Trek that is pleasing everyone because it, as a Trek story, as a special effects spectacular, as a cracking-good SF tale, does please everyone.

At last, an odd-numbered Star Trek that doesn't suck. It's a rethinking/reimagining/rebooting, it's all of those things, but somehow, it's none of those things. And it's all good.

Bliss.

See it. Don't miss out.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:15 PM |

Toss Jeff A Senator Treat

As Kevin has noted in this chronicle lately, Senator Jeff Merkley (three words I never get tired of saying) has been doing something unprecedented, at least as far as I can tell lately: trying to make good on his promises, such as the CreditCARD Act, which, amongst other things, finally does away with Universal Default.

You know what that is don't you? It's the little concept where a credit card company raises your rate on your credit card because you were late on your water bill. Or your power bill. Or your book club membership.

He's been doing hard work and actually trying to live up to the promises he made on the campaign trail.

Over at ActBlue, after being challenged to do so by a commenter at my original blog, I set up a donation page. My pitch is this: whenever Jeff acts on our behalf, to craft or pass legislation that does what he says he was going to do for us, and help everyone around here who owns a house or works for a paycheck, we should spot him a couple of bucks.

Thanks to the economy we all don't have a lot of donation money to throw around. But we've seen that a whole lot of small bits equal one big bit.

And what did Jeff do for you today? He was with President Obama at the signing of the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act. From Senator Merkley's Office:

The Helping Families Save Their Homes Act will help prevent foreclosures, increase the availability of credit, and make the banking system more stable.

The legislation includes an important amendment authored by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) and co-sponsored by Senator Merkley to protect renters living in properties subject to foreclosure . The amendment ensures that tenants and families who might otherwise have to vacate their homes through no fault of their own may remain in their homes for the balance of their lease or, if there is no lease, have 90 days to find their next home.

Well, hell, people, it may or may not be perfect, but do you think that for one single moment that would have even gotten out of committee in the last administration?

Say thanks with a small donation.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:50 PM |

Underwater

Today in Global Warming: major internet domain name registrar GoDaddy.com is advising prospective customers not to go with the TLD .tv suffix for Tuvalu, because due to global climate change, Tuvalu just might not ... well, be there in a few decades. Gizmodo:

According to GoDaddy, you should maybe stop buying .tv domains because Tuvalu, who owns all such domain names, is currently sinking underwater. Once Tuvalu no longer exists as a nation, the domains will also disappear.

That, my friends, is harsh.

We would perhaps parsimoniously point out that saying that Tuvalu is sinking underwater is kind of backwards in as much as the elevation of the island isn't changing at all but the altitude of Sea Level. Or, as the WC Fields characater in the Firesign Theatre piece How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All said of the twilight, "No, no, son, you're all confused! The sun isn't going down, the hor-i-zon is moving UP!".

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:03 PM |

I'm Kind Of Ashamed Of Us All

Now, I'm not going to be all smug about the fact that I voted yesterday (oh, well ... I'm going to be a little smug, ok?) or preach to anybody, but I was just gobstopped when I read the Oregonian today and found out that only two in ten of us went out to vote.

Oh, boy. That's pretty shameful.

Why? Well, there's the "our ancestors fought for the right to vote" stuff and all that, but it's not just that.

More germane to modern times is that the overall strategy of people who'd like to, for instance, get creationism-friendly (just as an example, mind) people into local government is to start small ... in school board elections, and things of that nature.

It's not hard to show up for those history-changing elections. We did ourselves proud then.

I'd argue that it's just as important for progressives, or liberals, or whatever you want to call yourself, to come out in force on the little, bland, uniniteresting elections, like this one most of you didn't notice.

The good news is that nobody with an obvious neo-conservative or theocratic agenda stood for any election, as far as I can tell, so we dodged the bullet this time.

But if we don't show up for these ... well, what the hell, huh?

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:05 PM |

"No good tree bears bad fruit..."

"...nor does a bad tree bear good fruit" - Luke 6:43 (NIV)

Apparently the "Pro-Lifer's) much-vaunted respect for "life" ends at birth:

Thousands beaten, raped in Irish reform schools

DUBLIN – A fiercely debated, nine-year investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

...

The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

This does not appear to be an abberation but rather appears to be consistent with how this particular sect of "pro-lifers" demonstrate their respect for life around the world.

Posted by Kevin at 07:51 AM |

GOP Chair Steele: They're Cool, We're Not. Please Won't Somebody Register Republican?

I'm actually following Kevin on an article he just linked, but a different point spoke out at me:

They're making fun of President Obama for being a celebrity ... again.

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele likened President Barack Obama's popularity to that of a celebrity and said Republicans can't be afraid of criticizing him head-on if they want to regain their relevance.

"He's young. He's cool. He's hip ... he's got all the qualities America likes in a celebrity, so of course he's going to be popular," Steele told state party chairmen Tuesday. But "this is not American Idol. This is serious ... and we are going to take them on."

You remember them flinging this up against the wall during the campaign hoping it would stick, yes? You remember ... it didn't work, yes?

I remember. So, in the spirit of sarcasm, let me deconstruct Steele:

The phrase:

He's young. He's cool. He's hip ... he's got all the qualities America likes in a celebrity, so of course he's going to be popular.

Actually translates to:

He's young. He's cool. He's hip ... and we're not. Man, we are totally screwed here. My own party treats me like a prop. Crap, we're not going to have a single chance to get back into the Presidency before 2040, even if Obama screws up.

And you're right, Michael. This ain't American Idol. And thank heavens for you, mate ... because in the American Idol of Politics, you guys are totally Sanjaya.

PS: I can't recall any Republican ever apologizing sincerely for any mistake of the past. So, did the era of Republican apologizing ever start?

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:54 AM |

May 19, 2009

GOP's Steele: not ready to face reality just yet

RNC Chairman Michael Steele asserts,

"The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over," he said. "We have turned the corner. No more looking in the rearview mirror. From this point forward, we will focus all of our energies on winning the future."

Joe Gandleman reads the tea leaves in the latest Gallup poll over at TMV and while Steele may be done apologizing, it doesn't appear that Americans have forgotten or are interested in forgiving just yet.

Posted by Kevin at 08:21 PM |

Fact Nugget: Portland Is A Gamma Class World City

I noticed this in passing: Apparently, Portland – yes, our glorious little burg – is what's known as a "Gamma Class" World City.

This is a dubbing by Global and World Cities Study Study Group, Network, and Stuff (more conveniently known for obvious reasons as GaWC), a part of the Geography Department of Longborough University in the East Midlands in England (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Windsor Group), and indicates our relativity next to other cities all over the globe in something, somehow.

I think it indicates our degree of relative nifty. World Cities are divided into strata named for greek letters (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and possibly Little Debbie), and three subgroups in each (e.g., there are Alpha +, Alpha, Alpha -, et. al, all the way down to Formula 409)

I was actually rather pleased to find that Portland is right square in the middle of the Gamma World City class, along with Guadalajara, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Lagos, Philadelphia, Perth, Amman, Manchester, Riga, Detroit, Guayaquil (Equador), and Wellington New Zealand. In other words, were as nifty as not only the city Tom Shane gets his diamonds in, but also a New Zealand city named after a sort of rubber boot.

Here's teh Wikipedia article on it, for what it's worth; it doesn't clear up too much. Here's also a the list at the GaWC website, which is notable for the number of cities on the "Gamma -" list, which we have to tolerate, and the cities on the "Sufficiency" and "High Sufficiency" list whom, apparently, we can tell to "suck it".

Tegucigalpa Hondruas is on that "Sufficiency" list, which suits me just fine. Tegucigalpa just pisses me off. It just does. I don't know why.

Seattle's "Gamma +", which I'm sure was a mistake. I blame gay marriage and rigged voting machines. I want a recount on paper ballots this time.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:31 PM |

Director Panetta, I Believe That Ship Has Sailed

The Politico's Josh Gerstein:

CIA Director Leon Panetta warned Monday against making his agency a pawn in the nation’s partisan political battles, even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that she was lied to by the CIA continues to reverberate in Washington.

“If they start to use these issues as political clubs to beat each other up with, that’s when we not only pay a price but this country pays a price,” Panetta said during a question-and-answer session following a lunchtime speech in Los Angeles.

We know, Director. We know ...

At a meeting on December 12, 2002, he (fmr. CIA director George Tenet) assured Bush that the evidence against Saddam Hussein amounted to a "slam dunk case."

Yeah, most days these dots pretty much connect themselves.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:31 PM |

Classy Bunch

(Warning to those with gentle souls: An adult word is used in the next-to-last paragraph of this missive. Proceed with due caution)

While it's predictable that Know Nothing Winger talk-show hosts would dance on Nan Pelosi's (as-yet-undug, and I see nobody getting out any shovels) grave, it still makes me wonder such self-proclaimed smart-people such as Neal Boortz (whose name is missepelt by two letters), would get on radio and say this with a straight face:

[H]ow fun it is to watch that hag out there twisting in the wind ...

I point this out not because I'm perfect (well, I am, but not in the way you're probably thinking) and not because we liberals are necessarily any more politer, given any specific situation.

But I do want to point out that Neal Boortz ("Americas most over-rated and overpaid talk show host") is the typical sort of Republican (yes, I know he says he's a Libertarian, but we all know he lies to himself about this) who loves to gig liberals and Democrats for being impolite, while gleefuly slinging the mud himself. That such a man is a hypocrite is nothing new, but its something which needs to be illustrated as often as possible.

Mom Always Said™ that anyone who's motto is "Somebody's gotta say it!" is just looking for an alibi for being a prick in public.

Mom (also) Always Said™ that anything deemed as "Somebody had to say it" is, more often than not, something nobody actually needed to say.

PS: It's not about Pelosi, it's about cover for probably committing war crimes.
PPS: Time to get over what Wanda Sykes said ... now.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:14 PM |

CIA-Themed Deep Thought

The CIA would never mislead the Congress.

Never.

Never ever ever.

Neverevereverevernevernever! Ever! Never!

Ooo-wee!

And it was never politicized. So there!

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:42 PM |

Merkley's doin' what we sent him there for

From the press release:

MERKLEY: CREDIT CARD REFORM ON THE WAY

Senate Passes Bill Ending Deceptive Practices and Hidden Fees

The U.S. Senate passed the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 today by a vote of 90 to 5. Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley was an original co-sponsor of the bill and urged the White House to support strong protections for consumers.

“Today’s vote in favor of credit card reform is a huge victory for American consumers,” said Merkley. “The CARD Act will end deceptive practices and hidden fees that are stripping wealth from Oregon families. I hope we’ll soon have a bill on the President’s desk to ensure that these reforms are in place and helping consumers.”

While the Federal Reserve has issued new regulations addressing some abuses, those reforms would not go into effect until July 2010 – too late for many consumers who are already deeply in debt because of the economic crisis. President Obama has repeatedly stated that credit card fairness is a high priority for his Administration. The president even held a town hall in New Mexico on the topic last week.

“I have heard from families across Oregon who have been hit with fees and arbitrary rate increases even though they paid their bills on time and did everything right. It’s time to diffuse the ticking time bomb of credit card debt that resides in the pockets of every American,” said Merkley.

The Credit CARD Act would both speed up and strengthen reforms of the industry by:

• Prohibiting “universal default” on existing balances, the bait-and-switch practice of raising interest rates on a consumer for actions unrelated to the card in question;
• Requiring payments beyond the minimum monthly payment be applied to balances with the highest rate of interest;
• Prohibiting fees based on the method of payment, be it telephone, mail, internet, or otherwise;

• Prohibiting card companies from issuing late fees if the card issuer delayed crediting the payment;
  
• Requiring card companies who increase a cardholder’s interest rate to review that decision in six months and decrease the rate if warranted;
  
• Requiring that consumers affirmatively “opt-in” to over-the-limit plans, which will protect consumers from unwanted and unfair over-the-limit fees; and
  Limiting the aggressive solicitation of young people.

Thanks, Jeff!

Posted by Kevin at 11:47 AM |

Irreconcilable differences

In his commencement address at Notre Dame the President said, "(t)he fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable." I would like to suggest that on some level the so-called "pro-life" camp has internal irreconcilable differences.

As I noted in the lead-up brewhaha amongst "pro-life" Catholics to Obama's impending commencement address, there is an apparent disconnect wherein the whole alleged respect for "life" seems to end at birth and thereafter the individual is seemingly fair game for abuse. Although I suppose that could be explained by drawing a distinction between respect for life and respect for quality of life, with only the former being held near and dear by a huge swath of allegedly "pro-life" individuals.

The latest evidence of the apparent irreconcilable differences among "pro-lifers" comes via comparing two different polling questions. One is the recent poll done by a GOP-affiliated outfit which claims (via Think Progress, via WaPo) to have found that 53% find "harsh interrogation of detainees" justified. A recent Gallop poll reportedly finds that 51% of respondants are "pro-life".

Of course, as the Think Progress dissection notes, leading questions can produce mis-leading results. The torture poll avoided using the word "torture" and also didn't mention that the military fully concedes that many detainees at Gitmo were innocent. It also avoided mentioning any of the suicides or attempted suicides among detainees, as well as the fact that only the smallest fraction of a fraction of detainees have been charged with anything at all.

So, what exactly does "pro-life" even mean in the real world?

Is turning a blind eye to torture a way of showing God that one respects life?

Is turning a blind eye to pedophile clerics and non-clerics raping boys and girls, as so many Catholic Bishops and their supporters have done, a way of demonstrating divine sanction?

WTF does "pro-life" even mean when such blatent disdain for life is demonstrated over and over by many of it's loudest proponents?

(hat tip: Spyder for the Think Progress link)

Posted by Kevin at 08:32 AM |

Speaking of Dick "I am not a crook" Cheney...

Tomorrow morning the Senate Democratic Policy Committee will probe millions of dollars in bonuses paid to the Army's biggest contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan (KBR) for grossly incompetent electrical wiring work on U.S. Army bases in Iraq. I'll have the full text of the news release after the fold.

Now, I suppose this'll get dismissed as "a partisan stunt" by some. And it is partisan in that Senate Republicans appear content to continue studiously ignoring their oversight responsibilities (per the Constitution and plain ol' common sense). But here's the kicker: the probe won't be just of (allegedly) fraudulently wasted tax monies paid in by citizens registered as Democrats. This hearing is actual oversight on behalf of all citizens.

Text of the press release:

SENATE DEMOCRATIC POLICY COMMITTEE TO PROBE MILLIONS IN BONUSES PAID TO CONTRACTOR IN IRAQ FOR SHODDY WORK

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) --- Chairman Byron Dorgan (D-ND) announced Monday the
U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) will hold an oversight
hearing Wednesday, May 20, to examine millions of dollars in bonuses
paid to KBR, the Army's largest contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, for
grossly incompetent electrical wiring work on U.S. Army bases in Iraq.
The shoddy work has been linked to the electrocution deaths of at least
two, and perhaps as many as five, U.S. soldiers and contractors in Iraq.
It continues to be a life threatening risk to U.S. soldiers and
contractors throughout Iraq.

The hearing will take place at 9:30 AM, Wednesday, May 20, in Room 628
Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Witnesses will include a Master Electrician hired by the Army to review
KBR's work in Iraq; a Master Electrician who worked for KBR in Iraq; and
the former Army official who managed the contract under which KBR
performed electrical work in Iraq.

Last summer Dorgan's committee held a hearing that revealed KBR hired
third country nationals who were not electricians to perform electrical
wiring work at U.S. military bases in Iraq. The Pentagon reports that
more than a dozen U.S. soldiers have been electrocuted in Iraq, several
as they showered or engaged in other routine activities on U.S. Army
bases in Iraq. At the hearing, two of those deaths were linked to
sloppy electrical work performed by contractors. Details follow:

WHO: U.S. Senators:
Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Chairman; Bob Casey (D-PA), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Tom Udall (D-NM),
and other Senators.

Witnesses:
James Childs, Master Electrician hired by the Army to review KBR's electrical work
in Iraq during 2008; Eric Peters, Master Electrician, who worked for KBR in Iraq as
recently as 2007; and Charles Smith, the former Army official who previously managed
the contract under which KBR performed electrical work in Iraq.

WHAT: Congressional oversight hearing on the payment of millions of
dollars in bonuses by the Department of Defense to KBR for shoddy electrical wiring
work that put the safety and lives of U.S. soldiers at risk on U.S. Army bases in
Iraq.

WHEN: 9:30 AM, Wednesday, May 20, 2009

WHERE: Room 628 Dirksen Senate Office Building,

WHY: To examine how millions of dollars in bonuses were paid to
contractor KBR for shoddy electrical work in Iraq and how to reform the Pentagon's
contractor compensation system.

Posted by Kevin at 07:14 AM |

May 18, 2009

Secesssionist Governor Goodhair Backpedals

Remember how, back on National Teabagging Day (good times, good times), Governor Goodhair of Texas hinted that, mmm, y'know, we might take our ball and go home, hmmm, ifyanknowwhatImean?

That was then. This is now.

I can't say I was surprised that critics worked so hard to recast my defense of federalism and fiscal discipline into advocacy for secession from the Union. Of course, I have never advocated for secession and never will.

We can't say we're surprised, either, Governor.

Problem was, this position was really playing to his base. He got the lead over Hutchison because of it, apparently.

The GOP: Taking a hard, principled stand on a stupid issue ... until they dont.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:07 PM |

Disclosed: The Undisclosed Location

Turned out Richard "Dick" Cheney was hiding ...

... in his own basement.

D'yer suppose he left the house key under the doormat?

The image of Old Dickie Old Chum peering up at the light from his basement windows just makes so much sense, too.

Raw Story's Jeremy Gantz raises the question this answer provides:

Hard to believe that the existence and location of this bunker wasn't classified. But perhaps just as odd as Biden telling this story is the fact that Clift sat on the story for nearly two months before passing it to a Newsweek blog editor for posting.

Yeah. Things that make ya go 'hmmm', indeed. It's a little strange, but our national government has been at sixes and sevens for so long that I think they've forgotten how to do anything that makes sense (and I agree with the current one we got, I'll still say that).

Altho I am getting sick of the "Biden verbal gaffe" CW. Why? Because it was (Clift, again) ...

...an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn’t be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall.

Which pretty much nails it. So I'm not lapping up this "Biden verbal gaffe" drivel anymore, K?

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:16 AM |

May 17, 2009

Another Deep Thought

I liked him better when he was walking and ranging in Texas and making bad karate films.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:21 PM |

Why Not Meaghan?

So, I'm looking over this page A2 story in The Sunday Oregonian which is trying, somehow, to frame Meaghan McCain as the New New Face of the GOP.

No, I didn't mistype that.

And then I thought, why the hell not?

Since Barack Obama was elected President, the GOP has been flailing about trying to "rebrand", remodel and repaint, grasping for someone, anyone who can make the GOP look like anything other than what it is: a party of old white men who only care about business and making a ton of money, looking not unlike a man in a vast desert, desperate for a drink of water.

More arrogant and somewhat rude opinionatin' after the jump.

The results of this frantic searching have been, in retrospect, almost predictably transparent, all of the "new faces" going over like a wet fart: Sarah "You Betcha" Palin, to appeal to vagina-Americans; "Teleprompter" Jindal, to appeal to not-white-Americans and internet-Americans; Michael (Not the Ex-Bangle) Steele, to appeal to ... well, actually, I'm not sure anymore.

These people are slapping on veneer faster than I can keep up with.

And now, Meaghan McCain. Brash, sassy-talking, sassy-blogging, net-savvy Meaghan McCain. Meaghan "The GOP doesn't understand Sex" McCain (well, actually, she has a point there). Pro-life (who's against it, really?), pro-gay-marriage, appearing on The View, Twittering Millennial Meaghan McCain.

Someone even floated the tagline of an apparent new GOP breed: The Meaghan McCain Republican. Sure. We've had "South Park Republicans". Wake me up when we get to "Fisher-Price Republicans"

Oh, wait, no need. We're there.

I don't know. The more I look, the more I see a void who's figured out how to make a living at being famous, but I'm cynical, not-famous, and kind of bitter about it.

Still, the whole article is framed in terms of style; how young she is, how interesting she is, how the GOP can use her to rebrand and reposition and realign, which is right up the GOP's alley. As I've said before, the GOP is as addicted to message-as-reality as a tweaker is to his crystal.

So, hell, why not Meaghan? The GOP can (and has) done much worse lately. And maybe she does represent the up and coming under-30 contingent, who doesn't soil their drawers when teh Gay comes into the room. More power to them.

She looks like an Obama voter. She kind of thinks like one too.

The flaw in that plan is that most of the Obama voters are ... well, already Democrats and left-leaning independents. Not Republicans. If the GOP is looking for hope for the near term, this isn't it – even the most enthusiastic pundits are holding that she's the vanguard of the up-and-coming generation. They'll still have to wash the old one out, and as we've seen lately, they aren't going quickly or gladly.

Meghan's got a big job ahead of her.

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:32 PM |

The Yellowstone Club Collapse Has An Oregon Boy At Its Heart

I've been following the collapse of the ultra-exclusive Yellowstone Club ski resort in Idaho via the LeftyBlogs wire, and it looks like a real mess.

This is a place which, as The Oregonian's Jeff Manning put it,

magine Black Butte Ranch if Mt. Bachelor were in its backyard, marketed solely to the Bill Gates crowd.

The idea took off. The club, created in 1999, attracted about 300 families, who paid $350,000 or more in initiation fees, bought lots and built mansions.

Members include cyclist Greg LeMond, former Vice President Dan Quayle and Gates himself.

"Living Large" would be damning with faint praise (or maybe praising with faint damns – your choice).

What I did'nt recognize up 'til now is that one of the people at the center of the mess, Tim Blixseth, is an Oregonian by birth, son of a poor millworker out of Douglas County.

There are a lot of charges flying about, but the essentials make it sound like some prole who got unwise with his credit cards or a bank that got careless with a subprime loan; Credit Suisse loaned the Club some $375 Megabucks to a club with a checkered profit history, pumping its debt load up to Brobdingnagian levels while only giving the club a percentage of the proceeds – a great deal of the loan, the article seems to say, went to Blixseth to pay off personal debts and buy property all over the world, with little if any care by the bank about the club's ability to pay off the loan or what Blixseth did with it all.

The club's bankrupt, Blixseth's in legal trouble, the investors are in a state, and the working men and women who depended on the club for employment, some pulling up stakes and moving cross country, are left out in the cold.

Kind of the quintessential American story anymore.

What really got me after reading the article was that people from similar backgrounds can take different paths.

One son of a working class millworker from Douglas County can end up an honorable US Senator who keeps his promises to constituents.

The other ... well, draw your own conclusions. The Oregonian certainly isn't painting a terribly flattering picture, that's for sure.

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:18 PM |

Deep Thought

I liked him better when they couldn't report on him without using the words "undisclosed location".

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:55 AM |

It's Not About Pelosi, Really

Well, it is, in so far as it can be proved that Nan is lying to us.

The words certainly sound weasely, and she's handled the PR with all the dexterity of a person with duct-taped fists, though.

But think about it, though. Regardless of how Nan was misled and when, that changed the ultimate responsibility for the A-OK not a whit.

Richard "Dick" Cheney, Face The Nation, May 10th, 2009:

SCHIEFFER: How much did President Bush know specifically about the methods that were being used?

We know that you-- and you have said-- that you approved this...

CHENEY: Right.

SCHIEFFER: ... somewhere down the line. Did President Bush know everything you knew?

CHENEY: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.

Nan has a price to pay if she's shading the truth. Pay it she will: at least I hope the voters of her district have enough sense to turn her in for a better model Democrat.

But never let it be forgotten that the ultimate responsibility, the ultimate accountability, must rest with the men at the top.

You folks are smart enough to do the math there.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:45 AM |

Preemptively Co-Opting The Oppositon

Hadn't thought of that. Makes sense now that Down with Tyranny's explained it so well:

The mainstream policies Huntsman has advocated have endeared him to moderates in the GOP and to independent voters but there is no room for that kind of talk as far as the party's current dictators are concerned. Huntsman's civil unions approach for gay couples has driven the far right off the cliff and by signing a regional initiative setting up a cap-and-trade effort to reduce global warming, he is looked on by the extremists as a traitor to the GOP. Speaking in Shanghai in 2006 about the need for close cooperation between the U.S. and China on environmental issues, he used all the wrong words as far as the radical right is concerned: "good stewards of the Earth" translates in Republican-speak as not supporting unrestricted development and market-based capitalism. They abhor him. A right-wing hate group in Kent County, Michigan (the Republican Party) withdrew a speaking invitation to Huntsman because of his mainstream views. The crazed bigot who leads the local party, Joanne Voorhees, wrote in the local newspaper that "The voters want and expect us to stand on principle and return to our roots. Unfortunately, by holding an event with Governor Huntsman, we would be doing the exact opposite."

More than that, he's a Republican who consents to serve when his liberal Democratic President extends to him an honorable request.

Yeah. Makes my head asplode too.

I guest he's not "Republican enough" for them.

Hell, with these schmoes, frigg'n Nixon isn't conservative enough!

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:39 AM |

May 16, 2009

Seen On The News: Timberline Dodge Anti-Closure Rally

Saw this on KATU-2, but they don't have video up on the site yet ...

Looks like somewhere between 100 and 200 people showed up in support of the ownership of Timberline Dodge, whom Chrysler's kickin' to the curb, today.

Hey, I wish them luck. TD always seemed to be a pretty prosperous dealership. Lots of people's jobs and a segement of the local economy depends on them staying open.

All this is happening literally at KATU's doorstep too. Timberline Dodge occupies various lots and buildings on the south side of Sandy Boulevard between NE 22nd and 27th Avenues. KATU's studios are on the north side of Sandy Boulevard between 21st and 22nd.

Talk about the perversity of the universe tending toward a maximum.

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:10 PM |

Reckless Burning, In The Shape Of A Cross

... you know, the one they say they hung Jesus out to dry on.

Though, in Alsea, down in the Coast Range in Benton County, they're apparently hanging justice out to dry on one too.

I've been in Alsea. Cute place. Last town in Benton County before State Hwy 34 crosses into Lincoln County on its way to Waldport. Quintessential small-town Oregon, it's an unincorporated burg about five blocks long and three blocks wide. Cute store at the flashing light, all that.

There's also a single white woman with an adopted African-American boy who had ... oh, a burning cross dumped on their lawn. What does the local police have to say about it?

Because there weren't any threats or other evidence of prejudice, the crime is not being classified as a hate crime, he said. Instead, it is classified as reckless burning.

Did they fall asleep during "Ku Klux Klan" class in cop school down there or what?

I just realized that this is why we have to have hate crimes defined as hate crimes. I was on the fence about it until just now, believe it or not.

If they wanted to stage a prank, there's always, like, toilet paper. Just sayin'.

Also ironically, the name of the place, "Alsea", was inspired by the Indian tribe that the White man pushed out of the area ... the Alsi. Whom, if any Alsi still exist, are an ethnic minority. I couldn't leave that fact alone, right? Right.

Posted by The Chinuk at 05:56 PM |

20th Century Pop Music Haiku Artist

My exploration of Elvis/Nixon a few missives back and the way I love to go on about it at work caused a hipster (but he's really pretty smart and not at all smug about it) cow-orker of mine to bring a CD for me to borrow: Elvis: 30 #1 Hits.

He thinks Dylan is God and we all roll our eyes when he goes on about him, but we're kinda mean people.

It's the job, the job does it do you. ANYWAY!

I decided to give the King another chance and I must stay, at least with Elvis's #1's, my Presley appreciation quotient has gone up.

But what really got me about all those songs was their absolute brevity. Most of them clock in at under two minutes, with "Hard Headed Woman" sneaking in at just under a minute fifty! Now, I'm a kid of the top-40 era when the exemplar of the pop music tune logged in about 3 minutes more or less. Compared to Elvis's work, this stuff was the long form.

And they moaned and groaned when Don McLean came out with "American Pie" ... never mind "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (which is its real title, actually).

Which explains the title of this post. Elvis sang haikus in comparison to today's stuff.

No, nothing political here. I'll be exercised about something later, promise.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:29 AM |

May 15, 2009

Giant Sucking Sound, Part Deux

GM to delete 18% – 1,100 of almost 6,000 retailers – from its dealer net:

General Motors today announced it would inform about 1,100 dealers — or 18% of its 5,969 stores — that the automaker no longer “sees them as part of its dealer network on a long-term basis.”

Such tender mercies.

Or, as Number 6 said in that episode of The Prisoner, "the butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart".

I never thought I'd get real-life context for that, but that's life for you.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:04 AM |

May 14, 2009

Jeff Merkley's Talking To Ed Schultz Right now

Sounds awful good: Credit card reform, public option for health care, beating Gordon Smith.

Bliss.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:40 PM |

I Guess The Foot's On The Other Hand Now, Isn't It, Wiener?

The Savage Wiener hated Hillary. Hated, Hated, Hated, Hated, Hated her:

Seems like only yesterday that Savage (KTTH m-f, 6-8p) was calling her "that hag, that harridan," a "fraudulent huckster," a "dangerous yokel," a "liar," a "sickening person." Evita Perón.

Remember when he spouted that one of her speeches, was "Hitler dialogue?" And he shrieked, "Goebbels would be proud of you, Hillary Clinton!"

Now that he can't get into Mother England? She's just the hero he needs.

Of course, The Wiener knows no shame or humility, so he 'respectfully demands' that she drop whatever she's doing and take care of his small, humiliating problem.

Hang on, Michael, she'll get to you. She's busy cleaning up the mess Mr. Bush made over the past several years.

But that's a big job. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a reply.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:11 PM |

Mail Out The Vote

Just a friendly reminder: if you want to make sure your Special Election ballots (we're having one? Yes, we are, bunkie, we can't keep track of everything for you) get the postmark before midnight of May 19th, you better get 'em in before Friday the 15th.

Otherwise, you'll have to cart them to a collection point yourselfs, which isn't so bad as long as you do it. You probably need the exercise anyway.

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:16 PM |

Giant Sucking Sound

Chrysler to shutter almost 800 out of nearly 3,200 dealerships across the country:

Dealers were told this morning through United Parcel Service letters if they would remain or be eliminated. The move, which the dealers can appeal, is likely to cause devastating effects in cities and towns across the country as thousands of jobs are lost and taxes are not paid.

Nobody likes the daily mail these days, it seems.

A commenter at the OregonLive article linked clues us to the local casualties, which seem to be Timberline Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge over on NE 24th and Sandy, and Gresham Chrysler Jeep, and a location in the Lithia constellation.

Additional hat tip to that commenter (BSRSH) who linked to a pdf with the list entire (apparently hosted by the Detroit Free Press).

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:07 PM |

Right Horse, Wrong Rider

On the upside, the Sam Adams Recall Crew is staging a big media event at Nick's Famous Coney Islands tonight.

From which Victoria Taft, the least-likable KPAM conservatalker since Victor Boc, will be broadcasting, a fact which the Crew seem imprudently sanguine about.

Ah – hmm.

Some feel that by letting Lady Wingnut be identified with the Recall Sam Adams pretty much washed away whatever credibility they'd gathered. I don't know about that: some I've talked to never gave them much to begin with. I do not necessarily share that view; the Crew's obvious sincerity has softened my stance toward them.

But I've never believed in "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" was ever a solid policy. It never, ever ends well.

But VT might get one or two more listeners, so, hey, win for her.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:45 AM |

Democracy in action

Every Thursday at noon there is a demonstration at the Pioneer Courthouse in downtown Portland calling for the impeachment of Judge Bybee for his role in writing the legal rationalization for the Bush administration to use torture. Bybee sits on the 9th Circuit which the Pioneer Courthouse is a part of - thus the weekly demonstration there where they hand out copies of The War Crimes Times.

Occasional DKos diarist and Blue Oregon commenter BOHICA is one of the participants in the weekly demonstration and invited me to join in, which I did last week. I took several pics and they're shown after the jump. But first I want to mention a central legal and historical fact relevant to all this.

Several weeks ago BOHICA wrote a diary at DKos about The Vietnam Torture Memos. In it he both has scans and transcripts of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam handout card spelling out precisely how and why American soldiers were to treat captives/prisoners, many of whom were not wearing uniforms ala the "detainees" at Gitmo and elsewhere. Also linked and discussed therein is a Washington Monthly article by General Wes Clark eviscerating the legal and moral rationalizations offered by Bybee and his ilk. I strongly recommend reading and digesting BOHICA's entire diary.

Now the pics:

Posted by Kevin at 09:36 AM |

Pop Quiz

Without looking it up, see if you can answer these questions:

Who's your:

• US Senators? (1 point for each)
• US Representative? (1 point)
• State Senator (1 point)
• State Representative (1 point)

Scoring:

4-5 points: Expert in all things governmental.

3 points: Could do better but still an asset.

2 points and below: thy name is Apathy

Whether or not you're really tuned into the process of government, you should at least know the names of the men or women who are making decisions in your name. This stuff is literally moments away via teh Google, so even if you are apathetic, that shouldn't last for long.

Make a note of the names you got wrong or didn't know, and look 'em up now.

No matter what you think of government, with times the way you are, times behoove you to bone up just a little.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:01 AM |

The New Oregon Senate Democrats Presence on the Intarweb

... it's pretty spiffy. I was just tooling around on it and it has all sorts of interesting stuff, such as live chamber video feeds from the House and Senate chambers, a comprehensive guide to the Oregon implementation of the ARRA (a/k/a, "The Stimulus"), and individual pages for each of the 18 Oregon Senate Democratic members.

I like wonky stuff like this, but with flickr, Facebook and multimedia links (under the "Government 2.0" dropdown), it's really kinda for everyone who's curious.

There's also a countdown to Sine Die at the bottom of the sidebar, which is kind of cool.

Recommended.

OregonSenateDemocrats.com.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:53 AM |

May 13, 2009

They Use The Word "Branding" A Lot, But I Do Not Think It Means What They Think It Does

In a development that should surprise nobody, the flatlining of whatever brain is left in the GOP will be on display next week, as the Republican Clown Car will pull up to some Washington area conference center somewhere, disgorge its contents into a meeting room, and vote to legitimize its utter irrelevancy. The Politico's Roger Simon:

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

Oh, snap! You also know that the RNC is moving to reduce Chairman Steele's spending authority? Yes, it's true. Hey, Bob Tiernan! Mr T! You were so darned proud of helping to elect a 'stereotype-busting' chariman you were pretty much taking credit for it yourself a while back! Are you going to stand up for your man here or what?

This is of course not new news; it's been ignored, as it ought to have been, since this idea was first vouchsafed in the middle of last month. As it turns out, RNC rules allow sixteen members from sixteen states to force an "extraordinary special committee session", and one was so forced, by a group apparently energized by bitter ex-KGMI (Bellingham WA) conservatalk jock Jeff Kent, which is a group which, if I read my blogs correctly, also wants to either make Michael (Not The Ex-Bangles Bass Player) Steele go away.

Go fig.

My schadenfreude is evaporating just to be replaced by a feeling of embarrassment for them. But not too much. Because they totally brought this on themselves.

Is the Red State Trike Force going to stamp its little feetsies when the Democratic Party doesn't go along? Prolly.

In other news, this time about the news, I have a bone to pick with the so-called liberal media, who largely reports this as though it were a big joke, but leaves headlines looking as though they think that the GOP has the perfect right to "rebrand" the Democratic Party:

• The Politico: GOP, RNC to rebrand Democrats as 'Socialists'
• The Village Voice: Republicans To Label Democrats Socialists, Officially
• The Washington Independent: Here Comes the ‘Democrat Socialist Party’

The GOP is so inept it can't rebrand itself, but they're giving credit to the GOP for rebranding the Democratic Party? What? Here's where you folks fell asleep in J-School: The GOP has no right to "rebrand" anything but themselves.

And you all know how well that worked out. J. Walter Thompson, they ain't.

And what about the actual Democratic Socialist Party! There really is one – how about that? Did anyone ask them how they felt about this? I found them in two seconds on Teh Google.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't ... and too damned funny not to watch!

(Brilliant "RSTF" graphic created by the blogmeister at Drinking Liberally New Milford)

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:30 PM |

EFCA: Biden States The Blindingly Obvious

Veep saith that unions are the way back to a strong middle class.

Well, duh. That's kind of how we got one to begin with.

But I'll give him credit. Someone had to say it.

Call your congresspeople and tell them that if they don't support Employee Free Choice Act, they kinda suck. And Jeebus will kill a kitten.

Please someone, think of the kittens.

Posted by The Chinuk at 05:36 AM |

I'll Bet this Isn't The Retirement He Was Counting On

John Demjanjuk, age 89, suspected of being Nazi guard "Ivan the Terrible", fit to stay in German prison, Saith the AP.

It took 'em 30 years, but they did it.

Posted by The Chinuk at 05:31 AM |

The Military: Still Frightened To Death Of Teh Gay

The US Military: The most awesome fighting force the world has ever known. Aiming High. Getting Army Strong. Can do it all with a few good men. Will snatch your heart out from your rib cage fast enough that it will dispassionately show it to you as you die.

Iron clad courage.

Except for one thing ... teh Gay.

Gotta go slowly. Might not happen at all.

Some things, apparently, you just can't rush or do before their time. One is selling Paul Masson wine, the other is ending a stupid policy that's causing the most amazing brain drain this man's Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines we've ever seen.

Well, it's worth it if teh Gay won't come cruisin' for ya, I guess.

Posted by The Chinuk at 04:44 AM |

May 12, 2009

Beware new radical-right-wing front group in Oregon

Mapes reports:

My curiousity is now focused on Common Sense for Oregon, whose executive director is attorney Ross Day, who has worked frequently with the property-rights group Oregonians in Action.

In addition, the Common Sense board includes two well-known conservative activists: Kevin Mannix, former legislator and gubernatorial candidate, and Russ Walker, who heads the Oregon chapter of FreedomWorks.

...

Day wouldn't give me any information about his contributors,and he's not required to under the law governing his non-profit. But I wouldn't be surprised if Nevada businessman Loren Parks, who has bankrolled both Mannix and Walker in the past, is their chief patron.

In other words, it's a veritable rogue's gallery of right-wing extremists. Grover Norquist is, at the very least, a known "Freedom Works" ally.

In my view these are very bad people with very bad intentions, as evidenced by Norquist's famous quote about wanting to get government small enough to drown in a bathtub - a sick reference to murder. Normal, well-adjusted people with good intentions simply don't say twisted things like that.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Posted by Kevin at 02:34 PM |

Deep Thought

I didn't care what David Reinhard thought while he had an Oregonian column, and now that he doesn't, I still don't care.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:21 PM |

Sinise's The One

The GOP needs a hero, it seems.

In an earlier missive I wondered if the GOP were working strategy out on an Etch-A-Sketch.

This was unfair to the Etch-A-Sketch.

They're actually doing it on Mom's clean living room walls with crayons – the big ones that are easy to hold on to.

Mom's gonna be pissed when she finds out.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:07 PM |

It's A Freeish Country

The peasants are -ugh- revolting, once again:

After standing silently for about five minutes, the nurses walked out of the hearing in an orderly fashion. They were not escorted by police. But shortly after the group left the hearing, more vocal individual protest began. A person stood up and in a screaming or loud voice, called for Congress to pass the single-payer system.

"We want guaranteed health care," one said. "We're tired of private insurance."

If it were just a few cranks, that would be one thing. But that loud rabble stands for nearly six out of ten Americans.

Any health-care reform discussion that doesn't put single-payer on the table is done in bad faith from the get-go.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:52 PM |

Is The Inquirer That Hard Up For Content?

John "Torture" Yoo gets a monthly column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Will Bunch writing at his blog Attytood:

Yet none of that was enough to prevent my colleagues upstairs at the Philadelphia Inquirer -- with none of the fanfare that might normally accompany such a move -- to sign a contract with Yoo in late 2008 to give him a regular monthly column. The Inquirer thus handed Yoo a loud megaphone on what was once a hallowed piece of real estate in American journalism -- to write on the very subjects that have now led Justice Department investigators to reportedly recommend disbarment proceedings against Yoo and has led international prosecutors as well as millions of politically engaged Americans to consider the Episcopal Academy graduate worthy of charging with war crimes.

No matter how cynical I get, I just Can't. Keep. Up.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:46 PM |

Sauce For The Gander

According to CQ Politics, If-This-Weren't-Bizarro-World-Sen. Al Franken has requested the Minnesotal Supreme Court to do what he'd of done already if there was a Republican that won the Minnesota Senatorial election by about 300 votes: Sign the certificate:

Noting that Pawlenty has “expressed some ambivalence or some confusion” over when he will need to sign the certification, Elias said the brief is “asking the court to reaffirm what it has already said so that Gov. Pawlenty will not have to worry about which way to turn here.”

Mom Always Said™ he who lives by the process deserves to lose elections by it.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:26 PM |

May 11, 2009

God Is In Her Heaven

Randi's back on the POJ.

I'm listening to her for a few minutes right now.

Life's good.

Posted by The Chinuk at 04:57 PM |

The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa

My daughter and I caught yesterday's matinee showing of the Milagro/Miracle Theater's production of The Shrunken Head of Panco Villa, a raucous satire full of boisterous antics set in a 1960s California barrio. As I was searching for a fitting adjective to capture the experience created by the eminent playwright, Luis Valdez, I kept thinking of rollicking, especially during the second half of the play. But the subtext was too serious to really be captured by the carefree connotation of rollicking. Here's the Milagro's description:

From the earliest days of Chicano theatre comes this satire of California farm-worker family life, in which the drunken father’s a sonavaviche and the long-suffering mother’s a saint. Of their four children, Mingo’s a sell-out, Joaquin a rebellious pachuco, and Lupe a whining teenager who envisions pregnancy as her only salvation. And the eldest? Just an enormous head who believes he’s Pancho Villa. To this hilariously disintegrating household, Mingo announces his intention to move his family out of the barrio and into the American dream. But will a seductive nostalgia for Mexico’s revolutionary past overwhelm his efforts? It’s the Chicano dilemma: Are we Mexican or American?

Now, I'm not Chicano, but I am an inveterate observer of the human condition and have personal experience on the fringes of the Chicano culture, which is why my daughter went along. And so it was that the internal conflict, particularly between the Mingo and Joaquin characters rang true for me.

I remember back when my second wife and I were still married we traveled to Yakima, Washington with her Chicano mother and mostly white father to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my mother-in-law's Garcia side of the family. We stayed at the Matriarch's house and living next door was one of my wife's Aunts and her family. My ex's older brother lives in Yakima too and spent nearly as much time there as we did. I'll never forget how whenever the Aunt from next door came over she would only address Chicano family members and that was only in Spanish. They, out of politeness to the two white guys (my father-in-law and myself), would always respond in English. Well, I found out later that this was the same internal conflict captured in Pancho Villa between the dueling identities of being Chicano and being American.

She disapproved of her sister marrying a white guy and my presence just made it worse because her niece had also married a white guy. Worse, we were breeding and she was NOT okay with that. We represented a dilution of the Chicano culture that she valued and wanted to remain unbroken. So she flat ignored my father-in-law and myself and would only speak to family members in Spanish.

Years before that when I was freshly graduated from high school and making my first attempt at college in Southeastern Washington (Walla Walla College/University) I quickly befriended and fell in with a small group of local guys who were still in high school. One was a Chicano who went by "Freddie" and we quickly became fast friends. I spent many an afternoon at his house getting to know his very much pachuco older brothers and the rest of the family, such that I was basically treated as a friend of the family. Which was no easy feat. His brothers were normally suspicious of white guys, but I've always been an emotional chameleon and they quickly accepted me.

Freddie was interesting because it was really obvious to me that he didn't want to be perceived as Chicano. He wanted only to be perceived as American, without qualification or condition. But the rest of the family were comfortable with being Chicano. Sometimes they would address Freddie in Spanish but he would only respond in English and would usually chide whomever it was to speak English and would complain or apologize to me later for his backward-acting family. He never ever criticized his family or their ethnicity, only their behavior and that only to the extent that it diverged from his perception of being All-American. He didn't like anything that made them appear to stand out from the cultural norm.

Freddie himself was trying his damndest to live what he perceived as the American dream. He was the lead singer of a typical high school rock 'n roll band with dreams of hitting the big time someday. And a lady's man... oy! But only white girls. I've never quit understood the aesthetic appeal of it and perhaps it was more a strategic line in the sand rather than genuine preference, but Freddie's family would razz him about his dream car - a Volkswagon Karmann Ghia. I kid you not! His older brothers dreamed of low-riders and Freddie dreamed of Karmann Ghias, at least as far as anyone knew.

But more to the point here, Freddie's parents had recently divorced. He wasn't happy about it but seemed to accept it as beyond his control and besides, divorce is one of the defining characteristics of our American culture. The only time I ever saw him well and truly angry was the day he found out that his mother was dating a migrant. Freddie was beside himself! He ranted and raved about the "(expletive) wetback" and how could his mother do that!?! It was the same identity crux captured so hilariously in The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa but minus the satire.

So it was that some of the most raucously hilarious parts of the second half of Pancho Villa were also deeply moving for me. As funny as the antics were on-stage, I understood the reality behind them. But then I think that was the point of Luis Valdez writing this play. Satire is mostly just a way to openly discuss otherwise taboo subjects. All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience which I highly recommend!

Miracle Theatre (525 SE Stark St., Portland) presents “The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa” May 8-30. It is an English-language production but Huerta calls it “very bilingual.” For tickets and information visit www.milagro. org or call 503-236-7253.

Posted by Kevin at 12:48 PM |

May 10, 2009

Employee Of The Month + Union Organizing = Former Employee (UPDATED)

I've been following the story of Elizabeth Lehr, former employee of Laurelhurst Village retirement community, for the past few days, and this story ... well, it stinks. There's no other word for it.

Here's the abstract.

Elizabeth, said to be a valued employee at the southeast Portland home, got involved in legal Union organizing activities. Subsequently, the home's management suspended a fellow employee for legal organizing activities. She stood up for him. Mere days later, she was fired.

According to SEIU Local 503, the organizing campaign was going well. 77 workers, a majority, signed cards, and 21 members were on the organizing committee. After Elizabeth's firing? The interest, not so mysteriously, evaporated.

The employees need not be weathermen to know which way the wind's blowing.

It would be one thing if Laurelhurst Village ran a tight ship. This, sadly for the residents (and the people who pay for them) is not the case:

Its latest Medicare inspection rating was one star out of a possible five, well below average ... Inspectors identified rampant violations including six incidents of resident harm, including one incident of abuse, at Laurelhurst from 2006 to 2008 and documented 40 violations of state and federal rules and regulations at Farmington Centers nursing homes from 2007 to 2008 including fecal impaction, pressure sores, significant weight loss, inadequate care after falls, medication errors, failure to follow physician orders.



And the profits from this company's various operations? $2.9 Million from 2006 to 2008.

Nice work if you can get it. Put my parent in one of these homes? I wouldn't let my mom walk in the lobby. Nice bunch.

Why is the management so afraid to let a union form at Laurelhurst Village?

Fight for the EFCA, people. If we had it, there would be a union at Laurelhurst Village now, and Elizabeth Lehr wouldn't go from Employee of the Month to turfed-out ex-employee just for daring to do legal organizing activities.

Don't believe me? Fine. Read what Elizabeth had to say, then read what Oregon State Senator Diane Rosenblum had to say about it. Oh, yes, Oregonian columnist Anna Griffin also had something to say about it, and it didn't look too complimentary (and I'll link to it as soon as they put the column up (c'mon, Oregonian, flip the switch, do what you gotta).

UPDATE: Here's the Anna Griffin column. I dub this required reading.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:31 AM |

Running scared or just plain crazy?

Has anyone else noticed a recent uptick in email spam from the lunatic anti-Obama fringe? I opened my PK email this morning and althought the spam control is quite effective there were a couple new ones at the top. One was from some entity calling itself Tribulation News (tribulationnews.net),

Four extraordinary Antichrist revelations have been received by prophet Linda
Newkirk since Barack Obama was elected.

Two of those prophecies are included with this bulletin. The additional warnings
about this man can be viewed at Prophecies.Org


On May 6/09, Linda posted Chapter 52 of Book 12. Chapter 52 contains very dire
warnings of God's pending Judgements that are soon to befall America!

It goes on to relate an alleged prophetic dream wherein this Canadian woman had a vision of Obama dressed up in full Nazi regalia, at which point I stopped reading. The next one purports to be from a political science student in Chile and alleges an "Obama-Lulu 'Axis'" that is going to have dire consequences for the faithful conservatives in Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Equador valiantly fighting to "preserve their liberties." Because, you know..., treating Castro like a pariah for 40 years has had such incredibly good results...

So I got to wondering why the sudden uptick in TheoCon & NeoCon... well... porn? I mean that's what it really is. This is how they gets their rocks off.

Obama's National Job Approval is on the upswing as are his National Favorability numbers.

But I suspect that what has their knickers all twisted up are two key stats. First is the National Right Direction/Wrong Direction track which shows that nothing they've thrown up against the wall has stuck, most notably being the recent Tea-Bagger protests. As bad as that trend is for the radical right it's nothing compared to the National Party ID track which shows the GOP a distant third (and losing ground!) to the Dems and Independents. All of which must appear especially worrisome in light of Obama's First 100 Days report card which shows him easily exceeding both Clinton and GWB at the same point in their terms.

Of course none of those stats radically diverge from historic norms of the last 30 years. But these stats come in the midst of a historic economic crisis and that is what makes them especially worrisome for the radical right. Grover Norquist and his ilk finally had a historic opportunity to destroy the federal government and they know that the opportunity is slipping through their grasping fingers.

Posted by Kevin at 08:20 AM |

May 09, 2009

Frost/Nixon? I'd Rather See Elvis/Nixon.

I'm far from the only person who's ever been charmed by the idea of this meeting, but to me it's so deliciously odd that I just can stop being amused by it. And if you, gentle reader, have never heard of When Dick Met Elvis, then allow me to bestow upon you a singularly American nugget of cultural history.

(I am, by the way, riffing on this, not writing authoritatively. I may get some of this wrong. Fortunately, it's hellishly well-documented, including the written communications (thanks, GWU!)).

Let's set the stage. It's December, 1970. Watergate isn't yet on the country's radar screens. Elvis, our parents' and grandparent's King of Pop, was two years into a career revived by the famous "1968 Comeback Special", but not quite (apparently) on the revolving spiral of bad health and drug abuse that was to cause The Ultimate Career Move in about seven years' time on the floor of a certain mansion's bathroom in Memphis.

Sic transit gloria Rex, I suppose. Anyway.

More wonderful quintessentially-American historical oddness and three-piece-suited Republican awkwardness below the fold, baby.

Where were we? Ah, yes. The King of Rock and Roll wanted to meet Nixon.

Actually, one could argue that it was meant to be. The iconic American singing star of the mid-20th Century, veteran of honest-to-God Army service in Europe (not the boutique-style, that Reagan did in Hollywood, or the Champagne-squadron-esque-was-he-AWOL-or-wasn't-he of Bush 43), with heartland-style, cornball-if-sincere, patriotic values, would eventually meet one of his heroes, the quintessential exponent of patriotic power elite.

Elvis was all shook up, you see. About what? Kids, and drugs, and the Hippie culture. He knew that, being at the throbbing center of pop culture that he was, he could communicate with teh kids on a unique way, and being appointed a Special Federal Agent of Something Somehow would be just the credential he needed to make a difference.

It would do nothing for his colon, of course, but at least he had his enlarged heart in it.

He and two of the members of the Memphis Mafia checked into a Washington hotel (incognito, or at least as far as Elvis did it, using the name "Jon Burrows") and sent the President a six-page handwritten letter stating his intentions and his hopes to gift him with a ceremonial Colt 45, amongst other gifts, and requested to be make a Federal Agent-at-large in charge of Being All Shook Up.

And The King was granted audience with The President.

The resulting pictures tell a story that combines the fandom of one with the awkwardness of the other. Ironically, the fandom is that of Elvis for the President, and the awkwardness is that of Nixon toward anything that wasn't in a suit and a tie:

What you have here is the perfect interface of a patriotic fan of the President with a Republican who just had something dropped in his lap and has no idea what to do about it. That uncomfortableness with the verities of reality has manifested itself latterly in a Republican initiative to cynically and clumsily "rebrand" their reputation, to embrace what they see as youth culture in a way so painfully embarrassing it can't help but end with Michele Bachmann (R-Mars) lauding Michael Steele off the platform with an hilariously-unselfconscious "You Da Man!". We are amused and sometimes appalled, but we are not surprised.

Clearly, the Republican party is trapped in a world they did not create and do not understand.

The meeting, it's said, went well. The gifts were recieved with graciousness and Elvis receieved a real badge (not an Jr Detective sticky-badge, as I'd assumed) and the meeting recorded for posterity. Interestingly, the GWU page linked to in my preamble asserts that of all items from the national archives, the images of Nixon and Elvis are by far the most requested, even more so than the Constitution.

Maybe the masses are asses. That would explain so much. And what an awkward self-indictment on my part, indeed, but that's life for you.

Anyway, there is a very bizarre (but not for Elvis) footnote to this, I found out unexpectedly. It would seem that E put that badge to use. The story is told that a member of his entourage, known as Hamburger James (for it was his job to fetch The King his hamburgers) disappeared with about ten large and Elvis' "kit" (that is, his portable pharmacy).

Once this was discovered, he was traced to the airport and Elvis and a handful of the Memphis Mafia dispatched themselves in pursuite of Hamburger James. Storming the airport, Elvis flashed that very badge yelling "Hold that plane! I'M AN FBI AGENT!"

And – what do you know – they held that damn plane. They were sure Elvis was going to shoot Hamburger James, but he treated him with forgiveness, saying "if you needed help, why didn't you just ask me?"

I think of it as our tax dollars (at least the buck-fifty or so that went into the manufacture of that badge) at work.

And so it goes.

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:30 PM |

May 08, 2009

Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield Customers Get Another Punch In The Gut

Your rates for coverage are going up another 14.7% after going up 26 % last year:

"This will throw more people into the ranks of the uninsured, now at about 600,000 in Oregon," said Steve Dixon, advocacy director for Oregonians for Health Security. "That leads to more hospital charity costs, which leads to higher insurance costs, which leads to more uninsured. It is a cycle we need to get out of, and we need to get out before it is a total collapse."

Edda Sigurdar, who runs her own hair salon in Beaverton, said she is now paying $683 a month for health insurance at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to get an appointment with a doctor.

"It goes up every year," she said. "I don't know where people are supposed to be coming up with this."

That's totally gonna leave a mark.

Can we please has single-payer before we all die broke please?

On a related not, Sen. Baucus, might we have a word?? If you really respected the views of the people whose votes put you into office as much as you paid lip service to, then you wouldn't have had them arrested for speaking up. Shame on you.

Just because you're a Democrat, don't think you're safe. They'll find a better Democrat and kick your backside out and then you'll have to find health insurance on your own.

I'd serve you right.

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:36 PM |

Republicans on Health Care Reform 2.0

The Problem:





Republican Solution:

Posted by Kevin at 11:42 AM |

May 07, 2009

Republicans on Health Care Reform

Republicans are launching a massive misinformation campaign designed to scare YOU into mistakenly thinking that meaningful reform is a Pandora's Box of problems. Don't believe a word of it. This is Terri Schaivo, torture and Iraqi WMD all over again... and brought to you by THE SAME FOLKS.

A great way to register your disapproval of the Republicans continued attempts to screw Americans six ways to Sunday would be to donate a few shekels to get this ad on the air.

Posted by Kevin at 04:19 PM |

As Told By A Supply Side Economist:

Kidding on the square:

First, they increase the systemic risk regulation of banks, insurance firms, and broker-dealers. Then they expand Big Government by increasing the transparency of financial instruments and magnifying the Federal Reserve's oversight of major hedge funds. And, as a finale, they tighten the federal standards for mortgage lending and require executive compensation to be contingent on corporate performance.

And the agent says, "That's a hell of an act. What do you call it?"

And the father says, "The Aristocrats!"

Read the rest at McSweeney's.

(via Majikthise)

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:17 PM |

"Joe" The "Plumber" To GOP: Drop Dead

(via)When you've lost Samuel "Joe the Plumber (not really Joe, not really a plumber either)" Wurzelbacher, you've lost America. Time Magazine:

Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he's so outraged by GOP overspending, he's quitting the party — and he's the bull's-eye of its target audience. But he also said he wouldn't support any cuts in defense, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — which, along with debt payments, would put more than two-thirds of the budget off limits.

And he was one of their remaining brain-cells, too.

I'm sure he'll join a party that represents his beliefs. Trouble is, he apparently has none.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:08 PM |

Sam Adams Drunk At The Scene? The Police Don't Seem To Think So

I'm not in favor of Sam Adams continuing as Mayor. When the recall election happens, I'll put this on the table right now: I'll be voting him out.

Still, I have sympathy. If anyone's having, as Queen Elizabeth once famously quipped about a year in her own life, and annus horibilis, it's him. It's bad enough that he admitted betraying all of us by admitting that the Breedlove Affair was, in fact ... well, just that, an affair. And it seems city policy since then has been generated by a Magic 8-Ball.

But lately it's gotten a bit crazy, and a whole lot risible. In The Accident To End All Accidents, last week, Mayor Adams proved himself to be as bad a judge of whether or not the guy in front of him was going to turn left as he was about whether or not he should tell the truth about his desire to play pass-the-orange with a member of the barely-legal set.

And it's beginning to seem that there's an amazing over-eagerness to believe that the Mayor was a disshevelled drunk at the wheel.

More fear and loathing of the Mayor below the virtual fold.

I wondered about that myself, especially since it was reported variously that the Mayor was the exact opposite of drunk by more than one person – including the man who the Mayor's car had struck

Police said they saw no indication that Adams was impaired and said they had no reason to ask the mayor to submit to a field-sobriety test. Reed also said he didn't notice anything unusual about Adams.

"The mayor had no signs of being under the influence at all," said North Precinct Sgt. Ron Berry.

Some seem too eager by half to believe the accounts of two people who were quick to say that they "smelled alcohol on Adams' breath". The Oregonian has made available the responding officers' reports ... both of them. Officer Harris's can be downloaded here; Sgt. Berry's can be fetched from here (thanks, Oregonian!).

Of Adams' condition at the accident, Officer Harris has this to say (any typos mine):

While I was one the scene of the accident (an hour and forty minutes) I had approximately six seperate face to face contacts with ADAMS. With regards to ADAMS, I observed no signs of intoxication. I smelled no alcohol on his breath, heard no slurred speech when he spoke, no glossy eyes or flushed face and observed no staggering/clumsy movement from ADAMS. I was never told by any individual that they smelled alcohol on ADAMS' breath. In addition, ADAMS spoke with several people on scene, including REED and did not appear to avoid interaction with others. At hone point he even helped clean up the scene as he swept up debris that were in the parking lot.

REED, for what it's worth, is the fella whose Subaru was hit by the Mayor's GMC.

Sgt. Berry, the other responding policeman, on Mayor Adams (any typos once again mine):

At some point a white male wearing a Car Toys uniform approached me and told me that his vehicle usually is parked where the Honda was parked today, and that he was glad that it was not his vehicle that got hit. At that point he made no other statement to me. Some time later this same white male was walking to his vehicle to leave (his vehicle was parked next to mine) he started to get in his vehicle then stepped back out and approached me a second time. He made the statement that he thought the driver of the pick-up may have been drinking. I told him that the driver was the Mayor and that we were looking into everything and that the Officer (Harris) had already checked on that. The white male said thanks and left.

...

After the white male made the comment to me, I watched ADAMS even closer, he made no attempt to eat or drink anything, he did not try to avoid anyone and was out in the open around other people the entire time.

I was never told or aware of any other witness who stated that they smelled alcohol on ADAMS, and I observed ADAMS speak to several people (NOTE I never saw the white male who made the comment speak or even around ADAMS the entire time I was on scene). No witness may any statement about there being a passenger in ADAMS'S vehicle.

The report closes with Sgt. Berry giving Ofc. Harris props for professional mien.

What I'm driving at here is that, while Sam's been a slow-motion train-wreck as a Mayor (ask anyone in the bicycling community, anyone worried about the future of the Rose Quarter, or anyone who has any opinion about Major League Soccer), and the Adams administration has largely been a joke, and, yes, that unresolved question of moral turpitude, there's a fine line between criticism and whatever's going on here.

Maybe I'm reading too many blogs too much, but this is on the edge of making the critics look worse than the Mayor, which is no mean feat. We have enough to turf the Mayor out on as it is without making crap up.

If you're going to believe that Sam Adams was drunk and disorderly at the scene of an accident, then at least have the dignity of coming right out and saying that you think Ofc. Harris and Sgt. Berry are liars covering for the Mayor.

I won't respect that opinion, because I think it's a crock of dung. But at least you're being honest with yourself and others.

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:55 PM |

Did You Lose Brooks Burford So You Could Keep Rush Limbaugh?

The Mahablog:

Eric Boehlert writes that Clear Channel Communications is drowning in debt and struggling to stay in business (yes, we weep and we mourn). Already this year it has shed 12 percent of its workforce. The workers remaining are losing company matching contributions to their 401K plans.

Yet last year Clear Channel gave Rush Limbaugh a 40 percent pay raise. And Boehlert marvels at this, because it’s not as if any other radio entity could have offered him more money than what he was making before.

Quoting Boehlert now:

The astronomical worth of Limbaugh’s eight-year pact: $400 million. The amount of money Clear Channel execs have been trying to scrimp and save this year as they lay off thousands from the struggling company: $400 million. Ironic, don’t you think?

Meanwhile, here in PDX (OMI, April 30th):

Clear Channel laid off a ton of people locally yesterday, including KEXers Brooks Burford, Mark Workoven and Janine Wolf (is anyone left over there?), Kool 105.9 morning guy John Williams, and accounts receivable gal Gail Swan.

OMI also clued us that instead of local news being local, our local news will be hubbed out of Sacramento, which makes sense, because when I think Portland, I also think Sacramento.

Sometimes I think Clear Channel gets its strategic advice from a tuna-fish sandwich.

Meanwhile, the fellow whose $400 Megabuck paycheck meant local news reporters had to lose theirs? Why, the weather's never been better on Planet Limbaugh:

But during all this growth I haven’t lost any audience. I’ve never had financially a down year. There’s supposedly a recession, but we’ve got - what is this May? Back in February we already had 102% of 2008 overbooked for 2009. [applause] So I always believed that if we’re going to have a recession, just don’t participate.

Isn't it the way of the parasite not to be aware of how it's hollowing out its host – or if it's aware, not to give a damn? It's easy to opt out of a recession when they set up a plant just to print the money they owe you, and pay for it with the paychecks of local talent that got flushed down the toilet.

Or, simpler, Limbaugh to everyone else: SUCKERS!

Clearly, I'm in the wrong line of work.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:18 AM |

Palin Fever – It's Killing Its Host

That smell you're sensing, wafting down from the north?

It's Sarah Palin's poll numbers, which are pretty much going the same direction the rest of the Republican public opnion is:

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who was the most popular politician in the USA a year ago, is now far less popular in Alaska than US Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose father Palin beat to become governor. Her positive rating is now at 54%, and her "very negative" rating is up from 3% a year ago, to 25%

.

Looks like a lot of Alaskans are waking up to the slow motion train-wreck that is thier governor.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:54 AM |

May 06, 2009

New Minor League Stadium – Back To You, Lents

He runs hot and cold.

First it's Lents, then it's the Quarter, then it's Lents again.

Since Mayor Adams is so eager to please after not listening to anyone all of a sudden, let's everyone ask him for a pony.

And now he's also talking to the Blazers trying to convince them that a Vegas-style "entertainment district" is a poor fit for the Rose Quarter. Well, I approve of that stance, anyhow.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:17 PM |

Netanyahu moves the goal posts and Peres blows smoke up Biden's kilt

By now we're all familiar with the oft-repeated Israeli precondition with Palestinian entities: Recognize our right to exist first. Well, Prime Minister Netanyahu is now trying to change that. No longer is it good enough that Palestinians renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist. Now he's insisting that they have to recognize Israel's Jewish character.

One of the many things that's really interesting about that is the ticking demographic timebomb. Israel can't hold on to the Occupied West Bank, much less Gaza or the Golan Heights, without ending up with a Jewish minority. Experts are predicting that this could happen within ten years, although that's nothing that a bloody war couldn't put off at least for a little while longer... Just so - y'know... - we're being upfront about possible Israeli motives for instigating a new conflict which, naturally, requires lots of Palestinians to be killed.

Meanwhile, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Vice President Joe Biden both addressed the annual AIPAC policy conference yesterday. Biden stressed that the United States expects Israel to inhibit "natural" settlement growth, or new building within existing settlements..

Afterwards Peres glibly informed reporters that he'd told Biden that "Israel cannot instruct settlers in existing settlements not to have children or get married."

Which, if that's what Biden had spoken about might actually have some relevance. But of course it was nothing more than an attempt to demagogue the substantive issue Biden had addressed.

In fact, Israel has never attempted to tell Palestinians, whether inside Israel or in the Occupied Territories, "not to have children or get married." Nor has that failure ever inhibited Israel from demolishing Palestinian homes, whether in Israel or in the Occupied Territories.

As an aside here is the tally of homes destroyed between 1967 and 2006: Palestinians have demolished 0 Jewish homes. Israel has demolished 18,147 Palestinian homes.

Unlike Netanyahu who is newly elected, Peres has been President since mid-2007 and as such had inside knowledge of the secret Spiegel report. The January exposure of which revealed that the Israeli government not only knows who is building or expanding illegal settlements and where they're doing it at, but that the Israeli government plays a central role by approving and sometimes funding those expansions before the fact.

"Nothing was done in hiding," says Pinchas Wallerstein, director-general of the Yesha Council of settlements and a leading figure in the settlement project. "I'm not familiar with any [building] plans that were not the initiative of the Israeli government."

What we're seeing from the two highest elected officials in Israel is more of the same BS and double-talk we've received from previous Israeli leaders.

Posted by Kevin at 06:50 PM |

Play Michele Bachmann Off, Keyboard Cat!

Michele Bachmann is a buffoon. And, heck, after that last missive (if you watched the trailer), you'll need a goofy and cute chaser ...

... so, play her off, Keyboard Cat:

The Meme, Explained.

The Meme on You Tube (there's even one based on when that Glenn Beck guest did a face plant that we commented on a little while back).

Inspired by this post at Matt Davis' crib, yo.

This particular play-off was a production of Chinuk Studios (that's me and my copy of QuickTime Pro)

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:34 PM |

In Upcoming Film, The Road To Hell Is Paved With At Least One Mortgage Banker

A warning: I'm going to write about a movie that's not out yet that I don't intend to see.

It's not that it's going to be bad or anything. It's a horror movie, and despite our evident need to be frightened by something, I've never been all that addicted to the need, as some are. It's got Sam Raimi's name on it, so it'll probably be a polished product; for those who like this sort of thing, it should be just the sort of thing they should like, actually.

On May 29th, a movie called Drag Me To Hell is going to be released. It's got all the usual tokens in it, apparently; a mysterious old woman in peril, a pretty young blonde girl who makes the wrong choice and incurs her wrath, being the recipient of the obligatory curse, which is no big deal; an evil spirit will terrorize her for three days then take her down to Hell (actual Hell, not Cleveland, which I hear is Hell for some, but not so much as Toledo, but I digress).

Expect gore, grotesquery, and a young, screaming blonde woman, desperate attempts to remove the curse, and at least one scene of several hip-looking characters gathered round a table holding hands and intensely regarding a well-done medium at the head of that table.

The point of all this exposition is the thing that got my attention, even though horror movies are most decidedly not my can'o'beer: the main character, our new young blond scream-queen in aborning, works in a mortgage bank.

According to the story synopsis, our main character is a good-hearted modern young lady whom fate places as the intersection of Ambition Avenue and Chance-To-Do-A-Good-Deed Street when our mysterious eastern European-ish woman (with regulation horrible snaggly teeth and one wierd eye) comes to see her appealing for nothing so much as an extension on her delinquent mortgage payment.

Yep, that's it. Just a little more time to catch up on the mortgage.

But she's up for the Assistant Manager position, against a up-and-comer who, as the young lady's superior intones, can make the tough decisions. Can she make the tough decisions? Well, there's this pleading old mysterious lady who needs an extension on her mortgage.

Our heroine makes the tough decision – "No", as it develops (if it would have been "yes", this would be either a very short movie or the main character should have been played by Jim Carrey and the old lady actually been a man played by Christopher Walken. I digress again. Sorry), and the slippery slope down to the warm nether regions commence.

I'm told, rather repeatedly, that horror movies, far from being shallow fodder for the masses, actually reflect our fears of the current state of society/civilization/whatever, and that particularly Romero's Night Of The Living Dead represents something about 60's culture somehow. I don't know about all of that, as I said, I'm far enough from a horror fan that it's a toll call.

I do think it's incredibly darkly humorous that this upcoming movie apparently plays on our fears that having to navigate a modern society that's made up of what is essentially nothing but shabby choices, a world which makes abject mockery of people who try to do the right thing instead of the thing they have to do to get by, might send even the good-hearted people literally straight to Hell. So it's incredibly timely. It's rather timely.

Actually, considering where the state of mortgages are in this country, one might wonder why it wasn't made sooner.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:44 PM |

Oregon needs a state rock song

Representative Gene Whisnant (R-Sunriver District 53) wants a more "modern" state song.

SALEM -- The reaction goes something like this: Why would anyone try to dump "Oregon, My Oregon" as the official state song?

Actually, Rep. Gene Whisnant doesn't want to upstage the classic, but he does think it's time for Oregon to honor other kinds of music.

"Modern," the Sunriver Republican tells his resistant colleagues. "Be modern."

"Oregon, My Oregon" has been the state tune since 1927, its lyrics in the official state book.

Whisnant's House Joint Resolution 25 would add "No Place Under the Sun Like Oregon" to the list and bump "Oregon, My Oregon" to state anthem status.

It's an interesting suggestion. But why does it have to be explicitly about Oregon? Several states have adopted songs that don't even mention the state. Ohio has "Hang on Sloopy" by The McCoys and Oklahoma has adopted "Do you realize" by The Flaming Lips, both as official state "rock song" in each case.

My first thought as I read the piece in The O was, "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen. I see that Washington state has adopted it as their "state rock song" but their claim is tenuous at best. The Kingsmen were a Portland band and recorded the song in Portland. Shortly afterwards Paul Revere & the Raiders recorded a version of the song in the very same Portland recording studio that The Kingsmen had used to record their version.

While I'm on the subject of songs adopted by Washington state, I see that they've adopted Woody Guthrie's "Roll On, Columbia, Roll On" as their official state "folk song" despite the fact that Guthrie wrote the song from the Oregon side of the river and did it under contract with the Bonneville Power Administration which is headquartered on the Oregon side of the Columbia river.

So how 'bout it? Leave "Oregon, My Oregon" as is for the traditionalists and let's choose a state rock song for the progressives among us. Louie Louie is just a suggestion, although taking it back from the usurpers in Washington state would be sweet justice. But if not that song then what would you suggest? Perhaps something like Neil Young's "Rockin' in the free world"?

Posted by Kevin at 01:13 PM |

May 05, 2009

Naming and Shaming: The Savage Wiener (et al) Not Welcome In England, Officially

The Home Office, the division of the government of the United Kingdom that has to do with internal affairs such as immigration, has released today a list of sixteen names (actually it's twenty-two in full but six are deemed not releasable due to public interest concernes) of people who have been banned from entry to the UK between Oct 28th, 2008 and Mar 31st, 2009.

At the bottom of that list? (in)Famous US hate-radio hose Michael Wiener, though you know him as airbag Michael Savage:

Michael Alan Weiner (also known as Michael Savage)

Controversial daily radio host. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence.

The list is just as interesting for the others on the list that aren't The Savage Wiener: white supremacists, a duo who assaulted minorities and then posted their exploits on YouTube, Stormfront's Stephen Donald Black, Westboro Baptist Church's Fred and Shirley Phelps, and a handful of Muslim clerics who encourage injury and violence in the name of Islam.

Talk about your rogue's galleries.

What's poetically symmetrical about the whole thing is that Wiener is forever huffing and puffing about language, borders, and culture, which kind of looks like (well, 2/3rds at least) the justification for the Home Office's telling him that he's not welcome in Great Britain.

What's really cold is that he's the last name on the list. Oh, snap!

Mom Always Said™ those who live by the language, borders, and culture will probably die by some combination of the three. Or at least lose his right to fly to England and see the Queen.

And so it goes.

This Just In: I went over and looked at WorldNutDaily so y'alls wouldn't have to (I do and do and do for you people) and the lede was rather predictable:

Talk radio host Michael Savage is considering legal action against Britain's top homeland security official after she released today a list grouping him with terrorists and neo-Nazi murderers banned from entry because the government believes their views might provoke violence.

In a telephone interview with WND, Savage said he is still waiting to hear back from attorneys, but he noted Britain has very strict anti-defamation laws.

Yeah, you go sue'em, Mikey. "Strict defamation laws?" At least for once you're doing your homework. In the UK, you see, the burden of proving you weren't out to "savage" ('scuse me there) the reputation of another may well be on the accuser (the UK Govt in this case), but if you lose, you, Mikey, gets to pay everyone's legal ticket.

Your move. Consider it carefully, yes?

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:00 AM |

Republican Tolerance Of Alternative Lifestyles

Commented on elsewhere, but this is just so joyously bizarro I can't leave it untouched, that Michael (Not the former Bangles bassist) Steele, the man who appears to be the head of the WhigKnow NothingRepublican Party says there's room and tolerance for those who follow alternative lifestyles.

The alternative lifestyle, in this case, is "moderate":

"All you moderates out there, y'all come. I mean, that's the message," Steele said at a news conference. "The message of this party is this is a big table for everyone to have a seat. I have a place setting with your name on the front.

"Understand that when you come into someone's house, you're not looking to change it. You come in because that's the place you want to be."

Great messaging, Michael! C'mon in, there's enough room for everyone, including you moderates ... back there. In the second-class citizen section. It's your party ... but you'll be a permanent guest.

That's why the Republican party is dying.

What are they working their PR out with over there ... an Etch-A-Sketch?

Posted by The Chinuk at 04:25 AM |

May 04, 2009

Oregon House votes to conceal concealed handgun permits

SALEM -- Concealed handgun licenses would be exempt from Oregon's public records law under a bill passed Monday by the Oregon House, making it much more difficult to find out who is getting the permits.

Citing privacy and safety concerns, lawmakers said people who apply for and receive permits to carry a concealed weapon should be assured that their names, addresses and other personal information won't be made public.

"It's about protecting the rights of the good guys," said Rep. Chris Edwards, D-Eugene, one of 54 House members who voted in favor of the exemption. "This is not about protecting the rights of punks, of hooligans, or meth tweakers."

What about my rights and my safety?

I'll admit that I once was a meth tweaker... over 20 years ago. But as a meth-free parent and citizen I want to know who is packing guns. I have no problem with cops or security guards packing heat because they wear them out in the open where I can make whatever appropriate *informed* choices I feel necessary. A concealed gun denies me the ability to make such informed decisions.

Personally, I've never approved of concealed gun permits. If you wanna pack a gun in the grocery store where I'm shopping then I damn well want to know or at least have a reasonable opportunity to discover it's presence for myself. Your right to feel like Rambo shouldn't trump my right to arrange to be elsewhere if I feel it's warranted.

Posted by Kevin at 03:57 PM |

A minority within a minority

Christians in Israel

Christians in Israel, the majority of whom live in the Galilee, have something of a splintered identity (Palestinian Christians live mostly in Bethlehem and West Bank villages near Jerusalem). They comprise 8 percent of the 1.5 million Arabs in Israel and face much of the same discrimination that Muslim Israelis do when it comes to employment and suspicion about political loyalties.

...

“The community lives with hope for a better future,” said Wadee Abunassar, a political consultant who lives in Haifa and is serving as the spokesman for the local Latin patriarch during the pope’s visit. “As part of the Arab community, Christians in Israel share the hopes of fellow Arabs -- namely peace and equality. So far, unfortunately, there is neither peace nor equality.”

Abunassar says Christians here want to play an active role in making Israel a better place for all of its citizens.

“We are an integral part of the society in which we live,” he said. “We are neither Muslims nor Jews, but we are Israeli.”

Posted by Kevin at 02:29 PM |

One Building, 5 Floors, 14000 Company Headquarters

Yes, that's 14,000. Five digits.

It's Ugland House, in the Cayman Islands.

If y'all are wondering just where a lot those "offshore" countries have those headquarters.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:59 PM |

Portland Vintage Trolley Gets "Atrios'd"

(Updated Nov 24 2009 to reflect Portland Vintage Trolley's New web address)

The Great One, who has been occasionally ruminating on trolleys and such lately, linked Eschaton to the Portland Vintage Trolleys site today – the 1912 Map of Portland's Trolley network.

If Richard Thompson (the apparent sitemeister) compiles traffic reports, he's going to be very very surprised, I think.

If I can make a slightly later recommendation, from my extensive file of bookmarks here's an idea of what Portland's combined Electric Bus-Trolley/Streetcar/Motorcoach network looked like in 1940. The streetcar network, while reduced, was pretty extensive still. It's a thing of multiple modes (no more cute trolley cars, but a preponderance of other-than-gasoline transport).

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:27 AM |

The Reason This Whole Rose Quarter Deal Just Doesn't Seem Right

The Oregonian's Barry Johnson is my new hero, because he nails it flat:

And that's where common sense comes in. I can detect no indication that this grand plan has emerged from our shared idea of what the city needs right now, nor has Adams explained it well enough to convince us that it is crucial. Which is why a substantial and spirited public defense of the coliseum has developed.

I thought maybe I had something witty to add there, but I don't.

That says it all.

But the column should be read, if only because of the deft way he fashions Randy Leonard's "ugly" critique and fashions it into a petard that would fit Randy just fine.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:51 AM |

Arlen Specter Really Knows How To Burn His Bridges

Face the Nation last Sunday, via transcript at CQPolitics:

One: The Surgeon General ought to declare the GOP as hazardous to your health:

If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.

Now, as the New York Times pointed out in a column today, when you talk about life and death and medical research, that’s a much more major consideration on what I can do, continuing in the Senate, contrasted with which party I belong to.

What little I was able to stand to read on the con and neocon blogs (I was tempted to read Free Republic, but stepped back from that abyss) is, of course, lambasting Sen. Specter, and mostly ignoring the fact that he, too is a cancer survivor, just barely.

But that's the way they roll, Well, we all knew that.

Two: With respect to the current state of the GOP, What Would Arlen Do?

I would tell the party to take the advice of Senator Olympia Snowe, who wrote an op-ed column earlier this week. I would say to the Republican Party, don’t listen to the Club for Growth.

That is a group which has, in a knowing way, defeated moderate Republicans in the primary, knowing that they would lose in the general election, because purity is more important than Republicans in office.

If you take Linc Chafee’s case, Bob, Linc Chafee was defeated by the Club for Growth. Had Linc been elected to the Senate in 2006, we would have had -- there would have been Republican control in 2007 and 2008.

Instead there were 34 vacancies left open that President Bush could not -- could not confirm, so that I would say, try to bring back the party that -- of the Reagan big tent, that I joined back in 1980, when you had Heinz and Weicker and Mathias and John Chafee and Mark Hatfield and Jack Danforth. The room was full of moderate Republicans.

If you have the big tent; if you say -- listen, I voted 10,000 times. One vote, the stimulus package vote, I was ostracized, created a schism. I don’t expect people to agree with all my votes. I don’t agree with them all, at this point. But you’ve got to have some latitude.

Well, so much for that donation from the Club for Growth.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:32 AM |

May 03, 2009

The Next Big Developer In The Rose Quarter

Meanwhile, on the local scene, the Battle for The Rose Quarter is still joined, with no clean end in sight.

While it's been covered in other places, it floats just below the surface like slightly waterlogged flotsam: the Blazers organization is apparently ready to partner with The Cordish Company, famous for stamping out "entertainment districts" all over the country (including, famously, Louisville and Kansas City, and making a metric ton of money off it) to create a "entertainment district" and at last breathe life into an area that was supposed to be destined to be Portland's next great nightlife destination ... but is now a lifeless (though stunningly designed) desert – at least when there's no game on at the Garden.

More wondering if there is cause to worry below the fold ...

One ought not help but be discomfited, however, by the reputation of Cordish, which seems more driven to make money by stamping out such things on a die and tailoring them awkwardly to fit (resulting in places that are unique – just like everyplace else) and a history of union busting, even more taxpayer funding, and opposition to local improvement projects (they apparently opposed a transit rail project in downtown Kansas City).

What really caught my eye, however, was a short paragraph in a post at the blog Buffalo Pundit, which hints at something unhappy in downtown Niagara Falls, NY, called the Rainbow Mall:

The city should also declare that Cordish is in breach of his agreement to operate the dilapidated eyesore of a Rainbow Mall, and the city should have a street festival to coincide with its ceremonious razing or implosion.

The Rainbow Centre Factory Outlet mall occupies the middle of downtown Niagara Falls, a city of about 60,000, which has been previously famous as having at its other end (about five miles away) that icon of toxic waste known as the Love Canal. While it was going great guns in the 1980s and 90s, the mall fell behind toward the year 2000 to the point where the only business in it was an OTB outlet. The rest of the mall mouldered.

The blog linked to above (The Bridge) takes off the gloves about the Rainbow Mall:

The Cordish Company’s website does not mention the failed Rainbow Mall in Niagara Falls. (The Cordish Company). David Staba and Mike Hudson have reported that “(P)romise after promise emanating from City Hall and Baltimore, Md., home to David Cordish, proved empty. Little of the hoped-for spin-off development ever occurred.” (Niagara Falls Reporter)

David Cordish has been suing Niagara Falls for causing the conditions that led to Cordish’s abandonment of the “Rainbow Mall’s project.(Niagara Falls Reporter)

Like I said, nice bunch. Now, I don't pretend that large development corporations must necessarily be perfect; not even an august personage as myself is Simon-pure. But when you read about the footprints Cordish has left over the national landscape, you tend to reach the conclusions Sarah Mirk and Scott Davis of the Portland Mercury (and by reference, the Portland Architecture blog) seem to be going for:

Headlines from Kansas City newspapers reveal the redevelopment has not gone smoothly. After receiving nearly $300 million in public money, the district is not meeting its revenue forecasts—in part because Cordish missed construction deadlines. The president of Cordish has sent Kansas City’s mayor abrasive all-caps emails demanding the Power and Light District receive top priority.

Adams says local businesses will be part of the “Portland flavor” of the Rose Quarter, but Cordish stuffed the Power and Light District with retail run by its own affiliate. The Kansas City Business Journal reported that Cordish invested $50 million in a group called Entertainment Concepts Investors, LLC, which owns three restaurants, two theaters, and a large music venue in the district.

Sam Adams promises us that the proposed entertainment district at the RQ will be different. Maybe it will actually turn out to be different, but different just like everywhere else.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who lives in Portland who's starting to wonder when the power and money elite in this town will please stop swooning over every sweet song every big developer sings.

Niagara Falls, Louisville, Kansas City. Portland, now?

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:00 PM |

Qatari citizens could teach us a thing or two about freedom

Think we Americans have no rivals as the freest spoken people on the planet? Read this and then get back to me on that.

Posted by Kevin at 04:42 PM |

Contrary to the mindless bleeting of bigots...

Those evil Arabs known as the Palestinian Authority are not only engaged in anti-terrorism but those efforts are aknowledged to have improved during the very time frame in which we were all being told that all Arabs want to drive Israel into the sea and that this, therefore, justified war crimes against civilians in Gaza.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Palestinian Authority counterterrorism efforts improved but are stymied in part by insufficient Israeli cooperation, a U.S. State Department report said.

Now, why would Israel want to hinder the anti-terrorism efforts of Palestinians???

Posted by Kevin at 08:03 AM |

Happy 90th, Pete Seeger!

One of our nation's greatest troubadours turns 90 today. At first I thought to just do a link-fest but there are too many to choose from. So I've chosen just one which goes to the heart of everything Pete Seeger has ever stood for, both directly and indirectly.

Chicago Tribune blogger Eric Zorn posted a rundown of the living legends who will be helping Seeger celebrate in style at a sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden. Zorn includes a touching anecdote about a letter written and replied to by Seeger years before. Then Zorn reprints a 1995 spleen-venting rant by Tribune columnist Stephen Chapman.

Clinton didn't bother to inform his unwitting constituents that the way Seeger saw things was invariably the way the Communist Party saw them...

Clinton further obscured the truth by saying it was a "badge of honor" that Seeger was blacklisted from radio and TV during the McCarthy era. Blacklisting was a bad thing, but some care should be taken to distinguish between those people who were harmed when they were falsely accused of being communists and those people who were harmed when they were accurately accused of being communists. Not all victims of McCarthyism were innocent victims.

Ah, there's nothing quite like a full-throated defense of McCarthyism to prove why or how communists are evil. Right? I mean, hey... the ends justify the means, even if the means become not only the ends but mirror the means used by those you are claiming to be exposing.

Notice how casually Chapman swept aside the issue of harm caused as long as the McCarthyist ideological charges had some grain of truth. Of course the exact same defense could be given to Stalin. But then that would require a level of actual comprehension by Chapman which conservatives almost never consider useful. Mindless regurgitation is more their style.

Anyway, for a more completel rundown of blog posts on Seeger's birthday check here, and for news articles check here.

Posted by Kevin at 07:19 AM |

May 02, 2009

A dedication to Christian Conservatives

Way back in the day I (along with Carla and Jim Dallas, co-founder of Burnt Orange Report) used to be members of a long-since defunct online political forum/community which had a tradition of dedicating songs for a variety of reasons. Being just a visual format, the way we'd dedicate songs was just to list the lyrics. Having just watched the PBS special on Peter, Paul & Mary on Oregon Public Broadcasting I was inspired to dredge up this old tradition and dedicate a song from their 2004 In These Times album.

To Christian Conservatives: Jesus is on the wire,

Run down church
Red clay
River covered
In a smoky haze

Sunday morning
The fire is out
Sunday morning
No one about

The earth is soft
This time of year
Boots get caked
From there to here

Down the road
Route 25
They found this boy
He was barely alive

Jesus is on the wire
So far away, higher and higher
Jesus is on the wire

They took him down
Off the fence
Cold as ice
Almost dead
They said that he
That he slept with guys
They said that he
Deserved to die

Jesus is on the wire
So far away, higher and higher
Jesus is on the wire

Posted by Kevin at 08:46 PM |

They Burn Books, Don't They?

Caught on a scan of the Wide World of Blog Feeds:

The Milwaukee branch of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) has filed a legal claim that says a book that is available in the West Bend Community Memorial Library is offensive.

...

Named in the claim are the city of West Bend, Mayor Kristine Deiss, the West Bend Library Board and Library Director Michael Tyree. The group is seeking $30,000 per plaintiff, Deiss’ resignation and a racist book be removed and publicly burned or destroyed as a deterrent to repeating the offensive conduct, the claim states.

Fortunately the demands are reasonable and in no way, shape or form recall the images of Nazis burning books, so shame on you if you were thinking that.

And what is that book aforementioned? It's a book called Baby Be Bop, a prequel to the "Weetzie Bat" story cycle by an author named Francesca Lia Block.

Not really my can'o'beer (I'm more of an SF reader myself, what us around the farm growing up called "Lititchur" being rather dry), but one of the customer reviews has it thus (typos as in original):

In Block's latest venture, she explores the very core of human sexuality through the story of the embracable Dirk. His stunning pride and unshatterable spirit propel him through his confrontation of his homosexual self. Dirk is an amazing character and captures the reader's heart immeadiatly. His heartbreaking loss of his love interest, Pup, his turn to a "punk" nature and his suicide attempt guide the audience through a startlingly beautiful sureal journey as Dirk's ancestors come to his aid to help him accept who he is. The frightening veins of fantasy collide with stark (in)humanity through his confrontations with homophobics, hate and the neo-nazi. This is possibly Block's most triumphant work, encasing skillful characterization artfully blended with a lightspeed plot.

I'm also taken by the name of the group: the Christian Civil Liberties Union, which confirms one thing I've always suspected: Christian civil liberties are different from actual civil liberties, just like neocon-brand Freedom™ is different from actual freedom.

In both cases, I'd say the latter is the the original, and the former is the economy pack. Your mileage, of course, just might vary there.

PS To Teh Gay from the CCLU: Don't accept yourself, remember that you are hideous and unlovable, stay miserable, and please keep the closet door closed. Thanks!
PPS To Public Servants who tolerate Teh Gay from the CCLU: Prepare to lose your jobs.

(h/t Illusory Tenant)

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:46 PM |

Open Thread: GOP Boobosity

The National-level GOP is made up primarily of real boobs who don't mind it when an anti-Teh Gay Marriage beauty contestant's fake boobs are paid for by some real boobs.

Discuss.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:01 AM |

Portland Transit Namechecked By Atrios

The Great One himself:

I've never been to Portland, and do think the restoration of the route 23 trolley is a much higher national priority than ferrying around drunks on the east side of Portland, but at least someone's getting some supertrain cash.

Hey! We like our drunks!

Even if its said in good-natured snarky jest, I am an Atrios fan (I have appointed myself the West Coast Atrios after all).

Hey, we all have to be fans of someone. Why, I remember reading Eschaton back when the visitor count was in the six digits.

The middle six-digits, yo.

(I think the extension of the streetcar to the east side is beyond nifty, for what that's worth)

PS: Atrios, dude, you should so visit PDX! Sure the city government has gotten a bit ... well, weird lately ... but this city rocks even if it's a little full of itself sometimes. I never get tired of this place, and I'm poor and can't afford to go out and do stuff. Just looking at this place is enough!

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:44 AM |

May 01, 2009

The NAFTA Flu

That's what some of the more serious wags are calling it. Via Truthout:

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect on January 1, 1994. That very same year Smithfield Farms opened the "Carroll Ranches" in the Mexican state of Veracruz through a new subsidiary corporation, "Agroindustrias de México."

Unlike what law enforcers forced upon Smithfield Farms in the US, the new Mexican facility - processing 800,000 pigs into bacon and other products per year - does not have a sewage treatment plant.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:51 PM |

Republicans: The Original Class Act:

A poised group, unwilling to speak ill of the dead and murdered.

Unless they're gay, of course.

(While you're over there, consider signing the petition)

Virginia Foxx: Just like Michele Bachmann, except she makes you cry and die inside. Also has no idea what the word hoax means, apparently.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:17 AM |

Justice Souter Hasn't Announced His Retirement Yet ...

... but that's where the smart money is.

And the argument over the likeliest nominee ... Sonia Sotomayor ... has already been joined, even though she hasn't even been announced yet. The Republican criticism is (fill in the blank here) is Too Liberal!!!!, and if you think that's bad, just wait until we liberals get our mitts on her.

We're even more brutal!

The actual takeaway from this situation actually has little to do with the above (though the prospect of Barack Obama getting to nominate Supreme Court justices so early in his first term can be naught but to the good) is tied in to the sudden departure of Arlen Specter from the Republican party.

As 2 Political Junkies note (from CQ Politics):

Here's why having Specter no longer in the role of ranking Republican creates disarray in the GOP.

Ranking Republican isn't just a courtesy title. It's a management job.

That's the person who runs the staff of legal professionals who evaluate legislation and handle the behind-the-scenes work of vetting each judicial nominee. As you can imagine, going through the paperwork on a Supreme Court nomination -- and dealing with the politics of a Supreme Court nomination -- is a very big job.

Will the experienced staff that Specter assembled continue to work for the committee?

Good question. While it is great fun to watch Republicans hide in corners and cry, even I'm not such a vandal that I'd like to see the process break down because of it. I just want Republicans to take their lumps and know their place (the Biggest Losers) as they expected the Democrats to. Because more and better Democrats are coming, and Republicans have time to remember what it's like to be a loyal opposition.

We'll have to keep our eyes on this one.

In the meantime, I understand Judge Marian Milian is available. Just sayin'.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:01 AM |

Blazers Season Ends In Apparent Mercy Killing

Houston spanks the Blazers in game 6: 92-76.

Owie. Wish they could've gone out on a better note than that!

Still, they got farther this year than anyone thought they would.

Watch out for them next year. They be HONGRY!

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:54 AM |

Please, Rep. Bachmann, Stop Talking

Join us once again as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Jupiter) opens her mouth and sticks her foot in to see just how far down the rabbit hole goes (the payoff happens between 0:49 and 0:55):

Yep. It was the "Hoot Smalley" tarrifs.

Please, Rep. Bachmann. If not for your constituents, for yourself: you are the reason someone once said "It is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought of a fool than to open it and remove all doubt".

Let's go to the cashier with this:

1. Calling for the McCarthy-style investigation of MCs who didn't agree with the Iraq war
2. "You da Man, Michael Steele! You da man!"
3. The Carter Administration's Swine flu outbreak, which really happened during the Ford Administration"
4. "Hoot Smalley Tariffs"

Wow. I'm getting a big NO SALE here.

Please, love, and I say this because I care, for your own sake, stop talking.

(h/t Dump Bachmann blog, where the MN-6 voters remorse is diagrammed in vivid Technicolor daily)

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:37 AM |

Miss Cali: Thou Shalt Get Thy Boobs Enlarged

It seems that the same Miss California who says she was being "biblically correct" when she opposed same-sex marriage at the recent Miss USA pageant wasn't exactly stepping out in the full faith in her god's handiwork when she gave that answer. She'd had her breasts artifically enlarged just weeks before.

'Cause, y'know... apparently the way God made her just wasn't good enough.

This past Sunday on the TheoCon circuit she stated while peering over her fake boobs, "I learned that God has a bigger crown than any man can give you." Pastor Mike McPherson gave her an ovation while on his stage, but it's not clear whether he was expressing his approval of her fake but oh so gravity defying boobs or for her willingness to publicly oppose equal rights.

Posted by Kevin at 06:36 AM |