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December 29, 2009
Hypocrisy
JTA:
Israeli police arrested nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu for meeting with foreigners in violation of his parole....
Under the terms of his parole, Vanunu is also prohibited from leaving the country or approaching foreign embassies.
Just imagine what the reaction would be in the Knesset if this were an Iranian nuclear whistleblower being prevented by the Iranian clerics from meeting foreigners or approaching foreign embassies.
What never ceases to amaze me is how Israel and her supporters, including our own government, act as if nobody is capable of connecting the dots...
Say what you want about the Iranian clerics and I'll likely agree with most of it. But the fact will remain that Israel is every bit as much an international scofflaw viz nuclear ambitions as the Iranian clerics appear to be. Arguing that Israel is more trustworthy than Iran won't ever change that fundamental fact.
Posted by Kevin at 02:57 PM |
Sen. Merkley: yeah it's flawed but no reason for despair
Senator Jeff Merkley (OR-D) today offered the best defense I've seen for the recent, flawed health care bill.
I received this via email:
Happy holidays. I'm pleased to be able to spend some time with my family and hope you will have that chance too, but wanted to take a few moments to share my thoughts about the Senate health care vote last week.
Like many of you and many progressives around the country, I am disappointed in what this health care bill is missing.
I am pained that the bill does not have a public option. I am furious that this bill will make it more difficult for some women to exercise their Constitutional right to control their own bodies. I think we have missed opportunities to more aggressively limit insurance companies and big Pharma's grip on our health care system.
But while this bill falls short of what it could be, it is a vast improvement over the system we have today.
- Under the health care legislation, 30 million friends, family members, and neighbors who are currently uninsured will get help affording health care.
- It will become illegal for insurance companies to kick their customers to the curb if they are so unfortunate as to need the insurance they've been paying for.
- Whether you get covered and what you pay will no longer depend on how healthy you are or whether you have a pre-existing condition.
- Seniors will get better coverage under Medicare, including a fix to the "doughnut hole" in drug coverage and free preventive care.
- And there's much more to be happy about in this bill -- big increases in funding for community health centers, new innovative programs to improve coordinated care, investments in prevention and to bring more primary care doctors, nurses, and other skilled professionals into health care, and more.
But most importantly, this bill marks the dawn of a new promise: a promise that our country will provide health care to its people. In America, we have finally settled the debate over whether health care is a right or a privilege. This is a big deal.
Without question, how we're delivering on that promise is flawed. But remember the example of Social Security.
When that landmark program became law in 1935, it lifted millions of seniors out of poverty. It also excluded agricultural workers, domestic workers, railroad workers, and state and local employees -- a huge swath of the population. It did not include survivor or dependent benefits. It wasn't even indexed for inflation.
The promise was crucial, and helped a lot of people, but its delivery was flawed. But getting the program started was the hardest part - over time we improved Social Security. And over time, we'll improve health care too.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." But as President Obama reminded us, "it doesn’t bend on its own. It bends because each of us puts our hands on that arc and bends it in the direction of justice."
The struggle for social and economic justice never ends. The steps towards justice always fall short of what they could and should be. But our duty - as progressives, as Americans, as human beings - is to keep marching towards justice, imperfect as each step may be.
I wish you and your families a happy and healthy 2010, and hope that you will help me continue this struggle - to improve this bill and to improve this nation.
I hadn't thought to compare this current issue to the beginnings of SSI. But the way Senator Merkley lays it out makes a great deal of sense to me.
It's not a reason to settle for second best or accept that this is as good as it'll ever get. It's a reason to not give up just because the few positives in this current legislation are far short of what is needed.
I just hope our economy survives the nihilistic greed that's preventing meaningful progress.
Posted by Kevin at 02:32 PM |
December 28, 2009
Foodie Fun: Sweet Potato Pie & BBQ Meatballs
Time for a couple more recipes that I used over the holidays.
The meatballs recipe is just the carnivore version of the Vegetarian Meatballs recipe I've previously posted.
I wish I could claim credit for the Sweet Potato Pie recipe because it got rave reviews at the two holiday dinners I brought a pie to, but I can't. It's derived solely from a reviewer's comment/twist on a sweet potato pie recipe posted at allrecipe.com. I modified it slightly but only marginally.
Both recipes below the fold:
First the BBQ Meatballs. A small group of friends put on a potluck on the last Friday of every month and since this closely followed both Thanksgiving and Christmas we all agree to avoid bring leftovers or dishes strongly associated with both holidays. Which is how I came to make a huge batch of BBQ Meatballs on Christmas day.
Meatballs:
3 lbs hamburger
3 eggs
1/2 tsp BBQ seasoning
1 tsp salt
1 medium/large sweet onion
1 tsp minced garlic
1/4 tsp cracked black pepper
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbsp Sriracha chili sauce
about 2 cups bread crumbs
Sauce:
1/2 Sweet Baby Rays Original BBQ sauce
1/2 Ketchup
Directions:
Cut the onion up into chunks and finely mince in a food processor along with the garlic, seasonings and the Sriracha chili sauce.
Combine everything but the bread crumbs - I used my bench mixer with the dough hook. Then add bread crumbs until the mixture is approximately the texture of meatloaf mix. You want it thick enough to hold it's shape while baking but soft enough to not be so crumbly that it falls apart. What I do is add most of the bread crumbs and then do a test meatball to see how well it holds it's shape and then adjust as necessary. Use breadcrumbs to stiffen up the mixture and milk to soften it up.
Roll into small meatballs, place in an oven-safe pan with the meatballs spaced far enough apart to not be touching each other and bake them at 350F at least 15 minutes. I usually like to bake them a bit longer - 20 to 30 minutes just to make sure they'll stand up to being transferred to another pan without breaking or cracking. But if you plan on pouring the sauce over them (ie. not move them) then 15 minutes should be fine.
For the sauce just mix the BBQ sauce half and half with ketchup. Make as much or as little as you want, just so long as the ratio of BBQ sauce to ketchup remains the same.
Either transfer the meatballs to another pan or leave them in the same pan. Either way, just pour the sauce mixture over them and return them to the 350f oven for 30 minutes and they are done!
And now the Sweet Potato Pie! This is a doubled recipe for making two pies and is the base recipe with the aforementioned modifications by reviewer "SL" coupled with my few slight modifications which I will put in italics.
Ingredients:
2 (1 pound) sweet potato
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups baker's white sugar (SL's twist: substitute brown sugar in 2nd cup. My twist: don't substitue if using sweetened condensed milk)
1 cup sweetened condensed milk (SL's twist: regular condensed milk)
5 eggs (original calls for 4 eggs)
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground clove
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (I sometimes omit this)
2 tablespoons lemon juice (I sometimes omit this)
1 tablespoon all purpose flour (SL uses 2, to thicken the filling, but sweetened condensed milk is thicker than regular condensed milk so I used less)
2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust
Directions:
Boil sweet potato whole in skin for 40 to 50 minutes, or until done. Run cold water over the sweet potato, and remove the skin.
Break apart sweet potato in a bowl. Add butter, and mix well with mixer. Stir in sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat on medium speed until mixture is smooth. Pour filling into an unbaked pie crust.
Bake at 350F degrees for 55 to 60 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Pie will puff up like a souffle, and then will sink down as it cools.
I've made these twice now. The first time I followed SL's modifications precisely and the result got rave reviews. This past week I modified it slightly and also forgot to add both the ginger and the lemon juice, and these too got rave reviews. I'm inclined to suggest using the ginger and the lemon juice because I would have if I'd been paying attention and because the ginger in particular (along with the clove) is responsible for most of the distinctive difference between how these taste and how a more traditional pumpkin pie tastes.
Posted by Kevin at 01:25 PM |
December 27, 2009
Senators Harkin & Merkley: reform the Senate!
Ezra Klein has been hitting the issue of Senate reform over the last week starting with a couple of interview posts last week on his WaPo-based blog and ending with an article in today's Washington Post, all focusing specifically on the filibuster. In the first interview Iowa Senator Tom Harkin(D) describes the problem:
You're supposed to filibuster something that is a deep seated issue. But in September, we had an extension on unemployment insurance. We had a filibuster that lasted over three weeks. They held up everything. And in the end, the vote was 97 to one. Filibusters are no longer used to debate something, but to stop everything.
We have an equally glaring example with the recently passed health care legislation in the Senate:
in my committee, we had thirteen days of mark up. Republicans offered over 200 amendments and we accepted over 161. And every Republican then voted against it. ...We've entered a new era here of outright stoppage at all costs. (emphasis supplied by yours truly)
Klein himself describes in today's opinion piece how the Grumpy Obstructionists Party (aka GOP) created the current crippling, dysfunctional abuse of the filibuster:
To understand why the modern legislative process is so bad, why every Senator seems able to demand a king's ransom in return for his or her vote and no bill ever seems to be truly bipartisan, you need to understand one basic fact: The government can function if the minority party has either the incentive to make the majority fail or the power to make the majority fail. It cannot function if it has both.In decades past, the parties did not feel they had both. Cooperation was the Senate's custom, if not its rule. But in the 1990s, Newt Gingrich, then the minority whip of the House, and Bob Dole, then the minority leader of the Senate, realized they did have both. A strategy of relentless obstruction brought then-president Bill Clinton to his knees, as the minority party discovered it had the tools to make the majority party fail.
But of course, as is and always has been the case inside the beltway, once a precendent has been set it is quickly adopted by both major parties and becomes enshrined in perpituity in everyones political playbooks:
Unfortunately, both parties have followed Gingrich's playbook ever since. According to UCLA political scientist Barbara Sinclair, about 8 percent of major bills faced a filibuster in the 1960s. This decade, that jumped to 70 percent. The problem with the minority party continually making the majority party fail, of course, is that it means neither party can ever successfully govern the country. (emphasis supplied by yours truly)
Citing his earlier interview with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley(D), Klein points out:
Jeff Merkley, a freshman Democratic Senator from Oregon and former speaker of Oregon's House of Representatives, spoke to this issue in an interview last week. "When you use the word filibuster," he said, "most of us in America envision it as the ability to speak at length and even delay progress by taking hours. I count myself among those Americans." He sighed. "But it's not a filibuster anymore. It's a supermajority requirement. And when that becomes commonly used, it's a recipe for paralysis."
So what's the fix? Sen. Merkley pointed out a few of the general ideas he's discussed with Democratic colleagues. Sen. Harkin was a bit more specific, describing a central component of an amendment he's floating:
The idea is to give some time for extended debate but eventually allow a majority to work its will. I do believe there's some reason to have extended debate. If a group of senators filibusters a bill, you want to take their worries seriously. Make sure you're not missing something. My proposal will do that. It says that on the first vote, you need 60. Then you have to wait two days, and on the third day, you need 57 votes. And then you need to wait two days, and on the third day, it's 54 votes. And then you'd wait another two days, and on the third day, it would be 51 votes.
In an irony of Orwellian proportions, Harkin's efforts at filibuster reform date back to the 1990s and were co sponsored once-upon-a-time by one Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut:
"People say I only worry about this because I'm in the majority," he said Tuesday. "But I come at this with clean hands!" Back then, his partner in the effort to reform the filibuster was Lieberman. "The filibuster," Lieberman said at the time, "has become not only an obstacle to accomplishment here, but also a symbol of a lot that ails Washington today." Lieberman has since stopped worrying and learned to love obstructionism.
But it hasn't been propagated just by Senators like Lieberman, who progressives love to vilify. Rank & file Democrats in the Senate have contributed to the current paralysis:
This isn't just a Democratic concern, though Democrats, being in the majority, are the ones raising it now. In 2005, Senate majority leader Bill Frist nearly shut the chamber down over the Democratic habit of filibustering George W. Bush's judicial nominees. "This filibuster is nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority," he said at the time.
But as much as many of us at the time expressed approval of Dems filibustering Dubya's attempts to pack the federal bench with wingnuts, the history of the institution, and indeed of virtually everything inside the Beltway, indicates that even life-long judgeships are transitory blips compared to the half-life of power-concentrating precedents such as what the filibuster has turned into. Meaning that we can't lay all of the blame at the feet of The Party of No. We all participated as cheerleaders when we perceived political advantage in doing so.
It seems clear to me that the filibuster has become a grave threat to every one of us regardless of ideology or political affiliation. I like Harkin's proffered solution but would love to hear more viable solutions.
(hat tip: Bleeding Heartland)
Posted by Kevin at 09:06 AM |
December 24, 2009
Unbelievable: IDF charges Arab peace activist with arms possession
The alleged "most moral military in the world" has charged Palestinian peace activist Abdallah Abu Rahmah in a West Bank military court with, among other things, illegal possession of arms. The basis? Rahmah collected spent IDF tear gas grenades and projectile shells which were fired at his village and used them to create the memorial to nonviolence pictured below:
Photo: Oren Ziv ActiveStills via Mondoweiss
Mondoweiss has the details and has been covering this story extensively.
Posted by Kevin at 02:14 PM |
Health care bill passes in Senate
Here's a statement released by Senator Merkley's office:
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the United States Senate passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to greatly expand access to health coverage, make insurance more affordable, reform insurance practices, and give citizens greater choice. Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley voted in favor of the legislation and issued the following statement:
“Today, we have taken a long stride forward in our decades-long effort to provide affordable, accessible, quality health care to every single American. Thirty million Americans will gain access to affordable health care. Millions more will benefit from insurance reforms that end the insurance practice of rejecting citizens with pre-existing conditions and of dumping citizens off policies after they become sick or injured. And virtually every citizen will benefit from the investment in health clinics, disease prevention, and disease management.
"For far too long, individual citizens have been like lambs to the slaughter when they purchased health insurance. Now they will be able to join with others to purchase policies at the same discount obtained by large businesses.
"The same goes for our small businesses, which have been struggling with double-digit health care inflation. In addition to the ability to join a health-care purchasing pool to drive down costs, they will obtain significant tax credits to drop the price of insurance for their employees.
"This legislation is not all I want it to be. It does not contain a national public option to increase choice and competition. It is imperfect in many other ways as well. But this bill brings peace of mind to Americans struggling to secure affordable health care. This bill attacks runaway health care inflation. This bill establishes that in the United States of America, health care is no longer a privilege, it is a right."
Posted by Kevin at 09:26 AM |
December 22, 2009
Why are health insurance stocks up?
(hat tip: BPaul)
Posted by Kevin at 10:02 PM |
December 21, 2009
When 'blood libel' contains a kernal of truth
A few months ago when the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published a story suggesting that Israel might be harvesting organs from Palestinians the reaction was swift and vociferous. Israel and her partisan defenders cried blood libel. But now it turns out that there might actually be a kernal of truth behind what was written in Aftonbladet.
JTA reports:
Israel admitted to harvesting organs from dead bodies in the 1990s.The admission came after the release of a 2000 interview with Dr. Yehuda Hiss, who was the head of Israel's L. Greenberg Forensic Institute in Abu Kabir, The Associated Press reported.
Hiss told an American academic in the interview, parts of which were broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 over the weekend, that the institute used corneas from bodies, including Israeli soldiers, Palestinians and foreign workers. Channel 2's report said that corneas, heart valves, skin and bones were used from the corpses without families' permission.
HuffPo has more:
The academic, Nancy Sheppard-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said she decided to make the interview public in the wake of the Aftonbladet controversy, which raised diplomatic tensions between Israel and Sweden and prompted Sweden's foreign minister to call off a visit to the Jewish state.Sheppard-Hughes said that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected by the practice in the 1990s, she felt the interview must be made public now because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."
There was reason to at least suspect that Aftonbladet's piece back in August contained a kernel of truth, as Alison Weir argued at the time on Counter Punch:
The fact is, however, that substantiated evidence of public and private organ trafficking and theft, and allegations of worse, have been widely reported for many years. Given such context, the Swedish charges become far more plausible than might otherwise be the case and suggest that an investigation could well turn up significant information.Below are a few examples of previous reports on this topic.
Alison Weir wasn't the only one suggesting that either. Bruce Wolman of Mondoweiss urged the left-leaning Jewish daily Haaretz to investigate the allegations but instead they too proclaimed it blood libel.
Ironically, on the same day that one part of HuffPo reported on this latest development, on another part Rabbi Abraham Cooper was flogging the "blood libel" horse in the context of a very interesting and worthy post about how much more quickly modern technology allows lunacy to be spread around the world.
But the most appalling thing was the official Israel rationalizations in response to the news that organ harvesting had in fact taken place:
While insisting that all organ harvesting was done with permission, Israel's Health Ministry told Channel 2, "The guidelines at that time were not clear." It added, "For the last 10 years, Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law."
Putting the lie to the Health Ministry's claim, the IDF admitted that it had in fact happened:
In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer," the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.
Here's the thing though... If it was done in the 90's under the cloak of official invisibility then by what objective criteria do we accept that it's not happening now? Because harvesting organs without permission was deemed unethical at the end of the 90's??? Hardly! It's been considered grossly unethical for many decades, dating back to when the Nazis practiced it.
If the near universal belief that such harvesting was grossly unethical before the 90's, and it happened in Israel anyway, then I see no reason to glibly accept the assertions that it has now ended.
Posted by Kevin at 07:51 PM |
Jackson Co. To Assoc. of Oregon Counties: Drop Dead
Mapes at The O has it that Jackson County (pop. about 202,000), whose county seat is Medford (pop about 79,000) is asking to be included out of the Association of Oregon Counties (population 36, more or less), and is taking its annual membership dues of about 31 Kilobucks with it.
I don't know why Jackson County thinks the AOC is so northern-county parochial …
You can see Mount Hood from Medford, can't ya?
Touchy! Next thing you know, they'll want their own state or summat.
Posted by The Chinuk at 09:13 AM |
December 16, 2009
Christian scare-mongering or ideological pornography?
The usual suspects - FauxNews (Glenn Beck), Michelle Malkin, stoptheaclu.com, ChristianNewsWire and many others - jumped all over a story late Monday night in the obscure Taunton Daily Gazette claiming that a Taunton second-grader suspended over drawing of Jesus.
Supposedly this little boy's teacher gave the class an assignment to draw something that made them think of Christmas. When the boy drew a stick-figure picture of Jesus on a cross with X's in it's eyes he got in trouble for drawing something violent and was forced to endure a psychological examination at the behest of the school district and then was suspended from school.
Only this apparent urban legend looks to be more a case of this kid's dad trying to extort money from the school district. The teacher and school district vehemently deny that there was any such drawing assignment and are skeptical that the drawing was even made anywhere on school property. Nor was the boy suspended from school. There does appear to have been some sort of psychological questions sparked by the drawing, but they had nothing to do with religion:
She said the boy's drawing was seen as a potential cry for help when the student identified himself, rather than Jesus, as the figure on the cross, which sparked the teacher to alert the school's principal and staff psychologist.
The boy's father added fuel to the fire yesterday:
Amid the flurry of media attention, the boy's father held court today at his girlfriend's apartment here, demanding the school district compensate him for his family's pain and suffering."It hurts me that they did this to my kid," Chester Johnson, the boy's father, told the Globe. "They can't mess with our religion; they owe us a small lump sum for this.''
But that's a circus sideshow story. The real story in my view is how quickly a wide assortment of arch-conservatives jumped on the original, highly questionable story and used it as proof that liberals are out to destroy America.
Becky first brought this to my attention via email. And she's the one who coined the "Christian scare-mongering" description. Which it is... but it seems to me that the usual reichwing suspects take so much pleasure from parroting stories - whether true or not - about those evil liberals that it seems more akin to pornography than anything. These people are getting their intellectual rocks off to this stuff. It serves to confirm their ideological self-perception in the same way that post-coital reflection serves to confirm the manhood/womanhood of it's participants. Same/same.
Here's Merriam-Webster's definition of pornography:
Main Entry: por·nog·ra·phy
Pronunciation: \-fē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek pornographos, adjective, writing about prostitutes, from pornē prostitute + graphein to write; akin to Greek pernanai to sell, poros journey — more at fare, carve
Date: 1858
1 : the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement
2 : material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement
3 : the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction
Definition #3 seems an almost perfect description of these rightwing orgies.
It's ideological porn for the ideologically repressed.
Posted by Kevin at 06:40 PM |
ORGov: Coming In From The Bench for the ORGOP, Chris Dudley
Dudley, 44, announced his candidacy to more than 60 supporters in the auditorium at Self Enhancement Inc., a North Portland charity that works with low-income youths to boost their educational and employment prospects.
His platform?
He pledged to slow the growth of the state budget and the high cost of the Public Employees Retirement System. He also said he opposes the tax measures on the January ballot.
Or, typical ORGOPper, big-business and rich-person-friendly.
I'm almost certain making that announcement at a foundation devoted to improving the educational and employment opportunities is an irony that is all but completely lost on the former Blazers center.
But at least the ORGov race has just gotten a lot more interesting, or, at least, is about to be more loaded with sports metaphors.
Posted by The Chinuk at 01:27 PM |
December 14, 2009
Meet the new script, better than the old script
Haloscan - our commenting system here for the last couple years or so - was acquired by JS-Kit about a year ago and they have generated a new, snazzier comment platform called Echo.
We will be transitioning to Echo, perhaps beginning with this post. New posts will migrate right away and older posts will take a while as the JS-Kit bot works it's way through our library of old comments.
Allegedly this new Echo is highly integrated with a variety of social networking platforms out there (Facebook, Twitter, etc). So... depending on what it looks like and how it performs, I may be removing the little social networking button at the end of each post due to pointless redundancy issues.
Whereas Haloscan was free, Echo costs money. But only $9.95 per year. Which frankly is chump change against the backdrop of $4 lattes and the like.
One cool feature of Echo is that it'll apparently allow the comments to be embedded in the web page. If by that they mean that they'll be embedded in the relavant post then that'll make it far easier for us to fisk troll comments to old posts. Since Haloscan never managed to let us know which post the comments were associated with unless they were to a recent post and it was obvious, this one feature might be worth the price of admission all on it's own. Haloscan had jury-rigged a way to associate comments with specific posts but only had it available for the blogger/blogspot platform.
So we'll see how it goes. You all officially know only slightly less about Echo than I do, and some might know a great deal more than I do. We'll figure it out as we go.
Lastly here, I would very much appreciate feedback on Echo features you do or do not like because some of them I can turn on/off or alter. By the same token, if I change something and you decide that you preferred the previous way it functioned, let me know! The commenting script is really much more for you than it is for me.
Posted by Kevin at 11:59 AM |
December 13, 2009
The Mysterious And Nifty OMC … Revealed!
The website Oregon Media Central has followed the act of the departed and very-much-missed Oregon Media Insiders to become, by far, the hands-down online media maven for wired Oregonians who like that sort of thing, such as myself.
The proprietor, who has gone pseudoymously since the site's establishment, however, has decided to pull away the veil and reveal the man behind the curtain, and that man turns out not to be a media insider at all, really, just a spirited and excellent fan of the media – one Mitch Nolan, late of Chi-town, as revealed at this month's OMC Media Circus.
Local alt-weekly scribe Byron Beck has the skinny here.
Even better: OMC now has a Facebook page, for those that like that sort of thing.
When OMI's blogmistress hung up her spurs some time back, I worried that it wouldn't find a worthy successor. OMC has filled the void with aplomb, and if you're interested in the Oregon market, you should support him with your eyeballs if nothing else.
You down with OMC?
Posted by The Chinuk at 06:27 PM |
December 12, 2009
How To Make Friends and Influence People At Blogtown
I don't know how much chance Mary Volm has at actually winning a seat on the Portland City Commission, but her emerging publicly-financed campaign has blown a huge, glowing crater in the comments of the post at the PMerc's Blogtown post on Mary's coming out as a candidate.
It's big, intense, farcical, and not for the squeamish or kids.
Another warning, a great deal of virtual rape is j'accused. With advocates like this, Mary doesn't need enemas, that's for sure.
It may leave you crying.
Posted by The Chinuk at 06:39 PM |
Temp Hiring On The Rise: Good News, Unless It Isn't
Temp hiring is on the rise in Oregon, a trend that often foreshadows a racheting up in the permanent work force. Workers in the employment services job category, which includes temps, increased by 11.5 percent from April through October, according to state employment data, compared with a 2 percent drop during the same period last year. Nationwide, the sector saw a 9 percent increase.
Well, yes, it suggests, an I'm no labor-market wizard or economist, but Mom Always Said™ if you wish in one hand and spit in the other, you'll know which one will fill up faster pretty quick.
Or, put another way, a bird in the hand beats two in the bush.
Or, if wishes were fishes, everyone would eat.
Or, if I can find my way out of the thicket of folksy aphorisms, wouldn't the only real thing a rise in temp employment indicate is, really, just a rise in temp employment?
I'm very good at seeing the dark cloud inside of the silver lining. It's a gift.
Posted by The Chinuk at 06:28 PM |
December 09, 2009
The sad state of modern professional "journalism"
KOIN-TV: Delete this tweet or face legal action is a post over at the Oregon Media Central blog. It describes what appears to have been the frivolous threat of a lawsuit to blatently intimidate a blogger clearly exercising Constitutionally-protected free speech.
You need to go read the entire post but here's what I consider the money shot:
Heider added that one of her duties as a news director (at KOIN) is to "protect the product's license, reputation and ability to be productive. That's hard to do when you are dealing with 10 (or more) year old material that no longer reflects the product's brand, look, set or even some of the personnel included in some of the discussions." - {emphasis supplied}
Since when did "protect(ing)... the product's brand" become part of journalism?
Picking up the general theme and expanding on it is Carla over at Blue Oregon with Legacy media and citizen journalists: death match or happy couple?
Posted by Kevin at 11:53 AM |
December 08, 2009
John Minnis Forced To Resign Over Something With Someone Somehow
The saga of why Governor K turfed out Oregon Dept of Safety Standards and Training supremo (and former Republican legistlator) John Minnis contiunes to unfold like a flower blooming …
… a maddeningly slow one. The Salem Statesman-Journal:
The former director of the Oregon Department of Safety Standards and Training resigned due to allegations of “inappropriate interactions” with a staff member, according to a letter released today by Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s office. John Minnis, 55, resigned on Nov. 24. The day before, the Oregon Department of Justice opened an investigation into alleged misconduct and Minnis was placed on administrative leave.
"Inappropriate interactions." Man, those still waters, they run deep.
Posted by The Chinuk at 04:16 PM |
Mary Volm For PDX City Council, Apparently
Matt Davis, the PMerc, reports that Mary Volm, previously a Portland city spokesperson for the Taxicab Board of Review, is apparently gearing up for a city council run, probably position 3.
Jason Wurster is a supporter:
I called Wurster on his cell phone, asking if Volm is running."I don't have that information," he said. "You'll have to get that directly from her."
I asked: What's her number?
"I have to go," he said, hanging up.
Guess you'll have to remain frenemies, Matt.
Right now she has a web address, http://www.maryvolmforportland.com/, which looks like a test-pattern and has two big "did you know?" bullet points, and an invitation to check back on Wednesday.
Insiders say she plans to take some stands on some issues, and be against some other issues. At this time her stance on Unicorns remains unclear. She will ask for your vote unless she can't have it, and if elected, she will attend City Council meetings and sit in one of the chairs.
Altogether a solid platform. Very Portland.
Posted by The Chinuk at 04:00 PM |
You Can Trust FOX News Math Like You Can Trust FOX News
Via Democratic Underground, FOX News proves that, indeed, math is hard:
That pie chart seems to demonstrate that 193% of the GOP queried support one of the three potential GOPper 2012 patsies.
This pie chart has been brought to you by FOX News (just one vowel-movement away from the truth) and your local de-funded public schools.
Posted by The Chinuk at 02:58 PM |
December 07, 2009
The Death Of Print, The Oregonian LTTE Rerun Edition
The Oregonian takes a page from talk radio and runs a "best of" … the letters to the editor.
Hey, they were great on Saturday, they're even better the second time around.
In that, they're rather like Chinese food. Or cold pizza. Mmmmmm, cold pizza!
Posted by The Chinuk at 07:46 PM |
Health insurance "reform" & Oregon
Wanna know how you'll fare under the New Boss (same as the Old Boss?) here in Oregon? Check here. But take it with a grain or two of salt. The goal posts continue to be shuffled even as I type this up. For example, HuffPo is reporting that Senate Dems may lower the minimum age requirement for Medicare.
That would probably be helpful but even so I find myself deeply disappointed by this "reform" sausage being scraped up off the floors of Congress. Caught between the rock of many millions who will still be left without health insurance and the hard place of being legally required to purchase health insurance, I don't see how any of this is really going to benefit anyone much beyond the next election cycle or two. Costs are not being fundamentally reigned in and that is the pink elephant rampaging through America's living room.
Color me underwhelmed.
But it could be worse. The Tea-baggers could be in control...
Posted by Kevin at 02:29 PM |
New Poll: Tea-baggers more popular than GOP
But the Republican party has yet to determine whether or not they can harness the energy emanating from the right wing without being pulled out of the mainstream. This dilemma was highlighted by the GOP's November loss of a congressional seat it had held since the 1800s, after a tea party-supported candidate pressured the establishment Republican out of the race. That race suggested something rather striking: while the GOP may not be able to win without the support of the tea party movement, they might not be able to win with it either.
Therein lays the rub now doesn't it?
Posted by Kevin at 02:21 PM |
The Christmas Wanker
Glenn Beck's peculiar little book, The Christmas Sweater, has been rendered into a stage show by The Human Tear himself, and it's apparently quite dreadful.
The story, in case you've wisely avoided it, is corn sweetened with Beckerwood's own brand of high-fructose corn syrup and trademark lachrymosity and sweatitude. Gawker gives you the only synopsis you need:
You should probably read the incredible summaries posted by those who witnessed this bizarre celebration of one man's incredibly dysfunctional self-regard. The basic story: Glenn Beck is "Eddie," and he is poor, and his mom makes him a sweater, and then he kills his mom with ingratitude, and then he cries on the floor while a black woman sings at him, and then he runs through a cornfield during a storm, and his mom comes back to life. And then Glenn Beck, who is no longer Eddie, explains that the capitalists at Simon and Schuster forced him to write that terrible dream ending, and in reality, he did kill his real-life mom with ingratitude.
But, as willing to swallow this BS as Glenn's credulous followers are, you'd think they'd be thronging.
Well, surprise: at it's New York showing – New York is, remember, a city of over eight million people and yes, it's Blue, but there's enough Red floating around there you'd think all you have to do is plop down a bolus like this and they'd fill a couple of auditoriums – they sold a total of 17 tickets.
Fox News infotainer Glenn Beck premiered his new live show, "The Christmas Sweater", based on the book, "The Christmas Sweater" last night, and in major American cities where liberals tend to dwell, very few tickets were sold: 17 in Boston, 17 in New York City and 30 in Washington, DC. That said, "sales were better in more conservative areas." In other news, a period of darkness is expected to occur tonight, upon the setting of the sun.
You know, if anything to me indicates the relative smartness of the general Beck audience, it's that they'll pay $20 (no, that wasn't a mistyping either) for their heaping helping of Type-2-Diabetes-inducing corn, simulcast, saving the Beckmonster the bother of touring with it, just like that bizarre "comedy" simulcast he did the other year.
If you're not going to take your comedy on the road, I'm not going to respect you.
Well, Big Daddy's not going to be able to buy any more condos otherwise. You got something against a fellow just makin' some money?
Come to think of it, the thought of all these Beckoids (no matter how few) gathering in auditoria all over America to watch the object of their affection reminds me of the citizens of Oceania gathering in Victory Square to watch Big Brother on Telescreen during the Two-Minutes Hate.
But Glenn wouldn't go that far – I mean, he's not any sort of fascist is he … ?
Oh, dear.
Posted by The Chinuk at 09:00 AM |
December 06, 2009
No Affordable Housing In South Waterfront After All
Amid a financial crunch, Oregon Health & Science University is close to a deal with the city of Portland to again delay construction of a big parking garage in the South Waterfront District.The agreement would also scrap a proposal for two affordable apartment towers above the garage. The apartments had been central to the city's push for lower income housing in a neighborhood dominated by expensive condos.
Somehow one always felt that when the rubber hit the road the "affordable housing" – the sugar coating on the pill everyone gets to swallow so we can have a bizarre, view-destroying apartment tower neighborhood on the South Waterfront that nobody actually seems to want – would go sooner or later.
Your tax dollars at rest.
Although you know times are hard when a freaking hospital (f'crying out loud) can't get a parking lot built.
Posted by The Chinuk at 07:00 PM |
Tom Friedman: The Brain Is Flat
This is how the mind of a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner operates, metaphoring America vis-a-vis Afghanistan at present:
I feel like we're like an unemployed couple who just went out and decided to adopt a special needs baby. You know, I mean, that's really kind of what we're doing. And that's like, whoa, y'know, that terrifies me.
Class, sass, and mustache: that's more classy intellectualism than you can shake a stick at, yessir!
And a bonus Keanu Reeves impersonation at the end FTW!
Our national discourse is in good hands.
And, by "in good hands", I mean screwed, blued, and tattooed.
Posted by The Chinuk at 06:24 PM |
Wild Bill Sizemore on KGW's "Straight Talk"
KGW does us a solid by putting up the videe, if you missed it. Watch as Billy does his own interpretation of The Ever Popular Tortured Tax Activist Effect:
Has the irony of someone like Bill Sizemore appearing anywhere near the words "straight talk" sunk in on anyone yet?
Enjoy!
Posted by The Chinuk at 09:00 AM |
December 05, 2009
Foodie Fun: Vegetarian BBQ Meatballs & Sweet Potato Bread
I haven't mentioned what I've been up to and (partially) why I don't post as much as I used to. Well, what I've been up to is going back to school. I'm taking the Pharmacy Tech training at Anthem College in Beaverton. It's a technical school specializing in the health care field. The point of the exercise for me is to better position myself for admission to Pacific University's School of Pharmacy in a couple or so years, once I've banged out the prerequisites.
So anyway Anthem College structures their classes in modules. That is to say, the student takes one subject or module at a time. It's 3.5 hours per day and once that module is done then the student moves on to the next module.
I just finished my first module yesterday and apparently there's a tradition of the class holding a potluck on their last day together. Being a foodie and loving to cook I looked forward to another opportunity to spread my decidedly hedonistic philosophy on cuisine.
However, I had a few constraints to work within. The teacher was allergic to onions, one student was allergic to avocado and another student was vegetarian. And of course being a hedonist of the progressive persuasion I didn't want to exclude anybody from being able to sample what I made. So... I made Vegetarian BBQ Meatballs with no onions and at the last minute I decided to try my hand at Sweet Potato Bread/Pound Cake. Naturally I added roasted hazelnuts to the sweet potato bread.
Before I get to the recipes I just have to say that there was only the one vegetarian in the class but everyone liked the meatballs and several commented approvingly on the texture - which they'd expected to be mushy and which weren't mushy at all. Instead, the texture was exactly what they'd come to expect from meat-based meatballs and wondered how I'd managed to get the texture right. Okay, on to the recipes:
First of all, to give credit where it's due I always use a recipe as a baseline when cooking or baking something that I've never made before. Such was the case with both of these. The baseline recipe for the BBQ Meatballs is here (meatball recipe only, not the sauce recipe) and the baseline recipe for the Sweet Potato Pound Cake is here. I diverged from both, as I invariably always do, and so will list out the recipes as I made them.
Secondly, the fake meat I used in the meatballs was Morningstar Farms Grillers Crumbles. As this product review indicates, these Crumbles are an excellent beef substitute which gets virtually everything right. My experience over many years has consistently been that devout non-vegetarians invariably like Morningstar Farms' Grillers. And since the Crumbles are merely unformed Griller patties that's what I decided to use. Rehydrated TVP (textured vegetable protein - available in most healthfood stores) would probably be a reasonably good substitute for the Crumbles, in terms of texture.
Vegetarian BBQ Meatballs
2 packages (12oz) Grillers Crumbles
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp Garlic powder
1/8 tsp Celery salt
bread crumbs (I used Matzo Meal 'cause I was out of bread crumbs)
BBQ sauce
1/2 Sweet Baby Rays Original
1/2 tomato ketchup
Combine all of the meatball ingredients except the bread crumbs. Then add bread crumbs until the mixture is stiff enough to hold the shape of the meatball but not so stiff that it's crumbly.
Lifelong vegetarians probably have no experience making meatballs so a brief word on how to form them: Take a small amount and place it in the palm of one hand. Slightly cup that palm, place the slightly cupped palm of your other hand over it and move them in opposite directions - you'll quickly figure it out since you can feel the meatball forming between your palms.
Place the meatballs in a lightly greased oven pan or tray and bake them at 350f for 30 minutes. Meanwhile combine the Sweet Baby Ray's Original BBQ sauce and the tomato ketchup (half and half). When the meatballs are done pour the BBQ sauce mixture in and coat all of the meatballs thoroughly with it and return the pan to the oven for another 30 minutes at the same temperature.
I'll also add that this is my standard BBQ sauce for meat-based meatballs and I have consistently received rave reviews from everyone who has tasted it. It's so incredibly simple and yet is perfect. Don't believe me? Try it! You'll see...
Sweet Potato Bread with roasted Hazelnuts
Note: Roast hazelnuts at 350f for 25 minutes and deskin them prior to using them in a recipe. Also, boil the sweet potatoes before hand and de-skin them.
1 cup butter (softened)
2 cups bakers sugar
2 1/2 cups cooked sweet potatoes
4 eggs
3 cups flour
1/4 tspn salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp Vanilla extract
1/2 tsp nutmeg (ground)
1 tsp cinnamon (ground)
1/4 tsp clove (ground)
1/2 cup chopped, roasted hazelnuts (optional)
Now, if you checked the baseline recipe you'll see that it calls for creaming the butter and sugar together first. This is fairly standard but I put the cooked sweet potato in first (into benchtop mixer) and mix it up good because sweet potatoes have little strings in them and most of these strings will get caught on the mixing blade, which makes them very easy to remove. Then I do add the sugar and butter next and cream it all together very thoroughly before adding anything else.
I'm lazy and don't like to premix all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl (which would then need to be cleaned) so I next add everything except for the flour to the sweet potato/sugar/butter mixture and mix thoroughly before lastly adding the flour.
You may have also noticed that I cut the amount of baking powder in half from what the baseline recipe suggests. This is because I invariably find that sweet bread/pound cake recipes call for more baking powder/soda than I like. Cutting the amount in half yields a denser, more moist sweet bread/pound cake. IMHO of course.
I like using mini-loaf pans so I grease up enough to accomodate however much batter I've made and then bake them in a 350f oven for 1 hour.
Posted by Kevin at 10:36 AM |
December 04, 2009
TV Alert: Looking Into The Abyss That Is Wild Bill Sizemore
Our favorite anti-gubmint self-made martyr, Wild Bill Sizemore, is going to be on KGW's Straight Talk public affairs program this Saturday, on Channel 8, at 6:30 pm.
Laural Porter will be taking Bill on about the indictments on him and his wife, and his future plans for the Governor's race as a Republican candidate. Bill says the idea of jail frightens him, that he thinks it's unfair that his wife got roped in too, and that he has some (most likely dreadful) idea about reforming PERS.
He also is planning to ask the state for an expedited trial, hoping to get the whole foofaraw behind him before the May primary, so he can embarass himself in public with a relatively-clear slate.
Isn't it ironic that Bill hates State government until he thinks it can do something for him?
Just between you, me and everyone we know, I think Laural can take him.
What? It's just an interview?
Oh, well.
Posted by The Chinuk at 06:05 PM |
Friends Don't Let Friends Read Ayn Rand
Nothstine nails it, of course.
Posted by The Chinuk at 05:50 PM |
One Times Ten-To-The-Sixth Years
Up today at BoingBoing is an article pointing to an interview at BldgBlog, which explores the considerations amongst the theorists whose job is to imagine a nuclear waste repository that actually works.
Naturally, the span of time such a facility will need to contain the waste beggars comprehension. Originally the idea was that such a facility would last 10,000 years.
Whether or not you can comprehend that span of time, it's helpful to remember that the most ancient world religion that I can think of – Judaism – considers it's been around since about 4000 BC.
That's 6000 years. The original rating required a stable storage space that would last about a third again longer than the Jews figure we've been around at all.
But wait, there's more – much more … recently it was apparently decided that, with what's known now about decay products, the facility should be ready to contain the poison for – are you sitting down? – one million years.
That's million, with an M as in OMG.
Does anything Humankind has made look as though it'll last a million years?
Most likely, by the time a million years has clocked by, Humankind will have probably either long gone extinct or changed into something we'd not ever recognize as such. But our thinking remains stuck in some odd time-warp, where we think that containing something like this for a million years is something we can actually engineer.
Yes, the problem of nuclear waste needs to be solved.
But if someone can sit back, consider that the time of human civilization is lest than six-tenths of one percent of the amount of time we're going to have to stand guard over this poison and not say "hey, this is insane", then we have deeper problems than we think, I think.
Gotta have our nukies, though.
Posted by The Chinuk at 09:38 AM |
The Curious Afterlife of (G.I.) Joe's
You'd be forgiven if you blinked and wondered if you were trippin' if you followed the URLs http://joessports.com and http://gijoes.com and saw the apparently-operant website of the famous Oregon-based retailer that went to Alphabet heaven last year.
Joe's isn't back … except maybe as a sort of retail zombie. Laura Gunderson of The Oregonian tells us:
Alberta-based UFA Co-operative Ltd. got a good deal on the domain names JoesSports.com and GIJoes.com two months ago and is earning a commission on all sales. GSI Commerce, a company that acts as a sort of online property manager for more than a dozen big-name retailers, owns the merchandise and fulfills orders -- as it did for the old Joe's.
UFA, you'll recall, is the same outfit that bought up the Sportsman's Warehouse stores – and famously refused to honor SW gift cards until the PR hassle just got too messy.
They don't plan on rebranding whatever remaining stores they have in Oregon, and there are no plans to open any new brick'n'mortar Joe's stores.
But you can be forgiven for thinking that, I suppose.
Posted by The Chinuk at 09:22 AM |
That Recovery Comes Roaring Back
We "only" lost 11,000 jobs last month.
We're "only" at 10 percent national unemployment.
Depending on how you look at it, of course.
Posted by The Chinuk at 09:18 AM |
December 03, 2009
Big Tobacco – They Got You Coming, and Now, Going
Today in Well, My Head Asplode: News has broken within the last day that Reynolds America, Inc – you may have known them as RJReynolds – have just bought Swedish company Niconovum AB.
This is remarkable because Niconovum makes nicotine replacement theraphy systems – nicotine-based stop-smoking systems. Currently it manufactures nicotine-replacement gum, patches and the like under the Zonnic brand name, a name only available in Sweden and Denmark at present. But it looks like they're going to try to get FDA approval to sell it in America.
They could market it under the "Ironic" brand.
So, once that happens, Reynolds can not only get you addicted, it can help you quit the habit. Maybe they're just trying to anticipate the future, but right now it seems the oddest of odd couples.
Who said irony was dead?
Posted by The Chinuk at 01:46 AM |
December 02, 2009
They Prefer Not To
Those famous White House "gate-crashers" don't seem so crazy about that fame now. (WaPo article-you may need to sign in to see it, but it's free, ya'll – just like America!)
Posted by The Chinuk at 11:38 PM |
Mary Starrett Chooses Her Battle
As it turns out, the chair Mary's interested in isn't in Salem, it's one of three in a room of a courthouse in McMinnville.
Mapes has it; Ridenbaugh has it; and by now everyone knows what the Newberg Graphic described in this article here:
Mary Starrett's back. And she wants on the Yamhill County Commission:
Starrett, 55, said she views her background as a boon — people know her and feel comfortable with her."I think any time you have familiarity, where people think they know you ... that right there is a vote of confidence,” she said, adding that her former viewers and listeners may subconsciously consider her a friend. “It’s pretty well known where I stand on the issues — if there’s people that think that bigger government is better government, then I’m not the candidate for them.”
Familiarity=confidence? Viewers and listeners subconsciously consider her a friend? Well, that saves the inconvenience of actually instilling confidence and actually making friends out of them.
Naturally, her target is the only Democrat sitting on the Yamhill County Commission – Mary Stern. And her campaign shtick so far? You probably saw it coming already. From the Graphic's reporting:
- “You want to stop repeat offenders, you don’t re-elect them.”
- “We have a commissioner who hasn’t met a fee she doesn’t like … ”
- "… Mary Stern has shown herself to be a big-government liberal."
Until Madame Candidate prefers to back that talk with fact, I'll regard it as what I think it is: uninspired Conservative mudslinging at a perfectly good Democratic county commissioner. They're all kind of conservative out in Yamhill County; my wife's family lived in McMinnville for decades were that 'salt-of-the-earth' type, the McMinnville News-Register (jokingly called by some the News-Resister) proudly proclaims itself a Republican newspaper. You have to be pretty sober to get public office in Yamhill County.
But hey, if Mary wants to ball up them red soils and toss them at her opponent, that's okay I guess. I'm not going to pretend to be surprised though.
Posted by The Chinuk at 08:43 PM |
What's Really At Stake In The War In Afghanistan
Namely, the success of the war in Afghanistan:
And so the President will be sending additional troops to Afghanistan - but a precise number of troops, carefully determined by the nation's top warologists after long months of carpet-bombing villages of laboratory mice - and they will kill Afghans there, but only for a precise period of time, calculated to be the exact interval necessary to protect our freedoms, or restore our security, or for all of us to grow bored and forget.Fafblog will set you straight.
Posted by The Chinuk at 08:36 PM |