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February 26, 2010

The Republican Rx For Working America: "Tough Luck*"

Our own Senator Jeff Merkley (at the HuffPo – now, ask yourself, would El Gordo have done as spiffily?) relates how it is in the Senate, up against dimwitted Republican Senators who are resentful of the poor, and in this case, we mean Kentucky's Jim Bunning:

Unfortunately in today's Senate, it only takes one objection to stall progress, and last night the Republican Senator from Kentucky blocked a bill to help working Americans, our seniors and our small businesses.

In attempting to justify his actions, Senator Bunning made the case that any program needs to be fully paid for. This explanation falls short in two ways: first, he was given the opportunity to put such an amendment before the Senate and declined to have a vote on his amendment. Second, when he repeatedly voted for the Bush tax cuts that benefitted the richest Americans, he never argued for any such similar hurdle.

This really symbolized the difference whether you're in the senate to fight for gains for the most powerful and wealthy among us or to fight to make America work for working families.
And, that point was driven home even further while I was in the middle of speaking to the challenges faced by our working families and our seniors, when the Senator from Kentucky exclaimed, "tough luck*".

I can't say I can read Senator Merkley's mind, but after working with ORGOPpers on the Legislative level, I'm willing to bet he wasn't too surprised by it. Still, it's dismaying.

That's the Republican party of today: so wistful for the days when they were the ones in charge, so hungry to return to power, they'll happily throw you (and by you, I mean us) in front of the train if it'll get them back into power (even, in some cases, while some of you apparently vote them in under the influence of free will).

Having trouble getting by because a Republican US Senator is playing petty, resentful power games with Democrats?

Well … tough luck*.

Just what you shouldn't be, by this example of Republican conduct, is surprised.

* The actual word used was considerably more salty, so to speak.

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:57 PM |

PDX in 2060 – Where We're All Growing To

It was like elephants mating, and in the end the vote was, they say, split, but we finally have an idea where the Greater Portland Megaplex is going to expand into over the next 50 years.

In the study area, 272,000 acres of the Greater Portland area – 425 square miles, an area nearly three times the size of the city of Portland's corporate area, will remain farmland, natural areas, and rural space. 28,000 acres, or about 44 square miles – an area a little larger than the corporate areas of Beaverton and Hillsboro combined – will be urban reserves, or areas that the Urban Growth Boundary will be expanded and urban development may not be now, but will come eventually.

A nice long article about it and a map can be seen at The Oregonian, but the upshot is – Metropolitan Portland may grow, but it won't grow out, not by much.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:02 AM |

Walden: For Insurance Company Anti-trust Exemption Before He Was Against It

Down With Tyranny, with a telling tale:

At noon yesterday the House voted on H Res 1098 which allows for consideration of the bill to end the exception from anti-trust laws that health insurance companies have been enjoying. After bitter protests from the Republican obstructionists, the rule passed 238-181, every single Republican voting no, along with 10 reactionary Blue Dogs (Bobby Bright, Travis Childers, Kathy Dahlkemper, Indiana Senate candidate Brad Ellsworth, Gabby Giffords, Baron Hill, Walt Minnick, Harry Mitchell, Scott Murphy, and Heath Shuler). The Republicans tried killing the bill with a motion to recommit which failed 170-249, three Republicans-- Cao, Jones and McClintock-- figuring out which way the train was rolling and jumping out of the way. Then when the bill itself came up for a vote, Boehner's opposition fell on deaf ears even from his own caucus. Only 19 of the most reactionary haters of American families voted against the bill which passed-- after all that obstructionism-- 406-19.

In historic votes like this, and especially in times like this when Republicans over and over pay lip service to what constituents need and this country needs to get back on what's left of its feet after eight years of Republican depletion, I always like to cast an eye on what Oregon's lone Republican rider on the Democratic congressional train – Rep Greg Walden of our very own 2nd District – does. I think it says more about what side he'll fall on when he doesn't have to worry about re-election than anything else.

On the first vote, the motion to consider, that passed 238-181, DWT mentions that it was nearly a straight party-line votes – Republicans and Blue Cross Democrats on one side, actual Democrats (and those conservaDems who've read the mene mene tekel that endorsing the Insurance Cos on this would be really, really stupid) on the other. No bonus points for guessing which side Our Greg went down on.

The second vote was for a motion to recommit. A YES on this sends the bill back to committee to be worked on some more but has the practical effect of killing it. The vote was 170-249 … the bad actors were on the 170 side. Three Republicans at least had the decency to see how bad this looked, and gave The Right Answer™; Walden was still not one of them.

It wasn't until the train was about to hit him that Greg Walden blinked, coming down on the side of doing the right thing. The final vote was, as the record shows, 406-19. This time the only ones left giving The Wrong Answer™ were the worst passengers in the Republican clown car, with Rep Boehner (R-Planet of the Orange People) at the wheel, as usual.

Eventually even Walden has to get on the bus or get run over by it. And that tells me that, as long as it looks like he can vote against his constituents without having to worry about looking foolish about it, he will.

Good call there, Rep. Walden.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:24 AM |

Grant County to UberWhitey: Include Yourselves Out

UberWhitey may want to move to Grant County, but Grant County don't want him:

Hundreds showed up at a protest Friday morning to keep racism out of John Day, Ore.

By 8:45 a.m. there were more than 300 John Day-area residents gathered to keep Paul R. Mullet and his Aryan Nations groups from moving to John Day. Mullet had recently headquartered his group in Idaho, according to the Associated Press.

A white supremacist group may establish its base in John Day and when area residents found out, they started rallying to keep them out.

'Scuse me a moment. I just can't type straight while I'm giggling at the fact that this group's leader is named "Mullet".

… okay. 'M better now.

Anyway, if this can get any wierder, it does:

Jerald O'Brien, an Idaho man who calls himself a spokesman for Aryan Nations, sent an e-mail to The Associated Press saying Mullet "is not with Aryan Nations," he has "no right to use the name," and that he is "a usurper."

As anyone anywhere can tell you, when they start throwing around words like, usurper, it's on. Next stop: court. Sure case of copyright infringement.

Due to the size of the IQs involved, I'm thinking small-claims court.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:10 AM |

February 25, 2010

Was There Nothing Dick Bogle Didn't Do?

Well, I suppose he didn't split the atom. But he was a great many amazing things: Portland cop, a black TV News anchor in a sea of white faces (15 years at KATU from the classic Rick Meyers-Jim Bosley et. al. lineup), Portland City Commissioner, noted jazz reviewer …

Dick Bogle died today, aged 79, congestive heart failure. R.I.P.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:53 PM |

Oregon Rolled Out The New Online Voter Rege System

(via) … and its debut was earlier today:

The event will be at 9 a.m. Thursday in Room 350 of the Capitol. Members of the Legislature, activists and news organizations are being invited.

A representative from the state Elections Division will take participants step by step through the process of registering to vote online. A question-and-answer session will follow with Director Steve Trout.

Any body see how this one went? I'm dead curious.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:29 PM |

February 24, 2010

The Death Of Print, Part 712

The O jettisoning 37, including Margie Boule.

I never thought Margie would get the ax.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:41 PM |

The GOP: They Can't Handle The Truth About Themselves

(via) The worst thing you can do to a tool is tell them you're a tool sometimes.

The House of Representatives, in a moment of sanity, voted to repeal the health insurance industry's 65-year-old exemption from anti-trust laws. In his speech to the floor, Rep Anthony Weiner (D-NY 9th) finally unsheathes the clue-by-four and lays it up against some very deserving heads:

You guys have chutzpah. The Republican Party is the wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. They say this isn’t going to do enough, but when we propose an alternative to provide competition, they’re against it. They say we want to strengthen state insurance commissioners and they’ll do the job. But when we did that in our national health care bill, they said we’re against it. They said we want to have competition but when we proposed requiring competition they’re against it. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. That’s the fact!

Everyone knows this. But when they say it, what do we get from the GOP? Rep Dan Lungren (R-CA 3rd) is wounded, sir … wounded, I say!:

Mr. Speaker I ask that the gentleman’s words be taken down.

Now, in the House, as in most places of this sort, a simple phrase such as "words be taken down" have import. You might imagine that words get taken down all the time in the chambers of the US Capitol. But to request that a members words be taken down is an opening gambit in a disciplinary move; the members words are taken down and examined, and if found to be specifically out of line, the member who uttered them is not allowed to speak for the rest of the day.

Everyone has seen this, it's been made plain by the way the forces line up. The GOP doesn't mind being seen doing it, but when you call them on it, oh, the offense!

Here's the relevant YouTubeage:

That's your modern GOP for you. So very sensitive. Well, to their own needs anyway.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:03 PM |

February 22, 2010

The Price Of Everything

Dateline, New Mexico: A tax on tortillas. Very uncool. Tortillas are the perfect food, of course:

I tend to shy away from the "tax the rich!" debates, but I have to say, on the face of it, taxing flour and also taxing tortillas made from flour really sounds like punishing the less financially well to do.

Dateline, Tracy, California: We hear that those who call 10-10-911 save up to 50% on emergency calls:

Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 9-1-1 for a medical emergency.

But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year which allows them to call 9-1-1 as many times as necessary.

Or, there's the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead, they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.

Why don't we just hand everything over to Omni Consumer Products and have done with it?

Posted by The Chinuk at 05:41 PM |

Don't Look Now, Rep. Walden, But You Have Competition

Joyce Segers is just the kind of someone southwestern Oregon Democrats (and those who fancy Democrats) may have been waiting for, and she's running to unseat Greg Walden:

She's the widow of a Korean war vet; supported Measures 66 and 67, believes in single-payer. In other words, she's for you and me, the Mythical Little Guy™. Or, as she put it (via the Medford Mail Tribune):

Segers says Walden has voted the interests of his party above those of his district.

"He's very comfortable in his seat," she said. "He doesn't pay attention to specific needs of his constituents on health care, jobs or education and I haven't seen him do anything substantial that wasn't party line."

Damn straight.

Here's her website.

Posted by The Chinuk at 04:54 PM |

Ban On Credit Check for Job Hunters Awaits Gov K's Signature

AP, via Medford Mail Tribune:

Backers say thousands of people have bad credit because of layoffs and medical bills that have nothing to do with their qualifications.

Opponents say the Legislature shouldn't interfere with business personnel decisions.

The House passed the bill today on a 33-26 vote. Most Democrats were for, most Republicans against.

Most Republicans against. Now, there's a huge surprise.

The next time you have your ballot open on the kitchen table and are thinking of inking that (R) candidate, remember: when there was a chance to stack the deck a little more in your favor, Oregon Republicans decided – in the main – that they could do without your company.

Well, unless they wanted your vote, of course.

Posted by The Chinuk at 04:16 PM |

Redefining the Lake Missoula Floods

Let's take a bit of a break from the endless stream of high-quality political witticism to cast an eye backwards in time.

Natural history of the Greater Portland/Willamette Valley area as we understand it holds that the unique geography of the area – as well as some of its more subtle properties, such as soil fertility – stem from an amazing series of natural events that happened during the last ice age.

15,000 to 13,000 years ago, an amazing body of water laced the valleys of what is today western Montana. Lake Missoula, a body of water containing half the volume of present-day Lake Michgan, dominated those ranges. Ancient shorelines still mark the slopes of the hills overlooking the present-day city of Missoula, Montana.

As the record appears to show, this lake was created when a southward-trending salient of the Cordilleran ice sheet dammed valleys. As anyone who owns a freezer knows, though, ice is a transient thing, and several times – about once a century, they say – the dam on what is today the Clark Fork River would give way, releasing the astounding contents of that lake to drain westward and out the Columbia Gorge. In the process, it created the Channeled Scablands and the coulees of eastern Washington and deposited hundreds of feet of fertile silt on the floor of the Willamette Valley, creating one of the breadbaskets of the nation – as well as a lot of local geography. Northeast Portland's Alameda Ridge, the slope of land coming away westward from Rocky Butte, was formed by these floods in the same way that rushing water forms silt ripples behind riverbed rocks.

Recently, USGS scientists in Vancouver were able to finally perfect a computer model of the floods, to the point where they were able to simulate, hour-by-hour, estimated flows and water heights – some of the numbers are even more astounding given the superlative-upon-superlative output of figures describing the floods:

Lake Missoula's water, all 550 cubic miles of it, drains in 55 hours -- less than three days -- according to the model. At that time, the flood surge peaks in the Columbia Gorge at The Dalles, rising 950 feet above river level (1,000 feet above sea level), spilling over the gorge walls in places, and flooding the valleys of tributaries for miles upstream.

Inundation of the Willamette Valley peaks on the seventh day after dam burst, in the simulation. Flooding reaches as far south as Eugene. Loaded with mud and gravel, the flood dumps sediment across the entire valley. Repeated floods build a layer 100 feet thick in Woodburn.

Such a vast inundation, far greater than anything ever witnessed in historical time, seemed impossible to geologists in the 1920s, when J Harlen Bretz proposed that the scablands resulted from a catastrophic flood, not eons of gradual erosion. The idea didn't gain mainstream acceptance until the 1960s. Since then, geologists have found evidence that Lake Missoula emptied catastrophically dozens of times during the last ice age.

The fertile lands of western Oregon and central Washington resulted from these floods – Lake Lewis and Lake Condon along the middle Columbia in Oregon and Washington, and Lake Allison, covering what modern-day Oregonians would call the Willamette Valley – were the result of Lake Missoula's massive and alacritous draining, and each one of these lakes existed for just a handful of weeks at the most.

Imagine a gigantic lake submerging and draining through Oregon's most populated corner in a matter of days, and you begin to understand why Oregon's aboriginal peoples come up with the most amazing and dramatic legends about how things got the way they got.

Nature is, indeed, larger than all of us.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:20 PM |

Best Oregon Blogs

Kari at Blue Oregon is putting together a "top Ten" list of Oregon blogs
this is blueoregon

In all fairness I felt I should only vote for one.
And as much as I like it here, my vote went to
His Vorpal Sword
Hart's blog is some of the best writing found on the internet.
(especially his recent series on "Reality 101")
Reality 101, part i
Reality 101, part ii
Reality 101, part iii
And his investigative stuff (like the Howie Rich series) is among the best researched anywhere.

Posted by Mac at 02:59 PM |

It's Official: The Mighty POJ Packs Top 10 Throw Weight With Our Thom Hartmann

This, from Talkers magazine, the talk radio industry bible:

View the entire list here: http://talkers.com/online/?p=3774

I must admit, when The Mighty POJ snagged Thom from all the way across the country in Vermont, I was guarded. A long time radio listener, I didn't know about the tenacity of a host who substituted brains for bluster (though Thom had the reputation of the intellectual for the average Joe). And I didn't know how PDX would take to Thom.

Well, I adore Thom's show – and so does PDX. He may come from elsewhere, but he's an Oregonian now.

The 9 above Thom? A bunch of conservative cloacae. What else do you need to know. And number one? Hint: He has a cochlear implant due to endless drug use and is a success because they give his show out for free. Your life will not improve for knowing who they are.

Congratulations, Thom … you're still way too nice to conservatives and Objectivists, but that's just an opinion of mine.

Posted by The Chinuk at 09:23 AM |

February 20, 2010

Yes, The Leader Of This Group Is Actually Named "Mullet"

… It's the Aryan Nations. Thought they were gone? No way, buster, and, and, to the dismay of residents of the John Day area, they want to move there (the Blue Mountain Eagle, via Carla at BlueO):

Mullet, wearing a uniform shirt with a swastika patch on it, said the group's goal is to create a homeland for white people.

"That area is the Pacific Northwest," he said. "The blacks have Africa, the Jews have Israel ..."

And we have them. Yay, us. Remember when I conceded, a few missives ago, that there might actually be a God?

Well, the Aryan Nations supply evidence that Jesus probably died in vain.

They're currently based in Athol, Idaho. That makes them a bunch of Athols, which seems appropriate (no offense meant to the sane population of Athol, Idaho). Their current residence isn't compound-y enough for them. But the John Day locals are unhappy that Ultimate Whitey wants to make John Day the capital of White America. Good on them.

Mom Always Said™ that when your new neighbors call their property a "Compound", it's Time To Worry™.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:35 PM |

In Oregon, The Senate Gives The Poor A Bailout

The four largest Oregon counties are giving some of our poorest homeowners a badly-deserved and needed break:

In a rare Saturday session, the Senate voted this morning to pass legislation that helps out some of the most low-income homeowners in the state. House Bill 3640 requires the four largest Oregon counties to cancel property taxes on manufactured homes valued at less than $12,500.

“The people living in these homes typically live at or below the poverty line,” said Senator Diane Rosenbaum (D-Portland), who carried the bill on the floor. “Small bills of a hundred dollars here and there can add up to an insurmountable obstacle. This bill offers relief for these low-income Oregonians.”

I've known a lot of people who live in "trailer parks". In Oregon, they have enough problems. If you live in a manufactured home community in Oregon, then chances are your landlord is in some other state and is either looking to make more money off you (space rent) or thinking of selling out to some developer anyway.

Most people who live there are living in what they can afford. And manufactured homes depreciate so fast they'll make your head swim. Those in the older homes will have one less thing pressing them down, and the counties won't have to spend taxpayer money (which is always in short supply) in a legal-intensive, low-return activity.

Looks like a win-win.

Your government just got a little smarter.

If this doesn't go over like mad with the Tea Partiers, that's your proof that they're frauds. Mark those words.

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:19 PM |

In Their Hearts, They Meant Well

Torture Yoo isn't evil, he's just drawn that way:

A series of Department of Justice investigative reports into the authorization of enhanced interrogation and waterboarding released on Friday found that Bush-era DOJ attorneys "exercised poor judgment" in formulating their legal guidance on the CIA's interrogation program. Several versions of Justice Department investigative reports and findings found that Bush-era DOJ attorneys had not committed professional misconduct but instead "exercised poor judgment."

The investigation focused on a controversial Aug. 1, 2002 memo issued under Jay Bybee, then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and mostly written by John Yoo, one of Bybee's assistants. The memo concluded that a definition of torture "covers only extreme acts," opening the door to legal justification for certain harsh interrogation tactics.

America: Evil approved.

We cease to be great when we cease to be good.

Posted by The Chinuk at 07:10 PM |

February 18, 2010

Kerik Gets 4 Years

America's Cop becomes just another number in the system.

He had a jail named after him, now he's going to be in one. Who says irony's dead?

And here's a dodged bullet: he was that close to being Secretary of Homeland Security before he had an immigrant nanny eruption.

Maybe there is a God.

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:18 PM |

The Democratic Wing of the Oregon Democratic Senate Delegation

Senator Jeff Merkley, who seems to remember what we voted him to go to DC to do and has something resembling a backbone.

Waitin' on you, Senator Wyden.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:52 AM |

If There's Hope, It Lies In The Proles

Since I'm all bothered about the pro-megacorps Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that pretty much handed the government over to whoever has the fattest bankroll, I figured I'd share this:

According to the WaPo, the majority of us Mythical Little Guys™ aren't really too thrilled with it.

Eight in 10 poll respondents say they oppose the high court's Jan. 21 decision to allow unfettered corporate political spending, with 65 percent "strongly" opposed. Nearly as many backed congressional action to curb the ruling, with 72 percent in favor of reinstating limits.

The poll reveals relatively little difference of opinion on the issue among Democrats (85 percent opposed to the ruling), Republicans (76 percent) and independents (81 percent).

The results suggest a strong reservoir of bipartisan support on the issue for President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are in the midst of crafting legislation aimed at limiting the impact of the high court's decision.

Well, at least they're saying it's good news for Democrats. And while it's encouraging that the proletariat have woken up (kinda) to the mess we've all been let in for, I can't help thinking that that ship's sailed. It's just a footnote really.

Hey, we all tried to tell y'all that that Roberts fellah wasn't going to be any good for us, but did they listen? No.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:39 AM |

February 17, 2010

Supreme Demotivator

Remember how appalled conservatives were about judicial activism?

I sure do.

Posted by The Chinuk at 04:59 AM |

February 16, 2010

Slumburbia – Not Yet, Anyway

A fascinating article from the New York Times about conditions in "Foreclosure Alley" – a/k/a California's Central Valley – uses Our Fair City to contrast what happened there with what happened elsewhere where things maybe aren't so bad:

Second, look at the cities with stable and recovering home markets. On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers, many of them, hate these restrictions. They said the coastal cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty.

It hasn’t happened. Just the opposite. The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls — Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley — are the most troubled, the suburban slums.

Come see: this is what happens when money and market, alone, guide the way we live.

The emphasis on the end is mine, mostly because the author has the right of it, but I think we should look at large swaths of the American way of life and draw this conclusion. Sometimes, the truth jumps out at you that way, all serendipitous-like.

And you can argue all you want about the what-it-is of the Portland economy and housing market, but developers do whine about what them evil land-use laws don't let them do, and they keep trying to press on them, and you might have one-house-in-eight in foreclosure in California communities, but you don't have, say, Gresham emptying out*.

So, the economy and the housing market may be only stable when compared to everything else, but here in greater Portland we still have a compact big town with productive ag land less than 15 (and even closer in some areas) miles out front city center, and a pretty nifty cityscape that other towns wish they had.

It's not ideal, maybe, but we seem to be doing something right.

* Something for which Troutdale is tres grateful.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:24 AM |

No Transit Funding In The Federal Jobs Bill

Portland Transport:

But the draft being circulated has not a single dollar to address the crisis in transit funding, which threatens severe cuts to essential service and the loss of thousands of jobs.

Tell your senators: Public transportation investments create jobs!

I still say that we're going to continue to have transit that isn't there when we need it in bad times (and even in good times, sometimes) if we continue to accept the mindset that transit is an optional luxury item.

It's the highway those of us who don't "car" … regardless of reason … use. It should be seen as essential infrastructure, just as the streets and roads are, and treated as nothing less.

We raise a big sound when potholes in the street don't get fixed, but there's no noise when big potholes erupt in the transit network.

We should shout just as loud, if not louder. Because that's our tax dollars at work for us, too.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:17 AM |

February 15, 2010

The Lege: Why Don't We Do It In The Annum?

The Oregon Legislative Assembly (that body we increasingly refer to as "The Lege") is once again taking up a discussion that is as evergreen as the "Let's have a sales tax!" question …

Should the legislative sessions be annual instead of biennial?

I'm thinking maybe it's about time that they did. There seems to be so much legislative business to be done that the regular sessions, in which sine die* seems to be pushed back further and further each year, and special sessions are becoming less special and more common, that maybe we ought to acknowledged that we need to do better than hand the running of the state over to the Executive branch and the Emergency Board for the remainder of the time.

The 2003 Lege, the 72nd Session, lasted 227 days. Most Leges meet until June or July.

Might be time for this, I think.

* I've always wanted to work sine die into a writing somewhere. Where do I go to get my Lege wonk membership card?

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:26 PM |

Get That Man A Talk Radio Show

Dan Quayle misunderstands not only math but also the simple majority.

Sad. For someone so simple, other simple things should be a piece of cake.

Or at least a potato(e) or two.

Vastly underrated southwest Oregon politiblogger Little Thom nails him to the wall. Rude word used. Approve nonetheless.

Posted by The Chinuk at 12:19 PM |

February 13, 2010

The Founders v. Fundamentalists

Currently @ Homeless on the High Desert : The Founders WERE NOT Fundamentalists ….

Mostly based on Harvey Wasserman's excellent piece at commondreams.org, it's prefaced with Ten Bears' own refreshingly pithy commentary which is why that's where I'm pointing you... as well as my facebook friends.

Posted by Kevin at 05:24 PM |

"The only good Indians are tame"

(ht - Iron Maiden: Run to the hills)

The Hubbard City Council is protesting a possible land deal north of the Aurora State Airport, according to the Woodburn Independent.

The deal, reported to be brewing between landowners Chris and Tom Maletis and the Klamath Tribes, concerns land where Langdon Farms Golf Club is located.

The property in question is way, way outside of the Hubbard city limits. Hell, it's well outside of the Aurora city limits. Other local governments are also protesting the potential deal, including Wilsonville and Marion County. Virtually all of the other local governments protesting the deal are opposed to the land being developed, wanting it to be retained as technically agricultural land. But the Hubbard city council seems to be particularly peeved at the idea of Indians getting ahold of this land while voicing approval for the idea of the land being developed in a way that would provide local jobs. And for this reason they have declined to sign onto any of the other organized lobbying efforts against this land deal.

"We support business expansion in our area and encourage economic growth, however we oppose any attempts by Congress or other government entities to pass out special rights and privileges to some, at the expense of others," it reads.

"As a city, we oppose government action which extends special rights and special privileges based upon race, alienage or national origin."

Ironically, the land upon which the city of Hubbard (as well as the Langdon Farms Golf Club) is located was forcibly (by treaty) taken from the Ahantchuyuk tribe of the Kalapooian people by aliens of exceptionally distant national origin and specifically because of race.

And to add insult to injury, the same federal government, whose Oregon representatives the Hubbard City Council is now lobbying, then turned around and sold off most of the treaty lands (ie., reservation lands) out from under those very same Kalapooians (and some 60-70 other tribes indiginous to Oregon) less than 60 years ago.

Councilor Angie Wheatcroft echoed similar sentiment. She noted that she has been involved with the issue for a long time and is strongly against any possible deal with the Klamath tribe.

"I’m definitely, definitely very opposed to them getting the land," said Wheatcroft. "They’re 200 miles away from where their tribe is. … They shouldn’t be able to come wherever they want to come and take land that isn’t their tribal land."

Ah, but WHY is this even possible? Because the Klamath's own lands were stolen from them. And then the small reservation they were left with was also stolen from them, by federal edict. And when the federal government decided to again recognize the sovereign status of the Klamath people in 1986, the restoration was conspicuously lacking any of the stolen land. So, to try to legitimize the theft (some have the temerity to describe such types of theft as "indian giving" - ironic, no? but I digress...) the Klamaths were granted the technical possibility of lands purchased by the tribe being retroactively granted sovereign tribal status regardless of where the land is at. And this of course because the federal government didn't want to give the Klamath's their OWN land back.

Granted, the Klamath are not the Kalapooian. But the Molala, who were the closest neighbors of the Ahantchuyuk, were one of the Klamath's main trading partners and the southernmost Molala are considered to have been absorbed by today's Klamath Tribes. And by that I mean by the Klamath tribe itself, not the Mudoc or the Yahooskin tribes who are part of the sovereign nation called the "Klamath Tribe" today. Some claim that the Molala and Klamath were related and that Klamath bands came far to the North into Molala lands and that the Klamaths would join with Molala in depredations on other tribes as well as in resisting the alien white invaders.

All of which means that there are members of the same Klamath Tribe which Councilor Wheatcroft dismisses as "200 miles away" whose relatives lived a minute fraction of that distance away to the East. Undoubtedly their kin traded with the Pudding River people (aka: the Ahantchuyuk) on whose land Wheatcroft's own home is located. The Pudding River being the largest tributary to the Molalla River just before it empties into the Willamette River about as close to the Langdon Farms land as Hubbard itself is.

Now... if Wheatcroft and the rest of the Hubbard City Council were lobbying Wyden and Merkley and DeFazio and the rest of our federal delegation to have the Klamath's land given back to them... Well, that would be very different, now wouldn't it? But they are not. And because they are not, the proffered crocodile tears over "special rights and special privileges based upon race, alienage or national origin" are revealed as the rank hypocrisy that it in fact is.

Posted by Kevin at 01:04 PM |

February 12, 2010

They Won't Get Fooled Again, Until They Get Fooled The Next Time

One of the endearing as well as appalling qualities of that odd soup of neocons and Tea Partiers is their obsession on being led, on finding just that perfect combination of pureness of doctrine and cult-worthy personality that they will follow someone until disillusionment and then another until disillusionment, over and over and over, ad nauseam.

It is a never ending source of political sardonic amusement for me. Kind of makes up for the fact that the country's hurting over what damage these morans are doing.

Well, Sarah made her appearance and the National Tea Party Convention, the biggest gathering of 600 people that ever shook the world, and the people who started the ball rolling are resentful. Why?

A prominent Tea Party leader from Texas is warning that the movement "is becoming nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party," and slamming Sarah Palin as representing "a growing insider's attack to the heart of the Tea Party."

Dale Robertson, the founder of TeaParty.org, is just the latest Tea Partier to express concern that the movement is being hijacked by the GOP.

Of course, Dale's just the latest Tea Partier who's waking up to the fact that they're nothing but a tool kit to the GOPpers who are either stepping on them on their attempted way back to power or just trying to make a bundle off their credulity.

Expect this to continue until they all get disillusioned about Sarah, and the search for The Next Reagan™ begins anew once again.

This won't happen until they really realize that they've been worked:

Robertson's animus toward the GOP also appears to have developed only recently. Last month, he complained to a reporter that he had been trying to contact the RNC to discuss working together, but hadn't received a call back.

That's because Dale doesn't understand that he's the useful idiot here – and his expiry date has passed.

It's as though they've awoken a sleeping giant … a very, very, stupid and gullible giant.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:14 AM |

Help The Cape Meares Lighthouse – They'll Need $500K Worth

In January, the historic Camp Meares Lighthouse, at Cape Meares which is just south of Tillamook Bay, was shot up by persons then-unknown. 15 windows and the Fresnel lens paid the price.

Reports The Oregonian that the two mooks who thought this was a wonderful time have been apprehended.

But the damage, as they say, is done. The windows would be enough of a cost, but the Fresnel lens – well, that's not something you can find in a vintage shop somewheres. The Fresnel consists of a central lens dish with triangular prisms molded in ranging concentrically out. These prism-shape catch the light that is radiating up and down from the source and direct them out. This is what causes a lighthouse's light to be tightly-directed and bright.

The estimate to repair is $500,000.

So if you don't care about anything else but care about something Oregon, you can care about this, yes? Toss a few bucks their way. If every adult Oregonian gave 'em, say, half a buck, they'd have more than enough.

We hope the fellows who perpetrated this get restitution. That'll keep 'em busy for a while.

Go here: http://www.capemeareslighthouse.org/html/news_events.html to find out how you can help.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:03 AM |

February 11, 2010

South Carolina: Redefining Irony

Somehow, I don't see subversives just lining up to fork over a fiver:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."

There, they fixed it.

The idea of subversives just trotting down to fulfil the intent of the vaguely-worded law is hilarious enough. But the ironic part enters in when you consider just what began at Fort Sumter on April 12th, 1861.

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:53 PM |

The Fourth Amendment: As Close As The Password To Your Wireless Router

(via) The prevailing legal view, apparently:

Who knew that password-protecting a wireless router also had constitutional significance? According to a recent court decision from Oregon, the failure to password-protect a wireless network can diminish the extent to which the Fourth Amendment protects computers and information on that network from government searches.

The case involved someone who got jacked up for collecting child porn via a Limewire connection into a shared iTunes folder on their home computer, which was connected up to a unpassworded wireless router that a neighbor was piggybacking on.

Naturally nobody is suggesting that someone collecting with child porn get away with it. The Law seems to be very good at finding kiddie porn creeps and jacking them up. But when we take the long view, we notice that "if you're doing nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear" tends to lose effectiveness as a defense, because the definition of "nothing wrong" tends to shift a with a lot more alacrity than people seem to think it does.

Just something to think about.

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:21 PM |

The Legislature That Does Not Remember The Present …

… will be forced to repeat the present as past in the future:

Gov. Ted Kulongoski says he's been told the Legislature will ignore his call for reforming the state's unique "kicker" tax rebates.

The Democratic governor said Thursday he's disappointed and, "The people of Oregon deserve better."

That means, of course, that somewhere down the road, sooner rather than later if the economy doesn't markedly improve and add some decent jobs …

… we'll all be doing this again.

If the Oregon Legislative Assembly can't summon the courage, with solid Dem majorities, to do the hard but necessary thing, then we'll just have to find better Democrats.

Don't bother with Republicans – they send people like Jim Weidener, who are just plain useless. There's no such thing as a better ORGOPper.

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:15 PM |

February 10, 2010

SerfdomWorks Tools: By Their Legislation Shall Ye Know Them

At Kossack salvador's DKos diary entry today, WRT Rep Jim Weidner (R-Yamhill) (who it will be remembered is in favor of letting 80,000 poor kids do without medical care), there is the following capper:

Weidner is one of four Republican legislators in Oregon to sign Freedomworks "no-tax pledge"

Ah, yes, I should have known SerfdomWorks by its spoor. It makes so much sense now.

I also see why Mary Starrett thinks she can gain traction by becoming a Yamhill County Commissioner.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:34 PM |

Les Climbs On The Kitz Bus

Les AuCoin, erstwhile 1st District Democratic member of Congress, has endorsed Dr. John.

(the original version had him as a '1st District Republican'. Must have lost my mind for just a moment. My apologies.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:17 PM |

Rep Weider to Rep Greenlick: Uhhh … What Was The Question?

The Oregon House Democrats are applying their own version of the Barack Obama Lion's Den strategy, which was also summarized succinctly by Harry Truman who once was reputed to say "I don't give them hell … I tell them the truth and they think it's hell" or, as Carla at BlueO says – Rep. Jim Weidner (R-McMinnville or thereabouts) brought a knife to a gunfight:

The bill in question, submitted by Rep. Weidner and about 10 or 12 other Republicans, would relieve insurance companies of the burden of a terrible, terrible 1% tax without which 80,000 Oregon kids would stay sick and unwell.

Heck of a guy. I wonder if he realizes he was sent out to be the designated target.

People of McMinnville – this is your Republican representative. Well, actually, he's the insurance companies', but he comes from near you.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:52 PM |

Global Climate Change: It's Flexible, and Gooshy

Take and underfull waterbed and push down on one corner. The other corner goes up.

Not just that, but other parts of the waterbed jiggle up and down in ways you can kind of expect, but not predict.

Global climate change is like that, kind of.

The brain cells at FOX news have been making a meal out of the blizzard on the east coast, the likes of which haven't been seen in fifty years or more, while ignoring the very recent story about the snow that has to be trucked into Wheeler, BC, to make sure the Winter Olympics will come off as scheduled.

We expect them the work around an inconvenient truth such as this, but it's really quite simple: Higher Average temperaures mean more energy in the system means more chaos in the system means more unpredictability in the system and also means that the extremes will be more extreme.

That's really what we're looking at.

Or you can keep watching FOX, and whistle past the graveyard.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:36 PM |

Marketing Your Gubernatorial Candidate

Proving he has a good grasp for employing marketers who are ready to try something clever, the Kitzhaber camp came up with an idea: Reissue a limited edition of the bumpersticker that saw him to victory back in '94 (500 copies) and offer one for a donation.

Not a bad idea, but I'd be reluctant to actually use one, as a limited edition – if Dr. John makes it back to Mahonia Hall, those'll be mad collectors items. Maybe. Perhaps. Who knows?

In 1994, Oregonians bucked the national trend. And in 2010, we're poised to do it again. Own your own piece of political history, by chipping in $5 or more. We'll get you a big blue sticker right away.

On the Republican side, I had forgotten that the Allen Alley campaign actually existed (and a shame that is, seeing as he was willing to walk across the state last year … sadly for him, few in the media cared). But we found his campaign headquarters, last night – it's on State Street and A Avenue, in downtown Lake Oswego.

The lights were on. Nobody was there.

No, that's not necessarily meant as a witticism.

Necessarily.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:52 PM |

U Can't Grow This – Oregon Ag Gets Tough on Ivy and Butterfly Bushes

(via various sources) Bad news for English ivy and the butterfly bush – you're complete outlaws in Oregon now.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture is amping up its sanctions on English ivy and butterfly bushes, which are immigrants nobody should want – they invade native habitats and outcompete local plants to the point of extinction if allowed to run unimpeded.

The butterfly bush is outlawed for sale or transport effective immediately, except for varieties which will not generate seeds. The new sanctions about English ivy will swing into effect on the 1st of June.

To read the Ag press release, go to http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/news/100210english_ivy.shtml.

A group that's working to limit the spread of English ivy through Portland's Forest Park is the "No Ivy League", and Portland Parks and Rec has a page all about it at http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/index.cfm?c=47820, if you want to find out more about noxious weeds and why we ought to act to safeguard our own local biodiversity.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:35 PM |

TriMet: But Wait, There's Less

A 27 Megabuck shortfall in TriMet's anticipated funding has had a lot of people waiting for the other shoe to drop. Today, it did.

Four routes are going to be completely discontinued: the 27-Market/Main, 65-Marquam Hill/Barbur, 157-Happy Valley, and 154-Willamette. These are routes that don't offer a lot of service to begin with, and particularly the #27, which serves a section of outer SE Portland and Rockwood between Gateway and 181st along SE Main and Market streets, only ran five runs a day, and none of them were conveniently timed.

The nearest routes with decent frequency, the #20-Burnside/Stark and the #4-Division/Fessenden, are a mile apart. Those of you who live in the long quadrilateral between Division and Stark and SE 99th and 102nd avenues now have an up to 1/2 mile walk.

Notable amongst the other discontinued routes, the #157 and #154, served fringe areas that didn't use transit much – but either didn't serve weekends (#154) or had a similar frequency (#157)

Having transit in outlying areas is fine, but if it's not at a good frequency, people still won't use it. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make transit too tough to use, they'll just go back to their cars. Which is probably what they did in those areas.

Enjoy those backups on I-205, campers.

The other reductions look to trim weekend or evening service due to low ridership, trim parts of routes that weren't well-used, or increase wait times from 2-5 to 10-12 minutes, depending on the route, which should come as "just one dam' thing after another" news to users to go to weekend and second- and third-shift jobs.

For the look at the blood-on-the-walls, view the TriMet public information release here: http://trimet.org/news/september2010proposal.htm. It's not for the squeamish.

Don't have a car and live in the outliers? Tough luck, bunkie. Prepare to walk or pay for a cab.

Or, we can treat transit on the same priority as any other commerce-necessary infrastructure – like highways and streets, f'rinstance – and fund it appropriately. Transit centered development looks like a failure because we have a failure of vision in leadership – not because it's a bad idea (it's never really been earnestly tried, so we can't say for sure if it is). My experience is, if people have access to transit, they'll use it. People always prefer the path of least resistance.

Fund transit like highways – Federally – and make them free for the peoples.

That's where we should be here. These cuts should send up howls.

Posted by The Chinuk at 01:16 PM |

February 09, 2010

Of snipers, FBI informants and unproven accusations

PSU professor John Hall has been banned from campus pending the investigation of a recent incident where he accused a student of being a trained Israeli killer, an FBI agent, and of trying to organize students to participate in violent acts against the university.

The student, Zachary Bucharest, conceded that some of what Hall said about his military background was true but denied the rest. Bucharest also has not been banned from campus pending the investigation.

Phil Lesch, executive director of PSU’s chapter of American Association of University Professors, said it’s not uncommon for someone to be barred from coming to campus during an investigation so that the outcome is not influenced by the person’s presence.

I don't see how anyone can conclude other than that only Prof. Hall is being investigated with any degree of seriousness since only he has been banned from campus.

Oh, and Bucharest apparently also managed to retain one of the nation's most prominant civil rights lawyers to represent him during this investigation. I wonder how many other students could have managed that feat? That proves precisely nothing one way or the other. But it is very interesting.

I don't know what Prof. Hall based his accusations on, so it's hard to commment definitively on them. At first blush it does seem that the good Professor went off the deep end. But maybe not.

Let's take the accusations one by one and look at what objective evidence exists to support them.

Bucharest apparently concedes the core facts about his having served in the IDF as a sniper. Presumably he doesn't concede the label of "killer" being afixed to him however. But as I reported last March, and as the above picture clearly reveals, at least some IDF snipers took an exceptionally callous and inherently approving view of Palestinian civilian casualties and deaths. As was widely reported at the time, other non-sniper IDF units demonstrated comparably callous/approving views of civilian casualties via t-shirts printed at their direction and at their request during the same timeframe in which the sniper unit's shirts had been commissioned.

FBI agent. The FBI apparently denies this allegation but I'm not sure their denial can be taken at face value since all they'd need to do is view his status as an informant as a legit state secret and then lying about it becomes not only permissible but manditory, from that POV. Thus their denial can't credibly be just accepted at face value.

The other accusation seems, frankly, pretty wild-eyed - that Bucharest is trying to recruit PSU students to engage in violent acts against the university. And frankly, my gut feeling is that it is this accusation which is largely responsible for Prof. Hall having been banned from campus pending the investigation.

Posted by Kevin at 12:36 PM |

February 07, 2010

Chicken Curry Tagine w/coconut rice

As I think y'all already know, I love to cook. And I love to use special occasions as an excuse to play around with something new. So today's annual Super Bowl party with the same basic group of friends that get together every year was just such an occasion.

A week or two ago I was watching a cooking show on PBS called Simply Ming and he had a guest chef on who did a one pot tagine. Having been a long-time fan of curries I was struck by how similar the ingredients were, or at least how well it seemed to me that they'd work with curry.

I love all curries but I'm particularly fond of Indian curries, both north and south India. Tagine is a Moroccan dish named for the type of pot it's made in. But it's essentially a stew with not a lot of moisture left when it's done. I suppose in that respect it's very much akin to a Spanish Paella.

Anyway, I was also fascinated by how this guest chef used a rice cooker, which I happen to have and use at home. But instead of just rice and water he used coconut milk, chicken stock and some grated coconut meat in with the rice before closing the lid, pushing the button and letting it do it's thing.

So my idea was essentially: India meets Morocco in one dish. I mulled it for several days and decided that I wanted to make a go of it so I bought a bunch of ingredients and when the invite came for this Super Bowl party I put my plan into action:

(note: as is my usual, I found a recipe to use as a basic guide. In this case it was this chicken tagine recipe.)

Chicken Curry Tagine
Chicken Thighs - 6, boneless and skinned
Sweet Onion - 1,medium large, finely chopped
Shallot - 1 medium, finely chopped
Tomato, Diced - 1 (15oz) can
Garlic, Minced - 2 tsp
Carrot - 2 medium, jullienned into largish pieces
Coconut Milk - 1 cup
Yogurt - 1 cup (optional)
Coriander Powder - 3 tbsp (for body and flavor)
Madras Curry - 2 tbsp, any brand(available in Indian or Middle-eastern stores)
Powdered Cinnamon - 1/4 tsp
Bay Leaf - 1
Powdered Cloves - 1/8 tsp
Sliced Black Olives - 1 (4oz) can
Dried Mango - 1 cup, diced (dried apricots would work great too)
Green Bell Pepper - 1, seeded and coursely diced
Apple - 2, peeled, seeded and coursely diced
Cilantro - about 1 cup, finely diced.
Coconut Oil
salt & pepper to taste

Coconut Rice
Coconut Milk - 1 cup
Chicken Stock - 2 cups
Jasmine Rice - 3 cups
Grated Coconut - 1/2 cup
Salt
Slivered Almonds - 2.25oz, toasted

Preheat oven to 350.

Toast the slivered almonds in some coconut oil until nicely brown and set them aside. Diced up the dried mango and set it aside.

Chop up the onion and shallot, add the garlic and saute in some coconut oil until the onion begins to become translucent. Add the carrot, bell pepper and apple and saute for about 5 minutes. Add the diced tomato and turn heat down to low.

Meanwhile, dice up the chicken and brown it up in some coconut oil in a 6-quart oven-safe pot. When the chicken is nearly cooked add the cinammon and clove powders and continue until the chicken is cooked through. Add the coriander powder and the madras curry powder to the chicken and continue cooking until about half the liquid has been cooked off. Add the sauted ingredients, the bay leaf, the olives, the cilantro and the coconut milk to the pot and mix it all together. Place uncovered pot in oven and bake for 20 minutes. When it's done add the diced mango, the yogurt and salt & pepper to taste and you're finished.

While the tagine is in the oven, in the rice cooker add the jasmine rice, the grated coconut, the coconut milk, the chicken stock and enough salt to season the rice. Close the lid and let it do it's thing. When it's done add the toasted slivered almonds.

Serve the Curry Chicken Tagine over the Coconut Rice and enjoy!

Now, I have a good reputation as a cook amongst this group of friends. So they're generally appreciative of whatever I cook. But I must say that their response to these two dishes was very approving! Undoubted they're going to be asking for this again in the future.

I'd also made some Cucumber Raita (diced & grated cucumber in plain yogurt with some cilantro and cumin powder) because that's a traditional Indian condiment which is used to moderate or cool down the spicy heat of a dish. I don't usually use madras curry and from what I'd read I was expecting this dish to be pretty hot. But it turned out to not be nearly as hot as I'd been led to expect. As a result I think I was the only one to use any of the raita condiment. And that was largely because I love the stuff regardless of how spicy the curry is.

Posted by Kevin at 08:49 PM |

February 06, 2010

Aspartame By Any Other Name …

… would still have to have a warning for those suffering from phenylketonuria.

Today in Please Make A Note Of It: A Japanese company which is one of the many worldwide manufacturers of the insanely popular artificial sweetener aspartame have rolled out a new brand name for its product …

AminoSweet.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:19 AM |

February 05, 2010

The Contracting Local Economy, Part 726

McGrath's Fish House Restaurants has filed Chapter 11. (via)

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:37 AM |

"Official" US Unemployment Rate Falls to 9.7%. Good News?

Oh, you know better than that.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:31 AM |

There's A Reason Mayor Sam Ain't Sweatin' The Recall Recall

People just aren't that mad anymore. Almost everyone has moved on.

Posted by The Chinuk at 11:27 AM |

February 04, 2010

Crime 'n' Punishment, Mannix Style

As noted by Carla at BlueO, Kevin's at it again, taking advantage of a political opportunity and dressing it up as concern for the peoples.

As far as it goes, though, I like the imagery of the Oregon Anti-Crime Alliance going up against (presumably) the Oregon Crime Alliance, an apparent subdivision of the World Crime League, which Buckaroo Banzai ably fought throughout his long and storied career. Fit for a comic book really.

Mockery aside, though, do people who have spent that last decade or so making our State Prison system a cash-sucking maw by demanding mandatory sentences, removing judge discretion, and jacking up penalties for just about every crime under the sun really deserve the right to complain when the changes they wreak make it necessary to let prisoners go early on the pain on not having enough money to run the rest of the state that serves law-abiding people?

I mean, I know they have the right to cherry-pick their scare-story and melodramatize it.

But do they deserve it?

I tell you what – I liked Mannix better when he was in that detective show in the 70s. Now, that was justice I could get behind!

Posted by The Chinuk at 08:46 PM |

Today in Bad Faith

Welcome to another edition of "Today in Bad Faith", where we examine that strange beast called Religion and see how 21st Century American culture has turned it into a spiritual version of the It's Alive baby.

All Rosary'd up? Good. Here we go.

1. We Know Worship When We See It, and That Looks More Like Sk8ing.

(via) The Oregon Tax Court has decided that The Truck Stop, an indoor skating park in Bend, can't have a tax exemption as a church because … well, because it's a skate park. Check out the PDF of the decision here. If you don't have the time for it, then the nut of it, at least to me, is page 2, where the court recorded that even though they wish to be considered a church for tax purposes, there's not mention one of that anywhere on the website, and as I looked at their current website (http://truckstopskatepark.com/) no mention of religious outreach or ministry, no mention of even a regular youth-group meeting.

Sure, maybe you want to have kids come in and have church in a "cool, non-churchy" environment, but you still have to have some church in there. Call me an old-fashioned, inside-the-box thinker, but that's the way I roll.

Otherwise, bunkie, you're just a business trying to weasel out of paying your taxes, as far as I'm concerned.

2. Another Plastic Shaman Faces The Music

You may recall some months ago when Newage (rhymes with sewage) self-help guru and motivational speaker James Arthur Ray (there are so many of them these days I missed this schmoe coming up) staged a retreat in Sedona, AZ, complete with a "sweat lodge" that made a bunch of people sick and actually self-helped three people off this mortal coil.

Well, James Arthur Ray, spritual warrior and plastic shaman, has recieved his comeuppance. The LA Times (complete with cool mug shot):

Ray was taken into custody at his attorney's office in Prescott, Ariz., a sheriff's spokesman said, and taken to the Yavapai County jail in Camp Verde. Bond has been set at $5 million. He is to appear in court Thursday.

The charges are linked to the last day of Ray's five-day $9,695-a-person "Spiritual Warrior" retreat near Sedona, where he assembled about 50 people in a makeshift, sauna-like sweat lodge for about two hours.

When it was over, three people were dying. Eighteen others suffered burns, dehydration, respiratory arrest or kidney failure.

He claimed to have searched out the techniques taught at the retreat in the jungles of the Amazon and in Peru.

You bet. And my Granny's apple basket is an Inca relic from Macchu Picchu. Be it noted that, after the sweat lodge deaths, Ray went right back to work promoting himself and, presumably, dispensing advice about self-actualization to anyone who would pony up the cash.

Even I know the only thing shameless cultural appropriation is supposed to do is make white people look like fools. It's not supposed to kill people.

Well, that's it for another edition of "Today in Bad Faith", our irregular feature designed, apparently, to make you lose all hope. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pray to whatever gods there be. Maybe I have a skateboard around the garage somewhere.

Posted by The Chinuk at 04:00 AM |

February 03, 2010

Knowing Thy Opponent Bringeth No Surpriseth

The Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll that casts such an ugly light on Republicans seems to be causing no small end of huffing and puffing everywhere (and more ZOMG!!!111!!!-brand fake outrage amongst Republicans) would perhaps be more earthsaking in my own gut if it weren't for the fact that it fairly confirms what I've always suspected about the GOPpers in the aggregate.

Look at it this way, it would take a party in which:

• 39% of those responding think the President should be impeached (despite having broken no law)
• 36% of those responding still think President Obama wasn't born in the United States
• 53% of those responding believe that The Quitter would be more qualified to be President (you can't see Russia from Chicago, I guess)
• 31% of those responding think the President is a racist who hates white people
• and a quarter of whom would be just fine with their State seceding from the Union

to help make sense of eight years of domestic impoverishment of the working class, endless employment of dilletantish fools in positions of authority (many of whom still are there), and the parade of Birfers, Teabaggers, and such who have come ever since.

Indeed the biggest worry to me isn't so much who responded with an opinion but who couldn't be bothered to have one – the not-sure's numbering on the above questions usually in the 20-30 per cent range whom, if combined with the fraction giving the dumb answer, would pretty much overwhelm everyone else.

And this group wants Palin in 2012?

So not-surprised. The only thing you shouldn't be is surprised. Or, if I may quote Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs:

If this poll is accurate (and Research 2000 has a good reputation for accuracy) the Republican base has an absurdly high percentage of wackos of all stripes, from religious fanatics to creationists to secessionists to conspiracy theorists. This is more evidence that the perception of a Republican base dominated by religious right extremists is grounded in solid reality.

From his POV, he should know.

Bad crazy, indeed.

Memo to those concerned, sane Republicans who worry about the party being taken over by teh crayzee: You can stop worrying now.

Posted by The Chinuk at 10:07 PM |

Just Because Your Credit Score Is Poor Doesn't Mean You Suck

Michelle Cole, The Oregonian:

Many Oregon employers would be prohibited from using a job applicant's credit history as part of the pre-employment screening process if a bill being considered by the Legislature becomes law.

The Senate Commerce and Workforce Development Committee held a hearing Wednesday on Senate Bill 1045, which would limit employers' use of credit checks unless the information is relevant to the job.

It's nice to see some sane talk in Salem these days. Maybe it'll delay our arrival at a place where they actually have to build poor houses.

The apparent response from the business lobby is rather predictable. You can fill it in yourself.

There may have been a time … long ago … where a person's credit performance might have shed some light on how they might have made judgment calls or how they might have performed on the job.

Maybe.

But those times have passed. I watched with some horror the things that people talked themselves into to convince themselves that the rather horrid bankruptcy reform was a needed thing. That people in bankruptcies just wouldn't be there if they'd been smarter, not spent beyond their means, weren't obviously trying to get out from under their responsibilities.

I also remember the dudgeon still being so thick that one could cut it with a sharpened credit card even after it was pointed out that it wasn't, in the main, irresponsibility that was creating all those bankruptcies but things that couldn't be controlled or even completely adequately planned for – medical bills that nobody can foresee or know the size of going in, or losing a job in some declining living-wage industry only to find the only jobs available pay barely over minimum-wage. Any sane commentator pointing toward that was either mocked or ignored.

Simply put, checking a credit score or history these days to prove employment worthiness is about as accurate as asking Punxsutawney Phil how the weather's going to be through mid-March. Ain't necessarily so.

And given that most people who have a bad credit history these days are more likely honest folks who have credit cards that were rode hard and put away wet and a house that's on the edge of foreclosure because the money's gone through no fault of their own, the whole idea these days is manifestly unfair.

Unless the idea of a permanently-poor underclass in America is your idea of what America should look like.

And if you still, after all this, think people on the skids deserved their fate … well, you just keep whistling past the graveyard, kids, and hope that your economic dice don't come up snake-eyes on the next throw.

Posted by The Chinuk at 06:43 PM |

February 02, 2010

Upside/Downside: Rush Limbaugh Dancing At The Miss America Pageant

Welcome to another edition of Upside/Downside, where we take a critical look at something that happened in the zeitgeist somehwere and look on both sides to evaluate the yin and the yang in everything.

In this video (which you view at your own risk) we see The Talented Mr Limbaugh, rather unfortunately, taking up the invitation of the lady onstage to dance to a Lady Gaga song.

Downside: Rush Limbaugh dancing. An amazing display of maladroitism that actually surpasses that time when he mocked Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease. As Randi Rhodes quipped, "It's like a Def Jam comic's impersonation of a white man dancing".

Upside: It's on TLC (that'll teach 'em). Nobody actually watches it anymore – out of a population of over 300 million Americans, only 4.5 million could be bothered, as this glowing article details. But it was penned by ROBIN LEACH! (yes, that ROBIN LEACH), so consider the source.

This has been another edition of Upside/Downside. CHAMPAIGN WISHES AND CAVIAR DREAMS, EVERYONE!!!!

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:16 PM |

Breaking News: Faith-Healing Beagley Parents Guilty

Followers of Christ church members Jeff and Marci Beagley guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

It's not a "Measure 11" (mandatory sentencing guidelines) crime, so the judge has some latitude. Probation is not outside the realm of possibility, apparently.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:05 PM |

One More Bit of Measures 66 and 67 In The Media …

This from Too Much, the weekly summary of who's winning the class war (probably not you), a useful weekly e-publication to read if you're masochistic enough to really want to have an idea of how far behind the hyper-rich you are and how hard they're willing to work to keep you there (people like me, in other words), a good read on exactly what Measure 66 and 67 represents, why it's necessary, and what good it will do (emphasis mine):

Back in 1930, voters in Oregon approved a state income tax. They haven't voted, statewide, for a tax increase ever since. Until last week. Oregon voters on Tuesday gave healthy majorities to two initiatives that will hike taxes on the state's corporations and wealthy. Affluent Oregon couples will see their tax rate on income over $250,000 rise by 1.8 percent. Oregon millionaires, even with the increase, will still be paying state and local taxes at a lower overall rate than the poorest fifth of Oregon households. But the children in those households will now be attending public schools spared the cutbacks that would have been inevitable without last week's tax-the-rich triumph. Notes Karen Kraut, an organizer with the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy: "The remaining 49 states would be wise to follow in Oregon's footsteps." State governments are currently projecting a $102 billion budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year . . .

Remember, if you fret about people agitating class war, you need to understand that it already happened, and you're on the losing side.

Passing 66 and 67 was the right thing to do.

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:04 PM |

Sarah Wants Rahm Out. Good Call, Miss Late-To-The-Party

A significant number of us in the Democratic wing of the Democratic party have been calling for Rahm's head for a while now. Now The Quitter's got the memo that Rahm Emanuel is … well, a rude bastard … is trying to get on our bandwagon.

It's developed that, when considering those liberal groups who've said they plan to run issue ads against Democratic candidates who are against single-payer, he described them as "F***ing retarded".

That's our Rahm: Mr. F***ing Warmth.

That also was vouchsafed last August.

But that didn't stop The Talented Ms. Palin from taking a break from buying up her own book to chime in on it now.

Now, it's well known that Sarah Palin has a developmentally disabled family member, but my view on the situation is best expressed by the HuffPo's Sam Stein, who wrote:

Palin presumably seized on this one because of her own experience with the issue -- her youngest child, of course, suffers from Down syndrome. But it's hard to ignore the fact that making hay out of "controversies" like these is her political trademark, regardless of whether there is a personal tie to the matter.

That's going rogue for you.

Posted by The Chinuk at 05:59 AM |

The Savage Wiener Is Moving To KPAM

This just in: Oregon Media Insiders is reporting that Michael "The Savage Wiener" Savage is going from KXL to KPAM:

Michael Savage is making a run for the border, immigrating from KXL (750) to KPAM (860), where he will air from 3 to 7 pm.

Savage objected to being bumped to 7 pm by KXL's new afternoon newscast, says Brian Jennings, KXL's program director

.

Savage objecting to some fact-laden program pushing him aside. Now, that's irony.

From what I'm reading, general buzz seems to be that Victoria Taft is either going to be pushed off entirely or moved to an even later shift, like 7 pm to 10 pm. Either way, she's likely to lose her listener. For KPAM, this is a necessary thing, since the new KXL sibling AM station KMCD "Serfdom 970" has skived off with Sean Hannity and Mark Levin.

In related news, everyone you know was quoted as saying "Who the hell is Victoria Taft?"

Other buzz has it that KXL might be looking at adding ex-Jammin' 95 morning host PK, who has occaisionally subbed for Teh Lars, as talent to fill The Savage Hole.

Thus we are treated to the amusing spectacle of two well-known local radio stations shuffling talent about with the result that they are both competing to be the most unlistenable.

Right now, though, I'm thinking KPAM ahead in that race to the bottom.

Posted by The Chinuk at 03:53 AM |

February 01, 2010

Now We Can't Put A Man On The Moon OR Make Coffee That Will Let You Sleep

America cedes the Moon and outer space to pretty much everybody else.

Tell Martin Landau and Barbara Bain to stand down; we won't need them after all.

(To those who don't get the title reference, this was from a decaf coffee commercial back in the late 60s)

Posted by The Chinuk at 02:51 PM |