If you’re going to invest your hard-earned money betting on Donald Trump, you’d be better off starting a pool where you try to predict when the Hot Pocket lodged in his left ventricle finally explodes his heart like a beached Oregon whale. Investing in one of his businesses? You might as...
Really, how hard is it to wear a mask? The first civil war in this country was fought over the profound moral tragedy of chattel slavery. If a second one is fought because Donald Trump didn’t want to smear his topcoat of Sherwin-Williams Burnt Sienna, I will be officially depressed....
Received this e-mail today from the Pennsylvania Democratic Party: The fight for fair electoral maps kicked off in earnest today, when the US Census Bureau revealed each state’s updated number of US House seats. And the bad news is that Pennsylvania will soon have one less representative in Congress. Republicans will...
President Joe Biden announced today that every state has removed age eligibility for Covid-19 vaccinations so anyone 16 or over can received a Pfizer/BioNtech shot and anyone18 or over can receive a dose of Moderna’s vaccine. Biden’s goal of 200 million vaccinations in his first 100 days should be reached this Wednesday, eight days...
Neofeudalism redux: more playing into the hands of the Russian support for syncretic RW groups in the US. For the US, it is an act of violence and the GQP is fomenting it at the state level for a Trumpist constituency. Imagine that moment when they rationalize secession to keep the...
I’m not sure if this is toxic masculinity so much as toxic schlubbery. How women, men, children, or companion animals look in public is pretty much no one’s business but their own. I mean, I live in Eugene, Oregon, where each day I see something that could have been torn...
Well, actually, he’s a Badger, not a duck. I was born in Wisconsin and currently live in Oregon. Believe me, I know the difference. And I can assure you, this guy is one enormous Johnson. I’m really not sure what Republicans’ strategy is vis-à-vis the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that’s...
Some big news today: x 🚨I'm leading Senate Democrats in pressing the Biden administration to include an automatic extension of unemployment benefits tied to economic conditions in the next round of COVID relief. We need to get workers off the financial roller coaster, and this is the way to do...
The sparse number of actual carbon capture and sequestration projects plus weak carbon markets amplify the problems of the climate crisis yet to be revisited, post-Trump. Two heartland examples in North Dakota and Texas show how there are several interlocking problems addressing the climate crisis that must be included in future environmental policy. More specifically...
Though my spot on the introversion spectrum lies somewhere between Kleenex box-wearing Howard Hughes and urine-collecting Howard Hughes (and as I continue to age, I’m on a bullet train to raw-fish-eating Gollum), I still usually get sick in the winter, at least once. In the past, while grocery shopping or taking...
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R. WI) has been making headlines today for saying stupid bull shit like this: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in a new interview said he didn’t think the Jan. 6 Capitol riot seemed like “an armed insurrection” and praised former President Trump‘s Senate impeachment trial attorneys following his acquittal. Johnson...
Vaccinations for Covid-19 were reported as 2,172,973 for yesterday by the Center for Disease Control. The number of Americans who have received at least one shot approaches 10% of the population (or over 12% of those old enough to receive the shot). Last week US vaccinations were averaging 1.3 million and it...
Received this e-mail today from U.S. Senator Ron Wyden’s (D. OR) re-election campaign: The lies and violence of the last few months have made it clear: If we're going to carry forward as a democracy, we need to protect the integrity of every vote. That starts with secure, reliable election processes....
While Trumpler festers in Mar-a-Lago having his version of “Mein Kampf”: “The Great Steal: I want my cookies back”, written for him. Only 15 Republicans find organizing actual sedition mildly distasteful. After all they keep saying we agreed with his “conservative” policies e.g. letting 430,000 Americans die. Many of The...
The January rains struck parts of NW Oregon with near-biblical storms. Bethany Lake flooded to new heights. Two inches fell overnight and never let up. The Wood Duck Island vanished. The shallow turbid muddy stream turned into a 100-foot-wide version of a real river. While I’ve often joked this weather...
By January Bethany Lake in NW Oregon, just west of Portland, gathers storm waters from hundreds of acres of avoided wetlands. Effluent also drains from the thousands of manicured yards and miles of streets in the surrounding suburban areas. The Lake and its tributaries discharges to Rock Creek, which slithers down...
From The New York Times: x YouTube Video The first television advertisements of the 2022 campaign cycle are on the air in Wisconsin. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin on Wednesday morning began a week’s worth of television and digital ads pounding Senator Ron Johnson for his role in fomenting doubts...
Impeachment and insurrection part deux on deck for next week, even as there’s now mixed messaging on the part of Pence invoking the 25th Amendment. Lots of banality of evil around and about. x 🇺🇸 Impeachment 🔵@SpeakerPelosi / #Democrats House Can ✔️Submit Articles of Impeachment ✔️Put it in Permanent Record...
Name’s Red. Red Woodman, Major Mammal Crimes Detective. This is supposed to be my last day on the job is I can make it through. Cough. They’ve assigned me a kid nick-named “Lucky” I’m supposed to train to take my place. I’m looking through his resume. He’d flunked out of...
Oregon will push teachers to the front of the line for the next round of the vaccine. Schools can re-open. Children can return to school, and Workers can return to work. Politically, this defuses the biggest right wing talking point; the closed schools. http://www.oregonlive.com/… Personally, having a science teacher son, I...
This continues the diary of two days ago. Nostalgia is a coping mechanism at the place known for its association with William Faulkner. Oxford Mississippi is a place where the nostalgia for a lost cause remains a kind of delusion. When injuries are imagined and retribution seems easy, this happens where...
Edward Abbey memorialized environmental resistance to mindless development in his tome The Monkey Wrench Gang. It essentially endorsed sabotage to thwart degrading of the natural world, for instance, putting sugar in the gas tanks of bulldozers that are about to plow under a nice area. However, advances in surveillance make...
“A 22-year-old self-proclaimed member of the “Boogaloo Bois” movement pleaded guilty on Wednesday to trying to sell weapon parts to Hamas after traveling to Minneapolis amid this summer’s George Floyd protests.” What’s curious is that for these Boogaloo Bois, while domestic terrorism remained the goal, the path had that Iran-Contra...
The hummingbirds dash around my back yard, as hard to track as a feathered 3-card monte game; are there 2 or 3 or 4 hummers? Any hummer that sits in our Bartlett pear tree is automatically named Bart. It fights any other hummer using any one of five feeders below...
CBS News reports that technically Trump got fewer electoral college votes (304) in 2016 because of two faithless electors. Biden received all 306 elector votes. “President Trump called his Electoral College tally a landslide. By his own standards, these numbers represented a clear victory then, and I respectfully suggest they...
But there are 40-odd cinder cones of once-active volcanos clustered near the bucolic town of Boring, just east of Portland Oregon. These, and the related lava flows, are part of the Boring formation. I live off this map to the left (west of Beaverton). I am intensely interested in this Boring...
For starters, this “No Trespassing” sign isn’t on private property. It’s on Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation Lands that are open to the public as the Rock Creek Greenway, west of Portland Oregon. Fortunately there are many anglers who are simply crazed about catching fish and who would wade through Hell fire for...
After Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, I wondered how I could ever go back there. (I’m a Wisconsin native who currently lives in Oregon. I thought I’d never have to deal with someone as loathsome as Scott Walker again; holy shit, was I wrong.) Well, my home state gets...
Hard rains just swept across NW Oregon and vicinity. The creeks climbed their banks. I watch Rock Creek, and its tributaries that flow through Bethany Lake, ten miles west of Portland Oregon. Upstream of Bethany Lake, a half mile wide grassy meadow has transformed into a nicely braided creek with...
I live in Oregon. My Thanksgiving is likely to be just my wife and me eating either a vegan roast or, if we’re too lazy to turn the oven on (and that’s a distinct possibility), perhaps takeout Thai food. But if we were going to have lots of people over...
I toss in my sleep, grabbing for the water bottle. I have to push the straw deep for the last few drops of precious cool water. Even the dregs are sweet. And in that moment between a memory and a dream, I was not sure if I was a hummingbird...
As I write this, blurry-eyed and still a bit nervous, things are looking much better for Joe Biden. But last night felt like watching an oncologist diligently search my chest X-ray for tumors. For eight hours. “Yeah, you might have a tumor here, or here, or here. Too early to call....
For six years, tadpoles have morphed into tiny chorus frogs in my backyard ponds. But once they’ve turned into frogs I seldom see them again. For the first few days into July, I find them near their birth ponds. Their default move is to hop back into the water for...
Stores are already being boarded up in anticipation of election week violence, as cops begin to take sides in spite of the rule of law. x if you've never read any police training manuals/literature before, this article is worth reading. it offers a good snapshot of how police are psychologically...
Trump and his supporters are such dupes that rather than taking a village, it may take a dominatrix to de-program Trumpists: But up until recently, there’s one group of potential Biden voters who have not been the subject of voter outreach: kinky, submissive male Trump supporters with humiliation fetishes. Now,...
For 20 years, I’ve tracked the movements of herons and egrets where I’ve worked and walked. I’d been working at a golf course in Banks Oregon, 20 miles west of Portland. We had a year-round heron, and every autumn, an egret visited and fished for a few days, angering the...
It does seem old-fashioned but the Biden post-debate train tour seems better than Trump’s promises to never return to (insert state) if he loses, which he did tonight in Duluth. x All aboard! Tune in as @DrBiden and I kick off our train tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania. https://t.co/z2m4tpAHNJ— Joe...
Antifa is a candy and a breath mint. I know because you’re soaking in a floor wax and a dessert topping. x Slave masters weren’t just an idea but apparently it’s one you’re in LOVE with. pic.twitter.com/uwyGQJzOR0— Karyn Bradford Coleman (@KweenKayBee) September 30, 2020 Trump’s shout out to the Proud...
Yale Environment 360 notes “just as global warming has propelled the Arctic Ocean past a tipping point which will lead to a largely ice-free Arctic in summer in the coming decades. Wildfire scientists say that rising global temperatures and worsening droughts mean that the world has entered a new era...
Much jackboot-quaking as a much-touted demo in Portland had a weak showing north of the anarchist jurisdiction. x tickled by this because I watched 5 seconds of the KATU coverage and the proud boy on the mic said something like 2,000 people were there— voltaverse (@voltaverse) September 26, 2020 x...
Big news today: x I’m proud to endorse these outstanding Democratic candidates who will work to get the virus under control, rebuild the economy and the middle class, and protect Americans’ health care and preexisting conditions protections. Support these candidates––and vote early if you can. pic.twitter.com/KETni3uwBt— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September...
GOTV and get a Biden landslide. x The Coming Biden Landslide https://t.co/DB0UYBnxoU pic.twitter.com/ePYMFI9YNi — #TheResistance | Vote Early And Use A Ballot Box (@SocialPowerOne1) September 13, 2020 With a few notable exceptions, like my estimable colleague Jonathan V. Last, it seems that nobody wants to predict the November 3 election—not the...
“It will start getting cooler. You just watch”. — Donald Trump Eleven Oregon GOP state senators walked out of session in 2019, and some even ‘vanished,’ meaning they fled the state so that a climate change bill could not get a quorum. Labor 411 connected the dots on their website that...
In an interview yesterday, Trump went all in on sanctioning extralegal political killing, because death squads seem right for his presidency, shooting people on the avenue, Fifth Avenue. x Trump on a purported antifa sympathizer who allegedly killed someone in Portland being killed by federal forces: “This guy was a...
Trump Russia continues, as IMPOTUS* covers for Russia, and DHS & DoJ defections continue in the assessment of 2016 and 2020 Russian actions. Will John Durham create an “interim” deliverable for Bill Barr’s ‘October Surprise’. x This is false. No independent arbiter “determined” this about Mueller. The DOJ IG said the Russia probe was...
Oh, I have your attention now, huh? So I was day-drinking here in the Land of Mordor (i.e., the Willamette Valley of Oregon; seriously, it looks like Satan’s asshole out there … after Satan spent the night binge-drinking in Wisconsin), when I stumbled upon this Politico story, which I am sharing...
Trigger-happy extralegal shooting by federal law enforcement. US Marshals fired many rounds into/at him. But surely death squads don’t exist in America. When police last week surrounded Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-described anti-fascist suspected of fatally shooting a member of a far-right group in Portland, Ore., the wanted man wasn’t obviously...
I live in Oregon. My state is burning. People are losing their homes and being forced to evacuate. I’m choking on smoke and God knows what else. Where is Donald Trump? Oh, that’s right. I live in a blue state. Never mind. So in case you’ve never checked out the...
So the guy who says nearly any kind of malarkey accuses his opposition of “massive disinformation”. Firehose of gaslight projected on an entire nation. x #SundayThoughts: The word “trumpery” appeared in the 15th century with the meanings “deceit” or “fraud”. 100 years later, it was being applied to objects of...
An Oregon developer of a proposed gas station next to a creek and wetlands has withdrawn his application. In short: Victory! Withdrawn App, how sweet the sound, Saving trees … thirty feet around. They were doomed on this place, but now are saved, thanks to Grace. The nearby neighborhoods’ coveys...
