Spotlight

Taegan Goddard of Political Wire has an article up on his blog (subscription required): Trump’s Strength Is His Lack of Loyalty, which analyzes the Former Guy’s continuing hold on the GOP. Trump’s leverage over Republicans right now isn’t that he can grow the party. It’s that he could destroy it...

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  • May 8, 2021

Rye Development is proposing a massive pumped storage power plant uphill from the site of the closed Goldendale smelter, next to the Columbia River.  This facility will take over a closed pumped storage plant. Native American tribes, including tribes from Asia, originally migrated to this vicinity as a group with common languages and...

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  • March 23, 2021

Without the strange speculation about how Trump is in decline, it is reasonable to think that Trump is consistently inconsistent in not being able to assemble a successful policy or even a political apparatus to execute policy. For example his insistence on claiming credit for COVID vaccine development also comes with...

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  • March 15, 2021

About 15 years ago, my son and I dug out two back yard fish ponds with a back hoe, to my wife’s surprise.  A backhoe. (not in my backyard.) This pond was about 12 X eight feet. We stocked it with dime-a-dance aquarium goldfish. The goldfish grew rapidly. I operate...

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  • March 14, 2021

Hi, Hoomans!  The last couple of months have been a whirl!   All I remember is waking up really horny and cold in the middle of January. “Hey,” I thought to my self, I remember these ponds from before.” At dusk, I heard a dozen male chorus frogs making their crude and...

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  • March 6, 2021
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From The Hill: Spoiler: Passing laws would indeed make my flags go away. Just not that one. Let’s do the right things for Pennsylvania. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇸 — John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) February 24, 2021 Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democratic Senate candidate, has replaced the pro-weed and LGBTQ rights flags hanging from...

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  • February 25, 2021

The local internet buzzed. The local goose had tangled itself in a loose strand of fishing line, with a barbed lure tearing at her throat. The local goose was an odd duck.  My best effort called her a Greylag or an Anser Anser.  She was mean and would chase children. ...

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  • January 27, 2021

“Office of the Former POTUS” (F-POTUS) has a longer shelf-life than Office of the President-Elect or POTUS*-in-Exile and isn’t Trump a branding genius. I recall the equally important "Office of the Former Becky Connor on 'Roseanne'" and the "Office of the Former Vivian Banks on 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'"...

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  • January 26, 2021

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...

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  • January 24, 2021

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...

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  • January 17, 2021

Approaching 4,000 deaths per day, Trump’s big policy win: stronger showers, faster dishwashers. Trump’s legacy will be 300,000 dead—and three-martini lunches. And apparently Trump is coming home early from Florida because he's excited about the Senate attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. x When Republicans who denied #COVID19, called it a hoax...

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  • December 31, 2020

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...

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  • December 28, 2020

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...

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  • December 19, 2020

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...

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  • December 16, 2020

Unlike one of her predecessors, who had numerous connections to the Trump impeachment and its hinky relations with the Russian oligarchs, Jennifer Granholm will combine clean energy policy and economic recovery. Even without explicit support for the GND, this is a direction 180 degrees from the prior administration's kowtowing to...

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  • December 16, 2020

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...

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  • December 12, 2020

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...

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  • December 5, 2020

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...

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  • November 20, 2020

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...

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  • November 10, 2020

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...

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  • November 1, 2020

From The Huffington Post: Though Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has lost several key endorsements to Democratic challenger Sara Gideon this election cycle, she received the full support last week of at least one group in her state: the anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion Christian Civic League of Maine. During an Oct. 13 interview...

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  • October 23, 2020

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...

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  • October 10, 2020

Gayle King: “It was very telling that a fly landed on Mike Pence’s head when he was denying America’s systemic racism. The fly was like ‘say whaaat?’” x Pretty fly for a white guyhttps://t.co/W6Nn4Qz0M1— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 8, 2020 At one point during his vice presidential debate with...

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  • October 8, 2020

A backyard pond turns oily. A DIY oil test confirms it’s more than iron oxide,  I found tiny broken eggs and cat-sized poop nearby (not pictured).  I suspect coon. I found knocked over plants in another pond. I put rounded rocks into abandoned birds’ nests and set them on the...

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  • October 5, 2020

Trump still has it and is contagious. He did his contagion parade outside the hospital to wave to supporters because he was “bored” but wanted to expose his Secret Service detail to COVID-19. x Instead they’ll send him to the White House tomorrow where he has control of the most...

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  • October 5, 2020

Seven high level employees  of Texas’ Attorney General’s office have sent a letter to federal law enforcement agencies asking for an investigation of their boss, Republican Ken Paxton. This is according to the Statesman News Network in Austin, Texas. http://www.statesman.com/… “We have a good faith belief that the attorney general is...

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  • October 4, 2020

“Oyez!  The Summer Session of Frog Court is called to order,  Judge Jeramiah Bullfrog presiding,” honked the Bailiff, who was  a Canadian goose. In strode two robed judges, who were six foot tall bullfrogs, trying to walk on two legs, but instead hopping from foot to foot.  The third bullfrog...

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  • October 3, 2020

So this has been one of the best backstories for a candidate: x .@SenDanSullivan works for #MitchMcConnell – he votes Mitch’s way 97% of the time. I’m a different kind of candidate – one who will always put #Alaska first. Watch our first TV ad and chip in to help...

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  • September 28, 2020
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From The Houston Chronicle: Texas has once again shattered vote registration records, adding more than 1.5 million voters since the last presidential election. Texas now surpassed 16.6 million voters, according to the latest numbers announced Tuesday by Texas Secretary of State Ruth R. Hughs. And there are still almost two...

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  • September 22, 2020

But even bold purply flowers, like this welcome offering from my hacked-down artichokes, seem washed out, as if horror author  Stephen King’s Tommyknockers are draining colors from view. I’ve offered some purple, now for the Haze. In some ways this is scarier than a Nebraska tornado cloud. No where to...

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  • September 12, 2020

There’s a BeijingBiden website, but Trump seems to have decided not to use this insult in speeches, leaving that meme to surrogates and media bottom-feeders. The meme was important to the Trump campaign in April, but since China “prefers” Biden, no amount of “China Virus” can offset Americans’ awareness of...

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  • September 9, 2020

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...

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  • September 4, 2020

The skies have not yield a moment of rain for months.  But I knew how to make it rain. I hung clothes outdoors on our new fancy clothesline.  It’s passive solar at its best.  Except the Rain Gods, laughing, then made it rain twice.  But not much, just enough to...

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  • August 23, 2020

From Salon: Maine farmers have blamed recent changes at the U.S. Postal Service after receiving thousands of dead baby chicks due to shipping delays. The state's postal workers blamed the slowdown on a bill championed by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that “weakened the Postal Service” — and faces a tough...

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  • August 23, 2020

        In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the...

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  • August 15, 2020

I’m Red Woodman, Senior Investigator for what we call the “Frog Court.”  If I can just get through today, I can retire with a pension.  But a whole bunch of new cases just hit my in-basket and I came to work to find a guy sobbing over a couple of baby...

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  • August 14, 2020

From Westword: During recent interviews, Gardner has said positive things about the way Colorado has conducted mail-in voting, and he did so again, more or less, during a forum not meant for public consumption: an August 5 telephone fundraiser. But in a transcript from the event obtained by Westword, he also sought to...

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  • August 13, 2020

Like the DHS and DoJ contractors deployed with the miscellaneous tactical units, a variety of former military are formally and informally at play during the Portland protests. In this case, a rogue element was pursued by citizen activists because these “contractors” were trying to escalate peaceful protests. The Military Industrial Complex...

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  • August 11, 2020

From The Houston Chronicle: For years, the same question has been asked: When will the new Texas emerge? The answer? Right now. Join @BlueTexasPAC as we work to secure Texas’ 38 Electoral College votes for Joe Biden, and turn Texas blue once and for all. pic.twitter.com/7uBLfrbKsV — BlueTexasPAC (@BlueTexasPAC) August...

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  • August 9, 2020

Trigger warning for sadness. The sun shown through the russet and tawny and cream of what seemed to be a feathered explosion in the robin’s nest.  I watched from a few feet away, with only enough time to lift a hand. Two Robin sentinels sped to the scene but the hawk’s...

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  • August 8, 2020

The World is colors everywhere here and there And the sky’s blinding blue is right in front of you. The burgeoning flowers send new blossoms out for hours. I admire the colors of each different lily, Or the Dragon’s Tongue; a little silly. My Dragon’s Tongue managed to survive all these...

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  • July 31, 2020

Fortunately Trump has too many vices unlike Londo Cotton. x Trump cannot take fascism all the way, not because he has any virtues but because he has too many vices. It is right to see fascism and call it by its name. It is also right to mock it, resist...

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  • July 27, 2020

 I’m not sure that this story from Florida Politics will go mainstream. It is yet another example of GOP hypocrisy and should have a spotlight on it. Florida’s junior senator has stated that his grandkids will be safe ‘distance learning’ while other students, teachers, essential workers are forced by the state to risk their...

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  • July 22, 2020

But of course the damsel flies are not really drinking; they are laying eggs. They contort on the edge of a lily pad with their abdomen curved into the water seemingly under the lip of the pad. It’s called ovipositing. I’d seen lots of damselflies joining at the end of their...

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  • July 20, 2020

In a meeting with a group of children and their parents, held more than nine years ago, a little girl asked Congressman John Lewis what he remembered about protesters' first attempt [Bloody Sunday] to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma, Alabama. After describing his harrowing experience to the ten-year-old,...

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  • July 19, 2020

From CNN: x 1. Technically, Senator Kelly Loeffler is running to keep her seat. But she has decided to campaign against Black Lives Matter. Loeffler highlights her opposition to the movement in every campaign stop and TV appearance Who is supporting this campaign?https://t.co/3L1jHcoSWc— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 16, 2020 Sony...

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  • July 17, 2020

I am so happy to walk into the back yard and have fledgling birds whirring about, clumsily.  New life! I put extra food on the ground for the dummies.   Some birds I know. Some I don’t.  Colors are vague.  Here’s a couple I don’t know. One seems to interact with...

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  • July 12, 2020

I’m just an old race horse out to pasture, pawing the ground when the race track bugle sounds.  I still read the local public notices about developments, reflecting back on 40 years of environmental challenges, wishing someone was doing some more challenging. And then something happened.  I am terrible at this...

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  • July 9, 2020

Tammy Duckworth has the makings of a very attractive VP candidate. Smart, articulate, a working mother (who gave birth while in office and has brought her baby to the Senate floor). An Iraq war veteran who lost both legs in the service of her country. Multi-racial (though Black is not...

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  • July 6, 2020

It is more of a comment on Trump’s “cancel culture” that the Aurora, Colorado police would bust up a crowd of violinists peacefully demonstrating a bias death. x Police showed up in riot gear to a peaceful violin vigil for Elijah McClain. “Aurora police basically recreated the dynamic of McClain's death,” says...

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  • July 5, 2020