Talk about un-compassionate conservatism.
A front-page story in today's Salem Statesman Journal reports that the group opposing modest increases in taxes on Oregon corporations and high-income individuals is blissfully unconcerned about...
Prisoners being released, teachers being fired, in-home care for seniors being slashed, newly hired state troopers being laid off, [...]
Guys, if you need a reason to take ballroom dance lessons, here it is: the woman has to do what you want. You lead. The woman follows. End of story.
Until you get off the dance floor.
Then your relationship goes back to normal. But as our instructor likes to say, [...]
It looks like the stolen emails from a climate research center at the University of East Anglia are a classic example of "the dog didn't bark."
That is, the big news from this peek into the private professional correspondence of climate scientists is that there is no big' [...]
You'd think that members of the Portland (Oregon) police force would be embarrassed that several of their brethren weren't able to handle a combative 12 year old girl.
An officer shot her at close-range with a beanbag gun, even though several men had her down on the ground and were [...]
Quack!
That's the sound of an offended Oregon Duck football fan, who's turned off by the Rose Bowl buzz kill inflicted by the university when it demanded that a great student-made video be removed from the Internets.
Of course, this heavy-handed attempt at censorship didn't succeed. I just watched the video' [...]
What good is a blog if you can't rant on it? Hearing no reply from the cosmos except a no good at all! from inside my head, I shall rant on.
Tuesday. It's grocery shopping day. I have a hyper-organized shopping list system. It soothes my left-brain soul to get [...]
It was a win-win night at the Crag Law Center "Wild Shots" benefit auction in Portland. With the purchase of only one -- count 'em, one -- raffle ticket (albeit for $25), I scored a beautiful Mark Gamba photograph.
And Crag ended up raising quite a bit of' [...]
Last night I listened to a couple of Oregon physicians nail what this country needs to do to solve our health care problems. In short: a single payer system, Medicare for all.
They convinced me that in many ways the health care reform bills being considered by Congress are going [...]
Last month I bought myself a birthday present: front row center seats for Champions of the Dance, which we saw last night at the Hult Center in Eugene.
Excellent ticket-buying decision.
There's a time to be at least a few rows back in a large auditorium, so you can get [...]
Ridiculous.
The health care reform bill passed by the House last weekend doesn't allow an abortion to be part of a benefit package bought by anyone who gets a government tax credit to help pay for the insurance.
Put another way:
Abortion would not be paid for in plans offered' [...]
Time keeps marching on. When I wrote my previous blog post, "How to make time slow down," I was 59. Now, I'm 61.
Obviously I haven't been able to stop chronological time. Every year, on my birthday, my age meter advances a click. But we all know how time seems [...]
Whether or not someone has a philosophical bone in their body, he or she likely will enjoy "This Is It" -- a documentary featuring rehearsal footage of Michael Jackson preparing for a monumental concert tour.
I do have philosophical bones. And they loved this well-reviewed movie as much as [...]
It's another election day, albeit a rather low-key off-year one. I'm getting flashbacks to 2008, when it seemed like everything was going to be just fine now.
With Obama our president for the next four years, wouldn't we get the change that we'd be wanting for the past eight? The' [...]
Some would say that nothing is less fun than pondering the question, "What is fun?" However, I'm the sort of person who enjoys ponders, and fun is about enjoyment, so I'll press on.
I got to thinking about fun recently by -- no big surprise -- having fun!
This year [...]
What could CNN be thinking?
It's in last place among cable news networks. Yet CNN changes the look of its web site to make it painful to look at and almost impossible to find any real news on.
I used to spend quite a bit of time on CNN.com. [...]
So, what does a guy do when his wife says, "The kitchen faucet is dripping. Can you fix it?"
I took a look at it. Yup. It was dripping, no matter how I turned the Kohler single handle faucet.
I vaguely remembered that the faucet used a cartridge. And that the [...]
Wrong, wrong, wrong. That mantra kept being repeated in my increasingly irritated mind as I read Bill Monroe's call to kill more cougars in last Sunday's Oregonian.
Monroe is an outdoors writer. But it's obvious that he doesn't know much about cougars, including their beneficial effect on ecosystems and how [...]
It's a tough job, being charitable.
Yesterday I had to stand unmoving for a whole four minutes, leaving my vanilla latte unsipped for a while, as I video'd the Artemis Tribal Belly Dancers at a benefit for the Elizabeth Bowers Zambia Education Fund.
Actually, I could have stood there' [...]
Damn. I want a Nook, Barnes & Noble's new well-reviewed eBook reader. Just like I wanted Amazon's Kindle.
I love high-tech gadgets. Heck, I just got a computerized (sort of) flashlight, the marvelous Fenix LD 20. It's terrific.
But last February I returned a Kindle 2 [...]
Oh, Bill, I'm so disappointed in you. I love your HBO show, "Real Time with Bill Maher." But last Friday's episode showed me that you've gone bonkers over your obsession with vaccinations.
Which you said usually aren't needed, and are ineffective. However, you're wrong.
Dangerously wrong, as Michael Shermer [...]
Here in western Oregon we don't have afflictions that curse other parts of the country: hurricanes, tornadoes, long bouts of hot humid weather, deep snow, scorching temperatures.
But this time of year the karmic weather account balances out somewhat, because one thing the Willamette Valley does have is leaves.
Billions, trillions, gadzillions' [...]
Just when I thought Regence Blue Cross of Oregon couldn't irritate me further -- after many years of double-digit premium increases, after trying to deny my plan-switch application because of two minor preexisting conditions -- they're now part of an effort to scuttle health care reform.
Deeply irritating. I [...]
We were ready to head to central Oregon last weekend. But the weather report showed cold. And Laurel was getting a cold. The sunny, balmier Oregon coast seemed more appealing.
Good choice.
We had our peanut butter sandwich lunch at Neskowin, north of Lincoln City. The beach [...]
My love affair with the iPhone is still passionate, continually renewed by the marvelous apps that I keep discovering and downloading.
MotionX-GPS Drive came into my iPhone life yesterday. We're getting along great. This is a terrific GPS application that cost me $2.99 -- a far cry dollar-wise from' [...]
I can't understand all the rabid anti-government sentiment from right-wingers in response to the notion of offering people a publicly-run health insurance option.
That's what Medicare is.
And Medicare recipients rate this government program much more highly than users of private insurance rate their plans. A survey found that' [...]
I came to Beer Frisbee late in life -- two days ago, in fact -- but I've been ready for it since intense training during my California college days in the 1960's.
Not by drinking beer, since this substance wasn't cannabis or a psychedelic. Hence...boring!
But by spending countless Flower' [...]
Excellent news. And not wholly unexpected.
I've always wondered if the right-wing crazies like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage have anywhere near the political influence that their over-heated egos claim.
New York Times columnist David Brooks says, "No, they don't" in The Wizard of Beck.
So the [...]
Finally...Obama got his mojo back last night.
Like so many others, I was energized by his health care speech. I even sent $50 off to the Organizing for America folks whose email pitches I've been ignoring, because I've been irritated about how Obama was letting Republicans get away [...]
This morning I noticed a Twitter Tweet from Blue Oregon's uber-progressive, Kari Chisholm, which said in part:
GoDaddy CEO is GOP activist. Try Dotster.com, local (Vancouver WA)
For many years I've used GoDaddy for domain name registration and web site hosting. I've been satisfied with the service, but the GoDaddy style [...]
Perusing the Sunday comics this morning, my wife called out to me. "You're going to like Doonesbury today."
Oh, yes, she was so right. I've copied in the strip below.
As he so often does, Garry Trudeau encapsulated the United States' biggest political and cultural problem in just a few cartoon' [...]
Anguished artist. Or tortured genius?
I'll go with either one, though if I went full-bore with my inner Tortured Genius there's a risk I'd end up doing a Van Gogh and cutting off my ear.
I did just get a haircut, though, so let's look on that gesture as a [...]
I don't think all Republicans are crazy. But most leaders in the Republican party are, when it comes to fixing this country's health care problems.
The insanity has got to stop. For a while it was sort of amusing to see how bizarre the lies could get.
Death panels!
For some (obvious) reason this Twitter tweet by "rawprincess" caught my eye:
14 things oral sex taught me about blogging
http://762ot.th8.us
Pretty true. Check them out.
I liked an addition suggested by a commenter on this post. A lot of blogs and web sites, not to mention talk radio, [...]
Armed with a free entry pass, because I was going to participate in a Tai Chi demonstration, I headed off to the Oregon State Fair this morning on my Burgman scooter. What I found was pleasing variety and a fresh vibe that coexisted nicely with traditional fair offerings.
Here's the photographic [...]
Hopefully the California ground squirrels who have been driving us nutty have an Internet connection and read my blog.
Because if they do, they'll realize that this mild-mannered PETA-applauding animal-loving long-time vegetarian has been driven over the "aren't they cute?" edge into a kill the bastards! dark hole.
Some days I turn up more interesting Internet riches than others. Today was one of those days.
-- San Franciso Chronicle columnist Mark Morford runs hot and cold for me. But his writing style always is entertaining. I loved his tale of visiting a Vegas bar and coming to see [...]
Everyone wants to be known for something. I'm hoping that my new You Tube video, "Dog stalking chipmunk," will become anti-viral. (see video below, after these explanatory remarks)
Meaning, anyone with an adorable cat can make a You Tube production that will garner millions of views. To be' [...]
Now, so far the title of this blog post doesn't find much support on the Internet, judging from a comprehensive two-minute Google search that I just performed.
But I wanted to be one of the first -- heck, maybe the absolute first! -- to point out the undeniable health benefits of' [...]
Being philosophically minded, I wonder whether what are the chances... means what we think it does. A few days ago I met someone who made me exclaim, "No way! This is unbelievable."
But believe it I did, because I was experiencing it. So what are the chances?
Well, after something happens, [...]
There are plenty of outrages in the world for me to be incensed about.
But today I choose to focus my disgust on Oregon's largest newspaper, the Portland Oregonian -- to which we subscribe, though we live in the wilds of rural south Salem.
The past [...]
This doesn't feel right. Like so much else that goes on in the unduly uptight and moralistic United States. Even pleasantly looser Oregon.
The Marion County sheriff, Russ Isham, has admitted to an affair. He also has submitted his resignation.
Why?
The investigation determined that there was substantial evidence to support' [...]
Yesterday I hopped on my beloved Suzuki Burgman scooter and two-wheeled to downtown Salem, wanting to check out the 2009 Summer in the City vibe.
I'd read in the paper that Pepe and the Bottle Blondes were playing on one of the pavilion stages at 2 pm. And' [...]
Being analytically-minded, before deciding on the title to this post I needed to figure out if "mid-life" defined my crisis, since I'm 60.
Ever since I got my Suzuki Burgman 650 Executive scooter, I've been pre-emptively telling people, "Yes, it's an end-of-life crisis purchase. The scooter is either going to" [...]
I'm not a believer, but I still thought "thank God we have a president who's so sane and intelligent" after watching Obama's town hall meeting on health care today.
My laptop brought me every live moment.
Like a LA Times blogger, I was disappointed that some right-wing wacko didn't [...]
Every blogger has to decide how to handle comments on his or her posts. In my case, I've opted for as much openness as possible. But now that I've gotten a rash of crazed commenters on my other blog, I'm having to rethink my approach.
Given that the blog is' [...]
My wife and I love "So You Think You Can Dance." It was sad to see the current show come to an end last night with Jeanine's triumph.
(How does someone 18 dance so well? Partial answer: she started when she was three.)
