Eric's Rant

Brrr ... it's chilly around here.

2009-06-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

I had been thinking about giving up this blog. In fact, I was thinking about dumping the site all together earlier today. Then a friend complained on facebook about HR 2454 and I started looking into what all the fuss was about. Thomas.gov seems to be having issues this evening, so I was unable to find the text of the bill. Every time I tried to find factual information -- you know, someone just telling me what was in the bill -- I kept running into sites that were pushing their point of view (I would never do that! ;)

After reading a few left leaners who felt the bill did not go far enough, I stumbled upon Rush Limbaugh's site where he has the transcript from his show today. I thought, well, I've read a few on the left, let's read what Rush has to say, maybe I can get a few facts.

In the third sentence. He said "This is so unnecessary, there isn't any global warming."

I read it several times to make sure I had read it correctly. "There isn't any global warming."

I thought the only people who still believed that were living in a cave somewhere. Perhaps Rush was trying to be rhetorical. I read on. Here are some excerpts:

There ought to be no Republicans on the fence on this. This is another one of these premises where we say: no you won't. We don't debate it. We don't say, okay, we're going to do global warming legislation. Fine, well, here's our idea. Our idea on global warming legislation is that there isn't any global warming. Sunspot activity is way, way down. I've got a NASA website series of photos to show you from 2000 to 2009 how the sun's activity has slowed down. It is cooling off all over the planet.

There is no global warming. Temperatures have not risen in the last nine years in an appreciable way and this legislation is not going to lower temperatures.

I read about this in a lot of different places today. What I have here is a piece from the Competitive Enterprise Institute which summarizes it pretty well. They are making public an internal study on climate science, which was suppressed by the EPA and Lisa Jackson. "Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration's agenda of regulating carbon dioxide." There's a defector, there's somebody in the EPA who put together a report: Wait a minute, temperatures are not rising. We can't prove that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. He cited evidence from around the country; he cited scientific data. By the way, the consensus on climate science that you've always heard about on global warming, it's falling apart. It's falling apart. Scientists from Australia and two or three other countries have defected from the so-called consensus. That's what this guy's report was about. They told him to shut up. They suppressed his report and they said don't you dare talk about it. They fired him. They said don't you dare talk to anybody about this.

More and more Australian politicians are being convinced now that the human contribution to climate change, global warming, be it cooler or warmer, is something you can't factor. We don't have that kind of power. So as the global warming debate climate is shifting, the backlash has fallen on Australia and Europe and Japan. The consensus has broken down. The scientists and politicians in those countries are taking a second look and saying: Wait a minute, we don't see any evidence here that man's causing any of this, and we don't see any evidence that there's any warming going on.

Now, this is not being reported widely in the United States, but it's happening in Australia and Japan and Europe. It's happening there and the reason it's not being reported here is because, of course, our star is Al Gore and the United Nations. The media goes out and they smear any dissenters. After listing scientists from all over the world who are skeptical of manmade global warming, Kimberley Strassel writes this: "The collapse of the 'consensus' has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon," and they're deciding around the world they don't have the desire and it makes no sense to put even more stress on their economies to reduce carbon when there's no evidence that more carbon is harming anything, bottom line.

There are so many problems here, it's almost hard to know where to begin. There are also a great many digs at Obama, things like Obama is purposely setting out to "destroy the US economy," etc, but I am going to limit this to the climate change issue.

Setting aside for the moment whether or not this bill is good, bad, or indifferent, let's just drill down and talk about climate change. Rush, citing Kimberley Strassel from her op-ed in the Wall Street Journal says that "there isn't any global warming." Strassel in her piece says "The collapse of the 'consensus' has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02."

Neither Rush nor Strassel provide sources for the climate data.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminsitration "seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001." Here is their report on global warming.

Well, maybe the Obama administration had someone there cook the numbers, how about the NASA Goodard Institute for Space Studies: "Calendar year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000"

Whew! We ARE getting cooler! Oh, wait a second ... they also said "In our analysis, 2008 is the ninth warmest year in the period of instrumental measurements, which extends back to 1880...The ten warmest years all occur within the 12-year period 1997-2008."

Shit. Obama got to them too.

Well, let's see what the scientists at the UK Met Office have to say: "...the global mean temperature for 2008 is 14.3 °C, making it the tenth warmest year on a record that dates back to 1850 ... The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Global temperatures for 2000-2008 now stand almost 0.2 °C warmer than the average for the decade 1990–1999."

The conspiracy is global!

Well, I did manage to find one group that claims our current warm years are just part of the cycle ... Harris-Mann Climatology. Here is their cool little graph:

I'd really like to see more on this data. How exactly do you record a temperature centuries after it occurred? Looking at this chart ... shit, we have NOTHING to worry about. I am so relieved.

UPDATE: I did just find this research where they used an ice core dating back to 1250 and were able to extrapolate temperature data from the core data. They found that solar activity can NOT explain the current increase in temperature.

When will prohibition end?

2009-04-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

I was surfing the net recently, looking for some information on craft distilleries here in Oregon and discovered that the OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission) has their own blog! Isn't that lovely. I suppose the OLCC feels it necessary, here in the 21st century, to get their propaganda out to the masses.

For the record, the OLCC was created in 1933, mere days after the end of prohibition to control the distribution and consumption of alcohol in Oregon. Today, if one wants to buy a bottle of liquor, one has to go to one of the state controlled liquor stores. Which is to say that the prices are "fixed." Instead of a tax, we have price fixing to keep our consumption down.

I know that folks have been trying to get rid of the OLCC for a very long time. In view of the recent economic distress in our state, shouldn't the state start trimming unnecessary programs and agencies? We should begin with the OLCC.

Oh sure, there will be the loss of jobs for the 243 state liquor agents (store operators) and their employees, but those same folks can easily get or create jobs at any of the grocery stores that would start selling liquor. Some will argue that the OLCC turns a profit and that eliminating the agency will produce even larger budget deficits, but wouldn't the same profit exist on a liquor tax that would be implemented in lieu of the state "control?" Collecting taxes is far more "profitable" than running your own business. You get the bulk of the profit with little of the expense.

The OLCC would still exist in some form. They would need to maintain enforcement, for example, but it is high time we ended prohibition in this state for good. There is some talk in the legislature of privatizing the OLCC, which is a ridiculous idea. Keep the enforcement and tax collection wings and dump all the rest.

There are a few other blogs that are quite entertaining about the OLCC. Check out Things About Portland that Suck and Liquidity Preference.

No more blogging?

2009-04-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

I am considering ending this blog. That's right. After nearly six years of sporadic posts, I think this little experiment has reached its end. It is not that I don't have anything to write. On the contrary, I think I have more to say now than ever, but this blog is not the place for those expressions.

Since my very first post in 2003, I have been amazed that anyone would read what I wrote, let alone find some value in it, and while I have enjoyed much of what I created here, I rarely drew much pleasure in the finished work. When I write plays or stories, they take on a life of their own and I can stand back and admire them. They exist in and of themselves. I have never felt the same about anything I have written here.

I will take a few more months before I make my final decision. Once I do, however, and if I choose to end this blog, I will take it down entirely. I could let it just sit here, as I have seen other blogs remain in perpetuity unchanged, but know that I would feel better about killing it. I may save the blogs on some disc somewhere, but kilgore.blogspot.com would cease to exist for me.

I will mull this over and sometime this summer make a final decision. If you have strong opinions about it... well, you know what to do.

Why don't you write any more?

2009-03-14T06:36:00.001-07:00

One of the most common questions I get from people I have not communicated with in a while, be it a month, year, or decade is "are you writing?" and I always get this slight pit in my stomach and shift my weight left and right and touch my nose and say in a meek voice "not really," or "no," or "not as much as I should," or "sadly, no, not right now," as if I will be writing soon. Tomorrow, or the next day. It's just around the corner. Then. Then. Yes, I will be writing.

But the sad fact is that, no, I am not writing. There. I've said it. I - am - not -writing.

Well ... I am writing this, you might say. In fact, one might argue that I write more every day on-line than I ever did before the internet, but it is not the same, and I have been asking myself why it is not the same. That question keeps coming back to me. It haunts me.

You see, while I am not writing, I think of writing constantly. It lives within me and my brain is always working on that unfinished novel and that unfinished play. Yeah, that one. You know what I'm talking about. That play that has remained half or one third finished since 1994. And that is roughly how long it has been since I've written much of anything. 15 years. I did write the first draft of a novel four years ago and have been vowing to rewrite it ever since, but aside from that, I have only written one short play during my workshop several years ago and nothing else to speak of. A bad poem maybe.

So I continue to blog now and again, incoherently, and I write email upon email, and update my status on facebook and chat with my friends with whom I've had no contact in years. It's fast. Immediate. Easy. The internet has truly shortened the width of the world. This was never more evident to me than when I had a video call with an old friend who lives in Ireland just a couple of days ago. Only a few months ago I did not know where she was, and now I can see her and talk to her as if I was sitting there with her. Well, almost.

For all of these reasons, and more (like being able to work from home,) I am thankful for the internet, but then I got to thinking, I kept asking, why haven't I been writing? Why did I stop writing in 1994 or 1995? What changed? And there it was, as evident as my last facebook status update: I don't write as much now because I don't write as much.

But, by writing, I mean the physical act of taking pen to paper. Prior to 1993, or thereabouts, I was almost constantly writing letters to one person or another. It was nearly a daily occurrence. And while one can say that I write more every day now, the quality of that writing is wholly different from the writing I used to commit to paper.

While the internet has given way to free, immediate communication, it has also shortened our thoughts: made them less concentrated, less fluid.

In the days when I would write to people with pen and paper, it took time. It was an event. I had to set aside a little time and collect my thoughts, and as I scribbled down my messages, I felt a connection to the person I was writing.

When my letter arrived, part of me arrived along with it. They could see my imperfect penmanship. They could see where I scribbled out words and sentences and wrote over the top of them. They could see my thoughts in a way.

Who doesn't recall the delight of receiving a letter in the mail. Ripping open the envelope and sitting down to take the time to read, or sometimes just standing there in the doorway pouring over the pages, knowing that this person you care for touched this paper. Catching a scent of them. Seeing them in the penmanship.

I remember how I often read a letter again and again. I saved them in a shoebox. I would go back to them. Cherish them.

Oh yes, I have years worth of emails. I could go back to them, and occasionally I do, if there is some bit of information I am searching for ... "Click. Search messages for 'XYZ.' Message found." It's cold and impersonal. It's just data. But searching through old letters takes you back to that very moment because it was isolated. You were not reading that letter while you read ten other letters. The train of thought was not interrupted one hundred times with bits of one hundred other letters. It was self contained and important in that time it took to sit down with a cup of coffee and read.

And so, I find myself longing to write letters with pen and paper. To fold up the pages and stuff them in an envelope. Write out the address. Affix a stamp and walk it to the postage box. I can not recall the last time I did that.

So, if days or months from now you go out to collect your pile of advertisements and bills from the mailbox, don't be surprised if you find a good ol' letter from me, written in my distinct scrawl. Open it up, take some time to read, and maybe you will be moved to pick up a pen and write a letter of your own that takes days to reach its destination. Not all things need to move so quickly in this world. We need to remember that.

Turn off the TV! I'm trying to drive!

2009-03-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it is that I was awakened by the television at 2:30 this morning and was unable to go back to sleep until after 4 -- Becky likes to fall asleep with the TV on, but I would prefer that there be no TV in the bedroom -- Or maybe it was that I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 this afternoon and am hyper-sensitive to TV and Radio taking over our lives, but whatever the case, as I was taking the girls to their choir concert this evening, I found myself transfixed as I entered the freeway by Dora the Explorer dancing happily across the six inch screen in the ceiling of the mini-van in front of me.

At first I was thinking, "Are your children really that short on attention or you so easily distracted that they have to watch Dora during the five minute drive between your house and the grocery store?" And after almost a minute of staring at that tiny little screen in front of me, completely sucked in to the bright colors and cute little dancing monkey, I realized, "MY GOD! I am watching Dora the Explorer in the car in front of me and I am merging onto the freeway! We are all going to DIE"

I am so sick of television right now. We have two TV's in our house, four if you count the two downstairs in my mother-in-law's house. In any given week, I watch approximately three hours and seventeen minutes of TV: 40 minutes each for Survivor and the Amazing Race (although I am usually doing something else during one or both programs, so I am kind of half watching, isn't TiVo grand?) 25 minutes for The United States of Tara, or Californication when it's on, 55 minutes of Bill Maher, and 37 minutes of 60 Minutes ... hmmm, I think I'm getting ripped off on that one. I do also occasionally turn on Charlie Rose while I am working, so let's add on another couple of hours there, and during Cycling season I turn on whatever race is on that Sunday and usually fall asleep after twenty minutes and then wake up just as they are coming in for the bunch sprint, so there's another half an hour, and I suppose we could add a couple hours for the Friday night movie I watch with the children, though I am usually not at all interested and read while they watch and make popcorn etc. So that brings me up to 7 hours and 47 minutes per week in front of one or more of my televisions or just over an hour per day.

The average American apparently watches over 4 hours of television every day! Who the hell has time for that? How exactly do people fit in that much television unless they are watching the TV in the car in front of them?

Damn. I think they need to make those screens bigger so I don't have to tailgate.

Recovery Act of 2009

2009-02-18T00:03:00.000-08:00

When I had a little down time last week, I read through the recovery Act as originally proposed to congress. I was trying to get a handle on what the act was trying to do and why there was resistance to it. I came away with the notion that people were opposed to it on the basis of the large amounts of spending within the bill. There were items that some people were objecting to, but over-all, the act seemed rather straight forward in its aim: to infuse money into our economy through infrastructure improvements, development and research, especially in the area of renewable energy.

One of the provisions I found most interesting was the creation of a web site to track the progress of the spending: www.recovery.gov Last week, the site was just an empty shell, but today there is already a message from President Obama and links to the various areas of spending and tax relief. It will be interesting to watch this over time and see how this money is spent.

This is a marvelous use of the web to create an easily accessible level of transparency to our government. I had to wade through the whole bill, adding up figures on the side to see where the money was going ... this site does that for you.

Day ZERO! Transplant Day!

2009-01-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

Today is the day we have been waiting for. Asher finished chemo on Saturday and will get the Bone Marrow transplant this afternoon. His brother will be going into the O.R. shortly and then it will take about 4 hours to process the marrow.

Asher has done amazingly well so far and we hope that it keeps up.

Chargers at .500 and in the playoffs!

2008-12-29T20:05:00.000-08:00

Over a month ago, I noted that my San Diego Chargers were on their way into obscurity and that, barring a miracle, they would NOT make the playoffs. Well, after yesterday's game, I can now say Miracles happen!

The Denver Broncos have lead the AFC West Division since the first week of the season. In the second week, they hosted the Chargers in their first meeting. With less than a minute to play, the Broncos' Jay Cutler fumbled the ball near the end zone. The ball was recovered by San Diego. Chargers win! Unfortunately referee Ed Houchuli whistled the play dead when the ball hit the ground, thinking it was a forward pass, which it clearly was not, and since he blew the whistle, the play could not be reviewed. The Broncos went on to win by a point, giving the Chargers' their second loss within the final minute of the game in two weeks. From that week, they won only four of their next ten games, and were sitting at 4 and 8 at the beginning of December.

The Bronocs continued to lead the division and were three games ahead of the Chargers at 8 and 5 after the first week of December. All they had to do was win any one of their final three games to win the Division or have the Chargers lose. They lost and the Chargers won, which brought them to the final regular season game last night in San Diego. The Chargers looked quite polished and motivated winning the game handily 51-21. Both teams finished 8 and 8, but because the Chargers had a better division record, they won the division.

The Chargers host the Colts next Saturday. The Broncos go lick their wounds.

While the Chargers played well across the board last night, it was the play of LaDanian Tomlinson that really shined. He has been plagued all season with a toe injury. While he said he was 100% about mid season, he never looked like himself until last night, averaging almost seven yards per carry. Unfortunately, it looks like he pulled a groin muscle late in the game and did not return. Having LT sidelined didn't slow the Chargers down though, as they have one of the most exciting back-ups and special team players to fill-in for him in Darren Sproles (also the shortest player in the league at 5'-6") Sproles is dynamite and is one of the most feared return men in the game. When he runs, it looks like the other players are standing still.

The Chargers also got excellent play from the rookie Jacob Hester and the Quarterback Philip Rivers has played exceptionally well this season, with a league leading 34 touchdown passes and the only QB in the league to finish the season with a passer rating above 100. Rivers season performance broke the long standing Charger record for season touchdown passes set by Oregon's Dan Fouts in 1981. Too bad for Rivers though, he will not be going to the Pro Bowl ... stupid fans!

The Chargers are red hot. If they can somehow tighten their secondary defense and keep LT healthy, they have a legitimate shot. They have always played well against Indianapolis.

Go Chargers!

Good-bye Josh!

2008-12-12T22:55:00.000-08:00

I learned this evening that a friend of mine passed away yesterday. His name was Josh Westhaver. He was a genuine person that cared for everyone around him and the world will be much dimmer without his smile, big laugh and love of life.

You can read more about Josh here.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Bone Marrow transplant!

2008-12-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

As most of you know, we have a five year old foster son with us right now. When he came into our care, at the end of October, all they knew was that his bone marrow was not working right and so it was not producing new blood cells. They did not know why, but had ruled out leukemia or any "abnormality" in his bone marrow.

We have been going for weekly transfusions of platelets and monthly transfusions of red blood cells while they continued to test. They eventually determined that there was no cause so he is labeled Idiopathic Aplastic Anemic. In most cases of Aplastic Anemia, this is the case.

They have tested all of his siblings and we learned yesterday that one of his older brothers is a donor match. There is some preparation to do, but it looks like he will enter the hospital for the transplant around the second week of January.

He will have to undergo chemotherapy to destroy his remaining bone marrow, then about a cup of his brother's bone marrow will be transfused to him. He will remain in the hospital for at least a month after the transfusion for the bone marrow to graft and for him to recover enough to come home, then he will be monitored two or three times a week to make sure he is doing OK.

The good news is that in over 90% of all sibling bone marrow transplants, the transplant is successful. He will make a full recovery and have the same likelihood that any child has of becoming Aplastic Anemic again.

Once he is recovered enough that the Doctors give the OK, he will return to his former foster family and siblings.

Quit yer bitchin'!

2008-12-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

I really did not know my blog was so highly read. I have had a number of people complain to me lately that it has been a WHOLE month since I've blogged anything. Mea Culpa! Mea Culpa! Mea Maxima Culpa! But honestly, don't you all have something to do? If you haven't heard, I am a little busy right now!

Since I am sitting here at Doernbecher, waiting for Asher's transfusion to complete, and have a few minutes, let me write a little something about my year of Cormac McCarthy.

I am a few pages away from finishing McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

A year ago I read my first McCarthy novel, The Road (a soon to be released movie.) I was so taken with that book, and No Country for Old Men, that I have spent the whole year reading all of McCarthy's work.

I read his Border Trilogy, his play and novel in dramatic form, as well as all of his other novels (with the exception of Suttree, which I may or may not read.) It is an interesting thing to read all of a writer's work, one after the other. You get to know their themes, rhythms of language, and world views. There were several times, as I read these last few novels, where I knew what words he would use next, even though these novels were written before the others I had read.

McCarthy's writing is dense, intense and often brutal. There is a high level of violence in his work and blood letting is common. I wish I could say that I enjoyed all of the work, but there were times that I felt disconnected from the text, particularly in this last novel, Blood Meridian. It is a rather impersonal text and the violence so prevalent and disturbing that I took little pleasure in it. The final third of the novel has been engaging, but I feel like I have been reading this book forever, which is why I think I am done with McCarthy, for the moment. I will certainly read future novels, as I think his recent work has been exceptional, but I see no need to go back to the novel I missed. Instead, it is on to the next writer ...

A great day!

2008-11-05T07:32:00.000-08:00

Like many Obama supporters, I was quite nervous heading into yesterday's election. While I looked at polls almost daily for the past several months, and saw that Obama was suppose to win by a large margin, I kept thinking that it would all somehow come unhinged at the last minute.

Early in the afternoon we started watching the coverage. There were very few surprises early on. Shortly after 6pm PST, I had to take Hailey to her gymnastics class. We listened to the radio all the way, and just before we reached the gym, NPR announced that Obama had won Ohio.

I started screaming and beating the steering wheel because I knew then that he would win big. It wasn't until 8pm that the election was called, just as Hailey's class was letting out, and we whooped and hollered all the way home, listening first to Senator McCain's concession speech and then watching Barack Obama's acceptance speech once we got home.

To say that our house is proud today, to say that we are excited, does not fully measure our spirits. As the girls got on the bus this morning, I felt that truly, anything is possible in this country and their future looks far brighter than I ever thought it might be.

Sarah getting a prank phone call ...

2008-11-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

One wonders how on earth this call ever got through ...

The last two days ...

2008-11-02T15:16:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across this article on the Christian Science Monitor web site. The title of the article is My wife made me canvas for Obama. Jonathan Curley, the author, a conservative, middle-aged white man says of his experience:

I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.

Things a five year old boy can do while receiving a blood transfusion:

2008-10-29T08:27:00.001-07:00

I spent yesterday with Asher at the hospital. He needed a red blood cell transfusion which takes about three and a half to four hours. Here are some of the things he did while hooked up to his blood.

Watched Spongebob Square Pants

Used his light saber in the courtyard to defeat many evil benches

Used dinosaurs to storm a castle

Created his own cars from blocks with snaps on the sides

Made me follow him around, pushing his IV stand, so he could drive his car

Used his mobile IV stand as a skate board. (He was really fond of crashing into things with it)

Use the restroom with no assistance, although he did pull the emergency cord and shouted "I need help!" When asked what help he needed, he replied "What does this cord do?"

Created all kinds of bridges with colored blocks and then destroyed them all

Ate several snacks, lunch, ice cream and pudding

Ignored the nurse when she flushed his IV

What can you do when you have an IV stuck in your hand?

It's Twins!

2008-10-23T14:45:00.001-07:00

We have been patiently waiting for news of our first foster child placement for almost two months now. A couple days ago, Becky got an email from our certifier saying that all was fine, they just hadn't had any school-age boys come into the system. Within hours of that email, that self-same certifier called me to say they have a boy who needs a placement in the metro area.

I can't go into all the details here, but this boy needs to be seen regularly at a local hospital and since he is currently placed more than a hundred miles away, they want to move him in here. He also has a twin brother and they want to bring him along so they aren't separated during this time.

Everything is still in flux, but it looks like we will have both of them by early next week.

UPDATE: Now it appears that only the one will be coming next week! Depending on how long his treatment lasts, they will reassess the need to send his twin. As our certifier put it, "we are consistently inconsistent." Bureaucracy at work.

It's in God's hands.

2008-10-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

In an interview with James Dobson, Palin had this to say:

"To me, it motivates us, makes us work that much harder, and it also strengthens my faith, because I'm going to know, at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4. So I'm not discouraged at all."

There are a couple of inherent questions in this:

Does God find it necessary to intervene in the US political process?

Does she believe that God is on her side?

If her side loses, will she praise God and willingly follow the Obama administration?

What the mayor of Wasilla does ...

2008-10-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

This is perhaps the biggest indictment of Palin's qualifications I have seen.

Socialism! Eeeeeeeeek!

2008-10-21T07:43:00.001-07:00

There is something evil lurking in the shadows of America. There is a dreadful specter about to cast itself over this, the greatest capitalistic nation in the world. There is a force more dangerous than any terrorist activity on our soil. It is coming soon to rip out our very life blood, to take from us the very essence of America and cast us into the dark ages. It is not Freddy Kruger. It is not Halloween. It is not Osama bin Laden ... it is SOCIALISM! Run for your lives!

so·cial·ism (sō'shə-lĭz'əm)
n.

1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Just when you thought it was safe to go shopping, just when you thought you would never have to pay taxes, along comes Barack Obama with his cosmopolitan European swagger and the Communist Manifesto tucked under his arm! Ronald Reagan save us!

Wait! The election is not until November 4th! There is still time!

Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson has started allocating $700 billion dollars of government money into private finance companies!

Last week, $125 billion dollars of government money was forced on the nine largest private banks, making the US government a stakeholder in each of the companies.

John McCain wants to use $300 billion dollars of tax payers' money (including Joe the Plumber -- should he ever pay his taxes) to refinance the mortgages of citizens who are at risk of losing their homes due to predatory lending, sub-prime loans, and speculative home buyers who bought just before the bubble burst.

Thank you America for NOT venturing down that ugly path toward socialism!

The perception of Palin

2008-10-21T04:44:00.000-07:00

I was looking over the latest Washington Post - ABC poll, conducted over the weekend. The numbers have been pretty stable across the board for the past couple of weeks. McCain gained a point here and there, but there was one question that jumped out at me:

13. (ASKED OF LIKELY VOTERS, 10/16-18) Regardless of your vote preference, does McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate make you more confident or less confident in the kind of decisions McCain would make as president?

date More confident Less confident No effect No opinion

10/18/08 38 52 8 2

9/7/08 50 39 6 4

9/4/08 43 39 14 4

In just over a month, since this question was first asked, there has been a complete 180. Voters appear to be extremely nervous about Palin and I don't think her appearance on SNL last week has helped her at all.

On a side-note, everyone was aware of McCain's cancellation of his appearance on David Letterman. Less publicized was his cancellation of an appearance on Larry King which he pulled during the Republican convention because his spokesman, Tucker Bounds was raked over the coals one evening by a CNN reporter.

Larry King, last night also mentioned that John McCain had promised to come on his show with Sarah Palin, but I suppose if he later cancelled his own appearance, there is no way Palin will be on either.

With only two weeks to go, there is still a possibility that Sarah Palin could be the first Vice President of the modern era to hold her first press conference AFTER being elected. Given her poor performance in her limited interviews with Couric and Gibson, I don't suppose there is ANY chance they will allow her to speak freely to the press ... hmmm, that sounds a lot like someone else I know in high public office that has trouble forming complete sentences ...

Re-elect Gordon Smith

2008-10-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

A year ago I thought Gordon Smith would cruise to a third term as our Junior senator, but now he finds himself in a dead-heat with Jeff Merkley. The backlash against President Bush and the republicans appears to be hurting Smith in a significant way, and that is unfortunate. He should be re-elected for a third term.

While I tend to vote Democratic, I will vote for whomever I believe best represents my interests and the interests of Oregon. Smith has done so, and, I believe, will continue to serve our state well. I may not agree with Smith on some issues, but he serves with humility and candor and is not afraid to buck his own party and vote with an independent spirit.

Oregon is an odd state. We have a vibrant urban center along the I-5 corridor that is dense in population and liberal nature, but most of the state is rural and mostly conservative. Gordon Smith represents the interests of rural Oregon very well. In spite of Jeff Merkley's ties to rural Oregon, having been born in Mrytle Creek, he lives in Multnomah County now and holds views that are in-line with the urban part of the state. If push came to shove, one might argue that my personal interests are more in-line with Merkley, particularly on the issue of abortion, but it is Smith that offers our whole state better representation.

Over the years, I have written all of our congressional representatives on various issues. I have always received a clear response from senator Smith's office and from representative Blumenauer's office. Responses from Ron Wyden's office have been less consistent. Gordon Smith has worked well in the senate and provides an excellent companion to Ron Wyden. Smith has done nothing in office that gives me reason to vote against him and I see no reason not to return him to this office.

I have been volunteering for the Obama campaign for some time now, and have been troubled by recent gatherings that have also asked us to make calls for Merkley. It has further troubled me that Democrats that have demonstrated judgment and articulation on their reasoning for voting for Obama, fall into partisan talking points when citing why they want Merkley in the senate.

Gordon Smith has and will continue to represent our state in an independent and thoughtful way. Return him to the senate on November 4th.

The truth about "voter fraud."

2008-10-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

John McCain is trying a new tactic in his desperate attempt to win the presidency: imply that Obama is engaging in voter fraud.

The McCain campaign has been vilifying ACORN and says that Barack Obama is tied to the organization. The McCain campaign says that ACORN is engaged in voter fraud. While it is true that some ACORN personnel have submitted erroneous voter registration cards across the country, there is no evidence that "voter fraud" has occured. In fact, since the bogus registrations have been caught, it appears that the possibiblity for actual fraud has been averted.

The local ACORN organizers should be ashamed and prosecuted for submitting illegal registrations, but there is no evidence that they were attempting to submit actual votes with these fake registrations.

In Oregon, policy makers that wanted to submit a ballot measure used to pay people to gather signatures. They were paid per signature, and, big surprise, many illegal signatures were submitted. The state has since done away with this practice and the problem has gone away.

ACORN's policy of paying their workers per signature on voter registrations is the cause of these attempted illegal registrations. These workers wanted more money and saw a way to get it. There is no evidence that these workers were attempting to cast ballots with these registrations and therefore no "voter fraud" occured.

John McCain's disdain for ACORN is surprising, since as recently as March of 2006, he was the keynote speaker at an ACORN sponsored rally in Florida.

But ACORN is not the problem. ACORN's objectives and goals are laudable. It's is their means that need to be addressed. As long as they pay people to gather registrations, this will continue. I would like to see one example where such a registration was actually used to cast a vote.

The Republican party has been making false claims of voter fraud for many years now. Anyone remember Alberto Gonzalez? Yeah, that fellow who fired eight US attorneys because they refused to bring up charges of "voter fraud" against Democrats after the 2004 election? Those attorneys did investigate the claims of voter fraud, but found no credible evidence that fraud was ever committed.

Nice typo!

2008-10-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

I would like to believe this was an honest typographical error ... but I really don't think so, and I don't think this is the only such error we will see in this election.

As the wheels come off ... the true nature shows.

2008-10-08T10:28:00.000-07:00

As the reality of this election catches up with the McCain campaign--simply that they are losing--their true colors have begun to shine through. From the governor of Alaska inciting fear and hatred, to the senior senator from Arizona calling his colleague "that one" in last night's debate, it has become increasingly clear that the McCain campaign will do or say nearly anything to try and find some footing.

I belong to "Oregonian's for Obama," an email list group that exchanges thoughts and ideas about Obama and sometimes lively debate about issues. Sometime this morning, a user, identified only by his email address "41390@msn.com" and the name "Jason" began posting a diatribe about how he was an Obama supporter since before the primaries, how he made hundreds of phone calls, donated money, etc. etc. but has slowly lost faith in Obama and now can not support Obama for reasons that are all lies.

It may have been one thing if he had posted this and let it be, but he has replied to EVERY message sent out with the same message over and over and over again, even after being asked to cease.

Is this the kind of bipartisanship McCain utilizes? Is this a productive way to help this country out of its current mess? Just one more reason NOT to support the McCain ticket.

Feel free to email 41390@msn.com to let him know how you feel.

The tilting electoral map ...

2008-10-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

Here is another electoral map that uses a trend estimate with the polls it receives to calculate the likely results. This may be more accurate than the other map, as it looks back over time at the gap between the candidates. It has continued to lean toward Obama in the past several weeks and today it shifted decidedly to Obama because he now leads in Florida and Colorado. Obama also has slight leads in Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina. Apparently McCain's desperate personal attacks are not working. McCain might have had more success had he been talking about exactly how he is going to fix the economy ...

date	More confident	Less confident	No effect	No opinion
10/18/08	38	52	8	2
9/7/08	50	39	6	4
9/4/08	43	39	14	4