Today in bad news...

This is the digital front page of the Oregonian newspaper's online service "Oregonlive" on December 5, 2023:

Note that the headline story, is a murder/suicide in Vancouver, Washington.

"Below the fold" are three more crime stories; two weapons crimes and a kidnapping, Under the "Latest" banner on the left? two sports pieces, two letters to the editor, a medical story about hot flashes, Miss Manners, a business piece on airline mergers, and the "top 25 Wikipedia pages of 2023."

Here's the front page from the on-line version of one of Portland's two weeklies, the Portland Mercury, on the same day.

Headline story?

The recently-ended teacher's strike and the funding problems it exposed.

Perhaps just as infuriating as the political situation in the 2023 United States is the condition of the public press, and this is a perfect little snapshot of why our First Amendment heroes are such an ungodly shitshow.

The teacher's strike was the ultimate "local news" story; a critical event that stemmed from even more critical public policy failures, and which in turn exposed even more problems and failures running from the individual schools through the city all the way to the statehouse in Salem.

If you get your news from Oregon's only daily public newspaper you have no idea that happened, or how it happened, or why. You'd have no real idea of the political and fiscal issues behind it, or exposed by it. 

You'd sure as fuck know about some rando who killed himself and his family, though, wouldn'tcha?

Blow this up to NBC and CNN and the NY Times and the Washington Post?

And there you have it; one, perhaps THE, massive factor in how fucked we are, from our Gilded Age economy to the fact that an unhinged orange moron is within a whisper of the highest elected office in the nation.

A true democratic republic requires that active, informed participation of the bulk of its citizens. It's not enough for them to just vote; they need to know and understand what their votes are doing, and how.

That's why the "free press" is the first amendment, not the tenth. Because without knowledge and understanding those votes are anything from useless to actively harmful, the sort of votes that brought the original Nazis a plurality in the Reichstag of 1933.

But it's not enough to be "free" if all that means is "free to print idiotic "human interest" and fire-and-murder stories". That kind of "free" just makes you stupider; less knowledgeable and informed only about trivia that makes you more frightened and more angry.

No wonder the average person thinks that crime is out of control, that the economy is awful, that things were "better" under Daddy Trump. Small wonder nobody is willing to do anything to repeal the idiotic "kicker" tax giveaway to help solve our public school problems.

Who's going to help them learn that?

I'm a monstrously literate guy with a passion for history and politics and an obsessive fascination with tracking down sources. I'm probably something like 0.0001% of the US public.

The rest of the country has to depend on the people like who run the Oregonlive website for their knowledge and understanding, and what they get is fucking murderous randos on Page One.

No wonder WASSSSSSSSSSF.

Portland Cops are crap, Part the Infinity (Proud Boys Edition)

 They knew who killed this guy.

They just didn't give a shit because he wouldn't suck up to their blue asses and his murderer would.

Another day in the "Portland Police Bureau is a wretched hive of scum and villainy much like a huge proportion of U.S. police agencies" life.

And because they're crap to people We don't much care about - the queer, the dark, the young, the troubled and homeless - we're pretty much okay with that.

Which is why they can continue to be crap and not have to bother even pretending to be better.

Tarnished franchise

I voted in this election a week ago.

And, no, Rush, I didn't pull some sort of vote-fraud trick. Oregon elections are now done almost exclusively by mail. I don't think I've gone to an actual physical polling place for years. The ballot shows up, you spread it out on the kitchen table, scratch your head with the eraser end and you fill in the little ovals, then stuff it in the envelope and stick the stamp on (you think the State of Oregon is gonna pay for the postage? Shame on you, you tax-and-spend liberal, you) and you've exercised the franchise. You don't get the little sticker, but nothing comes without a price.

This year's ballot was notably free of freaks and whackos (unlike last year's special election where the idiot factor went to eleven). And, as always, there was no real "race" in any sense of the word. The Oregon Republicans are an utter shitshow; in thrall like the rest of their party to the Teatards and Christopaths in a state where oligarchic fucktardry and bible-belting are about as popular as the clap. Outside of the unpaved parts where the Morlocks clutch their Rugers and their Bibles it's a blue, blue Oregon, so I never feel like my vote really counts for much.

Another grain of sand on the beach, maybe. At least I voted against the piss-poor anti-GMO measure.

Thninking about this election perhaps the most depressing part of this entire electoral season here in the Beaver State has been the Strange Tale of Monica Wehby.

The linked article does a good job of detailing how this woman's candidacy - which, given her vita, should have been a strong one - fell apart. She seems like she had some real personal flaws that her party should have picked up on. But they're a shitshow, remember? So, yeah.

That's not the depressing thing. Here's the depressing thing; Wehby's stand on the "issues".

They are, per her website and in order:

"Jobs" - which are, apparently, a problem but not a problem because of the rapacity of financiers and rentiers, regulatory and fiscal policies that favor capital flight, offshoring, and outsourcing but because of "...needless red tape, mindless regulation, tax increases...top-down, government bureaucracy...and mandates that come out of Washington D.C." Republican, right? Plutocracy, good! Regulation, bad! To grok these gomers you gotta think like a damn third grader.

But that's the good part. Things go downhill from here.

"Term Limits" - since the best solution to a Congress that has largely either given away its authority or is paralyzed by Dr. Wehby's party's insistence that no government is better than letting the Kenyan Usurper actually govern is to ensure that the Congress is packed with political neophytes. Can't see how that'll go wrong.

"Guns" - This one is actually labelled "Constitution/2nd Amendment" but since the only specific part of the document specified is the one about the bullet-launchers I thought I'd just correct the header to reflect what this is supposed to say to the guntards.

"Health Care" - because our emergency rooms are SO Awesum, we don't need no Obamacare negro welfare handout!

Yeah, the actual text that's in there is different, but the actual text is so bizarrely freaking meaningless that it might as well be written in cuneiform. Here's the good doctor's position on "health care":

"Monica was a prominent opponent of the ACA in 2009, when Obamacare was rolling down the legislative track. She was enlisted to be in a television commercial that ran nationwide, warning people about the dangers of that bill. Monica got a lot of hate mail for that ad campaign and had to change her home phone number, but her warnings have come to pass."

Try and figure out what the fuck that means, if you dare. You note the lack of actual ideas on, you know, "health care"? Yeah, me, too. Basically it seems to mean that "Doctor" Wehby's position on "health care" is the GOP bog-standard issue; if you have no insurance, don't get sick. If you do get sick, die quickly.

I can't make anthing else out of that hot mess. Moving on...

"Veterans" - are SO Awesum! SO Awesum that Dr. Wehby will put the "needs and care" of these "brave men and women front and center". Absolutely, positively no kidding but did she mention that not to the point of unbalancing the budget (see below). Sorry, Joe, sorry, Molly, we have to "live within out means". Because...Greece!

"Balanced Budget" - because "(i)f we don’t do something to end this fiscal insanity our entire country will end up like Greece or Detroit!" Never mind that neither one has any similarity to the federal government (which this person is supposedly wanting to get involved in running) in that in the EU Greece doesn't control its financial destiny and neither does Detroit in the US...unlike the, you know, actual US.

More GOP nonsense, like comparing the US government - that can change its income by law - with a "household" where trying that with your employer would get you, like, fired. This is third-grader economics and the second-worst zombie idea in fiscal policy but beloved of GOP rank-and-filers so, there.

"Education" - abolish the Department of Education! Again, there's a bunch of other goofy verbiage, but Doc Wehby pretty much just wants to complain about the Feds getting all up in the grille of local schools telling them that they have to educate those damn negroes an' retards an' stuff. Oh, and Common Core!

"Foreign Policy" - Big Stick.

Seriously; Doc Wehby quotes Teddy as a way of saying that our troops are So Awesum! that we need to throw them large amounts of taxpayer cash. That's it; we're not even talking third-grade level here, we're down somewhere in the preschool years or on the backside of the planet Mongo or something. Based on this the woman needs to be kept away from anything even faintly resembling foreign policy, or foreign food, for that matter. What the hell she'd do with falafel is a horrifying thought.

"Natural Resources" - drill, baby, drill!

Again, the cuneiform reads

"We know how to strike the proper balance between meeting both our economic needs and our environmental responsibilities. But for some time, however, the natural resource policies coming out of Washington have been seriously out of balance and the result has been tragic for the state we love."

but you know as well as I do that for a Republican the "out of balance natural resource policies" that have been "coming out of Washington" are the ones that keep you and me from clearcutting the damn trees and damming the damn rivers and, shit, man, God gave us the fucking stewardship of Mother Earth and what the hell good is "stewardship" if you can't bend ol' Mom over when you're feelin' frisky and sink some shaft into that hot, gooey, natural resource-y goodness, amirite?

And that's it. That's all our supposed-Republican-Senator will do if we send her to D.C.; cut the funding for everything but aircraft carriers and petroleum subsidies and make sure that your basement arsenal is safe from the BATF.

Any concern about the going-to-hell condition of Oregon's highways and public buildings? Any interest in figuring out how Oregon's rural counties manage to stay in business? Any mention of Senatorial responsibility for keeping the nation out of fucking land wars in Asia? Or any other foreign affair other than hitting dusky heathens with a Big Stick?

Not just no but fuck no.

Of course not; the woman is a general-issue Republican. She could no more stake out a thoughtful position on things like taxation, inequality, public policy, foreign affairs, and social issues than she could show up at the New Century Club naked and do the haka.

This candidate's policy positions should have made her untouchable outside the lunatic Bircher Right and a handful of Oregon plutocrats. Given what she says she believes in she should legitimately get no more than, say, 12-15% of the vote - 20% at the very absolute outside, the same level of support that the really off-the-wall nutbar got last November.

But she won't. I'll bet you right now that she'll get damn near 45% of the popular vote; nearly half. The looney and filthy-rich 20%...and another damn-near-quarter of Oregonians who should know better than to vote for this lunatic Bircher.

Tomorrow we'll see if I'm right, but that means that damn near a quarter of adult Oregonians who should know better will have voted someone whose published beliefs would make their lives harder, meaner, and more chancy.

Mind you, it could be worse.

Hell, it IS worse - in Iowa the idiots there are going to elect a moron pig-deballer who believes that the UN wants to take away our golf courses and the climate change is a scam to make us wear sweaters.

Seriously. And that is the state of our nation circa 2014 where the best lack all conviction, while the worst are fucking bull-goose-looney whackadoodle nutbars who have not just their own opinions but their own facts. Even in Oregon, where the worst are among the best of the worst, they're still the worst.

And so many of Us the People insist on trying to make them our Masters.

We. Are. SO. Fucked.

Planet of the Apes.

My friend Labrys is ruminating on Pascal's Wager:

"Blaise Pascal made it famous…that bet on God; but he could never have conceived of the takers of that bet trashing everything in the here and now. His idea was that belief could not hurt….but acting as if an entire planet and anyone not agreeing with your belief is disposable? Even Pascal would have skipped THAT gamble! I walked away from dogmas that dismiss the world and ALL its people. But yes, I do believe it is the duty of love to fight FOR that world….and as pagans in daily life and action, both mundane and magical. And I would suggest that it is the invisible, the unseen attitudes and fear, that must change before the visible can be altered."

While I agree that eighty-sixing the notion that there's a magical Sky Daddy that has the power to take the worst of your crimes and "forgive" them

(and I should note that almost ALL religions add a little kicker about "go forth and sin no more" which is almost always ignored - the religious Get Out Of Jail Free card always seems to be used to allow the sinner to continue to, if not actually recommit the sin, to bloviate about his or her speshul snowflakery with regard to how the beam in their eye doesn't require them to be shutting the piehole about the mote in yours, especially if you are poor, or an uppity woman, or a negro wearing your pants down around the bottom of your ass, or a "taker", or...)

would be a good idea I'm not sure I agree that it would do much to mitigate the fairly amazing rate at which we're fucking up the only planet that will take us or the lives of our fellow humans.

Thing is, I'm afraid that the problem is as much to do with what we are as what we "believe".

And, basically, that's a sort of jumped up nasty little hairless monkey.

Us hairless monkeys still act like we're pretty much hardwired for monkey-thought: Grab the food, as much as I can, as quick as I can, ALL of it if I can. If there's a hole (or a pole) jump on it. Other-monkeys-are-scary. When in doubt, scream, jump around and fling poop.

That worked fine when were were just another omnivore trying to get by on the Serengti.

Hey, it's hard out there for a chimp.

But give us planet-cracking technology and the ability to change everything from weather to our own bodies?

We'll tend to use it, and not like gods or heroes, but like the gibbering little monkeys we still are above the neck.

I think the genius of the GOP (and the bible-humpers) has been to take this sort of monkey business - that (at least since the Enlightenment and/or the scientific revolution that accompanied it) we are supposed to be ashamed of and trying to suppress - and pull it out into the daylight, celebrate it, and make it acceptable.

Selfish? Greedy? It's OK - Ayn Rand says so! Hate the poors, uppity wimmens, gays, liberal poofies nagging you about being narrowminded, greedy, spiteful shitheads? Wonderful! Awesome! God says you SHOULD! Convinced that Big Gummint will take your FREEDOM but that Big Corporatism is FREEDOM? You're exactly right, my friend because...FREEDOM!

Not surprisingly, this appeal to the worst sorts of monkey-fuckery in human nature has won them the approval of...wait for it...narrowminded, greedy, spiteful shitheaded monkeyfucks.

Which still comprise a surprisingly large portion of humanity (if you're surprised that humans are like the meanest fucking chimp in the woods and not more like cheerful bonobos actually-fucking their cares away).

So while I agree that ditching religion and the nasty habits it reinforces wouldn't hurt, I'd still be surprised if that did much to make humanity better at long-term, humanist, sensible thinking.

The Inner Chimp will always tend make us reach for the poop first and think later.

Pegging the Moron Meter

Yesterday we finished voting in our "special election" in northwest Oregon.

I've been following this little treasure mostly as a way of checking on the credulity and stupidity level of voters in the Portland metro area, and the final readings of the Moron Meter are now in.

First, on the issue of fluoridation of Portland's water supply, a bizarre coalition of looney Left and looney Right defeated fluoridation because...well, because fluoride isn't natural. God alone knows what these people - about 85,000 of them, by the way - think about pasteurization, immunization, the Germ Theory of disease, and quantum mechanics.

At least we're safe from those goddamn polio monkey serums.

I should note in passing that there are about 446,000 registered voters in Multnomah County, Oregon. And this election was, like almost all elections in Oregon now, done by mail. You didn't have to devote any time or effort to it. You opened the envelope, filled in the little ovals on the form, stuffed the thing back in another envelope and shoved it in the mailbox.

Only about 36% of the electorate - about 160,000 people - even bothered.

But aside from the usual non-interest in the election the real red light on my Moron Meter was pegged to these two guys:

First was a gomer named Lasswell who was running for a position on the Multnomah Educational Service District. Leaving aside the actual role of and value of the MESD, the part that caught me about this guy's ad in the Voter's Pamphlet was is complete and utter incompetence for anything relating to education or any other sort of political administration, for that matter.

The giveaway was his observation about how he was gonna do to the MESD what he'd done in the city of Anfal when he was a'servin' of his Country in Iraq. Because, as we all know, an impoverished Third World city rife with sectarian strife in a former Ottoman province now devastated by war is exactly the political equivalent of the Multnomah Educational Service District.

This goop got 25% of the vote.

Got that? This means that of the some 93,000 people in Multnomah County engaged and motivated enough in the political process to register AND to actually vote in this contest, one in four - 23,382 theoretically-sane individuals - were equally unable to make the same distinction Lasswell could not, between a smashed city in a Muslim state in the Third World and the educational administration of a mid-size American city.

One in four, people. One in four.

But wait; it gets worse.

This goof, name of Morrison, a genuine full-on, rubber-room, unapologetically whackadoodle bull-goose looney whose only issue as a reason for running for Portland Public School board was because WiFi makes your brain all funny (and I tend to agree that someone's brain was all funny here but not that WiFi had anything to do with that) got 18.7 percent of the ballots cast.

Almost 19 percent. Of the people who are probably in the uppermost quintile of engaged and politically aware and socially motivated citizens in the People's Republic of Portland. Nearly one in five. 12,165 people - more than were in the crowd attending that Thorns match I went to watch Sunday.

Voted for a complete and utter tinfoil-hat-grade lunatic.

You can say that, well, fine; the "process worked". The loonies lost.

But think; these are people who shouldn't have gotten anyone's vote. Lasswell, yeah, okay, maybe a handful of people who liked the idea that he was an ex-GI. But Morrison? For fuck's sake, people, the man is certifiable. Around the bend. Ripe for a canvas sportjacket with wraparound sleeves. And yet more than twelve thousand of you fuckers voted for him!

And then you complain about how we can't have nice things.

This is why, people. This is fucking why.

Because a critical minority of you will vote for absolutely goddamn anything no matter how idiotic.

Think about it; if almost one out of five of the most well-informed, motivated, and civically-engaged people in a nationally-known hotbed of social progressivism and intellectual liberalism will vote for a lunatic who is mumbling about electrical radiation melting his brain what the hell is going on out there in places where they think people like Limbaugh, Imhofe, Palin, and Bachmann have a functioning cerebrum?

Jesus wept.

We Are So, so, so, SO Fucked.

So he picks up his bowling ball and puts it in the sink...

Gee. I can't imagine how anything connected with this slice of genius pie could possibly go wrong in any way.



What the hell is the matter with the New York Times, giving this moron space on the editorial page?

"China’s role in a potential war on the Korean Peninsula is hard to predict." Gee, we can't figure out which way the large Asian nuclear superpower will react to an aggressive act of war on our part...so let's bomb some of their allies' shit and see what happens?



What sort of goddamn fool thinks that way? Wait, wait...I already know - the sort that thinks that invading a crapped out ethnically chaotic former Ottoman Empire Third World kleptocracy will result in candy and flowers?

Haven't we seen what happens when you listen to that sort of mouthbreather?



"This is the kind of pre-emptive action that would save lives and maybe even preserve the uneasy peace on the Korean Peninsula." Because we've seen how well bombing things without a sensible geopolitical plan for dealing with the fallout and blowback works in places like Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan?



Why, why, WHY can't we have a better press corps?

And UT-Austin...WTF, guys? You PAY this moron? For teaching this kind of stuff? And yet I couldn't get on full-time at the local community college?

Christ, UT, for the money this guy makes I promise - seriously, no shit - I could at least produce something smarter than this. I'll bet there are Aggies who could, too.

Aggies, guys. Fucking Aggies.



Just sayin'.