HinesSight

Oregonians in Action still up to its old deceptive tricks

Having failed to achieve the asphaltization of Oregon through Measure 37, now that Measure 49 has been approved by an overwhelming majority of voters, Oregonians in Action is up to new deceptions.

And, not coincidentally, fund-raising.

Someone who knows that my wife and I are interested in water issues sent us a June 13, 2008 mailing from OIA. It's filled with Dave Hunnicutt's usual over-the-top hyperbole.

Last year I wrote about the lies Oregonians in Action was telling about Measure 49. So it isn't a big surprise that OIA is spewing half-truths and untruths about a couple of well-related bills that were drafted for the 2007 state legislature.

The bills, HB 2564 and HB 2566, addressed real problems. We live on ten rural acres and have a well. Everyone in our neighborhood does.

We've heard the horror stories, lots of them. Wells that were fine for decades until nearby over-development sucked them dry. Deepening is expensive. Sometimes saline water is reached. It takes a lot of time and trouble to prove that a newly dug neighboring well is the cause of your problem.

But in the fund-raising letter, OIA denies that there's any problem with residential wells in Oregon. The first lines set the deceptive tone.

Here we go again! The Oregon Legislature is preparing another assault on rural property owners in the 2009 legislative session. But this time, the legislature is taking a different tack. Instead of focusing on your property rights, the legislature is considering taking away your water rights!

Two exclamation points and a bunch of boldface type in the initial three sentences. That's the OIA style. Spread the B.S. strong and deep, the truth be damned.

HB 2564 would require that meters be installed on new wells, not old ones (though the Water Resources Commission would have the authority to do this – unlikely as it would be). Yet OIA says:

And don't be fooled into thinking that House Bill 2564 only applied to new water uses. That's wrong – House Bill 2564 applied to every Oregon family who gets water from a well.

No, Mr. Hunnicutt, you're wrong. At least, it sure seems that way from my reading of the bill. Again, HB 2564 only lays out the possibility of existing wells being required to have a meter. So it's false to say that it applies to all wells.

Here's a more blatant lie.

Why did the Legislature want to put a meter on your well? So they could tax you for your water and tell you how much water you can use!

More Hunnicutt fancifulness. The guy has a great imagination. Especially when he's out to raise money for Oregonians in Action by scaring people. Tax water? Show me the evidence, Dave.

And you'd think that the attorneys at OIA would realize that Oregon law already tells residential well users how much water they can use: 15,000 gallons per day. Meters would simply document whether this amount is being exceeded.

Plus, the words "your water" point to another untruth. The water under your land isn't yours. It belongs to the state of Oregon. That's a fact:

In 1909, the citizens of Oregon authorized the state government to manage the allocation of surface water. In 1995, the Oregon Legislature added ground water management. Under these laws (the "Oregon Water Code") all surface and ground water belongs to the public. It is the job of the Water Resources Department to manage this water for the protection of existing water uses, the environment, and future needs. The Department works to ensure a sufficient supply to meet the needs of Oregon´s growing economy and quality of life.

How different truth, like the paragraph above, sounds in comparison to Oregonians in Action verbiage. Here's another examples of lies in Hunnicutt's letter.

But the environmental extremists have decided that it is bad to allow people to live and work in rural areas, so last session, they convinced the legislature to introduce House Bill 2566.

This bill would require a permit before a residential well could be dug. Just like you have to get a septic permit, or a driveway permit, or a construction permit, before you build a rural home. Gosh, what a non-invasion of liberty.

I'll end with one of the few bits of unvarnished truth in the OIA letter.

That is why I am asking you to make a contribution of $1,000, $500, $250, $100, $50, or $25 to Oregonians in Action.

Barack up. Lars down. A good day.

This was a good way to start the first weekend of summer.

First, my political soul, rubbed raw by seven plus years of brushing up against Bushian irritations, was soothed with the balm of fall election anticipation.

My visit to the intriguing FiveThirtyEight site (that's the number of electors in the electoral college) was spurred by a Newsweek article about its founder, Nate Silver, a baseball statistics geek.

Having honed his skills in successfully predicting baseball outcomes, Silver has turned his attention to politics.

Currently he's projecting that Obama will win 334 of those 538 electoral votes. The betting line is 74% for an Obama win, a 26% chance for McCain. Popular vote: 5% Obama margin.

Sounds good to me, no matter how far it is to November. I browsed through enough of Silver's FAQs to be impressed with his methodology. Something about regression coefficients and all that stuff.

Then, I reveled in a T.A. Barnhart post on Blue Oregon, "Jonathon Alter smacks down Lars." Click on the link and you can see Portland's most irritating conservative talk show host, Lars Larson, taken down many notches. Barnhart says:

Lars Larson makes the same mistake on Dan Abrams' show that the radio blowhard did with Chris Matthews, and it's just as embarrassing. He keeps blathering on with no regard to facts, which Portland listeners are too familiar with, and he keeps trying to run roughshod over those who call him on his crap.

Lars turns out to be much more of a talk show wimp when he isn't in control of the microphone.

I hugely enjoyed watching him being put in his place, unable to resort to dominating an argument with an uninformed monologue instead of persuasive facts and logic.

Lars' notion that Michelle Obama hates America is ridiculous. When pressed to defend it, he couldn't. Typical right-wing talk show modus operandi.

Another bad example is Mark Levin, who I listen to once in a while to test my ability to listen to pompous bullshit without having the top of my head fly off.

What strikes me the most about guys like Larson and Levin is how cowardly they are. Lars makes a big deal of his concealed weapon permit. Probably that's because he'd run like a chicken from a real fight.

He does that all the time on the air, cutting people off who are besting him in a conversation. Levin is even worse. He often responds to a caller who's getting the better of him with "Get off the line, you moron!" Then he cuts the guy off.

Wow, what a man. He can push a "kill" button. Here he is in action. I can't figure out why anyone would listen to him regularly, given how irritating he is.

I guess if you don't have a political leg to stand on, you're drawn to lean on other people who are similarly crippled.

(Update: Here's Loaded Orygun's take on the Lars Larson video.)

What’s wrong with McClellan being “disgruntled”?

As someone who's been a disenchanted employee, and also a whistle-blower of sorts, I don't get how White House defenders are trying to discredit former press secretary Scott McClellan's tell-all book.

They're saying that McClellan is "disgruntled," as if this defuses his explosive criticisms of the Bush administration. Well, yeah, of course he's disgruntled. He feels like he was lied to. Along with most of the rest of the country.

It's been framed as a choice between being (1) a great American, or (2) disgruntled.

How about changing the "or" to "and"? Scott McClellan is a great American and disgruntled. Staying silent about the spewing of propaganda crap isn't the mark of patriotic greatness.

I'm also puzzled by how puzzled Bush apologists are about McClellan's book, "What Happened" (which has garnered 56 Amazon reviews so far and is #1 on the best seller list even though it hasn't even been released yet).

The current press secretary, Dana Perino, is puzzled. So, she says, is President Bush. I guess they can't understand how someone could put loyalty to the truth above loyalty to an ex-employer.

The "ex," of course, explains it all to simple-minded Bushies. Bob Dole has called McClellan a "miserable creature."

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don't have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," the five-term Kansas senator wrote to McClellan. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

As if the Bush administration is open to criticism, or welcomes displays of dissent. If every federal employee who disagreed with Bush's policies quit, there wouldn't be anybody left to run the government.

Today on conservative talk radio I heard blather about how McClellan spoke differently about the Iraq war and other issues when he was press secretary than he does in his book. Thus, he can't be trusted.

Bizarre. Haven't any neo-cons heard about an ability that normal human beings have? It's called changing your mind.

Like when you believe something is true, then find out you were deceived. A national poll shows that President Bush's credibility sank even further after people watched an interview with McClellan.

(Only good news for Bush: when his approval rating hits zero he'll have nowhere to fall.)

Oregon’s non-religious voters go for Obama

Way to go, Oregon pagans, freethinkers, humanists, Buddhists, Wiccans, agnostics, atheists, and sundry other spiritual iconoclasts.

You did a lot to give Obama a big win.

From CNN:

Obama also won big in another category: among those voters who say they do not have a religion, or have another religion outside of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism.

Nearly 30 percent of Oregon Democrats said they were not religious and those voters went for Obama by 21 percentage points, 60 percent to 39 percent. And among those voters who listed "other" as their religion, a group that made up 10 percent of the vote, Obama won by 42 points, 70 percent to 28 percent.

Oregonians go to political extremes

Thanks to Blue Oregon, I now better understand how my state can be so politically contradictory.

We've voted for the option of assisted dying if we're terminally ill. That sounds progressive. We also handily approved a ban on gay marriage. That sounds conservative.

A nifty analysis of the state's voters ("Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking Prius-driving lesbian commune?") casts light on how we can swing both ways.

[Personal note: this Salem resident does drink lattes and drive a Prius. However, I'm not a lesbian.]

It turns out that liberal Oregonians are really liberal, and conservative Oregonians are really conservative. Based on exit polls from the 2004 presidential election:

So the liberals in Oregon are as liberal as any in the country, whereas the conservatives are as conservative as any in the country. This is how you wind up with the weird political soup wherein Oregon has decriminalized marijuana but has also passed a gay marriage ban, or how it allows assisted suicide but also has one of the nation's lowest effective tax rates.

[Legal note: in 1997 possession of up to one ounce of marijuana was un-decriminalized and now is a misdemeanor.]

So what we have here in Oregon are voters on the left and right who are as extreme as those in any other state. Thankfully, in this progressive's opinion, the liberals outnumber the conservatives – resulting in a political climate that is moderately leftward leaning.

The average Kerry voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 6.20 -- just slightly left of center. However, in Oregon, the average Kerry voter was a 7.17. This, as it happens, is the highest score in the country; the Kerry voters in Oregon were more liberal than the ones in Vermont (7.11) or even the District of Columbia (6.97).

Meanwhile, the average Bush voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 2.58 -- pretty darn conservative. But in Oregon, the average Bush voter was a 2.01 -- very conservative. And guess what? That is the lowest Liberalness Score for Bush voters anywhere in the country. The Bush voters in Oregon were as conservative as the ones in Tennessee (2.02) or Utah (2.15).

This keeps things interesting in Oregon, to say the least.

My wife and I were heavily involved in the campaign to pass Measure 49 in 2007, which fixed the excesses of Measure 37 (approved in 2004), which was a response to Oregon's passage of pioneering "green" land use laws in the early '70s.

At hearings and meetings on Measure 49 we'd see rabid environmentalists sitting side by side with equally rabid proponents of unregulated development. Measure 49 staked out some common ground, but it was a battle.

Oregonians, after all, go to extremes.

On the plus side (assuming extremism is a negative), we grow some quirky political characters in the deep blue and deep red cultural soil of this state.

Portland is poised to elect Sam Adams as the first openly gay mayor of a major United States city. He's currently on the city council, along with Randy Leonard.

Willamette Week, an alternative weekly in Portland, recently put up an unedited interview with Leonard that is hilarious. The guy can always become a standup comedian if he tires of politics. I loved Leonard's riffs on how Adams is faking being gay because that polls well in Portland.

Yeah, but not in most of the rest of the state. Remember: we go to extremes. Have a watch. And a laugh.

Randy Leonard's Raw Interview from dalas verdugo on Vimeo.

Shocking news! Cable “news” isn’t news.

Yesterday the TV truth hit home as it never had before. CNN, Fox, MSNBC – they aren't really news organizations, because what they peddle is mostly subjective fluff, not facts.

The West Virginia Democratic primary election is what drew me to this conclusion. It was something I already knew, but which hadn't sunk deeply into my consciousness until I spent most of the afternoon working on some windows with the television tuned to CNN.

It was unbelievable how an endless stream of pundits, reporters, political hacks, and elected officials could take a few crumbs of new information and turn them into an three layer cake of supposition, frosted with a heavy topping of speculation.

Let's see: last week, after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, the general cable news consensus was that Clinton was done for. Obama essentially had the nomination sewed up. The remaining six contests were just a matter of going through the motions.

Obama picked up a net gain of thirteen delegates on May 6. Then a bunch of superdelegates jumped onto the Obama bandwagon, putting him into the lead in that category also.

Polls predicted that West Virginia would be a Clinton blow-out. And that's what happened. She won 20 delegates and Obama won eight.

But from a large share of the blather on CNN you would have thought that the Democratic presidential race had changed completely.

Oh my god! Exit polls showed that many Clinton voters wouldn't support Obama in the general election! Poor, undereducated white voters in Appalachia weren't voting for Obama! He's doomed!

There was no new news presented, other than a confirmation via the actual results of what the pre-election polling had predicted. Yet the spin doctors, who, distressingly, included CNN anchors such as Wolf Blitzer, made a huge deal out of all this nothing.

The May 5 issue of Newsweek reported a new poll on how voters see Obama, Clinton, and McCain.

When asked "Which of the following presidential candidates shares your values?" 51% said that Obama did. Clinton got 49%, McCain 47%.

When asked "From what you know of the candidates, which of them, if any, do you think looks down on people like you?" 25% said that Obama did. Clinton got 32%, McCain 26%.

When Democrats were asked "Who do you think is most likely to defeat John McCain in the November election?" 46% said Obama and 38% said Clinton.

When Democrats were asked, "Who do you think best understands the problems and concerns of people like you?" 46% said Obama and 38% said Clinton.

Yet listening to CNN, I was told over and over that somehow the West Virginia primary showed that Obama has huge electability problems.

Well, with all those hours to fill before and after the election results filtered in, the cable news channels had to say something. So they just made stuff up, because reporting the actual results would have taken just a few minutes.

I'm a news junkie. But the overdose of punditology I imbibed yesterday may have permanently changed my desire to keep on getting my fix from television. On the Internet, at least, I can choose the blather I want to expose myself to.

Depression reigns if Clinton wins

I figure I'd better write this now, a few minutes before the Indiana and North Carolina polls begin to close, because later on I might be too depressed.

I'm a grumpy new Democrat, having changed my registration to "D" from non-affiliated a few months ago so I could vote for Obama in the Oregon primary.

I felt good back then. Now Obama v. Clinton is a game that's feeling way tired, way repetitive, way past its prime. The Democrats need to get it on against McCain, not themselves.

Clinton is really starting to irritate me, though at first (briefly) I was in her camp.

Obviously her supporters are equally piqued at Obama, because I just saw an exit poll where about half of Clinton voters in Indiana and North Carolina said they'd either vote for McCain or not at all come November if Obama gets the nomination.

Many more Obama voters – 70%, I recall – said they'd vote for Clinton if, god forbid, she's the nominee. See, we're more enlightened than Clinton supporters.

And that's another gripe I've got against her. Clinton is relying on winning over the uneducated, the clueless, the rednecks, the embittered, the unemployed.

That may be good politics. But I'll be damned if I want the future course of our county left in the hands of the people least qualified to make that decision.

If they're swayed to vote for Clinton by a promise of a $30 summer driving gas tax bonus, her pandering to the lowest common mental denominator just proves that Obama's call for a new style of politics is right on.

Last night Jon Stewart had a great The Daily Show segment on Clinton's gas tax proposal being dismissed as a screwy idea by so many economists, she couldn't mention one who favored it. Yet she still thought it was a good notion, because economists are elitists.

Stewart showed her face morphing into George Bush's. This sort of non-rational, anti-scientific thinking is just what we've had to suffer through for the past eight years.

And now Clinton wants to bring us more of the same. No thanks.

Hopefully Indiana and North Carolina will start to drive the nails in Clinton's coffin. Her time has come…to go.

Inside look at Statesman Journal election endorsements

Like making sausage, if people knew more about how many newspaper editorial boards go about deciding on endorsements, they'd be disgusted.

Today Salem's Statesman Journal, the newspaper in Oregon's capital, endorsed Hillary Clinton. That's no big deal. Here's why.

I have a better understanding than most of how this paper's editorial board works, because last fall I got hot and heavy into investigating how the Statesman Journal was able to justify endorsing a "no" vote on Measure 49 – a fix for Measure 37, which the newspaper opposed in 2004.

Go figure. My wife and I sure couldn't. Back in October I explained why the editorial board should get an "F" in journalism ethics. Dick Hughes, editorial page editor, wrote the "no on 49" piece.

After extensive exchanges of emails in which Hughes failed to offer me any substantive rationale for the newspaper's position, Laurel and I met with Hughes at a coffee house along with two other Measure 49 supporters who were similarly aghast at how the editorial's conclusion was marvelously unsupported by logic or facts.

It was quite a meeting. We learned a lot about how the editorial board decision making process works. Or, more accurately, doesn't work.

Most readers of a newspaper probably assume that an editorial board consists of a large group of people. More than four, at least. But that's how many are on the Statesman Journal board: four.

All are newspaper employees. In addition to Hughes, there's Brian Priester (President and Publisher), Bill Church (Executive Editor), and Barbara Curtin (Opinion Editor).

In the case of the Measure 49 editorial, Hughes told us that Priester stayed out of the debate, not having been in Oregon very long. So the "no" endorsement was made by three people, one of whom favored a "yes" vote. Thus one person ended up deciding the Statesman Journal's position, Dick Hughes (who also wrote the editorial).

Likely this is common. With some newspapers, the publisher calls the shots on endorsements. Again, one person. But when an editorial begins with "Our Viewpoint," as the Clinton endorsement does, readers are given the impression that "our" includes a representative group of people.

Nope. At the coffee house meeting we asked Hughes, "What happened to the community representatives on the Statesman Journal editorial board?"

Answer: Priester requested that they be removed in the summer of 2007 after he took over the reins of the paper. So there's no input from anyone other than Statesman Journal employees on editorial endorsements.

The Clinton endorsement editorial mentions a "divided Editorial Board" twice. I suspect it was divided right down the middle, two-two, with the publisher breaking the tie. If so, the endorsement again represents the position of one person.

The newspaper has a blog where draft editorials are posted prior to publication. Reader comments are requested, as they were with the Measure 49 editorial.

But Hughes explained to us that he was the only staffer who read the many comments submitted on the illogical "no on 49" draft. He didn't share them with the other editorial board members, reflecting the newspaper's lack of interest in community input.

Over and over Hughes told us that the Measure 49 editorial was opinion, not a news story. And I kept telling him that I recognized this, but opinion with no factual substance behind it shouldn't become a newspaper endorsement.

The Measure 49 piece was a travesty. There was essentially no connection between the conclusion – vote "no"– and facts supporting this recommendation. Because there weren't any facts. Just opinion.

That's a crappy way to run an editorial board. Which is why I wasn't surprised or disappointed to see the Clinton endorsement today, even though I'm an Obama supporter.

My expectations of the Statesman Journal are so low, after learning how the editorial writing process works from our meeting with Dick Hughes, that I no longer take seriously what newspaper employees publish on the editorial pages.

The Statesman Journal is a Gannett paper. And that's a whole other story, well told by Richard McCord in his book "The Chain Gang."

He documents how ethics and Gannett are two words that don't belong together, using as one of his examples how the Gannett empire drove newspaper competition out of Salem in a sleazy fashion.

So take Statesman Journal editorials for what they're worth: very little.

Yeah, I’m bitter. It’s tax time.

There's been a whole lot of misdirected talk about bitterness lately. You want to meet someone who's really bitter?

Glad to meet you. My name is Brian. I just mailed my tax payments today.

Speak to me, Barack. Let me know you feel my pain, Hillary. Are you on my side, John?

Not just mine. Ours. All the individuals who are paying a bigger share of the tax burden, while corporations are paying much less.

Yesterday's article in Parade magazine ("Are You Paying for Corporate Fat Cats?") was beautifully timed for maximizing tax-day bitterness.

A 2004 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found that 61% of American corporations, including 39% of large companies, paid no corporate income taxes between 1996 and 2000. Last year, corporations shouldered just 14.4% of the total U.S. tax burden, compared with about 50% in 1940.

While companies are getting off easy, thanks to loopholes, ordinary wage earners are getting stuck with the tab. The tax burden on individuals is expected to climb from $1.16 trillion in 2007 to $1.21 trillion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), while corporate tax receipts are expected to decline from $370 billion to $364 billion. By 2013, the CBO estimates, ordinary taxpayers' bills may climb to $1.86 trillion while corporate tax bills drop to $327 billion.

Lovely.

I was walking down the sidewalk today, about to stick my tax stuff in a mail box, when I had the foresight to thumb through the stack of envelopes. No stamps on my U.S. Treasury and Oregon Department of Revenue payments.

Must have been a manifestation of subconscious resistance, since I'd stamped other mailings.

For most of my life I haven't been bothered by paying taxes. Government services are important. Much, if not most, of the time, government spends money more wisely than individuals do.

But that time isn't now, sadly. Not after eight years of George Bush/Republican wastefulness.

Deficits are soaring. Spending is way up. Money is being thrown down the tubes. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

And trillions of dollars are being spent on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Three trillion, to be semi-exact. Close enough for government work.

Check out the Three Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree. See what your tax dollars could have bought, other than a war started under false pretenses and continued under massive incompetence.

Universal health care for every American. Plus a lot more. A heck of a lot more.

So, yes, I'm bitter. I've got a right to be. As do you.

Remember April 15 next November 4. We've got to do some changing.

Colbert nails Clinton on who’s more electable

I love it when Stephen Colbert humorously casts light on a serious topic. That makes all the hours I spend watching The Colbert Report, rather than, say, reading the New York Times, seem a lot more productive.

Recently Colbert had a great riff on Hillary Clinton's claim that she should get the superdelegate vote because she's more electable – having won the big important states that are crucial to winning the presidency.

Here's some of his right-on observations, as I recollect them (maybe mixed in with my own notions):

--Clinton says she can win the presidency because she won California, New York, and Ohio. But McCain also won those states. So doesn't this mean that both Clinton and McCain are going to be elected president?

--Clinton is all proud that she won a few big states, while Obama has won many small states. Yet if you mashed the many small states Obama has won into a few big states, wouldn't this come out to be the same thing?

--Clinton claims that she's electable because she won in Democratic strongholds like California and New York. But if these are really "strongholds," won't any Democratic candidate win those states? Like, Obama.

Obama's blog does a more refined job of taking on Hillary's arguments in "Debunking the Clinton Campaign's Dubious 'Big State' Spin."

And my new favorite web site, Pollster.com, shows how Clinton and Obama currently fare against McCain in some big states that supposedly are Hillary country.

Pennsylvania: Clinton 44%, McCain 44%; Obama 41%, McCain 42%. Basically no difference.

Ohio: Clinton 45%, McCain 44%; Obama 45%, McCain 44%. Absolutely no difference.

Lastly, nationally: Clinton 46%, McCain 46%; Obama 46%, McCain 44%. Slight tilt toward Obama.

Pollution is now a sin. Litterers, go to hell.

By and large, excellent news for progressives on the sin front today. The Vatican says that social and economic injustices are fresh areas of sinful behavior.

Pollution also. I can only hope that the jerks who have been leaving lots of litter on the road we take into Salem are Catholics who keep up on their faith's sin list.

Apparently polluting is a venial sin that can be forgiven by confession. However, I can still issue my non-papal proclamation: litterers, go to hell.

I don't often praise the Catholic Church (or any church). But this is a positive step on the long road toward bringing religion into the 21^st century.

Father Antonio Pelayo, a Spanish priest and Vatican expert noted that it is time for both sinners and confessors to get over their obsession with sex and think about other ways humans hurt each other in the world in which they live.

"There are many other sins that are perhaps much more grave that don't have anything to do with sex - that have to do with life, that have to do with the environment, that have to do with justice," he told AP Television.

Clinton nets four delegates. Whoopee.

I was kind of depressed last night, since I'd hoped that Obama would win decisively in Ohio and Texas. But perusing the new delegate totals on Obama's web site, I'm feeling better.

it looks like Clinton will pick up four after all of her "We're back!" hullabaloo.

Big deal. Obama is still 156 pledged delegates ahead with 571 remaining to be chosen. So Clinton needs to win the final twelve races by about 64% - 36% to catch up to Obama.

And that isn't going to happen. She needs the not-so-super superdelegates to hand her the nomination, or have the Democratic Party rules bent so Michigan and Florida delegates are tossed her way.

That'd infuriate me.

Yesterday my spanking fresh voter registration card arrived in the mail with a DEM under "party." I became a Democrat to vote for Obama in the Oregon primary, but that card will be shredded in a flash if he ends up with more pledged delegates and not the nomination.

There's fresh talk of a joint ticket. That'd be fine with me. "Vice-President Clinton" has a ring to it. Some, though, are aghast at the prospect.

I can understand why. However, some dance practice last night pointed out to me why Obama and Clinton could be a good match.

Laurel and I have different dancing strengths. She's much better at rhythm than I am. I'm better at remembering moves.

So often Laurel will say at a practice, "I've forgotten what we learned at our last lesson." I'll then show her the basic steps. She, though, usually has the feel of the dance down better than I do.

Thus we complement each other.

I lead the moves while trying to tune into her beat, because she has a better intuitive sense of rhythm than I do. Maybe someday my right and left dance brains will be equally competent, but they aren't now.

Similarly, Obama has the political beat down while Clinton is better at the policy steps. I don't know if they'd be willing to dance the presidency together. It'd sure be interesting to see them try.

Portland Trail Blazer Greg Oden endorses Obama

Oh, yeah. Ohio is going to go for Obama now. Former Ohio State basketball star Greg Oden is saying, "Vote for Barack."

This also should guarantee that Oregon ends up adding to Obama's substantial delegate lead, since rookie (and injured) Oden is the change that fans are expecting will return the Trail Blazers to playoff glory (or at least, just the playoffs).

And Obama is the best bet to do the same for the United States. Not a slam dunk, but the point spread is way in his favor.

Why Clinton is in big trouble

So what does it mean when 23 progressive Oregon women, feminists all, say they're supporting Barack Obama – 22 to 1?

Pretty clearly, Hillary Clinton's campaign is sinking. If she doesn't have the support of female middle-aged Democratic activists, I think she's done for.

Since I'm for Obama, last night it was music to my ears when a friend told me about this informal poll of a group of women who get together regularly to talk about politics and whatever.

She was surprised that Obama was the almost unanimous candidate of choice, since these women had been looking forward to a female presidency for so long.

But Obama's electability, personality, and potential to pull our divided country together overcame their feminist predilections. And that bodes well for both Obama and the Democratic Party.

I rarely agree with Robert Novak, the guy who outed Valerie Plame. However, his call for someone to tell Hillary, "It's over," rings true to me. I also agree that she'd be a much weaker opponent of McCain than Obama would.

Clinton's burden is not only Obama's charisma but also McCain's resurrection. Some of the same Democrats who short months ago were heralding her as the "perfect" candidate now call her a sure loser against McCain, saying she would do the party a favor by just leaving.

Yes, it seems like it's just a matter of time. And that time should come sooner rather than later.

Twenty-two to one, Hillary. Your base has spoken: "We want Obama."

George Taylor, non-state climatologist, leaves a loser

Finally! The man who pretended to be Oregon's state climatologist, even though no such position existed, is retiring.

Now George Taylor can pretend to be a fake something else, rather than deceiving the public about both global climate change and his qualifications to speak about it.

I've never met George. Likely he's a nice guy. But he's gotten under my skin for some time, along with the folks at Blue Oregon, who have also given him a good bye and good riddance sendoff.

What's amazing is that my local newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal, called him a winner in an editorial today.

WINNER: George Taylor. As the leader of the Oregon Climate Service and the de facto state climatologist, his out-of-the-mainstream views on climate change attracted fans and foes. But he made people think. Now he has decided to retire.

Wrong. Taylor is a loser.

Because he didn't make people think about climate change. Quite the opposite – Taylor never provided any scientific evidence to back up his loony notions that humans aren't major causes of global warming, and that natural causes are the culprit.

So there was nothing to think about when Taylor spouted off on conservative talk radio, or web sites supported by the same oil company money that Taylor also took.

I'm pretty sure he's never published anything about climate change in a peer reviewed scientific journal. Yet somehow Taylor thinks he knows more than thousands of genuine climatologists whose research has resulted in a scientific consensus.

Taylor and his global warming-denying cronies like to portray him as a courageous maverick who has fallen victim to climate change groupthink. Not true.

He's simply wrong. Just as there are still people around who think the Earth is flat, and that the moon landings were faked. They aren't winners either. Like Taylor, they're wrong.

May George have a pleasant retirement, hopefully one which keeps him as far as possible from making any more erroneous pronouncements about climate change science.

As a memorial to how wrong Taylor has been, here are the posts that I've written about him.

"Oregon's climatologist denies global warming" (March 2005)
"Oregon's climatologist still a Pollyanna on global warming" (May 2005)
"Kansas is to evolution as Oregon is to global warming" (August 2005)
"Willamette Week outs Oregon's climatologist" (August 2005)
"Global warming is real. Debate over." (April 2006)
"So-called 'climatologist' George Taylor has to go" (January 2007)
"Oregon's state climatologist flunks Climate Change 101" (February 2007)
"OSU stiffs Kulongoski on 'state climatologist' title request" (February 2007)
"Facts about George Taylor and the 'state climatologist'" (February 2007)
"Relax, right-wingers: George Taylor isn't being fired" (February 2007)
"George Taylor is a loser, not a winner" (February 2007)
"Climate models undermine global warming skeptics" (February 2007)

I become a Democrat to vote for Obama

The Democratic Party of Oregon is about to get a new member. But party leaders shouldn't get too excited about my shift from "not a member of a party."

Here's why. I'm sending in my changed voter registration form tomorrow because I want to vote for Barack Obama in the primary on May 20. That's pretty much the only reason.

So if the Democratic Party superdelegates, who aren't so super, screw Obama out of the nomination even though he ends up with more pledged delegates, I'm back to unaffiliated.

Pronto.

A side benefit of registering as a Democrat is that I'll have a card capable of being sliced up into tiny pieces and mailed to the Democratic Party headquarters if Obama gets the raw end of back room deal-making.

Hopefully that won't happen. Currently Obama leads Clinton by 138 pledged delegates, 1141 to 1003. That's a 53% to 47% split.

There are 1025 delegates still to be selected. Even if Clinton wins 55% of them, and Obama just 45%, Obama still will end up in the lead: 1602 to 1567.

And this assumes a highly unlikely turnaround in voter sentiment, with Clinton more than reversing the pro-Obama trend so far.

I was pleased to see that a recent poll shows Obama and Clinton in a dead heat among Texas Democrats. That state is supposed to be Clinton country, but Obama is closing fast.

According to Pollster.com, Wisconsin is heading Obama's way. Tomorrow we'll see how accurate this compendium of polls is – currently showing Obama up 49-42.

So I'm looking forward to the Democratic Party superdelegates throwing their support to Obama after the primary voting is over and he's got a comfortable lead in pledged delegates.

If this doesn't happen, a lot of people – including newbie Democrats like me – are going to wonder, "Whatever happened to the 'democracy' in Democratic?"

Rights are human-made, not god-given

Tucked into a story about a bill to let Oregon voters decide whether health care is a right was a stupendously ill-informed assertion by a Republican legislator that rights are god-given:

The vote was a victory for Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, the chairman of the House Health Care Committee who has trying for three years to help the uninsured.

During debate, Greenlick described how he would have lost his battle with lymphoma, now in remission, if he had not had health insurance. That so many suffer for lack of health care is unjust, he said.

"Rights are the products of wrongs; they come from human experience, particularly experience with injustice," he said.

But Rep. Scott Bruun, R-West Linn, said rights are God-given and "cannot be added to or detracted from by the whimsy of man." A long list of worthwhile ideals could be called rights, he said.

"Let's acknowledge health care is important," he said, "but it is not a right."

Rep. Bruun, thanks for showing why religion has no place in politics. This is one of my favorite subjects, which I blog about regularly over on my Church of the Churchless (here's an example).

How the heck is it possible to say that rights are god-given? For one thing, which god? Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist?

Every religion has its own conception of right and wrong. And of god.

If Rep. Bruun were Hindu, he might well be arguing that not killing animals for food is obviously a fundamental extra-human right, so vegetarianism should be favored by the body politic.

Further, even if we choose one religion over all the others (leaving aside the unconstitutionality of such an action), decisions have to made about which tenets of that faith should be accepted or rejected.

The Bible condones slavery and genocide, among other affronts to human dignity from our more enlightened 21^st century perspective. How do we pick and choose among the many injunctions in the Old and New Testaments, many of them certifiably whacko?

So Rep. Greenlick is correct. Rights come from humans, not god. If Oregonians want health care to be a right, like education, voting to make it so is our right also.

Here's a nice discussion of god-given vs. human-given rights. As it says:

Myth: Rights are natural, inalienable, God-given and self-evident.
Fact: Rights are social constructs.

Super delegates aren’t so super

Politics always is crazy. But the way the Democratic Party is choosing it's presidential candidate – that's beyond crazy.

I know, because I'm being driven insane trying to figure out what the delegate count is between Obama and Clinton. Obama's my man, so I'm pumped by how well he's done in the most recent primary contests.

But when I check CNN's Election Center just now, oh no!, I see in a big bold-face font that Clinton is still leading Obama, 1148 to 1121. (This even includes today's Maine results.)

Then I read the fine print breakdown. And see that actually Obama has 986 pledged delegates and Clinton 924. Clinton leads only in superdelegates, 224 to 135.

Who aren't at all "super."

They're Democratic Party functionaries. They can change their mind at any moment. And their preference for president shouldn't get more play in the press than the votes of more than 14 million people who have participated in Democratic primaries and caucuses so far.

Yet many news organizations include some of the 797 superdelegates in delegate totals for Clinton and Obama. CNN tallies 359. A week or so ago the NY Times had deduced the preference of 303.

I wish these not-so-superdelegates would shut their mouths for the moment. Every single one should be saying, "I've haven't made my mind up yet."

Because these unpledged delegates aren't supposed to be deciding who's going to be the Democratic candidate come November. Their job is to give the frontrunner, after all the primaries are over, a clear cut margin of victory at the convention.

At least, that's the informed opinion of Tad Devine, Walter Mondale's delegate counter in 1984, who says "Superdelegates, Back Off."

The superdelegates were never intended to be part of the dash from Iowa to Super Tuesday and beyond. They should resist the impulse and pressure to decide the nomination before the voters have had their say.

The party's leaders and elected officials need to stop pledging themselves to either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama, the two remarkable candidates who are locked in an intense battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

If the superdelegates determine the party's nominee before primary and caucus voters have rendered a clear verdict, Democrats risk losing the trust that we are building with voters today. The perception that the votes of ordinary people don't count as much as those of the political insiders, who get to pick the nominee in some mythical back room, could hurt our party for decades to come.

Absolutely. I heard Obama say that whoever is ahead in delegates after June 7, when the last primary is held, should get the votes of the superdelegates.

Makes great sense.

As Devine says, the last thing the Democratic Party needs is a drawn-out nominating process that drags into the convention, where the country would be "treated" to (or disgusted by) the sight of back room deals harking back to my memories of how candidates were selected in the not-so-good-old days of the 60's and 70's.

What's bizarre about all this is that the Democratic primaries assign delegates proportionally, which is wonderfully, well, democratic. Every vote counts, in contrast to a winner-take-all approach where the preference of 49.9% of voters can be ignored.

Yet the superdelegates have the power to ignore not the will of a minority, but the majority.

Millions upon millions of fired-up Obama supporters could put him clearly in the delegate lead on June 7, but lacking the few delegates he needs to win the nomination outright.

It'd be a travesty, shades of the Supreme Court giving the presidency to George Bush in 2000, if a few hundred politicos overturned the will of millions of primary voters and caucus goers.

(On the delegate tracking front, the Obama campaign has a clearly laid out Results Center. It seems accurate and dare I say it, conservative, since so far the states who voted on February 9 and 10, all Obama victories, haven't been factored in. It has: Obama 910, Clinton 882.

A Daily Kos diary today did a yeoman's job of assembling delegate counts from major news organizations and factoring them into a up to date consensus estimate. Bottom line: Obama 1028, Clinton 948.)

Oregon DEQ continues to coddle polluters

I'm pleased to see that Oregonian columnist Steve Duin is still firing bulls eyes at an admittedly easy target: how the Oregon DEQ looks the other way when well-heeled permit violators run afoul of environmental rules.

In his "Permitting and protecting the polluters," Duin describes a situation that's distressingly similar to what happened in our neighborhood when a Measure 37 subdivision said "rules, what rules?" and the Department of Environmental Quality meekly replied "whatever…we don't care."

Back in November Duin wrote a column about my frustrating fight to get DEQ to do the right thing, "At DEQ, the refs swallow their whistles."

You'd think that by now either the agency would be tired of choking on its failure to protect Oregon, or someone else (governor, legislature) would be forcing DEQ to stop looking the other way when big business ignores environmental regulations.

But no, even though contaminated water from a landfill is flowing into the Tualatin River, DEQ's solution is to request that the polluter pay $795 for a permit. Case closed.

This would be disgusting, but not surprising, in New Jersey. I know, because I've watched every season of The Sopranos. In supposedly squeaky clean and green Oregon, though, it's disconcerting when a state agency bends over backwards for the companies it's supposed to be regulating.

In my fight against a DEQ scofflaw, the agency finally did revoke a 1200-C erosion/storm water control permit. However, the only penalty for the applicant was waiting a while to get another permit.

I'd sent DEQ evidence that the applicant, a Measure 37 claimant seeking to build a subdivision, had violated the permit requirements and presented false information on the permit application.

DEQ's own administrative rules say that these are "no-no's." But with DEQ, almost everything a permit violator does is a "yes-yes." As in, yes, you broke the rules, and yes, we'll let you off the hook for doing so.

This reminds me of a policeman catching someone driving drunk dangerously without a license, who he then escorts to a DMV office so they can get legal. Case closed.

This state can do a heck of a lot better. Mark Riskedahl of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center says that a big step toward a solution to DEQ's lax enforcement is hiring a new agency director with a get-tough attitude.

Absolutely.

Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves

All of the Republican presidential candidates are competing to see who can spout a big lie about tax policy most convincingly: tax cuts pay for themselves.

Common sense says that's absurd. So does economic research. But that doesn't stop the Republican know-nothings, some of whom also disbelieve in evolution, from ignoring the facts.

What got me going on this was hearing disgraced former Rep. Tom DeLay holding forth on conservative talk radio today. He claimed that tax cuts generate increased revenue for government.

I thought, hogwash. But I hadn't done much research on this, so fired up Google this evening for what I figured would be some myth-busting.

I was right. Reputable economic research doesn't support the ridiculous notion that cutting government revenues somehow increases government revenues.

TIME magazine's business and economics columnist, Justin Fox, blogged about this subject in 2006. He adjusted for inflation when evaluating the effect of Reagan's tax cuts. Bottom line: it's false that tax receipts rise as a result of tax cuts. Check it out.

Recently Fox put up another post, "To repeat, tax cuts haven't increased revenue," citing Paul Krugman's look at the effect of population growth in addition to inflation.

Even economists who serve in Republican administrations don't believe in the voodoo economics crap. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities provided more evidence of this in 2006.

Now a Department of Treasury analysis presented in the Mid-Session Review itself confirms what outside experts have consistently said — tax cuts do not come remotely close to paying for themselves.

In this study the Center shows that economic growth was about the same in the 1980s (Reagan tax cuts) and in the 1990s (Clinton tax increases). But growth in government revenues was much higher in the 1990s.

I've got a granddaughter now. I don't want her saddled with paying for the massive deficits that the Bush administration is financing with a U.S. Treasury Credit Card – borrow now and pay later.

Clinton left this country a huge budget surplus and good economic growth. Bush is about to leave us with a huge budget deficit and poor economic growth.

His tax cuts have been a disaster. The last thing the United States needs is another Republican president who sticks his head in the sand and ignores economic reality.

As a Washington Post columnist said about politicians' propensity to believe that tax cuts increase revenues:

Politicians are always speechifying about how the United States must lead the world in research to maintain its edge. But having the world's best economics research isn't particularly helpful if those same politicians are silly enough to tune it out. The truth is that American business excels at turning university research into world-beating products; the paranoia on this score is overdone. But American government is often lousy at turning research into policies. That's what we should fret about.

How Yugoslavia reacted to King’s death

I was in a communist country when Martin Luther King died on April 4, 1968 – Yugoslavia. Back then it was called the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Tito was in power.

Along with a couple of dozen of other San Jose State College students, and a few professors, I was spending my second sophomore semester taking classes in Zadar, a picturesque town on the Adriatic sea.

As you can imagine, it was quite a culture shock. For both us and the locals.

Into a regimented traditional society comes a bunch of hang-loose long-haired hippie college students from the epicenter of Flower Power. (OK, we were some forty miles away down the peninsula, but when asked where we were from, we'd always round off the geography and say "San Francisco.")

There were some tensions, but overall we got along fine with the Zadarians. Even better, after news of King's death reached us.

Total strangers would come up to me on the cobblestoned streets of Zadar, shake my hand, and say "I'm so sorry." (Almost always Yugoslavs' English was much better than my limited Serbo-Croatian.)

Those were the days when the United States was still respected in Europe, even with the Vietnam War. People were genuinely moved by King's assassination. The same thing happened a few months later when Bobby Kennedy was killed.

This county was a shining light to the rest of the world, even (or especially) to those living in communist nations like Yugoslavia.

What a difference forty years makes. Now we're a bad example, not a good one. We wage war based on false premises. Our economy is tanking. The only dream most American politicians have is how to get re-elected.

I'm hoping that whoever ends up as the Democratic candidate for president will rekindle my '60s the times they are a-changin' optimism.

The deaths of King and Kennedy dampened the spirits of my generation. But lots of us are still revolutionaries at heart. We've just been waiting a long time for an a-changin' leader.

Barack Obama strikes me as much more King and Kennedy-esqe than Hillary Clinton is. So my 1968 soul hopes that I'll be able to see President Obama elected in 2008.

Clinton has a bit more momentum than Obama at the moment. Bob Dylan, though, tells us what can happen to frontrunners.

The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

I only hope.

New Hampshire, give us the gift of Obama

It's been a long time since any presidential candidate has turned me on. I'm tired of saying about the Democrat, "Well, at least he's better than _____."

That sort of faint praise, which is what I'd offer Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, isn't what this country needs or deserves after putting up with eight years of George Bush.

Barack Obama is.

So New Hampshire voters, please, pretty please with an Oregon fir tree on top, give my state and the rest of the county a tremendous gift next Tuesday.

Another impressive Obama win.

I've tried to get enthusiastic about Clinton. I really have. I can do it for, oh, an hour or so. I'll hear her give a speech and like what she says.

But then the thought of her trying to win over independents and Republicans in the general election fills me with dread. Heck, she's having a tough time winning over me – a progressive with moderate leanings.

Clinton is too familiar, too predictable, too much a chip off of the old Bill block. Been there, done that. It's time for a real change.

Which is the problem I have with Edwards also. He's a political retread who still has some miles on him. But not as the Democratic presidential candidate. Vice-president? Sure. Bring him on, as Obama's running mate.

Plus, I heard his second-place "victory" speech after the Iowa caucuses. It sounded horribly old-fashioned, all that talk about his parents and grandparents working in the cotton fields, or steel mills, or wherever.

"That's nice," I kept thinking. But bashing corporate America and praising the working class isn't going to cut it come November 2008.

I'm tired of divisiveness. Much of the rest of the country is also. I don't like Bush's "you're either with us or against us" attitude. I also don't like it when Democrats or Republicans take the same polarized stance.

I just watched Obama's Iowa victory speech (transcript is here for the broadband impaired). It's easy to see why so many are so ready to get behind this guy and propel him into the White House.

You [Iowa] said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington; to end the political strategy that's been all about division and instead make it about addition - to build a coalition for change that stretches through Red States and Blue States. Because that's how we'll win in November, and that's how we'll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation.

We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.

Another reason I like Obama: he's the only candidate who can say "give it up for Michelle Obama" (his wife) and not sound ridiculous.

No wonder he got the youth vote.

India gets a cool new computer before U.S.

It's a sign of the globalization times. And of the United States' technological decline.

Lenovo, a Chinese company which bought IBM's Personal Computing Division in 2005, has started to get into the home computer market.

I'm interested, because my wife and I each use Lenovo-made ThinkPad notebooks that still bear the IBM logo. We like them. They're rock solid and nicely designed with a great feeling keyboard.

Further, Consumer Reports rates Apple and Lenovo as the computer companies with the best support and most trouble-free products. So I've been perusing Lenovo's one and only notebook aimed at home/home office users, the Y410.

I'd like a computer with better multimedia capabilities. And Vista. (Mac addicts: I've seriously considered a PowerBook but have my reasons for sticking with Windows.)

But the Lenovo Y410, which is sold only through retailers like Office Depot, has some drawbacks. Like, the smallish 14.1 inch display. And sound that doesn't seem deserving of a "Dolby Home Theatre" description.

Plus, it looks pretty much like my ThinkPad. Utilitarian. Lacking in cool.

So I decided to Google my way into any news about forthcoming Lenovo notebooks aimed at home users. I hit a blank for a while. Then, Eureka!

There it was. A search result that included the terms "Lenovo Y510, the ultimate entertainer" and "boasting to be a way cool entertainment PC."

The only problem was another word: "India."

Yes, the Lenovo Y510 notebook is prominently featured on the company's India home page. And I could learn all about the three Y510 models, which range from Rs. 45990 ($1,164) to Rs. 58990 ($1,494).

I liked the look of the computer so much, I even checked into ordering it. I found a web page with a drop down menu for states that looked promising. Only problem was, the states had names like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Browsing further, I learned that currently the Y510 is available in India/South Asia. So people can get it in Afghanistan and Nepal. But not in the United States.

Hopefully that'll change soon. I'm going to call Lenovo tomorrow and try to learn when the U.S. rollout will be. I'll willing to wait a while, since moving to India just to be able to use a cool new computer doesn't make a lot of sense.

I'm not saying that this tale proves that the United States is heading toward becoming a second class technology power. But there sure are signs pointing to that conclusion.

Such as, this comic in the most recent issue of Funny Times. This right-on view of how India and the United States are changing places comes from the mind of Jen Sorensen, creator of Slowpoke Comics.

As she says, "Soon, Americans will be providing tech support to Bangalore. In broken midwestern-accented Hindi."

Sounds plausible. Americans already are drooling over computers available only in India.

Atheists are the embattled minority, not the religious

The more my agnostic mind ponders Mitt Romney's Faith in America speech, the more I get irritated by it. It's nonsensical – his notion that the United States is threatened by a "religion of secularism."

I only wish.

This country is one of the most overtly religious in the world. We vie with Saudi Arabia and other super-fundamentalist nations for the dishonor of having the most religious crazies per capita.

Yesterday I said on my Church of the Churchless blog that Mitt Romney's weird religion is relevant to voters. His chosen faith, Mormonism, is strange even by religious standards. It's "revelation" came via golden plates.

In 1827 the golden plates supposedly were dug up in New York by the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. They'd been protected by an angel named Moroni and engraved by Mormon, a pre-Columbian prophet-warrior. Smith translated the plates by looking into seer stones called Urim and Thummin.

Yet it's eminently possible to run for president of the United States and believe in this unbelievable stuff. More: it's not only possible, it's required.

An atheist candidate would be dead in the campaign water. Probably ditto for an agnostic. It's extremely difficult to conceive that anyone could be elected to a high public office in this country if he or she honestly said, "I don't believe in God," or "I don't know if there is a God."

Of course, nobody else knows either. But lots of people think God exists, and when it comes to God, subjective thoughts are the presumed reality– not anything objectively true.

Jack Oceano asks, "An Atheist as President of the United States?" His right-on answer:

Americans will not elect an atheist who doesn't hide his beliefs. In fact, atheism carries such a stigma in the United States that most Americans will not even conceal the fact that they wouldn't vote for a candidate who declared he was an atheist.