HinesSight

Alan Simpson trashes Republican extremism in Zakaria interview

Alan Simpson is a Republican who was a Senator from Wyoming for 18 years. He's an appealingly crusty, straight-talking guy. He's the sort of conservative who now is looked upon by super-far-right Tea Party types as -- gasp! -- a moderate.

Today I enjoyed listening to a podcast of his recent interview on Fareed Zakaria's GPS program. He appeared with his fellow co-chair of what's often called the Simpson-Bowles (or Bowles-Simpson) commission, Erskine Bowles. 

(Full transcript can be read on the CNN site.)

Simpson strikes me as a much more reasonable version of Ron Paul. Equally blunt, but without the craziness. Which doesn't mean that I agree with all of his deficit-cutting recommendations. I like him more than The Daily Kos does, though.

Perhaps Simpson is off the mark on reforming Social Security, a Daily Kos gripe.

Yet he and Bowles correctly realize that getting the federal budget under control, long-term, is going to require a balanced approach: some cuts to programs; some increases in taxes; some changes to how taxes are collected, a.k.a. tax reform (eliminating excessive "tax expenditures" which benefit special interests).

And when it comes to today's extremist Republican politicians, long-time G.O.P. member Simpson nails what's wrong with his political party. From the Zakaria interview:

ZAKARIA: Senator Simpson, you've seen what's been going on these last few months. The House actually voted on the Simpson-Bowles proposal and it went down decisively. 

Paul Ryan, the leader of the House on fiscal issues, I suppose, said that Simpson-Bowles was the wrong way to go because there weren't enough spending cuts and there were too many tax increases.

What was your reaction? That's your party.

SIMPSON: Well, I think my party and I have different views on a lot of things. I guess I'm known as a "rhino" now, which means a Republican in name only because I guess of social views perhaps or common sense would be another one which seems to escape members of our party.

Abortion is a horrible thing, but, for heaven's sakes, a deeply intimate and personal decision and men legislators shouldn't even vote on it. Gay-lesbian issues, we're all human beings. We're all God's children. What is that?

And for heaven's sakes, you have Grover Norquist wandering the Earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he'll defeat you. He can't murder you, he can't burn your house, the only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection.

And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we're in extremity, you shouldn't even be in Congress.

ZAKARIA: But talk about Ryan particularly, because what I'm struck by is the Simpson-Bowles plan calls for an awful lot of spending cuts and, yet, those weren't enough. 

SIMPSON: Well, Erskine can tell you we don't call for -- You can't cut spending your way out of this hole. You can't grow your way out of this hole and you can't tax your way out of this hole "Put that in your pipe and smoke it," we tell these people. 

This is madness. If you want to be a purest, go somewhere on a mountain top and praise the east or something, but if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise and you learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won't compromise and I'll show you a guy with rock for brains.

Crazy Shirts model spotted at Salem dog park!

OK, let's add "Aspiring" at the start of the title for this blog post.

Because right now I am not an official model of Crazy Shirts clothing. But after Crazy Shirts executives see today's Salem (Oregon) dog park photo shoot, I expect a modeling contract will be in the mail.

(One negative omen, though: Crazy Shirts seems to be age'ist in its current choice of clothing models. On the positive side, there's a dog in this photo of a 2012 photoshoot.)

My own photoshoot was spontaneously organized by my wife, who asked for my iPhone after I cajoled Family Dog #2, Zu Zu, to jump up next to me on a Minto Brown Dog Park bench.

"So cute," Laurel said. I assume she was talking about me, even though she was looking at Zu Zu.

Fortunately for my modeling career, I was wearing my Ugly Tuna Saloona hat, a Chile-Dyed Pepper Dragon t-shirt, and Chocolate-Dyed Canton Sweatpants -- all from Hawaii-based Crazy Shirts, which has become my favorite clothing source (and I'm saying that only partly because I want to kiss up to the Crazy Shirts staff who choose catalog models; I really do love their clothes).

The first photo has some energy to it. However, the vibe I get is of an irritated dog about to bite a guy who's trying to pat it. Probably should omit this one from my Crazy Shirts portfolio.

The second photo turned out better, aside from Zu Zu's butt being crammed into my armpit. On the plus side, Laurel was standing far enough away to prevent the Crazy Shirts' advertising department from clearly seeing how old I am.

An improvement. However, Zu Zu's tongue seems to be sticking out and she isn't exhibiting a high degree of adoring behavior to her owner canine caretaker.

Ah, a big dog smile. And a dog lovingly facing in my direction, subtly encouraged by my right hand pressing into Zu Zu's neck. This photo should put me over the top, Crazy Shirts modeling contract-wise.

The photoshoot ended with some canine backsliding. However, I look pretty damn good, in my utterly subjective opinion. I then grabbed the camera and...

Took a single photo of Laurel with Zu Zu. Sadly for her own modeling career, Laurel isn't wearing anything from Crazy Shirts. 

(And sadly for mine, I don't see "Model" as one of the available career opportunities on the Crazy Shirts web site.)

Innocent bee swarm...or something more sinister?

Maybe I've read too many mystery novels, and watched too many junky murder movies. But...

I'm worried that there's more to this bee swarm than meets the eye. Especially since the swarm is right at eye level, on a branch overhanging a trail that Family Dog #1 and I walk on often.

As soon as I drove home yesterday and got out of the car, Laurel excitedly asked me if I had my iPhone with me. "Of course," I said. "Good. There's a bee swarm on the trail to the creek. My phone's battery is dead. I want you to take a photo of the swarm."

Nothing too suspicious in that request. But when I approached the swarm and told my wife, "No way am I getting any closer," she said "Bees are gentle when they're swarming. Don't worry. You can move nearer."

I noticed, though, that she was standing in back of me. Which got me to thinking...

Bee swarm. Right on the trail where I often walk. Her iPhone conveniently lost its charge. A wife urging her husband to get closer to a humongous bunch of bees. Why, this could mean...

My wife has fallen in love with a bee keeper. A specialist in killer bees. Who has genetically modified the killer bees to look like regular "nice" bees until they sense a pheromone within ten feet of the swarm. Which was surreptitiously sprayed on my hair while I was sleeping. 

Could be. Or, not.

So I'm playing it safe and keeping my distance from the possibly killer bees. Along with making notes for a screenplay to send off to the Lifetime channel. Tentative title of movie: "Sara's Killer Swarm."

Creative Portland marriage proposal gets Storm Large's "fuck, yes"

Since I'm a big fan of Storm Large, I wish I could obey her Twitter tweet.

My good friend Amy just got engaged, and..no pressure, boys...but this is how the fuck you do it. http://vimeo.com/42828824 

However, I'm already married.

And my proposal to Laurel some twenty-three years ago was horrible, compared to how the marvelously creative guy who put together this lip-sync'ed marvel did it. Very Portlandia'ish.

When I proposed to Laurel, it was so half-assed Laurel wasn't sure what I was saying. "Are you asking me to marry you?", she said. "Yes," I told her. Not exactly the stuff romance novels are made of.

Oh well.

I'm happy this woman got to enjoy such a great proposal. The look on her face (in the corner of the video) as she watches the dancers is wonderful. Congrats to Isaac Lamb and his bride-to-be. You showed me way up, Isaac. 

Good for you.

According to the Oregonian, your video has gone viral (gotten 1.4 million hits already) and national TV interviews await you. Couldn't happen to a better couple, judging by the six minutes I've known you via the video.

Why we sold our Nissan Leaf and bought a Chevy Volt

Goodbye, dear Leaf. I had mixed feelings about seeing our Nissan electric car loaded onto an auto transport trailer a few days ago.

The car was on its way to a new owner in eastern Washington.

It needed a lift, given the Leaf's 100 mile range. I was happy to have sold the Leaf, since the Chevy Volt that we ordered to replace it is on a train at the moment and should arrive in a few weeks. Yet I enjoyed the Leaf and was sort of sad to see it go.

(As described below, my wife felt differently.)

After placing an Auto Trader ad for the Leaf, I got quite a few emails from people asking "Why are you selling the car?" Good question, since we only owned the Leaf for about eight months and it had just 3,000 miles on it.

Here's the detailed answer that I shared.

Our reasons for selling the Leaf are kind of unusual. Meaning, quite specific to us. My wife has a sensitive back. Even though she test-drove a Leaf several times before we bought ours, almost as soon as we got the Leaf home she started feeling uncomfortable in the front seats. That's the main reason we had leather put on the seats, added some firmness to the driver's side seatback, and got the electrically activated lumbar supports in the front seats.

My wife also didn't like the front headrests, which, like on most new cars these days, are angled forward in an attempt to reduce the "whiplash" distance in an accident. So after some negotiating with Nissan, we were able to buy some headrests from another Nissan car that are much more upright. Thus we have two sets of leather headrests that will go with the car when we sell it.

I found the Leaf seats comfortable. Researching this subject on Leaf discussion groups, I learned that some people don't like the seats, while most people do. Consumer Reports thought they were somewhat soft and lacked support. Adding leather and the other things we did helped quite a bit, but my wife still gets some back pain when driving the Leaf. (She also has trouble with many mattresses and chairs, her back being quite sensitive.) So that's one reason.

Another reason -- and this only will make sense to you if you're an avid dog lover, or know someone who is -- is that when the rear seats are folded, the Leaf "luggage" compartment slopes downward toward the hatch, because of the battery stack in the middle of the car. Our oldest dog is 12 1/2 years old. She's getting some hip problems, being a Lab/Shepherd mix. Our dog tilts downhill when she's on the pad that we put in the luggage compartment. Pretty clearly, she doesn't like riding in the Leaf as much as she likes to ride in our Mini Cooper or Highlander SUV. This might not seem like a big deal to you, but you don't know how dog crazy my wife is.

Lastly, we live about six miles from the Salem city limits, out in the country. Even so, range in the Leaf hasn't been a big issue. When the Leaf is fully charged, usually it shows an estimated 100 miles of range, or thereabouts. That's a lot of driving, even starting six miles from Salem -- where we do most of our shopping, errands, and such. Range, though, drops to 80 miles or so in the winter if it's near freezing, given the need to use the heater, wipers, and headlights more. So a minor issue added on to the more important "seat comfort" and "dog" issues is range.

We've ordered a Chevy Volt, which is being built for us. It's supposed to arrive in late May or early June. We're staying electric. But the seats in the Volt feel more comfortable to my wife, and the luggage area where our dog(s) will go is completely flat. That's why we're selling the Leaf. I might have told you more than you need, or want, to know, but felt that if you're thinking of a Leaf, it would be helpful for you to fully understand why we're selling it.

Obviously, it's also got a lot of plus's. Aside from the environmental benefits, freedom from gas stations, and low cost of "filling up," I like the light, quick, airy, high-tech feel of the car, even though I mostly drive my Mini Cooper S. Meaning, I like a responsive sports car feel, yet the Leaf has its own distinctive driving appeal. The Volt feels more sporty, yet the Leaf has an air of quietness (literally, road noise is less in the Leaf than in the Volt), responsiveness, and openness (Leaf feels more spacious than the Volt, and visibility is better) which I like a lot.

Federal spending hasn't risen much during Obama's presidency

Well, one more Republican untruth has been demolished by facts.

Contrary to widespread belief (including me, I have to admit), federal spending has increased much less under Obama's leadership than under the last four presidents -- including Reagan.

Check out Rex Nutting's excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch, "Obama spending binge never happened."

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Here's the key to understanding why so many people believe the opposite.

Why do people think Obama has spent like a drunken sailor? It’s in part because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal budget.

What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year. It takes time to develop a budget and steer it through Congress — especially in these days of congressional gridlock.

The 2009 fiscal year, which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House. The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress.

Like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded, Obama came in with a budget in place that called for spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars in response to the worst economic and financial calamity in generations.

Charts don't lie.

Ignoring chainsaw safety tips pays off for stupid me

Sometimes doing a bunch of stupid stuff can add up to something sort of smart, like how multiplying two negative numbers produces a positive result.

Yesterday I broke quite a few chainsaw safety rules. But if I hadn't ignored all of them, I probably would have gotten hurt.

Chain saw stupidity... let me count the ways.

(1) I stood on the top of a folding ladder while using the chainsaw.
(2) I held the chainsaw high over my head while cutting.
(3) I did the work with nobody else close by. 
(4) I failed to consider how a branch could snap back after being cut.

I probably ignored some other chainsaw safety rules also. Not smart. 

I've got a healthy respect for chainsaws, having heard horror stories from people a lot more skillful with them than myself, including a couple of pros who handled damage to a very large oak tree on our property a few years ago. 

These guys laughed while relating a story about how one of them got whacked in the forehead by the very same small Stihl chainsaw model that I own. The tale was indeed funny... in retrospect. But there's nothing humorous about a chainsaw injury, which I've managed to avoid so far.

Even yesterday -- when we had bark dust blown into our non-easycare yard, as we've had done every spring the past three years. The bark and two man crew arrived in a large truck which always has difficulty navigating our narrow, steep, tree-lined driveway.

After the driver backed in almost as far as our carport, I congratulated him. "I'm getting better at it," he said. "There's still a problem with some tree limbs, though."

Looking at the side of the tall truck, I saw what he meant. He'd managed to back in by pushing some fairly substantial (2" thick, or so) protruding oak branches out of the way, along with some smaller fir branches. 

They were pushing against the right side of his truck. I told him, "I'll cut them while you spread the barkdust. Then they'll be out of the way when you leave, and next year it'll be easier for you to get the truck down our driveway."

Good intention. It was the execution that was the problem. 

The more I've used my pleasingly light Stihl chainsaw, the more comfortable I've become with breaking some standard safety rules. Like, not cutting anything above shoulder height. So I took a quick glance at the branches, figured I could reach them if I stood on a folding ladder and stretched my arms out, and got out the equipment that I needed.

Chainsaw. Ladder. Gloves. Safety glasses. Ready to go.

What I should have done, though, is spend more time pondering the position of the thickest oak branch. Semi-consciously I assumed that just the very end of it was being bent back against the side of the truck. However, actually the entire branch was under quite a bit of backward pressure.

That could have been bad news if I'd been following the safety rule: do not operate a chainsaw above shoulder height. Because if I'd leaned an extension ladder against the truck and climbed up until my head was higher than the branch, I'd have gotten a nasty physical shock to add to my mental surprise.

Wow! I thought, watching and feeling the oak branch snap backward with surprising force after the chainsaw had cut most of the way through the wood.

I was happy that the branch had whipped over my head, not into my head (or neck/chest). I wasn't pleased, though, with how the chain had gotten stuck in the cut.

I was still holding onto the chainsaw with my right hand, leaning backward now on the folding ladder, rather than forward, owing to how much the branch had moved after most of the pressure had been released from being against the side of the truck.

I pulled on the blade. Stuck. I pulled harder. Still stuck. What the hell, I said to myself. Done everything wrong up to this point; might as well keep going. 

I decided my best bet (though perhaps not the smartest one) was to try to cut the branch completely through from my precarious leaning one-handed position on the ladder. At first the chain wouldn't turn at all. After a few more tries, it did. The end of the branch dropped to the ground. The part of the branch still attached to the tree snapped back a few more feet.

Hey, that wasn't so bad, said my overly optimistic self. I got off the ladder, pulled the cut branch out of the way, and moved to the next branch that was stuck against the truck. And after that, another one.

Here's the most amazing part of my chainsaw cutting adventure: basically the same thing happened with the next two branches. Guess I'm a slow learner. The branches snapped back after being cut most of the way through, but the chain didn't get caught, and I was a lot more mentally prepared for the whoosh.

Better to be lucky than smart, I guess. Better yet, though, lucky and smart. Next time I use my chainsaw I'll do more thinking about what I'm doing before I do it.

Oregon judges should be appointed, not elected

I have no idea why Oregon voters, or those in any state, should be electing judges.

There has to be a better way to fill vacancies on the Oregon Supreme Court than to have voters, most of whom are clueless about both the judicial system and the qualifications of candidates, electing judges.

Last Tuesday in Oregon's primary election, the best qualified candidate, Timothy Sercombe, got the least amount of votes among the three candidates. So the other two, Portland attorney Nena Cook and Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Richard Baldwin, will face off on the November ballot.

A likely reason for this is disturbing.

In the weeks leading up to last Tuesday's primary election, Timothy Sercombe looked to be a shoo-in for Oregon Supreme Court justice. 

Sercombe won the backing of all 10 of the editorial boards of Oregon newspapers that made endorsements. He won a preference poll of attorneys -- conducted by the Oregon State Bar -- by a landslide over his two opponents. 

A judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals for the past five years, Sercombe also was following the well-worn path of his predecessors: Five of the state Supreme Court's current seven justices had served on the Court of Appeals. 

...Beth Bernard, who for years advised candidates on national campaigns before becoming executive director of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, thinks Cook won because she's a woman. When given the choice of two men and one woman who all had decades of legal experience, female voters chose the woman, Bernard said. 

"If they all seem qualified, they say, 'I'm going to go with the woman,'" Bernard said. 

And therein lies the problem with races for judgeships, some political observers say: Many voters make their choices not on issues, but on gut feelings or little knowledge of the candidates. 

Voters don't elect judges to the United States Supreme Court. Why should voters be electing judges to the Oregon Supreme Court? It'd be better to use the "merit plan" used by twenty-three states:

Judges are nominated by a nonpartisan commission, and then appointed by the governor. Judges serve a term and then are subject to a retention election, where they run alone, and voters can either approve another term or vote against them.

Currently Oregon is one of fifteen states which elect judges in nonpartisan elections. Since voters don't pay much attention to judges in elections (the Oregonian reported that about a third of those casting ballots skipped voting for the Supreme Court position), it doesn't make sense to have them picked by what amounts to a crapshoot.

In the past few years I attended two hearings of the Oregon Court of Appeals. I got to see TImothy Sercombe ask cogent questions of the attorneys arguing land use cases. I've read the opinions he wrote on the cases.

I didn't agree with all of his reasoning. But I came away highly impressed with Sercombe and was looking forward to him being on the Oregon Supreme Court. Or at least making a runoff for the November election.

Are you better off today than when Mitch McConnell said...?

Listening to POTUS (great political talk programming) on satellite radio recently, a caller had a great response to the usual Republican line, "Are you better off today than four years ago, when Obama was elected president?"

He said the question should be:

Are you better off today than two years ago, when Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president"?

The biggest problem our country has is Republican obstructionism.

The not-so G.O.P. dislikes Obama and his policies so much, it seems that Republicans would rather have the economy hurt, than pass legislation which would make things better.

McConnell's statement made that clear. Republicans aren't serious about working with Democrats and the White House to solve national problems. Their sole selfish goal is more political power.

"You look like Richard Branson." Nice compliment.

Though I'm irked at Hawaiian Airlines for dropping its non-stop Portland, Oregon to Maui flight, on our return from Honolulu a few days ago a Hawaiian employee made me feel really good.

I'd forked out an extra $70 for two seats in an exit row, where I'd stretched my legs in comparative comfort for the five hours it took to cross the western Pacific. As we started our descent into Portland, a flight attendant sat down in the jumpseat that faces backwards across from the exit row.

Looking at me, she said, "I've been thinking for the whole trip that you remind me of someone. A little while ago I figured it out -- the guy who runs Virgin Atlantic, you know, um..."

"Richard Branson!" I blurted out, all excited. "Except, he's blonder, tanner, and better looking. Thanks, though."

She added, "I kept wondering why Richard Branson would be flying coach on Hawaiian Airlines." Good point. Unless he was thinking of buying the airline (which I'd be heartily in favor of, if he brought back that direct Portland-Maui flight).

My wife diplomatically said, "Yes, there's a bit of a resemblance." OK, I guess. I just scrolled through quite a few pages of Richard Branson images on Google. I didn't find many that made me think, "That's me."

Yeah, there's a bit of me reflected in this expression. Branson is just a few years younger than I am, which makes me wonder about his decidedly less gray appearance.

And there's a mild resemblance here. Again, there'd be more if Branson was as naturally gray as me.

Sadly, I can't recognize any commonality between me and Richard Branson in this photo. I suck at anything having to do with water skiing. Having a beautiful naked woman hang onto me would make my suckedness even worse, leaving us both in the water (not a distasteful notion, though).

So in the end, I'll preserve a fond memory of the flight attendant's comments through this blog post, but I won't expect to be treated like royalty if I ever fly on Virgin America/Atlantic.

(Note: over on my other blog I've shared some photos of our trip to Maui, along with life lessons learned on tropical beaches.)

"Real-life Barbie" does appear to be a real woman

When I came across mention of a real-life Barbie on my Twitter feed, naturally my curiosity was aroused. I've always thought Barbie was hot (though my most ardent attraction is to a more mature, yet similarly curvaceous comic strip character, Blondie).

A 21-year-old girl, who has become an internet sensation in her home country of Russia, claims on her blog to be the most famed woman on the Russian-language internet.

Valeria Lukyanova's doll-like features, long blonde hair and 'perfect' body make her look like a real life Barbie.

In fact, with her tiny waist and large breasts, she bears such a resemblance to the famed plastic doll that cynical web users have been speculating about whether or not she is real.

After careful Googling, I've concluded that, yes, Lukyanova is for real. At least, as real as a Barbie-in-the-flesh produced by gobs of makeup and, most likely, plastic surgery can be.

Her Facebook page has so many photos and videos of her, it's difficult to believe that Lukyanona is purely an artifical creature. She's undeniably beautiful. Yet also a bit creepy, when she's in her full-on Barbie look.

Here's some more photos...

Hawaiian Airlines drops non-stop Portland-Maui flights, so we drop Hawaiian

Most likely, yesterday we took our last flight on Hawaiian Airlines. For about twenty years we've flown direct from Portland, Oregon to Maui. In January 2012 Hawaiian dropped non-stop Portland-Maui flights. 

So my wife and I are going to drop Hawaiian. We had lots of frequent flyer miles accumulated through our usually-annual flights to Maui, supplemented by our habitual use of a Hawaiian Airlines VISA card, which gave us one mile for every dollar charged.

This year we used up almost all of our frequent flyer miles to buy "free" tickets for a flight to Maui that required a plane change in Honolulu. Ugh. Never again.

From now on we'll fly Alaska Airlines' non-stop to Maui from Portland. And cancel our Hawaiian VISA card. Hawaiian Airlines made a bad business decision. 

Have you enjoyed direct flights from Maui to Portland on Hawaiian Airlines? That service is about to end. Beginning mid-January, you will need to make connecting flights through Honolulu.

This move is bad for Maui tourism. Nonstop service is what attracts visitors to the Neighbor Islands. With fewer options for direct flights, tourists who understand the consequences of connecting flights will opt for a different airline or a different locale to visit.

The Portland flights always seem full, but if statistics show otherwise, why drop the number of days for the direct service to zero? We understand that difficult business decisions sometimes need to be made, but we don't understand the wisdom of deserting an existing market entirely.

Yesterday we asked a Hawaiian Airlines employee why the non-stop flight was cancelled.

"I have no idea," we were told. "The company doesn't tell us employees anything. The direct flights were almost always full. People liked them. Now we're losing business travelers who can't get to Maui early enough to do a full day's work. You should write Hawaiian and complain."

For sure. I'm going to.

Maybe it won't make any difference, but the more people who gripe about losing the non-stop Portland to Maui flight, the more Hawaiian Airlines will realize that whoever dreamed up this stupid move made a bad decision.

From a Facebook page, I learned that [email protected] is an email address to send complaints to. And the above-quoted letter from The Maui News says, "Leona Duarte at the airline is accepting email from affected travelers/businesses, [email protected]" So I'm going to send my message to both email addresses.

I'm going to let Hawaiian Airlines know that it was much less enjoyable to fly to Maui through Honolulu. Yesterday my wife and I left Maui pretty much on schedule at 12:45 pm. Our flight to Portland left Honolulu about twenty minutes late, around 3:00 pm. 

So we spent over two hours getting farther away from Portland. Which meant that by the time we got our bags and hopped on the Park N' Fly shuttle, it was after midnight. Living as we do in south Salem, we didn't get home until close to 2:00 am. 

Not fun. Not compared to the non-stop Portland-Maui flights that we and so many others had come to like so much.

The Hawaiian Airlines employee we talked with had the same attitude as I did: "It just isn't right that now a lot more Oregonians are going to be flying on Alaska Airlines to Maui. Getting to Hawaii should be on Hawaiian Airlines."

I agreed. Wholeheartedly.

My wife and I love the service and island-atmosphere on Hawaiian. More than that though, we love not wasting hours of our time making an unnecessary stop in Honolulu -- which is an unattractive, poorly designed airport with horrible eating options for health-minded vegetarians like us. 

Hawaiian Airlines likely is about to feel the full impact of disgruntled formerly loyal customers. As mentioned above, we've now used up almost all of our frequent flyer miles. From now on, we'll use Alaska Airlines for our annual vacations on Maui.

Good bye, Hawaiian. We've enjoyed your company for several decades. But your inexplicable decision to drop all direct flights to Maui from Portland is causing us to embrace Alaska. Change your ways, and we'll probably come back into your arms wings.

Not if you continue to make us fly through Honolulu, though.

Marijuana rolls into center of Oregon Attorney General race

Ellen Rosenblum would be a much better Attorney General for Oregon than Dwight Holton, not least because of her respect for our state's voter-approved medical marijuana act, which Holton almost certainly would continue to undermine -- notwithstanding politically-inspired attempts to downplay his previous attacks against the act.

I hope she wins tomorrow in the Democratic primary. Rosenblum is the choice of progressives, while a poll showed that Holton is favored only by the most conservative Democrats.

A few days ago I got an email from a US News and World Report editor who wrote a story analyzing the impact marijuana is having on the Attorney General race (Republicans aren't running a candidate, so likely whoever wins the Dem primary will be the next AG).

Hey Brian,

I just read your blog post endorsing Ellen Rosenblum for AG. I just completed a long feature piece for US News & World Report about the race, focusing partially on its national implications for marijuana activists: 

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/05/10/why-the-oregon-attorney-general-race-has-national-implications-for-marijuana-laws

Thought you and your readers would find it interesting.

Take care,
Simon Owens
Assistant Managing Editor
US News & World Report

Well, I'm pleased to publicize your story on my blog, Simon. Glad to suck up to you. Just keep me in mind next time you need a quote on an Oregon-related story.

Here's some excerpts from Owens' piece.

Oregon has a long and storied history with marijuana. In 1973, the legislature voted to make possession of less than an ounce of pot an infraction with a maximum fine of $100. The legislature then tried to reclassify simple possession as a misdemeanor in 1997, only for voters to reject it in a 1998 ballot initiative.

That same year, a majority of voters approved another ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes, making Oregon one of the first states to do so (this initiative became what is now called the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act). Unlike some states—California, for instance—Oregon does not allow the sale of medical marijuana, but rather allows those granted permission to either grow pot for themselves or designate others to grow it for them.

...If Holton loses on Tuesday, it won't be the first time marijuana activists will claim they were able to tip the scales of an election. In 2010, activists ran ads against Steve Cooley, a Los Angeles District Attorney they considered hostile to medical marijuana dispensaries, when he ran for attorney general of California. He lost by a slim margin, and activists think it was their ads that cost him the election.

Lurking in the background of the Attorney General race is the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act 2012, which would allow personal use/cultivation of marijiuana, and regulate commercial cultivation/sale. It looks like backers of the citizen initiative are on track to get it on the November ballot.

Rosenblum would be a much better fit for Oregon than Holton if the Cannabis Tax Act is passed by voters. Here's what's cited as the best reason for progressives to vote for Rosenblum:

Progressives' top-rated reasons for supporting Ellen Rosenblum:

"A few weeks ago, at the Eugene City Club debate, Dwight Holton, candidate for Oregon Attorney General, picked a fight with medical marijuana patients when he called the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act a “train wreck.” Holton went on to say he would work with Republican legislators who in 2011 introduced legislation that would have effectively gut the 1998 voter-approved law. Holton is the same former US Attorney who authorized raids on Southern Oregon medical marijuana providers last fall, depriving over 200 patients access to their legal medicine. Holton hails from Virginia and only joined the Oregon State Bar in 2009. He has never tried a case in an Oregon State Court. Judge Rosenblum has been a lawyer, prosecutor and Judge in Oregon for 36 years."

"Ellen Rosenblum is Oregon. She knows most facets of the job and has new ideas of improving communication between the Governor, the state agencies and her constituents. She's well-balanced and will be able to work with the Legislature and the Courts better than her opponent. Former AGs Dave Frohnmayer and Hardy Myers endorse her and they both know what it takes to make not just a good AG but a wonderful AG. Vote for Ellen."

1000 Friends of Oregon urges Salem to preserve Sustainable Fairview

Today the Salem City Council has a choice to make: preserve cutting-edge Green zoning requirements for the highly touted Sustainable Fairview mixed use development, or show once again why Oregon's capital deserves it's nickname, "So-lame."

I'm not wildly optimistic, given the Salem Planning Commission's disappointing go-ahead to Simpson Hills, LLC that would allow it to build a bunch of average apartments on what should be an exceptional piece of property.

But if the City Council listens to those in the know, as opposed to those with the biggest short-term profit motive, it will stick with the Sustainable Fairview Master Plan.

1000 Friends of Oregon urges, "Salem Should Keep Sustainable Fairview VIsion Intact."

A flawed proposal can sink a whole vision. That's the case in Salem, where a proposed multifamily housing development seeks to sidestep an innovative, sustainable plan that local residents developed several years ago. The proposal will soon go before City Council, and local advocates are urging the Council to stick to the vision already adopted.

When the City of Salem adopted the visionary Fairview Master Plan in 2005, it was the product of a community with big ideas. It proposed a livable, sustainable future that garnered praise locally and around the country for its creative and productive reuse of a unique large parcel in the middle of a city. “Salem may get used to seeing its name on magazine covers for some time,” crowed the Statesman-Journal editorial board at the time.

Just seven years later, the City has a decision to make: whether to keep to the vision and the potential of that citizen-created plan, or to follow a bland path that it will undoubtedly later regret. 1000 Friends of Oregon hopes the City will choose to stay on the course its citizens so boldly laid in the Fairview Master Plan.

...The nearby Pringle Creek Community, on a different portion of the Fairview site, is a faithful expression of that vision, and has been rightly praised for its accomplishments. But Simpson Hills, citing insufficiently proven constraints on its portion of the site, claims that many of these same principles should be set aside to build utterly indistinctive apartment housing that might be seen anywhere in the country.

Local neighborhood associations, businesspeople, and advocates reject the idea that Salem should embrace blandness and walk away from the community’s vision expressed in the Fairview Master Plan. 1000 Friends of Oregon agrees.

Quality matters. This site can only be developed once. If Salem gets this right, it will set the tone for its own future as a livable and sustainable place, and those magazine covers will keep coming, as will creative and talented residents who will help the city’s economy and culture thrive.

And Salem Breakfast on Bikes has another good overview of what's wrong with the Simpson HIlls, LLC attempt to de-Green Sustainable Fairview.

On Monday, in an appeal on a Planning Commission decision, Council returns to the matter of the third Fairview refinement plan. (For background and analysis see here, here, and here.) The lead images from the plans, though, tell quite a bit of the story in a visual shorthand. The refinement plan strays significantly from the Master Plan and Council will have to decide how much straying should be permitted and, even, whether to construe the refinement plan as "straying."

My (cynical) ideas for a Salem, Oregon city slogan

Yesterday Michael Rose, a business reporter for the Statesman Journal, asked in a Twitter tweet, "What would be a good city slogan for Salem Ore.?"

Oh, great question. My mind is cynically-inclined when it comes to describing Salem's positive qualities, or more accurately, lack thereof. So it didn't take me long to respond to Michael with quite a few suggestions.

Waking up this morning, after my brain had unconsciously incubated additional embryonic seeds of cynicism, I came up with some more. This is my current Salem city slogan oeuvre.

Salem, the blandburger sandwiched between Portland and Eugene's spicy buns

Salem, after you visit just once you'll say, "Now I've seen it all!"

Salem, a great place to buy gas on your way to Portland or Eugene

Salem, visit us and your hometown will look so much more exciting

Salem, the town that could, if it would, but hasn't

Salem, gateway to the Woodburn Mall and downtown Albany

Salem, great places to visit are just an hour away in every direction

Salem, the town that never wakes

Salem, where manic-depressives are cured of what ails them before the hyphen

Salem, a state capital where the Governor sometimes wants to live

Salem, come for the prisons and mental hospital, then stay on our streets

Salem, you'll be surprised how close to Boring we are

Salem, lots of downtown free parking, few places you'll want to go

Salem, so special, there's nothing like us between Keizer and north Albany

Salem, home of... um, let me think... oh, lots of homes!

I suspect there's little reason for me to hope that the Chamber of Commerce will phone and say, "We want to make one of your ideas the official city slogan of Salem."

However, scrolling through Wikipedia's list of U.S. city nicknames (both formal and informal), I found there's some precedent for dark humor. For example...

Forestville - Poison Oak Capital of the World
Pacifica - Fog Capital of California
Gallup - Drunk Driving Capital of America 
Utica - The City That God Forgot 
Cleveland - Mistake on the Lake 
Beaver - Cow Chip Capital of the World 
Bellingham - City of Subdued Excitement 
Forest Junction - You Can Get There From Here 

And Salem can't let itself be shown up, humor-wise, by my favorite slogan that I came across in the Oregon category:

Talent - Our name speaks for itself

Thanks to Obama, I'm going to stop saying "that's so gay!"

Yesterday I was thrilled to learn that President Obama has come out (so to speak) in favor of gay marriage. This is a good move ethically as well as politically. 

Homosexuals are people too, Mitt Romney and fellow gay-bashing Republicans. Recognizing the obvious will energize Obama's base, and it won't cost him many votes since homophobes already plan to vote against him.

Eugene Robinson ends his column on this subject with:

Politically, Obama may have taken a big step toward reclaiming the future.

The magic of hope and change that suffused his 2008 campaign has dissipated after 40 grueling months in office. Obama’s supporters could point to his accomplishments and cite the reasons why Romney would be a poor replacement, but the optimism and excitement were missing.

Obama could have kept silent on gay marriage, and frustrated progressives would still vote for him. Instead, he spoke out when he didn’t have to and took a stance that might hurt him in key states — reminding us how he can surprise and inspire.

Did I just catch a whiff of that hopey-changey stuff in the air?

For sure. I've already vowed to make a change in my habit of blurting out what I now realize is a slur: that's so gay!

Here's an example.

In the past, my wife has tried to get me to buy a Jams World shirt when we've gone to Maui. She likes the Jams World clothing line. High quality; made in Hawaii; kind of expensive, but not super-outrageous given what you get for your money.

Almost universally -- coincidentally, up until yesterday, the day Obama stated his new position on gay marriage -- I've responded to her pointing out a men's Jams World shirt I should consider buying with Oh, no, that's so gay!

Now, I've had good reasons for saying that. Check out the retro Jams World flambe.

lt just isn't me. Most of the time I wear gray and black combinations, often from Hawaii's other cool clothes purveyor, Crazy Shirts. My taste runs more toward a dark-themed macho Chinese dragon or big breaking wave, not pink flowers.

Still, I also like colorful shirts. Yesterday my wife showed me a Jams World shirt that was much more subdued than the one above. I ended up buying it. However...

My first reaction, more from habit than anything else, was to tell her that's so gay when she said, "I like this Jams World shirt." I kept my mouth shut, though. Partly because we were in a public place and I no longer feel comfortable saying that's so gay, in the same way I wouldn't say that's so black. 

And partly because I had just learned about Obama's gay-friendly words a few hours before. I was enthused by them. I felt that the United States had taken a big step toward ending discrimination against homosexuals. 

Which has been a long time coming. 

Back in my high school years, 1962-66, us guys taunted each other with faggot! There weren't any openly gay students in my high school. Any guy who looked or acted too feminine was teased mercilessly. We had essentially zero compassion for gays.

So I was astounded to read what Mitt Romney said about his own (much worse) gay-bashing experience, given that we are almost exactly the same age.

“I don’t remember that incident,” Romney said, laughing. “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case."

Ridiculous. Back in the 1960's attitudes were hugely different toward homosexuals than they are now. Almost certainly Romney is trying to erase and excuse his past, as he so often does.

My past is still with me.

I wasn't so clearly aware of that until yesterday, when I caught myself about to say that's so gay! Yes, it seems that there is a certain gay style, though I can't describe it exactly. Likewise, there is a certain black style, though I also can't describe it exactly.

But my use of that's so gay had a homophobic edge to it. I was afraid of looking like I was gay. I didn't want people to think, "Only a gay guy would wear that shirt." 

Why? Why couldn't I simply say to my wife, that shirt doesn't appeal to me; too pink, too bright?

That's what I'm going to say now. No more that's so gay. Of such small steps revolutions are made. May we have legal gay marriage all across the United States soon.

Here's the Jams World shirt that I bought. I've worn it several times. No one has asked me if I'm gay.

In the unlikely event someone does, I'll respond, "Yes. You must have been able to tell from the Jams World shirt. Very observant. By the way, please support gay marriage. We gays deserve equal rights. Along with nice clothes."

Economic austerity humorously ridiculed in Fiore animation

Austerity to bring about prosperity is a ridiculous economic idea. So I liked how Mark Fiore makes fun of this notion in his News in a Nutshell animation, "Assaulting Austerity," or: "Why events an ocean away matter to you."

Check it out.

You'll never again believe Mitt Romney or other Republicans who say that cutting spending and jobs in a recession is the way to... here's the joke... get more spending and jobs! (Not that you ever should have believed them.)

Hilarious.

Or it would be, if right-wingers weren't so serious about pursuing wacked-out policies that would only benefit the rich. Europe is figuring this out, as Fiore humorously points out. Here's the words to his animation, conveniently shared on his website.

News, in a Nutshell presents . . .

"Assaulting Austerity," or: "Why events an ocean away matter to you."

From left to right to really right, across Europe, the Battle of Austerity rages, with leaders and governments falling everywhere-- from the Netherlands to Greece to France as voters say "NO MORE" to cuts!

It all began as a sure-fire solution to Europe's economic woes, which were blamed on government spending and too much debt.

Never mind the banks, it was the fault of those dastardly government spendaholics.

So belts were tightened, lips were stiffened and boot straps were relied upon as government spending was cut and safety nets snipped.

People who did things for or sold things to the government were out of luck, as demand fell in an already-weakened economy.

Which led to a weaker economy and more unemployment.

But there was a solution!

Belts were tightened, lips were stiffened and boot straps were relied upon as government spending was cut and safety nets snipped.

Which, unfortunately for people who did things for or sold things to the government, led to falling demand and more unemployment in an already-weak economy.

Clearly, more austerity was needed!

So belts were tightened, lips were stiffened and boot straps were relied upon as government spending was cut and safety nets snipped.

(Which, for some odd reason, weakened an already-weak economy.)

Budget-cutting austerity stars like Ireland became basket cases, leading thousands to flee!

As Europe double-dipped into recession and depression, banks here at home remained dangerously exposed to the predicament across the pond.

But never fear, America's wise financial leaders and deficit hawks in Congress have a solution!

Belts will be tightened, lips will be stiffened and boot straps will be relied upon as government spending is cut and safety nets snipped.

Gute nacht, and . . . zut alors.

Why biking and other risky activities are dangerous, but not fearful

Thank you, Tim Krieder, for writing such a marvelous New York Times essay, "Cycle of Fear." You wonderfully described why I love riding my maxi-scooter (a Suzuki Burgman 650) so much. Also, why I like boogie boarding on the biggest waves I can find on a Hawaii vacation so much.

Krieder talks about riding his bicycle in New York City. But his explanation of why risky activities are so enjoyable applies to lots of pursuits: motorcycling, downhill skiing, rock climbing, skateboarding, horse riding, many others.

After speaking about our modern-day hypervigilance to mostly imaginary threats, the worries and anxieties of everyday life that obsess our waking brains (and even our dreams), Krieder says:

Which is why it’s such a relief, an exhilarating joy, to break the clammy paralysis of worry and place yourself at last in real physical danger. Even though it’s the time when I am at most immediate risk, riding my bike in Manhattan traffic is also one of the only times when I am never anxious or afraid — not even when a cab door swings open right in front of me, some bluetoothed doofus strides into my path, or a dump truck’s fender drifts within an inch of my leg.

At those moments fear is a low neurological priority that would only interfere with my reaction time, like a panicky manager shoved aside by competent, grim-faced engineers in a crisis. I doubt that the victims of sudden violent accidents die terrified; they’re probably extremely alert, brains gone pretty much blank while their galvanized bodies try to figure out what to do. I don’t think our minds are designed to accept that there’s no way out. Based on my own close calls, I suspect that if I am killed while biking, the state of mind in which I am likeliest to die is extreme annoyance. And at least it won’t be by drowning.

Exactly. I'm never scared while riding my powerful scooter.

(I usually put some sort of macho adjective before "scooter" when I write about my passion, to differentiate a Suzuki Burgman 650 from weenie scooters like teeny Vespas; nothing wrong with them, where I live it just seems like they're almost always ridden by young women wearing pink helmets, a demographic I don't identify with.)

As Krieder says, there's too much that needs concentrating on while engaged in a risky activity for fear to be present in one's mind. Even when riskiness raises its dangerous head, dealing with the situation occupies the brain cells which otherwise might scream Scary!

When I’m balanced on two thin wheels at 30 miles an hour, gauging distance, adjusting course, making hundreds of unconscious calculations every second, that idiot chatterbox in my head is kept too busy to get a word in. I’ve heard people say the same thing about rock-climbing: how it shrinks your universe to the half-inch of rock surface immediately in front of you, this crevice, that toehold.

Biking is split-second fast and rock-climbing painstakingly slow, but both practices silence the noise of the mind and render self-consciousness blissfully impossible. You become the anonymous hero of that old story, Man versus the Universe. Your brain’s glad to finally have areal job to do, instead of all that trivial busywork. You are all action, no deliberation. You are forced, under pain of death, to quit all that silly ideation and pay attention. It’s meditation at gunpoint.

Right now my stomach muscles are sore.

This morning the waves were running nicely high in Maui's Napili Bay. However, they weren't breaking super-cleanly, gradually from side to side. More like crashing down vertically in a single curvaceous whump, then whitewatering onwards.

It took a while to figure out where to position me and my boogie board for optimum wave-catching. I decided to venture past a small reef, rather than wait for a wave in front of it. This was a good decision. But for a split second, I had some doubt.

Not a fearful doubt. Just a calm, albeit highly focused, feeling of Whoa...look at this.

What I was looking at was nothing. Nothing, that is, between me and the ocean some four feet or so below, as the breaking wave had caught me in the curl and presented me with a great view of empty air between me and the ocean (also, somewhere, rocks). 

I managed to hold onto the sides of my boogie board and land halfway gracefully on the wave after falling what seemed like miles. The landing hurt, but any discomfort was quickly erased from my mind as I enjoyed my best wave run of the day, almost all the way into the beach.

So, yes, I know what Krieder is talking about. And heartily agree with it.

I’m convinced these are the conditions in which we evolved to thrive: under moderate threat of death at all times, brain and body fully integrated, senses on high alert, completely engaged with our environment. It is, if not how we’re happiest — we’re probably happiest in a hot tub with a martini and a very good naked friend — how we are most fully and electrically alive. Of course we can’t sustain this state of mind for too long.

People who go through their whole lives operating on impulse tend to end up in jail. We are no longer purely animals, living only in the moment; we are the creatures who live in time, as salamanders live in fire, prisoners of memory and imagination, tortured with dread and regret. That other, extra-temporal perspective is not the whole reality of our condition. It’s more like the view from the top of the Empire State Building, of people as infinitesimal dots circulating ceaselessly through a grid.

Eventually we have to descend back to street level, rejoin the milling mass and take up our lives; you lock up your bike and become hostage to the hours again. But it’s at those moments that I become briefly conscious of what I actually am — a fleeting entity stripped of ego and history in an evanescent present, like a man running in frames of celluloid, his consciousness flickering from one instant to the next.

Video of father-daughter wedding dance I'm envious of

When my daughter, Celeste, got married, I wasn't the dancing fool that I am now.

By "fool," I mean that my dancing is more fun for me than it is artistic to look at; also that I now feel foolish for not having started to take ballroom lessons earlier than my wife and I did, because we really enjoy dancing.

If I had my father-daughter wedding dance to do over again, I'd love it to look like this one. I think I could handle most of the moves this fellow gray-haired guy throws out on the dance floor so engagingly.

His daughter is enjoyable to look at also. Congratulations father and daughter. You've brought smiles, and likely some joyful tears, to many people. 

 

European Union is a success, no matter what U.S. conservatives say

With the French elections happening today, Adam Gopnik's "Vive La France" piece in the May 7 The New Yorker is timely reading. 

Like so much else in the magazine, it's wonderfully written and soundly reasoned.

The piece touches on a question that baffles me: why conservatives/Republicans in our semi good-old USA have such a distaste for European social democracies. Those nations do a lot of things better than we do.

Like health care. Modern transportation. Making it possible to move up the economic ladder. Providing essential social services to all of their citizens.

At the end of his essay, Gopnik reminds us of sixty million other reasons for those of us on the other side of the Atlantic to offer up a rousing chant of European Union! European Union! European Union! 

To the American right, anything that goes wrong in Europe does so because Europe is wrong, and not because of austerity, because austerity is right.

This anti-European bias is producing an indecent-seeming amount of schadenfreude—on the right but also on the left—about the prospect of the dissolution of the European Union. The potential Franco-German split, Germany’s own ambivalences, the Greek crisis, the fall of the Dutch government, the backslide of the British economy—the tone about all this is oddly punitive here, as though the E.U. had been the product of some Brussels bureaucrat’s utopian folly rather than a miracle of coexistence wrought by a handful of quiet visionaries after more than fifty years of catastrophe.

In thinking about Europe and its union, the number that one needs to keep in mind is not the rate of the euro exchange or the measure of the Greek deficit but a simpler one, of sixty million.

That is the approximate (and probably understated) number of Europeans killed in the thirty years between 1914 and 1945, victims of wars of competing nationalisms on a tragically divided continent. The truth needs re-stating: social democracy in Europe, embodied by its union, has been one of the greatest successes in history.

Like all successes, it can seem exasperatingly commonplace. There is something uninspiring about the compromises and the dailiness of a happy marriage, and something compelling about one that is coming apart: it looks more like the due fate of all things. Yet the truth ought to remain central.

A continent torn by the two most horrible wars in history achieved a remarkable half century of peace and prosperity, based on a marriage of liberalism properly so called (individual freedoms, including the entrepreneurial kind) and socialism rightly so ordered (as an equitable care for the common good).

Any pleasure taken in the failure of Europe to expunge all its demons threatens to become one more way of not having to examine our own. A mild-mannered, European-minded citizen king is, at least, better than a passionately convinced exceptionalist. France, and Europe, learned that lesson the hard way. 

Heartland Institute compares global warming believers to "murderers"

As if we needed more proof that anti-science global warming deniers are wackos, here it is:

Well, when facts, reality, and 98% of the world's leading climate scientists aren't on your side, it looks like the global warming deniers are reduced to disgusting fearmongering and personal insults. Here's what part of the Heartland Institute's press release announcing the billboard campaign said:

May 3, 2012 – Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too.

Heartland’s first digital billboard – along the inbound Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) in Maywood – is the latest effort by the free-market think tank to inform the public about what it views as the collapsing scientific, political, and public support for the theory of man-made global warming. It is also reminding viewers of the questionable ethics of global warming’s most prominent proponents.

“The most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists,” said Heartland’s president, Joseph Bast. “They are Charles Manson, a mass murderer; Fidel Castro, a tyrant; and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Global warming alarmists include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).

Huh? Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, and Osama Bin Laden are/were "global warming's most prominent proponents"? What planet are you spreading your lies on, Heartland Institute?

Al Gore. Barack Obama. The Dalai Lama. Pope Benedict XVI. Desmond Tutu. The Heartland Institute is associating these men, who all accept the truth of human-caused global warming, with the "world's most notorious criminals." 

Andrew Sullivan tells it like it is:

In some ways, this is an almost perfect illustration of what has happened to the "right." A refusal to acknowledge scientific reality; and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association. 

...Mann and Ornstein are correct. Large sections of the American right are now close to insane as well as depraved. 

The Guardian's Environment Blog says:

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

And Climate Progress writes:

The Heartland Institute has launched one of the most offensive billboard campaigns in U.S. history. The Chicago-based anti-science think tank is comparing all those who accept climate science — and the journalists who report on it accurately — to Charles Manson, the Unabomber, and Osama Bin Laden.

Oregon weather breaks my May heart... then heals it

Oregon weather, I'm fed up with you. I've had enough abuse. This afternoon I realized that I can't stand you anymore.

Driving around in south Salem, I just had to pull over, grab my iPhone, and document what a crappy companion you've become. 

Come on! You're ridiculous! My Mini's thermometer doesn't lie. The warmth between us is gone. You're giving me 43 degrees. That's cold any time. Especially...

When the time is 12:50 pm -- middle of the freakin' day! -- on May 4. Spring. In fact, late spring. Yeah, I'd been listening to the "Chill" station on Sirius satellite radio. But that doesn't entitle you to make the outside what I'm grooving to on the inside.

Speaking of outside, Ms. Oregon Weather, this is what you looked like when you were giving me that 43 degree frigid treatment. You've gone gray. And blah. And all rainy weepy. I don't find you attractive any more. It's over!

Oh, sweetheart... I'm sorry for those harsh words. When I got home, after being so pissed-off at you, my heart melted when I saw how beautiful you can be in your sunnier moments.

Thanks for the flowers. I'm going to do my best to work things out with you.

Oregon Weather, my dear, you're an alluring creature. Hellish to live with when you're nasty; heavenly when you choose to be seductive.

Salem City Council, preserve the vision of "Sustainable Fairview"

Please, Salem (Oregon) City Council. Pretty please.

Don't allow the beautiful property in south Salem to become less than the world-class Green development that Sustainable Fairview currently is zoned as.

A few days ago I learned that the Salem Planning Commission is OK with turning the undeveloped portion of the property from a vibrant green to a blah gray, architecturally speaking. On May 14 the City Council meets to decide whether to allow Simpson Hills, LLC to build a bunch of typical apartments on 43 of the 104 acres it owns at the site that used to house the Fairview Training Center. This is the big picture of Sustainable Fairview. Pringle Creek Community, a genuinely Green development, is located in the jagged outcropping at the top of the green-outlined boundary of Sustainable Fairview.

Simpson Hills, LLC owns the property at the bottom, lots 1-5. The white area is to be developed in the future. The area just above, lots 1-3, are inaccurately termed the "Refinement Plan Boundary." Refinement, I guess, is how planners refer to modifying existing zoning criteria.

I'd say Demolishment would be a more fitting term in this case. Here's a close-up look at the plan for lots 1-3.

Yes, it's largely colored green. But that's about the extent of its Green'ness, sustainability-wise.

These lots are planned to house typical three story apartment buildings. Even though current Sustainable Fairview zoning requires LEED standards, Simpson Hills, LLC doesn't want to make the apartments any greener or more environmentally sound than the usual Salem zoning requires.

Ridiculous. 

When Simpson Hills, LLC bought 104 acres of the Sustainable Fairview property, the buyers knew that this was, duh..., a sustainable development with especially sustainable zoning regulations that had been approved by the City of Salem quite a few years ago.

The vision of the Sustainable Fairview Master Plan, for example, included having highly energy-efficient homes; all stormwater captured on site; minimal emphasis on cars/roads; varied types of housing; mixed uses on site so people could "live, work, and play" in a conveniently compact area.

Disappointingly, Simpson Hills, LLC now wants to back off substantially from those laudable goals.

Note the expanse of gray in the plan for lots 1-3 above. Those are parking lots and roads. Lots of lots. Lots of roads. The rain water that runs off them, which will be lots, is planned to end up in the holding pond shown on the right of the drawing. Then all the water will go into Pringle Creek. 

Pringle Creek Community, by contrast, has permeable asphalt and other ways of capturing stormwater. And the original plans for Sustainable Fairview envisioned limited "obvious" parking, with cars sequestered behind dwelling units, rather than prominently parked front and center.

The Morningside Neighborhood Association, which represents those already living in the area, isn't thrilled with the Simpson Hills, LLC "refinement" plan.

Geoffrey James, an architect, heads up the association's land use committee. He's put together an excellent critique of the proposed development which can be read here. It starts off with:

Fairview Hills is a current proposal by a developer for the southern ownership [portion of the Fairview property,i.e. the old Fairview Training Center, that was sold by the State of Oregon in 2008 [actually, 2002], and is supposed (by ordinance) to be a Sustainable, Green, and Low Impact Development. Unfortunately, conventional apartments are currently proposed, with conventional parking lots. A public hearing on this is before Salem City Council on Monday, May 14. Morningside Neighborhood Association is the neighborhood, and the Executive Board passed a motion unanimously, that is opposed to this development.

Attachment 7 in this (large) collection of documents related to the Simpson Hills, LLC proposal is a memo from Sustainable Fairview Associates (SFA), the organization which bought the Fairview Training Center property from the State of Oregon. 

If anybody knows how Sustainable Fairview should be developed, it is SFA. And SFA also isn't happy with how Simpson Hills, LLC is trying to cut corners on cutting-edge sustainability/green'ness. In the memo Sam Hall, SFA Managing Member, told the City of Salem:

We are generally supportive of the plan to develop apartments on the site, but there is little evidence that their plan for apartments at Fairview is different from the projects they say they have done many times before on properties all over the country. We see very little understanding or recognition of the goals of the Master Plan and the nature of the Fairview site.

This should be a no-brainer for the Salem Planning Commission and City Council.

Simpson HIlls, LLC shouldn't be allowed to breeze into town with a cookie-cutter proposal for the Sustainable Fairview property that maximizes profits for themselves and minimizes Salem's chance to have a world class Green development. 

Salem Weekly, our city's alternative newspaper, has exposed how the Planning Commission is unfairly (and possibly illegally) comprised: five out of seven members have strong ties to real estate development.

So its no surprise that a short-sighted Chamber of Commerce mentality at odds with the Sustainable Fairview Master Plan has led the Planning Commission to recommend approval of the Simpson Hills application. It's up to the City Council to stop the madness.

Frequently I critique Salem's blah'ness on this blog. There's a good reason Oregon's capital is nicknamed "So-lame." Often, it is.

Sustainable Fairview is a non-lame flash of creativity, innovation, excitement, and world-class Green design that needs to be nurtured, not crushed by a Simpson HIlls, LLC proposal which seeks to markedly diminish those qualities.

Geoffrey James put it nicely in his critique of the ill-considered development plans:

Why was the area described by the Fairview Master plan meant to be different than other areas of Salem? What is the value of a "sustainable" community or neighborhood?
 

It is intended to be a new kind of neighborhood for those who live and work in Salem, that will foster innovative land development and transportation practices. create a strong yet dynamic sense of community, stimulate and create new employment opportunities, demonstrate the efficient use of both natural and human resources,preserve a healthy environment for people, nature, and business, protect nature and develop new techniques for integrating the natural and built environments, use resources to meet the needs of this generation while conserving them for future generations, encourage creative ideas, products, and processes, and share them with other communities and developments, and be a focal point for the growing effort to achieve a balanced,sustainable future.

The distinction of the project is it is becoming a magnet for people out of state wanting to relocate to a community that values sustainability. Protecting the standards of the project will ensure a differentiated project that would attract new people and new talent to Salem, in particular young professionals from out of state. Additionally, for recruitment, such a distinct housing offering will help our large employers attract top talent to Salem, rather than lose workers to other cities or to Portland. Several thousands of workers live in Portland and commute to Salem each day because they believe Portland has a better quality of life. Offering a well- designed housing option in Salem may lure these workers to live in Salem, and spend their money here rather than in Portland.

 Absolutely.

It'd be crazy if the Salem City Council said "OK" to building a bunch of oh-so-average apartments on the Sustainable Fairview property that are indistinguishable from apartments on Liberty Road, Commercial Street, Wallace Road, or many other places in our town.

Sustainable Fairview is designed to be special. Simpson Hills, LLC wants it to be nothing-special. Why? Apparently because the corporation thinks it will make more money by offering an average housing product, rather than an exceptional housing product.

Well, Salem has enough average.

Let's continue to aim for exceptional with Sustainable Fairview, as the Pringle Creek Community is doing, and which I assume SFA intends to do with the portion of the property it still owns.

Hold fast to the Fairview Master Plan and current zoning, Salem City Council. Don't settle for average.

(The Breakfast on Bikes blog has a good post about the Simpson Hills, LLC proposal. Give it a read. I heartily agree with the concluding words: "Salem has plenty of conventional development. The City of Salem should give that Master Plan a fair trial and square deal. Is it really necessary to water it down from the start?")