Wayward Landlubber

     The EPA was created in December of 1970, signed into law by Richard Nixon, the Republican party's 2nd-worst president in its history. Before, the creation of the EPA, environmental laws were passed by state legislatures, or more often, ignored by state legislators when the money was right.       Sometime around the year I graduated from high school I began to read accounts of an environmental activist in Wisconsin named, The Fox. He was not named for the television and movie hero, Zorro, the fox. He took his name from the Fox River near Greenbay, Wisconsin. Back in that time Wisconsin was a liberal state with popular Democratic politicians like Sen. William Proxmire and earlier, Governor Robert Lafollette. They also had a pretty good football team in those days. The environmental movement was in its infancy and had marginal influence outside of the youth movement that I was growing into.      James F. Phillips was a mild-mannered bi...

     There's a lot of Americans who have low cultural knowledge. North Americans. The land pushing against Canada and trying to push Mexico into the Gulf. Mostly it is the red states that give us a bad rep.       Back in the opening days of the Iraq-Afghanistan war, a reporter made the comment that this would not end well. It didn't. We overthrew Saddam Hussein, captured him and put him in prison. He was a Ba'athist, a nationalist party, and a Sunni muslem, in a predominantly Shia country, who ruled with an iron fist. The Shia have about 55% of the total Muslim population but the Sunni held more power. Iran, iraq's hostile neighbor is majority Shia. To put that in a way that red-state America could understand, Republicans are the B'athist party, Catholics are the Shia equivolent, and red states are the Sunni, blue states are whatever the unitarian equivolent of Islam is. By the time we were pulling out our troops, our only accomplishment was to have in...

     I admit to being a little rough on Republicans. It is one of the great pleasures available to those of us for whom trickle-down did not trickle down. Given the level of incompetence displayed in this last decade or two, it is a somewhat kinder sort of display than the tinkle-down we might be inclined to try.      Back in the early 2000s there was an Oregon politician named Dan Doyle. He was a member of the state House of Representatives in Oregon. The Republican party back in those days had had a few years as the majority party, maybe a decade. During that time they got a little over-confident. I know this will surprise you.       We have been starving our public schools for funding since the spotted owl and the closure of sawmills built to handle the larger old-growth logs. School funding had been partially offset by timber taxes. Public school funding since has been tied to the Oregon Lottery, a bitter irony because it is yet anot...

I have good news and bad news:      There are stories going around the internet that 2023 saw a decline in readership of rightwing news sites. I use that term, news site, loosely. Breitbart alone, has seen an 80% decline. I cannot say for sure how credible these sources are but I can take some satisfaction in the thought that altnews is hoping this is altnews. The truth will be known when they have disappeared. And I will not mourn.      Which brings me to the bad news. Traditional print press has long been in decline. It would not surprise me that conservative media is the culprit. The rise of Foxnews is concurrent with the decline of news some seven or so years after Reagan got rid of the fairness doctrine. So is this digital thing we have with us constantly. I remember back in the days of Air-America radio when there was a successful effort to remove that liberal news-talk station from the air by Sinclair radio, a well-financed conservative media company...

He talks with Words thick  with hate. And you let it happen He walks impiously Among the pious Dripping hot sweat  As you bow with  unction before him. And you let it happen He told you What he'd do, Small voices from the back say, Listen to him, I beg you. You did not. And you let it happen. He appointed  Unqualified people  To positions critical To our very lives.  And you let it happen. A nation hostile To our interests  attacks our president With spies and innuendo  And you let it happen. In the near future We may find  Our fears before us. What else can we say but, You let it happen.

     When I first signed up on Facebook I used to type out to people whom I friended, or who friended me, that "I'm only here to piss-off righties, I don't do business online". I sort of got away from that in later years. No surprise, I would friend someone and after a while they would send me a message with the opening sentence, "Have you heard the good news?" At least I no longer get offered the opportunity to help a Nigerian prince.      As a writer of not very high repute Facebook has been very helpful. I'm better at editing my responses and posts. My spelling is better, I don't abuse commas as much, and I have polished my short, pithy, replies. Sometimes I'm like a jaguar sitting on a limb waiting for a lame MAGAt to wander into range. And they do. Arrogantly puffing out their chests as if they were unapproachable. Trust me, my day is made on these people. And I do not feel bad insulting them. Those who persist in our discussion will sooner ...

     I was born in the middle of the last year of the 1940s. By the time I was born, Joseph McCarthy had added one more drunk Republican to the Senate. While he certainly sought power, that was not what he was drunk on. A few years later, 1953, John F Kennedy entered the Senate. One of these men is celebrated, The other was another in the long list of public embarrassments from the Republican party.       Throughout my lifetime, Republicans have given a safe hiding place to fascists and proto fascists. Not all Republicans were part of the conspiracy, but they share the thing that should embarrass them all. Yes, I acknowledge that the Democratic party contained at that time the Southern Dixiecrats who spawned the KKK during Reconstruction, but they had been slipping into disfavor since the 1948 Democratic Convention seated its first black delegates. By 1971, the Dixiecrats would be invited, under the aegis of the "southern strategy", into the Republican...