Wayward Landlubber

     I am approaching my 75th year. I obtained my voting privileges when I was 19 years old, thanks to a young college student of the time named Earl Blumenauer and a lot of young people eager to end the Vietnam War. During that time I have been a proud Democrat. There were some pretty good Republicans in those days that I willingly voted for: Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield, Bob Packwood, Wayne Morse. But the Republican party was not my party because of people like Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Sen. Barry Goldwater, and Richard Nixon of Watergate fame. Those were, sadly, the high point of Republican politicians. In more recent years we have watched Republicans become increasingly autocratic, influenced by Newt Gingerich, the Tea-party, and finally, MAGA.       For all of that time I rarely went public with my distaste for that other party, the party that has sought to erase the progress that our party had achieved by strenuous negotiations. But these are not normal...

     I have this friend... we've known each other since the two of us could sit on Ron's Honda 50 and ride across the playground at Washington elementary school. There were times when we weren't in contact with each other, but we always re-united. He's been married for over 50 years. His wife, Frankie, encouraged my kids to read. She always had suggestions for them. Friends are like that. Frankie had a frequent joke; she used to subscribe to a humor publication called, "Liberal Opinion". When I would visit she would give me her old copies and say, "I know you need some liberal opinions, Larry."      During one of those times when we were out of contact, Ron was a well-driller in Eastern Oregon. He discovered that he had a rare talent, one rooted in ancient chronicles. He is a diviner, a water-witcher. We have joked about that good naturedly, over the course of our adult lives. In the same way that Ron and his father used to good-naturedly remind me a...

     There are certain people who, without thinking very hard themselves, think they know enough to lecture the rest of us. Many of those people can be found in the party that believes there is something bad about being woke. This is where someone from that other party defensively exclaims, "but they're all the same". They are not all the same. Some things are pretty obvious. Finding higher-level intelligence can be found from most Democrats in leadership positions, from Joe Biden-who stutters, is old and moves a little slower these days, but still possesses the wit to put Republicans in their place anywhere he happens to be speaking. To Jamie Raskin, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, Joe Nagouse, and many many of the current 213 members of the House of representatives, and the 51 members of the Senate. I seriously doubt that any single member of the Republican Caucus in either chamber can match the  mental acuity of the least member of the D...

     From time to time those who believe they are a direct conduit from the diety, take to the pulpit to warn of the impending destruction of the planet by an angry God. It has always been thus; back to the beginning of preachers when there was a surplus of Dieties. A recent example was Reverend Camping whose prediction of the end of the world on May 21, 2011 did not come to pass. Optimist that he was, he claimed later to have miscalculated by five months. We are still here, though we have not seen much of Rev. Camping.       Since we now have some time to better prepare for the apocalypse, here are some thoughts on how the righteous can avoid appearing self-righteous and insincere to those who won't be experiencing the blessings of rapture.      1) It should be remembered that clothing, even underclothing, will not be needed. Therefore, it would be seen as outre' to purchase special apparel for the end times. This is a benefit, since th...

     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...