Red states vie for title of "Most Ignorant"

Man, oh, man!

It seems that the red states (those states that went for Mad Johnny McCain in the last presidential election) are each trying to outdo the others to attain that coveted redneck title, "Most Ignorant."  Consider:

• Oklahoma, already a serious contender by virtue of its troglodyte US Senator James Inhofe (who calls global-warming a "hoax") strengthened its bid when tea-baggers and Republicans in the state legislature advocated the formation of a state militia to defend against "improper federal infringements on state sovereignty."  Tea-baggers in the Sooner state are ready and willing to play army in the woods, just like the Hutaree, if it means they don't have to have health care.
  
  
• Texas, a perennial favorite by virtue of having launched the political career of no less ignorant a figure than Junior Bush, continued to display considerable strength by handing a Republican party primary victory to neo-confederate Governor Rick Perry for this year's gubernatorial election.  And the Texas State Board of Education has contributed mightily to the effort with its crayola-crayon revisions of history.
  
  
• Alaska, after showing promise early, fell out of the running when the Queen of Tea-bagging, Sweet Sister Sarah, resigned the governorship mid-term, amid sagging approval ratings.  Apparently, Alaskans just aren't ignorant enough for Alaska to be a real Red state.
  
  
• But my pick for the most ignorant of tea-bagging red states goes to Arizona.  I mean, guys like US Senator Jon Kyl and Mad Johnny don't come along every day.  (And let's not even mention that beacon of enlightenment, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.)  But Arizona has pulled out all the stops to win the title of America's "Most Ignorant" with two recent actions by its state legislature:
   
1. The state house passed a resolution requiring presidential candidates to show a valid birth certificate in order to be listed on the state ballot for elections.  This is a direct pander to those tea-baggers that cling to the idea that President Obama was not born in the United States and, therefore, is not legitimately the president.  Further, it is an insult, intended in the most personal of terms, to the President himself. 
   
   
2. Both houses of the legislature passed a bill, now awaiting signature by the state's Republican governor, aimed directly at Latinos.  The new bill would give law enforcement officers in that state the authority (indeed, the obligation!) to demand proof of citizenship from anyone for whom those officers have "reasonable suspicion" of being in violation of US Immigration law. 

Does anyone imagine that the Arizona state legislature was motivated in either of these actions by anything other than racism?  Already, Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva is calling for an economic boycott of his own state if (Republican) Governor Jan Brewer signs the anti-Latino legislation into law.

But redneck ignorance in Arizona is potent stuff.  Recall that Arizona was a long holdout against recognizing Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday, even when it cost the state millions in lost income due to the relocation of 166 conventions and Superbowl XXVII as a result.

There are millions of good, decent people that live in red states, of course.  But, unfortunately, they don't hold sway.  Instead, the face that red states present to the world, is the face of ignorance, bigotry, and prideful stupidity.  Half-assed Klansmen.  The kind of people that mutter insults at you under their breath, then deny it when confronted.  Vile, cowardly people.

Rock on, you Red State numb-skulls!

Earth Day, 2010

Earth Day, today.  Forty years ago, on April 22nd, 1970, twenty million Americans demonstrated to express concern about the despoiling of our air and water.  Conditions were so bad at that time, that the Cuyahoga River in Ohio actually caught fire in 1969.  Smog produced by millions of cars burning leaded gasoline hung like gray death over American cities.

I remember passing through Riverside, California, with my family sometime in the late 60s. Riverside is located west of Los Angeles, surrounded by mountains and hills. A dense, choking gray presence hung in the lifeless air.  It was as if the city were enshrouded in a thick fog, obscuring vision beyond a certain distance.  But the thickness of the air was not due to vaporous water that would burn away with the sun.  It was smog. The breeze from the Pacific was strong that day and all the smog produced by drivers in Los Angeles, had blown inland, to Riverside, where it was trapped by the surrounding highland.  I had never seen anything like it before (nor since) and it had a profound effect on me.

The first Earth Day started something, though.  No one can deny that environmental regulations and public awareness have resulted in vast improvements to water and air quality here in the United States.

But, although I don't want to rain on the parade, I'm at least half-convinced that all our efforts are in vain, that humanity may have already passed the point of no return, environmentally.  The huge environmental crises that are looming before humanity are so vast and perplexing, and are further complicated by the willful ignorance of people who would rather not be bothered, that I have trouble believing humanity can take the steps necessary to reverse the tide.

Global warming, depletion of water resources, deforestation, and the unprecedented rate of extinction of non-human species seem to indicate that Earth is getting ready for another Big Transition^TM.  Even to slow the progress of these destructive trends would take an unprecedented level of cooperation on a global scale.  I'm not sure human beings are capable of it.

One would think that preserving the Earth, the one shared endowment of every single human being, would be of utmost importance to everyone.  And I think every human being probably does know that, at least at some level.  The problem is that human institutions, which often have interests that are in opposition to the interests of human individuals, wield inordinate power.  What is good for a corporation is not necessarily good for a human being.  (And I don't care what the Supreme Court has to say about it.)

Nonetheless, it is my duty to keep trying and to keep hoping.  So, I do my best to curtail my driving.  I have a relatively efficient car (~35 miles per gallon).  I keep the thermostat in my home at 62 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter.  I recycle; I try to buy locally-produced food.  I vote green.

In the end, it may not be enough.  But, like I said, it's my duty.

Happy Earth Day!

La batalla de inmigración empieza en Arizona

A pesar de las advertencias de republicanos de los peligros del gobierno intruso, la nueva ley pasada por el poder legislativo del estado de Arizona revela sus intenciones verdaderas: suprimir latinos.  La ley, que aguarda la firma de Gobernadora Jan Brewer (R), dice que la policía pueden demandar prueba de ciudadanía de cualquiera ellos escogen.

¡Ahora vemos conservadores cómo valorar los derechos de individuos!

Pero, de veras,  no es una revelación que los Republicanos, especialmente esos que creen que el Senador John McCain es un liberal, son racistas.  La pregunta más importante es esta: ¿cómo afectará esto el debate sobre la política nacional de inmigración?

Los representantes de Arizona en EEUU Congreso, incluyendo Luis Gutierrez y Raul Grijalva, han llamada en el Presidente Obama para intervenir. Pero, no es claro qué él puede hacer. De veras, ellos  llaman para un boicot económico de su propio estado si la Gobernadora firma la ley.

¡Qué lástima que mi mamá y su esposo han comprado un hogar para el invierno en Arizona recientemente! Pero yo no los culpo. Ellos quieren disfrutar de su jubilación (la cuál que ellos han ganado). Sin embargo, yo evitaré el gasto cualquier dinero en Arizona hasta el gobierno del estado cambia la política.

Presidente Obama ha dicho que proponerá una nueva política nacional para la inmigración. Bien, las racistas indican que la batalla ha empezada.

(Perdóneme por favor para mi español malo.)

Pullin' chain at DG Shelter

In the spring of 1983, I left off school and went to work at the little lumber mill outside Klamath Falls, Oregon run by DG Shelter Corporation.  The timber industry was well-respected in Klamath Falls in those days.  The town owed a lot to the saw mills. If it weren't for Weyerhaeuser and Modoc Lumber Company and all the rest, it is hard to imagine that Klamath Falls would ever have been more than a farmer's hamlet.

I got a job there because the foreman of the planer mill on day shift was Joe Tacchini, an old family friend.  DG Shelter paid me 7 dollars and 20 cents an hour, and that was respectable money.  Not as much as the union workers at Weyerhaeuser were getting, but plenty for a college drop-out just looking to have a little fun while he figured out what to do with his life.

Mill work was tough.  I worked on the planer chain.

The way it worked was this: 

Smeltzer, standing over at the planer feeder, would let in the rough-hewn planks, just out from the kiln, one after the other, making sure they didn't jam.  The planar would hum and the planed lumber would shoot out the other side and onto the belt table which carried them past the graders, Les and Philo, who would look them over and scrawl a grade on them with colored chalk, according to their warp and the size and number of knots.  They had a way of marking instructions for the trimmer that told him how much to trim off each end.

Ted ran the trim saws.  He'd set the lumber just so on the chain feeder and hold it with his right hand until the cleats caught it and carried it up under the hood to the line of trim saws.  Then, with his left hand, he'd push the keys on the control box, dropping the trim saws and making the cut according to the grade.  Sometimes, especially when he was just starting the job, he'd miss a grade and just drop the whole line of saws down, cutting the lumber into useless 2 foot segments that fell down onto the hog feeder belt, and were carried up and into the hog to be chipped.  But Ted got to be pretty good at it, and those instances were rare.  Mostly he got it right.

The trimmed and finished product would come out the other side at a length of between 4 and 20 feet.  The sorting belt caught it from there and brought it out to us where we read the grade and pulled it off the belt and onto the appropriate stack.  When you finished a unit, you'd signal the carrier driver by patting the top of your hardhat to indicate that you had a full load.  The straddle carrier would drive over the top of the load, pick it up with the lifting shoes, and carry it off to the yard where it got loaded for shipment.  As the carrier pulled out, we'd jump down and set the bolsters for the next load, then jump back up and start again.

They called it "pulling chain."  The lumber would get to coming out of there fast at times and we'd have to move quickly. But, toward the end, our team of pullers was pretty good.  There were Dave Azevedo and Doug Brown and Jeff Anderson and I.  And some other guys, too.  The line-up changed from time to time.

The mill was located on the shores of Lake Ewana, south of town.  In the winter, the lake froze over and the wind would come up off the ice and whip through the mill.  That was the one time when we liked being in the "hot spot" up on the sorter line:  the first position past the trim saws where the lumber came out fastest and you had to move the most.

Dave Azevedo was my best friend of the bunch.  We had been teammates on the Klamath Union football team.  (Go Pels!)  In the warm weather, he'd ride me to work and home on his motorcycle.  Dave was killed in a car wreck a few years after the shut-down. It's a shame.  He was a good guy.

I liked the old-timers, too, like Les and Philo.  They'd been working in lumber since the heydays of the late 60s and early 70s.  Most of them were pretty broken-down.  A lot of them were missing fingers or pieces of their hands.  Working around heavy equipment, year in and year out, things like that did happen.  Once you got to know them, if they liked you, the old-timers would always say, "Son, get an education.  This life is not the way to go."  I had many of them tell me that.

It wasn't a bad life for me.  I came to appreciate the  homespun wisdom and the funny, rustic dialect.  But, then again, I knew that it was just for a short while.  I planned to go back to school. For the old guys, though, who had been supporting families and paying mortgages all their adult lives, it wasn't an easy existence, nor did the future hold much promise.

When DG Shelter closed down, in the spring of 1984, I was there.  Tom Monterossi, the plant manager gave us the news in a big meeting in the main break room. 

There was some carping and some griping but most of the guys seemed resigned to it.  They took it with a sense of humor.  After all the writing had been on the wall for quite a while.

Kitchen spill

False cheer melody
Announces Monday morning,
From soulless cell phone;

Sour, obscene, it seems,
Now our battle lines are drawn
On silly small beer;

Juice-stained kitchen floor,
Pretext of our division:
Wee causus belli;

I will acknowledge
Peace must break, at intervals;
This happens sometimes;

But Monday morning,
Crouching in stupid foxholes
Is dreary and gray;

A glance at the Oregon governor's race

This year, Oregonians must elect a new governor to replace term-limited Governor Ted Kulongoski when he leaves office in January of 2011.  A full slate of candidates from both major political parties are lined up for the job and have begun the task of selling themselves to Oregon voters.

The three names that garner the most attention in the media (and that must, therefore, be regarded as the "front-runners") are former Governor John Kitzhaber, former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, and retired Portland Trailblazer Chris Dudley.

I like all three of these men for various reasons.

Chris Dudley

Chris Dudley is a great guy with a great work ethic, as evidenced by his career on the NBA basketball court as a Portland Trailblazer.  Dudley was a workhorse and a team player.  You didn't look for him to score points, but you always knew that he would be down in the paint scrapping for those loose balls and blocking shots.  His work in the community speaks highly of him, as well.  Dudley founded the Chris Dudley Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting kids with Type I diabetes (an affliction from which Dudley himself suffers).

But... I am concerned about Dudley's lack of experience.  Oregon is facing some real challenges and I think we need a strong, experienced governor that knows how to work the state legislature to get things done.

Then, there is the unfortunate fact that Chris Dudley is a Republican.  Although I like and admire Dudley, my disgust for the Republican party, for what it has become, is such that I cannot vote for anyone associated with it.

(Please note that I have not always felt this way.  In the past, I have voted for Republicans.  I voted for Governor Vic Atiyeh in his reelection bid in 1982, and I voted for Norma Paulus in her unsuccessful bid to succeed Governor Atiyeh in 1986.  But the Republican party has changed since then.) 

Bill Bradbury

I have met Secretary Bradbury and he is a genuinely nice guy.  I like his positions on gay rights and green energy and I find his idea for a "Bank of Oregon" intriguing.  I like the idea of using state revenues to support local banks which will, in turn, use money to support local businesses.  In short, Secretary Bradbury's positions and philosophy jibe with my own views very nicely.

However, I have to admit to being a bit skeptical about Secretary Bradbury's ability to put up his dukes and fight, when warranted.  I was deeply disappointed with his performance in his 2002 race to unseat Senator Gordon Smith.  I volunteered for the Bradbury campaign back then and I really felt that Senator Smith was vulnerable.  I still believe a stronger performance by the Bradbury campaign could have succeeded.  The stakes in that election were very high, and it was offensive to me that one of the senators that represented my state supported Bush administration abuses.  Without Gordon Smith's mewling "aye" to add to the bleating Republican chorus, this nation might not be in such a terrible state today.

When things got tough with the state legislature, would a Governor Bradbury put up enough of a fight to get a progressive, pro-Oregon agenda passed?

John Kitzhaber

Governor Kitzhaber is a fighter.  That much is assured.  As governor, he implemented the Oregon Health Plan and held in check a Republican-controlled state legislature back when the state was in the grip of anti-tax demagogues represented by loathsome Bill Sizemore.

In the controversy over where to site a new state prison, Kitzhaber showed political courage by opposing a proposal to build the prison in rural eastern Oregon, instead choosing Wilsonville, just south of Portland.  Kitzhaber is a proponent of land-use planning, which does anything but endear him to developers:  another mark in his favor, as far as I'm concerned.  Kitzhaber is a medical doctor (a surgeon, in fact) and an avid outdoorsman. 

Which, then?

At this point in the race, I'm leaning toward Governor Kitzhaber, but I haven't written off Secretary Bradbury.  I have nothing against Chris Dudley other than the "R" behind his name.  Put it down to "blowback" from the Junior Bush administration.

The Oregon primary is only a few weeks away, so I'll have to make my decision soon.

Tea-baggers flirt with armed rebellion

Racist losers looking snappy in uniform

It was inevitable, of course, that all that spew that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sister Sarah vomit out onto the airwaves would lead to something like this:

One of the leaders of the Oklahoma tea-bag movement, Al Gerhart has proposed creating a state militia to "defend against what [he] believe[s] are improper federal infringements on state sovereignity." Catch that? He's advocating creating an armed force as a counter to the federal government!

Tea-bagger Al Gerhart:  Just like Jeff Davis, only dumber and less hairy

The purported "final straw" that caused Mr. Gerhart to propose this drastic step?  The passage of health care reform legislation by Congress last month.  You see, if health insurance companies are required to extend coverage to more Americans, if they are not free to renege on their commitments to those who pay premiums, if they are held to account for how they use the money that they extort from the American populace --well, then we are no longer "free."

Of course, one dim-witted tea-bagger justifying his fever-brained paranoid fantasies by reciting Fox News talking points is nothing new.  But here's the kicker:  Mr. Gerhart has apparently found a sympathetic ear or two in the Oklahoma State Legislature!

Said Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon (a Republican), "[The founding fathers] were not referring to a turkey shoot or a quail hunt. They really weren't even talking about us having the ability to protect ourselves against each other.  The Second Amendment deals directly with the right of an individual to keep and bear arms to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government."

Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon:  traitor?

Er... not exactly, Randy.  Here's what the Second Amendment of the Constitution actually says:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

See?  Nothing in there about an overreaching federal government.

I suppose it is possible that Senator Brogdon communicated directly with the Founding Fathers in some right-wing orgiastic seance.  Can't you just see it?  Senator Brogdon, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and Glenn Beck holding hands around a table, in a candle-lit room, chanting, weeping, beseeching their gods, when the spirit of Thomas Jefferson appears and exhorts them to raise an army to fight off the tyranny of people getting health care insurance?

Tea-baggers can dress it up any way they like:  Second Amendment Rights, defense of the Constitution, whatever. Let's refer once again to the Constitution of the United States to see what the "revered" Founding Fathers had to say about it.  Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 of that document states:  "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them..."

Isn't it ironic that the Republican party, birthed on a platform of abolition and the indivisibility of the United States, should today be co-opted by the descendants of the very people who chose to secede from the Union rather than accept its first Republican president?  Isn't it ironic that the Republican party is now the party of treason and sedition?

It will be interesting to see how high-profile Republicans react to this new development.  Will they denounce the rhetoric coming out of Oklahoma?

Well, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Tom Coburn, Eric Cantor?  How are you going to deal with this?

I have my own personal message for rascally tea-baggers.  Quoting the character Duncan Idaho from Frank Herbert's novel God Emperor of Dune:  "Draw that knife or take your hand off it!"