"Fluoride is ahead 60 percent to 40 percent in early returns."

Fluoridian slip?

Related: Tonight I chipped a tooth eating a burrito.

Well, I guess this means we won't have to spank the fluoride lovin' minority again for another 20 years or so. When you lose by 20% (or more) you just have to give it a rest for a decade or two. That's about as much of a beat down as you can get at the polls, especially when you outspend the other side 3 to 1.

I'm relieved that my water won't contain chemicals.

"I'm relieved that my water won't contain chemicals."

Minus water being a chemical with its one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds.

AKA H2O.

It also might be likely you're joking, at which case I apologize.

Yeah, it was a joke. Accepted. The fact that you can't tell speaks volumes about the antis.

Just got back from the campaign party. Thank you Portland! What a fantastic victory for common sense and what a dismal failure for anti-science pollution advocates.

I love how this debate has inspired the Typical Portland Liberal to wax poetic about how "Democracy sucks" and how "the uneducated" shouldn't be allowed to vote on stuff like this.

You know, because things so rarely work out for your Typical Portland Liberal causes, when put to a vote.

Yeah, we were for pollution all right.
Got us there.

I guess making fun of refugees wasn't such a great thing for the Mercury's pro endorsement after all...

Take a look at the last picture of the anti-fluoride gathering. Now count the number of stupid fucking hats. Yeah, that's right, two fedoras even.

This is the type of person that voted no on this for a gauge of Portland's electorate.

It didn't even have anything hard in it. Just beans, cheese and pico.

TL;DR

I don't realize how out of touch I am with Portland values, so I attend the opposition's victory party to speedily mock them.

@ theMarsTravolta:

Yeah, if something takes more than 15 seconds to read, it's obviously too long and i refuse to read it. I, like you, learn a lot more that way. I can't wait until all news is Twitterified. Details are dumb. Words are stupid. And if it's something important, yet detailed and wordy, i'll just let someone else read it and tell me what to think. Rock on, bro.

@the MarsTravolta- Best Avatar Ever

Sweet, roughly 24% of registered City of Portland voters got what they wanted. Its a mandate people!

Can we get started on outlawing chemtrails? I live near the airport and its been getting out of hand the last few years.

Chunty, I think it is funny that you assume that "typical Portland liberals" were on the "yes" side. I'm pretty sure that there were more of them on the "no" side.

@Mars: the Mercury Staff confessed in their pro-fluoridation issue that they were overwhelmed by the "dizzying" loads of information they had to sift through to make their so-called 'enlightened' proclamation.

Yeah, if it was a Twitter feed, they might have come to a different conclusion. As it was, they took the circuitous route and came up with something that was just batshit crazy talk.

Good for you, Mercury, waiting til 8:06pm last night to publish a story from the opposing team. How very big of you. You guys just suck. In other news, I threw a Mercury on the ground and stomped on it yesterday. It felt good. Assholes.

Phew! Thank LOB! Now I can go back to building a tin hat for my house and protesting those horrible vaccination clinics!

As for presenting a plan:
Assuming the city still agrees to spend $10M in 10 years, how about if we create a poor peoples' dental insurance and hand out tooth brushes and FLUORIDE toothpaste at the dollar store. And maybe ban high-fructose corn syrup.

@Katie Napalm - yep, 65+ years of solid scientific evidence is "batshit crazy talk." Good thing we have you to set us straight, changing public opinion one newspaper stomp at a time. Big congrats to you today.

"Assuming the city still agrees to spend $10M in 10 years, how about if we create a poor peoples' dental insurance and hand out tooth brushes and FLUORIDE toothpaste at the dollar store. "

This was the argument on the No side that I found the most naive. You know how far $10 million over 10 years goes in health care, even dental health? Nothing. It's not even a fucking blip. That's the whole point of fluoride: it's incredibly cost effective.

Disagree with @showstopper. Snark is one of the cornerstones of this publication and if we let science deniers take that away from us, what have we got left?

We were confounded, Katie? Or did we actually suggest maybe some opponents and skeptics were confounded? Maybe you didn't read our endorsement so closely or don't understand a deployment of the royal "we"? Take a look at the verbatim quotation:

"The simple and reasonable case for fluoridation—which the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definitively urges for the prevention of tooth decay in children and adults—is drowning under a hailstorm of counter-arguments that look, sound, and seem rational. Except that they aren't.

And it's understandable. We're scared of junk science that we're too busy to tear apart. And we're worried about one of the things that Portlanders hold at the center of our civic identity: our water. So we rage about lobbyists and we put up signs that tell people not to do something that practically every other major city in America has done, some for decades and none with any sign of catastrophe.

Never mind that many of you who might be leaning toward "no" won't be the ones who suffer..."

Have fun jumping on newspapers and complaining about how people who don't agree with you—and list precisely and transparently why not—are rotten!

Blabby, in my unscientific opinion, fluoridation was a very upper-middle-class and white cause, another one of those "we've got to look out for the poor people!" things that make the privileged feel good about all the favors they've done for the poor Black kids that they're convinced only eat HFCS or whatever. (Never mind that it was the upper middle class whites that kicked the minorities out to east county with development and gentrification, but that's a bit too spiny of an issue to tackle-- especially when a "Dental Health Crisis" had magically appeared overnight!) So I'm sure this was very much the Big Issue for "hot yoga class" attending moms gossiping in line at the Whole Foods checkout.

Now don't get me wrong; the tinfoil hat bad science crowd loved the other side, and maybe that's "wingnut" Portland liberal, sure. But it's not "lives-in-a-$600k-Alameda-home" Portland liberal. (So many different varieties!) We could split hairs further and say that the Hot Yoga Moms would be voting GOP anywhere else, but hey, this is Portland! We're all liberals and we're all really excited about eco-equality and outdoor activities and whatnot. Common ground. At least most of the time.

Somehow the wingnuts found themselves in bed with the curmudgeonly libertarians this time around, adding to the confusion. So yeah. But the "save the children" appeals weren't aimed at them; they were aimed at anyone who's decided that they exist on some sort of figurative perch, high above the unfortunate. This crowd might drive redevelopment, food culture, etc but they're not the majority. They're not really hippies, just like they're not really progressive or really into yoga. They're just good at throwing money and time at pretentious self-serving causes.

Awesome. Portland stays within the relatively sane 95% of the planet that doesn't put toxic fluoride into their drinking water. That includes 97% of Europe, including France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Scotland Iceland, and Italy. No surprise: a 2003 survey of over 500 Europeans from 16 countries concluded that "the vast majority of people opposed water fluoridation".

Also, 1/3 of the US rejects fluoridation -- yet another crucial fact that the manipulators at the Mercury didn't mention.

Now we just have to convince the remaining 5% minority of "kooks" and "fearmongers" and "conspiracy theorists" (in the polite words of The Mercury's frantically pro-fluoride reporting) to follow the saner 95% (including Europe, Japan, Portland, and 1/3 of the US) in rejecting toxic fluoride.

Portland officially kicks ass. And if you think we're stupid, that's just because you're a pseudoscientific hack with no critical thinking skills, and should move elsewhere.

And take your asinine pro-fluoride propaganda with you.