Weekend’s here, y’all, so let’s talk vices. First, tidings of increased access to booze. The OLCC is plotting its largest expansion of liquor stores since prohibition, saying there aren’t the outlets to keep up with the state’s rising population. Portland alone is looking at up to 17 new booze retailers.
Pot news, too! The parks bureau hates Hempfest, but for the second year in a row Portland City Council has overridden the bureau’s decision not to permit the weed celebration. It’s coming to the waterfront this year, after all.
And great news for all you video poker junkies! The Oregon Lottery is supposed to make sure that establishments don’t reap more than half their revenue from the video terminals, but a new state audit finds it could not be less concerned with making sure folks comply. It’s barely even trying to hide that fact, instead arguing that the state could lose millions (earned off the backs of gambling addicts) if it made places follow the law.
Don’t think I forgot about you soda drinkers! Just, uh, make sure that Big Gulp doesn’t lodge itself under your brake pedal, okay?
So maybe Donald Trump is considering not being a spoiler candidate, should he not get his party’s nomination? Narrow thinking, I say.
All sorts of new migrant tragedies going on, including: 71 people, thought to be Syrians, found decomposing in the back of an abandoned truck in Austria, and flagging authorities to the existence of a large smuggling operation.
And as many as 150 people are dead after a fishing boat sunk off the coast of Libya. They’d been headed toward Europe.
A shooting at a Georgia university last night does not appear to be an attempted mass attack.
How’s that Oregon drought coming along? Very well indeed, with 67 percent of the state now experiencing “extreme” drought.
But the drought is imperiled. The biggest news of the day is that it’s about to get real wet ’round here. Ready your rain barrels!
You’re exactly right that it’s Karaoke Friday! This week, I was tempted to dabble in the realm of cliché, but will instead grace you with what I believe is the best in-song monologue ever put down on wax (hitting the staccato rhythm of “Thirty-seven-hundred-dollar Lynx coat” is particularly important). I give you “The Rain”, by Oran “Juice” Jones. Sing it/speak it with me, won’t you?