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GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND!👋
Put the thought of snow behind you and get ready for a rainy/occasionally sunny week with highs in the upper 40s and topping out at... 58 degrees on Friday? You may want to join me in taking your thongs to the dry cleaners! In the meantime, here's a thong-full of NEWS.
IN LOCAL NEWS:
• It's President's Day—a useless holiday if there ever was one—and the 50501 movement (50 protests, 50 states, one movement) will be staging a peaceful protest at City Hall in Portland from noon to 4 pm today, with similar demonstrations happening across Oregon in Salem, Eugene, and Medford. There will also be a seperate protest against Elon Musk—our other corrupt and bloviating Commander in Chief—organized by the SW Indivisible chapter, this coming Friday, Feb 21 (4 pm-5:30 pm) at the Portland Tesla dealership (4330 S Macadam). Yet another demonstration against Musk was held this weekend, so be sure to mark your calendars for this Friday and get rid of your Teslas, please & thank you!
• Our new city council seems to be making headway on their efforts to curb Portland's housing affordability crisis. According to this report from our Courtney Vaughn, at last week's Homelessness and Housing Committee meeting, they signaled their intent to address construction permitting, rental pricing, and residential vacancy rates—all of which contributes to our current housing woes. But District 3 Councilor Angelita Morillo is going extra hard with her proposal to ban the use of anti-competitive rental practices, which includes algorithmic pricing software used by landlords to collude with each other to keep rents skyrocketing upward.
Councilor Steve Novick went hard during the first meeting of the Portland City Council’s Climate Resilience, and Land Use Committee today.
— Taylor Griggs (@taylorgriggs.bsky.social) February 13, 2025 at 10:59 AM
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• While Mayor Keith Wilson has a lot of grand plans to end unsheltered homelessness in Portland, it's not exactly filling us with confidence that some of the facts and figures he regularly trots out are not... factual figures. According to Oregonian fact-checkers, while Wilson may be correct on certain points, he often repeats proven falsities (or states examples out of context) such as the number of shelter beds being utilized every night, the percentage of houseless people who have full time jobs, and how Portland's woes compare to other cities like Boston.
Power dinners at Olive Garden.
A distaste for caffeine/curse words.
A propensity for data/anecdotes that don't stand up to scrutiny.
A relentless workhorse, optimist & mission-driven do-gooder.
“Either he’s hopelessly out of his depth. Or he’s right.”
— Shane Dixon Kavanaugh (@shanedkavanaugh.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 9:28 AM
www.oregonlive.com/politics/202...
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• Interesting happenings in Old Town: Prosper Portland has approved a $7 million loan to create a footwear and apparel manufacturing campus on NW 5th and Everett, which is hoped to become a creative hub for connecting suppliers with brands, as well as making sneakers and other products that are often sourced out to Southeast Asia. While local small businesses are rightfully suspicious of being left out of the project, organizers say there are opportunities being planned for them as well, such as small stores, pop-ups, and kiosks designed to spotlight local makers.
Strap on your brains, it's time for another entertaining POP QUIZ PDX! This week's trivia questions include: local sporty-sports, the death of your FAVE retail store, and Trump flounders with his firehose of failure. See how well YOU score! 🤓
— Portland Mercury (@portlandmercury.com) February 13, 2025 at 9:56 AM
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IN NATIONAL/WORLD NEWS:
• Today in Trump's saaaaad trombooooone: The president's cronies are furiously working to bring back some federal employees that were fired by Elon Musk's DOGE dummies, after it was discovered they performed critical tasks that provide safety to all Americans, such as... oh, I don't know... maintaining the nation's nuclear arsenals. A memo has been issued to rescind the firings of all but 28 of the 350 people let go at the National Nuclear Security Administration, but some are planning to refuse the offer, since they no longer trust the administration as well as the seemingly unending idiocy of Musk. SAAAAAAD TROMBOOOOOOONE!
• But does this mean that Trump and Musk have learned their lesson about indiscriminate federal government firings? Ohhhhh, noooooo! The administration has already started the purge of several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, just weeks after a major air disaster, which includes such critical jobs as those who maintain radar, plane maintenance, and air traffic controllers. I guess it's time to once again "fuck around and find out." (I wonder how many Marjorie Taylor Greenes will need to die before they reconsider?)
• The shot...
The CDC has confirmed a third U.S. bird flu hospitalization, Wyoming's health department said Friday after a woman was admitted to a healthcare facility in neighboring Colorado. https://cbsn.ws/4hYJWKq
— CBS News (@cbsnews.com) February 16, 2025 at 12:00 AM
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And the chaser...
www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-dis...
— f16col.bsky.social (@f16col.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 8:25 AM
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• Looks like bloviating business baby Elon Musk is attempting to steal your personal information again, now training his beady eyes (and those of his DOGE acne-riddled boy-toys) on the Internal Revenue Service, where he hopes to lay his hands on your tax returns and the private information therein. According to an administration official, at least one of Musk's li'l DOGEies will be attempting to gain access to the IRS system that houses sensitive taxpayer information under the guise of rooting out "wasteful spending" (AKA using your information to make themselves richer or track down the girl they obsessed over in 8th grade biology).
"The customers said that it was because we drove a Cybertruck. Any suggestions?"
— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) February 17, 2025 at 8:03 AM
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• In the "Give 'em an inch, they'll want to be exonerated for child porn" headline of the day: "Jan. 6 Rioters Want Pardons to Cover Other Charges, Like Murder Plot and Child Porn."
• And finally,... what follows is the most difficult ethical question you will ever face in your life!
@godzilla.stopmotion Godzilla is offered 1 million dollars. #godzilla #stopmotion #shmonsterarts #hiyatoys #million #dollars ♬ original sound - zhemjz
