Comments

2

What's wrong with us? The list is far too long. The short answer is human beings are destructive, evil, vile, short sighted, disgusting beings and the only way the planet will ever be saved is when human beings cease to exist and the earth is given at least tens of thousands of years to recover from the destruction (if it is able to recover and that's a big if).

3

Nice rant.
It would be anyway, except I don't think Kate is paying attention past her hair and makeup and the opportunity to appear relevant.
And the 400 private jets required to ferry the other attention seekers to their photo-op?
Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

5

Tovarich,
McCall, a republican, was the quintessential definition of progressive. Environmentally, fiscally, socially, all an order of magnitude beyond what currently passes for progressive.

By comparison, Brown, in both her capacity as Secretary of State and as Governor, has led with all the decisiveness of a deer in the headlights. As demonstrated most recently by another brilliant proclamation regarding masks.

Her presence at COP26 was, it seems, a purely self serving act. She contributed nothing. She brought back nothing, unless one considers a closer relationship with Bezos something. She traveled to Scotland for what appears to be the sole purpose of "the photo op." Her sights, no doubt set on a US Senate run, when Ron decides to hang it up. While you and I and every other Oregon taxpayer paid the bill.

Just like her trip to Doha in 19.

Her leadership during the summer of 2020 was nonexistent, providing Wheeler free reign to invite trump's thugs to wage war on Portland with impunity.

You might think I'm disappointed with her. You'd be mistaken. I've known her personally since 1991. I've contributed to her political rise with both my dollars and my time. She was an excellent representative and senator. Almost. It took some convincing to get her to treat cell phones and driving with any seriousness. She joked, while serving in the legislature, that 'banning listening to the radio while driving was next up'.

I am utterly disappointed.

Her tenure as governor has been an abject failure. At a time where decisiveness and courage are sorely needed, we get whatever keeps the dollars flowing from the soccer parents in Happy Valley.

It would be wonderful if someone with an ounce of personal integrity, intelligence and courage would stand for us. But with her and her sycophants at the controls of the democratic machine in this state, that simply won't happen. Witness the fate of any who cross her or her entourage.

Substance is nothing, image is all that matters.

8

Tovarich,
I get the feeling that there are those who wouldn't have sought any ground to appease the "open the restaurants" crowd.
Wish they'd run for governor.

10

...and I too am an old liberal. To whom hippie is not a bad word.

I disagree regarding our governor's response to covid. She has not listened to the science. She has followed the advice of those who wished to keep her one step ahead of Newsom and Inslee while appeasing business. Listening to optics over science.

Case in point. In March 2020, when it was abundantly clear that we were in a shit storm, our governor finally acquiesced and shuttered schools. But did not shutter state offices, especially nonessential state offices like the DMV, despite a hue and cry from the medical and scientific community to do so. It took her an additional 2 weeks to jump on that; because Newsom did.

While the medical and scientific community has urged, pleaded, begged, cajoled maintaining our vigilance and discipline at an extreme level, choosing to counsel caution over convenience, our governor has, with regularity, relaxed that discipline in favor of business, only to set whatever gains our efforts had achieved, back.

Science and medicine have set a metric wherein we can expect to see mitigation of spread, that we have yet to approach, ever; while our governor chooses to establish her own metric, based, one can only assume, upon the optics of the moment.
Case in point, reopening schools. The teachers did not want to. A position supported by the best medical evidence available, and that pesky science based metric. The state kept changing the metric to satisfy the demands of parents who did want schools reopened. Parents in upper income communities.

On the same day the WHO, EU, and CDC all pointed to science based evidence of a new strain in South Africa and said 'Holy Fucking Shit!' Kate says it's okay to stop wearing masks.

And then, when small business in Portland begged that our governor send the National Guard to separate PPB from protests, and their windows, our governor threw them under the proverbial bus despite every indication from the mayor that he was losing control of the police bureau (though it certainly appears as though ted was in complete control all along). Then ted himself asks for them.

In short, she could have stopped 100 nights of violence, and traded it for 100 nights of cops and protesters separated by multiple city blocks.
She was advised to do so by members of her own inner circle.
By local media.
By members of our congressional delegation.
And ultimately by ted.
But, instead of taking the lead, like a governor, she sends all of 50. Fifty, where 500 hundred were clearly needed.
I doubt she will ever tell us why that is.

What passes for progress today is simply control masquerading as governance.

We're well and thoroughly fucked.

12

Remember all of these last few years when it comes time to cast a vote for anyone who is part of her entourage. They're a high school clique masquerading as leadership. A clique who toss the word "progressive" around without the slightest conception of what it means.

Fuck, how I wish integrity was still a thing.

13

The question "What's wrong with us?" is as old as the human species. Most of us are pawns on a chessboard, bit part players eeking out living, trying to do their part in a hierarchical system of class warfare. A ruling elite control the economy, production of commodities and distribution. The simplest definition of fascism is "business control over government" where no elected office holder politician is immune to the influence of money. Who knows whom Oregon's next Governor will be? I'll base my vote on their take on energy, transportation, land-use and development. I've presented my perspectives in those matters, supportive or oppositional based on thorough analysis, but the agencies involved - ODOT, Tri-Met, Metro, Portland City Council - continue to mislead the public.

It's clear to me that the Swan Island Daimler electric freight trucks should be plug-in hybrid rather than all-battery drivetrain. But the environmentally conscientious among us get no further in their thinking than "Leave it in the ground, man," which isn't going to happen, nor should it. The real problem in those regards is that we drive too much, truck and ship goods around the world too much, fly too much. Play with our motorized big boy toys too much. Plug-in hybrid PHEV tech distributes resources to many more purposes than possible with BEV tech over a longer period of time. Jeff Bezos wants expensive and limited battery resources to go to his Amazon trucking and delivery empire, a crime against humanity. Elon Musk wants the public to believe in the future we won't own cars, we'll just hail them from cell phones, another example of poorly misdirected resources that benefit the wealthy few instead of a majority.


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