Long shot presidential candidate Bernie Sanders came to Portland yesterday, following a rough stop in Seattle. At the Moda Center, “as many as 28,000 showed up for a high-decibel rally,” writes the Oregonian. The Mercury‘s Shelby R. King was there and tweeting:
Whole lotta love for @SenSanders in here. Expand social security, vets benes, equal pay, immigration reform. Sound familiar? 2008? We’ll see
— Shelby King (@shelby_king) August 10, 2015
The events were hardly intended to serve the same purpose, but man, it’s just about impossible not to compare Sanders’ rally to frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s quiet visit to Portland last week—which was at a private home, was attended by 140 people, and cost “$2,700 per ticket.”
There was another shooting in Ferguson last night, coming one year after the police murder of Michael Brown. “The flash of violence signaled a cruel end to a day that in many ways had seemed festive and hopeful,” the New York Times reports, “with activists from across the country descending on Ferguson to push for changes in the police treatment of blacks.” Here in Portland, police arrested two women at a small protest in Southeast.
Obamacare appears to be working—at least for states that didn’t spend all their energy complaining about it. “The share of Americans without health insurance has dropped sharply since enrollment under the Affordable Care Act began in 2013,” notes the Huffington Post. “The contrast between Obamacare-friendly states and those hostile to the law is stark.”
THE MYSTERY OF SATURN’S RINGS HAS BEEN SOLVED! Did you know there was a mystery involving Saturn’s rings? There was! And it has been solved. Take it away, Professor Nikolai Brilliantov, which certainly does not at all sound like a made-up name. “The rather general mathematical model elaborated in the study with the focus on Saturn’s rings may be successfully applied to other systems, where particles merge, colliding with slow velocities and break into small pieces colliding with large impact speeds. Such systems exist in nature and industry and will exhibit a beautiful law of inverse cubes and drop in large particle abundance in their particle size distribution.” Ugh. I’ve been telling people that for fucking years, but now they’re actually going to fucking listen just because this fucking guy’s name is Brilliantov. UGH. Anyway: Science mystery! Solved!
The second season of True Detective wrapped up last night, speaking of bewildering mysteries. Remember back in June, when Matt Zoller Seitz warned it was “too early to sum up whatever this thing is, and critics with common sense should know better than to try“? Well, those who stuck it out for just under 10 hours slowly came to realize they were watching a Western—and one that I, at least, quite liked, if my half-drunken tweets from last night are any indication. Meanwhile, the Mercury‘s Wm. Steven Humphrey did not quite like it at all, and has a hate-watchy recap coming up on Blogtown in about 30 minutes. Stay tuned for the phrases “hilariously terrible,” “fucking terrible,” and, of course, “terrible folk singer.”
I really ended up liking this season a lot and I actually thought Vince Vaughn’s character and his portrayal were what I enjoyed most the last 3 episodes. I’m looking forward to season 3 already.
Well, I must say after researching some of Bernies’ positions, I find him a great character – and a welcome candidate.
Though I still remain of the opinion it is high time for a Woman President.
The police didn’t murder Mr. Brown. He committed suicide by cop when he tried to take the officers’ gun, and failed.