It’s a bleak one today, gang.
A month after the accident that killed Dr. Steve Fritz—husband to Commissioner Amanda Fritz—and a coworker, state officials have fast-tracked barriers in the Interstate 5 median that likely would have prevented the tragedy.
Sorry, Republicans. For the first time anyone can remember, the share of Oregon voters registered to the GOP has fallen below 30 percent. And in the wake of a banner voter-registration drive, oodles more voters aren’t affiliated with any party.
School shootings: Not just for disaffected loners anymore.The 14-year-old who opened fire on his Seattle-area high school’s cafeteria yesterday bucks many school-shooter cliches. Jaylen Fryberg was popular enough to be voted homecoming prince, and he didn’t shoot indiscriminately—two of his cousins were among the victims, as was an unidentified girl who’d apparently broken up with Fryberg recently.
Then there’s the guy who terrorized Canada’s capital with a rifle on Thursday, killing a soldier and rushing the parliament building. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau is described as “troubled” and increasingly desperate, with a recently increased interest in radical Islam.
Ebola’s taking the Big Apple by storm, causing an unprecedented (in modern times) mandatory quarantine for health workers who return from the good fight in West Africa. But will that cloistering, announced yesterday, just ensure that no one wants to join that fight?
And by the way, it is one hell of a fight. Everyone’s focused on local cases (hey! Nina Pham survived!) but the disease is still going gangbusters in eight African nations.
We’ve got our first American death of the ISIS offensive. It was a 19-year-old soldier, and not at all related to combat.
Also: We’re bombing the hell out of Iraq.
And in Iran? A woman kills a man who she said attempted to rape her, and is hung for it. It’s not quite that clear cut, but human rights advocates insist authorities didn’t do nearly enough to answer lingering inconsistencies in the woman’s conviction.
I’ve been looking about, for the last 10 minutes, for a suitably cheery story to end this on. Nothing doing. Republicans are going to clean up in this year’s election. A guy in California killed some police officers for no reason. Prominent Renee Zellweger coverage.
And then this:
Sorry. Gonna dance my way out of here.
Dirk, I know math is hard for you but Republican losses have been far less than Democrat losses in Oregon party registration. In the past 6 years, the Democrats have lost 12.3% of their registered voters compared to 7.1% for the Republicans. Thanks Obama!