Food Safety and Security

Factory farming methods are a huge threat to food safety and security in the United States, but so are many other things.

Jesus, the kid gets it!

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Chris Dudley, Candidate

Except for his two NBA records for consecutive missed free throws, Chris Dudley’s basketball career was remarkably unremarkable in that he utterly failed to distinguish himself as an exceptional player. He sure as hell didn’t lead the Portland Trailblazers to a comeback championship season. That begs the question, if he can’t lead a basketball team to a comeback, how does he expect to lead the State of Oregon to a comeback? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which is the more difficult task.

Nor am I inspired by Chris’ campaign rhetoric, which consists of nothing more than the same old nonsense Republicans (Democrats have their own brand of nonsense) recycle through every election. Cutting spending will not create jobs, and cutting taxes will not create jobs, so where are all those jobs he promises coming from? Does he not understand that cutting taxes and cutting spending will further deepen Oregon’s recession? Does he not understand that the national economy has a profound effect on Oregon’s economy, and that George W. Bush was driving that particular bus when Oregon’s economy tanked? Does he even suspect that a national economic crisis must be addressed at the national level, and that anything he proposes to do at the state level is only political posturing?

Nothing I saw in the campaign propaganda available on his Web site convinces me that he even has a clue about how to fix what ails Oregon. Sure, he gets a few of the most minor things right, but he gets almost all of the major things wrong. Newsflash, Chris! Doubling down on the very policies that got us into these economic and environmental crises is not going to get us out of them. Your new ideas need to be new, not recycled Republican bullshit that’s been around since at least the ’60s.

What I find most offensive, though, are Chris’ egregious distortions and outright lies regarding former Governor John Kitzhaber’s record. The verifiable truth of the matter is that Oregon’s economy was among the fastest growing in the entire country under Kitzhaber’s leadership, and it only turned south after Bush took office.

Without apologies to Chris or anyone else, I simply don’t find in Chris Dudley a candidate I can support; too little experience, too many uncertainties, and too much bullshit.

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Gulp!

Here’s a tip for anyone contemplating suicide by drain cleaner. If you’re really serious about getting the job done, don’t smear it on your face; drink it. All of it. Then shoot yourself.

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Who's Your Daddy?

If some economists have got it right, the recession is over. It was the longest economic downturn in American history; begun on President George W. Bush’s watch, ended on President Obama’s.

Who’s your daddy, now?

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Tex Books Redux

Next week, the Texas Board of Education—whose membership apparently consists exclusively of anti-Muslim bigots already possessed of a Texas-style education—will vote on a resolution that effectively rewrites a large chunk of American religious history. The problem is that Tex Books find their way into educational systems all across the country, so that if when the resolution passes, students living far beyond Texas’ borders get to share in the ignorance and stupidity of it all—whether they want to or not.

Gee, while the bigots on the Texas Board of Education are voting on the resolution, couldn’t the non-bigots among us get together and vote Texas off the island, or something?

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Time Going Nowhere

"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans." —Robert F. Kennedy

Some things never change.

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The Queen of Patpong

Tim Hallinan’s The Queen of Patpong arrives in bookstores today and, come to think of it, so should you. Go ahead! Buy a few copies; get an early start on your Christmas shopping. Buy a copy for yourself, get one for your best friend, give one to your brother’s ex-wife’s sister’s boyfriend. Give a copy to your third cousin in Paducah. Or buy a box of them and hand them out to homeless people on a downtown street corner.

Seriously, The Queen of Patpong is a great, good read; Kirkus Reviews liked it enough to give it a star (getting a star out of Kirkus involves about the same amount of effort as squeezing river rock until it bleeds). If I gave out stars with my reviews, The Queen of Patpong would get five of them. Yeah, it’s that good.

Speaking of reviews, you can read my review of The Queen of Patpong here. If you click on the links near the end of the review, you’ll find other reviews, author info, lots of good stuff for dedicated readers and writers of thriller fiction. You won’t be disappointed.

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From the Gulf of Mexico to Coxsackie-Athens High

Regular readers of this blog are well aware that my blogging activities sort of ran off the rails in early April and that my blog posts since then can be counted on the digits of one hand—with a couple of thumbs to spare. Getting my various projects back on the rails and back up to speed has been a long, slow process, so when Barbara O’Brien (The Mahablog) asked me if I could post one of her articles on my other blog (Petey’s Pipeline) I readily agreed. I might be too proud to ask for help, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m too proud to accept help if it’s offered.

After you’ve read Barbara’s most excellent and insightful piece about the Gulf Oil Disaster, do yourself a favor and read Coxsackie-Athens High School valedictorian Erica Goldson’s graduation speech in which she makes a scathing condemnation of institutionalized education. Larry Hamelin (The Barefoot Bum) believes that Erica’s profound and moving speech deserves the widest dissemination, and I concur. It is, after all, hard to be smart if you can’t think.

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Good Intentions, Flimsy Excuses

When good intentions collide head-on with the reality of adverse circumstances, good intentions almost always come out the big loser. To make the point, I’ll cite an example from recent personal experience. While my intention was to do all the things I’d committed to do, the reality was that a sudden downturn in my health—not life-threatening, but life-complicating—forced me to suspend most of my writing activities for the duration. The net result is that I inadvertently ended up screwing the pooch on many of my projects—none of which were more important than my obligation to read and review Portland novelist Bill Cameron’s excellent new thriller, Day One. Oh, the reading part of that project got done in a timely enough fashion; it was the written part of it—you know, the actual review—that couldn’t seem to get written. And for the longest time, it didn’t.

For missing the publishing date, for the long delay in getting my review posted, for missing his book signing at Murder by the Book, I owe Bill Cameron apology on top of apology. Well, Mr. Cameron shall have his apologies (I’m truly sorry, Bill, on all counts), and I shall come away from this debacle thoroughly humbled and with yet another lesson in the application of Murphy’s Law as a permanent part of my résumé.

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Health Care Redux

The following blog post, reprinted here unchanged from the original, comes to us courtesy of Barbara O’Brien (The Mahablog, Crooks and Liars, et al.) Barb asked if I would be interested in helping her out by reposting her article; because I stand ready to enlist the pages of Frieddogleg to any number of worthy progressive causes, I readily agreed. Live and learn, then pay it forward.

Health Care Reform Will Help Everybody

Many Americans assume the new health care reform act will benefit mostly the poor and uninsured and hurt everyone else, according to polls. As Matt Yglesias wrote, “Basically, people see this as a bill that will take resources from people who have health insurance and give it to people who don’t have health insurance.” Those who still oppose the reform say that people ought to pay for their own health care.

We all believe in the virtues of hard work and self-reliance, but these days it’s a fantasy to think that anyone but the mega-wealthy will not, sooner or later, depend on help from others to pay medical bills. And that’s true no matter how hard you work, how much you love America, or how diligently you take care of yourself. The cost of medical care has so skyrocketed that breaking an arm or leg could cost as much as a new car. And if you get cancer or heart disease — which can happen even to people who live healthy lifestyles — forget about it. The disease will not only clean you out; it will leave a whopping debt for your survivors to pay.

And the truth is, we all pay for other peoples’ health care whether we know it or not. When people can’t pay their medical bills, the cost of their health care gets added to everyone else’s bills and insurance premiums. When poor people use emergency rooms as a doctor of last resort, their care is not “free.” You pay for it.

Another common fantasy about medical care is that the “free market” provides incentives for medical companies to develop innovative new drugs and treatments for disease without government subsidy. It’s true that private enterprise is very good at developing profitable health care products. But not all medical care can be made profitable.

For years, the U.S. government has been funding medical research that the big private companies don’t want to do because there is too much cost for the potential profit. This is especially true for diseases that are rare and expensive to treat. An example of a recent advance made possible by government grants include new guidelines for malignant pleural mesothelioma treatment developed by MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers. Another is a blood screening test developed by mesothelioma doctors like thoracic surgeon Dr. David Sugarbaker. The health reform act provides for more dollars for such research, from which even many of the tea party protesters will benefit.

The biggest fantasy of all was that people who had insurance didn’t have to worry about health care costs. But the fact is that in recent years millions of Americans have been bankrupted by medical costs, and three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance. And yes, insurance companies even dumped hard-working, law-abiding patriots. But the health care reform act will put an end to that, and now America’s hard-working, law-abiding patriots are more financially secure, whether they like it or not.

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