Posted inCity of Salem Salem Police Department

City of Salem has to pay $1 million for excessive force in George Floyd protest

I guess it's a sort of poetic justice. Today the Salem Reporter has a story about how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a $1 million damage award against the Salem Police Department after a woman was seriously injured by rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. So the Salem Police Department used excessive force during a local protest against the use of excessive force by the Minneapolis Police Department. While there's a certain amusing irony to this, the harm…
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Posted inCity of Salem Salem Police Department

City of Salem has to pay $1 million for excessive force in George Floyd protest

I guess it's a sort of poetic justice. Today the Salem Reporter has a story about how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a $1 million damage award against the Salem Police Department after a woman was seriously injured by rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. So the Salem Police Department used excessive force during a local protest against the use of excessive force by the Minneapolis Police Department. While there's a certain amusing irony to this, the harm…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump

Hard to feel sympathy for Trump when he acts like an asshole

After the first assassination attempt that left Trump with a wounded ear and a rally attendee dead, I felt some sympathy for Trump, along with most Americans. It helped that at first Trump spoke about being a changed man after his brush with death, vowing to unify the country. That didn't last long. Soon Trump was back to blaming Democrats for the assassination attempt, ignoring the inconvenient truth that the shooter was a registered Republican and hadn't expressed any particular political leanings.  Yesterday there was another attempted assassination according to the Secret Service, though the person in custody, Ryan W.…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Debate with Harris showed what an unmanly wimp Donald Trump is

Donald Trump likes to pretend that he's a macho guy. But in truth, he's really unmanly. Even more, he's a wimp -- as Bill Maher likes to call him, a "whiny little bitch."  Trump is always complaining about how people treat him unfairly. Yet while he demands respect, Trump doesn't act in ways that elicit respect. Speaking as a man with 75 years of experience of that gender, men know the difference between a leader who, as the saying goes, "speaks softly and carries a big stick" versus what Trump does: speak loudly and carry a fragile twig. Now, I…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Harris beat Trump so badly in the debate, I almost feel sorry for him

If this was a boxing match, it should have been called after the first round: technical knock-out for the clear victor over Donald Trump, Kamala Harris! But the bout, or rather the debate, went on for more than ninety minutes tonight. Trump got in a few good punches, but the evening clearly belonged to Harris. She outdid him on both style and substance, leaving Trump fumbling and mumbling his way through answers to questions that he clearly was incapable of using to his advantage. Largely this was because Trump is so bad at talking about specific policies, preferring to resort…
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Posted in2024 election Joe Biden National politics

Biden wanted to cling to power, which would have been a disaster. Pelosi saved us.

Thanks to an article in the September 2 issue of The New Yorker, "Life of the Party: The Democrats seem rejuvenated by their new candidate. Why was it so hard to get one?," I learned about how close the Democratic Party came to being stuck with Biden after his disastrous debate, because he and his staff were so adamant about him staying in the presidential race. Below are excerpts from the article by Andrew Marantz that show the extent to which Biden was dangerously out of touch with reality until Nancy Pelosi and a few other leading Democrats put enough…
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Posted inInternational issues

Netanyahu is Israel’s Trump, caring only about himself, not the hostages

I feel sorry for the majority of people in Israel who want their country to do everything possible to save the lives of the remaining hostages kept captive by Hamas, but have to deal with a leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu, who only cares about staying in power, not what's best for Israelis.  If that sounds just like Donald Trump, no big surprise. Trump and Netanyahu are close with each other, sharing a bond of unbridled egotism, self-centeredness, and a desire to remain in power in order to forestall legal proceedings accusing them of criminality. Recently six hostages were killed by…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Harris and Walz interviewed on CNN. Now let’s see Trump and Vance.

Ever since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, following Biden's withdrawal, many in the media have been clamoring for her to do interviews and press conferences. Today Harris and Walz were interviewed by CNN's Dana Bash in a Georgia diner. Hopefully this will put an end to the claims that Harris is scared to answer tough questions. She handled everything Bash threw at her with calm competence, as did Walz. Given how often Trump changes his policy positions, it's amusing that Bash thought it was worthwhile to ask Harris about her 2019 statement that she'd ban fracking if…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City of Salem Salem Reporter

Salem’s “news desert” makes it tough for the city to pass a tax increase

In reading a Salem Reporter story about the effort of city officials to get voter approval of a property tax increase in order to deal with a $8 million - $13 million gap between revenues and expenses, I was struck by the several mentions of communicating with the public about this problem. Here's some excerpts from "City Council discusses possible next steps to address budgetary shortfalls" by Joe Siess. Salem city councilors appear ready to put a measure before voters next May to raise property taxes to avoid sweeping cuts to city programs. But councilors made clear during a work…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Nate Silver says Harris is a great candidate and RFK Jr. dropout won’t mean much

Last night Kamala Harris gave one of the best acceptance speeches I've ever heard from the presidential pick of the Democratic National Convention. I've watched them all since the 1960s, I'm pretty sure.  Harris was virtually flawless in both the substance and delivery of her speech. And I've added "virtually" not because I found anything not to like in what she said, just because no one is perfect. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch the 38 minute speech. Which is relatively short by acceptance speech standards, way shorter than Trump's. NPR reports that Harris' speech…
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Posted in2024 election Tim Walz

Watch Tim Walz’s inspiring acceptance speech at Democratic National Convention

Like many millions of other Americans, I've become a big fan of Tim Walz. Tonight he gave an acceptance speech for the vice-president nomination at the Democratic National Convention that showed why he inspires so much love and affection. Walz is a regular guy who happens to be a skilled politician -- a wonderful change from the usual skilled politicians trying to appear like regular guys. Yeah, I'm talking about you, J.D. Vance. The problem for Vance and other regular guy wanna-be's is that you can't fake the sort of background Walz wears effortlessly, because it is who he is,…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Salem City Council facing tough choices on revenue-raising options

It wouldn't be surprising if Mayor Hoy and the other members of the Salem City Council have a bit of post-traumatic stress as they get serious at next Monday's council meeting about choosing an option to raise revenue for city services, which are heading for a $15 million shortfall in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2025.  That figure is in an informative Salem Reporter story, "Library advocates push for property tax increase to restore Salem library hours." Local library advocates organizing through the group Fund Our Libraries Now are asking the Salem City Council to seek voter…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Harris-Walz are doing great, but I have one big worry

Happy days are here again for us Democrats. We've gone from severe depression when it looked like Biden was going to stay in the race and hand a victory to Trump, to fervent joy now that Kamala Harris is at the top of the Democratic ticket and is kicking Trump's butt. The good news is plentiful. I'll be content with just providing a few examples before doing what is typical for Democrats: worrying.  Nate Silver's "Silver Bulletin" take on the presidential race currently has Harris with a 56% chance of winning this November, with Trump at 44%. That's basically a…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump

Trump lied lots in yesterday’s press conference. Reporters let him get away with it.

At least since 2015, and before that also, it's been obvious that Donald Trump lies. Not just a little. A lot. He's a compulsive liar. Can't stop himself. Even, or probably I should say, especially, at yesterday's press conference at Mar-a-Lago. The New York Times fact-checked Trump's rambling, often incoherent, statements in response to questions asked by reporters -- which couldn't be heard at all clearly, since the Trump campaign didn't provide a microphone for those asking questions, probably so Trump could blather on about whatever he wanted without the television-viewing audience knowing the question he was asked. I've copied…
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Posted in2024 election Kamala Harris Tim Walz

Tim Walz is a joyous vice-president candidate, unlike JD Vance

There's no guarantee that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will be elected this November, but one thing is sure: they'll bring a heck of a lot more joy and positivity to the campaign trail than the dour Trump and Vance will. I'm thrilled that Harris picked Walz yesterday. However, I would have felt this way about anyone she chose to be her vice-president candidate, because I trust Harris to make good decisions and she had way more knowledge about the possible VP picks than I or anyone else were privy to. A New York Times story discussed "Five Key Reasons…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

I hate Trump, but here’s my advice to him for defeating Harris

I'm not actually a Buddhist, but occasionally I like to pretend that I am. So I'm putting on my Buddhist persona for this blog post in which I demonstrate my boundless compassion for all sentient beings by telling Donald Trump what he needs to do to defeat Kamala Harris and win the election this November. Even though that prospect fills my non-Buddhist self with revulsion. But since there's basically a zero chance that Trump will take this advice, I feel fine sharing it. Donald, things haven't been going well for you lately. Sure, your surviving the failed assasination attempt garnered…
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Posted in2024 election Donald Trump Kamala Harris

Harris has much better chance than Biden of beating Trump, says Nate Silver

Today Nate Silver, who ran the acclaimed 538 web site back when it was part of the New York Times, turned on his proprietary election prediction model (Silver maintained the rights to it after he became an independent analyst) following a hold when Biden withdrew from the presidential race. Now Silver considers that there's sufficient polling data for him to get the model up and running again with Harris as the Democratic candidate. Here's a couple of key figures from his Silver Bulletin, which I pay $10 a month for a subscription that gets more detail than his free offering.…
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Posted inInternational issues National politics

Netanyahu lied shamelessly in his address to Congress today

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hugely unpopular prime minister, is that country's Donald Trump in this regard: Netanyahu lies shamelessly, seeks to cling to power to avoid being held to account for crimes he's committed, and avoids taking responsibility for his failures. Today Netanyahu used an address to Congress, which was boycotted by a large proportion of Democrats in the House and Senate, to continue spreading falsehoods about how Israel has been conducting the war against Hamas under his failed leadership.  I watched most of the speech, then couldn't stand all the B.S. that was flowing freely from Netanyahu's mouth, and fast-forwarded…
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Posted in2024 election Joe Biden Kamala Harris

I’m a happy Democrat again, thanks to Harris replacing Biden

What a difference a day makes when it comes to presidential politics. I woke up on Sunday, yesterday, feeling fine about my personal life and crappy about the prospect of Biden refusing to withdraw from the presidential contest, thereby likely guaranteeing a Trump victory this November. Then, later in the morning, I checked my phone and saw that Biden had withdrawn. At first I couldn't believe it. Maybe it was a sick joke? But a bit more scrolling on X revealed that yes, it was true. I raced to find my wife and tell her the good news. We both…
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Posted in2024 election Joe Biden National politics

BIden will destroy the Democratic Party if he doesn’t withdraw

Every day President Biden dithers around, now with Covid clouding his already-suspect thinking, trying to decide whether he should withdraw from the presidential race, he sets the stage for a catastrophic destruction of the Democratic Party if he fails to do the right thing and turn the nomination over to Kamala Harris. I say this as a (formerly) proud Democrat who always backed my party's candidate for president with enthusiasm. Now I rejoice in replying "stop" to every text message asking me to donate to Biden's campaign. I have no interest in helping his candidacy in any other way, either,…
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