Posted inCity of Salem Coronavirus

City officials allow Covid super-spreader event in Riverfront Park

I have a tough time figuring out who is more irresponsible: (1) The Salem Awakening organizers who held a Christian event in Riverfront Park attended by hundreds of people in violation of Governor Brown's order limiting outdoor gatherings to no more than a hundred individuals.  (2) The attendees, most of whom weren't wearing masks and failed to engage in required physical distancing.  (3) Officials with the City of Salem who have been allowing Salem Awakening to use the park without a permit for most of the summer, and who did nothing to control last Thursday's super-spreader Covid event. I'm going…
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Posted inCoronavirus Donald Trump

Trump pushes COVID advice by doctor who warns against sex with demons

Whew. I can relax. A few days ago I read that Trump was vowing to act more presidential now that the election is less than 100 days away. Since I desperately want him to lose, I was worried that Trump was going to at least sound as if he valued the advice of public health experts when it comes to combatting the COVID crisis, even if he continued to act otherwise. I should have known that Trump was incapable of pretending to be a science-loving leader of our nation, since that goes against his compulsion to attempt to lie his…
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Posted inCoronavirus Jobs

List of Salem businesses that got PPP loans is mildly interesting

The title of this blog post won't go down in the annals of provocative headline writing, for sure. But it's accurate. I toyed with other titles, like "If you're too wired to sleep, read this" or "Here's something more interesting that watching paint dry... barely." Still, I hate to let a good PDF file go to waste, so here's a list someone sent me of the businesses in Salem that got PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) money from the federal government. The highlighted names of businesses in the list are ones that this person felt deserved attention. Download PPP Loans in…
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Posted inCity of Salem Coronavirus

City officials encouraging COVID free-for-all in Salem parks

What a difference between Salem and Eugene when it comes to making sure that city parks are available, safe, and welcoming to all in an equitable fashion in these COVID-19 days. The City of Salem is operating its parks quite differently from Eugene, with no reservation permit system at all anymore. This allows Salem Awakening 2020, a religious group, to continue appropriating the Riverfront Park amphitheater every evening from 6 to 8 pm for many weeks or months, using a sound system and also, I’ve heard, city electricity.  UPDATE: Councilor Leung forwarded me a message from a city employee saying…
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Posted inCoronavirus Donald Trump Humor

Trump is a genius! He just solved every problem on Earth.

Ever since he was elected president of the United States, I've been a vociferous critic of Donald Trump. But now I realize how wrong I've been. A recent statement by Trump points to a solution to not only the COVID-19 crisis, but every conceivable problem that afflicts our planet. Behold the genius of Trump the Almighty: I bow down before the glory of this single marvelous sentence which, in eight carefully crafted words, cuts through the thicket of confusion that has prevented humanity from dealing with so many issues that have bedeviled people for millennia.  Trump, though, did expand upon…
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Posted inCoronavirus Oregon politics

Dumb and dumber: Capitol vandals and Sam Brentano

Saturday's Statesman Journal featured stories about a couple of spectacularly dumb local people. It took me a while to decide who deserves the "dumb" award in this blog post, and who the "dumber," but I'm going with this: Dumb -- whoever spray painted two marble sculptures in front of the state Capitol building during the first weekend of Black Lives Matter protests. Dumber -- Marion County commissioner Sam Brentano, for being so irritated at Governor Brown's pausing of county reopening plans due to a spike in coronavirus cases in Oregon. Sure, it can be argued that these dumb and dumber…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Marion County not allowed to reopen. Who’s to blame?

Frustrating. Not good. Irritating. There's a lot of words I could use to describe my feeling about Marion and Polk being the only counties in Oregon whose applications to start reopening were rejected by Governor Brown and the Oregon Health Authority.  Of Oregon's 36 counties, 31 were given the OK to reopen. Three haven't applied yet (Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington). And two, Marion and Polk, have the dubious distinction of not passing the re-opening criteria, apparently mostly because of continued high numbers of new COVID-19 cases. On the sort-of bright side, today's OHA Coronavirus Update said, "The applications for Marion and…
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Posted inCoronavirus

With so many COVID-19 cases, Marion County shouldn’t reopen soon

I'm as eager as anyone to have Marion County get back to a semblance of normality in these coronavirus times. i miss my Tai Chi classes. I miss going to the Courthouse Athletic Club. I miss having my hair cut (though I'm looking more like Willy Nelson every day, which can't be a bad thing). But I'm also an avid reader of the daily Oregon Coronavirus Update that gets emailed to me by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA). Disturbingly often, Marion County has an outsized number of new cases, frequently outpacing Multnomah County which has a much larger population. According…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Survey shows Oregonians strongly support stay at home orders

Facts matter. And it's a fact that a recent DHM Research survey found that 82% of Oregonians support Governor Brown's Stay Home, Save Lives orders. Here's the graphic from the first survey release. You can read about the findings in this DHM Research PDF file.Download COVID Survey--Annotated--March 2020 Below is an excerpt from the report about the overwhelming support for stay at home orders, and how this undercuts the claim of right-wing activists that people want Oregon opened up for business as soon as possible. Oregonians overwhelmingly support the state’s stay at home orders. 82% of Oregonians support the state’s…
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Posted inCity of Salem Coronavirus

Minto Brown dog park should be open during COVID-19 crisis

Woof, woof. That's the sound of our dog agreeing with the title of this blog post. For some unknown reason, parks in Salem are open, but the Minto Brown off-leash dog park is closed. I took this photo today at the entrance to the parking lot that serves the dog park. My wife and I, along with Mooka, our dog, were disappointed to see this barricade and sign saying "This Area is Closed Until Further Notice."  But it wasn't a total surprise, since I'd read this letter to the editor in the Sunday Statesman Journal. Closure of dog park disappointing…
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Posted inCoronavirus

Survey finds Oregonians anxious about coronavirus crisis

Today DHM Research released the results of an online survey of 507 Oregonians aged 18+.Download COVID Survey--Annotated--March 2020 Not surprisingly, it found that people are anxious about the coronavirus, worried about their financial situation, feel that things will get worse for at least another month, disapprove of how Trump is handling the federal response, and approve of how Governor Brown is handling the state response. But as you can read below in the summary of findings that I copied from the survey report, there's some surprises. Young people say they're more concerned about the coronavirus than people 65+. But maybe…
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Posted inCoronavirus Donald Trump

Don’t fall for Trump’s latest coronavirus B.S.

A bullshit detector should be mandatory equipment for everyone who watches Trump's coronavirus press conferences, which was held today in the White House Rose Garden for some reason (maybe so the roses could be fertilized by the crap that came out of Trump's mouth). It's difficult for me to pick the most disturbing thing Trump said today, given how many candidates there are. But I'll start with what irked me the most: Trump's repeated claim that if there are only 100,000 to 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States, that's a good thing, a success, because supposedly there could have…
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Posted in2020 election Coronavirus Donald Trump

Trump wants people to die so he can be re-elected

I can't believe how many times I've said, "Trump can't do anything worse than what he did today." But he does. And today was the latest example of appalling worstness. During the daily White House coronavirus briefing, where Trump hogs the microphone while other officials cower in the background, doing their best to keep a poker face as Trump rambles on semi-coherently, our Idiot-in-Chief announced that he wants to make saving lives a distant second priority to resuming business as usual by the end of March. Why? Well, because he doesn't want the country to be in a recession, or…
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Posted inCoronavirus Donald Trump

Experts agree: Trump horribly mismanaged the U.S. COVID-19 disaster

Two days ago my daughter lost her job as sales manager for a small business in southern California. She's shocked. Her company's financial problems arrived very suddenly because of the COVID-19 outbreak. As I described in a previous blog post, with no retail outlets being open, with the companies that owe them money being unable to pay, and with them being unable to pay their suppliers, every employee has been furloughed. I blame Donald Trump. For good reason. Trump is why the United States is facing a massive disaster. Lots of sickness and deaths. Economic recession, if not depression. Shortages…
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