Posted in2026 election Julie Hoy Vanessa Nordyke

Given Julie Hoy’s serious lie, her future as Salem’s mayor seems bleak

Four days ago I wrote a blog post about how Salem Mayor Julie Hoy lied to the city council president, Linda Nishioka, about how Hoy had supposedly learned that a majority of the council wanted the City Manager, Keith Stahley, to resign. After Nishioka passed that falsehood on to Stahley, he resigned -- setting in motion a fiasco that culminated in a recently-concluded investigation by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. The investigation found that instead of a majority, five, of the city council members wanting Stahley to resign, actually just one did: Mayor Hoy herself. Yesterday I talked about Hoy's…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Julie Hoy

Salem Mayor Julie Hoy lied about a majority of the city council wanting the City Manager to resign. Actually, only Hoy did.

A recently concluded ethics investigation found that the Mayor of Salem, Julie Hoy, violated our state's Public Meetings Law in February 2025 when she orchestrated a private series of individual conversations with city councilors about whether the City Manager at the time, Keith Stahley, should resign. That was bad. But this is worse: Julie Hoy lied when she told the city council president, Linda Nishioka, that her conversations revealed that a majority of the city council (at least five of the eight members; one seat was vacant at the time) wanted Stahley to resign. At the request of Mayor Hoy,…
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Posted inCity Council Julie Hoy

Ethics investigation concludes Mayor Julie Hoy and five city councilors violated Public Meetings Law

Today I received the results of an investigation by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission into whether Mayor Julie Hoy and seven city councilors violated various provisions of Oregon's Public Meetings Law. I got those results because I was one of two people who filed a complaint about the actions of Hoy and city councilors that resulted in the resignation of then City Manager Keith Stahley earlier this year. Elliott Lapinel was the other complainant. My complaint was in the form of a blog post, appropriately titled "Here's my Oregon Government Ethics Commission complaint about Keith Stahley's forced resignation." Josh Sullivan,…
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Posted inNational politics

Why the Democrats shouldn’t vote to keep the government open

I was undecided about how the Democrats should handle the looming federal government shutdown at midnight on October 1 until this dawned on me: the Dems shouldn't vote to keep the government open. That's different from voting for a government shutdown. Sure, this is a subtle difference. But it's an important one. Trump and his Republican cronies are all set to scream from the (metaphorical) rooftops, "We wanted a clean continuing resolution to keep the government open for seven weeks, which would allow time to negotiate a budget for the next fiscal year, but Democrats rejected our oh-so-reasonable offer because…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Health tip: Don’t take medical advice from Donald Trump or RFK Jr.

I'll say this as non-gently as possible. Anyone who takes medical advice from Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or anyone else in the Trump administration is a fucking idiot! Okay, not you, if you've done what I said you shouldn't do, because I adore  each and every one of my blog visitors. I'm just talking about everybody else who listened to Trump's incoherent recent remarks about how pregnant women shouldn't take Tylenol (acetaminophen) even if they have a high fever, because Tylenol causes autism. Both of those statements aren't true. But you shouldn't take medical advice from me either.…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump has gone full authoritarian by demanding Bondi prosecute political opponents

I used to wonder why Trump had such fondness for authoritarian leaders of other countries: North Korea, China, Russia, Hungary. Those nations aren't exactly exemplars of freedom and human rights, to put it mildly. But now that Trump is unleashing his own authoritarianism to a much greater degree than he did in his first term as president, it's obvious that Trump adores authoritarians because he's one himself. And if there's one person Trump loves (there may only be one), it's himself. Yesterday Trump posted this on his Truth Social propaganda account. "Pam" is Pam Bondi, Trump's Attorney General. James Comey…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Jimmy Kimmel suspended after pressure from FCC chair shows autocracy of Trump administration

I’ve gotten used to learning about outrageous goings-on in the Clown Show of the Trump administration. But when I heard this afternoon that Jimmy Kimmel Live, his late night show on ABC, had been suspended indefinitely because of a comment he made about how conservatives are using Charlie Kirk’s killing to score political points, that struck me as beyond outrageous. In a story about Kimmel’s suspension by ABC, the New York Times reported what he said. The comments at the center of this week’s firestorm came during Mr. Kimmel’s opening monologue on Monday night. “We hit some new lows over…
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Posted inNational politics Uncategorized

Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to be killed. But he spewed falsehoods and hate.

I'm sorry Charlie Kirk, a well-known right-wing activist, was killed by an assassin in Utah last Wednesday. No one deserves to die for expressing their political beliefs. However, I'm amazed at how the Trump administration reacted to his death as if he was a former president. The vice-president flew to Utah on Air Force Two and transported his body back to Arizona, where Kirk lived. The FBI director went to Utah to oversee the manhunt for his killer, even though Kash Patel has no experience in this area. Flags were flown at half-staff. Praise of Kirk from Republicans made him…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics Uncategorized

Oregon’s Covid vaccine problem shows how destructive Trump is

It's starting to feel a lot like The Handmaid's Tale, that gripping series about how the United States was taken over by religious zealots who forced women into being raped in order to have children at a time when infertility gripped the world. I came to The Handmaid's Tale late, but watched it every day until I was able to write about how the conclusion inspired resistance against Trump's autocracy. In the series, the only states who remained free of the zealotry were Alaska and Hawaii, if I remember correctly. I have the impression that the West Coast states also…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Wanted: Democrats with the guts to shut down the government on September 30

As painful as it is for me to say this, congressional Democrats bear a lot of resemblance to the pitiful Oregon State football team that lost a game to Fresno State yesterday it should have won. Unorganized. Mistake-prone. Divided. Listless. After recording the game and watching enough of it to realize how bad Oregon State was playing, I fast-forwarded my way through most of the rest of the game, because it was so painful to watch a team I wanted to win perform so poorly. This also is how I feel about the Democrats in the House and Senate. They…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Republican party no longer believes in individual and corporate freedom

There are many bizarre aspects to Trump's second term. One among many is this. The Republican Party used to be known for its commitment to limited government, unbridled capitalism, and individual liberty. No longer.  With Trump as president, today's Republican Party firmly supports massive government control, federal interference in business decisions, and unheard of constraints on the freedom of Americans. The party that feared black helicopters and jack-booted thugs when a Democrat occupied the White House is fine with them, now that Trump is the occupant.  I recall the uproar when Republicans claimed that the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, would…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Why the $32.5 million economic benefit from Avelo Airlines is a screwy figure

Let's get this clear right off the bat. I'm not an economist. Heck, I've never even had a college economics class. But I've got a pretty good sense of when an economic sales job appears to be B.S., or to put it more delicately, taken with a grain of salt -- meaning, skeptically.  That's the feeling I have whenever I hear boosters of the Salem airport having commercial air service speak of the economic benefit to our city from having an airline fly in and out. Salem hasn't had any success in keeping an airline for more than a few…
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Posted in2024 election Joe Biden

After reading Original Sin, I’m even more irritated at Joe Biden

It took me a while to finish reading the tell-all book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, It's Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice To Run Again. One reason is that the book brought back painful memories of the 2024 presidential election that resulted with Donald Trump beating Kamala Harris and earning another four years in the White House where he will have another opportunity to lead our country and the world down some dangerous paths. Sending the military into Democratic-leaning cities. Weaponizing the Justice Department against his political enemies. Trashing renewable energy and efforts to combat global…
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Posted in2026 election Donald Trump National politics

If Trump tries to rip my mail-in ballot out of my hands, he’ll get a nasty paper cut

Hopefully the title of this blog post doesn't earn me a visit from the Secret Service. Guys, this isn't a threat against the president; it's a warning to Trump that if he messes with the much-beloved universal mail-in voting we have here in Oregon for every election, this will generate bad karma for him, possibly including a well-deserved paper cut. Trump's threat yesterday to issue an executive order banning mail-in voting is toothless, because the Constitution makes the states responsible for elections. Any changes to state election laws would have to be approved by Congress. Good luck getting that through…
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Posted inDonald Trump International issues

Behold, my Ukraine war peace plan (Nobel prize, please)

President Trump wants a Nobel peace prize. Well, so do I. And I think my plan for negotiating an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia is better than Trump's. Of course, the bestowers of Nobel prizes would have to overlook the minor (in my view) problem that I have absolutely no contact with Ukraine or Russia, so I'll be conveying my plan to Zelensky and Putin via mental telepathy. If my plan is adopted in whole or in large part by the warring parties, that will prove to the Nobel prize committee that I am most deserving of…
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Posted inDonald Trump International issues

Trump humiliated by Putin at Alaska meeting about Ukraine

We have a horribly weak president. That's obvious to us here in the United States, since Trump only gives an illusion of strength when he's dealing with people and organizations subject to his presidential powers.  But today the whole world saw Trump humiliated by Russia's dictator, Vladimir Putin, because Putin knew how to use to his advantage Trump's eagerness to submit to men more powerful than he is. Even though Putin is 100% responsible for the war in Ukraine, having invaded the country for no reason other than Putin's desire to reconstitute the old Soviet Union, Trump agreed to Putin's…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Democratic response to Trump is almost as irritating as Trump himself

I'm an unhappy Democrat. I have lots of company. Currently I'm stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. I can't stand Trump and what he's doing. I also can't stand the Democratic Party and what it's doing. My irritation with the party I've been a member of since I was old enough to vote is manifesting in various ways. Whenever I get a text message from a Democratic politician asking for money to support some quixotic liberal cause, I quickly press "delete and report spam." If the text is from Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton, I press even more…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump’s pick for Bureau of Labor Statistics head favors “feelings” over data

It was clear that something bad was in store for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) when Trump fired the head of the agency after the BLS reported poor job creation numbers recently. That's Trump's style: fire the messenger when they report an accurate message that the Dictator in Chief doesn't like. Today the bad thing came into view. Trump has nominated an unqualified MAGA loyalist, E.J. Antoni, to be the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is unheard of, since the BLS is a nonpartisan agency that is known for producing world-class high quality statistics on…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

All I want for Christmas is a Democratic leader with a killer political instinct

It's tough being a Democrat these days. After being depressed over Kamala Harris' disappointing loss to Trump last November, there hasn't been much to raise my spirits on the national level. (Locally and statewide in Oregon, Democrats are faring better.) Just about every Democrat on the national stage either irritates me or fails to inspire me. I get countless,  more or less, text messages and emails every day urging me to contribute to some Democratic cause. I never read them before I delete them. Sure, I realize that Democrats have no power in Washington, D.C. They don't control the White…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump fires Bureau of Labor Statistics head because he didn’t like some statistics

In any other presidency, two things Trump did today would be so outrageous to both Democrats and Republicans, our representatives in Congress would waste little time protesting the president's actions. But with this presidency, it's just another day in the Office of Sleazy Goings-On for Trump's acolytes. Outrage #1 was Ghislaine Maxwell being moved to a minimum-security camp in Texas from a regular federal prison in Florida. The move required a waiver of guidelines that prohibit prisoners convicted of serious crimes with more than ten years remaining on their sentence from being in such a camp, which doesn't have any…
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