The Chicago Tribune has printed a four-part series on a subject I wrote about last year: https://www.eastportlandblog.com/2015/09/22/the-pope-pig-manure-and-minnesota-water-quality-by-mark-erickson/ Here’s one Tribune article regarding pig polluters: http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/launch.aspx?pbid=3e7227b1-e3b7-4fac-aa07-5f943e58b4c5 As I read the article that landed on my doorstep today I recall the book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which exposed the production and sale of meat and the …
The NYT posted a video today of Trump’s supporters letting it all hang out at his rallies. The footage is instructive, but not for the squeamish. – Vino Knight-Trané http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unfiltered-voices-from-donald-trumps-crowds.html
I may live in a blue state, but the politics of my immediate neighborhood tinge red. Obama doesn’t come here to raise money, but a lot of right-of-center political celebrities stop by, including Sarah Palin when she did her Going Rogue book tour in 2010. It made sense, then, that Donald Trump and his plane …
This one’s one of the best podcasts I’ve heard in a while in terms of knowledgeability and candor. Mark Salter was on McCain’s staff for a long time, including during the 2008 campaign. One of the points he makes draws from that experience, when they knew for the last couple of months that they were …
I suspect the Republican nomination will either go to Trump or be a big-time mess, or both. Someone like Paul Ryan could emerge as the nominee, but only after a public bloodletting in a non-brokered free-for-all of a convention that might put 1968 to shame. He would start the general election with serious disadvantages in …
President Barack Obama has spent the last few days in Cuba as part of his effort to normalize relations with the island that has endured a 50 year embargo. The Chicago Tribune reported that Obama advocated for “human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly and religion” during the trip to which President Raul Castro …
Norm Ornstein’s one of my favorite political writers, even though the think tank he belongs to, the American Enterprise Institute, leans right. His most recent piece in the Atlantic addresses the images of 1968 that are in a lot of people’s minds nowadays (bold type mine). http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-grim-reality-of-american-politics/474198/ I found this passage particularly interesting: “Some prominent …
I’ve enjoyed David Axelrod’s podcasts of late. His most recent interview with Mark Leibovich of the New York Times is pretty insightful. Axe seems to be pretty good at getting his subjects to relax and open up, and he asks good questions. One of the more interesting exchanges was about Hillary Clinton’s limitations as a …
I just watched Mavis! on HBO – this documentary is so good, it even caused me to have warm feelings towards Jeff Tweedy! There’s great vintage clips and commentary from Chuck D & Dylan, plus a warm moment with Levon Helm not long before he passed. – Pat Thomas is the author of Listen, Whitey! …
Don’t know if this makes any sense if you haven’t seen John Oliver’s (above) epic takedown of Trump (my wife was nonplussed), but the image below is my first effort at agitprop. This is the perfect time to point out that Trump was accused, today, of leading his followers in a pledge which looked suspiciously …
Recent coverage of the U.S. Presidential campaign has been interesting in its perspective. After a 5% loss in Nevada, all of the prognosticators suggest that Sanders is done–one article suggesting that he’ll be at a disadvantage because his twenty-something army will be on spring break during upcoming primaries. This seems very premature. On the Republican …
I must admit I didn’t see this coming. Who’d a thunk Aht Gahfunkel would be the last hippie standing? This makes the photo of Trump and Neil Young so much sadder.
On Christmas Eve, before eating the roast beast, my family reads the Nativity story found in Luke. Verses 1-2: “At that time Emporer Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Roman Empire. When the first census took place, Quirinius was the governor of Syria.” Matthew 2 explains King Herod felt threatened that his …
One more time. Films that purport to show Planned Parenthood selling baby parts are deceptively edited fraud. They spin the truth into lies. If you believe these videos, as Republicans in Congress apparently did, you’re a dunce. Planned Parenthood is not selling baby parts. They are allowed by law to let mothers donate fetal tissue, …
“16 shots, 14 months. 16 shots, 14 months. 16 shots, 14 months.” I attended a protest rally on Black Friday that was easily attended by more than 5,000 people. The protest closed down Chicago’s “Mag Mile”, which is the high-end downtown shopping mecca. We congregated at the majestic Chicago Tribune building and proceeded north. Why …
In the wake of the recent bombings and killings in Paris, I offer this. But first, I must step back. Shortly after 9/11, I opined in a pre-Twitter universe to a creation similar to Twitter, something called “xnpc”, that the United States had stoked hostility by imposing sanctions and a killing machine upon Iraq. People …
Nixon’s attorney John Dean calls today’s tea party, specifically the U.S. House Freedom Caucus, “near treasonous” and says their actions might be unconstitutional with “criminal implications.” Robert Scheer has a new podcast on KCRW. In it, he talks to Dean, former White House Counsel under Richard Nixon, who served during the Watergate scandal. In the …
Below is a list of worthy anti-colonial (#anticolo) movies—perhaps the best ever made. A cursory Google search has not uncovered a single list of the best anticolo flicks of all time. The aggregated minds of East Portland Blog have come together to generate a list and potentially be the first website to broach this subject. …
Pope Francis has landed at Andrews Air Force Base for his first visit to the United States. There’s a lot of speculation about what he might say, especially when he addresses Congress Thursday morning in light of first visiting Cuba. I am hopeful that he will discuss American capitalism’s flaws, a theme he has hit …
Last night while watching neutral Al-Jazeera TV, I saw a clip about the US Army having committed $500 million to train Syrians to fight ISIL. The clip was a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing chaired by Senator John McCain. General Austin testified about the program that strove to train 15,000 Syrians to fight. General Austin …
At 8:20 a.m. on September 9, 1971 the Attica Prison riot began. At 9:45 AM on September 13, tear gas was dropped into the yard and New York State Police troopers opened fire non-stop for two minutes into the smoke. by the time the facility was retaken, 10 hostages (Nine of them Prison guards who …
Author and Bad Religion member Greg Graffin has shared “Faith Alone”, one of his own songs that thematically inspired his new book, Population Wars. The full series including “My Poor Friend Me”, “The Answer”, “Changing Tide” are available on an limited edition exclusive 7-inch available for pre-order with Population Wars at kingsroadmerch.com/badreligion. With his new …
Saturday afternoon on August 8 I headed to downtown Seattle for a rally for social security. The guest speaker of note was to be democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The event was held in the Westlake Plaza, the traditional gathering place for political rallies and gatherings in Seattle. A half an hour before the event …
((((Facebook is aggregating all the people in my pipeline that feel Cecil the lion is getting too much “air time” or they just don’t “understand” all the hoopla- and there seems to be an empathy war going on between all the injustices out there. Also, thee “if you eat meat why do you care?” tactic …
Manson Prosecutor and Prolific True-Crime Author Vincent Bugliosi, born in Hibbing, Minnesota in 1934, is best known for his prosecution of Charles Manson and his hippie cult followers. During the year-long trial, Bugliosi used vicarious liability and aiding and abetting theories to convict Manson. This skilled prosecutor described Manson as a “dictatorial maharajah of a …
My favorite photo from our Washington, D.C. experience today was of a reflection. We caught this shadow on the back of the Lincoln memorial at sunset, as a dad was proudly taking a picture of his son, who had just graduated from college. The dad asked the son to take off his robe but to …
As an opponent of the militarization of American society, I always oppose the Pentagon’s continuous bloated budget and wasteful spending. In December 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2013, “the Pentagon’s top 85 major-defense acquisition programs experienced overruns of nearly $411 billion.” According to the same WSJ article, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter …
Last January, the Port of Seattle irresponsibly gave Shell the go-ahead to use Seattle as home base for its Arctic drilling operations. They ignored Shell’s terrible safety record, the very high risk of a major Arctic oil spill, and devastating impacts to our climate. The Port Commissioners hoped the deal would go unnoticed. The non-profit …
Saturday morning, March 21, 2015, I attended one of seven gatherings around Washington state to address K through eight funding. The event I attended was standing room only at Nathan Hale HS in north Seattle. There had to be at least four thousand educators and parents in attendance who are fed up with lack of …
On Tuesday night, January 13 I joined hundreds of others outside Seattle’s Federal Building to join hands and surround the building in protest of the Keystone Pipeline that was recently passed by the new republican controlled congress. President Obama has said he will veto the bill, but this protest was enacted to make sure he …