By Steve Hynd
In a new interview with German mag Der Spiegel out today, Obama's National Security Adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, is sounding skeptical about the McChrystal escalation request for extra troops in Afghanistan. He says, dismissively, that "generals always ask for more troops".
SPIEGEL: The Obama administration is reviewing [...]
Latest Wells Fargo survey: expectations for increased revenues improve small business owner optimism
Outlook also better for capital spending and credit availability
From Wells Fargo Bank,
Optimism among small business owners improved during October, driven by improved outlook for revenue, capital spending and hiring, according to the latest results [...]
Faith-Family Film Rview: A Christmas Carol
by Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
A Christmas Carol—Lavish, well-crafted but frequently eerie 3-D animated adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic 1843 novella in which miserly misanthrope Ebenezer Scrooge (voice of Jim Carrey) is urged to change his ways by [...]
FRIDAY, Nov. 6 (HealthDay News) — If an inept or abrasive boss is ruining your workday, you may be taking that stress to heart, literally. New research links having a poor supervisor to a higher risk of heart attack, and that’s not all: people who don’t [...]
Statement by Bob Stallman, President, American Farm Bureau Federation, Regarding Ballot Measure Victories In Ohio and Texas
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 4, 2009 – “Our congratulations go out to the Ohio and Texas Farm Bureaus this morning for the leadership roles they played in important and meaningful victories [...]
Faith and Family Film Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats
By Catholic Office of Film and Broadcasting
The Men Who Stare at Goats—Fact-based satire, set during the early stages of the Iraq War, in which an eccentric military veteran (George Clooney) regales a reporter [...]
In Portland Oregon, Habitat for Humanity homes are built to be Platium-LEED certified. So who says we can't make a difference on Global Warming because it will cost too much?
' [...]
I love our winter storms. They're actually cyclones just like those which are called hurricanes or typhoons further south. The ocean is roaring so loudly that it sounds like the waves are going to crash outside my bedroom window.' [...] We are like the skinny kid sitting on the end of the bench on a basketball team when it comes to playing the game against millions of dollars flowing into Oregon to defeat Oregon's tax measures on the January ballot. We are not like the other team all lined up [...]
By John Ballard
I haven't read it yet but this is a snip from my next reading assignment. I'm posting as I wait for the printer to finish eleven pages.
H/T Maggie Mahar's blog. Looks like pretty good content.
VII. ONE DAY, WHILE I was standing in Intermountain’s cardiology intensive-care unit, which, [...]
The global temperature anomaly as measured by UAH is, well, kind of in the middle: +0.284°C. (Can these things really be measured to one part in a thousand?) While Charlie Burr at BlueOregon accused me of stooping "to take the luster off" the Al Gore endorsement of Bradbury by reporting here on the genuine history of bad blood between Gore and Kitzhaber, over at Willamette Week, reporter Hank Stern admits that, journalistically, I simply beat him to a [...]
Commentary By Ron Beasley
Barack Obama ran his campaign on the platform of change but by the time the election rolled around a year ago he had already been bought and paid for by Wall Street and the Financial Industry. James Lieber explains:
We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We' [...]Fannie Mae - Troubled company!
[...]
It appears that the Oregon League of Conservation Voters is getting ready to take their political work to the next level.
First, the Oregonian has a Q&A with OLCV's new Executive Director, Jon Isaacs:
How are Oregon environmentalists doing politically?The environmental community does not get the respect it deserves from [...]
Across Oregon, after the question "Should U of O end up ahead of Boise if they both win out" I'm sure the most popular sports fan worry is "WTF with the Blazers?" It's way early yet, and 2-3 is hardly a disaster--but there are some evil portents and recurrences of [...]
Wow now this is pretty amazing. In a document published by George Washington University entitled "Thinking Anew---Security Priorities For The Next Administration" the Ft. Hood Shooter's name "Nidal...
'" [...] 
"I can almost remember when a suspect being human was a given, not an option.""Climate Change" (code for Man-Made Global Warming) has been recognized for what we've known all along: a religious belief. The landmark ruling comes from the U.K., but has global implications.Â
His employers contended that climate change was a scientific, not a religious or philosophical belief, and thus not legally protected.' [...]
Obama/Pelosi/Reid are asking Americans to explode our nation's deficits on a risky experiment while reducing coverage for elderly Americans and mandating coverage for other Americans.
Read this...
[...] By Dave Anderson:
Liberals and Democrats have argued that the two governors' races that the Democrats lost this week turned on a combination of local issues and weak Democratic candidates who would not do anything to excite the Democratic base.Â
Conservatives and Republicans have argued that these two races are' [...]
It’s a concept I brought up without much thought: since a major sticking point in contract negotiations is a five-day furlough for teachers, does the district want to force a strike, then, after five days of teacher picketing, come back to the table without the furlough in their contract offer? [...]
tweetmeme_url = 'http://siliconflorist.com/2009/11/06/portland-wiki-project-city-oregon/'; tweetmeme_source = 'siliconflorist'; For all the wiki activity in Portland—I mean, c’mon, the inventor of the wiki lives here—Portland has been virtually bereft of a wiki of its own.
Until now. There’s a new project underway called Portland Wiki. It’s goal? To document everything there is to [...]
What could possibly have motivated an army shrink to go on a rampage like that? Post-traumatic stress, perhaps? Nope - the 39-year-old Doctor has never served in a war zone; his job consisted of "counselling" soldiers who (unlike him) actually had served in war, and who returned with stress-related disorders. [...]
For anyone with even slight observation skills, it is clear that both our political leaders and the main stream media elites are anxious that we, the unwashed masses, are assured that the Ft. Hood...
Oregonians with short memories may think Gore’s endorsement of Bradbury in Oregon’s Democratic gubernatorial primary is a singular act of political love for Oregon’s ex-secretary of state.
But that misses an intriguing subplot.
Gore’s move is the continuation of a decades long feud with Oregon ex-governor Kitzhaber, Bradbury’s leading primary opponent, dating back to Gore’s [...]
Tired of the dreary weather already? Need an excuse for a cheap date? Step right up, have I got a deal for you!
It’s the first Friday of the month, which means it’s time for Cort and Fatboy’s Midnight Movie. November’s selection? The Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona.
This [...]
Barack Obama is coming under fire for his "frightening insensitivity" to the Ft. Hood massacre yesterday. And I think rightfully so.
Obama was scheduled to make an appearance to a Native American...
By Steve Hynd
The Obama administration has a new so-called Afghan Compact which is designed to increase good governance in Afghanistan and reduce corruption. The main problem, though, is that any compact needs two sides agreeing to implement it.
The success of the so-called "Afghanistan Compact" will hinge on Karzai's willingness' [...]
Much has been written, at least of late, about the Gates Foundation’s influence on public education. From donating money to Race to the Top applicants to the multiple Gates officials serving in the DOE (and all the billions of dollars flowing in between), there’s no doubt the foundation [...]
Despite the dismal US unemployment report, there are signs that the economy is stabilizing and even turning the corner, albeit slowly. Former Trailblazer Chris Dudley is thinking about running for Oregon Governor on the GOP side. He's got himself a website on training wheels that includes some nice photos, but nothing so far that gives us a real sense of the guy and what he's about.
I'm not so in to' [...]
It is worse than you suggest. What company will hire new employees if they don't know what their contingent liability for health care and carbon will be? These bills are enormous overhang on the economy that is freezing decisions for hiring' [...]
The US unemployment rate, as expected, rose to 10.2% in October. The economy lost an additional 190,000 jobs. It would not be surprising to see double digit unemployment persist until spring. [...] 
In August, the White House projected that unemployment would peak at 10 percent sometime in the middle of next year. The BLS’s October labor report shows that unemployment passed the 10 percent level in October.
U.S. unemployment in October [...]
Commentary By Ron Beasley
Yesterday we reported that we have the best government money can buy. We have yet another example today.
It took just five weeks after the WorldCom accounting scandal erupted in 2002 for Congress to pass, and President [...]
Karl Rove highlights this week from his Wall Street Journal 
