Around a decade ago, Multnomah County residents saw a new, $58 million County jail, Wapato, completed. The facility has never been used, and County Chair Jeff Cogen now says that it never will be used. This is the kind of forward-thinking that we get from Portland and Multnomah County Democratics.
Speaking yesterday at Portland City Club, Cogen instead yammered on about the need to form partnerships and take calculated risks (with other peoples' money) during his "State of the County" address. Perhaps it's his way of ushering in the Chinese "Year of the Snake".
Speaking of which, Portland City Council has fast-tracked their push to dump fluoride into the historically pristine, Bull Run-fed public water system. Naturally, it's For The Children™. So it's of more than passing interest that a recent analysis by the National Institutes of Health notes that fluoride in water demonstrates an inverse relationship to child I.Q.:
The results suggest that fluoride may be a developmental neurotoxicant that affects brain development at exposures much below those that can cause toxicity in adults ...
But as long as the kids have bright smiles, nothing else about them really needs to be all that bright. They can safely ignore the fact that virtually all toothpastes and rinses presently on the market contain fluoride - and that these products are not intended for internal use; rather, they are to be spit out after brushing or rinsing.
With luck, fluoridated water will result in many more Democratic voters.
And in terms of hypocrisy, Portland takes the cake with a couple of tales - last year, three people jumped to their deaths from the 12-story-high Vista Bridge in Southwest Portland. The Zero today has a tear-jerking story about the problem, and a lot of people leapt in to comment regarding the need for sullying the historic landmark with barriers to prevent such tragedies, yet in view of the fact that many in the Portland area support Planned Parenthood, which had a banner year last year in which they established a new record for abortions performed, many of the comments are contributed by hypocrites.
Finally, in terms of cake and hypocrisy, Portland is treated to a battle - soon to be a legal battle - between a cake-baker and a lesbian. It seems that two lesbos want to get "married", and they approached the owner of a small shop in suburban Gresham, asking him to bake them a wedding cake. The owner declined:
“I apologized for wasting their time and said we don’t do same-sex marriages,” he said. I “honestly did not mean to hurt anybody, didn’t mean to make anybody upset, (it’s) just something I believe in very strongly.”
Well, too flippin' bad! Rather than simply visiting another shop, they've hired a lawyer and are determined to make a big hoot and holler over the fact that - as they see it - their sexual anomaly must trump his religious convictions.
The question now: whether his constitutional rights outweigh state statute.
It's an interesting case:
The Oregon Equality Act of 2007 prohibits discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.
However, complainant states that she had previously purchased a cake from the shop for her mother's wedding. Obviously, the owner didn't discriminate against her because of her sexual orientation. He simply declined to provide a cake for a homosexual wedding - which is an event, not an orientation.
