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Enviro Lashes Out At Salem, Oregon Over Plan To Sell Water Rights

Yeah, the Usual Suspects are at it again.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The city of Salem has agreed to sell part of its water rights on the Willamette River to the city of Hillsboro. If the deal is approved, Hillsboro will pay Salem $16.2 million.

Salem has water rights there, but they don't use them; they get their water out of the North Santiam River, but Hillsboro needs to expand their city supplies. It's a good deal all around, since Salem would like to upgrade its water supply infrastructure, and that $16 million would certainly help.

Oh, but not so fast! Professional gadfly John DeVoe doesn't like it:

But one conservation group says the deal is the latest in a series of municipal water grabs that eventually could endanger fish and river health.

“What’s happened is encouraging speculation in water in the Willamette Valley and across the state,” said John DeVoe, executive director of WaterWatch of Oregon. “These entitlements should not be permitted.”

Oh, Dearie, Noes! Why this sort of thing could eventually endanger something. Not that it will, and he has no evidence to back his view, but he doesn't need any - he's an environmeddlist. Feelings are all that matter - well that, and publicity.

Where does DeVoe get his water from? Maybe he just goes outdoors when it's raining, lies on the ground, and opens his capacious mouth.

According to him, water rights should be illegal.

Seems like he'd fit right in at Nestle.

Oregon Follies Already Resume

The Oregon legislature's concerned: they're looking at a $1.3 to $1.6 billion "hole" in the next budget, and where-oh-where are they going to find the money to fill it? Whatever could have happened to create this problem? It's a mystery.

Oh, wait - Oregon's Public Employee Retirement System presently has a deficit of $27 billion because contract "negotiations" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) between public employee unions and the various bureaucrats in the state went unsupervised, so the bureaucrats made promises that they couldn't keep - but heck, by the time that became known, they'd be retired themselves. No harm, no foul. And then there are a few other things:

The Oregon Health Authority is quickly applying to renew a five-year federal waiver that helps pay for its expanded health insurance program for low-income residents. The current waiver expires next summer, and the state is asking for $250 million per year for the following five years.

As part of the Affordable Care Act, the state is also due next year to pick up 6 percent of the tab for the hundreds of thousands of residents who became insured through the health care law. Oregon will pay an estimated $270 million more for that, according to the health authority.

Also adding to the state’s bleak budget outlook were raises nearly all state employees in the executive branch received in late 2015. That will cost an additional $254.1 million in the next budget after the state paid $124.4 million in the current budget.

Yep, now that we're slowly starting to emerge from the recession, let's give everybody pay raises! Never mind that those also increase the PERS benefits; these are dedicated public employees! And how about that wildly successful "Affordable" Health Care Act?

In brief, this is what you get when Democratics are in charge, whether locally or nationally. It's even worse when they're in charge at all levels - the idiocy runs non-stop. And their solution is always more taxes and fees. Heaven forbid that they cut anything, anywhere (well, maybe the military or law enforcement, but other than that...).

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It Doesn't Pay To Be A Driver For Terrorists

(Newser) – A DNA test has confirmed that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a US drone strike, Pakistan's interior ministry said Sunday, as the family of a driver killed in the strike sought legal action. On Sunday, the family of Mansour's driver—identified as Mohammed Azam—filed a police case against unknown US officials, seeking to press murder charges against them, police officer Abdul Wakil Mengal said. The family maintains Azam's innocence, and describes him as the sole breadwinner and a father of four. They say they want justice.

Yes, well...when you take a job driving top Tailban guys around, you kind of give up any claims of innocence. Bad things can happen. Probably would've been safer to let the Mullah dude drive his own butt around.  Guess the driver's family is going to have to win their own bread.

Do I think that Obama (a.k.a. "The Drone Ranger") gets a little too loosey-goosey with those things? Unquestionably. Is this one a legit strike? According to the DNA results, yes. But them Tailbans have managed to select a new target:

Senior Taliban members, after successfully evading American drone strikes for long enough to hold a leadership conference, have named a successor to the leader killed in a US airstrike last week. The Afghan Taliban, acknowledging Mullah Mansour's death for the first time, announced Wednesday that he will be succeeded by one of his deputies, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada.

This is why they can't be circumcised; there ain't no end to them pricks.

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Groping Delay At JFK

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Neal Buccino says a server providing Internet service had problems at about 4 p.m. Sunday, which required manual check-in.

Thanks, Verizon!

Buccino says Terminal 7 is operated by British Airways, which leases space to other carriers. He says at one point Sunday night, more than 1,000 passengers were waiting in line to get checked in. He says the number dropped to about 80 by midnight.

No word on how many people ended up missing their flights due to the booking delays, but boarding passes had to be hand-written, which should give you hand-cramps just thinking about it. That's massive. And at present, Verizon has not been able to provide a timeline regarding service restoration.

Bottom line: if you're at JFK today, you'll probably be there tomorrow, too.

Thoughtcrime Arrests On The Rise In Thailand

As the military coup there enters its third year, the junta is taking an increasingly hard line against any dissent; it seems the country is swarming with plainclothes cops. In recent months, Thais have been arrested for "liking" a comment on Facebook that the junta deemed subversive.

Others have been detained simply for reading George Orwell’s “1984” in public, or for raising three fingers, an anti-tyranny salute from the “Hunger Games” films.

Officers have even snatched up a man for eating a sandwich.

It was no ordinary sandwich, mind you. It was publicly declared a “sandwich for democracy,” scarfed down by an anti-junta activist at a mall — all while reading 1984. He was quickly surrounded by plainclothes officers.

But the junta claims that it won't retain power indefinitely; they've even written up a constitution that they say will allow for the return of an elected government. Thais will be permitted to vote on that constitution come August, although they won't be permitted to debate it beforehand - that carries a 10-year prison sentence.

Today we memorialize the many who fought and died so that we could live in relative freedom, and while I enjoyed my time spent in Thailand, I'm glad I don't have to live there.

I'm watching an HBO series produced by Tom Hanks, "John Adams". I'm not a big fan of Hanks' politics, but he doesn't do B-grade films. This series is no exception.

 

A-Huntin' We Will Go

Line up the lawn chairs and crack open some brewskies, boys! That seemed to be the way Portland's idiot "chief of police" viewed things just before he ended up shooting one of his "huntin' buddies" in the back last month out in Harney County, Oregon. Yeah boy! They was a-shooting these "sage rats":

On account of those Belding's ground squirrels are such nasty and sneaky critters.

They'll hide out there in the grass or the sage and just wait until you clamber out of your lawn chair to go fetch another brewski. Then they'll make their move, although some of them don't even wait that long. They just might up and decide to shoot one of yer "huntin' buddies" in the back. And that's where our esteemed chief of police blew it (fortunately, the Harney County deputy investigating the incident didn't have a breathalyzer handy).

Personally, I think he should have blamed one of those "sage rats" for the carnage.

They're dangerous killers.  While you're resting in your lawn chair the squirrels can sneak up and pull the trigger on your gun.  That's why they must be taken out.

Yee-Haw!

No wonder Portland cops are so highly respected; with that as "leadership", what else can be expected? Man, what fine folks we end up with around here. Well, at least now ol' Larry should be able to find time to attend the Oregon Brewer's Festival. If he brings a lawn chair, ya might want to leave.

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Socialism At Work: Venezuela

Lovely place, isn't it?

The wires add a nice decorative touch, along with the streetlights burning during daylight hours.

In recent weeks, the government has taken what may be one of the most desperate measures ever by a country to save electricity: A shutdown of many of its offices for all but two half-days each week.

But that is only the start of the country’s woes. Electricity and water are being rationed, and huge areas of the country have spent months with little of either.

But they keep the streetlights burning day and night, because that's how you save electricity.

Last week, protests turned violent in parts of the country where demonstrators demanded empty supermarkets be resupplied.

Venezuela’s public schools are now closed on Fridays, another effort to save electricity.

Naturally, their problems are America's fault:

Venezuela’s government says the problems are the result of an “economic war” being waged by elites who are hoarding supplies, as well as the American government’s efforts to destabilize the country.

But most economists agree that Venezuela is suffering from years of economic mismanagement, including over-dependence on oil and price controls that led many businesses to stop making products.

Yeah, government-imposed controls will tend to turn businesses off - a little fact that Oregon politicians have yet to grasp. The nice thing about the situation is that it's helping Venezuela lead the fight to Save The Planet™: since nobody has any money - or work - the streets in Caracas have almost no traffic. Isn't that a wonderful thing?

 

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Bummer In Cincy

A family outing at the zoo there turned stupid after mommy and daddy left their four year-old at the gorilla exhibit yesterday.

Cincinnati Zoo President Thane Maynard said the boy crawled through a barrier and fell an estimated 10 to 12 feet into the moat surrounding the habitat. He said the boy was not seriously injured by the fall.

But all hell broke loose when a 17 year-old male lowland gorilla rushed over to the kid's aid:

Brittany Nicely of Dayton was visiting the zoo with her two children and four other children on Saturday. They were at Gorilla World when the incident took place.

"Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the little boy in the bushes past the little fence area. I tried to grab for him. I started yelling at him to come back," Nicely said.

"Everybody started screaming and going crazy," she said. "It happened so fast."

Nicely said the gorilla rushed toward the boy and led him by the arm through the water in the enclosure. She said initially the gorilla seemed protective and only alarmed by all the screaming.

The area was then evacuated by zoo staff. Nicely stood with her group outside the exhibit.

"About four or five minutes later we heard the gunshot," she said. "We were pretty distraught. All the kids were crying."

Nicely said she spent the whole trip home explaining why they are told to stay close and not run at the zoo.

Yep, the response team shot and killed the gorilla. They didn't really have a lot of choice, because the idiots hooting and hollering were upsetting the 400 - pound animal, making unintentional injury to the child more likely. Sure, you've got your tranq gun, but the problem there is that the animal goes berserk when hit with a dart. If you ever saw what happens after the dart hits, it not only ain't pretty, it's downright scary. In real life, you don't hit them with a dart and then they just fall over and go to sleep; it takes a while.

With a bullet, they do fall over and go to sleep. Unfortunately, they never wake up. And it all could have been avoided except for the fact that so many people are so stupid. It's a sad reality that it's not possible to build facilities that eliminate human stupidity.

I've seen people lift their child over a barrier railing and sit the kid on the exhibit wall at bear exhibits. In my experience, that stops when you casually approach mommy and daddy and ask if they happen to have any idea as to how high a bear can jump. It's much more common in America and Europe than in Asia - presumably because Asians didn't have quite so much exposure to Disney flicks.

Used To Be, They Wouldn't Make It To The Jail Cell

PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) -

A Portland man and his ex-girlfriend were in court on Friday facing 89 child pornography charges.

Supposedly, 45-year-old David Hyliard is/was a software developer, while his meth-addled sorta girlfriend, 25-year-old Chelsea Lovell worked as a stripper in Southeast Portland. As you can see from her mug-shot, she's a real beauty. The guys at her strip joint must be wowed by her. Unsurprisingly, they popped her on a methamphetamine possession charge as well.

It's tempting to say that they both deserve a little Chinese justice, which would involve a bullet to the head, but in her case, a long stint in jail without her meth might be just the ticket.

You Don't Need To Look For The Union Label

It's right here:

Idle container shipping cranes at Portland's Terminal 6.

The boys in the Portland chapter of ILWU staged years of stoppages and slowdowns, and the shipping lines finally got a bellyfull and left. Why call at Portland - where container transfer might well take a week or more - when you can call at Puget Sound, where those same container transfers happen in less than a day?

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