Tardy Tuesday

I was camping in the middle of nowhere and completely off the grid over the long weekend, so a belated happy Independence Day to all.

Here, have a picture. I hear that's worth a large number of words:

(click to embigginate)

Guvna

So, uh, there was a scandal. So sad, we're all terribly devastated here. It's awful, really. Rending of garments, wailing in the streets, dumping out of craft beer pints, ritual flannel sacrifice, etc.

Oh, wait, no it's not. Yeah, so, other than the Oregonian, and Willamette Week newspapers, pretty much nobody I know gives a shit. Everybody I've talked to about this has the following reaction: "Oh, what? Really? Huh. Who's the new guvna?"

The woman pictured here, that's who, and that's where it gets good. Because of Kitzy's stupidity, we actually get a real, honest-to-FSM liberal female, Kate Brown, as Governor. And get this: She's also bisexual. First openly LGBT guvna in the whole damn USA. Woo! Yay Oregon!

So, if that's the outcome of this scandal, I think we need more scandal around here. Sorry Kitz, you were a good guy, that (mostly) did good work, but you went and fucked up. Hope for your sake you don't go to prison, but that's about it.

The Governor is dead, long live The Governor!

We're Number One!

We're number one! We're number one!

1. Oregon
Standout stat: 6.3 craft breweries per 100,000
It should be noted that our entire editorial staff (except for Kryza, who lives in Portland and likes to tell people about it) was actively rooting against Big O in this ranking. It leads any booze-related national conversation on the strength of its unassailably dense beer scene, but OR's also third in wineries, fifth in distilleries, and 13th in bars per capita. Oh, did we mention craft beer and wine alone account for $4.6 billion in economic impact each year, and Oregonians drink 2.65 gallons of booze? Because it does, and they do. Basically, it's a big, boozy bully, and we wanted to take it down a peg or several. But the numbers don't lie -- The Beaver State is America's Booziest.

Suck it, you buncha sober losers. :-b

In a related study, extensive research has found that buying a new house and moving for the first time in eleventy-zillion years results in a dramatic increase in quantity of alcohol consumed. The study is ongoing, with an additional focus on examining any correlation between types of remodeling projects and choices of beverage.

Coincidence?

Or did FSM (praise his noodly appendages!) arrange for a little display of solidarity in the sky now that Oregon finally entered the modern world yesterday?

Photo credit: Corvallis Gazette-Times

It's about damn time people!

Updated because I meant to add this random musical interlude also, too:

Maybe this election cycle we can also fully get our shit together and take care of that other thing that we used to be one of the leaders on:

Maybe.

Prediction (updated with video)

Maddow just teased a story from Oregon and the teaser contained Art Robinson. I predict the story is about Art wanting our urine, because that's what a mailer I got from Robinson over the weekend was about.

[Popcorn.gif]

UPDATE:

Here's the video: (go here if the embedding doesn't work)

Can you imagine if a Democratic candidate solicited people's urine for a study? The nutjob-wing of the Republican party (but I repeat myself) would flip right the fuck out. It'd be worse than eleventy-five Benghazis times nine U.N. Agenda 21s. Carnage!

There's an amusing article from a local rag about it here. They actually sent away for the kit.

Coasting

The Oregon coast is pretty when it's not pouring rain.

Rogue's main brewery is just behind and to the right of the main arch of the Yaquina Bay Bridge:

Rogue had their semi-annual garage sale this past weekend, which meant there were a variety of 12-packs of 22oz bottles of their beers for $20. Normally they're about $5 to $10 per bottle which is just fucking ridiculous; they're OK beers but not worth the prices they charge. At the garage sale prices it was a no-brainer to bring home a few cases.

Just beachy.

Oregon

is horrible and ugly and the beer is terrible. Stay away.

(Note, I have no idea who the tiny people are in the waterfall photo. They do help to show the scale though.)

Yay Oregon! Part Two

BREAKING! URGENT!*

After yesterday's post about GMO wheat, Another article out today with a bit more detail. The telling bit from there is this:


"STREAMLINED" SYSTEM

Heavy criticism has already hit Monsanto, including a lawsuit filed Monday by a U.S. farmer who is alleging the seed company was negligent in allowing its experimental seed to escape its control.

Monsanto countered that its wheat development program was "government-directed, rigorous and well-documented and audited."

The field trials were conducted under a streamlined system known as "notification," which is more lenient than the tightly controlled permitting process.

Under the permit process, companies must establish buffer areas around field trial sites to help avoid contamination of neighboring fields; to use only dedicated machinery and storage facilities for GMO material; and train personnel. Annual inspections are required.

Under the notification process, there are fewer field inspections and regulators rely largely on developers like Monsanto for evaluating and reporting the adequacy of their controls.

Over time, more and more field trials have come under the notification process and it now accounts for the vast majority of field trials on biotech crops.

In light of the discovery in Oregon, USDA should assess its review process, said U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

"This incident underscores the need for an agency review of field-testing practices to determine how to avoid this situation in the future," he said.


(emPHAsis mine)

Again, who could've possibly predicted that allowing massive corporations to police themselves would result in anything but glorious positive outcomes and rainbow sparkleponies for all? Inconceivable.

Also, thankfully we have an actual progressive Democratic Senator now in Merkley that isn't in the corporate pocket like his predecessor Smith was, and isn't a traditional, wishy-washy, centrist, Paul Ryan-lovin' "normal" Democrat.

(*Note: not urgent at all)

Yay Oregon!

Care to guess which state could possibly ruin all international sales of U.S.-grown wheat? Yep, it's us!

Go Oregon! Woo! We're number one!

Well, I mean technically, if you want to be pedantic, Monsanto had a little bit to do with it also. But who could've ever predicted that trials of a genetically modified crop could possibly escape into the wild? I mean, that's clearly inconceivable.

Disclaimer: Beer produced by Oregon Beer Snob™ Enterprises LLC, EFI, LOL©® does not contain any wheat, GMO or otherwise...

For now...

It's Always Rainy In Oregon

Or, y'know, not.

Although we seem to have broken the planet, it looks like Oregon might be a pretty nice place to be, at least until the hordes of ravenous humanity fleeing the desolation of what was once California arrive.

Hopefully they won't show up until after the weekend. I have plans.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian, cont. Again.

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian has a new article in today's campus paper. (See here and here for the previous installments if you can stand it.)

Today we get the pleasure anguish of reading yet another article about same-sex marriage. Because nobody else in the media is talking about it from that super-special-snowflake of glibertarian perspective. Or something. At least the glibertarians usually want to allow same sex marriage, like sane people should. Unfortunately that's typically where the sanity stops with them, and indeed we'll see that here as well.

As with the last installment in this series, he starts off in semi-sane mode, if you're willing to ignore the usual "government must stay out of governing" angle:

Since the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against gay marriage last week, the bandwagon for marriage equality returned. However, the real issue remains dormant on both sides. We should not be asking government to give us “marriage equality.” Instead, the government should have no part in marriage.

Of course, it immediately continues to accelerate downhill from there:

Marriage has existed longer than the government. Marriage is not a product of the government. Many people believe marriage comes from religion and in America, we have the separation of church and state, but many other ideas of marriage exist, as well. Regardless of any one view, why does the government regulate marriage when it should not?

That's some awesometastic sentence construction there. Good thing you don't write for a newspaper or anything. But yes, why does the evil government have an interest in regulating marriage? It's not like society has any interest in encouraging healthy relationships between people. That's why we also don't regulate any sorts of violence between individuals. And have no regulations whatsoever about interaction between folks in various transactions and how various people treat other people. Because America! FREEDUMB! Fuck yeah! WOLVERINES!!!

Oh wait, what do you mean we do have all sorts of laws and regulations about all sorts of relationships between people? Contracts and such between folks that want to conduct trade without the threat of violence? Oh, yeah, we do! How silly of me.

But still, this one particular form of relationship is one the government should stay completely out of. Uh, because freedom, I guess? Let's see what he thinks:

The government requires marriage licenses in order to call a couple married. But what business of the government's is it if two people want to, and do, get married? The government should not have any rules about it. The government even requires marriage licenses. Why? The original intent of marriage licenses was to prevent interracial marriages. Marriage license laws began in the mid-1800s to stop whites from marrying anyone who was not white. By the 1920s, 38 states had state laws prohibiting the marriage of whites with other ethnicities.

As is his typical pattern, now he's just started making shit up. While he's correct about about states in the '20s specifically using laws to prevent interracial marriage, his assertion that the "original intent" was to prevent them is laughably false. Marriage licenses have been around since at least the middle ages, and were all about contracts between families. That is something glibertarians usually like, sacredfreemarket and all that. I should really stop being surprised by this guy's complete lack of historic knowledge and/or utter contempt for facts, but whatever.

At this point we know how this is going to end, and indeed it proceeds down through all the standard glibertarian tropes of evil government stealing people's money and freedom. I can't be arsed to dissect the rest of it, so just read it if you must. Here's the concluding paragraph:

Marriage equality may be the big uproar right now, but we need to look at the bigger picture. The government erodes our freedoms, and turning to them for more laws and oversight will only wear away at the few freedoms we have left. We need to tell the government to get out of marriage, to get out of our lives, and not return.

At this point I think he only wants the government to stop regulating marriage so he'll finally be able to marry Ayn Rand's corpse. I hope somebody's keeping an eye on her grave.

Sounds of Spring

All of a sudden after a couple halfway warm days, the frogs are out in force.

Those in the midwest buried under yet another snowstorm can either take this as a taunt, or as a reminder that spring will eventually show up...

Oregon's Dumbest Glibertarian

I pointed out over on Sadly, No! recently that we seem to have the state's dumbest glibertarian writing a column for the campus paper. In a state that is home to Lars Larson, taking away the "dumbest glibertarian" crown is no small feat, but this guy is trying his damndest.

(The paper's website is complete and utter crap, so don't be surprised if it barely works most of the time if you click the links.)

Here are some short snippets from a few of his columns, just so you can get a feel for the stupidity without the need for full immersion:

Less intrusive government is key for better market, consumers

One of the biggest places in which the government invades our lives is through transportation. The government built, owns and maintains most of the roads in America. But to think we need the government to do any of this remains absurd. ... Henry Ford is the most revolutionary of them all. ... Ford sold cars to the common man at an affordable price, $850. Over the next few years, the price dropped to approximately $250. The government didn’t force Ford to do it. The government hadn’t taxed people heavily to build roads yet either. Ford sold cars to people before roads existed. ... Now that roads are owned by the government, prices skyrocket due to artificial demand the government has created by printing money.

I especially like this one because the lead sentence in the article is: "Today’s America consists of massive government intrusion and a lack of knowledge of history." And then he proceeds to completely fuck up the history of transportation in America. I mean "Ford sold cars to people before roads existed." is just absurd on its face for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that he must almost think that Henry Ford actually invented the wheel or something. Regardless, a nice quick search for road history in America might have led an actual thinking person to the League of American Bicyclists history page, where we find this:

The League began as the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) in 1880 -- Newport, R.I. was the location of our founding meeting -- and was responsible for defending the rights of cyclists from its start. The League of American Wheelmen is credited with getting paved roads in this country before the reign of the automobile.

And it's barely worth getting into the utter absurdity of thinking that private industry could have somehow built the railroads and interstate freeway system without government help. He doesn't even know basic history of the Transcontinental Railroad:

The construction and operation of the line was authorized by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864 during the American Civil War. Congress supported it with 30-year U.S. government bonds and extensive land grants of government-owned land. Completion of the railroad was the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line. It was one of the crowning achievements in the crossing of plains and high mountains westward by the Union Pacific and eastward by the Central Pacific. Opened for through traffic on May 10, 1869, with the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, Utah, the road established a mechanized transcontinental transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American West.

Yep, no government help there. Stupid government, can't do anything right!

Here's another gem:

Trillion-dollar coin will hyperinflate US currency

Although the U.S. government “averted” the fiscal cliff, a new proposal has risen that could send us maybe not off the fiscal cliff, but into hyperinflation and total destruction of the U.S. dollar. Paul Krugman, and others who have power or influence, but still don’t understand economics, have proposed the minting of a trillion-dollar coin.

(emphasis mine)

Yep, you guessed it, of course the rest of the article is about OMG FIAT CURRENCY! and ending the Federal Reserve and such. The best part of this though is that an earlier article is:

If only people understood economics

If people had a firm understanding of economics and the free market, we could have a much better world. ... Too many people comment on the subject of economics without a firm knowledge and understanding of it. The Austrian School of Economics has been the only school of economic thought that explains real-life behavior.

That really does just not need any further comment, the stupid stands tall and proud, all on it's own.

UPDATE:

In the comments ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© helpfully provided an excellent link to a really good series of articles about the Austrian school. Just in case nobody reads the comments, and so you don't have to dig up the links to the other two parts, here they are:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

And here's a podcast the author did covering the series and another article by the same author that is about the Austrian school and the constant libertarian yakking about gold.

All really good stuff, thanks ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©!

Lunch View

Not a bad spot to spend a random Wednesday afternoon. Well, a few minutes of the afternoon anyway -- this is the Dimple Hill summit. It's a great spot for a lunchtime mountain bike ride.

Oregon Hops

There's a good article in Willamette Week about the future of Oregon's hop industry and how it relates to craft brewing. It's nice to see people working toward getting the local industry going again, especially now that the "big boys" that usually dictate what varieties will be grown all being big foreign megacorps now. I hope the new hop efforts are successful and that we will end up with a thriving local industry and lots of great new varieties of hops available for home brewers too.