Ebola continues its incremental creep into our country this morning, but Ebola isn't going anywhere (except maybe on a lightning-quick manifest destiny romp around our nation), and election season is finite. We begin with politics!
You were too busy eating dinner or drinking whiskey or painting figurines to watch debates in the races for governor and US senator last night? Lucky for you: Internet. Watch Senator Jeff Merkley take on Monica Wehby! Then watch Governor John Kitzhaber debate Rep. Dennis Richardson (who said things about transportation everyone should be appalled by).
Okay, one quick thing about Ebola. Another "medical worker" has contracted it, in that same Texas hospital where a Liberian man died last week. We are trusting Texas with our wellbeing, and that trust seems very much misplaced.
But politics! No surprises here, but it's worth noting Republicans plan to file an ethics complaint against Kitzhaber and his fiancee Cylvia Hayes today, over concerns that she's used her public position to obtain cash as a consultant. In last night's debate, Kitzhaber once again said he wouldn't have a special prosecutor look into the matter, and said he flat-out disagrees with conclusions drawn recently by Willamette Week.
The Oregonian's Steve Duin tracked down a corporate lawyer who ran across Hayes at some junket or another. That lawyer was not complimentary.
I forgot to mention: They say that Texas hospital staff left a vomiting, incontinent Thomas Duncan lying in an open area of an ER for hours. They say staffers didn't even have proper garments, while Ebola was flying hither and thither, like so much bleeding wedding rice.
Put that out of your mind, though. To national races! It's looking like a bloodbath is in the offing for Democrats. The party's pulling money out of a dozen congressional races once thought competitive, and candidates aren't going to get a boost from President Obama, whose approval rating is at record lows.
Not so different from Ukraine, then, where people have taken to literally throwing politicians into garbage cans. Literally.
(The CDC is admitting that, yup, it shouldn't have entrusted Texas with shutting down Ebola.)
You're in good company if you find yourself a little bewildered by the millions of unexpected dollars that rained down on Portland Public Schools last year. So are school board members, who voted on how to spend that money last night, with very, very little specificity as to what it'll actually go toward.
American troops in Iraq were doing more than training up an army and battling insurgents in the last decade. They were also ferreting out Saddam Hussein's many chemical weapons, often at great peril.
I don't pretend to know much about video games, so answer me this: Is there something about devotion to the form that makes people frightening misogynists?
Hong Kong protests: Not likely to be assuaged by new footage of plain-clothes police officers beating the hell out of a man in handcuffs.
And of course, a tour bus stabbing spree.
It is gusty and rainy—the first true commute of fall.
Eh, this should suffice.
