Mark's Views, Perhaps — from behind my eyeballs
No, not mother. Nature. Period.
Actually, though, I like this better: God the Father at Work in Nature.
Spider web in our magnolia tree
Thursday, October 2 — 8:30 am
Whether or not you’re for the huge bailout that went into law yesterday, I suppose you should know this:
| An Oregon arrow maker suffers slings of outrage
An Oregon company selling a 30-cent shaft for children’s arrows became a bull’s-eye for critics of congressional pork nationwide Friday, when lawmakers eliminated an arcane tax as part of their $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. […] The critics gathered force, and the tiny company based in southern Oregon’s Myrtle Point found itself the surprising flash point for public venting against a bailout package with costs too vast for most citizens to grasp. […] As of Friday, Dishion received more than 100 phone calls, 40 e-mails and hate mail from people across the country, not to mention phone calls from the BBC and mentions on the Bill O’Reilly talk show. […] The flap reveals the misinformation circulating about what the 43-cent tax repeal is really about, according to Jay McAninch, president of the Archery Trade Association. […] The tax became a problem for Rose City and a handful of other companies in 2004, when lawmakers, while trying to correct another problem with the arrow tax, changed a 12 percent tax on all arrows to a flat 43-cent tax on arrow shafts. The tax, which got tacked on to every arrow shaft, goes to fund educational programs put on by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. […] Rose City Archery’s wooden arrow shafts sell for 30 cents. |
Wait a minute. How does that work?
A 43-cent tax on a 30-cent shaft? 😯
“The 43-cent tax took a huge toll on its youth archery business” the above article goes on to say.
No kidding.
Oregon tax activist says she deserves to pay more
| “I deserve to be taxed, and if you give the wealthy a tax benefit, you’re going to be giving it to me — and I don’t need it,” she says. |
Ma’am, here are my two helpful suggestions:
Thank you for considering this. 8)
You can help protect someone else’s property…as well as their right to free speech. 🙄
| Anyone thinking of swiping an Obama/Biden ’08 sign from a front lawn in Portland might want to consider this: The world may be watching.
A Portland woman known as “Poverty Kids’ Teacher” has created an Internet sensation with a webcam that’s streaming video around the clock of the political signs in her yard. No, it’s not another artsy viral campaign in support of the Democratic ticket. It’s one woman’s response to thieves taking her political signs when she wasn’t looking this month. |
Wait a minute! That’s an $8 sign?! 😯
If a campaign wants me to display their sign, why should I pay for it?
That’s dumb.
Source: The O
The Good Ole Boys network, that is:
| Jaime Nared, the 12-year-old Beaverton-area basketball sensation who was banned from a boys team in spring, earned a big win Thursday afternoon after a lawyer threatened to take her case to another kind of court. |
She’s still banned from any boys’ team.
But she’s been allowed on the new coed team.
After all, no court of law and no suer and no lawyer and no threats can change this reality: A boys’ team is comprised of boys only.
Or to frame it up another way, if one or more girls are part of a team that includes boys, it is not a boys’ team.
This is a public service warning to all cellphone users and photographers and videorecorders living in or visiting Oregon: Get permission for the audio part!
| Oregon law allows audio material to be recorded only if one of the parties is aware the recording is taking place. Judge said Vang was recording video and audio using his cell phone camera. Only the audio recording violated Oregon law, she stressed. |
And failing (or opting not) to get permission for the audio, turn it off before shooting your video.
If you’re reading this from an Oregon prison cell due to your video indiscretions, be advised to read Ain’t Complicated daily.
No, I’m not posting any of my spectacular sunset pictures. Not in this post, anyway.
| Most inhumanities start small, like the beginning of a tsunami, but then build, as they head toward inevitable and unstoppable destruction.
It is difficult to pinpoint the precise beginning of the cultural tsunami that has devalued human life. Did it begin with the subjugation of women? Did it begin with slavery? The Nazis made their contribution with the Holocaust and Josef Mengele’s hideous human experiments. Surely unrestricted abortion added to the growing list of inhumanities. Now we have the next wave. Randy Stroup is a 53-year-old Oregon man who has prostrate cancer, but no insurance to cover his medical treatment. The state pays for treatment in some cases, but it has denied help to Stroup. State officials have determined that chemotherapy would be too expensive and so they have offered him an alternative: death. |
Adds new meaning to what Governor Tom McCall famously said on national TV way back in the 70s:
“Come visit us again and again. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.”
Yup, we’re the Pacific Wonderland, alright.