A New Way to Fly from Salem

 

I travel an awful lot by air and have frequently wished  for the return of the Delta service to Salt Lake City that ended in 2009. Any service to a major hub would be welcome - anything to avoid the time-consuming, often frustratingly slow crawl to PDX. And now there is an alternative - sort of.

Avelo Airlines announced service to Las Vegas and Southern California (Hollywood/Burbank) starting October 5, targeting the greater Salem area and the whole South Portland market like Wilsonville, Tualatin, Sherwood, and the like. The service is only two days per week to each destination and focuses on the leisure travel market. Avelo is a low cost carrier like Spirit, Allegiant, or Frontier. Fares are cheap but beware the ignorant passenger who wants a seat or other "luxury"  item. There's a charge for everything! Even so, fares are usually considerably cheaper (sometimes a lot cheaper) than the big carriers like Delta, Alaska, United, etc. 

I did a little checking and Avelo seems to have generally good reviews. Seating is tight, but it's only a 2 -hour flight and you can buy a seat with more leg room. Onboard service is pretty much nada, but it's cheap and that's why. Probably the biggest problem is if your aircraft has a mechanical issue. The airline doesn't have extra planes sitting around or additional same-day flights to the same destination, so it can wreak havoc with vacation plans. 

In summary, it's a start. Obviously it's a risk and "use it or lose it." If all goes well, we can expect additional frequencies to these first markets and the airline is already talking about adding San Francisco and Phoenix, perhaps even Palm Springs in the winter. So if you're heading for the glitz of Las Vegas or the palms of Southern Cal, give Avelo a try and see what you think. 

But Why?

Oregon Live headlined today that they think downtown Portland is unsafe and uninviting. I can't imagine why. Maybe we should alask the developers of the new Ritz Carlton hotel that has halted construction midway, or the other new and first class older hotels like The Benson who are dying from low vacancy rates. Ditto cultural events in downtown, the Oregon Historical Society Museum, etc, ad nauseam. Perhaps the Portland City Council can add a new business tax to put Portland's homeless in the hotels and buy them season tickets to cultural events. See - problem solved!

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2021/05/downtown-in-distress-portlands-core-is-unsafe-and-uninviting-residents-say-in-new-poll-threatening-citys-recovery.html

Oregon is a Bottom Feeder

The American Legislative Exchange Council puts out an annual report ranking states by State Gross Domestic Product. It looks at the move out/move in ratios, wage growth, job creation, etc. And guess who finished in the bottom 10 states in the country? You guessed it - Oregon! We had great company: California, New York, Illinois and other blue states. Tax the snot out of businesses, regulate the bejeepers out of 'em, spend like there's no tomorrow ... yeah, that's the ticket! And it's also probably just a coincidence that Oregon hasn't landed a major new high tech plant in 20 years, including the two that Intel has recently announced that went to Arizona. Gosh, maybe we can all work for the government.

annual-rich-states-poor-states-report-winners-losers-fall-along-red-state-blue-state-divide

End the Idiocy with Masks and Sports

A young female runner from Summit High School collapsed just short of the finish line while running the 800 due to total oxygen deficit. She was wearing a mask because Oregon it. It's time to end at least this particular idiocy regarding masks. Young people are basically unaffected by Covid - they don't get it and they don't transmit it. It should be ended before a young person is seriously injured or dies from this fiat that is based at this point on superstition rather than science.

https://www.oregonlive.com/sports/john_canzano/2021/04/high-school-coach-calls-on-oregon-health-authority-and-governor-to-reconsider-mask-mandate-for-distance-runners.html

Yes, Virginia - There Are Still Good People Out There

Charles Barkley recently opined that in his experience, there are good people of all races who get along just fine, but that the politicians are dividing us to raise funds and stay in office. Good call Charles and this story illustrates his point.

Mrs. Hamilton was a cook at a frat house at LSU and had fed and been a friendly ear to a lot of college students over the years. Recently an alum found out that at age 73, she still had to work at two jobs to make ends meet, primarily because of a $45,000 mortgage still hanging over her. He spearheaded a fund drive to pay off her mortgage and the picture shows her "boys" giving her a check more than sufficient to clear the mortgage. Yes Virginia, as Charles says, there still are good people out there. Be one of them.

https://www.upliftingtoday.com/2021/04/fraternity-house-rallies-to-pay-off-mortgage-for-the-woman-who-cooked-for-them-for-14-years/?utm_source=wnd&utm_medium=wnd&utm_campaign=syndicated

A Lament for Portland

It's not fun to watch someone kill themselves slowly. Chronic drug use, alcoholism, anorexia, etc. is ugly and unfortunately rampant in our society. It's not fun to watch an entire city kill itself either, but as this requiem by Patrice Lewis laments, Portland is doing just that. 

As a resident of Oregon, it used to be fun to go to Portland for a play, a pro basketball game, a dinner. No more. Lewis points out that on the night after President Trump's 2016 election, rioters trashed the Pearl District where maybe 1% of the voters voted for him. The idiocy has continued and worsened. The city is eating itself and the rest of us can only stand by and watch. 

Looking across the country we see other major cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago all going down the same garbage chute. "Progressivism" is such a misnomer. It is a giant step backwards in barbarism. It is nothing but a plague of locusts. 

https://www.wnd.com/2021/04/lament-portland/

Viewpoint

"Started out as a good idea - Let's be nice to people' - and finished up as a humorless, censorious, literal-minded, posturing idiocy,"  John Cleese of Monty Python fame commenting on "Wokeism."

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/john-cleese-mocks-hank-azaria-apology-apu-simpsons

Lying Down with the Dragon

Pope Benedict XVI has been snuggling up to China for some time. Yesterday he approved an expansion of a protocol with the CCP that expands the ability of the Communist government to have a say in the selection of Catholic bishops in China. One wonders if he read the new CCP vision of the Bible before for doing so.

Jack Fowler previewed the new "holey" book in his Weekend Jolt for National Review yesterday, October 3. As he notes, in doing so the CCP "... has taken more liberties than the crew of an aircraft carrier that’s been at sea for a year." Point taken. To illustrate his point, he gives the Red version of the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. 

The moral of the original version is, of course, let he (or she - equal opportunity here) who is without sin throw the first stone. The CCP authorized version of the Bible transmogrifies this message, however, into:

"When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, 'I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.' "

Gonna say close, but no cigar. Well, OK - not even by a country mile. Actually, I think you might agree that they turned the original meaning completely on its head. And that folks is the danger of giving the Red Chinese a bigger "voice" into how the Church does business in China. Will this become the authorized version for the Catholic Church in China. Will this be mandated in dioceses by the new bishops, even though the Vatican knows nothing of it? Who knows, but you can bet they are going to try. 

The Church has always been at its best historically when it lives counter-culturally to the prevailing orthodoxy. That's why the Framers in this country enshrined separation of Church and State in the First Amendment. The purpose was not to protect the State from the Church, but rather the other way around. They were very familiar with the distortions of the Christian faith that occurred in England with the Anglican Church as the official State-sanctioned church, justifying political and evil actions in the same of God. The same distortions and worse will happen in China. That being said, perhaps lying down with the Dragon is not the wisest course for the Pope to follow. 

https://news.yahoo.com/vatican-pope-benedict-xvi-approved-094449838.html

Gems in the Rubble

OK, the first Presidential debate was a goat rodeo. There was a lot of heat and not much light. A number of gems of hard information were present in the rubble, however, including this beauty from Biden about tax policy. He made his point unambiguously:

“That’s why I’m going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts. And I’m going to eliminate those tax cuts.”

That's pretty straightforward, but what is the impact. Good question.

The Trump tax cuts were a boon to the middle class:

"... doubled the standard deduction for singles from $6,350 in 2017 to $12,000 in 2018; nearly doubled the standard deduction for married couples from $12,700 to $24,400, and bumped up the child tax credit up from $1,000 in 2017 to $2,000 in 2018."

The impact of this on the average working couple is a tax INCREASE of $2,300. Do you have $2,300 more  to shell out to the Feds next year ? And at the same time, Biden can still play the shell game and say with a straight face that he wouldn't raise your taxes if elected. Moi? How so Joe? Well, he isn't proposing to raise the tax rate, ergo no new taxes. Oh no, he is just exposing more of your earned income to taxation by eliminating deductions. The net effect is the same and we need to see through the word games and see the reality - something that the Democrats are trying to avoid at all costs.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/30/nolte-biden-admits-in-debate-hell-raise-taxes-on-middle-class/

The Great Divide

Dennis Prager admitted that he has been wrong his whole life - the Left's moral compass isn't broken; it never had one. Prager made the mistake that most Americans make, namely that there really is such a thing as right and wrong. Americans have long seen the world from a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, whether or not they are believers in a formal faith. From Karl Marx on the Left, though, has never thought in these terms. 

Instead of seeing the world through the lens of objective right and wrong, the Left sees it through the eyes of class warfare and expressly rejects any external and objective standard of right and wrong. Prager quotes Lenin at a Soviet Party Congress:

"We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. ... We do not believe in an eternal morality. ... We repudiate all morality derived from non-human (i.e., God) and non-class concepts" (Address to the Third Congress of the Russian Young Communist League, Oct. 2, 1920)."

The only relevant question for a Marxist is whether a statement or action advances (as they see it) or sets back the class struggle. Thus, lying, destroying opponents, or even murder can be justified as "right" if it advances the class struggle. 

What is confusing to many is that the modern Left no longer speaks in terms of the old-fashioned "proletariat" of the USSR, but has added many other categories to the protected class, i.e. - race, women, immigrants, and basically any people group weaker than an opponent. Anything and everything from the New Left's standpoint that is said or done that advances the interests of a protected group in this class is therefore permissible. 

What are some examples of this in the real world? Well, U.S. bad/Communist and socialist countries (by definition) good, white bad/everyone else good, Males bad/females and the gender du jour good, Israel bad/Palestinians good, police bad/rioters good. If you are classified on the "bad" side, then any lie or action that they can get away with is justified. Do you see how it works? 

It is futile to think that any Leftist will ever admit they are wrong in any objective. This is the source of the Great Divide that we see in this country today and indeed in much of the world and the reason that it won't go away. It is a fundamental difference in how the world is seen: one is grounded ultimately in God and in the other,  in power and as vested in whoever is ruthless enough to rise to the top of the heap. We should be prepared to respond accordingly over the long haul. 

https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2020/09/15/the-lefts-moral-compass-isnt-broken-n2576225

The Steelers are Winners

The Pittsburgh Steelers are winners, whether or not they make the playoffs! At a game this weekend they all stood for the national anthem and then unfurled a banner that says "Steelers Against Racism."  What genius - to be "for" the United States and "against" racism - sentiments which I share. Well done Steelers! You would think someone might have figured this out earlier, cough, cough, Roger Goodell. 

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/steelers-players-stand-national-anthem-banner

Never Forget!

 

You Have a Choice

One of the scenes I remember most vividly from the Minneapolis riots was a Black woman who lived in the neighborhood where the rioting took place. It was the day after rioters and looters had moved through and on to other areas of the city like a plague of locusts. She stood there looking at the burned out Target store and others in her area that had been torched and sadly lamented where would she now shop? Victor Davis Hanson apparently saw it too and is noticing a phenomena that is being ignored or suppressed in these urban areas where poor victims of the rioting abound and are shifting toward Trump. He asks a great question of undecideds in the Black community:

Most of the white Antifa mob and its wannabe thousands do not live with minorities and did not grow up with them or go to school with them. Do working-class African Americans enjoy watching white college kids or baristas in knee pads with umbrellas or teachers on full paid sabbaticals or Zoom half-days, ordering their local Target to be torched?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/trump-race-and-class/

Cue the Violins - Rome is Burning

Back from a week's vacation and nothing much seems to have improved. Some observations during this last week of de facto summer before Labor Day:

• The Republican Convention was well done. I loved the statements from Americans from all backgrounds and colors. Many of their stories were truly moving and it came through loud and clear that these were people who loved freedom after experiencing a horrendous lack of it in their countries of birth. I also loved the stories of people coming slavery, severe handicaps, and other extremely difficult situations, who persevered and ultimately triumphed. I want all of them on my team!
• And the corollary - Why do so many people in this country crave living in a dictatorship? I propose that we simply cut to the chase and have Congress pass the "Don't let the Door Hit You in the Butt" Act that buys these folks a one way airfare to whatever s#@thole country they want to go and a $2,500 stipend. They have to renounce their American citizenship on the way out and their passports will be automatically void upon entry into the other country. Go live in a communist "paradise" and enjoy every minute of it. Please. 
• I keep reading this statement from mayors and police chiefs of cities where rioters are running amok, "We did not order our police officers to engage the situation for fear of aggravating it." Hell's bells - Rome has been burning for 90 days and you don't think the fire department should be called? Are all officials in these cities stoners? 
• People are starting to get killed. This is not a surprise. It is not an accident that gun and ammunition sales have been setting records these last few months. The word "vigilante" will come back into vogue and pretty soon, everyone will be walking around with a .45 on their hip. As H.P. Lovecraft said, "An armed society is a polite society." We'll see if we get to test the accuracy of his observation. 
• Am I the only one noticing what a colossal failure Gov. Kate Brown is as a manager of the state? The governor is the CEO of the executive branch of government and in one agency after another, it's one failure after another. The largest, of course, is the inability of the state to pay unemployment compensation to those qualified. Allegedly this is due to a computer failure. The Feds, however, gave Oregon $300M in 2013 to fix this and it still sits undone. Then there is DMV. Tried to get you Real ID driver's license yet? Good luck. My wife tried to, as hers had expired in April and the offices haven't been open much since then. She dutifully went in and despite the website saying you didn't need an appointment, and despite the fact that there were 4 people total in line, and despite the fact that she had all the requisite documents in hand, she was sent home to - wait for it - make an appointment. Of course, Do you know who I am Mr. Vidal?! When are Oregonians going to demand even a mediocre level of competence from government? 
• The CDC has quietly announced that only 9,700 of the deaths attributed to Covid-19 were solely the result of the virus. This is 6% of all U.S. Covid-19 deaths; the other 94% had an average of 2.6 other underlying conditions. We have shut down pretty much everything for 9,700 deaths, While these deaths are sad, of course, they need to be seen in perspective. For example, 38,800 lost their lives in auto accidents last year, 17,000 from slips and falls, and an estimated 606,880 deaths from cancer for 2019. The NY Times also dropped this weekend that as many as 90% of all supposedly positive Covid-19 tests were false positives. Arrggh!

It's a strange, strange world we live in Gunga Din. 

The Bigger Picture

Americans have taken a series of gut punches this year between Covid-19, the resulting shutdowns, and now the rioting. We aren't talking protests any longer, we are talking insurrection. 

Rioters in Chicago who trashed the highland Miracle Mile stores like Coach, Gucci, Apple, etc., said their booty was "reparations." For what - living in Chicago? Then we have Portland. Remember how the riots were going to go away after the Feds"provoking it" went away? Yeah, right. People have already been shot in Seattle and stabbed in Portland and it is likely this will be happening with more frequency. Right now it's ball bearings, frozen water bottles, and lasers, but the guns will come out and there will be blood.

These are not rioters, they are terrorists, and terrorists always have a political goal in mind. Dennis Prager looks at this bigger picture in a column today that lays it out well. Essentially, you have competing religions based on antithetical worldviews. 

The West was founded on a Judeo-Christian worldview: there is a God, man is made in His image and that is the basis for "unalienable rights" for all, regardless of race, creed  or color. Government is necessary to restrain evil since man has fallen, but it should be limited to allow free men to flourish.

Leftism denies there is a God. We are free to shape a perfect society of utopian goodness and government is seen as the agent to accomplish this. No existing society lives up to this perfect utopia and therefore must be demolished by any means necessary to usher in the Age of the Perfection. It is this religious faith that somewhere out there, the perfect society is possible, despite all the failed attempts like the USSR, Red China, Nazi Germany. It explains why the stock retort to people pointing out this inconvenient fact is always, "It has never really been tried." It must exist or my life is meaningless. 

Europe lost its faith in God in WWI and WWII finished off any residue. Prager points out that they had seen the dangers of fanaticism and became, "... more preoccupied with working less, traveling more and being taken care of than with ideological movements." He says that, "One might say that Europe was inoculated against fanaticism." Not so this country, although the secular Left was already hard at work undermining the the intellectual underpinnings of the American heritage. Like locusts swarming across the African continent destroying everything in their path, the Left has nearly completed its long march through American institutions toward a universal secularist understanding of man and the only objective left is the destruction of the current order and the rise of the Perfect State. To make it worse, unlike Europe, we have not been inoculated against fanaticism by the experience of two world wars that shattered them, and that fanaticism is what we are seeing in American cities right now. 

Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of a government the founders had created in Philadelphia.He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." Unless Americans wake up and act to keep it, I am afraid that the republic is going to be tossed on the ash heap of history and we will join all those serfs in fear of the State that have gone before us and exist in much of the world today. 

townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2020/08/11/why-america-is-in-real-danger-n2574078

Antidote for All the Garbage

This is an article that you should read. It's written by Ryan Bomberger, a black man, adopted into and raised in a racially diverse family of 15, and it is a ringing endorsement of what makes America the greatest place on earth. Problems - sure. But have they been tackled and resolved before. Can we do it again? Absolutely! It starts with throwing paralyzing fear over the side and beginning to move with confidence again that we are one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And making it happen. Do yourself a favor at the end of a long week (year?) of crap, read the article, roll up your sleeves, and together let's get back in the game and make this country an even better place. Divided we fall; united we stand.

townhall.com/columnists/ryanbomberger/2020/08/07/stop-apologizing-for-america-

Geniuses at Work

Would you mistake this flag for the Confederate battle flag? Me neither. But that's exactly what a bunch of people did with a Norwegian flag flying at a B&B outside Lansing, MI, forcing the owners to take down the flag. And once again proving once again - you can't fix stupid.
www.dailywire.com/news/michigan-bed-and-breakfast-owners-remove-norwegian-flag-after-backlash

Pot Calling Kettle Black

Democratic Chair of House Committee Jerry Nadler accusing AG Bill Barr of endangering the Committee's health by not wearing a mask. You cannot make this stuff up. 

www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/07/28/jerry-nadlers-mask-meltdown-stop-violating-the-safety-of-the-members-of-the-committee/

WAT?! A Politician Does What He Promised to DO?

One thing coming out of the Covid-19 crisis that was glaringly exposed was the almost total reliance of the U.S. on China for prescription drugs - even the ingredients to make them. The obvious answer was to on-shore production again and President Trump promised to do just that.

It was just announced that a Defense Department Production Act loan of $765M is being made to Eastman Kodak to launch "Eastman Pharmaceuticals" to begin making the base ingredients for generic drugs. The company has seen hard times with the almost total transition to digital photography, but retains considerable expertise with chemicals. If the drug ingredients are made at Eastman's complex in Rochester, NY, it will also be a boon with new high-end jobs back in this country. A double win for all concerned. 

www.dailywire.com/news/trump-strikes-deal-to-produce-vital-drug-ingredients-in-u-s

I Mean It - I'll Shoot

Apparently the Feds, in trying to protect the Federal Courthouse in Portland by putting up a temporary fence, have encroached on a city bikeway WITHOUT A PERMIT! OMG!!!! The City of Portland, in a rare "get tough" moment (and not directed at the rioters, of course) has said that it's going to FINE the Feds $500 for every 15 minutes the heinous fence stays in place. President Trump is undoubtedly shaking in his boots. How about this? The Feds will start docking Federal aid to Portland in the same amount every 15 minutes? Better yet, the Feds will cut off Federal aid altogether. How 'bout them apples?! As the general handling the rescue efforts in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina said about some folks, "You can't fix stupid." Indeed. 

www.foxnews.com/politics/portland-maximum-fines-federal-government-fence-courthouse