City of Portland Un-Streamliner

We visited the Oregon Rail Heritage Center yesterday (see post 9/12/12) and next to the building was parked this little guy representing the flagship of the Oregon Pacific Railroad. It runs excursions to Oaks Park and back every 2 hours for $5/person and is a fun and cheap ride for grandchildren without having to drive all the way to Hood River and the Mt. Hood Railway, although that is a lot of fun too. Besides an easy add-on to a tour of the ORHC, OMSI lies just a block north, which makes for a nice and varied day.  

www.orhf.org/

Pay Attention!

OK America, time to focus. Put down the hot dogs, skip the last piece of apple pie and realize that another anniversary of 9/11 is coming up quickly. The bad guys haven't forgotten, as demonstrated in this delightful piece from the Al-Qaeda magazine:

A new English-language Al Qaeda magazine features a how-to article on making car bombs and suggests terror targets in the United States, including casinos in Las Vegas, oil tankers and military colleges, and implies that an attack is imminent.

townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2014/08/28/al-qaeda-magazine-hints-of-looming-attack-n1884524

The Benghazi attacks that killed our ambassador and several other Americans occurred on 9/11. Persistent intelligence reports now say that they are picking up increased bad guy "chatter." We have an open southern border and suicide bombers are a low tech but effective terror weapon who can easily slip across it. Let's see - LA, Las Vegas, shopping malls, outdoor concerts, football games - all sorts of fun places await! Focus America, focus. The President isn't - he's off fund raising or playing golf, so I guess the rest of us have to take up the slack. These guys really do want to kill us.

A Santayana Moment

Victor Davis Hanson is on to something. Basically, his thesis in this column is that Obama's view of history is that it is like a river flowing by us and always in a positive direction. Thus, all we have to do is sit languidly on the bank and watch it go by, carrying despots like ISIS and Putin away like so much debris in the current of historical progress. Come to think of it, that's pretty close to what we have been seeing from the Prez. Too bad this view doesn't bear any resemblance to real history. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, gently down the stream...

townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2014/08/28/obama-fails-history-101-n1883977

Solution to the Illegal Immigration Mess

Gov. Jerry Brown said that all illegal immigrants are welcome in California. Perfect - problem solved. Rick Perry and Jan Brewer, are you listening? California will export its jobs to your states and you send all the illegals to them. A win-win solution!

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/26/Jerry-Brown-to-Mexican-Illegals-You-re-All-Welcome-in-CA

Observation Point

I got this one, okay?  Love, God

Daily Guideposts, 8/22/14

(Ed. note - I think this is occurs more frequently than we realize, having had a recent experience of it.)

Seattle's $15/hour Minimum Wage - Early Results

The Washington Post reports on some early results of Seattle's passage of a $15,hour minimum wage in June this year:

"In Seattle, 42 percent of surveyed employers were ‘very likely’ to reduce the number of employees per shift or overall staffing levels as a direct consequence of the law. Similarly, 44 percent reported that they were’“very likely” to scale back on employees’ hours to help offset the increased cost of the law. That’s particularly bad news for the Seattle metro area, where the unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds is already north of 30 percent — due in part to Washington state’s already-high minimum wage.

Perhaps most concerning about the $15 proposal is that some businesses anticipated going beyond an increase in prices or a reduction in staffing levels. More than 43 percent of respondents said it was ‘very likely’ they would limit future expansion in Seattle in response to the law. One in seven respondents is even “very likely” to close a current location in the city limits.” (Emphasis added)

Perfect. Let's throw more people out of work! But it feels righteous saying you supported it, doesn't it? Welcome to the law of unintended (but predictable) consequences. 

www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/08/04/the-early-results-from-americas-experiments-with-higher-minimum-wages/

Observation Point

Show me your friends and I'll show you your future.