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You don't often see as hard fought and at times ugly campaign as the one between incumbent U.S.
It's been said that next week's election is a referendum on the past eight years, which have been characterized by the catastrophic mistakes of the current administration. Senator John McCain has labored hard to distance himself from that storyline.
Somebody - we think it might have been Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes - said that freedom of speech means freedom not just for the speech we like but, more importantly, freedom for the speech we don't like.
In this frenzied presidential election campaign, hysteria is mounting on both sides and people are showing their dislike for other people's exercise of freedom of speech in some rather alarming ways.
With the latest poll numbers showing Obama's lead widening, Sen. McCain appeared this week on Meet the Press to engage in a Bush-esque denial of reality, claiming that the race was actually getting more competitive in battleground states (perhaps because McCain is bailing out of key states like Michigan and conceding them to Obama). The reality of the situation is that the GOP campaign is coming apart at the seams, the election is still a week off and the finger pointing has already started. There were widespread reports that Palin and her inner circle are revolting on their GOP handlers waging a sort of "rogue" campaign that reflects her ticket’s desperate position - give her credit, at least she recognizes that the ship is sinking. Publicly the campaign has retreated into scare tactics and aggressive attacks that do little but incite the party's base of wing nut conservatives. (Check YouTube "McCain" and "Rally" if you have any doubt as to with whom the ACORN and William Ayers accusations resonate).
So much for a home field advantage.
Measure 54: Yes
Amends Constitution: Does away with a non-enforceable law that requires voters to be 21 years of age to vote in a school board election.
Measure 55: Yes
Amends Constitution: Changes operative date of redistricting plans by allowing affected legislators to finish their terms in their original district.
For Deschutes County Commission: Alan Unger
Alan UngerThere's a running joke about Deschutes County Commissioner Mike Daly and the punch line is essentially: Mike Daly.
Anyone who has followed his career to any degree can't help but marvel at the two-term commissioner's resiliency. He somehow manages to survive despite his gaffes and extreme provincialism. Daly is famous for viewing every county issue, no matter how nuanced, from his own life experience as a state trooper and Redmond excavation contractor.
He practices his homespun approach to governance at a time when our community, in this case the county, is growing larger, more complex and more diverse. To the best of our reckoning, Daly has survived on a mix of personal connections and political affiliations. He's survived some legitimate challenges, but perhaps none as serious as this year's campaign by fellow Redmond area politician Alan Unger, who is finishing out his term as Redmond mayor while he campaigns against Daly.
Back in the dying days of the Central Oregon timber economy, mills were closing, unemployment was in double digits and downtown storefronts were sitting vacant. Things weren't a whole lot better at the national level in the early 80s with the country mired in a deep recession.
Out of this economic morass came a proposal to pump up Oregon's tourism economy by easing the state's land use laws for resorts that would draw tourists from around the country to our state where they would spend money, creating jobs and injecting cash into our local economies. With its proximity to the mountains and disproportionate amount of sunshine, Central Oregon was a natural choice for developers. Fueled by a national real estate boom and easy credit, real estate and resort developers converged on Deschutes and Crook counties over the past few years floating one proposal after another for increasingly massive resorts.
Upfront along with about 17 million other Americans suffered through Gov. Sarah Palin's guest appearance on Saturday Night Live this past week. Like the rest of the country we had tuned in to see if SNL alum Tina Fey would reprise her Palin bit. She did, but we also got a solid dose of the real Sarah Palin, whose appearance on the show was, we presume, supposed to showcase how she can handle a good natured ribbing. The guest spot, which included appearances with Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin at the top of the show and another cameo on Weekend Update, registered an "11" on Upfront's Weird-O-meter. To say it was awkward really doesn't sum up the difficulty of watching Palin throw her arms in the air while Amy Poehler executee a mocking, self-referential rap on the same stage.
It didn't help that the material just wasn't funny.
Pundits have cited the appearance as evidence that McCain and Palin are lacking in some fundamental judgment skills (her for appearing, and him for letting her go on), but Upfront wonders what SNL was thinking. Honestly, did they really think we wanted to see Sarah Palin?
Because if the show does, they've got bigger problems than keeping the Tina Fey cameos coming after Nov. 4.
Position ONE: Peter Gramlich
You know what Make It Count: Our 2008 city council and local we like about Peter Gramlich? Dude's a straight shooting, open-minded cool guy who believe it or not…gasp…actually seems to want to work for what's best for the city. This is a guy who, when discussing a proposed ban on fireworks at a council meeting said, "You know, I'm usually the guy who shows up with the fireworks," but didn't let his apparent love of novelty explosives cloud his ability to soberly discuss what became a pretty hot issue amongst the public.
While Gramlich is an incumbent, he's not technically running for reelection, seeing as how he was appointed to the council after John Hummel stepped down, but during his short time he's cemented himself as the council's most reliable progressive and quite possibly its least bullshit-believing member. Although Gramlich works as an architect, he's kept COBA out of his campaign coffers and says that growth is the city's number one issue, telling us, "If we don't do something to stop sprawl, it's going to happen."
The new dad who's married to BendFilm founder Katie Merritt (tack on a few extra cool points for that one) thinks that the city should have a say as to who gets to set up shop in Juniper Ridge (sorry Wal-Mart Superstore enthusiasts) and is fully backing stabilizing Bend's transit woes, even if the transit district ballot measure fails. Gramlich's opponent, Tom Greene, is an equally nice guy, but is running on some vaguely vanilla themes of "fiscal responsibility" and when asked to discuss his second important issue at a recent League of Women Voters forum…he drew a blank.
We realize local elections aren't popularity contests (as evidenced by former Source staffer Scoop Lewis' failed 2006 county commissioner campaign) and it's not Gramlich's semi-star status in town that's got us backing him - it's his reliability. Hell, he even has his complete voting record posted on his website.
It's no secret that tough times have settled on Central Oregon.
Foreclosures are up and 401Ks are down. These are anxious days for our
republic and for our town. But times are a little bit tougher for some
and we as a community got a glimpse of that last weekend when more than
1,800 people in need, many of them children, showed up to Deschutes
County Fair Grounds for a helping hand during a one-day outreach event
targeted at Central Oregon's homeless population. That's a roughly
fifty percent increase in individuals seeking assistance from just last
year when 1,200 people attended the inaugural event
The evidence is clear: homeless is a serious problem in our community that is only growing worse.
A
survey conducted earlier this year found that more than 1,700 Central
Oregonians had no permanent housing or were sleeping in cars, the homes
of friends, shared motel rooms and, in the worst cases, outside. More
than a third of the homeless were children.
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