Conservatives' Big Coup: No Pop for Prisoners

The conservative group Common Sense for Oregon is preening itself over a major victory: It’s gotten free soda pop taken away from Oregon prison inmates.
Common Sense jumped on the issue when it found out that prisoners were allowed to have free soda pop with their meals.

Got an e-mail “Action Alert” yesterday afternoon from Oregon Republican Chairman Bob Tiernan urging me to bombard the state’s Democratic congresspersons with phone calls opposing the “Obama-style health care reform” package that just cleared the Senate Finance Committee.
Tiernan waxes positively apoplectic over the finance committee bill – which in fact is a weak-kneed, limp-wristed, half-assed, token measure that fails to include any feature that would curb skyrocketing health insurance costs.

Oh, happy day – the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 10,000 yesterday for the first time in over a year.
Meanwhile, however, we witnessed another milestone that probably means more to the typical Central Oregonian: The median sales price for single-family homes in Bend dropped below $200,000 in September.

The swine flu situation in Deschutes County is more serious than the local news media so far have reported, judging by an e-mail County Communicable Disease Manager Shannon Dames sent to health care professionals today.
Under the subject line “H1N1 Cases are way up!” Dames’s e-mail states:
“I am sure this is not news to you, given what you are seeing in your own clinics, but to be sure we are all in the loop:

Schools are seeing higher absentee rates – some up to 25%
The Bend and Redmond emergency rooms are packed – 44 ILI [influenza-like illness] admissions in two days early this week, and 22 positive results [for H1N1 flu] from the State lab.