The Wandering Eye

The threat of terrorism came home to Oregon Friday as the FBI foiled an alleged plot to detonate a huge bomb next to Portland’s Pioneer Square during the annual holiday tree-lighting festivities.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old sometime engineering student at Oregon State University, allegedly intended to blow up a van packed with explosives while the square was thronged with some 25,000 spectators.

The right-wing Oregon Catalyst site quotes a study by the right-wing Americans for Tax Reform organization supposedly proving – surprise, surprise! – that right-wing economic policies promote growth and prosperity.
The ATR compared states that will gain congressional seats through reapportionment as the result of the 2010 census with those that will lose seats and found that the gainers “had significantly lower taxes, less government spending, and were more likely to have ‘Right to Work’ laws in place.

This Thanksgiving, Americans still have much to be thankful for. Well, some of them do, anyway.

The good news (for conservatives) is that Oregon lost public-sector jobs in the third quarter of 2010. The bad news for the Oregon economy is that Oregon lost public-sector jobs in the third quarter.

Think you know how to fix the federal budget deficit? The New York Times has posted an interactive tool that lets you take a shot at it.
The Times gives you 40 different options to play around with, including spending cuts in areas such as the federal government payroll, the military, Social Security and Medicare, and revenue increases of various types.