NBA Finals Predictions 2016: Cavaliers in Six

Sanders pictured with actor Danny Glover, known as one of Hollywood's biggest supporters of the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. It's an Oakland thing.

Let's close out this amazing month with some whimsy.

NBA finals: Bernie Sanders=Golden State, so Donald Trump=Cleveland? (because the GOP convention is going to be there?)

In any case,  /r/NBA (the NBA community on Reddit) seems to be grudgingly behind superstar Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers against the Golden State Warriors heading into the final series (here's their top-ranked meme regarding this). Don't ask me why, that's just how it's breaking there. I'm just reporting it to you.

One of the top-ranked Lebron James memes on /r/NBA. It is based on this movie scene..

Television sports history: if you're interested in this kind of thing, I highly recommend ESPN's 30 for 30 production Believeland, which I saw a few days ago, about the history of being a fan of the Cleveland teams of the various sports, specifically the heartbreak associated with how they lose championships in absurd fashion at the last minute.  The last championship they won was in Dec. 1964, and everything since then is agony upon agony.

The program does a nice job of tying in the agony of Cleveland fandom with the decline, fall, and attempted restoration of Cleveland as a great American city, a topic I'm very much into.  I got to spend some time there back in 2004, on a cross-country road trip, taking pictures all over the downtown. It's a fascinating place, with a unique history.  There is a lot more to Cleveland in American history than people realize (hint: guess which American city is historically most associated with the petroleum industry? Yes, even more than Houston.)

As it would happen, the Republican national convention this year is in the arena in which the Cavaliers play their home game in downtown Cleveland, namely the Quicken Loans Arena, commonly called The Q, which opened in 1994 as Gund Arena.

Gund Arena, now the Q, was part of a wider effort at the renovation of downtown Cleveland after a long era of decline. It replaced Richfield Coliseum which opened in 1974 and was demolished in 1999 (during which time the Cavaliers were mostly awful).

The Q seats around 20,000 people, depending on the configuration, which is pretty much the standard for arenas across the NBA. The Moda Center seats almost the same number of people (compared to Memorial Coliseum's 13,000), and by comparison the largest arena in the league, Madison Square Garden in New York, seats less than 22,000.

Construction broke ground April 27, 1991.  It opened on Oct 17, 1994, almost exactly one year before the Moda Center in Portland (built 1992-1995).  Like the Moda Center, it is home not only to an NBA franchise but a minor league professional hockey team as well.

Quicken Loans arena in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The historical center of Cleveland is along the Cuyahoga River near its mouth on Lake Erie.

Cuyahoga River basin showing the location of the cities of Akron and Cleveland. (source)

But Trump is aiming to give his acceptance speech not in the NBA arena but in the bigger NFL football stadium in Cleveland, as Obama did at Mile High in Denver in 2008.

Conclusion: Trump's playing a whole different game than Sanders.

Unfortunate incident at a zoo at the other end of Ohio.

NBA finals prediction: on a pure hunch, I'm picking the Cavaliers to win in 6. I know, I know, that means they win two games on the road. Moreover,they fail to let down their fans, and all of the city of Cleveland, and all of the wider world who for some reason don't like Golden State, by actually winning at home in Game 6 on Jun 16.  The entire arena is in shock of disbelief, even worse than the times that the Cleveland teams screwed the pooch at the last minute. Did this actually just happen!?

During the  the English Civil War (1642–1651), the term Cavalier, or Royalist, referred to the supporters of King Charles I (d. 1649) against the Roundheads, or Parliamentarians.

The Dwarf Jester of Mannheim

Perkeo (born Clemens Pankert, or Giovanni Clementi) 1702–1735.

It strikes me lately that one of the best historical antecedents for the Hollywood during the Golden Age, and by extension for American Pop Culture in general, might be the the court of Mannheim (Germany) in the Eighteenth Century.

Back at that time Mannheim was part of the lands in Germany near the Rhine that were ruled by the Elector of Palatine (so-called because he was one of the formal Electors of the Emperor, who ruled from Vienna).

That area of the Empire (the Palatinate) wasn't always peaceful, but during this era, life would remain remarkably stable and prosperous by historical standards, at least until the Napoleonic Wars early in the next century (when all of Germany would undergo huge transformations akin to a Revolution).

Red box indicates location of the various Palatinate landholdings within the Imperial borders of 1789.  (source)

In the 1710s, while Elector of Palatine had his court in the city of Heidelberg, he had begun building one of the finest orchestras in Europe, rivaling the ones in Berlin and Vienna. In 1720 he moved his court to nearby Mannheim, at which point the court orchestra enters into a Golden Age. It would remain highly influential throughout much of the Romantic era.

Mannheim welcomed skilled players from failed orchestras throughout Europe, acting like a wealthy center for musical refugees. Over time the court orchestra invariably came to include a cosmopolitan variety of players of the highest caliber and diverse musical backgrounds, including exotic places such as Eastern Europe and Silesia.

The goal at Mannheim was more than recruiting players of great talent and skill.  It was also to build an orchestra of unprecedented scale, especially in the string section, with the goal of producing an overpowering musical effect in the audience inside the concert hall.

Moreover, the goal was to achieve wild innovative musical effects as well. Along those lines, the court composer at Mannheim, Johann Stamitz, instituted a particular style that became widely known and imitated throughout Europe as being characteristic of the court orchestra.

The Mannheim style was characterized by specific musical effects including sudden crescendos and diminuendos, and varieties: the Mannheim Crescendo, the Mannheim Rocket, the Mannheim Roller, the Mannheim Sigh, the Mannheim Birds, and the Grand Pause. The style of composition is found in the music of two figures who framed the beginning and end of the era in music: Mozart and Beethoven.

Composers of the Mannheim school introduced a number of novel ideas into the orchestral music of their day: sudden crescendos – the Mannheim Crescendo (a crescendo developed via the whole orchestra) – and diminuendos; crescendos with piano releases; the Mannheim Rocket (a swiftly ascending passage typically having a rising arpeggiated melodic line together with a crescendo); the Mannheim Roller (an extended crescendo passage typically having a rising melodic line over an ostinato bass line); the Mannheim Sigh (a mannered treatment of the Baroque practice of putting more weight on the first of two notes in descending pairs of slurred notes); the Mannheim Birds (imitation of birds chirping in solo passages); the Mannheim Climax (a high-energy section of music where all instruments drop out except for the strings, usually preceded by a Mannheim Crescendo); and the Grand Pause where the playing stops for a moment, resulting in total silence, only to restart vigorously. The Mannheim Rocket can be a rapidly ascending broken chord from the lowest range of the bass line to the very top of the soprano line. Its influence can be found at the beginning of the 4th movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 as well as the very start of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 2, No. 1.

Mannheim Rocket, Wikipedia

Mannheim must have been a very interesting place back then. One can imagine the privilege that the audience members must have delighted in, to be among the few people in the world to experience the range of musical emotion that was produced in the concert hall.

One can get a glimpse of what life in the court of Mannheim was like by the fact the historical figure most associated with that era by Germans today is not the ruler (the Elector of Palatine), or even the court composer Stamitz, but rather the Elector's favorite dwarf jester, who went by the name Perkeo.

Perkeo allegedly derived his name from the Italian perché no? (why not?), which is what he would invariably reply, when asked if he wanted another glass of wine.

Today Perkeo remains a symbol of the city of Heidelberg, the original location of the court. Mannheim itself has mostly been forgotten as an important cultural center.

Fact: the MGM Studio Orchestra, which is possibly the finest overlooked musical ensemble of recent history, doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page. It doesn't even get its own section in the MGM article! (Alas I've long since retired from that particular publishing platform, so someone else will have to do that)

Johnny Green, Music Director at MGM 1949-1959 (borrowed from Sinatra.com)

Splendidly Played: Origins of American Pop Culture

1842 --- Foundation of the New York Philharmonic, the oldest of the "Big 5" American orchestras.

Founder: violinist Urelli Corelli Hill (b. 1802, New York City)

Urelli Cordelli Hill. Opening conductor of the first performance of the N.Y. Philharmonic on Dec. 7, 1842. (Wikipedia)

Hill's father was a musician and composer in Vermont, and his grandfather had been a fifer in the Revolutionary War. 

In 1835, at age 32, Hill traveled to Europe and spent several years there taking lessons and visiting the finest concert venues on the continent and Britain. 

The Elbe basin in Europe. The river drains the mountain-rimmed region of Bohemia and flows northwest through eastern and northern Germany to the North Sea. Cities along the river include Dresden, Magdeburg, and Hamburg (its principal port). Cities on its tributaries include Prague,  Leipzig, Zwickau, Potsdam and Berlin.

Beethoven (1770-1827), age approx. 48 in 1818, by August Klöber. (source)

At the time Hill went to Europe, the Romantic era of music was at its height. Beethoven had died just eight years earlier, and was still in living memory of the people Hill met.

At a festival on the banks of the Elbe, Hill was transfixed by a performance of Beethoven's music. But like a true Romantic, his ecstasy was bittersweet. In this case it was tempered by a despair that a hundred years would need to  pass before one could hear anything like it back in America.

(N.Y. Times, 2002)
In fact it was scarcely a decade. After Hill returned home and formed his Philharmonic Society, Beethoven led off the orchestra's inaugural concert at the Apollo Rooms on lower Broadway on Dec. 7, 1842. George Templeton Strong, the music connoisseur and diarist, pronounced the ensemble's debut ''glorious'' and the Beethoven (the Fifth Symphony) ''splendidly played.'' 

Opening bars of Symphony No. 5 in C minor of Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 67. Composed between 1804-1808 while Beethoven was in Vienna. It was first performed on Dec. 22, 1808 by Theater an der Wien. (listen)

George Templeton Strong (b. 1820), noted diarist and audience member at the American premiere of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in 1842.

(N.Y.Times, 1992)

"After the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, Mr. Hill yielded that baton to Henry C. Hill, who led opera arias and duets by Weber, Beethoven, Mozart and Rossini and overtures by Weber and Kalliwoda. There was even some chamber music, a quintet by Hummel."

Hill continued to conduct the Philharmonic several more years then left New York for Ohio in the late 1840s. After several years, he returned to the Philharmonic as a violinist and board member.

(N.Y. Times, 2002)
"Hill played violin with the orchestra until he was over 70, then fell into poverty and depression. In 1875, living in Paterson, N.J., he wrote a farewell note to his second wife: Why should or how can a man exist and be powerless to earn means for his family?"

cf. New York: a documentary film by Ric Burns on George Templeton Strong, aired 1999 on PBS.

cf. A Clockwork Orange, 1971. Clip (violent images): "O bliss, bliss and heaven. It was gorgeous and gorgeosity made flesh." 

cf. "Bernstein explains Beethoven's Fifth", aired 1954 on CBS television.

Trump's in San Diego

Great shot I found here. Skyline of downtown San Diego. Taken May 27, 2016. The photograph was apparently taken from just north of San Diego International Airport looking southeast along the southbound lane of I-5. The short round building at the end of the highway median (where the road turns to the east, see map below) is the familiar Four Points by Sheraton on 1st Ave. A couple years back I had the pleasure of staying over New Year's 2013 at the Motel 6 which is just one block south of this, just below the line of sight at the top of the freeway. That particular Motel 6 is a pleasant renovated older hotel on 2nd Ave, dating from the middle Twentieth Century. The rooms were quite nice and reasonably priced for a stay in the downtown area.

I loved being in San Diego and getting to know the city. My father lived with his family during the war years at base housing in San Diego while my grandfather served in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific. I loved hearing his stories about the early years. I will miss him beyond measure the rest of my life. I'm glad I got hear so many stories.

My grandmother, who was from central Iowa, loved living in southern California back then.  She particularly loved the architecture. When they moved back to Iowa after the war, and my grandfather became a high school biology teacher, they were able to buy a lot in Ames and build their own house. The lot was on a hillside overlooking a river valley. My grandmother was very influential in designing the structure and gave it a modern California design with a flat roof and an open car port. In 2011, after my grandfather passed away, we found the trove of my grandmother's design research for the house when it was built back in 1951.

I got to grow up in that house in Ames as much as I did anywhere else. I have a continuous tapestry of memories over many years, with all those people in it. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person ever to have lived.

Downtown San Diego

The Demolition of the Spectrum

Composite of images from 2004 to 2011. Opened 1967. Architect: Skidmore, Owings and Merrill Last event was held in 2009.  source.  

Location: South Philadelphia. Movie clip, TCM: "South Philly Southpaw"

Philadelpia was founded October 27, 1682 by William Penn between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers

Construction on the arena began June 1, 1966. It was intended as the home for an NHL expansion team in Philadelphia, and for the existing NBA franchise, the Philadelphia 76ers. The arena opened on Sept. 30, 1967, right at the start of the season for both teams.

1974 Advertisement from Billboard Magazine. (source).

Philadelphia is known in American music culture as the cradle of a certain soulful sound that is unique to the City of Brotherly Love.  For its part, the Spectrum was the scene of a great many live performances by famous rock musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, The Who,  Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, N.W.A., Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, and perhaps most famously Bruce Springsteen, who gave his first arena performance there in 1976.

 'On the night of December 9, 1980, after learning of the assassination of John Lennon following a performance there the night before,  ...Springsteen opened the show with a statement regarding Lennon and said, "It's a hard thing to come out and play but there's just nothing else you can do." With members of the E Street Band in tears, Springsteen and his band put on a 34-song marathon which ended nearly 3½ hours later, with a cover of "Twist and Shout".'

The honor of closing out the arena in 2009 went to Pearl Jam.

Also, in the 1970s, there was Kate Smith, of course, "the First Lady of Radio," who gave many of her most famous late-career short performances at the Spectrum like this one in 1974 at age 67.  She was credited by many locals as having been significant factor in bringing the Stanley Cup to Philadelphia. Her contribution as a "lucky charm" was cited as an argument to change the national anthem.

The 76ers found little success in the early years after moving to the Spectrum. In 1967, they had come into the arena having just been crowned World Champions a few months earlier. At the time they were led by Hall-of-Famer Wilt Chamberlain, but they traded Chamberlain to Los Angeles in 1968 and the franchise went into decline through the 1970s. Finally in 1976 they were able to acquire a new superstar, Julius Erving,  who had been playing in the rival ABA until the two leagues merged.

 Erving was acquired by Philadelphia his previous team came into the league via the ABA-NBA merger. He played the remainder of his Hall-of-Fame career with the 76ers, retiring in 1987 as the sixth highest scorer in history.

The Erving acquisition in 1976 was an excellent move for the 76ers. At the end of his first season the Sixers were in the NBA finals representing the Eastern Conference.

In May of 1977 they faced off for the championship against the Western Conference champions, the  Portland Trailblazers, a seven-year-old NBA expansion franchise who were appearing in their first-ever finals.

Portland had been able to rise into excellence quickly after 1974 when they had used their overall number one draft pick to sign UCLA's Bill Walton.

Walton was a very tall lanky center, but unlike many players in that position, he was a forceful leader. He used his wide wingspan to dominate the defensive boards, not just high up but down near the floor. He could then throw or even tip the ball quickly down the court like a quarterback. As his coach Jack Ramsay,explains in the video below, this ability allowed three Blazers to run down the court to receive the outlet pass on the fast break. It made for a devastating half-court offense.

The 1977 finals opened on May 22 with the first two games at the Spectrum. Philadelphia kept Portland off-balance and went up two games to none. Back at home in Memorial Coliseum, the Trailblazers found their game, dominating Games 3 and 4 to even the series 2-2.

Game 5 went back to the Spectrum on June 3. It was seen as a must-win for Philadelphia (see clip). Having lost two games on the road, the 76ers needed to regain the momentum on the their home court.

But Portland was not intimidated this time. The Blazers' crippling defense, together with Walton's passing attack and Maurice Lucas' clutch shooting, sent Portland to an early lead that they never relinquished. Philadelphia came within one point in the third quarter, but George McGinnis missed a free throw that would have tied it. Portland quickly built the lead back up, and by the time Dave Twardzik put the Blazers up by twelve with a driving lay-up late in the third quarter, it was apparent who was in control of the game. Walton sat back in defense and grabbed the ball on rebounds like he owned the court, funneling it down the court on the fast break to his teammates.

The victory was the definitive road win that Portland needed to claim the championship. With the win at the Spectrum, they stole home court advantage and closed out the series two days later at home at Memorial Coliseum 4-2, having won four straight games.

Game 5 of the 1977 NBA finals, June 3, 1977 at the Spectrum. Broadcast on CBS television with play-by-play by Brent Musburger, and color commentary by Rick Barry and Sonny Hill. 

Barry: "There's that Portland offense being executed to perfection again..."

Portland When Nixon Beat Kennedy

Memorial Coliseum

Fountain Plaza of Memorial Coliseum, Portland. This is one of two plazas that is sunk one story below grade level on either side of the main entrance, the doors of which are behind the railing in the background... 5/24/16

The Moda Center is a nice place, but in some ways it is still outclassed by its older counterpart just across the plaza, Memorial Coliseum, which opened in Nov. 3. 1960, five days before John F. Kennedy beat Nixon in the presidential race. Nixon carried Oregon by about 40,000 votes out of 776,421 cast (52.6% to 47.3%)  and thus Oregon gave its six electoral votes to the Republican.

Stairs down to Fountain Plaza. Looking down to a portion of the memorial wall of names is show in black marble.

Google News, Ellensburg Daily Record, Nov. 4, 1960

Front entrance of Memorial Coliseum, Portland. The construction of the arena was part of a larger urban renewal project that razed several existing blocks of lower Albina. In the old street plan, the entrance here would have been facing the former continuation of N Benton Ave  near the intersection with N Flint Ave.

ss

Memorial Coliseum (which now seats around 13,000) is where the Trailblazers played during their years of greatest success. It is where they won games 3, 4, and 6 of the 1977 NBA finals, going 3-0 at home to beat the Phiadelphia 76ers in six games (May 22 – June 5). Bill Walton was the MVP. The games were broadcast on CBS.

The Blazers now play at the Moda Center next door, but Memorial Coliseum still gets some use. The Portland Winterhawks of the Western Hockey League play split their home games between the two arenas. Most of the time the arena sits empty now. There is a proposal to turn it into a giant homeless shelter.

Memorial rose garden on the south lower plaza. The wall of names here is an overflow continuation of the larger one in Fountain Plaza. Corner tip of the coliseum is along top right of the frame. The structure in the background is a later construction (after the Moda Center)  housing commercial offices and a restaurant.

Stairway down to the Memorial Rose Garden plaza. The Moda Center (built 1993-1995) is in the background across the plaza The two arenas are architectural very different. The balance between them creates an interesting public space.

Location of Memorial Coliseum (now known as Veterans Memorial Coliseum)  shown by red pin. Moda Center is large grey structure just to the right. The pink area on the other side of I-5 is the Oregon Convention Center.

1960 Presidential election, from Wikipedia

Homeless Pouring into Portland

We moved into our current place on 26th and Burnside in January 2015. I didn't see any homeless people in the surrounding blocks until one day last October when I had to step off the curb into the street to accommodate an old man with a shopping cart heaped with his belongings. He was trundling down the narrow sidewalk on Burnside near 24th Street, where sidewalk narrows to go by the bus shelter.

At that point I'd already seen the growth of camps down closer to the river on the east side. They had been colonizing the sidewalks block by block in the area around SE Pine and 11th, which I began to call "Homeless Heights."

Sure enough within a few weeks of seeing that man with the cart, I noticed another man with a backpack sleeping in the doorways of businesses near our place during the night hours.  Within a month, there were others.

Since then there has been a continuous occupation of our area. I'd bet at least a dozen people spend the night in the open in the blocks nearby to us, especially since we are near a school with a large public playground.

With spring weather has come a big flush of newcomers, many more than before.  Where are they coming from ? The older occupied areas are full up and people are colonizing new bits of ground that were not occupied last year.

Almost every day now there are tents in new areas where they weren't before. The occupation is brazen. It is as if the city is slowly filling up for a giant summer music festival. 

I notice this on my morning commute, how the placement of tents changes day to day, even as the density increases. 

Often I like to detour along the river north of the Broadway Bridge. I've been keeping my eye on the woods there, and noticing when new tents colonize a new patch of ground.When one tent appears, usually more will crop up beside it almost immediately.

The arrival of a new camp is marked invariably by an abrupt uptick in the amount of strewn garbage, often as if someone opened a trash bag and flung the contents around.

Looking wets across the Willamette from the hill above N Interstate Ave just north of the Broadway Bridge.. Northwest Portland is in the background across the river. In the foreground, the blue tent next to the tree is one of several in a small camp just north of the bridge.   They have been in the same place a couple weeks now. Many new arrivals have come with spring weather. There has been a definite uptick from last new, with many new patches of ground colonized with tents. Almost every median next a freeway exit or bridge has as at least one tent or camp on any given morning. May 23, 2016

Area of East Portland just north of the Broadway Bridge.

 SE Pine St Area

There seemed to be a huge number of new arrivals late last nummer. I noticed them walking to work down on the East side.

By last October, the tens had taken over the sidewalks for entire blocks in the vicinty of SE Pine St and SE 11th Ave.  Oct. 16, 2015.

Near Colonel Summers Park

SE Taylor and 17th. Oct. 15, 2015. A patch of ground, a vacant lot owned by the city apparently, was the site of about a dozen tents when I walked number. The number is actually greatly fluctuating from day to day. Many homeless hang out in the nearby Colonel Summers Park, which even today is the locus of many of the nicer older homes in the area.

Near the Morrison Bridge on East Side

Encampment in median of entrance ramp to Morrison Bridge, in just off SE Grand.  Oct. 15, 2015

Oct. 15. 2015. Under the east approach to the Morrison Bridge

This car was parked right next to the tent above. lol.

The Real War Has Now Begun

Brace yourself. The Great Crack-up is in full swing. So many zeitgeist-level earthquakes happening at once right now. The shock of the U.S. Presidential election is just one. The Whole Foods down the street feels downright surly.

Things are about to amp up a level. The Establishment is getting blow to bits, but the development I was personally looking for is in this Breitbart article.

The London-based newspaper that published this accusation is owned by a prince of the House of Saud who was a former deputy Minister of Defense.

At some point, it would begin to be obvious to enough people that the still-classified 28 pages of the  9/11 Commission Report from 2004  provide strong indications that people high up in the House of Saud (which is the family that runs Saudi Arabia like a fiefdom) assisted in the planning and execution of the 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and they did so in no small way.

This is despite strong censorship, monitoring, and rewriting of the report by the White House (specifically the Office of the Vice President), during the commission hearings, as reported by multiple commissioners themselves.

Saudi participation in 9/11 has actually been obvious for a long time, but it has been officially deniable. Soon it won't be deniable. Enough people are going to know. Enough people are going to stand up and point fingers. People aren't going to be afraid anymore.

This participation by Saudi Arabia in the attacks brings up very serious questions. 

Question: Why the f$@#* did Saudi Arabia attack us on 9/11?????

Contemplating the answer to this question will generate sick feelings in the gut of Americans, as the nation comes to wake up and realize the horror over what this implies during the last fifteen years. This is going to be profound. I can hardly blame folks for not wanting to face it. But it won't be avoidable much longer.

Among other things, it's going to cause a lot of bad feelings directed to Saudi Arabia, and to the Americans and citizens of other nations who have helped them.

Saudi Arabia is cracking up right now. It is broke and on the edge of a revolution.

When Saudi Arabia goes down, we are going to realize what a stranglehold it had on us. It will be obvious afterwards, the kind of dystopia of denial we lived in. I wouldn't want to be one of the people Americans blame for having participated in the assistance and cover-up of this.

In any case, it's no longer theoretical. It's all in motion now. The specific signal I was looking for, that would tell me that things are past the point of no return, is when Saudi Arabia started firing back with counter accusations. 

As the wicked go down in their own holocaust they will point fingers at each other. They will not go down alone. They will drag as many others into Hell with them as they can.

I don't intend to be one. Do you?

The Tiny Life Raft of the Establishment

If you have somehow been living off the national security state and the foreign policy establishment, and all its extended organs, then you are most likely losing your mind about now, much like the political cartoonist who wrote this article.

Prominent on Drudge Report today above the fold. I opened it thinking it was going to be a dull lecture  to Sanders supporters who detest Hillary telling them why Hillary is actually the real deal for them. Instead it's brilliant x-ray of  Establishment thinking at the moment, and how blind they are to the reality on the ground. Godspeed to them on that raft.

quote from article: (emphasis mine).

One amateur political observer on my Facebook page called [Hillary] “Lady Trump.” Another one of my regular dyspeptic penpals calls her “Hildebeast,” and derided her appearance (yeah, yeah, pal: Tell it to Dan – dmorain@sacbee.com). 

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article79165287.html#fmp#storylink=cpy(emphasis mine) The sneering condescension of "amateur" sums up everything about the cadre of people who are being thrown out of all levers of power.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article79165287.html#fmp#storylink=cpyBrilliant commentary from a political cartoonist. 

I respected Dick Cheney as a frighteningly good pro gone bad. I thought Richard Nixon a genius who played hardball, which got way out of hand. Dan Quayle? Practically Machiavelli by today’s standards, and not at all a bad person. I don’t even think he was, you know, dumb.

Funny how people can see the world in such different ways.

This is the most telling part:

One amateur political observer on my Facebook page called [Hillary] “Lady Trump.” Another one of my regular dyspeptic penpals calls her “Hildebeast,” and derided her appearance (yeah, yeah, pal: Tell it to Dan – dmorain@sacbee.com).

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article79165287.html#fmp#storylink=cpy

(emphasis mine) The sneering condescension of amateur sums up everything about the cadre of people who are being thrown out of all levers of power.

Harsh Truth For Liberals

Diamond and Silk are the Silent Majority of 2016.  Come to grips with this, or be swept from the pages of history like Palmyra.

Albina: Phantom Intersection of Stanton and Mississippi

Under I-5 at the former intersection of N Stanton St and N Mississippi Ave in Portland, identifiable by the orange fire hydrant on the corner curb. May 20, 2016. One of the aspects about Portland that fascinated me back in the day was that it obviously had not been devastated by the building of freeways to the degree many cities had been in the post-war years. Here the freeways were built leveraging natural geography in a way that spared much of the city center, including downtown Portland, from the devastation that rendered other city centers across the nation dead districts for a generation. Albina is one district of Portland that did not escape this fate.  These few blocks, down the flank of the hill from the current Emmanuel Hospital, was sacrificed completely for the freeways.  Today this is city-owned property used for temporary vehicle storage and waste materials collection. 

East Burnside Outside Starbucks

April 12, 2016

April 21, 2016

Unfair

From the subreddit HillaryForPrison,  

Meme is a Photoshop creation based on a photograph of Sen. Robert F. Byrd,

This meme is actually a one-frame derivative of this diptych meme, which is the subject of an ongoing attempt to keep it constantly in the top rankings of Reddit, by posting multiple clever versions of it, one after another (more).

HillaryForPrison itself is popular neutral ground for Anti-Hillary memes for supporters of other campaigns. Started by Trump supporters, the subreddit is now increasingly a hangout for Sanderistas.

Slap a Swastika on It

Metal sign post, 24th and Burnside. May 22, 2016. Recently appeared. 

For or against?