Good morning and welcome to Tuesday, November 7, 2017. The east winds are revving up, with gusts to 50 in the eastern Metro areas and 60 in the Gorge, and it’s cold outside; some pockets around town might develop freezing fog, so watch out for the occasional slipperydoodle on the drive to work. And with the chilly wind blowing, parents need to wrap up those little buddies before shoving them off to the bus stop. Daytime highs’ll be 50, but right now on the weather deck it’s 38, and let’s not talk about tomorrow, because that’s the beginning of ten days of rain. Sunrise 6:59 AM Sunset 4:49 PM Pacific Standard Time.
Overnight there was a fatal shooting on the Park Blocks near PSU. No arrests, and no identification or gender released on the victim. SW Montgomery is closed from Park Avenue to 10th.
It’s election day! Nowhere near as portentous as last year’s seismic outcome, but there are local items that will affect many of us in a direct way. Today’s Portland area vote includes a Portland Comunity College bond issue that, among other improvements, would supersize workforce training in Northeast Portland. Hillsboro schools have a bond issue to build new schools and modernize the district. The town of Silverton is voting on a two-cent gas tax for roads; the North Marion School District has a bond issue to make its gym seismically safe.
Across the wide Columbia, there’s a white-hot election for an open seat on the Vancouver Port Commission. If candidate Don Orange (yep that’s his name) wins, that could doom the Vancouver Energy Oil Terminal, which if built would ship out a third of a million barrels of Bakken crude arriving here by rail through the Columbia Gorge. Orange’s opponent is named Greene, Kris Greene, and though he says he’s keeping an open mind, his candidacy announcement e-mail contained the headline, “I Support the Oil Terminal at the Port of Vancouver.” So it’s Orange vs. Greene with oil on the line.
The stakes are huge for in an election today to fill five state Senate seats in Washington, where Republicans could lose their one-vote majority. That would give Democrats control of all three branches of Washington’s state government, a position they already enjoy in Oregon and California. That would create a West Coast bloc of blue-state power to counter the policies of the administration in that other Washington, and some people have some big dreams about what that could mean.
The Russian Revolution took place 100 years ago today, as the Bolsheviks (which simply means “the majority”) carried out an armed insurrection against the capitalist ruling class, paving the way for the rise of the Soviet Union five years later. Some analysists think they’re rising again.
Some heads-up work by Washington County Sheriffs Deputy John Cage, who was alerted to a driver having a seizure behind the wheel of a Chevy Suburban on Baseline Road in Cornelius. The car was rolling into traffic when Cage ran alongside, bashed out the window with a baton, and took the vehicle out of gear. Everyone OK.
An ominous clue in the search for a 15-year old Aloha girl who ran away last week, apparently with a 23-year old wanted sex offender. The young man’s car was found in a parking lot on NW Cornell Road…at what I believe is an access point to the Wildwood Trail in Forest Park…and the girl’s backpack was inside. Authorities believe the man may be suicidal, and that he has a gun.
The killer who gunned down all those people at a Texas church was able to get his murderous hands on all the firepower he needed because the Air Force failed to report his domestic abuse conviction to the FBI database used in background checks. The Air Force is going back through its files to see who else may have slipped through the bureaucracy.
The Texas murders pushed Columbine out of America’s worst ten.
The New Yorker reports that Hollywood creepoid Harvey Weinstein hired “an army of spies” including former Israeli intelligent agents and private investigators posing as women’s rights activists to track and suppress actresses and journalists.
Joni Mitchell was born on this day in 1943, and Leonard Cohen died on this day in 2016. Love them both.
OK! That’s the DD for this early November day. Quick programming note: I’m suspending myself with pay for a pre-holiday attitude adjustment, the need for which is pretty evident. Thursday will be the last official DD for the next week. Of course we’ll probably pop on here, so we can pop off about something, and I’ll do some more private ramblings that I might share on the personal blog page. Thanks for the patience and mutual support!
Portland's Daily Drip 