This is what we are fighting for folks

Don’t let the forces of hate, fear, ugliness and bigotry win. Do your part. Vote next Tuesday and do something, anything between now and election day to help get this man elected.

MLS to PDX News

Some of you may know that I have a side project which is helping to bring MLS to PDX. We have a website www.mlstopdx.com with great information and urging folks like you to get involved in the effort to bring Major League Soccer to Portland.

I won’t be infesting this blog with to much stuff on that cause I spent enough time on it already over at mlstopdx.com and other sites but today we were greeted with some great news.

Commissioner Randy Leonard and the Timbers owner Merritt Paulson were back in NYC this week talking with MLS big wigs and apparently things went well. Here is Randy’s account:

City Commissioner Randy Leonard is just back from New York and a visit with the commissioner of Major League Soccer. What are the chances of Portland being granted an expansion franchise by the league?

Leonard says it’s in the bag if all goes well with PGE Park. “It’s clear to me that it’s ours to lose,” Leonard said Wednesday.

What that means is that we need 3 out of the 5 city councilors early next year to vote to allow bonds to be drawn on the city’s credit to pay for $35-$40 million in upgrades. Money that will be paid back to the taxpayers through a combination of ticket surcharges and rent on the stadium. This is a small fries amount people to bring a second major league team to Portland.

Yet another small reason I’m voting for Obama

He is a good man who surrounds himself with good people who take the time to respond to 8 year olds:

A little more than a month earlier, teacher Joyce Ben-KiKi had Aron and his classmates each send letters to a famous person as part of a language arts lesson. Ben-KiKi wrapped the exercise around well-known children’s book character “Flat Stanley,” so along with the letters, the children each tucked a Flat Stanley figure they had made into each envelope.

“I told them not to expect a letter back,” Ben-KiKi said. “I told them these people are very busy and most likely will not write back.”

The list of recipients was impressive: Yankee third basemen Alex Rodriguez; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz; Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. John McCain.

Obama was the only one to write back. Two other boys, Avshalom Drescher and Zachary Goldberg, both 8, also wrote to him, but Aron was the first to get a reply.

Obama’s three-page letter to Aron described Flat Stanley’s visit with him and his staff in Washington, D.C. It chronicled their busy day together, which included coffee with constituents, a Senate committee meeting and a trip to the gym. It also had historical facts about the U.S. Capitol, details of Obama’s job and a confession from Obama.

“Sometimes I get a little nervous before talking in front of a crowd, but Flat Stanley helped me practice the speech,” Obama wrote. “He made me recite it in front of him and then even gave me some advice so the speech would go smoothly. Flat Stanley is really a great coach.”

File this under – Exercises in Unintentional Self-Parody

Okay so I am seriously not making any of this story up.  Hat tip to Wonkette for first finding it.

So this rapture right nutjob over at the 700 Club apparently has been called by God:

In January of this year, Cindy Jacobs was in a worship service when the Lord spoke to her, “Cindy, the strongman over America doesn’t live in Washington, DC – the strongman lives in New York City! Call My people to pray for the economy.”

I wasn’t aware that there was a strongman over anything and much less over my hometown of D.C. AND New York City!

But apparently the Lord didn’t just stop with that pronouncement to Cindy:

The Lord further said, “October 29 was Black Tuesday, the day the stock market crashed, and Satan wants to do it again.” We must be proactive in prayer. At the beginning of the year many intercessors began to hear from the Lord that without divine intervention, a major shaking was coming to Wall Street. This would spread until there were food shortages. Some think that 2009 would be worse than 2008. Of course, it goes without saying that this would affect markets around the world.

But of course! It was all Satan’s fault in 1929 and Satan is ready to rear his head again today. You know, such a simple view of the world most really be nice. No need to worry about learning about economics when all you have to do is keep Satan at bay to ensure a healthy future for your 401K.

But it gets better folks:

Many people are fasting and praying for the upcoming elections, Cindy says. We don’t want to let up in this final press, we need to P.U.S.H. (pray until something happens) to avert financial judgment. On September 29 last month, the US stock market went down 777 points in one day. Cindy says it was no coincidence that this happened on the first day of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.

“This is so severe in the economic area because we are facing judgment from the actions, not only for our stance towards Israel, but our blatant sin against Him in passing laws such as the one allowing homosexual marriages,” Cindy said

Okay call the crazy police. Seriously. Can you make sense of this – somehow the markets collapsed because we have been mean to the Jews and some gays got married (in really expensive suits with top of the line caterers thus putting money into the economy but we are in a fact-free universe here with Cindy.)

So in response to Satan, the Jews and the Gays assault on our economy, Cindy called for a Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies on Wednesday, October 29, 2008.

Apparently there are at least another dozen crazy fuckers like her who decided to heed her call and descended on Wall Street. Where they did this:

“Christians,” praying at a golden calf, for economic wealth.

Moses sez FAIL!

.

In Honor Of Derby Day

So in honor of Derby day  I have decided to post an old blog post from England in April of 2006.  Derby day for me is defined by three matches.  Arsenal vs Tottenham.  Timbers vs Sounders.  Skins vs Cowboys.  In all three cases it is not an overstatement to say that if the Spuds, Flounders or Cowgirls happened to be involved in a tragic accident involving herpes and fire I would be the one hanging around with gasoline just to make sure everything caught fire.

Today the mighty Arsenal play the awful horrible Tottenham Spuds.    When I mean horrible I mean literally terrible, bottom of the freaking table.  Anything less than a thrashing today will not be acceptable.  Of course this means the opposite will happen.  It is a North London Derby afterall.

Perhaps I should turn to my old pal (term pal in this case is used quite losely) Arseblog to put into words what this means:

“Some might say this is just another three points if you win, but it’s not. It’s a gold-plated, caviar on the side, sexy time with Angelina Jolie three points. Sure, it might only be three points when you look at the table but when you think about those three points it makes you feel all warm and tingly. Three points won against Sp*rs are a better three points than those won against somebody more or less irrelevant, like Blackburn for example.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Which is why I didn’t. Anywhoo…back to my fateful spring day in London of 2006…Without any further ado, enjoy a blast from the past.  Come on you Gunners!

April 2006

I was talking to a few friends at the pub last night and telling my Arsenal experience and people encouraged me to do a poor man’s version of Allie’s travelogue http://timbers.soccercityusa.com/travelogue2006.htm. Let me first state that my camera is crap so the pics are a pale version of Allie’s and I am no Roberto (http://www.oregonlive.com/weblogs/timbersblog/) so bear with me if my writing gets a bit pedantic.

So here it goes….

So the best way to sum up this once in a lifetime experience was….holy shit.

This past Saturday I attended the last North London derby between Arsenal and Tottenham. Those of you that know me know that I have been a rabid Arsenal fan since 1992 (side note to all my Mackem friends – I love you guys, and Sunderland is my second favorite team, but I am sure you understand). When we decided to take the trip to Sunderland last year I took one look at the Arsenal scheduled, circled this match and knew I had to go. I had to see Highbury before it became a condominium development.

For those of you who do not know Arsenal is moving out of it’s 90 year old plus storied stadium to fancy new digs next year right down the road. Highbury is truly a one of a kind stadium, tucked right into a North London community. There are literally houses right across the street from every side of the stadium.

For non-Arsenal fans it is also hard to describe what it meant to me to get this amazing opportunity to see this last match at Highbury. I requested a ticket for this match back in August of 2005. Only two ArsenalAmerica members were granted tickets. I am truly fortunate and forever grateful to Rick Brees for coming through for me. Tickets were going for 500 quid outside the stadium ($1,000) so that should tell you the importance of this match.

For those unfamilar with the north London derby… To say that Tottenham and Arsenal don’t like each other is a massive understatement. Their stadiums literally sit less than 1/2 a mile apart. North London is a community divided. If you cross a specific street you are in Arsenal country. The neighbors on the other side of the street are Tottenham fans. You don’t mix. It is that simple.

In the past 10 years Arsenal have had the upper leg in this derby but this year things were different. A younger Arsenal squad struggled earlier in the season and as such they are now caught up in a dogfight for that all important 4th Champions League spot with – you guessed it – a resurgent Tottenham side. This match would literally all but determine who would be playing in Europe next season.

So I started my day at London King Cross. I took the tube to the Arsenal stop – one of the cool things about this stop is the huge mural that they put up in honor of the Higbury anniversary.

I then made my way to the World of Arsenal store. Good thing my credit card had been put on fraud alert and canceled (someone from Romania was trying to charge things ) or I would have come home with half the store.

I was supposed to meet my “benefactor” Rick Brees at the shop. Rick runs Arsenal America London branch and takes care of all the tickets for American Gooners coming over to watch matches. The problem was I didn’t know who the heck he is or what he looked like! Luckily he could spot a confused lost looking American and we soon met up.

It was glorious day in London. Sunny about 70 so we went for pint. All the streets around Highbury are basically closed on matchday and when the weather is nice everyone drinks outside the pub!

I actually only had one pint cause I really wanted to remain sober for the match and remember as much as I could of the experience. I think I will try that for Timbers matches this year as well. Okay maybe not.

So we made our way to the North side entrance. The North bank of Higbury is famous. In the days of terracing it is where all the most rabid fans sit.

North Bank of Highbury

I was extremely excited to hear that my ticket was in the North Bank. I would be sitting with the president of Arsenal America and this great bloke – Paul – who was our guide for the match and getting us safely back to the pub post match.

Here’s Paul.

So we made out way into the stadium.

When I walked in the hairs on my neck literally stood up. This sadium is literally 90 years old. Everything is classic about the place from the gates to the tiles in the bathroom!

The idea that it was all going to be gone in only 1 month almost made me cry.

The stadium was roaring 15 minutes prior. People were chanting all sorts of anti – Spuds songs (Tottenham Hotspurs is the official name but us Arsenal fans either call them Scum or Spuds).

The Bathroom Tiles

A side story here. Some of you may have seen the mid-week Champions League match between Arsenal and Villareal at Highbury last Wednesday. You may have also seen this grey squirrel that made its way onto the pitch. He was soon nicknamed “Regis”.

It wouldn’t leave and literally ran around the North Bank goal for a good part of 15 minutes. In fact he made better runs at Jens Lehman’s goal than Villareal. The North Bank came up with all sorts of pro-Squirrel chants and these carried through to Saturday. I think I heard something about a squirrel and Robbie Keane’s arse.

The press loved “Regis”

A Little Photoshop Fun

Here is me in the North Bank before kick off!

So the game starts and much to our dismay Henry, Fabregas, Lgunberg, and Eboue are all on the bench being rested for Tuesday’s crucial Champion’s League semifinal against Villareal. Understandable but a huge risk. Tottenham are no joke.

The starting lineups

The first half Tottenham has the run of play and comes very close to scoring on several occasions. Our best players are not in there and it shows.

Lehman makes a save.

The second half things become a little more even but at about 60 minutes ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. Basically what happens is that two Arsenal fullbacks and one Tottenham player go into a tackle and the two Arsenal players collide and are hurt and laying on the pitch. A confused Jamie Carrick passes the ball to Edgar Davids who then hesitates but then starts making a run with the ball down a utterly exposed left flank. The entire stadium starts whistling and booing. Davids ignores the traditional move of putting the ball out of play so the injured players can receive treatment and instead crosses to a wide open Robbie Keane who slots the ball home passed a stunned Lehman and company. Did I mention all hell broke loose?

As if this derby needed anymore fuel this was just gasoline on the fire. The entire stadium are chanting CHEATS CHEATS CHEATS. Arsenal fans make runs at the celebrating Tottenham fans. Jens Lehman almost beats up Edgar Davids. The Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger and the Tottenham, coach Martin Jol go face to face on the sideline.

But the goal stands.

Then in the 70th minute Thierry Henry finally comes on. The hairs on my arms literally stood up as he came in because the reception was simply unbelievable. The messiah had arrived. And arrive he did.

Here is a bad pic and a of him coming on.

Henry Enters The Match

Arsenal takes the game to them and in the 86th minute. 4 minutes from full time Thierry Henry scores a sublime goal right in front of me in the North Bank.

The stands went crazy. I was hugging random fat Englishmen. I fell over about 4 rows. Suddenly I was standing somewhat closer to the pitch. No one cared.

I am proud to say I started the chant “One-Nil to the Arsenal, One –Nil to the Arsenal” and the whole North Bank picked it up.

Arsenal then pressed for the last 5 minutes and came awfully close but came up short.

1-1 final time and another North London derby classic was in the books. We made our way out of the stadium with many songs and chants referring to the cheating scum etc etc.

Paul led us back to our pub where I began to get the pints in! I was thirsty and had lost my voice and we were told it was better to wait till any trouble passed before heading back to the Tube.

Outside the Pub

So we are standing outside in the sun, breaking down the match and drinking our pints when all hell broke loose for the second time. I look up and a huge band of Tottenham thugs had broken through the police line and were coming at our pub. A bottle wizzes over my head smashes against the bar. My friend Rick alertly pulls me inside and the next thing I know the doors were slammed shut and the bartender pushes a button as steel shutters closed over the windows.

Yes automatic steel shutters. Apparently they have seen this before. Within 5 minutes the trouble had passed, the police were all over it and had chased away the scum and we were back out in the street drinking. Crazy.

So I said goodbye to my new friends and headed back to the hotel. I was advised not to wear my colors outside the pub so I wound up in the tube in my undershirt. With all my Arsenal gear safely stowed in my bag.

I was exhausted, dirty, a little drunk but I was buzzing. I had never been happier in my life.

Great Moments in Journalism

No folks this isn’t an Onion or Colbert Report piece. This is a real interview on a local ABC affiliate in Orlando.

I give you Barbara West in all her right-wing nuttiness.

Reminds one of Edward R Murrow doesn’t it?

Governor Palin: This is What an Unrepentant Domestic Terrorist Looks Like

Yesterday Sarah Palin was asked a simple question by Brian Williams of NBC News.   A question she refused to answer.

Brian Williams: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition?

Sarah Palin: (Exasperated sigh.) There’s no question that Bill Ayers by his own admittance was one who thought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There is no question there. Now others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that it would be unacceptable to, I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word “terrorist” there.

Get that?  Sarah Palin refuses to state that people who systematically bomb innocent American citizens in an attempt to intimidate and prevent them from making a consitutionally protected choice are not terrorists.  Of all the things this woman has said on the campaign trail this is probably the most apalling thing of all.  It goes directly to her willingness to protect the very people she would have to swear to protect.

Now lets got to the Websters definition of a Terrorist:

ter⋅ror⋅ist–noun

1.	a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism.

2.	a person who terrorizes or frightens others.

3.	(formerly) a member of a political group in Russia aiming at the demoralization of the government by terror.

4.	an agent or partisan of the revolutionary tribunal during the Reign of Terror in France.

–adjective

5.	of, pertaining to, or characteristic of terrorism or terrorists: terrorist tactics.

---

Origin:
1785–95; terror + -ist; cf. F terroriste

Governor Palin – this man is a unrepentant Domestic Terrorist:

Eric Rudolph

“Abortion is murder and because it is murder I believe deadly force is needed to stop it.  What I did was right” – Eric Rudolph at his sentencing in 2005.

Terrorist Acts  carried out by Eric Rudolph a in the name of the Army of God -  a radical anti-abortion TERRORIST organization:

•    July 27, 1996

Bombing of Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park kills a woman and injures 111 other people.

Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park day of bombing.

• Jan. 16, 1997

Two bombs explode at an office building in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs, Injuring six. An abortion clinic in the building is believed to be the target.

•    Feb. 21, 1997

Nail-laden device explodes at The Otherside Lounge, a gay and lesbian nightclub in Atlanta. Five people are injured.

•    Jan. 29, 1998

Explosion kills a policeman and maims a nurse at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala.

Nurse Emily Lyons is removed from the sidewalk in front of the New Woman All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham, Ala.

This are what victims of domestic terrorism look like Governor Palin:

Robert Sande Sanderson  Security Guard New Woman, All Women Clinic in Birmingham.  Murdered.

Emily Lyons – Nurse at the New Woman, All Women Health Care Clinic

“I lost my left eye, it damaged my right eye, broke the right side of my face, first, second and third-degree burns on the front of my body, broke my left leg…tore the muscle and skin off the front of my legs, hole in my abdomen—my intestines were hanging out.”

Alice Hawthorne 44 murdered by Rudolph at the Atlanta Olympics

Now let’s go back to the definition of a terrorist. Governor Palin how on god’s green Earth is Eric Rudolph not 1. a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism. 2.a person who terrorizes or frightens others. ?

He is not a terrorist in her eyes because she doesn’t condemn his actions. She knew she could not explicitly state that and instead attempted to filibuster her way out of the question with a wink and a nod to the “Rapture Right” who embrace her candidacy for this very reason.   Palin represents the most extreme form of  the anti-abortion forces in this country.  Her positions are well documented and she wears her radical anti-abortion stance proudly on her sleeve.

I can only draw the simple conclusion that Sarah Palin could not call Eric Rudolph, a psychopathic cold blooded murderer of innocents, a terrorist because she doesn’t believe he is.

Awesomeness

Lyrics  -

Hey Sarah Palin do you tell them in Wasilla
that 4000 years ago we roamed the planet with  Godzilla?

Is it true?

I am so fuckin’ scared of you.
as number two

What if Obama is wrong?

I am sitting here watching an excerpt of Obama’s stirring speech from Virginia yesterday where he directly confronted the Sarah Palin nonsense of “real” parts of the country versus “fake” parts.  It’s really good stuff and it is why Obama burst onto the scene in 2004, was able to beat an “inevitable” primary candidate and is looking, 12 days out, like he is about to decimate John McCain who is increasingly destroying any vestige of honor he once had.

Here is a video of the good parts of the speech:

Wonderful stuff that gives me hope that Obama is gonna do things very very differently than the horrible 50% +1 – divide, demonize and conquer politics of Rove and Bush.

And then I saw this video:

What the hell?

This woman lives on a completely different planet than I or anyone else I know here in Portland.  Watch the video again.  She is as convinced in her righteousness as I am when I pound the table and expound upon why it is insane to continue our disastrous economic, environmental and foreign policies.

Is she clinically insane?  That would be too easy of an explanation and cop out.  There are millions more like her in this country. They all can’t be crazy.

But I simply do not understand them.  Not the “I don’t understand how they can support X abortion policy or Y tax cut” thought.  This goes beyond that.  I fundamentally don’t understand them as a person.

And I suspect they look at my liberal, Portland, organic eating, public transit using, non church going, evolution believing, premarital sex having,  ass and shake their heads as well.

I like to think I am a pretty easy going guy who can have a conversation with just about anyone, even a hardcore Republican.  There are a million things we can connect on  – our love of the Washington Redskins, the status of our tomato garden or maybe woodworking.  I can and do have these conversations all the time with Hatfield/McCall Oregon Republicans.

But then I look at this video and realize there really are people out there that I would have nothing to say to.  Her world view is so dominated by a “rapture chistianism” that the space between us is more like a gaping chasm.

So while I want to believe Obama when he talks of “one America” I think he may be wrong.  And that saddens me deeply.

Thought of the Day

Will someone please ask Sarah Palin to define Socialism.