Answer to "What Shall I Read Next?"

The Doser's idol - Leonard Pitts, Jr., has published a list of books about African-American history that he values. It is to be hoped that The Doser is the only person in the world who has not read any of them! How can we understand our history if we don't know anything about what our neighbors consider to be history? Here is the list: "From Slavery to Freedom" (1); "Mirror to America" (1); "Before the Mayflower"(2); "Slavery by Another Name" (3); "This Was Harlem"(4) (4); "Been in the Storm So Long"(5); "Trouble in Mind" (5).

The authors numbered are: (1)John Hope Franklin; (2)Lerone Bennett 3) Douglas Blackmon (4) Jervis Anderson (5) Leon F. Litwak

Solve Our Drug Problems

The "solution" to the drug problem is this: The US should legalize drugs and facilitate their inexpensive distribution. Just that. When the alternatives are ludicrous and expensive and failing, the simplest solution needs to be sought. It is not a "good' solution,for, as with the repeal of prohibition of booze, social problems will follow. It is simply the only solution.

Drug Addiction vs Prevention Addiction

Drug addicts are willing to do whatever is necessary to get the drug they want. The US government has become addicted to the idea that they should not have the drugs they want. Neither stance makes a lot of sense. Why should drug addicts give up whatever is necessary to get their drugs? On the other hand, why should the US government, at such enormous cost, doggedly attempt to stop them from getting their drugs? If you don't have the answer to either of those, you are certainly right on the threshold of a break-through into realism about drugs.

Drug Supply Re-Visited.

The Doser knows that you are thinking about the Drug Problem. Here is the bitter dose: WE are the problem. Just that. All that "ugliness" and a substantial part of our own criminal and penal problems will go away if WE solve the problem that WE present. However in the world is that to be done?

Drug Supply

From the venal coca grower in South America, through an assorted bunch of other criminals involved in the transport, to be passed by a particularly vicious group of smugglers under our radar, the material arrives in the US. The cocaine that we want. Our embattled country is imposed upon by that whole, vicious supply system. Of course we must expend whatever is necessary to stop this evil network. We must protect ourselves from them.

Time to Solve the Drug "Problem"

The Northern Mexico town of Ciudad Juarez was invaded the other day by 1500 of the Army troops of the Mexican government. The deployment is now increased to 9000 troops. There has been deep-seated police corruption and drug warring going on. There were ten drug-related slayings a day in Ciudad Juarez until the Army came. The Army didn't invade the area because the town folk were rebellious - the pure and simple fact is that the demand of US citizens for drugs has completely destroyed the decent purposes of the city. The Doser suggests that we have exported the evil demands of our drug habit to much of the area south of our borders. We have pretended that it is their problem: they produce the drugs, they smuggle the drugs into our country, they sell their drugs to us illegally. It is time that we recognize a simple fact: it is our problem. It is not their problem. It is time to clear our streets of drug-gangsters, to clear the drug felons out of our prisons, to relieve our police officers of our useless drug enforcement program. The Doser challenges you to think it through and figure out for yourself what we have to do to get out of this mess.

Bonus for non-Success

AIG resists the O'Bama Administration effort to reduce their executives' bonus package (said to be $100 million!) on the ground that they are bound by contract to pay them. The Doser wonders what kind of "contract" provides a bonus for abysmal failure? The only achievement that the AIG pirates seem able to claim is that they arranged for a government subsidy of $165 billion. Is that a confidence builder or what?

Just when things seem unbearably grim, there seems always to surface some comic legislator that brightens us up by suggesting a piece of asininity. One of them, following Multnomah County's feckless initiative, wants to require restaurant operators to put on their menus the amount of calories involved in their food offerings. First, Do we believe obese people will be put off if what they want to eat is noted as high caloric; Second, Isn't everybody who is interested in calories fully aware of what is highly caloric? Third: How many restaurants can afford to add a dietitian to provide those entries; Fourth: Can the high end restaurants afford the additional cost of preparing a "Please ask for our calories menu:" Five: Who is going to enforce it? Sixth: How high are the fines that sweet reasonableness would tolerate? Seventh: Who gave these busy-bodies the right to extend their already overly large turf? Eighth: Who cares?

Limited Use Drug

As the advertisers point out so wisely: Avodart is not for everyone.

Turn Merit Badge Up, George

It's time for George W. Bush to do a good thing for a change: urge clemency for the shoe-thrower (Muntadhar al-Zeidi.)

Bedside manner.

The Doser has been down with the dread mokus for a couple of days. (The thing that's "going around.") The Doser's wife utilized her medical back-ground to get him on the proper recovery track. She reminded him: It isn't the cough that carries you off; it's the coffin they carry you off in. Comforting axiom.

Priorities

There's nothing like straitened circumstances to help us realize what our true priorities are. The City of Portland is trying to build sports arenas for soccer and baseball. Schools are having to decide whether to cut teachers or sports. Even the feds, with the best of stated intentions, have let the earmarks flow and the bankers cavort. The Pols are correct in one thing. Until we, the people, gain confidence in the enterprise, we will not get out of this vale of difficulty.

A small group of Muslim clerics is suggesting that the Islamic world and the "Christian" world have survival as a common need. The suggestion is that Islamites and Christians should attempt to live together in amity. It seems that 138 Muslim clerics originally signed the document and 163 subsequently have endorsed it.

The Doser makes several initial observations:

If the imams are as numerous as preachers are in the US, the number of signers is the equivalent of the church leadership of a population area less than the size of Portland, Oregon. Thus, to achieve agreement to this message from only this number of imams in a year and a half indicates lack of something: knowledge of the initiative, or, possibly, support for it.

The world of Islam is united in one organized religious network that has had no counterpart in the Western World since the collapse of the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church. Within what is left of "Christianity," there is virtually no cooperation toward a common goal as is assumed to be possible by this initiative.

Though it may be true that the cultural enterprise of the Western World is farther along the road toward "civilization," it has not been very long since Christianity was acting in the same sort of bloody-minded ways that Islam seems to be doing now. Consequently, that should be no deterrent to a positive response from us.

A large part of the most vocal of our clerics believe that it is necessary to bring the Islamites to their way of thinking and they have little room for accommodation. People on both sides of the Western/Islam aisle "relish conflict," as the initiative describes it. It's likely that the most earnest religionists on both sides are going to be the least easy to reconcile to any amity.

The paper points out: "The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake." That's a telling point, the Doser says. Maybe we should look around and see if there is some societal component that has the clout among as the Christian Church once did.

Leadership at State

Hilary Clinton seems to be doing an excellent job. She is proving to be loyal to O'bama's administration,(mentioning his leadership on all initiatives) moving into the proper vacuum areas (sending envoys into Syria) and innovative (as shown by the "reset button" event.) The Doser has just one small nit to pick: why does she not have access to a capable Russian speaker?

Still More Good News!

What a day! Another good news item: Portland dog owners will no longer be permitted to socialize their animals at the Portland Farmers' Market. The Market will re-open March 31st without the bothersome menagerie. Bravo to the brave marketers!

More Good News.

The intrepid red-tailed hawk that attempted to assist us with the eradication of the SUV blight is recovering.

Well, okay!

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY:
The Oregonian has observed a groundswell of public opinion in favor of its Comics and has turned away from its plan to cut one-third of them as an economy move.

Spirit bigger than ability.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY:
The red-tiled hawk that was doing the laudable task of trying to take out an SUV will live to swoop again.

The Doser is seeking a term to identify the people who are taking it upon themselves to crank up another vituperative anti-gay-marriage campaign. In a spasm of tolerance, The Doser is trying to avoid the appellation bigots. So what to call them? Even they must know that their form of "traditional marriage", as they put it, has several alternatives. If they didn't know this, we could comfortably call them ignoramuses. Since their acrimony is aimed mainly at the marriages of gays and not at arranged-marriages, marriages of convenience, marriages of "other" religious sects, we could call them homophobes " Might be thought to be overly pejorative. Well, I guess we'll just have to get along with the traditional word for such people: busybodies.

Perk up, Portlanders.

This blog is just for Portlanders: Our civic gem, the Ladd Carriage House, is covered with a plastic coccoon which The Doser believes promises that, come whatever with the weather, our jewel will soon emerge with a fresh coat of paint. There, that should make us all feel better!

Millions with Meaning.

What once seemed to be such an unimaginable figure, a "million," is like small change now when dealing with dollars. The measly million (as we have come to think of it) still has power to amaze though: There have been found evidences of early, upright-walking hominids in Kenya - dating from 1.51 to 1.53 million years ago. Amazing, eh? Staggering to contemplate, eh? Don't even try to think of it in terms of dollar bills laid on end and representing one year each. Just let yourself admire that wonderful figure. Just think: We humans have a one and one half million year history!