Category: Oregon

Oregon’s Pointless COVID-19 Lockdown

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Wednesday, Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Kate Brown announced that the state’s public schools would not re-open this school year, and also extended “indefinitely” an order closing restaurants and bars. That order, issued last month, had been scheduled to end April 15.

A simple question: Why?

Oregon’s schools must be doing a lousy job of teaching arithmetic, to say nothing of basic science. According to CNN, Oregon (population 4.1 million) has had a total of 1,321 reported cases of COVID-19, with 44 deaths. That’s 31 cases per 100,000 population, a known infection rate 96% lower than the rate in New York. Your chances of dying of coronavirus in Oregon are slightly above one-in-a-million, and the vast majority of the cases are in a few cities, but the entire state remains under a stay-at-home order with no end in sight. The question remains: Why?

Jeff Stidham called my attention to a blog that is asking this question, and explains that Oregon is planning on a “surge” of COVID-19 cases, an expectation based on model projections which simply do not reflect the reality of the state’s coronavirus outbreak:

[T]he reason so many Governors locked down their states is because they were presented with data by the IHME that showed extreme death levels if lockdowns didn’t happen. Frankly, if I’d been presented with the IHME’s data I probably would have locked down Oregon, too. Here’s the problem: their data has proven to be disastrously wrong, and has overestimated death and hospitalization rates by 5-10x, which means they have been off by roughly 500-1,000%, which basically means their data has been useless. . . .
[A]ny peak for COVID-19 has not only ALREADY HAPPENED, but it was actually happening before Governor Brown’s lockdown order of March 23rd. Moreover, even if you accept the highly faulty model that Governor Brown is using that has never been right, even on our worst day it shows that our hospitals will barely be stretched with a forecast usage of 8.6% of current capacity.

The local press in Oregon is still relying on these projections, publishing headlines like “Oregon prepares for coronavirus surge,” despite the fact — clearly apparent from data published by Oregon’s health department — that the state’s “surge” in cases is already over.

Think about this: It takes a certain number of days between the time someone becomes infected with COVID-19 and the time they experience symptoms (if they ever do exhibit symptoms, since many cases seem to be asymptomatic). The reason for all the crisis messaging in March was that it was projected that a “surge” in cases would overwhelm the hospital system. Patients who experience only mild symptoms — they experience flu-like symptoms for a few days, then recover — and never require hospitalization are irrelevant to the public-health concerns about a possible shortage of hospital beds, ventilators, medical personnel, etc. Therefore, the important statistic to study is not the cumulative total of known COVID-ID cases, but rather the number of hospitalized patients.

The time delay between a person contracting the virus and being hospitalized is one factor to keep in mind when examining trends in the pandemic. Another factor is the time-lag between onset of symptoms and death, in those cases that prove to be fatal. In Italy, for example, their number of new cases peaked about six days before the daily number of deaths. The most recent Oregon coronavirus deaths:

Oregon’s 39th COVID-19 death is a 74-year-old man in Linn County, who tested positive on March 22 and died on April 3 at his residence. He had underlying medical conditions.
Oregon’s 40th COVID-19 death is a 97-year-old man in Linn County, who tested positive on March 15 and died on April 4 at his residence. He had underlying medical conditions.
Oregon’s 41st COVID-19 death is an 87-year-old woman in Multnomah County, who tested positive on March 28 and died on April 6 at her residence. She had underlying medical conditions.
Oregon’s 42nd COVID-19 death is a 41-year-old woman in Multnomah County, who tested positive on April 5 and died on April 8 at Oregon Health and Sciences University. She had underlying medical conditions.
Oregon’s 43rd COVID-19 death is a 66-year-old man in Multnomah County, who tested positive on March 31 and died on April 5 at his residence. He had underlying medical conditions.
Oregon’s 44th COVID-19 death is a 74-year-old man in Benton County, who tested positive on March 26 and died on April 8 at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis. He had underlying medical conditions.

So, these six patients tested positive between March 15 and April 5, and died between April 3 and April 8. The time between positive and death ranged from three days (patient #42) to 21 days (patient #40). All but one of these six deaths involved patients who had tested positive in March. And the number of new cases has been decreasing since the third week in March. Given that Oregon’s current case numbers are far from placing any strain on the state’s hospital capacity, that the known infection rate in Oregon is barely 3 in 10,000 residents, and that the state’s death rate of known cases is 3.3%, why is the entire state still locked down? Because the governor is a Democrat?




 

A ‘Hate Crime’ CNN Won’t Mention

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“Intersectionality” in action:

Jasmine Renee Campbell is the Oregon woman facing hate crime charges after investigators said she tried to strangle a woman using the victim’s hijab.
The confrontation happened at the TriMet MAX train station in Portland on November 12, 2019. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office announced the charges on January 3, 2020.
The victim did not suffer serious physical injuries. But District Attorney Rod Underhill explained in a news release that the victim told the police that she “no longer feels safe wearing a hijab in public.” . . .
According to the Portland Police Bureau, which is the department that led the investigation, Jasmine Renee Campbell allegedly approached the victim from behind on November 12, 2019, at a train station. Officials say that Campbell is accused of grabbing the hijab and using it to try to choke the victim.
The victim managed to push Campbell away. But, according to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, Campbell continued the assault. The victim said Campbell forcibly ripped the hijab from the victim’s head. Campbell then allegedly rubbed the garment “across multiple exposed sexually intimate parts” of her own body.  . . .
The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office says the two women were strangers to each other. The victim was not identified by name.
But investigators described her as a 24-year-old student at Portland State University. She is a foreign exchange student from Saudi Arabia. . . .
As of this writing on January 5, Jasmine Renee Campbell was not in custody. Court records with the Oregon Judicial Department show that there is an active warrant for her arrest. . . .
The District Attorney’s Office says that the arrest warrant remains active because Campbell failed to show up for a scheduled court hearing. Campbell had been ordered to appear at the Multnomah County Circuit Court at 9 a.m. on January 3, 2020.

So, not only did Campbell attack a Muslim immigrant, but she is now at large, a fugitive from justice, free to attack others. If such an Islamophobic hate crime against an immigrant had been committed by a white male right-wing Trump supporter, CNN would be giving us hourly updates on the manhunt for this dangerous fugitive. As it is, however, this crime is strictly “local news” for some reason . . .

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)



 

Portland Antifa Terrorist Has Previously Been Arrested for Similar Crime

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According to Gateway Pundit, Joseph Christian Evans has been identified as the Antifa terrorist who used a metal pipe to attack Adam Kelly during a weekend protest, leaving Kelly with severe scalp lacerations. Evans had previously been arrested “on charges of recklessly endangering another person and unlawful use of a weapon” at a protest last August: “Why isn’t Joseph Christian Evans in prison?” Of course, it’s because Portland is a Democrat-controlled city whose mayor supports terroristic violence against law-abiding citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Meanwhile, Portland Police have asked for the public’s help in identifying other Antifa terrorists, but really, what’s the point if they’re just going to turn them loose on the streets to commit more violence?

Bonus: Ace of Spades calls Jonah Goldberg a “fat, sweaty failure” for his weak response to Antifa terrorism.



 

LGBT Totalitarians Lose Again

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Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer want to force you to bake them a cake.

Do these two women look like they need more carbohydrates? Are they so starved for calories that their access to baked goods constitutes an emergency requiring government intervention? Alas, these two Democrats in Oregon took advantage of a law against “discrimination” that makes it mandatory for bakers to provide cakes for obese women who want to marry each other. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed:

The Supreme Court on Monday tossed out a lower court ruling against two Oregon bakers who had refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
The case involved Melissa and Aaron Klein of Oregon, who shut down their small bakery after a state agency fined them $135,000 for refusing to bake a wedding cake for two lesbians. The agency said the Kleins had violated the state’s public accommodation law.
The Kleins, though, cited their Christian beliefs as the reason they would not provide services for the gay couple. The case followed another from last year, in which Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of a Colorado baker.
The high court sent the Klein case back to a lower court “for further consideration in light of” their Colorado decision.
The Oregon case involved Rachel Bowman-Cryer, who went to the Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Gresham, Oregon, in January 2013 and inquired about a wedding cake. When Aaron Klein asked for the name of the groom, Bowman-Cryer said there wasn’t one. Klein told her the bakery does not bake cakes for gay weddings.
The Kleins were ordered to pay $135,000 to the couple for “discriminating against them in violation of a state public accommodations statute,” Fox News reported. The couple was forced to shut down their bakery.

This is the second time in a year the Supreme Court has ruled against the LGBT totalitarians. Last year, the court struck down a Colorado “civil rights” punishment against Masterpiece Cake Shop.

In the sidebar at AOSHQ, Oregon Muse comments:

I don’t understand why there never seems to be a judge in these cases that is willing to ask the obvious question “Hey, why can’t you just go to some other shop that will bake you your damn cake?”

This involves what I’ve called “The Compulsory Approval Doctrine.” LGBT radicals do not consider it sufficient that their basic rights of life, liberty and property should be protected, as the Constitution requires; they believe they are entitled to public approval of their sexual peculiarities, and that the force of government should be exerted to compel this approval: Dissent is “hate speech” and must be silenced.

Common courtesy once forbade the civilized person from making mention of what is called “sexuality,” and you can call me old-fashioned, but I lament how the Left’s identity-politics agenda has ruined our manners as much as (or arguably more than) it has ruined our morality. Homosexuality and transvestitism are not recent inventions, but public discussion of such behaviors was once more or less prohibited. Nowadays, everyone is expected to “come out” and publicly proclaim their carnal appetites, their fetishes and “gender” delusions, and we’re all expected to applaud them for their courage in “coming out.”

What have the Bowman-Cryers done to deserve our applause? You’re not allowed to ask such a question. Skepticism is also “hate speech,” and you’re likewise not permitted to speculate why these women are the way they are. To suggest that homosexuality can be explained from a perspective of developmental psychology — that deviant behavior might result from some causative factor in the circumstances of a person’s early childhood experience — contradicts the “born that way” narrative. We are therefore required to ignore any evidence that the homosexual’s preference might be, for example, a psychological reaction to family dysfunction. But consider this information:

They met when they were 19 and Laurel Bowman was on medical leave from the Navy. . . .
They had both grown up without a family. Rachel’s mom kicked her out at 14 for being a lesbian. Laurel had bounced from home to home after her father and brother died in a car accident when she was 3.
Laurel proposed after a year, but Rachel turned her down. Rachel hadn’t believed in marriage since her parents divorced when she was young. . . .
After her younger brother came out as gay, Rachel persuaded her mother to move with him to Portland.

What a completely random coincidence, said nobody ever.

Of course, there is no certain combination of circumstances that automatically lead to someone becoming homosexual, but as I’ve often said, there’s always a backstory. Back in the heyday of Freudian “talk therapy,” analysts often focused on their patients’ relationship with their parents as the best clues to the origin of their emotional problems, and there was extensive research about the correlations between certain disorders and various childhood factors. From this research emerged a number of observations about developmental patterns. For example, it was observed that the male homosexual was typically the son of a so-called “smother mother” household — “too much closeness to mother and a distant negative relationship with father.” We are no longer permitted to notice such patterns, apparently because any curiosity about the “why” of sexual deviance threatens the self-esteem of deviants.

So the fact that Rachel and her younger brother are both homosexuals, and that their parents divorced when they were young, is not something we can explore from the perspective of developmental psychology. Why? Because this might hurt their feelings. This quasi-therapeutic attitude of protecting the allegedly fragile self-esteem of Victims of Society is what justifies the Compulsory Approval Doctrine. We are supposed to believe that homosexuals are delicate creatures, emotional weaklings who are just one insult away from committing suicide, and therefore everyone must constantly applaud them for their courage.

Well, excuse me for not volunteering as an LGBT cheerleader, but it so happens that I know actual gay people, and in general they don’t seem to be suffering from a deficit of self-esteem. The real-life gay people I’ve actually known were not emotional basket cases, trapped in a slough of suicidal depression; quite the contrary, in fact. Exactly how this myth of gay victimhood became part of our cultural narrative is a subject worth studying, but my point is that this whole bake-me-a-cake business and the endless witch-hunt against “homophobia” is misguided, and contrary to First Amendment freedoms. If you have a right to say what you believe, how then can anyone compel you to say something you don’t believe? Certainly, in a free society, you cannot be forced to pretend that you approve of homosexuality if you don’t. As I say, old-fashioned courtesy would impose a polite silence in regard to such matters, but it’s difficult to remain silent while radical gay activists are attempting to shut down any business that does not endorse their agenda.

As for the Bowman-Cryers, I would suggest that they skip the cake altogether, and perhaps instead try a tasty salad with low-fat dressing.



 

Illegal Alien Rapes Dog to Death

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Protected by “sanctuary” laws:

Federal immigration officials lashed out at authorities in Multnomah County, Oregon, and local sanctuary laws Thursday after a man residing in the U.S. illegally was set free upon serving 60 days for raping a dog to death.
Fidel Lopez, 52, was convicted on April 8 of sexually assaulting his fiancée’s Lhasa Apso mix so forcefully that it had to be euthanized. He received a 60-day sentence but was released immediately because he had already served that amount of time awaiting trial on the February offense.
But ICE says the county should have notified the agency at least 48 hours before Lopez was let go so they could apprehend him on immigration violations.
“On April 8, Lopez was convicted of sexual assault of an animal and aggravated animal abuse and sentenced to 60 days in jail with credit for time served,” said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman Tanya J. Roman in a statement. “The Multnomah County Jail did not honor the immigration detainer and released him without notice to ICE.”
ICE picked up Lopez at home Thursday and served him a notice to appear, the agency said, and he will be taken to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma “pending immigration proceedings.”

Illegal aliens are just raping dogs that American dog-rapers won’t rape, I guess. You may be curious about how this crime happened:

Police learned of the case after Fidel Lopez’s fiancee reported to police that she found her small dog whining and hiding beneath the couch on Nov. 18, 2018. Upon moving the couch to take a look at the dog, she found blood and injuries to the dog’s hind end, according to a probable-cause affidavit.
She took the dog to the DoveLewis emergency hospital, where staff euthanized the dog because of significant internal injuries.
The dog was named Estrella, which means “star” in Spanish.
Estrella’s owner asked that a rape kit be done because Fidel Lopez had expressed an interest in bestiality by exposing his genitals to the dog, bragging about watching another person sexually assault a dog and asking if his fiancee would ever consider getting a dog bigger than a Lhasa Apso mix, according to the affidavit.
DNA evidence linked Fidel Lopez to the crime, investigators say.
According to the affidavit, he told police that he had sex with the dog while in bed with her, after becoming frustrated that the dog’s owner — who was his fiancee of 2½ years — didn’t return home the previous night or answer his phone calls. He told police the dog seemed fine. He said he had been drinking.

Your fiancée doesn’t come home, so you rape her dog. Maybe that’s acceptable in some cultures. Stop being such bigots! Check your privilege!



 

The Fake ‘Hate’ Epidemic

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Political paranoia:

Portland, Oregon, is a deep-blue city in a deep-blue state — in 2016, Hillary Clinton got 73% of the vote in Multnomah County, carrying Oregon by an 11-point margin — and therefore would seem to be an unlikely place to find anti-LGBT violence. So when activists in Portland claimed they had been the targets of hate crimes in February, Andy Ngo was skeptical. A transgender activist’s claim to have been attacked by assailants wielding a baseball bat? Portland’s anti-bias crime unit dropped the investigation for lack of evidence. When “a self-described fat-queer activist” claimed on Facebook that her girlfriend “was attacked by ‘two young white men’ in a maroon SUV”? Portland police don’t even have a record of a report for such an incident, according to Ngo. The good news, then, is that Portland’s LGBT community has no reason to fear they’re being targeted by an epidemic of hate crimes, but the bad news is, some activists are apparently willing to invent such incidents to support the Left’s narrative that President Trump’s election has unleashed the forces of “hate.”
In the wake of Jussie Smollett’s hoax in Chicago — another deep-blue stronghold where Trump-inspired violence would seem unlikely — Americans are increasingly suspicious toward similar claims. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.



 

Crazy People Are Dangerous

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On Dec. 28, sheriff’s deputies in Stevens County, Washington, responded to the report of a shooting at a home near Colville, about 70 miles north of Spokane. They arrived to find that Mark Leland, 51, had been shot with a .357 revolver by his father-in-law, James Gates, 72, as the result of an apparent domestic dispute. Leland died later than night in a nearby hospital. He and his wife had been visiting her father, and this shooting in Washington state made headlines in the Portland Oregonian because Leland’s wife — Gates’s daughter — was one of the most notorious killers in Oregon history. In 1980, when she was 13 years old, Michele Gates drowned a 4-year-old girl she had been babysitting. While being questioned by police, Michele Gates confessed that two years earlier, she had drowned her 3-year-old cousin by shoving her into a pond at the zoo. The case spent years in the juvenile justice system:

Psychiatrists deemed the girl a sociopath, incapable of controlling short-term impulses. She almost avoided prosecution because of debate over her mental state. She spent time at a home for troubled kids in Maine, and at one point before the case was resolved, police were alarmed to learn she had gotten a job as swimming coach at the local YMCA.
Finally, in January 1985, when she was 18, Gates was convicted of the juvenile equivalent of murder. She avoided prison because state law at the time forbade incarcerating female juvenile offenders past the age of 18. That conviction was later expunged, allowing her to legally say on job applications that she’d never been convicted of a crime.
That lasted until 1992, when Gates, then 26 and using the last name Shorthouse, was indicted in federal court on charges of arson and solicitation to commit murder. She was accused of hiring one of her ex-boyfriends to kill her fiance’s ex-girlfriend.
Gates had blamed the woman for telling others of her criminal past, and Gates wanted to help her fiance win back custody of his young son, prosecutors alleged. She pleaded guilty that year to lesser charges of abetting arson and interstate travel with intent to commit murder, and was sentenced to 15 years in federal custody.

To recap: Sociopath killed two children and later attempted to kill another woman, and now her father shot her husband to death.

Crazy people are dangerous.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)

 

Portland Antifa Mob Riots

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Hannah McClintock was one of six people arrested Saturday in Portland, Oregon, where left-wing “Antifa” attacked a men’s rights group:

One of the six members of far-left extremist group Antifa, arrested in Portland, Oregon, on Nov. 17, was captured on video spitting on and punching protesters before being apprehended.
The latest clash between Antifa — a group that advocates openly for violence against people and groups it disfavors — and people holding permitted rallies and events began with police officers blocking the radicals from a “Him Too” rally, organized by Haley Adams for men’s rights. She said the gathering was to support due process and men falsely accused of sexual assault.
Members of the conservative Patriot Prayer group attended the rally but said they were not its organizers.
After the rally, people departing the site were stalked by Antifa members and others, leading to several flare-ups of violence.
In one scene, people who had attended the rally were confronted by a large group of radicals, including Hannah McClintock, 19, distinctive with purple hair. McClintock “repeatedly spit at a man and hurled punches at him. I had witnessed her trying to fight people over and over,” said journalist Andy Ngo, who recorded the video.
McClintock was later arrested on a charge of harassment.
The other five people arrested were identified as Ruben Delahuerga, 25, Betsy Toll, 68, Brittany Frost, 35, and Elizabeth Cheek, 33, all on one charge each of interfering with a peace officer; and Gary Fresquez, 52, on charges of second-degree disorderly conduct and two counts of interfering with a peace officer.
The Portland Police Department said it saw Antifa members and other people interfering with the Him Too demonstration using a number of weapons. “Officers observed sticks, glass bottles, lit road flares, bottles filled with a substance believed to be urine, and gopher gas used as projectiles,” it said.
The projectiles were thrown at officers and demonstrators, the police said.

By the way, Andy Ngo’s got a tip jar to help support his journalism. His work is excellent, and he deserves your support.