Monthly Archives: November 2024

Sports news

Rarified air in grid polling

Allow me this brief admission, which is that a long-suffering fan of the University of Oregon football program is finding it hard to breathe while the Ducks are perched at the tippy-top of a list of elite programs.

Yes, the Ducks have been good for some time now. They were ranked No. 1 briefly during the 2012 season. Then they ran into the Stanford Cardinal, which knocked the Ducks off their lofty perch.

I didn’t attend the U of O. I attended Portland State University. However, as a red-blooded American patriot who loves college football, I am enjoying the dickens out of watching the Ducks take care of business on the field.

A couple of points need to be made about Oregon’s rise to the top of the heap. One is that the Ducks now compete in the Big Ten, which for us Pacific Coast natives is akin to cheering for the enemy on the battlefield. In the old days, the Pac 12 competed for the right to play in the Rose Bowl, in which the other team was the Big Ten champion.

It’s all a mixed-up jumble now, with the Rose Bowl game tossed into the mix of bowl games designed to determine the national football champion.

The other thing is this “transfer portal” that seems to dominate college athletics. Student-athletes now are able transfer to schools just to compete in football or other top-drawer sports. The Ducks ‘ lineup now features a kid named Dillon Gabriel, who transferred to Oregon from Oklahoma.  Last year, the stud was QB Bo Nix, a transfer from Auburn. This transfer business makes it hard for fans like me to latch onto players who only are there for a season or two. They have zero loyalty to the school.

Marcus Mariota played QB for the Ducks and won the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player in the nation. He entered school as a freshman and stayed until he earned his degree … and then used up his football eligibility.

However, all this is just chatter. The college football know-it-alls think the Ducks are the top college team in the country and have them ranked No. 1. Those of us who remember all those lean years in Eugene will accept this new “elite” status happily … and with pride that the gridiron glory brings to the state of my birth.

media news

Trump can declare a form of victory

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Win or lose when they count the presidential election ballots on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump can declare an important victory in one of the side battles waged in this campaign.

I believe the Republican nominee has managed to bully major newspapers into forgoing a presidential endorsement in this most consequential election.

The Washington Post will be quiet on who it prefers to see elected. So will the New York Times. So will Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain. Major metropolitan daily news across the land have made the same decision.

Why is that? I believe that the GOP nominee’s insistence that the media are the “enemy of the people ” has managed to sink in. Publishers and senior editors have sought to explain themselves. No explanation is necessary.

They have been cowed into fearing how readers might react were they to recommend the election of Democrats Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. This election, though, cries out for some media leadership, particularly when we have a major-party presidential nominee who is so demonstrably unfit to serve in the office he seeks.

I take no joy in recognizing what I believe is a tactical victory for Trump. I’ll just have to swallow hard.

national news

Who’s up? Who’s down? Who can tell?

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Those damn political polls continue to confound me, as they tell conflicting stories all at the same time.

Vice President Kamala Harris is (a) on the verge of a blowout victory next week, (b) is locked in a dead heat with Donald Trump, or (c) might be facing a landslide loss to the former TV reality host turned POTUS.

I have quit trying to insert my own view into what I believe will happen. I am left with only offering what I hope will happen on Election Day.

My hope is that Harris is harvesting most of what is left of the undecided cache of voters who despite knowing all we need to know about the boorishness of Donald Trump remains on the fence.

He recently held that rally in Madison Square Garden that proved to be a hotbed of hate; he said former Congresswoman Liz Cheney should be executed by firing squad for opposing his election as president; he continues to defame Harris’s intelligence and the smarts of the senior military officers who have declared Trump to be a fascist.

I am going to go with what my heart wants to believe, that Harris is on the cusp of making history as the nation’s first female/first woman of color to be elected president of the United States.

I won’t venture into the guessing game of predicting the margin. Trump’s character has been revealed for all the world to see. My hope is that the world detests what it sees.

Uncategorized

Heading down the stretch

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The rhetoric I am hearing these days tells me that the 2024 presidential election just might end in the manner I and millions of other Americans hope will occur.

There’s chatter about polling errors that could be revealed that place Vice President Kamala Harris in the driver’s seat en route to the Oval Office. Puerto Ricans are expressing rage over the comments about the island being populated by “garbage.” Donald Trump then clambered aboard a trash truck to, um, demonstrate something; it reminded me and others of the1988 campaign moment when Michael Dukakis boarded the tank and produced the Mother of Fatal Photo Ops.

Trump is flailing. Harris is sailing.

Will this be a runaway? Probably not. Pollsters are continuing to prepare us for a photo finish. I am continuing to have my doubts that the race will be as close as the pundits are telling us. I won’t predict a runaway, given my terrible record as a political predictor.

However, it is beginning to a bit better for the good guys.