Things Portland is currently ravaged by: Pizza Temperate, sunny weather Coffee Middling soccer Sunsets Farmer’s markets Apples Hiking trails Thai food Fresh hops Harvest-ready vineyards Things Portland is not ravaged by: War Thank you for your attention to this matter.

We need to be honest about what this is. It’s a transparent attempt to use the military to incite protests that the administration will then use state violence against. Portland is not “war ravaged” or anything remotely close to it. And those who repeat this lie without correcting it are complicit.

Injuries happen and they’re most often just bad luck. But this swarm of them has been so extreme that I think the Thorns need to at least consider if there’s some causal factor within their control there. #BAONPDX

It’s pretty sunmarizable in a tweet. The Timbers have a coach who’s never finished higher than sixth. They’ve decided not to swim in the deep end of the transfer market. And their development pipeline is weak. Their PPG is almost identical to 2024 because the output matches the input. #RCTID

Twice this year the Timbers have spent $5-6M on an attacking midfield DP only to be frustrated that they don’t seem to be consistent game-changers. The output is matching the input. The hope is certainly that they’ll punch above their weight, but that often takes time—if it happens at all. #RCTID

The thing about the Oregon-Oregon State rivalry entering a less consistent period now is that there’s nothing inherent to the game or college athletics that caused this. People—primarily media executives—decided that their interests were more important than maintaining this.

What’s obvious about this situation is that they’re not going after Kimmel because he said anything egregiously bad. They’re going after him precisely because he didn’t say anything egregiously bad so as to send a message to everybody in media and entertainment that they can get you, too.

I’m beginning to wonder if some of the people who’ve been described to me as “free speech advocates” over the last several years might not be quite the First Amendment warriors they were portrayed as.

Let me see if I have the respective partisan speech standards for pundits right: Insufficiently sensitive criticism of Charlie Kirk’s views gets a liberal pundit fired. But breezily proposing the mass killing of mentally ill homeless people by a conservative pundit warrants a Sunday show apology?

These horrific political assassination attempts appear far less correlated with ideological extremism than they are with hyper-online nihilism. Sadly, I worry this story won’t be explored at least among broad-distribution outlets because its far less salient to the political horserace.

Adventures in micromanaging speech in stadiums. St. Louis CITY is now forcing the redaction of a banner *painted by children in a cancer treatment center* because promoting childhood cancer research is not “pertinent” to the game. Yikes.

Let’s try it this way: If you were stopped by an officer today—right now in this moment—and asked for documentation to prove your citizenship or lawful immigration status, what would you provide to make the encounter “brief”? Hint: In many instances, your state-issued ID won’t do it.

Clearly USMNT should keep playing in the same 10 stadiums for exorbitant prices. This is going great.

Portland, for the record, is pretty great and everybody who insists on lying about how it’s been “destroyed” or like living “in hell” can themselves go to actual hell.

Their specific brand of conservatism hasn’t won an election in 21 years and now has no home in any major party, so of course Bret Stephens and Ross Douthat can’t stop writing about the downfall of liberalism after Democrats lost one election.

When you try to regulate speech in places like stadiums because it’s “political,” you put yourself in a never ending series of untenable line-drawing (and redrawing) positions. MLS should just draw the line at vulgar and bigoted speech and get out of the game of deciding what speech is “political.”

Tough day for the idiom about a prosecutor being able to indict a ham sandwich.

One of the through lines of the modern Republican Party is that it doesn’t want to deal with actual problems. So over and over it takes absurd positions to justify an easy way out. War in Ukraine? Cut a deal with Putin. COVID? The cure is worse that the disease. Climate change? Fake news.

We’ve reached the first perilous point of the season for the Timbers. They’re only two points above falling into the play-in picture with a difficult slate of games ahead. Onboarding the new signings is going to be important, but that’s usually a bit of a process and the danger is immediate. #RCTID

He scored two, made a mistake on one, and was overall the Timbers’ best player by some distance. Young players make mistakes. I’ll take a highly influential and involved performance with a mistake over an anonymous one (of which he’s had several) without one 1000 times over. #RCTID

Tremendous performance from Kelsy tonight. Figuring out his holdup game is what will unlock his ceiling, and we saw it tonight. A more technical and athletic Fanendo Adi is what he can be. Work to do to get there, but closer tonight than he’s been. #RCTID

The gap between Evander and Da Costa so far in this game is…woof. #RCTID

Feels like a two true outcome game for Evander. He’s scoring or he’s getting sent off. #RCTID

But honestly the turn and ball out to the wing was even better than the goal. #BAONPDX

Really interesting window for the Timbers. They’ve emphasized bringing in former MLSers—evincing a desire to focus on 2025. I’m intrigued by Rojas and Carballo—particularly as a glorified trialist. Velde is an interesting, if high-risk, scouting play. And they came to the right outcome with Santi.

Well I think we know how Trump got his inflated D.C. crime figures. Apparently he counted all the times this guy, seemingly the world’s tiniest weenie, illegally drove without a seatbelt.

To point out the blindly obvious: This is why D.C. needs to be a state. The residents of D.C. are American citizens but have been deprived of the basic political right to self-governance that the citizens of states enjoy.

Th issue isn’t that they’ve made Portland a bad place to play. The issue is that their go-to answer when an opportunity elsewhere arises for a player is “no.” And when that’s the too often case, it incentivizes players to take more extreme steps like this. #RCTID

I mean… The more this happens the harder it gets just to blame one bad apple. #RCTID

Selling Santi wouldn’t be the craziest thing for the Timbers to do. It’s clear from recent DP signings that the transfer budget isn’t unlimited. So they could use the money. It’s not really a “win now” year. And Santi’s going to have a larger cap hit in 2026 without a clear starting spot. #RCTID

This is going to have to be a scouting play for Grabavoy and company. By resume, this is a pretty mid DP signing in 2025 MLS. So the bet here will be that the fit that they see in Portland can bring out something more. #RCTID

Firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a round of weak economic data is the most cartoonish, two-bit dictator move there is.

This is the soccer equivalent of a Golden Sombrero for Atletico San Luis, right? #RCTID

USSF apparently can seek waivers to play in Kansas City, but not Portland? If it’s somebody else’s fault that USSF has boycotted Portland and its fans, they should tell us that. Alas, we’ve received the silent treatment.

Most of USWNT’s players and many of USMNT’s players over the years regularly played on Providence Park’s turf without incident. Maybe that’s the explanation for USSF’s silent boycott of Portland. But if so, it’s a terrible one.

Coming up on 12 years since either senior national team played in Portland with no explanation from anybody at USSF.

Maybe the best performance of the season from the Timbers last night. Still lacking some punch in the attack with Antony out, but they controlled things enough that they were never really under it. Very encouraging if they can show that’s more than a blip. #RCTID

The fact that this was a “very difficult decision” tells you all you need to know about this rule. If the league is torn about enforcing a clear rule against its most prominent players, then the rule is dumb and should be abandoned for everybody.

Those surprised by MAGA’s different reactions to Trump balking at disclosing Epstein materials and WSJ reporting Trump’s creepy letter to Epstein misunderstand conspiracies. Conspiracy theories aren’t open-minded searches for the objective truth. They’re quests to confirm presupposed theories.

You may think the Timbers wound up last place in this survey, but the Timbers’ data folks are here to tell you they finished *tied* for last place. #RCTID

Yeesh, even Neville’s grousing about the uncalled penalty is uninspired. Yes, it should’ve been called. But also it would’ve been an unearned bit of luck from an unforced error by Caliskan. So it’s not like that deprived the Timbers of a result they otherwise earned. #RCTID

Tons of injuries right now are undeniably a major factor. But that’s the kind of situation in which coaches earn their contracts. And the last 135 minutes from the Timbers have been downright dire. Phil Neville’s reputation as a calm seas skipper remains intact. #RCTID

I’m growing firmer in my belief that the MLS West basically shakes out as follows: Good Teams: San Diego, LAFC, Vancouver, Minnesota, Seattle Okay Teams: Portland Bad Teams: Everybody else.

It’s been obvious for some time that certain clubs have workarounds for roster rules that, as a practical matter, aren’t available to the league’s middle class. The middle class owners have plenty of power to change this, but haven’t. At this point the story is that they’ve handcuffed themselves.

Folks pointing out how Republicans’ proposed cuts to public broadcasting will mostly undermine outlets in deep-red rural areas as tho it’s a bug of the Rs’ bill are missing the point. That’s exactly what they’re trying to do. They want to lock *their voters* in an partisan information environment.

This whole thing has been bizarre. Reviving a misnomer nickname that has no lasting connection to the city and then unveiling it officially in predawn hours on a random Tuesday on a TV show that very few in this time zone watch. What am I—admittedly not a marketing professional—missing here?

Is USSF even remotely prepared for how politically hyper-charged next year’s World Cup is going to be?

I understand why Neville is dropping into the 3-back (arguably better described as a 5-back) given the absences on the wing. But man, they’ve been poor basically every time they’ve played in it. The good news is that 7-11 in the West is a steaming pile. But 6th may be the Timbers’ ceiling. #RCTID

Love seeing DDC taking that initiative. But my goodness that’s a scandalous defensive sequence from St. Louis. How Da Costa finds himself in that much space in that area of the field is beyond me. #RCTID

This isn’t a comment on whether Ridgewell deserves this honor—he clearly does—but I’m dying at including his status as a 2014 All-Star in his infographic. #RCTID