Good Morning I am Barbara Wright, from Pendleton, Oregon. I am a Democrat in a Red district and I am a somewhat progressive, somewhat moderate and rarely conservative Democrat who is running for the house from my district with the hopes of uniting the state. I am sick and tired of Oregon being divided by the cascade mountains and Eastern Oregon being the part that gets the shaft. lesser wages, poorer roads and less economic development because we don't have the housing available to house prospective workers. I also do research for vets and I am acutely aware that our government isn't telling the t***h during the C***D p******c.

There have been lots of media stories about the racial profiles of v***s victims & lots of "r****t" comments! All of the usual rants about r****m have been blamed, especially from the left!

A fact that has had VERY LITTLE mention is Sickle Cell Disease which does strike many more b****s than other races, this disease is highly hereditary, not caused by poverty, living conditions, income or other factors which are often given as causes of "r****m".

Sickle Cell is a blood disease which k**ls off the red-blood cells in a body at a more rapid rate than normal because the blood cells cannot get enough oxygen to other parts of the body as fast as they should, not the full story, but how it relates to C****-**. C***d k**ls when oxygen fails to reach vital organs. C****-** causes prolonged & progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells.

Victims of Sickle Cell already have a c*********d blood problem, therefore the higher rate of infection & death is probable! You will probably not hear this explanation from the MSM!

OPP members are engaged in an ongoing political/ideological ping pong game, no one wins, no one loses, and no one is keeping score.

The bulk of interactions here are just people busting each other's chops. 99% of the activity on the Main page is either an attack or a defense and no one on either side of the issues is yielding an inch. Lord knows I have roundly engaged in this crap myself.

Nothing happening here on OPP is going have any effect on the future of our nation. At the most there are 20 or 30 active members, and regardless of the power or weakness of anyone's argument, I have yet to see a change of mind on either side.

We are on a threshold unprecedented in American history. Even the American Civil War or WW2 can match the potentially devastating consequences to our nation's security and economic prosperity if we cannot get back to the principles of America's founding.

And then there are the trolls. Seems we have an abundance of them, most of whom are raging against that possibility, and I have no qualms about busting their chops. I didn't swear the oath to defend our constitution and our way of life and spend much of my life doing so to allow i***ts to go unanswered.

Really, the only thing keeping me here is occasionally someone posts an opinion or a source that is informative, enlightening, entertaining, or supports my world view and provides food for thought.

I surely understand the reasoning behind Mr Mister's decision to quit.