10/16/07 Get This

Chris Andreae

1. Right about now, Portlanders are going to get a snoot-full of terror dust.  Today’s the day that every local, state and federal “security” agency descends on the City.  Given the general lack of awareness and curiosity on the part of the majority of the citizenry, it is not impossible that “fake” panic may turn real, in which case “mock” martial law may turn surreal.  (Though, I have to say it:  Martial law is so last millennium.  The Bush administration has achieved a level of civil control that martial law is intended to create without ever saying the words.  All that was necessary was to keep Americans – left and right – fat and happy.  Let the Left spout platitudes and epithets.  Let the Right shop and watch TV – amounts to the same Frighthouse effect…)  There’ll be “Fake and Balanced” media on hand to cover the event, so remember to smile:  You’re on The Fed Files.
2. The Big Freeze:  PacifiCorp figures now that we’re looking at a long Winter of Discontent, it’s time to squeeze customers for more money. 
3. Oregon pulled a solid ‘D’ in Children’s Welfare 101.  (Here’s how it works:  You cut taxes so states governments don’t have the federal funds to run the social programs that hold us together as a nation bound by mutual responsibility.   And let’s not even think about the word “entitlement”:  Universal human rights are not “entitlements.  Invading a sovereign foreign nation without consulting Congress, the American people or the United Nations, now that’s “entitlement”   But I digress…When these programs are cut, people point to the government as the incompetent culprit making it that much easier to turn the public’s affections to the rapacious private sector…Well,res ipsa loquitur, y’know…)
4. The Native American Youth and Family Center landed a $3.36 million dollar grant for “poverty reduction.”  (It’s about time someone noticed that one of the best ways to address poverty is giving people money…)
5. Del Monte Fresh got a slap on the wrist for safety violations.
6. Feel The Burn:  David Wu handed a lucrative military contract to a local tee-shirt company in exchange for campaign contributions.  The shirts melted in the Iraqi heat, burned the soldiers and Wu’s public image.  How much of this is true and how much is the creation of some GOP smear factory is anybody’s guess.
7. From ‘Old Growth’ to ‘Old Money’:  How the West is won comes down to less logging on public land and more public land in private hands.  It is either very good or very bad, depending on whose hands we’re talking about.  One way or another privatization has come to the wilderness.
8. Now we have gone and pissed off the Chinese – again – by welcoming the Dalai Lama to the US Congress.  What the Dalai Lama makes of Bush we will never know, but it’s doubtful that enlightenment will be part of the story.
9. The Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Richard Engel figures that the US is not safer as a result of Bush’s imperial wars of occupation.  (Sad, really.  The Turks had the Ottoman Empire,  and all we’ve got is the Laz-Z-Boy Empire…)
10.  Home-wrecker:  In New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers has handed off the job of destroying people’s homes to the broke-ass city.  In a paradoxical way, this might turn out to work in favor of the Big Easy’s poorer citizens:  Maybe there won’t be enough money to tear down their houses before they get them rebuilt…
11. Edwards Scissorhands: Presidential candidate, John ‘The Hair’ Edwards got the endorsement of ten Iowa State chapters of the SEIU even though the Union hasn’t granted him national endorsement (Holding out for an Al Gore candidacy?  We can only hope…)
12. North Texas is flooding.  This, despite all the Bible-thumping emanating from the Lone Star State.
13. The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by an Arizona prisoner who said his execution would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment – He was on death row for more than 30 years.  Still, the poor guy’s timing is way off:  The is a ‘post-constitutional’ regime we’re currently experiencing and “cruel and unusual” are words which might as well be our new national motto:  ‘America:  Cruel and Unusual since 1776.’
14. The US air Force’s number two weapons acquisitions officer was found dead at his home, “an apparent suicide.”  (I’m sure.  And I’m also sure there’s more to this story…)
15. The US is facing what could potentially be billions of dollars in trade sanctions for failing to scrap illegal subsidies paid to American cotton growers.  See, when the Project for a New American Century first came up with the notion of globalization enforced by free trade dogma, it forgot that it too might be bound by the same rules it cooked up for the rest of the world.  Turns out this particular American trade “entitlement” isn’t going to last…
16. The US serviceman who was in charge of Saddam Hussein is being court martialed for providing his prisoner with hair dye and Cuban cigars.  “Aiding the Enemy” is the charge and the guy is looking at more jail time than the all the guys who raped and murdered an Iraqi girl put together.  ‘Be all you can be and do whatever you want, as long as you don’t get caught…’
17. Republican Donald Fleischman, Chairman of the Republican Party in Brown (And how!) County, Wisconsin was caught fondling a sixteen year-old boy.
18. Now It’s Official:  Turkey got permission from parliament to sic its dogs of war on rebel Turkish  troops inside Iraq.  For the US commanders in Iraq, this has got to be the worst Homer Simpson moment of the whole war.
19. Beyond TerrorDome:  Seventeen people were arrested in New Zealand – among them the high-profile  Maori activist, Tame Iti.  More than 300 police were involved in the raids, which also targeted political and environmental agitators.
20. Britain’s Gordon Brown has got the carrot.  The rest of the world has got the stick.  Burma has got the shaft.
21. The Indian stock market is the latest place for 'unvestors' running scared to stash their cash.
22. Cuba and Venezuela are getting serious.  They are building LNG terminals and embarking on all manner of mineral and energy explorations projects.  (I guess even heroes have a few warts…)
23. In China, the Three Gorges Dam is metastasizing into the World’s biggest environmental Disaster.  (And just in time for the Olympics!)
24. Mexico City is coping with a serious cannibal problem.