10/26/07 Get This

Chris Andreae

1. Portland’s ‘Strong’ Mayor Tom Potter walked out of a City Council meeting last night when he was over-ruled on a decision regarding the proposed renaming of Interstate Avenue after civil rights leader, Cesar Chavez.  (‘Interstate’ – such an interesting name to get choked-up over.  Until this recent brouhaha, most people’s first thought upon hearing the word, ‘Interstate’ is ‘trafficking.’ 
2. Turning Over a New Leif:  The Siuslaw Middle School ‘Braves’ shall henceforth be known as the Siuslaw Middle School ‘Vikings.’  Scandinavians will be enraged, but it’s the price you pay for encouraging testosterone-fueled aggression (And that’s just the parents…) to penetrate the curriculum.
3. But enough about Siuslaw Middle School…. Let’s talk about Jake  ‘Greenscare’ Fergusson.  Jake, as many readers know, is the junkie, arsonist, government informant, and – as of yesterday, free man.  Yes, after 16 assorted acts of arson, fire-bombings and serious drug abuse, Judge Ann Aiken in federal court in Eugene charged Ferguson with just one count of arson.  He is expected to get probation, no jail time, no prison and probably something like a $150 thousand dollar ‘thank you note’ from Uncle Sam.  The environmental activists will be serving sentences ranging from three to 13 years in federal penitentiary. 
4. You think that’s the story?  Wrong.  The real story is the absolute, complete, total media blackout surrounding the information.  (I found it on Indymedia the other day.)
5. There was an anti-NAFTA rally at the Federal Building yesterday. 
6. Family Values:  Doctors at Seaside Urgent Care are swamped with cases of this new bacterial staph infection that is stone-cold resistant to antibiotics.  Just one of the Bush administration’s celebrated “health benefits” bestowed on society by global warming, presumably.  It started out in hospitals and nursing homes but now it’s in schools and moving into family-sized communities.   Something not generally high on the panic button list, but it’s moving up the medical charts  rapidly now..
7. Another situation that has managed to squeeze under the radar:  Residents of  Clatsop County have been without water for two weeks now.  The sheriff has asked Kulongoski to declare a state of emergency.  There is insufficient water flow for either drinking water or fire-fighting water.
8. Jane Doe:  A judge told the State of Oregon to give those people back their deer.  Story goes that this family in Molalla found a deer with a deformed leg beside the road, rescued it, spent thousands of dollars on vet bills to take care of the leg, only to have the State seize the deer as “evidence” in a “criminal investigation.”  The offspring of this doe was also seized and released into the wild somewhere along the way.  The doe, ‘Snowball’, made the front page of the Oregonian.   Epitaph:  They got their deer…And as long as prosecutors are unable to tie the case to “terrorism,”  ‘Snowball’ will remain a free deer…
9. It’s an old California custom:  Thousands of inmates from California’s jails are on the front lines in the Southern California fighting fires, repaying their debt to society.  Murderers, rapists, child molestors and convicted gang members need not apply – And it goes without saying, Don’t even ask, if you are an arsonist…(Jake Ferguson, you dog you, had you been sentenced to any jail time at all, you could have got your fiery little weirdo rocks off fighting blazes like the ones you set.)  In exchange, they expect to get early parole.
10. Six bodies burned in the fires have turned up.  Four of them appeared to be immigrants, literally caught in the crossfire.
11. Massive cargo planes and helicopters remained safely on the ground – thanks to government incompetence and bureaucracy – while half of San Diego burned.   A side note:  FEMA threw a press conference but forgot to allow the media enough time to get there.  So what the Agency did was have its own employees pretend to be reporters and ask the authorities questions about its response to the fires.   (An opening there, Jake:  You like talking to government authorities…)
12. British Petroleum got slapped with fines for fraud and desecration of the environment.
13. America’s B-2 stealth bombers are getting tricked-out with ‘bunker buster’ bombs – just in case, Right?
14. The “Terrorist Watch List” is now up to 755 thousand names.  So call the Feds today and make sure you’re on it:  The more names, the bigger a mess it’s going to be and the less useful to the NSA.
15. Dana Perino wants you to know that she doesn’t know much about climate change or health for that matter, but she hates it when the White House pulls her string and makes her say something that it just balls-out stupid.  Example?  Well, before climate change,  people got cold in winter sometimes, so cold that they died.  I can hear George Bush ‘splainin’ that dying of cold in a tenement building in New York City because you can’t afford to pay for the heat isn’t really as bad as it sounds because in the final stages of hypothermia, victims experience a nice warm, relaxed sensation…
16. The commander of the nuclear sub-marine got sacked for failing to do any of the routine safety checks.  This is not just any old nuclear submarine:  This is the USS Hampton, as badass and state-of the–art  a killing  machine as the world has ever seen (Or not, as the case may be, when it’s under water…)
17. A Federal Grand Jury is investigating California Republican Representative John Doolittle’s ties to Jack Abramoff – and Boy, are they mad…
18. A fellow in Miami got sacked from his job too – and not because he recklessly endangered thousands of innocent lives and risked causing a potential environmental disaster that would make the Exxon-Valdez like a piss in the pool.  No this guy got the pink slip because he happened to mention that two years ago he had had a staph infection.  His boss panicked – see story # 6 above. – And refused to touch the note from the employee’s doctor clearing him of the deadly staph infection.  He was told to go home FAX it.  Granted, the bug is- to-date - somewhat ahead of AIDS in the Killing Department…
19. The US had imposed more sanctions on Iran, singling out the Quds Force and three of that nation’s biggest bank.  Russia and China have got business to do with Iran and are probably not going to go along with the harassment.   The rest of the world has been quietly backing away from the US.  It looks like Americas will end up set adrift in the leaking lifeboat, while the rest of the world steams off  into a brighter future than the one Bush’s operators had planned…
20. A couple French train companies got the contract to build a tram right through Palestinian land between East and West  Jerusalem.
21. And Olmert and Abbas are meeting today.  Abbas wants to talk final borders,  the status of Jerusalem and the fate of the Palestinian refugee.  Olmert just hopes to dodge corruption charges…
22. Meanwhile, Israel decided to kill time by shutting off the power to the Gaza Strip.