1109 am 'Get This' news

11/09/07 Get This
Chris Andreae
 

1. Double Jeopardy, Anyone?  A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Army from launching a second court-martial of 1st Lieutenant Ehren Watada.  In what has got to be the understatement of the week, US District Judge Ben Settle said that a second trial would violate Watada’s constitutional rights.  Trying him in the first place was a violation of the soldier’s constitutional rights, since what Watada did - refuse to fight an illegal war -  is perfectly legal under the constitution and as far as his remarks criticizing the administration, where Free Speech when it is most important?
2. Portland lawyers - and attorneys nationwide – are going to hit the streets today in support of Pakistan’s legal community.  The difference?  In Pakistan the lawyers are seriously lit up over ‘president general’ Pervez Musharraf’s crushing civil restrictions, amounting to martial law.  Here in the US, we too have a ‘president’ who considers himself ‘Commander in Chief’ and the last word on all things military.  And we also appear to have undeclared martial law.  Ours is based on Fear Management techniques and it produces the same results without the nasty blowback in the form of bad PR.
3. Portland is back on top of its Green Game.  Here’s the plan:  We’re going to charge builders hundreds of dollars – perhaps even thousands – for each new house that does not meet stringent energy efficiency standards.  Think about it:  This could slow tract house sprawl and kick McMansion erections right in the nuts, and of course go a long way toward cleaning up the air, the water and the earth. 
4. Multnomah County almost paid $44 million dollars for a building downtown.  This is exactly how homeowners got snookered into accidentally tanking the world’s major economies.
5. Swing Low:  Turns out that not all the students at Reed College are the intellectual titans they are portrayed as:  At least one Young Turk took time out from discussing Foucault and smoking weed to hang a few nooses from campus trees….Halloween hijinks, y’know.  
6. If you’re going to Seattle today then you probably are heading for the FCC hearing on media ownership.  The Media and Democracy Coalition will be out in full force, fighting on behalf of the millions of people who ‘don’t know that they don’t know, and if they did, they still wouldn’t care because they don’t want to know…’
7. One Man’s Poison is Another Man’s Poison:  Pete DeFazio wants to ban a little thing called Compound 1080 made by some chemistry hick who runs a factory in Alabama.  The stuff is incredibly deadly, there is no antidote and if it got loose in the water supply….A few fuckwits out West use it to kill coyotes, but it’s got to be at the top of every aspiring terrorist’s Wish List.  Amazing that we are living in The Dark Ages and the only thing that keeps us from flicking the light switch is Fear Itself….
8. Privatized Lives:  The Washington State Supreme Court ruled that Tim Eyman’s latest attack on the public sector, the execrable property tax limit initiative, is unconstitutional.
9. Democrats made a show of prancing around, fluffy anal feather on full display, attempting to draw attention to their Human Rights fertility.  But we knew all along that Mukasey would be a shoo-in.  Empire holds few surprises for those who dwell within….But the Outside World sometimes has a few surprises for the Empire on tap...
10.  Did the math:  House Democrats are under pressure to support the troops but not the war.  Translation:  troops  = votes.  war = no votes.  Still, popularity is always for sale… if you’ve got the money, the Dems got the spine…
11. The House managed to pass a Disaster Insurance Bill…Hmmmmm…Maybe Climate Change is real after all, y’think?
12. Uncle Fucker::  A former Marine Corps prosecutor was all set to testify before Congress yesterday that harsh interrogation techniques had tainted his case against an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist.  A last minute e-mail from the Pentagon told him not to.  Proving?  Proving that - given we know it is an established fact that harsh interrogation techniques almost never produce useable or even true information – there is only one reason that America’s leaders still condone it either overtly or covertly.  They must like the idea that the US is the scariest motherfucker on the Planet.
13. San Francisco is scrambling to contain the massive oil spill that stretches 40 miles up the coast from the Bay.  Authorities apparently downplayed the seriousness of the spill until it was so obvious they had no choice but to react.
14. California is suing the EPA.  Cali wants a decision on its Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards.
15. FEMA has barred its employees from entering FEMA trailers because of the danger of formaldehyde poisoning.  (They are still free to pretend to be reporters at fake press conferences, however…)
16. So there are all these trailers sitting around in the sun cooking up deadly chemicals…FEMA is going to provide them to Native Americans in Southern California who lost their homes on the Rez in the big fires.  (I wish I were making this stuff up…alas, I am not.)
17. Merck has to cough up nearly $5 billion dollars in settlement money over its Vioxx disaster.  (Why not just give pain sufferers opiates?  They have been used by billions of people all over the world for countless millennia;  We know exactly what the side effect are:  There are simple, not life-threatening ways to manage aside effects:  As long as opiates are clean and administered judiciously, they pose no hazard whatsoever…Still we’ve got to designate a demon drug of some kind, or people will keep getting sent up for smoking weed…
18. Bernie ‘Mr. Taser’ Kerick is going to surrender to authorities to be arraigned on criminal charges.  When Kerick was a New York cop, then mayor Rudy Giuliani praised Bernie’s contribution the 9/11 rescue and law enforcement efforts.  As a result, the man nearly wound up as head of Homeland Security.  (This could only happen in a nation where any child can grow up to be president…. and one of them actually did…)
19. The Los Angeles Police Department is going to make itself a little map so officers can easily locate Muslim neighborhoods.
20. In Pennsylvania, a judge had to order John Dunkle to take down the incitements to murder that festooned his web site.  By means of said web site, Dunkle cheerfully called upon his shit-for-brains fans to kill doctors at women’s health clinics.
21. Benazir Bhutto is under house arrested in Pakistan, a nation that has the balls to just tell people their civil rights have been curtailed – instead of pretending nothing has changed as long as everyone stays scared and keeps shopping…
22. In Burma, Aung San Suu Kye is set to talk to the leader of the junta.  (This is tantamount to Cynthia McKinney having a heart-to-heart with George Bush – something you’ll never see happen under the Cheney junta…)
23. An obscene number of people have been killed in violence in Sri Lanka.
24. The Ibero-American Summit on social equality in on in Santiago, Chile today and tomorrow.
25. Hugo Chavez is going to meet with FARC rebels  (This is tantamount to Cynthia McKinney and Aung San Suu Kye having a heart-to-heart with George Bush – something you’ll never see happen under the Cheney junta…)
26. In Yemen, angry tribesmen whose job applications had been rejected by an oil company attacked the facility.  (I say, Hire these guys!  Hire them today as guards…Not even the Yemeni military will be able to touch the place…)
27. Storms in the North Sea have caused the ocean around British and Dutch shores to alarming new highs.