Chris Andreae hosts a special program all about the West Coast Convergence for Climate Action, 8 days of Low Impact Living and High Impact Action with skill shares, sustainability demonstrations, direct action, community organizing, and entertainment.

Host Chris Andreae hosts a diverse panel of folks involved in Oregon's Liquified Natural Gas Pipelines and terminals on the effects LNG will have on our way of life.

Get This:  Mission Accomplished!  Indeed…The ILWU shut down the West Coast ports yesterday. 

Chris Andreae

05/02/08

1. The Longshoremen and Warehouse workers union did it:  They shut down the shipping on the Left Coast.  It might have hurt Middle America more, if Middle America had any money to buy the stuff on the ships – or any gas to drive to the Grande Mal…
2. Metasta-Size Me:  Now it’s Barack Obama’s turn to bring us the candy and flowers.  He’s going to do all the things that Hillary is only more and faster.  Okay, the LNG siting would be nice.  But “timber payments”?  C’mon…the timber is all gone, the money is almost gone…Isn’t it time rural Oregon figured out some other way to survive?  And as far as the salmon are concerned, a cancerous population burst has turned habitat over to agribusiness and power generation.  We’ve metastasized and we are killing our planetary host.  (Okay, ‘hostess’;  Be that way…)
3. Week In The Knees:  Ron Wyden is set sell off public – I said public land  (As in yours and mine) in  Grant and Harney Counties and the entire West Coast salmon fishery is a disaster – no fish, y’know.  It’s all interconnected.  The seminal Chaostatician, Rupert Sheldrake told us:  “Sensitive dependence on initial conditions.”  But did we listen?    (And if you think tourism is going to save us from ourselves, think again…Nobody is going to pay to look at Dead Zones, dead fish, dead sea lions and stumps – not even with a beer in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other…)
4. Smoke Em While You Got Em:  The Oregon Supreme Court ruled unanimously that smokers must show actual harm to make a negligence claim against cigarette manufacturers.  (Let’s try this out on automobile manufacturers:  People are killed every day from the horrendous pollution and maimings caused by cars.   Follow Me!  Let’s sue the bastards till their eyes bleed…)
5. Salem – and virtually every city around the world – welcomed – or not, as the case may be – throngs of people yesterday demonstrating on behalf of immigrant rights.
6. The Wild, Wild Wet:  If you’ve got the right paperwork – and the right attitude, I might add – you can carry a loaded, concealed gun while visiting beautiful Crater Lake.  That way the lake won’t be the only crater around:  You could, for example put another one in the tentfull of hippies in the campsite next door for playing Sugar Magnolia constantly all night.  Or perhaps offer up a simple wager, “Call it, Friend-o.”
7. Wal-Merc:  Yes, Blackwater Worldwide, formerly Blackwater USA, formerly Blackwater,  the world’s biggest supplier of deadly mercenaries trained in all sort of “unconventional”  (And how!) warfare techniques is looking to establish a school in Northern Idaho.  For graduation, they can attack campers at Crater Lake…
8. Regularity!  North Dakota and Washington are going to work with the EPA to regulate pesticides.  Okay, this could go either way, more or less.  Let’s though try to regulate our own pesticides at least until this vile administration has been sent packing.
9. Oregon and Missouri have come up with a novel idea:  Let’s make it possible for released prisoners to reenter the Free World by sending them to all sorts of classes and support groups.  I’ve got a novel idea:  Why don’t we make it illegal to deny employment, housing, public assistance and medical care to released prisoners.  They’ve changed;  Isn’t it time society did?
10. General Motors lost $3.3 billion in the first quarter, and the game isn’t over yet.  There’s still billions more to be lost out there.  (Looking for $3.3 billion dollars?  Forget looking under the sofa cushions;  you’d know it was there because your sofa would be in a low earth orbit.  Try going through the GM Board of Director’s financial statements after the annual bonuses come out…)
11. Karl Rove is getting subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee.  Ha, Ha…Just kidding.  What appears to be a subpoena is actually another coat of Teflon…
12. Did Anybody Call A ‘Plumber’?   In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced no less than ten – and counting – “suspicious”  incidents.  Breakins?  Check.  Arson?  And check.  (I’m guessing when they track down the Bush appointee responsible for the above, there with be no charges of “terrorism.”  Too bad they can’t be charged with “patriotism.”
13. Missionary Position:  It’s the fifth birthday of “Mission Accomplished” and we’re still fucked.
14. Iraq’s PM, Nouri al-Maliki (Bollocky Maliki, to his friends of which there are fewer by the hour…) is spending a restful weekend in Tehran with Ahmadinejad discussing how to tell the Iranian people that Israel has decided to “wipe the Persian people from the face of the earth.”
15. That aircraft carrier of ours?  The one heading for the Persian Gulf?  It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that Stinger missile.  We are being asked to believe that it is just in the Gulf as a sort of demented display of Feng Shui designed to scare the Iranians…
16. Condoleeza Rice scolded Arab states for not “doing enough for the Palestinians.”  Indeed.  How about us not doing so much for the Israelis.  That would help.
17. And be careful not to ever, ever get detained by the Israelis if you happen to be Palestinian.  Torture, y’know…
18. Lake Baikal, former home of 20 percent of the earth’s freshwater, is drying up.  (Don’t you worry:  There’ll be plenty more after we get finished with Greenland…)
19. Fiji deported the Murdoch paper’s publisher.  Where can we get some of that Fiji back here in FOX-besotted America?
20. And – Oiks! - in Britain, the Labour Party came in dead last in recent local elections.

Get This: Vote.  What makes you so important that not voting is going to “send a message”?

04/29/08

Chris Andreae

1. Today is the deadline for getting your vote on.  If you have any changes in party allegiance to make, if you have not registered, this is it.  C’mon…You know you want to.  No,  Cynthia McKinney is not the front runner the last time I checked.  But if you let them steal it again, this is the last chance we’ve got before the final slide into fascist mayhem – and then it won’t matter how much you love the ‘third party candidate’ it will be All One Party, and that’s no party at all.
2. Heavy-Hitters & Highest Bidders:  Portland’s got candidates galore running in all directions.  This is going to be fun!  Who doesn’t love a good sack race?  Joe Walsh vs. the mighty Earl Blumenaur?  The only mystery here is why a few heavy-hitters aren’t demanding impeachment.  (No mystery at all when you remember that “heavy-hitters” didn’t get that way without selling their souls.  And these days, it’s a buyers’ market.  ‘Follow the Money’ lead to one impeachment.  What’s stopping us now?)
3. Ghost Town:  Rural Oregon is a strange state of mind:  Elected officials are quitting in droves.  Seems they don’t want anyone following their money.   The problem is they don’t want to file Statements of Economic Interest disclosures as mandated by the State’s conflict-of-interest laws.  (So in case you were planning on following that particular money, you can’t.  But I can tell you where it is going in two words:  ‘Destination resorts’.
4. And the wheels on the law go…Oregon is facing off with the ACLU over a ridiculous law that “restricts the sale of sexually explicit material to children.”  Sounds reasonable.  But wait!  Are we all such children that we need Bible-thumpers conflating sin and crime in the name of grinding minds into ever-narrowing pointy heads (Pointy heads fit better in those hoods, y’know…)  The law is yet another way to legalize idiocy.  We shave laws created to prevent priests from bonking the choir boys.  We have laws prohibiting old Uncle Billy-Bob from bonking his niece.  And we have laws against bonking anyone if money changes hands.  So now we have a new law to stop kids reading Judy Blume books or studying the directions for inserting a tampax.
5. Garbage In/Garbage Out:  The Feds are discovering all over again that if you make waste, you have to put it somewhere.  Hanford made a lot of seriously deadly waste that’s not going anywhere for a very long time.  Nevada is as good ass next door when the stuff gets loose…And even the Feds know that eventually it will…
6. For my next trick, I’ll need a volunteer.:  An Egyptian-owned tanker piped waste oil into Oregon-owned coastal zone, got whacked $7.25 million dollars…And yet – mirabile dictum – the environmental disaster is still there!  The money did not make the poison vanish.  Want to see The National Navigation Company saw a lady in half?  Didn’t think so…
7. On A Clear Day You Can See Gitmo:  This summer, Washington boaters are being asked to spot terrorists on the waters between Canada and the US.   (Picture Khalid al-Masri being accosted by a sunburned, overweight teenager wearing a ‘beer hat’ and riding a Skidoo…I feel much safer now…)
8. First forest fire of the season!  At least in the Pacific Northwest.  This one’s in Idaho.  (Can you still call it a “forest fire” if half of the Los Angeles basin is burning?  If so, those SoCal bastards beat us to the punch once again.)  
9. Praise The Lord And Pass The Ritalin:  See, there’s this family in Forest Grove, kid is out of control, they ask the school to do the parenting that the parents opted out of.  So the parents pack Sonny Boy off to a private school in Prineville and want their local school district to foot the bill.  The story is that the scion of this magnificent family unit has ADHD.  That’s like saying young gazelles are too ‘jumpy.’  Who doesn’t have it these days…(Hello young lovers wherever you are:  Don’t squirt one out unless you are prepared to undertake some serious parenting.  Forest Grove isn’t going to raise your child, and if the courts have anything to say about it, neither is Prineville…)
10. Could be Worse Dept:  In Florida, a seven year-old child stole his granny’s SUV and went on (I wish I could truthfully say “drunken”) a savage rampage.  Police said the behavior was “out of character for a seven year-old.”  (Send that boy to Prineville:  They’ll handle it…)
11. House Judiciary committee Chairman, John Conyers is going to subpoena John ‘TortureMemo’ Yoo and David ‘Call Me Daddy’ Addington (Cheney’s Chief of Staff) unless some serious quid pro quo happens…
12. The Supreme Court approved Indiana’s voter ID law – and not a Neocon moment too soon.  The primary is May 6^th.
13. Why they call it a military “campaign”:   Soldiers deployed to far-flung places are allowed to vote – it’s just that their votes don’t get counted.  Oh, there are a number of official reasons for this.  But it boils down to the fact that the people who brought you the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections don’t want to know what the troops think about America’s Long War.
14. Department of Not Surprising:  Now that the military is accepting recruits who are high school dropouts with drug busts, criminal records, the courts are beginning to cope with huge numbers of violent and/or suicidal veterans.  So what do we do about this?  Tighter requirements for soldiering?  Shorter deployment?  Better après-war training?  No war in the first place?  No, no, no and no.  Instead, we are going to have special courts for people with PTSD (Which, in my opinion, would include anyone who has ever had dealings with the criminal justice system)  where they can get help.  Couple questions:  Shouldn’t everyone have access to these kinder, gentler courts?  I mean who among us – including seven year-old children in Florida – is not a heartbeat away from running amok?  And secondly; what the hell did we expect, sending impoverished, ignorant  teenagers into a totally unfamiliar country where everyone hates them, give them speed and steroids, and guns, tell them to shoot anything that moves.  I mean, how’s that going to look on a resume?  “Homicidal dufus with eighth grade education seeks gainful employment”?  Or perhaps a simple sign held aloft while standing next to the on-ramp:  ‘Will Kill For Food.  God Bless’…
15. Human Rights Watch says it has been watching something far from right – and not very human either - going on in American prisons in Iraq.  Turns out US soldiers are abusing Iraqi prisoners.
16. The White House has drawn the attention of the Government accountability Office regarding it’s willful, deliberate undermining of the EPA.
17. Tornados blasted Virginia.  No surprise there either:  It is well understood, though not so well known that air pollution causes violently weird weather.
18. Australia is spending $13 billion dollars to secure its water supply – just as soon as it finds one.
19. The former chief prosecutor for the Gitmo war crimes tribunals is going to appear as a defense witness.  (Air Force Colonel Moe Davis must indeed have “witnessed” something untoward going on down there in Cuba. 
20. Tarik Aziz and “Chemical” Ali go on trial today.  I think we all know where that’s going.  The only question is Will either man’s head be accidentally snapped off during the Grande Finale?