01.23.08 am 'Get This' news

 Get This:  And The Wall Came Down:  Between Egypt and Gaza today there flows a river of celebrant Palestinians, buying food, fuel and catching up with friends and relatives. Chris Andreae 01/23/08  

1. Here in Oregon, another sort of species extinction is on line to be halted.  A lawsuit will be filed today asking a judge to halt a cougar study that works like this:  First we kill the cougars.  Technically, this is referred to as “thinning”.  (I can think of another dangerous, killer species that could stand a little “thinning.”)
2. Here’s a Crazy-Good Idea:  Marion County officials are going to reduce the number of mentally ill people who typically get thrown in jail simply for being themselves, by providing funding for better mental healthcare.
3. Oregon’s latest task force is charged with figuring out how to “stimulate” the State’s stagnant economy (A vibrator?  A sharp stick?  A bucket of ice water?).  Sad but true, in other nations where the education systems are not devoted solely to creating consumers, where ideas are encouraged, analytical thinking rewarded and problem solving skills celebrated, the economies are growing – Well, they would be, if American consumers didn’t continue to feel entitled to that which they cannot afford simply because Americans are “exceptional.” people.   Where was I?  Right!  Eliminating the capital gains tax won’t help Mom and Pop.
4. Fishing For Permits:  The National Marine Fisheries Service wants the US army Corps of Engineers to at least temporarily deny a permit to dredge the Columbia River on behalf of the Liquefied Natural Gas industry.  In this case, Northern Star Natural Gas.  (And by the way, if you want real economic crisis, wait till one of these LNG terminals blows up and the State gets stuck with the bill.  Wait till the fishing and tourism industries go belly-up.  Wait till. …hell freezes over.
5. The House Transportation Committee (When it morphs into the ‘Horse Transportation Committee’ they’ll be able to keep the same acronym.)  voted to introduce a bill that would require people to show they are legally in the US before obtaining or renewing an Oregon driver’s license.  (And while we’re at it, let’s make the actual ability to drive mandatory along with anger management classes.)
6. One thing about an imploding economy that is true virtually everywhere and at any time in history, it provokes weird strains of nationalist bigotry and jingoism.  Case in point:  The renewed effort to blame undocumented workers for our crumbling schools and hospitals.
7. Responding to the economic emergency (This really isn’t a sudden surprising turn of events:  Even a kid running a lemonade stand knows if he/she borrows ten bucks from Mum’s purse and spends it on sling shots with which to attack the kid across the street, something is going to go bad back at the juice bar…) Governors of various political persuasions got together beneath a freeway overpass in LA (Don’t stand around under there too long, boys…) to put together a coalition to lobby for federal investment in America’s decaying  infrastructure.  Funny isn’t it that we can afford to shore-up decaying despots worldwide but we can’t seem to keep out bridges from falling into our polluted rivers…)
8. In New Orleans in the – where else? – the 9th Ward, a church was destroyed.  Not just any church…This was the Holy Ground Baptist Church rebuild after the hurricane with the express mission to help those who needed a hand up.
9. People who bought blood diamonds are going to get their money back from the mine giant De Beers after making their way across fields far and dangerous, over mountain precipices, after crawling through haunted ice caves inhabited by minions of Dark Forces, after fending off Wind Cretins That Would Destroy…Wait…No….That Tolkien.  De Beers customers just have to fill out a form and send it in.
10. Federal regulators recommended that SpeechNow.org cannot accept unlimited contributions from donors if it wants to advocate for or against candidates for federal office.  Irony:  SpeechNow was formed by critics of government restrictions on political advocacy (Otherwise known as “money”.)
11. A Finger In Every Eye:  Non-US residents traveling internationally and having the misfortune to be booked through Logan Intl. out of Boston are going to have their fingers strip-searched.
12. Longline fisherman are using new long and scary lines to deter seabirds from tangling and dying at the staggering rates they have done in the past.
13. The state agency charged with protecting California’s coast (Protecting it?  From what exactly?  Aliens?  Paris Hilton?  Dolphins?)  argued against President Bush’s exemption of the Navy from environmental laws that would restrict the use of high-octane sonar off the coast.  As any whale knows, the stuff can kill ya.  So, America, sleep well tonight knowing  that thousands of whales are going to die in the name of protecting you from marauding fleets of al-Qaeda submarines.
14. And the Hits Just Keep On Coming:  A new study has found that Bush and his top cronies lied 935 times to the gullible American public since 9/11.  Fortunately for democracy, the American public was watching TMZ and not paying attention to administrative mendacity.  (Whewph…we dodged that one…)
15. Voters regardless of political affiliation oppose Bush’s proposals – or at any rate find such proposals hilariously inept.  Imagine the human suffering if these clowns were halfway competent.  But think again, paranoids:  Maybe they are  highly skilled social engineers and all this mess is 100% intentional right from the get-go known as PNAC…Aaaarrrrrggghhhh!  First they loot the US treasury and then they run…
16. New armored trucks in Iraq make getting killed by a roadside bomb much safer.
17. Security Council leaders draft yet another resolution sanctioning Iran.  (While Nato is putting the finishing touches on its nuclear strike dba, Israel.
18. The World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland had harsh words for the US Federal Reserve’s panic-stricken .75 interest rate cut.  “It makes the rest of the world think you are panic-stricken.” is what money’s globalized mind had to say.  Many of the people meeting in Davos are themselves panic-stricken as it slowly dawns on them that maybe America really is as stupid as it appears to be…
19. Rich countries did $1.8 trillion dollars damage to poor countries.  (But now that the rich countries are well on the way to becoming poor ones, maybe we they can get their money back.
20. Mr. Olmert!  Tear Down This Wall!  (Never mind….We’ll do it ourselves…)  At the Rafah Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt “gunmen blew up the Israeli-built (That of course means US taxpayer-built) wall with bombs.  This of course is the wall that prevents Palestinians from traveling between the two countries to buy food, fuel, construction and medical supplies.  (But wait a minute…wouldn’t that make them “bombmen” not “gunmen”?)
21. Rogue Nations:  Israel and the US are the only countries on the planet that are boycotting the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting on the “situation” in Gaza.  (In Africa it’s called “ethnic cleansing”  or sometimes even “genocide”, but Palestine is a little too close to home so instead we have a “situation.”)
22. In southern Africa, the suffering, the misery, the disease, the dying continues and now countries there are coping with power outages.  (Keep in mind:  These people who are suffering and dying in staggering numbers every day are human beings just like you.  and like you they have homes, families lovers, friends, memories of fire.)
23. You Say You Want A Resolution:  The Lebanese Army was forced to fire on Israeli jets that had illegally invaded southern Lebanon – yet again -  in direct violation of a UN Security Council Resolution..
24. South Korean fishermen and residents of villages along the coast rioted on behalf of swift compensation after their livelihoods were sunk by the recent horrific oilspill.  Well, good.  But who’s going to compensate the environment?   And who’s minding the store so this won’t happen again?