0821 am 'Get This' news

08/21/07 Get This
Chris Andreae
 

1. Portland could experience a Very Busy Week.  Operation Noble Resolve started yesterday and is scheduled to run through Friday  (Or not, as the case may be.  These military and security establishment “exercises” tend to turn suddenly and viciously real for all the wrong reason…This one could easily last well into the Giuliani presidency…).  About Noble Resolve:   “Four days of “simulated” nuclear terrorist scenarios in the US & Europe” http://tinyurl.com/ynq8oq  USJFOCM - 1 http://www.jfcom.mil/index.htm   USJFOCM – 2: http://tinyurl.com/328eoj
2. Lock Up The Hen House!  The Hyenas Are In Town!    Michael Chertoff and the Department of Homeland Security (Which in my mind’s ear, still sounds eerily SS).  Chicken houses across the nation are one step away from being named the newest terrorist targets, demanding stricter access and regulation.  (I guess you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet…)
3. Salem House O’Nutz resident and Constitution Party hack, Michael Marsh has filed a recall petition to remove Senate president, Peter Courtney.  (Fortunately for the State of Oregon you don’t need to file a petition to remove the likes of Mr. Marsh:  All it takes is involuntary commitment documents….)
4. While Homeland Security is soiling itself over chicken houses, The Private Sector is painting a gigantic target right in the middle of Coos Bay (Other sites around the State as well, but this is a story about Coos Bay.).  Yes Oregon’s coast is currently being plucked and trussed in preparation for being roasted and eaten up by the liquefied natural gas industry.
5. A federal judge in Montana has ordered the Bush administration’s top forestry official to explain why he should not be held in contempt of court for the US Forest Service’s failure to analyze the environmental impact of dropping fish- killing fire retardant on wildfire.  (Analyze This:  the Forest Service has in the past also used napalm on forest fires…)
6. Several dozen hurricane survivors and their allies will leave the Northwest today to participate in an International Tribunal in New Orleans.  The idea is to bring charges against the government for actions and inactions in the aftermath of Katrina (And let’s not forget the willful, deliberate, criminal neglect that set the stage for the worst battle yet in America’s on-going War on the Poor…)
7. The John Lennon bus is in town.  And no it not a mausoleum on wheels:  This bus travels the land teaching the young songwriting techniques and providing recording studio facilities. 
8. Senate Judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy is threatening to hold members of the Bush administration (You know who you are…) in contempt of court…at the very least.
9. Shafted:  Bob Murray, CEO of the company that owns the collapsed mine in Utah says that the six buried miners are going to have to stay that way.
10. Wind is making trouble for firefighters in Montana (Time to break out the napalm?)
11. The Midwest is under water.
12. Monster with PhD’s:   Back in 1939, a group of orphans was used in an experiment that sought to induce stuttering by means of psychological torment (The researchers involved all went on to successful careers working alongside the CIA at Abu Ghraib…Kidding!  Just kidding!  Really…Please don’t hurt me…).  Six of these people have won a $1 million dollar settlement.  Seems like a paltry sum split six ways for a lifetime of suffering.  The actual name of this vile little academic adventure?  ‘The Monster Study.’
13. Hurricane Dean is now a category 3 storm.
14. Sometimes A Cigar is Just A Cigar:  Five Cubans convicted of spying  (And keeping chickens?) in the US on behalf of the government in Havana have appealed for a retrial.  They were found guilty because of the quite obvious anti-Castro bias on the part of the Justice Department as a whole and its Florida incarnation in particular.
15. Academics from around the world are protesting Germany’s federal prosecutor over the arrest and detention of a Berlin sociologist who is accused of associating with a terrorist group (And three or four suspicious-looking chickens wearing dark glass  hanging around a falafel stand talking into their collars…Sorry, No…That’s the American version…).  This guy is Andrej Holm, a city planner who used the words “gentrification” and “inequality” repeatedly in his academic papers, leading investigators to conclude that Holm wanted to destroy Western Civilization, leaving the world to – you guessed it! – chickens.
16. It’s court martial time in Baghdad – again.  This time around the Bad Boy in question is the amiable psychopath, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan who made a name for himself by signing off on the use of nudity, dogs and much more at Abu Ghraib back in 2003.  (Jordan will probably wind up with a medal for biting the heads off chickens, a skill he learned stateside working the carnie circuit in the South…)
17. In Baghdad today the trial of fifteen Saddam Hussein’s cronies -  Look!  Up There!  Ha!  Distracted, you eh? – began.  The celebrity defendant is, of course, Saddam Hussein’s cousin “Chemical Ali.”
18. China is praying for strong winds to carry Beijing’s severely polluted air somewhere else (Mostly likely Mt. Bachelor)  before these Olympic Games get underway.  Sickened and dying athletes is just one more export problem China doesn’t need right now.
19. Mydeathspace.com is the website set up to record the demise of Myspace users.  (A better name would, in my opinion, be ‘Morespace’…because that’s what you’d have…