0919 am 'Get This' news

evergreen_web_banner.png

KBOO is open to the public! To visit the station, contact your staff person or call 503-231-8032.


Produced by: 
KBOO
Air date: 
Tue, 09/18/2007 - 5:00pm

09/19/07 Get This
Chris Andreae
 

  1. Out of Gas:  State regulators are starting work on a new rule requiring Oregon companies to report emissions of greenhouse gases.  No word as to what the new rule will look like but you can bet it will involve “cap and trade” sleight of hand.
  2. Double Indemnity:  US District Judge Michael Hogan ruled that Pete Seda – of el-Haramain fame – has to stay in jail until he decides whether Pete Seda should stay in jail.  Ahhh, the Wheels of Justice keep on turning, turning….in the same rut.
  3. Dial ‘M’ for Murder:  Multnomah County is going to have real people answering the 911 phones when they ring.  No more ‘Please hold’, no more recorded message;  You can murmur your final words before expiring to an actual human being.   (Thereby avoiding the chilling scenario:  ‘Push one for burglary in progress.  Push two for rape.  Push three for car theft’…)
  4. Oregon’s own MercyCorps is back from North Korea where they delivered three tons of antibiotics and other medicines to rural (That’s most of the country) areas hit by massive flooding earlier this year.  Few people have actually seen rural North Korea, but those who have suggest that situation normal and massive destruction of infrastructure are not necessarily that far apart.)
  5. Steve Novick, contender for Gordon Smith’s Senate seat and all-round Oregon activist is just one step behind Independent John Frohmayer is sending up the cry for impeachment.  Not that it hasn’t been on his mind for some time now….
  6. Portland’s housing market is starting to cool.  But before you break out the cut-rate Trader Joe’s bubbly and start celebrating the End of Wealth as we Know It, remember this:  The pool of available rental property is going to shrink dramatically and rents are going to take a sharpish upward spike. 
  7. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke cut interests rates yesterday and Wall Street is definitely breaking out the expensive stuff….But listen up you Junk Bond Kings, The Fed's decision to cut interest rates will quite likely tank the dollar.  That’s going to piss-off China because it’s holding a mountain of worthless dollars…Whereupon the Chinese can exercise a little leverage of their own and tell Uncle Sam to stand down and let them invade Taiwan…or else they’ll dynamite old Mt. Greenback and head for the Euro Hills.
  8. Chairman of the Red:  Running it all the way into the red for a second time, Alan Greenspan says that the Euro might take over as the reserve currency of choice.
  9. The parents of Rachel Corrie have been refused permission to sue Caterpillar Inc., the company that supplied the Israeli Army with the bulldozer it used to crush their daughter to death.  (Odd country, America…a Nebraska Senator can sue God for wreaking havoc on human kind, yet the mother and father of a murdered woman can’t sue the company that supplied the murder weapon…)
  10. Thirteen House members got their subpoenas yesterday – all just spillover from Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham’s financial indiscretions.   (Don’t gloat:  Yours could be in the mail any day now…)
  11. Insult To Injury:  As if the medical care were not bad enough, now the Veteran’s Administration says that vets’ personal data and medical records are at risk of security breach because the VA has been too busy covering its ass to implement a few simple safety measures to protect the data.  (Not that a veteran’s job prospects would be compromised by said leakage…. I mean “Killing people” makes for a rather thin resume…)
  12. Bush was wakened from a short booze snooze to take a spin over to Maryland to lobby for more domestic spying.  But really, why bother “spying” at all when you can just stand around under the mainframe and see what leaks out.  And if the information is in a foreign language?  Well, that would mean you’d have to find someone in the military that wasn’t gay and was a capable translator.  And even then, someone else would have to persuade the current regime not to issue orders to ‘stand down.’  And that isn’t going to happen when it’s going to take a frightened populace to sign off on the coming war with Iran…)
  13. Michael McConnell says that China has surpassed us not only in economic clout and smog, but …wait for it…Spying!
  14. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is going to call for votes this month on a number of anti-war proposals, including Carl Levin’s that would end the war by next summer.  (Just declare victory and leave, is what they really should do.  Bush can even drag out his old ‘Mission Accomplished’ sign  - It must be in some broom closet gathering mildew -  hoist it up on the Rose Garden flagpole, smile for the press and go back to Crawford.
  15. The Marine captain who failed to investigate the murder of 24 Iraqis in Hadithagot off scot-free.
  16. Britain is cutting the number of troops it has in Basra.  (What military blogs say, Basra is beyond British control.  Soldiers at the base are hunkered down waiting to be killed or evacuated out – which ever comes first…)
  17. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says that “countries” involved in the Iraq war have a “moral obligation to do more.”  That would be you, America.
  18. Occupational Hazard:  In Baghdad, residents of the Green Zone have been busted down to prisoners of the Green Zone.  It is now no longer possible to the Occupying Forces to occupy much more than their own offices.
  19. John ‘Mad Dog’ Bolton says the US would support an Israeli strike on Iran.
  20. And speak of the devil:  Israeli warplanes have buzzed Southern Lebanon in defiance of a UN resolution.  (Here’s a thought:  Sanctions against Israel.  They have as much as formally announced they have nuclear weapons;  They are the agents of much of thee violence and chaos in the Middle East;  They constantly threaten their neighbors and they are guilty of what amounts to genocide against the Palestinian people, whose land they illegally occupy.  What’s not to like?)
  21. Condoleeza Rice says the Gaza Strip is a “hostile entity”  (Translation: target.)  Ahh yes…American diplomacy at its finest…)
  22. ‘Dear Ban,”:  Ban Ki-moon seems to have at last emerged from his MBA cocoon.  The Sec Gen wants Lebanon’s Prime Minister and parliamentary speaker to reconcile their differences and play nice.  Or else Lebanon could wind up with two governments and two presidents (And an invading army of Israelis.)
  23. Iran’s deputy commander of the air force says he’s got all his retaliation ducks in a row…so if Israel tries anything fancy… Duck!

 
 

Audio by Topic: