1019 am 'Get This' news

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Air date: 
Thu, 10/18/2007 - 5:00pm

10/19/07 Get This
Chris Andreae
 

  1. Shopping Maul?  It was bound to happen:  TopOff-4 accidentally set off a bomb scare at Lloyd Center.  What happened was that when Homeland Uber Alles Security Czar, Michael Chertoff finally showed up for the drill, his phalanx of phear-mongers triggered the bomb dogs’ finely-tuned reflexes.  No, Chief Chertoff was not mauled by German shepherds, but the scare did shut down surrounding streets for a couple of hour.  (The story is, “explosive residue can get “baked in” to vehicles.”  You mean like when something detonates?  Anyway, it probably won’t wash with irritable TSA agents next time you fly…)
  2. Lessons Learned:  And we still do not and will not know what we learned about civilian safety after, Lo, these many TopOffs.  (Probably because the whole exercise is designed to gather information on peaceniks, environmentalists and assorted anarchists…. Trust me:  These people have more pictures of you than your mother does…)
  3. Lessons Litigated:  Education advocates are trying to persuade a three-judge panel that the Oregon constitution requires the legislature to cough up the billions of dollars guaranteed by the “uniform and general system of common schools” and the “adequate level” clauses in the statute.  The State’s lawyers disagree.  
  4. Which means that someday we might have an adequately funded education system in Oregon….That is if we can keep the little bastards alive long enough.  The battle over children’s healthcare isn’t over yet.  Amazing that we even have to consider this.  Aren’t we supposed to be able to expect healthcare and education for all children?  Well, yes, and that’s what makes the whole deal so irresistible to the private sector.  Designer air – it’s only a breath away…
  5. Oregon’s horses are the latest victims of a bacterial infection that used to be limited to California and points South.  (Find that amusing or irrelevant?  Wait till you call in sick with a variety of tropical hemorrhagic fever…)
  6. This weekend is the 30th anniversary of the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides.
  7. Hillary’s Artillery:  The weapons industry is one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest campaign donors.  The US arms industry has given many thousands more to Hillary than to any of the Republicans.
  8. Okay, Kids, Get Out Your Payolas:  The FCC cited conservative pit-bull Armstrong Williams yesterday for violating a ban on payola in promoting the Bush administration’s failed education plan.  (It’s only a failure if you still believe this White House cares about an educated citizenry.  All the administration cares about is producing a cowed and incurious nation of consumers who keep their heads down and their asses up.  So in a sense, No Child Left Behind is a howling success.)
  9. And while they were at it, FCC is going to clear the way for a single media outlet – Oh, hell, let’s just call it a content provider – to own a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market.  This would be frightening were it not for the fact that Fox and Clear Channel already own America and newspapers are all but out of business because no one reads any more…
  10. Sleeping With The Enemy:  The former US commander at an Iraqi jail was acquitted of aiding the enemy (He lent an unmonitored cell phone to an inmate.) but convicted of three lesser charges – he misplaced some paperwork, read porno magazines…stuff like that.  He could wind up doing ten years for this.  If he’s lucky, one of the guards will lend him a cell phone…
  11. New York City has refused to list the detective who put in hours at Ground Zero - eventually dying as a result of inhaling a massive dose of toxins floating around -  as a 9/11 victim.
  12. The Senate caved in to the Bush administration.  Privacy advocates gave it their best shot, but it looks like major telecommunications companies are going to be granted immunity from prosecution for their role in the president’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program.  (They may be immune from prosecution, but they aren’t immune from mass migration of their customers to other carriers with a less cavalier attitude toward communications security.  So cancel your Verizon account and call another company – any other company – and ask them about their policies regarding cooperation with the Police state…)
  13. Elementary My Dear Watson:  James Watson Nobel Prize winner back in 1962 is looking a little less “noble” these days.  Watson told a British paper that he was worried about Africa sorting out its problems because the people there were less intelligent that people in other places.  (I would challenge that by referring Dr. Watson to the Bush administration.  Their brightest light is Condoleeza Rice and even she sounds more and more like what she is, a former ice skater.  Tonya Harding, where are you now that your country needs you?)  Anyway, Watson got canned from his administrative job, which is probably a good thing since he’s obviously senile…
  14. See Dick Run!  See Dick Hide!  Run, Dick.  Hide, Dick:  A judge is thinking about ordering the Bush administration to produce all those e-mails it lost.  (Picture it:  A whole presidential library full of ads for rejuvenation products and erectile dysfunction cures…)
  15. Michael Mukasey doesn’t know much about water boarding but he knows what he likes:  the Constitution.  (Try the Spanish Inquisition.  That’s where the technique originated…)
  16. In Karachi, as Benazir Bhutto’s motorcade was making it’s way from the airport to the location where she was scheduled to address the nation, Ms. Bhutto and entourage were concerned because none of the street lights seemed to be functioning.  In point of fact, the lights were off, it was night and her security people had to train spotlights on the vast crowds of supporters to try to get a look at the bad apples.  And they were dead certain that there were bad apples out there.  Another problem:  their cell phones were jammed.  Bottom line:  Bhutto herself survived the suicide bomb, grenade attack and fire fight, but 126 other people were killed and more than 250 were wounded.
  17. Little Gitmo:  A British human rights group is demanding that MP’s look into the searingly hard evidence that one of the notorious American ‘Black Sites’ is the British territorial, Diego Garcia Island.  There is a substantial US military presence on the island already and it is in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a location where it is unlikely  that reporters would have easy access to.  (Plus, think of all the “dreadful accidents” they might meet with on the way home…)
  18. Iraqi Kurds are in the streets marching for peace. 
  19. The United Nations is trying to mop up the mess left by a little translation error regarding Syrian nuclear facilities and a few errant Israeli air strikes.
  20. Vladimir Putin is hard-charging backwards into the good old days of the Cold War he remembers so well.
  21. More violence in the Gaza strip.  One Israeli “soldier”  and one Palestinian “militant”.  It’s all in the semantic, baby.  US client states have “soldiers”, everyone else who dares to challenge oppressive forces of occupation is a “militant.”
  22. And oil hit $90 dollars a barrel.

 
 

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