Winners

Americans.  Whether you like or dislike Barack Obama, he is at least jumping in with both feet and starting to get to work.  Hopefully, the results will match the hype.

Hikers and other people enjoying recreation in Washington State.  The Washington Legislature has introduced a bill to require hunters under the age of 14 from hunting without a parent or other adult supervising them.  This is a response to the shooting of a hiker in Skagit County last August that resulted in the death of a 54-year-old woman hiking in the woods.  Of course, since the shooter was already 14, this wouldn’t have made any difference if it had been enacted at the time.  Perhaps the legislators will change the age to 16 or 18 before passing it, or they will pass this one and feel good for solving nothing.  Is there some reason teenagers need to be shooting animals in the woods anyway?  Is the recession that bad already?

Losers

Readers of a particular newspaper in Nigeria, who learned that reported that police implicated a goat in an attempted automobile theft. In a front-page article on Friday, the Vanguard newspaper said that two men tried to steal a Mazda car two days earlier in Kwara State, with one suspect transforming himself into a goat as vigilantes cornered him. I’m just glad that our police don’t find goats to charge with crimes when nothing else works. Our police just accuse the wrong people, then offer them plea bargains to expedite their cases.

OK, we will score no losers this week, since I had to reach too far out of Cascadia to find the story.

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Supporters of the University of Washington Football Team are behind a plan to spend $300 million on renovating the 88-year-old Husky Stadium.  Half of the money would be raised by the University from among it’s football supporters, and the other half would come from — Ahem — the Washington Legislature.  A lot of people think that amount is pretty excessive for a facility that hosts around six home football games per year.  Of course, if the UW gets that kind of money for a sports facility, there are other colleges around the state who will be lining up for their share, too.  A couple of groups of Washington State University supporters think that their cross-state rivals at the U-Dub don’t need the money, or that Wazzu needs a similar amount for their stadium.  Cooler heads might wonder why, since there are so few games played there, that perhaps they could make a deal with the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks to share their new state-of-the-art stadium, Qwest Field.  I think that would be a great idea — but the UW supporters would just discount my opinion since I went to WSU.

Winners:

Glenn Proctor, 21, of Federal Way was freed from the King County Jail after being held for 11 months for a crime he did not commit.  He was present at a transit center when someone tried to shoot another person there.  Since the video surveillance camera didn’t clearly show who did it, they went ahead and arrested the young black guy.  Surprisingly, Proctor said he was not angry over his arrest.  “Acting angry is real negative,” he said. “I’m trying to add positive things to my life, not take away.”  More power to him as he tries to get on with his interrupted life.

Somebody in the Seattle area, after a large cache of weapons was found in a Bellevue storage locker.  In four searches in Bellevue and Spokane, agents seized 37 machine guns, 12 silencers, two grenade launchers, more than 60 high-explosive grenades, several pounds of military-grade C-4 plastic explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition.  It’s a good thing that they didn’t get used for anything serious.  Probably just enough to do a little hunting, though.

Losers:

The citizens of Portland.  The mayor of Portland, Sam Adams, has admitted to lying about his personal life before the recent election. This either meens six more weeks of Winter, or it means that the city’s business will not get done while his enemies try to evict him from office.

Passengers returning from vacations in Mexico this week.  The plane was headed to Seattle, but couldn’t land there because of the fog.  So the plane was diverted to Portland, a place that claims to have an International Airport.  Upon arrival at PDX, the passengers spent 4 hours waiting for US Customs & Immigration agents to arrive.  They never arrived, because the plane and its pilot had the audacity to land there at an inconvenient tome for them.  The solution for passengers who had just endured a six-hour flight followed by four hours on the ground and had run out of food?  The plane was told to return to Mexico City.  Passengers finally got another flight to Seattle the next day, but I’m quite sure the airport and federal authorities could have come up with a better plan.

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• People in low-lying areas around Cascadia are cleaning up after last week’s major flooding episode.  Sadly, I haven’t included a link to a report on this, because articles on this are few and far between.  People evacuating in front of flood waters makes for a spectacular news story.  The story of the cleanup, even though it drastically affects the lives of many people, is simply not worth more than a short mention in much of today’s media.  Sad.
• Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski is again promoting his plan to do away with the gas tax and replace it with a mileage tax. This is really problematic at a lot of levels. It is trying to fix something that isn’t broken, other than it is probably appropriate to raise the tax itself so we the public can benefit from the higher price of gas. The plan includes putting a GPS transponder in all of our cars to track us. The plan includes calculating the mileage tax and paying it when you fill up with gas, making collecting the tax a burden on gas station operators. I’m hoping this one dies a slow death.
• A Seattle-bound US Airways Airbus A320 with 155 people on board crash landed in the Hudson River in Manhattan on Thursday.  The survival of all aboard was credited to the skillful work of the pilot and flight crew.  Being a fan of ferries and boats in general, the thing that struck me immediately in the article was the number of ferries, water taxis, and tour boats that were on the scene immediately offering aid.  Nothing like everyone on the scene being totally prepared for an emergency, and that fact being instrumental in saving everyone.
• Finally, fans of the whodunnit might want to try to figure out where a 45-year-old Bellevue woman disappeared to.  The Bellevue Community College instructor and author of ten books disappeared Tuesday after she (or someone) drove her minivan onto the ferry Puyallup heading from Seattle to Bainbridge island.  When the ferry got to the other end, she did not show up to drive her car off the boat.  Her keys and purse were found on the upper passenger deck.  You can read more about the story here. Stay tuned, we are all wondering about this one.

OK, that was my first try at the Weekly News Roundup. More here every week, as I get it all down.

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