Obama in Oregon: Show Us Your Trees!
Anyone attempting to drive East on I-84 knows the president was in town. Which is a different situation than, say, planning for the event. Stockpiling ammunition? Ordering guns in pieces and assembling them, perhaps around the kitchen table with a few dozen of your closest racist skinhead friends? Oh, they are out there – and in some cases not so far out there…There are 15 – fifteen – hate groups in Oregon, many of them based in Portland. So, Barack Obama swung through Portland on a fund raising tour that must have looked like the CERN hadron colider from inside the security apparatus beneath the surface.
Obama appeared to feel forced to focus on parrying Mitt Romney's virulent response to his legitimate questions regarding exactly when Romney left Bain capital. And where are the contender's tax returns? Vacationing in the Cayman Islands perhaps? While Mitty's sordid history with Bain certainly bears scrutiny as does the whereabouts of Romney's tax info, there are many issues of import to citizens of Cascadia that the president was careful to sidestep. First up - in light of the recent Colorado shooting - Obama has been overly cautious in addressing gun laws. But as one pundit pointed out, Why not focus on the ammunition? Regulate that and problem solved…But there is a lot of ammo out there, some people make it themselves as a sort of hobby, like baking cupcakes or growing orchids.
The big story however, is the one that did not happen. We woke up Wednesday morning and we still had a living, breathing president. The surface of this election is weird – but beneath the surface it’s weirdly dangerous…- KBOO