He was here to visit D.B. Cooper. Duh!

Believe it or not, there is a hemorrhoid clinic on NE Sandy Blvd., but I’m inclined it had something to do with closing the airbase.

There is also the one and only Spartacus Leather…

he was picking up a ball-gag for the next Oval Office party...GW's coming as the official "gimp".

I really don't care what GOP fat cat/fishing buddy he was visiting in town. What I object to is the police officers assigned to escort/stand watch outside the Governor Hotel for a personal visit. My tax dollars at work. The meth-related property crimes/assaults must be under control if we can spare these officers to babysit the VP.

Dick was in town discussing with PGE ceo Peggy Fowler plans to privitize the city of Portland and, if necessary, ship Eric Sten and Randy Leonard off to Gitmo.

Sorry Mayor, it's top secret

"Since the White House classified it as a personal trip, will the City be asking for reimbursement for those expenses?"

they'd better. that's bs...the fed can pay for his security (by way of our tax dollars anyway, i guess). that's what the SS is for.

It all about PGE. There will be a new player in the game, or he is making sure the records from his last "Summit" won't get purchased and released by the new owners. HEY! Now there's an excellent reason for the City to buy PGE. Wouldn't we get those records for review!

Or, to get really speculative, if they can just engineer another energy crisis in California there's got to be some way to swindle a few millin out of that.

Are we sayin' Peggy Fowler's a crook?

How nice to see liberals concerned about the use of tax dollars. Usually you seem perfectly happy to see them spent on public art, endless bureaucracy (aka future democrat voters), needle exchange programs, and benefits for illegal aliens.

I'm glad you draw the line at police protection for the vice president...

Those aren't "surprise" visits they make to Iraq and Afghanistan, they're "sneak-in" visits cuz they're scared of getting shot at. Of course, they have no such qualms for our troops they so blithely send there.

Rorovitz,

If you're the ceo of a company that collects $750 million from customers expressly for the payment of taxes, but your company pay's less the 0.1% of that money to any government, would you be a crook?

If the corporate tax on utilities were repealed, PGE would lose money because they couldn't collect and keep tax from ratepayers. If the corporate tax on utilities were repealed, the state would come out ahead. Now, the government pays more for taxes on its electric bill than it collects from PGE for tax on all its profit! Oregon is, indeed, business nirvana: businesses are allowed to tax the government.

It's my understanding that, in the past, PGE taxes due evaporated as they were figured into the greater structure of Enron. In the future if PGE becomes a stand alone company would not the taxes they collect then be due and payable vs. washed away in a larger conglomerate? If this is correct then any repeal of the corporate tax on utilities may be arriving just before PGE finally starts paying them. Unless I am missing something?

1) the guy is running out of gas, Larson at Gaucho was a convenient pit stop.

2) got tired of "conversations" with W. Needed something intellectually more satisfying for change. Ditto.

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(First aside, the 'for decades the S.S. has locked down towns, swept rooftops,' etc. is bogus -- no they haven't; today's hated clowns in The Fright House are like nothing there has ever been. When Clinton was passing through, he'd go jogging along the riverwall at 6:00 a.m., no problem.)

However, on point: Who was Cheney doing here? I thought of the question and my dozen 'possibly's' before I saw this thread. And when Tom said "PGE," he nailed it, slam dunk, and for exactly the right reason: Because PGE has Enron memos and email remnants from Ken Lay incriminating Cheney's illicit Energy cum Iraq Invasion Task Force.

Probably he could have some strategizing to do to try to undo the 'We don't need no stinkin' JTTF' slap in his face, too; and there's the obvious -- since The Oregonian 'knew' -- possibility of a bad news roll-out (or roll-up) planning session with publisher Fred Stickel. Any of his 'meeting a fishing buddy' is like his 'knowing where the WMDs are' -- Cheney is a liar and whatever he says he was here for is absolute horseturds. Swallow it if you don't know any better.

Furthermore, the 'stopped in on his way to Seattle which is the reason for the trip,' is more crapola. Probably exactly backwards. More likely it's 'had to handle some threat to expose Cheney's crimes gaining a hold in PDX, and covered up the seriousness of those dealings by tossing in the Seattle red herring.' Not that the Evil Office doesn't have cover-up work to do in Washington. He's got to bind and gag Rossy from going loose cannon. He's got to grease the skids of the Spokane mayor and evict him before Nethercutt gets hurt. And there may be records to burn which might link these GOPers (or more) with the mushrooming cloud of Coingate in Ohio and the fallout from the money stolen there having gone into '04 campaigns here and everywhere. Lastly, maybe Cheney must strangle some borning movement against Hanford waste handling or Snake River dams, and this latter connected back to Portland's PGE.

For all the Washington possibly's, his undisclosed locating in Oregon overnight feels more sinister, like a bigger game afoot. Whatever fowl here he hunted from his blind in the Benson Hotel (memo to self: that place is now contaminated), must be or have been big enough to crush him personally. Because: the veep avoids all travel since his prime coronary condition has reduced him to the small countable number of trips he has left -- certainly each last one of them too precious to waste enjoying fly fishing. Besides, there's no salmon in the river this year.

No, something abominably evil this way came. I thought Cheney should have taken time to look into the leaking around the chemical weapons that keep going ker-blooie over at the Army's Umatilla disposal zone.

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You know, for a thre ehour train ride, his friend could have met him in Seattle. He came here with a real sinister purpose, there's no doubt of that in my mind.

PS - Tensk, pass the meds, I'm seeing the same evil spirit you are.

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Theory B.: Cheney was here not to stop some looming trouble in his fascistic realms, but to start it.

There is a very public, openly published book -- Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, [New Society Publishers, 2004] -- which builds the thesis that Cheney was agent in the plans and conduct of the 9/11 mass murders. Indeed, the book is gaining sales toward best-seller popularity, (see here and here).

However, the larger and more importantly vital content in the book, (in fact, author Michael Ruppert, investigative journalist par excellence, says 'forget bringing Cheney to justice, it's too late, he got away with murder same as O.J. Simpson; we can't afford to lose the time pursuing the case'), goes on to document that a thousand times worse is the number of lives at stake in the near future (before 2010), because the earth's stock of crude oil is being burned so wastefully.

This impacts everything. For example, locally, the Burnside Bridgehead project and the South Waterfront project, even the OHSU tram, are not going to get done in time, and the energies in policy and plans for them is all only chaff of distraction from the overwhelming critical issues we better face and deal with as a matter of survival. Oil exhaustion is a straits of life or death for millions of humans -- no, hundreds of millions.

Ruppert spoke in Portland Thursday evening, (June 2nd), sharing his evidence, connecting the dots, and I personally called in advance and spoke with Randy Leonard, during his appearance on KBOO's morning program, and asked him to attend Ruppert's presentation. I saw 250 people in the audience that evening but I didn't see Randy, (and I wouldn't recognize his staffers), although I barely searched. (Many in the crowd seemed to have come to hear the indictment of Cheney and to have left crestfallen after Ruppert said 'forget about him, forget 9/11 prosecutions, there's no time for it.' I stood in the rear walkway looking toward the stage over a view of the backs of the heads of the whole audience. The most poignant thing: As Ruppert's talk compounded more and more information showing how dire is our immediate future -- example sentence: "Switching to nuclear energy can't save us, there isn't enough uranium on the planet for the amount necessary for reactors just to equal the electricity we get from oil today, nevermind expand." -- and as listeners began to get their own sense of the meaning for themselves, in their personal lives, I saw several young, middle-aged, and older couples start leaning together and putting their arms around each other's shoulders, and reaching to hold each other, until it reminded me of an audience growing scared watching a horror movie.)

It happens that discussion of earth's oil being used up breaks down among intelligent people in the wide disagreement about when the end is. I mean you and I disagree, and you and the person next to you disagree. So what's needed is this: You answer these two questions -- 1) How much oil is known to exist, (the reserves)?, and 2) How much oil is currently used per day? And until you have answers, presumably based on evidence you can find by investigative research -- and Why is that data so hard to find, not openly and regularly published in our mass media, not sharing the most accurate and strongest consensus answers available, when the information is the most vital knowledge there is affecting the survival of humankind, millions of times more important than tomorrow's weather forecast? -- until you have answers for How much there is and How fast it's going, and a basis of understanding where you got the numbers and how reliable they are, well, you can't really say you know what you're talking about. Can you? If someone says, and based on sources they cite, that earth's oil can only last ten years at today's rate of consumption, you can't really disagree unless you have collected your own information and more trust your own sources. Can you? (Of course, there is always simple denial, and it's everywhere, if we're each ready to bet our life on it.)

Ruppert is perhaps the smartest and best connected detective-type investigator there is. He has thirty years of police, military, and CIA training at finding things out. He and his organized network sifts through hundreds of times the information I see, and I'm pretty well informed compared with the misinformation I hear others go by, (and probably only because I work at it full time, reading and researching and interviewing people, and others would be equally informed if they had such time for it). Maybe the information that is the most difficult in the world to find out is ... wait for it ... How much oil is there? and How much are we consuming? Several nations' so-called 'security' is built around such data, societies established and committed to it, and preventing public upheaval almost worldwide depends on keeping the data out of view in many respects. And most of what can be learned, most of what is reported, is laced through and through with purposed lies and false numbers, set that way to keep someone rich or someone empowered. So, yeah, go ahead, investigate and research and come up with your most reliable answers to the only two key questions.

Ruppert has been at it for years, gleaning the tidbits and building the data base and drawing the big picture, and now offers the best answers. (One trillion known barrels of oil in the ground, and we've used one trillion since the oil age began about a century ago -- so the gauge is on Half, we're at the median 'peak' of the bell-curve distribution of oil usage across time. Second answer: about 100 million barrels used per day, now. Simply divide 100 million into 1 trillion and figure how many days it can last at this rate.) You could just look over how Ruppert got it and copy his answers and use them. I do.

Ruppert's 8-year-old website is FromTheWilderness.com, with thousands of pages of archives where you can judge for yourself the reliability of his group and work. I recommend it for Randy, and all Commissioners, and the Governor, and every state legislator, and every U.S. Congressperson (thirty of whom are paying subscribers of Ruppert's newsletters), and every public official and world leader, because these people are steering the course of our planet. Our best interest is in them having a map of what's ahead.

I am getting wind generators for electricity to power the waterpump in the well. I am tilling a garden to grow all the family's food. There is more contextural information at SurvivingPeakOil.com. for example, and many other websites.

Then, almost as a postscript, consider the following. Cheney staged and conducted the destruction of the three (3) World Trade Center towers, with whatever casualties were in it, to be a traumatic event shocking enough to Americans that we would allow the invasion and capture of Iraqi oil fields in our name, with the touch on the Pentagon thrown in for good measure. (Otherwise we might not take military action, because we didn't warrant such a response the last time an Arab blew up the WTC only, or tried to.) Actually, I suspect Poppy Bush and his Carlyle Group gang, which includes mainly Saudi royalty interests and which is a bunch of thoroughly informed, pretty smart operators, all began planning and preparing, (recall their roles in forcing the 2000 election result), as much as thirty years ago, when Bush Sinister was CIA director, (and Bush Jughead was exiled into drug detox at a CIA station in Alaska, summer of '74), and the information of intelligence began to tell the story of the obvious end of oil -- what goes around comes around, but what goes out in combustion entropy never comes back -- and others may suspect the Carlyle colossus astride the world, too, however the evidence Ruppert's book exhibits only indicts Cheney found holding the weapon. (He was President Ford's chief-of-staff, as I recall, the year G.H.W.B. headed the CIA, 1976, when America stared enthralled with a parading armada of bicentennial Tall Ships. A personal irony(?) may be in my having filmed Ford on April 19, 1775, in Lexington, MA, at a newly rebuilt staging "By the rude bridge that arched the flood, / Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, / Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson. National irony(?) may be, with the 'best' outcome of Cheney's deed, in having all the oil in Iraq and keeping it for ourselves, the survival of a hundred million Americans and perhaps America could only be extended about twenty percent, like from twenty years then to twenty-five years, either way it sacrifices our kids and grandkids to our denial psychology, and any way, no matter who 'owns' or controls or takes over all the oil on the earth it doesn't add a single drop to the supply -- it is what it is, and hundreds of thousands who were are dead. For naught.)

So Cheney was the 9/11 trigger man. "Get over it," Ruppert said. Add that he also said what people had better deal with is that there is too little oil to sustain us in today's capitalist-profitting consumer-paying lifestyle, but that our leaders aren't looking at the problem as too little oil, they are looking at it as too many people. And then add that Cheney has said 'we know that the ones who committed the terrorizing acts of 9/11 are going to strike again.'

And in sum, whatever the hell explanation was given or truly is for the secret visit this week, any time creepy veep Cheney surveys your town you better pay attention and be afraid, damn, be very afraid.

On the other hand, some could see it as more pressing to choke up ninety days of all media time and attention discussing a smidgeon of long or short difference in the hypothetical account of Social Security 75 years from now.

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Maybe the geniuses at the FBI built Dark Dick a new bomb shelter in the Benson basement for a quick escape next time he visits, wait for it, "Little Beirut"!

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I apologize to you, Jenni S., for a wrong paraphrasing. I counted on "locked down towns" to be fewer letters to the same sense as yours. I am sensitive to criticisms of the lengths of writing I extend, and I do actually count and pare letters for that. However, I maintain my challenge disputing that the Secret Service's 'total zonal securing' (my characterization), in extremis, is any older than the term of the present administration. In '80, Hinckley walked up to Reagan. In '89(?), G.H.W.Bush broke phalanx and walked into a store and bought athletic socks. In the last decade, a suicidal Cessna pilot crash-plowed a ditch across the South Lawn stopping a few feet short of building impact, at least three snipers shot at the White House from the fence, Lewinsky got in a window, and the Service itself broke from perpetual tradition to testify under oath as to events witnessed in the private quarters of the president. So I say, no, this total bubblewrap around today's occupants, including false arrests of innocents at publicly funded appearances of Vee P. and Wee-wee P., is completely unprecedented, on the order of them having something to hide. And leave to interpretation who 'them' refers to.

--

And you're right, Kari, the meds kicked in and gave a serenity of reflection in which I realized the truth is I filmed Ford on April 19, 1975, exactly two hundred years later than I first claimed. Color, Super-8, with sound, two 3-minute rolls Subject: Ford speech, more on other Subjects. And I didn't actually have my eye to the viewfinder, I gaffered gear standing alongside and moving with changing framing sets. I wrote "I filmed" because it was shorter. Cheney was there.

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You're all wrong!

Cheney's fishing buddy on the Supreme Court warned him it was his last chance to stop by Oregon and fill his Marijuana prescription. If there was ever a man that needed to mellow-out, its our President of Vice, er, Vice President.

Heeee...it was a funny Portland thing... Wake up so-called progressives, we were MUGGED! Your tax dollars paid for his security, you waited while police closed streets and you got substandard police response while officers stood on every overpass on I-80 Monday as he left. You care about school funding? You care about always being asked to pony up more tax revenue? Apparently not; Cheney just takes what he wants right out of Portland's pocket and we find it amusing. You know, people do get the kind of government they deserve and from where I stand I can't see that you all don't deserve the dog shit you're wallowing in. Tell me just what it will take for you to get off your fat, baby mongering asses and DO SOMETHING. Do you realize how much your logic, or the lack thereof, sounds just like the right? Why would anyone talk about "Baghdad is on the 33rd parallel, Dallas is on the 33rd parallel and Bush Sr. is a mason" when they've got their cock in your ass? (Apologies to "Doug").