Intel and the 400

There are cranes on the horizon. Not the flying kind, or the commemorate-Hiroshima kind, but the tower kind (which come with new safety instructions..) As many as 5, all in one place.

Intel is expanding! Hey! And towards that end (or maybe completely different, they don't share their state secrets with me) 400 kids showed up in local school districts, while their parents will be attending training.

The letters to the editor of our fair Oregonian mostly are negative. We don't want your state secrets, this is a real imposition! How can we squeeze room for 400 kids in this budget environment! They all cry out.

Well hey, that is a problem I like to have. Expansion. A chance for cultural exchange. A chance for these kids to get to know American kids. And their parents to be trained here. A chance for all of them to contribute to the local economy for their time here.

What is the alternative? For companies to shrink up and dry away like fallen leaves on an October day?? Give me the 400. As the story of the loaves and 2 fishes which fed 500, with leftovers for tomorrow, well somehow we shall find a way.

What's in Your Newspaper?

I have to wonder how the Oregonian chooses stories that are "newsworthy" these days.

Al Gore, my savior and preacher on the important issue of global climate change - for a week or more stories appear about how a local massage therapist claims she was sexually assaulted by him.

They print the seediest looking pictures they can find of the man. Oh, now it comes out that the woman, 7 years after the alleged act, had her story bought by the National Inquirer. Hmm, any chance she saw dollar signs and fabricated a story to match? Did the Oregonian do any fact checking before smearing a former vice president and Nobel Peace prize winner?

Now their favorite smear target, Mr Bill Sizemore, has a significant legal victory in a Marion county court. A judge, in the ongoing trials where unions have sued to shut down both his political and activist-initiative life, is taking an objective view of matters. He will allow discovery, which in this case turns the tables and allows Sizemore's PAC to sift through all the emails and evidence they can find in union archives. SEIU, OEA, it will all open up.

In both cases, Mr Gore and Mr Sizemore, when there is sensational news, the Oregonian sees this as fit to print. But when tables turn, as seems to be the case for Sizemore, all I read is - nothing.

So, I've quit watching CNN when it turns into People magazine, is this what is happening to our Oregonian as well?