From the Right Corner: Sometimes the Columbian is just retarded over the Gorge.

I dunno… I just have a problem with the rank hypocrisy the Columbian shows over the Columbian River Gorge.

Tom Koenninger, crybaby extraordinaire, apparently seems to see the Gorge has his own personal fiefdom. Were it in his power, he would drag every human in the Gorge out; tear down every manmade structure, close I-84 and Hwy 14, and only allow logs and salmon the right to transit the area.

Clearly, he continues to flex his pea-brained muscle within the editorial staff. Today’s crybaby whinfest has Koenninger’s fingerprints all over it. It smacks of the exact same kind of sniveling he exhibited the last time the Gorge Commission budget was whacked.

He bitched like a cut cat then as well. The world, as we knew it, was going to end. He stupidly, ignorantly and shortsightedly issued threat after threat, complaint after complaint, including a demand for the resignation of then-State Representative Marc Boldt, “before his constituents throw him out.”

Of course, the simple idiot failed to get it. Then Rep. Boldt was not only re-elected four more times… He now sits as a Clark County Commissioner; much, I am sure, to Koenninger’s dismay,

Tom SHOULD have read the tealeaves from those outcomes. In case he couldn’t… let me spell it out: The people of this region do NOT believe that Tom Koenninger’s judgment on the Gorge is the right one. The State Supreme Court HUMILIATED Koenninger when they destroyed the legal position of those whining about the Bea House, 9-0.

Do those who view the Gorge area as their own personal post card understand that the Constitution of the United States doesn’t magically end at the borders of the Scenic Area? Apparently not.

The Oregon legislature, no doubt at the wise council of Oregon State Senator Ted Ferrioli (R-John Day), is cutting the Gorge Commission budget. So, we are now served up the second in a no doubt long series of crap from Koenninger telling us the world is going to end and those varmints who would DARE do such a thing should, in effect, be run over with a bus, figuratively speaking.

Today’s nonsense, allegedly from the editorial board includes this crapfest:

“But they better be careful of what they wish for, or they might get it. If the gorge commission and its staff become ineffectual, you can bet that some members of Congress as well as environmental organizations will be calling for the federalizing of the scenic area and an end to the notion of the gorge as a political football.”

To that, I say, “bring it on.”

Koenninger has proven himself in the past to be the master of the empty threat.. and this threat is one of his emptiest.

Why, gentle reader, do you think that Koenninger and his Winged Monkeys, the Friends of the Gorge (appropriately enough, the FOG) failed to appeal their shellacking at the hands of the state supreme court to the US Supreme Court?

Because they knew they risked the total destruction of the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Act, a dark of night, smoke-filled room piece of crap by a bunch of RINO Republicans who, like Koenninger, viewed the Scenic Area as their personal little playground, residents of the Area be damned and saw this a cheap environmental vote… because they all knew, like Koenninger knew, that THEY would never have to live under restrictions that would have made a Stalin-era commissar blush.

So, to Tom, I say this: You think you can make this happen? You think you can get this BS past a Republican Congress and a Republican President?

Bring it on.

Meanwhile, stop whining. It’s so unbecoming.

Instead, take a look at what motivated the hatred by Gorge residents for the bureaucracy that was imposed on them. Take a look at why Sen. Ferrioli feels compelled to take these actions. Perhaps you could lead a movement to address the injustice to the people of the Gorge. Perhaps you could demand an end to the economic inequity between Washington’s much more restricted side of the Columbia River and Oregon’s much more liberal side.

But that’s not likely. Addressing unfairness, addressing inequity, addressing the basic violation of the rights of the citizens of the Gorge Scenic Area… why, that would be an admission that they were wrong from the beginning… and that the way the Gorge Scenic Area is administered represents a blight on the otherwise shining example known as the Bill of Rights.

Such an admission is impossible. So, instead, we get empty threats from the empty-headed. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?