Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 2059 - 2083 of 3750
According to a CNN report, about half the political ads running prior to Super Tuesday 3 were anti-Donald Trump ads. The one that gained the most traction was about his attitude toward women. This commercial showed a variety of women simply quoting some of Trump’s more sexist comments. Reportedly, it has gained tremendous internet viewership and has been widely seen on television. The ad was just part of the “stop Trump” advertising intended to slow his campaign. It was said that if he won both Florida and Ohio on Tuesday the Republican race...
On March 1, the Wall Street Journal carried a sobering editorial that ought to force us to look behind the toxic presidential campaign rhetoric and ask two very important questions about how we position our nation to compete internationally. First, what really happens when our leaders impose punishing trade sanctions? Second, why are companies leaving America? Specifically, when Donald Trump “threatens to endorse 45 percent tariffs on Chinese and Japanese imports and promises to punish U.S. companies that make cookies and cars in Mexico,” as... Full story
Why Caucus? The campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have showcased ideas and policies which will shape the future, but it is at the precinct level where the ideas that you support begin their journey to the Democratic Party’s platform. Washington Democrats have 109 delegates to send to the National Convention. Those delegates will not only elect the nominee, they will be debating the plans and ideas of the two campaigns. Delegates are allotted according to the percentage of Bernie and Hillary supporters who attend. So, if you would... Full story
Donald Trump will never be mistaken for a cosmopolitan, but he will bring a distinctively European flavor to the 2016 presidential election, should he win the Republican nomination. As in continental Europe, the two parties in a Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton race would accept the basic parameters of the welfare state, and the debate about the size of government -- so central to American politics for decades -- would fade to the background. No matter how appalled the left may be by Trump, his prospective takeover of the GOP would be a watershed...
Sure, he may be a racist, a misogynist, a dangerous demagogue who unleashes the worst instincts of scared, ignorant bigots, but there is one fact about him that suggests Donald Trump is not all bad: He has terrified his party's establishment. That is a good thing. These are the Republican muckety-mucks who for generations have been the paid protectors of their super-wealthy patrons, oftentimes resorting to a camouflaged version of the same ugliness. The difference is they've relied on polite code to exploit the intolerance. President Barack Oba...
Once again Colton girls took the state championship in 1B basketball. This is the school's eighth straight championship. The girls have not been unbeatable, but they have been unstoppable. In fact, they have lost one game in three years. “Unstoppable” is one word to describe the dynasty. Another is “dominant.” Remember, this is high school. Every year students graduate and others come in as freshmen. The team is not the same as the one which started the championship streak eight years ago. Each year the Colton team had a different makeup.... Full story
Converting animal poop to power makes sense, but today it is too expensive. The good news is it reduces greenhouse gas emissions and curtails odors from farms. Biomass is an important part of our nation’s effort to generate electricity from renewable sources. However, in Washington, where electric rates are low, it is difficult to make an economic argument using biomass to solely produce power. Our state’s forest products companies have burned wood wastes for decades as part of the manufacturing process. It is called co-generation. Pre...
The FBI wants access to the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, and Apple CEO Tim Cook is resisting and putting his refusal in apocalyptic terms. Should Apple comply with a judge's order to help the FBI, we're supposed to believe, it will have created the privacy equivalent of a doomsday device, making everyone vulnerable to the intrusions of government and depredations of hackers and criminals. This is trite marketing -- only Apple can save us from Big Brother, and by the way, please keep buying our phones -- masquerading... Full story
Here's why what Bernie Sanders promises is false: Because what he says is true -- the system really is rigged so he can't deliver. The wealthy in this country have a grossly unfair advantage because they can bribe our politicians to make sure the laws don't apply to them. Actually, they can use their financial advantage to buy the best of everything for themselves, whether it be tax shelters, medical care, lavish homes, education, you name it. They maintain their gilded existence through what amounts to bribery. They use their campaign...
The Republican race for president may be taking a new turn. Stopping Donald Trump is the new mantra. Trump won in seven of the states holding primaries on Tuesday. So many states and so many delegates were at stake that it was called Super Tuesday. Ted Cruz won in two. He was victorious in Oklahoma and his home state of Texas. Marco Rubio won one state. Quoting Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, Cruz called on the other Republicans still in the race to “come together.” He thinks that only by coming together can they hope to stop the Tru...
Public safety agencies across America face the same problems as other employers — finding enough qualified workers. The difference is our safety is increasingly at risk. Law enforcement leaders are working harder at recruitment, yet they are drawing fewer applicants. Big city departments are not alone. It is the same story in smaller communities such as Leesburg, Va., where the number of applicants dropped 90 percent over the past five years. A decade ago, the Seattle Police Dept. had 3,000 applicants for 10 openings. Now, there are 1,000 a...
Sharing the Palouse There has been heated discussion recently regarding railroad easements, rail banking and property rights. Here is my perspective. My wife Diane and I own about 3.5 acres in central Pullman, an area that’s never been developed, with only cattle grazing many decades ago. A major stream, Dry Fork Creek, passes through it. Our land is a wonderful amenity for Pullman residents to enjoy, so I constructed a quarter mile trail through the middle of it. The trail offers a pleasant and pastoral alternative to city traffic and the h... Full story
According to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the future of the republic teeters in the balance. Unless the United States Senate bows to the will of President Barack Obama and approves his replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, everything we hold dear will be lost. A refusal to get with the program, Warren insists, "would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that – empty talk." This is the twisted view now prevalent on the l...
This shouldn't be necessary, but apparently Republicans need a little constitutional review. So for Mitch McConnell and the rest of the partisans, let's turn to Article 2, Section 2, which is about the responsibilities of the president. Can all of us see it there, the part that reads "he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States"? Does everyone notice it says "shall," that it's not...
The current campaign for president is setting the tone for future political discourse. This campaign season has seen unprecedented personal attacks, dirty tricks and vulgar language. Truth and civility are notably absent. No candidate seems “presidential,” and both parties are guilty of the abuses. All this does not bode well for the future. One of the most disturbing comments to come out of the campaigning was, not surprisingly, from Donald Trump. It has not been widely reported. Put aside his comments about Hispanics or Muslims or the oth... Full story
Tribute to an old friend The other day as I was walking down the hall at the high school, I went by one of the opened doors to the gym and I noticed my old friend, Scooter Brannon, quietly seated on the bleachers. I looked at this as an opportunity to say hi and ask of his health. We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries and talked of the girls’ success on the basketball court. While sitting there and sharing I looked up to see that the whole girls’ basketball team had formed a tight semicircle around us and Carmen Gfeller had seated herself nex...
In 1962, songwriter Bob Dylan composed "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind." It was a Vietnam War protest song suggesting the ambiguous answer to ending war and living in peace and harmony was “blowin’ in the wind”...somewhere. Today, wind power is an important part of our nation’s electricity generating system and it will be essential in the decades ahead. The question is how much of it can we reasonably produce to meet our nation’s growing electrical demands? While people support wind power they aren’t hip about seeing thousands of... Full story
In the blink of an eye, we've gone from opening combat jobs to women to Republican presidential candidates endorsing registering women for a draft. Hide your daughters -- our deluded and cowardly political elites are a clear and present danger to common sense. A proposal from the chief of staff of the Army and the commandant of the Marine Corps to require that women register with Selective Service seemed at first like an effort to highlight the absurd endpoint of the rush to women in combat, but top Republicans duly saluted and fell in line....
Hillary Clinton can duke it out when she needs to. Or duchess it out. That was on display during the recent Democratic debate when she confronted Bernie Sanders' persistent charges that she is tainted by her financial ties to Wall Street and the political "establishment." His accusation, she spit out, was "a very artful smear." "Smear" is one of the most brutal pejoratives in the campaign game. With Martin O'Malley no longer cluttering the stage, it was just Bernie and Hillary, mano a womano. And she played the female card: "Sen. Sanders is...
He's just a socialist offering free stuff. Only a few years ago, the charge would have worked. But in 2016, what used to be the forlorn lament of the purest liberal is now enough to build a legitimate presidential campaign on. The issue, as it's named, is “income inequality.” It's misleading though, because most of Bernie Sanders' supporters don't even have a problem with it. The vast majority of Americans are all for successful, accomplished people getting rich. But they do have a problem if...
In January, the American Association of Railroads or AAR published its first-ever state of the railroads annual report focusing on the industry’s economic value, innovations and emphasis on safety. The nation’s railroads have been around for about 180 years and maintain 180,000 miles of track. Trains move over 51 million tons of freight each day which is about 40percent of the nation’s freight. Rail has been a vital transportation link in Pacific Northwest since 1883. That year President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in we... Full story
Colfax Amazing Val Gregory, unified executive director working for several different organizations, is the most extraordinary person that I have ever met. She is doing for this community more than anyone has done before. Her talents go in every direction. Val’s ability to research and formulate ideas and bring to fruition ways to put Colfax in the spotlight is absolutely amazing. She has energized others to be a part of her endeavors. I am sure that Val is not paid enough to compensate her for her time and efforts. She is supposed to be part t...
Who can possibly govern a country where the name "United States" is an illusion? There is little united about us, not when it comes to politics. In both parties, we have candidate lineups that make the WWE look authentic by comparison, except that the wrestlers are not as weird as the candidates. How else should we describe the bizarros in that recent tag-team match, otherwise known as the Republican debate? Actually, the star of that circus was the clown who didn't show up: Donald Trump, the modern reincarnation of P.T. Barnum. What a...
We live in the age of working-class discontent, which, if it wasn't obvious before, has been made plain by the passions roiling 2016 presidential politics. The media's preferred description of the average Republican voter has often been "the angry white male." This was crudely simplistic and meant to be pejorative. If the press wants to update the descriptor, it should refer to "the despairing white male." Or more accurately, the despairing white working class. White working-class life in America has been in a slow-motion disintegration for dec...
Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, is the first community to vote in the state’s primary election. The registered voters arrive before midnight, so they are ready to cast their ballots at the first tick of election day. The community has had a 100 percent voter turnout for decades. This year, all nine Dixville Notch voters cast their votes. Bernie Sanders won on the Democratic side. John Kasich won on the Republican side. It’s a quaint tradition. Not so quaint a tradition is the inordinate effort of presidential candidates to win in two non...
