Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 1759 - 1783 of 3747
Among my many strong principles is this one: Disagree with whatever Ann Coulter says. Actually, Ann is not the only one; she's really just a fill-in-the-blank name on my page reserved for ridiculously cruel commentators who build their followings with their limitless shock stock of tacky offensiveness. They manage to be both uninhibited and calculating at the same time. Every poisonous word they utter, every inflammatory tweet they type, every dangerous stunt they concoct is aimed at getting publicity. That is their guiding unprincipled princip...
Gazette editor "From the Cascades to the Bitteroots" was one of the slogans on their shirts. The slogan derived from their ride which started at North Bend and went across Washington on the John Wayne Trail, into Idaho on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes, and into Montana on the Trail of the Hiawatha. A color photo in the Gazette in June of 2006 shows the scouts and their leaders at the east end of Milwaukee tunnel 41 just south of Plummer. In 2008, they added "Montana or Bust" to their shirt logo and designated 450 miles as the length of their...
Last month, a Wall Street Journal editorial hit the nail on the head recommending Amtrak focus its limited funds on shorter more heavily traveled routes between Washington, D.C., and Boston. The money is needed to prevent more derailments. The situation will only worsen unless Amtrak plows additional funds into rebuilding its dilapidated northeast railroad infrastructure. It must quit subsidizing runs greater than 750 miles. One is the Empire Builder, the passenger train started in 1929 between Seattle and Chicago. It is bleeding red ink. At...
Mike Neves Gazette staffer SEWEDA is a familiar acronym to many folks in Whitman County. It stands for Southeast Washington Economic Development Association. The organization is a 501c3 non-profit, with funding provided at the state level. Its purpose is to help people with their businesses, whether they are existing, or only existing in the minds of would-be entrepreneurs. They focus on helping business startups or already established owners locate funding, grant opportunities and tax...
Donald Trump's saber rattling may or may not deter Kim Jong Un, but it's had an effect south of the border. In the first few months of this year, illegal border crossings have dropped precipitously. It is an early proof of concept that yes, it is possible to secure the border and a victory, even if a provisional and incomplete one, for President Trump's enforcement agenda. Once you stripped away the impossibilities from Trump's rhetoric on immigration during the campaign -- there wasn't going to be a wall along the entire border paid for by...
Those who worry that they are closed-minded because they can't conceive of agreeing with anything Donald Trump says or does can stop beating up on themselves. He's finally come up with something sensible, calling the intense focus on any president's first 100 days in office a "ridiculous standard." It is ridiculous, largely media hype, a contrived way to judge how a new administration is doing. For the record, Trump is doing a miserable job. He's a reverse King Midas. Everything he touches is tarnished, and it's not even gold to begin with,...
I read a magazine article the other day that claimed to describe how veterans see the world. I agreed with part of it but decided that the underlying objective of the article was to solicit for organizations that may or may not help veterans. The article assumed that veterans are a homogeneous group set apart from the rest of society. That assumption and the stereotype it generates are not only false but tend to support those who would con a sympathetic public. I was on a New York subway a few years ago when two guys in old field jackets...
Twenty-five years ago Los Angeles exploded in riots. Most of the violence was in the south-central part of the city, a predominantly black, low income area. Residents had long objected to the roughshod methods of the police. Tensions had been particularly high over the shooting of a black girl by a Korean storekeeper. The well publicized beating of Rodney King by police kept those tensions at boiling point. Then, the officers accused of beating King were found innocent. That was enough for the city to explode. For hours, at the height of the...
It may take United Airlines years to overcome the public relations nightmare of a doctor being dragged off an overbooked flight by Chicago police. That one incident not only sparked costly litigation, but could well impact the company’s bottom line and expansion plans. Unfortunately, for United, with today’s cellphones and social media, millions of people worldwide instantly saw the video. Some started a boycott. The video lit up social media in China where United is working hard to establish new routes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Ch...
Invitation only Recently, the Lewiston Morning Tribune announced that meetings with Cathy McMorris Rodgers would be held in Colfax on the 17th and 18th of April. The notice ended with, “The public is welcome,” so I walked in for the Monday meeting believing that it was open. Not true. I didn’t discover this until afterwards when talking with an aide outside. I admitted that I had just been to the meeting about farm issues. Imagine my surprise to be asked, “And they let you in?” After further conversation, I came to understand that there is...
With U.S. missiles flying in Syria, the "mother of all bombs" exploding in Afghanistan and an aircraft carrier strike group heading toward North Korea, has there been a revolution in President Donald Trump's foreign policy? His most fervent supporters shouldn't get overly exercised, and his interventionist critics shouldn't get too excited. What has been on offer so far is broadly consistent with the Jacksonian worldview that is the core of Trump's posture toward the world. Trump's views are obviously inchoate. He has an attitude rather than a...
Only a few people know what a "GBU-43/B" is. A bunch more will figure it out if we use the official designation: "Massive Ordnance Air Blast," or "MOAB." Now you get it: It's informally referred to as the "Mother of All Bombs," and that designation is nothing but great PR for the military. It's called that, as we all know by now, because it's the biggest conventional weapon in the U.S. armed forces arsenal. News anchors couldn't say "Mother of All Bombs" often enough as they breathlessly described how, for the first time ever in combat, a...
The season of community festivals kicks off this weekend. It starts in St. John, traditionally the first of the county’s town events. Billed as the St. John Fair and Stock Show, activities for entries have already begun. Public events kick off tonight (Thursday) with viewing at the home ec building. Full details were in last week’s Gazette. A story is on Page One in this issue. On Friday at the Colton-Uniontown school is the Colton-Uniontown Fair. This one-day event has stock showing, demonstrations, food and an FFA greenhouse sale. The com...
While state lawmakers work to bridge major differences in the budget, they agreed our distractive driving laws need stiffening. Companion bills sponsored by Sen. Ann Rivers (R-LaCenter) and Rep. Jessyn Farrell (D-Seattle) cleared the legislature. They update current statute which allows law enforcement officers to stop motorists when they see them driving while using hand-held devices. The new legislation bans using hand-held cellphone and electronic tablets even while waiting for a stoplight to change. The bill takes effect in 2019. The first...
Fujiyama chef “Fred” prepares an “onion volcano” on the hibachi grill at the restaurant Monday night. Fujiyama’s official grand opening is today, April 20. Pullman’s newest restaurant looks like it belongs in a much bigger city. Once the home of Denny’s restaurant, which closed in 2013, the interior is now almost completely unrecognizable. Classy Japanese ornaments decorate the walls, large windows – each with several boxes filling the frame – make for an abundance of natural lighting, setting...
The circumstantial evidence is mounting that the Kremlin succeeded in infiltrating the U.S. government at the highest levels. How else to explain a newly elected president looking the other way after an act of Russian aggression? Agreeing to a farcically one-sided nuclear deal? Mercilessly mocking the idea that Russia represents our foremost geopolitical foe? Accommodating the illicit nuclear ambitions of a Russian ally? Welcoming a Russian foothold in the Middle East? Refusing to provide arms to a sovereign country invaded by Russia?...
We don't know if President Donald Trump was purely motivated to fire cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield. Was he genuinely horrified by the nerve-gas attack on a rebel-held town ordered by dictator Bashar Assad? His strongest critics insist that Trump saw the revulsion at the deaths of the innocents, including children, really and cynically, as an opportunity to boost his approval ratings, which have spiraled ever downward during the constant embarrassments that have defined the earliest days of his administration. There is no way to...
President Donald Trump’s agenda has dramatically changed. He is about to celebrate his 100th day in office, and the major items he promised for his first 100 days while on the campaign trail have not come to pass. The promised repeal and replacement of Obamacare is stymied. Tax reform is in limbo. The much ballyhooed wall on the country’s southern border has been dramatically truncated. The ban on immigrants has been stopped in the courts. And, despite his unrelenting criticism of presidential leadership by executive order, he governs out of...
Trumpism is in crisis. This isn't a function of poll numbers, or any melodrama of the past months, but something more fundamental: No officeholder in Washington seems to understand President Donald Trump's populism or have a cogent theory of how to effect it in practice, including the president himself. House Speaker Paul Ryan isn't a populist and doesn't want to be a populist. He has spent his adult life committed to a traditional limited-government agenda. He crafted his own platform during the campaign, the so-called Better Way agenda, to di...
Apologist I have managed to keep my blood pressure in check without upping the dosage while reading the opinions of your recently added columnist, Frank Watson. But it has not been easy. This latest one, “We Have Lost the Spirit of Compromise,” almost pushed me over the edge. Where was he with this observation when Congress, including our very own congresswoman, promised to do nothing for eight years? Frank seems an apologist for the person a friend of mine refers to as “The Orange One.” I don’t understand how anyone can support someone f...
American entrepreneurs’ ability to invent, create and bring products and services to market makes our nation great. Their success generates the tax revenue which fund our schools and puts people to work. Many “big businesses” started in the imaginations of immigrants who came to our country – a place of boundless possibilities. America is a land where your station in life doesn’t matter and where hard work, innovation and perseverance are the keys to success. The story of M&Ms is a good example. Today, the Mars Company is a global giant mar...
April Fools' Day has come and gone, but on the first of the month, I kept marveling at how -- starting even before he ran, continuing through his campaign and certainly since Inauguration Day -- Donald Trump has played us for a fool. Successfully, I might add. After all, we elected him, or enough of us did. Millions of people were and are attracted to his message of hate and ignorance -- that, combined with justified anger at the establishment. Even though millions more did not vote for him, he and his operators finessed a Democratic candidate...
Mary Dye, 9th Legislative District representative, has protested the cutbacks in funding for fairs in the state. Reportedly, the threatened budget cuts at the expense of county fairs is not new. The cuts seem more symbolic than financially important. Out of the entire state budget of billions of dollars, the fairs have only been getting $4 million. Mark Schoesler, state senator for the 9th District, blames house Democrats. County fairs are important to rural communities. They provide entertainment, opportunities for education, local...
What happened to the American spirit of compromise? Our political landscape has fragmented into bastions of ideology that refuse to give an inch. Is this rigidity new with the first Obama administration or is that just as far back as my memory goes? I’m not sure, but I do recall being somewhat surprised when President Obama refused to listen to the opposition. I remember thinking that his repeated, “I won and can do whatever I want,” would come back and bite him as well as become the new political normal. The masterpiece that is our Const...
Driving east along SR 14 these days, you see water pouring out of Columbia River dams. It is already a high water year with much of the runoff from our heavy mountain snowpack yet to come. It is part of our “feast or famine” weather cycle. As you pop over the hilltop near the historic Maryhill Museum, you look down to see John Day Dam with its floodgates open spilling massive amounts of water. Then you see remains of the razed Goldendale Aluminum Co. smelter next to the dam. That plant once accounted for 1,300 jobs, $40 million in personal inc...
