We are new to Westside church. We travel from Alfalfa to the Westside of Bend to attend, so the banners don't affect us one way or another.
I welcome new Outdoors columnist Pam Stevenson. Although I will miss reading my good buddy Robert W's columns, a woman's point of view is long overdue.
With the ever-increasing price of gas pushing more and more people to get out of their cars and onto their bikes and scooters, the numbers of these new commuters seems to be increasing everyday. This is a great thing, and a definite upside to the situation.
This letter is in response to the Letter to the Editor printed in the 6/26 issue of your paper.
Thanks for the compliments on our trail building skills (I think).
Lettter of the Week
This week’s feature letter comes from Evelyn Dong who presents us with a contrasting viewpoint on the Tumalo Backcountry proposal — from a skier’s perspective. Thanks for the letter Evelyn.
Order in the Court!
Baby rapers, oil spillers and gang-bangers be heartened! Gitmo be gone, but the new and utterly bought and sold Supreme Court handed down decisions that will impact us for decades - Much like the President Bush, who nominated its two new Justices, Chief Roberts and Count Weirdly Alito. Let's take a look at these precedents, led by quotes from the new members.Court Weirdly
"I've also represented corporations accused of antitrust violations, and I think that balanced perspective is something that's valuable for a judge."
Chief Justice John Roberts stated this on January 29, 2003, before the Judiciary Committee, explaining how whistleblowers can be fired for cause. Roberts also defended Microsoft against States suing for antitrust as a private lawyer. So, when Exxon Mobil came before the Roberts-led Supreme Court, his sympathies were already known. "So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" asked Roberts during the initial arguments in February, seeming to defend Exxon Mobil for employing a known alcoholic captain for the Exxon Valdez in 1989, who crashed and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. How oh how can we help this poor corporation? Throw out the $2.5 billion in punitive damages (equaling one week of profits for Exxon Mobil) through some archaic maritime law that compensatory to punitive damages must be 1:1. Ahoy! This precedent will reverse medical malpractice, tobacco settlements and corporate malfeasance lawsuits for years; of course Exxon Mobil would have preferred a slap on wrist but, in a shocking moment of conscience, Justice Alito recused himself because he owns over $100,000 in Exxon Mobil stock.
The US Senate is often called the world's most exclusive club. Sen. Gordon Smith belongs to an even more elite club - the Society of Republican Senators from West Coast States. It's so exclusive that Smith is the only member.
Oregon's junior senator would like to remain in that club by winning a third term, but the signs are it won't be easy.He’s only red on the inside. Republicans are saddled with the most unpopular president in modern American history, a war that two-thirds of Americans oppose, a tanking economy and a lackluster candidate at the top of their ticket. Democrats have an exciting, charismatic presidential nominee-apparent, surging party enrollment and, above all, the distinction of not being the party that put George W. Bush in the White House.
Sensing that all this might make Gordon Smith vulnerable, the Democrats have been throwing the kitchen sink at him (not to mention a set of golf clubs; see this week's Wandering Eye, Page 11). Smith has countered with a campaign designed to show him as a moderate, non-partisan chap who has no trouble working with both sides of the aisle.
Greetings. And arghh.
Your perpetuation (deliberate word choice … hint hint) of this morning's "Oregon Man's Invention: Commute Generates Electricity" in the Bend Bulletin is yet another example of how high energy prices makes reporters and editors stupid. Okay, perhaps not stupid … but certainly it seems to render them so un-critical that they fail to recognize a perpetual motion machine when they see it - or that they simply assume their sources are telling the truth or have a clue what they're talking about.
Other recent horrid examples: (1) A New York Times reporter's
acceptance without request for explanation of a hybrid land yacht
owner's claim that she goes twice as long between fill-ups as with the
old behemoth, even though the new one only gets 50 percent better gas
mileage. (2) A different Bend Bulletin reporter's acceptance last week
without apparent skepticism of a scooter salesman's quote about
"average" drivers of four-wheeled vehicles spending $120/week on gas
compared to $6 per week for drivers of scooters - when even the most
generous look at the math shows the salesman has assumed for his
audience's sake that the "average" driver gets just 5 miles per gallon
and that the average scooter gets 100 mpg.
Belgian brewer InBev makes a bid to buy Anheuser-Busch for $46 billion. That's a $46 billion company that was once banned in America for producing a product that a bunch of puritanical religious fanatics touted as evil.
The Bend PD and The Bulletin should both get The Boot by perpetuating the myth that cyclists "cause the majority of the problems." The PD gets it for making a sweeping generalization that is contrary to statistics (ODOT statistics say 56.
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