President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize recently and your paper managed to run a couple (tidbits) on the event, including banter from a guy who didn't even know it happened and a piece in Upfront that was just an off-the-dome blurb. I'm not sure if that really counts as journalism. The Internet is rife with people spouting off uneducated opinions about various topics and you're killing trees to put more of it in print. To Mr. McMenaminuses (whoever that actually is) I would say, why don't you listen to the Nobel committee chair explain the decision before you feel the need to go on about it. There were specific reasons that they cited (“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”) that make a lot of sense. And to those people who say that Obama hasn't “done” anything, I would say that you're completely not paying attention. In short, Obama has fundamentally changed the way the United States government operates.
Quit Baggin' On Obama
Enough Already…
The New York Times' Sunday edition has an article featuring Oregon's Earl Blumenauer and the difficulties he finds himself in regarding the progressive agenda he worked so hard for. It is similar to the frustration so many of us Obama supporters are feeling at the President's seeming inability to shift gears from his intense desire to compromise and find by partisanship in just about everything he does.
No question that Barack Obama was dealt an unprecedented set of difficult disasters when he entered the White House. The economy in shambles, the health care debate raging out of control while millions of Americans were left without the simplest of care, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claiming billions of dollars and countless human American lives (aside from the locals, caught in the crossfire) and the list goes on.
Keep The Wimp
Currently there’s a brouhaha brewing over Deschutes County’s intentions to close down NW Wimp Way thereby eliminating an alternate access route into and out of Crooked River Ranch. If you don’t know NW Wimp Way it’s the roadway that heads west off Highway 97 just north of Terrebonne and just south of the Rex T.
Hey Balloon Boy Dad, We Stopped Working Because of You. Pay Up
News outlets have been going bonkers with all the fallout from the Balloon Boy and his wacky dad (strangely, Balloon Life magazine has been mum on the subject) who looks like he, along with his wife, might get the book thrown at at him by pissed-off law enforcement officials for the alleged hoax he pulled off last week.
Balloon Dad Richard Heene may get the bill for the extensive air and ground search for his ironically named son, Falcon, who is now known as “Balloon Boy” because when your real name is Falcon, you need a really ridiculous nickname.
Faux Pros
In a town where everyone is either: a) a former Olympian/World Champion, b) a really important big deal someplace else before they moved here, and c) wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, add professional photographer to the list. If my calculations are correct, there are more professional photographers in Bend than there are medical professionals.
Ignite Bend 3 Video
Sorry for the delay on this, but we at the Source got some pretty solid video from Ignite Bend 3 last week at the Tower Theatre. If you don’t know what Ignite is, here’s a crash course: Presenters choose any topic they’d like to share and then give five-minute slide show presentation.
Conservatives' Big Coup: No Pop for Prisoners
The conservative group Common Sense for Oregon is preening itself over a major victory: It’s gotten free soda pop taken away from Oregon prison inmates.
Common Sense jumped on the issue when it found out that prisoners were allowed to have free soda pop with their meals.
Damn Yankees
From age eight I lived for baseball. The kids in my neighborhood took over two adjoining vacant lots and created a diamond where games were played almost daily from when the snow melted in April through until late October.
When Is Too Much, Too Much?
“Man,” noted a Canadian journalist who called this week with some questions, “for a town that’s the poster child for a depressed economy due to the fallout from the housing boom and greed era, Bend sure has a lot of entertainment going on all the time.”Ah yes, this is the town with the endless array of entertainment possibilities from downtown fairs/festivals that are interchangeable no matter what season they celebrate to concerts galore, a glut of music in general, art walks, you name it, we got it in spades.
KPOV Gets Federal Grant, Moves Transmitter
There’s been plenty of good news for KPOV 106.7FM, Central Oregon’s community radio station coming down the pipe today.