Posted inOpinion

Elk Don’t Belong in Farms

Do we really need to domesticate another wild species? Is keeping a herd of pet elk as cute and harmless as it seems? Consider this:
Chronic wasting disease (mad cow disease for deer and elk) has been spread from elk farm to elk farm and sometimes from elk farm to wild elk in over a dozen states in the last 15 years. CWD is always fatal, and you can't even tell if an animal has it until it dies. Meanwhile, it's contagious for two or three years or more before the animal dies. It's nasty, and the risk to our wildlife is too great to contemplate.
Saskatchewan spent $20 million eliminating CWD from 38 elk farms. Wisconsin has spent over $12 million trying to eradicate CWD from its white-tailed deer herds. These are taxpayer dollars.

Posted inNews

Barackstar Status: Neither spring break nor a basketball loss can stop Obama in Eugene

Spring break has officially begun at the University of Oregon on this Friday afternoon, but there’s no shortage of young faces remaining on the Eugene campus. A line, five people thick in some places, starts at the doors of McArthur Court, extending in both directions for more than a thousand feet, nearly enclosing the university’s massive athletic complex. There isn’t a basketball game at Mac Court today — the team is in Little Rock, Ark. and slowly losing its lead in a first-round NCAA tournament game. And there isn’t a concert either — live music doesn’t stop at Mac Court too often these days. These people are here to see Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful who is in the midst of a less than two-day sweep of Oregon in preparation for the state’s May 20 primary. 

Posted inOpinion

Walden’s Locked-Door Policy

In December 2007 I got an e-mail from the folks at MoveOn.org asking if I would be willing to deliver a petition (signed by over 900 residents of our congressional district) to Congressman Greg Walden. I am not a joiner, and I don't agree with everything MoveOn says, but I resisted my own reluctance and agreed to do it, because I believed in what the petition said.
MoveOn sent me the names of several other people in our area who had agreed to meet at the congressman's office on Dec. 13.
I called the congressman and reached his receptionist, who told me the office would be closed that particular day. I asked her if they would agree to at least have one of the staff stop by the office and receive the petition on behalf of the signers. She said, "No."

Posted inOpinion

Why They Hate Hillary

The reason Hillary Clinton has such negative image problems is that when she was the First Lady in Little Rock she helped pass legislation to improve the ailing state school system and extend education for 4-year-olds. This hit the big boys in Arkansas right where it hurt them most, in their pocket books. Their hatred of her became vitriolic and they formed a Republican committee to taint and discredit her image.
While our homeless veterans and mentally ill are eating out of garbage cans to survive, right-wing Christian radio has spent millions to billions of dollars duping hard-working Americans to vote time and again with the wealthy, who are laughing all the way to their banks. Newt Gingrich suggested to Rush Limbaugh and other mean-spirited conservatives to repeat "words" like sick, pathetic, welfare, crisis, traitor, cheat, steal, bizarre and radical over and over to brainwash their audience. Let's not forget that during this time Newt was having an affair and served his wife divorce papers while she was recovering from her illness. Read Molly Ivins' books, god rest her witty soul. I am so sorry that she is not here to witness what is happening.

Posted inOpinion

Good News: We Don’t Have to Pay Taxes

Your sidebar on people who don't pay taxes exemplifies the incredible job of brainwashing our society has undergone.
No one should be paying federal income taxes.
The 16th Amendment was never properly ratified.
The Supreme Court had previously ruled a central bank was unconstitutional prior to the creation of the current Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. Since the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified the IRS is illegal. There is no law that says we the people have to pay income taxes.

Posted inOpinion

Four Thousand

A macabre milestone was passed on Sunday: The 4,000th American soldier was killed in Iraq. The 4,000th death was recorded when four troops were killed by a roadside bomb that exploded near their vehicle in southern Baghdad.
The American death toll since the invasion of Iraq five years ago this month has now exceeded by 1,002 the number killed in the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. It does not, of course, include the nearly 30,000 US troops who have been wounded in action, nor the Iraqi civilians who have been killed, a number that probably will be forever unknown but that has been estimated at more than 600,000.
Vice President Dick Cheney (he of the five Vietnam-era draft deferments) was interviewed by ABC News on Monday and asked to comment about the 4,000 American troop deaths. He seemed to think they were not that big a deal, pointing out that those who went to Iraq all volunteered for military service.

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