The Bush campaign machine’s smear of Kerry’s service record is beginning to backfire. Soon, when attention is turned to Bush’s record, watch the Republicans scream foul. None screamed as lies were tol
Bush ads are trashing a Vietnam veteran’s record. The trashing of Vietnam veterans is supposedly the realm of war-hating hippies and liberals. Republicans have expressed their disdain about this for o
So - will the Bush government now seek a violent way to overthrow Chavez as president of Venezuela now that he has easily survived the recall referendum? Our CIA and other secret U.S. agencies have be
He has his leering look as he leans over a podium and says the US is safer with Saddam removed from power. That’s it. And variations on that. He has it down pat. He stumbles when he speaks of anything
Well, no surprise. And not even close to the extreme measures the weird people behind Bush will go to in order to avoid being thrown out of office. They went ballistic when Clinton was elected. They u
Seems most of my conservative friends are avoiding it. But they tell me what they think of Michael Moore and they are not nice comments. They should see the movie first.
Very good documentary. The Democrats do not get off clean. The Democrats are well documented in the movie going along with Bush’s absurd war against Iraq. They are shown as mindless suits without a bi
This from the movie revenue watch website Box Office MoJo: “In terms of raw dollars, Fahrenheit is actually the biggest opening ever for a movie playing at less than 1,000 theaters, topping Roc
No showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 in Bellingham this past week. Why not? Because Regal Cinema booked the rights to show it but waited to see if it was well attended. Regal controls all three movie
From a friend who is an enlisted person in the military - in a combat unit. The officers - the lieutenants - of his unit lectured them this week about torture. The officers said the enlisted soldiers
and we will suffer for it. Reagan did not win the Cold War. Communism was systemically fatal - just as all the conservatives kept saying. Reagan did do the right things to end the Cold War - and he de
Today the Washington Department of Ecology released a report that says, basically, that mercury in the lake is less now than in the past. “Decreasing” is the operative word.
The initiative is ‘remove motor boats’, not ‘remove boats’ from Lake Whatcom. Our Chamber of Commerce just lies in print to achieve their goal of defeating the initiative.
ABC News has an exclusive interview with a sergeant in the 302 MI Battalion, a unit of Col Pappas 205 MI Brigade. See NwCit report below of May 4 - two weeks ago. The sergeant says there was and is a
This statement was posted on the DOD website on Saturday - and I took a computer photo of it on Sunday - to catch them if they changed it. Well, they went back and doctored it - improved it - without
It is to cause extreme physical or mental pain for punishment or to extract a confession or information. Our government officials are now saying we do not torture because we follow the Geneva rules. T
A short note. For days we have all listened to voices from the left demand resignations and voices from the right actually defend this behavior or at least excuse it. We have not seen any reporting on
Questions not being asked by the press about the abuses. At least I’ve not run across them in news reports. The reports have not gone into any more detail in three days. We see a few more photos but n
Writer's notes: The candidates for State Representative in the 40th District Position 1 are: Dusty Gulleson (prefers Republican Party,) Chuck Carrell (prefers Republican Party,) Doug Revelle (prefers Happiness Party,) Mike Newman (prefers Republican Party,) Kristine Lytton (prefers Democratic Party,) Tom Pasma (prefers Democratic Party,) Thomas Boucher (prefers Democratic Party,) Justin Van Dyk (prefers Democratic Party,) and Donna R. Miller (prefers Republican Party.)
What follows are the two responses to questions I submitted to Chuck last Mon, Aug 2.
Why should I vote for you?
"I’m running this year because the Legislature and Governor continued their out of control spending habits despite our troubled economy, and we need to stop it.
The only way it will stop is to start electing strong leadership to the Legislature that can make the hard choices that will be needed.
I will not support any new taxes unless they will completely eliminate an existing tax and make the amount less overall to the people they affect.
I think people are taxed to their limit right now and the real long term solution is to have the state and local governments cut their spending and get back to the essential functions of what state government is supposed to do.
I will not accept money from, or be a representative for, any PAC or special interest group. That’s important when figuring out where to trim at least $3 billion dollars from our state’s budget next session.
When making cuts, these candidates will feel obligated to keep unnecessary programs due to the financial aid they received during their campaigns. The problem was highlighted this year, and electing those types of candidates will only bring the same issue to the next Legislative session."
What is important to you?
"The most important thing to me this next Legislative session is getting our fiscal house in order.
We need to simplify the tax structure and then get an accurate assessment of what the state budget will be.
Then we need to REALISTICALLY balance the budget. This means that we fund our most important things such as education and public safety first and then continue down until everything is funded or there is no more state money left.
When the state budget is down to zero then we stop funding programs. No matter how badly we want to fund a program, if the state budget is spent then they will have to get their funding someplace else besides state government.
Even within our top priorities we need to look at how to consolidate these agencies and programs to make them more efficient. We also need to look at reducing the middle management in these agencies and what I term “inner bureaucracies.”
Years of these types of hiring practices by state and local government has created an enormous drain on our resources and is not sustainable. Nor can we rely on Federal grants like we did this year to balance the budget."
