News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Some of us grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day. The words “one nation, indivisible” are a potent memory. Are those words history? The thirteen colonies declared their independence from England on July 4, 1776. Congress adopted the name “United States” on September 9, 1776. In 1777, they designated June 14 as American Flag Day. The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified in 1791. It is surely probable that the writers of those amendments would have been stunned by the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decisio...
I recently had one of those annual medical examinations. While waiting for the doctor, I was required to provide answers on a questionnaire. “Have you ever had this or that medical issue?” Finally, the questionnaire posed a set of state-of-mind questions ending with, “Are you happy with your life?” I answered, yes, I am happy with my life. The doctor looked at the questionnaire and remarked, “We don’t see many people like you.” My satisfaction with my life is not because of great achievements; I am in the ordinary category. It is because I am...
Europeans have invaded Russia twice. Napoleon invaded Russia with a force of close to half a million troops. He advanced to Moscow, but the Russian government had relocated. The brutal Russian winter arrived, and Napoleon’s army froze, starved, and died of disease as they retreated from the country. Germany, under Hitler, invaded Russia at the outset of World War Two. The Germans sent their best armed forces to the Eastern Front to fight the Russians. Seventy percent of Germany’s casualties were sustained fighting the Russians. During the war...
I try to avoid questionable sources of information, but I came across some gossip on Elf Net that I am obliged to pass along to you. It seems that Santa will be delivering by robot this year, and some really bad grinch is attempting to hack the system. Then, there is the possibility that the robot could get stuck in your chimney. If you don’t get what you wished for, check the Santa clause in your contract. And don’t forget to lay out some batteries for the robot. The Merry in Merry Christmas, at least for adults, is about family and fri...
For centuries people struggled to determine whether citizens would be governed by the Catholic Church or by civil governments, whether they would be ruled by hereditary monarchies or by elected governments, whether enslaved by fascist armies or saved by military forces from democratic nations. The US has long been admired for its democracy, but that image was damaged by the assault on the U.S. Capitol and U.S. democracy on January 6, 2021. Radical deviant politicians are now condoning and exploiting the people who hold bizarre beliefs...
United States armed forces have superior morale, leadership, training, and weapons systems. After the Vietnam era, the U.S. military resolved to never again become engaged in that type of quagmire. Efforts were made to develop procedures making it difficult for Congress or the president to commit U.S. military forces to a task not appropriate for military force. The U.S. Army reoriented to maximize effectiveness when deployed against a conventional enemy military force fielded by a nation-state that has a capability to present a serious threat...
The video portraying an American Air Force plane moving on a runway with a mob of Afghani citizens running beside the aircraft and some on the outside of the aircraft presented an embarrassing image of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The fast collapse of the American sponsored Afghani regime is equally distressing. Young readers may not recall, but the U.S. experienced a humiliating final exit from Vietnam in 1975. Photos portrayed desperate people climbing to the top of the U.S. Embassy attempting to get aboard departing helicopters. Pe...
I offer, here, a few words of history that were overlooked when you were in school. Diseases have been master killers throughout human history. There was no defense against the misery, death, and sorrow until modern medical science developed vaccines, antibacterial medicines, and other methods to prevent or treat diseases. Historian William Manchester reports that during the Middle Ages “… half the people in Europe died, usually from disease, before reaching their thirteenth birthday.” Vaccines do not ordinarily eradicate a disease, but small...
Americans paid a high price to obtain and maintain our freedom and independence. Americans have also paid a high price to help other countries maintain their independence. Those achievements required teamwork. In the wake of WW II, the U.S. Congress gained a lot of members who had served in the war, eventually reaching 78 percent of the membership. Military service in a war zone is not essential for legislative service. However, those former members of Congress gained something vital from their war time experience. They learned that...
President “only I” committed political suicide during the final days of his term. Unfortunately, the pirate captain took the Republican ship down with him. His hour long, January 2nd, phone rant to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger revealed, unequivocally, what some insiders knew and other people suspected about President Trump’s character flaws and his willingness to subvert American democracy. President Trump’s incitation of his fanatic followers resulted, on January 6th, in an assault on the United States Congress while in session...
During the long history of human existence, we have relied on belief. It was the only system that existed for most people. There was no repository of reliable information. Belief is embedded in our heritage. Belief gives us psychological comfort. Belief can be based in fact or based on rumor or imagination or deliberate falsification. Beliefs can be harmless, but they can also be detrimental. Our reliance on belief was moderated in the Western world by the development of disciplined fact finding in eras that historians call the scientific revol...
America needs a Republican Party that represents ordinary people and solves extraordinary problems. That would be a political party whose policies command a clear majority of votes cast in a national election. The Republican Party got under way during the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. Republican legislators produced a national graduated income tax to distribute the burden of cost of government in an equitable manner. To raise additional money, the government sold bonds directly to individuals, thus circumventing the sometimes-gre...
What makes good government? Many of us would probably contend that we have taken a recess from good government. Sometimes we learn more during recess than we do in the classroom. Polls indicate that our confidence in the way our federal government operates has been declining for several decades. Money has become the governing factor enabling a political candidate to get on stage. At that point, it becomes a personality contest with all manner of pundits rating every syllable, move, garment, and hair style while photographers spot every...
We have two kinds of water problems: too much and not enough. The oceans cover 70 percent of our planet, and they contain 97 percent of the water on Earth. Samuel Coleridge in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water every where, Nor any drop to drink.” The remaining 3 percent is freshwater (no salt), and approximately 69 percent of that freshwater is ice at the South Pole (Antarctica) and the Greenland Ice Sheet. The remaining fraction of freshwater provides life to all of the vegetation and animal life that requires freshwater. The wat...
Few things are more important to people than good health. Healthy citizens are a vital foundation for a prosperous society. The need for healthcare is universal. The need starts even before we are born. Prenatal care is vital because the developing embryo-fetus is extremely sensitive to its environment. Very young children are also vulnerable because they are still developing and because their immune systems are immature. Healthcare for dental, hearing, eyesight needs, injury, disease, and the deterioration caused by advancing age is...
There are biblical references to false statements and rumors. It is not a new issue, but currently the problem is amplified by an electronic twist. The printed word on paper has been a mainstay of the American experience since well before the American Revolution. Ben Franklin was in the printing business in the 1720s. The print medium, including newspaper, has survived the advent of radio, television, and computers. The news content of all of those media was generally subjected to editorial review to ensure accuracy. But a new development,...
Some politicians, pundits, and lobbyists launched vile attacks on the student survivors of the mass murder at a school in Parkland, Florida. That seems counterintuitive, since we usually exhibit sympathy toward innocent victims. The critics have contended that the students, who are not old enough to vote, have no right to address gun law issues. It has been suggested that the students should learn CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) instead of trying to prevent the need for CPR. It has been suggested that the students are trying to rewrite the...
John W. Schoen, CNBC, wrote in a June 2016 article that “the National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates there are roughly 5 million to 10 million AR-15 rifles [privately] owned in the United States. . . .” The U.S. Government has purchased an estimated eight million of the military version for use by our armed forces and our allies. The AR-15 rifle uses military ammunition. It has a rapid-fire function, and it accepts large-capacity ammunition magazines. If any one of those three factors were changed, it would be a much less deadly wea...
Science has given us the ability to know things. Before the era of science, that being most of human history, people could only believe or not believe many things. Still true. But some things can be proved. For example, water heated at sea level elevation, where the weight of air is 14.6 pounds per square inch, boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. That can be proved by experimentation, and the result is the same every time. But many things cannot be so convincingly proved, and we are often governed by beliefs that may be right or wrong. Men, it...
In the 1700s, when weapons of war were still primitive, the Founders of our constitution were wise enough to know that war could ruin nations, and they gave the congress the sole authority to declare war. Congress last declared war 75 years ago. Since then, the congress has forfeited its authority while presidents initiated wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the current undefined conflict in the Middle East, Africa, and Pacific countries. Members of congress were recently surprised to learn that the U.S. is engaged in combat operations in Niger. That...
We do not want the Russians — or anyone else — to influence the outcome of our elections. But interfering in elections is an everyday occurrence. According to historian Alfred W. McCoy, citing research at Carnegie Mellon University, between 1946 and the year 2000, the U.S. intervened in 81 elections in foreign countries. Stephen Kinzer writes in his book “Overthrow” that the U.S. has overthrown 14 foreign governments. Interference in elections has also become a homegrown problem in the United States. An elected official who represents the peo...
At the close of World War II, the winners (the Allies) divided Germany into east and west Germany, Korea into north and south Korea, and Vietnam into north and south Vietnam. The division of Germany produced a threat of military conflict for more than four decades. Germany was eventually reunited without war. The division of Vietnam did produce a military conflict that, in retrospect, seems to have been foolish. Vietnam is reunited. The division of Korea produced a war, and that conflict is unresolved. After Mao Tse Tung gained control of China...
The world is changing at a fast pace, making it difficult to keep up and even more difficult to know what it all means for us and our children and grandchildren. Only a generation ago, 60 percent of college students in American colleges were men. Today, that is reversed; 60 percent of college students are women. When men were drafted for military service during World War I, government administrators were surprised to discover that those men typically had only six or seven years of schooling. Today, 61 percent of young people say that completing...
We say that we live in the information age. The available quantity of information is immense. The reliability of that flood of information is uncertain. That situation is not entitely new; there have always been rumors. But electronic communication gives us access to more rumors and false information than we can easily process. We need reliable information to conduct our daily lives and exercise our responsibilities. How do we distinguish between accurate information and false information? It is not easy. Traditionally, we have relied on...
For many months, day after day, the first thing that appeared on much of the national news media in bold black letters was the word Trump, often accompanied by a photograph of Mr. Trump. By early March 2016, some of the political pundits were saying that the GOP (Republican Party) was unhappy with the political candidate they had created. But the Republican Party didn’t put Mr. Trump at the top of the first page of those many editions of the national news media and pundit blogs. And it wasn’t advertising paid for by Mr. Trump. It was the med...