Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Sorted by date Results 1473 - 1497 of 1891
Hang on to your hats! President Obama considers that his 52% vote during the 2012 election was a mandate by the people that he was to be granted supreme power. To h*** with the legislature! He believe that his 52% margin (the highest during the last five elections) gives him the right to bypass congress and misuse executive powers. He has already shown his propensity to do this during his first four years. He believes he has nothing to lose. But, the talk by the liberals of a third term should concern us because the...
Byron Behne watches the grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse. 1/29/13: For all the volatility in the markets in the last few months things sure have been boring lately. There just doesn’t seem to be a strong catalyst to break this market out in either direction for the time being. Unless exports begin to beat expectations our gains over the last few weeks may begin to erode. 1/31/13: Chicago wheat lost 7 cents today after being up 10 the day before. Yesterday’s rally was sparked by concerns about South American wea...
“The Sequester is coming! The Sequester is coming!” Yup, Congress is in a panic over a problem they created, and many in Congress want you and me to pony up. Again. Some want to cut only non-military discretionary funding – like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, transportation and the like in order to “find” about $1 trillion to balance the federal budget. Instead of planning on cutting programs and raising taxes on you and me to balance the federal budget, Congress already has a known-to-them remedy at their...
Just a few minutes ago, I was more than halfway through a column about my birthday. I paused to read it through, just to make sure it made sense, when I realized I was WHINING. Ouch. I decided I don’t need to do that anymore. Instead, let’s talk about technology. I have some fairly strong Luddite leanings, but am basically too lazy to actually act on them. It’s one thing to despise technology, and quite another to live without it. So I have a smart phone. One of the reasons I...
My father taught me the line when I was a child: “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” Those were the words William Shakespeare put into the mouth of King Richard III when he was knocked off his horse in the midst of the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Richard was killed, ending the rule of the Plantagenet royalty in England and ushering in the time of the Tudors. Shakespeare famously depicted Richard III as a hunchbacked villain who murdered members of his own fam...
First of all, we regret to inform you that there is only silence on the IEO front. No word from anyone, except when the Bankruptcy Court sends out legal notices to all of us who are creditors (almost every business in town, it would appear). Odessa's other big project, however, is about to break ground as soon as weather permits. The meat-processing facility under project manager Sue Lani Madsen of Edwall is taking shape, both on paper and in terms of obtaining capital and gearing up for production. Area livestock producers...
Thank you for getting us in touch with Lydia and Helmut Kieß, our German cousins who visited in Odessa last summer. We have been enjoying their correspondence, and maybe we can help each other in researching the history of our ancestors. We appreciate the coverage in The Record. Larry and Della Kiesz Ritzville...
Byron Behne watches the grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse. 1/22/13: Chicago wheat fell 12 cents, posting a larger trading range than Friday and then closing lower. This seemingly puts a stop to our rally, as it gives off a pretty negative technical signal on the price charts. There wasn’t much news driving prices down today, but Northern Plains forecasts are a little wetter than they were last week. Corn was unchanged on the day and soybeans strongly higher on drier weather forecasts for Argentina. 1/25/13: W...
There’s that song again. My unwanted, inadvertent, unloved theme song. “I’m just a girl who cain’t say no . . .” Well, wait a minute now. Yes, I can. Or is that “cain?” I do. Say no, that is. I’m saying no to the voice that says I’m crazy to try to continue Odessa’s tradition of having a quilt shop. I’m saying no to the voice that says Old Town Hall is past redemption, or that its future is unalterably linked to the success of existing organizations. I’m saying no to the...
We are still trying our best to figure out what transpired at the Inland Empire Oilseeds facility just prior to Christmas. Well, actually, what transpired was that the workforce was laid off and the plant was shuttered. Chapter 7 bankruptcy was filed. What we don't know is the why. And with many issues to be resolved in bankruptcy court, the principals, on advice of counsel, are not yet talking about the why question. We attended this week's meeting of the Odessa Public Development Authority. We learned that there is at least...
Lately I’ve been thinking about what advice the old me (that is, the me I am today) would give the young me. The first thing that popped into my head was, “Don’t wear shoes that hurt your feet.” Right after that came, “Don’t wear shoes that make you walk funny.” And right after that came, “Why would I listen to the old me when I wouldn’t listen to my parents?” I’ll admit, I have an obsession with shoes. So did my mother. It may be because, shaped the way I am, the only clothe...
A few weeks ago I lost the use of my toilet and learned first hand just how much I missed it when it wasn’t there. My plumbing went out of order when the pipe between my house and the city’s sewer line in the street collapsed. It was about 60 years old and made out of compressed fiberboard of some sort – I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did. Pipes like that belong to the homeowner, so it was my responsibility to get it fixed. It took about a week for the workmen to come...
Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire reflected on her eight-years in office in her State of the State address at the Capitol Tuesday morning, her last official act before relinquishing the reins of that office to Gov.-elect Jay Inslee. Among the issues she touched upon were her administration's achievements and involvement in industry, education, transportation and economic recovery. Gregoire also offered advice to the legislature, outlining her suggestions for the next administration. Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft and Starbucks...
I have a genuine concern about the young men and women of America! We have tens of thousands of young people in our state looking for work. However, the Washington State Patrol is facing a crisis because they can’t find enough good candidates to fill a class. They prefer to have 60 people in each class, as that is the optimum size for their facilities and instructors. They recently advertised extensively, and they did not get enough candidates to fill a class. The chief of the WSP said in a recent interview that they had e...
Personally, I blame it all on Walt Disney. Seriously. Before Walt came along, fairy tales tended to be not just cautionary, but downright terrifying. I’m pretty sure that prior to being introduced to the happy-ever-after brand of storytelling perfected by those at the Disney company, I was too scared to do anything wrong. After all, being baked in someone’s oven or eaten by a wolf didn’t sound particularly pleasant. Then here came Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinde...
On Monday, January 21, we celebrate both Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and the inauguration of Barack Obama. Much has happened between the Civil Rights Movement, which began in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education, to the election of America’s first bi-racial president to another term in office. In April of 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support the sanitation workers striking for better working conditions and a living wage. Not only had he fought discrimination against all minorities in this country, he also c...
After the recent theatrical charade about the fiscal cliff given to us by the people elected to lead this country, I would like to inform them what Winston Churchill said regarding what they accomplished. “I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." Joe Wollman Odessa...
In light of Duane Pitts’ piece about labor unions, maybe we should tell the rest of the story. I am including something I found in the Jewish World Review by Thomas Sowell and please note the place where he points out that labor unions do not create wealth. Dave McClanahan Odessa Union Myths By THOMAS SOWELL The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians. Nothing shows the utter cynicism of the u...
When I lived in Portland, I had (what I considered to be) a glorious garden. My house, which was quite small, sat on a standard city lot. In the eight years I lived there, I dug out most of the lawn and planted things that bloom. I planted heirloom roses, daylilies, bearded iris, crocus, tulips, daffodils and peonies. I planted daphne, heather and creeping phlox in the rock garden, along with basket of gold and clove pinks. Delphinium, coreopsis and echinacea bloomed all...
Wow! It's a whole new year! Again. Well, it's not actually a whole new year as I'm writing this, since my deadline is Monday, but I'm projecting a bit here, trying to sound like the me I think I'll be on Thursday, when you might be reading this. That's right. I'll still be me. When I was a very young person, and even a not-so-young person, I still believed that if I tried hard enough, I could reinvent myself on an annual basis. I don't believe those things anymore. It's not...
Three months after the worst terrorist attack on an American diplomatic outpost since the 1998 Embassy bombing the state department is trying to clarify what happened in Benghazi this past September 11th. Congress was to be briefed by an advisory board on security in Libya. Two deputy secretaries were to testify in open hearings in the House and Senate. Fuller disclosure on Benghazi is supposed to set the record straight. However, the critical piece of the puzzle will still be missing. Hillary was scheduled to testify but...
We know that the House of Representatives has been unable to reach a sensible deal to avoid unnecessary fiscal trouble at the first of the year because of right-wing Republicans’ aversion to tax increases. But there is another issue on which conservatives are creating needless difficulties for themselves and the country: It’s harder and harder for politicians on the right to think straight about health care. Conservatives once genuinely interested in finding market-based ways for the government to expand health insurance cov...
Byron Behne watches the grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse. 12/26/12: I suppose I could make a stupid joke about Santa leaving the wheat market a lump of coal but I just don't have the energy. For now the path of least resistance is lower until export volumes improve or investment money decides that grains are once again the place to be. Going into the end of the year doesn't look like it will be any fun. 12/27/12: Blah blah fiscal cliff, blah blah investment money, blah blah export demand, blah blah labor...
We are not having a debt crisis. It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows. And even the confrontation over the debt ceiling that looms a few months from now if we do somehow manage to avoid going over the fiscal cliff isn’t really about debt. No, what we’re having...
Byron Behne watches the grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse. 12/17/12: Wheat prices continue to trade a lower range that was established after the USDA monthly supply-and-demand report last week. Chicago futures fell 6 cents on the day and white wheat dropped 3. The HRW belt is supposed to receive some needed moisture this week. However, what they really need is a change in the long term weather pattern and not one rain/snowstorm. 12/18/12: Wheat prices finally got low enough to entice Egypt into a tender on Tuesday...
