Instead of Envision Eugene which is our City’s long range plan for the future, I think our community needs another plan to appreciate our little City just the way that it is. I think we need a different plan for the future. I will call it “Appreciate Eugene.” Instead of envisioning Eugene the way that it isn’t, I think we should learn to appreciate Eugene just the way that it is! I would like people living here to know what a wonderful place Eugene already is.

So according to Mitt Romney’s supporters, Rick Santorum’s withdrawal from the race means that the people have chosen. Oh Really? Well I say NO ! The people have not chosen! The people with THE MONEY have chosen! AGAIN! Romney and his backers, and the Party Establishment with all of their money and all of their connections have chosen once again. The PEOPLE were actually backing either Santorum or Paul. A brokered convention wouldn't have been so bad for “the peeps.”

National Public Radio and the White House have obviously been taken over by an alien entity. This is no April fool’s joke! The following “news” item was “reported” last week by NPR. The President of the United States said, “Republicans in Congress have proposed a budget that is so far to the Right that it makes the Contract with America look like The New Deal”. That message was broadcast by the Commander in Chief directly over National Public Radio. And it came from a person and a place that are both so far removed from reality, so far out in outer space that it could actually be coming from an alien entity!

The Obama Administration and the entire Democratic Party are hard of hearing! The Establishment of the Republican Party is completely tone deaf. Two years after the passage of the historic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a full sixty-five percent of Americans still want the precedent setting health care law that requires Americans to buy a health insurance policy, either overturned or repealed. And what does one key Democratic Senator, Chuck Schumer from New York say on Sunday’s Meet the Press? Only that the Obama Administration has done a poor job of Communicating their message.

On March 28th 2012 there was an editorial that appeared in the Register Guard entitled, “Not a Vote of Confidence.” It could just as easily have been entitled, “We Are Not On Board Anymore.” Here’s why.

Photos and links of traffic congestion problems made worse by designated bus lanes.

This article is the second in a series, republished especially for the May 2012 election campaign. Editor’s note: This article was first published in January, 2011. This year Rob Handy and Peter Sorenson are running for re-election to the Lane County Board of Commissioners from District 4 and District 3 respectively. It is important for the voters of North and South Eugene to remember that they were both found guilty of serious ethical violations, because they broke Oregon’s Public Meetings Law, and they were found guilty not by a Republican judge, of which there are not very many in Oregon, but by an impartial judge of the State of Oregon.

Big labor unions, the entitlement class, and the immoral government oligarchy are the reason that America has its back up against the wall. The Conservative Movement has been effectively co-opted by people like Sarah Palin endorsing Newt Gingrich and Marco Rubio endorsing Mitt Romney. Have you ever noticed how Republicans rally behind so called conservative candidates only to have them abandon their “conservative” principles after they get elected? Take Scott Brown for instance and also now apparently the freshman Senator from Florida Marco Rubio, with his recent endorsement of Mitt Romney?

Editor's Note: In Foreign Policy Magazine, which is a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard professor Stephen Walt writes that he thinks the media is irresponsibly promoting the idea of a war with Iran over the threat posed by their nuclear weapons program. This article is a rebuttal to Stephen Walt’s March 2012 piece that appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine. In responding to Professor Walt’s many different assertions and assumptions I would like to offer what I believe is a more sensible and more realistic counter opinion, and a realistic alternative to his arguments which basically support Iran’s right to have a nuclear weapon. When you get right down to it, all of Stephen Walt’s arguments go to supporting Iran’s right to develop and build atomic weapons!

I lost my Mother last month. With God’s grace she died peacefully in her sleep. I only hope that she did not experience any anxiety or discomfort when the time came, nor have any idea what was happening while she slept. I imagine that she just closed her eyes one typical evening and went to sleep and she never opened her eyes again. My mother would have been eighty-five years old last month. If anyone ever deserved to be taken peacefully in their bed as they lay sleeping it was my dear mother.

Campbell Soup Company makes a pretty good tasting broth called alphabet soup. It’s tomato based and it’s loaded with tasty little pieces of pasta shaped in the letters of the alphabet. It’s been on the grocery store shelves since I was a little boy. And that’s over sixty years of serving up some pretty tasty meals to millions of satisfied customers. The Mainstream News Media is sometimes jokingly referred to as the Alphabet News Networks. Unlike Campbell Soup however, what they cook up is not nearly as nutritious, nor good for you!

Out funded and out spent since the beginning of the Republican Primary by nearly ten to one, nevertheless Rick Santorum still managed to beat Mitt Romney in Louisiana’s March Primary by almost a two to one margin. If it hadn’t been for three former Republican candidates who long ago suspended their campaigns, but whose names still appeared on the March ballots, Rick Santorum would have received over fifty percent of the votes. What does that mean for Mitt Romney?

The other day I was trying to figure out a good analogy for Barack Obama’s misguided and dangerous foreign policy in the Middle East, especially as it pertains to Iran’s nuclear weapons development program. Why does Obama continue to avoid doing what is absolutely necessary in order to prevent this Iranian threat from coming to fruition? All across the Middle East, in one country after another, President Obama’s policies are leading to insurrection and instability, but not in Iran. Why not?

Lois Joyce Rohter March 18, 1927 - March 15, 2012 Beloved wife and mother

There needs to be a clear choice in the next election between Barack Obama, and whoever the Republican Party chooses to run against him in November. That is why I am not supporting Mitt Romney, or Newt Gingrich in the Republican Primary. And after hearing from just one too many of Ron Paul’s obnoxious, God hating libertarian followers, I cannot, and I will not remain neutral any longer between Senator Rick Santorum and Congressman Ron Paul.

John McCain told us not too long ago that we had nothing to fear from Barack Obama. That was back in 2008 when he was running against Obama for President. He was wrong then, and he is wrong now. McCain was not right when he made that assessment of America’s first openly avowed Socialist President, and he is wrong today too when he openly endorses Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican Primary to run against President Obama in the General Election. In fact John McCain is almost never right, or right of center.

Every time that Newt Gingrich is faltering in the polls, or his Presidential campaign seems to be wagging behind, the Elite Liberal Mainstream Media Establishment just picks him up, dusts him off, and breathes new life into his faltering campaign with another Sunday morning infusion of free publicity from the press, and another Sunday morning round of cardio pulmonary resuscitation from the media, aimed at reviving his failing Presidential chances, and bolstering their under-performing corporate advertising revenues at the same time.

Freedom of speech is not a slogan. It is not a bumper sticker. Free speech is more than mere empty words. Just as I believe in free speech, and free markets, I also believe that more freedom, not less freedom, is the solution for what is wrong with our country. I believe that freedom is The Best Antidote for What Ails Us. It is the strongest antiseptic for what evils have infected our body politick, and our ‘public square’, right down to our local city or county government.

It looked until very recently like either Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney, who were jockeying back and forth in the polls, were a “shoe-in” to win the GOP Primary. But that was before Rick Santorum took off, i.e. Rick Santorum’s Presidential campaign blasted off form the Primary launch pad. It blasted off like a giant Atlas V Rocket with two solid propellant booster tanks strapped securely to its sides, and a Presidential candidate’s capsule mounted firmly atop the powerful launch vehicle, which was aimed directly at Washington D.C. with a soft targeted landing planned for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sometime between November 2nd 2012 and January 20th 2013.

I realize that drastic problems require drastic solutions. Problems of the type and magnitude that our country is facing require drastically different solutions proposed by drastically different leaders. The only drastically different candidate left in the Republican Primary with drastically different solutions is Ron Paul. None of the other candidates in the race are really that much different than the other leaders who preceded them, and from all of those who have been governing our nation for over the last thirty years! And therein lies the problem. We need to put out a huge fire that is raging inside Washington, D.C. It is threatening to take our country down, and we can’t do it with a little garden hose.