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Open thread
- By Phillip Brownlee
- Posted May 29, 2006 at 12:07 a.m.
- Filed under Uncategorized
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50 Comments
Ha Ha I am the first!!! Crap now what do I say? LoL Nice weather… a bit hot!
Dang it writerdog, you have to do better than that! You have to come out swinging and rile some folks up to kick off these open threads. Here, I’ll show you how it’s done.:)
Quote of the Day:”[The] question is not whether American civilization will collapse [due to the blight of uncontrolled immigration] but when.” — Dr. Thomas Fleming
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
Thanks to the Eagle for giving us a twice-weekly Open Thread. Now, let’s see if we can justify it by using the blog responsibly.
Hatred and greed are more likely to undo everything that is great about this country
Amen to that Heartlander, amen to that.
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
Actually, Ian, I think the Eagle should give YOU a twice-weekly blog.
But there is a tradeoff. You get filtered off every other blog.
Notice your posts (and others please notice too).
You always close
“Viva La Raza Blanca!”
That’s histrionics. If you did that on a high school debating team, you’d be kicked off the team. You want to be a demagogue, not a thoughtful debater/discussant. And I think that is fine. Which is why I am suggesting that you be given your own semi-weekly thread, but be cut off from the other threads. You get free speech. People can voluntarily read your harangues, if they want to.
I want to talk about the bike paths. Or lack there of. Sure there are bicycle routes, but it’s not the same thing. You can’t ride your bike’s safely as transportation in Wichita.A friend was riding back from Lake Afton on his bicycle training for the Wicked Wind. There are no bicycle lanes so he had to ride on the edge of the road. He could hear a car load of kids coming up behind him. One leaned out of the car and threw a full can of coke at him!!!! The can hit him in the leg. It was a frightening moment for him. He rode all the rest of the way home afraid to look down to see the damage. It felt as though the can had taken his leg off at the knee. When he reached his house he found just a huge ugly bruise and a knot rising. He refuses to ride on city streets to get anywhere.On a recent visit to Anchorage, Alaska I was amazed at their accomodations for people on bike. They had bicycle lanes between cities that traveled along the highways away from the motorized traffic. In Anchorage itself they had bicycle lanes that cars weren’t permitted to drive in.In the days that gas is $3 a gallon and my prediction it will be more than $4 by labor day why can’t we look at real alternative choices.My department has about 20 people in it. Four would ride their bicycles to work if it was a ’safe’ option. I know there are many people who wont’ brave the city streets.Expand and create useful, dedicated bike paths. Paths that go from point A to point B. I’d like to see paths from Downtown to all the outer areas of town. Lets connect the city in a meaningful way.
I think it is in Denver, where any new housing additions have to tie into the existing bike paths. I would like to see something like that for Wichita, too. And I agree that we are way behind the times in terms of providing these bike paths in Wichita.
Good post, Sum1..yes, Wichita is behind the curve on safe bike lanes. But, sadly, a designated bike lane will not stop hoodlums from throwing things at bicyclists (or others). It is a shame we can’t catch the hooligans and pelt them with full soda cans!
Please take this survey. Number an reply email one through ten (with your ratings of agreement/desagreement) and send it to the hotmail account below. Thanks. Any results will be posted here. You can answer anonomously, if you wish.
Please indicate whether you: strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree with the following statements in a return email. Please just number your answers with one of the disagree/agree responses in a reply email. Thank you.
1. The United States should be a nation governed by Christian principles.
2. The idea of the separation of Church and State is a secular attempt to reduce Christianity’s influence on people.
3. Biblical injunctions are more binding than secular law.
4. There is a homosexual agenda.
5. The homosexual agenda is aimed at undermining Christian principles.
6. It is appropriate for Christians to have dominion over non-Christians.
7. Today’s Christians are persecuted by the influence of secular humanism.
8. It is more appropriate for Christians today to create a separate Christian community than to attempt to take dominion over the main U.S. culture.
9. Christ did not mean that Christians should stay out of politics when he said: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto the Lord what is the Lord’s.”
10. Public Education is dominated by the secular agenda.
I thought of something to say:
RememberingBy R.D.Liebst
It was a passing message, one of those that an announcer said just to remind everyone listening to remember the reason for this holiday was not a day off, not a chance to go to the lake and cook out.It is to remember those who have sacrifice in the defense of this country. He said please take a minute and think of them and to remember those family members that were left behind.
I would have done it anyway, that is just the way I am about things. But I thought, in a way I am lucky that I personally did not know any family that have died in war, oh somewhere in France there are two white stones with my great uncles names. They had been killed in world war one, but other then a few pictures I felt no real connection to them. My dad was in Korea, my uncle in world war two, a nephew in Iraq, a brother in law who was in Vietnam. The brother in law was the closes, he died of a brain tumor at thirty years old which they said could have been a result of exposure to agent orange during his tour.
But no one I had ever talked to had been killed in action, so I did not know anyone to remember.Then I did remember, I use to go to a site that had the pictures and names of those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. I stopped because I could not get through it without the tears falling down my face. I saw people I knew, the names were different but I knew them! There were the faces of young men and women I had gone to school with. That I had met at work, at the mall. I had laugh with them, talked with them. Every picture had a familiar face in it, they were friends of my kids, friends of mine, brothers and sisters of people I knew.Children of people I knew, all and everyone of them I knew, I knew their life and loves, their likes and dislikes. I could still hear their voices as they enjoyed the life that had been taken from them.
As different and a like as they could be, all coming together on these pages that seem to roll on with no end.So young, 18,19,20,21 at a time in their life that they should be thinking of finding that one true love, of buying that car they always wanted. Of finding a good job, all those things that a young adult wants out of life. They sacrifice for this country, for the freedom to find that love, that car, that job, that life.All these things that others take as a give me, they forsake so that this country could stand against those that would take it from us.
One day suddenly just does not seem enough of a thank you, but what could be done that would equal the sacrifice that they made? Then I think of all those that died before them for those same freedoms, those that fell in the waves on Normandy beach. That froze at Valley Forge and still fought on for this than new country. For the ideals that this country would stand for and the freedoms that Americans have.It is that they died for, not some land or a flag but those freedoms. They were not asked to died, they did it for those freedoms! That is the thank you to give, honor those freedoms and keep them sacred for they did not come without cost and were paid for with the blood and life of Americans.
For those freedom are worth more then yours or my life, they are the gift that those who are gone have given to our children and their children. They should never be given up freely, never traded away for anything less. “I would rather die a free man then live in comfortable servitude” those words live on long after the one who said them. Remember this day and everyday after, those that paid for these freedoms.Remember that the Constitution is not written in ink but blood, the parchment that holds the words is the lives of those that died to defend the words. How much more that those who have died to defend this nation and her freedom have over those that died solely for a king or a piece of land.
I am remembering.
DD,Purple Chicken, yada, yada.
Respects to all my fellow Vets out there on this Memorial Day.
WE editors, not even a thread to commemorate the sacrifice of Veterans on Memorial Day? Shame on you!
DD,
I have seen some biased polls, but that one is blatantly obvious.
Feel free to not answer it.
Here’s a poll that is the equivalent in it’s rediculousness to yours:
The leadership of the Ku Klux Klan would like you to provide a response to the following poll. Please indicate whether you: strongly disagree, disagree, agree, or strongly agree with the following statements:
1. I do not like black people.
2. I believe that people should be separated by the color of their skin.
3. Ian Santiago is a genius.
4. Ian Santiago should run for president.
5. The Dukes of Hazard is “real life”.
6. That King boy was nothing but trouble.
You should also feel free to not answer the poll. Sheesh…
No doubt members of the same crowd who think Bush Approval ratings are meaningless. Alternate Universe inhabitants.
DD,
If Bush approval ratings polls are as skewed as your poll then yes I think they are meaningless.
Do I really need to break down your questions and explain why or do you admit to your questions being unfair?
I will be sure to answer your poll later by email DD.
Forgive DD but I need a bit of clarification in order to respond correctly.
I read that 10 would be strong disagreement?
6. It is appropriate for Christians to have dominion over non-Christians.
I would strongly disagree with this. Would 10 be the correct response or 1?
Results should be interesting. Just want to make sure I respond as I mean to.
Let me be clear, I don’t think there is anything approaching a normal distribution of views on this blog - Hello, out there.
Even if a normal distribution was possible, the numbers would not be large enough to yield anything meaningful - Hello, again.
Contrary to the rightest most critics, I think people can respond how they see things, especially in an impersonal enviornment like this, even if the question pulls one way or the other. Maybe I have more faith in people than some here - why would I not be surprised by that?
Don’t want to respond? I invite you to pass it by.
I am getting to work on painting my house now. Will check back later.
JR - responses are only strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly disagree - there are no numerical ratings - the statement numbers are the numbers.My wife is tapping her foot now. see ya.
Here is a thought-provoking essay, written by Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill) titled,
“The buck stops with Bush, not Rumsfeld”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-emanuel29may29,0,7213887.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Oh, and here’s another interesting fact. Remember how, going into Iraq, we were told about a great “coalition” of nations joining us? Then it turned out that only Great Britain was sending substantial numbers of troops?
It was reported last week on C-SPAN that Tony Blair’s approval rating is LOWER THAN BUSH’s, 28%. The English opposition to the war is overwhelming. But we aren’t hearing this on Fox News, or for that matter CNN or the networks.
Another C-SPAN show’s CONSERVATIVE speaker said that the problem with the war in Iraq is that the true reasons we invaded are NOT the reasons that have been publicly proclaimed to engender public support. A democratic republic cannot survive if the public is lied to by leaders who feel no compunction about misleading the populace in order to stupify and manipulate it.
RD–
How can you mourn the deaths of soldiers in Iraq without holding the man responsible for those deaths accountable?
Since today is Memorial Day, I thought it appropriate to remind folks of our current Constitutional crisis, in which the President claims the authority to decide what does and does not count as ‘Constitutional.’ This threatens the doctrine of separation of powers, and turns the President into an elected (sic) despot.
Here’s a follow-up story to the Boston Globe’s earlier reportage about the Bush Administration’s extralegal use of ’signing statements’ and its assertion that the Executive Branch possesses the ultimate authority to decide what is and isn’t Constitutional.
Takeaway points:
-The Bush Administration has appended 750 signing statements to bills that have become law, thereby changing their meaning or nullifying them entirely. President Bush has yet to veto a bill sent to him by Congress.
-Douglas Kmiec, the Dean of Pepperdine Law School and a conservative legal scholar, rejects all of the Bush Administration’s claims regarding its Constitutional powers, and the validity of its use of signing statements;
-An early formulation of this rationale for expanding Executive authority was offered in response to the 1987 Congressional Report that criticized the Reagan Administration for allowing the Iran-Contra Affair. Dick Cheney led the minority group of Republicans who authored the report.
Because folks have to register with the Boston Globe to get this content, I have posted it here in its entirety.
We do the efforts of veterans no service if we allow the Executive to assert its perogatives in this unconstitutional fashion.
Happy Memorial Day.
**********************************
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/05/28/cheney_aide_is_screening_legislation/?page=1
Cheney aide is screening legislationAdviser seeks to protect Bush powerBy Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | May 28, 2006
WASHINGTON — The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president’s desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials.
The officials said Cheney’s legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington , is the Bush administration’s leading architect of the “signing statements” the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president’s right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.
The Bush-Cheney administration has used such statements to claim for itself the option of bypassing a ban on torture, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and numerous requirements that they provide certain information to Congress, among other laws.
Previous vice presidents have had neither the authority nor the interest in reviewing legislation. But Cheney has used his power over the administration’s legal team to promote an expansive theory of presidential authority. Using signing statements, the administration has challenged more laws than all previous administrations combined.
“Addington could look at whatever he wanted,” said one former White House lawyer who helped prepare signing statements and who asked not to be named because he was describing internal deliberations. “He had a roving commission to get involved in whatever interested him.”
Knowing that Addington was likely to review the bills, other White House and Justice Department lawyers began vetting legislation with Addington’s and Cheney’s views in mind, according to another former lawyer in the Bush White House.
All these lawyers, he said, were extremely careful to flag any provision that placed limits on presidential power.
“You didn’t want to miss something,” said the second former White House lawyer, who also asked not to be named.
Cheney and Addington have a long history. Addington was a Republican staff member on the congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, while Cheney was the ranking GOP House member. When Cheney became defense secretary under President George H. W. Bush , he hired Addington as Pentagon counsel.
After Cheney became vice president in 2001, he again hired Addington as counsel. Addington played a major role in shaping the administration’s legal policies in the war on terrorism, including a 2002 memo arguing that Bush could authorize interrogators to bypass anti torture laws. In October, when Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby , was indicted for perjury and resigned, Cheney replaced Libby with Addington.
A spokeswoman for Cheney’s office, asked to comment on Addington’s role in reviewing legislation, said, “We do not comment on internal deliberations.”
Addington, through the spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed.
But Martin Lederman , who worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush , said that Addington is simply doing the day-to-day legwork for Cheney and that he is influential within the administration because of the vice president’s desire to enhance executive power and Bush’s willingness to endorse Cheney’s views.
“In every administration, Democratic and Republican, there are officials with strongly held constitutional views, including somewhat idiosyncratic views,” said Lederman, now a law professor at Georgetown University. “What is new is that the extremely idiosyncratic and aggressive constitutional views are being adopted by the vice president and, therefore, by the administration.”
Previous administrations left the reviewing of legislation to the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
“What’s happening now is unprecedented on almost every level,” said Ron Klain , who was chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1999. “Gore was a very active policy maker in the Clinton administration, but that didn’t include picking through bills of Congress to find things to disagree with.”
The administration insists that Bush’s use of signing statements is not unprecedented. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, “President Bush’s signing statements are lawful and indistinguishable from those issued on hundreds of occasions by past presidents.”
The use of signing statements was rare until the 1980s, when President Ronald W. Reagan began issuing them more frequently. His successors continued the practice. George H. W. Bush used signing statements to challenge 232 laws over four years, and Bill Clinton challenged 140 over eight years, according to Christopher Kelley , a political science professor at Miami University of Ohio.
But in frequency and aggression, the current President Bush has gone far beyond his predecessors.
All previous presidents combined challenged fewer than 600 laws, Kelley’s data show, compared with the more than 750 Bush has challenged in five years. Bush is also the first president since the 1800s who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments.
Douglas Kmiec , who as head of the Office of Legal Counsel helped develop the Reagan administration’s strategy of issuing signing statements more frequently, said he disapproves of the “provocative” and sometimes “disingenuous” manner in which the Bush administration is using them.
Kmiec said the Reagan team’s goal was to leave a record of the president’s understanding of new laws only in cases where an important statute was ambiguous. Kmiec rejected the idea of using signing statements to contradict the clear intent of Congress, as Bush has done. Presidents should either tolerate provisions of bills they don’t like, or they should veto the bill, he said.
“Following a model of restraint, [the Reagan-era Office of Legal Counsel] took it seriously that we were to construe statutes to avoid constitutional problems, not to invent them,” said Kmiec, who is now a Pepperdine University law professor.
By contrast, Bush has used the signing statements to waive his obligation to follow the new laws. In addition to the torture ban and oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, the laws Bush has claimed the authority to disobey include restrictions against US troops engaging in combat in Colombia, whistle-blower protections for government employees, and safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research.
Cheney’s office has taken the lead in challenging many of these laws, officials said, because they run counter to an expansive view of executive power that Cheney has cultivated for the past 30 years. Under the theory, Congress cannot pass laws that place restrictions or requirements on how the president runs the military and spy agencies. Nor can it pass laws giving government officials the power or responsibility to act independently of the president.
Mainstream legal scholars across the political spectrum reject Cheney’s expansive view of presidential authority, saying the Constitution gives Congress the power to make all rules and regulations for the military and the executive branch and the Supreme Court has consistently upheld laws giving bureaucrats and certain prosecutors the power to act independently of the president.
One prominent conservative, Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School, said it is “scandalous” for the administration to argue that the commander in chief can bypass statutes in national security matters.
“It’s just wrong,” Epstein said. “It is just crazy as a matter of constitutional interpretation. There are some pretty clear issues, and this is one of them.”
Laurence Tribe , a prominent liberal at Harvard Law School, said: “Nothing in the text and structure of the Constitution, or Supreme Court precedents, supports the Bush-Cheney assertion that Congress cannot limit or direct what government officials may or must do.”
Nonetheless, Bush has demonstrated that he is willing to put his legal team’s claims about his authority into action. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush authorized the military to eavesdrop on Americans’ international phone calls without a warrant, bypassing a surveillance law that requires warrants.
Passed in 1978, the warrant law is one of a series of policies enacted after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The laws sought to prevent future abuses by regulating how the president can use his national security powers.
In December 2005, shortly after the warrantless wiretapping program was exposed, Cheney gave a rare press conference to explain why he believed the program was legal. Offering an early view of the administration’s argument that the warrant law is unconstitutional, Cheney recalled the period in which it was enacted as a time of congressional overreach.
“A lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both, in the ’70s served to erode the authority, I think, the president needs to be effective, especially in a national security area,” said Cheney, who served as White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford .
Cheney also offered a roadmap to his thinking about presidential power. He told reporters to read a 1987 report whose production he oversaw when he was a leading Republican in the House of Representatives. The report offered a dissenting view about the Iran-Contra scandal.
“If you want reference to an obscure text, go look at the minority views that were filed with the Iran-Contra Committee,” Cheney said. “Nobody has ever read them, but . . . I think [they] are very good in laying out a robust view of the president’s prerogatives with respect to the conduct of especially foreign policy and national security matters.”
The Iran-Contra scandal involved efforts by Reagan administration officials to bypass a law cutting off funds to anti-Marxist rebels in Nicaragua. The officials secretly sold arms to Iran, sent the proceeds to the rebels, and lied to Congress to cover it up.
A congressional committee issued a 427-page report concluding that a “cabal of zealots” in the administration who had “disdain for the law” had violated the statute.
But some of the Republicans on the committee, led by Cheney, refused to endorse that finding. They issued their own 155-page report asserting the real problem was Congress passing laws that intruded into a president’s authority to run foreign policy and national security.
“Judgments about the Iran-Contra affair ultimately must rest upon one’s views about the proper roles of Congress and the president in foreign policy,” Cheney’s report said. “The fundamental law of the land is the Constitution. Unconstitutional statutes violate the rule of law every bit as much as do willful violations of constitutional statutes.”
Cheney’s report includes a lengthy argument that the Constitution puts the president beyond the reach of Congress when it comes to national security. Some 18 years later, the Justice Department would repeat these same arguments in a 42-page memo arguing that Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program is a lawful exercise of presidential power.
Despite legal scholars’ skepticism about the expansive theory of presidential power Cheney has long promoted, Bush’s legal team has used the theory to target every law that regulates the military or the executive branch.
Kmiec, one of the only scholars who has testified that Bush might have the authority to set aside the warrant law, said he thinks the administration’s use of signing statements has gone too far, needlessly antagonizing Congress. Arlen Specter , Republican of Pennsylvania and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, recently announced hearings into the matter.
“The president is not well served by the lawyers who have been advising him,” said Kmiec.”
Nathan–
Yes, point out what is wrong with the questionnaire.
It sounds pretty good to me–the items are all things I hear people saying on both sides of the issue.
BTW, DD, here are my responses.
1. no 2. no 3. no 4. no, except that equal rights could be considered an agenda 5. no
6. no 7. no, true Christians are not at all threatened by secular humanism (cf. C. S. Lewis’s contrast between humanism and medieval scholastism in “16th Century Literature Excluding Drama”) 8. yes 9. yes 10. yes, and that’s how it should be
Since its an open thread, I’ll pick a subject everyone has an opinion on…. Weather interruptions… What weatherguys annoy you, which ones do you like?Do you think the local stations (3,10,12) interrupt too much or not enough.. Who has the fanciest radars? Set?
Dear JWink,
I’d like to respond to your last post on “Can Kansas produce another Eisenhower?” re TWA.
I was referring not to Howard Hughes, but William “Jack” Frye.
As you rightly noted, Richard Robbins was TWA president during a monumentally historic period 1930-34, and his original company, Trans-Continental Air Transport, was one of three merged companies that became Trans-Continental and Western Airlines (”T&WA”).
For more information, please see “Smithsonian Frontiers of Flight”, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1992, pp. 101-105, and Frye’s National Aviation Hall of Fame enshrinee bio at http://www.nationalaviation.com).
In TWA’s metamorphosis from a regional primary air mail-carrier (doing rail-and-air-combo service) into a national primary passenger transcontinental-flight carrier, the Smithsonian and the National Aviation Hall of Fame give credit to Frye (VP of operation) for TWA.
Frye was an expert pilot and flight-school operator who founded a regional mail-and-passenger service between Los Angeles and Phoenix/Tuscon in 1927, Standard Air. Air service was extended to El Paso in 1928. In 1929 Standard worked out a cooperative agreement with Southwest Air Fast Express in which mail and passengers were taken by taken from NY to StL, then flown to Sweetwater, OK by Southwest, then taken by train to El Paso, then flown to California by Frye’s airline.
In 1930, the Great Depression forced Frye to merge his airline with another Los Angeles company, Western Air Express, founded in 1925. Later that year, the U.S. Postmaster forced Western Air to merge with Robbins’ Trans-Continental Air Transport, thus forming T&WA.
Frye sold his airline interest to Western, so was no longer a principal, but was chief of operations when the second merger occurred. Then he was made VP of operations for T&WA.
Robbins was president, but Frye is universally credited by aviation historians for spearheading the company’s commission of the DC-1, DC-2 and DC-3–T&WA didn’t just buy planes from Douglas, the company, under Frye’s impetus, convinced Douglas to design revolutionary transport aircraft. (T&WA wanted to buy Boeing 247’s, but because Boeing and United were owned by the same consortium, United blocked T&WA’s purchase goal. So Frye contacted fellow Los Angeleno Donald Douglas, and the rest is history.)
Robbins was basically over his head, and the company’s directors knew that Frye was the driving force behind T&WA’s metamorphosis from a small-scale air carrier into the world’s leader in airline technology development, an effect that not only made T&WA a major player in the airline business, but also aided United and American’s progress and growth as they contracted to by planes originally commissioned by Frye, and built by Douglas to meet Frye’s performance specifications.
Robbins was forced to step down in 1934– a short 4 years after T&WA’s formation, and Frye was promoted to president, in recognition that he was T&WA’s TRUE leader, a post he held for 13 years, which tenure included Trans-Continental and Western Airlines being renamed Trans WORLD Airlines after WWII under his presidency, and fellow Californian Howard Hughes’ controlling ownership.
(This is sort of similar to Lloyd Stearman’s short stint as Lockheed president in LA: the two Kansans couldn’t keep up.)
Richard Robbins is not enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame. History does not record Robbins as a man of great vision or ability. It does record Los Angeleno Frye as one. To be sure, Frye had an unbeatable advantage: he lived in a city that had accumulated the greatest collection of aeronautical engineers and theoretical scientists (at the California Institute of Technology) that the world had ever seen. He knew what these guys could do, so he challenged them. They came through. Robbins surely must have marveled watching his right-hand man do magic.
Not to take away from your topic jb it’s a good one.
But I’ve been thinking about something XXX posted.
The WE didn’t give us a Memorial Day thread. Maybe that’s negligence. Maybe they thought the Open would serve for that.
This is a day when some will be visiting graves and remembering. I don’t have any to visit myself. The rest of my family is buried far away.
This is the first Memorial Day without my Dad. He isn’t buried. He was cremated. He’s been gone a little over 5 months. My Mom is having a pretty hard time not just today but in general. Her and Dad were married 45 years. Some days, she just doesn’t know what to do with herself.
I wondered if anyone knew of any web sites I might steer her toward.
Probably there are other folks with a fresh hurt on this Memorial Day. It just seemed to me they might want to use this space. For some, this is more than a day off from work or a good excuse for a picnic. For some, they might not feel like “celebrating”.
JR
Tell me how Bush can walk the a VA Hospital, know he did this to all these soldiers and not just bring the rest home?
CF, wonderful work. This is what a community blog should be.
writerdog’s earlier encomium is a beautiful essay, and I didn’t want to criticize it earlier. But the truth is, most of our killed and wounded soldiers didn’t enlist to fight for freedom. Most of them were stuck in an economy that didn’t value their high school diploma skills. They wanted to earn scholarship money to go to college, to improve their own lives. They wanted to develop skills that hs education didn’t provide them.
They have been exploited, and abused as what used to be called “cannon fodder” by cruel and indifferent “leaders”. Rumsfeld was told by military leaders to send 300,000 troops to Iraq. The arrogant Defense Secretary responded, “No, you get 130,000. I have a pet theory. Your order is to test my pet theory. I’ve never been in battle, but I’m much smarter than you are. I went to Princeton. I don’t need battlefield experience, because I once worked for America’s greatest president, Richard M. Nixon.”
In 2000 most Americans were smart enough to not vote for Bush. Unfortunately, most Kansans were not this smart, and the votes of those who were this smart were annihilated by a fatally flawed state winner-take-all law. How about giving proportional Electoral College votes to Kansans? How about moving up Kansas’s primaries to give little Kansans a voice in the selection of presidential candidates?
Why don’t the Eagle, Star and other newspapers press these issues, and then report legislators’ lame excuses why we “can’t” do these things. Then, we need to support new candidates who will DO these things.
Mr. Price:
If you and your friend would like to offer some feedback from a position of at least rudimentary knowledge, I would suggest finding this linked book which is in the WSU library (it’s short; only about 80 pages long and it is written for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803927436/104-0930200-7433505?v=glance&n=283155
I would be willing to bet that I have forgotten more about nomothetic net theory and psychometric theory in general than you and your chum have ever known.
If you can show anything besides a defensive response, I would be glad to explain further why I did what I did.
It is hot and humid out there - luckily for me, the wife got tired of painting, too.
Does anybody think that one of the Arena Designs could have had a roof simalar to Expl. Place.
I think that would have been an architectural mastepiece. It could have been done, and it would have been something to be proud of.
What do you think.
JR,I don’t have any suggestions for your mother. I do have condolences for your family and understand the difficulty Memorial Day and other holidays days can be on you and your family. Take care.
Well, maybe one suggestion…
Take your time to mourn the death of your father. Just ignore a society that tells you that you should be over that by now.
DD,
You think you’re so smart, with your fancy-pants book learnin’!
CF,I’d apologize but it cost the government a lot of money. I had an NIMH traineeship and I have never since felt like I had as much money. It is great to get paid for learning stuff you love and want to know know more about.
NoJoCo,Appreciate you saying that to JR.
JR,Talk about serendipity, I saw this in the Washington Post today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/28/AR2006052800877.html
I am thinking that setting up Web sites might be beyond your technology. Email me back channel if I can help you do something. It may be time to get a PC, man. Take care.
In lieu of a direct email, toss me in with a ’second’ to lefthook’s list, DD. Thanks.
DD,
Indeed. That’s what keeps me sending in Fulbright applications–the hope that one year I’ll hit the jackpot and earn a federal subsistence wage for learning stuff that interests me.
Heartlander: This past week I attended a high school reunion and several graduation ceremonies here and there so I haven’t been watching the WE Blog. As I browsed through the blog postings today, I almost missed your comments about my initial story about the founding of TWA by Richard Robbins and others.
As I mentioned, I met Mr. Robbins way back probably in 1948 to 1950 with my father at Robbins ranch house on his Belvidere Ranch in Kiowa County. But I was too young to ask any perceptive questions. I do remember the giant longhorn steer horns on the backporch and the view to the west over the Gyp Hills. Nearby was Richard Robbins’ old Frank Rockefeller Ranch, a Kansas showcase in 1880 to about 1900, but that is another story.
Over the years, I seemed to have a lot of contact with TWA in addition to being an occasional passenger. A K.U. classmate and fellow Army Reserve member became an early TWA 727 pilot. When I first arrived in K.C., I originally lived in the Casa Loma with many TWA hostess trainees where I made some life long friends. In later years, one of my neighbors was TWA finance director and one of the final TWA presidents during the time Carl Icahn, the infamous corporate raider, decimated TWA’s assets. This eventually lead to TWA’s bankruptcy and final transfer to American Airlines.
At one time, I started to collect information on Richard Robbins’s connection to TWA but never found time to do anything with it. However, I did talk to many people who knew parts of the old Robbins/TWA story. I recall talking to the Chairman Board of Kansas City’s First National Bank because Mr. Robbins served on his board of directors for many years. He had a lot of stories. Senator Robert Dole knew Mr. Robbins and his amazing story quite will. In fact, Mr. Dole offered to put me touch with one of the Rockefellers to discuss their uncle, Frank Rockefeller’s Kansas ranch in Kiowa County. I talked to Evan Koger (a Robbins’ descendent and a large Kansas ranch owner) and various others about the story.
I also recall talking to the fellow (whose name escapes me right now) who as a young boy actually heard the TWA Fokker Tri-Motor crash about a mile from his parents’ ranch home in 192_ ?? in the Flint Hills in Chase County. In fact, he showed me where the bodies of Knute Rockne and his fellow passengers were found.
I have also reviewed some of the TWA history books. I noticed they seem to glorify Jack Frye’s contribution over Richard Robbins. I attribute that to the old saying the “first lier never has a chance.”
Of course, I am very familiar with TWA’s Jack Frye Training Center in Overland Park on Shawnee Mission Parkway. I think that facility is now owned by a financial company.
In about 1934-35, the U.S. Postmaster General forced all U.S. airline presidents to resign over a charge they had divided up the lucrative air mail routes without which airlines couldn’t afford to fly passengers. At that time, Richard Robbins was replaced by Jack Frye as president. I also know Jack Frye later recruited Howard Hughes’ financing for new airplanes which eventually resulted in Howard Hughes basically owning TWA. And Hughes fired Jack Frye after World War II before he, Hughes, was himself forced out.
The airlines that joined together were Pittsburgh Aviation Industry and TAT which I believe stood for Trans Air Transport. These were “encouraged” by the postmaster to merge with Jack Frye’s Western Air Express which flew in Arizona/California. Financial backers included General Motors and Pennsylvania Railroad.
These three airlines formed into Transcontinental and Western Airline. This was later changed to Trans World Airlines or TWA.
According to a newspaper interview with Mr. Robbins in 1969, Donald Douglas was recruited by a technical committee of Mr. Robbins, Charles Lindbergh (who was a consultant), Jack Frye and Tommy Tomlinson, a stunt flyer. Only one DC-1 was built but the DC-3 became the workhorse of WWII.
I also believe Richard Robbins was more instrumental than Jack Frye in setting up the air/railroad coast to coast flights in 48 hours than he is generally given credit for by history books. Incidentally, Amelia Earhart was said to be on their first air/railroad coast to coast trip through Wichita.
After his departure from TWA, Mr. Robbins continued to serve on the board of the Santa Fe Railroad, a number of banks in K.C. and I believe in Wichita. Somewhere a long the way, he accumulated many large Kansas ranches particularly in Chase, Barber and Kiowa counties. One story I was toldSanta Fe passenger trains often stopped to pick up Mr. Robbins at the otherwise deserted intersection of US 281 and the Santa Fe RR, perhaps 20 miles north of Pratt, when he was going to K.C.In WW II, he was appointed to a number of defense boards. In about 1948, Mr. Robbins served as president of the Kansas Historical Society.
His main large white house still stands on north Main Street in Pratt, Kansas.
JWINK- Every heard of a link? Duh!
Thanks for the response JWink. You’ve personally gathered a hekuva lot of info!
Kind words NoJoCo thank you.
DD alas my lack of technology wouldn’t let me see your link. I DO hope to get a computer soon.
I THINK it might have referred to online memorials.
I should note on this Memorial Day that one of the maybe not known features of the Wichita Eagle online is an online memorial. It is linked through the obituaries. The Eagle should be congratulated for this. Through it, persons posted in the obituaries can be remembered by online post for a year. In the case of my Dad, one poster spoke of my dads kindness and sweet nature. We had no idea by the name who it was. Turns out he went to GRADE SCHOOL with my Dad! Truly, a fine service on the part of the Eagle online.
JR, a cut and paste of the article:
Online Memorials Bring Strangers and Friends Together in Community of Grief
By Yuki NoguchiWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, May 29, 2006; A01
Days after his wife’s death from inflammatory breast cancer in 2004, Michael Bloomer set up a Web page memorial. An old co-worker from Florida signed Kim Bloomer’s online guest book. So did a high school classmate in Michigan.
For Bloomer, a retired government worker who lives in Dumfries, the memorial page became a soothing place where he could read stories, receive condolences and even reach out to his wife by posting his own messages: “Hi Honey. . . . It’s only been about a month since you left, but it seems like ages since we laughed and loved when the days were normal and you were without pain. I miss you so much it hurts inside.”
Bloomer says he frequented the online memorial in the first year to read new postings or to reread old ones. “It was kind of like a lasting tribute so that anybody could go on there at any time.”
As the country observes the memory of those who died in its wars, online memorials have altered acts of bereavement and become palliative retreats for some who grieve. Web sites dedicated to the deceased now number in the millions in the United States, and for those left behind, posting stories, photos and videos is a way of keeping a permanent record of the person’s life. Material added to mark important days such as birthdays, Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, or even notes left by well-wishing strangers help the page evolve, so the memorial itself can take on a kind of second life.
Viewers use the Web sites to find and comfort one another — not only to facilitate communication from far-flung or long-lost friends who couldn’t attend a funeral, but also to send messages from one dead soldier’s wife to another, from one mourning mother to another or among those galvanized to fight a disease.
“I know it helps me grieve,” said Williamsburg police officer Mark Schafer, whose son, Michael, an Army staff sergeant, died in battle in Afghanistan on July 25. Legacy.com, the site that hosts Michael Schafer’s memorial, offers a free service for military personnel who died in Iraq or Afghanistan. “It helps me grieve when I see his pictures,” Schafer said. “I feel proud that [people] can say some of things they say about him. People who don’t even know him can go on there and tell him that they were proud.”
While many non-Western cultures build rituals around death that allow a person to grieve over time, in highly individualistic societies, losing a loved one can be isolating, some psychologists say, which may be why some turn to the Web to reach outside their traditional social network.
“When death happens, we’re so alone,” said George Bonanno, a psychologist at Columbia University. “It would be nice if we had a sense of community, and maybe that’s what the Internet provides.”
Some sites such as Legacy.com, Memory-of.com and Mem.com have been around for about a decade and provide software tools for users to customize their Web pages. Legacy.com and Memory-of.com charge one-time fees of $50 to $100 for a permanent place on their sites. There are other, smaller sites started by funeral homes; still others are set up by individuals who purchase domain names in honor of the deceased. Another site, called MyDeathSpace, is less a memorial site than a bulletin board that posts stories about deceased members who kept profiles on the social networking site MySpace.
In some cases, dealing with death online is no prettier than it might be in real life: Companies that maintain memorial sites occasionally find themselves facing its darker side — bitter divorces, sibling rivalries and inheritance feuds sometimes try to play themselves out through online memorials. Online sites, therefore, need their equivalent of groundskeepers to root out advertisers or tasteless postings.
Most of the 75-person staff at Legacy.com, which maintains obituaries online for 300 U.S. newspapers, monitors postings before they go online. Profanity and political commentary are not allowed. Nor are postings from former mistresses, which employees have gotten adept at catching, said Hayes Ferguson, chief operating officer for the Evanston, Ill., company that hosts about 50,000 permanent memorials. “We can’t get involved in family squabbles,” she said.
But such instances are relatively rare, even on Web sites where notes are not filtered before they are posted, online memorialists say.
Executives at major memorial Web site companies say users often develop a close relationship with their Web page, visiting it as often as three or four times a day for years after the person’s death. Traffic is heaviest usually in the morning and evening, as people start and end each day thinking about their loved ones.
The founders of Memory-of.com originally envisioned an online photo gallery for the deceased, but it now hosts forums for grieving people to talk to one another or to seek support.
“It’s become a lifeline for a lot of families,” said Henry Chamberlain, chief executive of Memory-of.com. In its early days, when the Web site went dark for a few hours, panicked users would e-mail and call, feeling as if they were reliving the loss of their loved one, he said.
The Internet’s constant availability makes it possible for people to grieve in their own time.
“You can’t tell someone when they should process their loss,” said Scott Mindrum, president, chief executive and founder of Making Everlasting Memories LLC, which runs Mem.com. The company started in 1995 as an archive site. “What we didn’t know was the bereavement value” of allowing people to create their own site, he said. “People face into their grief,” to the point where family members sometimes hug the monitor when a video is played.
The death business can be a touchy one, especially when it comes to marketing, said Legacy.com’s Ferguson. In early days of the Internet, some casket makers and funeral homes tried to advertise online — which struck some users as tactless. Instead, most major sites may have a small ad for a florist on the home page but no advertisements on the guestbooks, she said.
Legacy.com wasn’t sure how to react after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and when the war in Iraq began, Ferguson said. “We quite frankly didn’t know how to respond. We didn’t want to take advantage of the situation,” but within days, people started asking for online services for those people, she said.
Dawn Cepero said she grieves mostly through the memorial Web sites she set up after her 4-year-old daughter, Caylee, died of leukemia last March.
For Cepero, the sites fulfill many functions. She uses them to claim that toxins in the well water serving her old home in Thonotosassa, Fla., caused her daughter’s sudden, acute illness. She warns other parents to get their children blood-tested for the disease. She uploads every photo and video of her daughter for safekeeping. She helps raise funds for other children with leukemia. And while she continues to seek solace in all those activities, she also reads daily condolences she receives from other parents who leave her notes on various Web sites.
“I get probably 25 a day,” said Cepero, who said those contacts helped her compile an e-mail list of people to help her with fundraising. “You feel like no one’s forgotten, and no one’s going to forget,” said Cepero, who said that in her everyday life she seldom encounters people who have lost a child and can relate to her. “I probably would have lost my mind if I hadn’t done something.”
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
JR,A friend of mine lost her 20 yr old son to suicide. The family used the Eagle online service you mention and it was of great help to her and her family. Thanks for mentioning this service.