Jon Stewart made more tasteless jokes at the expense of Kansas’ senior senator Wednesday on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” doing a bit about what he called “the stem cell prop comedy of Sam Brownback” on the Senate floor.
After a clip of Brownback pointing between an image of an eagle egg and an eagle and saying, “The egg is the eagle because the eagle comes out of the egg,” Stewart said, “By that logic, Sen. Brownback is a vagina.” After the laughs died down, Stewart added: “I’m going to guess that that sentence has never been uttered.”
After a clip of Brownback with a chart illustrating the life of a girl named Hannah who’d been adopted as an embryo, Stewart suggested Brownback would next pass around her placenta. And after the senator switched to Hannah’s embryo chart, mentioned earlier on this blog, and suggested that one of its depicted embryos was asking, “What, are you going to kill me?” Stewart broke in and said: “I have to say, if you have a talking embryo who is cognizant enough to wonder if you’re going to kill it, I say we don’t do research on those ones. And if we find them and identify them, perhaps one of them will grant us three wishes.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Likening himself to the race’s Seabiscuit, attorney Tim Pickell of Westwood is covering a lot of counties in his long-shot bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination and getting noticed for some unusual talking points: He would create the post of state auditor, a la Missouri. “I think we can cut 4 or 5 percent from most agencies’ budgets and not miss a beat,” he told The Eagle editorial board this week. He would push a bill to expand high-speed Internet access statewide. And he proposes a state referendum on abortion, to let the public settle the divisive issue. He said that he’s kind of the “silent majority representative” in the race, appealing to those fed up with strident political discourse and the inability to get together and make decisions. Pickell thinks that if he wins Aug. 1, he’ll also be in the best position to beat Gov. Kathleen Sebelius: He and his running mate, Jeffrey McCalmon, don’t have voting records, and “now she’s got to debate two Eagle Scouts,” Pickell said. Given Sebelius’ debating skills, he has a point.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The local League of Women Voters is calling for random audits of Sedgwick County’s new electronic voting machines. “They are not even as accurate as slot machines or ATM machines,” league co-president Ernestine Krehbiel told The Eagle editorial board, saying that “there have been foul-ups all over the country with these machines.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Ken Canfield boasts on his campaign Web site that he was the front-runner among GOP gubernatorial candidates in a recent SurveyUSA poll. Well, Canfield had an 11 percent favorable rating, compared with 9 percent for Jim Barnett and 7 percent for Robin Jennison. Canfield doesn’t mention that he had a 16 percent unfavorable rating, compared with 15 percent for Barnett and 17 percent for Jennison. Where the three candidates scored high was in being unknown to voters: 42 percent of those surveyed were unfamiliar with Canfield and Barnett, and 45 percent were unfamiliar with Jennison. Meanwhile, 64 percent of Kansans polled by SurveyUSA (including 62 percent of Republicans) had a favorable opinion of Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Maybe President Bush will calm his criticism from the right with his veto of the embryonic stem-cell bill. But the conservatives’ upset increasingly extends to foreign affairs, according to The Washington Post. Many think the administration has been too timid and too confused in dealing with North Korea, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich puts it this way: “We have accepted the lawyer-diplomatic fantasy that talking while North Korea builds bombs and missiles and talking while the Iranians build bombs and missiles is progress. Is the next stage for Condi to go dancing with Kim Jong Il?” he asked, referring to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the North Korean dictator.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
FYI: The Kansas Taxpayers Network has released its legislative ratings for the 2006 session, and 18 lawmakers — nine from the Wichita area — received 100 percent ratings. The 18 were Rep. Anthony Brown, R-Eudora; Rep. Steve Huebert, R-Valley Center; Rep. Lance Kinzer, R-Olathe; Rep. Forrest Knox, R-Fredonia; Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita; Rep. Ty Masterson, R-Andover; Rep. Don Myers, R-Derby; Rep. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee; Rep. Jason Watkins, R-Wichita; Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia; Sen. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler; Sen. Phil Journey, R-Haysville; Sen. Kay O’Connor, R-Olathe; Sen. Ralph Ostmeyer, R-Grinnell; Sen. Peggy Palmer, R-Augusta; Sen. Mike Petersen, R-Wichita; Sen. Dennis Pyle, R-Hiawatha; and Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
