John McCain’s campaign is trying to downplay Barack Obama’s speech today in Berlin, which drew a huge, cheering crowd. But it is significant that, according to one poll, 72 percent of Germans want Obama to be the next U.S. president and only 11 percent favor McCain. Obviously, Americans will make up their own minds, based on a variety of issues and factors. Still, Europe matters in the war on terror and on other issues. For example, we need more European troops in Afghanistan. “America can’t do this alone,” Obama said in his speech about Afghanistan. It’s easier to get that help if other countries respect our president.
A recent fundraising mailer for Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline was sent out under the letterhead of Women Influencing the Nation, a national anti-abortion group. Kline’s campaign manager, Jennifer Giroux, who belongs to the organization, called the use of the letterhead a “horrible mistake.” The slipup speaks volumes about Kline’s one-note activism.
Sedgwick County Commissioner Kelly Parks has an interesting idea of raising the county sales tax for 18 months in order to pay down government debt. But this plan likely will strike many citizens as a continuation of the arena sales tax, which ended in December. “We told you the tax wouldn’t go away,” they’ll say. Also, the city has been discussing the idea of raising its sales tax so it could lower property taxes, and it may put the proposal on the November ballot. If that were approved, it’s unlikely that voters also would support raising the county sales tax.
A word to parents thinking about taking younger kids to see the latest “Batman” blockbuster, “The Dark Knight”: Don’t.
This isn’t campy comic book fare. It’s the most serious, scary and adult big-screen treatment yet of superhero material. Heath Ledger’s Joker is a sick, twisted, sadistic killer who makes Jack Nicholson’s Joker look like Ronald McDonald.
As this blog points out, many reviewers are urging caution: The movie is “potentially terrifying for children,” writes Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News. “The PG-13 rating should offer some warning, yes. But this film dances just south of an R in my book.”
My 14-year-old son and I really liked the movie. But it’s pretty dark stuff.
Barack Obama allowed this week that achieving peace in the Middle East is a tall order. That’s especially true given the hate-filled religious school curriculum in even “friendly” allied nations such as Saudi Arabia.
A Slate piece notes that a promised reform of extremist textbooks in Saudi Arabia’s Islamic schools hasn’t occurred. For instance, here is a “revised” fourth-grade textbook’s correct answer in a multiple-choice question about having “true belief”: “A man worships God alone, loves the believers and hates the unbelievers.”
Hating the unbelievers is central to Saudi Arabian Wahhabi and other extremist Islamic schools. The Slate piece calls for the world’s moderate Muslims to speak out more forcefully against these schools. Changing the way Islamic children in some countries are taught might be as important as defeating the Taliban in America’s long-range fight against terror.
