John McCain blamed Barack Obama and Democrats for the failure to pass a financial rescue plan Monday. Huh? Two-thirds of House Republicans voted against the plan, the group that McCain was trying to get on board. This is the same group that scuttled the bipartisan plan that was nearing finalization last week. And the claim that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is to blame because of her partisan speech — as boneheaded and irresponsible as it was — makes the GOP look even worse. As Peter Wehner, a former Bush administration official, wrote on the National Review blog: “On one of the most important votes they will ever cast, insisting ‘the speech made me do it’ is lame and adolescent.”
But there is plenty of blame to go around, including for President Bush, who doesn’t even have clout within his own party, to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who didn’t do a good job explaining the bailout, and to Democratic and Republican leaders who were unable to deliver as many votes as expected.
The only good news is that, so far, the market is up today based in part on the hope that Congress will get its act together.
Democrats have “so successfully mocked, derided and lowered expectations for Palin in Thursday night’s VP debate that if she doesn’t drool or speak in tongues, many millions still open to persuasion will be impressed,” wrote Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times. “Al Gore’s campaign made the exact same mistake going into the 2000 debates. So all Texas Gov. George W. Bush had to do was not lose. In that sense, Democrats may have played right into a PR cul-de-sac. Biden, for instance, described Palin as merely better-looking than him. A far better communications strategy would have been to insincerely portray Palin with superlatives as a superwoman, making it harder, not easier, for her to impress. Too late now.”
Though a number of polls said that Barack Obama was the winner of Friday’s debate, John McCain’s campaign didn’t waste time announcing that McCain won. In fact, the campaign goofed and placed two Internet ads declaring McCain the winner hours before the debate even occurred. One ad featured a quote from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declaring: “McCain won the debate — hands down.”
As the elder on the Wichita City Council from 1997 to 2005, Phil Lambke sometimes couldn’t see past his southeast-side district toward a greater good for the city at large. But you had to admire the consistency of his conservatism and his low tolerance for nonsense, such as when he called city staff members’ travel spending “loose as a goose” and a consultant’s presentation a “bunch of mush.” When he left the bench, we offered this spoof headline: “Asked for parting statement, Phil Lambke says ‘no.’” Our thoughts and prayers are with Lambke’s family, in the wake of his death Friday at age 87.
A majority of House members, including of all the Kansas delegation except Dennis Moore, D-Lenexa, rejected the bipartisan financial bailout plan reached between the Bush administration and top lawmakers, sending stocks tumbling even more. Many lawmakers apparently were more worried about voting for an unpopular plan five weeks before an election than with the predictions of economic catastrophe.
“We’re all worried about losing our jobs,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “Most of us say, ‘I want this thing to pass, but I want you to vote for it — not me.’”
Actress Tina Fey did another killer impersonation of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend. But the spoof about Palin’s interview last week with CBS News anchor Katie Couric wasn’t as devastating as the actual interview. Here are two of Palin’s actual responses from that interview.
On how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign policy experience: “It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where — where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to — to our state.”
On why it is better to bail out financial institutions than spend that money to help middle-class families: “That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the — it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”
What started as a 50-state strategy keeps shrinking. Barack Obama’s campaign has been redeploying staff and resources in a way that abandons some states (North Dakota, Alaska and perhaps Montana) and more fiercely defends others (Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin). A Time magazine analysis suggests that to win, Obama needs to hold the states John Kerry won in 2004, plus Ohio or Florida; take back parts of the South by winning Virginia, North Carolina and maybe Georgia; and win Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.
Eleven people including Mayor Carl Brewer, Vice Mayor Sue Schlapp, two Wichita Police Department officials and others such as Kansas World Trade Center president Karyn Page and state Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick (as one of two “experts in agriculture”) — that’s quite a crowd that will be going on a Wichita Area Sister Cities visit to China Oct. 15-21, largely on the taxpayers’ tab. Yet the Wichita City Council approved the expenditure, including $16,600 for 10 plane tickets, without discussion Tuesday. Make no mistake: the Sister Cities program and the relationships it has established have been a boon for Wichita. No doubt this visit will reap benefits, too. But shouldn’t such an expense rate one question from the council bench, if only to reassure the viewers at home that someone is watching the till?
Politically active pastors must keep up the pretense that they aren’t endorsing candidates or risk their churches’ tax-exempt status. But that was before Pulpit Freedom Sunday, which will find at least 33 pastors this weekend making their picks public and practically inviting the Internal Revenue Service to come after them. “What they’re doing is talking to their congregations about biblical issues related to candidates and elections, and they believe they have the constitutional right to do that,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel with the sponsoring Alliance Defense Fund.
“Historically cautious and prudent, the Republican Party in recent years has become, instead, radical — doctrinally anti-tax, any tax of any sort for any reason,” columnist Tom Teepen wrote, responding to the criticisms of Joe Biden for saying that sometimes stepping up to a tax increase could be the patriotic thing to do.
“The Bush tax cuts, weighted to the wealthy, were supposed to ignite such a boom your ears would hurt. Instead, they have us again nearing record deficits, a factor in the current financial collapse and a leading complication for any effort at recovery.
“You will recall the president told us that rather than paying for war, our duty was to go shopping. We have put two wars on the cuff and now are putting a trillion dollars in buyouts there, too — dumping ourselves and our future into still deeper hock to the Chinese and the Mideast oil states.
It is difficult to see all that as patriotic.”
Remember the calls for a presidential debate on science? Well, Science Debate 2008 didn’t end up getting a live event, but its “top 14 science questions facing America” get extensive answers from John McCain and Barack Obama on topics from water to stem cell research to biosecurity.
Some opponents of the USD 259 bond issue have argued that the district shouldn’t need more classroom space because its enrollment has been fairly flat since the 2000 bond issue. But that ignores the addition of all-day kindergarten throughout the district since 2000, increases in students who speak English as a second language, and the district’s push to lower class sizes — all of which requires more classrooms. The district’s latest enrollment numbers, which are up by 441 students, also show that the northeast and southeast areas of the district are experiencing rapid growth and school overcrowding. That’s where the district wants and needs to build new schools.
Conservative columnist and Sarah Palin fan Kathleen Parker has reluctantly concluded that Palin is “clearly out of her league” and should step down. “As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem,” Parker wrote on today’s Opinion page. “Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.”
Parker added: “No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does.”
Parker’s conclusion: “Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country.”
Thomas Friedman has a simple test for choosing the next president: Which guy can tell people what they don’t want to hear — especially his own base?
Here is what he would like to hear McCain say: “My fellow Americans, I’ve decided for now not to continue the Bush tax cuts, because the most important thing for our country today is to get the government’s balance sheet in order. We can’t go on cutting taxes and not cutting spending. For too long, my party has indulged that nonsense. Second, I intend to have most U.S. troops out of Iraq in 24 months. We have done all we can to midwife democracy there. Iraqis need to take it from here. We need every dollar now for nation-building in America.”
Here is what he would like Obama to say: “The Big Three automakers and the United Auto Workers union want a Washington bailout. The only way they will get a dime out of my administration is if the automakers and unions come up with a joint plan to retool their fleets to get an average of 40 miles per gallon by 2015 — instead of the 35 mpg by 2020 that they’ve reluctantly accepted. I am not going to bail out Detroit with taxpayer money, but I will invest in Detroit’s transformation with taxpayer money, provided the management and unions agree to radical change.”
John McCain will be at tonight’s presidential debate after all. After wanting it postponed and saying that he wouldn’t attend unless the financial bailout plan was worked out, McCain’s campaign announced today that he would be attending. His campaign cited “significant progress” in the bailout negotiations, even though Thursday’s White House summit broke down after House Republicans revolted. McCain “had intended to ride back into Washington on Thursday as a leader who had put aside presidential politics to help broker a solution to the financial crisis,” a New York Times news analysis observed. “Instead he found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end.”
New York Times columnist Gail Collins noted how different Wednesday’s John McCain seemed compared with “last week’s versions, that blamed Obama for the financial meltdown while tossing out rescue plans like a desperate dart player 10 minutes before the bar closes.”
On the prospect of a McCain-less debate, she recalled: “Once in New York, when Rudy Giuliani boycotted a mayoral debate, one of his opponents spent the night twirling around a rubber chicken and the citizenry enjoyed it quite a lot.”
In light of Obama’s “overly casual” manner in the face of economic disaster, she concluded: “This election is turning into a Goldilocks story. One candidate’s too hot, and one’s too cool.”
By a twist of fate, the Westboro Baptist Church’s protest at the National Conference of Editorial Writers in Little Rock fell on International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19). So the Fred Phelps clan was countered by some Flying Spaghetti Monster (in photo) devotees known as the Central Arkansas Pastafarians, who snarled “Arrgh” and held signs declaring that “God hates shrimp — Leviticus” and “God hates cotton-polyester blends.” As for what the Topeka-based Phelps clan has against editorial writers: It turns out we are “responsible for the satanic milieu in this evil land” and for serving the “satanic agendas” of “baby-killers and fags.”
In light of Monday’s conviction of Marlin Williams in Sedgwick County’s first case of human trafficking, in which Williams took a 15-year-old girl from Wichita to Dallas to work as a prostitute, the latest New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof on the global issue of sex trafficking caught our eye. Especially this part of it: “A bill to strengthen federal anti-trafficking efforts within the U.S. was overwhelmingly passed by the House of Representatives, led by Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York. But crucial provisions to crack down on pimping are being blocked in the Senate in part by Sens. Sam Brownback and Joe Biden, who consider the House provisions unnecessary and problematic.”
If tonight’s first presidential debate actually happens, there is talk that it could surpass the record 80 million viewers set by the Jimmy Carter-Ronald Reagan debate in 1980. Former Wichitan Alan Schroeder, Northeastern University professor and author of “Presidential Debates: 40 Years of High-Risk TV,” predicted to Politico that the debate will live on in excerpts on YouTube and cable news, and “those one or two excerpts will overtake the entire program.” The newspaper Variety warns that high-definition television, now watched by at least one-third of U.S. households, “could expose every blemish, every wrinkle, every gray hair to a national audience.” Topping Schroeder’s list of top 10 debates was 1988’s Lloyd Bentsen vs. Dan Quayle (in photo), famous for the “no Jack Kennedy” line.
John McCain blamed Barack Obama and Democrats for the failure to pass a financial rescue plan Monday. Huh? Two-thirds of House Republicans voted against the plan, the group that McCain was trying to get on board. This is the same group that scuttled the bipartisan plan that was nearing finalization last week. And the claim that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is to blame because of her partisan speech — as boneheaded and irresponsible as it was — makes the GOP look even worse. As Peter Wehner, a former Bush administration official, wrote on the National Review blog: “On one of the most important votes they will ever cast, insisting ‘the speech made me do it’ is lame and adolescent.”
