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?
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.
