“I don’t stand with those who held out while others made sacrifices,” President Obama said today about the small group of hedge funds that scuttled a deal with creditors to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy. An administration official complained that the hedge funds failed to “do the right thing” or to “act in either their own economic interest or the national interest.” Still, Obama expressed optimism that Chrysler will “emerge from this process stronger and more effective.” We’ll see.
The courts will be the judge of whether Wild West World founder Thomas Etheredge is guilty of the 10 counts of securities fraud with which he has been charged. It’s possible that the 2007 bankruptcy of Etheredge’s amusement park involved no criminal wrongdoing, that its quick closure really was all Mother Nature’s fault. But too many people lost money and jobs in the Wild West World debacle for accountability to be optional. Etheredge’s arrest Wednesday was a reassuring sign that accountability, as well as more answers, may be forthcoming.
Now that Democrats could soon have a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate, will conservative fears be realized? Here are two funny suggestions by Washington Post readers of how liberal Democrats might run amok:
Everyone will now have to buy a GM car and run it solely from the solar collector on the roof.
Same-sex marriage is now mandatory, and through a revision of NAFTA, gay Mounties are authorized to confiscate all the firearms in private U.S. hands and give them to Mexico.
You bloggers have other ideas?
The Cheyenne Bottoms are among the greatest natural treasures of Kansas, drawing hunters and birders from throughout the state and far beyond with a riot of ducks, geese, whooping cranes and other wildlife. But the important wetlands system long had to speak for itself, offering visitors no opportunity to ask questions or otherwise fully comprehend what they see there. That changed with Friday’s opening of the Kansas Wetlands Education Center near Great Bend, a 11,000-square-foot, $4.2 million facility for research and public education. Kansans owe their appreciation to Kansas Wildlife and Parks Secretary Mike Hayden and project partners including Fort Hays State University, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, the city of Great Bend and the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation, which gave $500,000 for the center’s Koch Wetlands Exhibit. As the attraction helps interpret Cheyenne Bottoms for kids and other visitors, it stands to both enrich their visit and underscore the need for conservation.
“We’re talking about a state that’s as red as Dorothy’s ruby slippers.” — Sen. Claire McCaskill (in photo), D-Mo., marveling at Democrat Kathleen Sebelius’ political success in Kansas
“We don’t want to appear to be frivolous.” — Then-Gov. Sebelius, asking a writer to wait until after her Senate confirmation vote to report that she was spotted Sunday at New Orleans’ Jazz and Heritage Festival
“Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through.” — Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, to the Washington Independent blog
“I don’t think we’re out of the woods. I don’t think we can even find the woods right now.” — Lawrence schools superintendent Randy Weseman, on the prospect of the state economy worsening and school funding shrinking further
After 54 years, someone from Wichita is once again governor. Mark Parkinson — a Wichita native who graduated from Wichita Heights and WSU before graduating from KU law school and moving to Olathe — was sworn in Tuesday as Kansas’ 45th governor. Parkinson will represent the entire state, of course. But here’s hoping he will be attuned to the challenges facing south-central Kansas, including Cessna Aircraft’s announcement today that it is laying off an additional 2,300 people, extending its summer shutdown and suspending its Citation Columbus program.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party was “a function of personal survival” and is “further proof that high taxes, big spending and big government are unacceptable to Republican voters,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in the Washington Post. But Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, wrote that the switch reflects how the GOP is headed toward having one of the smallest political tents in generations. “We simply cannot expand a majority by shrinking the ideological confines of our party,” she said.
“Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008,” wrote columnist Ross Douthat. He argued that a Cheney-for-president campaign would have helped the GOP determine if its losses were due to a failure to be conservative enough, as many think. The campaign also would have forced the public to confront the torture issue.
The economy may not have improved, but 27 percent of the public thinks that race relations have gotten better since Barack Obama has been president, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Two-thirds of Americans also think race relations are generally good, and the percentage of blacks who say so has doubled since last July, the New York Times reported.
Congratulations to the Lord’s Diner on serving its 1 millionth customer Monday night. What an achievement, and what a blessing to this community. The diner, which opened Feb. 13, 2002, met this milestone about two years earlier than it initially expected. The reasons for that include a greater than expected need, a facility and staff that make customers feel valued, and the generous support of volunteers and donors.
About five years ago, radio host Rush Limbaugh ignorantly mocked the Lord’s Diner for allegedly serving customers who weren’t needy. Wendy Glick, the diner’s executive director, graciously responded: “The Lord’s Diner is here to serve, not to judge.” That’s another reason the diner is such a blessing.
Finding his “political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched parties today. In the process, he thumbed his nose at an anticipated conservative GOP challenge next year by saying, “I am unwilling to have my 29-year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.” With Specter, Democrats now have 59 seats. If Al Franken can get clear of the legal challenges to his win in Minnesota, he would be the 60th. Specter’s move must be bitter for his old colleague Bob Dole; Specter lived in Wichita from 1930 until the family moved in 1942 to Russell, where his family did business with Dole’s family.
A paradox of the torture scandal is “that it is not about things we didn’t know but about things we did know and did nothing about,” wrote Mark Danner, author of “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror,” in a Washington Post commentary. “Beginning more than a half-dozen years ago, Bush administration officials broke the law and did repugnant things to detainees under their control. But if you think that the remedy is simple and clear — that all officials who broke the law should be tried and punished — then ask yourself what exactly the political elite of the country has been doing for the last five years. Or what it has not been doing. And why.” Danner noted that “although we have known the general narrative of torture since the summer of 2004, most politicians have been loath to do anything about it,” because they feared being painted as soft on terrorism.
President Obama has had to deal with a slew of challenges during his first 100 days, but so far the public is giving him high ratings. Overall, 69 percent of the public approves of his job performance, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll. Obama also got strong marks for his handling of the economy (58 percent), international affairs (67 percent) and Iraq (71 percent). The public also trusts Obama far more than Republicans on the economy (61 to 24 percent). Obama’s lowest ratings were for the automaker bailout (41 percent favorable), immigration (48 percent) and the budget deficit (51 percent).
A Fox News poll had Obama at 62 percent approval, and Gallup had Obama with a 63 percent average approval rating for his first three months in office.
The following satirical headlines come from borowitzreport.com:
CHENEY STARTS PRO-TORTURE FACEBOOK PAGE; Creates Social Network for Waterboarding Fans
OBAMA OPENS CHEVY DEALERSHIP ON WHITE HOUSE LAWN; Slashes Prices on Malibus, Cobalts
TALENTED UGLY PERSON BAFFLES WORLD; Networks Lift Restrictions on Unsightly
JIM CRAMER DECLARES DEPRESSION OVER, MILLIONS PANIC; ‘Run for Your Lives’ Heard on Wall Street
MADOFF TO HELP U.S. SELL BAD ASSETS; Legendary Swindler Pressed Into Service
It can be difficult sometimes to get 100 people to help with a service project. So it was especially impressive that about 3,000 citizens volunteered Saturday to clean up parks, paint homes for the needy and give back to this community in other ways. The Love Wichita event was organized by 27 churches and spearheaded by Eastminster Presbyterian Church, which began the annual event last year. Hats off to everyone who participated, and here’s hoping for an even larger turnout next year.
U.S. officials Sunday declared the swine flu to be a public health emergency, and the World Health Organization said it has “pandemic potential.” Kansas has had two cases so far.
Presidential politics never takes a holiday, not even during the first 100 days of a presidency. Public Policy Polling has President Obama leading in the 2012 election, whether he faces Newt Gingrich (52 to 39 percent), Mike Huckabee (49 to 42 percent), Sarah Palin (53 to 41 percent) or Mitt Romney (50 to 39 percent).
“The excess consumer demand and jobs created by our credit and housing bubbles have masked not only our weaknesses in manufacturing and other economic fundamentals, but something worse: how far we have fallen behind in K-12 education and how much it is now costing us,” wrote columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman. Citing a new study titled “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” Friedman warned: “In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. dominated the world in K-12 education. We also dominated economically. In the 1970s and 1980s, we still had a lead, albeit smaller, in educating our population through secondary school, and America continued to lead the world economically, albeit with other big economies, like China, closing in. Today, we have fallen behind in both per capita high school graduates and their quality. Consequences to follow.”
A House Judiciary Committee hearing last week deteriorated into a press-bashing session in which “ideologues of the left and right made no effort to conceal their yearning for a day without journalists, when public officials would no longer be scrutinized,” wrote Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. But as University of Pennsylvania law professor C. Edwin Baker told the committee, “the biggest correlator with less government corruption is newspaper readership: When people are reading newspapers, corruption goes down.” That’s why Thomas Jefferson famously said that if asked to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
A Washington Times editorial took a different tack in opposing Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services, painting her as a friend of an industry (abortion) who therefore is unfit to run the department that oversees that industry. “If she were the cat’s-paw of any other industry, Mrs. Sebelius would be in trouble. Yet she appears to be sailing toward a sure confirmation, thanks in part to the support of Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, a fellow Kansan and one-time pro-life leader. The industry is good to its friends, the way Standard Oil and Big Sugar once were. And it intimidates those it doesn’t buy.”
