Ron Vine

Mike, his name is Ron Vine not Ron Vines as you write in your most recent column. How tough is it to get a name right, especially when your job was to cover City Hall? Here is what he looked like. He still looks a lot like this today. He was one of the ablest public administrators the City of Topeka ever employed.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Kind of cool, isn't it.

Did you see the B-2 Bomber?

Around 10 am, I was just about finished with my morning walk when I heard a jet's roar overheard. I'm a former pilot (licensed, but with a lapsed medical) and I always look to see what kind of plane is making the sound. Today, it was a B-2, stationed at nearby Whiteman AFB in Missouri. What a beautiful sight!

Happy Birthday Dad!`

Charles W. Wright, former Topeka mayor, will celebrate his 90th birthday Aug. 17, 2009.

Chuck is publisher of Christmas Trees Magazine, and he is active in many community organizations.

The family congratulates our dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather for all the love, support and generosity he has given us over the years.

Please join us in wishing him a "Happy Birthday" by sending cards to his home or to P.O. Box 107, Lecompton, KS 66050.

Honduras has won!

Good news for all who love democracy. Here.

Atlas Shrugged

I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It was never required reading for me in any class I took. Rand, who considered it her masterwork, wrote and published it just after World War II, but is still fresh and relevant today...more so because of its message of individualism, seeking personal happiness, ownership of private property and limited government. It is nearly 1,100 pages of small print, but I can now answer the question, "Who is John Galt?"

Hall Watch

One of my favorite columnist/bloggers is Joe Posnanski of the KC Star, and soon to be Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated. Since the Kansas City Royals made the ill-advised trade for Yuniesky Betancourt, JoPo has kept a Yuni-Watch, cataloging Yuni's futility at the plate and is incompetence as a major league shortstop. It has been brutal, but it is now over as JoPo has announced he has made his point, and he won't be continuing his watch as he transitions to SI. I have a suggestion for a replacement which will track incompetence---the Hall Watch---which documents the inability of T C-J columnist Mike Hall to write anything of interest. Again this week, Hall's column fails to generate any comments. Not one. And, there are plenty of crazies who add their comments to the other columns and articles in the T C-J on a daily basis. Hall is on a three-week streak generating more "no comments" than a beleaguered Congressman being asked about Obamacare.

HHS Secretary Sebelius and ObamaCare

Do you think Kathleen Sebelius is homesick for Kansas? See for yourself.



Later....

Catching up on a few odds & ends

Mike Hall. He's still mailing it in...only now he's laughably absurd. His latest column begins, "I know from your comments...." In truth, his columns are so bland they never generate any comments. This column in particular, dredges up a name from the past, former T C-J writer, Leslie Guild, who was, in my humble opinion, a disaster as a reporter. She tended to engage in rumor-mongering, always from "anonymous" sources. At first, I complained at the unfairness of me having to respond on the record to some anonymously-sourced rumor. When, as a matter of fairness, I stopped responding, she wrote the story anyway, with the mere fact it was seen in writing, giving it more credibility than it deserved.


Honduras. With each passing day, doesn't it seem more and more likely that the Obama administration picked the wrong horse to support in Honduras? Some commentators have raised the suggestion of corruption.

Topeka Police Department. Judge Nancy Parrish dismissed the criminal charges pending against off-duty police officer Jason Judd. The charges were filed 1 1/2 years ago by a desperate District Attorney, trying to score some points and get himself re-elected, rather than seeing that justice was done. In this sense, there is a similarity between his actions and President Obama's statement that the Cambridge Massachusetts Police Officer "acted stupidly" in arresting Obama's friend, Skip Gates, for disorderly conduct, in his own home. In both cases, the powerful badly misjudged public sentiment that detests rude behavior, whether it is the Llamas brothers playing their music too loud at 2 in the morning or a college professor seeing racism where there is none. That DA Hecht and President Obama supported people who had behaved rudely caused a great many citizens to choose sides, and to come down on the side of public civility.