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| Reservations aside, we hope baseball works Sat, 7 Jun 2008 21:38:32 -0500 Although we have some serious reservations about taxpayer exposure to risk in downtown redevelopment, with the groundbreaking for the new stadium Wednesday bringing that portion of the project closer to reality, we can only hope baseball will be as successful here as proponents contend. Work should get under way soon at the site of the 5,700-capacity arena. The stadium will house baseball team owner’s Art Solomon’s single-A minor league team, the Columbus, Ga., Catfish. Pictures and sketches of the stadium show a intriguing looking structure that will include 4,000 seats in the first-level bowl and another 1,700 seats in the picnic area, a grassy berm, 50-person group decks, 10 -18 seat suites and a private club that will seat 175 to 200. We hope it will prove to be a great asset to the redevelopment that is currently taking place in Bowling Green. The team will play at least 70 home games a year, but Solomon expects the stadium to be in use 100 to 120 days per year. In addition to the stadium being used by the minor league baseball team, Western Kentucky University’s baseball team will also play a half dozen games there a year. Solomon also said he would like to see some NCAA baseball tournament games played there in the future. Solomon said the stadium could also host concerts, high school or college games, nonprofit events and fundraisers. Solomon, who owns another team in New Hampshire, said the team will be greatly involved with the community, including efforts to promote youth literacy by giving free admission and recognition to children who read extra books. The ballpark will also employ 20 to 25 people year-round and 75 to 100 during the April-September playing session. The full-time payroll will probably reach $1.5 million annually, including benefits. Solomon believes baseball coming to Bowling Green will also help spur our local economy. Visiting teams will probably stay several nights in local hotels, for a total of perhaps 2,000 room rentals a year and the stadium will buy large amounts of food and drink from local vendors. Success in real estate development has enabled Solomon to indulge his passion for baseball. “We wouldn’t have come here if we weren’t optimistic,” he says. We hope this optimism is well founded and wish both him and his team success since the success of downtown redevelopment is closely tied to the success of minor league baseball here. |
| War and Obama Sat, 7 Jun 2008 21:38:23 -0500 Cutting through all the fog, there are two primary reasons behind Barack Obama’s stunning victory over the Clinton machine: authenticity and the war in Iraq. As amply demonstrated, there is simply no comparison between Obama and Hillary Clinton as far as public speaking is concerned. He is eloquent and natural, talking directly to the folks. She is more stilted and rehearsed, talking at the listener. Sen. Clinton comes across as the typical politician, while Sen. Obama seems like a genuine human being. He also outflanked her on the Iraq war. In the beginning of the campaign, Obama bolted from the starting gate flashing his anti-war cred. From the jump, he had been against the action. And now he was the guy who would pull the USA out of the Iraq swamp. Clinton was immediately put on the defensive, as she initially supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein. Also, her entire outlook on confronting Islamic fascism was far too bullish for far-left America. So the Net roots, as they call themselves, flocked to Obama and provided him with vast amounts of money via the Internet. By the time Hillary rallied Democratic moderates, it was too late. Now Obama has achieved the nomination, but his winning primary strategy on Iraq could come back to haunt him in the general election, when the far left becomes rather insignificant. Already John McCain is painting Obama as a terror appeaser who would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq. And McCain has some heavy ammunition to back up his attack. In May, American casualties were the lowest since the Iraq war began in 2003. In addition, Iraqi oil production is now at its highest level since Saddam fell. Even the liberal Reuters news agency calls the current situation in Iraq a “dramatic turnabout.” Of course, you won’t hear much about that in the American press, as the liberal media have much invested in a U.S. defeat in Iraq. But there is no question that the war there can now be won. It’s not a lock, but it’s certainly a possibility. McCain must make the case that a victory in Iraq, which means the country stabilizes and becomes an ally against Islamic terror and Iran, means a much more secure United States. For the past few weeks, McCain has been spotlighting Iran’s villainy; pointing out its support of terror groups like Hezbollah and its outright killing of our forces in Iraq. Quietly, McCain is setting Obama up for a hard right to the jaw. If the U.S. pulls out of Iraq too quickly, the pressure on Iran immediately lightens and the potential for aggression by the bitterly anti-Jewish and anti-American Mullahs rises dramatically. Does Obama understand that? Does it matter to him? McCain will confront his young challenger with those questions. Obama’s advisers know the Iraq scenario is changing fast. They also understand that the media will ignore the good news for as long as it can. But word will get out and, after years of frustration, Americans could be staring at a success story after all. Not good news for Obama. |
| A perfect storm we must avoid Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:45:00 EST A "perfect storm" occurs when there is a convergence of substantial negative forces, which, awful by themselves, are catastrophic in their combination. Such a storm will soon be upon us here in Kentucky, as 10,000 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face a future with little prospect of securing crucially needed specialized residential and community support services. |
| What makes a redneck red? Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:47:00 EST I was reading in a paper today where one of the presidential candidate's advisors indicated they would not pursue the "Bubba" vote. Since I've been referred to as "Bubba," "redneck," "good old boy," just to mention a few, I decided to take a look at where these names started and why. |
| Widen bridge Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:47:00 EST After reading this lame editorial, I think the only "no-brainer" is your editorial board. As one who travels this roadway quite a bit, I cannot say that speeding is a problem, particularly due to the curves before and after crossing the bridge. Second, the proposed use of a traffic signal primarily as a speed-control device does not meet the standards for the use of traffic signals. |
| Glenview road closing, grant disputed Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:48:00 EST The Metro government is giving the city of Glenview $10,000 to help finance a "Neighborhood Conservation Plan." Really? The city can not afford to open all of its pools, we're asking little league teams to pay the electric bills at our ball parks, and The Healing Place, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, just had its budget cut $36,000, but we can give $10,000 to a community whose median household income is $199,703! Do you find this a hard pill to swallow? |
| With a smile on my face Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:49:00 EST The history-making moment with which we're now all familiar seems to have surpassed inevitability and entered the realm of foregoneness. There seems no stopping Barack Obama, not solely because of his obvious appeal but because, who really wants to be the one who stands athwart history yelling "Stop!" when this particular history is so compelling? |
| Obama should reject Hillary Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:49:00 EST An axiom. When voters watch a presumptive presidential nominee considering this or that running mate, they think: What if the president dies? When the presumptive nominee considers this or that running mate, he thinks: What if I live? |
| Our nasty carbon footprint Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:50:00 EST When the city and county merged to form Metro Louisville, signs popped up around town boasting that this was the 16th largest city in the nation. The way the county lines were drawn allowed Louisville to make this claim despite its not being among even the largest 40 Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the U.S. (Census Bureau rankings last July listed the Louisville area as 42nd largest in the U.S.). |
| Clean up... Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:31:00 EST |
| Readers' views Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:14 EDT SMOKERS SHOULDN'T BEAR ALL OF BURDEN In "Light a fire under legislature," the Herald-Leader editorial board claims to have found the true feelings of Kentuckians on raising the tax on cigarettes and suggests that a $1-a-pack tax is the ideal solution to solving the state's budget crisis. A poll of 600 respondents limited to those who were likely to vote is not likely to be accurate for this issue; people who don't vote may be more likely to be smokers. The result was not overwhelmingly in favor of the tax. Fifty-five percent favored it, but since about 70 percent of Kentuckians do not smoke, even many non-smokers reject the proposal. The editorial phrased the proposal as a tax on cigarettes, but in reality it is a tax on smokers. If the proceeds went solely to paying the cost of health care for smokers, then the proposal would be more palatable. But since only about 30 percent of Kentuckians smoke, the proposed tax would force 30 percent to shoulder the burden of balancing the budget for the other 70 percent. |
| Drug tests wrong approach Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:03 EDT Recently the Scott County public schools were embarrassed by a high-profile drug case involving a high school basketball star trafficking in cocaine. The embarrassment added momentum to a half-baked plan by the school board to launch a random drug-testing program. This plan is a bad idea. The central mission of the public schools is to educate children. Kentucky is already ranked near the bottom nationally in education. Although Scott County is one of the better school systems in the state, it is still doing only an adequate job at best. Implementing an expensive and underfunded drug-testing program is an unneeded distraction that adds financial and management strain to an already stressed system. The argument for drug testing goes like this: Drugs are bad for kids. Some kids take drugs. We should stop kids from taking drugs by testing. You could make exactly the same argument about a myriad of other problems, such as: Obesity is bad for kids. Some kids are obese. We should stop kids from being obese by monitoring food intake. |
| Don't fall for hysteria over 'carbon footprints' Mon, 09 Jun 2008 02:03 EDT Nothing stimulates Cassandra like a "sky is falling" report. The Brookings Institute report on metropolitan "carbon footprints" has found Lexington the foulest polluter in the land, pouring out greenhouse gases at a volume sure to burn up the globe. It sure has heated up the small fowl on the Herald-Leader editorial board. Like plentiful corn, the report has fueled a wing-flapping, feather-flying frenzy of sprawl-bashing, mass-transit celebrating and a new round of attacks on your home, your freedom and your pocketbook. What the Brookings report alleges is unimportant in the current context. What it and others like it support and promote is the subject and poses a far greater threat to the future of our children and grandchildren than possibly warmer winters. A collective of educated elites, politicians and radical environmentalists consider most of us an unattractive herd of animals ravaging the Earth in our SUVs as we run aimlessly thither and yon about our suburban homes, too selfish to stop and too stupid to know better. As European imperialists once felt compelled by noblesse oblige to rule the benighted peoples of Africa, so today's self-styled nobles feel an overwhelming obligation to correct and rearrange the lives of the dim-witted. |
| Chalk one up for fairness in workplace Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:04 EDT Looking at photographs of legislatures, city councils and state and private offices from 40 or 50 years ago, many things seem strange. There are typewriters, clunky black telephones, room air conditioners, cigarettes and ashtrays, and virtually all the seats of power are occupied by white, presumably straight, men. How inefficient, unhealthful even unsustainable current-day observers would say of the surroundings; how unfair about the personnel. To be sure, it was unfair to exclude the majority of the population from decision-making roles. But it was also inefficient and unsustainable. Gov. Steve Beshear did the right thing Monday when he signed an executive order restoring equal-opportunity employment to all current and prospective state employees regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. |
| Higher graduation rate good news Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:04 EDT The news that Kentuckians are graduating from high school at a rate slightly above the national average is a true cause for celebration. It's also no accident. Kentucky's progress from the bottom to the middle of the pack on this key indicator reveals the value of the state's education-reform efforts over the past 20 years. But, despite the gains here and nationally, almost a third of students still do not finish high school after four years, which shows how very much work remains to be done. The data also reveal the value of an independent, standardized approach to calculating high school graduation rates instead of the state-by-state approaches that underestimate the dropout problem and produce a confusing picture. |
| Carbon hoofprint Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:33 EDT |
| A Canuck In Kantuck: Saying goodbye to a mentor It was a complete shock when my former co-worker Julia e-mailed me two weeks ago and told me Brad had died of cancer. |
| One Man’s Opinion: The lies politicians tell Although our fine candidates can promise the voters the moon and the stars, they cannot deliver on those promises without help. |
| In the Zone: Kids have kept me busy |
| Hot is hot in central Texas The heat sent me down memory lane Friday. In the flash, I was lying under the canvas of an olive drab tent in the central Texas short brush. |
| Kentuckians must ask: ‘Why not?’ One day last week a western Kentucky lawmaker joined a few reporters during lunch in the Capitol Annex cafeteria. |
| Search for artillery begins Pleased to read in Gina’s report on fiscal court that the magistrates gave W.S. Everett and his committee of veterans the go ahead on the artillery piece for the Justice Center lawn. |
| Mother’s find strains emotions Please pray for my mom. |
| CHEERS and JEERS: Much to do about county Barren County was the place to be last weekend. |
| First abode was special Go out and pick up any daily newspaper — preferably the GDT — and you’ll often be reading about the nightmare that is our present economic state. |
| YOUR VIEWS Glasgow shows positive faceBeware scam by pool installer |
| The year of Obama Mon, 9 Jun 2008 11:49:14 -0500 In the end, the Democrats fell in love. At least, half of them did, and the party establishment, as represented by the superdelegates, wasn’t going to deny them their inamorata. Kids fainted at his rallies as if they were at a concert of the latest boy band. He mustered crowds worthy of the pope. He gave TV commentators shivers. Rather than a traveling press corps, he should have been covered by the greatest of sonneteers: Oh, his subduing tongue, his spirit all compact of fire, his beauty beauteous! The Democrats have always yearned for another Kennedy, and here is Barack Obama promising the stylish cool of a Jack, inspiring the frenzy on the campaign trail of a Bobby and sporting the endorsement of Ted. The last fresh new thing in Democratic politics, Bill Clinton, never truly had the imprimatur of the Kennedys, even if he brandished a youthful photo of himself shaking Jack’s hand at the White House as a kind of Excalibur moment. Clinton the centrist was always compromised as a liberal paladin by his compromises. Obama represents a rejection of triangulating Clintonism. He had no Sister Souljah moment during the primaries. Indeed, he initially embraced his Sister Souljah, in the form of a Rev. Jeremiah Wright introduced to the public in videotaped anti-American rants. Nor did Obama make any creative policy departures, like Clinton’s advocacy of welfare reform in 1992. Obama is the fullest flowering of liberal orthodoxy since George McGovern. And yet he has to be slightly favored to win the presidency. He brings his formidable personal gifts to a confrontation with a Republican Party that, beset by intellectual exhaustion, congressional scandal and an unpopular incumbent president, teeters on the verge of a Watergate-style meltdown. So Democrats contemplate the delicious prospect of having their purity and victory, too. It would be as if the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964 - and won. Everyone remarks on Obama’s stirring rhetoric, but the other hallmark of his primary campaign was organizational prowess. He had a cohesive team; it executed a strategy of relentless focus on delegates, even from tiny caucus states, that proved decisive; and it raised the astonishing sum of nearly $300 million, outspending Hillary Clinton three-to-one in February, when Obama all but clinched the nomination. With the flush of good feeling over his historic victory, Obama will barrel down on John McCain’s puttering Straight Talk Express like a runaway train. The night he clinched his victory, Obama easily filled the arena in St. Paul, Minn., where Republicans will hold their convention, whipping the crowd of 17,000 into a rapture of hope and change. McCain delivered a counterspeech in New Orleans that reactively riffed off Obama’s signature lines in another sign that - one way or another - it’s The Year of Obama. The race will be all about him. Can he connect with the downscale voters who gave Hillary Clinton half - or maybe a little more - of the Democratic primary vote? Can he put away questions about his Chicago associations? Is he a plausible commander in chief? Does his rhetoric begin to seem naively grandiose and his unruffled detachment arrogant and out-of-touch? The trajectory of the race could reprise 1976. Jimmy Carter, the Obamaesque purveyor of a new politics who exploded out of nowhere, led the solid, uninspiring Gerald Ford by as much as 30 points, before winning by a mere 2 points. Obama may lead McCain throughout the summer, but the public will focus on the reality of a President Obama in the fall and the race will tighten. Only then will we know if Obama is the transformative figure of a new era of Democratic dominance in Washington, or the candidate on whom besotted Democrats heedlessly threw away an all-but-inevitable victory. They have the man they love - for better or worse. |
| Obama really needs to listen to all women Mon, 9 Jun 2008 11:49:15 -0500 Chances that Sen. Barack Obama would pick Sen. Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential candidate took a nosedive on the night he secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination. Her defiant non-concession speech revealed just the sort of independent, unpredictable thinking that no sane candidate would ever want to have in a running mate. Taking on Clinton as a future vice president means taking on “the Clintons” - herself and her former president husband - which sounds about as comfortable as turning a pair of wild badgers loose in your minivan. You could see that on the night of the final two primaries, the night Obama made history as the first black candidate to secure a major party’s presidential nomination. Clinton congratulated Obama and his supporters only “on the extraordinary race they have run,” without making a concession or even a reference to his having won the delegate chase. Instead of letting the man savor his victory, she seemed eager to rain on it, yanking the spotlight away as if to make the night all about her. One can only imagine the justifiable howls of complaint that would have been heard if Clinton had won the delegate race and Obama similarly ignored the historic milestone that would have been for women. Yet I can only begin to imagine the disappointment Clinton must have felt when the bad news finally sank in. She was riding high in the polls for months, winning most of the debates, before Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses changed the playing field. She regained her footing near the end. She became a new heroine for “hard-working ... white Americans,” her unfortunate term for working-class voters who emerged as her key demographic, along with older white women. But it was too late. Obama stayed ahead just enough to win a victory. This left some Clinton campaign insiders expressing surprise to reporters that she seemed to have given so little thought to how she was going to end her crusade. Meanwhile, Obama has a lot of healing to do, particularly with Hillary Clinton’s disappointed supporters. He also needs to reassure the apprehensive working-class white voters, who need to get better acquainted with the “skinny kid with the funny name,” as he used to call himself when campaigning for the Senate in Illinois. That does not mean he should ask Hillary Clinton to be his running mate. The last thing a president needs is a vice president who has spent more time in the White House than he or, someday, she has. Worse, Hillary Clinton brings along a husband who used to be president and already seems on occasion to have too much time on his hands. The Oval Office does not need a back seat driver. There’s no question that visions of an Obama-Clinton ticket still dance in many Democrats’ heads as the best way to heal the wounds opened up by long and heated primary campaign. But other Obama fans and the independent voters that Obama wants to attract see the Clintons as products of the old-school politics to which Obama’s “change” theme runs in striking opposition. “Meet the new boss,” goes an old song by The Who, “same as the old boss.” That’s not a campaign song that the Obama chorus wants to sing. No, Obama is better off finding a campaign role for the Clintons, early and often. There would be no clearer healing signal to disappointed or apprehensive Democrats than to have Bill and Hillary campaigning at Obama’s side or jetting around on a plane that his campaign should cheerfully provide. Obama doesn’t have to win a majority of white working class voters in order to win the election. No Democratic candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 has done that, but Bill Clinton came closest, winning about half of their votes. Obama needs that sort of culture-crossing appeal on his side, especially during the early summer. If either of the Clintons says anything too embarrassing, which Bill has been known to do lately, Obama will have several months before election day in which to repair the damage. Obama’s first priority, in my view, should be his outreach to women. Many were understandably disappointed when Hillary Clinton came so close, then failed to win. As a man who lives with a dynamic wife and two growing girls, whose aspirations he surely wants to broaden, he needs to get out and talk to women. More important, he needs to listen to them. |
| It’s time for state to raise cigarette tax Mon, 9 Jun 2008 11:49:16 -0500 The Herald-Leader/WKYT-TV poll came within three points of nailing the victory margin in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary and, when undecideds are considered, was nearly that close on the Democratic presidential race. We bring this up not to praise the pollster, but to make the point that the poll’s other findings are also reliable - including the support among likely voters for raising Kentucky’s cigarette tax to $1. The polling was completed almost a month ago. Since then, the public’s desire for Kentucky to collect as much money as other states from the sale a pack of cigarettes can only have grown. That’s because the need for new revenue has become even more achingly real. In the last 10 days: |
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