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| Hospice needs support from the community Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:57:09 -0500 Congratulations go out to Hospice of Southern Kentucky for the opening of its new care center. Hospice provides an extremely valuable service to its area, which includes Allen, Barren, Butler, Edmonson, Hart, Logan, Metcalfe, Simpson and Warren counties. There is nothing more frightening than dying, and hospice provides a wide range of services to help those with terminal illnesses and their families cope with that fright. Hospice gives the dying as much comfort as possible by addressing the physical, social, psychological and spiritual needs of the patients. As its Web site states: “The emphasis of hospice care is on living rather than on dying. Hospice staff and volunteers can be with patients and their families to offer the special kind of support and care that eases the loneliness and fear of death.” Hospice services include skilled nursing services, emotional support, pain and symptom care, equipment and pastoral and bereavement counseling. The new 16,000-square-foot center has 10 rooms for patients and their loved ones. The rooms include comfortable furniture and patios, with medical equipment discreetly hidden behind the walls. It is only the third standalone hospice care center in the state. What it will not do is take the place of traditional hospice care, which takes place in the home. “This is another way we can serve the community,” said Julie Pride, hospice community development coordinator. “Society is getting older and baby boomers will need to be taken care of.” And that’s where residents come in. The new center cost $3.2 million, and the nonprofit will kick off a fundraising campaign next month with a goal $3 million. To date, $175,000 has been raised in the quiet phase of the campaign. Individuals, corporations and foundations can make donations that will give them naming rights to various areas of the center. Five of the 10 rooms have already been sponsored with donations of $25,000 each. Our region has always been generous in supporting various charities, and certainly that generosity will again be displayed by helping hospice quickly reach its goal. To help, call (270) 782-3402. |
| Expectations Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:57:21 -0500 There is a reason the psalmist warned, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm 146:3) It wasn’t that he was cynical about humanity. It appears the writer observed that the best efforts of humankind were unable to produce the satisfaction people sought in earthly leaders. Which brings us to the expectations surrounding Barack Obama. It is a truism in politics that you are supposed to lower expectations in order to boost your political stock should you exceed them. Sen. Obama has done precisely the opposite. He has raised expectations so high there is only one way he can exceed them following his nomination in Denver. That is to climb to the top of a mountain peak, there to be transfigured and ascend into Heaven. No wonder Jon Stewart lampooned his messianic personae on “The Daily Show,” saying that while in Israel, Obama made a short visit to the manger in Bethlehem where he was born. In his Berlin speech, Obama promised to tear down more walls than Joshua did at Jericho. He’s going to destroy walls separating black from white; walls between Jews, Muslims and Christians; walls dividing rich from poor, and East from West. Prior to the advent of Obama, such powers were reserved for the Messiah, who, we are promised, will beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, make the lion lie down with the lamb and we will study war no more. No politician can live up to such great expectations. That is because neither the problems, nor the solutions emanate from Washington. Politicians in one party want us to believe that politicians in the other party caused our problems. Each party has had its turn in the White House and a congressional majority. If one party is better than the other, shouldn’t one of them have solved the problems by now? With expectations so high, if Obama is elected president and his party maintains, perhaps expands, its margins in the House and Senate, he will have to immediately solve at least some of the problems he has promised to solve, lest his opinion polls take a dive and cynicism makes a comeback. Obama is to be commended for lecturing black men about their role as real fathers, not just sperm donors. But he is not the first to give that lecture. Rev. Jesse Jackson and comedian Bill Cosby have also given it. Yet, the targeted behavior has not changed. America’s primary problems are not economic and political; they are moral and spiritual and there government cannot go, with or without “faith-based initiatives.” In our self-obsessed, entitlement age, politicians send the message that if you’re breathing you should expect a government check. Few want to hear a message about personal responsibility and accountability. The Obama disciples want to hear more about what government will do for them, not what they can do for themselves in a free country that offers opportunity to those who will seize it. They want to punish “the rich,” who they used to want to emulate, but now just envy. And so those few who are already paying more than half the taxes are told they aren’t paying enough. John McCain might mimic Ronald Reagan by saying that America is struggling, not because government is doing too little, but because it is doing too much; sapping the strength of the country, which is not found in Washington, but rather in “we the people.” If McCain can lower expectations from Washington and raise them in individuals, showing them what tenacity and hard work can produce, he might win. Should we expect such a message from him? We should, but will he deliver it? My own expectations aren’t very high, which means he might exceed them. |
| Looking back Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:39:00 EST If you didn't swear allegiance to party and platform, on everything from W to gay marriage, the investigation said, you were out of luck, job-wise, even if that meant judgeships stayed open. Even spousal affiliations and sexual orientation weren't off-limits to the thought police. |
| All's well Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:39:00 EST The Beshear administration, for the most honorable and sensible of reasons, wanted to change the policy on lowering the flag for fallen service personnel. The rule was that flags should be dropped to half-staff from the time any Kentucky soldier's death was announced until that individual's funeral was over. |
| It's fine to whine, but McConnell should get it right Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:40:00 EST As endless examples will prove, we try to avoid having the last word in ongoing arguments on the editorial page. However, Sen. Mitch McConnell's letter responding to our July 27 editorial, "Protecting speculators," was so outrageous in its misrepresentation of what we said that it's necessary to set the record straight. |
| McConnell 'will win' Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:40:00 EST No matter how many hand-picked anti-McConnell letters you print from the zombies on the left, it won't matter. He will win, and he will win big. The left's reign is over in Congress. Praise Jesus! |
| The perils of unrealistic expectations Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:41:00 EST There is a reason the psalmist warned, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help." (Psalm 146:3) |
| Goodlings Gone Wild Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:41:00 EST You might think that the two of these have nothing in common save the happenstance that both are the subject of devastating new reports: Goodling about the stomach-turning politicization of the Justice Department; the deficit about the stomach-turning state of the federal Treasury. |
| McConnell responds again Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:43:00 EST How can I tell when The Courier-Journal will publish its latest misleading McConnell editorial? Easy: Any day that ends with the letter "y." If only fairness and accuracy were as important as churning out talking points. |
| Candidate: Republican Mitch McConnell Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:48:00 EST "Kentucky's state gas tax just went up again. Who lobbied for automatic gas tax increases? Bruce Lunsford." |
| Systematic Partisanship... Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:31:00 EST |
| Readers' views Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:11 EDT Right to smoke not same asright to litter I was leaving church services one Sunday when I noticed a man smoking a cigarette just outside the door. He apparently could not stand another moment without smoking and had left the service early to do so. It was not his smoking that caused my frustration, but his total lack of respect for his surroundings. When he finished blowing smoke over the exiting worshipers, he discarded his cigarette butt directly onto the sidewalk in front of the church. One might say that he was oblivious and that to him, a cigarette butt is not litter, but some socially acceptable last bastion of a smoker's rights. I can't say that he was courageous in his act since he didn't know I was watching and that I am a proactive nutcase for non-smoking and littering. |
| Stacked deck at Guantanamo Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:21 EDT This editorial appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Since when has a trial in a U.S. courtroom opened with the prosecutor voluntarily screening a video of the accused, bound, hooded and being grilled by armed and masked government agents? What happened last week at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the Bush administration's first terrorism war-crimes tribunal, though, bears only a passing likeness to the American system of justice. |
| Proposed black-lung rule would be setback for miners Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:04 EDT Kentucky residents may be interested in current efforts by Sen. Mitch McConnell, his wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, and their energy industry allies to kill new initiatives to eliminate black lung disease and other serious health problems faced by miners. The McConnell team has been very persistent in its efforts to weaken mine health and safety. From the opening days of the Bush administration, Chao delayed implementation of rules to limit the exposure of metal and non-metal miners to diesel engine emissions and eliminated critical requirements before allowing the limit to go into place only very recently. And she has changed a uniform disclosure rule on health risks to provide an exemption for mine operators. While other employers have to provide their employees with information on the latest findings of several organizations about the health risks to which they are exposed, mine operators are permitted to ignore any recent findings. Many miners are exposed to toxic chemical substances, and yet nothing has been done to revise exposure limits set 40 years ago. And while the McConnell team is well aware that black lung has returned to exact its horrible toll on a new generation of miners and that there is technology that can end this problem forever, the department continues to .slow walk. solutions right to the last day of the administration. |
| Burgoo Something to stew over Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:21 EDT Seems to us there's a certain irony afoot in downtown Lexington right now. As the bulldozers claw away at the block that is supposed to birth CentrePointe, three very visible signs of why that development is so questionable are on display. On Main Street between Mill Street and Broadway and on Mill between Main and Vine Street are three Webb Companies billboards advertising .Space Available. in the Radisson and the Big Blue/Fifth Third buildings. At least it seems ironic to those of us who have wondered ever since Dudley Webb sprang CentrePointe on an unsuspecting Lexington whether there is truly a market need for a development of that size downtown when the core already appears to be swimming in Space Available. |
| State's legal arms twisting each other Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:05 EDT Two arms of state government are flailing each other in state courts over funding for public defenders. And now there's a threat of a lawsuit in federal court because overworked public defenders are withdrawing from representing some juveniles. As the fallout thickens, taxpayers can trace the whole mess to Senate President David Williams. Without ever listening to Public Advocate Ernie Lewis, Williams zeroed out the state's second-largest public defenders office from the budget during this year's legislative session. By the time the smoke had cleared, the Lexington office had been restored, but $2.3 million had been axed from public defenders' offices statewide. Their budget shrank; their case-loads grew. Prosecutors and the Beshear administration are now arguing before judges around the state that public defenders should just suck it up and do their jobs representing poor people facing jail, even if the jobs they do are inadequate. |
| Bad Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:42 EDT |
| Direct Kick: Too much acting in men's soccer |
| A Canuck in Kantuck: Not with a bang, but a whimper |
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