News opinion 2008-08-16 Andanh.com

Annual book sale is great event for city Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:19:35 -0500
A lot of people just enjoy turning their telephones and televisions off and diving into a good book and for those who like this pastime, they have a chance to find some of those books at the upcoming Friends of the Library Book Sale. The Friends of the Library organization is now accepting donations for its annual book sale, which will be Sept. 19-21 at the old L&N Depot. The organization already has some books ready for sale, but could also use many more, which is all the more reason for citizens to donate old books to this worthy event. Lisa Rice, director of the Warren County Public Library, estimated that each year they have more than 100,000 items for sale. What is so attractive to book lovers about the event is that you can get some real bargains, including hardbacks for $1, paperbacks and children’s books for 50 cents, DVDs for $2 and books on tape or CD for $1. Not only can you get good bargains at the event, the money raised goes to a good cause. The library uses the money to support its summer reading program, which costs about $10,000. The library itself is strengthened by improving its educational programs. Each year, people from all walks of life come to the event to get their favorite books. Rice said the most sought after books are cookbooks. Teachers even come to the event to buy books for their classroom. Rice said she expects the event to be more popular than usual as people look for ways to economize. All this makes the Friends of the Library book sale the place to be on the dates mentioned. Donations of books can be taken at any branch, but Rice prefers that they be brought to the main library branch if possible.

Common sense Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:19:13 -0500
In any struggle between the dreamers and the realists the realists always win. We’re seeing that played out right now as the supreme realist of our time, Vladimir Putin, not only is running circles around the dreamers of the West, but is also making them look like a bunch of incompetent ninnies. Putin is playing the role of Vlad the Impaler, and the heads he is displaying atop Red Army bayonets as he marches through Georgia - a la Gen. Sherman - are those of the leaders of what used to be called the Free World. We should have seen it coming, but we were too busy with George Bush’s dreams of a democracy-drenched world - and Western Europe’s preoccupation with the destruction of all vestiges of its Christian past - to notice what Vlad has been up to as he goes about creating the latest version of a czarist imperialist Russia itching to expand its borders. As the always-perceptive Ralph Peters wrote in the New York Post, Putin’s latest venture “not only sized up President Bush humiliatingly well, but precisely anticipated Europe’s nonreaction - while taking a perfect-fit measure of Georgia’s mercurial president.” Putin, he added, “not only knew what he was doing - he knew exactly what others would do” an example, Peters wrote, of “intelligence work at the hall-of-fame level. (For our part, we had all the intelligence pieces in our hands and failed to assemble the puzzle.)” Peters recalled the signs that were always there for the CIA to see, had they been able to recognize what was taking place right under their noses - “the months of meticulous planning and extensive preparations for this invasion [that] were covered by military exercises, disingenuous explanations - and maskirovka, the art of deception the Red Army had mastered.” The result? “The Russians convinced us to see what we wanted to see.” The reaction of all of this by the Bush administration and our Western allies has been to run around like headless chickens. We have been shown exactly how it feels to be rendered impotent in the face of a determined opponent that doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks of him. There are a lot of lessons to be drawn from this, but for Americans one of the most important ones concerns the current debate on energy. Nobody seems to have noticed that the crisis in Georgia points up once again just how dependent we are on getting much of our oil from areas of the world where turmoil is rampant. A vital oil pipeline runs through Georgia, for example. One word from Putin and it shuts down. In the face of all this, when we need desperately to take advantage of the vast stores of oil that lie beneath our feet and off our shores waiting to be exploited, we allow the Democrats to place all that petroleum off-limits as they have since the Clinton administration all but banned drilling. They scoff at the vast majority of Americans who are demanding that we drill and drill now, using the lame excuse that it will take years before the oil here can be brought to the surface and refined and supplied to the nation’s gas pumps. Instead they dream of presently unavailable alternative sources of energy that may never become realities, and in any case are years in the future. Realists don’t dream. They recognize that if we start to drill now, sometime in the not too distant future - two, three five or even ten years from now - America will have all the oil we’ll ever need and we won’t have to worry about what Vladimir Putin or Iran’s President Ahmadinejad are doing to threaten our oil supplies. If we listen to the dreamers ten years from now we’ll still be waiting for the promised age of alternative energy to get off the ground - and we’ll still be dependent on foreign oil at only God knows how much per gallon.

The good tax Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:24:00 EST
The news about the damage cigarette smoking does to health just keeps on coming, here and elsewhere. Sadly, none of that seems to affect Kentucky policymakers. Consider:

Two bridges -- yes Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:24:00 EST
When Gov. Steve Beshear appeared this week at the Louisville Forum, perhaps the most important thing he said got little attention. Here it is:

Forum flashes: good moves bad moves Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:23:00 EST

Beshear's trip to Japan a worthy investment Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:23:00 EST
Recently, Gov. Steve Beshear and top officials from the Cabinet for Economic Development traveled to Japan to recruit new businesses and investment in Kentucky. Unfortunately, some have questioned this trip as excessive and unnecessary at a time when the state's revenues are down and there is belt-tightening throughout state government. This view is short-sighted at best.

Maintain bike lanes Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:23:00 EST
I applaud our mayor for his continued support of events like the upcoming Bike and Hike on Labor Day. What a great way to get out and exercise, and travel a route that goes through Old Louisville.

Freddy's new voice Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:19:00 EST

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:01 EDT

readers' views

Breast-feeding mom did not bother others

Shame on McDonald's. Who gave it the authority to decide that breast-feeding a baby is obscene? There was only one child having a healthful dinner there: that baby.

The rest of us were having our cheeseburgers and fries, clogging our arteries, and washing it down with Coke. No one was paying attention to the young mother until the manager started being offensive and crude.

Moving ahead on equine drug ban Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:01 EDT

There has long been a strange split personality at work in Kentucky horse racing.

Images of the Kentucky Derby, rich sales, beautiful farms, long tradition and exquisite horses have shouted that we're the best. But there also has been the wink-and-nod, not-just-yet approach to policing the sport that has delivered another message.

The Equine Drug Council took a huge step Thursday toward closing that rift when it unanimously agreed to send a strong ban on steroids to the Kentucky Racing Commission.

The commission, which meets Aug. 25, should adopt the proposed ban and ask Gov. Steve Beshear to put it on the fast track for implementation.

Idea pool Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:52 EDT

Bush gave away his position
A very small and not vocal enough minority said, as our military prepared to invade Iraq in early 2003, that we should consider the damage to our credibility internationally.

Will reform follow investigation
This is Kentucky, and so we’re being treated to another investigation of the Transportation Cabinet.

GUEST EDITORIAL: Health Kentucky
More than 500,000 Kentuckians awake every morning without health insurance or the ability to pay for it.

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