Archive for January, 2010
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
AURORA, Ill. (January 29, 2010) - As the 2010 AMA Arenacross Series enters its fourth round of the season this weekend and makes its return to Kansas City’s Kemper Arena, the headlining story a quarter of the way through remains Babbitt’s Monster Energy/TiLube Kawasaki’s Tyler Bowers. After a total of six races, Bowers has grabbed the win all but one, including the last five in a row.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Airline History Museum in Kansas City has been in a holding pattern for more than a year in receiving the largest piece of its collection: a vintage Lockheed L-1011 airplane.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
What’s more, the recession has cut deeply into donations. After posting its first loss two years ago of about US$30,000, the museum is looking at what one staffer termed “a monster loss” that could approach a quarter of a million dollars when the final accounting for 2009 is complete. For a relatively small museum that has always depended on the kindness of others, $200,000 is seismic.
Much of the revenue loss is traceable to a drop in licensing revenue. No one is predicting the museum’s imminent demise, but everyone agrees the trend must be reversed.
“For museums all over the country, dollars are becoming hard to find,” said Greg Baker, who took over as executive director a little more than a year ago. “We are challenged by that. We’ve got to raise money to keep going and if we don’t, we’ll end up closing our doors.”
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
During the third quarter, the company’s net income was nearly cut in half and in the second quarter, profits tumbled nearly 90 percent.
In the most recent quarter, revenue dipped 4 percent to $406.8 million. Volume fell just 1 percent from a year ago, but revenue from fuel surcharges fell 43 percent, to $26.8 million from $47.3 million a year earlier.
BusinessWeek.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Kansas City — A 45-year-old Kansas City woman is accused of letting her 3-year-old twin sons have access to prescription drugs, leading to one boy’s death.
Springfield News-Leader.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Pendergast was hired as defensive coordinator last year only because Romeo Crennel wasn’t available. Crennel accepted that job earlier this month, putting Pendergast out of the job.
KCTV Kansas City.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
The announcement that sticks out is that former defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast is no longer with the team. He was replaced by Romeo Crennel two weeks ago. At that time, Kansas City head coach Todd Haley said he wanted Pendergast to stay with the team in some form.
ESPN.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Police Capt. Mike Wood says officers who went to a farmhouse in Henry County on Thursday found more than $100,000 in merchandise, including mini-refrigerators, lamps, toys and smaller items such as socks. Police say the farmhouse was set up like a store.
KTVI.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
GOP activist Rich Kiper of Leavenworth says the statement is so generic that Democrats could have agreed with most of it.
Party chairwoman Amanda Adkins says the document is part of an attempt to show that the GOP is “the party of ideas.”
CJOnline.com.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Critics, including civic leaders, developers and home owners in Iowa, Kansas and Vermont, have complained the newly expanded flood zones in their areas will stifle growth and hurt property values.
Press & Sun-Bulletin.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Sanders has said that the commission sometimes excludes members appointed by the county, school districts and libraries. That leaves full power with six commissioners appointed by the Kansas City mayor.
News Tribune
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Transportation Logistics Systems CEO Melody Warren has been appointed as chairwoman of Kansas City SmartPort Inc., a nonprofit that promotes the region as a freight and logistics hub.
MSN Money.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Known as “W.W.,” Baker joined the Star as a reporter in 1947. He rose through the ranks until being named editor in January 1967 and executive vice president in 1971.
KTVI.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Newt Gingrich’s political group raised nearly $6.4 million in the second half of 2009, easily outpacing the fundraising efforts of potential rivals for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty.
POLITICO.com.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Obama largely escaped any controversy over terrorism in the 2008 campaign, because voters were so focused on the economic crisis and because many were supportive of Obama’s plans to break from the Bush-era war on terror, by ending the Iraq war and shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison.
But a series of stumbles in recent weeks has given Republicans a chance to renew that line of attack against Obama, at a time when he’s already confronting public criticism of his handling of the economy and health care.
POLITICO.com.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Following its launch in nine days’ time, the US space agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will spend five years in orbit trying to discover the causes of extreme solar activity, such as sun spots and solar winds and flares.
Times Online .
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The mother of one of three Americans jailed in Iran for six months says even hiring an attorney in Iran has brought no new information about the welfare of her son or his friends.
3 Americans now held.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
ONE of Britain’s most dangerous gangsters has been using Facebook to threaten and intimidate his enemies from a maximum security prison.
Colin Gunn, an underworld godfather who ordered the execution of two grandparents, has been able to correspond freely with up to 565 “friends” on the social networking site for the past two months
Times Online .
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Arne Duncan is getting a lot of heat for telling the truth.
You heard me. Duncan said, “The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster.” Yep.
Duncan, of course, did not point the finger at teachers’ unions, the bloated bureaucracy, or any of the major causes, but the fact is that yes, without Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans could not have rebuilt its horrible school system on a charter school model.
Erick’s blog - RedState.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
SurveyUSA New York Poll on 9/11 Terror Trials
Should the September 11 terror trials be held in Lower Manhattan? Or should they be held somewhere else?
Lower Manhattan 23%
Somewhere else 69%
Should the September 11 terror suspects be tried in a civilian court? Or a military court?
Civilian court 26%
Military court 69%
race42008.com
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
During his first year in office, did President Obama accomplish most of the goals he set out to achieve?
Yes 19%
No 70%
Over the past year, have taxes been cut for 95% of working families in America?
Yes 21%
No 53%
race42008.com
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Moran and his family continued to live in Hays, with Moran flying home virtually every weekend.
Tiahrt said he flew out to Kansas most weekends, too.
A Moran spokesman said his candidate was not criticizing Tiahrt’s family, but was questioning his rival.
“I don’t think Moran is attacking his family,” Moran spokeman Dan Lara said
Tiahrt said the Virginia move enabled his to spend far more time with his family than he had been spending with them when the clan resided in Wichita.
In Virginia, he was able to attend ball games and teacher’s conferences again where he hadn’t been able to do that before.
Neither Tiahrt nor Moran mentioned the other by name in their public remarks. But spokesmen for both camps said the two men were speaking of each other.
Polls show the race is close.
Prime Buzz.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
As a political matter — for Mayor Mark Funkhouser — the most critical comparison will be with the 2006 survey: The one just before he took office. Funkhouser has often said he wants to be judged by whether those numbers have gone up during his term.
Prime Buzz.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Kevin Yoder, who is running for Congress in the 3rd District, announced that he raised more than $233,000 in less than a month of fundraising since he entered the race in mid-December.
“We will build upon this early momentum,” the Overland Park state rep said in a statement.
Now, the big question for insiders is how much Republican Nick Jordan brought in. That number hasn’t been released.
Prime Buzz.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
The most recent Kansas City survey of citizen satisfaction is in — and bloggers and others are comparing the latest findings with recent, previous surveys.
As a political matter — for Mayor Mark Funkhouser — the most critical comparison will be with the 2006 survey: The one just before he took office. Funkhouser has often said he wants to be judged by whether those numbers have gone up during his term.
Prime Buzz.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Prime Buzz.
In 2006 prison volunteer Toby Young smuggled convicted murderer John Manard out of Lansing in a dog crate in her van. The audit found that prison officials failed to follow up on repeated reports that Young was “overly familiar” with inmates.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
KansasCity.com Prime Buzz.
There remains a dispute between Cauthen and the city over additional severance. According to several sources, Cauthen and his attorney believe that he is entitled to additional vacation and sick leave pay, while the city argues that amount is capped.
Posted in Elections, Johnson County | No Comments »
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
When Amanda Adkins was elected a year ago to the top position of Kansas Republican Party chair, she went unchallenged, and there was some degree of enthusiasm and optimism. While few knew Adkins personally, there was a large amount of trust placed in her, due to the knowledge that she was “Brownback’s choice.” Brownback’s preference in Adkins — a former campaign manager for Brownback — had never been clearly, publicly stated, but this was the unsaid conventional wisdom among Republican activists. (more…)
Posted in Elections, Johnson County, Opinion, Editorial, and Analysis | 2 Comments »
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
For the UAW, the future looks particularly bleak. Manufacturing jobs continue to shrink. New factories are mostly locating in the right-to-work South, bypassing Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states where union influence is still disproportionate to its representation of the work force.
Even in Michigan, the bluest of blue-collar states, union membership has dropped well below 20 percent, and there’s a growing drumbeat to get a right-to-work proposal on the ballot as a means of improving the state’s economic competitiveness.
In opinion polls, the union shares blame about equally with corporate mismanagement for the collapse of the automobile industry. Residents who never enjoyed UAW-style wages and benefits are openly resentful that the union’s stubborn refusal to give back until it was too late put Michigan’s economy in a tailspin.
In fact, one of the reasons offered for the lack of voter enthusiasm for Mr. Cherry is his strong ties to the UAW. A top political operative for another union told me that labor is hesitant to back any candidate this fall, worried its support will be the kiss of death in a state weary of labor politics.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Justice Samuel Alito let a pained expression pass his face and muttered, “Not true.” His reaction to Pres. Barack Obama’s demagogic attack on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision aptly summed up the entire State of the Union address.
Obama warned that the decision striking down restrictions on corporate spending opened “the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections.” But the court explicitly left untouched a statute that bans election spending by foreign corporations, even “indirectly.” There isn’t even a “loophole” for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign firms, as the White House claimed in damage-control mode.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
The Real Clear Politics average on the generic ballot now shows Republicans ahead 46%-42%. This is historically unprecedented.
Except for a single CNN/USA Today poll conducted right after the Republican National Convention, September 5-7, 2008, which seems to have been an outlier, Republicans didn’t take the lead on the generic ballot-which party’s candidate will you vote for in House races-until March 9-15, 2009, in Rasmussen polling (which samples likely voters and whose results have therefore leaned more Republican than those of other pollsters since Barack Obama’s inauguration). Republicans since took a lead in the NPR poll (July 22-26), Gallup (November 5-8), Bloomberg News (December 3-7), Battleground (December 6-10), CNN/Opinion Research (January 8-10) and Democracy Corps (January 7-11).
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Thus, I think it was inappropriate for the President to take a shot at the Court in the way he did. The Court’s solid reputation is a public good for the country, and it should not be tampered with, especially over a case such as the one in question. It seems to me that if the Court had rendered a judgment that was truly beyond the pale - akin to Dred Scott - I wouldn’t mind if the President took a shot at the Court. But on a campaign finance ruling? That strikes me as irresponsible and short-sighted on the part of a President who wants people to trust their government. It becomes even more irresponsible when one recalls that he blasted the Court right to its face. That particular level of disrespect sends a message that is not conducive to keeping the Court’s good reputation intact.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters say the United States and its allies are winning the war on terror. That’s the third time in four Rasmussen Reports tracking surveys that confidence has been below 40%. Numbers that bleak haven’t been recorded in consecutive surveys since the middle of 2007.
New Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveying finds that nearly one-in-three voters (31%) believe the terrorists are ahead in the war on terror, up just one point from a month ago and the highest level of pessimism recorded in several years.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Fifty-three percent (53%) of likely voters now believe that decreasing the level of government spending will help the U.S. economy. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 24% of voters think that cutting federal spending will hurt the economy. Eleven percent (11%) say it will have no impact, and another 11% aren’t sure.
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
LONDON (AFP) - Former prime minister Tony Blair said Friday he had no regrets about removing Saddam Hussein after delivering a robust defence of the 2003 invasion of Iraq at a public inquiry into the war.
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