Various news opinion segments

tara and laughter an odd combination surely that one that i'd been given thought to as i work on my car and directing assignment the musical comedy a little shop of horrors in which account with a penchant for blood and rock and roll eats the world and we are approaching halloween season when we float with the ideas of monsters and ghosts and the evil this festival wasn't observed in england where i grew up although all hallows eve is on the church calendar instead we had a guy fawkes day on november fifth when we ritually burned an effigy of the man alleged to have part of the destruction of the houses of parliament the symbol of the british way of life that holiday was born from english anti catholic paranoia which feared the pope wanted to eat the world whole the festivals have long since lost any real belief in evil spirits or roma ship lots of world domination yet a lot of nights

with a hint of winter chill in the air we continue to spook the south with symbols of our latent terror what could be the origin of the strange customs could it be that by lampooning the devil we'd robbed him of his power or by feeding order was going to love the sadistic dentist to order to the man eating plant we somehow reassure ourselves that evil is merely a laughable fairytale here there are those among us who would suppress halloween precisely because we do believe in the supreme evil as strongly as in the supreme court as though by not mentioning evils name it will not be tempted from its hiding place the brilliance of little trouble juarez is that it is through one man's desire to serve that the math just a fijian plant is nurtured seymour's altruism through the ego that comes with

success it perverted into world dominating are in other words for the origin of evil we need look no further than our own best intentions the simplistic modern notion certainly suggests that god is within comfortably reducing the notion of the devil to acquaint superstition yet as the musical cabaret brilliantly demonstrates with regard to nazi ism and little show of ours to perhaps unconsciously demonstrates the devil after all may not be externally but like a dragon sleeps with one eye open by averill and fireside last friday i attended the first canadian men's basketball game of the nineteen ninety one season in kansas jane talks were hosting the melbourne tigers from

australia all the traditional elements were there a huge audience of an all ages huge pep band vampire themed cheerleaders already to inspire the crowd the thinking of the us national anthem and a cahill alma mater and the way the introduction of the players with accompanied by their adult years for the local guides and by students holding up newspapers and shaking them vigorously when the opposing team was welcomed and of course there was a number yet rousing rendition of that walk talk jane hart can't i kept wondering what are about to get a lot of that strange almost mythical incantation now when i get you when the little flower time to play that floppy but all in all it was good to know that was bathtub our time again and yet not everything was that they may have in previous

years there were that i know and to my mind a disturbing addition to be on how about everything here and into the bleachers when a large brightly illuminated find her watch us brent king and more than a dozen other companies were prevented and they're looking around and think that the people when they're with a break in the action and what caught the eye with the line it with visually distracting and it looked just plain tacky i know i know hey you is not exactly rolling in front of the fight the current edition of the loans and others and advertising have been a part of amateur sport for years for example that they aren't always been rotating every type of under the scoreboard and the occasional announcement over the loudspeaker banking not going to or a travel agent of the k u men's basketball team for its support mr andres they'll

be all in at that classified ad interpreted in color glass and frankly it looks more like one of the questions about who joined them strip shopping centers you find off interstate ramp and nothing after all day event just any play it will be on how they'll pay grade coach bobby allyn is located on me that guy named after that not a basketball it is the home court for a team that has won the national championship and regionally and nineteen eighty eight i mean do you not basketball and not exactly desperate for attention the pentagon are only slightly easier to obtain an activity that from baghdad iraq i would the destitute we need to think that well i think that the ball can cut the ice hockey team at the university of texas that el paso the want a mcdonald's golden

our job to the jihad in front of ron paul or thinking nationally one of the spectrum the washington monument that is why our building lot like they and it you know you have to have every year but they could rape if we allowed companies to place flashing billboard on the reflecting pool out of your capitol building if we get it we get rid of the federal effort that can find and the adventures of the persian gulf with the revenues we obtained but we dont thumping advantage of to highlight the tampa went to special a commercial life the part about the boeing and that's probably violates the constitutional prohibition against government funding of our lives than i would have expected it could fit into that category well

you're glad to blow out the candles on nights centennial kick paraded and i've been to conferences and i've listened to radio programs and watched tv specials i've seen eisenhower's picture on posters fires and in the newspaper so much i dreamed i woke up in the morning bald with a big smile plastered on my face i've even seen a butter sculpture of i can meet me at the kansas state fair and somehow it seemed ok he's kind of the cream of kansas butter on the commonwealth that most kansans represent dow once liked it i liked him back there and i'll be dead because to really got the allied forces together and pulled off the final stages of the war as supreme commander of the european theater of operations i like a ticker tape parade the biggest in our history up until then i like his pride in being in it and i like as nato commander in fact i liked him ride up to

his presidency that though it was downhill for ike and downhill for kansas torture he was popular for he kept on smiling sure it was reassuring to watch him play golf as though the country's problems weren't nearly as irritating as a bad line in the sand trap sure those are good economic times some of the last years i made any money farming out here again as ken scherer ike brought kansas something we caught the reflection from the sun shone on me and sure enough for just a while eich was kansas kansas was i and the country like this so why don't i like the eisenhower presidency like me has kansans well lived for all the wrong reasons for our traditional conservatism when in fact we have just as many radical traditions a name for that greatest of all papa grabbed william jennings bryan who got so much of his support from the

kansas populace it uses stood against tyranny in government uses do against that arch conservative joe mccarthy he may as well like for our unwilling estrada built on issues like civil rights when in fact we want to have a reputation of bleeding and as an elected a black man to his daily office as far back as the eighteen eighties it easier to enforce the laws without being forced into it as you were the rock he may as well lived for art tolerance are exceptions are forgiveness when in fact we have a tradition for taking up the more hectic and slamming it in the hypocrisy and lies like you should never embraced richard nixon activated bs checkers speech by nineteen sixty one after eight years of golf and waffling like was history just like kansas was history there would be a new frontier and the ball away from it in the old frontier kansas

represented so we've just been a year celebrating the eisenhower legacy that we found a lot of good things so be it but all i can think is the legacy he left for the republican presidents who followed him and what they learned from him nixon to tape his dealings with his staff reagan to smile while the business community runs the white house and bush to keep on offering even when the country is in one of the biggest and threats of its history and the world seems abandoned saying to the rest of us are all like there's times with a good heart and a nice smile just aren't enough so and i got a deal for you wanna by utility make money and let some other sucker pay for it was that a fictional scenario addison sleazy novel now is a real life crime stoppers reenactment ever proposed utility acquisition kansas power and light is actually trying to buy a

nuclear plant and if that isn't bad enough they're trying to do with our money merger and acquisition mania has hit kansas in the nineteen eighties three trillion dollars were spent on this bigger is better approach to life the economic realities of sound that the vast majority of mergers didn't produce new assets are better products that simply resulted in a redistribution of wealth among the wealthy short term interest begin company's priorities not long term research and development they had to assume massive debt to pay inflated stock prices in a free market corporate merger a bad management decision heard stockholders consumers can do business with a more prudent company who pays the price and assumes the risk and utility mergers usually the ratepayers as we know too well there is no other like your company to turn to a virus raises rates utility executives say now have a misguided idea that government regulators and concerned consumers have no business

telling them that operate sorry to burst your bubble guys that you're not a free market enterprise you're a monopoly with no competition by the grace of government regulated by the government to operate in the public interest rates don't get to do whatever the market will bear no economist but i do hope i can spot a prudent purchase better than my utility bills overall electric rates are relatively low kansas gas and electric utility the er lusting after is one of the main owners of wolf creek they have high rates an unhappy customers jpl is offered to take a genie stockholders more than their stock is supposedly worth ratepayers getting that paint generously for a proverbial pig in a poke a wolf creek what a great nuclear plant has an unknown lifespan unanswered questions about construction quality unknown but escalating cost a decommissioning the plant and high level nuclear waste that we don't even know how to get rid of safely much less how much it'll cost is this a like a prudent business decision in the

public interest sounds more like carnal enterprise to me that management will control the biggest utility in kansas and the golden parachutes have yet to be uncovered because the city is holding hearings on a merger after a very short in questionable investigation high priced lobbyists have been hired but utilities in washington is well as topeka now expenses been spared especially since the ratepayers will probably pick up the tab the issues boy band and who benefits and who pays stockholders cagey any customers k p in our customers management this is a merger that what's significant long term effects on kansas and the kansas economy the public interest must control not only whether this acquisition takes place but also the details of any agreement for my part i intend to encourage gave you know the joy and shoppers anonymous before they get any other bright ideas behind