Andanh.com

Many of you may have heard the claim that Barack Obama chose not to visit wounded troops on his overseas trip because a press entourage and cameras wouldn't be allowed.

Very few of you likely heard that the Washington Post vetted the claim and debunked it.

The reason so many have heard the false claim about Obama's trip is that newscasts aired it when released as part of a John McCain campaign ad.

With all that free airtime, the New York Times reported that as of last week the fallacious TV spot had run as a paid commercial "roughly a dozen times." Talk about bang for one's campaign buck.

Welcome to how elections are covered in the post-Willie Horton age.

Pray that you never need an advocate as much as those caught up in the Agriprocessors immigration raid in Postville, Iowa.

A lot of people are feeling soiled by the May raid, which officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially bragged was the largest such operation in immigration history. Nearly 400 people were scooped up and shuffled in shackles to a fairground designed to hold cattle.

Now, three months after the raid at the kosher meatpacking plant, more details are emerging -- and attorneys, clergy, members of Congress and labor officials are decrying a major miscarriage of justice.

State labor investigators complain that ICE overran an ongoing investigation into horrible working conditions in the Agriprocessors plant. And for what? So that ICE could make its numbers look good. So that it could claim it had deported more "criminals."

At the heart of the Postville operation was a "hurry up and charge 'em" process that made it difficult, if not impossible, for attorneys to meet with the arrestees.

Sometimes the most logical, most obvious solutions are the most difficult to see.

While the presidential campaign was mired in the egregious and the trivial last week, there was a hearing in Washington, D.C., that addressed what should be a critical component of the nation's energy strategy. It got very little attention.

Put aside for a moment all the talk about alternative fuels. They are no doubt important and the wave of the future. But the fastest, cheapest, easiest and cleanest step toward a sane energy environment -- a step available to all of us immediately -- is the powerful combination of efficiency and conservation.

That was the message delivered again and again at a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee that carried the title, "Efficiency: The Hidden Secret to Solving Our Energy Crisis."

It may be hard to believe, but largely because of far-reaching efficiency and conservation measures imposed by former Gov. Jerry Brown's administration, California is now among the lowest of all the states in the per capita consumption of energy. If you could take automobiles out of the picture, it would have the lowest per capita consumption of any state.

At the beginning of this long political season -- if there ever was a beginning, since campaigns are now nonstop with only the players changing -- it appeared this one might, just might, be different.

Barack Obama, the biracial candidate, would be the transracial healer. He promised to seek common ground with Republicans for the betterment of the country.

John McCain, too, was the reach-out candidate with a record of working with "the other side" -- to the consternation of many conservatives, but to the delight of independents who, say the experts, are essential to a McCain victory.

For the doubtful, which are those of us who have observed politics for a few decades, it all seemed too good to be true. And now politics as usual has proved too true to be good. The pettiness, the tearing down and the irrelevance of the political dialogue resemble so many other distasteful presidential campaigns. Obama was the first to use the "race card," claims McCain.

No, he wasn't, says Obama. One wishes some adult would step in and say, "children, go to your rooms."

Machining Specialists was invited by Boeing to attend a tanker supplier conference in Washington, D.C., in April, after the military's decision to award the most expensive defense contract in our nation's history to Airbus.

As one of 28 local aerospace companies projected to participate in building the Boeing KC-767 tanker, Machining Specialists was proud to be among three local companies, in addition to Spirit AeroSystems, to attend the conferences and discuss the advantages of the Boeing proposal.

Since the contract already had been awarded to Airbus, I was asked why I would attend the conference. For our company and me, the answers were simple.

First of all, Boeing's presence in Wichita has been important and good for our community. Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is here. Its commercial airplane successor, Spirit AeroSystems, continues to provide much of the same Boeing commercial work and undoubtedly would be a major supplier for the KC-767.

Less than 1 percent of our company's total annual sales had been for Boeing's KC-767, so we haven't had a large personal stake in this contract. But we strongly support this project because of the potential economic impact for Kansas in supporting 3,800 total jobs, in providing an estimated $145 million annual impact on the Wichita economy, and in adding potential work for 28 local suppliers.