The Wenatchee World Online - Commentary for Wenatchee, Washington

OPINION COLUMNISTS

Tracy Warner, EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

Labels don’t matter now
We are sliding down “the slippery slope to socialism,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Texas Republican, on Monday. Said Rep. Jim Bunning, R-Ky.: “I thought I woke up in France.”

Susan Estrich, CREATORS SYNDICATE

Sarah Palin made me miss Hillary Clinton
For all the Republicans’ complaints about Gwen Ifill, the moderator’s questions were softballs compared to what Sarah Palin faced from Katie Couric. Ifill did not demand that Palin list (OK, how about just name more than one?) Supreme Court decisions. She did not push on the issue of foreign policy experience. She didn’t follow up on how it is that Americans who get dropped from the health insurance rolls are supposed to buy a $12,000-a-year health insurance policy for their families with a $5,000 tax credit, or why oil companies deserve more tax breaks, or what part of global warming is not manmade. She didn’t even ask the governor whether she really believed that humans and dinosaurs once lived side-by-side, which is my favorite Palin-ism.

Kel Groseclose, PEACE OF MY MIND

These days, simplicity is a reward
Perhaps these times of economic uncertainty and the tumultuous days on Wall Street are just what the doctor ordered. No, I don’t mean we should live with constant anxiety or debilitating worry. And I’m not interested at all in having another Great Depression like that which began in 1929. But perhaps our preoccupation and reliance on properties owned, accounts held, and an uncontrollable assortment of material possessions, we might well benefit from a simpler lifestyle. Perhaps we could focus more on family life, as well as on our basic human needs and core values.

Rick Horowitz, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Betting on the future of bedding
These have been unsettling times for the American economy. The credit crisis, the collapse of major players in the financial-services industry, the latest nose-dive on Wall Street — all of these have caused widespread concerns about the economy’s underlying health, and its future direction.

Garrison Keillor, TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

Dishonest and cynical men try to deceive us
We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus. In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It’s hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can’t afford health insurance, she can’t get fixed, but she still goes to work because he’d be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her. I know because I’m related to some of them.

Kathleen Parker, WASHINGTON POST WRITERS SYNDICATE

In the mountains, they crave straight talk
WASHINGTON — If you’re a Democrat who needs help getting the votes of rural white folks, the go-to guy is David “Mudcat” Saunders, a central-casting political consultant recently made famous by a parade of magazine writers led by The Weekly Standard’s Matt Labash.

Eugene Robinson, WASHINGTON POST WRITERS SYNDICATE

Don’t let McCain change the subject
WASHINGTON — Let’s see: The financial system is still in grave peril, despite approval of an unprecedented $700 billion bailout. Unemployment is rising, the economy is slowing, and the question isn’t whether we’re in for a recession but how long and how deep the recession will be. Meanwhile, U.S. troops are still fighting in two places — Iraq and Afghanistan — where, as a rule, foreign occupations end badly. The terrorists who struck us on 9/11 have been allowed to regroup within the borders of nuclear-armed Pakistan and are busy plotting new attacks. Rarely have there been bigger or more urgent issues to talk about in a presidential campaign.

Lenore Skenazy, CREATORS SYNDICATE

George F. Will, WASHINGTON POST WRITERS SYNDICATE

The federal government takes over
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress are being exhorted to stampede, like lemmings in reverse, away from a postulated cliff. But some of the economic geographers who say they know that the cliff is there, and that the economy will plunge over it if Congress stops to think before empowering the secretary of the Treasury to control the flow of capital through the veins of American capitalism, are some of those experts who said in March that prophylactic federal intervention in the matter of Bear Stearns was necessary to contain the crisis.