NATIONAL TOUR!
January 29-31
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THE INAUGURATION OF
HOPE
SCULPTURES BY ED DWIGHT
TRAVELING EXHIBITION Featuring life-size sculptures depicting the inauguration of President Barack Obama
Free admission
JANUARY 16, 2013
January 21 through June 29
ARKANSAS TIMES
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Blue moot of Kentucky “Is Ashley Judd going from Hollywood to Capitol Hill? The media sure hope so. Otherwise Mitch McConnell’s reelection race will be deadly dull. The well-known actress was mooted as a potential candidate for U.S. Senate from Kentucky last month in what merely seemed to be a lighthearted post-election story.” Skip Kendel writes: “As a law school graduate, I’m familiar with the word moot, but I’ve never seen mooted before. Are you familiar with this word or its usage?” Vaguely. Moot is usually an adjective meaning “debatable, doubtful” or “not actual, theoretical.” When the judge says a point is moot, he doesn’t want to hear any more about it. But occasionally moot appears as a verb, meaning (as in this case) “to present or introduce for discussion,” or “to reduce or remove the practical significance of.” I recall Eddie Sutton mentioning a willingness to crawl from Arkansas to Kentucky to be the basketball coach at the University of Kentucky. I’d make that same crawl to see Ashley Judd run against McConnell. Beauty v. Beast, indeed. And appearance wouldn’t be her only advantage. I’ve been asked a number of times about the origin of the phrase “the whole nine yards” and could never find a persuasive explanation. I’m not the only one,
1/14/13 4:23 PM
according to the New York Times: “When people talk about ‘the whole nine yards,’ just what are they DOUG talking about? ... SMITH dougsmith@arktimes.com Does the phrase derive from the length of ammunition belts in World War II aircraft? The contents of a standard concrete mixer? The amount of beer a British naval recruit was obligated to drink? Yardage in football? The length of fabric in a Scottish kilt (or sari, or kimono, or burial shroud)? Type the phrase into Google and you’re likely to get any of these answers, usually backed by nothing more than vaguely remembered conversations with someone’s Great-Uncle Ed. But now two researchers using high-powered database search tools have delivered a confident ‘none of the above,’ supported by a surprise twist.” The surprise twist is that the phrase first appeared in print, the researchers say, as “the whole six yards” and sometime over the years, somebody raised the ante. But six or nine, nobody knows the significance of the number, and the researchers conclude that it has no particular significance, that it was chosen randomly, and that “the whole nine [or six] yards” is just another way of saying “the whole thing” or “the whole shebang.”
WEEK THAT WAS
It was a good week for… ASA! HUTCHINSON. Public Policy Polling, known as a Democratic organization but generally pretty reliable, has released a poll on a potential race for governor in 2014 between Republican Asa Hutchinson and Democratic Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, the only announced candidates so far. The poll puts Hutchinson way out in front, with 46 percent of respondents saying they’d support him versus 33 percent for McDaniel; 22 percent said they didn’t know. BIPARTISANSHIP. There was much talk of working together as the 89th General Assembly began. House Speaker Davy Carter, who was named chair of the Revenue and Taxation Committee by Democratic House Speaker Robert Moore in the last session, took one step toward making that a reality, naming four Democrats and seven Republicans to committee chairmanships.
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W O RDS
WALMART. The Bentonville-based corporate giant pledged $670,000 to underwrite Arkansas’s new healthcare Payment Improvement Initiative, a shift from the fee-for-service model to payment for “episodes” of care. Walmart, which self-insures its employees, also said it would join private insurers Blue Cross and QualChoice in
participating in the initiative. In other news, Walmart has pledged to hire every veteran who wants a job; it estimates it will provide 100,000 jobs in five years. STATE REP. DARRIN WILLIAMS. The Little Rock Democrat and attorney was named CEO of Southern Bancorp. CITIZEN LEGISLATION. The Attorney General certified a revised version of the Regnat Populus ethics proposal, which allows the proposal’s backers to begin collecting signatures. Two new petitions will be submitted this week: one for a medical marijuana initiated act, attorney David Couch said, that would eliminate the “grow-your-own” provision, and the other a constitutional amendment to repeal the state ban on same-sex marriage.
It was a bad week for… REP. TOM COTTON. At this rate, he’ll be a fixture in this column as long as he stays in Congress. After spending his first week as a U.S. representative voting against authorizing flood insurance payments to Hurricane Sandy victims, he attracted negative national attention again when he said, on Laura Ingraham’s radio show, that women are not physically fit to serve in combat in the military.