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May 2008
What a bozo manuever
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sometimes, you just shake your head in disgust.
Clayton County students who graduated from high school Friday and Saturday did not receive diplomas in recognition of their hard work because the district’s new superintendent, John Thompson, insisted that they be given diplomas printed with his name on it.
“It’s not important my name is on it. It is important the superintendent’s name is on it,” said Thompson, who took office a month ago. “I am the superintendent.”
Oh please. So he did it for the sake of the children?
No, he did not. He did it because he valued his own ego gratification more than he valued the students he was hired to serve. Replacing the original diplomas ordered in December would have cost the district $80,000, but the company that prints the documents, Herff Jones, has announced it would do so for free and try to rush their production. Good for them.
But who on earth decided to hire Thompson in the first place?! Oh, that’s right. The Clayton County School Board did.
My last shot at the FairTax
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You don’t have to have a degree in economics to see the failings of the proposed FairTax, although economists say there are plenty. You don’t need to be a lawyer or accountant to see where it would all go wrong, although lawyers and accountants who have studied the idea say it’s unworkable.
All you need is the good sense your momma and daddy gave you, along with a knowledge of human nature.
The core of the idea is to replace the federal income tax, estate tax, capital gains and payroll tax with a 30 percent sales tax on all goods and services. And to offset the impact of a high sales tax on low-income Americans, every household in the country would receive a significant check every month from the federal government. This year, for example, a family of four would get a monthly rebate of $537, regardless of their income.
Human nature being what it is, tens of millions of households would quickly become addicted to that check. Each month, they would depend on the generosity of their dear Uncle Sam to help them make their car or house payment or buy groceries for their kids. And that ought to drive conservatives nuts. Their biggest fear is a populace that becomes dependent on government, and the FairTax would do more to encourage dependence on government than any program liberals have ever concocted.
(For the rest of the column, click here)
Volunteer or draftee? What’s the difference?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Whenever the conversation turns to the toll taken by our twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the more than 4,000 dead, the tens of thousands with post-traumatic stress syndrome, the many thousands with permanent brain injuries — someone always points out that, well, they volunteered for it.
I’ve never understood that. If those soldiers and Marines had been drafted, would their sacrifice be any greater? Is the death of an enlistee somehow less tragic than that of a draftee, as in Vietnam? Do their loved ones grieve any less?
The real difference is political. As long as we can tell ourselves that they volunteered for this, we can worry less about them. And we all know what would happen if we suddenly had to turn to a draft to fill out the ranks in Iraq and Afghanistan: The war would be over, or at least the part of it occurring in Iraq. And you do have to question the morality of a war that we sustain only as long as most of our kids are protected against having to fight in it.
In effect, we are doing just what we did in the early years of Vietnam with college draft deferments, before we acknowledged the immorality of the practice. We are protecting our elite, college-bound students from serving, while their less-educated peers with from less affluent backgrounds bear the brunt of the fighting and dying.
Explain to me how that is right.
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A scary to-do list for any president …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve long thought that the challenges facing the next president may be more daunting than those faced by any new president other than Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Our $9 trillion national debt, the war in Iraq and Islamic terrorism, global warming, the energy crisis, health care … we have some tough decisions to make on issues that we’ve avoided addressing for far too long.
So it was interesting to hear Sen. Johnny Isakson say something similar in a radio interview with Tim Bryant of WGAU in Athens. Bryant asked the longtime Republican why he had decided to stay in Washington rather than come home to run for governor in 2010.
“The next eight years — under which ever person is elected president of the United States — probably are going to be the most challenging years in the history of — the modern history - of our country,” Isakson said, citing “a myriad of issues that we must deal with or it’s gonna be too late. And I want to be a part of that.”
There are moments in history when forces and pressures that have accumulated for decades force a dramatic and sudden change on a society, for better or worse. I think we’re on the cusp of such a moment. Isakson apparently thinks so too.
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“Watchin’ Scottie Grow”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“This doesn’t sound like Scott — not the Scott McClellan I’ve known for a long time,” Karl Rove said this week, referring to his former colleague’s new book from inside the Bush administration. “It sounds like a left-wing blogger….”
And that’s exactly the point. Nothing in McClellan’s book is surprising or new. Its power lies in the fact that its author, a former White House press secretary who had worked loyally for Bush since his days back in Texas, does indeed confirm what the president’s harshest critics have said about him and his administration.
(That includes the public take on Rove, by the way. McClellan calls him “an operative who places political gain ahead of national interest,” which is a damning indictment of anyone who serves in a high position in the White House.)
As McClellan now concedes, the invasion of Iraq was poorly thought out and an act of gut instinct on the part of Bush, who believed that only wartime presidents were ever remembered as great. The invasion was sold to the American people as something it was not, says McClellan, because “Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitious purpose of transforming the Middle East.”
But part of the blame, McClellan says, falls on a national media that served as “complicit enablers” of the Bush strategy.
“If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq…, he writes. “In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
That’s exactly right. At a critical time in the nation’s history, the media failed to do their duty under the First Amendment and they — we — failed the American people as well.
In one of the most compellling scenes in the book, McClellan recalls a private moment in the first presidential campaign when Bush, angered by press questions about past cocaine use, claimed not to remember whether he had used the drug in the wilder days of his youth. McClellan could not believe it was possible to forget such a thing.
“It’s the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true,” McClellan writes, a “penchant for self-deception” that Bush would later use to avoid coming to grip with far greater issues, such as Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, with great consequences.
But as many have pointed out, McClellan himself found a way to avoid confronting the truth during his years at the White House. None of his former coworkers can recall any instance in which he voiced the sentiments he now states so forcefully. “Scott never did that on any of these issues as best I can remember or as best as I know from any of my White House colleagues,” former Homeland Security adviser Frances Townsend said on CNN. “For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional.”
But here’s the hard part: Much of what is now being said of Bush and his administraiton can also be said of the nation as a whole. The president was far from alone in preferring to think with his gut, not his brain, in deciding to invade Iraq. If he had not reflected the national mood so well, he could not have led us so easily into such a bad war.
Furthermore, the fact that Bush was re-elected in 2004 suggests that self-deception can be a national as well as personal phenomenon.
It is wrong — tempting, but wrong — to try to scapegoat one man for the mistakes of the past seven years, even if that man is as powerful as the president. Our institutions have failed us, and we have failed ourselves. For that failure, we will pay a heavy price for years to come.
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Our worst president: You don’t say … Part II
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The president’s real motivation for the war, McClellan said, was to transform the Middle East to ensure an enduring peace in the region. But the White House sold the war as necessary due to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein because ‘Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitions purpose of transforming the Middle East,’ McClellan wrote.”
It was a war launched on lies and run by incompetents, and the damage it has done to our country will linger for generations. President Bush will be remembered as the worst president in this nation’s long history.
You don’t say…really?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.
“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”
— Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, as quoted by politico.com from his new book.
It’s the economy, stupid….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sales of new one-family houses plummeted by 42 percent last month compared to April of 2007, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Meanwhile, consumer confidence fell to its lowest level in 16 years, according to the latest survey by the Conference Board.
“Weakening business and job conditions coupled with growing pessimism about the short-term future have further depleted consumers’ confidence in the overall state of the economy,” said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center.
The previous low was October 1992. The next month, Bill Clinton was elected president.
‘Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kids who were 12 years old— brand spanking new sixth-graders, right out of the box — on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 are now heading off to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hope you had a good Memorial Day weekend.
‘It’s always better to talk than to shoot’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It might be hard to tell, but beneath the name-calling and posturing, John McCain and Barack Obama are actually debating two critically important questions confronting the American people:
First, under what conditions should we turn to force to resolve our differences with other nations?
Second, how willing should we be to turn to negotiations to resolve differences as a way of avoiding war?
Both candidates have a history on such issues: McCain, for example, was an early advocate of war with Iraq; Obama was an early opponent. In fact, it’s telling that most of the neoconservatives who helped drive us to war with Iraq backed McCain in the 2000 GOP primaries against George W. Bush, believing McCain to be more aggressive about the use of force.
In general, the difference between the candidates can be described in a single sentence: Both men are willing to go to war to protect America; McCain is more willing to go to war to protect American interests.
That may seem at first a subtle distinction, but it is not. Protecting America, and protecting American interests, are two very different thresholds for going to war. Defending America and her allies is always a cause worth fighting for — we should never balk at that duty, and we never will.
The invasion of Afghanistan, for example, was a clear use of force to protect America, because that country’s territory had been used to launch a devastating attack on our soil. Both McCain and Obama backed that decision.
However, sending our fellow Americans off to fight and die to advance American interests is a very different thing. Our interests, while important, don’t directly affect our security. They seek less tangible goals such as economic benefit, strategic advantage and the removal of leaders who frustrate our goals. And in general, most Americans are leery of asking their countrymen to die in pursuit of national interests rather than national security.
But as we’ve seen, there are ways around that reluctance. If you want public support for a war intended to advance national interests, you get it by deceiving the American people into believing that it is instead a war to defend America herself.
The invasion of Iraq was sold just that way, as a war to protect America against mushroom clouds that might rise over U.S. cities and unmanned aerial vehicles from Iraq that might spread smallpox or anthrax over the American landscape. Saddam Hussein was cast as the new Hitler, and anybody who dared question the need to remove him by force was condemned as a dangeous appeaser.
It’s a little late, but the American people now understand how they were fooled, which is why only 33 percent of us still believe invading Iraq was the right thing to do.
However, similar issues are now being raised by the debate over how to deal with Iran and Syria and extremist groups such as Hamas. President Bush and McCain both dismiss the possibility of negotiation with those parties, with President Bush suggesting to the Israeli Knesset that those who advocate negotiation sought “the false comfort of appeasement” like that which led to the rise of Hitler.
That talk is nonsense, and Bush knows it. While he came into office refusing to talk to North Korea, he’s now sending personal letters to Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s dictator. In Iraq, we initially refused to negotiate with Sunni groups that were launching attacks against U.S. forces; now, through negotiations, we have turned them into at least temporary allies. Even in Israel, 64 percent of adults in a recent poll said they back negotiations with Hamas, and a few days after Bush’s speech, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert announced he had begun direct negotiations with Syria, explaining that “it is always better to talk than to shoot.”
In the world that Bush and McCain occupy, that makes the Israelis appeasers. For the rest of us, it sounds like plain common sense.
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A ridiculous claim against Hillary
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hillary Clinton has been forced to apologize for mentioning the June 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy while explaining why she is staying in the race. The apology was unnecessary, the outrage is ridiculous. It’s yet another case of groundless gotcha politics distracting us from the important stuff.
Watch it yourself, judge for yourself. Clinton was making the logical point that previous primary battles have gone well into June, so why shouldn’t this one? (The best answer to that question is that this particular race is over, but I digress….)
Clinton was certainly not suggesting that Obama might be assassinated, and it’s disappointing that the Obama campaign chose to misinterpret it that way. That kind of response undercuts Obama’s claim to be seeking a different kind of politics.
UPDATE: This response from Obama is a lot better than the initial statement by an Obama spokesman that Clinton’s remark was “unfortunate” and “has no place in this campaign.” It has the added advantage of being absolutely accurate:
“I have learned that, when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make, and I think that is what happened here. Senator Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it, and I will take her at her word on that.”
11 billion - with a B - miles less in March?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wow! As my dad would say, “Who’d a thunk it?”
WASHINGTON — Americans drove less in March 2008, continuing a trend that began last November, according to estimates released today from the Federal Highway Administration.
The FHWA’s “Traffic Volume Trends” report, produced monthly since 1942, shows that estimated vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on all U.S. public roads for March 2008 fell 4.3 percent as compared with March 2007 travel. This is the first time estimated March travel on public roads fell since 1979. At 11 billion miles less in March 2008 than in the previous March, this is the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.
Though February 2008 showed a modest 1 billion mile increase over February 2007, cumulative VMT has fallen by 17.3 billion miles since November 2006. Total VMT in the United States for 2006, the most recent year for which such data are available, topped 3 trillion miles.
Additionally, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that greenhouse gas emissions fell by an estimated 9 million metric tons for the first quarter of 2008.
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ANWR and $4 gasoline
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The prospect of $4 gasoline has no doubt convinced folks to stay a little closer to home over the holiday weekend, and it has also gotten people more than a little angry at politicians who let us get into this situation.
So here’s a little data to help clarify things:
For decades, the Republicans have rebuffed calls for greater energy conservation and fuel efficiency with one line of attack that they have repeated over and over in various forms:
We don’t need to conserve, we need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge…
If only those silly environmentalists would let us drill in ANWR….
Why do those liberals love caribou more than humans….
Why do those greenies want us to stay dependent on foreign oil….
Yadayadayada.
Well, now we know the truth. The federal Energy Information Agency, a branch of the Energy Department and part of the Bush administration, has released a study of the impact of opening ANWR on oil prices. The study can be found at the EIA’s website.
Here’s what the EIA found: At peak production somewhere around 2030, oil from ANWR would reduce the price of oil — now about $135 a barrel — by a whoppingly huge 75 cents. That’s a decline of 0.55 percent, or barely two cents on a gallon of gasoline.
And we’d probably never see even that tiny reduction, the EIA warned.
“Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could neutralize any potential price impact of ANWR oil production by reducing its oil exports by an equal amount,” it concluded.
Just thought you’d want to know….
Don’t go there, Sen. Clinton
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Hillary Clinton presses a bitter rules fight for delegates in Michigan and Florida — and she’s making disturbing suggestions she may do just that — she will destroy the legacy built with her husband and confirm the claims of extreme ego and selfishness always levied by her worst enemies.
Clinton agreed long ago to the rules that she now insists be changed, showing no concern whatsoever back then for the right of Michigan and Florida voters to be heard, a right she now claims to believe is sacred.
And if that tactic results in a Republican victory in the fall, which it very well might do, she will be blamed far more strongly for that loss — by history and her party — than Ralph Nader ever was in 2000.
Justice done in rogue cops case
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A jury of his peers found former Atlanta cop Arthur Tesler innocent on two counts but guilty of lying to federal investigators regarding the tragic killing of Kathryn Johnston in her home. Tesler has now been sentenced to four and a half years in prison. The two cops who actually fired at Johnston and were more directly involved in obtaining a false search warrant await sentencing on the more serious charge of involuntary manslaughter.
Justice was done. I agree with community activist Markel Hutchins: The greater culprit in this case was the permissive culture within the Atlanta Police Department; the department now has an obligation to the public and to those good cops in its ranks to punish those in supervisory roles responsbile for establishing and tolerating that cowboy culture.
FairTax debate, live this AM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This morning, I’m going live on the Martha Zoller show — starting around 9:30 — to discuss the so-called FairTax. Martha’s a supporter of the FairTax, so we’ll bat it back and forth for a while and then take calls from listeners. The show is broadcast on 550 AM, and can also be heard via the station’s website at www.wdun.com.
If you want to listen and discuss what you’re hearing, comment below.
Voters seeing purple because of traffic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Georgia Republicans don’t find a way to address metro Atlanta’s transportation problems, they will find themselves replaced by someone who will.
In fact, if GOP legislators in the Atlanta area want a peek into their future, they should cast their eyes northward to Virginia, a state where until recently Republicans held a firm grip on power. Virginia was solidly red, with Republicans in control of statewide offices and the General Assembly.
That’s no longer the case. The number of Republicans in the 100-member state House has fallen from 67 in 2003 to 55 in 2007. Last fall, the GOP also lost four seats in the state Senate, which gave Democrats control of the upper chamber for the first time in a decade. In addition, Democrats have won two consecutive races for governor and a U.S. Senate race, and are favored to win a second Senate seat come November.
There are a lot of reasons for Virginia’s transformation from a solid red state to a state now decidedly purple, including demographics. But the GOP’s biggest problems have come in northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area, fast-growing regions where traffic is a critical quality-of-life issue.
Virginia Republicans, handcuffed by pledges to never ever raise taxes at any time ever under any conditions ever ever, have failed to respond to that problem. So voters in those fast-growing areas, desperate for a solution, slowly began to abandon the Republicans.
“This is not a blip,” said GOP state Sen. Russ Potts, who retired after the ‘07 elections. “This is a change in the face of Virginia politics for the next 20 years. This business of no-tax pledges and no abortions, no exceptions, is not going to fly. The party desperately needs to widen the circle.”
Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, intends to drive that point home. In a special session of the General Assembly called for June 23, Kaine will seek passage of a $1.1 billion statewide tax increase to fund transportation projects in congested areas and cover a deficit in road-maintenance funding.
“We are going to make something happen or let the public see who is obstructing, and frankly, that is one of the reasons why Democrats have won elections in Virginia,” Kaine said.
Interestingly, Virginia Republicans did try a variety of ways to fund transportation without raising taxes. For example, they championed the idea of raising fines for traffic violations as high as $3,000, hoping to raise around $65 million a year. Kaine signed that measure into law last year as part of a larger transportation bill, but it was quickly repealed after public outrage.
The Virginia General Assembly also passed legislation that would create regional transportation agencies in northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area and allow those agencies to raise taxes for transportation. That attempt to duck responsibility was shut down by the Virginia Supreme Court, which ruled that the Legislature could not delegate its taxation powers to unelected agencies.
If all that sounds familiar, it should. Georgia Republicans are traveling down that same road. Gov. Sonny Perdue, for example, has proposed a milder version of the speeding-fine approach, and earlier this year the Georgia Senate came within three votes of letting metro regions tax themselves for transportation needs.
As in Virginia, Georgia legislators hoped the regional approach would be a way to generate funds for transportation while shoving the responsibility off on someone else. However, Georgia’s approach was much smarter than that of Virginia, for two reasons.
First, it was designed as a constitutional amendment, to pre-empt legal challenges. And before a tax could take effect, it would have to be approved by a majority of voters in a metro area.
But in the end it didn’t matter, because Georgia legislators lacked the guts to pass the measure. Once again, legislators told constituents stuck in traffic that there’s nothing the state can do to help them, and you have to wonder how long voters will tolerate that.
Richardson and Romney for veeps?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So who should Obama and McCain pick as vice presidential nominees?
My picks — made strictly from the point of view of who would be best for the country, rather than most beneficial politically — would be:
For the Democrats, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. His range of experience as governor, congressman, U.N. ambassador and Energy secretary make him a perfect choice for the less experienced Obama.
For the Republicans, former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney: He too has a lot of experience, and he’s a more intelligent and sensible politician than he allowed himself to be in running for the nomination.
Somebody’s gotta say it….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On several occasions, FairTax champion Neal Boortz has used his syndicated radio show to attack me for daring to point out the absurdities of his pet proposal. For some reason, though, the blustering Boortz has repeatedly refused to let me debate the issue on air with him. Maybe he fears what might happen should his faithful listeners be allowed to hear a dissenting viewpoint.
But hey, it’s his show, and his choice.
Martha Zollar, another talk-radio champion of the FairTax, is made of sterner stuff. She’s invited me to talk about the proposal on her show Thursday morning. Beginning around 9:30, we’ll bat the FairTax around and then take calls and questions from listeners. Her show is on WDUN News/Talk 550, and can be heard on the station’s website.
We’ll have a live discussion thread here at ajc.com as well.
Israelis are Nazi appeasers?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President Bush goes before the Israeli Knesset and condemns anyone who wants to talk with Hamas and other groups, comparing them to those who appeased the Nazis. It’s a “foolish delusion” to talk with such people, Bush said, “as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”
But according to a new poll, 64 percent of Israelis support direct negotiation with Hamas, including 48 percent of those in the hard-core Likud party.
So according to the president, Israel is a nation of Nazi appeasers…. who knew?
Johnny’s not marching home again…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When Sen. Johnny Isakson announced he would try to stay in Washington and would not return home to run for governor in 2010, it was bad news for Georgia and even worse news for the Georgia Republican Party.
I disagree with Isakson on a lot of issues, but I know from covering him in his time at the state Legislature that he’s not a party hack. He also has earned a level of personal and professional respect that would allow him to lead.
Given political realities, our next governor is likely to be Republican. For Georgia’s sake, that governor has to be someone with the intellect, standing and character to make progress on critical areas such as transportation. Isakson could have been that kind of governor. Sonny “Go Fish Georgia” Perdue has proved he doesn’t fit that description, nor do any of the other Republicans elbowing each other to succeed him.
Again, that’s bad news for Georgia. But for Georgia Republicans who have already been embarrassed by the behavior of party leaders under the Gold Dome, it’s even worse. Another failed governor and more childish feuding will accelerate the rejuvenation of the Georgia Democrats.
But of course, they have problems of their own…..
Hillary’s expiration date
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By staying in the race long after it was apparent she had lost, Hillary Clinton has won a lot of grudging admiration as a fighter, voiced even by some who otherwise despise her. But when do tenacity and drive cross the line into stubbornness, foolishness or even obsession?
I think that line is in sight. Clinton has clearly become the third horse in a two-horse race, drawing little attention and becoming increasingly irrelevant as John McCain and Barack Obama focus their attention exclusively on each other.
And at some point, a cause for admiration can become a reason for ridicule, especially when the excuses for staying in become more and more flimsy. With primaries today in Kentucky and Oregon, the expiration date for her campaign is looming.
Lest we forget…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I have this site bookmarked, and would recommend it highly.
It’s a blog by an Army lieutenant commanding a front-line platoon in Iraq. I’ve been following the adventures and misadventures of Lt. G and his Gravediggers for about a month now, and the author/lieutenant is as frank as operational security allows about the challenges they face and the human aspect of what they do. Some of it’s hilarious, some of it depressing, all of it interesting. His newest post, “The Happiest Dog in Iraq,” is up now. Scout it out, and report back ….
A shameless Huckster
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mike Huckabee makes it clear he wants to be on the McCain ticket as vice president.
“There’s no one I would rather be on a ticket with than John McCain,” the Huckster said Sunday. ” All during the campaign when I was his rival, not a running mate, there was no one who was more complimentary of him publicly and privately. … I still wanted to win, but if I couldn’t, John McCain was always the guy I would have supported and have now supported.”
That statement — as shameless and blatant a pleading to be picked as you will ever see — does a couple of things. If McCain now fails to choose Huckabee as his running mate, he will appear to be rejecting not just Huckabee but his supporters as well. To that degree, Huckabee has boxed in McCain quite nicely.
On the other hand, no presidential candidate likes to be boxed in like that. If Huckabee pulls a stunt like this now, how controllable and subservient will he be if he’s on the ticket? That’s especially true since Huckabee already has a reputation as a loose cannon. Final analysis: Bad move by Huckabee.
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Hoo boy…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So, Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine tells Georgia Republicans at their annual meeting in Columbus that when he’s elected governor in 2010, he’ll convene a convention of the states to write the FairTax into the U.S. Constitution.
And as soon as I’m elected pope, I promise to convene the College of Cardinals and repeal the Law of Gravity.
Gloomy in America
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Peggy Noonan in the WSJ, on the glum outlook for Republicans:
“If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party’s fortunes from the president’s. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn’t be left with a ruined ‘brand,’ as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.”
Her piece almost makes me feel sad about all this.
Honest, we tried to warn ‘em…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After losing three consecutive off-year elections in strongly GOP districts, congressional Republicans are really beginning to panic. They sense an impending November disaster that could put the party in the minority for decades, and like New Orleans before Katrina, they don’t know what to do about it.
Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told his GOP colleagues in a 20-page private memo that “the Republican brand is in the trash can. I’ve often observed that if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”
“Members (of Congress) and pundits waiting for Democrats to fumble the ball so that soft Republicans and independents will snap back to the GOP fail to understand the deep-seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures and, in some areas, the underlying cultural differences that continue to brand our party,” Davis wrote.
Davis, by the way, has decided to evacuate before the hurricane hits. He’s retiring.
I agree fully with President Bush….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Asked which baseball player he would pick first if starting a new franchise, the former Texas Rangers president said:
“I like (Chase) Utley from the Philadelphia Phillies. He’s a middle infielder, which is always - you know, they say strength up the middle. There’s nothing better than having a good person up the middle that can hit.”
I’d love to have Utley on my fantasy baseball team, but my brother stole him. That’s OK though — my team is still in first place. Thought you’d want to know.
Credit where it’s due…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I see on Political Insider that five Georgia Republicans — U.S. Reps. Paul Broun, Nathan Deal, John Linder, Tom Price and Lynn Westmoreland — voted against the $289 billion farm bill. As the Aussies would say, “good onya.”
Farm bills are a scandal, and this one’s worst than most. The farm lobby is a millionaire’s cabal, with sugar states, cotton states, corn states and others dominating the ag committees and protecting each other’s sweetheart deals from outside attack. Political Insider’s take on the farm bill
Good, because cruelty should have a price
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
from the AP…
LOS ANGELES — A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted a Missouri woman for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide.
Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis allegedly helped create a false-identity MySpace account to contact Megan Meier, who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. Josh didn’t exist.
Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her.
Drew was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl.
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The “Long War” or “Forever War”?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Andrew Bacevich is a former U.S. Army officer, instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and veteran of both Vietnam and the first Gulf War. His son, who followed his father into the Army, was killed a year ago this week in combat in Iraq. Bacevich, now a professor at Boston University and has a very wise op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Times.
The key point is here:
“Meanwhile, the immediate danger to the American way of life comes not from terrorists but from our own adamant refusal to live within our means. American profligacy, not Islamic radicals, triggered the mortgage crisis that underlies our current economic distress…. We can either persist in our efforts to change the way (the Islamic world lives) — in which case the war of no exits will surely lead to bankruptcy and exhaustion. Or we can recognize the folly of generational war and choose instead to put our own house in order: curbing our appetites, paying our bills and ending our self-destructive dependency on foreign oil and foreign credit.”
Obama’s success suggests we can transcend race
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Race has been in the room since the beginning. It was there in Philadelphia, where the Founding Fathers debated slavery in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It is there now, two centuries later, still playing a central if sometimes hidden role in politics.
But in the election of 2008, the first in which a black person stands a reasonable chance of becoming president, the role of race will be far from hidden.
In ways large and small, the weeks and months ahead will test just how far we’ve come as a nation.
For some individuals, the answer will be not very far at all. In Marietta, for example, a tavern owner is proudly selling T-shirts depicting Barack Obama as a monkey holding a banana. Naturally, he professes to see nothing racist in the image.
Likewise, a few months ago a minor Republican Party official here in Georgia sent a mass e-mail to fellow party members and others featuring Photoshopped images of top Democrats.
In one, a bawling Chelsea Clinton is seen holding a T-shirt proclaiming “My mom is getting her ass kicked by a Negro,” as if there were some special shame in that.
In the second, Bill and Hillary are seen standing near a plantation house with a black-faced lawn jockey. The face on the lawn jockey is that of Obama.
Later, the official sent out an e-mail to apologize “if this offended anyone,” explaining that she had only forwarded an e-mail that she herself had received from many others.
“Please be assured that the 25 longtime conservative Republicans who have forwarded this to me are not at all racists,” she wrote.
No. Not at all. Why would anybody think that?
But you know what? Ugly as it might get, let’s draw this poison out. Let’s drag it into the open, where it can stand as concrete refutation of the claim that racism doesn’t really exist anymore. It remains real, it retains the power to warp lives and futures and souls, and you can see its handiwork throughout our society.
However, while we acknowledge that racial bias remains a powerful subcurrent in all aspects of American life, it’s also important not to confuse that subcurrent with the mainstream. The country is changing quickly, and for the better, and there is no stronger evidence of that transformation than Obama himself.
Early in the primary process, a lot of African-American voters and leaders were wary of Obama’s candidacy. They were not ready to believe that their fellow Americans might support a black candidate; they feared that his rejection would be their rejection as well.
So when Obama started surprising people with victories in Iowa and other states, some of his fellow black Americans were most surprised of all. That initial wariness has since been replaced by joy, with black voters turning out in record numbers for Obama.
However, that enthusiasm is about more than a chance for black Americans to vote for “one of their own.” This time, black Americans seem motivated to vote as much out of excitement about this country as about the candidate. They seem thrilled that the secret, often unspoken hopes they have nurtured for America and their place in it might actually come true someday, and that “someday” could even be today. They’re voting not just for Obama, but for America.
Seeing that hope realized does not, in the end, require that Barack Obama win the election. He may very well lose, just as fellow Democrats John Kerry and Al Gore lost before him for reasons other than their race. What matters will be how the campaign is run.
It would be a vast exaggeration to refer to the Republican Party as racist. However, it has certainly been willing to play on racial fear and resentment for political advantage, pushing that message just hard enough to have an effect without being obvious.
Against Obama, that will be a tricky thing to modulate. As we’ve seen, his very presence in the race will provoke some to excess, and if the GOP pushes things too far, or if it tolerates the worst instincts of those on its fringe, it risks a powerful backlash in Obama’s favor.
Because we’re just not that country anymore.
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