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Thursday, December 28, 2006
Online sales, Iraq deaths, no to Biden
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones is right. Picking a new police chief is his prerogative, not the screening committee’s. If he blew it, take it up at the polls.
• Don’t tell the tax-and-spenders that online buying is on track to increase 26 percent over December of last year, while sales overall were expected to grow 5 percent. The tax liberal salivates at the prospect of collecting sales taxes on online purchases.
• My impression, as a Christmas mailer, is that the U.S. Postal Service had a very good year — noticeably improved over the past two Christmas seasons.
• Counting paper ballots to affirm challenges to electronic balloting outcomes is time-consuming, yes. But some of us will be counting hanging chads from Florida for another 100 years. Spending a few days to confirm with paper the integrity of the electronic vote is no time at all.
• What do the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services have in common? After tragedy, second-guessers abound. But listen for a practical, affordable system that guarantees a different outcome next time. Hear one? Me, neither.
• City of Atlanta employees will be subjected to three days of “training” in “nonviolent conflict resolution” by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Police are among the first up. Would employees be forced to sit for “training” by the National Rifle Association? Nope. And they shouldn’t sit for other advocacy groups, either.
Besides, read the daily crime news briefs. The wrong people are getting the lesson on nonviolent conflict resolution. Police are not usually violent unless you shoot at them.
• It’s fair to say that a majority of Georgians would regard themselves as conservationists committed to protecting the state’s natural environment, regardless of whether they choose to belong to dues-collecting organizations.
So why then is it seen as a devilish plot to get rid of “pro-environmental voices” when two of four members of the Georgia Board of Natural Resources — three of them appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue — are forced to step down because of redistricting?
The non-Perdue appointee was up against former state Sen. Jim Tysinger of DeKalb County, as fine a public servant as Georgia produces. I’d trust him to make any decision about Georgia’s future. Besides, the nonselected member had 13 years on the board.
• Metro Atlanta’s growing reputation as a dining destination is in danger. The Fat Boy restaurant in Smyrna, a local institution, is closing for good on Saturday. Its Greek salad was worth a trip from Athens, Rome, Cairo or Paris.
• Headline: “U.S. losses exceed 9/11 death toll.” And the message is … ? Three days at Gettysburg or three weeks at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea would have been more apt comparisons.
• A butcher, a mass murderer who killed frivolously, declares a final absurdity: “I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking,” writes Saddam Hussein while awaiting the executioner. The lesson of Saddam’s life: Butcher ‘em, but don’t hate ‘em.
• How the world turns. Islamist groups that had controlled Mogadishu since June and threatened to overrun all of Somalia have imploded in the face of a weeklong Ethiopian government assault.
This is a bad news/far worse news story. Bad in that warlords take back over. Far worse in that a stable Somalia may well become a sanctuary for terrorists. Some problems are ours, some are the world’s, and sometimes one becomes the other, as in North Korea, Syria and Iran. Right now Somalia is the world’s — and should stay that way.
• OK, I’ll take Hillary as president if I must. But please, please, please don’t torture me with four years, or even one campaign season, of the pompous Joe Biden, incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and possible presidential campaign aspirant. To that ambition, I say “give it up or turnit a loose.”
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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Polls were wrong; Ford was right
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The AJC’s morning headline, a partial quote from former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, captured the essence of truth about the life and career of former President Gerald R. Ford. “History will treat him well,” asserted the headline, which was drawn from this quote by Nunn: “Jerry Ford brought closure to our national nightmare, and history will treat him well….He set a gold standard for public service and his wisom, decency and integrity strengthened our nation greatly.”
There’s no question now that President Ford was the leader America needed as the nation divided by war and scandal regained its bearings. Shortly after being sworn in, the new President caused a national uproar, and probably cost himself a full term, by pardoning Richard M. Nixon. But as he pointed out later, knowing full well that it could cost him the White House, he granted the pardon to avoid the prospect of a former President in jail and litigation that could have continued to divide the country for years. “I had to turn the page and let the healing process begin,” he told his former speechwriter, James C. Humes.
History is kind, though, to leaders who discount the polls and pursue the course that best serves the nation’s interest, as Ford did. In 2001, he was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for putting the nation’s needs above his own political fortunes. It’s a lesson that should guide this President and all those to come.
This is a blessed nation. In times of need or crisis, it either finds great leaders — FDR, for example — or it finds ordinary men who rise to the greatness the moment requires. In announcing his death, Mrs. Ford said of her husband that “his life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.” He was a good man and the country knew it. Nunn and others who have made the assertion are right: “History will treat him well.”
