Thinking Right

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 8:07 AM | Link to this

Good morning all. Opening note reflects state legislature thinking. I cannot imagine the rationale for state “halls” of fame, especially since half of the honorees have fled the jurisdiction. Why honor those who think Georgia is just a “good place to be from?” I would be interested in a wax museum of politicians, if depicted as a rogue’s gallery – prison stripes, etc. Otherwise there is almost nothing that could be displayed that would attract my attention.

Vetoes, and overriding vetoes, are good things, without regard to who is running things. Of course I have a bias in favor of spending reductions, and overridden vetoes rarely accomplish that goal, so those are less-good things.

If you really want to see a political train wreck, let the state give money to Grady. Or worse, take over Grady.

Special tax districts are all designed by Dali. They do not have to make sense.

If my Nazi representative had a brain, instead of telling fund managers how to do the job, he would be abolishing the darn thing entirely, and allow the individuals to make their own 401k investment decisions. Beware of those who want to make personal decisions for us. Next thing he’ll be forbidding investments in companies run by democrats. (Said by one who cannot distinguish American democrats from Sudanese strongmen.)

I think I need to move to Woodstock. Chip Rogers persuades me on swimming pools, and my unthought-out bias would have been otherwise.

On the Federal “stimulus” package, I think there are 35 guys who merit my respect. Does today’s AJC list them, by chance? The rest need to be fired.

The appropriate name for the proposed state traffic congestion plan would be the “pig in a poke act.”

I can understand why Richardson wants to throw out Evans – cannot have someone capable of thinking in such a critical position. Richardson and Shafer give republicans their reputation. Our equivalent of the McKinneys.

By Mid-South Philosopher

February 1, 2008 8:07 AM | Link to this

Good morning, Jim.

It seems as though your topics today verify the immortal remark by Bill Clinton…“It’s the economy, stupid!” That remark is probably not original with Billy, but he is most remembered for it.

Last night’s love fest between Hillary and Barack demonstrates that the Democrats are far more united than the Republicans. Higher taxes, socialized medicine, and more government intervention is the order of the day. Additionally, I suspect that national security will be even more compromised and the war against Islamist fanaticism will flounder. With respect to the economy, I suppose we could create a number of new jobs in the construction and service industries by establishing a program to build a significant number of “welcome centers” along our southern border!

On the Republican side, we have the makings of a “Texas-Tornado Death Match” between John McCain and Mitt Romney. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, these two men do not like each other. They would never be “drinking buddies” in the way that Georgie Bush and Teddy Kennedy might be.

Romney is a corporatist and McCain has too many undependable qualities, e.g., the McCain-Feingold Act, opposition to the Bush tax cuts, and the Kennedy-McCain-BUSH Illegal Immigrant Amnesty effort (which failed, thank God).

The best man in the whole deal is Mike Huckabee. He has values and a perspective. He embraces true tax reformation. However, he is a Baptist preacher. I don’t know whether or not he is a teetotaler, but never trust a politician who want take a drink. Remember Jimmy Carter!

By Copyleft

February 1, 2008 8:16 AM | Link to this

“Never let death penalty opponents kill capital punishment on pocketbook arguments or tactics.”

Yeah, you shouldn’t let people use logic and facts. That could get in the way of more killin’!

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 8:22 AM | Link to this

Special tax districts are all designed by Dali. They do not have to make sense.

Maybe it’s just the lack of coffee, but I found that really funny.

Back to Jim’s comments—Chip Rodgers is a legislator, not an environmental engineer. Until we address our water situations the pools should stay closed. Take the kids up to lake Lanier. There are plenty of new beaches.

Hope those State officials running away from Grady don’t injure themselves, they might need a level 1 trauma center. Gee, where would they find one of those, ya think?

Instead of worrying about fund-nazis, we should worry about the declining interest rates required to prop up the economy. Low interest rates kill savings.

By Craig

February 1, 2008 8:23 AM | Link to this

As a loyal resident of Senator Rogers’ district, counselor, I can tell you that the good senator never fails to pounce on issues that he thinks are winners politically. Substantive policy issues, or solutions to actual problems? Not so much.

By ron

February 1, 2008 8:26 AM | Link to this

Good morning ,Jim.You missed the take your gun to church bill.I like that one.Why permit gun owners and then restrict where they can carry? Doesn’t make sense.Close the pools ,tax everyone for the street cars they desire,and and at least thank the people that voted against the rebates.I’ll be getting $600.I don’t know what I’m going to do with all that money.Put it my stash to be spent on a bigger woodpile sometime in 2011.I’m good until at least then.

By HIDT

February 1, 2008 8:27 AM | Link to this

The halls of fame were a worthy idea and putting them in Middle Georgia makes sense on one level. However, economically, it would have been smarter to put them where the people are, Atlanta. Or, even where tourists now go, the coast. As it stands now, a Stone Mountain needs to take place, and a contractor needs to operate them, especiallly the music hall of fame, which might interest folks outside the state.

By bunker buster

February 1, 2008 8:54 AM | Link to this

What keeps Jim up nights:

$30 billion in tax “rebates” will go “to people who didn’t even pay taxes last year.”

The horrifying idea! how dare we provide assistance to people too poor to pay Federal income tax?

BTW, Jim, please stop lying. People who don’t pay income taxes most assuredly do “pay taxes.”

You lie every time you state otherwise.

By OneForTheRoad

February 1, 2008 8:54 AM | Link to this

State History Museum! What’s wrong with you people? It’s mostly built already — just needs the finishing touches. To start with, we need to put the roof over Stone Mountain. Then, we just need a covered breezeway connecting the King Center with the Cyclorama. For the finishing touch, we need to extend the Stone Mountain railroad over to Grant Park. This arrangement was planned many decades ago through a corroborative effort between the State Legislature, the DOT, and the State BOE. There’s something in it for everyone. Why there’s even contingency plans to haul in extra Porta-Potties from White County in case of overflow, extra fried catfish from Houston county during periods of extended drought, and emergency MARTA bus service when the Stone Mountain train breaks down or else when the engineer is out on strike. The DOT says that if it’s a big success, they’ll be ready to expand the operation, with rapid rail, all the way to Lovejoy. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump over to the historical Hampton racetrack. I hear tell that there’s interest from NASCAR to set up a display of moonshine runners. I’m getting all excited just talking about it.

By bunker buster

February 1, 2008 9:00 AM | Link to this

Copyleft @ 8.16, Jim’s one of those weird-a* “Christians” who believes there are lots of folks who “need killin’”

By MADMOMMY

February 1, 2008 9:03 AM | Link to this

Ok, first off I am all for veto’s. It’s not like the AJC (the only Atlanta paper) give all the facts to begin with, so just go with it for now. Secondly, I am all for water restrictions, but to take away the pools this summer will lead to more energy usage from kids sitting inside doing nothing trying to stay cool rather being outside playing with friends, getting some exercise, and cooling off in the water. We need to just find other ways to save water and adapt them into everyday life. As for a GA Hall of Fame, I think it’s a great idea, but what are we going to put in it? Would it really be that big of a draw to our state with vistors? I think we just need to do a pro/con list and see how it turns out.
Have a great Friday and remember to Vote on Tuesday! Go Huckabee!!!

By deegee

February 1, 2008 9:06 AM | Link to this

How would Chip Rogers know that there is absolutely no evidence that closing swimming pools will noticeably impact our drought situation? Last year Chip Rogers sponsored tough illegal alien legislation that was supposed to save the state millions. A year later, survey says that there really isn’t any good way to determine what the state has saved. The only evidence we have is that there was one more application for public assistance denied in 2007 than there was in 2006. And, we have no way of knowing whether the application was denied to a citizen that couldn’t produce the proper documentation or if it was denied to an illegal alien. Chip Rogers wouldn’t know evidence if it came up and bit him on his grandstanding, political behind.

If you accept Chip’s argument then why can’t we water our lawns? Aren’t there plenty of landscaping companies in the metro area that would benefit from Chip’s scientific research?

By Craig

February 1, 2008 9:07 AM | Link to this

Amen copyleft. Ain’t it amazing how the cons, supposedly the party of clear headed thinking, get all squishy when it comes to their pet issues?

The death penalty is ineffective at crime prevention and much more expensive than life in prison? Never mind, we want to kill ‘em anyway…

By Abomi Nation

February 1, 2008 9:10 AM | Link to this

A few short years ago when the Georgia Senate, House and Governor were all controlled by Democrats Jim would write a column once a week claiming that we would all be better off if one party did not have total control of the government.

Now suddenly those columns have stopped. For some reason balance is no longer needed. One party rule is now acceptable.

Jim, when can we expect the next column of yours extolling the virtues of two party rule?

Surely overriding a Bill every 34 years would not be enough to change ones view.

So tell us Jim, where have all the columns on this issue gone? You used to be a huge advocate of 2 party control. What happened?

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 9:14 AM | Link to this

copyleft and bunker buster

Am I to understand your position as, “we should allow fiscal restraints to determine the trials we pursue for criminals”?

Since Jim’s position was apparently that justice must be served without the constraints of money - you two seem to think felons should go free if we have a tight budget.

Hope you two never have a loved one snuffed by the likes of the courthouse killer or this dirt-bag Hilton.

By AH

February 1, 2008 9:16 AM | Link to this

Streetcar comment - I did buy into a condo on Peachtree and guess what, I like the trolley and I’d like to see it build. If the single family people are excluded from paying for it, so what. I know what it is going to cost me and I’m willing to pay. Nothing in life is free and when I want something I’ll pay for it. Suck it up people if you want something just pay for it and make sure you get what your paying for.

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 9:18 AM | Link to this

Craig @ 9:07

You wrote:

“The death penalty is ineffective at crime prevention…”

There is a 100% certainty that Ted Bundy will never massacre another group of coeds. So the death penalty appears extremely effective in preventing his crime.

By bunker buster

February 1, 2008 9:18 AM | Link to this

To complete the thought from upthread, I think the depths of hatred Republicans have for those who aren’t Republican voters bears some closer examination.

The GAO, and every other reputable economic analysis outlet, will admit that the fastest and most efficient way to boost the economy would be to get it into the hands of those who are going to need to spend their newfound income. Like it or not, that’s the economy—most of our GDP is consumer spending.

If you want to boost the economy via the Federal Government, the fastest and most efficient way to do so is by putting money in the hands of poor folks, via food stamps, unemployment insurance extensions, and suchlike.

But such is the depth of hatred for “losers” that Republicans would cut off their nose to spite their face; they’d actually ensure that the economy continues to suck simply to prove a point, to wit, that they really, really hate poor people.

By profit

February 1, 2008 9:18 AM | Link to this

Indeed bunker buster, and I might add to the list most of the worthless newspapers in AmeriKa, including the AJUrinal and the WashingAss Post. Hmmm, ah betya that both papers are managed by short fat men, who we have already agreed cannot be trusted, an owned by shorter, and fatter women, who we have already agreed noboy likes very much. Hint Here: Hillarity the Clown is a very short, fat woman, as is Doppy Donna Shalala, the hag who single handedly destroyed the University of Miami football dynasty. Randy Neuman said it best “short people got no rights.”

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 9:20 AM | Link to this

Craig, more amazing to me is how the right-wing justifies the use of government. Some biblical subjects—or what they claim are biblical subjects should be enforced by law. Amending the State Constitution on gay marriage, outlawing abortion, and so forth are part of their Jesus-based value system, so we need those laws. And they love to fall back on the idea that it isn’t about what they want, it’s what God wants.

Try to pass laws enforcing other biblical values like caring for the sick or feeding the poor—-watch ‘em scream! And of course, killing a few criminals is just what Jesus would do. He was really all about revenge.

By bunker buster

February 1, 2008 9:23 AM | Link to this

JohnD, it’s not about fiscal restraints, it’s about your idiotic obsession with killing people.

By Abomi Nation

February 1, 2008 9:23 AM | Link to this

John D, what are the chances that Eric Robert Rudolph will kill again?

By Redneck Convert

February 1, 2008 9:27 AM | Link to this

Well, I expect if jbmlaw is against the tax rebates there must be something good in them, but I’m against them anyway. I don’t like seeing my tax money go to Those People and the bums that don’t pay taxes. Far as I’m concerned we can just have a recession before I’ll see my money going to them. Anyway, all we’ll be doing is borrowing more money from China to give people here the money to buy stuff made in China. Why don’t we just write China and tell them to send us about 300 billion to tide us over? It would save us from paying intrust on all that money we’ll be borrowing.

Anyhow, I watched the librul Democrats debate last night. Well, I didn’t watch, I listened. I kept my back turned to the TV like I always do when there’s something on I don’t like. The only time I watch the screen is when Fox News is on. Anyway, the missus wanted to see the debate and I wasn’t about to cross her.

I never heard such pablum in my life. You would think this Osama and the Hillary woman was long-lost kin, they was so sweet to each other. Anybody with any sense knows they hate each other but they sure kept it a secret.

I about fell out of my chair when they started talking about letting the tax cuts of My President die and using the money to pay for the health care of a bunch of bums and Those People. I expect the people that make the big money like jbmlaw and this Glenn was fit to be tied. They could just see theirselfs getting their paycheck and opening it up to see that all the money had been took by the guvmint. Like jbmlaw says, taxes is just stealing.

And they both talked about beating the Republicans like a rented mule. That sure got my hackles up.

Anyway, it sure looks like this librul McCain is going to beat out the Mormon, and the godly Rev. Huckabee don’t stand the chance of one of Those People at a Klan meeting. The Rev. Huckabee may win GA but that’s about all.

That means it will be a librul against a librul for president this year. Old Rush and Sean and Neal and Ann all say McCain ain’t a real Republican and I believe them. Ann even says she’ll vote for this Hillary woman before she’ll vote for McCain.

Oh, back to the topic. I just got carryed away. I’m for getting rid of all the hall of fames and using the money to set up a NASCAR museum. I know we lost that one to Charlotte but we could build our own anyway. Bunch of libruls in downtown Atlanta beat us out of having the first one. They all hate rednecks.

Anyhow, its a dull day here at the trailer so I might drive up to the tractor pull in Cleveland. I’ll check in later when the wrangling starts. I expect Sister Dusty will wake up in a bad mood with a hangover again and start lighting into people. And this @@ will start piling on. Pretty soon there will be a good fracas. Have a good day everybody.

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 9:27 AM | Link to this

deegee @ 9:06

Cobb county approved approximately 200 pool construction permits last year. The water used to fill those pools was only slightly more than ONE homeowner used in the same period.

On the other hand a pool contractor will employ those who support 20 or more families for a year to build 75 pools around the metro area.

The way Chip Rogers would know about the effect on the drought situation is by the number of gallons of water used to fill the pools. Now comparing that to the economic impact on the state of not opening the pools and a sensible decision can be made.

Why allow your personal dislike for Chip Rogers create such animosity for a proposal with merit? Just plain old, ignorant politics ms. deegee?

By profit

February 1, 2008 9:28 AM | Link to this

Well aquagirl, ah’m an atheist, and damned proud of it…When I rent a hotel room, ah find the bible in the room to be offensive, so ah descerates it using urine, page by page…..Make a law agin’ that, jesus freaks……

By bunker buster

February 1, 2008 9:28 AM | Link to this

And now is the time in this conversation when the death penalty fetishist makes his “if Ah kills me a murderer, it DEE-turs him from killin’ agin! har har har…”

So the death penalty appears extremely effective in preventing his crime.

That all you got?

By TW

February 1, 2008 9:29 AM | Link to this

The surge was little more than an exercise to show how four US Marines are better than two. Most of us already knew that.

“The recent National Intelligence Estimate said that although the surge is producing real if uneven security improvements, progress toward political reconciliation has been negligible and might be perishable. Hence the surge is a tactical success disconnected from the strategic objective it is supposed to serve.” - George Will

Someone please tell ‘w’ our soldiers are not the plastic ones that come in bags of 50 at the walmart…

By Craig

February 1, 2008 9:29 AM | Link to this

very true Aquagirl.

JohnD i have a distant cousin, I’m sorry to say, in another state who killed his girlfriend. He’s in prison for life, and also will never ever kill again. And he will have the chance to make amends with God and perhaps with the family he devastated.

By deegee

February 1, 2008 9:30 AM | Link to this

Brian Nichols was diagnosed with some sort of a personality disorder. Apparently it is treatable with medication. Brian Nichols was in custody while he went on his killing rampage. Someone should have taken that into consideration before asking for the death penalty. Can we please make that part of the lessons learned discussion and avoid bankrupting the state public defender’s budget going forward?

By GaVoter

February 1, 2008 9:34 AM | Link to this

Amen, AH. I like the idea of paying — paying for what I need, paying for what I want, paying for what I ask for. I like the idea of a free market. Now wouldn’t that be a novel approach. Can you imagine having an economy that is not constrained by big businesses and special interest groups commanding all the attention of our elected officials. What about a system that rewards businesses that employ people in the US, that rewards businesses with a demonstrated understanding of ethical behavior, that punishes businesses and people that would take advantage of uninformed or uneducated people….I guess we can all imagine all the people.

By profit

February 1, 2008 9:35 AM | Link to this

Bad news Craig: Prisoners do murder other prisoners and guards. Get use to it now, before your sentencing hearing…..

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 9:37 AM | Link to this

bunker bafoon @ 9:23

I have no obsession with killing people, idiotic or otherwise. I do however believe there are certain crimes so heinous they are worthy of execution.

abom @ 9:23

Rudolph will likely kill again if he escapes from prison and possibly if he does not.

All of you “anti-death penalty wackos” seem to ignore the fate of Albert De Salvo and Jeffrey Dahmer. Why were you libs not there to protect them in those wonderful prisons?

By TW

February 1, 2008 9:38 AM | Link to this

auqagirl - convenient how rightwing morality doesn’t cost anything…just the extension of a judgemental finger, and sometimes the flick of a switch…

By RCH

February 1, 2008 9:39 AM | Link to this

Bunker Buster

Why do they call it a tax rebate? Those rebates should go to those who participate in paying taxes. If you want to give money to those who pay no taxes call it what it is;WELFARE. Better yet if you feel so strongly about their (the poor) lack of tax refund, pull out your checkbook or use your refund and donate funds to your favorite charity,but keep your hands out of my pocket. Unfortunately ( or fortunate) I will not be receiving a refund even though I paya very large tax bill.

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 9:43 AM | Link to this

bunker bafoon

100% deterrent is all I need.

By the way, “got” is a word for the lazy and uneducated.

By Abomi Nation

February 1, 2008 9:45 AM | Link to this

Yes John D, of course.

All liberals wanted to see Dahmer set free. We were devastated to learn he was murdered in prison.

Everyone knows that if you are not for the death penalty you support murder.

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 9:48 AM | Link to this

Craig

I fortunately have not been forced to relate to the sadness in a family resulting from your cousin’s actions.

That said, an individual once convicted has plenty of time to reconcile with God and the victim’s survivors if the prisoner so desires. Only in the reasonably distant past were those convicted marched from the courtroom to the gallows.

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 9:53 AM | Link to this

abomi @ 9:45

I will type this slow for you.

The pint is prisons do not contain 100% of their prisoners and those convicted of murder but given a life sentence are then more likely to kill in prison since there is no future for them.

So while De Salvo and Dahmer were not “innocent” victims the idea that those imprisoned will never kill again is pure fantasy.

By bunker buster

February 1, 2008 9:54 AM | Link to this

Death-penalty fetishists sure are funny when they get all riled up, aren’t they?

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 9:57 AM | Link to this

abomi

Make that:

“the point is prisons…

By Craig

February 1, 2008 10:00 AM | Link to this

Very true John. The fact remains, however, that it costs more to impose the death penalty, than to lock them away for life.

At least when we just marched them to the gallows it was cheaper!

By profit

February 1, 2008 10:02 AM | Link to this

bunker buster - They sure are, like a cult, TheDeathPenaltyCult - Kill ‘em for jesus…..

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 10:04 AM | Link to this

TW @ 9:38, you’re on to something there. How many times have we heard the complaint that tax dollars are going to support a murderer sitting in prison? That seems less moral outrage and more coveting another tank of gas for the yellow ribbon bedecked SUV.

Outlawing abortions costs nothing, if you’re unwilling to pay for the result, kids who have unprepared parents. No coincidence that anti-abortion goes hand in hand with anti-food stamps and anti-“I’m not adopting those babies”.

Don’t even get me started on wingnuts who rail on about Grady while sitting in their illegal-immigrant constructed McMansions. The Group Formerly Called The Religious Right is an appalling bunch. Watching McCain thumb his nose at them is a great pleasure.

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 10:06 AM | Link to this

Poor bunker!

Limited intellect and a limited vocabulary but apparently an unlimited amount of love for the those who would kill, rape, torture or kidanp Ol’ bunker if he stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time.

By the way, that wrong place may be your home!

Yes indeed, let’s take the chance the Bundys, DeSalvos and Dahmers of the world are loosed upon us after we know who and what they are.

And Brain Nichols has “some sort of personality disorder”. I would suggest anyone who commits a crime punishable by death has “some sort of personality disorder”!

Even Alcatraz proved incapable of confining 100% of the prisoners.

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 10:13 AM | Link to this

Dear Craig @ 9:07, it’s a Kantian thing, not a utilitarian thing.

Dear AH @ 9:16, I mostly agree. Get government out of the picture entirely, let a private capitalist build it, and charge whatever it costs to run it.

Dear BB @ 9:18, you err. The “stimulus” will be as effective as the Carterian application in 1978. Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.

Dear Aquagirl @ 9:20, you set a straw man with an anti-religious flavor. Those of us who are believers and conservatives do not make our arguments based on our Christian beliefs. Sorry to ruin such a riff. It would be just as valid to call left-wingers Nazis who seek to use the tools of government to enforce their beliefs, who would criminalize political differences.

By JohnD

February 1, 2008 10:15 AM | Link to this

Did not take long for the “kill babies” and spare the hardened criminals to come out in you libs.

Nichols has a personality disorder but we ought to go ahead with killing innocent babies according to the ever thoughtful prose of those paragons of virtue - aquagirl and deegee.

And each of you has the nerve to use the term wingnuts or write of Christians in a derogatory manner. All the time using your most hackneyed term of the past several years - hypocrite.

By OneForTheRoad

February 1, 2008 10:15 AM | Link to this

Poor, pitiful people praying for a pontificating Perdue to pounce proudly upon any preying porkers posited to proclaim profoundly a politicized policy to polarize.

Anyway, that’s what I always say.

By deegee

February 1, 2008 10:16 AM | Link to this

Hello JohnD, First of all your case for filling up swimming pools is no different than the case that landscapers have been making in favor of watering lawns. The statistic that you threw out is designed to mislead. Filling up 200 new pools in Cobb County is obviously a bit like taking a whiz in the ocean. Filling up every new and existing swimming pool in North Georgia two weeks before Memorial Day will have an impact. Parents may have to find something else to do with their kids other than dropping them off at the pool over the summer. Just because you live in Cobb County doesn’t mean that you can’t sacrifice like the rest of us.

By zeke

February 1, 2008 10:18 AM | Link to this

First of all, the trolleys and beltline need to be abandoned as a taxpayers nightmare! Ms. mayor, noted by some frivilous liberal rag as a top 5 mayor, now has a $100 million deficit! Think more taxes! The trolley and beltline projects will only add to the burden of taxpayers! If they are so important, let the private sector build and fund them with revenue from their use, not from the taxpayers. If private sources volutarily fund these projects totally at their own expense, without being extorted by the governments and various anarchist activist groups (naacp, aclu, peta, greenpeace, sierra club, etc.) then let it proceed. Otherwise SCRAP THESE IDIOTIC PUBLIC PROJECTS!!!

By Craig

February 1, 2008 10:20 AM | Link to this

Glad to see you back, jbm. Would like to get your thoughts on your beloved Ann’s endorsement of Hillary over John McAncient. (On Hannity and Colmes…)

What an interesting year.

By Abomi Nation

February 1, 2008 10:21 AM | Link to this

Rudolph’s mother claims that he is not being treated well in prison. She says he is not allowed to read or write. He is isolated in a cell and is miserable. Sounds like he would rather be dead.

The parents of the woman killed in the mountains said just yesterday they would rather have the killer spend the rest of his life in jail. Execution would be too easy.

How many people have escaped from a super max prison?

(Btw JohnB, if you are going to “type this slow” so I can understand you, please try to write better sentences.)

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 10:25 AM | Link to this

JohnD, it has already been pointed out that lack of enthusiasm for the death penalty does not equal love of murderous thugs. You sound stupid suggesting anyone is a Dahmer or Nichols devotee.

Supermax prisons are a good compromise. Moussaoui,the 20th 9/11 hijacker, is now rotting away in lieu of his desired martyrdom. To me that’s even better than the death penalty. And when’s the last time you heard of a murder or escape from one of those facilities?

By TW

February 1, 2008 10:26 AM | Link to this

Babies? Who’s killing babies?

By profit

February 1, 2008 10:33 AM | Link to this

Yum, yum, roast leg of baby, tastes like veal…..

By OneForTheRoad

February 1, 2008 10:40 AM | Link to this

Government employees getting a tax rebate. Now that’s what I like to call recycling. Try to top that one, Gore. The nerve. Trying to tell Christians who this planet belongs to. It’s right there in the very first book — In the beginning…

By Political Foreskin

February 1, 2008 10:49 AM | Link to this

Hillary will only have four years. Her administration will be a disaster, not the nightmare we’ve just endured, but bad enough so that the Republicans will be in the white house for the next quarter century. Hillary’s legacy will be that she failed to reverse the abuses of power that the patriot act gave the president. History will see it as the american people’s last chance to get their freedom back.

The terrorists win when a free country is forced to become a police state, like Bush has ensured. I for one, am joining the Taliban, for they get casual Fridays where the guys they behead can wear jeans.

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 10:50 AM | Link to this

Dear Craig @ 10:20, it is an interesting argument, no? “The policies of McCain and Clinton are indistinguishable, and as leftism is always doomed to failure, vote to ensure blame is placed correctly.” The logic is unarguable.

The flaw is in her assumption that McCain’s judicial appointments will be as bad as Hillary’s. Just by accident McCain may appoint a conservative or two, and that would be worth the potential. Certainly Hillary would not appoint a conservative.

By deegee

February 1, 2008 10:53 AM | Link to this

The question in the Brian Nichols case is not whether or not he did something evil. He did do something evil. He should be incarcerated and medicated. What is at issue is whether the district attorney’s office used sound judgment in electing to make this particular case a death penalty case. I personally don’t take any pleasure in knowing that a human being was killed for revenge regardless of whether it was state sanctioned revenge or not. It takes years for a person convicted to death to be executed. In order to make the argument that the death penalty ensures that the individual will never kill again, you would have to execute on the day of sentencing. DNA testing has exculpated a number of convicts.

The Brian Nichols case is very high with emotion as his victims were a part of law enforcement. Can we speculate on whether his trial would be over by now if he committed the same crime against a different set of individuals?

By JK

February 1, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this

Timothy McVeigh did, what? Five or six years in prison for destroying all those lives? Doesn’t seem fair he got off so easy.

By profit

February 1, 2008 10:57 AM | Link to this

A vote for McInsane is a vote for FOUR MORE years of WAR…and just maybe, McInsane will start the final NUCLEAR WAR that will destory all human life on earth…that is what his rapidly blinking insane eyes say to me

By OneForTheRoad

February 1, 2008 11:02 AM | Link to this

When the reporter called out Hillary saying that this country needed to ensure the preservation of a way of life that has served us well for over two centuries, she was cut short by Hillary’s reply: “I’ll be the judge of that”.

By profit

February 1, 2008 11:04 AM | Link to this

Quack lawyer: Hillarity the Clown’s policies and John McInsane’s policies are indistinguishable because they are both owned and operated by the same people: the zionists who also own the BushNeoScum administration. America has been sold down the river by the pro israel crowd, and since they control the news media, the average american knows nothing about that particular betrayal. Face it, Quack, all Zionists are Traitors to America, and should be delt with accordingly.

By getalife

February 1, 2008 11:06 AM | Link to this

In the geat debate last night, I was very impressed with Obama. He may be her VP but if he wins the nomination, I will vote for him.

These two have been going at it for over a year now and if someone else jumps in, they are lazy and will not be considered.

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 11:26 AM | Link to this

My goodness, Jim Wooten overdid it today. This blog reminds me of Democratic debates before they got sweet and covered the hate. Oh well, let’s see.

Museum—don’t need any more relics. Enlarge Fernbank.

Swimming pools—they do take WATER. Shut ‘em down and send the children to summer school. If I have to choose, I’ll take drinking water over swimming in it.

Grady—HELP! Somebody needs to. Not the state. Have you been reading about State Mental Hospitals? Sounds like the Dark Ages. Better stay out of those places, Democrats.

Tax rebates—the definition of REBATE is a return of a portion of a payment. Rebate does not mean gifts of goodness. In this case, it is a gift to the economy.

Death penalty—give the serial killers a choice i.e. either take this poison pill or stay in big, hardtime prison for life.

Ah well, many more “points”. But I will close with a bit of poetry by W. B. Yeats for jbmlaw who is going to “chicken out” on vacation and leave us bloggers stranded. Maybe jbm will go to The Lake Isle of Innisfree and I give you Yeat’s last verse.

*I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.*

Have a good time, jbmlaw. We will give you a hard time when you get back.

By getalife

February 1, 2008 11:30 AM | Link to this

“Ann Coulter: I’ll Campaign For Hillary If McCain Is The Nominee”

Um, this must be why the wingnuts heads are explodong today.

But Hillary will tell him to GFY!

Bwahahahahahaha!

By profit

February 1, 2008 11:36 AM | Link to this

Based on the crime in downtown atlanta, we suburbanites need to build a defensive wall outside of I-285, to keep the criminals in Atlanta, and the honest folks out. Ah hear its gang initiation time…the punks are out car jacking…will some hero not trap and exterminate them…carry a 9mm in your car, when the punks approach, empty the clip into them…hmmm, would it be ok to take their scalps afterward??? fear keeps the jungle bunnies away….

By Thomas

February 1, 2008 11:37 AM | Link to this

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 10:50 AM | Link to this

Dear Craig @ 10:20, it is an interesting argument, no? “The policies of McCain and Clinton are indistinguishable, and as leftism is always doomed to failure, vote to ensure blame is placed correctly.” The logic is unarguable.

So jbmlaw…using your definition of success would you please tell us just what has been so successful during the last 8 years of undeniable “rightism”? Please tell us jbmlaw.

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 11:39 AM | Link to this

err getalife @11:30

State hospital or private?? Better decide in a hurry.

By D.A.D.

February 1, 2008 11:40 AM | Link to this

“Filling up every new and existing swimming pool in North Georgia two weeks before Memorial Day will have an impact.” DeeGee

Actually, the existing pools are already filled with water. Mine has 30,000 gallons in it and I need only plunk in the hose once a month to replenish what evaporates and is not replaced by rainwater. Let’s see, that is maybe 5,000 gallons a year at most. But you would rather I let my backyard turn into a mosquito infested swamp when the water drops below the intake for me to use my filtering equipment? Or did you just want me to pump it all out and open a skateboard park? I already drive a dirty car, water my plants with dehumidifier water, let the yellow mellow, use a front-load washing machine and capture rain in barrels and thus have conserved more than enough water to top off my pool, which I fully intend to do.

By BigEasy

February 1, 2008 11:41 AM | Link to this

Jim, when can we expect the next column of yours extolling the virtues of two party rule?

That one is real easy. When the Democrats are in control of the WH, congress, and senate. Jim is just another right wing hypocrite.

By RobertW

February 1, 2008 11:52 AM | Link to this

By RCH

February 1, 2008 9:39 AM | Link to this

Bunker Buster

Why do they call it a tax rebate? Those rebates should go to those who participate in paying taxes. If you want to give money to those who pay no taxes call it what it is;WELFARE. Better yet if you feel so strongly about their (the poor) lack of tax refund, pull out your checkbook or use your refund and donate funds to your favorite charity,but keep your hands out of my pocket. Unfortunately ( or fortunate) I will not be receiving a refund even though I paya very large tax bill.

Well well, the biggest fraud on this blog is back. Get fired again RCH. Smack another woman around? Why would anyone want to put their hands in your empty pockets RCH. You don’t have a pot to pee in. Never forget RCH that many of us here know your sordid history. Get a job punk. YOU RCH are nothing but a fraudulent leech. Go away maggot.

By profit

February 1, 2008 11:56 AM | Link to this

Does Burning Babies Make One a War Hero? If Yes, then vote McInsane for President - he will burn hundreds of millions of babies…Look at his rapidly blinking eyes, the eyes of a Baby Burner….

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 11:57 AM | Link to this

D.A.D., thanks for dropping in and proving the feeling of entitlement extends beyond welfare recipients and public housing dwellers. While you’re here, anything else you want to say “gimme” for?

By profit

February 1, 2008 12:04 PM | Link to this

Yo RobertW - the money the feds are giving away does not come from tax receits, as we are already running a deficit, and all tax reciets have already been spent or are committed to spending: rather we are giving away freshly created dollars, and as such each and every american has an equal right to his fair share of those freshly printed, inflationary dollars. Each new dollar devalues all existing dollars…So pay all 300 million americans, or pay none….

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 12:06 PM | Link to this

Dear Profit @ 11:04, you remind me of a great quote, by Martin Amis, that I first read this morning: “I know it’s a great tradition of the British left to support Palestine, but when you come up against this question, you can feel the intelligence and balance leaving the hall with a shriek, and people getting into this endocrinal state about Israel. I just don’t understand it. The Jews have a much, much worse history than the Palestinians, and in living memory. But there’s just no impulse of sympathy for that … I know we’re supposed to be grown up about it and not fling around accusations of anti-Semitism, but I don’t see any other explanation. It’s a secularised anti-Semitism.”

Dear Thomas @ 10:50, your question is false in that you equate the Bush administration with conservatism, but as the President has done a few unquestionably conservative things, I am pleased to highlight three. (1) When the bubble economy of the 1990s was collapsing, the Bush administration intelligently proposed substantial wealth-forming tax reductions, which provided the capital for the steady growth of the past five years. (2) When foreign terrorists killed 3000 innocent Americans, the Bush administration committed to extinguish the movement that grew throughout the 1990s – seemingly nearing total success there. More to the point, for the first time since Reagan, all foreigners now see that it is not a good idea to give cover to America’s enemies, a desirable change in world perspective. (Even the resurgent Russians do not shelter Al Qaeda.) (3) In the shadow of the horrible Kelo decision, two good Supreme Court justices replaced one and one-half good justices.

Dear BigEasy @ 11:41, in all fairness, when Jim wrote those editorials there were still two or three sane democrats. The world has changed, and surely you would expect Jim to recognize the emerging truth.

By Sam

February 1, 2008 12:07 PM | Link to this

I once had a pet rock named “profit”. And he was much smarter than the one posting on this blog. By the way “profit”, what is the name of the rock that your ignorant azz crawled out from under?

By RCH

February 1, 2008 12:08 PM | Link to this

RobertW I have chimed in time to time. Too busy working and enjoying life, unlike some of those on this blog who try to use intimidation and outright lies ( Sounds like Hillary to me) to silence conservative voices

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 12:08 PM | Link to this

Dear RobertW @ 11:52, your inability to post anything other than epithets does not reflect well on your cognitive capacities.

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 12:09 PM | Link to this

Well, for one thing that seems forgotten, McCain is a war hero, imprisoned and tortured for four years.

We are not running a rewards election, but we are naming what makes a candidate STRONG.

If you don’t think McCain’s military experience is a “pillar of strength”, why don’t you try it?

I think his strength under duress is more admirable than the delicate “I did not vote for this war.” (and therefore would not fight nor serve).

I will never vote for a coward.

By FraudDetector

February 1, 2008 12:13 PM | Link to this

Has anyone else on this blog noticed that this clown RCH can’t make one post without alluding to his supposed wealth. What a fraud. The ones that have it don’t need to talk about it. The guy is nothing but a legend in his own deluded mind. What a putz. My guess is that he gets an earned income credit every year. Probably ran down to H&R Block the moment he got his 1099 from the Department of Labor so he could cash in on that EIC his unemplyment check generated.

By Jus Askin

February 1, 2008 12:13 PM | Link to this

By Dusty February 1, 2008 12:09 P I will never vote for a coward

Did you vote for Bush?

By RushL

February 1, 2008 12:17 PM | Link to this

Ditto on that RCH gas bag. Nothing but a wannabe that never will be. Now give us some more of your comedy RCH. I need a good laugh today.

By profit

February 1, 2008 12:19 PM | Link to this

Sam - Tele Aviv

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 12:21 PM | Link to this

Jus Askin @12:13

Yes, I did vote for Bush and I am very glad I did. He is not a coward. Besides that, the thought of Gore and Kerry is worth a laugh and a sigh of relief.

By Artie Sammish

February 1, 2008 12:22 PM | Link to this

Carville. Was James who scrawled it with a fat maker on a piece of paper grabbed out of the fax hopper and taped it up in the War Room. Classic James. A whole Billfest in one sentence.

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 12:24 PM | Link to this

Dear Dusty @ 11:28, thanks for a beautiful note, but I’ll still be here next week. After that I’ll be hiding for a couple of weeks.

By Clint

February 1, 2008 12:25 PM | Link to this

You can close my pool when you pry it out of my wet, pruney fingers.

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 12:31 PM | Link to this

Testing. Testing. Check. Check. Is this thing on?

– HIDT

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 12:33 PM | Link to this

It takes a brave man to fly around Alabama while others die in combat. I don’t know how Bush mustered the strength. Treasure that vote, Dusty.

BTW, the family of Pat Tillman is hardly laughing or sighing in relief. Don’t mind them. They aren’t the Great Americans that you are, they shouldn’t interrupt your self-satisfied moment of hilarity.

By getalife

February 1, 2008 12:33 PM | Link to this

“BAGHDAD — Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars Friday, Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital last spring.”

Yay, lets stay another 100 years and waste a few more trillion.

Damn.

By Political Foreskin

February 1, 2008 12:35 PM | Link to this

You know, there’s a lot of cats out there that think that swimming pools are the #1 problem with modern society. These cats claim that the pool area itself fosters promiscuity which causes family breakups. Go to your neighborhood pool. Notice the babe in the bikini? Well, so does your wife. No, dont watch her come out of the water when her bikini is all wet and clingy and exposes everything, you dolt. No, dont follow her into the refreshment area as she adjusts her suit and you can get a flash, you philanderer. Your wife is going to clobber you when you get home, man.

Drain the pools. They’re moral cesspools. The bikini’d babe isn’t interested in you, by the way, so forget it.

and lose the speedo, Alfredo.

By Sourthern born Hispanic

February 1, 2008 12:37 PM | Link to this

I don’t care for any of the anti-illegal alien crowd. I will support McCain with all my energy because he refuses to accept defeat in Iraq knowing we have an obligation to the Iraqi people for creating chaos in their country. He also knows how to offer a HUMANE approach to immigration. Your fight against illegal aliens is futile.

Call me a traitor but I can still vote and am pursuing a Law degree so every individual regardless of nationality or ethnicity whom you freely label as a criminal or illegal is granted due process as mandated by the Bill of Rights which is why the Brian Nichols case must be tried with complete respect and adherance to the Constitution of the United States. That is what the foundation of this country is all about.

By Randy

February 1, 2008 12:54 PM | Link to this

Hey folks.. I skimmed this pretty fast so if I missed someone else mentioning this I apologize.

Related to Pool closings / openings… in addition to the direct financial impact impact to the economy and water supply, the indirect impact will be a lot of kids this summer with a lot less to do if the pool isn’t open. Will be interesting to see the ways kids find to break up the summer monotony … and not necessarily in a good way.. since in too many areas there are too few parents at home and too few organized activities that don’t involve pools during the summer.

By RCH

February 1, 2008 1:01 PM | Link to this

I see things have not changed much on this blog. Stupidity still finds its way here.It is apparent who works and pays taxes and those who have a minimal job and live off of the rest of us.Rush L, Bunker Buster does that ring home?

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 1:07 PM | Link to this

Unattended kids at the pool aren’t involved in organized activity. Lifeguards and other swimmers aren’t babysitters, contrary to popular belief among lazy suburban parents.

Hey, if I’m willing to go without a pool, the rest of you should be too.

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 1:08 PM | Link to this

Dear SBH @ 12:37, I respectfully partially-disagree, you are what this country is all about. Good luck, and God be with you.

By Tireseus

February 1, 2008 1:14 PM | Link to this

Aquagirl, your ground rules are clearly considered and responsible. On the other paw, we’re also a nation only in the crysallis stage of sloughing a long history of infanticide, so why not be Southern and look after one another’s children, at every opportunity? We could take flight that way. Or at least they, or their children, might some day do so.

By getalife

February 1, 2008 1:16 PM | Link to this

Looks like the corporate media and RW are turning on Obama to paint him liberal.

Move on. org endorsement probably set this in motion.

This will help Clinton get the Independent votes.

By bunker buster

February 1, 2008 1:29 PM | Link to this

For all of the elementary school graduates who troubled themselves to define the term “tax rebate” for me: do you want to provide an actual stimulus to the economy, or do you want to feel good about yourselves? Sheesh.

For the record, this is one topic where Huckabee actually makes some sense. I don’t have much faith in jump-starts myself; like the Huckster, I agree that investing in infrastructure makes a lot more sense, if you’re going to go father into debt you might as well actually get something tangible in exchange for it.

By Jus Askin

February 1, 2008 1:31 PM | Link to this

By Dusty February 1, 2008 12:21 PM | Link to this Jus Askin @12:13 Yes, I did vote for Bush and I am very glad I did. He is not a coward. Besides that, the thought of Gore and Kerry is worth a laugh and a sigh of relief.

Thanks for providing the laugh for the day Dusty.

By TW

February 1, 2008 1:34 PM | Link to this

getalife - just goes to show that all this ‘won’t vote for Hillary because it’ll envigorate the right’ is total crap. Hillary is merely the present bone on which the ignorant/evil right gnaws. Close that store and the monster will shop at the new one within the hour. No matter who the dem nominee is, come fall the rushannity circus will loathe them like they have no other.

By profit

February 1, 2008 1:37 PM | Link to this

Pools are useful as a last resort for both drinking water and water to fight fires. Imagine the draught gets much worse, and the water pressure drops too low - where will you get water to bath, flush, wash dishes, and yes to drink? The subdivision swimming pool is a source of relatively clean water. The fire department has been known to use swimming pools as sources of water to fight home fires, when the fire hydrants are not sufficient - that is why they have a big red truck called a “Pumper.” For you journalism majors out there, the pumper is used to boost the water pressure so it shoots out of that long thing called a hose real fast. The source of input water to the pumper can be a fire hydrant, a farm pond, or a swimming pool. I will be topping off my pool in May, regardless of rules, regulations, and laws. Catch me if you can, Dudley DooRight….

By Corey

February 1, 2008 1:37 PM | Link to this

All you Bible thumpers, please get a copy of Dr. Ehrman’s “Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scriptures We Never Knew”, and stop being misled by your “good ministers.” You will be absolutely amazed to discover that what was written into and out of the New Testament is a result of battling Christian factions. One only need to read Paul’s vehement letters, especially to the Galatians and Corinthians. But with the New Testament we only get one side of the story. The Pauline faction won, and that’s what we inherited. If you want the whole story you will have to do your own reserach. All factions that had different interpretations were slandered and branded heritics. Which by the way, the word “heretic or heresey” literally means to choose. Now, I know some of you may say that Dr. Ehrman just wants to confuse poeple and sell books. Dr. Bart Ehrman is the chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. The man hardly has a religious agenda; he researches and publishes his findings, and lets the chips fall where they may. Those 1st, 2nd and 3rd century battles for dominance, power and control still rage today with the Evangelicals using religious bullying for those who disagree with them. Get these fools away from our secular government or our grandchildren and their children’s children will wind up living in a Christian Caliphate. Peace! It’s amazing that millions of people all across this great land show up for two hours every Sunday morning and submit to indocrtination. And in these conservative churches it’s akin to suttle brain washing. Peace! Don’t get me started!

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 1:37 PM | Link to this

Aquagirl 12:33

I know you don’t like President Bush but your put down of the National Guard is hardly correct. Bush was a pilot in the National Guard who flew fighter planes. The fact that he did not go overseas does not change the fact that he was trained and ready.

The National Guard usually served at home until Clinton made extensive cuts in the military relying on the backup of National Guardsmen.

Bush left the National Guard quite legally and helped his father in a Presidential election.(Democrats would let us know immediately if they could find something illegal. But they can’t. Just forgeries and rumors. You are using old stuff.)

As to Pat Tillman, I think he was a fine heroic American who volunteered to fight for his country. The fact that his family turned against the military is not surprising with the grief that comes from losing a son. Look what it did to Cindy Sheehan.

I don’t think it is complimentary to use a heroes name to downgrade the military and the President.

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 1:39 PM | Link to this

Jus Askin 1:31

You are welcome. Democrats don’t have much to laugh about these days.

By getalife

February 1, 2008 1:39 PM | Link to this

By last November, John McCain’s presidential campaign was broke. To survive, he offered his fundraising lists as collateral for a $3 million line of credit from a local bank. But obtaining the loan required an unusual extra step: He had to take out a special life insurance policy in case he did not survive the campaign.

Will the ole kook make it another year?

By profit

February 1, 2008 1:40 PM | Link to this

Wow, finally a use for the mentally retarded - can the autistic be far behind?

“BAGHDAD — Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars Friday, Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital last spring.”

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 1:45 PM | Link to this

Tire @ 1:14, I’m not sure I completely get your post, it seems to somehow blend drought restrictions with abortions. That’s a tad much of a stretch for me.

As far as helping out with other’s kids, I’m happy to do so. It takes a village, you know. However, many of those children in need of care have parents who are self-absorbed and care for nothing but themselves. Chances are if you feel entitled to fill your private swimming pool during a drought, you’re not exactly respectful of other people. Children who absorb those values are not a joy to care for. And they’ll never get anywhere beyond the cookie-cutter suburban existence of their parents. My help means little.

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 1:47 PM | Link to this

Southern Born Hispanic: I recommend that you contact John Trasvina (don’t know how to key a tilde) in San Antonio at your earliest opportunity. Tell him Glenn from his law school days sends his Hulme House best. [Is that MySpacing, or Craigslisting?]

Anyway, Dusty & Aquagirl,

If our Texas flyboy had been called up—-a distinct possibility—-he’d have been a baby-burner and, on weekends, a sport rapist, torturer, mutilator and mass murderer reminiscent of Genghis Khan.

See? That’s the spirit. In the Commonwealth you could build a political career with that spirit! Maybe be President one day…

Bush Lites:

Like other Sacramentans I watched Rush Limbaugh go from being a newly employed, small-time smarta$$ with a listening audience of approximately seventeen unemployed alcoholics in Rio Linda, to become the multimillionaire who revived AM radio, hired tutors to teach him Constitutional Law, and daily displayed his stone cold political instincts to unprecented millions of viewers. Not bad for an unemployable wise-acre from the Show Me State.

The Dem take on him as somehow washed up, or fatally discredited, or influential with only an Amen Corner of unreflective persons of no consequence, it as utterly untrue as the notion that he is jaundiced and bitter and hateful.

Know thine enemy, my former fellow Dems. John McCain will not make the mistake of underestimating him and encouraging others to do the same; why should you?

By Jus Askin

February 1, 2008 1:48 PM | Link to this

By Dusty February 1, 2008 1:39 PM | Link to this Jus Askin 1:31 You are welcome. Democrats don’t have much to laugh about these days.

You are right about that one. No one with a brain could laugh about what’s been going on during the last 7 years. Hopefully that will change, and if not we’ll trudge onward just as we’ve been doing.

By @@

February 1, 2008 1:49 PM | Link to this

I’m not going to argue with you on the one-party government Jim. Checking each other behind closed doors would likely result in my personal check ending up in the hands of someone I don’t know.

Grady Hospital? I would agree….what is it the liberals say? if “I wanna get drunk on Sunday the government shouldn’t stand in my way.”

The special tax district? I agree. A Streetcar Named Desire.

They’ve got sixteen miles and what do they get

Another day cooler and deeper in debt

Saint Shirley dont’cha call me cause I can’t go

The trolley didn’t stop at my front door.

My accounts are divested from terrorism Jim. I wonder how the government workers would feel if they knew? They are dead weight though so the burden probably doesn’t bother them.

One thing that Senator Rogers may not have considered is the need to backwash to meet health requirements.

Brian Nichols has more than his “fair share” of fairness. He’s successfully diminished the funds available for the next indigent defense candidates. It’s time for Nichols to share his last words.

Let’s see, that was 35 Republicans who voted against the stimulus package. If the vote had been put to the American people, how many dims would have voted for it? I’ve heard a lot of them here saying it was too little, too late. I guess that answers my question.

Fix congestion. Show us the plan. Too bad they didn’t ask that question of THE BIG HOLE in Ma*achusetts before they went waayyyyyy overbudget and cost one commuter her life.

By Craig

February 1, 2008 1:52 PM | Link to this

Thanks for your comments counselor. I have to admit I am enjoying the weeping and gnashing of teeth on the Republican side this year. Especially after watching two smart and capable people debate last evening.

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 1:55 PM | Link to this

Corey:

You seem not to have noticed that there are no “Bible Thumpers” here, if by that you mean people who play Dueling Verses as though the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures were a cudgel. We had your discussion, days running, in the third week of December (both here and at Luckovich’s), so now we know where you stand on such matters. Good.

jbm,

Had no idea that that particular Amis is so astute. He talks like a Sociologist of Religion cocktailing. I’ll have to add him to my reading list beneath WFB. Thanks.

By Jackie

February 1, 2008 2:10 PM | Link to this

Further evidence showing that the economy is in worse shape than previously believed. Inflation’s low. Productivity’s high, but there are certainly some troubling signs, serious signs that the economy is weakening and that we’ve got to do something about it,” said Bush, who spoke just hours after the Labor Department reported that employers cut 17,000 jobs in January.

It was the first such reduction in more than four years and a fresh sign that the economy might be stalling. And it ended Bush’s repeated claim - made most recently in his State of the Union address - that “America has added jobs for a record 52 straight months.”

On Friday, at Hallmark Cards, Bush said, “A serious matter is that for the first time in 52 months we didn’t create jobs.”

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 2:15 PM | Link to this

Jus Askin 1:41

If Democrats had not spent the last seven years trying to find something to indict Bush, they may have been a little happier. Even supported the war.

But thanks for explaining the malaise. I see it still goes on in Congress. Democrats have spent most days setting up new investigations.

I guess the next investigation will be, once again, how Republicans “made” Democrats lose the 2008 election.

By Corey

February 1, 2008 2:19 PM | Link to this

My bad, Glenn. I just couldn’t help myself.

By Apocalypse

February 1, 2008 2:28 PM | Link to this

Two More Reps Endorse Obama!

Oberstar, Blumenauer back Obama By Aaron Blake Posted: 02/01/08 12:19 PM [ET] Reps. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president Friday, adding two more House endorsements to the quickly rising total of the Illinois Democrat.

“This week helped me make up my mind between two great candidates – that I was going to be supporting Sen. Obama,” Blumenauer said.

Oberstar, the 17-term chairman of the House Transportation Committee, had initially endorsed former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who has dropped out of the race.

Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) all announced their backing for Obama on Thursday. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) endorsed him on Wednesday. All of their states except Oregon will vote Tuesday in the so-called “national primary.”

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 2:28 PM | Link to this

Dusty @ 1:37, So your argument is that Bush chose to join a unit that was typically not deployed, instead of one that was? What does that say about the man? I will cede you the point that he was trained and ready, it’s a start—and certainly more than you have done.

I’m sure his time was served legally, completely by the book when did I claim it wasn’t? Whatever. It’s also legal to march with the Klan. Or not call the police if you see someone being assaulted or murdered. To stand there and watch makes you a perfectly legal a*******hat.

Sorry that Pat you think Pat Tillman’s family is unhinged. Maybe really experiencing the war is a bit more stressful than blogging about it from your comfy chair. Not that I agree with your point that they oppose the war in Iraq due to being crazy. I don’t think it’s complementary to call someone mentally ill just because their cogent and well-thought out statements doesn’t agree with your scrambled, Bush-mesmerized babbling. Especially when they’re the ones who have made the sacrifice.

But then only troops—or KeyBoard Warriors who support Bush are worthy of your support. We already know that.

By Tennessee Ernie jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 2:29 PM | Link to this

Dear @@ @ 1:49, laugh of the day

By Mermaid Man

February 1, 2008 2:30 PM | Link to this

Dusty’s just agin swimming pools because she hasn’t had a swimsuit season figure in about two decades.

By Rolly

February 1, 2008 2:33 PM | Link to this

Keep up the good work Corey!

We want more!!!!!

By Apocalypse

February 1, 2008 2:34 PM | Link to this

New Yorks Daily Star Endorses Obama Published: February 01, 2008 03:45

Obama gets our support

We would have no problem if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee for president. For that matter, we would also have been fine with John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd or Bill Richardson.

Clinton has been a fine United States senator, representing New York state actively and well for the past seven years. he is knowledgeable about upstate issues and has been an effective advocate for her adopted state. However, today The Daily Star endorses Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in Tuesday’s New York Democratic primary.

For all of the debating, the campaign ads and invective, all of the major Democratic candidates essentially have agreed on the important issues.

These include universal health care, the economy, the war in Iraq, abortion and gay rights.

What earns Mr. Obama our endorsement is the possibility that he will change the dynamic of our entire political system. He is the main reason why there has been such an influx of young people who have voted in various primaries.

An attractive alternative to “Clinton fatigue,” Obama’s soaring rhetoric has the ability to inspire a new generation to take an active role in government.

We do not discount what an important and long-overdue wonder it would be to elect our first woman president, but the idea of a compassionate black president would send a message around the world that a new day has dawned in America, that things are going to be different from the foreign policy blunders of the Bush administration.

It is a tough choice between Clinton and Obama, but we believe Barack Obama represents the best hope to give America a badly needed fresh start.

{“Headline24”/}McCain best pick for Republicans

{“Body Text Edit”/}There are many issues about which we disagree with John McCain. These include abortion, universal health care, gun control, gay rights and especially the war in Iraq, to name just a few.

So why is the Arizona senator receiving The Daily Star’s endorsement in Tuesday’s New York Republican primary?

Many hard-core conservatives in his own party cannot stand the man. Of course, when your enemies include disgraced former House Whip Tom DeLay and radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh, that might be reason enough to earn discerning Republicans’ votes.

The party race has essentially come down to McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Romney is a panderer, a political chameleon who has changed his views on virtually every major issue to appeal to conservatives who will decide the nomination. What’s more, he promised voters in Michigan he would bring back lost auto industry jobs when he knew he could do no such thing.

McCain, while not above questionable politics such as the last-minute false ad he ran against Romney before the Florida primary, at least has the courage of his convictions.

On matters such as global warming, campaign finance reform and torture _ about which he is something of an expert having been a prisoner of war in Vietnam _ McCain has shown courage and bipartisanship.

He is far and away his party’s best choice.

By deegee

February 1, 2008 2:38 PM | Link to this

D.A.D., Please let me know why it’s okay for you to throw a little water in your pool when it’s needed but it’s not okay for me to throw a little water on my lawn when it’s needed. If swimming pool water consumption is negligible then why has it become a topic of discussion? Why should we be concerned about an eyesore in your backyard, assuming that your 30,000 gallon pool is in your backyard? My entire fescue lawn is an eyesore right now, and I am conserving water in the same way that you are.

By Jackie

February 1, 2008 2:39 PM | Link to this

@Auagirl,

Dubya WAS NOT trained as an Air Force pilot in the Alabama National Guard. He does not have a pilot’s license; he refused to take his flight physical. The commanding officer of the unit, Maj. Gen. Higginbotham said he has never seen him or heard of him being in the Alabama ANG. Ask anyone at Delta and they will tell you that each pilot has responsibility for a airplane that has a specific tail number. Dubya can not tell you the tail number of his plane; he can not tell you his service number and the FAA does not have a copy of his pilot’s license. His DD-214 can not be found and there is no record of his admittance or discharge from the Alabama Air National Guard.

By Apocalypse

February 1, 2008 2:41 PM | Link to this

Complete MoveOn Endorsement Info Breaking: Moveon Members Endorses Obama 71-29 by: Matt Stoller Fri Feb 01, 2008 at 05:49:04 AM EST

In a resounding vote today, MoveOn.org Political Action’s members nationwide voted to endorse Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for President. The group, with 3.2 million members nation-wide and over 1.7 million members in Super Tuesday states, will immediately begin to mobilize on behalf of Senator Obama. The vote favored Senator Obama to Senator Clinton by 70.4% to 29.6%.

Senator Obama accepted the endorsement stating:

“”In just a few years, the members of MoveOn have once again demonstrated that real change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. From their principled opposition to the Iraq war - a war I also opposed from the start - to their strong support for a number of progressive causes, MoveOn shows what Americans can achieve when we come together in a grassroots movement for change. I thank them for their support and look forward to working with their members in the weeks and months ahead.”

Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org’s Executive Director, issued the following statement on the group’s endorsement:

“Our members’ endorsement of Senator Obama is a clear call for a new America at this critical moment in history. Seven years of the disastrous policies of the Bush Administration have left the country desperate for change. We need a President who will bring to bear the strong leadership and vision required to end the war in Iraq, provide health care to every American, deal with our climate crisis, and restore America’s standing in the world. The enormity of the challenges require someone who knows how to inspire millions to get involved to change the direction of our country, and someone who will be willing to change business as usual in Washington. Senator Barack Obama has proved he can and will be that President.”

“With 3.2 million members nationwide and over 1.7 million members in states that vote next Tuesday, we’ll be able to immediately jump into action in support of Senator Obama’s candidacy. We’ve learned that the key to achieving change in Washington without compromising core values is having a galvanized electorate to back you up. And Barack Obama has our members ‘fired up and ready to go’ on that front.

It’s not quite as skewed towards Obama as it was in the Dailykos poll, where Obama took 76% to Clinton’s 11%, but it’s pretty close.

UPDATE: I just spoke with Ilyse Hogue, communications director for Moveon, and she tells me that the group is going to mobilize volunteers for Obama in key states and use call for change technology. That’s the stuff that lets their members do phone-banking with their browsers to targeted individuals, and often what Moveon will do with this is have Moveon members in non-key states call other Moveon members in key states for GOTV. We’ll see what they do.

I have a few more thoughts on this, one meta and one just a small practical observation. Practically, this is a boost for Obama’s campaign, but it is driven by Moveon’s members. Moveon members have never been ‘far left’; the group was started to censure Bill Clinton. These are mainstream liberal Democrats, and they are driving the leadership of the group to endorse Obama. Part of it is cultural and creative class driven, but part of it is Clinton’s conservative actions in the Senate and failure to lead.

On a larger ‘meta-politics’ level, it’s interesting that Moveon is using tools developed, in particular the call for change tool, in the last few years to generate political power and organizing help for Obama. There was not a lot that individuals could do prior to 2006 to help campaigns, since most politicking was organized around large media buys and direct mail. You could hold a sign, maybe, or go into a local office and make phone calls, many of which were wrong numbers. This has radically changed, as I wrote about for the Nation. Individuals at Moveon are going to be the ones who make this endorsement meaningful, since it’s those people who are the ones who are going to do the work for Obama, or not. It’s not like AFSCME, where Gerald McEntee can just get his people to work on behalf of Clinton. Obama needs to motivates Moveon’s people to work directly, but the upside is that it’s possible for each person to have a real and measurable impact.

UPDATE AGAIN: Interestingly, the numbers for Moveon-style Color of Change, if Edwards swings over completely to Obama as they did here, are more Dailykos-like than Moveon-like.

By profit

February 1, 2008 2:44 PM | Link to this

Dusty, the ChimpinChief can no more fly a jet airplane than you can….but I hear you can make a nice mu mu out of a parachute, with little material left over…So you can enjoy the pool this summer, just tell folks you are 9 and a half months preggers, a little overdue, hence your, eh, shape… ha ha ha

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 2:44 PM | Link to this

Dear apocalypse @ 2:28, you would enjoy Peggy Noonan’s analysis of the Kennedy family endorsements of Barack Obama. Conservative friends may enjoy her analysis of McCain and the base, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120182823864633891.html

By Apocalypse

February 1, 2008 2:44 PM | Link to this

Chicago Sun Times Endorsement Why Obama gets our vote A candidate who is right for America

February 1, 2008

On June 5, 1986, the curiously poetic name of Barack Obama appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times for the first time. Obama, new to us but presenting himself as a “community organizer” on the South Side, was quoted in a news story calling on Mayor Harold Washington to get asbestos out of a public housing project.

Obama was right about that one — the poisonous asbestos had to go — and perhaps we should have weighed in at the time with a strong editorial. It is the job of a newspaper — especially this newspaper — to stand with the powerless against the powerful.

And so today, as we mark the 60th birthday of our newspaper, it is a special pleasure to give Obama this newspaper’s endorsement in Tuesday’s Illinois Democratic presidential primary. Because we believe he’s right again.

Obama is right on the issues, right in daring us to believe in a goodness greater than ourselves, and right in having the confidence to appeal to all of us as one America.

Obama has the power of a celebrity’s charisma and the grounding of a common man’s birth.

There’s been talk of Camelot in the last few days. Back then, that young president said to us:

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

And once, we had another great leader, who said, “I have a dream.”

Americans took them at their word. They joined the Peace Corps. They marched on Selma. They protested a pointless war.

We need a president and a leader like that again.

Remember, in 1960, voters chose John F. Kennedy, whose own vision was sketchy yet promising, whose political track record was largely as a senator. The country still mourns that unrealized dream of Camelot.

Significantly, the Kennedy family can see the promise that is Obama:

“I want a president who … appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved,” said Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s 50-year-old daughter.

Call us shameless idealists, but that sounds right on to us.

Obama has been open with us about his flaws — his youthful drug use, an appetite for danger, insecurities about his absent father. Yet all that seems to play in his favor, to make him a little more like a regular American.

With Obama, though, we are offered the stirrings of possibility, the nearness of greatness. Talk to young people and hear their voices quake with anticipation — dare we say hope — that Obama will deliver on the campaign rhetoric about changing the way Washington works. Yes, he’s still relatively new to Washington, but that also means he has not accumulated many political debts. He can step on toes to get things done.

The Harvard-educated, street-trained Obama has largely been accepted on his own merit — his race, rightly, relegated to near afterthought. His biracial heritage is a bonus for a generation that has grown up in integrated schools and fawning over black celebrities and athletes.

Should we elect a man because of how he makes us feel? Of course not. Obama has substance, too.

Obama was right about the asbestos back in 1986. Much later, on the bigger stage, he was right about the Iraq war. He has a workable plan to get our troops out of Iraq without a disastrous retreat, and he’s the only candidate who consistently opposed the war. Unlike, we are embarrassed to say, this newspaper.

Before a shot was fired, Obama told a Chicago audience:

“I don’t oppose all wars … what I am opposed to is a dumb war.”

That’s not weakness. That’s not Obama being soft — he has also suggested he’d bomb Pakistan if he thought it would kill America’s terrorist enemies.

We like the thinking he has put into extending universal health care to the uninsured by working through existing insurance companies. It’s a scheme rooted in the doable, not the ideological.

We like that this man of faith believes in something bigger than himself. He told the Sun-Times that he believes all people — Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists — know the same God.

“I am a Christian,” he told us. “I have a deep faith. I believe that there are many paths to the same place.”

He speaks powerfully of his faith and manages not to alienate nonbelievers. This man can get both votes.

Quite some trick.

Obama’s worldview is shaped by his multicultural upbringing. He was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a white mother from a Protestant family and a black father from Kenya. He grew up in Indonesia. This global heritage can go a long way toward repairing our image abroad, particularly in dealing with Islamic terrorism and national safety.

America would instantly gain credibility on the global stage, and that’s huge. Even a right-wing thinker like Andrew Sullivan put it this way:

“It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man — Barack Hussein Obama — is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm … a brown-skinned man whose father was an African … who attended a majority-Muslim school, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”

But Obama is American through his bone marrow, and only this wonderfully multicultural free land could even produce such a man.

And here’s where Obama is at his finest: In the soaring inspiration of his words.

Let cynics say his words are empty. Let them swim in the glowering mean-spiritedness of talk radio and the intellectually shameful spin games that pass for serious political discourse on cable news.

Let President Bush continue to falsely link the Iraq war with al-Qaida — as he did again Monday in his final State of the Union address.

Let Hillary Clinton insist, as she did in last week’s debate, that Obama was praising President Ronald Reagan’s conservative policies when she knows perfectly well he was speaking of Reagan’s political skills.

We expect little better from Bush these days. We do expect more from Sen. Clinton and her husband, Bill. We know politics is a blood sport for this overachieving couple, and the racial rhetoric and negative campaign tactics they’ve employed bear this out.

Even those of us who liked the idea of a woman in the White House, even if only because it’s time, are now demystified about Clinton. Her attempt to cast Obama as the so-called “black candidate” was crude and evoked racial stereotypes we have all grown tired of. Hillary Clinton’s reliance on negative campaigning speaks more of her willingness to stick to the old ways of the Establishment and less of her capacity to foment change.

We make this endorsement with our eyes wide open. Obama has limited experience in big-time government. He has never run a business, never met a payroll. Privately, he can be occasionally snippy (he didn’t like being asked about his pedicures), and publicly he can be secretive (he refused to divulge all facts and figures on fund-raisers).

Especially troubling is what we don’t know about Obama’s relationship with indicted Chicago developer Tony Rezko, currently in jail awaiting trial. This newspaper revealed that story, and we will continue to demand a full accounting.

So, yes, this newspaper is endorsing a man because of how he makes us feel, the hope he evokes within us, the patriotism that he inspires in us and, most important, his ability to unite Americans, no matter their color, gender or social background.

Obama is more than an motivational speaker. He represents to us, more than anything, a break from orthodoxy, a break from the Bush- Clinton legacy that is 20 years in the making. Yes, he is a symbol of truth, possibility and that overused word — change.

By Captain Freedom

February 1, 2008 2:51 PM | Link to this

THE Captain will take a moment out from counting his recent gains in the market, having had the foresight to hold heavy positions in EXXon, whose record shaterring profit has once again proved the quality of Our Leader’s leadership to have led us into the lead.

Today, THE Captain takes a moment away from pasting dollar bills to his sweaty, naked body to alert Our Nation to a creeping cancer in its very core. I speak of course of the hapless replacement for the Godly Abu Gonzales, the man who made the Justice Department safe for whatever Our Leader declared was his legal perogative. Now certainly, the Godly Abu G would have been a hard act for anyone to follow, unless Our Leader had decided to become Attorney General in addition to his role as Commander in Chief. And while the idea has Golden Shower Merit, I can just hear the Islamobedwetters howling about “conflict of interest” or some other imaginary problem.

So, we had to accept a weak tea substitute in Mukasey. Things seemed to be okay until yesterday, when this Fifth Columnist traitor offered the following SHOCKING testimony to Congress regarding the methods God gave us to protect ourselves from swarthy Islamoterrorists:

“There are statutes that describe specifically what we may not do. We may not maim, we may not rape. There is a whole list of specifically barred techniques.”

Clearly, this is a man who would hand the keys to the White House to Osamabama bin Laden himself without so much as a by your leave. By publicly excluding ANY effective means of coercing life-saving information from these godless towelheaded cockroaches, we leave Our Nation open to deadly attack, attack on YOUR children, on Our Very Way of Life.

Well, THE Captain will boldly draw a line in the sand and declare where He stands, and He knows that Our Leader and His Dick would approve. THE Captain wishes it to be known that if a terrorist has, for example, possibly planted a plutonium projectile in the Perimeter Penny’s Panty department, He would be proud to rape that man to obtain whatever information he may or may not have about the bomb that may or may not even exist. THE Captain hesitates to commit to repeated rogerings, as His stamina is not what it once was. Harking back to the noble tradition of duelling, perhaps Glenn would serve THE Captain as a Second?

Raping our prisoners. It is the Right Thing to do.

By Apocalypse

February 1, 2008 2:53 PM | Link to this

Breaking: MoveOn and CA SEIU endorse Obama! (2) MoveOn, CA SEIU to endorse Obama Posted: Friday, February 01, 2008 11:46 AM by Domenico Montanaro Filed Under: 2008, Obama

From NBC’s Chuck Todd and Domenico Montanaro NBC News has learned the MoveOn.org PAC and the California SEIU will endorse Obama.

The 600,000-member union had been behind Edwards and has now moved to Obama — the second reported union to do so. NBC News reported yesterday afternoon that the 200,000-member Transportation Workers Union was set to switch from Edwards to Obama today as well, now that the former North Carolina Senator has suspended his campaign.

By Camus

February 1, 2008 2:56 PM | Link to this

jbm,

It is rare that we agree, but I also found Peggy Noonan to be a good read today. Especially this:

“{E}veryone who knows Teddy Kennedy knows that he holds a deep love for his country, that he feels a reverence for the presidency and a desire that America be represented with grace abroad and stature at home. He has seen administrations come and go. And maybe much of what he’s learned came forward, came together, this week.

“His principled and uncompromising rebellion seemed to me a patriotic act..”

I look forward to you and the rest of your cabal treating Sen. Kennedy with the same respect Noonan offered.

Mr Wooten, are YOU listening?

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 2:58 PM | Link to this

Aquagirl @ 2:28

You are really reaching. You still downgrade the National Guard to the level of Boy Scouts while Bush was serving in the National Guard. That is an illogical and degrading way to discredit the ones who have so often met emergencies in this nation. You will say anything to try and make the President look amiss, almost like the liberals who fled to Canada or the KKK.

That’s cheap, Aqua, and doesn’t work. Bush did his duty anad so did the National Guard.

I wish you would also stop making the Tillmans look like malevolent anti-military Americans. With two sons volunteering for the military, I would not insist that they were antiwar or antimilitary.

Unless you have sons, I do not believe you can know the depths of grief that comes with the loss of a son or daughter. The Tillmans made many statements that reflect their dismay. It was done in sorrow.

By Apocalypse

February 1, 2008 3:00 PM | Link to this

Thanks jbmlaw,

A Rebellion and an Awkward Embrace By PEGGY NOONAN February 1, 2008

In the most exciting and confounding election cycle of my lifetime, Rudy Giuliani, the Prince of the City, is out because he was about to lose New York, John Edwards is out, the Clintons are fighting for their historical reputations, and the stalwart conservative New York Post has come out strong and stinging for Barack Obama. If you had asked me in December if I would write that sentence in February, I would have said: Um, no.

If there is a part of you that loves politics, loves the sheer brunt force of it, the great game of it, you are waking up each morning with a spring in your step. “What happened last night?”

Both races continue to clarify, if not resolve. On the Democratic side, a great rebellion, a coming together of former officials, members of the commenting class, and the Kennedy family to stand athwart the Clintonian future and say, Stop. They are saying, as Jack Kennedy did when pressed to endorse a hack for governor of Massachusetts, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

On the Republican side an embrace, but an awkward and unfinished one. It’s like the man-hug the pol at the podium now feels he must give to the man he’s just introduced. They used to just shake and say, “Thanks, Bob,” and go to the podium. Now they embrace, with an always apparent self-consciousness. Can you imagine JFK doing this? Or Reagan?

It is this kind of embrace many in the Republican party are giving John McCain. He has real supporters. He keeps winning. But he’s not getting even close to half the vote, as the presumptive nominee should. And he has been at odds with his party on so many things.

As much attention as the decision of the stars of the Kennedy family to endorse Sen. Obama received this week, it has still not been given its due. This was a break with the establishment and from the expected, and it may carry a price. The Clintons are deeply wired into their party, they run many money lines and power lines, and Hillary Clinton is still, in the Super Tuesday states, in the lead. Will the lives of those who rebelled against her be made more pleasant if she wins? The Clintons have never had the wit to be forgiving.

But all parties, all movements, need men and women who will come forward every decade or so to name tendencies within that are abusive or destructive, to throw off the low and grubby. Teddy’s speech in this regard was a barnburner. He went straight against the negative and bullying, hard for the need to find inspiration again.

He is an old lion of his party, a hero of the base. But people do what they know how to do, and objects at rest tend of stay at rest, and Teddy has long led a comfortable life as a party panjandrum who knew to sit back and watch as the dog barked and the caravan moved on. In a way he seemed to rebel against his own tendencies. He put himself on the line.

“I love this country,” he said, “I believe in the bright light of hope and possibility. I always have.”

As a conservative I would say Ted Kennedy has spent much of his career being not just wrong about the issues but so deeply wrong, so consistently and reliably wrong that it had a kind of grandeur to it. So wrong that I cannot actually think of a single serious policy question on which I agreed with him. But I remember the night President Reagan spoke of Sen. Kennedy’s brother at a fund-raiser for the JFK Library, and I remember the letter Reagan got from Teddy. “Your presence itself was such a magnificent tribute to my brother… . The country is well served by your eloquent graceful leadership, Mr. President.” He ended it, “With my prayers and thanks for you as you as you lead us through these difficult times.”

Liberals are rarely interested in pointing out, and conservatives by and large may not know, but everyone who knows Teddy Kennedy knows that he holds a deep love for his country, that he feels a reverence for the presidency and a desire that America be represented with grace abroad and stature at home. He has seen administrations come and go. And maybe much of what he’s learned came forward, came together, this week.

His principled and uncompromising rebellion seemed to me a patriotic act, and adds to the rising tide of Geffenism. When David Geffen broke with Mrs. Clinton last summer, and couched his disapproval along ethical lines, he was almost alone among important Democrats. It took some guts. Now others are joining his side. Good.

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 3:05 PM | Link to this

Corey, you incorrigible heathen. When I was a young editor, the only words of wisdom I carried in my proverbial back pocket were the famous ones of Justice Brandeis: “The proper remedy for offensive speech is more speech.”

If you want to do something efficacious and easy to combat the chilling effect of these zealots, then I’d recommend that you support and encourage any of the atheist organizations actively working to carve out greater latitude for expression of their beliefs. As for the zealots, I’m reminded again of the interview in which our first Poet Laureate, Mr. Frost, was asked to name “the ugliest name in the American language”. At first he demurred, and ended the interview saying that he had no idea. Then, turning back, he said that he reckoned he did know “the ugliest word in the American language.” It is, he answered, “EX-CLU-SION.”

Finally, wherever the “fools” may seek their Caliphate (Jesus utterly rejected power politics, BTW) in such a way as to trample the rights of others, please bear in mind that Mr. & Mrs. Citizen Sliwa and their minions stand ready to augment any short-staffed enforcement authorities in such cases. (I know, because I asked him.)

By OneForTheRoad

February 1, 2008 3:08 PM | Link to this

Bring on the jobs. The heck with these stimulus packages — rebates. I’m getting a rebate for my copy of TurboTax[tm]. That’s because I paid for it with my hard earned money up front and they are sending a portion of it back after I mail in the paperwork. That’s not how it works with the government. If they tell you that you are getting a “rebate”, the truth is that you’re paying less taxes at that moment in time. The part that they aren’t telling you is that you have to pay back the “rebate” with interest at a later date. Well, guess what. I didn’t ask for no dam* government mortgage payment so keep it. A handful of our legislators in Georgia finally did something “right” by voting against this garbage. Too bad it was for the wrong reasons. They voted against it because it wasn’t big enough. What a bunch of morons.

By deegee

February 1, 2008 3:16 PM | Link to this

Couldn’t the city of Atlanta kill two birds with one stone by bringing the Pink Pig out of mothballs and running it up and down Peachtree Street a few times a day? Who would object to that? It’s historic.

By Bill Campbell

February 1, 2008 3:27 PM | Link to this

I was dated a streetcar named Desiree, but she lost weight and now she’s hot. Her liposuction was paid for with city of Atlanta tax dolllars. Holla.

By Bill Campbell

February 1, 2008 3:27 PM | Link to this

I once dated a streetcar named Desiree, but she lost weight and now she’s hot. Her liposuction was paid for with city of Atlanta tax dolllars. Holla.

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 3:27 PM | Link to this

Dusty, keep lying. I have far more respect for the National Guard than your chimp-in-chief, who has used them to prop up his war for the last several years. Instead of calling for a draft, or expanding the regular military, he’s fed them through the grinder. How convenient for him when he served the National Guard wasn’t used as it is now—by him. All your slurs don’t cover the fact that Bush chose a unit that was unlikely to do anything but sit at home and be ready. That’s a nice way to do your military time while there’s a draft, so as to not really end up in a real war. Those suck.

The Tillmans aren’t malevolent; they aren’t anti-military, except in your Bush-obsessed head; and Kevin Tillman didn’t lose any kids, he lost a brother, dingbat. This was after serving in the war himself.

The only thing I have to do to make Bush look bad is tell the truth. People who don’t live in FantasyBushLand are able to realize he’s an incompetent, arrogant fool who has gotten us into a war where a lot of people have died. People who live in the real world would be the entire slate of Repub candidates (thus the invocation of Reagan) most of America, and yes, the Tillman family.

You still won’t stop denigrating them will you? Your patronizing, condescending attitude is more appropriate for three year olds, not adults who have made sacrifices in this war. Oh poor wittle babies, they’re so crazy from their loss, they call the war wrong. How silly of them.

You are a sick, sick person to ignore these people, solely because they threaten your imaginary world.

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 3:45 PM | Link to this

Jim,

Thanks for the weekly feeding. Three of your bullet items, plus your concluding remark, strike me as of a piece. (Rather odd, but here goes.)

The “Father of Urban Design”, late Kevin Lynch, who was a pupil of John Dewey’s and the most significant, and also one of the earliest, of F.L. Wright’s many protoges, invented an interesting tool. Children’s “mental mapping”. (Unrelated to the eponymous pedagogical neuroscience of inquiry patterns, etc.) Designers ask children to draw maps of their “communities”. The children decide what that means. They invariably abstract distances and accentuate points of interest, note but attenuate dreaded places, and ignore irrelevancies and unknown places.

The maps show, in effect, what works for the children, in their spatial surrounds, and sometimes they show what doesn’t work and why. It’s great fun, of course, and anyone can play. Classic Lynch, the bloody genius!

Please get ahold of the nearest early-adolescent Atlantan, Jim, and run this experiment. Better yet, try it with a girl and her brother of roughly the same age. Do you suppose that any nearby Halls of Fame would show up on such a map in any fashion that would not make a porkbarreler blush?

And what showing the swimming pools?

Strangely enough that brings me to Grady, because a crucial part of what should be happening there, with the recidivist alcoholics, is some very smart and efficient non-formal education, as in the swimming pools and not the Halls of Fame. Pragmatists such as Lynch were taught to draw a clear distinction between training and education, but the boozers need both, and I do mean need. Not re-education; simple, humane care and understanding that can inform a search (it will lead to Cambridge) for the most scientific and efficient means of getting those men and women healthy and back on their feet.

And when they do become newly autonomous, and you ask them for their maps, Grady will be there, with flying colors.

Postscript: One of your maker’s marks, as a stylist, is your un-newspaperly care taken with percussive concluding lines. And today’s hits me like that. It stings.

I’ve been coming here all my life, but until last year I’d never spent more than three weeks at a time here. (Like TR, come to think of it!) Since Carter was Governor and increasingly since then, and of course especially lately, I’ve heard Atlantans say, as casually and derisively as you did today, “Welcome to Atlanta” in answer the inevitably surreal tales of Georgian incompetence. Likewise your familiar phrase “products of the Georgia public schools”.

This is a very great state indeed, one with, it seems to me, as many smart folks as reside in Los Angeles, and considerably greater entrepreneurial inventiveness, resourcefulness and success. When will you clever Georgians get seriously smart about these problems—-of which children are the first casualties, after all—-and stop making stupid excuses for stupid assumptions? Why should North Carolina be the next Capital of the South?

This is how grave the situation is, and how unworthy of the attention of mere politicians. One in three (yes, three) Georgians cannot make out a check properly or read the front page of your newspaper or the instructions on a gas pump. One in five cannot read in any way that we would call literacy. They cannot even read the poison warnings on a household product.

But all of these Georgians can draw a map that will damn this State if we don’t get cracking.

By Apocalypse

February 1, 2008 3:46 PM | Link to this

February 1, 2008, 1:37 pm It’s Official: Alma Rangel Backs Obama

By Sewell Chan new york

Alma Rangel, the wife of Representative Charles B. Rangel, has endorsed Barack Obama’s presidential bid Friday, Mr. Obama’s campaign announced. Mr. Rangel, the dean of Harlem politics, is a leading supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

By Apocalypse

February 1, 2008 3:50 PM | Link to this

Primary Endorsement: Barack Obama Although Hillary Clinton might be the natural choice for Yalies, Obama—wise, brilliant and innovative in his conception of the presidency—is the natural choice for the nation

Published Friday, February 1, 2008

It would seem natural for us to endorse Hillary Clinton for president.

She attended Yale Law School — the roots of the Clintonian dynasty are here in New Haven — and left an accomplished and well liked alumna. She has led an inspiring career of public service since.

And indeed, we are grateful for the past 18 years of Eli representation in the Oval Office. Four, or eight, more sounds nice enough.

But the time has come to abdicate Yalie rule over America, at least for now. The past three United States presidents — George H. W. Bush ’48, Bill Cinton LAW ’73 and George W. Bush ’68 — had their strengths. But in the end, they were good presidents (if that) — and not great ones. Too often, they behaved like politicians — and not leaders.

Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 is of the same breed. To endorse her would be to endorse intelligence and preparedness, but also divisiveness and the politics of manipulation. And, as it seems of late, it would be to endorse Bill Clinton, with his own baggage and questionable campaign tactics to boot.

So we turn instead to an honest, and brilliant, man who represents his actual home state in the U.S. Senate, has more years of elected experience than Clinton and gave so many of us chills with his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His Harvard Law degree notwithstanding, Democrats across Connecticut and the nation should embrace Barack Obama as the next president of the United States on Tuesday.

So many at Yale have done just that.

Take Thursday night. Dozens filed into the Branford College Common Room to watch the Democratic debate. Their eyes locked on the screen when Obama spoke. He seemed genuine. He probably was. Across the street, city politicians and students gathered at the Af-Am House to share, and spread, his vision.

Still lingering, though, is the question of substance. Too often asserted is the notion that one should run for the presidency with a crystal-clear, unchanging slate of party-line policy initiatives. With Obama’s candidacy, however, comes an opportunity to correct this flawed conception of the chief executive as a glorified policy wonk. Our legislative system, after all, is designed to encourage compromise and cooperation. Overwhelming majorities for a single party are rare enough that a combative, polarizing politics that insists on a fixed agenda is self-defeating. Solid policy planks, then, are only half of the battle. What we must know — and do know in Obama’s case — is which philosophy a candidate would bring to the West Wing. And we are impressed by his deep-rooted belief in one nation, not two.

But we do have a dose of humble advice for Obama: Reveal your potential cabinet now. Part of the reason we are endorsing you is that we have confidence in your ability to surround yourself with good people and great statesmen.

As Obama said in last night’s debate, explaining his ability to attract droves of young supporters: “Part of the task … of leadership is the hard nuts and bolts of getting legislation passed and managing the bureaucracy, but part of it is also being able to call on the American people to reach higher.”

Nothing more aptly sums up the spirit of youth. And as Obama rises, so, too, does our generation, once called leaderless, amorphous, solipsistic and uninterested.

Forty-eight years ago, John F. Kennedy, whose daughter endorsed Obama this week as “a president like my father,” visited the New Haven Green in the hours before the election. Thousands came. Hope filled a depressed town.

Electing Barack Obama — another candidate who could surely fill the Green — would reclaim part of that era. But it would achieve more. An Obama presidency promises a reassertion of the natural, American optimism for which JFK stood, but also new reforms of which he could only have dreamt.

By Dusty

February 1, 2008 3:51 PM | Link to this

Aquagirl,you really don’t get it. I am telling the truth.

You implied that Bush joining the National Guard was nothing more than the freedom to march with the KKK. You said it. I never made any such comparisons or denigrations.

My father, husband and son have all served in the military, two of them during wartime. I do not like wars but, after attack,I support our efforts. I do not like terrorism. You put up with it. I won’t.

The Tillman family consists of mother, father and children. I was speaking of the whole family. You only see what you want to see, not what I write. I admire their sons efforts and sacrifice for this country.

I am leaving so I will not respond to your far left replies this afternoon. I see that anything goes with you, not the actual facts.

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 4:07 PM | Link to this

Enjoy your reality, Dusty. I think that’s the only reply possible to your bizarrely unresponsive and mentally detached post.

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 4:33 PM | Link to this

OK, so I’m checking out Rodney Ho’s blog on the Newnan woman being on the Bachelorette TV show. I, being a former ink stained wretch, notice he spelled Realtor with a small r, which is incorrect. I made an admittedly smart aleck post pointing out the minor error and two – count em – two other readers really rip into me for it. In the words of our dear, wonderful, cheeky friend getalife – geez.

By Jus Askin

February 1, 2008 4:41 PM | Link to this

By Dusty February 1, 2008 2:15 PM If Democrats had not spent the last seven years trying to find something to indict Bush, they may have been a little happier.

Yep, they could have routed more $ into investigating Clinton for indulging in a little ‘la de da.’ You poor dearie. Get a life. No offence “getalife.”

By OneForTheRoad

February 1, 2008 4:50 PM | Link to this

Said Glenn, the Grim Ripper, as he ventured from familiar territory.

By JK

February 1, 2008 4:57 PM | Link to this

It takes a brave man to fly around Alabama while others die in combat. I don’t know how Bush mustered the strength. Treasure that vote, Dusty.

Sorry, Aquagirl, but you’re wrong. My Daddy (after serving full-time for several years) was a fighter pilot in the Alabama National Guard when the Bush boy allegedly served. Unlike the Bush boy, he has lots of photos and documents to prove he was there, serving with the other men in the pictures on the tarmac in front of their planes. He never saw the Bush boy; never heard of him being there. NONE of his buddies (the guys in the photos who were actually there) did either.

The only actual flying around Bush was doing was in the heads of Dusty and the other deluded faithful. Didn’t happen. Didn’t. But they still sink low enough to trash the service of another. Trash indeed.

By TW

February 1, 2008 5:10 PM | Link to this

JK - there of no photos of him because HE WAS ON A SECRET MISSION! WHAT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT THAT? You see, it all makes sense now about us ‘winning’ this war in Iraq. It’s all a front for the secret war started during the 60’s in which they originally recruited our best and brightest, a quality sweep that netted our current commander in chief…shhhhhhhh…

By Greg

February 1, 2008 5:16 PM | Link to this

RE: “Give us a state transportation plan”

Right on. I left Georgia and can’t imagine returning to that traffic nightmare!

I hope Georgians get a plan that starts relief soon. You certainly deserve it.

By Political Foreskin

February 1, 2008 5:23 PM | Link to this

Glenn, Wooten did give us a feeding. Real mashed potatoes.

BTW: Thanx for the 1000 word manifesto. I’m sure everyone read it.

I’m officially calling miller time at 5:18pm friday, Feb. 1, 2008.

Ground hog day, my favorite holy day of obligation, is tomorrow.

Superbowl sunday: Giants 43 Pats 41.

By GaEducated

February 1, 2008 5:23 PM | Link to this

I “rib” and will continue to “rib” our elected officials here in Georgia whenever spare pork happens to rear its ugly head (of course, I am assuming that I spotted it in the first place). It is a duty that has been bestowed upon us taxpaying residents — a responsibility to be ever vigilant in the face of those that would fatten us up for the slaughter. Yes, we need to spend tax dollars and spend them wisely. Spend those dollars first on people best suited to study the problems that ail us. Let those people provide a timely study to those whom we have entrusted with the purse strings. But beware, keepers of the budget, do not plunder or pilfer. Spend wisely or suffer the consequences.

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 5:31 PM | Link to this

Pofo, funny parodies. Need you and Edie (not to mention Sam’n’Ella) shove me in the shallow water, though, just when I was getting so deep at the big kids’ end?

And puh-sleeeez, I’d never end a post with “Geez”. Me, plagiarize Getalife?

Into what unfamiliar territory of current affairs could such a shameless generalist as I possibly stray? (Other than quantum physics, of course, or Keynesian Theory.)

Apocalypse,

That Yale Communique is important. A bit daft, but important. Is it yours? If so, have you plans to disseminate it more widely?

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 5:37 PM | Link to this

Aquagirl,

Cool of you to stick up for the vindicated Tillmans. That’s the main thing.

The minor thing is, do you suppose Kevin would want you calling his Commander the chimp-in-chief?

You know, Lincoln, who was one seriously cold war fighter, was accustomed to being compared to an ape. Reckon it’s not known whether such comparisons ever enobled anyone or shed light on that man’s character.

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 5:46 PM | Link to this

GaLiberal,

I take your warning about excesses of spare pork.

How do you feel about spare ribs?

By Political Foreskin

February 1, 2008 5:47 PM | Link to this

What about the new Hadron Collider. Higgs Boson, anyone? They really think they’re going to find the cootie, and with that, we can rid the world of fat chicks once and for all.

I love science.

By jbmlaw

February 1, 2008 5:55 PM | Link to this

Dear Camus @ 2:56, you confuse what we know with what we say. Do not expect me to praise the senior drunk from Massachusetts, even though I also know he truly loves his country. That would be rather like the leftists on this blog appeciating the willingness of George Bush to fight the war against Al Qaeda.

By Political Foreskin

February 1, 2008 6:02 PM | Link to this

Quantum 101: Here’s where we are, folks. With the new collider, we may prove that mass is not inherent to a particle, but rather a the acquired characteristic a particle gleans during the process of a particle’s function.

That is, an atom doesn’t have mass, but the parts of an atom glean mass by their movement and interaction.

I dont know what I just said. now I’m frightened. I’m on bud light number three. Listening to big band classics on a comcast music channel.

If comcast wants to please me, they will have a beach boy channel, a beatles channel, a stones channel, etc. I dont listen to any of the channels they have except classical music and big band. they’ve got like dozens and dozens of music channels. WTF?

And finally, Why doesn’t my computer’s keyboard have an umlaut key? and just how am I supposed to write like the heetler wrote?

By Glenn

February 1, 2008 6:02 PM | Link to this

I thought you were pounding suds, PoFo. Hey, what’s a 23 year-old Atlantan with an inexplicable lifelong talent for hydrology to do for a living, with the proper training? Anything cool?

By Camus

February 1, 2008 6:05 PM | Link to this

If Dubya was interested in fighting al Quaeda, he never would have undermined the mission in Afghanistan by diverting the lion’s share of military resource to a country that had no appreciable al Quaeda presence. Well, none at the time, anyway, though Bush’s war has certainly made Iraq safe for al Quaeda in the end.

Cut’n’run, I think it is called.

By Aquagirl

February 1, 2008 6:15 PM | Link to this

Glenn, I’m not about going around conforming with Kevin Tillman’s views because he’s a vet of Afghanistan. My point to Dusty was that she would rather employ mental twisting (to the point of mental disorder) to avoid placing Tillman in her self-created “HatesAmerica” category. If she thinks Americans who don’t support the war or Bush are with the terrorists, she should own up to it. And it’s really, really, screwed up to say Tillman, or any other American is for the terrorists because of their legitimate political views.

So, long story short,(and no disrespect to him, or you as I word it this way), but I don’t care what Kevin Tillman thinks.

I do think there is a point beyond name-calling where you’re out of bounds. I felt the same way about Cynthia McKinney saying Bush knew about 9/11 and was part of a conspiracy. Another sick, sick woman.