Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > December > 04 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USOn Clark Howard, Bush, college fees
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Clark Howard’s not running for mayor of Atlanta. Smart guy, Howard. The time to pinch pennies was when they were accumulating a mountain of debt. They’re now into juggling. The radio personality they need is get-out-of-debt guru Dave Ramsey.
• Proof that a well-thought-out message can persuade those who try to kill us to rethink their efforts: Libya wants to open a new chapter in its relationship with the United States. Moammar Gadhafi has renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, has compensated the families of the victims of the 1988 bombing on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and vows to move from a dictatorship to a constitutional democracy while investing some of Libya’s $100 billion wealth in U.S. companies. The message was a bomb dropped near his tent in the Libyan desert in April 1986 at the direction of President Ronald Reagan. That was the beginning of clarity for Gadhafi.
• Disagree if you will on policy, but there can be no disputing that President Bush will be remembered, as he wishes to be, “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. … I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.” A decade from now, maybe sooner, the man’s worth as a leader will be measured alongside Harry Truman as a wartime president. A modern politician who can ignore polls to do what’s right for the country is a jewel.
• Cities like Kennesaw that issue bonds for developers that are financed with payment-in-lieu-of-taxes bonds should be required by law to reimburse other governments for taxes lost — in this case the Cobb County School System and county government. Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), chairman of the House Rules Committee and a reliable taxpayer champion, is drafting legislation to prohibit any government from unilaterally stripping another of tax revenues.
• Two state senators who left the legislative arena to seek judgeships, both of whom were probably more temperamentally suited to the judicial branch, lost. Michael S. Meyer von Bremen, an Albany Democrat, lost on Nov. 4 in a crowded field for a seat on the Georgia Court of Appeals. This week, Joseph I. Carter, a Tifton Republican, lost a runoff for a Superior Court seat. Good guys, both. Thoughtful and calm.
• Get out the sniffing salts, Betsy. A Cobb County law firm, Gardner Groff Greenwald & Villanueva, announces that it’ll cut its flat-fee rates up to 12 percent below 2008 and won’t increase hourly rates.
• Now, son, the promise was that college tuition would be fixed for the four years that you’re there. Nobody promised that “fees” wouldn’t be raised in lieu of tuition hikes, as they were — $100 per semester at research universities, $75 at most other four-year schools and $50 at the two-years. Lesson? Don’t make promises that can’t be kept. And get rid of the fees when the current financial crunch passes.
• The outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. Senate runoff does not bode well for Georgia Democrats in 2010. Barack Obama was a phenomenon. Nobody currently on the scene is capable of matching his appeal to Democrats and independents in Georgia. DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones is right, I believe, when he asserts: “The Democratic Party has to stop putting up these liberal candidates who tend to win in the primary but not in the general.” But I’ve read enough post-election advice from liberals to Republicans that they become Democrat-lite that I’ll avoid the condescension of suggesting that state Democrats become Republican-lite. They should fix it as Mr. CEO and others think necessary to win statewide.
• Honoring the president-elect in the only way government knows how — by giving public employees another paid holiday — officials of Perry County, Ala., declare the second Tuesday in November to be a Barack Obama Day holiday from work. Perry County, in central Alabama, is one of the poorest in the state.
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By Ragnar Danneskjöld
December 5, 2008 8:10 AM | Link to this
Good morning all. I am reluctant to say much favorable about former terrorist leader Moe, other than he appears to have learned something. His recent good behavior is more directly related to the deposition of Saddam than with the amazingly-complex 1986 military mission.
I have mixed feelings about soon-to-be-former President Bush. His great legacy is international. Post-Bush, it is no longer “cool” to be a Moslem terrorist, and that was a growth industry prior to the Afghan war. The establishment of a democratic representative government in a large country in the heart of the Middle East – Iraq – is inherently beneficial; the negotiations between Syria and Israel are the great proof to me. With the prospects of post-Shah Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon capacity, the Middle East still has one rogue nation. The domestic Bush, who behaved like a far-left democrat on spending (the Kennedy education bill, the Daschle agricultural bill), leaves us a legacy of significantly larger and more-intrusive government, when there was every possibility of reducing the footprint of government. Most presidencies are ultimately inconsequential – Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, Carter, Bush 41, Clinton; some are net negative – Hoover, FDR, LBJ; a rare one has a great and beneficial effect on the world – Reagan. Bush 43 was not inconsequential, nor net negative, nor great – sui generis. President Polk strikes me as the closest analogy. This subject is too complex for the Friday morning shorts.
I could not care less that Cobb County schools are not getting revenues they think they are entitled to receive. Get government out of the education business.
Wonder if GGG&V found it was ahead of the market in its pricing? Even attorneys are subject to the laws of supply and demand, even if it sometimes seems that they manufacture their own demand.
I disagree broadly on Jim’s theme on how to reform the Georgia democrat party. Republicans lost in 2008 because we ran as democrat-lite – the solution is otherwise. Democrats started to win in 2006 by recruiting conservatives to run as democrats. Real Conservatism is always a winner. As I urged yesterday, Georgia democrats need a substantial image change. I think “libertarianism” is compatible with the beliefs of many Georgia democrats, and would be a formidable challenge to Georgia RINOs.
Special note to friend Southern Democrat, I posted a response to your 3:16 questions.
By One Voice
December 5, 2008 8:30 AM | Link to this
Jim,
I never used to read you much because I wasn’t impressed with your writing. I thought of you as a small town, country hack supported by AJC welfare in order to meet their quota for conservative writers. And by keeping you on the payroll the AJC never risked the embarrassment of you making their less-than-stellar liberal writers look bad. But the more I read your work the more I have to question your intelligence.
You wrote that one of Bush’s greatest attributes was his determination (most of us would call it stubbornness) never to alter course. Here’s a news flash for you: His lack of intellectual capacity to analyze, synthesize, and adapt was his greatest weakness. Let me introduce you to a guy named Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” This, of course, applies to both Bush and our favorite conservative AJC welfare recipient.
You think that Bush will be viewed alongside Truman? You are delusional, aren’t you? Well, you did insist that McCain would win a close one up until the day before Obama won a landslide and a mandate. What ever happened to the time when journalists were valued for their accuracy? You even wrote, “A modern politician who can ignore polls to do what’s right for the country is a jewel,” in reference to Bush. You are obviously one of the 2 in 10 Americans who have not yet been persuaded by the mountain of evidence and the many examples of Bush doing what was wrong for the country and very few examples of him doing what was right for it. Well, you’re in good company in that 20% with the uneducated and indoctrinated extremists of your party.
And finally, you wrote of how the 2010 election doesn’t look good for Democrats in Georgia. Here’s another news flash for you: Republicans were just on the receiving end of a national trouncing, the likes of which we have not seen in many decades, and what Georgia does in 2010 won’t matter one iota. Democrats will have a liberal president in office, they will still control the House, almost all of the 16 Senate seats they’ll have in contention are safe seats, and at least 9 of the 19 Republican Senate seats have a good chance of being flipped. Do you understand what that means? A filibuster-proof Senate is a sure thing, and the hillbillies in Georgia won’t have a say either way.
You still don’t get it. A foolish consistency is… Well, have a great weekend anyway.
By Southern Democrat
December 5, 2008 8:40 AM | Link to this
Jbmlaw,
Thank you kindly for your thoughtful replies.
In regards to the current president, I agree with you that this conversation is too unwieldy to have here and in response to the bullet points. I am a bit perplexed, however, by Mr. Wooten’s agreeing with the President’s delusional idea that he stayed true to his “values” and eschewed “politics.” ????????
This is the president who campaigned on unity and “compassionate conservativism” and installed a political advisor whose idea of a “permanent majority” was predicated on ruthless squelching of dissent. If the Clinton White House governed by the polls, the Bush White House governed by fiat sprinkled with fear.
While I do agree that history will be softer on this President than his poll numbers the past two years, the usage of that statement to support this fact is, respectfully, absurd.
If I view Georgia in a Machiavellian/Rovian way as a Democratic strategist, I write it off and bide my time. For those of us who have lived in the Empire State of the South for many years, we knew that despite Georgia electing Democratic governors for the entire 20th century, it was actually a red state ideologically. Similarly, just like the Old Dominion and North Carolina, it is just a matter of time before the carpetbaggers create a critical mass and shift this state back to the blue. Take heart, though, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi will be comfortably red for years to come.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 8:43 AM | Link to this
There’s an old story, evidently true, about the Hollywood producer Jack Warner and the actor Ronald Reagan. When a friend asked Warner in 1966 how Warner liked Reagan for Governor, Warner, unfamiliar with the idea, replied:
“No: Jimmy Stewart for Governor. Ronald Reagan for Best Friend.”
So: No, Dave Ramsey for Governor. Clark Howard for Best Friend!
By John Adams
December 5, 2008 8:51 AM | Link to this
More irony from hypocritical Democrats:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats are growing impatient with President-elect Barack Obama’s refusal to inject himself in the major economic crises confronting the country. Obama has sidestepped some policy questions by saying there is only one president at a time. But the dodge is wearing thin. “He’s going to have to be more assertive than he’s been,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., told consumer advocates Thursday. Frank, who has been dealing with both the bailout of the financial industry and a proposed rescue of Detroit automakers, said Obama needs to play a more significant role on economic issues. “At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said.
First, can you imagine the Congressional uproar if the tables were turned and it was a Republican coming in and trying to take over early? Further and more to the point, exactly what in the hell has a DEMOCRAT RUN CONGRESS been doing for nearly two years now – besides wasting time going after Bushie & Cronies? Yep.
But back to the snippet, is that the same Democrat liberal Baloney Frank who told the Bush Administration in 2003 that there is no crisis in Fanny Mae/Freddie Mac and increased regulation was not needed when people in said administration expressed a growing concern as well as Republican congressmen like John McCain? One truly has to wonder if Al Gore — the Jim Jones of the Church Of Mass Hysteria Global Warming — had been president and made that claim if Mr. Baloney Frank would have actually listened to this warning instead of being a partisan hack like so many of his colleagues. Yep.
Let us review for the slow wit Obama voters out there who were interviewed at polling places and admitted to getting their news from Keith Olberman and John Stewart and thought such brilliant truths such as Republicans actually controlling Congress in 2008:
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
It’s going to be nice now to sit on the sidelines and be the rock throwers, poor-mouthers, and negative critics now. No, you Dimocrats can put your hate and racist comments back in the liberal kiddie box of mindless emotional knee jerk responses, thank you.
On another topic, gas prices plummet at record levels. Anyone remember how the slow wits amongst us, including those in the DNC media, blamed Bush when prices skyrocketed? Now where are these same slow wit hysterics as prices plummeted? In the same hole about the Liberty goings on in Iraq in recent times? Yep.
By ron
December 5, 2008 8:51 AM | Link to this
Good morning,It is indeed a smart person that chooses not to run for Mayor.A mountain of problems and no raise in the future.
I always tell the story having the bomb land in the tent.It sounds better.
Mr.Bush did not sell his soul.He sold the country.I don’t believe history will be too kind to George.
I can’t see that I’m going to save a lot of money because of the reduction of prices in a certainlaw firm,but if anyone should,put the money aside.There’s a big bill a’coming.
Fees.College fees. I remember them well.When my daughter went I think there were fees for breathing.
The outcome for Democrats doesn’t look good in 2010.——Georgia ranks 41st in healthy states.Only 9 worse.Those 9 are also in the Republican stronghold that is the South.In the country that pays the most for it’s health care in the world,for a country that is way down the totem pole on most health care indicators,this state ranking speaks reams for Republican policies.They are exactly what is wrong.
Governments can’t spend money on their days off.I guess that’s the bright side of the Obama holiday.
By Jeff
December 5, 2008 8:54 AM | Link to this
jbm:
I respectfully put forth that the majority of BOTH halves of the Democratic-Republican party in GA would find a better home in the Libertarian Party.
I further put forth that those that would not find a better home in the Libertarian Party would find such a home in either the Constitution Party (Republicans) or Green Party (Democrats).
To Mr. Wooten’s points:
I must agree with jbm on Bush 43’s legacy. Domestically, government grew like few other presidencies before, though he campaigned on a more limited government platform - at least in 2000. Furthermore, after campaigning on ‘no more nation building’ in 2000, we remain in Iraq - building their nation - more than 5 years after the end of the actual war there.
By lazermike
December 5, 2008 8:54 AM | Link to this
Thank you, Ronald Reagan! Your wise bombing “near” Khaddafi’s tent clearly led him to reverse course, only 22 years later. I can’t wait until Cuba institutes some democratic reforms — then we can belatedly thank JFK for his prescient Bay of Pigs invasion.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 8:55 AM | Link to this
Ragnar,
Yes, let’s please do get government out of the school biz, but how about it reasonably takes, say, 30 years to do so, and in what stages might the transition occur, and what might be the very next, better stage toward which to ease the governmental leg out of the pedagogical stocking?
(If you see what I mean…)
By lazermike
December 5, 2008 9:00 AM | Link to this
Thank you, Ronald Reagan! Your wise bombing “near” Khaddafi’s tent clearly led him to reverse course, only 22 years later. I can’t wait until Cuba institutes some democratic reforms — then we can belatedly thank JFK for his prescient Bay of Pigs invasion.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 9:02 AM | Link to this
lazermike:
“One over, one under, one ON!”
By Three Man Rush
December 5, 2008 9:02 AM | Link to this
You could rank W with Truman…if Truman had nuked Madagascar instead of Hiroshima.
CNN just reported that Doctors in France have thrown in the towel concerning judging whether a sudden cure at Lourdes is a “miracle” or not. Inspired by a visitation from the Virgin Mary, christians view Lourdes as a Mecca for the Sick, and for 150 years, doctors have reviewed claims of instantaneous cures after patients drank water from the spring there.
But no longer. French doctors have suddenly quit supporting or encouraging claims of cures. “Some folks simply needs killin’” one doctor suggested.
The doctors arrived at their decision after being stuck on the tarmac for 14 straight hours in a plane which only had one movie playing on a loop the entire time, (“Outlaw Josie Wales”).
“What sealed it for me”, insisted one doctor, “was that we were asked to review photo’s of Barbara Walter’s derriere to judge whether the cellulite has disappeared and is a miracle cure. I dont think this is what the Virgin intended”.
By norman ravitch
December 5, 2008 9:07 AM | Link to this
The Democrats in Georgia and the South need to become more white or they will never win.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 9:09 AM | Link to this
wait, waitaminnit…I don’t get the comparison to Hiroshima. I mean, Madagascar is innocent…
By Peter
December 5, 2008 9:10 AM | Link to this
Jim a joke today as usual…….
Bush came to Washington to make his family and friends RICH…..and he left Washington having done so.
He also bankrupted the USA, he created the largest deficit ever, he created the largest Government ever, he destroyed the ecology, he started WARS he won’t finish on 2 fronts.
Bush gave away Billions of Tax payer’s money on corporate Bailouts, he created the worst economy after given a strong economy……..and we now have 6.7 % Unemployment……. CAN YOU READ JIM ?
He also created more poor folks in America than at any other time not counting the Great Depression.
He is the Worst President Ever, and Jim the Lemming is HAPPY AMERICAN’S are Hurting.
Jim is anti American at best !
By Concerned Citizen
December 5, 2008 9:13 AM | Link to this
Bush will not be remembered as a jewel. He will be remembered as one of the worst presidents ever. He has no values. He has no intelligence. He is incredible embarrassment. Thank god his reign of terror is at an end.
By Three Man Rush
December 5, 2008 9:17 AM | Link to this
If Bush wouldn’t level with us about the economy even though we were the ones being hurt by it, then imagine what the true state of the war in Iraq is, when the Iraqi people are the ones being hurt by it. (Good thing the surge is working)
What Bush has started, people, and you better sit down, can be explained thusly: A Peter-Pricipled (PP) Commander-in-name-only (CINO) has tripped an international Rube Goldberg Machine (RGM) setting off a Domino Theory (DT) of chain reactions of Diverse Industry Perfect Storms (DIPS) which has produced a global meltdown of a once hot global economic destiny.
We’re forked, folks.
There wasn’t supposed to be a war in Iraq. All of the current economic problems are directly related to this ancient fools trap and resource-mirage-quagmire from hell.
Wooten is presumptuous to claim a postivie future for our presence in Iraq. Yeah, and look how good alcholics are doing in the wake of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1797.
Because of the peril the entire world is in, W is Mankind’s Greatest Monkey, (MGM), and Paris Hilton’s new BFF is once again diamonds. (Diamonds are a girls BFF).
Then, worse, W tricked us all again into bailing out the credit markets with a chicken little littany of possible catastrophes that could have befallen us all. Could have befallen? It already had Befallened. It already had befallened!
The horse was already out of the barn, and we fell for it again. That money is in the hands of the elite, and they are sitting on it, knowing what lies dead ahead:
We are on the cusp of a new economic civil war: The two armies in this war are the W administration cronies and their 700 billion dollar bailout, against 299 million Broke Americans. The last 8 years would have been better for us if we had surrendered on 911. The chinese just executed a fraud in a case where investors got bilked. Who’s for sending W’s entire crew of cronies and phonies to China, and let them prosecute?
JKLOL
BTW: 700 billion is a joke. (LOL). The real amount Bush squandered is over three trillion. 700 billion we could handle. Three trillion ruins us.
Many of you dont know how much money three trillion dollars (TTD) is: If you stacked the money in a huge pile like a pyramid, it would take the egyptian slaves 50 billion years just to launder it, much less count it and stack it in piles, and then add another 10 billion years to open all the tax-free offshore accounts. Throw in a few days to print counterfeit money to replace all the real money, (the pharoah’s dead, he’ll never know), and you get an idea here.
I am making a formal citizens arrest of W here and now on this blog. I will ask the president to surrender himself to the nearest police station for booking. The charge is the entire Bible. The sentence is to be sent into hell for all eternity.
Book him, Don-oh.
By Peter
December 5, 2008 9:19 AM | Link to this
Bush loved American children so much…..
He cut After school programs,.
He cut funding to the Boy and Girls Clubs of America.
He cut educations spending for all Children in America.
George Bush a real REPUBLICAN !
By getalife
December 5, 2008 9:19 AM | Link to this
w is another pos that started a depression with his corporate rule Jim.
You are so freaking pathetic.
By spankmonkey
December 5, 2008 9:23 AM | Link to this
Bush’s legacy will be that he STARTED a war, Truman’s is that he was dragged into a war, and won it. Had Bush “stayed the course” in Afghanistan, instead of starting another war, the Taliban wouldn’t be making a comeback, and the opium trade would be hurting instead of seeing boom times.
By Peter
December 5, 2008 9:25 AM | Link to this
Legacy of George Bush……….
More American Jobs were lost under his watch since the great Depression.
Highest Job losses in one month since 1983….34 years….
George Bush a real economic Republican…..The Stock market is now lower after 8 years of his “PLAN”….then when he became President !
George Bush a total liar about “Faulty Intelligence”, and Weapons Of Mass Destruction !
George Bush a Real REPUBLICAN !
By the finger
December 5, 2008 9:28 AM | Link to this
oh yes and what wonderful values they are: contempt, secrecy, incompetence, tolerance (of torture), disrespect (of others),… the list goes on
how about some crowing for adhering to f’ed-up values from the losers?
By Peter
December 5, 2008 9:29 AM | Link to this
George Bush legacy….
the entire time he was president the IRS reported that the American Poor got Poorer.
The Middle Class got Poorer, and a Few American’s got filthy Rich !
George Bush a Real REPUBLICAN !
By Steven Daedalus
December 5, 2008 9:31 AM | Link to this
Bush will be viewed along side Truman, what a joke, maybe Daffy Duck, Heckle and Jeckyl, Jethro Bodine, I do apologize to these guys for insulting them.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 9:35 AM | Link to this
Concerned Citizen,
When President Truman left Washington, DC with his wife and daughter, his own party considered him an embarassment and a hick. The Trumans took the rails out of Washington with the same fanfare as the Lincolns enjoyed taking the rails in: None. In both cases the Nation was assinine, and in both cases the Nation was wise in its voting.
I’ll not offer the absurdist formula that, since God loves simple persons and our President is one, therefore God shines on our President, but the man is both a simplifier and simply and boldly patriotic, and for that, I’ll shiver railside until his sleeping car passes.
By From within
December 5, 2008 9:47 AM | Link to this
Well John, Here is why Bush gets no credit for the price plunge. How can you burn gas when you have NO JOB TO GO TO??? Everyone is cutting back because there is no money in the system, everybody’s basically broke and holding on to every little $ they have.
We are also smart enough that this whole thing was a fleecing of the american people anyway when fuel prices shot up the way they did. The supply and demand argument just didn’t hold up.
You still have huge populations in India and China that are consuming oil. A $100 price change in such a short time. Yeah right. More bone jobs from Wall Street.
By mm
December 5, 2008 9:49 AM | Link to this
President Bush will be remembered, as he wishes to be, “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process
I heard Bush say this in his interview a couple of days ago.
It didn’t take long for his AJC lemming to start repeating it.
That is the biggest lie I have ever heard Bush tell. He spent his entire 8 years trying to turn the entire US government into a wingnut dynasty.
By Watta Load
December 5, 2008 9:50 AM | Link to this
Bush has said he’s sorry for “mission accomplished”, sorry for bad inteligence, sorry for the economy, sorry for this and sorry for that…yet he didn’t sell his soul? Maybe he should have.
By getalife
December 5, 2008 9:50 AM | Link to this
Yeah and Paulson is in China getting lectured on capitalism.
The riots have started there and China is scared.
w should bailout auto but he is too busy working on his legacy.
Jim Wooten calls him a jewel, I call w a pos.
By Three Man Rush
December 5, 2008 9:52 AM | Link to this
The economy is so bad, (how bad is it?), the economy is so bad that Paris Hilton’s new BFF is diamonds. Sorry, girls, Paris can only have one BFF.
Doctors in Lourdes have refused to review any more claims of miracles after a anorexic-bulemic was cured and sent fat-chick photos as proof. Sorry, girls, no fat chicks.
I’ll be here all week.
By deegee
December 5, 2008 10:03 AM | Link to this
Can someone please tell me why the outcry over lending the big 3 automakers money when we simply accept the no strings attached bailout of the banks and AIG?The fundamental problem with Detroit is the same as the housing industry, that being credit. Until the recent runup in the price of gasoline, no one was complaining about gas guzzling SUVs. Mr. and Mrs. Fatazz America were not clamoring for compact, fuel efficient hybrids. The socially engineered tax code gives us a tax break for buying gas guzzling SUVs. I am not making any excuses for mismanagement but if people can’t get a car loan, how in the hell is Detroit going to sell even the greenest of green cars? Even the Japanese are closing auto plants and cutting back due to weak sales. I don’t know who is in the pocket of that Sen. Shelby kook from Alabama but he is either corrupt or incredibly ignorant.. I do find it ironic that 30 years ago you wouldn’t want to be caught driving a Japanese pickup truck through his district at night.
Consumer credit aside, people need long term credit for 3 basic purchases, homes, cars and college. Home builders have already taken it on the chin. The banks are now in possession of millions of dollars worth of foreclosed property. The banks can hold on to the property as the government gives them tax money, or liquidity, to weather them through the storm. The banks control lending and as far as I can tell we taxpayers haven’t gotten much for our initial outlay of $300 billion. It appears that the banks are lending each other money but not much is going into the hands of the public. The banks can sell their foreclosure inventory whenever they want. As long as the Fed keeps sending them cash, who cares? The money men run this country and they don’t give a flying fornication about you or me.
By Three Man Rush
December 5, 2008 10:12 AM | Link to this
You know, when I tour the blogs with my act, alot of people ax me “WTF? Y dont U STFU?” Well, I get a satisfaction from making folks laugh is Y. Now, people say that I’m giving away material and that’s true, and I’ll run out of material….in 60 years. (Blowspud)
I wanted to blog a diary in little blips about my wife’s final weeks or days, who knows. Friday she went to breakfast with our daughter, Jenny and a friend. She doesn’t remember having that breakfast at the Flying Biscuit in Marietta. She remembers shopping at Chico’s at the nearby Avenue mini-mall, after breakfast, but nothing from breakfast. Yesterday, she was talking lavishly using innapropriate details with my daughter on her cellphone…at 5:30 AM. I listened to her conversation and watched her. She was gesticulating in bed, with wild swings of her arm, and explaining ad naseum about why her text message went awry. I took the cellphone for a minute and asked my daughter, “WTF?”. My daughter laughed and said, “It’s okay, we can talk about this later, put mommy back on, I need to say bye bye”.
Just in the last two weeks, my wife’s hand have started shaking uncontrollably, and her handwriting looks like a 99 year old’s. She also is prone to fall, and I have to accompany her to the bathroom, shower, and really everywhere sometimes. Other times she’s reasonably solid on her feet, but you cant trust it. I have to be near. She spends 20 hours of every day in bed.
Breast cancer has spread to her brain and spinal column We found out two weeks ago. That’s when all these symptoms started so suddenly.
She’s been battling breast cancer three whole years now.
Two guys go into a bar…..
By HIDT
December 5, 2008 10:18 AM | Link to this
Mercy and peace to you, your wife and daughter.
By Patty
December 5, 2008 10:19 AM | Link to this
Degee, yes, I can explain it. The American people were bent over and f——- by the same criminals (Wall Street crooks who invented these derivitave packages whereby they sell stuff that doesn’t atually exist) and their ENABLERS (the effers in Congress who allowed them to do this stuff legally). This particular financial rape, coincidentally timed to occur right before imminent change begins, is akin to the “grudge f—-“. The relationship is over, hurtful words cannot be retracted, but somehow, one last, ugly, anger-filled copulation occurs right before the door slams.
By AmVet
December 5, 2008 10:24 AM | Link to this
W compared to Truman???
The Hero of the Texas ANG couldn’t carry Give ‘Em Hell Harry’s jock. (BTW, The moniker arose when in response to when a supporter “a supporter during his 1948 election campaign yelled out, “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!”. Truman replied, “I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.”)
There will encyclopedias devoted to the screw ups of this worst ever American administration.
A complete debacle in almost all regards, particularly ethically, intellectually and Constitutionally.
Like some imperious and vacuous Hitler, he listened to NO ONE who did not parrot what he wanted to hear.
Look at his closest advisers - discredited Reaganista reactionaries and uber-sycophants all.
The only guidance he ever really needed was via the red phone to his deity upstairs. And it’s hard to learn much when you already have all of the answers.
And you ostriches and chickenhawks will never stop justifying his litany of failure.
Not even with another electoral bloodbath or two…
By ron
December 5, 2008 10:27 AM | Link to this
Dear Three Man rush,—-I could write your diary from memory.I hope for your wife’s sake it’s a thin book.
By deegee
December 5, 2008 10:30 AM | Link to this
Patty, I really have to agree with you in principle but I can’t for the life of me understand the timing. Everyone knew that the ARMs that were created in 2006 - 2007 were going to start adjusting upwards in 2008. Everyone knew that a lot of people weren’t going to be able to afford to pay their mortgages. Everyone knew that foreclosures were imminent. Was there some method in allowing this to occur as it did, or is it just that a bunch of shallow frat boys are running this country the same way they ran their toga parties?
By Three Man Rush
December 5, 2008 10:37 AM | Link to this
Patty, Does that girl you mentioned who had the grudge fook have an older sister for me?
I never had grudge fechs. That’s not fair, but I love the concept. A grudge faq. of course! how did I miss this one? When I look back and see how many grudge fiks I coulda enjoyed, honestly, I think I was born in the wrong chapter of the sexual revolution.
UC, I was born a baby boomer, and all we knew till puberty was coonskin caps, hula hoops, and mouse ears. Little did we realize that we were being groomed for fur pies, diaphrams, and phone sex.
My 15 minutes came at the original woodstock, when I was the one who started the naked conga line. (see the movie, that’s me wearing only the davey crocket hat). Of course I led everyone down into the cow pond where most contracted dysentary and ended up in oxygen tents. Did you know that bongs stay lit for hours in oxygen tents?
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 10:41 AM | Link to this
Hi deegee,
You’re a day late.
By Two Points
December 5, 2008 10:42 AM | Link to this
Barack Obama said he would use military force for genocide and ethnic cleansing…(when referencing Darfur and other African nations)
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait murdering and killing hundreds of thousands…he also killed up to 1.5 million of his own people some with mustard gas.
Stop acting like we invaded peace loving Canada…Saddam was the worst of the worst who committed genocide and ethnic cleansing.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
December 5, 2008 10:44 AM | Link to this
To friend PoFo, we have no useful words of comfort. You and your wife remain in our prayers.
To Jim’s third note, which I pronounced “too complex”: Peggy Noonan, often hostile to President Bush lately, writes today, [“At Least Bush Kept Us Safe - The two words Democrats don’t want tacked onto that sentence.”] (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122843788060281477.html?mod=djemEditorialPage )
By Political Foreskin
December 5, 2008 10:52 AM | Link to this
Pikers.
By Patty
December 5, 2008 11:04 AM | Link to this
Deegee, I believe the “bailout” of the financial industry and the many factors leading up to it (just like the long-term no-bid contracts in the no-reason-for-it long-term occupation of Iraq) were not just well-timed, but planned long ago and executed step by step along the way.
Who would do such a thing and why? Ask the handful of people left standing at the end with money in their offshore accounts. If we follow the money and the corresponding events in our recent embarrassing history, it’s hard to come to any other conslusion. (Although some PNAC loyalist will surely pipe up with some gibberish about values, freedom, and the godlessness of liberals who allegedly caused all this.) Like musical chairs, who’s holding the money when the music stops? Hint: It’s not the ones who break their backs doing the hard work REAL jobs in America, like teachers, cops, nurses, truck drivers, factory workers, small business owners, and so forth.
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 11:10 AM | Link to this
Dear PoFo/three Man rush @10:12
I wish I knew something to say that would make you feel better. Well, I do enjoy your funny lines (sometimes). That’s not much but oh what sad and difficult times these are for you. Let me hope that your wife slips painlessly into “that good night”. I say a prayer for that and your loving endurance for your wife.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 11:16 AM | Link to this
“like the long-term no-bid contracts in the no-reason-for-it long-term occupation of Iraq…”
You may be sellin’, Patty, but I ain’t buyin’.
In the days after 9/11, not before, it became obvious that the U.S., and not just e.g. Israel, Turkey, Egypt and Europe, had a direct interest in changing the playing field in the Middle East. As it turns out, the field was changeable, and we were right. Are right.
The President-Elect has allowed as much, and so, I think, should you do.
By Patty
December 5, 2008 11:18 AM | Link to this
Cancer sucks.
By cubalibre
December 5, 2008 11:22 AM | Link to this
One Voice @ 8:30 am: Beautifully put, and dead on. Well said!
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 11:34 AM | Link to this
Dear Jim Wooten,
MY SINCERE APPRECIATION for your good words about President George W. Bush. Most surely history will name President Bush as a man of resolute character and foresight, a man who will always be outstanding in American history.
President Bush came with ethics, goals and good will and, as he said, he leaves with those same values. He also leaves us as free Americans who can look with pride at the efforts of our military to free two countries in the Middle East. Few presidents have been strong enough to force our enemies to recede. Bush could see what the future held for America and he moved to keep us safe. There is no substitute for freedom and he has kept us free.
So, thanks, Jim Wooten, for your clear vision. I enjoy reading the truth as you present it.
By Peter
December 5, 2008 11:35 AM | Link to this
Bush kept us safe……..HA HA HA……. A BIG JOKE !
He did that right up too 911…….when thousands of Americans got killed…….so for a few months during his administration American’s were safe….????
But ……. Safe from what ?
California folks were not safe from the bilking they got by Bush’s energy Pal’s were they ?
Then Bush attacked Iraq, because Bin Laden attacked us…….”Makes Tons of Sense”…….. and HE got thousands More AMERICAN”S Killed during his Made up WAR.
He Allowed Cheney to give huge Cost Plus, No Bid Contracts to all his buddies……AND drove the country into the largest debt known to man kind.
His “Faulty Intelligence” got us into TODAY’S huge Mess.
Funny ……… I had never heard it was “COOL” to be a terrorist……..more made up Bull Sh!t………I guess no different then the crap Cheney spewed….”Bin Laden and Saddam were working together !”
Do Republican’s remember Bush thought it was ….”COOL”…. to give control of security of OUR American Ports to Foreign Companies…….which thank GOD was laughed off as totally STUPID !
On top of it all Bin Laden has NEVER been Brought to Justice…….. thanks to the “Bush Terrorist Protection Program”…….
Please Remember the Bin Laden’s do allot of Oil business with the Bush Family !
Also as we know today, the Al Qaueda are stronger than ever…… a bigger threat then ever……thus we have the WAR in Afghanistan……so now America is in two (2) Wars !
Safe Duhhhhhhhh ??? I guess the American’s fighting there in Afghanistan are safe ?
More “FAULTY INTELLIGENCE” coming from the worst President ever……..
Today we have more unemployed American’s, the largest deficit ever, and Bailouts for all Bush’s PAL’S, while the typical American is struggling to hang on.
All that said……….. our poor financial situation has made America a much WEAKER country overall….so much for making America secure……and SAFE !
Get off the crack pipe and into the real world Republicans !
By Call it Like it is
December 5, 2008 11:35 AM | Link to this
Amen, Jim
You can trace most of the economic mess right back to the Democratic Party and their home loans to non-qualifying people during the Clinton years.
Yet, the Liberal Biased Media gives this one and The Socialist Robin Hood Obama a pass.
Enough Said!
By Three Man Rush
December 5, 2008 11:40 AM | Link to this
Okay, please refrain from writing sympathy comments for me wife. Trolls simply cant resist name-jacking and writing messages like “Pikers”. I dont mind a morbid sense of humor at all, and that was very funny. I’ve still got milfs coming in my nose. (wait, that was the porn site I visited earlier).
BTW: what is a piker? I’ve never heard that one before.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 11:41 AM | Link to this
I does do, Patty. Fair enough.
By findog
December 5, 2008 12:00 PM | Link to this
Dear Jim,
About that African-American conservative democrat who attempted to hitch his star to the most liberal member of the senate, and his loser advice: after the 2004 cycle many advised democrats to find Zell clones if they ever wanted to return to power, boy were they wrong. The issue in Georgia was, is, and shall ever be: RACE. The only reason Martin did not win out right was under-voting by African-American’s that would not vote for the white dude that beat Jones in the primary. Democrats will not win again for a long time because they have to appease the blacks in the primary and then attempt to be light gray, or tan, in the general – a reverse of Nixon’s strategy of right then center as a republican presidential candidate…
By manman
December 5, 2008 12:02 PM | Link to this
peter,
Have your heard of LOGCAP? Look it up. Halliburton won a lowest bid contract in 2001. You are a product of the msm propaganda and micheal moore lies.
“Please Remember the Bin Laden’s do allot of Oil business with the Bush Family” !
You have go to be kidding.
Oh yeah, Bush was in bed with bin laden and reaping oil profits before the war and he went to war to mess it up.
Hey libs, by the way. Bush has two months to steal the oil. Now is the time. Where are the tankers? Do you think he will do it in the dark of night?
By jm
December 5, 2008 12:04 PM | Link to this
Rather than President Reagan’s missile attack in the 1980’s, I would wager the serious need for repair and modernization of Libyan oil fields got Gadhafi to the table. He know that without oil revenues he is out of a job. The only was that was going to happen was to make nice with the US.
As for W, history will probably be kinder to him than he deserves.
Ah yes, fees. That is how government convinces us that our taxes are low. When they want to take money from us, instead of calling it a tax, they call it a fee. I was recently involved in a minor traffic collision and I was amazed at the number and amount of “fees” that the state tacked on to my citation. Those fees went toward items that in an honest world would be paid for by the general fund.
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 12:08 PM | Link to this
Dear Peter,
I’d send you some of my fruitcake and Manichevitz to make you feel better, but IT IS ALL GONE.. ( I finished it off! It was MY present at my son’s birthday party and Thanksgiving soiree’.)
Seems you need a bit of a “picker-upper” from your state of dejection and your erroneous conclusions. (I’m being nice today.)
Hang in there, buddy. There’s still sunshine behind your miasma of misery.
By HIDT
December 5, 2008 12:10 PM | Link to this
You are right and wrong finddog. Martin did not come closer in the runoff because those inspired to turnout and vote for Obama were not so inspired by Martin for the runoff. But, “The only reason Martin did not win out right was under-voting by African-American’s that would not vote for the white dude that beat Jones in the primary,” is dead wrong. Blacks rejected Jones because he is a nucking futcase.
By deegee
December 5, 2008 12:19 PM | Link to this
Thanks, Glenn. I read through the Wootang blog and just wasn’t that interested in Clark Howard, Moammar Gadhafi, Rep. Earl Ehrhart, of Powder Springs, Michael S. Meyer von Bremen, Joseph I. Carter, a Tifton Republican, the Gardner Groff Greenwald & Villanueva law firm, DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones, and Perry, Alabama. However, I believe I did stay on topic with respect to W’s legacy. His lack of leadership and poor decision making ability is as apparent on his way out as it was on his way in.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 12:22 PM | Link to this
PoFo,
Was getting you back for the name-jacked “Amateurs!” of the other day. Figured you had it coming.
By Peter
December 5, 2008 12:26 PM | Link to this
Hey Dusty I have a job and an excellent income…….
But I know you really do not care about the typical American……Republican’s are a ME FIRST GROUP in General !
You know the Poor….the unemployed, the suffering AMERICAN’S……. The children…….. especially the over 2 million children living below the poverty line….they are hurting the most…..perhaps some reading about the issues for these folks MAY give you Some EMPATHY……….
I know “Empathy” is not a word Republican’s are in touch with.
The Fruitcake is what you see in the mirror in the morning…….the cheap wine is what you and other folks may enjoy…….now America is Broke and hurting.
As far as being Safe in America……..as America becomes Financially weaker so does the entire country !
George Bush is perhaps the WORST President ever……and just out of curiosity…….
Who is going to pay off the deficit ?
YOUR Grand kids ?
By mister.earl
December 5, 2008 12:34 PM | Link to this
$100,000
Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist was paid $68,400 and her hair stylist received more than $42,000 for roughly two months of work, according to a new campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission.
This amount came on top of the $36,000 she had already been paid in previous reports, dating back to September.
In addition, Ms. Palin’s traveling hair stylist, Angela Lew, was paid a total of $42,225, with $23,400 coming during the period covered by the latest reports to the commission, which were due at midnight on Thursday.
Much attention has been paid to the $150,000 the Republican National Committee spent on outfitting Ms. Palin in September at high-end department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, as well as on makeup service
By Peter
December 5, 2008 12:34 PM | Link to this
Hey Dusty…..Here is Bush’s Legacy……
1 WAR’S……..(2) Wars not just one any more !
2 Workers’ nightmare: 1.9 million jobs vanish The economy lost 533,000 jobs in November, bringing the year’s total job losses to 1.9 million. November had the largest monthly job loss total since December 1974, CNNMoney reports. According to the Labor Department, the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent, the highest since October 1993.
3 Largest Deficit in US History.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — On the heels of the worst job-loss report in more than 30 years, President Bush on Friday urged Congress to act next week to help the ailing Big Three automakers, but stressed they needed to do so in a way that protects the taxpayer.
“I am concerned about the viability of the automobile companies. I’m concerned about those who work for the automobile companies and their families,” Bush said. “And likewise, I am concerned about taxpayer money being provided to those companies that may not survive.”
He reiterated his stance that the money provided to them be taken from funds appropriated to the automakers last fall to help them make their cars more energy-efficient. Democrats have been calling on the Bush administration to draw the money from the $700 billion financial rescue package passed in October.
“BUSH” A great mans and President…..???????
“President Bush came with ethics, goals and good will and, as he said, he leaves with those same values.”
OK Dusty…….fun making stuff up isn’t it ! HA HA HA……
“Thinking Right Not Wrong. Not Left. Right. Common sense conservativism”…………
Time for Jim to make up a new tag line !
By Jim Jr
December 5, 2008 12:37 PM | Link to this
SWEEP
Thanks W – The President. You did your part —20% approval rating. Thanks Sarah – The Governor – More than did your part —58% incapable rating.
SWEEP
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 12:37 PM | Link to this
degee,
I wasn’t aware that in opining on Detroit’s bailout prospects, yesterday’s topic, you actually had found cause again for comment upon Mr. Bush’s fitness for office, but it goes without saying that such commentary is for you more irresistable than any topic of this day or that one.
By mister.earl
December 5, 2008 12:40 PM | Link to this
A woman who appears from campaign finance records to have been Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s fashion stylist was paid $54,900 by the Republican National Committee, according to a new report filed with the Federal Election Commission.
By ron
December 5, 2008 12:44 PM | Link to this
Dear Dusty,——-As a picker upper this fine Friday, I am going to reach into the back of the vault and bring forth a Pilsner that has been stewing in it’s own carbonation for about a year.All it’s little settlings will be in the bottom of the bottle,allowing me to carefully pour a sparkling,clear brew.Don’t tell Redneck that I brew my own because he wouldn’t like the competition.
I have a bottle of Night Train Express® here that I could donate to you to give to Peter.
By Mort Merkel
December 5, 2008 1:02 PM | Link to this
I think Peter would be better served by tincture of bella donna on the rocks with a twist.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
December 5, 2008 1:03 PM | Link to this
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. - Abraham Lincoln
By Eli Jones
December 5, 2008 1:03 PM | Link to this
I just submitted a post to that weasel Jay Bookman and lo and behold he has censored me on his poor excuse of an opinion piece. It seems that if you don’t agree with thin skin Jay, he does that. Typical liberal.
By mister.earl
December 5, 2008 1:07 PM | Link to this
President Barack Obama
In trying to put his team together rapidly, Mr. Obama is fighting history. It took a little more than two months after inauguration on average for John F. Kennedy’s nominees to be confirmed by the Senate, according to data compiled by Paul Light, a professor at New York University. By Mr. Reagan’s presidency, it took twice that long. President Bush’s appointees on average took nine months.
New legislation and extensive efforts by the Bush administration are helping to speed that up. Clay Johnson III, a Bush aide coordinating with the Obama team, called the president-elect’s selection process “well organized and staffed” and said he was on track to put his senior team “on the field faster than any incoming president in recent history.”
By Craig's List
December 5, 2008 1:09 PM | Link to this
By Jim Jr December 5, 2008 12:37 PM
SWEEP
Thanks W – The President. You did your part —20% approval rating.
Right. Meanwhile Nancy’s Congress held a consistent below 20% job approval rating since taking over in 2007. Did we forget that little tidbit sweetheart? Never fear, the truth on the left is out there, no matter how hard the lib media tries to hide it.
Anyone else find it interesting, if not timely, how quickly this economy went to hell after Democrats took over Congress?
By From within
December 5, 2008 9:47 AM
Well John, Here is why Bush gets no credit for the price plunge. How can you burn gas when you have NO JOB TO GO TO??? Everyone is cutting back because there is no money in the system, everybody’s basically broke and holding on to every little $ they have.
Right. The soup lines are all over this nation like 1931. Nobody is working. I wonder why all those people got trampled, and one died, during Black Friday deals then?
There is this to say however: if the left raises taxes on the investors, successful individuals, corporations, and business owners, there may very well really be soup lines indeed.
By Gagrunt
December 5, 2008 1:15 PM | Link to this
One Voice -“what Georgia does in 2010 won’t matter one iota.”
Always suspected you were a Yankee… It matters to Georgians
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 1:20 PM | Link to this
Peter@12:26 & 12:34
Oh..I am cut to the quick!!! Peter says I look like a fruitcake in the mirror and calls my memorable Manichevitz “cheap wine”!! My connoisseur character of all fine things will never recover from such puerile prattle!! Chefs will not call for my advice! My children will no longer brag on Mother’s Meal Making!!!(not that they ever have)!! AND..Claxton will shut it’s fruitcake doors!! Manichevitz will get moody!!
SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE, PETER!! A blow to the world of culinary arts and absolutes!!For shame! Your karma is not a charma!! Is there NO justice!!!
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 1:28 PM | Link to this
Dear Ron @12:44
I thank you for you offer of absolutions..or..err something. BUT IT IS TOO LATE!! Night Train Express would send Peter too far down the track! And that aint the Chattanooga choo choo!!
By ron
December 5, 2008 1:34 PM | Link to this
I’ve decided that I don’t care who pays the deficit,or even if it gets paid.
Lebanon,that country that gets blown up regularly,has a pristine economy today. Seems that banking regulations are a little tougher there than in the rest of the world.
Simpson gets six.
Good day Ladies and Gentlemen.
Good job today Jim,thank you.
Bob Barr also got some wardrobe help from political donations.Can’t imagine Bob dpping into the campaign funds for self gain.Chortle,chortle.{Falls of chair while laughing hysterically}.
By findog
December 5, 2008 1:40 PM | Link to this
HIDT @12:10 My contention is not that Martin should have won the runoff; he should have won the general. As I watched the returns Saxby was constantly behind McCain by more than his margin of victory. I just do not buy that new voters were so stupid to just vote for the president…
By Peter
December 5, 2008 1:45 PM | Link to this
Dusty ………I do appreciate your humor today, as we all need it…I did laugh after reading your last blog entry…….
Well not all can cook…..Bobby Flay may never call you…….. and I am sure he is too busy for me as well !
Anthony Bourdain is a favorite………. and it was nice to see the Rathbun brothers beat Bobby Flay in the Iron Chef competition !
Karma is something that does come round, and the elections have proven that.
Please though……calling Bush anything but selfish is wrong……and NOT having Empathy for Millions upon Millions of American’s, especially for American Children living below the poverty line is wrong as well…..
Frankly Un-American !
To all that would like to donate to my fun ….. “Famous Grouse” is a tasty treat !
By Ben
December 5, 2008 1:53 PM | Link to this
After the Democrat-run Congress finishes the job they started when they took power two years ago and completely destroys the economy, the GOP will do just fine in 2010. A Congress with a rating lower than Bush’s, and the recent election pushed them even further in the direction of insanity.
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 1:53 PM | Link to this
Mister earl 12:40
Talk about Palin’s haridresser, let’s jump back to May 1993.
Air Force One sits on the runway holding up air traffic at L A International Airport while President Clinton gets a $200 haircut on board.
Palin has never held up any air traffic and she sure looks better than Clinton.
Any more pointless lib lines you want to bring here about the governor of Alaska?
How about a few lines on how Obama broke his promise to McCain on campaign finance because it would give him more money?? Ethics???
By CommunistAJC
December 5, 2008 2:04 PM | Link to this
Wooten, This one’s for you.
‘At Least Bush Kept Us Safe’ The two words Democrats don’t want tacked onto that sentence.
by Peggy Noonan
To drive through the suburbs of Northern Virginia is to marvel still at the widespread wealth, the mansions and mini-mansions that did not exist a quarter-century ago and that now thicken the woods and hills. It used to be sleepy here; it used to be horse farms. I remember looking at one of the new houses 22 years ago. As I explored the heavy, sprawling concrete basement, the agent said, “We think this would take a 40-megaton bomb.” She meant it as a serious selling point. We were near Langley. [Declarations] AP
The other night, the big houses were strung with glittering white Christmas lights—not all different colors, as we do in other suburbs, but stately white—and from the Georgetown Pike, heading toward Great Falls, we saw a house with a big glass-walled living room that faced the street, and below it a glass-walled entrance room, and each had its own brightly decorated tree. “Two Christmas trees,” murmured a companion, and it captured the air of prosperity and solid well-being of the area.
It reminded me: Government is our most reliable current and future growth industry, and the near suburbs of the capital are where those who run it, work it, lobby it, feed off it and finagle it live. “You have to go farther out to see the foreclosure signs,” said a friend.
At a sparkling Christmas gathering of mostly Republicans, there was warmth, laughter and a mild sense of confusion: “Are we still important?” A handsome former senator, trimmed down and looking younger than he did in office, held forth in the entryway, near a sunny U.S. ambassador who was home for a few days. The ambassador joked that while the country to which she’s assigned has long been peaceful, she still has a few weeks to go back and cause mayhem.
At such a gathering a month ago, there would have been some angry mutterings at John McCain, but not now. He’s come quietly back to the Senate, where one of his colleagues told him of an amazing thing. The colleague had been touring the young democracies of Eastern Europe during the American election, and he found it wasn’t so much Barack Obama that immediately knocked out observers but Mr. McCain’s concession speech. This is the first American transfer of power they’d seen in eight years, and they couldn’t get over the peacefulness and grace with which Mr. McCain accepted the people’s verdict. “It really impressed them,” the colleague told Mr. McCain, and later me. It gave them a template, a guide to how the older democracies do it. When he told me of this, I remembered the observation of a journalist who had covered Russia. The Russian newspapers had generally played down Mr. Obama’s victory, she said, because it got in the way of the establishment line: that the corrupt American democracy is composed of two warring family machines that have the system wired and controlled with the help of their corporate oligarch cronies. It’s not a real democracy but a pretend democracy, and a hypocritical one. This helps the Russians rationalize and excuse their infirm hold on democratic ways and manners. And then the black man from Chicago with no longtime machine or money is elected …
So the Russian press muted its coverage. Mr. Obama’s victory upset their story line. They have to think up a new one now. They will.
Back to the Christmas gathering. There was no grousing about John McCain, and considerable grousing about the Bush administration, but it was almost always followed by one sentence, and this is more or less what it was: “But he kept us safe.” In the seven years since 9/11, there were no further attacks on American soil. This is an argument that’s been around for a while but is newly re-emerging as the final argument for Mr. Bush: the one big thing he had to do after 9/11, the single thing he absolutely had to do, was keep it from happening again. And so far he has. It is unknown, and perhaps can’t be known, whether this was fully due to the government’s efforts, or the luck of the draw, or a combination of luck and effort. And it not only can’t be fully known by the public, it can hardly be fully known by the players at all levels of government. They can’t know, for instance, of a potential terrorist cell that didn’t come together because of their efforts.
But the meme will likely linger. There’s a rough justice with the American people. If a president presides over prosperity, whether he had anything to do with it or not, he gets the credit. If he has a recession, he gets the blame. The same with war, and terrorist attacks. We have not been attacked since 9/11. Someone—someones—did something right.
But here is a jittery reality: We are living through the time of two presidents. Or, if you choose to see it that way, the time of no president, with one on his way in but not arrived, and the other on his way out and without full authority. Histories will be written about this moment, and about the administration’s work with the president-elect’s office. But it is jittery because criminals calculate, they look for opportunities and vulnerabilities. This is a delicate time, with a transition of power, a profound economic crisis, and a nation feeling demoralized around the edges.
We received a reminder of the gravity of the situation this week, with the bipartisan congressional report saying the odds are high the world will see a biological or nuclear terror attack in the next five years. It said, “America’s margin of safety is shrinking, not growing,” and “the risk that radical Islamists—al Qaeda or Taliban—may gain access to nuclear material is real.”
Commission co-chairman Bob Graham, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and an adviser to Mr. Obama’s transition team, was sober in a Q&A with Newsweek. He said he was most surprised at the risk of biological weapons because of “the ubiquitous nature of pathogens”—anthrax, or a resurrected infectious agent such as the one that produced the 1918 influenza epidemic, which has been re-created in the laboratory.
The report hasn’t received the attention it deserves, nor have its recommendations. Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat, accused the commission of playing the “fear card” and trying to imitate the Bush administration in alarmism and bellicosity. Mr. Graham, a Florida Democrat and former senator, would have none of it. “Our adversaries are gaining greater capabilities,” he said.
Why does Congress prepare such reports? To inform, and to win support for new plans. To show they are doing something. And to be able to say, in the event of calamity—forgive my cynicism—that they warned us. This hasn’t been the first such report. It won’t be the last. But it comes at a key moment for Mr. Obama, because it gives him a certain amount of cover to be serious about what needs to be done. What’s at stake for him is two words. When Republicans say, in coming years, “At least Bush kept us safe,” Democrats will not want tacked onto the end of that sentence, “unlike Obama.”
By the way, he should both reorder the Department of Homeland Security, that hopeless bureaucracy, and change its name. Homeland is a Nazi-ish word, not an American concept at all. And at this point “Homeland Security” is associated more with pointless harassment than safety. No one knows who came up with it. Probably some guy with two Christmas trees in Northern Virginia.
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 2:09 PM | Link to this
Dear Peter@1:45
My goodness, are you trying to say that Scotland’s well known whiskey “Famous Grouse”is better than Manichevitz?? Such heresy! Manichevitz is the MOST, ‘specially with fruitcake. But…if I ever get to Scotland, I shall certainly try the Grouse, whether I get tipsy or not..
As to empathy for children, Peter, I appreciate your efforts on their behalf. President Bush has it too but we won’t argue any more about that. Little ones are the joy of this world and our treasure. There’s no argument over that.
By @@
December 5, 2008 2:24 PM | Link to this
O.K. Jim, it’s Friday and I’m feelin’ spunky! When I married at the tender age of 19 (that was when I thought money grew on trees) it was Clark that was “jugglin” me. Now ‘tis I who “juggles” my Dave. Grrrrrr….he’s sooooo hot!!!
Gadhafi’s was a lesson in humility by a president who dropped his in the interest of all.
President Bush? A man of principle who saw his principal responsibility (through no fault of his own) as that which was to protect. That, he has done well. And for that I remain grateful.
When Charlie Gibson asked what he regretted. Bush was forthright and honest. Had it been me sitting in that chair, and had Charlie asked “in what are you disappointed?” I’da said the strength and resolve of America’s left. Bush would never have said that.
Never in my voting life have I witnessed such rapacious rabidity as that which has been displayed by the left over the last eight years. I’m finding my heart to be more bent towards libertarianism (rebellion) while my principles remain forged in conservatism. The conflict comes in defining harm. I know from whence it comes and after three years at the AJC blogs, I know to what and whom it is directed……all things decent.
So, are Gardner Groff Greenwald & Villanueva injury lawyers? I’ve read where “injury” lawyers are looking to benefit from larger settlements under PrezE Obama.
Well here’s hopin’ my daughter knows what she’s talking ‘bout when she says her reduced tuition fees were locked in through serving in an assistantship. She hasn’t failed me or herself yet. She and her benevolent professor/tutor communicate weekly.
I’ll go with Vernon. What can I say? He challenged the status quo in DeKalb County. I like that in a politician.
So what is it Jim? Obama doesn’t qualify to be recognized on President’s Day?
By Maniac is accurate
December 5, 2008 2:32 PM | Link to this
O.J. sentenced to 15 years. Boy George convicted to imprisoning a male hooker at his London flat. Bill O’Reilly giving up his radio gig.
There’s some karma schtick there somewhere, but I’m too tired on a Friday afternoon to flesh it out. Three man rush, whaddya got?
By cubalibre
December 5, 2008 2:34 PM | Link to this
Oh, please. Bush deserves credit for “keeping us safe” since 9/11? The same people who’re bleating on about this are no doubt the same ones who were hacking up hairballs at any suggestion that Clinton “kept us safe” after the 1st WTC bombings in 1993 (after all, we weren’t attacked again until after Dubya took office, right?). Typical GOP hypocrisy.
By AF
December 5, 2008 2:38 PM | Link to this
Disagree if you will on policy, but there can be no disputing that President Bush will be remembered, as he wishes to be, “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. … I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.”
Well, true. But he will be remembered as te worst president in US history. His “values” are to lie, cheat, and steal. Total loser. Disaster.
By Redneck Convert
December 5, 2008 2:44 PM | Link to this
Well, I’m good and mad now. Wooten says something good about the Best President in the Whole World and all the librul crazies start slinging nasty stuff about him.
And now I find this ron’s been brewing his own beer on the side and trying to put me out of business.
All of you can just kiss my You Know What.
By NtC06
December 5, 2008 2:53 PM | Link to this
Haul your a* over to Cuba libre!
Are we safer?
Be sure to check out the mid to late 2000s mutt.
By Peter
December 5, 2008 2:58 PM | Link to this
Yes Dusty No arguments about children with exception to the Republican treatment of children.
Cut after school programs…….. Cut funding to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Cut education spending……..
All this proves Bush really never cared about American Children…..
Just his Family and Friends Pockets !
Funny he is asking for a Auto Bailout today……..
Is he still giving Tax Credits if you buy a GAS GUZZLING SUV Now ?
Funny how his thinking went…..
American’s Please buy a vehicle that burns lots of GAS, we will even give you a tax break to do it……..
PLEASE help make MY FAMILY RICHER, our business is OIL !
Short term thinking …… all about ME FIRST !
By cubalibre
December 5, 2008 3:04 PM | Link to this
NtC06: You obviously can’t make an intelligent rebuttal, so you call me a mutt & tell me to “haul [myself] over to Cuba”? Way to go, genius. Revealing yourself to be a moronic tool in no way refutes the truth of what I’ve said.
By Tucks pads
December 5, 2008 3:05 PM | Link to this
Almost as satisfying as murderer O.J. Simpson finally going to prison is the comeuppance of his b@$tard barrister Yale Gallanter, the heartless jackhole who delighted in saying he had “kicked to the curb,” the long-suffering Goldman family whenever they were blocked from collecting on their wrongful death judgment. Glad to see a slimeball kicked in the cojones.
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 3:13 PM | Link to this
Cubalibre 2:34
You are trying to compare the bombings of the WTC with 9/11 to denigrate President Bush. There is little comparison other than both tragedies were done by terrorists. Here are a few things you seem to forget:
Six lives were lost in the WTC bombing.
Almost three thousand lives were lost 9/11.
You try to say that Clinton’s efforts were comparable to Bush’s response. Don’t you think that Bush had MORE to handle than Clinton?
Bush did and he handled it well enough to keep us from having more terrorist attacks on America. He also gave two coutnries their chance at freedom.
Your ‘belittling” sounds more like the usual lib hate-Bush efforts that started when Gore lost the election. The results were fair and square but you and others couldn’t take it. You’ve been whining and squirming ever since. Don’t you think it is time to “grow up”??
By Jim Sr.
December 5, 2008 3:19 PM | Link to this
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents. “Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job. Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.
By jill in clayton county
December 5, 2008 3:40 PM | Link to this
CuberLibido
Here are some of the terrorist high-lights during the Clinton Administration. You’ll note the fun didn’t end after the WTC bombing in 1993:
February 26 1993: World Trade Center bombing kills six and injures over 1000 people, by coalition of five groups: Jamaat Al-Fuqra’/Gamaat Islamiya/Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Ramzi Yousef
June 1993: Failed New York City landmark bomb plot
March 1 1994: Brooklyn Bridge Shooting, Rashid Baz kills a Hasidic seminary student and wounds four on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City in response to the ‘Cave of the Patriarchs’ massacre
March 8 1995 Terrorists in Karachi, armed with automatic rifles, murdered two American consulate employees and wounded a third as they traveled in the consulate shuttle bus
February 24 1997: Ali Abu Kamal opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from the United States, Argentina, Switzerland and France before turning the gun on himself
December 14 1999: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States-Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots
January 3 2000: USS The Sullivans was subject to failed attack by unknown terrorists
October 12 2000: USS Cole attacked by al-Quaeda operatives; 17 crew killed
Your Fidel-like assertion that former Democratic president Clinton kept Americans safe after the WTC attacks is somewhat, well, Fidel-like in its error. President Bush did a commendable job preventing further attacks on the nation after 9/11.
I believe that’d be “hypocrisy” checkmate.
By cubalibre
December 5, 2008 3:40 PM | Link to this
Dusty, you (as usual) miss the point. The ‘93 bombing was a terrorist attack, albeit on a much smaller scale than 9/11. The analogy I’m making remains the same, regardless: we were attacked on Clinton’s watch, and we didn’t get attacked again until after he left. But the Repubs back then scoffed at the idea that he had anything to do with that “safety record”. Now, however, they’re trying to say that W is responsible for preventing any further attacks since 9/11. The analogy remains the same— the scale doesn’t change it one bit. W had no more to do with “keeping us safe” after 9/11 than Clinton did after 2/93. THAT was my point— and for your information, I’ve cast three votes in the past 22 years for Republican presidents, so your blanket assumption that I’m one of those supposedly still stewing over the 2000 election decision is patently ridiculous. My distaste for Bush II and his nest of lying, pillaging warmongers has nothing to do with Election 2000, and everything to do with the way they have utterly and completely devastated our economy with their policies favoring corporate fatcats & the uber-rich, wiped their collective behinds with the Constitution, and turned the worldwide goodwill we had after 9/11 into near-universal loathing. I don’t imagine that anything I’m saying to you will change your idealogy or your opinions, and that’s not my goal. You just need to know that you are in a very, very minute minority when it comes to Bush II’s “legacy” (other than on this board, obviously). Deal with it!
By Peter
December 5, 2008 3:41 PM | Link to this
Hey it is Official……………
Bush says we are in a Recession……..Funny it started last year according to other sources……..
Lemmings here would not admit that during the election…….but if course they had their SPECIAL “Faulty Intelligence”.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 3:49 PM | Link to this
@@,
You refer to your daughter’s “reduced tuition fees.”. Yet surely you know that tuition is the cost of your own instruction whreas fees pay for non-essentials. Dusty hates it when we warn of the sins of our native State, but, come on, the Golden State balanced its books for decades in the hope of confusing taxpayer/voters as to which is which. That multibillion-dollar exercise in conflation has become crucial to California’s tenuous hold on solvency.
And, all of it, a professional prevaricator’s Feat of Nomenclature. It’s a disgrace.
By Algonquin J. Calhoun
December 5, 2008 3:53 PM | Link to this
but there can be no disputing that President Bush will be remembered, as he wishes to be, “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. … I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.” A decade from now, maybe sooner, the man’s worth as a leader will be measured alongside Harry Truman as a wartime president. A modern politician who can ignore polls to do what’s right for the country is a jewel.
You must be high! Bush will be remembered as a bum that purloined his high office, attacked and occupied a nation just because he wanted to, committed numerous war crimes, killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, trampled the Constitution, spied upon Americans and drove the economy into bankruptcy. it is my fervent hope he will be charged, tried and executed!
By cubalibre
December 5, 2008 4:21 PM | Link to this
Jill/Clayton County— what a silly post! My “Fidel-like assertion”— are you serious? You obviously don’t realize that all of the examples you give either were isolated incidents that weren’t characterized as consolidated “terrorist attacks”, were attempts that DID NOT SUCCEED, or didn’t actually take place on American soil. If you’re going to include “attempts” or out-of-country attacks in your examples, then by your own reasoning, the argument for Bush “keeping us safe” fails— on a grand scale. Just a few examples:
Attempts or suspected attempts since 9/11: Richard Reid, December 2001 (the Shoe Bomber); Jose Padilla, May 2002 (the “American Taliban” dirty-bomb plotter); Lackawanna Six, September 2002 (conspiring with terrorist groups); Iyman Faris, May 2003 (planned to torch the Brooklyn Bridge); Virginia “Jihad” Network, June 2003 (violated the Neutrality Act for conspiring to attack other countries with which the US is “at peace”); Dhiren Barot, August 2004 (plotting to attack the NYSE with dirty bombs); James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj, August 2004 (plotting to bomb a subway station in NYC); Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi, Zand Wassim Mazloum, February 2006 (conspiring to build bombs to be used in Iraq); Assem Hammoud, July 2006 (conspiring to bomb NYC train tunnels)
Out-of-country attacks since 9/11: Well, let’s see— two huge examples— the 4,000+ Americans dead in the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq (W’s hasn’t been doing too great at keeping our folks over there safe— after all, this is the administration that took three years to see that our armed service personnel carriers were FULLY ARMOURED). Oh, and most of these occurred AFTER W’s “Mission Accomplished” carrier landing.
Again, by your own barometer of what “keeping us safe” entails, W fails— miserably. But keep on with your head-in-the-sand, ad hominen attacks. You still can’t make your case, and W will still go down as one of the worst US Presidents in history.
By Bub
December 5, 2008 4:27 PM | Link to this
I wish you hoity-toity pointy heads would quit using the term ad hominem.
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 4:33 PM | Link to this
Cubalibre,3:40
Sooo the next time a local tornado tears down somebody’s barn we are to say the taking care of that is the same as taking care of Katrina. Your analogies are not equal in complexity.
Your form of Bush-hate may not be liberal but it is just as venomous. Your view may be with the “crowd” at present but my view is what I believe and a “crowd” has nothing to do with it. Perhaps if you could break from the herd you might see a little more clearly. Right now, you sound like a simple anti-war protestor and white flagger who will not be happy with anyone who “protects and prevents” for this country.
Keep talking, bub. I’m sure you had rather do that than stand up and fight for anything. Bush stood for us and you hate it. YOU deal with it, Mr. Timidity.
By Bub
December 5, 2008 4:46 PM | Link to this
Huh? I was sort of standing up for you. But, whatever, rip me a new one, too.
By jill in clayton county
December 5, 2008 4:47 PM | Link to this
tuberlibre
You asserted that the Clinton administration kept the country free from subsequent terror attack after the WTC bombing. I identified at least three successful terror attacks on Americans after the initial WTC attack. Those three terror attacks included the seventeen dead on the USS Cole in 2000. You are, however, correct that three other terror attempts during the Clinton presidency were unsuccessful (failed to kill an American).
US soldiers killed in a combat zone cannot be deemed “killed by terrorists.” An appeal to emotion, no doubt, but no banana. There were no other terrorist fatalities to Americans, that I’m aware, subsequent to 9/11. I therefor concluded that the Bush administration did a commendable job preventing further terrorist attacks on Americans after 9/11.
Checkmate.
By cubalibre
December 5, 2008 4:51 PM | Link to this
Bub: Sorry! Not trying to be “hoity-toity”— just trying to stay polite!
Dusty— did you go back and actually read what you posted? I certainly don’t hate Bush the man (hating anyone just conjures up too much negative energy, and I don’t want to waste my time that way); I do, however, hate what his and his cronies’ policies have done to this country. You and the other W apologists seem incapable of distinguishing between philosophical dissent and hatred— why is that? And why do you assume that I a) am a man, and b) have never fought for anything? You’re wrong on both counts. What’s more, you (and most of your idealogical consorts) apparently lack the ability to disagree without resorting to nastiness. That simply detracts from any point you’re trying to make, and makes it easy to just dismiss you outright. I realize it’s an exercise in futility to try to get my point across with you in a civil way, but I’ve at least tried. So, have a good rest of the day, hear?
By Cubalibre
December 5, 2008 4:56 PM | Link to this
Jill— 1) go back and read for comprehension, Sweetie, and maybe, just maybe, you might understand what I was actually saying; and 2) what are you, in the eighth grade? Is this really how you go about trying to make your points? Since you can’t debate like a big girl, you get to be persona non grata. (Google it, toots. It’s Latin.)
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 5:03 PM | Link to this
A.J. Calhoun……
another nut about to crack!!
Although the Presidental election is over, I would say you are quoting directly from the “Poison Bush and all Republicans” handbook for libs and war protestors. Or maybe it is Osama’s manual.
I am not “confused” like you who declare about Bush that it is your fervent hope that he be charged, tried and executed. (I told you A.J. was “cracked”.)
No, I would be satisfied if YOU were tarred and feathered and driven out of town on a rail. No hate, of course. Just joking!!A happy thought drifting by in the manner of liberals who present “happy thoughts” here every day.
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 5:09 PM | Link to this
Bub@4:46
Sorry, Bub, I flubbed the dub. I was talking to bub the cuba dub and didn’t mean to club you. Did I get that right, Bub??
By CommunistAJC
December 5, 2008 5:19 PM | Link to this
Dusty, Don’t waste your time on these troglodytes. Facts are facts and we are safer because of Bush. Why do you think guns sales are through the roof since Obama Husein and the dems took over? Hmmmm.
By Ragnar Damnitscold
December 5, 2008 5:20 PM | Link to this
Have a great weekend and try to stay warm all.
By Dusty
December 5, 2008 5:34 PM | Link to this
Yes, cubalibre,4:51
I did read your manifesto. Yes, it is slightly hard to tell hate from dissent when you post words like Bush and his lying, pillaging warmongers and then accusing Bush with favoring corporate fat cats and uber rich…wipe their collective behinds with the Constitution..etc. etc. Just sweet little love notes you posted without a bit of nastiness.
I don’t care if you are an android who fought your way here from Mars. You can’t hide your hate under dissent. And, since you let us know by your ID that you identify with Cuba and freedom, may I ask why you left since you don’t seem happy here? Hardly ever see a pile of “dissent” as big as yours and I wouldn’t call it happiness.
By Glenn
December 5, 2008 5:48 PM | Link to this
Cuba libre!
By Keeping It Real
December 5, 2008 5:48 PM | Link to this
Mr. Bush sent 4000 plus people to die in a stupid war that was to bring demoracy to a country that did not want it. He made the Katrina victims seem like third world citizens to the world thus demonstrating that America is not all it proclaims to be. How can anyone with a sound mind see him as being anything but a despot? Other than thse examples of idiocy, Mr. Bush was not that bad.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
December 5, 2008 5:49 PM | Link to this
I wish I had written HIDT’s 5:20 note. And I do believe Jill handed cubalibre his yarbles @ 3:40. Jill is a force to be reckoned with. A most impressive first two days.
By Algonquin J. Calhoun
December 5, 2008 5:51 PM | Link to this
Krusty, you insipid klown, it is you and the other fascist nincompoops who should be driven from the confines of this ove-hyped cowtown. Get a clue! The Republinazis are no longer in control of this government and they’ve left it in ruins. You and other intellectually deficient porcupines put the looters into power. They are now out of power. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, and others, are guilty of criminal offenses and I hope they are punished for them. Lump it clod!
By Tucker
December 6, 2008 8:29 AM | Link to this
The University System fee increase was for one semester only so “per semester” should be replaced by “for spring semester” in your statement and your “get rid of fees” is a moot point. After the spring semester this supplemental revenue stream will shift to regular tuition for students entering the University System and fixed-for-four program for the first time. As a conservative, I agree with your opinions almost all the time, but I also expect accuracy in your statements of fact.
By Three Man Rush
December 6, 2008 9:02 AM | Link to this
Tucker is a conservative? That’s like a homo-sapien claiming to be bi-pedal and possessing opposing thumbs up their wazoo, isn’t it?
A primate, such as Tucker, has the right to sound out, especially if they see a dove about to drop one on their favorite statue of Reagan.
But you would think that an obviously secondary school over-achiever would incite more support by wearing the colors. It’s like when all those rebels yelled “I’m Spartacus”. It became meaningless.
And Wooten’s blogging is not so much an opinion to align with, than it is a vibrational tone-poem of vacant hollow pipes chiming in the winds of the Change. Those winds are calling the tune.
The Change. The Change. Light travels in quanta, that is, in bundles. So light pulses. Light throbs. And each pulse brings new data with it. That’s like political seasons. They dont transition gradually. They immerse ideology with new reason, suddenly, like a flood drowns a city.
When you read Wooten, imagine a person still sitting in front of November’s Electoral College Map, rocking back and forth almost imperceptibly, murmuring indecipheral half words while barely moving his lips, and making half hearted attempts at sharing his comprehension of that very map.
It fits like a glove. It shows you the very soul of a journalist coming to terms with an undreamed of destiny.
By Scott
December 6, 2008 9:44 AM | Link to this
With each column he writes, the more I realize just how stupid Jim is. It’s sad that the AJC is unable to find a conservative columnist who is intelligent and who is capable of writing columns that are not over-emotional babble and that are not so full of political partisanship that it does nothing but encourage people to have negative feelings towards their fellow man who just happens to have different opinions of the country and the world. So often with Jim his opinions are couched in language that implies you either agree with him or you are a second-class citizen. I also frequently detect sexism, racism, gender orientation hatred, etc. and total disdain for whatever other category to which a person may belong of which he disapproves (which is pretty much any category that he does not belong to). Worst of all his columns seem to be filled with an underlying un-Christian-like tone that attempts to incite distrust and even hatred towards anyone who does not see things the way he does. Jesus taught love, peace and understanding. Jim preaches distrust, selfishness and intolerance. His opinions are much better suited to a fanatical right-wing publication. I implore the AJC to hire someone who can intelligently and lucidly express their conservative views without trying to incite hatred against those who choose to see things differently. This country will go nowhere if people of all sides of the political, socio-economic, sexual, racial, etc. specrum are unable to work together, and the Jim Wooten’s of the world, who are so insecure of themselves that they fear the opinions of others, only serve to obstruct cooperation and understanding. Right now we need everyone to recognize the need to compromise and realize the very deep need to come together to solve the problems of the country and the world so that the true evil can be beaten back and we can all prosper. Jim is nothing but a sad embarrassment to the AJC and to himself and a man who thinks of nothing but himself. He is mired in his own uncompromising views. What a truly unpleasant and unhappy man he seems to be. I pray for him and his soul - may he learn love, understanding, respect, charity, humility and faith in his fellow man. No matter how large the majority whose opinions are opposed to his, he always believes that he is right and everyone else is wrong. For those who become incited by his often inflammitory words, please step back and think whether following his gospel of hatred is really doing you or your country any good. And think too what Jesus might say and do if he were in your shoes. [I reference Christianity only because it seems to be part of the shield that Jim hides behind as if we are to forgive his inciteful and negative words simply because he calls himself a Christian!]
By Poodles-R-Dogs-Too
December 6, 2008 10:02 AM | Link to this
Lets see Ga NeoClown Repukes in Congrees save Lockheed and other defense contractors…We plan to zero them out in next year’s budget….no more c130s, f22s, or any of the other overpriced junk those theives have been forcing the taxpayer to buy, imho…..die lockheed, die…Close Warner Robins too….
By ron
December 6, 2008 10:35 AM | Link to this
Dear Scott @ 9:44——That’s quite a rant in the name of love and peace.Glad you’re not on my side.
By Tom
December 6, 2008 11:30 AM | Link to this
It amazes me that a man came to office with “values” and is leaving with those same “values”. Let’s see stealing, lying, distorting the truth and facts, stuffing your own and friends pockets, pre-emptive war for whatever reason, no regard for rule of Law or the Constitution, no regard for human life, etc. Yep, this is a great man and a leader for all time. Idiotic, but a lot of you are just like Clark, and will buy this B.S. of supporting a man with no conscience or morality, and the only principles he has are none at all.
By Dusty
December 6, 2008 11:47 AM | Link to this
Dear three Man Rush,9:02
I see you are on a roll ths morning, a donut hole of mild circumferance, a whiff of suspicious smoke on the horizons of Saturday stuffing.
Whither goest thou in the wild blue yonder? Has the stimulus of the coffee cup (I hope that’s it)lifted you to the ethereal events of multitudinous machinations of the mind? So be it perhaps.
I venture to say that the “Tucker” here is not our one and only editor of liberal latitudes. But the mere moments of a restless reader. Well, of course…..
And our “Scott” here today is a mere moment of melancholy musings by a constant complainer and never a complimenter. As Ron spoke succinctly to Scott *Glad you’re not on my side”.
So, on this slow Saturday I say “adieu” to you. Great things to accomplish, ribbons to hang, greens to gaggle, presents to prepare, lunch to eat and other timeless things such as putting clothes in the washer. See…I’m getting the Christmas spirit even as the chilly winds blow and the clouds hang low.
So let us celebrate this Saturday. It’s almost Christmas and we are Americans!! (Don’t you love my patriotic pointillism? I could paint a perfect picture with it.)
By clemency
December 6, 2008 11:57 AM | Link to this
Ah yes, the elected man of the people. Let me guess please…this flaunting and blinging is okay because it’s Bush’s economy. A Democrat run congress for two years means nothing. Got it.
President-elect Barack Obama, returning to his home state of Hawaii for the holidays, plans a beachside vacation at one of Oahu’s most exclusive properties, according to an islander involved in the planning.
Arrangements are being finalized for the Obamas and the families of two or three friends to stay at a Kailua beachfront location with three modern, multi-million-dollar homes. Each wraps around a lagoon-style swimming pool, with palm trees, grassy lawns and retractable glass walls for postcard views of the white sand and windsurfers.
Hypocritically pathetic.
By clemency
December 6, 2008 12:10 PM | Link to this
Here comes the Obama New Deal:
BROADBAND: “As we renew our schools and highways, we’ll also renew our information superhighway. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m president – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.”
—SCHOOLS: “[M]y economic recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen. We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.”
Doesn’t that sound so sweet and touch you all over with feel goodness? Here’s a thought: why not address why schools are doing away with FAILING STUDENTS WHO DO NOT MAKE THE GRADES???
Oh, but we can’t hurt their poor little self esteem now, can we? Any comment about American competitiveness in the 21st Century while feel good liberal ideology like social promotion is going on in schools is an absolute mockery of where we have come from; and worth no more than a turd in a paper bag on a doorstep on fire—after the bell was rung.
Anyone remember F’s in schools?
For more students nationwide, the grading alphabet ends at “D,” as school districts eliminate policies that allow children to be given failing marks. School districts are changing the way they grade kids. At public schools in Grand Rapids, Mich., high school students will no longer receive “F”s but instead will earn the letter “H” when their work falls woefully short.
The idiocy of the liberal left has no limits of absurdity so long as everyone feels good about themselves.
By catlady
December 6, 2008 12:25 PM | Link to this
• Disagree if you will on policy, but there can be no disputing that President Bush will be remembered, as he wishes to be, “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. … I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.” A decade from now, maybe sooner, the man’s worth as a leader will be measured alongside Harry Truman as a wartime president. A modern politician who can ignore polls to do what’s right for the country is a jewel.
I agree that Bush has not changed his values. They are not, however, values that anyone should boast of. This has to be one of the biggest head-in-the-sand paragraphs I have ever seen in my life. And I am pretty old. I suspect his soul was sold long before he became president.
Bush did not ignore the polls. He just went his own misinformed, lying, bullheaded way no matter what information was brought to his attention.
When the history books are written, I am unsure whether his chapter will be of total infamy, or if it will be a comedic chapter. Either way, the United States of American and its citizens have been the victims of the worst presidency ever. Our lives, our livelihoods, our rights, our environment, our safety, our integrity, our standing among other nations have all gone down the toilet under this sorry excuse for a “leader.” As we all say, “Good job, Brownie.” NEVER AGAIN.
By Tom
December 6, 2008 12:26 PM | Link to this
Everyone have a Happy Holiday. I’ve asked this question before, other than being pro-life on birth, but not on civilian deaths like Iraq where somewhere between 150,00 to 1,000,ooo have been killed, what are the Conservative Values today? Would really like one of you conservatives to explain what you mean when you say “conservative values”. Thanks
By dilligaff
December 6, 2008 1:17 PM | Link to this
Tom.. google ‘Thomas Sowell’ and read. His views pretty much represent what I and my conservative friends consider ‘conservative values’..
By OMG
December 6, 2008 1:44 PM | Link to this
Now see, I thought Bush’s values were selling our nation to the highest bidders in the military industrial complex: he didn’t have to sell his soul. And who says he has a soul to begin with? hmmm
By Glenn
December 6, 2008 2:04 PM | Link to this
clemency,
No more bad grades; instead, low test scores. Remember?
Plenty of blame to go around, as long as it redounds to parents, so the money keeps flowing. You know — like that sort of thing… NEA, competitiveness, standards&accountability, reelection time, etc.
Surely you recall…
By Poodles-R-Dogs-Too
December 6, 2008 2:32 PM | Link to this
Outsourcing is outa control. The suicide hotline has outsourced its call center to Pakistan….The first question the Pakistani hot line askes a suicidal caller is “can you drive a truck?”
By Poodles-R-Dogs-Too
December 6, 2008 2:36 PM | Link to this
Poorly performing students is the fault of the TEACHERS, period. The school super duper in DC is firing stupid, lazy teachers right and left, and performance is improving. You know there is a problem when the first grade teacher tells the parent that their little six year old should have learned the a,b,c’s in preschool…hey teach, isn’t it your job to teach them the abc’s, reading, and writting? Fire all the lazy teachers, and git the pe teachers and coaches too….
By Poodles-R-Dogs-Too
December 6, 2008 2:39 PM | Link to this
15TH in BROADBAND!!!! BUT WE ARE THE WORLDS BIGGEST CONSUMERS OF ONLINE PORN…WE MUST CLOSE THE BROADBAN GAP….SPARE NO EXPENSE…
By Glenn
December 6, 2008 3:19 PM | Link to this
Poodles-R-Not-Dogs-but-Dogs-R-Poodles,
The hellion in DC reminds me of the two — not one, but two — times I heard my old boss Al Shanker say, the second time in august company, that the thing to do is to fire two-thirds and double the salaries of the remaining third. The chief in the District is firing a third. Good start, but it upsets Shanker’s math. I wonder whether she’s being stringent enough. Seriously. I mean, this is darkly comic, sure, but…seriously.
Also, I’m not the hardarse I used to be about these things, and for many months now I’ve been wondering whether and how it (radical improvement) might be done whilst raising all boats, whilst lifting all parties — pupils, siblings, school-leavers, parents, teachers, administrators, rank bureaucrats, neighboring shopkeepers, community figures — toward a more informed station in their respective lives. Does that sound Aquarian?
By @@
December 6, 2008 3:26 PM | Link to this
Glenn from yesterday:
Fees? Tuition? Alls I know is she says it’s under control. And like I said, she hasn’t failed me yet. She’s rather protective of her aspirations in higher education. I know when I’m not needed.
The system is so much more complex than when I was enrolled.
BTW, I can’t help but laugh when I read the word “nomenclature.”
It kinda sounds like an intestinal seizing up that gnomes may experience. An STD in gnomes land.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but sometimes it needs to wander.
By Glenn
December 6, 2008 3:46 PM | Link to this
Yeah, @@,
I didn’t mean to pry, as to your daughter’s tuition issues. I never mean to pry, really — in spite of my frequent teasing.
What I meant was, is, that once they get to call tuition “fees”, they’ve got us, for good. And there’s no going back. California, I’m afraid, taught that trick of educational finance to much of the rest of the country, and Jim shows that the lie is coming to roost here in Georgia.
My use of the word in question had to do with a legal expression, “feat of nomenclature”, which expression is itself a feat insofar as it means a legal prevarication, a circuitous misrepresentation, a lie. St. Augustine referred to his teaching post, in Rhetoric (the precursor of jurisprudence), as his “Chair of Lies”. But then the man buried his books whilst the Vandals encircled to capture and kill him. Loser.
As for my own attitude toward the term “nomenclature”, I think it’s a really, really good idea for a word to describe the doings of e.g. surgeons and aeronautical engineers, but a really, really stupid word to describe the idiotic ways in which adults define and describe child-rearing. Educationese is, as the late Richard Mitchell showed for fun&profit, the ultimate Jar-GONE!
By Glenn
December 6, 2008 3:56 PM | Link to this
@@,
At breakneck speed California, following the election in 1966 of a Governor, Ronald Reagan, who would clean up the campuses, de-funded its all-but tuition-free universities, making the unwashed students pay through the nose in “fees”. Today, California faces an $11.2 Billion shortfall mostly generated by sops to the CTA (NEA) and by the Republican governor’s inability to reign in the spending of (term-limited) amateur legislators gunning for higher office through showy spending.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Germany boasted, among its youth, the most highly educated generation a nation’s ever seen. Adolf Hitler had promised free — as in, cost-free — higher education to every qualified Aryan, and the b******* delivered. Moreover, Germany’s were at that time the finest universities in the world.
Bad news for Britain in 1939.
By Three Man Rush
December 6, 2008 3:57 PM | Link to this
What is the mission of US troops in Iraq?
Anyone but Glenn may answer. I cant understand a word that man sez.
By Glenn
December 6, 2008 4:01 PM | Link to this
TO SAVE THE CHICKENS, YOU SONOFABUZZARD!
By Forgotten Messiah.
December 6, 2008 4:23 PM | Link to this
The Lords of the Fly.
A man who was taking part in a terror attack on a hotel found himself needing a bathroom. He found a door marked “mens” and went inside. The one stall was already occupied by another terrorist, yet he knocked on it anyway.
“I’m sorry, this stall is taken” came the polite half sung reply. “It’s okay, I’ll wait”.
Moments passed. Outside, the sounds of a massacre encroached over the vent fans and courtesy flushes. The terrorist, becoming impatient, knocked again, “Hey, can you hurry up? There’s a jihad, hello.”
“I’m almost done. You want the sports page while you wait?”
“The sports page? Are you in there reading? Come on. Lets go.” Not once did the terrorist wield his weapon. It just hung there from the straps around his neck and shoulders..
“Almost done”. The terrorist began to look around the room and noticed a vending machine selling Spanish Flies. He studied the marketing pitch about fail-safe sex and observed the cartoon figure of a woman in heat. Isolated and deprived his entire life, (born and bred for the jihad), he had never imagined such a product was available, and soon decided to buy one of the pills. He knocked on the stall again. “Hey, do you have a quarter?”
“A quarter? What for? I’m almost done. Just wait.” The terrorist returned to the vending machine and indulged his imagination with the fantasy of Robosex for the first time.
More time passed and suddenly a woman entered, obviously trying to escape the carnage just outside the restroom doors. She stood face to face with the terrorist. “Do you have a quarter?” The woman took the situation in. She saw the vending machine and knew exactly what it was. She read the face of the terrorist perfectly and realized she could buy some time. She raised her purse and pretended to rifled through it for change. She noticed the AK47 on the floor inside the stall, and the extra pair of boots.
The woman gave the terrorist a quarter, and he quickly turned to plunk it into the machine. Nothing happened. “You have to pull the knob…the knob…here, I’ll show you….” the woman stepped forward and her perfume, Poison, bequiled the terrorist further and as he imagined the immediate future that he was buying for only a quarter, he felt himself becoming fly. Superfly. The pill appeared in a shiny metallic-green package about the size of a condom envelope. The man retrieved it and handed it over to the woman.
“I’ll need some water”. The woman cupped her hand under the sink, popped the pill in her mouth, and slapped the water to her face. She gulped, exaggeratedly. For a moment the two stood there, the man wide eyed and expectant, his Id doing a countdown, the woman, eyeing the cartoon of an affected woman, rehearsed her foreplay, and was soon on the floor, writhing around moaning, and grabbing at her crotch.
The other terrorist opened the stall door and saw the woman. He raised his rifle to fire, but his comrade stopped him and showed him the vending machine, the empty package, and the opportunity. Soon, the two were unbuttoning, disarming, and unstrapping.
Realizing that her chance had arrived, the woman got into the intern/president position and the jihad was going to have to wait, for even the isolated suicide radicals had heard of the Lewinski. The two stood there, at attention, waiting for the love-in. The woman grabbed her purse, took out the mace, and sprayed the two one-eyed mice.
The jihad had never trained these two for that kind of pain or torture. They immediately fell and writhed around on the floor moaning and grabbing their crotch.
The woman got up, grabbed an AK47, and pulled the trigger. She undressed, but then put on the terrorist’s bloody garb and hid her face beneath the ski mask. Cradling the rifle, she made her way outside and surrendered to police. After 60 hours of waterboarding she was released.
Soon after, she was sitting in front of Katie Courek on CBS News. “Did you have sex with the terrorist? Did you really swallow that pill? What is a Spanish Fly? Are you sure you’re not editing the truth about how you escaped?”
The woman read Katie’s face perfectly. It would sell better if she HAD done the act. Maybe even a booking on the View, or David Letterman. (camera to David Letterman, at the Oscars, if the USA had surrendered on 911: “Allah, Mullah….Mullah, Allah…..Allah, Mullah….Mullah, Allah…..heh heh ewww…” camera to Osama Bin Laden, in the audience, pointing at Letterman, “Keel him!”)
“Yes, I had sex, if oral sex is considered sex, is it?”
Katie jumped out of her seat. “Yes, of course, and so it was like a MMF porn video, then, right? Like a movie! I always thought 911 was like a movie, you know, I watched the big explosions and the buildings collapsing and I kept saying, “This is like a movie”, didn’t you think so? Didn’t you think 911 was like a movie? A movie spectacular!! Well, was your ordeal like that? Was it like, like, like, a porn movie?”
The woman said that it was, and Katie waved off a commercial break as she led the woman through her invented narrative about the sodomy, just as if it were indeed a porn movie.
The woman became a national sex goddess and Paris Hilton’s new BFF. Brangelina split up and the popparazzi had a field day as Brad escorted the woman everywhere.
By Glenn
December 6, 2008 4:38 PM | Link to this
The extra pair of boots?
By Forgotten Messiah.
December 6, 2008 5:08 PM | Link to this
A woman discovered that her hubby was cheating. She put exlax inside a timed release capsule and offered it as a vitamin pill at breakfast on the very day he was to present his big idea to the board. As he approached the board room, the exlax went off, and he couldn’t suppress the leak. He could have excused himself and cleaned up, and risked the consequences of the delay, but he was so close to the career-making show-and-tell, that he decided to go with it.
He spoke well, confidently, and got through to the halfway point of his 14-minute presentation, when he leaked again. His wool suit was up to the challenge, and his BVDs were the perfect choice that day, my friends.
So far.
As he neared the conclusion of his pitch he leaked for the third and final time.
The board members rapidly adjourned, his career in shambles. He just stood there, his Trump tie the only survivor.
His wife divorced him, taking everything, and he managed to eke out a living selling really neat can openers on street corners wearing what was left of his wardrobe, which was considerable.
His wife was a very merry widow indeed.
By Glenn
December 6, 2008 5:56 PM | Link to this
How much on eBay for the surviving necktie?
Last August I bid for the Sasquatch suit used in the bicoastal con, but I was outbid by a little less than $125,000.
Figure this time I might get lucky.
By @@
December 6, 2008 7:59 PM | Link to this
Jim, are you open all night now?
Twenty-four/Seven……365?
If not, could you turn out the light. I can’t sleep with it on.
By ron
December 7, 2008 8:19 AM | Link to this
Good morning Jim,Fine morning to be on the right side of the sod.
15 billion to the auto industry.For now.More to come later.
Toyota is cutting production.Inventory reduction the stated purpose.Maybe a little bailout money to boot please.Why not?An arrow making company in Oregon got help.It’s important to keep producing arrows.Something to do with diversity,I’m sure.
Georgia is 41st in status of healthy states to live in.Keep that in mind.Child poverty,infant mortality and smoking are all big numbers.Get them born,then forget them is the motto.
The states find themselves in the unique position of having to make sure tobacco companies succeed because they’ve borrowed so much money from future tobacco settlement payments that if tobacco companies were to fail the state budgets would collapse.
Tobacco wants a couple of billion dollars back.Seems there’s a clause in the settlements where states are responsible of funding any share loss in the market share caused by people quitting smoking.I know that can’t be right but I read that.
By Ronco
December 7, 2008 8:30 AM | Link to this
Ronco’s portable, fun oven which can cook entire turkeys, no matter how big, on a spit is marketed with the slogan, “Set it, and forget it”.
Conservatism is pro-bun in the oven, no matter how big a turkey the hen doing the basting is, and is marketed with the slogan, “Beget ‘em and forget ‘em”.
I have finally proved the vast right wing (and neck) conspiracy.
Pass the stovetop stuffing, please.
By Rascal
December 7, 2008 8:37 AM | Link to this
Obama wants to put $500 billion of our hard earned dollars to work “for us”. Government spending money that government does not have is the problem in our economy. People spending money they did not have added to the problem. We have had a phony economy for the last 30 years as government spending and personal spending have skyrocketed, creating a backlog of economic reality. It is time to pay the price and unfortunately, that means lost jobs and suffering for the next few years. Unfortunately, Obama and our governing class feel like they have solutions, to the problems they caused. The solution is more of the same stuff that got us here. The only meaningful government spending that might actually help is to use any money spent to make nuclear power plants happen in every state or region. Force oil companies to drill offshore/onshore/wilderness areas/national forests etc. Put real money into building power generating systems so we can truly have access to inexpensive power. This will create more jobs in areas that will actually generate true public long term good for the US. All the crap about kids access to internet, improving the light bulbs in government buildings etc, is pure BS and serves no one but a green movement that cares little about the poor and jobless in this country. While putting new lighting in government buildings will improve the brightness or the lights, it will do nothing to improve the brightness of the people working in those buildings.
By The Bank of Ron
December 7, 2008 8:53 AM | Link to this
Excellent brief, Rascal. By bailing out failed business models, we could be ensuring the Son of the Great Depression.
The logic goes like this: Since we cant escape the Son of the Great Depression anyway, then lets take the 10-1 gamble that some unexpected resource will save us in the year or two delay that we can buy with bailouts.
the only thing that can save capitalism now is war.
A really big war. World War. We need enemies. not just little cells of suicide squads shooting up random hotels, that’s no good. We need armies of enemies, tank blitzkriegs, air forces of modern jets trying to nuke us….
….WE NEED KRUSCHEV!!!
Kruschev was the best thing our economy ever had, man. He was fat. He was mean. He always said the wrong thing, (To Jackie: “We will bury U2!”
Kruschev was the best weapon our military industrial complex ever had. He was so good, Hollywood modeled James Bond villians after him.
Kruschev: we hardly knew ye!
By ron
December 7, 2008 9:52 AM | Link to this
I was minus two when the raid at Pearl Harbor took place so I don’t remember much about it.Today isn’t a day to plan future wars but to reflect on a past ones.That one was my father’s war,mine was Vietnam.We skipped Korea.My son took part in Panama.One of my grandsons probably will be in Afghanistan.
To all the veterans of Pearl,I salute you.
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 10:12 AM | Link to this
@@,
I’m trying really really hard not to play with your line about leaving the light on…
All&Any,
It surprises me how hard this December 7 hits, this year. Random feelings, but amounting to what, I can’t say.
For some years now we’ve been feeling the loss of the passing of those who fought for the U.S. in the Pacific Theatre. That’s not new, though. So it’s not that.
And it was POTUS 41, George Herbert Walker Bush, who so gracious met the Japanese dignitaries at Pearl Harbor during his incumbency to lay a wreath upon the Arizona and publicly bury the hatchet. (That man’s astounding wartime heroism is, in keeping with his father’s reticence, very little known, by the way.) So that this day hits hard can’t be due, either, to old wounds still open.
But maybe so. I’m a history teacher (yes, the worst of all educative life forms), and as such it bugs me no end that the Japanese People have yet to own up to their almost inconceivable brutality, nor even to hint at it honestly to their schoolchildren. Until they do so, then the War, in my heart, continues.
This morning my stepfather drove down from Buford and returned a birthday gift of a few days ago, a book entitled “Halsey’s Typhoon”. My stepfather wants me to read it for myself, and then to donate it to the library at Marines Memorial, in San Francisco. Quite uncharacteristically, he said: “If you can read this book without crying, then God help you.” He added that the Sailors and Marines defeated in the book’s twin battle with Nature and Nippon turned up in his hospital in Hawaii. “I treated those boys,” he said.
As he was arriving in the icy driveway I was folding up the nylon Stars and Stripes that normally flies housefront. In its place I’d hung an old linen 48-star, in honor of my stepfather and his “boys”.
By Change
December 7, 2008 10:21 AM | Link to this
We all fought Vietnam. Every American sacrificed and left a part of themselves in Nam. But wowee! did our economy sing!!
Capitalism doesn’t work without war, pirates, and Paris Hilton Pearl Necklaces.
What kind of America will emerge after the economic coup d’etas we are living through? A more just america. A more democratic america. an america where a W is not possible.
Remember there is no W in America There’s no W in Freedom. There’s no W in Washington DC…..D’OH!
I hereby present a motion to remove the W from Washington DC. (and the E from Potatoe). All in favor say Bite me! “BITE ME”. All oppposed fondle yourselves. (camera to the repudlickans being themselves)…..
The motion passes, Our capital is now called, Assington DC.
Gosh, I feel good, paw. I’ve made change. Change is good, aint it paw?
By Bill Shipp
December 7, 2008 10:31 AM | Link to this
Georgia reporters, pundits, bloggers and political junkies are all trying to assess the meaning of the result of Tuesday’s U.S. Senate runoff, which Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss won by an unexpectedly large margin. Chambliss, who fell just short of 50 percent on Nov. 4, bested Democrat Jim Martin by 14 points.
A look back at the four-week runoff campaign shows that it mattered less what Chambliss did than what Martin did to himself. Leading up to Nov. 4, Martin ran an effective advertising campaign that repeatedly reminded Georgians of the troubles brought on by what he called “Saxby Economics,” and also reminded them that he opposed the $700 billion Bush administration bailout of Wall Street, which Chambliss supported.
Strangely, once the runoff started, Martin seemed to forget everything that got him there. Instead of sticking with his effective economic message and contrasting his opposition to the bailout with Chambliss’ support, he and the Washington crew who took over his campaign decided that tying Martin closely to President-elect Barack Obama was the way to go.
While they seemed to argue that Martin would help Obama on economic matters and Chambliss would obstruct him, all that voters figured out was that Martin was touting his desire to be a rubber stamp for Obama (who, by the way, lost Georgia this year, a fact the Martin operation ignored).
While it is understandable that national operatives who made a drive-through runoff appearance in the Peach State would fail to understand the campaign’s circumstance, Martin has been in Georgia politics long enough to know that since Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, no Democrat has won a statewide race by lashing himself to his national party. Georgia is changing, and likely now moving in the Democrats’ direction, but it still is a conservative place that has shown no interest in electing U.S. senators who promise to do national Democrats’ bidding.
It was clear from the two candidates’ competing ads that one of the campaigns had made a serious strategic error. On television you would see an ad from Chambliss or any of a number of conservative groups saying Martin would go to Washington to be a rubber stamp for Obama and Democratic congressional leaders. In the next commercial break, there would be Martin, using his own money to run an ad saying he was going to go to Washington to be a rubber stamp for Obama and Democratic congressional leaders.
Even a rudimentary knowledge of Georgia’s political history made it obvious which side was miscalculating, and the results of the runoff voting confirm it.
Martin did face a challenge in spurring Democratic voters, especially blacks and young people, to return to the polls for the runoff in the numbers that they did for the general election. He hoped his show of fealty to the new president would provide motivation. Obama made a show of sending in campaign aides to help with turnout, but they were clearly less focused and driven than they were for their boss before Nov. 4.
In addition, Martin couldn’t count on the state Democratic Party to help, since it never built the field operation that it claimed to be focusing on, and instead spent its scarce dollars on D.C. inaugural parties and college professors who were the latest fad in Democratic armchair strategizing.
It was obvious as soon as the statistics from early voting were available that Martin’s strategy of announcing to the world his loyalty to the new president was not only failing to generate elevated turnout by Democrats, but was in fact spurring angry and frightened Republicans to vote in their last chance to “stop Obama.” Martin kept right on going, however, and even appeared at the Capitol on runoff eve with three controversial Atlanta rappers (one of whom currently is serving a sentence on federal weapons charges) to drive home his point.
Chambliss’ re-election might be the biggest missed opportunity by Democrats anywhere in America. Metro Atlanta clearly is trending Democratic, and that combined with Chambliss’ weakness made him very vulnerable. If Georgia Democrats are going to take advantage of their chances, however, they’re going to need better candidates, a party focused on winning elections and a strategy to ensure opportunities don’t pass them by.
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 10:34 AM | Link to this
Change? Change? Think what a Paris, had she been born a Lubbock, would do for change. Think what the mere mention of Change, repeated often enough to stir the corpse of a Himmler, could do to lobotomize the American voters en masse toward the polls. Think Change! A change of seasonal dress? A change of heart? A change of physique, or of sex organs?
Change! Change Is Good.
By squid pro quo
December 7, 2008 10:41 AM | Link to this
December 7. Today, if we had another December 7 … oh wait, we did. It was something the liberals and democrats want us to forgot about. Anyway, imagine what today’s liberal left would have done on December 7 1941: war is not the answer; we don’t need to retaliate; we need to reflect inward on our policies and why we are so hated as to be attacked on our own soil. Gag me already.
Thank you Slick Willie Cold Cash Jefferson. The fact that you have not claimed racism and/or a racist witch hunt (or have you?) in your ouster at least elevates you above most idiotic race wh0res :
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In a year when national Republican fortunes took a turn for the worse, Louisiana delivered the GOP two seats in Congress in elections delayed by Hurricane Gustav.
Indicted Democratic U.S. Rep. William Jefferson was ousted Saturday from his New Orleans area district, while Republicans narrowly held on to the seat vacated by a retiring incumbent.
But the stupidity of New Orleans residents still shines:
“People are innocent until proven guilty,” said Faye Leggins, 54, an educator and Democrat who moved back to the city six months ago and still has fresh memories of Hurricane Katrina. She voted for Jefferson on Saturday. “He has enough seniority, so he can do a lot to redevelop this city.” [an educator and a Democrat - imagine that]
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 10:42 AM | Link to this
“Georgia reporters, pundits, bloggers and political junkies are all trying to assess the meaning of the result of Tuesday’s U.S. Senate runoff…”
Well Mr. Shipp,
I happen to fit all four categories, and I don’t give a damn about Tuesday’s foregone outcome. It means no more to me than Saxby Chambliss does.
By squid pro quo
December 7, 2008 10:49 AM | Link to this
You can always tell when the liberal democrats feel threatened about something: they won’t shut the hell up over it and go on the offensive. The bean brains won’t leave Sarah Palin alone any more than Joe Plumber. Case in point, one of the douche holes at the New York Slimes says that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher shouldn”t publish a book. Listen to this pig squeal:
By TIMOTHY EGAN Published: December 6, 2008
The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet?
I didn’t think so. And I don’t want you writing books. Not when too many good novelists remain unpublished. Not when too many extraordinary histories remain unread. Not when too many riveting memoirs are kicked back at authors after 10 years of toil. Not when voices in Iran, North Korea or China struggle to get past a censor’s gate.
Joe, a k a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, was no good as a citizen, having failed to pay his full share of taxes, no good as a plumber, not being fully credentialed, and not even any good as a faux American icon. Who could forget poor John McCain at his most befuddled, calling out for his working-class surrogate on a day when Joe stiffed him.
You think that Slimes leech remembers that it was OBAMA that approached SAM????
By squid pro quo
December 7, 2008 10:59 AM | Link to this
LA Slimes guest columnist: Toyota should unionize to help the Big Three. Hey Jonathan Cutler: go start your own car company if you don’t like the way others are run.
Any foreign car manufacturer in this nation that gets threatened to unionize by the radical left and other misfit goons of liberalism needs to pack the hell up and go build cars in South America. Or China for that matter. Give them nothing.
By Jonathan Cutler December 6, 2008
The Big Three are a mess, and there is plenty of blame to go around. Washington lawmakers pondering the bailout for Detroit have been grilling executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler about their role in the crisis. But sitting by their side Thursday on Capitol Hill was Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers.
It is not too late to save the Big Three. But the solution is not to tear down the historic and heroic gains won by prior generations of UAW workers. If there is hope long term — for the unionized Big Three companies and for the UAW — it rests in dealing with the unfinished business of the 1980s: unionizing the unorganized transplants.
Jonathan Cutler is associate professor of sociology at Wesleyan University. [another liberal college professor - go figure]
By Poodles-R-Dogs-Too
December 7, 2008 11:12 AM | Link to this
Well, looks like the Bush Depression, aka the Neocon Depression, started in December of 2007. That sure takes the wind out of the sails of the Bush lackeys who have been blaming the election of Mr. Obama as president, seeing as how December of 07 is eleven months before November of 08. Not that I expect truth and reality to stop the Bush Liars like dusty and jmbliarlawyer, seeing as how republicans are the party of the big lie. Ah sure hope they git their layoff notices real soon like…be sure to keep us posted here… ha ha ha…STUPID REPUKES…
By AmVet
December 7, 2008 11:18 AM | Link to this
On this sacred day of remembrance,it is good to know that the Democrats were in charge in the 1940’s.
Can you imagine Ronald Reagan at the helm? Or even worse, The Hero of the Texas ANG?
Reagan would have declared war on and invaded Grenada.
And Bushie, after he put down My Pet Goat, would have declared war on Paraguay but due to “intelligence failures” invaded Uruguay.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
December 7, 2008 11:58 AM | Link to this
Dear lapdog @ 11:12, if you check the stats, the last time the republicans controlled Congress, the unemployment rate was 4.5% (Oct. 2006). Even one year later the rate was only 4.7%. But it began the slow rise around the time the democrats passed the higher minimum wage. Current rateis6.7% Wonder how high it will get before the American voters wise up?
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
December 7, 2008 12:05 PM | Link to this
Also, dear lapdog, I failed to observe for all that you fit the usual leftist “cultist” template, citing the role of “people” rather than citing any particular “policy.” Contrary to leftist theology, people make little difference in politics, it is the policies that attempt to implement (or not.) Think of all the good Obama could do for the country simply by renewing the Bush cuts of 2002. Instead, look for corporate welfare.
By Bushless
December 7, 2008 12:08 PM | Link to this
No, Bush didn’t sell his soul, he sold the country’s and we will be paying for it for generations to come.
Let him go live of daddy’s money in his million dollar home in Dallas and come up with more propaganda as he tries to revise history in his favor. Good riddence!
By Change
December 7, 2008 12:10 PM | Link to this
W’s wartime heroism is on a par with Reagan’s in “Hellcats of the Navy”.
I salute both actors, and only wish puppets like them would get elected more often.
BTW: is there one document which proves that W was on the planet during his National Guard Tour of Duty?
Please show me that piece of forgery.
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 12:30 PM | Link to this
Yeah but Poodles,
They were stupid insofar as they succumbed to overspending. Overspending, they thought, had been the hallmark of Democrats, but as you and others have pointed out, Democrats historically have been the party of pay-as-you-go. The Bush Administration was so insanely at odds with its own base as to become more base than any previous economic base had been.
It’s such an astounding thing, really. WTF were they thinking?
By Change
December 7, 2008 12:33 PM | Link to this
Falcons minus thirty.
By Dusty
December 7, 2008 12:37 PM | Link to this
Well, today we remember the horror and the heroism of Pearl Harbor. It still hurts to see the actual pictures of the attack and battleships and their sailor crews sinking and fighting and burning in a sneak attack.
How marvelous that the men and women of our military will continue to fight for this country in the worst of times. Oh, I feel so proud of them them, then and now. There is nothing like a fighting American when the country is threatened.
Reagan certainly would have fought back immediately. George W. Bush still leads the fight against those who would endanger America. We have been fortunate to have strong presidents when they were needed to make brave decisions.
By Poodles-R-Dogs-Too
December 7, 2008 12:47 PM | Link to this
So, Rag Head the Fool, paying poor people a few pennies more has caused the Bush Depression? More likely, the top 1% of the population stealing 35% of the income has caused this depression. You repukes make it worse by only taxing capital gains at 15% for these fat cat scum…BRING ON THE CLASS WAR, AH GOT SOME SCALPS TA TAKE….The top 1% robs other stock holders in corporations by getting their pet Board of Directors to give them and their croonies cheap stock options and outright stock grants….on which they later pay only the 15% capital gains tax. When my fellow investors read statements by management and the bod that sounds like “we must align managements interests with the stockholders interests,” hold on to your wallet, because management and the bod are about to pass out shares of stock, shares that you have to pay hard earned dollars for, for free to the dead beat management team. Yeah, the bod’s are on my list of fat cat scum….
By ron
December 7, 2008 12:48 PM | Link to this
Economics 101 for the future——When the price of anything starts going up faster than what could resonnablly be considered the norm,we must seek out the persons responsible and shoot them.
By Poodles-R-Dogs-Too
December 7, 2008 12:52 PM | Link to this
Indeed Glenn, London owes it survival in WWII to the humanity of Adolf….who refused to use chemical weapons, saying they were inhumane. I myself would have hit London, Moscow, St Petersburg, and Stalingrad early and often with aerial bombardment with GB nerve gas….the Germans might very well have lost the war on Hitlers Humanity….imagine that.
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
December 7, 2008 2:03 PM | Link to this
Yes, lapdog @ 12:47, everything Congress does that increases the costs of doing business, is multiplied far beyond the cognitive capacity of a leftist. For example, multiple choice quiz: if a rational businessman comes to believe Congress plans to make it easier to unionize the workforce, the rational businessman will: (a) lay off all of the marginal workers, (b) consider outsourcing to other countries, (c) hire more workers at higher wages, (d) pehaps shut down the business or sell out if possible, (e) beg Congress for handouts, or (f) all of the above except (c). Answer: you already know.
By HughG
December 7, 2008 2:13 PM | Link to this
Jim: If the message was delivered in 1986, why was Pan Am blown up in 1988? Did he just not get the bomb until twenty years late?
By BB77
December 7, 2008 2:18 PM | Link to this
By AmVet
December 7, 2008 11:18 AM
On this sacred day of remembrance,it is good to know that the Democrats were in charge in the 1940’s.
Today’s {liberal} Democrats have NOTHING in common with those of the 1940s … or JFK for that matter. Tax cuts anyone?
By Ragnar Danneskjöld
December 7, 2008 2:20 PM | Link to this
Quick tutorial for our friend lapdog: if, hypothetically, you were a leftist who wished to persuade businessmen to hire people and expand the company, you should avoid a few simple errors:
(1) don’t make it easier to compel union membership as a requirement of retaining a job;
(2) don’t raise corporate taxes;
(3) don’t raise taxes on higher income individuals;
(4) don’t renegotiate international trade agreements, to make them less free and more “fair”;
(5) don’t implement a “cap and trade” system for energy, primarily to enrich those who control the system;
(6) don’t restrict production of traditional energy sources, such as coal, oil, and nuclear;
(7) don’t raid the taxpayers for corporate welfare, to be paid to preferred “alternative” energy producers, mostly leftists;
(8) don’t nationalize health care, financing all costs through business taxes.
All of those policies increase costs, and would reduce quality of life for all living under the yoke of nanny government. The flight of capital, seen in the decline of the Dow Jones Industrial average, is fully rational, and, as we regularly note here, voters deserve the governments they elect. The real question is whether the elected democrats are foolhardy enough to implement the programs they promised. Voters will have an opportunity to change course soon enough.
By BB77
December 7, 2008 2:26 PM | Link to this
Now we get to the pathetic “thinking” of liberal Democrats:
By Poodles-R-Dogs-Too
December 7, 2008 12:47 PM
So, Rag Head the Fool, paying poor people a few pennies more has caused the Bush Depression? More likely, the top 1% of the population stealing 35% of the income has caused this depression. You repukes…
Take note how this says that earned income is STOLEN if it’s higher than that of someone else. Isn’t that such brilliant thinking? Someone here the other day stated that democrat liberals don’t really rationally think. They just react. Like a cockroach when the lights are turned on.
Would the same POS who posted the above also please acknowledge that the top 1% pays 40% of all income taxes that others STEAL from?
Nah. Facts suck to a lib. It’s all about the emotions.
By Dusty
December 7, 2008 2:40 PM | Link to this
Poodles@12:52
Get back to the kennel for more training. You are running with the wild and crazy again.
So Hitler was humane!! I guess that is why he stopped killing people when over ten million were dead. I’ll bet that you know other “good” points about Hitler. You are a poodle without a “noodle”.
Which brings up another question: How many years does it take to get warped? You seem to have covered the whole ten yards.
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 2:59 PM | Link to this
Poodles stop humping History’s leg.
Your boy Hitler was at that time not yet fully deranged, his nastiest weaponry not yet ready. Besides, he’d two other things to deal with: the physical reality of occupying the British Isles, and the tremendous danger of doing so. Churchill, as it turns out, had some fantastically diabolical plans of his own, should the Hun have shown on his shores…
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 3:09 PM | Link to this
Go, Dusty!
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 3:19 PM | Link to this
And Go Ragnar, and BB77!
By Ronco
December 7, 2008 3:25 PM | Link to this
Saint’s three man rush is killing them. Falcons should win this. So far a most entertaining game.
The irony of the saints employing a three man rush is very touching.
No way will the saints make the two point conversion. Up the middle? U gotta be kiddin’ me.
The falcons have this game in the bag.
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 3:42 PM | Link to this
That may be so, but the weekend belongs to college ball.
About which, what’s with UCLA fielding a defensive line of pure nasties, whilst USC, of all mafiosi, play ball as genteel as Vandy ever did?
Go figure…
And Go Longhorns!
By ron
December 7, 2008 4:14 PM | Link to this
Typical boys,watching a boys game.The weekend here has been turned over to paying attention to the cat.My rabbit ears don’t pick up football.That’s a plan.
I read that The Big Three are in Canada asking for $6 billion to keep that end afloat.No government up there to even ask boys.Parliament has been shut down per request of The Prime Minister.Come back in another tiie.
By Dusty
December 7, 2008 4:14 PM | Link to this
Glenn@2:59
Yes, indeed, there was CHURCHILL!! He could really stir a crowd and without a teleprompter in sight. That blood, sweat and tears can still bring the goose bumps and the fire. What a speech!!
If we could have gotten Bush to read a Churchill speech now and then, the mad mob might have listened. Bush has the soul, the spirit and the drive but his speeches are not, shall we say, stirring.
But…a speech without spunk behind it …is still a loser. Bush has the spunk. Obama has the speech. Let us hope there is something beyond Obama’s pleasantries that can be called spunk and not spoiled promises.
(Obama’s Hawaiian vacation with three multimillion dollar homes to take care of his needs already sounds like SPOILS. Hard to preach pennypinching from mansions!)
By Ronco
December 7, 2008 4:18 PM | Link to this
Hard to get happy after THAT one! It was the early turnover. We had an easy six and it goes the other way. Add in the special team’s big play, and it’s too much to overcome. THe death blow was the wasted time out. Dont ever call a time out even if you have to take a delay penalty. Dont call time out, till the last drive when you need it. And dont challenge a spot. Just dont challenge a spot. Stupid mistake cost us the game.
It’s still not impossible, but I cant believe I let myself get hurt so bad by the Falcons again so soon after I swore them off in 1981.
there weren’t many mistakes in the game plan, but damn that hand off/draw play that the Falcons need to lose. Run ANY play but that. Ryan amazing. This guy is 50 times better than vick ever was.
By Glenn
December 7, 2008 5:00 PM | Link to this
Boys will be boys. Grass stains and all.
By BB77
December 7, 2008 5:13 PM | Link to this
I see the neo-Comm lib POS that defecated that 12:47 Stalinist drivel hasn’t been back. What’s the matter pooksie poodle? Did the big bad wolf scare off your prancing liberal prissyness?
Speaking of liberal moonbats, our worst president in history is going to go suck face with Syria and Lebanon:
Former US president Jimmy Carter will meet Syrian President Bashar Assad and top Syrian officials during a visit in Syria next week, Israel Radio reported on Friday night. Carter will also visit Lebanon, where he is expected to speak at the American University in Beirut.
Just so you know who the old lib Democrat pacifist dictator kisser is going to visit:
Syrian President Bashar Assad has awarded murderer Samir Kuntar the country’s highest medal for spending nearly three decades in an Israeli jail. The Syrian News Agency says Kuntar, who murdered a young girl and her father, received the Syrian Order of Merit during a meeting with Assad in Damascus Monday.
By BB77
December 7, 2008 5:27 PM | Link to this
Just how low will lib trash rags like the New York Times go? By giving that domestic terrorist radical left POS Bill Ayers the time of day. No word yet if the America hating scum at the NYT will give Al Qaeda equal opportunity to “explain” themselves.
Op-Ed Contributor
By WILLIAM AYERS Published: December 5, 2008
[snip]
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.
Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.
Disgusting.
By BB77
December 7, 2008 5:34 PM | Link to this
For the man-made global warming liberal moonbats: I didn’t know there were SUVs and personal space heaters on Pluto causing it to have global warming too:
In what is largely a reversal of an August 2007 announcement, astronomers said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.
Pluto’s atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past 14 years, indicating a stark temperature rise, the researchers said. The change is likely a seasonal event, much as seasons on Earth change as the hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun during the planet’s annual orbit.
They suspect the average surface temperature increased about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius.
Can we get a little global warming right now? I sure could save some money on next month’s power bill.
Moonbats.
By ron
December 7, 2008 5:42 PM | Link to this
Dear Glenn @ 5:00——- There are only good things to be said regarding legitimately earned grass stains.
By GaLiberal
December 8, 2008 9:08 AM | Link to this
Moron Jim: I can’t decide who’s more pathetic; you for writing such right-wing yellow lies or the backward, bigoted, ignorant, inbred rednecks that believe you. Either way, it’s just pathetic. I guess the AJC has to keep you on as their token Rethuglicon drumbanger. How’s it feel to be on welfare?
By GaLiberal
December 8, 2008 9:14 AM | Link to this
Moron Jim: I can’t decide who’s more pathetic; you for writing such right-wing yellow lies or the backward, bigoted, ignorant, inbred rednecks that believe you. Either way, it’s just pathetic. I guess the AJC has to keep you on as their token Rethuglicon drumbanger. How’s it feel to be on welfare?
By GAPeach
December 8, 2008 2:27 PM | Link to this
Listen up all you Wooten bashers!! At least Wooten isn’t afraid to receive comments (if that is what you want to call them) … say what you will … but you don’t see Cynthia Tucker opening up her opinions for comments . . do ya? What is she afraid of! Hearing the truth!!
By GAPeach
December 8, 2008 2:27 PM | Link to this
Listen up all you Wooten bashers!! At least Wooten isn’t afraid to receive comments (if that is what you want to call them) … say what you will … but you don’t see Cynthia Tucker opening up her opinions for comments . . do ya? What is she afraid of! Hearing the truth!!
By GAPeach
December 8, 2008 2:28 PM | Link to this
Listen up all you Wooten bashers!! At least Wooten isn’t afraid to receive comments (if that is what you want to call them) … say what you will … but you don’t see Cynthia Tucker opening up her opinions for comments . . do ya? What is she afraid of! Hearing the truth!!
By GAPeach
December 8, 2008 2:31 PM | Link to this
Listen up all you Wooten bashers!! At least Wooten isn’t afraid to receive comments (if that is what you want to call them) … say what you will … but you don’t see Cynthia Tucker opening up her opinions for comments . . do ya? What is she afraid of! Hearing the truth!!
By Wart-on School of Hard Knocks
December 8, 2008 2:57 PM | Link to this
If Cindy Tucker did a blog, she would be subjected to all the racist crap that Terence Moore gets (you’ll note that commenting on his blogs is often shut down rather quickly, or never opened up at all depending on the topic).
That said, I used to enjoy reading Tucker’s stuff, but this year she’s been a boring Obama-is-God one-note. She even had the yarbles last week to suggest that the only good thing George Bush ever did was hire Colin Powell and Condi Rice. Really? He committed big bucks to fight AIDs in Africa. Does Cindy not realize many of the people there are black, too?
By GAPeach
December 8, 2008 3:20 PM | Link to this
Well if “Cindy” Tucker can dish it out … then she should take whatever results in comments. She is “boring” you say?…you’ve obviously confused boring with being an unintelligent who dwells on nothing but her “blackness.”