Hope those folks in line at Goodwill aren’t regifters

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

> To friends and fellow Georgians who lined up 12 deep at the Goodwill Industries Roswell store and donation center to swap their discards for income tax-deductions, this warning: It’ll really hurt our feelings if we go there and find you’ve donated the Christmas gift we just gave you.

> A $150,000 bonus check to a public employee whose job is to tempt people to gamble their way through a bad economy may sound like paying bonuses to weathermen for delivering the rain. But our gamblers held steadier to their weakness than did gamblers in lots of states. Ticket sales were down nearly 10 percent in California and 4 percent in Texas recently, reports The Wall Street Journal. So Georgia Lottery CEO Margaret DeFrancisco can argue that the $150,000 bonus atop her $286,000 salary was deserved. Me, I don’t believe government should entice people into undesirable behaviors.

> Caroline Kennedy is taking a beating for wanting to be Hillary’s replacement as a U.S. senator. In a New York Times profile, she was described as an individual who “still seemed less like a candidate than an idea of one: eloquent but vague, largely undefined and seemingly determined to remain that way.” Beg your pardon, but that’s the description of the person we just elected president of the United States.

> Judge Griffin Bell, a great American, offers the calming reassurance that a lifetime of accrued wisdom permits. Said he, in response to a question from the AJC’s Rosalind Bentley about whether he’s optimistic or pessimistic about the world his great-grandchildren will inherit: “Well, I’m optimistic because I’m an optimistic person by nature. And I have a personal belief that we’re like the British; we always muddle through some way or another.” Of course, muddling through requires a strong belief that there is a God —- or else it’s aimlessness.

> It’s quite amazing how little people recognize their own prejudices. Matt Miller, author of “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas,” thinks public education won’t improve until the federal government makes it happen. If state and local control are dead ideas, God help us. Of course, he also argues that higher taxes are OK, prompting interviewer Tom Sabulis to note that some of his statements could be “construed as Democratic talking points.” Replied Miller, “I’m a Democrat, but … ” Like Miller, the beliefs that I think are real obstacles to American progress are those that keep mine from being implemented.

> The city of Ringgold is betting that erecting a statue of Confederate Army Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne next October will bring tourists with fat wallets eager to spend. It’s on my list —- just after the Golf Hall of Fame, the Music Hall of Fame, the Sports Hall of Fame and the various others that were to be the salvation of some place or other. But give the people of Ringgold credit. The statue was not financed by taxpayers.

> No nightlife in Atlanta? Conventioneers get bored. Once Fanplex closed, metrowide boredom was inevitable. The arcade and miniature golf center developed in 2002 by the Atlanta-Fulton Recreation Authority across from Turner Field could have had the superstar appeal of, say, a Gen. Patrick Cleburne statute, but it never got the promotion dollars needed to make it exciting.

> The Army needs 30,000 new troops to fulfill worldwide obligations without becoming stretched too thin, says Undersecretary of the Army Nelson Ford. Suppose now that U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and others on the left will argue for a return of the draft? Or was that proposal in 2003 only directed at George W. Bush? Said Rangel then in calling for a reinstatement of the draft: “If indeed the president believes war is necessary in terms of our national welfare, then he has to believe that sacrifices need to be made, and those sacrifices need to be shared. We have to kick up a notch the sense of patriotism and the sense of obligation.” The left wants a draft because they think one will turn us into a nation of pacifists.

> If you started 2009 without hog jowls, black-eyed peas and greens, you’re not prepared for the sour economy. Don’t blame others for your own poor judgment.

> Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Friday, Sunday and Tuesday.

jwooten@ajc.com