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Page 2 of 790 pages < 1 2 3 4 > Last »
July 2008
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Rumination
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Mon Jul 7, 2008
5:11 pm
by McGehee
5 comments
[Asides]
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Today I blogged for the first time in five days. Except for absences from home—and those mostly before we had a laptop—I don’t think I’ve ever gone five days without posting something to whatever blog I was running at the time. Yesterday I looked at the datestamp on the latest entry and was surprised I had let four days go by without writing anything here.
Simply put, I think my juices have run dry. After six-plus years of being able to express whatever I wanted to say right here, whenever it popped into my pretty little head, I appear to be no longer capable of the kind of lengthy writing I used to do in, say, early 2003 or before.
I think I should take more of these long pauses. I think I should limit myself, at least for a while, to only posting once a week. I can save up stuff to write about, once I can once again think of any, and hopefully give it a better effort than I would if I simply sat down at the keyboard as soon as it came to me. Maybe I’d even find a better class of subject matter than I’ve been resorting to lately.
So, see you next Monday. Or the one after that, if necessary.
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Time for Some Political Darwinism?
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Mon Jul 7, 2008
8:32 am
by McGehee
[Elections]
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The man Rush Limbaugh calls “Senator Grahamnesty” could be turned out of office—with the help of blue-dog Republicans.
“Sorry for the delay, Jim,” Bob Conley apologizes after calling just five minutes later than expected. “I’ve been running around like a one-armed paper hanger.” Not the ordinary opening line from a politician, let alone a major candidate for U.S. Senate. But “Flat-top Bob,” as his friends call him, isn’t your ordinary politician.
Conley, a 42-year-old engineer from North Myrtle Beach, unexpectedly became South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Democratic challenger, winning the primary by just 1,058 votes out of more than 147,000 cast. Yet he plans to run as the more conservative candidate in the general election against the man some have called the worst Republican senator. Conley’s vanquished primary opponent lamented, “We’ve nominated a Republican in a Democratic primary.”
In fact, Conley ran as a Republican for the Indiana state legislature in 2000, then bolted for the Reform Party as it nominated Pat Buchanan for president, and returned to the fold to support Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. He voted for Paul in South Carolina’s GOP primary in January and resigned his position on the Horry County Republican Party executive committee in February. He opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, and amnesty for illegal immigrants, repeatedly referring to the incumbent senator as “Grahamnesty.” He repeats his line, “Pitchfork Pat plus Dr. No equals Flat-top Bob,” concluding, “Sounds good to me!” »
What About Bob?
I could do without the Buchanan and Paul ties, but we need people in office who are more conservative, not less. Especially in this election. As for Graham…
Even Senator Graham admits his challenger is to his right. According to the Charleston City Paper, he said, “From what I can tell, he doesn’t represent moderation. I represent a brand of conservatism that you will feel comfortable with.”
Unless you’re a, you know, conservative.
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Can We Believe Him?
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Mon Jul 7, 2008
7:50 am
by McGehee
[Elections]
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Uh-oh: John McCain is making promises. Again.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico.
The vow to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger zone that thwarted President Bush after he named it the top domestic priority of his second term.
McCain is making the pledge at the beginning of a week when both presidential candidates plan to devote their events to the economy, the top issue in poll after poll as voters struggle to keep their jobs and fill their gas tanks.
“In the long-term, the only way to keep the budget balanced is successful reform of the large spending pressures in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” the McCain campaign says in a policy paper to be released Monday.
“The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.”
The pledge is a return to an earlier position he’d later backed away from. On April 15, McCain backed off a February pledge to balance the budget in his first term when asked about it by Michael Cooper of the New York Times, who reported that McCain said “at a news conference … that ‘economic conditions are reversed’ and that he would have a balanced budget within eight years.” »
McCain promises to balance budget
It’s a damn certainty these things need to be done, and the lack of action on Social Security is one major failure of George W. Bush. The only question is, if a Democrat Congress refuses to work with McCain—as it refused to work with Bush—what can we realistically expect from him?
If anything, McCain is even less likely to buck congressional Democrats than Bush has been. Unless he switches parties or something.
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The Perfect Image
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Wed Jul 2, 2008
11:53 pm
by McGehee
1 comment
[Here's Your Sign]
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If I wanted a picture to illustrate the “can’t help themselves” level of stupidity exhibited by some people, it would be the one associated with this old article I stumbled on while following some silly internet bunny trail this evening. Of course, it’s really unfair to the squirrel, because it really didn’t know any better—whereas people (theoretically) do.
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June 2008
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I Cannot Disagree
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Mon Jun 30, 2008
11:48 pm
by McGehee
[Coweta County]
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Saturday evening, on our way to the fairgrounds, Chris and I saw a ten-mile-long backup on northbound I-85 due to a series of accidents not far from our own exit. Vehicles in the backup attempting to leave the interstate four miles from the accident scene were backed up for at least another six miles.
The interstate is undergoing extensive work through Coweta County, and in my opinion the planning for the project has been an extended fustercluck.
It’s time for Coweta County residents to avoid travel on Interstate 85, if possible. In less than a week, there are been three massive multi-vehicle traffic accidents on the interstate in our county that have jammed traffic for hours.
Each of these major wrecks took place in highway construction areas. Stormy weather may have contributed to two of the pileups.
Even before these recent multi-vehicle accidents, authorities reported a significant increase in wrecks on the interstate within the past year. For well over a year, every mile of I-85 in Coweta—plus a stretch south of Coweta in Meriwether and a much longer stretch in South Fulton north of Coweta—have been undergoing construction. That construction will continue at least for another 18 months. The scheduled deadline is for the work to be completed by the end of 2009. Too often construction deadlines are not met.
As the construction has progressed, more barriers have been erected. There have been recurring lane changes and shifting of traffic. When the new inside lanes that are now being constructed are completed, workers will begin rebuilding the outside lanes. We will experience more and more lane changes and more and more barriers during the next 18 months.
»
It would be a good idea to avoid travel along dangerous I-85
For miles, I-85 effectively has no shoulders. The posted speed limit has been lowered from 70 to 60, with signs proclaiming the limit is “strictly enforced”—but the prevailing speed remains as it was before the work began.
Did I mention “no shoulders”? As in, where the @#$!! is a trooper or deputy supposed to pull somebody over?
Very bad planning. The only thing worse I can imagine is for all that traffic to detour onto Coweta’s surface roads. Fortunately not everyone who travels I-85 reads the Times-Herald. Or this blog.
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The Shape of Things to Come, if Obama Is Elected
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Mon Jun 30, 2008
11:09 am
by McGehee
2 comments
[Elections]
[Here's Your Sign]
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Back in the ‘70s, when “Doonesbury” was still occasionally funny, Garry Trudeau had fun with Jimmy Carter by imagining him with a Cabinet-level “Secretary of Symbolism.”
In keeping with the notion that Barack Obama would be a second Carter term…
Unity, N.H., is not just small, it’s small and out-of-the-way. The town has no major roads, just winding country ones. It has a single school, the elementary school, no large retail center and no parking. It is an hour and a half from the nearest sizeable airport, and hotels for traveling press are nowhere to be found. Who in the world would hold a political rally for several thousand people here? Barack Obama would.
Unity might be one of the worst towns in America in which to hold a major political rally, but symbolically it was ideal for the Obama campaign. Where better to have Hillary Clinton join Obama on stage in a display of party loyalty, showing her supporters that there are no hard feelings for her loss to Obama and urging them to work hard to make him President, than in a town named Unity, where in the New Hampshire primary in January the vote for Obama and Clinton was evenly split—107 apiece?
For the attendees, the choice of location would be a nightmare. For the Obama campaign, a campaign based entirely on symbolism, it was perfect. »
Used in Unity
If America is going to elect its first black president, don’t you think he should be good for something besides symbolism? How is he not making a token of himself here?
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It’s Field Day
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Sat Jun 28, 2008
12:11 pm
by McGehee
[AK4MC]
[Humor?]
[Coweta County]
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Today at 2:00 p.m., hams across the country begin “Field Day,” a 24-hour activity designed to practice emergency-power operations, make contact with a lot of other hams far away, and if possible show off the hobby to interested prospective new hams.
My club will be having its Field Day fun at the Coweta County Fairgrounds in Newnan.
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