Jay Bookman

This guy I know — I’ll call him “Boose” — is getting married this weekend for the first time, just two days short of his 50th birthday. The man held out for a long, long time, but the once impregnable citadel of his bachelorhood finally met a conquering force it could not resist in the great and powerful Miss LK.

So Boose my man, this week’s Friday Evening Travelin’ Music is dedicated to you, courtesy of the inimitable Miss Nina Simone. And don’t worry, bro, I’ll be standing right there beside you when the deed gets done.

The ceremony, that is.

Continue reading A special dedication for this week’s travelin’ music »

Fox News is trumpeting the results of its latest poll, showing that President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to its all-time low of 46 percent, matching his disapproval rating.

A few days ago, Fox was also trying to make a big deal about Obama’s bow to the emperor of Japan. The poll suggests that seed fell on barren ground.

The question:

When the president of the United States is traveling overseas, do you think it is appropriate for him to bow to a foreign leader if that is the country’s custom or is it never appropriate for the president to bow to another leader?

The response:

Yes, bow when it is the proper custom: 67 percent
No, it is never appropriate: 26 percent
Democrats: Yes, 84 percent; Never, 9 percent
Republicans, Yes, 53 percent; Never 40 percent
Independents: Yes, 62 percent; Never, 30 percent

Continue reading Fox poll says Obama disapproval rising; bow was OK »

Sprawl is dead. It’s roadkill, you might say.

And unlike movie zombies, the growth phenomenon that once defined the metro region is not going to spring back to life. In Atlanta and most other places, the sprawl era that began with post-war Levittown, N.Y. and eventually redrew the American landscape and mindset has now passed into history.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the suburbs created by sprawl will disappear or even decline. To the contrary, for many they remain great places to live and raise a family, and that won’t change. Once the economy recovers, a lot of suburbs will resume growth through infill development and increased density, although they will become increasingly urban in the process.

However, the conversion of vast tracts of far-flung greenspace into suburban housing — that has ended. The larger postwar demographic trends, economics, lifestyle choices and government subsidies that drove that trend have all petered out, and without them, large-scale sprawl …

Continue reading The phenomenon of sprawl has passed into history »

This may be the most remarkable polling number I’ve seen in a long time.

As part of its most recent national poll, Public Policy Polling asked the following question: “Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?”

Overall, 26 percent of the Americans polled said they believed ACORN stole the election for Obama. That number is troubling enough, but the number among Republicans polled was shocking. According to PPP, just 27 percent of Republicans said they believed that Obama won the election legitimately, while 52 percent said ACORN stole it.

I don’t know how many Democrats believed that the election of George W. Bush in 2000 was illegitimate. It was a substantial number, especially in the days and weeks right after the election, but I don’t think it was ever anything near 52 percent. And even though the claim was groundless, the strange events of 2000 — the fiasco in Florida and the …

Continue reading Only 27 percent of GOP will admit Obama’s win was legitimate? »

Jesse Jackson

Pat Buchanan

Pat Buchanan, who made credible runs for the GOP presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996, has long since ceased to be a force in the conservative movement. His appeals to racial resentment became a little too transparent, and his need for the spotlight drove him to say and do things that embarrassed his party. In recent years, Buchanan has been quoted and cited far more often by liberals, who cast him as a convenient if outdated caricature of the right, than by those on the right who used to support him.

Buchanan has a close counterpart on the left: Jesse Jackson. Three years younger than Buchanan, Jackson also ran credible campaigns for his party’s nomination. He too has been left behind by changing times, with his own appeals to racial resentment increasingly rejected by those who once turned to him for leadership and inspiration.

Over the last 15 to 20 years, Jackson has allowed himself to become the conservatives’ favorite black man, the …

Continue reading Jesse Jackson reduced to a parody of himself »

I’ve always found Victor Davis Hanson, the historian and National Review columnist, a bit cartoonish and over the top. He has a habit of letting his passions and conclusions get waaaay out in front of the evidence. This is the guy, you might recall, who back in February was proclaiming that “We are quite literally … teetering on an Obama implosion.” That was just two weeks after Obama’s inauguration.

So when I saw a Hanson column headlined “Circling Sharks Smell American Blood,” I figured I knew what to expect: yet another conservative condemnation of Obama’s performance on his Asia trip, in which observers all over the world noted a more humble approach to geopolitics and America’s role in the world.

For many on the right, such an argument is no doubt tempting. However illogicially, it offers a way to project the blame for America’s relative decline onto one person — a man who they already hate for other reasons. And while Hanson indulges in a bit of that, he also …

Continue reading World, U.S. have to adjust to new power structure »

Harold Meyerson, at the Washington Post, traces the economic rise of China — and the relative decline of the United States, now deeply indebted to the Chinese — to a trade deal signed by President Clinton and then approved by Congress in 2000:

The U.S. trade deficit with China was roughly $60 billion in 1998, the year before we reached the accord granting China permanent normalized trade relations. Over the following decade, it ballooned to $268 billion, and tens of thousands of U.S. factories closed down. The trade deficit is the major reason China is awash in dollars — about 800 billion of them — and has become our largest creditor. And it is the major reason why boosting consumption in the United States, in an attempt to reverse the recession, has the peculiar effect of boosting production and employment in China just as much as if not more than happens at home….

So as we try to rebalance our relationship with China, let’s not entertain any illusions that our growing …

Continue reading China’s ascent traced back to Clinton-era trade deal »

Sgt. Chris Head holds his 11-month-old son Wyatt after a send-off ceremony Tuesday afternoon at Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville. Head's unit, the 802nd Ordnance Company of the U.S. Army Reserve, is being deployed today to Afghanistan. AJC photo by Hyosub Shin

I was struck by this photo on the front page of the AJC’s Metro section today and thought I’d post it here, just as a reminder. There’s an awful lot happening in that photo.

Continue reading Fathers and sons and war, another chapter in an age-old story »

Stephen Hawking

It’s a good thing that physicist Stephen Hawking was born in Great Britain, with its nationalized health care system. Because if he lived here in the United States, with its gaping holes in health-care coverage, he’d probably be dead or shuttered away in a human warehouse by now.

Just ask Kenny Whitey. He’d tell you all about it.

If he could.

Whitey is a trucker who was seriously injured on the job. Now his workman’s comp company has gone out of business, leaving him and his family out of luck and out of options. As the Gainesville Times reports:

“Overall, Whitey’s medical bills total around $47,000 per month.

“He just started physical therapy three weeks ago. The doctors said that they saw a 2 percent improvement. When you have a brain injury, 2 percent is a lot of improvement and now we don’t have any way to pay for that,” Pat Whitey said.

“The van company that has been transporting him to his appointments isn’t being paid now, and we can’t …

Continue reading Ladies and gentlemen, “the best health care system on Earth!” »

The breach between the Israeli government and the Obama administration becomes a little more public:

from the Israeli daily Haaretz:

“The White House responded angrily Tuesday to Israel’s plan to build 900 new housing units beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem, despite specific objections from the U.S., saying that “we are dismayed.”

In a statement, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs voiced the U.S.’s disappointment with “the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem.”

The Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved the construction plan Tuesday despite an expose in Israel’s Yedioth Aharonot newspaper earlier in the day revealing that the U.S. has specifically objected to the construction outlined in the plan.

“Ata time when we are working to relaunch negotiations,” the White House spokesman went on to say, “these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage …

Continue reading Breach between Israel, White House a bit more public »