Archive for November, 2010

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

• A story based on a Pew Research Center survey asks the question: Is marriage becoming obsolete? Only 52 percent of adults 18 and over are married, an all-time low. In the survey, 39 percent find the institution “obsolete,” compared to 28 percent in 1978. We might as well ask if honesty or personal responsibility is obsolete. Middle-class self-indulgence in lifestyle choices creates missing-parent voids in the lives of their children and tragedy when mimicked by the poor and uneducated. Marriage is never “obsolete” for children.
• I’m thankful this Thanksgiving for honest people like Jan Laskey, owner of Macon’s Ingleside Bridals & Formals, who spotted a wallet containing credit cards and several hundred dollars in the parking lot of a Macon restaurant, tracked down the owner, by then 20 miles down I-16, and waited until I returned. She declined any reward. She lost a pocketbook once and it was returned; she’s …

Continue reading Marriage is never ‘obsolete’ »

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

● I defy incoming Commissioner Gary Black, or any other Republican, to operate the Georgia Department of Agriculture, on the budgets of Tommy Irvin, who’s retiring after more than 40 years. He’s among the last of the Depression-influenced penny-pinchers setting or managing a budget in state government. Irvin’s in the news because on the way out the door he’s given 41 employees raises that will cost the state’s taxpayers $130,000 per year — or just slightly more than the cost of one average federal employee. (Check back in four years on how much this department’s budget grows.)

● Nothing quite captures “greed and excess” like shoes. Among Bernie Madoff’s seized possessions up for government auction was a pair of gold-thread BLM-monogrammed black velveteen slippers, which were among a clothing lot that sold for $6,000. Presumably those who see you in your slippers know who you are — even the …

Continue reading GOP clings to good ol’ boy system »

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

● Horror of horrors, I may have been wrong. I blamed President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the massive election defeat their party suffered last week. They swear it wasn’t them. It was, said Pelosi in a USA Today op-ed, “the genuine frustration of the American people, who are justifiably angered by the continued high unemployment rate.” Frustration, not their policies. Got it. Proceed, now, to the 2012 campaign on that long black train.

● The Pelosi-Obama-induced implosion of the Democratic Party in the South continues with the decision by three veteran legislators to switch parties. State Rep. Alan Powell’s switch means that outside metro Atlanta only two House districts north of I-20 are represented by Democrats: Rick Crawford of Cedartown and Barbara Massey Reece of Menlo, one just south and one just north of Rome. The other two party switchers are from …

Continue reading Georgia Democrats in full retreat »

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

● Nathan Deal draws criticism with his first decision as governor-elect. His transition team, announced Wednesday, needs more diversity, critics say. Indeed it does. This and every appointment to come should include conservative women, conservative blacks, and conservatives of Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, Hispanic and other national origins. Koreans, by their example of hard work in difficult settings, Vietnamese by virtue of their sacrifices for us and their commitment to the American Dream, and Indians, in the hope that Georgia can find another Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, or Nikki Haley, daughter of Sikh immigrant parents and the just-elected first woman governor in South Carolina.

● It’s no surprise that North Georgia dominates at the Gold Dome in the new year. Governor, lieutenant governor, speaker, attorney general , secretary of state, agriculture, labor and insurance commissioners and School …

Continue reading Democrats are toast in Georgia »