Friday, July 25, 2008

My Morning Wooten

We're gonna have some fun this morning!
Nobody will let me have my first choice as vice president on the John McCain ticket. That’d be former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
The Bush obsession continues. Keep typing, Jim. Maybe one day you will succeed in convincing history to view the last eight years as ponies and rainbows.
Little-noticed changes that matter a great deal build the Sonny Perdue legacy. A prime example is the Georgia Technology Authority’s plan to contract with private-sector vendors to operate computer systems for 11 agencies. About 500 state workers will move to the private sector and about 200 jobs will be eliminated. Technology changes too quickly for government procurement. And, too, why hire the excess help needed for emergencies when the private sector can provide three or 300 when needed? Great move.
It's a fantastic move! A legacy builder for any Governor! In fact it's such a fantabulous policy move, the transition towards privatization including the creation of the GTA out of the Department of Administrative Services and its first major act of privatizing the massive state telecom infrastructure began under Governor Roy Barnes.
Don’t retire the odd-even watering police just yet. China deals with its Olympics-related traffic problems by ordering odd-even driving days. Why add road capacity when you can simply order drivers off the road?
We don't have the Russkies anymore so I guess we'll have to settle with the Chi-Coms. Anyone else notice how we seem to hear that old 50's term more and more these days? And everyone knows the alternate transportation hippies are only a thin sliver from full bore, Little Red Book Maoists. Unlike our good God fearing, "free market", pavement-solves-all-woes road builders.
When a public official, tasked with responsibility to reduce payroll by 2.5 percent, announces that 53 police and 27 fire vacancies won’t be filled, as Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin did, you gotta believe it’s a game.
On the other hand, when a Republican tasked with difficult budget choices makes difficult cuts, it is fiscal restraint in hard times.
A nation cannot be safe from terrorism if its people think asking them a security-related question is an outrage, or worse, a reason to sue. This is what passes for a major revelation in today’s politically correct, touchy-feely world: From The Associated Press, this first paragraph: “The Justice Department’s former top criminal prosecutor says the government’s terror watch list has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled.” Goodness gracious. Can this nation survive in a world where people really are trying to kill us?
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

It's a wonder we ever survived the first 200 years following that politically correct, touchy-feely thing called the Constitution.
We really are becoming a nation where the elite in academia and the media are guerrillas determined to destroy corporations they don’t like —- tobacco, insurance, “predatory” lenders and oil, for example. An example is a report from Harvard researchers purporting to show that tobacco companies have “manipulated” menthol levels in cigarettes to keep customers. Imagine the crime of that.
Given that the CEO's of every major cigarette manufacturer testified there is no manipulation in their product we don't have to imagine far. It's called fraud.
Blaming Southern foods and “metro Atlanta’s car-crazy culture” for obesity is the same as blaming guns for crime. The CDC finds the South to be the nation’s fattest region. People make choices. They are responsible. Not the fried chicken, gravy, fried pies or biscuits. How long will it be before some do-gooder suggests shutting down all-you-can-eat buffets?
I'm betting the day some "do-gooder" actually succeeds in a loony idea like shutting down the feed troughs will be the same day certain dailies start requiring certain editorial writers fact check their pieces before publication.

Selah.

3 comments:

rptrcub said...

Read my lips: no new Bushes.

As to shutting down food troughs, I'm kinda agreeing... shudder... with Wooten there. People make the decision to pony up to those smörgåsbords (wow, Firefox found the special Swedish characters!), and it's their free choice to fill until they've consumed enough calories for five weeks in one sitting. However... there should probably be grotesque warnings on the door--maybe showing what human fat taken from the body looks like. Kinda like with cigarette packages in some countries with photos of diseased and nasty lungs.

I differ from Wooten on the car culture aspect: it is a *huge* culprit. If people were encouraged to walk to close stores and entertainment, without the fear of being mowed over by crazy-ass soccer moms from East Cobb, I think more people would do it.

Anonymous said...

The problem in your "search and seizure" response is the definiton of "reasonable".

Our last President, a Rhodes Scholar, couldn't even decide on the meaning of "is" and "alone", so we can try to imagine the difficulty of a TSA nerd interpreting the Constitutional meaning of "reasonable".

Oh, one more thing, Wooten is a pudding head.

Anonymous said...

...and the paving companies ceased to be a "free market" solution as soon as they started getting paid by the government

The government can use free market principasl, but they are not the free market.