My Morning Wooten

Perhaps it's the holiday spirit, but Jim and I have rarely jousted lately. Today, peace on earth once again takes a back seat. Let's have some fun!

Clark Howard’s not running for mayor of Atlanta. Smart guy, Howard. The time to pinch pennies was when they were accumulating a mountain of debt. They’re now into juggling. The radio personality they need is get-out-of-debt guru Dave Ramsey.

It's a clever turn of phrase. I have to admit admiration for the skills of the scribe. But it is also evidence Jim worships the trinity of WGST's Beck, Limbaugh and Ramsey. If he ever roamed up the dial, he would discover home town hero Clark Howard has a pretty good handle on debt as well.

Disagree if you will on policy, but there can be no disputing that President Bush will be remembered, as he wishes to be, “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. … I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.” A decade from now, maybe sooner, the man’s worth as a leader will be measured alongside Harry Truman as a wartime president. A modern politician who can ignore polls to do what’s right for the country is a jewel.

A needless war. Taking America's legitmacy in the world from a pinnacle to an absolute abyss. Imprisonment without due process. Torture. I'll take book on whether history views Bush as Jim does and as I do. What wants to place a bet?

Two state senators who left the legislative arena to seek judgeships, both of whom were probably more temperamentally suited to the judicial branch, lost. Michael S. Meyer von Bremen, an Albany Democrat, lost on Nov. 4 in a crowded field for a seat on the Georgia Court of Appeals. This week, Joseph I. Carter, a Tifton Republican, lost a runoff for a Superior Court seat. Good guys, both. Thoughtful and calm.

Can't disagree here.

Get out the sniffing salts, Betsy. A Cobb County law firm, Gardner Groff Greenwald & Villanueva, announces that it’ll cut its flat-fee rates up to 12 percent below 2008 and won’t increase hourly rates.

A private firm adjusting its business model due to market pressure? Isn't that a fine example of conservative philosophy? But this is lawyers - one of the usual right wing pinatas - therefore instead of platitudes, we get snark.

The outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. Senate runoff does not bode well for Georgia Democrats in 2010. Barack Obama was a phenomenon. Nobody currently on the scene is capable of matching his appeal to Democrats and independents in Georgia. DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones is right, I believe, when he asserts: “The Democratic Party has to stop putting up these liberal candidates who tend to win in the primary but not in the general.” But I’ve read enough post-election advice from liberals to Republicans that they become Democrat-lite that I’ll avoid the condescension of suggesting that state Democrats become Republican-lite. They should fix it as Mr. CEO and others think necessary to win statewide.

Jim Wooten choose your own adventure! (Insert Democrat name here) is an idiot/corrupt con-artist/the most evil creature walking the earth except when he switches parties/is criticized by Daily Kos/agrees with me.

Honoring the president-elect in the only way government knows how — by giving public employees another paid holiday — officials of Perry County, Ala., declare the second Tuesday in November to be a Barack Obama Day holiday from work. Perry County, in central Alabama, is one of the poorest in the state.

Yes, what they did is stupid. But what is stupider and far more insidious is certain members of the right wing, usually limited to whacko right wing radio but more frequently on the pages of the paper that covers Dixie like the dew, insistence on finding every turtle on a fencepost then attempting to convince us all that the not yet arrived Obama presidency will cause us all to smother beneath a crush of turtles.

Selah.