My Morning Wooten: Semi-Aggreance Edition

The planets must be in a weird alignment. Jim and I are agreeing this morning. But not everything.

Georgia’s rushing to execute its murderers, you say. Would the “rush” apply to Jack Alderman, who murdered his wife in Savannah in 1974 —- 34 years ago —- or to Curtis Osborne, who murdered two people in Spalding County in 1990, 18 years ago? Stays were lifted on both.

Bloody Jim is back.

Public Service Commissioner Bobby Baker finally wins all challenges to residency. His wife has a house in DeKalb; he has a condo in Athens, in the PSC district he represents. He spends most of his time in Atlanta. Duh. That’s where his job is. Requiring PSC members to live in districts is one of the dumber laws the Legislature has imposed. It should be repealed promptly.

Have to agree on this one. You could argue residency is important for the legislature, but the PSC? Really?

The state has no business licensing home inspectors. Gov. Sonny Perdue was right to veto that bill. In his view, and mine, the marketplace and voluntary associations are perfectly capable of “regulating” those who inspect the homes for prospective buyers. In fact, the state should be looking for every opportunity to get out of the licensing business. Mostly, licensing is a way to keep out potential competitors. License physicians. Republicans should be deregulating, not piling on.

Yep. A brief anecdote. About two years ago my family needed a real estate appraisal. We hired a family friend who promised one in six weeks. Six months later, still with no appraisal and under the threat of lawsuit, the appraiser returned our deposit. We then found another appraiser who produced the report in four days for 1/4 of the price. Lesson learned? We should have shopped around.

Whatever happened to the Great Speckled Bird newspaper? It died. All the young hippies went into academia or politics and/or into being old hippies.

A surprisingly non-judgmental analysis of the long dead leftist publication. But I'm not going to let you off that easy, Jim. Even when you use the lash lightly. Given many of the hippies who hawked the paper learned a quick harsh lesson in capitalism (sellling papers=money to eat), I'm willing to bet you quite a few entrepeneurs and business owners emerged from that bunch.

I’d probably have to read the book to find out why 78-year-old Barbara Walters wants us to know that she once had an affair with a politician. It never occurred to me to inquire. Or care. People, especially those in sports and entertainment, are all the time telling us more than we want to know about their personal lives. Stop. Quit. Or else I go before the Tribunal of Right Wingers to get a cease-and-desist order.

Step back, Jim. The market works in more ways that one. I wouldn't read that dreck but plenty of people do. Until the market changes, you and I will have to continue the onerous task of simply walking by these tripe buckets. Awful to have to resist that urge but that's the way it goes.

Barack Obama is determined to control not only his campaign but the campaign he will authorize to be waged against him. He tells Tennessee Republicans his wife’s comment that “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country” is off-limits. “If they [Republicans] think that they are going to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful, because I find unacceptable the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family.” Bill’s fair game. So’s Michelle. If they make campaign speeches, they’re fair game. Spouses. Children. Parents. Pets. Sacred cows. All.

A candidate trying to control the message on both sides? Say it ain't so! Oh, and I don't want to pay the archive fee at the AJC, so Jim can you tell me how you handled criticism of Nancy back in the 80s?

No crisis here, at least with the state’s system for testing middle school students. Failure rates ran as high as 80 percent. The levelheaded observation of Herb Garrett, director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, charts the course: “Anytime you have that level of failure statewide, you’ve got to go back and re-examine the test and re-examine everything associated with the test.” Take a sip of water, a deep breath and go on living. Matching curriculum, instruction, testing and higher standards is a work in progress

Pretty much everybody agrees something is seriously screwed up with this test.

Good news. Somewhat, anyway. Syria and Israel resume direct talks. Syria wants the Golan Heights. Surrendering it invites disaster.

Wait? Someone's talking to the enemy? Yet, no cries of appeasement? Something certainly can't be right here.

Thank you, Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville, Nathan Deal of Gainesville, Paul Broun of Athens, John Linder of Duluth and Tom Price of Roswell, who cast a fiscal conservative vote to sustain the president’s veto of the $307 billion farm bill. “At a time when net farm income is projected to increase by more than $28 billion in one year, the American taxpayer should not be forced to subsidize a group of farmers who have adjusted gross incomes of up to $1.5 million” per year, said the president. He lost. We did too.

As the owner of a small sliver of farmland in south Georgia, all I can say here is...no comment.

Have a good holiday weekend everyone.

Selah.