Do The $2 Repair First

We have four new light fixtures burning that we didn't have (or knew we had) before Thanksgiving.

A few months ago we had a trio of professionals -- okay let's call them what they really were -- jackleg handymen -- working in the house. We had several parts of a new kitchen installed and were hoping to have some new lighting installed in the kitchen. While they were here we replaced a ceiling fan in the bathroom that had quit working.

Well, the plans for new lighting were put on hold when we couldn't get the guy to return our phone calls. And the new fan in the bathroom was still not working with no explanation from the pros.

Bout now, thanks to my handy son-in-law, we have light!

My dad was a good do-it-yourselfer, building an addition to my boyhood home by himself, building a patio and repairing anything around the house that broke. I only got a fraction of that gene, but Drew has it in spades.

Together we installed new ceiling lights in the kitchen -- a job that should have taken an hour or so. Instead it involved a second trip to Lowes and fishing around in a six inch hole in the ceiling replacing a 20-year-old junction box that more like playing pickup sticks. You are trying to line up two small holes and the wrong touch sends the whole assembly crashing apart.

In the bathroom he found it was a a simple job to replace the light switch on the wall to make the fan (and built-in light) work. That's better than the pros could do.

And in the basement he noticed an overhead light that we hadn't and replaced the bulb.

Sometimes you miss the obvious things, but it's best to try the simplest repair -- the $2 light switch -- before you go further.

How Many Presidents?

News commentators and even the President-elect have said that the U.S. can only have one president at a time.

It seems strange to note that the actions of the president-elect seem to be affecting the stock market more than the actions of the current president. Especially when Bush says something the market goes down and when Obama says something the market goes up.

So expect to see the following story coming out of Washington (and Chicago) in the near future:

President Bush today pardoned two Thanksgiving turkeys.

President Elect Obama immediately followed suit, pardoning two turkeys and a tofurkey.

Why We Don't Read The AJC

A week before the election we decided to not renew our subscription to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It's not something we took lightly; we had been subscribers for nearly 20 years since moving back to Atlanta.

Add together the reduction of local news, the elimination of zoned sections and the increasing liberal leaning of the paper from its editorials to news staff and we couldn't stand it anymore. (It seems that others could not either. Associate Editorial Page Editor Jim Wooten took to working from the Marietta office rather than the Marietta Street office downtown because he couldn't stand being in the same offices with Super Liberal Editorial Page Editor Cynthia Tucker.)

One of the last straws for us was the Tucker column that referred to "the myth of voter fraud" in railing against voter ID at the polls. This from a newspaper that won a Pulitzer for its expose of voter fraud in south Georgia a couple of decades ago.

So, we have done without the AJC and haven't missed it. Except for a couple of Sundays and the lack of my daily Dilbert fix. But I've solved that with the addition of the Dilbert widget here on the blog. And it's in color too.

I have no sympathy for the AJC. They have done it to themselves. They moved from being a decent local and regional newspaper, interested in the community to a national newspaper favoring events in Washington and New York over those in the suburbs. Then they gave it away free on the Internet. Then they cut out local sections and laid off experienced local reporters and photographers. What's left, just quit publishing altogether?

No wonder that The Bright Side is doing well, it's the only local news some people receive.

Hillary For State?

News reports say that soon-to-be-crowned President-elect of the World (but not Cobb County) Barack Obama will name former interminable primary foe Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.

(Would that make Bill the First State? Or does Delaware retain the title? Depends on which one is bigger. So it's a tossup.)

One pundit suggested that the Hillary ploy was a reminder of the "Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer" rule of politics.

Perhaps it goes back to those TV ads about the 3 a.m. phone call.

When the situation is heating up internationally, the person that gets the call at 3:01 a.m. is the Secretary of State.

That's payback, baby!

1,459 Days and Counting

After just a few days in the military you learn to respect the rank of those who have achieved it, whether you like it or not.

On that note, congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama, our next President.

He may not have been our choice (Georgia did her part) but he is the duly elected president.

Like a lot of things, we'll learn to live with it. (We survived Jimmy Carter.)
There are 1,459 days until the next Presidential election. Republicans need to start selecting a candidate we can agree on now. It will take that long to get the scattered pieces of the party back together.

The best rumor I've heard is that the country's best Conservative thinker and organizer, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, is being considered as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. When I started writing this I thought that Haley Barber was RNC Chair. Turns out it's Mike Duncan, according to the RNC website. I guess he did a good job with what he had to work with, but Newt is the master.

Republicans need to quit sniping at each other and trying to place blame on each other. We didn't have a candidate and we didn't stick to message. It's that simple.

We only have a couple of years to find a charismatic candidate who we can agree on and memorize three talking points and keep repeating them.

Saturday it's 1,458 and counting.

Where Are The Long Lines?

Remember those horror movies where the protagonist awakes and finds that there is no one else alive in the universe?

That's the scene in some of the polling locations in Cobb County (NW metro Atlanta). TV showed a scene at Lassiter High School with no one waiting in line outside. Our polling place, Marietta High School (although we voted advance a month ago) had only a smattering of cars in the parking lot. And WSB radio reported half a down polling places in Cobb with lines of 20 minutes or less.

There have been charges of voter suppression, but everyone?

Could it be that everyone who was going to vote worried about the long lines and voted in advance? Some 2 million out of 5.5 million registered Georgia voters used advance voting. (20 percent nationwide). One report showed that 43 percent of black voters had already voted.

This advance voting has to start changing the dynamic for political campaigns. We placed ads for a state House candidate in the week leading up to the vote. During that time we received half a dozen mailed flyers from our candidate and his opponent. But by then some 35 percent of voters had already recorded their decision. Campaign planners will have to get these mailings out earlier – over the 45 days of advance voting -- and that's going to cost more, because you can't leave out the last minute voters.

We took part in a final day GOP rally highlighting Sen. Saxby Chambliss and the rest of the GOP lineup. The Chambliss – Martin race is going to be a nail biter. Because of the presence of a Libertarian candidate there could be a runoff which would bring the entire political universe (and their competing ads) to Georgia for the next three weeks.

Tonight at 7 p.m. the networks will announce definitively which way Georgia voted. But it could be up to 10 days before we have every vote counted because of challenge and provisional ballots. Still those 2 million advance votes have to be counted along with the millions who vote today. So Georgia could still be in play for another 24 hours.

If you have voted, bless you. If you haven't voted, go vote now. It's going to be a long night.

It's Almost Over, But The Counting

Uncle! Please, Stop, I'll tell you all the military secrets I know. Just stop the insanity of the political commercials.

They are unrelenting, right. I just sat through three minutes of back and forth charges on just one race. Is the Saxby Chambliss – Joe Martin race the most important one in the country? It must be if there's that much money being put into it.

Thank goodness, I'm immune to the ads. We voted early at the first of October. We thought the advance voting line was long but decided to wait out the 45 minute line to get it over with. Good thing because every day the wait grew exponentially. At times the lines were up to four or five hours long with the last person in line casting their ballot after midnight.

This, of course, brought out the charges of voter suppression and racism. Voters have 30 times longer to vote than most any other election and someone is holding people back?

Can you imagine the same complaints if long lines of white, middle aged men wearing suits were standing in line? No.

And what about the systematic suppression of the military vote? In 2000 the Gore campaign worked actively to keep military votes from being counted. Today there are numerous examples of military votes being challenged. Let's work to protect the freedoms that our military is fighting for.

The actions of ACORN and others have raised the specter of voter fraud. It's easy to see what is happening when some voters are registered 72 times and illegal aliens are added to the lists. While this is documented, AJC columnist Cynthia Tucker writes about the "myth of voter fraud." This is the same newspaper that won awards for its reports of South Georgia counties where dead residents voted, in alphabetical order.

If voter fraud is a myth, then perhaps so too is underage drinking and there should be no need for ID cards to purchase alcohol. Isn't it strange that the same people who buy beer the day before and after the election and flash their ID card to the clerk, have a philosophical opposition to showing it to an election official once every four years.

Of course it does lead to some strange conversations: "Hi Allan. Hi Estell. Glad to see you at church Sunday, How are the kids? Fine. Can I see some ID?

Go vote and hope for miracles.