How Tea Party rumors gain traction
Ostensibly, the Tea Party meeting I attended Tuesday night in Peachtree City was about the “cap-and-trade” climate change bill that Congress is now considering.
But a passing reference to an unrelated rumor was more interesting. And it said a lot more about the way the Tea Party rank-and-file gets worked up over things that aren’t even happening.
This week’s baseless rumor apparently is that President Obama is planning to ban protests on the National Mall. “Treason,” one Tea Partier responded when he heard that. Another yelled something about “revolution.”
Here’s the video. Below’s my explanation of why the rumor appears to be totally baseless.
AJC likens feds’ flood response to Katrina
Here’s an AJC headline that borders on tasteless. It at least falls into the category of slanted and sloppy.
Barely a day-and-a-half after Gov. Perdue asked President Obama to declare parts of north Georgia a natural disaster area, one local politician — a guy who happens to be running for statewide office — gripes to Jim Galloway, the paper’s political blogger, that the president’s taking too long.
Galloway’s headline? “Shades of Katrina: A frustrated Sam Olens wonders if Washington knows how badly metro Atlanta is hurting.”
Whoa, now, Jim. Doncha think that’s a tad melodramatic? Read more
Obama is biracial love child of Strom Thurmond!
PRESIDENTIAL PROGENATORS: George "Daddy" Bush and Strom "Daddy" Thurmond.
Yesterday’s withering ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land of Columbus, Ga., against Obama birth-conspiracy theorist Orly Taitz concerns me. If the birther movement suffers more discredit at the hands of conservative Republicans, fewer people will believe Grand Ol’ Party has devolved into a bunch of kooks. And then the Republicans might actually win a few elections outside of old Dixie.
So, please, it’s imperative that you help me spread a new birther conspiracy theory: President Obama is the biracial South Carolina love child of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond. And, because, as some neo-Confederates argue, the South never returned to the union, Obama is not a natural-born citizen! Read more
Isakson won’t take my health insurance advice
I met with an aide to Johnny Isakson yesterday afternoon to urge the Republican senator from Georgia to support health insurance reform. Though the young man I spoke with was courteous and smart, I left the meeting depressed and not very optimistic.
Now, I’m more depressed. Around the same time, as it turns out, Isakson was claiming to the Macon Lion’s Club that the discussion currently underway in Congress is a “classic debate between single-payer health care and private sector delivery.”
That’s about as true as the claim that the bill contains a provision for “death panels,” a canard that Isakson earlier this week called “nuts.” Read more
See Isakson on health care this week
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (left) with fellow Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss (right) and your average constituent.
Some guy named Barack asked me to go by U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s office in Cobb County this week to let Isakson know what I think about health insurance reform. OK, well, actually it wasn’t Barack. It was somebody who work for him. But I’m going anyway.
This seems like the most effective counter-move to the ill-informed mobs that are trying to shutdown open discussion on health care by shouting over anyone who disagrees with them and by hanging congressmen in effigy.
I’m disgusted by the bullies, and was a little worried last week that the country’s best chance ever at health reform would go to waste if better informed people didn’t speak up. So I signed up at Barack Obama’s Organizing for America site. And last night, I got an e-mail suggesting that I stop by Isakson’s office at a preset time.
Here’s what I’m going to tell Isakson (or more likely, his staff member): Read more
Saporta: What Obama’s urban agenda means to Atlanta
“Georgia politics since the beginning has mostly been about resentment of Atlanta.”
That line got my attention! It’s a quote from a column by former AJC columnist and current blogger Maria Saporta that touches on what Obama’s urban preclivities could mean for Atlanta and Georgia. She wrote the piece following Friday’s meeting of the Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable. Check it out here.
Will Leah Sears be married to Supreme Court?
I’d love to see Leah Ward Sears elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court. It would give me boasting rights. After all, she presided at my wedding.
The Georgia Supreme Court chief justice also is an exceptional person: smart, decent, composed, highly logical and, well, judicious.
There’s one factor that makes the Georgia Supreme Court chief justice a longshot, however: Most U.S. high court nominees have experience in the federal courts, interpreting federal law on the bench or arguing over it as government attorneys.
Sears — who is rumored to be among those being considered by the Obama administration to replace retiring Justice David Souter — has spent her entire judicial career in municipal and state courts.
No Gupta?
CNN’s Sanjay Gupta may be out as President Obama’s surgeon general nominee, Fox News is reporting (with barely concealed glea, I might add).
Word leaked in December that Obama’s transition team had approached the CNN medical correspondent for the post, but there hasn’t been much said about him for the last couple of months. According to the grapevine, Gupta withdrew himself — but you always gotta consider in the story like this whether that’s a cover story.
I, for one, thought Gupta would be a great choice for the job. The parttime Atlanta resident is a very credible, responsible journalist but also a good communicator and by all accounts an excellent neurosurgeon.
Georgia DOT lists stimuli
STUCK IN THE STATION: Dallas managed to build a streetcar system. Will the stimulus finally push along Atlanta's languishing proposals?
Where’s all that transportation stimulus money going in Georgia? Mainly to roads, it seems.
The Georgia Department of Transportation has done a nice job of clearly laying out on its website where some $1.1 billion in transportation money from President Obama’s stimulus package is going. The site, which is really oriented toward informing local officials and potential contractors, doesn’t yet break down the projects in detail (that’s coming, apparently). But it does outline how money is going into broad categories.
For example, of the $144 million directed toward public transportation, only $7 million will go to MARTA while $126 million will go toward other systems in urban areas. It’ll be interesting to see whether that money finally gets transit projects, like the Brain Train, further down the track.
The really big question, though, is how some $900 million in highway money will be spent. If DOT and the state’s metropolitan planning organizations, shovel the bulk of it into new roads and highway expansions, the stimulus will have the effect of extending sprawl and worsening metro Atlanta’s environmental/quality of life problems.
If, on the other hand, a big share of the money goes toward maintaining roads that already exist — a far bigger need in Georgia than is acknowledged by politicians who want to build roads — then existing communities will benefit, as will the economy and the environment.
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