GA Legislature battle over indigent defense

The Legislature is still in session--the attack is scurrilous. See other March FCDR articles for informed debate on properly funding the Council.

Georgia Supreme Court blows off protecting the vote, Fulton County Daily Report blows off fully cutting & pasting AP stories

Lovely Wisconsin blogger post on local healthcare reform debate

With thanks to Illusory Tenant for drawing my attention to it.

Health reform political twist

World government crisis watch

Title link is to the latest developments about Honduras from Reuters. I had hopes for the Arias-led mediation; looks like it's getting pretty rocky.

From the Georgia Blogwire

The title link is a lovely post of anguish from Cup O' Joe on healthcare reform. He has motivated me to check out a couple of the details of the current bill(s) and think of what Senators I might call that it would make a difference.

From the LeftyBlogs feed: Wilkinson (pop. 10K) gets more transportation stimulus funding than Fulton

Talk about something crying out for follow-up, as in, what on earth is it being spent on.

EDIT: Mostly on a single highway bypass, it seems. For introductory background on recovery.org, see this interview. Not to be confused with recovery.gov.

Local news: Buckhead boil water advisory & Georgia fatcat Don Leeburn

It's always something with the water in Atlanta, isn't it.

Also, as ignorant as I am of Georgia politics, I just learned of this charming fellow via Lucid Idiocy.

NYT offers the Washington perspective on the possibility of a negotiated compromise in Honduras

The title link discusses the hopeful opening represented by Honduras' politicians accepting Costa Rican President Arias as a mediator.

It's a lively world these days, isn't it, what with Honduras, Iran and China's Xinjiang province. I bet there are other political hotspots out there I'm unaware of.

Following the Honduras story revived an ongoing problem I have: finding a decent web site that permalinks AP stories. I like following Salon's AP feed, but those links have a really short weblife; this one, for instance, is bound to disappear soon:

http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2009/07/07/D999RVQG0_us_us_honduras/index.html
Honduras political rivals accept mediation
By MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writer

If anyone knows an easily searchable site that preserves AP stories, please let me know.

EDIT: I forget whether Bloomberg stories disappear too. I think so.

Well, scandal or not, Andrea Mitchell's theory that Palin is "out of politics for good" seems dead wrong

Title link to an AP story found on the Drudge Report. Forceful pushback on scandal speculations. We'll see, won't we?

A classic illustration of how an intelligent man falls out of touch once he becomes President

The title link is a Washington Post story of a conference call Obama held with a couple of his administration officials and half a dozen Congressional leaders on healthcare. He's only been President for 5 months and two weeks, but here he is

1) using the stenographers at the Washington Post to communicate with liberal pressure groups like MoveOn and Democracy for America--not just to communicate with them, but to chastise and express displeasure with them. Your Excellency, if you want to communicate with a group, pick up the phone and call them, or invite them to a conference call. Don't use the corrupt inside-the-Beltway media to try to dictate to them at arm's length;

2) fully embracing the power and insiderhood he has won. Do you remember when you quoted Franklin Roosevelt, Mr. Obama? "I agree with you; now make me do it"? That's what pressure groups are for. That's what good, effective activism is. When our representatives don't represent us the way we want, we become their adversaries. We withhold our support. We go after them no matter what letter they have after their names.

Again, you are squandering one of America's best opportunities so far. You could be a transformational President. Part of that would include dismantling some of the power that your office has arrogated for itself ever since John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, through Thomas Jefferson making the Louisiana Purchase, to Abraham Lincoln preserving the Union rather than contain the supremacy of the federal government, to William McKinley conquering and creating the overseas Empire, to Franklin Roosevelt breaking the Supreme Court and the tradition of voluntarily giving up power, becoming President for life, to Richard Nixon asserting executive privilege, to Bill Clinton abandoning even the fig leaf of United Nations consensus to wage a war that Congress (again) never declared, to George Bush finally asserting that nothing, not even the Constitution, controls the power of the commander-in-chief.

Are you going to continue protecting the office you hold, and consequently all the criminals who used it before you, thus becoming criminal yourself? Or are you going to be the hope you appealed to?

A response to President Obama's latest email to his supporters

Barack:

1. On healthcare, I need you to move the goalposts further in the country's favor to ensure that whatever compromise ultimately ensues actually accomplishes your goals. I echo Robert Reich's consternation that neither "single-payer" nor "universally-available alternative government plan" seem to be part of the vocabulary any more.

2. On foreign policy, I need you to live up to your campaign promises. I allowed myself to briefly hope that you would become our first transcendent President. The best we have ever had so far (the Roosevelts, Lyndon Johnson) outlined and accomplished truly good domestic agendas, but remained instruments of U.S. tyranny abroad. So far you are replicating that model. You have paid lip service to ending Cheneyism, but from state secrets to escalating unmanned attacks in Afghanistan to many other areas (Glenn Greenwald speaks for me in these matters) you have put a kinder face on essentially the same policy.

Please fulfill the hope and change you championed.

Yours truly,
Blake

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 4:29 PM, President Barack Obama wrote:
> Blake --
>
> The chance to finally reform our nation's health care system is here. While
> Congress moves rapidly to produce a detailed plan, I have made it clear that
> real reform must uphold three core principles -- it must reduce costs,
> guarantee choice, and ensure quality care for every American.
>
> As we know, challenging the status quo will not be easy. Its defenders will
> claim our goals are too big, that we should once again settle for half
> measures and empty talk. Left unanswered, these voices of doubt might yet
> again derail the comprehensive reform we so badly need. That's where you
> come in.
>
> When our opponents spread fear and confusion about the changes we seek, your
> support for these core principles will show clarity and resolve. When the
> lobbyists for the status quo tell Congress to hold back, your personal story
> will give them the courage to press forward.
>
> Join my call: Ask Congress to pass real health care reform in 2009.
>
> After adding your name, please consider sharing your personal story about
> the importance of health care reform in your life and the lives of those you
> love.
>
> I will be personally reviewing many of these signatures and stories. If you
> speak up now, your voice will make a difference.
>
> http://my.barackobama.com/HealthCareOrganizing
>
> American families are watching their premiums rise four times faster than
> their wages. Spiraling health care costs are shackling America's businesses,
> curtailing job growth and slowing the economy at the worst possible time.
> This has got to change.
>
> I know personal stories can drive that change, because I know how my
> mother's experience continues to drive me. She passed away from ovarian
> cancer a little over a decade ago. And in the last weeks of her life, when
> she was coming to grips with her own mortality and showing extraordinary
> courage just to get through each day, she was spending too much time
> worrying about whether her health insurance would cover her bills. She
> deserved better. Every American deserves better. And that's why I will not
> rest until the dream of health care reform is finally achieved in the United
> States of America.
>
> Please add your name to join my call. Then share your personal story about
> why you too will not rest until this job is done.
>
> http://my.barackobama.com/HealthCareOrganizing
>
> Last November, the American people sent Washington a clear mandate for
> change. But when the polls close, the true work of citizenship begins.
> That's what Organizing for America is all about. Now, in these crucial
> moments, your voice once again has extraordinary power. I'm counting on you
> to use it.
>
> Thank you,
>
> President Barack Obama
>
>
>
>
>
> Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National
> Committee -- 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This
> communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
>
> This email was sent to: *********
>
> To unsubscribe, go to: http://my.barackobama.com/unsubscribe
>

Atlanta mayoral race news

President of the Grady Health System Foundation and City Council President Lisa Borders has re-entered the race after dropping out last fall for her parents' health. They've gotten better, and she's back in.

For some time all I saw were signs for Kasim Reed. In the last week on one of my usual neighborhood drives I saw a yard sign for Mary Norwood.

I'm ashamed to say that these are all people that I've been marginally aware of for the last few years, but haven't read about or followed at all. I do a pretty bad job of following Atlanta & Georgia politics, which is the main reason that I've never submitted this to LeftyBlogs. I am just barely literate enough to know that the election will be this November, and to hold the tenuous opinion that Shirley Franklin was a big improvement over Bill Campbell. Occasionally I notice some glaring scandal of the legislature, such as when Erick Erickson emailed his readers about the nuclear power boondoggle or Tondee's Tavern did the same about the amazingly regressive elimination of the ad valorem car tax. (The Georgia Power nuclear bill passed.)

I did of course notice that Attorney General Thurbert Baker has declared for governor, which is a potentially very interesting development, and fascinating if only for the ensuing scramble to replace him as AG. And in the course of looking for the web link to Erick's email, I discovered that the car tax is dead! Thank god the bumblefuckedness of Republican Georgia legislators can't be underestimated.

This is not the first time the McCain campaign has shot itself in the foot

If McCain is personally in charge of his campaign, then he's incompetent. Accept the endorsement of Ayers' Republican funder right before the last debate? When you've gotten wind that your opponent's rebuttal on Ayers is that he was funded by said major Republican? Either that, or McCain is being sabotaged. If, as I've seen hinted, it's by a Palin-supporting group closer to Bush & Cheney than McCain (Schmidt, Kristol, etc.), they're doing a terrible job of introducing her for 2012. She's such an obvious liar, so obviously incompetent and such a tangibly scary religious nut that she's already been defined as unqualified for the Presidency to a large majority of the country.

My God, I didn't expect this

A little bit of the old McCain. (Thanks Andrew Sullivan.) And thank you, Senator John Sidney McCain III. Second piece of good news all week. Buy more stocks on Monday, kthnx. Consult the Fed for all your borrowing needs. (Except for credit cards; go ahead and just pay those off, you never know when you'll need your full power to delay payments.) Maybe someone won't take a shot at Obama now, because if McCain kept this Ayers shit up it would get likelier and likelier.