Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Ralph Reed postscript

Hotline:

The further away from Atlanta, the better Reed seemed to do. He won or broke even in the three most sizable GA locales outside of Atlanta, Savannah (Chatham Co), Augusta (Richmond Co.) and Macon/Warner-Robins (Bibb and Houston Co’s), and won a number of scattered rural counties. As Reed well knows, however, GA elections are won and lost around the capital city.

Terrance (who grew up here but hasn’t lived in Georgia since 1994) says it’s because we’re more conservative out here in rural Georgia.

No doubt we are, but I continue to be surprised at how conservative big city Atlanta is and how many progressives there are here 97.9 miles and a world away.

I’m thinking they’re just more set in their ways here and not nearly as interested or tuned in so they are honestly unaware of Ralph’s chicanery.

Georgia Equality declares victory

Not so bad as we thought?

Support for equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Georgians gained momentum last night as the results were announced for both Republican and Democratic Primaries. [...]

Georgia Equality endorsed 18 candidates and 14 either won or face a runoff.  But it was the re-election of Karla Drenner by a wide margin that was considered the biggest win.  “Our opponents threw everything they could at Karla and she not only survived, but she survived by a wide margin.  Clearly, the voters in her district realized that she is the best person for the job regardless of her sexual identity.”

“With the overwhelming election of Karla Drenner, Kathy Ashe, Sheila Jones, Stacey Abrams, and others, we are returning a strong team to the House of Representatives.  Another big win for us was the election of Nan Orrock who will bring a powerful and unwavering voice in the Georgia State Senate and who joins Gloria Butler and other Senators who have stood on the right side of history,” he said.

Georgia Equality will be directing all of its focus on endorsed candidates who face runoffs including Jim Martin in the Lt. Governor’s race and Douglas Dean in House District 59.  But the number one priority is [former Georgia Equality Executive Director] Allen Thornell who finished second in House District 58.

“We are three weeks away from electing the first openly gay man to the Georgia House of Representatives.  Voter turnout will be the key to winning on August 8th and we are mobilizing our forces now,â€Â� he said.

Coming Sunday in the Times

Book Reviews - Bruce Handy reviews CATCH A WAVE: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin:

[I]s there really anything “new,” as they say, to say about Wilson and the Beach Boys? Not really, at least on the evidence here - don’t go looking for revisionist theories about Al Jardine being the group’s real genius - though Carlin seems to have spoken to everyone close to Wilson who’s still alive, and some who aren’t. He has also dug up some illuminating new documents and recordings, transcripts of family squabbles, druggy parties and such, that flesh out the story more fully than earlier tellings did. And I’ve never seen a diagnosis of Wilson quite as precise as the one Carlin offers: “mildly manic-depressive with a schizo-affective disorder.”

The least favorable review of Ron Suskind’s THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 I’ve read. By Bryan Burrough:

[T]hough he never comes out and says so, Suskind partners with a former director of central intelligence, George Tenet, along with members of Tenet’s team and a few Rolodex Regulars, like the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft. Tenet is a good horse to ride: the C.I.A. was at the center of the Qaeda fight, and there is plenty of new material here concerning the pursuit of the Khalid Shaikh Mohammeds and Ramzi bin al-Shibhs of the world. The problem is that Tenet, however central, was just one horse in a crowded field. President Bush is here, as are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. There’s no hint, though, that any of them said word one to Suskind. There’s no attribution, a concern magnified in the point-of-view format, but their every appearance clearly arrives through the eyes of Tenet or his men. It’s not so much that the text is ill informed. It’s just one set of hands on a very big elephant.

And from Travel & Leisure: Will it do for air travel what the cell phone did for phone calls?

Enter the “microjet,” a new breed of aircraft that, its backers say, may soon begin to decongest the system and help make flying pleasant and invigorating. Microjets typically carry six to eight passengers, cost less to produce than ordinary private jets and can land on shorter runways than normal airliners. In theory this means that such planes can skip the hubs and fly point to point between much smaller airports. What’s more, fleets of “air taxisâ€Â� promise to do this relatively economically, allowing people who don’t have corporate jets to travel, at least on occasion, as if they do. Should the industry grow as rapidly as expected (the F.A.A. expects that by 2010 there will be more than a thousand microjets in service), the C.E.O.’s and film stars in their Gulfstreams may still beat the rest of us to the landing strips, but not by quite as much and not in such superior mental condition.

The SECOND largest Baptist Group?

Nathan Newman tells us of the moves afoot to unify the various non-Southern Baptist organizations within the Baptist community:

And those Baptist groups, recently brought together at the Carter Center to explore building a ”North American Baptist Convenant”, would include 20 million members, more than the 16 million folks in the Southern Baptists.  Encouragingly, this group of Baptists came together to affirm:

They specifically committed themselves to their obligations as Christians to promote peace with justice, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and the marginalized, welcome the strangers among us, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity.

So for those looking for the “religious left”, they could do worse than follow developments around this emerging alternative Baptist bloc.

Payoff time

The pharma friendly Medicare Prescription Drug Plan is beginning to pay off:

The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to reap a windfall from a surprisingly lucrative niche market: drugs for poor people.

And analysts expect the benefits to show up in many of the quarterly financial results that drug makers will begin posting this week.

The windfall, which by some estimates could be $2 billion or more this year, is a result of the transfer of millions of low-income people into the new Medicare Part D drug program that went into effect in January. Under that program, as it turns out, the prices paid by insurers, and eventually the taxpayer, for the medications given to those transferred are likely to be higher than what was paid under the federal-state Medicaid programs for the poor.

That’s what we get from the best government big money can buy!

And I helped!

Ralph Reed concedes defeat:

Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed conceded defeat about 9:50 p.m. in Georgia’s Republican primary for lieutenant governor.

“Tonight my candidacy for lieutenant governor comes to an end,” he said.

He promised to work for the GOP ticket, including Sen. Casey Cagle (R-Gainesville), his rival in the lieutenant governor’s race.

I didn’t make it to the polling place on election day ‘til nearly closing time, and didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there up to the very last minute. Then, as I was signing in and I saw those two check boxes labeled Republican or Democrat, I impulsively checked “Republican.”

I went up to that Diebold machine with no paper trail and voted with my passions: against Sonny Perdue (who enjoyed an easy primary), against Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox (the former Republican House Member and supporter of the conservative Christian Coalition whom I have met with and do not like or respect won anyway), and against Ralph Reed.

Much as I dislike Mark Taylor (have you seen his ads? The big guy claims to work for all Georgians but doesn’t count me among them. Of course, neither did Cox causing this problem in the first place) I may start voting Republican regularly.

UPDATE: A commenter at The Moderate Voice says many of us crossed over.