Who are you?
Who’s askin’?

I am a beachball on the river of life.

I am the “fun” in “malfunction.”

I am the puff of wind in your ear just before some Willie inserts a wet finger.

I am the last bubble on top of the best mug of coffee you’ll ever have.

I am obviously not going to really answer the above question, but I can do this all day.

Zombies – undead monstrosity or the next logical step in human evolution?
From Reid’s Point of View, zombies are merely further proof everything is distributed 80/20. In this case, 20% of movies about zombies are entertaining, and 80% are awful.

Young Elvis or Fat Elvis?
Tort Elvis (I actually did this whole quiz just so I could give that linked answer)

If you were a superhero, what would your name be?
Whatever, Man

Yes, you would have to include the comma.

You are the last man on earth, and it is your job to perpetuate the human race, whether you like it or not. Your choice of potential mates is between Wonder Woman, the Bionic Woman or Super Girl. Which one do you choose?
Gosh. Can I maybe have a choice that might not break me in the process of trying to procreate? I mean, what’s the goal here?

What was your first car?
1970 Volkswagen Beetle, handed down to me by my parents, who bought it brand new for $1,995. When I sold it a dozen years later for $300, I feared going on the test drive at the used car place, because the passenger floor had rusted out so bad you could see the road going by in places.

Last seen about three weeks after I sold it, broken down on the side of the road in Warner Robins, Georgia.

If you were going to show me around your city/town, where’s the first place you would take me?
Centennial Park. The Atlanta skyline surrounds you, the Georgia Aquarium is on the north edge of the park, and on the south edge, CNN. In between I could show you the brick I bought to help build the park (has my name on it) and then we could douse ourselves in the Olympic Rings fountain.

What’s the last album you bought?
Prince, Lotusflow3r/mplsound

Do you have an arch enemy? Would you like one?
No, and no. I have more than enough problems, thank you very much.

What’s the title of the movie they are going to make about your teenage years?
Why is the last question always the hardest? How about … “Generic 1970’s Disaster Movie”?

When I wrote about ridiculous claims back in April, I included this one:

The Atlanta Falcons claim they are going to trade Michael Vick. The thing is, in the NFL, you are actually trading a contract with a player, not so much the player himself. And in 2004, Vick signed a 10-year, $130 million contract with the Falcons. Now, how many NFL teams do you think are willing to swallow about $13 million per year for the next five seasons, just to take a chance on a convicted felon fresh out of jail? Shortly after June 1, you’ll see the Falcons release Vick and take the salary cap hit (about $7 million for 2009 alone), because they will have no trade takers.

Well, here we are shortly after June 1, and the Atlanta Falcons have indeed released Michael Vick: “We spent a significant amount of time this off-season trying to trade him to another NFL club, and we had some conversations with a few teams, but nothing materialized.” What a surprise!

And so a sometimes ugly era comes to an end. Mark Bradley at the AJC writes about some of Vick’s “brief shining moments“ (“He was the biggest athlete this city has ever seen.”). But over at atlantafalcons.com, J.Mike writes:

Dimitroff and Head Coach Mike Smith were not around when the team drafted Vick or during the turbulent events of 2007 sparked by his federal indictment. Less than a dozen Falcons on the current roster played with the quarterback.

That can’t be said for others in the organization, some in their second or third decade with the team. We’ve all witnessed part of history and grown from the frustration, hurt and confusion.

But this isn’t a time of reflection.

This is a time of closure.

The Falcons are a playoff football team again with a new quarterback and a new blood as bright as the team’s red jerseys.

The Michael Vick book remained open through all the re-building and success, but got pushed to the far corner of the desk.

Now it’s closed.

It was really closed a long time ago, because, as Jeff Schultz points out, team owner Arthur Blank was never going to allow Vick back: “Blank writes his office e-mails in red. The man who writes in red e-mails was lied to — and he doesn’t like being lied to. Blank also knew that for every dollar he made if he brought Vick back by selling jerseys and season tickets to Vick fans, he would lose far more dollars because of the fans who would leave and the corporate sponsorships that would go away. And did I mention he was lied to?”

When I wrote my concluding piece about Vick nearly two years ago, it was titled Michael Vick is a Lying Dog Murdering Team Betraying Anti Role Model. I detailed each of those charges. I’m not sure how many of those things are or aren’t still true. I doubt we’ll see another arrest on that particular charge, he could prove loyal to a new team, and could again become a decent example for kids of how one can rise from your mistakes. One has to wonder, though, particularly about the lying.

But that’s an issue for others. There is no doubt that Michael Vick has served his time, paid his debt to society as determined by our judicial system, and deserves a second chance at freedom. Whether Michael Vick deserves a second chance at his chosen career, well, that seems a separate matter, and one that is up to the NFL Commissioner and 31 other NFL teams.

Here in Atlanta, he’s done. Right down to the final paperwork.

We debate these semantics and keep getting diverted from the basic issue. Probably on purpose.

Diversion One: But wait, don’t spend too much time worrying about the semantics of “what do we call this,” that’s not the proper measurement. Let’s talk about whether it was effective.

Diversion Two: But wait, that’s not important either, the real crux of the matter is what did Nancy Pelosi know, and when did she know it?

Diversion Three: And if we’re going to close Gitmo, do those hundreds of terrorists really have to move into that foreclosed house in the cul-de-sac around the corner? I find that somewhat scary…

After years of no motion, the past few weeks have brought a lot of fast talk, culminating in Thursday’s “dueling speeches” from President Obama and former VP Dick Cheney. I watched all of the President’s speech, and watched Cheney’s until I was overcome by the urge to shoot myself in the face to make it stop. And I once again feel the need to address publicly muddied issues that seem crystal clear to me.

Diversion One. When I wrote The Torture Debate, Part 5150, I responded to the idea that torture yielded information, and therefore the argument should be “are these techniques effective?”:

I hear that robbing a bank yields cash. I hear that rape yields some sick satisfaction for one of the parties involved. Yet these acts are considered both repugnant and illegal, despite the apparent yields. Go figure.

Diversion Two. I want to establish up front, I’ve never thought much of Nancy Pelosi. Or any of the Senators or Representatives who allegedly lead their party in Congress. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell; all seem pretty useless to me.

When Pelosi did her public tap dance about what she knew and when, topping it off with accusations against the CIA, here’s what I heard…

“I was informed. I was not briefed.” Perhaps this semantic difference helps you parse your personal filing system, but down here in the public, we see those as pretty much the same thing.

“I was told what they were considering, not what they were doing.” If someone tells me they are considering doing something, I assume it is because they might actually want/need to do it. If someone tells me “I am considering kicking you in the nuts,” you’ll see me physically react as if they were actually going to do it. Again, Pelosi is parsing a semantic difference so finely that it sounds like a weasel-worthy excuse.

“They misled Congress.” Ah, yes, Ye Olde “they lied to me, so it doesn’t matter what I knew or when I knew it.” There is a long history of Congress claiming it has been misled by those charged with informing it. There are times it has proven to be true. I have no idea if this is one of those times, but as “The Final Excuse” in the string issuing from Pelosi’s mouth, it rings especially hollow.

So, Pelosi’s performance was atrocious, without a doubt. But here’s the point missed by most in this debate. When you are a ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, and you are “briefed” (or “informed” … whatever) by the CIA about either what they are doing or what they are planning, they have not come to you for approval.

They have not come to you for a vote, or official consent. They are just informing you. And, in turn, you cannot tell a soul what you now know. Sure, I guess you can write a strong letter to the President. But over the past 8 years, that man was someone who would add signing statements to laws Congress passed that essentially meant “I’m going to do what I deem necessary regardless of this law.” So what impact would a strong letter from Pelosi have had? Well, I guess she could have held it up at her press conference to say “yes, I knew, and I complained.” But other than covering her ass, it would have had no impact.

Her knowledge, whenever it occurred, would not have changed a thing. She never had that power, no matter what she was told or when. Which makes her “performance” all the sadder.

Diversion Three: The approximately 250 detainees who will be moving into your neighborhood. Not! The scare-mongers speak as if these detainees will be set loose into the US, like a felon released from prison on parole. The truth is that the public would be at no more risk from these detainees than they are from Charles Manson. Or Eric Rudolph. Or Ted Kazinski. Or any number of convicted murderers and rapists in their own home state, who are in high security custody.

In fact, if you think about it, the ones who will be placed at the most risk are those “terrorists” who might be released into general prison populations. How long do you think they would last in that environment? Who exactly is it that should be scared of this … if you pause ten seconds to actually think about it.

But pausing for thought would just make too much sense. And there isn’t a whole lot of that to be found. That’s why Rove and Cheney are able to make the ridiculous claim that Obama and the Democrats want to “criminalize the policy choices” of the previous administration.

This is not about criminalizing a policy dispute! This is about potential violations of decades old international law, the Geneva Convention, as well as US law. When you make policy choices that knowingly violate the law, yes, you have opened yourself to criminal prosecution, by your own actions.

You say “policy choice,” I say “war crime.” We just don’t seem to live in the same reality any more. Just look at the similar cases of the torture memos and that of the torture photos. The release of both is mandated by court ruling, in cases filed long before Obama was even the Democratic nominee.

Obama decided to obey the court ruling to let the memos out, and was castigated by the right and congratulated by the left for doing so. Then Obama decided to further fight the court ruling to let the photos out, and was castigated by the left and congratulated by the right for doing so. Meanwhile, Cheney says there are other documents he’d like to see released … but just the two that allegedly support his position.

Not only is it a “no win” situation, it’s a gross distortion. People act as if the problem, the offense, is paper memos or photographic prints. The problem, the offense, is the historical acts they represent and depict. And hiding paper or pixels does not change those offensive acts or that history.

History. That has been the last refuge of folks like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush. They firmly state that, when all is known, history will be the ultimate judge of their actions. They seem quite comfortable with that. And, credit where it is due, Bush and Rumsfeld have largely avoided the spotlight since leaving office. Cheney, not so much. He’s been keeping his thumb on the scales of history quite heavily in the past few months.

And despite Obama’s professed preference to avoid investigations and/or prosecutions, it seems that this argument isn’t going away. It’s just getting more grossly distorted.

I’ve become convinced the best way to resolve this is via a very narrowly constructed Truth Commission. Emphasis on “Truth.” After all, who can argue with wanting to know the truth? And in my opinion it would only work with two major stipulations.

One, the commission should not just be “independent,” it should be complete outsiders. No one who has ever held elective office. Choose from a pool of some retired military officers (no generals, maybe some NCO’s instead), retired judges, public defenders, doctors, clergy, cowboys, Indian chiefs, etc. Decidedly non-Beltway types.

Two, there would be no prosecutions for information revealed to the commission. You could compel people to testify via subpoena, you would give them blanket immunity in exchange for full disclosure under oath. The only potential charge would be perjury, if it is revealed that even with complete amnesty, they failed to tell the whole truth.

The goal would be The Whole Truth, a final report that was not politicized or diverted by either the authors, or the potential outcome. A final report that lays it all out.

For history.

So that you know, and I know, and the world knows … exactly what was done in our name. We have that right.

This country has been “debating” torture much of this decade, and I last summed up my feelings in November of 2007, with Becoming The Thing We Hate.

One would have hoped that a new administration would put this to rest by denouncing those “enhanced interrogation techniques” and banning them. Which they did. But now we have to endure the likes of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney engaging in this bizarre form of public projection in which they now decry the very actions and strategies they used to practice religiously every day of the week. Others chime in to say the most outrageous things about this country and torture.

And it has become more than I can bear.

Torture supporters got a woody yesterday from, of all places, The New York Times

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

So, torture yielded information? I hear that robbing a bank yields cash. I hear that rape yields some sick satisfaction for one of the parties involved. Yet these acts are considered both repugnant and illegal, despite the apparent yields. Go figure.

But nevermind the logic, this statement caused many torture supporters to claim the Obama administration is selectively releasing information that supports their position and smears their critics. Perhaps they got so excited by the above comment they failed to read the rest of the article:

“The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

Oh. So, we might well have gotten that info anyway, and the practice turned into a recruiting tool for those who wish to kill us. Well, that’s a minor point to someone like Karl Rove:

“What they’ve essentially said is if we have policy disagreements with our predecessors…. [W]e’re going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses and what we’re gonna do is prosecute systematically the previous administration, or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences. Is that what we’ve come to in this country?”

That’s a nice ploy, calling our violation of decades old international law a “policy difference.” You see, a “policy difference” does not beget prosecution. But a violation of the law might. It’s called “accountability,” which I know is an endangered species in this country, but that’s all the more reason for people to stand up for it.

And this wasn’t done on a whim. As Paul Begala notes:

…the president was compelled to release them by a lawsuit, a lawsuit that his lawyers, the Justice Department and the White House counsel, decided they could not successfully defend.

We have a Freedom of Information Act. I know it’s — it’s an adjustment, but we now have a White House that lives under the rule of law and obeys the laws. So, he released them because he was compelled to release them.

This is very different from the Bush administration, which selectively leaked national security information, top-secret information, in order to build what I think the record shows was a dishonest case for war, or, in the case of Valerie Wilson, to destroy the career of a covert CIA agent.

That’s the politicization of intelligence information and — and top-secret information. This was the president obeying the law.

A president obeying the law has absolutely astounded his critics. How could he? Well, he could have done much more, but directly chose not to:

“Obama knew he could not stop Congress from doing whatever lawmakers decided to do but he was reluctant to give a presidential imprimatur to a national commission that would keep the controversy alive for months and months and months. Obama had his own agenda and wanted to move on. Putting out the memos was the cleanest way to accomplish his goal. […] In his comments Tuesday he tried to steer lawmakers away from partisan investigations, arguing that if anything were done, it should be with the cooperation of both parties.”

He’s been trying to tamp this down, and releasing the four memos was the least he could do to satisfy the lawsuit. Rather than quietly acknowledge this, and allow the issue to die down, many on the right have gone on the attack.

OK, so then let’s take a closer look, since you insist. Maybe a truth commission really is what you need, but for now, how about this?

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.

The process was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,” a former C.I.A. official said.

These are just a few of the things that “The Deciders” did not know when they did the deciding. Despite this lack of knowledge, they used torture to try and squeeze blood from a rock:

“There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.

“Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA … and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies.”

Senior administration officials, however, “blew that off and kept insisting that we’d overlooked something, that the interrogators weren’t pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information,” he said.

Got that? They were so motivated to attack Iraq after 9/11 that they used torture (and pushed for more torture when it didn’t work) to create a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda that never existed. But they were certain if they tortured enough, someone would admit to it.

Torture me enough, and I’ll admit I’m both the Anti-Christ and Sasquatch, and will agree to wash your car for the rest of my life as penance.

Even more maddening is the fact the prime proponent for torture is Mr. 13%-Approval-Rating, the man America most wishes would return to his undisclosed location (except for Democratic leaders, who want him to continue as the voice of the GOP), Dick Cheney. This is not unlike having the OctoMom endorse a fertility drug.

Or, as Robert Gibbs puts it, “We’ve had a at least two-year policy disagreement with the Vice President of the United States of America. That policy disagreement is whether or not you can uphold the values in which this country was founded at the same time that you protect the citizens that live in that country. The President of the United States and this administration believes that you can. The Vice President has come to, in our opinion, a different conclusion.”

Why isn’t that considered an outrageously shameful position? We defeated Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Empire without resorting to torture. But America is not strong enough to retain its basic character in the face of an attack by cave-dwelling extremists? Who is it that has so little faith in this country, its traditions, and its people?

Dick Cheney, that’s who.

To me, that position is downright un-American. At the very least, it betrays a severe lack of faith in this country and its people. And that should be loudly pointed out.

By the way, Cheney never served in the military (five exemptions during Vietnam), so let’s hear from some who have. How about James Joyner:

When I was being trained on this issue as a young cadet a quarter century ago, in addition to the legal and moral factors explaining why we must treat captured enemy combatants humanely — even risking our own lives and the accomplishment of our immediate mission to safeguard them — was a practical lesson: The other guy was a hell of a lot more likely to surrender to you if he expected to be treated well. Americans were more likely to keep fighting in Vietnam even against overwhelming odds because they knew they enemy would treat them as subhumans, whereas NVA and VC soldiers would surrender to us knowing they’d get three hots and a cot. Certainly, that proved to be the case in both the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq; Saddam’s soldiers couldn’t throw their weapons down fast enough.

That’s not likely to be the case for some time now.

Or you could take the word of one of the senior interrogators in Iraq:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.

Gosh, will someone please read that last line to Dick Cheney?

Or, if you find the phrase “fair & balanced” comforting, perhaps you’d prefer the view from Fox News’ Shepard Smith:

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!”

Well said. It confounds me somewhat to say so, but well said.

In an ideal world, I’d like to see the Justice Department go after those who made the decisions to implement these “harsh interrogation techniques” … not those who followed the orders passed down. Accountability should start at the top, not the bottom. We’ve already seen the latter at Abu Ghraib, where only non-coms got prosecuted.

But we don’t live in an ideal world. And accountability, well, frankly, we don’t have that in our society anymore, except for you and me. For our elected leaders, the leaders of failed companies bailed out with public funds … there’s no accountability. In fact, if you try, they squeal loudly.

But just once, I’d like to see one of them shut up with a subpoena and threat of prosecution.

Let’s start with Cheney. Maybe we can then get him to agree to a plea bargain: you stop torturing us with your asinine opinions, and we’ll let you live out the rest of your miserable life in freedom.

Pretty please?

Update: Ali Soufan, who was an F.B.I. supervisory special agent and handled part of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, says the claims that “enhanced interrogation techniques” garnered information are “false claims”:

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.

Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).

My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue.

And then there’s the story of Alyssa Peterson, an Arabic-speaking interrogator in the Military Intelligence section of the 101st Airborne:

Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed.

Peterson was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. “But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle,” the documents disclose.

It’s important to remember, at the tip of the spear, there were many who objected to the techniques because they knew, in their gut, they were wrong. And some of them were ordered to continue anyway. Others simply could not bear the pain.

“He’s a serial exaggerator. If I was being unkind I would say he’s a liar, but it’s a habit he ought to drop,” Rove said on FOX News. “You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the vice president of the United States.”

With that last line, Rove has played Bud Abbott to every Lou Costello with a blog. Shall we peruse but a few quotes from the VP of the last eight years?

“Well, you’re going to get into a debate here about — talking about several years, several hundred thousand troops for several years. I think that’s a non-starter. I don’t think we have any plan to do that, Tim. I don’t think it’s necessary to do that.” Vice President Dick Cheney 3/16/03

“And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei, frankly, is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq is concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing.” Vice President Dick Cheney 3/16/03

“In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists, had an established relationship with al Qaeda, and his regime is no more.” Vice President Dick Cheney, Nov. 7, 2003

“I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” Vice President Dick Cheney, June 20, 2005

These are found in minutes via a simple search for Cheney quotes. The results are pages filled with lies and exaggerations, not stirring quotes of a historic nature. Because that is the legacy he left.

In fact, David Letterman recently did a bit called “The Dick Cheney Lie Count.” In other words, the lies and exaggerations of Cheney are so much a part of our mainstream culture that our comedians use it to make us laugh.

So, Karl … go stick your head in your undisclosed location. You sound like Jeffrey Dahmer telling someone they really shouldn’t eat veal because it’s cruel.

Services have already been cutback in many areas, and MARTA has said that a fare hike of 25 cents (total price, $2) is all but guaranteed. But there’s another more complex problem, one the legislature could have easily fixed. More than half of MARTA’s revenue comes from a 1% sales tax levied in Fulton and Dekalb Counties. And across the nation, sales tax revenues have plummeted, leaving MARTA with about a $20 million budget shortage.

Long ago when this tax was put in place, it had a restriction: 50% of the funds could be used for operating expenses, and 50% had to be used for capital improvements. At a time when the heavy rail system was still being planned and built out, this probably made good sense. 25 to 30 years later, not so much.

Thus, MARTA is faced with the conundrum of having about $65 million in the bank for expanding a system that is facing a $20 million annual shortfall in operating expenses, at its current size. It cannot touch that $65 million without a change in the law.

Our state legislature was too busy with their petty transportation feuds to even bring this bill to a vote. Now MARTA is faced with cutting service to the tune of $20 million. Since weekend service has already been slashed in previous cutbacks, they now say they may have to shut down on Fridays.

Imagine a Friday afternoon in late September. Friday afternoon rush hour, traditionally the worst of the week in Atlanta, is massively amplified by the fact all who normally take the train or bus must now drive on Friday. Or simply not go at all. College students at Georgia State University, Spelman, Emory, Morehouse and Georgia Tech. Employees who work in midtown and downtown. How many people are we talking about? Well, “For fiscal year 2006, the average weekday ridership was 451,064.” Furthermore, “More than half of all MARTA users say they use the system to commute to work.”

Now, add this. The Braves, still in the pennant race (hey, I’m a hopeful guy), have a big Friday afternoon game. 55,000 fans, the majority of whom normally take MARTA to the game, must now drive, or forfeit their ticket (the same thing will happen in 2 days to 60,000 Falcons fans). Suddenly you’ve thrown over a half million new car commuters into the Friday afternoon traffic jam (and I haven’t even mentioned the fact Atlanta is a convention town, and most of them start on Friday)

At which point business owners in Atlanta will roar about the sorry sacks of crap that show up to represent us in Georgia each year, and how they can’t even do the simplest thing in a down economy to help people get to work. At zero cost to them.

Now, some say we’ll have to call them back for a special session to deal with this. But Governor Sonny Perdue, the man who could order that, wants to avoid special session on MARTA: “The governor mentioned several times that MARTA made no effort to get him involved in passing legislation that would have freed up funding for the system.”

I see. The governor did not get a gold plated invitation to help the citizens of Georgia with a clear problem that has been in the news for weeks.

Gosh, I hope if a hurricane hits the coast this summer, someone thinks to call him, or else they may get told “they made no effort to get him involved,” and thus, will get no help.

Update: State Rep. Ralph Long, D-Atlanta reports:

On Wednesday, April 1st, two days before the end of the General Assembly’s 2009 session, the Fulton and DeKalb County delegations called a special meeting for the sole purpose of discussing MARTA. At that meeting, the Republican leadership approached the two counties with what they said was a deal. According to the Republican leader, they needed 20 votes to pass S.R. 1, an unpopular bill related to property valuation freezes.

We were told that we must support S.R. 1 in order to give the Republicans the votes they needed. In return, the MARTA bill would pass. If S.R 1 did not pass, we were told that the MARTA bill would die in committee and not be brought up for consideration before the end of sine die. The Republican leader said that he lives closer to Disney World than any MARTA train station, and that he only occasionally rides MARTA to ball games.

Rep. Long says he may be stripped of his committee positions for reporting this backroom news, but he doesn’t care. He thinks we have a right to know the petty partisan shenanigans that got us to this place.

Sorry sacks of crap, indeed.

The Atlanta Falcons claim they are going to trade Michael Vick. The thing is, in the NFL, you are actually trading a contract with a player, not so much the player himself. And in 2004, Vick signed a 10-year, $130 million contract with the Falcons. Now, how many NFL teams do you think are willing to swallow about $13 million per year for the next five seasons, just to take a chance on a convicted felon fresh out of jail? Shortly after June 1, you’ll see the Falcons release Vick and take the salary cap hit (about $7 million for 2009 alone), because they will have no trade takers.

Michael Vick claims in bankruptcy court that he expects to return to the NFL, earn $10 million per year, and play for another 10 to 12 years. He’s 28 years old. The average length of career in the NFL is less than 4 years … which he has already exceeded, prior to his jail term. Look around the NFL, and see how many 38 to 40 year old quarterbacks there are earning $10 million a year. He’s going to be very lucky if [a] NFL Commissioner Goodell decides to allow him to play, [b] some desperate team is willing to take the PR hit from animal loving fans, then maybe he might get a salary a bit above league minimum for a one year contract with lots of incentive pay. No guarantees, no signing bonus, he’ll have to earn every dollar by performance.

Elsewhere, a Pakistani Taliban leader claims the Binghamton attack was their doing. Um, the attack appears to have been done by an angry Vietnamese immigrant. Which seems a bit “outside the jurisdiction” of the Pakistan Taliban.

In Pittsburgh, a man claimed the government was going to take all our guns away, among other things. After killing three police officers, they did indeed take his guns away, but not for the reasons he’d claimed they would.

Ev Williams claims twitter is worth more than $1 billion.

The weatherman claims it is going to snow in Atlanta in April.

And a local blogger claims he’s going to try and post to his site daily. Well, weekly. Um, how about “more.”

But I wouldn’t believe any of these ridiculous claims.

Anything of note in the news lately has been too depressing or mad-making to bother writing about. As if you or anyone really needs my input anyway, when our media cup runneth over.

If you spend your time watching Fox News or CNN or MSNBC or CNBC or any of those other alarmist acronyms, well, you’d be hard pressed not to be depressed. When you have to fill 80% of the 1,440 minutes in each day with something that will make them watch the other 20%, well, you tell them “your nest egg is at immediate risk from sources you do not yet know … more after these commercials!” Or, “these are indeed the worst days of our lives … find out why after this break!”

As someone I know said on twitter, “Wife says that watching an entire family addicted to Heroin on Oprah is better than the news.”

The purveyors of gloom and doom are plentiful. And collecting a salary for it, as well. Keep in mind, that is their primary motivation. Not informing you. The goal is selling commercials, filling the remaining airtime with something sensational to hold those eyeballs, and collecting a check.

Tangentially, this is a very real reason we should all be worried about the fate of the newspaper industry. Because if we have to rely on the “cable journalists” to neutrally inform us of news events that impact our lives, and explain them in some detail, we are so very totally screwed.

But back to the economy. Now, don’t get me wrong. I know things truly are bad in many ways. I know people who’ve been laid off from their jobs due to the shrinking economy. I’m married to one. We’re both working freelance now, and I’ve watched my freelance business suffer some dips and swings over the past six months.

But let there be no doubt there are those who would profit from your fear, by magnifying it. And there are others simply grasping at straws, like Peggy Noonan, who thinks “There’s No Pill for This Kind of Depression.”

She thinks “the economy isn’t the only reason for our unease. There’s more to it. People sense something slipping away, a world receding, not only an economic one but a world of old structures, old ways and assumptions. People don’t talk about this much because it’s too big…”

Peggy, you need to go watch comedian Louie CK’s appearance on Conan O’Brien’s show. It’s well worth watching all 4:12 of it, but here’s a quick rough transcription of a couple of parts of it, so you get the flavor:

Everything is amazing right now, and nobody is happy. The changes in my lifetime in the world have been incredible. When I was a kid we had a rotary phone, you had to stand right next to it to call someone, and it was so primitive, you dial it and you’re making sparks … If someone called and you weren’t home, it would just ring.

If you needed money, you had to go into the bank. You had to stand in line and write a check to yourself, like an idiot, and when you ran out of money, you’d go, well, I guess I can’t do any more things now. I’m out of money.

I was on an airplane the other day, and there was high speed internet, the newest thing there is, and it’s great, I’m surfing the web, watching YouTube videos, it’s amazing. And then it breaks down, and they apologize. And the guy next to me says, “this is bullshit.” Like, how quickly the world owes him something that he just found out about ten seconds ago.

Go watch the whole thing. Very funny. And all good humor has an underlying nugget of truth.

We forget how good we’ve got it. My grandfather was born into a world with no airplanes, very few automobiles, and electricity in your home was talked about the way we talk about flying cars. As a child, during the tail end of the depression, my Dad flipped the first light switch in their home. Later, he took produce into town driving a donkey and cart on a dirt path that is today a four lane highway. Then there’s me; I telecommute. I drive a desktop, a laptop, and an iPhone. Were my grandfather still alive, he would understand none of these things, yet we are only two generations apart.

We live in the most amazing times.

This thought flashed in my mind just the other day, as I performed what is now a simple and regular act. I was doing a photo for a client, and had received an email with some requested changes. I went back to the set, and then realized I’d forgotten one thing. So I went back to my computer, and grabbed the flash memory card.

As I did, it flashed across my mind, I’d just picked up a piece of plastic less than one inch square, which contained 4.7 times more memory than the entire hard drive on my first computer (a 4GB card versus an 850MB hard drive). Furthermore, a mere ten years ago, my simple task would have been so much more complex and time consuming.

I would have had to shoot with a 4×5 view camera for the resolution needed, which means loading film in holders, exposing them, taking them to the lab, waiting two hours for them to be processed … and then you could deliver it to the client. Physically delivered, that is, not digitally shipped like today. Emailed directions for changes? Forget it, you had to shoot a Polaroid that another human had to physically hold to view, and direct changes.

That boost in productivity in a mere decade is amazing. Conservatively, I estimate it would take me three times as long to complete the shot (i.e., earn the same amount of money) doing it “Ye Olde Way.” I haven’t set foot in a darkroom in six years. If I had to go back to Ye Olde Way, frankly, it would be pretty depressing.

What’s that on the floor, a straw to grasp? Go for it, Peggy:

The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread. In New York their use became common after 9/11. It continued through and, I hypothesize, may have contributed to, the high-flying, wildly imprudent Wall Street of the ’00s. We look for reasons for the crash and there are many, but I wonder if Xanax, Zoloft and Klonopin, when taken by investment bankers, lessened what might have been normal, prudent anxiety, or helped confuse prudent anxiety with baseless, free-floating fear. Maybe Wall Street was high as a kite and didn’t notice. Maybe that would explain Bear Stearns, and Merrill, and Citi.

While I will be the first to agree that we never ever should have allowed pharmaceutical companies to advertise their wares on TV, I have to say, when it comes to grasping at straws, this one is so insignificant you need an electron microscope to grasp it.

Yeah, it was the drugs. Perhaps as a part of the stimulus package, we can include a dirt-cheap recycled “Just Say No” campaign to make things better.

Now, why are some people depressed? “I feel utterly powerless to do anything about the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures. It seems to me that every day he is responsible for assaults on the freedom and well being of the American people. I can’t keep up and I can’t stand to pay attention.”

This sounds like an echo with a four year delay. If you replaced “infantile leftism” with, say, “neocon idiocy,” then you’d have an archive from DailyKos, circa spring 2005.

I understand political disappointment, but how does one explain the literal blubbering mess Glenn Beck has become? David Frum asks WHAT IS GOING ON AT FOX NEWS?, and then quotes another of Beck’s tirades:

We are a country that is headed towards socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest dreams. I have to tell you: I’m doing a story tonight that I wanted to debunk — these FEMA camps — I’m tired of hearing about them — you know about them? I wanted to debunk them. We’ve now for several days done research on them. I can’t debunk them!

Oh, Good Lord, it’s the old FEMA Camps story. Listen, if someone told me the Girl Scouts of America were going to be running detention camps, I’d be worried. Because they are an organization capable of delivering a box of Thin Mints or Do-Si-Dos to every home in America.

But FEMA? C’mon! The only way I’d be afraid of them is if they were trying to deliver help to me when I really needed it. I’d be scared to death.

This FEMA camps rumor has been around perhaps a couple of years, and was most recently brought up to me last September … as a device Obama would be using when he was elected President. I was forced to ask, “why would the Bush administration be building these camps today for Obama to use next year?” There’s zero logic behind the rumor, just fear. So it gets repeated by those who wish to use that.

Then there are those shipping sarcasm Obama’s way because he
allegedly mispronounced Cassiopeia (in a country where I would wager 85% of adults do not even know what Cassiopeia is), the same people who gladly stood up for a man whose mangled syntax was nonpareil.

Because that kind of stuff is important, you know.

Two months in, we’ve seen Obama called a socialist, even a communist and a fascist, in fact, some even bring up Hitler (ignoring Godwin’s Law). Some say “We’ve got trash in the White House.” Frankly, it’s as if some people have lost their minds (and their memory).

I know it has likely been more than 20 years since we’ve had a President that the opposing party didn’t try to tear down. But to get to “Hitler” and “trash” in two months? What have we become?

A nation that cannot agree on a solution. Ever. To anything.

So, that’s why it’s been some time since I felt like commenting on any of this. Because while there are Real World things to be upset about, there is so much more that seems ginned up, or perhaps some kind of political genetics (symptom: uncontrollable knee-jerking), or simply irrelevant (mispronouncing star names?). And even if you could come up with a solution that would place “a chicken in every pot,” there would be those who say that chicken is a poisonous attempt to subvert us all for shadowy political reasons.

Listen, I know people are worried that some as yet unseen catastrophic financial event is going to take them out. But this is true every day of your life.

Or every night, as the case may be. About two months ago, I was preparing to go to bed about 3am (yes, I’m a nightowl), and when I turned off the sound making electronics, I heard a faint beeping sound. I tracked it down, and it turned out it was the fire alarm in the condo below me. With no one answering the door, I had to call 911 and pray the fire department got there in time. Which they did, but I had enough time to think about “catastrophic financial event” from a whole other perspective.

Tangent: this is another example of twitter killing blogs. What normally might have been a somewhat entertaining blog post from me was instead spun out (starting at 4:10am) as … a … series … of … twitters.

Now, Susan and I did spend some time worrying … what if this guy does it again, and we’re not so lucky? It’s easy to think about the consequences, but literally impossible to prevent them. And at some point, you have to let go of it. It’s beyond your control, at that point in time.

I hate to close by getting all Zen on you, but, for frak’s sake, be here now. If you spend your time worrying about the investments you should/shouldn’t have made, that day you turned down the job you now wish you had, or other events in the past, you are expending precious mental energy on something you cannot change: the past.

If you spend your energy worrying about the choices you may (or may not) have to make next week or next month, it’s the same thing; you cannot do anything about that unknown future at this moment.

But by worrying about the past or the future, you can sure as hell ruin today. Today is all we have. Tomorrow may bring a storm, or sunshine. Tonight there maybe a fire, or 8 hours of uninterrupted peace. We cannot know.

Oh, sure, there’s lots who will be glad to make a prediction for you … right after this commercial break! But, for your own sake, ignore them. Do the best you can do each day. And do your best to enjoy each day.

You only get so many.

First, from right here in Georgia, we have the Peanut Corporation of America: “As far back as 2007, salmonella-laced products were shipped by a Georgia peanut company that knew the peanuts probably were tainted and sometimes after tests confirmed that contamination, inspection records show.”

They knowingly shipped tainted product. In the end, eight people died and nearly 600 more were made ill in 43 states.

In some circles, knowingly giving someone poisoned food is called “premeditated murder.” There are certainly people in Guantanamo who’ve done less.

Why is this company … still a company? Why are there no criminal charges yet filed?

Because we live in the Land Of No Accountability.

It’s a land where you can run your multi-billion dollar financial services company into the ground, cost your customers their nest eggs while giving out billions in bonuses, then get a government bailout to save your butt, and have your hefty salaries defended by sitting Senators against the $500,000 annual salary cap proposed by the President:

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) blamed the “tone deaf” bankers for creating the political environment that allows Obama to call for a cap.

“Because of their excesses, very bad things begin to happen, like the United States government telling a company what it can pay its employees. That’s not a good thing in America,” Kyl told the Huffington Post.

“What executives have done is troubling, but it’s equally troubling to have government telling shareholders how much they can pay the executives,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL).

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that he is “one of the chief defenders of Obama on the Republican side” for the president’s efforts to reach across the aisle. But, said Inhofe, “as I was listening to him make those statements I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?”

GOP Opposes Pay Limits On Bailed-Out Bankers

Yes, sir, Senator, we do. We tell them “you may forgo a public bailout, go bankrupt, and pay yourself whatever you want out of the remnants. But if you’ve run your company to the point it is [1] too big to fail, [2] is failing anyway, and [3] therefore requires a bailout to stay in business, you have already effectively lost control of your company, and you will have to live by the terms of the lenders. Or go home. This is life in the ‘free market’.”

We tell them, “Apple Inc. is free to pay Steve Jobs and his VP’s as much as they wish, because they haven’t run their company so poorly they required a bailout. You, however, need some forced humility.”

We tell them, “the fact you are being allowed to keep ANY job, never mind one earning a half million per year, makes you far, far, FAR luckier than the 600,000 Americans who lost their jobs in January.”

Then you tell them to STFU before a rider is added demanding that all CEO’s and board members of bailed out companies must resign immediately, due to their clear professional failure. Because they deserve to lose their jobs far more than the 600,000 who lost theirs in January.

Of course, that pay cap was a part of the stimulus package that the Senate is still arguing about. It’s my understanding that Republicans have pointed out $19 billion in spending in this package that they consider wasteful.

It’s about an $800 billion package, so that’s about 2% “waste.” Or as we know from our American advertising, it’s “98% pure” or “98% fat free.”

And some of the objections are laughable. One example:

What in heaven’s name does Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have against honeybees?

That question haunted my days after I saw the Kentucky Republican on TV fulminating about a provision he found in the proposed government stimulus package. The provision, he said, would provide $150 million for “honeybee insurance.”

“This is nonsense,” he said, as if he took it personally. You had to think he got stung as a kid or maybe caught a local swarm in the act of recruiting aphids for Al Qaeda.

Their campaign was joined Tuesday by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who stood on the floor of the chamber challenging “any member to come and explain what that provision was.”

I’m no senator, but I’m pleased to inform Vitter that it is, in fact, a disaster insurance program for all livestock producers. Beekeepers obviously would be minor beneficiaries next to, say, cattle ranchers, so it’s a tad bit dishonest to label the whole program “honeybee insurance.”

The provision simply continues a program enacted by Congress last year, overriding a veto by President Bush. In other words, the Senate voted on it twice in 2008 — once to enact and once to override. Connoisseurs of political comedy will see the punch line coming: McConnell and Vitter voted yea both times.

So it turns out that McConnell isn’t really against honeybees. He’s only using them to pretend that he’s got a principled objection to a stimulus plan aimed at pulling the country out of the most severe recession in decades.

The honeybees, and the rest of us, are merely collateral damage.

Michael Hiltzik: Republican buzz on stimulus plan has no sting

So, he’s now raising Cain about the extension of an expenditure he already voted for twice, once over the objections of his party leader. In other words, he was for it … twice … before he was against it.

For me, the steam comes from these silly word games our elected leaders play while the majority suffer. For others, the issues are far more near and dear:

As a mother of a severely disabled child I resent the question posed by the Republican leadership, and the stance of the party against special education funding for years, how is funding special education stimulative?

I had my baby. This is what you want, right? Moms to do the right thing and bear the disabled child? OK – she’s here. Where is the help, the love, the care, the support from the party that encourages this anti-abortion behavior?

Education is stimulative. Special education more so. For every child in regular ed, we hire 1/32 of a teacher. For every child in special education we hire 1/10 of a teacher, 1/5 of an aide, 1/10 of a bus driver, some part of a nurse, some part of an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, a physical therapist.

These are GOOD jobs and these are people who do good works every day of their work lives, works that most of us do not do, and that many of us, apparently, would not even pay for.

Chambliss, Isakson will vote against Obama stimulus package

The market on “tone deafness” has not been cornered by the CEO’s of financial services companies. It has always resided in the greatest quantity in the US Congress.

For now. However, events like the above make me think it is very possible that much of it will be forcibly shipped out in 2010. The people who are more concerned with winning some partisan battle than with fixing our country’s huge problems, may find in 2010 that they become far more familiar with the unemployment lines so many Americans are in today.

An angry U.S. senator introduced legislation Friday to cap compensation for employees of any company that accepts federal bailout money.

Under the terms of a bill introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, no employee would be allowed to make more than the president of the United States.

“We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer,” an enraged McCaskill said on the floor of the Senate. “They don’t get it. These people are idiots. You can’t use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses.”

CNN: Angry senator wants pay cap on Wall Street ‘idiots’

Employees at the failed and swallowed Merrill Lynch got $4 billion in bonuses, moved up a month to beat the Bank of America merger, and previously CEO Thain spent $1.2 million to pretty up his office. Citibank took $45 billion in a bailout, and then wanted to spend $50 million on a private jet (how many business class tickets can you buy with $50 million?). And now we hear that AIG, who lost 34 billion in credit default swaps, wants to pay 400 people in that arena $450 million in bonuses. AIG “has been providing data on employee compensation to Congress, saying retention programs are needed to keep the value of the units from eroding as AIG seeks buyers.”

So, they claim if don’t pay each of them an average bonus of $1.125 million, they might leave, and then who will lose $34 billion for them next year?

The remaining portions of the financial industry’s business model that didn’t completely blow up last fall are still working against them. If you are going to insist you have to have a “pay-for-performance” bonus system, then you have to accept you may face those ugly years where there is no bonus, because “performance” is hard to find when billions have been lost.

But this whole bonus system, in my opinion, helped drive this Pinto down the road to disaster. Suppose you are given a job at a big financial services company. This firm is known for helping clients navigate the risky waters of the investment field. Helping clients protect their investment is as important as making them grow one more percentage point. And for this job, you are paid a handsome salary, $700,000 per year. No bonus.

In this scenario, your handsome income depends on the company remaining as risk free as possible, so that your nice paychecks continue. You are not likely to take risky chances that jeopardize that.

Now suppose your company comes to you and says, “you know, we want to give you the chance to make more money. We’re going to cut your salary to $180,000, and put you on a performance bonus system where you could take home another $500,000 to as much as 2 or 3 million per year. Go make us money!”

Now your motivation has changed. The more risk you take, on behalf of your clients and company, the more your potential profit. Rather than being concerned about your company and its future, you are now concerned with the competition: your co-workers, and the bonuses they might take from you.

And before long everybody is simply looking out for Number One. The big buzz at year end isn’t company net revenue, but who got the most zeroes on the end of their bonus check. Even clerks and secretaries get them, on the theory it helps attract the best talent.

Criminy, so does offering a base salary 20%-30% above industry average! That’s the best way to get and retain good people. Because now a lot of those people in lower end positions who became accustomed to their bonus as a part of their annual income truly are taking a hit this year. They may no longer be retainable, as opposed to the bloke who’s been getting seven figure bonuses for years.

I can understand how some narrow number of higher end positions might best work on a commission/bonus basis, but when your entire pay structure is based on it to the point a secretary’s annual income is affected by market downturns, you’ve engineered your own doom.

Because you’ve built a model powered by naked greed that assumes you will never see rain, never mind a hurricane.