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The early voting lines lengthen as Nov. 4 approaches. The finger-pointing becomes angrier. The Republican blame game grows louder. The polls, one by one, highlight double-digit divides between first-place Barack Obama and lagging John McCain.

Gov. Sonny Perdue and other Republican notables have dropped from sight. The odor of roasted lame duck is in the air.

Nearly every sign points to an Obama presidential victory -- not just an ordinary win, but one of historic proportions -- a sweep, if you will.

Tuesday, October 14, 11:55 a.m.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has placed a TV buy in Georgia.  Look for the Republicans to follow suit.

What would you do?

Georgia’s gasoline pumps have all but run dry. Prices have soared at the few stations still in business. The state’s unemployment rate is running ahead of the national jobless rate, which is over 6 percent and rising.

The state budget has a $1.5 billion to $2 billion hole in it, thanks to some unrealistic economic forecasting and a steep dip in revenue collections. And Georgia is among the top five states in home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies.

Our governor should consider taking a page from Alaska Gov. Sarah
Palin's playbook -- sell a state airplane or two and try to hold down
flying. With aviation fuel selling at nearly $6 a gallon, state
officials might be surprised at the savings a grounding order would
bring.

Instead, in Georgia officialdom, it's fly, fly, fly. And nothing's
too good for the upkeep of the state's fleet of planes and helicopters.
The state is spending $600,000 on a state-of-the-art hangar at Charlie
Brown Airport.

Let's hear it for Kathy Cox. The Georgia schools superintendent won
$1 million in Hollywood on the TV quiz show, "Are You Smarter than a
5th Grader?"

She says she plans to give some of the prize money to the state's
special-needs schools. That is truly magnanimous. It will help restore
some of the funds her predecessor stole from the state education
department to pay for a facelift and finance her campaign for governor.

Kathy deserves full credit and our congratulations for finally making Georgia look good on national TV.

Saturday, September 6, 2:41 pm

The New York Times reports in an article today that the Presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama's withdrawal of television advertising in Georgia prior to the two conventions will become permanent.  Obama is unveiling a new strategy for the General Election that aims to spend television money and other resources largely on the traditional battleground states from 2000 and 2004.

Thursday, September 4, 11:56 am

Cobb County State Rep. Rob Teilhet will air an ad on Friday's Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader episode that State School Superintendent Kathy Cox is set to appear on.  The spot questions Cox's appearance and offers Teilhet's own prescriptions for improving education in Georgia, including reducing class sizes and expanding Pre-K.  The advertisement is available online on YouTube.

You will never see me write again that the Republican Party is the dumb party. Corrupt maybe, or hypocritical or tobacco roadish, but never dumb.

The selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate was the slickest tactical move I have seen in politics. It took the wind right out of the Democrats’ sails and swept Barack Obama’s name out of the headlines. As soon as Palin was announced, that hissing sound you heard was the air going out of the donkeys’ momentum.

Though, for the life of me, I cannot picture in my mind’s eye the Hillary Clinton supporter who would switch to the McCain-Palin ticket because of the perception that Sarah has replaced Hillary as the women voters’ champion. Hillary’s supporters are mostly Democrats and Independents. Sarah is an extreme Republican and a strong antidepressant for the GOP’s evangelical bloc. The right-wing church folks seemed a bit down after maverick McCain, a sometimes pro-choice guy, won the primaries and the nomination. They ought to be feeling a whole lot better now that Palin, an unconditional anti-abortionist, is on board.

As Gov. Sonny Perdue and his fellow Republican leaders in Georgia head off to Minneapolis to party, more Georgians back home are beginning to feel the squeeze of his ordered budget cuts and reductions.  In one particularly tragic case, the Georgia War Veterans Home in Milledgeville has told residents that it will be shuttering its doors and that they'll need to find other places to live.

The assisted living facility houses veterans with special needs, many of whom were homesless prior to obtaining admission.  Programs such as this can be the casualty of across the board budget cuts when department heads look to ax one entire entity quickly instead of causing trouble by messing with the budgets of numerous internal agencies under their control.

Because Perdue's revenue estimates were too optimistic, and unless he convenes an unlikely special session of the legislature where budget writers can explicitly make their preferences known, it will be up to bureacrats to make convenient reductions that may prove to be politically unpopular.  In the case of the Veterans Home, it would probably survive a special session, but if it is shuttered that decision may be reinforced by the stark realities of this budget crisis when appropriators finally meet next January.

They'll be unwilling to come to the aid of unpopular decisions that have already sunk in if it means opening new cans of worm elsewhere.  By the way, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California skipped the Minneapolis GOP Convention to tend to his own homegrown budget crisis.