Telephone Polls

I got a call yesterday from a polling company. They asked me if I would be interested in going through some questions with them pertaining to the upcoming election. I had a few minutes available, so I agreed to answer the questions. At first the questions were straightforward. Had I heard of Person A? Had I heard of Person B? Would I vote for Person A in November? Would I vote for Person B in November? Then the true nature of the poll was revealed when they started to ask some ridiculously biased questions. I forget the exact wording of these questions, but they asked something along the lines of whether or not I knew that Person A voted for a bill that would hurt Georgians and line the pockets of some group? And did I know that Person A took X dollars from that group? How did that make me feel about Person A? Would I still vote for Person A?

I immediately asked who was doing this polling. The questions were ridiculously one-sided and almost certainly dishonestly framed. The pollster said that they didn't know who funded the poll. Yeah, right. Pull this leg and it plays jingle bells. I asked if they were going to ask equally biased questions about the other candidate. The pollstar didn't respond affirmatively.

It was such a ridiculous survey. I haven't been involved in any polling this close to an election. If this is the way that telephone surveys are conducted, I wouldn't trust any of the results that come from them.

Not that it matters that much since both sides probably do this, but the target of this poll's negativity appeared to be Casey Cagle, candidate for Lieutenant Governor. He was the one that this "neutral" poll tried to portray as a step or two short of being Pol Pot. I'm guessing that it was commissioned by the Georgia Democratic Party or Jim Martin's (his opponent's) camp. Either way, I imagine that they didn't like my answers or my editorializing about the nature of the questions.

Don't you just love election season?

On boa constrictors and illegal immigration

Here are some updates on happenings related to illegal immigration.

Good news: McCain's support for illegals stings him in Alabama (from Ace of Spades via Freedom Folks)

McCain had a fundraiser and the showing was paltry. Per Ace of Spades:

I actually did some "investigative reporting" (I called some of my old friends on Capitol Hill who are close to the McCain people) and asked why they thought the Senator wasn't getting much traction in a place like Alabama, which traditionally loves their war heroes. The answer: Illegal Alien Amnesty and the "torture" debate have taken a much heavier toll on McCain then previously thought. Even McCain's recent vote in favor of construction of the 700 mile border wall hasn't earned him any credit among these voters.

More good news: Illegals dropping off the dole in Georgia (from the AJC)

Georgia's Medicaid program lost almost 70,000 in membership in the first four months of 2006, after Georgia launched new rules to control fraud.

Beginning Jan. 1, the state began demanding proof of income and citizenship for people to join or stay on Medicaid. Through April, the government insurance program for about 1.3 million of Georgia's poor and disabled had an enrollment decline of 69,635."

and...

"Illegal immigrants are getting onto our social system, and it is busting the bank now," Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.) said at the hearing. Norwood earlier took his anti-fraud fight national, helping push Congress to pass a law requiring proof of citizenship in all states' Medicaid programs.

And the bad news: Congress playing smoke and mirrors with border fence legislation (via MSNBC)

"No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts."

We need results on this issue, not rhetoric. We need to keep fighting, because many of the politicians are thinking that this crisis will pass and we'll move on to the next thing. Then they can move forward with their plans of open borders, a NAFTA superhighway, and a North American Union. They're like a boa constrictor in that they wrap their corrupted system around us and then they wait for us to relax or exhale. When we do, they tighten their grip. They're just waiting until we stop kicking. Then they can dispose of us and go ahead with their nefarious activities. Well, I'm hoping that the boa constrictor bit off more than it can chew this time. We can't stop fighting until the snake frees us from its grip. Otherwise, we may as well just give up now.

Is Dubya the devil?

Uber-socialist and professional America-hater Hugo Chavez, the President of oil-rich Venezuela, had a chance to speak yesterday at the UN. In his speech, he practiced his brand of Yosemite Sam cartoon diplomacy by repeatedly referring to George W. Bush as "the devil". This got me to thinking: If George Bush = "the devil", what else do we know about George Bush as a result of this revelation?

Here are a few other phrases that would then be applicable:

Dubya is in the details.
Dubya went down to Georgia.
Give Dubya his due.
Dubya made me do it.
Dance with Dubya.
Running with Dubya.
Dubya wears Prada.
Speak of Dubya.
Dubya's advocate.
Have you ever danced with Dubya in the pale moonlight?
Making a deal with Dubya.
Dubya's backbone.
Sympathy for Dubya.
Shout at Dubya.
Dubya and Max Devlin.

and my favorite...

Idle hands are Dubya's workshop.

Of course, this is all based on Chavez' statement being true. Chavez strikes me as a charismatic leader, but he does seem quite unhinged. I think it's safe to say that he needs a Prozac the size of a barrel of oil.

Maybe the sulfur Chavez claimed to smell wasn't left over from Bush's visit. Sulfur is used in fertilizers, so maybe the smell of sulfur was emanating from the er...fertilizer that Chavez was piling high and deep. Or maybe Chavez himself is "El Diablo". Wouldn't that be just like the devil to accuse someone else of being the devil in an attempt to divert suspicion away from himself?

Just in case, maybe we should keep an eye on Bush in the near future. If he pushes Congress to pass legislation benefitting pitchfork manufacturers or if he solicits large donations from any "fire and brimstone" PAC's, we could have a problem on our hands. We should probably keep the Vatican on speed dial, just in case.

Come to think of it, Bush was a member of the secret society called Skull and Bones when he was at Yale. That sounds ominous. And Bush does try to dismiss any concerns about global warming. In fact, he seems to embrace it.

I'm just sayin'...




(Note: I'm kidding of course. Shrub is a little thick sometimes, but he's not the devil. I'm quite sure that Beelzebub is much more on top of things than Dubya.)

My Erk Russell memory

In case you haven't heard, former UGA and Georgia Southern football coach Erk Russell passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was a heck of a football coach. He coached the "Junkyard Dawg" defense at UGA from 1964-1981 and then resurrected the football program at Georgia Southern. While at Georgia Southern, he won three Division 1-AA championships.

Erk was a colorful character, to say the least. As you can see on that Wikipedia page, he had a penchant for headbutting his players and would frequently have to coach his games with a bloodied, bald noggin.

I had the privilege of hearing Erk speak once. I was at Boys State back in 1986. As usual, it was held on the campus of Georgia Southern, and Erk was the guest speaker on one of our last nights there. Usually, I don't remember what most guest speakers say, but he had a couple of funny lines that I remember to this day. Here's what he said (in quotes, but basically paraphrased):

• "I don't normally go to Halloween costume parties, but my wife talked me into going to one last year. Do you have any idea what my costume was? I went as Ban Roll-On."
• "One day my wife said to me, 'Erk, sometimes I think you love football more than you love me.' I responded, 'Yes, dear, but I still love you more than I love track.'"

He was a funny and entertaining man and, from what I hear, a master motivator on the football field. He certainly made a name for himself in the state of Georgia and he was loved by many. Most people would be thrilled to live half the life and have half the impact he did.

As I read somewhere last week -- if God needed a defensive coordinator, he's got a great one now.

New venture for the current administration?

Did Dick Cheney and George W. Bush get a head start on their post-2008 careers with a new business venture? If so, it looks like Dick let Shrub name the company, but didn't have the heart to tell him that he spelled Cheney incorrectly.

But seriously, I drove by this business last week while I was visiting with family in Fitzgerald, Georgia. I definitely did a double-take when I saw the name of the company. I don't know if it's just a coincidence or if the owners opened the business after 2000 and thought they would have a little fun with the name. I had to take a picture of it, though.

The Braves' streak is over

It finally happened. While they still have a chance of making the NL playoffs this year as the wild-card team, the Braves' streak of consecutive division titles has come to an end. The last time the Braves didn't celebrate a division championship was 1990. I was a junior at Mercer University back then. I could've never imagined that I'd be 37 years old before the Braves failed again to win their division title. It has been an amazing ride. I can only hope that the Braves get the well-earned respect that such a streak merits.

If you get a chance, check out Mark Bowman's article over at mlb.com. He provides a great synopsis/retrospective of the streak.

A competitive gene that went into overdrive

Check this out:

The backup punter at Northern Colorado has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing his teammate -- the starting punter -- in the kicking leg.

The motive may have been competition for the first-string job, police said Wednesday.

Wow. That's a guy who REALLY wants to get on the field. Something tells me that this guy was long overdue for a trip to the school's mental health counseling office. It looks like his mental evaluation will now be handled by the state's prison system.

This is reminiscent of the Nancy Kerrigan situation when Tonya Harding's boyfriend whacked Kerrigan in the knees.

A competitive spirit is a healthy thing, but it just seems to push some people over the edge.

What I remember most from 9/11

It was a surreal day. I wasn't working that day and I slept in. When I awoke, I remember turning on the news and seeing the immediate aftermath of the attacks. I left the TV on and quickly went to CNN.com to see what it said. CNN.com had completely revamped their website to focus almost exclusively on the attacks. They used gigantic fonts for the headlines and their stories were changing and being updated on the fly.

Three other items of note that stood out for me personally. I live and work in or around Atlanta, so I wasn't anywhere near New York or DC. However, I had some colleagues who worked in both of those cities. A few days after 9/11, I was speaking on the phone with one of those colleagues who lived in New Jersey but worked in New York City. She told me that she had been driving back and forth to work in the days after 9/11 and kept noticing the large numbers of cars at the train/subway stations that never moved. The cars were there when she went to work and the same cars were still there...unmoved...when she returned home from work. It dawned on her that those were cars of people who died or were still missing in that time period right after 9/11.

Another colleague of mine in DC told me how some folks in the office had been in their cars that morning and had seen the low-flying plane (Flight 77) that would eventually crash into the Pentagon. So much for that missile theory that the moronic conspiracy theorists keep pushing.

Finally, one of my colleagues in the Atlanta office lost a sister on Flight 77. Her sister, who worked for a defense contractor in DC, was flying out on a business trip that day. She rarely flew, but she had the misfortune of being on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. They were eventually able to identify some of her remains, but it was a harrowing situation for my co-worker and her family and in-laws.

Many lives were and families were changed forever that day. I can only pray that we continue to fight back against those who seem hell-bent on destroying us with any weapons they can dream up.