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♦ FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2006 4A Houston .TJounml OPINION Daniel F. Evans Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Don Moncrief Foy S. Evans Managing Editor Editor Emeritus It's not a 'commercial' venture You’ve got to give politicians their props. Unfortunately, that statement today doesn’t mean give them a pat on the back. It is quite often meant literally. Last election it wasn’t necessary but appar ently this one we’ve entered the technologi cal age. Everybody has to have a prop. For example: In one commercial a candi date is portrayed as Pinocchio. In another Little Leaguers are used to get the mes sage out, in another a high school football coach. In yet one more a gal ley of slaves is shown in the background rowing a ship. What’s next, Sonny Perdue as Shrek III? Politics is not Star Wars. It may be about Star Wars but we don’t need Mac Collins to dress up as Yoda: “Cut taxes I will.” Ridiculous? Yes. We don’t need the fancy special effects. How about this: Just give it to us straight. Stop telling us what your opponent is against. And by the way, telling us your opponent is against lower taxes without telling us you’re for them just doesn’t cut it. We’re not going to fall for assumptions. Tell us. Start telling us what you’re for and leave the Hollywood theatrics to the profession als. Letter to the Edhor National media failing us Our national media have failed us miserably. It has inundated us with the caterwauling of Republican and Democrats and deprived us of alternative candi dates. Who are the Libertarian, Communist, Socialist, American Independent candidates for public office? TV radio and print sources don’t tell us. We need to do more to ensure more voices in the politi cal process. First, we must change the Constitution and rid it of the Electoral College and change to a majority rules. That would also keep elections out of the hands of judges and legislative officials. The guy with the most votes gets to be president. We need an amendment that prevents restrictive laws that prevent political parties from getting their candi dates on the ballot. Third, we need restrictions on the amount of money candidates can spend on their races. If nothing else, tele vision and radio stations can air more ads for hair loss products rather than burying us in the babble of buffoons running for office. I’d rather be lied to by a representative of the Hair Loss Club for Men than by politicians seeking to represent my best interests. Television, radio and print companies must be required to give equal time to all candidates. Since the media moguls won’t do it themselves, they need to be forced into airing debates with monitors who force candidates to stay on topic and answer the ques tions asked. See LETTER, page $A HOW TO SUBMIT LETTERS We encourage readers to submit letters to the editor. Letters should not exceed 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and telephone number. All letters printed in The Daily Journal will appear with the writer’s name and hometown - we do not publish anonymous letters. The news paper reserves the right to edit or reject letters for reasons of grammar, punctuation, taste and brevity. Letter writers are asked to submit no more than one letter per person per week. We cannot guarantee that a letter will be printed on a specific date. The Daily Journal prefers that letters be typed. Letters to the editor are published in the order they are received as space permits. There are three ways to submit a letter to the editor: E-mail it to hhj@evansnewspapers.com, mail it to The Houston Daily Journal at P.O. Box 1910, Perry, GA 31069, or drop it off at 1210 Washington St. in Perry - between 8 a m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. How about this: Just give it to us straight. Stop telling us what your opponent is against. And by the way, telling us your opponent is against lower taxes without telling us you’re for them just doesn't cut it. We're not going to fall for assumptions. Tell us. Things are moving at warp speed I read about things “moving at warp speed". Frankly, I didn’t and don’t know exactly what that means. I thought it meant moving very fast - and I still do. Still, I looked it up in my “Webster’s” and my understand ing is now more uncertain. There are words after “warp” such as yarn, rope, pervert, distort, a twist or curve, to move by hauling on a line, etc. My deci sion: For the purpose of this column, moving at warp speed means moving very rapidly. Change is inevitable. Remember in school studying about the Ages: Stone, Ice, Iron, Mechanical, etc. Significant changes, but not at warp speed. Slowly changing. Man adapting. Little change during any one generation’s time on earth. Dean William Tate, Dean of Men at the University of Georgia when I was there, used to tell about his grandpar ents and how if Julius Caesar had vis ited them in their mountain cabin, he (Julius) would have instantly known what almost everything they had was. Perhaps not the matches and the flint lock rifle, but everything else. You get the point that Dean Tate was making. Little change for hundreds of years. Some readers of this article have seen great changes in their lifetimes. Let me illustrate by reminding of great business enterprises that flourished and essentially disappeared all within their memories. What about buggy and wagon mak ers - there was a great enterprise of this at Barnesville. The automobile came and the buggy slowly rode into oblivion. Blacksmiths met the same fate. What about the ice man - he cometh no more. Then there is the textile industry. It made the Callaways iTUfrEPTOgg... —uiM GOQSL IT'LL fcACK IN MYUAT, m UGED TO \ MAUSACK IN MV DAYAVE U6EDTO : / WALK TWO WLEGTO SCUOOL AND PLAY TAG AMO EVEN PODGE J j | Some astute political observations And now, some astute political observations from the genius who predicted four years ago that Gov. Roy Barnes would win a sec ond term in a landslide. Please have your pencil and paper ready. I don’t do this often because it makes my brain hurt. Astute political observation #1: There is a possibility that Republicans will lose their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives come November. If they do, it will prove once again that the people are still in charge. Everybody holding political office or wanting to should read “The House: The History of the House of Representatives” by Robert Remini, official historian of that body. Since the U.S. House first met in 1789, the group in power begins to act like they are elected for life and loses touch with the voters. The electorate then throws them out and brings in a new bunch, and the same thing happens to them and they get tossed. This phe nomenon is as predictable as the tides at St. Simons, but politicians don’t seem to get the message until it’s too late. If you will recall, we booted the Democrats in 1994, and now it is the Republicans who are scrambling for their political lives. Astute political observation #2: Sometimes I think political consul tants have the brains of a sand gnat. Gov. Sonny Perdue’s campaign was running some very nice ads featur ing First Lady Mary, when a political consultant with too much time on his hands decided the governor ought to OPINION and many others in the South wealthy, but today, it is only a shell of its former self. I could go on and on. But, you get the picture, but not necessarily the point. The point is that former changes - from the Stone Age to the Iron Age or from the buggy to the automobile - did not take place at warp speed. To the contrary, it was slow, and man (to include woman) adopted and modified behavior over a long period of time. Now, to what this column is really about. Life is now changing at warp speed. Can man adapt? Can man keep up? Will many be hurt, financially, and lose out? What is the long-term effect and significance of these rapid changes? To speculate as to which businesses will be immediately the most affected is just that - speculation. But, ponder and reflect I will. I would hate to be in the movie video business. Is it the “buggy business” of our time? I don’t believe it will be long before you can order first-run mov ies, like, say, “Flags of our Fathers”, as soon as the movie is released in Hollywood, or wherever it is released. Get the movie on your television for $25 and let the whole family and the whole neighborhood watch. Why go to the video store if you can get the newer and better stuff at home? taaoßoß Larry Walker Columnist Iwalker@whgb-l3w.com Dick Yarbrough Columnist yarb24oo@bellsouth.net respond to challenger Mark Taylor’s ad about his Florida land purchase. The result has been to keep the issue high er profile with the voters than the gov ernor would like, plus it has been done with Perdue’s own advertising dollars. What the consultant evidently doesn’t understand is that Mary Perdue will get the governor a lot more votes than talking about his land deal will. Duh! Astute political observation #3: Poor old Max Cleland still doesn’t get it. Our former U.S. senator recently wrote an op-ed piece in the Atlanta newspapers ardently defending Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who is in an ethics pickle in his home state of Nevada. Harry Reid? Nevada? Dear Max, guess how many people in Georgia care about Harry Reid and his financial problems in Nevada? About as many as care about what planet our Ambassador to Outer Space Cynthia McKinney will land on when she gets her new hairdo. No wonder you only served one term. Astute political observation #4: Talk about a made-to-order political death wish. Georgia Republicans seem determined to resurrect H.B. 218, which provides a Solution to a prob- K|* ■» yfißr* »* HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL And you won’t even have to program the movie! Then, hand-in-glove, to the video store demise is the movie theater. True, they have a bigger screen, but many houses now have screens almost as big as the “picture shows”. And just think what all of this will do to popcorn growers and PomPom makers. Then there is the U.S. Post Office. My office doesn’t get one-half as much mail as it did only about a year ago. The Post Office closes on Saturday afternoon and Sunday and every night. E-mail and the Internet never close. How long can the Post Office hang on? Next, newspapers. I love 'em. Can’t wait to read 'em every day. I am a dinosaur. More and more are getting their condensed news on line. Not to be patronizing, but I believe papers like this one with local coverage have a better chance of being here when my grandchildren are my age, than does the “Chicago Tribune” and the “Atlanta Journal Constitution”. Well, it is being a little patronizing. You ask, what about lawyers and the law practice? It’s going to change, too. Many won’t be willing to pay our rates if they can get it on their computer for nothing. Hopefully, I can hang in there for a few more years before the buggy lawyer is a thing of the past. But what about the Johns - Walker and Hulbert? Landline telephone companies. Gas operated motor vehicles. Home-cooked meals! Yes, the times are changing. Things are moving at warp speed. Many won’t have time to adapt. You believe me, don’t you? By the way, how many blacksmiths thought that the first time he saw Henry Ford’s Model T drive by? Not many, I’d bet. lem that doesn’t exist. House Speaker Glenn Richardson and his cohorts want to take economic development negotiations including how your tax dollars are spent behind closed doors, although proponents cannot cite a single example of Georgia having lost a company relocation or expan sion due to our open records laws. The state’s newspapers are going to fight the effort tooth-and-nail, as well they should. I am, too. Nobody wanting this unneeded law has made a case for it, or if they have, they forgot to tell me . ... Astute political observation #5: Politicians in Georgia should heave a big sigh of relief now that Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, has been named deputy commanding general of the U.S. First Army, and is second in command for U.S. combat training operations. As far as I am concerned, he could have run for just about any political office in the state after the outstanding job he did in Iraq, and won. If he was able to deal with Arab tribal leaders who would just as soon shoot you as look at you, he could han dle anything we threw at him. He is a good man and an excellent leader. ... Finally, because you have been so attentive you have earned a bonus astute political observation: I predict that Gov. Roy Barnes will win a second term in a landslide. (Or have I already said that?) You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb24oo@bellsouth.net P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139, or Web site: www.dickyarbrough.com.