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September 2008
They call this justice?
I covered enough murder trials as a cops reporter to understand the value of a plea bargain - in theory, at least. It’s almost always better to take a guilty verdict from a suspect than put the question in the hands of 12 people you’ve never seen before.
But theories have to go out the window at times. I’m just as bumfuddled as everyone else at the plea bargain granted to Mark Bowling. Rose Vincent received 29 years in her “deal” in exchange for testifying against the man who asked her to do the killing. Bowling may be out of prison by the time he’s 50. That’s justice?
Look at it this way. If Rose Vincent had never been part of the picture, chances are that Julie Bowling would be dead anyway. A stripper who talked to the Telegram last year told us Mark Bowling had offered her money to kill Julie. Who knows how many other women he propositioned the same way? Or how many he would have asked before he found someone else to do the dirty work?
Rose Vincent is no innocent victim in the case. But even if she was the one who pulled the trigger, it was only because Mark Bowling was pulling the strings that made her do it.
Bowling is a jerk, a coward, a liar and every other name you want to throw at him. Thank goodness there’s a place in prison for him. It’s a criminal shame he won’t be there for the rest of his life.
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Defining moments in presidential debates
Even in this age of YouTube ads, incessant polling and action figures, debates have the potential to define a moment in a presidential campaign.
Just a few examples that come to mind:
* 1960 - Get me make-up! Richard Nixon vs. John F. Kennedy. Even I was too young to see this firsthand, but we studied it in a political science class my freshman year in college. Make-up and coolness gave Kennedy a decided edge over a pale, sweating Nixon. A defining moment in the role of television, one that would forever change how the candidates and campaigns approached mass media.
* 1980 & 1984 - There you go, again. Ronald Reagan vs. Jimmy Carter and later Walter Mondale. Again and again, Reagan shaped Carter’s record in four words, each time suggesting that nearly every statement Carter made came from a liberal agenda. The phrase became forever linked with Reagan. He reprised it in 1984 for his debate with Mondale, who had served as vice president under Carter.
1988 - Would you favor an irrevocable death penalty? George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis. Dukakis had plenty of hills to climb as a liberal governor from Massachusetts. But his campaign got no easier on the first question of his second debate with Bush. Then-CNN anchorman Bernard Shaw asked Dukakis if Dukakis would continue to oppose the death penalty even if Dukakis’ wife were raped and killed. Dukakis’ answer was so wooden and unemotional, it’s not even worth quoting here. His response did little to rally a spirit in American voters.
1988 - Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy. Dan Quayle vs. Lloyd Bentsen. Vice presidential debates don’t often become national conversation pieces, but this one did. Quayle, a little-known senator from Indiana, was a surprise running mate choice for George H. W. Bush. Quayle noted during a debate against Bentsen that he had just as much experience as John F. Kennedy had when Kennedy ran for president. Bentsen, a longtime member of the U.S. Senate, leveled his gaze at Quayle and said, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator … you’re no Jack Kennedy.” The statement did nothing to knock Bush’s campaign off track, but it was an early sign (and many more would follow) that Quayle was a lightweight on the national political scene.
Those are a few that come to mind. Any others you want to share? More important, what do you hope to hear John McCain and Barack Obama address as the presidential debates begin Friday?
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Who’s going to bail out the rest of us?
This editorial will appear in Wednesday’s edition of the Telegram:
Washington doesn’t do emergencies well.
The United States rushed into a decision to invade Iraq … because it was an emergency. Congress passed the U.S. Patriot Act … because it was an emergency.
Now comes U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pressing Congress for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street … because it’s an emergency.
In every instance, the onus has somehow fallen on Congress to act quickly, whether the move made sense or not. Should Congress fail to do so, the fault somehow gets shifted to Capitol Hill because of the lawmakers’ “short-sightedness.”
Lord knows, Congress has been guilty of thousands of other poor decisions, and the bailout may indeed be the only sound course of action for the U.S. economy. But here’s hoping senators and representatives will make that call after hearing reasoned arguments and evidence - not on panic-stricken cries from the financial institutions who cared little about abandoning their responsibility during the past couple of years.
The $700 billion it will cost U.S. taxpayers to rescue lenders is more than the war in Iraq has cost us thus far. For that kind of money, let’s hope taxpayers get a few reassurances out of the bailout legislation.
As Wall Street struggles back to its feet and begins to turn profitable again, those profits should be returned to the people who threw them their life line - that’s U.S. taxpayers. And the notion that the people who steer the recovery should be paid handsomely for their efforts needs to be thrown out the window, also.
Taxpayers are dog-tired of paying through the nose every time trouble comes along - in airline prices, at the gas pumps, for failed savings and loans - only to see how well the CEOs and other corporate leaders line their pockets.
We’d much rather help the family down the street in danger of losing its house because of the sub-prime meltdown than write another check to a Wall Street tycoon.
If Congress can come up with a plan that addresses those concerns, we’ll swallow the pill a little more readily.
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The loss of an award-winning writer - and mentor
Sad news on the state wire this week about the death of Mary Garber.
Mary probably wasn’t well-known in this part of North Carolina, but I’ll bet hundreds of kids who played high school sports around Winston-Salem remember her. So do their parents.
Mary was a longtime sports writer for the Winston-Salem Journal. I remember her well from my earliest days in journalism, when I was a shaggy haired college kid covering preps on weekends 30 years ago.
Even in the late 1970s, seeing a woman sports writer wasn’t that big a deal. I learned more than I could begin to tell you about writing of all kinds from Sarah Sue Ingram, then a sports writer at the High Point Enterprise.
But what set Mary apart from - well, just about everyone - was the fact that she was at a high school ball game of one kind or another every weekend, every Tuesday, for every holiday basketball tournament and who knows how many other events that I never attended.
She was in her early 60s then. She’d climb the bleachers in her blue sneakers and knit cap, and she’d take notes and offer pointers to kids like me trying to keep track of fumble recoveries and technical fouls. Always with a smile on her face. Always with an attention to detail and an eye on her watch. Not making deadline was out of the question.
I didn’t realize until reading her obituary today how prized she was by her peers. She was the first woman to win the Red Smith Award - the highest sports writing honor given by The Associated Press Sports Editors.
She never talked about such accolades when I knew her. The kids on the field or court in front of us were far more important.
Mary Garber was 92 when she died Sunday.
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Trying times for optimists
A guy named Gil Stern had a pretty good line about the value of optimists and pessmists: An optimist invented the airplane. A pessimist invented the parachute.
Wall Street could use one of each these days.
I try to stay sunny about the economy. No matter what we’re going through right now, I think things are going to pick up in 2009, once we have new leadership in the White House.
I don’t think it even matters much to the market who wins the election. Investors are so ready for a change from the past eight years of misery they’re convinced that happier times are just around the bend. They can’t get here soon enough.
The optimist in me remembers that the Dow bottomed out at 7,500 six years ago. In October of last year, we hit an all-time high of more than 14,000. The optimist tells me to be patient. Things will turn around again.
We sure have our work cut out for us though, don’t we? In addition to fighting two wars, trying to keep gasoline prices under $4 a gallon and figuring out what to do about health care, the new president now is going to have to keep banks from going under.
I’m 50 years old. A lot of folks my age and younger have pretty much given up on the idea that Social Security will take care of us in our old age. Many of us have sacrificed to put money into 401(k)s. That’s where the growth is, right?
I don’t even want to log onto the Web site that tells me how my mutual fund is doing any more. But what do you do? If you stop investing now, there’s no way you’ll pull back up. So we keep the contributions rolling out of our checks every payday and hope for good news from Wall Street.
I’m still an optimist. But more and more I’m looking around for a guy who knows where the parachutes are stored.
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The mysteries of gas prices
My wife and I drove down to the University of Georgia this past weekend to visit our daughter and watch the Bulldogs beat up my University of South Carolina football team on television.
It was perfect Herrin timing. With Hurricane Ike threatening Gulf Coast refineries, the oil companies did what oil companies do best - jacked up the prices of gasoline everywhere they could get away with it.
I was fortunate to have three-quarters of a tank on Friday, so I figured I could coast to South Carolina before having to refuel. As most of us know, the price of gas is always cheaper in South Carolina.
Yeah, so much for that logic.
We kept an eye on the signs as we drove down I-85. It’s funny. Gas stations during times like these become a lot like politicians who don’t want to answer a question. The politicans mumble. The gas stations suddenly develop “technical difficulties” with their electronic signs. They don’t want you to know how much they’re charging, so the signs display incomprehensible blips and garbage.
It’s the stations’ way of saying, “Never mind the signs, folks. Just exit the highway, pull up to the pump and then we’ll talk.”
I finally gave up on finding anything reasonable and bit the bullet for $3.99 a gallon. Only it wasn’t $3.99 a gallon. It was $4.05 a gallon because I was using a debit card. We have to pay for that privilege in South Carolina, it seems.
Still, by the time we got to Athens, I felt pretty lucky. Stations in Georgia were typically charging $4.09 or more a gallon over the weekend.
Ike spared the Texas refineries, fortunately, and by the time we got in the car Monday to come home, I figured we’d dodged a bullet. With the refineries intact, surely gas prices would be back in the $3.50 range, right?
Well, no. You see, it’s important for oil companies to jack up the price of gasoline immediately when there’s the slightest hint of a storm coming. It’s not nearly so important to bring those prices back down after the storm has ended.
I paid $3.89 a gallon on the way home and considered myself lucky.
But between the gas station lottery and radio reports about fuel prices, I thought of a whole bunch of questions.
Why are gas stations allowed on Friday to hike up the price of fuel that was bought (and sold) at a much lower price on Thursday? It’s not like the storage tank is suddenly costing them more.
In South Carolina, the price of diesel is lower than the price of gasoline. In North Carolina, the price of diesel is more than the price of gasoline. How can that be?
Across the street from the station where I bought gas at $3.89 a gallon on Monday was a station selling gas for - no kidding here - $4.69 a gallon. What kind of sense does that make?
A Georgia Public Radio report told us the average price of gasoline in Georgia Monday was $4.17 a gallon, but the average price of gasoline nationwide was around $3.78 a gallon. If the refineries in Texas process crude for gas stations nationwide, why was the national average so much cheaper than the prices I saw in the Southeast? Aren’t stations in other states affected the way we are?
I don’t have any answers to any of those questions. They just made a long ride home from Georgia seem even longer.
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How do you choose a president?
I’m not trying to send any more bullets flying than there already are in this political season, but I’d like to hear from you about what goes into your thinking when choosing a president.
I know some people focus heavily on key issues. A candidate’s position on abortion, for example, can be a deal breaker for voters on either side of the debate. Others want to compare experience, voting records and other tangibles when making their decision.
I have a feeling though that a lot of people look at those facts, then try to get some sense of what kind of person the candidate is. “Who would you rather have a beer with?” has been a popular question asked in recent elections.
I find myself drifting more and more into that camp. It’s not that issues aren’t important to me … they certainly are. But more and more, I think candidates tend to position themselves according to what they think will have the broader appeal. Maybe not on moral issues, but certainly on questions like offshore drilling.
I don’t mind those changes of heart. They happen to every single one of us at some time or another. In political campaigns, of course, they’re called flip-flops and they’re exaggerated to become the biggest sins a candidate can commit. In reality, I just want to know if the guy (or gal) is changing horses because it’s the right thing to do … or because some special interest group is calling in a favor.
That might sound shallow to some people, but I have to think it has a little more substance to it than lipstick or the number of houses someone remembers owning.
So, how are you going to decide whom to vote for?
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So, how bad was Hanna?
We lost a pretty good-sized limb from a tree in the front yard at my house, but other than that, we’ve been very fortunate.
How about you? Do you know of any power outages? Any serious damage? Anyone who needs help and hasn’t received it?
Or post here if you just want to say “Thank God, it wasn’t any worse than it was.”
Hope you’re all safe.
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Hurricane slams coast; journalists drenched by cliches
So, have you made that grocery store run yet? Got milk? Bread? Bottled water? Batteries?
Most important … have you hunkered down?
Hurricanes bring out the cliches in journalists like almost no other event. Headline writers get to use words like pound, slam, clobber, devastate. The TV guys tell us to hunker down so often, the phrase could be its own drinking game.
Even hurricane preparations bring out a steady stream of familiar reports. For a long time I’ve wondered if there’s a law that says TV cameras can’t photograph men nailing plywood over windows unless the men agree to take off their shirts first. And the men in question are almost always people who really shouldn’t be taking off their shirts for television cameras.
My other peeve is the TV weather people’s choice of location for reporting hurricane news. They always stand outside, no matter how hard it’s raining or blowing, and when they’re not telling us yet again to hunker down, they’re looking concerned and warning: “Whatever you do, don’t go outside!”
Do they listen to themselves?
And is it just me, or does it seem a little too coincidental that signs always happen to blow by the weather guys as they’re standing outside telling us not to do what they’re doing? I don’t know. The first few times, it seemed cool, but lately it seems to happen on every single shot on every single station.
Do you think they’ve got some guy standing off-camera, flinging signs at the weather guys to make the storm seem even stormier? And if so, why the heck isn’t that guy hunkered down? The reporters might be missing a screw for standing outside under such conditions, but at least they get to express their concern on camera.
The rest of the crew are just out there getting soaked.
I’m hoping Hanna makes a sudden right turn between now and Saturday and we won’t have to see any of the above. But don’t take any chances. Buy some bread and plywood and maybe a sign or two to fling.
And for gosh sakes … hunker … oh, I can’t even say it.
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Earth to media: Leave the girl alone
In all the scolding and what-does-this-mean-ing surrounding Sarah Palin’s daughter over Labor Day, something really big got lost.
She’s a kid, for crying out loud. Her whole world flipped upside down a few months ago. Her pregnancy is now being examined like no 17-year-old’s who ever came before her.
Lord knows, there are plenty of issues to discuss about her mom’s candidacy. We can only hope that the TV heads and pundits eventually get around to things like foreign policy, the economy and the price of gasoline.
But for now, it seems we’re far more interested in the impact of her pregnancy on the ticket. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a poll: Does Bristol’s pregnancy help John McCain or not? You decide.
There’s a reason most 17-year-olds still go to school and live at home. They’re kids. They make mistakes. That’s part of what being a kid is about. Growing up the hard way, on occasion. Learning lessons. With luck, it’s in the privacy of your home.
The difference between Bristol and almost every other 17-year-old in the U.S. is that Bristol’s life has been the alternate act to Gustav in cable news’ breathless round-the-clock drama.
How fortunate for television that the news broke on Labor Day, so all the folks at home could tune in, nudge each other knowingly. “Now that you mention it, she did hold her baby brother in front of her when McCain was introducing her mom. Wasn’t that clever.”
Can you imagine the stress on this poor girl? Not enough that she’s having a baby, marrying the father at such an early age and trying to pull her life together. We get a subplot involving her impact on the entire 2008 presidential election. You might make the history books, kid. Good luck with that.
Every time we see a flaw in a candidate’s family life or personal life, it seems, we wring our hands and talk about privacy and wonder if it should really be part of the public record.
Funny how those discussions change nothing the very next chance we get to expose a candidate’s human side.
