Plead the First

Mr. Sun is live-blogging the National Spelling Bee again this year, and asked me to create a cartoon in honor of the Bee and contestant Saryn “The Hook” Hooks from North Carolina. The cartoon, and other Bee related coverage may be found here. Go Saryn!

PS: Mr. Sun, there’s been some sort of mix up – these aren’t my parents. I’ve sent the two of them on their way, and ask that you locate and release my actual parents at once. I don’t know what kind of operation you’re running over there, but mistakes like this just reek of sloppiness.

SCAT, Greensboro’s appointment-based public transportation system for the disabled, is apparently straining the city’s budget. Sandy Carmany has made several posts recently at her blog detailing some of the public transportation issues facing City Council (here, here, and here).

The subject kind of flew under my radar at first, until I read a couple of posts that Beth at Greensboring.com made on the matter (she even created a couple of SCAT cartoons of her own). While I disagree with the way she ties the SCAT issue into the tax breaks for the Wachovia Tower, I do think she makes a good argument that the SCAT rate increases are too harsh. It’s reasonable that the rates should increase so costs are covered better, but surely they could be increased gradually, or some middle ground can be found that won’t completely upend the lives of people who are dependent on SCAT without much wiggle room in their own budgets.

I went to see The DaVinci Code on Sunday afternoon. Beforehand they had a preview for an upcoming Nicholas Cage movie called “World Trade Center”. I found it unbelieveable that they would create a trailer like that. They actually showed firemen and policemen buried in rubble beneath the crumbled buildings. If one goes to see the WTC movie, they are obviously expecting to sit through scenes like that. However, such images shouldn’t be sprung on unsuspecting viewers by including them in the movie trailer.

This week’s cartoon: Greensboro’s PGA tournament, formerly the Chrysler Classic, is still in search of a sponsor.

The onslaught of spam was getting to be too much, so I’ve installed Spam Karma 2. If you comment on a post and your comment doesn’t show up in the thread, please send me an email using the “Email me” link on the right side of the page.

The May 16 edition of the show with zefrank included a challenge to viewers to create an Earth Sandwich by placing a slice of bread on the ground, and having someone on the exact opposite side of the Earth do the same.

The cool part about this is the “Find the opposite tool” provided to assist in finding the point on Earth that is exactly opposite any given location. It’s a very clever use of Google Maps, and it’s fun to play around with. Click and drag on one of the maps to try it out.

Unfortunately, the Triad is directly opposite of the Indian Ocean, so there will be no Earth Sandwich for us. Unless someone has a boat.

Nathan Tabor, a North Carolina political activist and contributing editor at The Conservative Voice, recently tried to take “the liberals” to task on the subject of prayer. Unfortunately, his arguments are a little long on rhetoric, and a little short on support. A few highlights:

To hear liberals tell it, George W. Bush doesn’t have a prayer of succeeding. What with the war in Iraq, soaring gasoline prices, and the high cost of medical care, the President’s critics dismiss him on good days as ineffectual…on bad days as a dunce.

Yet, the President, with his cockeyed optimism and can-do American spirit, seems to believe he can and will succeed. And he believes that much of the credit can be attributed to prayer.

You see, this is a praying President. Maybe that’s why he catches so much flack from the media elite, who never met a praying man that they liked.

I’m not sure who the “media elite” are, but I know that there have been many positive stories about “praying men” in the media over the years, including Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II. There are plenty of other potential reasons for Bush to catch flack other than his propensity for prayer.

In fact, this President was bold enough to say that prayer is the greatest gift a citizen can offer him. Not a vote. Not a contribution to the Republican Party. Prayer.

I’m not sure how this qualifies as bold, considering that 82 percent of U.S. adults pray during a given week, and considering that the comment was made during his speech given for the National Day of Prayer. Bush may be a bit tone deaf and out of step on occasion, but I think even he can see it’s better to talk up “prayer” instead of “votes” or “contributions” on the National Day of Prayer.

Yet, this is not a President who is commanding people to pray—as some on the left would have you believe.

More vague generalizations. Who on the left has said this?

Unfortunately, for many of us, the National Day of Prayer is a national day of regret. This is because we are not really free to pray at times in the land of the free. For instance, our children are banned from offering an earnest prayer at school—where prayer is often needed the most.

Here Tabor’s argument really goes out into left field. Children are not banned from offering prayers at school. Our Constitution protects our right to pray wherever we want, be it in school, in a church or in a park. Tabor makes it sound as though a poor third grader saying grace quietly at lunch time is going to be disciplined, and that’s certainly not the case. To be sure, there have been instances where an overzealous teacher or administrator has overstepped his bounds, but you would be hard pressed to find a case where a court had upheld such an action.

A number of liberals would like to shut down churches where pastors are bold enough to dare speak against modern-day ills such as abortion, the break-up of the family, and pornography. They claim such clergymen are venturing into the religious no-man’s land of politics.

Again, what liberals have called for this?

Even if you can scrounge up a few people who happen to be liberal and are guilty of the offenses Tabor lists, that hardly warrants painting that whole side of the political spectrum with the same broad brush. After all, there are conservatives who want to forcibly convert people to Christianity and indiscriminately bomb Arab nations with nuclear warheads. Does that mean that “conservatives” as a whole are calling for such actions?

North Carolina’s state legislators are debating whether to raise North Carolina’s minimum wage. Sounds like a good idea to me (and around 70 percent of NC voters), and will surely be more helpful to low-income earners than some of the other ideas the legislature has run with.

The Minuteman Project will be holding a rally in Greensboro this evening. Didn’t anybody tell them that South of the Border isn’t actually part of Mexico?

I agree that there’s a need for The Heart of the Triad, or a project like it. We’re experiencing huge amounts of growth around here, and thinking through our development options is definitely preferable to bulldozing first and asking questions later. That being said, I’m not certain that this particular project has been executed that well so far.

The issue that this cartoon addresses is the makeup of the committee that’s going to be making the final recommendations on how the area designated as the Heart of the Triad should be developed. While the committee may end up making legitimate and wise decisions, they’ve set themselves up for the possibility of having their choices and their motivations questioned because of who has – and has not – been chosen to be on the committee. The details have been covered pretty well over at Sandy’s Place, and Jim Capo has a couple of posts giving his view of the initial planning charrettes. Jim’s skepticism about the process far outstrips mine, but I think his account raises some good questions. One part that seems particularly odd is the insistence on the part of the charrette leaders that all of the development options being considered had to be placed within the area under discussion. Deciding that one of the items should not be a part of any future development was not an option. I’d recommend checking out the above links if anyone is unfamilar with the Heart of the Triad project.