In this week's DeFuniak Herald/Beach Breeze- 2/18/2010

[DeFuniak Herald / Beach Breeze]

Another issue packed with lots of Walton County news that you need!

This week features a special sports section featuring the
Freeport High School Football Team!

Pick up a Beach Breeze today and read in depth articles about..

*Last Saturday's Hands Across the Sand event
*The latest on the Hotz Ave. one-way issue in Grayton Beach
*the Lupin Beach project in Inlet Beach
*the nuisance ordinance meeting at SWHS
*all the latest TDC, BCC, and other local meetings
*legals and classifieds
*Chuck Hinson's Art Clips section

Pick up a DeFuniak Herald and find lots of news....including

*Freeport City Council Utility project updates
*DeFuniak Spring planning board news
*4-H motorcycle project test drive
*Florida Chatauqua Assembly schedule
*Krewe de Yak photos from Mardi Gras parade
*Alaqua Pets of the Week
*editor Bruce Collier's editorial
*story on Misty William's battle with cancer


Let us know if you know of newsworthy Walton County NEWS!!

 

[Kurt]

This week's edition was packed with good stuff - can you ask Bruce to post his editorial?

 

[Bluznbeach]

And can somebody give me a quick rundown on the Lupin Beach story, which doesn't seem to be on the Herald/Breeze website yet? Lots of Inlet Beachers are watching that one.

 

[Alicia Leonard]

The site should be updated tomorrow and I'll see if we can get a copy of the editorial up in the morning.

 

[Matt J]

Walton County's best newspaper.

 

[Alicia Leonard]

Editorial comment

"Brain-dead partisanship"

By BRUCE COLLIER
The title of this editorial comes from a quote recently made by Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who has announced his intention not to seek re-election to a third term in the U.S. Senate. If you know anything about Indiana politics, you know that the name Bayh carries the same political cachet in the Hoosier State that Byrd carries in Virginia and Taft and Kennedy used to carry in Ohio and Massachusetts.

Bayh's father Birch was a perennial presidential hopeful in the '60s and '70s, and Evan Bayh last month expressed confidence that he would win re-election. Given the fact that he was governor of Indiana for two terms and has never lost an election, he's not just blowing smoke. Still, Bayh is walking away. Why?

Could be he's preparing for a shot at the presidency, a project he began studying in 2008 before deferring to Hillary Clinton. Or could it be that Bayh has taken to heart a recent CBS News-New York Times poll citing a 75-percent disapproval rate for Congress? That is being paired with another poll that expresses a near-identical "dissatisfaction" rate (73 percent) with the direction the country is taking.


Naturally the country's ranking Democrats, from President Obama to the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been concerned. Unnamed sources say that Obama attempted to persuade Bayh to reconsider. Reid is making the best of it, expressing regretful best wishes and moving on the really important job - getting another Democrat in that seat. In fairness, the Republicans are behaving in a similar fashion. They smell blood nationwide, and are looking for one of their own to fill Bayh's vacant desk.

Pundits are suggesting that the G.O.P. may actually be able to achieve its master plan - getting a controlling majority in Congress, of course.

Insert "brain-dead partisanship" comment here. Bayh also added "...and not enough progress." Anyone coming from a governor's job (the executive branch) to a senator's job (the legislative branch) must get that feeling more or less daily. What is curious is that what Senator Bayh realizes, and what all those folks that responded to the above polls realize, seems to have eluded the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties. To paraphrase former President Bill Clinton, "it's the gridlock, stupid!"

The "direction" the country is taking, the one that those 73 percent aren't happy with, is the same direction a dog takes when he sees his tail wagging in his face. "Yes We Can" has been transformed into "No They Won't." Our two leading political parties remain in thrall to their extreme wings, both blindly insisting that theirs is the true political religion. Every time a moderate or bipartisan-minded lawmaker gets fed up and walks away, the party response is not, "do we need to reconsider the way we do things?" It's "how do we hang on to that seat?"

You'd think that those ugly poll numbers (reportedly the lowest congressional disapproval rate since 1992 - a lifetime in Washington years) would shake something loose. Both parties employ ridiculously overpaid experts to monitor the voter pulse - what can they be recommending? More of the same, it seems. If it's not possible to get elected to Congress except by slavishly toeing a party line, that's bad. Once elected, if it's not possible to get anything done for the same reason, that's not just bad, that's disgraceful.

Are they not listening, or are we just not talking? Both, I'd guess. I bet they're talking in Indianapolis, though, and not just about losing the Super Bowl.

 

[scooterbug44]

I have really been enjoying my subscription!