Opinion

Purchased by Gideon Barnes in 1826, the city of Barnesville has a rich legacy of agriculture, industry and quality of life.

It has been the home of numerous factories and businesses as well as the stomping grounds for some of the Southeast's most successful people. [Full Story »] 

I boarded the train as I did everyday. 7:30 a.m. Northbound on the J from Gates Avenue to Canal Street. The train limped along its tracks ultimately stopping short of the Manhattan Bridge.

The voice came over the loudspeaker warning us that do to some "unidentified activity" we were going to have to stop until the line was cleared.

We all sat there nervously flicking through our dailies, playing Solitaire on our phones and using feigned conversation to mask our nervousness.

I thought back to 9/11 when the trains stopped moving and we were held across the water suspended on the elevated tracks just in time to see our city being burned down building by building.

And at that moment I realized that even in places of relative peace, we live in a time of war. [Full Story »] 

School lunches need more fruits, veggies and whole grains and a limit on calories, says a report urging an update conducted by The Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academies) of the nation's 14-year-old standards for cafeteria fare.

But the changes won't come cheaply.

Schools can't put just anything on a kid's lunch tray. They must follow federal standards, because the government's school lunch program subsidizes lunch and breakfast for needy kids in nearly every public school and many private ones. [Full Story »] 

This weekend "Where the Wild Things Are" proved a bigger hit with adult audiences than family crowds as the adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book debuted at No. 1 with $32.5 million.

Perhaps it was because the movie-going adults fondly remember '...Wild Things...' from their childhood as it was originally published in 1963 making the primary (and rather nostalgic) audience to be roughly 40 - 45 years old. [Full Story »] 

No one was exempt from the story that seemed to captivate America between 2 p.m. EST and 5 p.m. concerning one little boy and a homemade "balloon," of sorts.

Falcon Heene, a 6-year-old Colorado boy, was thought to have floated off in a homemade balloon - an episode that has now raised question as to whether it might have been an elaborate attention-getting family stunt. [Full Story »] 

The Social Security Administration makes it official today: There will be no cost of living increase for Social Security recipients next year, the first year without one since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.

The announcement comes as President Obama and key members of Congress call for a second round of $250 payments to more than 50 million seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities. [Full Story »] 

In recent decades, layoffs were the standard procedure for shrinking labor costs. Reducing the wages of those who remained on the job was considered demoralizing and risky: the best workers would jump to another employer. But now pay cuts, sometimes the result of downgrades in rank or shortened workweeks, are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.

State workers in Georgia are taking home smaller paychecks. So are the tens of thousands of employees in California’s public university system. The steel company Nucor and the technology giant Hewlett-Packard have embraced the practice. So have several airlines and many small businesses. [Full Story »] 

Setting another precedence for the executive office the Obama administration on Sunday called Fox News "a wing of the Republican Party."

So far this has served only to escalate the pre-established war of words against the channel, even as observers questioned the wisdom of a White House war on a news organization.

"What I think is fair to say about Fox -- and certainly it's the way we view it -- is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party," said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. "They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."
[Full Story »] 

Foreclosure filings are occurring every 13 seconds in this country.

And government programs to fight the foreclosure crisis look increasingly inadequate and should be reworked and supplemented with new ideas. [Full Story »] 

Much to the shock and surprise of the free world, Nobel officials in Oslo, Norway announced the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Price early this morning for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

The winner, of course, was United States president Barack Obama.

The committee cited his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation. [Full Story »] 

Early tomorrow morning, NASA will slam two spacecraft into the moon in the hope of unearthing signs of water.

The spacecraft, called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite or LCROSS, will break into two parts to hit the moon a few minutes apart. First the Centaur upper stage rocket will hit the lunar crater Cabeus near the southern pole, sending a plume of debris about 6 miles above the moon. LCROSS then will fly through the debris, collecting and analyzing the debris, searching for signs of water ice before slamming into the moon at 5,000 miles per hour. [Full Story »] 

The general notion is that America is a country founded on christian morals and ethics.

There is reference to God in the Declaration of Independence. Our presidents take their oath with their hand on the Bible. The most recent Supreme Court justice even put her left hand on the Bible held by her mother at her swearing in.

So if it is good enough for the goose why then is the gander put under such scrutiny? [Full Story »] 

An old saying goes, “If you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything.” I believe there to be a great deal of wisdom in those words. Good health is our most valuable personal asset and is worth more than all the material possessions the world has to offer.

Think about it – even rich people fear death and there isn’t one of them who wouldn’t trade every penny of their fortunes to be spared from a terminal illness. Even if one’s life itself isn’t threatened, poor health can steal away many of life’s greatest joys – holding a baby, watching a son or daughter graduate high school, going for a walk on the beach.

It’s little wonder when Washington begins talking about health care reform, the whole country sits up and takes notice. The country usually doesn’t like what it hears. America’s recent overtly negative reaction to the administration’s health care reform proposal is similar to, though much more intense than, the Clinton (that’s both Bill and Hillary) health care reform proposals of the early 1990s.

In fact, it appears likely that, at least with regard to the House of Representatives, the election cycle of 2010 will resemble that of 1994 when American voters turned out in huge numbers to cast out Democrats bent on supporting the Clinton's terribly flawed plan.
[Full Story »]