More bewildered self-appraisal

My partner, the Songbird, some while back told me I am the least artistic artist she's known, in that I don't spend terribly much time doing art on my own. I also don't spend anything like the time I should honing my professional skills. And a lot of the jobs I have taken over the years have been of limited challenge at best (often leading to boredom, which leads to all sorts of trouble).

What the hell is wrong with me? Am I only doing graphics work because it's something that comes easily to me? Why don't I seem to want to do much more on my free time than surf the net, watch the tube or read comic books? Is it a function of depression? Fear of failure...or fear of success? Am I just fundamentaly lazy? Did I get so used to having peer-level over-achievement in my childhood that I became averse to doing anything that really strains me intellectually or creatively? If anyone cares to offer helpful insight or observation, I promise not to go into a funk or fly off the handle. But I could use some help figuring this out.

Georgia's GOP pols finally find a social program they like

Yeh, I know, that sounds like an early April Fool's Day headline, but so help me Reagan, it's God's own truth. This column in our local daily points up the delightful (well, to libs like me, anyhow) irony in seeing state legislature poohbahs, the Gubnah and his lite guv, Republicans all, lobbying the Bush Regime and Congress to fork over funds to save the state's financially foundering child health insurance program, PeachCare. This program has traditionally been funded partly by the federal government--you remember, the ones the GOP guys are always calling "the problem, not the solution"? Yep, that federal government. And it's exactly the kind of social program they historically have always loved to whack the daylights out of, both as a rhetorical piñata and as a place to cut the budget: the kind that doesn't serve rich, white Anglo-Saxon heterosexual males and/or their families.

So why are they rallying around PeachCare even though it only benefits families making $40K a year or less? Well, it turns out that an awful lot of those families getting healthcare insurance for their kids through PeachCare just happen to live in—wait for it—Republican congressional districts. (Actually, that's a redundancy in this state, unless you're talking about Fulton and DeKalb [Atlanta proper]—the only two liberal Democrat oases in a sea of red rural counties.) In fact, the two counties with the most PeachCare clients of all the state's 159 counties are Gwinnett and Cobb, right here in metro Atlanta, both solidly Republican (you might remember Cobb County as Newt Gingrich's old district, the one that passed the anti-gay resolution that wound up getting Olympic events moved out of the county).

At least these right-wing bozos are finally doing something good for people lower down the economic ladder. Too bad the votes they're buying will likely never swing my way.