Just found out from one of our drivers, Obama is in Mississippi.  They have I-55 South between Batesville & Memphis blocked off.  He should be there around 4:30-5 pm.

Good Luck Obama

I thought I would send a HAPPY since everything else I post on here is so serious!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Just seen on the Associated Press just announced that McCain will be debating tonight at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. 

I’m proud because the State of Mississippi DESERVES this!

Below is two articles from CNN.com’s political ticker.  They are detailing the Plan B for the Mississippi Debate.  I have been watching the news constantly about this; mainly because we have put a lot of money and time in this debate and when McCain does not show tonight; many Mississippians will view this as an insult against the state of Mississippi and the South.  The South is supposed to be important to Republicans, but we are constantly put down and snubbed by everyone in Congress.  I watched WTVA & WCBI news last night and many Mississippians are taking this very seriously.  I believe this will be political suicide for McCain if he does not show.  If he doesn’t show, it will just show how Obama is FOR the American People and how he want to let them know what is going on and how he intends to fix this.  Personally, I like a “town hall” format, so this may be a blessing in disguise for McCain not to show up.

Plan B proposed for Mississippi debate

(CNN) — Whether GOP nominee John McCain intends to participate in the first presidential debate –scheduled for Friday night — is up in the air, but Democratic opponent Barack Obama said it’s still on as far as he’s concerned.

Obama will fly to the University of Mississippi in Oxford — site of the debate — on Friday, according to his campaign.

University Chancellor Robert Khayat said if McCain does not show, the format may include members of the audience to submit questions to the moderator, Jim Lehrer. Lehrer would then pose the questions to Obama. It would take on a kind of town hall format, according to Khayat.

Khayat said he will recommend that to the Debate Commission, which would make the final decision.

The debate was to focus on foreign policy and natural security, but the economic crisis is likely to be a dominant issue as well.

On Thursday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said he expects both candidates to attend Friday night’s debate, even though McCain has said he’ll only go if Congress reaches a deal on the bailout.

“I expect there to be a debate tomorrow night [Friday] and I look forward to it,” Barbour told reporters at the University of Mississippi.

Barbour said he had not been in direct contact with either of the candidates and he did not have any “inside information.”

Debate planners got a big surprise Wednesday when McCain called for postponing it. The university has invested millions of dollars preparing for it.

McCain said he was suspending his campaign to focus on the $700 billion bailout proposal. His campaign said he would attend the debate if Congress passes legislation by Friday morning.

McCain said Thursday that Washington needs “all hands on deck” to work on the government’s proposed bailout plan.

Obama’s campaign has argued over the past couple of days that both attending the presidential debate and working on the bailout plan can be accomplished and the event should go on.

“I think we can do both of these things at the same time. The next president is going to face multiple crises on the same day,” Robert Gibbs, Obama’s top adviser, said on CNN’s “American Morning.”

“We’ve got a presidential debate scheduled. We’ve got a stage. We’ll have an audience. My guess is we’ll have a moderator and at least one of the presidential candidates,” Gibbs said.

Khayat, appearing with Barbour on Thursday, said university officials have been in contact with both campaigns but only in regard to “what we have to do to be prepared for tomorrow night.”

Richard Howorth, the mayor of Oxford, said debate preparations are under way and organizers are staying positive.

“We think it’s going to happen. We’re not thinking about the alternative right now, so we’re still excited about it and have a really positive attitude,” Howorth said.

Howorth acknowledged, however, that they are in a “wait-and-see mode.”

 

“The plans for this forum have been under way for more than a year and a half. The CPD’s [Commission on Presidential Debates']mission is to provide a forum in which the American public has an opportunity to hear the leading candidates for the president of the United States debate the critical issues facing the nation,” he said.

“We believe the public will be well-served by having all of the debates go forward as scheduled.”

Below is more Mississippi reactions about McCain not showing up for the Ole Miss debate.  There is something majorly wrong with McCain.

Greene: Mississippi reaction

Posted: 06:25 PM ET

From CNN Contributor Bob Greene

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

BATESVILLE, Mississippi– John McCain’s request to postpone tomorrow night’s presidential debate at the University of Mississippi seems to be turning into something less than a trumpets-blaring triumph for him down here.

The state of Mississippi was waiting, with great pride, to host the first debate between McCain and Barack Obama– and the people who live here seem understandably unhappy that, after months of planning, this uncertainty has been thrown at them at the last moment.

Last night and this morning we reported on conversations with Batesville residents–one of them an avid McCain-Palin supporter– who are disappointed and even angry that McCain may not show up tomorrow night. And a conversation today with two men here who have their own theories about the possible no-show provided more viewpoints on how this is going over in northern Mississippi.

“McCain saying that he thinks it’s a good idea not to come to the debate– that’s what you call running from a challenge,” said Arcaro Conner, 45, a maintenance worker. “I don’t think he wants to debate Obama– I think he’ll talk at Obama from a distance, but he won’t talk to him to his face in the same room.”

“He doesn’t want to face the music,” said Mike Diltz, 45, also a maintenance worker. “The American people want to hear from these two men. So why would you say that you might not show up?”

McCain’s stated reason is that he believes it is more important to be in Washington, working on a solution to the economic crisis, than to be in Mississippi for a campaign debate.

“Come on,” said Arcaro Conner. “That’s like a football team that says they’re not going to play because it looks like rain. It’s not the rain the football team is worried about– it’s the team they see waiting for them across the field.”

“This whole thing about having to get an economic deal worked out over the weekend,” Mike Diltz said. “That’s like the pitch for used cars– ‘You’ve got to buy this car by the weekend, or it will be gone. I just heard from a customer who liked this car, and he might be coming back, so you’d better buy it right now.’

“What’s the rush? In around 40 days, we’re going to know who the new president will be, so why are they telling us that they have to rush to a decision right now? It took them eight years to get in this mess, and now, right before the debate, McCain is saying he doesn’t want to come because they have to fix it by the end of the weekend?”

Commentators and political analysts have been saying that McCain’s proposal to postpone the debate came as a big surprise.

“No one I talked to was surprised,” Arcaro Conner said. “Everyone I called last night said they knew all along there wasn’t going to be a debate.”

Really? That sounds unlikely– his friends really weren’t surprised?

“Not at all,” Conner said. “He doesn’t want to face Obama.”

Whatever you may think of the reasoning of Arcaro Conner and Mike Diltz, the one thing that seems beyond contradiction today is that people in Mississippi, and at the University of Mississippi, have a right to be frustrated at the prospect of the diminution of their big night during the biggest presidential campaign in recent memory.

“A couple weeks ago, all that John McCain wanted was to get on the stage with Obama,” Conner said. “Remember? ‘Let’s the two of us go around the country and talk from the same stages.‘

“Well. . . here’s his chance. Is he going to show up?”

Here are a few articles from CNN.com’s political ticker.  I believe that McCain thinks that the state of Mississippi is expendable and he really doesn’t care about this state at all.  Like I’ve said before, everything that McCain is doing is purely political.  He doesn’t care about the American people.  Well, I should say he doesn’t care for the poor and middle class.  The middle class is what holds this country together.  All he cares about is his rich friends in Washington & New York.  When will people realize that Republicans only care about special interests, lobbyist, and their rich cronies across this wonderful nation.  I believe with a McCain presidency, we will be in a larger mess than we are now with President Bush.  By the way, I thought President Bush done a good job last night.  I do agree with the bailout, but the CEOs and other executives must not be paid and after everything stabilizes that money MUST be paid back, no matter what!!  This is a serious time in our country and I feel like that we are on the verge of a very bad recession or worse a DEPRESSION.  Pray that the Lord God above will help this wonderful country of ours during this dark time.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Greene: Mississippi reaction

Posted: 09:20 AM ET

ABOARD THE ELECTION EXPRESS

BATESVILLE, Mississippi (CNN)– Whatever the McCain campaign may have anticipated about national reaction to the suggestion that tomorrow night’s debate be postponed, people around here, who have been looking forward to the event for many months, are taking it rather personally.

“The debate should go on,” said Patricia Houston, a bartender at a local restaurant that was opened this year and that was counting on heavy business over the debate weekend. “Why does he have to be up in Washington to discuss the economy? Does he not know that we have Internet access down here in Mississippi? He can keep in touch from down here just fine.”

Houston said she is a strong political supporter of John McCain, and that “I love Sarah Palin.” She is deeply disappointed that McCain, in her opinion, is treating her state as expendable.

“We’re used to it,” she said. “We grow up assuming that a lot of the country has a ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ view of us. They don’t think about us much, and when they do think about us, it’s not in the best of ways.”

Whether or not her assessment is accurate, she thinks the McCain campaign’s request to delay the debate is just one more indignity directed at the citizens of Mississippi.

“They say they just want to cancel it for Friday night, but that they’ll come back,” she said. “You know that, if they cancel it, they probably won’t come back.”

She thinks that the people of Mississippi, regardless of their political affiliation, will regard the request to postpone the debate as an insult: “An insult to Mississippi, and an insult to the South,” she said. “It‘s not like it’s hard to get quick communication from here to Washington, D.C. It’s not 1867 down here; he can reach anyone he needs to.”

She stressed that she will almost certainly still vote for the McCain-Palin ticket. “But I don’t know about other people,” she said. “The South is supposed to be important to McCain. This doesn’t seem like it.”

She said that she understands the nation is in a financial crisis, “but it’s not like we’re not part of the United States. All the country wants the candidates to do is stand up and say, ‘This is what I think we should do about the economy.’ Why can’t he stand up and say it here?”

I heard about this on Kidd Kraddick this morning.  Like I said this morning, something is terribly wrong with McCain and I believe everyone is seeing it right now

Letterman skewers McCain for cancelling appearance

Posted: 11:00 AM ET

From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

 

(CNN) — David Letterman was not amused Wednesday night John McCain hastily canceled his scheduled appearance on the show.

“This doesn’t smell right,” Letterman said during a routine that only half appeared to be a joke. “This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody’s putting something in his Metamucil.”

Shortly before he was slated to be on Letterman’s show Wednesday, McCain announced he was suspending his presidential campaign to head back Washington to help ensure Congress passes a version of the economic bailout bill.

But Letterman didn’t appear to buy the Arizona senator’s explanation, and after praising McCain’s record as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said, “This is not the John McCain I know, by God.”

“It makes me believe something is going haywire with the campaign,” he said. “Something’s gotten to him.”

Letterman also took a dig at Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin.

“Here’s what you do if you are running a campaign in the middle of an economic crisis and it’s about to crater,” Letterman continued. “You go back to Washington, you handle what you need to handle. Don’t suspend your campaign. You let your campaign go on shouldered by your vice presidential nominee…or is that really a good thing to do? See what I am saying?”

Speaking on NBC’s Today Show Thursday morning, McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace said, “We deeply regret offending Mr. Letterman, but our candidate’s priority at this moment is to focus on this crisis,” she said.

I’m not a big Haley Barbour supporter at all, but it is good that he has come out with a press release about this.  We, in Mississippi, have been looking forward to this for a long time now and now that we have a chance to show the country and the world how we have changed and improved ourselves.  Mississippi is not the “closed-society” that it once was.  We are very proud of our heritage, but we also realize that we must grow as a state to achieve what we want to do. 

Mississippi Gov. says debate plans going forward

Posted: 12:30 PM ET

 

(CNN) — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told reporters Thursday preparations for Friday’s debate are going forward as planned.

“I expect there to be a debate tomorrow night and I look forward to it,” he said.

John McCain has suggested pushing back the debate if an agreement on the economic bailout has not been reached by Friday morning. Barack Obama has said the debate should occur regardless of whether the bill is passed by that time.

 

Happy Thursday, EVERYONE!!!

Sorry, I haven’t really “blogged” this week only putting up excerpts from the news I’ve read.  It’s been really busy here.  I still have to order parts and do my job too, so it’s been pretty hectic around here this week.  Everyday has felt like a Monday. 

Let me tell you about my progress with my new workout routine.  I have lost 12 pounds.  I’m so excited.  I’m trying to get back down to my old weight of 175 lbs.  I hope that I will be able to do this by Christmas.  I just want to be able to walk into a room and everyone says,”Is that Johnathon? Man, He looks awesome!!”  I have been running everyday and lifting weights.   I worked on my chest and arms two days ago and I still feel it today.  I’m going to up my cardio today just for 5 more minutes.  I want to be able to run at least 3 miles in an hour.  Also, with my new gym package, I got tanning included.  Monday, after my workout, I went and lay in the tanning bed for 12 minutes.  BIG MISTAKE!! I should have thought that this is not my daddy’s tanning bed and that they have new bulbs.  I’m still red and I’ve been putting Aloe Vera on myself every night before I go to bed so at least I will start “browning” and won’t peel. 

 Have you just enjoyed this weather that we are having?  It’s been so nice and “fall-like.”  I cannot wait until Halloween.  Every time I go to Wal-Mart or some other retail place, I am compelled to go in the Halloween section and see all the decorations, costumes, and goodies.  I’m going to order my costume next week.  I’m going to be Robin Hood.  The costume is pretty awesome.  Below is a picture. 

Like I said in an earlier blog, I’ve always been something generic and I really want to go all out this year.   

Also, starting next month, I’m going to start my Christmas shopping and go ahead and get that out of the way.  I want to buy me a new tree and new decorations.  I don’t know what kind of theme I want to do this year, but I want it to be amazing.  I already know how I’m going to decorate the outside the house.  It’s going to be garland galore with clear lights.  I’ll will take pictures and post them on here whenever I put everything up.  I want to go and start my shopping for the main reason is this…after Thanksgiving, I will have to start working Christmas In Cottonplant and I won’t have time after that.  I really don’t even want to go to Tupelo or Memphis during the month of December except maybe for a party or two.  I want to give my family the best Christmas I can because the past few years I haven’t been able to do a whole lot.  The past few years since my wreck, my family has been there for me and I don’t feel like I’ve thanked them enough for all they have done for me. 

As for my personal life, I’m just taking a hiatus right now.  I believe I need to focus on my goals.  I’m still going to hang out with my friends in Tupelo.  My friends, Anna & Nilda, put their home up for sale last week and they sold it this week.  They close on their new house on October 3^rd.  They are moving to Saltillo in the same subdivision that my friend Matt & Sheila lives.  Lord, the gays are going to take over that subdivision one of these days.  LOL Anna & Nilda are such great people.  I call Anna my “Daddy” and Nilda is my “Momma.”  I love them to death.  Also, my friend Justin has a new roommate.  Our friend, Mitzi, moved in with him.  Justin moved into Scotty’s old room, which is kind of bittersweet.   I miss Scotty so much.  I know that I have an angel in heaven looking over me and my other friends.  I know that when God closes a door, he opens a window.

Now about the whole McCain debacle.  I believe McCain is losing it.  He knows that he is down in the polls and now he’s trying to act like the “bigger” leader when in all actuality he’s not.  I believe he is just scared to debate in Ole Miss.  I believe that he knows that Obama is a better debater and know that his butt will get “whooped.”  But that’s my rant for that today.

Well, I guess I need to get back to work.  Hope you have a Great Thursday and a great weekend! 

OK..now I agree that our elected officials in Washington need to do something about this whole financial mess that we are in right now because i believe that it’s bleak.  But I agree with some people when the say, “We need leadership, not a Photo Op.” I believe that is what John McCain is doing.  He wants to look like he has a “plan” to get us out of this mess, but in true reality his plan is a bunch of bull.  His “plan” will put us deeper in debt and increase the national deficit.  Now, do you know what will happen if the deficit gets any larger.  The dollar gets weaker, prices go up, and interest rates increase.  I believe that Obama and the Democrats have the right mindset to get this economy back on track, it may take a year or so, but with them it’ll be good.  McCain will put us in the poor house for sure.  I think that we need to go ahead with the debate as planned because a lot of time and a lot of Mississippi money has gone into this debate.  If McCain is scared, just say that he is scared.  LOL  Below is the article written by the Associated Press on djournal.com. 

http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=279578&pub=1&div=News

The Associated Press
NEW YORK – Republican presidential nominee John McCain challenged rival Barack Obama on Wednesday to suspend their heated campaign, postpone Friday’s debate and work together to deal with the nation’s financial troubles.

Obama did not immediately respond to his rival’s bold political move, but Obama campaign officials say the senator is inclined to move ahead with the debate.

McCain said the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout plan seemed headed for defeat and a bipartisan solution was urgently needed. The move was an effort by the Republican to claim leadership on an issue that has been troublesome for him at a time when his rival is moving ahead in the polls.

McCain said he would put politics aside and return to Washington Thursday to focus on the nation’s financial problems after addressing former President Clinton’s Global Initiative session in New York. McCain said he had spoken to President Bush and asked him to convene a leadership meeting in Washington that would include him and Obama.

“It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration’s proposal,” McCain said. “I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.”

McCain said he has spoken to Obama about his plans and asked the Democratic presidential nominee to join him.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid issued a statement saying the debate should go on because “we need leadership, not a campaign photo op.”

The University of Mississippi said it was going forward with preparation for the debate in Oxford. “We are ready to host the debate, and we expect the debate to occur as planned,” the school said, adding that it had received no notification of any change in the timing or venue.

The Obama campaign said in a statement that Obama had called McCain around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to propose that they issue a joint statement in support of a package to help fix the economy as soon as possible. McCain called back six hours later and agreed to the idea of the statement, the Obama campaign said. McCain’s statement was issued to the media a few minutes later.

“We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved,” McCain said. “I am confident that before the markets open on Monday we can achieve consensus on legislation that will stabilize our financial markets, protect taxpayers and homeowners, and earn the confidence of the American people. All we must do to achieve this is temporarily set politics aside, and I am committed to doing so.”

McCain’s statement was an effort to show leadership on an issue that has spread economic fears across the country and overshadowed the presidential campaign just six weeks from Election Day. The economy has not been McCain’s strongest suit, and his move was an attempt to turn it into an opportunity to show he’s the candidate of bipartisanship and action. Recent polls showed Obama with an advantage with voters in handling the economy.

The move put Obama in a bind. Rejecting the idea would allow McCain alone to appear above politics, but agreeing to suspend campaigning and the debate could make Obama look like he’s following McCain’s lead.

McCain said if Congress does not pass legislation to address the crisis, credit will dry up, people will no longer be able to buy homes, life savings will be at stake and businesses will not have enough money

“If we do not act, every corner of our country will be impacted,” McCain said. “We cannot allow this to happen.”

McCain also canceled his planned appearance Wednesday on CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman” program.

A senior McCain adviser, Mark Salter, said the campaign would suspend all advertising and campaign events until a workable deal is reached on the bailout proposal — but only if the Obama campaign agrees to do the same.

***

Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler in Washington contributed to this report.

 

Here is what washingtonpost.com says about Ole Miss.  I’m so proud of our state right now.

At Ole Miss, a Valedictory to the Old South

Sunday, September 21, 2008; Page B03

So, in the same way, has a great deal changed in the broader South. To many Americans, this region of the country remains a separate land with its own unique, radically different culture. In the popular view, it’s a place still inhabited by various versions of William Faulkner’s eccentric Snopes clan, with only the occasional noble Atticus Finch to balance things out. But as someone who has spent nearly 10 years writing about Mississippi and race and cultural identity in the South, I know that the state and its people have changed vastly since I left more than 20 years ago, vowing never to return.

If Faulkner landed in Oxford today, he wouldn’t recognize the place or the people he’d encounter. It’s a bustling town that no longer feels like a place of unfulfilled hope, as did his fictional version, called Jefferson. Groups of blacks, whites and Hispanics gather together in restaurants on Courthouse Square (which, of course, has its own Confederate memorial).

I recently went back to talk to students at Ole Miss and get a sense of how they view the coming election and how they think their region has changed. I learned that today’s generation is willing to look beyond race and political party affiliation in ways that their parents couldn’t, to move away from an identity that’s shaped closely along racially demarcated lines and to achieve full social integration.

Taylor McGraw is a white freshman who grew up in Oxford. He contemplated going out of state to school but ended up at Ole Miss. He was determined to make a difference in college, and the university seemed to be a place where he could do that. “I know that race does affect the environment at Ole Miss in many ways,” he says, “but race and diversity is what makes America unique.”

Melissa Cole, a senior from Jackson, takes that one step further. What’s happening at Ole Miss, she says, “is just the beginning of change in Mississippi, a new approach to race.”

“James Meredith accomplished the racial integration of Ole Miss,” agreed Nick Luckett, an African American student from the Delta town of Drew, “but our generation is tackling the next hardest task: social integration.”

Ole Miss’s efforts to achieve such integration no longer center merely on black and white but also include the population of international and, above all, Latino students. How could it not, given that Mississippi’s Latino population has risen 60 percent since 1980, and the overall Latino population of the South has risen 462 percent since 1990?

Social integration also means moving beyond race and looking at issues of class as well. In my days at Ole Miss, race always seemed to be front and center, even when the issue may have been social class instead. But today, says McGraw, “race doesn’t explain everything.” Mississippi is a poor state, and even though the university was known as the school for the children of the wealthy Delta “planter class,” its students have always represented a broad cross-section of the state’s socioeconomic makeup. The tradition of the planter class has long since faded away, but economic background remains an issue. And yet, discussions of class in the South can obscure honest talk about race. “It’s easier to talk about class, the money you have or don’t have, than to talk about race and social segregation,” Patrick Woodyard, a white senior from Hot Springs, Ark., told me.

On the other hand, Curtis Wilkie, a journalism professor at Ole Miss, believes that nowadays, “many of the divisions in Mississippi are more partisan than racial.” His comment conjured an image from one of my visits to Mississippi last spring: A white man in a muddy pickup passed me somewhat aggressively along U.S. Highway 49. But he had an “Obama for President” sticker in his window, right below the gun rack.

Former Democratic governor Ray Mabus is working actively for Obama in Mississippi, which has probably made it easier for many loyal white Democrats to support a black candidate. Nevertheless, most registered voters are still Republican, and the state is without question conservative, far more likely to fall into McCain’s column in November than into Obama’s.

As the saying goes, it’s not your father’s South anymore. Today, the region is more sophisticated and open-minded than most people outside it realize. Maybe the public and political strategists will both finally see that when John McCain and Barack Obama arrive on campus, and walk past those bullet-pocked walls.

eubanks@newamerica.net

W. Ralph Eubanks, a fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of “The House at the End of the Road: A Story of Race, Identity, and Memory,” to be published in May 2009.

Yes, I know that i’m a HUGE Mississippi State fan, but I’m so excited about the 1st presidential debate coming to my backdoor.  Oxford is only an hour away from me and this is HUGE!!  Here’s an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.

“For the University of Mississippi, hosting the first presidential debate involving an African-American nominee this Friday will cap a long effort to redeem a school linked with the most violent era of segregation.

Ole Miss, as the school is known, gained infamy in 1962, when U.S. soldiers were called in to put down a riot resisting the enrollment of the school’s first African-American student, James Meredith. It was a crucible in the battle over integration in Mississippi, where the 1955 murder of a 14-year-old black boy had helped start the civil-rights movement and the murders of three civil-rights activists in 1964 spurred congressional passage 11 days later of the Civil Rights Act.

 Here even coincidences can be sensitive: The nickname Ole Miss is an honorific that slaves reserved for the mistress of the plantation. Over the past decade, Chancellor Robert Khayat has pushed Ole Miss through a grinding transformation. After taking over in 1995, he banned Confederate flags at football games, provoking an unsuccessful federal lawsuit and death threats that led him to hire a bodyguard. A beloved Ole Miss athlete in the late 1950s, Mr. Khayat, 70 years old, also removed the venerable sports mascot, the Confederate Colonel Rebel.

“It was a virtual war,” Mr. Khayat said.

He approved a new campus institute for racial reconciliation that helped organize blacks and whites to formally demand prosecutions in the unsolved 1964 civil-rights murders, a move that led to the 2005 conviction of a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 2002, on the 40th anniversary of Mr. Meredith’s admission, the school for the first time honored the surviving soldiers who had subdued the mob.

Black students, for years reluctant to enroll, now comprise 16% of the student body. School officials say their goal is 37%, reflecting blacks’ representation in the state.

Freshman Rico Glass, an African-American from Weir, Miss., said his friends warned that enrolling would mean “getting around all these white people, and they are going to call you names, like you don’t belong here. It’s not that kind of atmosphere. You can be yourself.”

Others say hostilities still percolate. Last year, a fraternity was suspended after a black student complained that he received a racial slur, was assaulted and pushed out of a party at the fraternity house. Senior Paul Quinn, who is white, said the flagrant racism he witnessed led him to temporarily withdraw from Ole Miss as a freshman. “There definitely are a lot of people who don’t help out the cause,” he said. “They don’t belong on our campus….But it’s not a majority.”

Mr. Khayat tripled fund raising, which paid for the $27 million performing arts center that will house the debate.

When Washington journalist Thomas Oliphant visited the campus in 2003, he said, he was delighted to find a university that appeared as progressive as it had been intolerant in 1962. One afternoon over lunch in downtown Oxford, Mr. Oliphant gushed to a friend on the faculty, journalism professor Curtis Wilkie: “Wouldn’t it be great to have a debate here?”

Mr. Khayat embraced the idea. Mr. Oliphant, a 37-year fixture in political circles as a reporter and columnist at the Boston Globe, began pressing the idea in Washington. Thus a liberal Yankee writer became the patron for reintroducing Ole Miss to the nation.

“I was just effused with this notion that this place would be perfect after all we’ve been through as a country,” said Mr. Oliphant, now retired. “We began quietly proselytizing.”

Ole Miss first wanted to host a presidential debate in 2004, but pulled out of the competition, citing concerns about the security cost of a visit from a sitting president, with George W. Bush seeking re-election. Mr. Khayat said the campus also labored under an “inferiority complex.” It was a sensitive time, as Ole Miss still was taking criticism for eliminating its mascot, and some donors were withholding millions of dollars to protest the decision.

In 2006, Ole Miss unveiled a life-size bronze likeness of Mr. Meredith, and praise streamed from all quarters. “One of the things we agreed on is we did not want to be historical revisionists,” Mr. Khayat said. “We are who we are, but we’re not who we were.”

Riding the momentum, Mr. Khayat in the spring of 2007 set his sights on winning one of three debates scheduled for the 2008 election cycle. The bid pit Ole Miss against New Orleans, which was aggressively pushing the story of its recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

Oxford, the city of 19,000 where Ole Miss is located, had glaring disadvantages compared with New Orleans, such as fewer than 700 hotel rooms and no major airport within 80 miles. The debate’s producers were concerned that no facility could accommodate the news media. The university raised $4 million and built a gigantic media tent, ran a redundant power line to Jackson, Miss., and will provide transportation to hotels in surrounding cities.

In November, the Commission on Presidential Debates awarded the bid to Ole Miss, and the other two debates to Belmont University in Tennessee and Hofstra University in New York. “I think having the program in the Deep South is attractive,” said Mr. Khayat. “There’s something nice about little Ole Miss finally making a move.”  “

by:  Corey Dade Wall Street Journal

You can go to the website: 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122204790958761749.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Darticle

When you have an
I Hate My Job Day,
[even if retired, you have those sometimes]
try this:

On your way home from work, stop at your pharmacy and go to the thermometer section and purchase a rectal thermometer made by Johnson & Johnson

Be very sure you get this brand.

When you get home, lock your doors, draw the curtains and disconnect the phone so you will not be disturbed.

Change into very comfortable clothing and sit in your favorite chair. Open the package and remove the thermometer. Now, carefully place it on a table or a surface so that it will not become chipped or broken.

Now the fun part begins.

Take out the literature from the box and read it carefully. You will notice that in small print there is a statement:

‘Every Rectal Thermometer made by Johnson & Johnson is personally tested and then sanitized.’

Now, close your eyes and repeat out loud five times,’ I am so glad I do not work in the thermometer quality control department at Johnson & Johnson.’

HAVE A NICE DAY AND REMEMBER, THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEONE ELSE WITH A JOB THAT IS MORE OF A PAIN IN THE BUTT THAN YOURS