John Hodgman, from The Areas of My Expertise. Georgia. NICKNAME: "Where every street is named Peachtree" STATE COCKTAIL: The "Georgia-on-My-Mind": equal parts Coke, Peachtree schnapps, and dry sherry. NOTES: Georgia is a bounteous state marked by the near supernatural production of two remarkably versatile crops: peanuts and peaches. The former is commonly trasformed into peanut butter, various roofing materials, and allergens; the latter are used to make Peaches 'n' Cream Lifesavers, accounting software, and glue. Both are made into schnapps. Martin Luther King, Jr.,was born in Atlanta, yet it would take a thousand clones of that great activist for peace and tolerance to erase Georgia's dark reputation as the birthplace of Stalin. Unfortunately, though, conservative anticloning ideologues within the U.S. government have conspired to keep MLK models #1-1000 in stasis in the basement of Georgia State University. Their fate is uncertain.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Gay factor: it was cute and instructional listening to Mrs. Clinton speechify with ardor for the Human Rights of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender people in the world while The New York Times just published an article in which she states that she is still against gay marriage. Her speech received a standing ovation at the United Nations.

Andrew Cuomo and Democratic Values. While New York's governor has been touting a more just taxation system that would have those in a lesser bracket pay less, those in a higher pay more, once the newspapers discovered that with the so called millionaire's tax (a tax surcharge) gone, the higher brackets would pay less of a percentage of taxes than they do with it still in place, the Governor has miraculously changed his statements, criticizing all increased taxation as a deterrent for the development of the economy (hell if I'll ever use the term grow). The loss in tax revenue will be a neat 2.1 billion. The millionaire's tax about to expire was 7.85% for those earning from 200,000 to 500,000 and for those earning $500,000 and up 8.97%. Here are the percentages, soon to diminish yes, but for whom?: $200,000 : now 6.85 in the future 6.65%; for those earning $350,000: now 7.85% in the future $6.85; for those earning 2.5 million: now 8.97%, in the future 8.82%. A way to improve things? Here's a quote from The New York Times:" The Public Employees Federation, the second largest union of state workers, produced a flier urging people to call Albany lawmakers and demand that any tax deal generate the same amount of money as the expiring tax surcharge." Hey, I'd go bolder and encourage a percentile increase in those earning $100,000 and over, this moderated by a peek into family composition too. Let's just see if there's a problem with the budget anymore.

The Health Care Option. While the new Democrats seem to be searching for kudos, say, in an appearance of Nancy Pelosi's on Bloomberg's financial network saying that the administration and she were all for reducing spending, after all, hadn't they cut Medicaid for the new Helth Care Reform Bill? they also seem to have brought 1.5 billion dollars in prescription drug savings to 2,500,000 Medicare recipients ($569 per person)to satisfy a different class of people.