How cold is it?

Friends from Fargo, N.D., think our bone-shivering Georgia cold is like a balmy afternoon back home. We, however, are huddled by space heaters, trying to thaw out. We’ve become wearers of thermal undies, experienced in layering clothes to capture body heat.

In economic times like these, we can easily see which governments have been managing the store and which ones have been shoplifting.

Welcome to Washington, “Mr. President.” I know you’ve been here before for a short time as senator, but this is different. This is The Big Time, the world stage and you are the leading man.

Whatever history’s verdict on the Bush administration might be, it is likely to be very different from what we hear from the talking heads on television or read from the know-it-alls on editorial pages.

George W. Bush had the misfortune to become president when two long-term trends that predated his presidency reached historical tipping points:

When I was a child and given to daydreaming as children often are, I dreamed of what I would be when I grew up. I wanted to be strong, courageous, glamorous and well-traveled. And more than anything, I wanted to tell stories.

I hate to see John Smoltz leave us Braves fans, but I wish him the very best. Smoltz and the Braves parted ways after he signed as a free agent with the Red Sox. The 41-year-old pitcher coming off of major shoulder surgery said he’s doing great and is confident he can contribute this year and even beyond.

It's time for all of us to brace ourselves for some hard facts.

When you tell employees layoffs are inevitable, there is no joy for anybody.

Several evangelical heavyweights have joined together in something called the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI). The Initiative, anchored by over 250 “senior evangelical leaders,” including Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Gordon MacDonald, Jack Hayford, and a gaggle of Christian college presidents.

There are countless books that provide people with ideas of things they should do before they die. I’d like to add an item to those lists.

Dear local government officials and public employees, I feel your pain.

The local economy has gone rotten, and tax revenues are far below what you’d ever thought you would experience.

We can rarely escape the consequences of our choices.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has our national debt pegged at $1.2 trillion (a staggering 8.3 percent of our gross domestic product) for the year. If President-elect Barack Obama’s sweeping stimulus package is enacted, it could add nearly $1 trillion or more to the red ink over two years.

Mississippi was calling my name the other day, beckoning me softly to pay a visit to the land that often comforts me.

In deference to their privacy, we’ll let our subjects remain anonymous today. Frank and Cora, we’ll call them, an older couple we’ve known for many years. A week or so after Thanksgiving, Cora announced to Frank that she’d been hearing what sounded like the scurrying of some rodent bowling in the attic above their bedroom at night.

We buried my father in law in Boise, Idaho, on Friday. He was, by profession, an electrical engineer. By hobby, he had been an avid backpacker, with his favorite trips taking place in the Sawtooth Mountains.

As promised, this is my annual thank-you column — a small thing for the humongous amount of help offered by our local churches in sending their news throughout the year.

A news channel featured a program recently and posed the question: “Is this the end of the United States?”

It is not an outrageous question. In our own time, we have seen the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union as that massive superpower broke into numerous fragments. The Third Reich, which seemed unstoppable, died in writhing agony. History is replete with powers and empires that once ruled the land or the sea yet came to an ignominious end.

Barack Obama has dubbed his behemoth fiscal stimulus proposal the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.” But if truth in advertising were required of White House plans, only one title would fit the trillion-dollar-plus-and-growing bill: The Generational Theft Act of 2009.

The ostensible purpose of the war in Gaza is for Israel to wipe out Hamas and eliminate its capacity to rain rockets down on its citizens. Both the dovish leaders in the current Israeli government — Prime Minister Olmert, Foreign Minister Livni, and Defense Minister Barak — and the international diplomatic community want to get rid of Hamas and leave the more moderate Palestinian Authority as the sole negotiating agent for the Palestinians. So the Israeli attacks have not received the kind of international condemnation and vitriol that they usually attract.

Congratulations! If you’re reading this article, it looks like you made it into the New Year, and since I’m writing it, it looks like I’ve made it as well.

For an outfit known for its lack of drama, Team Obama has become a downright thrill show.

Bill Richardson! Rick Warren! Rod Blagojevich! Roland Burris! Talk about a ride through the fun house.

In my reading over the past several months, I have noticed an interesting use of a familiar word. Much of this reading has been historical. I have been especially interested in the lives of Christians of past ages, especially those known for holiness of life.

With the election of Obama, the United States has moved dramatically to the left in its foreign policy at just the time that Israel, which seems likely to return Bibi Netanyahu to office in early February, is moving to the right. A collision is almost inevitable.

So in a matter of days it’s bye-bye, Bush. Then it’s bye-bye, gradually, to the cottage industry dedicated to ridiculing, castigating, smearing and trashing the 43rd president of the United States, who couldn’t have pleased this surly gang save by expiring in office (even if his expiry would have vaulted Dick Cheney to the White House).

Whoever called politics “the art of the possible” must have had a strange idea of what is possible or a strange idea of politics, where the impossible is one of the biggest vote-getters.

Many professors, mostly on the liberal side of the political spectrum, use their classrooms to proselytize students.

I have taught economics for the past 40 years and challenge anyone to find even one student, among the thousands who went through my classes, who can say, “Professor Williams used his class to proselytize students.” While acceptable at most universities, it is nothing less than academic dishonesty to do so.

I am writing this column before the end of 2008 and I am feeling pensive, reflecting on a year that gave me a lot of good things, while taking away some others.

I have become concerned about our current leadership and their strange application of what might otherwise be identified as common sense.

Our current local political environment evokes the old proverb, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”

The educational SPLOST was narrowly approved by the voters of Fayette County. The additional sales tax can best be described as a Board of Education’s attempt to correct a massive deficiency in planning.

The Hamas Charter proscribes peace with Israel. Ceasefires are possible only when advantageous to Hamas and always are temporary.