I am thankful for you. I’m taking the rest of the week off and a couple of days next week to recuperate from some much needed orthopedic surgery. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t in the countdown to a number of things.

Just like the wall is a foundation to the discussion about immigration reform. You can’t have one without the other. The debt, spending and deficit problems cannot be addressed until the budget process is fixed and happens on time and within a schedule.

A couple of weeks ago, Ellen DeGeneres was skewered because she posted a picture of her sitting in a box with former President George W. Bush watching a football game in Texas and apparently, they were having a good time together. Somehow, she was selling her soul by being nice to someone.

Whenever anyone talks about cutting or controlling budgets, the naysayers conjure up an image of soup lines and desperation. I’m more in the paraphrased Lee Iacocca club of, “You can cut 5% out of anything and not hurt operations.”

I know living in the 9th District of Georgia is like living in New York City. Before you throw something at me, let me explain. The 9th is a strong GOP district. No Democrat stands a chance. Conversely, in the New York City area, they are strong Democrat districts and no Republican stands a chance.

I was hosting Morning Talk with Martha Zoller and Andy Maddox was my cohost that morning. Andy’s brother worked in the financial district of New York. He couldn’t reach him on the phone and later found out he had a meeting in the World Trade Towers at 8:30 am that morning. It was cancelled and he was walking out as the first plane was hitting.

There are a few people in politics I can’t be objective about. One of them is Senator Johnny Isakson. On Wednesday, he announced to the state that he was retiring at the end of the year.

All methods of communication start out as this breakthrough way to communicate and then deteriorate into name-calling and eventually we lose it.