As we collectively honor/ogle Michael Jackson, it’s worth noting the pervasiveness of MJ’s influence as a performer was not always a good thing. For every Filipino prison “Thriller” or “Dance Raja Dance”, there’s probably dozens of these:
For the impatient, the explosion of MJ-ness arrives at the two-minute mark.
(Thank you @Kltpzyxm. By which I mean, no thank you.)
The biggest story on AJC.com main page today is a report about Georgia’s high rate of obesity.
John Robinson (known to many ’round these parts by as Gnosis) spotted elsewhere on the same page a possible explanation for our state’s collective girth.
A new AP report on census figures shows Atlanta is among the 25 fastest growing cities in the U.S.
The bureau found the population shifted from 520,368 persons in July 2007 to 537,958 in July 2008, about 3.4 percent.
We’re all so accustomed to gridlocked traffic and construction cranes that “Atlanta is growing” doesn’t seem like news.
It is.
Remember, despite the metro area’s half century of uninterrupted rapid growth, City of Atlanta lost population from the 1970s until the 1990s.
Also of noted: Last week the Atlanta Regional Commission released a report showing metro Atlanta is the second fastest-growing metro area in the country this decade after Dallas. By 2040, metro Atlanta is expected to be home to 8.3 million people.
Good thing local and state leaders are working so well together to meet our transportation and water needs.
(Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated the 2000 U.S. Census showed a decline in Atlanta population from 1990. Here are the correct numbers.)
The competition for fifth place in Atlanta’s mayoral race just got hotter!
Tiffany Brown “launched” her campaign this morning in the form of a web site, BrownForAtlanta.com.
This is Brown’s second “run” at Atlanta’s highest elected office. Brown, then 25, “ran” for mayor in 2005, citing her 3.22 undergrad GPA as one of her main qualifications.
Brown has been commenting on the mayoral race since March using the Twitter pseudonym @nextatlmayor.
The two alleged top leaders of the weekend’s military coup in Honduras are graduates of the U.S. Army’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a.k.a. the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Columbus.
General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, head of Honduras’ armed forces, attended the school in 1976 and again in 1986. General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, head of the country’s air force, attended the school for a month in 1996.
WHINSEC/School of the Americas was founded in 1963, ostensibly to help professionalize the militaries of U.S.-allied countries in Latin America. A September 21, 1996 article by the Washington Post’s Dana Priest revealed the school taught students how to torture, kidnap, extort and execute prisoners. Priest won a Pulitzer Prize ten years later for uncovering the Bush Administration’s gulag archipelago chain of secret CIA prisons.
The feds shut down five more failed banks over the weekend, two of which were in Georgia. 20 percent of U.S bank failures this year have been in Georgia, home to only four percent of the country’s banks.
Former mayor of Gainesville Mark E. Musselwhite was arrested last weekend after Georgia Department of Natural Resources ranger Brandon Walls says he found Musselwaite sitting drunk and naked at a Rabun County campsite.
The incident report is, as one might expect, delightful. An excerpt:
I asked him what he was doing, he said he was just sitting here and asked if there was a problem. I did notice he was drinking and appeared very intoxicated. I asked him why he did not have any clothes on, and he said he was hot and had been in the creek . . . I advised him that we had gotten complaints about a man walking around nude in the area. Still nude, he told me that it was not him. I said the complaintant had specifically said his campsite, and the fact that he was still nude made me think it was him.
Read the whole thing at AccessNorthGa.com.
According to the AJC, Creflo Dollar charges $5.99 per month for devotional text messages.
The guy’s a genius. I want me some of that action.
If you would like devotional text messages sent to you, but aren’t willing to pay $5.99 each month, I’m willing to you send one devotional text message per week for the low, low, Creflo-beating introductory price of just $3.99 per month.
A sample of my work:
G-D H8S U! J/K. G-D LUVS U. BUT HE LUVS ME MOR SO GIMME $$ ;-)
I take Visa, Mastercard, American Express and even Discover!
On Tuesday, Red State/Peach Punditeer Erick Erickson complained the hubbub surrounding Gov. Mark Sanford’s disappearance was a trumped-up phony hit-job non-issue:
First, we need to be clear on the facts — not the media speculation:
- Sanford did tell his staff and family where he was going.
- Because he was traveling without a security detail, it was in his best interests that no one knew he was gone.
- His political enemies — Republicans at that — ginned up the media story.
- When confronted by a pestering media, things went downhill.
- Again though, at all times there was no doubt that Sanford’s staff and family knew where he was.
Now, here is all you need to know about this whole entire story — the reaction from the erstwhile Republicans angry at Sanford for not being a fiscal squish and from the media all go back to their core belief that without Sanford manning the barricades of government at all times, the government will collapse and people will starve, die, and forget how to read and write.
That’s it.
Maybe not quite it.
Fomer bass guitarist of the popular 70s rock ensemble Wings, Paul McCartney, will play a concert in Piedmont Park on August 15.
Well-known Wings hits include “Goodnight Tonight,” and “Venus and Mars/Rock Show.”
Who’s afraid of Shirley Franklin?
Everyone is running to replace her.
At the first city mayoral debate Monday, candidates vying to succeed Mayor Shirley Franklin were asked to grade her performance as mayor.
The average grade was a B+. One candidate, City Council President Lisa Borders, gave Franklin a 90 (A-).
Each of our current mayoral candidates is eager to talk about an aspect of city government they plan to “fix” or “improve,” but none is willing to explicitly blame Franklin for failing to fix or improve them herself.
The good news: Because of her high marks, Franklin won’t be held back to repeat her second term.
(Mortarboard tip to Atlmalcontent)
Here’s a sentence I didn’t enjoy reading:
Of the 48 U.S. counties with the highest prevalence rates for HIV infections, 25 of them are in Georgia,
It’s from a Los Angeles Times story about an HIV/AIDS report released today by the National Minority Quality Forum.
I’ve been trying to read the report for several hours, but NMQF’s web site is overloaded.
The producers of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” will be in Buckhead tomorrow looking for conventionally attractive, tanned gym-goers who cry on cue and insist on using the word “amazing” to describe things that aren’t at all amazing.
Iranians have got a lot going on.
A typical day for an Iranian consists of: waking up; being oppressed by a fanatical, corrupt, incompetent regime; going to work (if they’re lucky enough to have a job); getting oppressed; spending time with family; running some errands; enjoying an “Ugly Betty” rerun; and maybe some more oppression before bed.
On June 12, the nation collectively carved time out of this hectic schedule to cast votes in a presidential election.
Don’t be mistaken: Iran is not a democracy. It’s a theocracy with many democratic characteristics.
The country’s real ruler is “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He runs an unelected religious gang called the Guardian Council. They’re the government’s highest decision-making body. Among the Guardian Council’s powers: choosing who is allowed to run for public office.
It’s as if a committee consisting of a priest, a rabbi, a Protestant minister, an imam and David Copperfield had the power to strike U.S. political candidates from any ballot.
In other words, Iran’s election was fixed before the ballots were even printed. Fixed. Broken. Same thing.
But that’s not to say Iran’s elections are meaningless. As long as no one questions the primacy of the hats-n-beards on the Guardian Council, Iran actually allows free-ish political debate. Iran’s public political discourse is significantly more open than in the other large thugocracies of the Muslim Middle East, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (both of which are U.S. allies, by the way).
Massive pre-election rallies, as well as very long lines at polling places, strongly suggest the Iranian public is in the mood for change.
Any change will do at this point: change they need, change they can believe in, regime change, whatever. At this point, I’m sure a lot of them would settle for change for a dollar.
Why are so many Iranians eager to turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes?
Because by any objective measure, their current government is a disaster.
AJC: #1 for #2 news!
For some horrible, unknowable reason, the lead story on AJC.com at this very moment is the temporary closure of Piedmont Park pool today due to fecal contamination.
That’s not a joke. It really is the lead story. With a picture and everything.
The story doesn’t have a byline, so I have no idea if it was reported by the paper’s Senior Swimming Pool Correspondent, the Assistant Editor of Potty Training, or a Miscellaneous Spills reporter.
THIS JUST IN: The QuikTrip at North Druid Hills and Briarcliff roads reports a taquito has been dropped on the floor by a clumsy. I repeat: taquito down!
(A tug at the elastic thigh-band of my Huggies Pull-Ups® to @loriming for alerting me to this, and to Thomas Wheatley, for his Poo-litzer Prize-winning report on the spill earlier this afternoon.)
Q: How many times does an Atlanta business have to be burglarized within a ten-day period before the city assigns a police officer for a stake-out.
A: Five.
(Warning: page linked above contains dismayingly unflattering photo of Dagmar Midcap)
After President Obama’s Cairo speech, one of the more bizarre memes to emerge from the Magical Dungeon of Nonsensical Anti-Obama Talking Points was the notion that Obama’s words were somehow harshly critical of Israel.
The most popular criticism: Obama’s speech threw Israel “under the bus.” Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard said it. Former Bush One Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin said it. Best-selling professional Muslim-hater Robert Spencer said it, too.
Google — or, if you prefer, Bing — the phrase “Obama threw Israel under the bus” and you’ll find countless examples. By countless, I mean there were a lot, but I didn’t count them.
Rush Limbaugh didn’t use “under the bus.” Instead, he said Obama’s speech “threw Israel over the cliff.”
I’m not sure if getting thrown over a cliff is supposed to be better or worse than getting thrown under a bus. I suppose it depends on what’s at the bottom of the cliff. If there’s a giant trampoline or a nude beach with exceptionally bouncy sand at the bottom, then maybe the cliff ain’t so bad.
If, however, there are dragons at the bottom of the cliff, or a freaky modern art installation consisting of thousands of upward-facing pitchforks, then I’m taking the under-the-bus option.
GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES MEETING: Blessed are the new-fangled showerheads. For they restricteth thy flow. (Credit: Sonny Perdue)
This is weird.
The list-generating business consultants at Mercer say Atlanta has the best city infrastructure the United States.
Mercer says the ranking is based on “electricity supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transport provision, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports.”
Um, Mercer, what the f@$k is wrong with you?
Atlanta’s long-terms water use planner is Jesus.
Atlanta’s mass transit funding is controlled by Satan.
Metro commuters endure the worst traffic in the nation and the city’s biggest transportation project of the past decade consists of forcing Ryan Gravel to pose for photos by a disused rail line every six months.
I suspect the massive number of flights in-and-out of Hartsfield-Jackson is throwing off Mercer’s magic formula. If that’s the case, the formula needs tweaking.
Mercer, people pay you a lot of money to know stuff. Earn your money. Know stuff. Read a newspaper. Visit some local blogs, such as this one. AtlantaWaterShortage.com is pretty good, too.
Atlanta Business Chronicle reports Delta is shutting down its routes from Atlanta to India and China.
That sucks.
How are Americans supposed to schmooze our future Asian overlords if we can’t fly there directly?
(Hat-twip to the always Biz Chronic @Urvaksh)
When is right-wing violent extremism actually left-wing violent extremism?
When defensive, embarrassed right-wingers pretend it is!
From Peach Pundit/Red State blogger Erick Erickson:
Clearly the Erick Ericksons and Michelle Malkins of the world would like you to forget the countless mainstream conservatives who systematically and serially mocked a prescient recent government warning about violent right-wing extremists like Von Brunn and the man accused of gunning down Kansas abortion Dr. George Tiller.
No amount of spin and finger-pointing changes this essential fact. We were warned and they laughed. Don’t forget that.
Jesse Altman, CEO of Grant Park-based coffee energy drink maker Whynatte, says the Perception of Crime in Atlanta broke into his company’s headquarters early Tuesday evening.
Altman says building security cameras captured images of the Perception of Crime in the shape of three young men who walked off with two of Whynatte’s laptops, some cash, and an assortment of electronics.
From Altman’s e-mail to Perception of Crime Watch®:
Cops dusted for fingerprints - said that it would take 6-12 months to run the prints since it’s a non-violent crime. Office next door was burglarized last week. Cars have been getting broken into on a weekly basis.
Altman’s frustration with the Atlanta Police Department’s apparent inability to quickly cope with property crimes was echoed to me this week by a staffer at Midtown’s Grady High School.
The staffer, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted me after at least two perceived thieves broke into the school early Tuesday morning and stole 26 student computers.
The staffer told me the school’s monitored burglar alarm was triggered by the perceived burglars, but police did not respond for several hours. The AJC reports today that the area around Grady is experiencing a rash of similar perceived crimes.
If the Perception of Crime in Atlanta has burglarized, robbed or stabbed you, drop us a note.
The Times of London and CNN report the suspect in today’s Holocaust Museum shooting is 89 year-old James W. Von Brunn.
Von Brunn is the author Kill The Best Gentiles!, a book he describes on his web site as “A new, hard-hitting exposé of the JEW CONSPIRACY to destroy the White gene-pool.”
UPDATE: Suspected Holocaust Museum shooter James W. Von Brunn is a Holocaust denier.
From page 166 of Von Brunn’s book “Kill The Best Gentiles”:
Since WWII, literally tons of evidence relating to the “HOLOCAUST” has been studied by world-class scholars. There is NO evidence supporting the “HOLOCAUST” as defined:
THERE WAS NO POLICY TO MASS MURDER JEWS.
NO ORDER WAS GIVEN TO MASS MURDER JEWS.
THERE WAS NO BUDGET TO CARRY OUT SUCH A POLICY.
THERE WERE NO MEANS (GAS CHAMBERS, etc.) TO CARRY OUT MASS MURDERS.
Revisionist Historians have concluded that a total of about 300-thousand JEWS died of all causes during WWII.
There was no JEW “HOLOCAUST.” There was a German Holocaust!
The Financial Times ranks the 20 most popular airline routes in the world.
Hong Kong to/from Taipei is the most popular with 2,138,484 passengers annually.
18th on the list is Atlanta to/from New York with 935,265 passengers annually.
(H/T: TreeHugger - the FT list was published in January, but TreeHugger drew my attention to it today as part of its series on ‘greener’ flying.)
I had CNN on mute the other morning and saw something out of the corner of my eye about President Barack Obama speaking at Cairo University in Egypt about muslin.
I was only half paying attention, but it seemed like he went on for, like, a whole hour about how the U.S. has no quarrel with muslin in general, but only with violent muslin radicals who want to destroy America’s traditions — by which I assume he meant denim. I guess he did the speech in Cairo because Egypt is one of the world’s largest growers of cotton and is therefore a hotbed of muslin extremism.
I sure hope the muslin world isn’t too cloth-eared to accept Obama’s benevolent overture.
If you think the muslin/Muslim pun in the first three paragraphs is stupid, I don’t blame you. Rereading it now, I haven’t quite cottoned to it myself.
OK, I promise I’ll stop.
But punning muslin and Muslim is only slightly sillier than politicians and journalists suggesting over and over that the “Muslim world” constitutes a coherent grouping of people.
“Muslim world” is about as nonspecific as one can get. Targeting a speech to the “Muslim world” is like walking up to a podium and saying, “Greetings, Earthlings,” or “Welcome, my fellow vertebrates.”
EveryBlock finally launched a beta site for Atlanta.
Woo!
And hoo, as well!
I’ve been checking EveryBlock for a while waiting for an Atlanta launch.
To understand why I’m so excited, have a look at some of EveryBlock’s neighborhood pages in other cities. If you’re too lazy to pick, here’s the page from Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood.
Pretty cool, eh?
