Fresh Loaf

Not exactly a blog, but it deserves a shout out. Staffers at UGA’s student-run newspaper the Red and Black worked overtime to provide coverage of Saturday’s shootings. Read their follow-ups here, here and here.

Ben at Terminal Station rips into state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine’s idea to consider privatizing MARTA.

Jim Walls of Atlanta Unfiltered uses the words “Tyler Perry,” “Tupac Shakur,” and “comp time” all in the same blog post as he delves deeper into the firing of former DeKalb Police Chief Terrell Bolton.

Christa at Pecanne Log spots the hottest trend in spring fashions during historic economic collapses! Recycled ethernet cables! Yay!

Garrett Vonk fires back at Twitta-hatas.

Jason Pye, who says he’s never taken a puff, says decriminalizing marijuana should be on the table. Also: Legalizing marijuana is now more popular than the Republican Party.

Veteran TV journalist and Live Apartment Fire blogger Doug Richards today will pull the tarp off the magical news van to pull a one-day shift in the 11 Alive newsroom. Here’s exclusive video of him training for the adventure.

Travis Fain at Lucid Idiocy wonders if lawmakers have already been forgiven for failing to make progress on transportation funding this year.

Decatur Metro. Leon’s Full Service. And late-night drunken bocce. Discuss.

FlackAttack bids adieu at Tondee’s Tavern.

Other exciting links feel free to post them in the comments.

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Jason at Peach Pundit hammers House Bill 614, legislation that he says would violate your privacy.

Maria Saporta says the state needs to stop plotting takeovers of MARTA and Jackson-Hartsfield International Airport.

Ben at Terminal Station has a rundown of Saporta’s report on an Urban Land Institute mayoral candidate forum.

Doug at Live Apartment Fire spotlights veteran reporter Don McClellan. The still-at-it newsman reported on — and ran in — this weekend’s ING Marathon.

Speaking of the ING Marathon, Dave at inDecatur has video and photos from the race.

Good news for Georgia’s reputation and any hope of having a biotech industry here. Jim Galloway reports that a House committee chairman says the controversial stem-cell bill won’t move out of the lower chamber.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Urvaksh Karkaria reports on a top-secret meeting of tomorrow’s media overlords at Kennesaw State University professor Leonard Witt’s home. There are photos!

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to post this. Christa, the mysterious scribe behind Pecanne Log, found a 1967 issue of GQ that’s all about Atlanta. She has photos and pullquotes.

And just because, a helping of Griftdrift’s My Morning Wooten from Friday.

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Christa at Pecanne Log says I say someone else says Bill Murray is loose in Atlanta. One night he’s at Loca Luna buying drinks for strangers. Another night he’s watching the Hawks play the Cleveland Cavaliers. Supposedly, he’s filming this flick. I’m still waiting for him to get a pedicure with me.

Buzz Brockway at Peach Pundit says the site’s bloggers won’t retaliate against state lawmakers who voted for Senate Bill 31, a controversial piece of legislation they adamantly opposed. The complex bill would allow Georgia Power to recover financing costs in advance for two proposed nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle. The Punditeers got into a tiff with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a free-market think tank, about the issue. No hard feelings, the bloggers say, but they’d still like a clear explanation of the foundation’s stance on the issue. (Just one more: Jason Shepard at the site finds Georgia’s facebook page shows an unexpected “friend.”

Remember #atlgas? Grift links to a Nightline report in which the Twitter hashtag that saved Atlanta’s ass is mentioned.

Decatur’s wi-fi cloud is “complete,” Decatur Metro reports.

Jim Galloway at the AJC’s Political Insider sneaks a peek at preliminary numbers which show Georgia’s rush of newcomers — aka the growth industry, the state’s bread and butter — might be slowing. He writes a powerful post about the subject.

Want solid political commentary recorded here in Atlanta? The new Kudzu Vine podcast is posted and available for download.

Doug at Live Apartment Fire points us to a recent piece by Tom Jones, the WSB-TV reporter who won’t work for nobody but you. Jones covered the search for a man who’s allegedly been flashing children in the Grant Park area. The suspect’s ripped a page from afterschool specials and is offering candy to the tykes.

Travis Fain wants the old Speaker Glenn Richardson back. I second that.

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Back by popular demand!

• Pecanne Log’s Christa, who’s been on fire the last few weeks, documents the mysterious senior citizen daredevils who putter around the city on what seem to be Segways — with seats! What are these baffling people movers and where can I purchase one?

• The deadline for the Urban Land Institute’s Urban Design competition was last week. Ben at Terminal Station was part of a Georgia Tech team that submitted a redevelopment vision for Denver. I had the opportunity to review his group’s proposal — a multi-phase smart-growth model — and it’s awesome. He’s posted photos and info about his team’s submission.

• Grift continues his hilarious live-blogging series of Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Lawmakers, the daily rundown of state Legislature news. So far we’ve seen talk of taxes, Sunday booze, Minoo! and transportation. Pretty soon, they’ll get to the boll weevil. Fingers crossed, folks.

• ATLMalcontent points us to a video about Elwin Wilson, a South Carolina man who in 1961 attacked a young Civil Rights activist — and future U.S. Representative — named John Lewis. Wilson, beset with remorse over the incident, recently visited Lewis’ office in Washington, D.C. to apologize. According to the Associated Press, Lewis “offered forgiveness without hesitation.”

• Leon’s Full Service, a new Decatur pub from the same owners who brought you the Brick Store, pours its first brew today at 5 p.m. Decatur Metro has the details, including a blow-by-blow account of the eBay auction for that first beer that’s raised more than $2,500 for employees of Trackside and 5th Earl.

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e/b in the comments section of Pecanne Log’s Halloween costume post provides information that could save many a procrastinator’s ass:

The Value Village at Belvedere (Memorial & Columbia Dr.) has 50% off Wednesday Oct. 29.

Last year I went there on the day-of without a costume in mind (SHAMEFUL) – and found all the makin’s for a sweet Velma costume in about 15 minutes.

I have great love for the Belvedere Value Village. AND everything is arranged by color which is perfect for costume searching.

Comment by e/b — Friday, October 24, 2008 @ 11:33 am

I’m dressing as a 1970s Hi-Fi stereo, so this is awesome news to me.

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It’s refreshing to see a candidate not focus entirely on eating BBQ in Kansas and churning butter out in the sticks. Those voters and their concerns matter, but so do those who live in the nation’s economic engines: Urban areas, such as Atlanta.

And the Wall Street Journal reports Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is set to relaunch his urban platform today that he says would aid our beleaguered cities.

The article is so chockful of information that it deserves to be read more than reviewed, but here are some snippets:

The wide-ranging plan contains bedrock Democratic principles, pledging to increase funding for affordable housing, raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011, triple the income-tax credit tied to that wage and fully fund the federal No Child Left Behind policy for schools.

Centerpieces include creation of a new White House Office of Urban Policy and the restoration of billions of dollars cut from community block grants, a key source of funding for cities.

In a nod to one of the mayors’ top priorities, Sen. Obama would open a national bank, seeded with $60 billion over 10 years, to finance road, bridge, airport and other public-works projects in metropolitan areas. The bank would be modeled on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., with an independent board of directors.

Sen. Obama says his administration would shift urban-policy making to so-called smart-growth strategies that synchronize transportation, commercial and housing needs for entire regions, rather than following the tradition of focusing first on fighting poverty and crime. He would fund $200 million in annual grants to develop “regional clusters,” such as the high-technology-focused area known as the Research Triangle in North Carolina.

(Thanks to Christa for the find)

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Yes, Christa, we can’t help ourselves! What better way to enjoy the cluster#$@! that is sine die, the 40th and final day of the legislative session, than with your cyberfriends? We’ll be heading to the Capitol in the next hour, setting up the proverbial shop, and hammering away at our keyboards while the House and Senate lob amendments back and forth at one another. If you work at one of those really cool places where you can curse and drink while you sit at your desk, please uncap the jug and take a swig every time one of our distinguished Golden Sleaze recipients stands before his or her colleagues.

Feel free to chime in and contribute your thoughts. If you want to watch the festivities, click here and select your chamber of choice.

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Yet the [Buckhead] library is a likely casualty of the ongoing movement to transform Buckhead into Alpharetta. Seems you can’t have enough mixed-use developments.

– ATLMalcontent has an excellent piece about Atlanta’s stagnant architecture scene posted at his wicked den of diatribes. He, like several others, bemoans the possible loss of the Buckhead Library.

I just don’t get it. We’ve got the Republican leadership wanting to raise taxes on 174 services, increase the sales tax and essentially nickel and dime us to death. Imagine being a small service business owner and having to deal with collecting taxes now. What a mess. I see NO focused opposition to this from the DPG, caucus or the county parties.

– sndeak at Tondee’s Tavern wonders why the Democratic Party of Georgia and local parties haven’t shown a little outrage and backbone over the outlandish tax hikes businesses and customers across the state would see with the More-Subpar-Than-GREAT tax plan, the mutated dungeon baby of House Speaker Glenn Richardson.

Even if you are not an avid biker looking to further personalize your dangerously cool lavender fixed-speed vintage bike, this will probably be a neat place to pick up tiny original works of art for your desk or elsewhere!

– Christa at Pecanne Log spreads the word about a call for art from Octane, a great coffee shop and office-away-from-the-office for one editor of a local alt-weekly. The java joint will auction off “spoke cards” April 12 to raise money for a bicycle-maintenance shop on a coffee farm in Rwanda.

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People, be careful. Especially women. Which I really hate saying because fear really sucks. Just be smart and be careful and maybe you can avoid being afraid.

– Christa at PecanneLog writes about a friend of hers who was robbed outside her Kirkwood home. The police officer who responded to the call told her friend that there has been a “rash” of these types of crimes, including break-ins and robbers forcing people to withdraw cash from ATMs.

Remember this budget is about choices. If we can give Delta a 30 million dollar tax break on jet fuel, we can restore 30 million in education cuts to our poorest counties.

– FlackAttack of Tondee’s Tavern points out Gov. Sonny Perdue’s recent reductions in education funding. Update: The House Appropriations Committee reinstated the funds.

Least shocking statement of the day:

I have high regard for Limbaugh.

Of course you do, dear. After all you are brothers in the belief that facts matter less fury.

– James at Drifting Through The Grift, writing about Jim “WootDawg” Wooten, Atlanta’s most favorite Orville Redenbacher impersonator.

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I know everyone has better things to do these last two days before Christmas, so why don’t we all take a two day time-out from politics and spend some quality time with our families. At this time of the year, family comes first.

— Georgia Politics Unfiltered’s Andre Walker, writing at Peach Pundit, and requesting a cease-fire on all things politique in the run-up to Christmas.

–

My two-year-old threw a kaleidoscope at Santa Claus today.

The holiday misanthrope in me is somewhat proud of that.

— Paige at the Avery Lane Experience, remembering that one of the true joys of Christmas is letting your babychild just be a babychild, eyeballs of part-time shopping mall elves be damned.

–

Late last night in the Ponce Kroger parking lot, a white-haired man approached me and told me Shirley Franklin would arrest him if he asked me anything. When I told him I didn’t have any cash, he told me he could have found me a better black mayor in 1969. He then said some other things I couldn’t really understand but I think implicated me in Mayor Franklin’s ascendancy to office and her subsequent vendetta against this man. “She ain’t my mayor,” he said a few times as he wandered off.

— Christa at PecanneLog. The white-haired man — we hope — was not Jim Wooten.

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