I was going to try to take a picture of Thomas Wheatley liveblogging at Manuel’s last night, but technology failed him before I could get photographic evidence of what liveblogging in action looks like since I’m sure a lot of people out there are wondering. It’s basically a guy on a laptop at a table full of McCain supporters. Fortunately, Thomas was wearing a starched shirt so he fit right in.
So I took this instead:
That, my friends, is Zell Miller in a white Members Only jacket.
Hey, does anyone even remember when Mark Taylor ran for Governor? No?
I spotted someone tearing down a Hillary sign on N. Highland on Monday or Tuesday night. The sign was posted up high and at first I thought he was hanging it up, but then his furtive glance over his shoulder when my headlights hit him betrayed his purpose. He then tried to play it off like he was doing something that was totally legit and normal and sloooowly ripped it down in the hopes that I would pass before I could see him complete the act and realize what was going on.
Whatever, tear down signs, I don’t really care. What really puts a bee in my bonnet is that whoever was tearing down the Hillary signs just crumpled them up and left them on the sidewalks to be trampled over, instead of depositing the opposition’s signs in one of the many trash cans on the street. Total lack of class! There are at least half a dozen dirty, wrinkled and torn Hillary signs all up and down the sidewalks of N. Highland.
I can only assume this was some Ron Paul person, because there was a fresh batch of Paul signs up this week where the Hillary signs used to be. They want him to be the only visible candidate around town. Uh, sorry, he’s not going to win and no one cares about his crazy racist ideas. Libertarians also probably have no problem littering. If it was Obama’s camp they would have had the decency to find the nearest trash receptacle.
Therefore, it is with great pride that, on the eve of the eve of the eve of Super Tuesday, Pecanne Log endorses for Next President of the United States of America: (more…)
Hang out around the Georgia World Congress Center tonight, and that’s what you’re sure to see because Atlanta gets to host the Jefferson-Jackson dinner this year. Barack Obama, star of last year’s J-J dinner and the universe, won’t be there because he already won the South Carolina primary, but Hillary Clinton and John “Quitter” Edwards will be in attendance, courting your primary vote for president and Attorney General, respectively.
Previously: SCANDAL! Young Dems of Atlanta employ famous Republican tactic to disenfranchise urban voters
Today is the day of the Iowa caucuses! Usually we wouldn’t talk about such a thing here because it’s happening in Iowa, but since it affects us in many ways I’ll use it as an excuse to post this photo of John Edwards looking dreamy. (Is it gross to swoon over the candidates’ high school photos? Probably.) Mitt Romney was handsome back in college too but didn’t hold a candle to what a fox Edwards is so I didn’t bother with his picture.
Anywho, there’s sure to be a crowd at Manuel’s as we watch the fate of our nation rest in the capable? hands of Iowans, who want corn ethanol to be the new high fructose corn syrup and who have likely never laid eyes on a black person in real life. (The latter characteristic they share with New Hampshirians.) Caucuses are far different and more backwards than what we experience in the Georgia primaries, where we hide in voting booths to individually cast our ill-informed votes – it is more of a group decision, which means a lot of peer pressure. What desperate hijinks will the Ron Paul crowd pull? This should be a wild ride.
If only people cared about Georgia as much. South Carolina is the other important player in early primary season, but I feel like there should be one state with a really major city it that also gets to play God here. MayorTV says that 80% of Americans live in cities. In the Georgia Assembly, Atlanta is up against the rest of the state just by virtue of being a big city. (CL ran a great feature on this Atlanta vs. everyone else hostility in their 10/10/07 issue.) Atlantans need to feel that at some legislative level our needs and demographics are being represented fairly.
So – see you guys in a month on the new Super Duper Tuesday, when it doesn’t really matter who you pick in the primaries if you’re a Democrat (and especially not if you are voting for Kucinich). Electoral College, whee!
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.
Meanwhile, Shirley starred in an episode of the hit series MayorTV. MayorTV has a compelling premise – “A challenge from America’s mayors to the 2008 presidential candidates: start talking about cities,” given that 80% of Americans live in cities. (via tightgrid)
Her interview on MayorTV is far more interesting and specific than that worthless little narrative in Newsweek for its cover story “Women and Power” earlier this fall. On the one hand – the mayor of Atlanta was on the cover of Newsweek! On the other hand – Rachel Ray was also on the cover of Newsweek, and three times larger than Shirley! E.V.O.O.!
Oh, Georgia Assembly. You are not dodgy at all.
(via Wonkette)
What are the “other purposes,” pray tell?
I should note that this resolution is from 1999, so Glenn Richardson was not the aforementioned horny Speaker of the House at the time. (Probably Tom Murphy?)
Geoff at Tightgrid remarks on Doraville’s election of Brian Bates to Doraville’s city council. Bates is white! He’s a Republican! He’s a man! Oh, and he’s Georgia’s first openly gay elected official!
Republicans have been electing gay people to public office for years. They just don’t realize they’ve done so until said official is arrested trying to be all DL by trolling a men’s room or Craigslist.
In Riverdale, a Clayton county judge threw out a lawsuit claiming gender fraud against transgendered councilwoman Michelle Bruce’s re-election campaign. However, Bruce lost yesterday’s runoff to Wayne Hall (who came in second to Bruce in the Nov. 6 election).
“The lawsuit gave exposure to things in Riverdale,” Hall said. “The two biggest issues here are credibility and accountability. Once you establish those two, you fix everything else.”
I don’t want to infer that Hall is implying a trans person lacks credibility and accountability, but I kind of will anyway.
Thomas Wheatley had a particularly prolific Monday over at Fresh Loaf, we are happy to report. The cream of the crop was his coverage of the Rudy 9/11 Guiliani rocking chair rally in Atlanta that a bunch of Ron Paul supporters crashed. Despite all the distraction from the libertarians shouting “FREEDOM! FREEDOM!”, there was still time for the important questions for candidate Guiliani – will he legalize prostitution?
Earlier [a blond shop owner] mentioned something to me about how it would “get the girls off the streets,” and that if he didn’t plan on pursuing such a change, she was going to vote for Hillary Clinton. A journalist told her it was a state law, not a federal law, and Giuliani couldn’t really do anything about it. That didn’t matter — she had her question and dammit she was gonna’ ask it. When she was finally able to capture his attention and blurt it out, what unraveled was a garbled flurry of jibberish. She left feeling vindicated, though, shouting, “I asked him! I asked him!” as she walked out.
Now, just sit back quietly and enjoy this video of a cat merely playing with a laser pointer:
When I checked out the results of Stomp and Stammer‘s current poll asking “If you’re voting Republican, who do you currently support?” I anticipated seeing 33,567 votes for Ron Paul because every online poll shows Paul winning by approximately 900%, whether those “voters” happened upon the poll while looking for the latest “Bands I Useta Like” or not.
However:
Paul places a close second to Alan Keyes. Are Stomp and Stammer readers being ironic or did Jeff Clark attract a strange following after his searing 2004 film review of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 when he blew the lid off of liberal Hollywood’s gentle favoritism towards communists and its bias against fascists?
(To be honest, I think I picked Keyes as well before I saw the results.)
Atlanta’s Burning, Stomp and Stammer‘s 11th anniversary party, is Friday night at the Variety Playhouse with Snowden, the Black Lips, the Selmanaires, and Deerhunter.
Finally, a reasonable answer to the drought. And don’t worry, it won’t impact watering your lawn OR running your waterfall. It just involves a little prayer.
Somehow, I missed the memo that Sonny Perdue has been pushing for Atlantans to pray for rain for months now. But this morning on the local NPR station, I heard that there will actually be a large and organized prayer led by good old Sonny sometime soon (was it today?) in the hopes that the mass number of guilty Atlantans will be able to move God to make it rain in our parched little corner of the Peach State.
I wonder if my neighbor down the street will be there. He’s got all sorts of Christian Conservative stickers on his Nissan Sedan, which is parked in front of his house where he can always be seen standing outside watering his lawn. He makes this surly face when he does it, scowling beneath his trucker hat (not actually an ironic one, as he is 60 years old and probably worked for the company advertised on the bill) and just daring you to be the brave liberal to try and get him busted.
In any case, I hope it works. I’m tired of my shorter showers.
By default, Atlanta-Fultoners must choose the latter. Sorry guys, Diddy only gives us two options and the city narrows it down to one. But if you’re in DeKalb County or are just interested in what no-longer-fake cities like Chattahoochee Hills, Milton, and Sandy Springs are up to in their municipal general elections, Bloglanta has conveniently linked it all for you. The AJC has a voting guide as well.
This also means you can feel free to frivolously endorse and promote candidates in said no-longer-fake cities even if you technically live 15-25 miles outside of their carefully-drawn limits, like these neighbors of mine:
Will do, neighbor, will do!
Hey, if you’re feeling left out of a sense of civic duty, you can vote belatedly in our invasive Daylight Savings Time Poll! Monitored by Diebold.
The ol’ Rovian suppression trick to get the urban and minority constituents to show up to the polls 24 hours late:
Oh.
If you spend about five minutes driving down any main thoroughfare in incorporated Decatur you will be like, “What is the deal with these people?” because their enthusiasm for political bumper stickers is unmatched. A while ago MoveOn.org was mailing out free “Grand Oil Party” stickers that had an elephant pumping gas with its trunk and it seemed pretty ridiculous, perhaps in part because their whole campaign also encouraged MoveOn activists to protest the oil industry by driving to the gas station at N. Decatur and Clairmont Roads and holding up posters. Anyway, a few weeks later (presumably once the stickers had been mailed out) I noticed about every fifth car in Decatur bore a brand new statement.
Then there’s the one Denny Kucinny fan who lives on Commerce Drive who has had the same sign from 2004, still proudly on display and slightly worse for the wear. HOPE BEGINS, guy, hope begins.
Which no doubt compels aggressive counter-signs from residents on the other end of the spectrum. One law firm located on Ponce in Druid Hills put their giant “Sonny: Georgia’s Governor” sign up for way too long. All the Paideia parents with their Cathy Cox-supporting Priuses cursed the sky.
Over in East Atlanta, someone took matters into their own hands and had their own sign made:
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