Radical Georgia Moderate

I’ll be in Tampa, Fla., today and most of tomorrow. Tampa is probably best-known as the birth place of famous cocaine addicts Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry.

Dwight “Doc” Gooden

Darryl “Straw” Strawberry

I’ll be in town to watch Tennessee hopefully not lay another egg against a Big 10 opponent in the Hall of Fame Outback Bowl.

If you know of any good bars in Tampa, please drop me a line at rusty@radicalgeorgiamoderate.org.

I’ll save you UGA fans the embarrassment of living down to my expectations of you, and go ahead and make the crack that, yes, Straw and Doc’s prison jumpsuits are pretty close to Tennessee Orange. Volunteers are also known to have sex with half-bear, half-cat animals. Har har. Clever.

The black uniforms the Bulldogs will wear in the Sugar Bowl look like Falcons uniforms. So there.

If you’re looking for something to do while I’m gone, you can listen to our end-of-year episode of Mostly ITP.

First photo of me and the GDGF at our new place!
March 20, 2007

Penny responding to the dog guy in real time at PodCamp Atlanta
March 22, 2007

The dropping of the Beach Balls
April 7, 2007

Juxtapositions galore
April 28, 2007

The GDGF at Two Urban Licks
May 10, 2007

Me before surgery
May 18, 2007

View from the AP building
July 4, 2007

Walkway to Old Governor’s Mansion
July 20, 2007

Sunset at Wrigley
July 31, 2007

Keynote with Elisa Camahort
Oct. 20, 2007

Campers eating dinner
Oct. 12, 2007

Running through the T
Nov. 11, 2007

Shoe tree in Little Five Points
Dec. 4, 2007

Knox Theatre sign
Dec. 8, 2007

Note: dates are when I posted the photos to Flickr, not necessarily when they were taken. They were all taken this year though.

The end of another year is coming soon, which means another end-of-year episode of Mostly ITP! Here’s last year’s episode.

We try not to get all PBS-beg-a-thon about asking people for participation in things, but it would be nice if y’all would leave some voicemails for us to play. Have a favorite episode? Have an episode that made you want to veer off the road into a telephone pole in disgust? Don’t listen to the show, but do a great impression of Charles Bronson baking a pie wearing nothing but an apron and a smile? We’d love to hear from you.

You can call and leave us voicemail at 678.389.9441, or you can leave a message on my Skype account at rustytanton.

Thanks!

I just passed Flickr photo number 2,000 today with this photo, from a set taken at the Rogers Street rail yard a little over a year ago:

I expect to hit 3,000 photos much more quickly than I hit 1,000 or 2,000, given that there will probably be 2,400 or 2,500 when all the photos from my Gallery are moved to Flickr. I’ve been deleting sets from there after they’re ported over using the awesome Gallery2Flickr plugin.

I doubt I’ll catch up to Amber anytime soon. She’s got over 4,300 photos.

From the AJC:

Davis’s bill, HB 914, would redirect a portion of the gas tax from general state funds to transportation, which he said would put an extra $169 million into transportation in 2008. The state Department of Transportation’s annual operating budget is about $2 billion, and metro Atlanta agencies say the transportation funding shortfall is in the billions of dollars.

I have given state Rep. Steve Davis a hard time in the past. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a huge amount of money and not nearly the worst idea he has proposed during his tenure.

I just wish that instead of growing and growing and growing GDOT, that the state would divest itself of road-building entirely. Auction off the highways that aren’t owned by the feds to the highest bidder. Leave other roads up to county and local governments, and get rid of all transportation-related taxes at the state level.

Impossible, you say? If they can’t do that, then they need to fund transportation alternatives with an equal zest for bloat. As long as the state is funding all of these roads, private enterprise has no incentive to offer alternatives.

Amber, in the comments at So..What’s Next?!?:

Anyone who thinks my interest in and passion for sexuality and sexual freedom limits my credibility as a podcasting expert (not that I would call myself an “expert,” but I’m short on time right now and can’t think of a more appropriate word) is not someone I am interested in sharing my knowledge with.

Could not have said it better myself. I used to worry a lot more than I do now about whether saying something someone potentially might find offensive would lead to lost opportunities (business, activism, friendship or whatever). If I’ve learned anything, it’s that those people aren’t worth my time, no matter how good the opportunity seems on its face.

I do realize it’s a luxury — a privilege even — to be able to say that. I feel very fortunate to be in a position where I can tell people to kindly fuck off if they’re going to be judgmental.

InsiderAdvantage posted a release looking for political bloggers if you’re interested:

In January, IA will launch The Internet News Agency website with live webcasts, news and analysis by nationally known journalists, exclusive InsiderAdvantage polling, plus political and other news from our national network of field correspondents – maybe including you! INA correspondents will have what every blogger and political and news junkie most avidly seeks in today’s world of information overload – access to newsworthy events and people, plus readership of your written news reports, and viewership of your news videos. Plus, the INA website will feature links to direct our web visitors to your personal blogs and websites. In its start-up phase, INA will not offer paid compensation to correspondents.

SpaceyG was outed a few weeks ago as working on this project, and Griftdrift just disclosed today that he’s working on it. I don’t know much more than what’s in the release, other than Grayson says it will be video-intensive.

Insider Advantage is owned by Matt Towery, a former Republican legislator, and is most famous for its polling operation. However, IA (relatively) recently hired Dick Pettys and Tom Baxter, indicating an interest in bolstering the company’s journalistic credentials.

The company will have some work to do to attract non-Republican contributors. The redesign launches sometime in January. Thoughts?

h/t SpaceyG, who is the contact for the position.

January is going to very interesting. I learned of another collaboration that will be announced at about the same time this comes out, but I don’t know a whole lot about it yet beyond its existence.

“Mr. Speaker” Tom Murphy, the longest-tenured state House Speaker in U.S. history
1924-2007

Image from the New Georgia Encyclopedia

For better or for worse, today’s state government owes its power structure to two events:

• The Legislature naming Lestor Maddox governor in 1966 thanks to no candidate winning a majority of popular votes, weakening the stranglehold the position of governor previously held over the state’s power structure.
• The election of Tom Murphy as House Speaker by the House Democratic caucus when George L. Smith died in office in 1973.

Murphy never looked back, becoming the closest thing to a dictator the state has ever seen. He is a complex figure that I couldn’t possibly do justice to in a short blog post.

The AJC has a pretty good obituary up. I thought the comments by the current governor and House speaker were classy.

I was up in the Cumming/Suwanee area this morning to provide some Flash training, and afterward went and took some photos. Here’s a photo I took of Buford Dam today:

Compare that to a photo Amber took in July 2005:

If that’s not enough evidence of a drought in progress for you, try this one on for size:

Those used to be docks in front of people’s lake houses. I have more photos in a set you can view here.

Also, I took a bunch of photos of some Herring Gulls that congregated in a Wal*Mart parking lot. This was a bizarre sight to me because we don’t really seem to have gulls around here.

Full set here.

David Cutcliffe, Tennessee’s offensive coordinator, is reported to have taken the head coaching job at Duke. Georgia is 0-9 all-time against Tennessee teams with offenses coached by Cutcliffe, including embarrassing blowouts the past two seasons by a combined score of 86-47.

His desire to become a head coach again was well-known, so I’m sure there’s already a plan in place to replace him. UT fans know and like wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor, whom everyone who keeps up with the program knows is an excellent position coach, recruiter and motivator. Is he OC material yet? Few people outside the coaching staff and the players really have an opinion about that worth listening to. I’d like for him to get a tryout in the Outback Bowl.

Cutcliffe is one of the best quarterback coaches in the country and a pretty good coordinator, but not a great recruiter. However, his credentials as a QB coach may allow Duke to attract QB recruits it hasn’t been able to land since Steve Spurrier was roaming the sidelines. And as dismal as the ACC has been overall the past couple of years, I think he can put Duke in a position to be bowl-bound, which would be a major step up for them.

Update 1:35 p.m. False alarm? We’ll know later today.

Update 3:30 p.m. ESPN reports that Cutcliffe took the job.

Trooper Taylor to interview for Baylor’s OC position. The plot thickens.