Radical Georgia Moderate

I‘m okay with most of the Legislature’s smoking in public places ban (login), which excludes bars but bans people from lighting up most everywhere else. I am a little irked with the “serves customers younger than 18″ language pertaining to bars. I’d be interested to see some stats on the number of those businesses that let in the under-18 crowd, because the ban is going to hurt them as it’s written. For instance, many sports bars let adults bring their kids in until late at night (the ones around here kick them out at 10 p.m.). So, it’s a no-win for them, because it means they’ll be forced to either turn away families or to turn away smokers, who are going to find somewhere else to go where they can light up. With that in mind, there’s the tobacco farmers to think about too. Tobacco is a substantial cash crop in Georgia, and to not leave smokers a haven somewhere is to say you don’t care about the livelihood of those people. The more restrictive the smoking ban, the harder it is for tobacco farmers to tread water. So, I would have liked to see the Legislature stay away from regulating bars more than it did. We’ll see the practical effects soon enough.

UPDATE: Sid thinks Governor Perdue will veto the smoking bill. Interesting… very interesting.

Says the Legislature: Ethics legislation? Golly, that’s hard. Banning genital piercing? We’re right on top of it (login). It seems to me if someone is willing to endure the risk of infections and a loss of sensitivity purely for cosmetic purposes, that should be punishment enough. Since this ban only applies to women, I guess I have another year to shove sharp objects through my scrotum legally.

The bill is HB10, for those keeping score. I would have mentioned in the first paragraph that the bill only applies to girls under 18, but that would have ruined the set-up for my scrotum remark.

In other BIG BIG NEWS, the Legislature voted to make Oct. 8 Georgia’s official Bill Elliot Day (login). Goddamn, it’s great to know my taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely.

It looked like God uncorked his bladder all over my back yard this morning. The mud puddles were six inches deep or more in places, enough so to muffle the patter of rain drops hitting them. It seemed like a scene that would have made for some interesting photos, but nothing really turned out well for all my trudging around. The good news is there were a couple of photos of Sophie remaining from a few days ago when I was trying to give my camera a conniption. I appear to have succeeded. These are not retouched at all other than to resize them for the web. Click for larger, more detailed versions (recommended, particularly for the second one):

I’m excited that ten sites have already started using the themes I submitted last week to Alex King’s Wordpress theme contest. Here’s the current list, to my knowledge, generally found through web stats or Technorati:

RadMod

8D Studio*
Excitable Boy
Hatemail
idratherbesleeping
The Daily New Song

Yaaarr, tis me blog!

Amie’s
Bloxmania*
noenry
No Illusions
The Sachse High School Blog

* non-English characters didn’t display correctly in my browser… maybe you’ll have better luck

Also, Geester had been using an early version of RadMod for a few months previous. You can download my themes here.

It’s the last day (login) of Georgia’s legislative session. It will finish a day earlier than its allocated time, which will save the state $40,000. That’s better than past sessions, which have often spilled outside the allocated 40 days and into special sessions at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Of course, it’s easier to be efficient when the House Speaker can essentially change the results of a committee vote whenever he pleases. Or is it? I was surprised to read they still haven’t passed the Sandy Springs bill. I was not surprised to read they’re still having trouble coming up with the votes to pass ethics legislation (wolves… hen house…).

There’s little worth writing about this morning. Even the Political Insider has resorted to an article about sparklers in the potential new city of Sandy Springs. In a thread below, I was prodded by Chris to run for office if I’m so pissed with some of the losers the Democratic Party put up last time (one in particular, but I’m not going to get into that here). It’s not going to happen in 2006 for a variety of reasons (not to mention I couldn’t even tell you what local races would be available to me off the top of my head), but I will tell you how candidate Rusty would answer questions from his antagonists and detractors:

• Q: What is your stance on the Terri Schiavo case? (couldn’t you just see the stupid media asking someone running for a lower local office a question like that first?)
  A: While I feel it’s unfortunate for the families to have to endure the pain they have, I also don’t like the idea of the government stepping in to settle inter-family disputes. As a practical matter, it concerns a small percentage of the population — say five percent. I’m more concerned with answering questions that affect 100 percent of Georgians… questions like “Will I have a job when I wake up tomorrow?” or “If I come down with a serious illness, will paying for treatment bankrupt me?”
• Q: What is your stance on abortion? (see snarky footnote from above)
  A: I wouldn’t want my wife, girlfriend, or daughter to have one, but I generally prefer the government stay out of constituents’ bedrooms and boardrooms whenever possible. If we had better sex education, perhaps we wouldn’t have to ask the question as often as we do.
• Q: You’re running as a Democrat, yet the key points of your platform are to curb unnecessary spending and lower taxes for property owners. Why aren’t you a Republican?
  A: Historically, Democrats have demonstrated they want to regulate your wallet. Republicans have demonstrated they want to regulate your behavior. I’m not interested in adding more regulation in either case.
• Q: Then why aren’t you a Libertarian?
  A: Because raising money to run for office would be next to impossible as a Libertarian.
• Q: What are you interested in?
  A: Picking a few areas — such as first responders, education, infrastructure, and health care — and making them strong, and doing away with many of the rest.
• Q: Won’t you just fall into the same trap of proposing last-minute pork projects to win cheap points with your constituents that everyone else falls into?
  A: No, because I don’t care about having a long-term career in politics. A lot of people are going to be disappointed when I don’t bring home a bunch of statues and monuments and other superfluous items. They should be happy I’m not out spending their money like a drunken sailor on R&R in Thailand. If they’re not, they can vote for someone else next time.

Bye Johnnie! Courtesy of Conservative Eric at Paradise Grille trivia.

At a Chevron on Lower Roswell:

…than for blogging.