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Shooting in Athens, GA – 3 dead…

There was a shooting near downtown Athens yesterday. A university professor (George Zinkhan) shot his wife and two other members of a community theater company. Nobody knows exactly why, but he had been arguing with some people at the theater picnic and then came back with two guns.

My girlfriend is the Editor-in-Chief of the Red & Black, and I must say, the R&B has done a fantastic job covering the story. Breaking updates & expansive coverage of all aspects. Zinkhan is still at-large, and most people think he’s either in hiding or has killed himself.

Feels like shootings are on the rise over the last few years. Some people (including myself) might take this moment to argue a case for stricter gun control laws, but, really, what difference would tighter gun control laws have made here? The answer is none. No difference. This is just one of those acts of brutality that has left three families shattered.

The fact that Zinkhan could’ve shot & killed his wife and two other people while his children were waiting in the car just totally boggles the mind. Since I can’t ever fathom doing something like this, its hard for me to imagine what state of mind a person would have to be in to do something like this.

Its a terrible day for Athens. My thoughts go out to the family & friends….

Random Thoughts – NFL Draft Edition

- Al Davis is officially an idiot. I mean, I think everyone already knew that he was quirky and a little crazy, but now, he’s officially an idiot. Drafting Darrius Heyward-Bey at #7 overall has to be one of the dumbest moves ever. Even if he turns out to be a star — he would’ve been there later.

- No complaints about Al Davis being an idiot though — because of his lunacy, the 49ers grabbed Michael Crabtree at #10. Giddy with joy I am. Even though the position is not one of need, he will be a starter from Day One. The 49ers actually have a pretty frakkin’ decent wide-receiver corps now.

- Pretty pleased overall with the drafts from my teams (49ers & Falcons). 49ers didn’t pick up a tackle, but they drafted for value rather than need, and I can’t really argue with that. Their current right tackle situation isn’t great, but it’s not damning either. Marvel Smith should be pretty good if he stays healthy, and if he doesn’t stay healthy, Adam Snyder has proven he can play in a pinch. Snyder is ideally more of a guard, but he won’t get the quarterback killed.

- Falcons had a pretty solid draft. Defense pretty much all the way, and they picked up some guys who should be pretty good. They’ll be an interesting team to watch this fall, with a much tougher schedule and a defense that is… questionable.

- Right as I’m looking at the remaining prospects, and am thinking “The 49ers should really pick up Ricky Jean-Francois, and put him at end,” the 49ers draft Ricky Jean-Francois with their last pick. Hah.

- Patriots wheel & deal as always. How many picks did they have in the second round? Jeez. Smart though, especially with the talent in this draft.

- Still think Stafford as #1 was a reach, but, then again, I think he needed another year in college. I feel about Stafford the same way I felt about JaMarcus Russell: Did they watch him in college? Sure he had some great games (see Georgia-Georgia Tech, 2008), but he also had some serious clunkers (see, Georgia-Florida, 2008).

- The again, I wasn’t wild about either of the quarterbacks for this draft. I think they both should’ve stayed another year.

- For all the talk about how all the elite talent was going to come out this year because they were scared about the rookie pay cap or the CBA falling apart, this draft lacked a lot of star-power.

- 49ers draft eventual Alex Smith replacement – Nate Davis, who’s a lot like….. Alex Smith?

- I think the fact that the 49ers passed on Everette Brown and traded their second rounder for Carolina’s first next year speaks to the confidence they have that Parys Haralson & Manny Lawson will develop into good pass rushers. Me? Not so sure, but they seem to be.

- I can’t wait for Beanie Wells’ first game, vs. 49ers. Ahh… the rude awakening he will receive when Patrick Willis ploughs him into the ground. (See, 49ers v Vikings, 2007, Adrian Peterson – 14 carries, 3 yards)

Random Daily Thoughts (4/23/09)

- Great YD meeting with DuBose Porter last night. Talked with him afterwards about some things. If I don’t end up in Washington, I’m going to try to work on his campaign.

- Spooks (aka MI-5) is a crazy show. I’m serious, it’s just ridiculously intense. Even when I pick up on what’s going to happen, I still get tense because they have a history of killing people off.

- Only one week left at the State Capitol, and I found out I don’t have to work on Monday because it’s Confederate Memorial Day or something like that. We get off work for Confederate Memorial Day, but not Presidents’ Day… yeah….

- I almost completely forgot that tomorrow I supposedly hear back about the White House. Now I’ve got that little tinge of nervous excitement.

NFL Draft – No frakkin’ clue…

This draft is totally messed up. The teams with the Top Ten picks are truly terrible (starting with the 0 for 2008 Lions, with their new “fierce” logo, all the way through my poor Niners), and this is a pretty poor draft to have a Top 10 pick. I mean, it’d be great if the NFL had a rookie salary cap, but, yeah, they don’t.

I’ve seen mock drafts that have the Niners picking everyone from Aaron Maybin to Matt Stafford with the #10 pick. I’ve also seen drafts that have them taking Aaron Maybin with their second round pick, so that just shows you what a crapshoot this year is.

I’m hoping that B.J. Rajii drops, which likely won’t happen. I don’t really want them to take Sanchez. I’m fine with Crabtree. Hell, I just want some stupid team to trade with them, but that’s not going to happen.

Le sigh. The woes of being a 49ers fan.

Then again, a least I’m not a Detroit fan. That city really needs something good people.

Random Daily Thoughts – Earth Day Edition

- It’s Earth Day! And yet I’m not being very Earth-friendly today… I should get on that.

- Hawks DID make the playoffs, 4th seed, whooped up on the Heat! Game 2 tonight!

- Dick Cheney is an ass.

- Love George Lucas & Maureen Dowd’s exchange about Cheney: He’s the Emperor, not Darth Vader.

- I’m so over my current job. Working for Republicans has started to irritate me. I used to be able to do it without any problems, but my inner Democrat just wants to yell: “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” at some of their ideas.

- Chick-fil-a for lunch today. For you non-Southerners, that’s pronounced like “Chick Filet,” not “Chick feel-a.”

- Did I just call myself a Southerner?

- Interesting piece by Tony Barnhart about the ‘Dawgs in the SEC since Mark Richt. Tied for tops in overall wins with LSU, and tied for SEC wins with the Gators. Now we just need to win a frakkin’ National Championship.

- I did just call myself a Southerner… wow.

Perez has come across as the intolerant one…

I’m sure many people have heard about the controversy at the Miss USA pageant. While I usually completely ignore these pageants — I actually didn’t know it was going on until the news story broke — there is an aspect of this that is truly bothering me.

Those who know me know that I’m a pretty “secular” person. It’s not that I don’t have faith, I just have an inherent suspicion of organized religion, and I believe in a strict separation of church & state. Unfortunately, what I ideally believe and what is reality are two different things, and I’ve come to terms with the system we have.

However, as suspicious as I am of organized religion and as annoyed as I get at they hypocrisy of a lot of religious beliefs that breed intolerance, many very religious people are suspicious of secular people like me and get annoyed at what I believe.

Let me go at it this way: a popular attack of seculars on the religious is their intolerance for the ideas of others. However, just as often, seculars are intolerant of the ideas of the highly religious. Case and point: the Miss USA pageant.

Miss California (who may or may not have deserved to win, I don’t really care) was asked about the legalization of same-sex marriage in Vermont and Iowa. She responded (and I’m paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to get the direct quote) that it was great that we have a system where the people can decide about marriage, but to her, marriage is between a man and a woman.

Perez Hilton flipped out, stated that she would have won if not for that answer, called her some names, and attacked her for being a bigot. Tell me, where in that answer is bigotry? She didn’t say that it was bad that Vermont and Iowa had legalized it, she didn’t say she was against it being legal. She said that, according to her beliefs and how she was raised, marriage is between a man and woman.

She was respectful of the opposite viewpoint. Perez was not respectful of her viewpoint (which, by the way, is also the view of our current President).

There are many, many people who have very traditional views of marriage — that doesn’t mean their bigots. I personally disagree with Miss California, I think that marriage is between two people who love each other and are devoted. I disagree, but I respect her view, and her opinion.

So, while we should always be on guard against religious intolerance, we also should be on guard against secular intolerance. There is nothing wrong with being religious or secular — the problem comes when you completely exclude the other’s views and opinions simply because they’re “religious” or “secular.”

Georgia Legislature gets an “F” on Transportation

From me at least.

This year’s legislative session had two major objectives: deal with a looming $2.3 billion budget deficit, and deal with the state’s horrible transportation issues. Did they get a budget passed? Yes. They’re constitutionally required to. The budget wasn’t the problem. The problem is the stall on transportation for the third year in a row.

Let me back up. For those of you who don’t know, Georgia has a part-time legislature. The state constitution only allows them to be in session for 40 days. Session typically begins the second Monday in January, and ends sometime around the end of March or early April. The only thing the legislature has to do is pass a budget. And that’s about all they accomplished.

It’s fairly well-known that Atlanta, GA has some of the worst traffic in the nation. Actually, if I remember my numbers correctly, Atlanta has the 2nd worst traffic congestion in the country. The city with the worst is Los Angeles. The problem with that ranking is that Atlanta is not nearly as large as Los Angeles. The problem doesn’t lie solely in Atlanta, however. Connecting rural areas (including upgrading shipping routes for the agricultural and logging industries) as well as upgrading the growing port areas are also issues that need to be dealt with.

The main problem is funding. Georgia spends among the lowest per capita in the nation on transportation and is one of the fastest growing states. A secondary problem is the Georgia Department of Transportation, which is an agency whose organization and spending is based on a decades-old patronage system.

This session, two different funding plans developed: in the State Senate, a “TSPLOST” plan, spearheaded by Lt. Governor Casey Cagle, was passed. This plan would have allowed individual counties and the 10 county Metro Atlanta area, to pass a local option sales & use tax for the purposes of regional transportation projects. In the State House, a state-wide increase in the sales tax was proposed, with an attached “project list.”

Let me be clear, I think the project list was crap. Many projects had never been planned out, and there things proposed (such as a Lovejoy commuter rail line) that were absurd. Additionally, the regional plan would have worked great for Metro Atlanta, but probably wouldn’t have done much for any other part of the state.

The problem was that both plans called for referendums. Referendums are required elements of a TSPLOST package, but calling for a statewide referendum on increasing the state sales tax is doomed to failure. It’s been tried in 15 states and has never been passed.

What really needed to happen, was a combination of both plans. The legislators should have had the cajones to simply pass the statewide sales tax, and added on a TSPLOST option. That way, statewide and rural projects get the funding they need, and areas like Metro Atlanta have the option to further increase funding to for projects solely in their area.

However, both sides just sat and yelled at each other during conference committee meetings stretched over two days, and no deal was reached. Each side made marginal attempts at offering compromise plans, but neither really put forth an effort to reach a consensus, and for the third year in a row, nothing got done.

The main reason for this is because the respective plans were spearheaded by the heads of the two houses: Casey Cagle (Lt. Governor and President of the Senate) and Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson — two men who despise each other personally. Their differences on policy are actually quite minimal, but their personal animosity tends to override that. In this instance, neither one (who have both been mentioned as candidates for the 2010 gubernatorial race, Cagle is declared, Richardson is still mulling) wanted the other to get credit for the transportation plan. Instead, it became a struggle to see who would get blamed for the failure. And, in the end, their fellow Georgians got stuck with the short end of the stick.

New Computer

And I love it!

Random Daily Thoughts (1/28/2009)

- Its a month late, but I feel confident in saying: BIG XII SOUTH = OVERRATED.

- I still can’t quite get over the Cardinals being in the Super Bowl, but I hope they win, I don’t think I can take the Steelers being the first to six Super Bowl wins.

- The stimulus package passed, 244-188-1, along party lines, as expected. The Democrats cut the contraceptive spending (which would have actually saved about $200,000,000 annually, but oh well) and the National Mall renewall (which would have created jobs, but oh well).

- I had to listen to Sean Hannity for about 20 minutes last night when I was stuck in horrible traffic, waiting for a traffic report. It made me want to break something, he’s such a frakkin’ idiot.