B-sides, demos, outtakes and rarities from Thursday’s National Biological Armageddon Facility hearing hearing.

• The AJC’s Ken Foskett picked up on something I may have missed: it looks like the cost of building the NBAF rose from $525 million to $680 million. The higher figure is found here (click on site cost analysis and scroll down to page 27) in virtually illegibly small type buried at the bottom of an otherwise redacted chart. I guess that explains how I skipped over it, and why AJC reports make the big bucks. The Homeland Security guy I talked to today plead ignorance and said he’ll get back to me. I should have something for y’all early next week.

A-C Commissioner David Lynn might be canceling his subscription soon.

Conspicuously not heeding that shopworn advice about picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel, Lynn tore into the Banner-Herald over this editorial on no fewer than three occasions during a 90-minute discussion about streetlights Tuesday night.

“ … faced with the possibility they'll anger constituents in neighborhoods that might lose some streetlights, at least some (commissioners) are looking for ways to backpedal, and beseeching government staff to protect them from their unthinking earlier decision on the lighting issue,” editorial page editor Jim Thompson wrote in the July 21 editorial.

Let’s talk qualifying.

We’ll have two very interesting Athens-Clarke Commission races to follow: Elton Dodson versus Mike Hamby in District 10 and Red Petrovs versus Ed Robinson in District 6.

I know Petrovs far better than Robinson because I’ve been covering OneAthens and I wasn’t around for the 2004 election. This will be a race of contrasting ideas and styles where there’s a clear-cut choice.

Petrovs is a tough-talking, no-nonsense kind of guy who is conservative, especially fiscally, but is driven by facts and not ideology. His voice would be unique on the commission. He could get stuck with the Chamber of Commerce tag – the kiss of death in recent elections – but he says the chamber’s changed so much since Larry McKinney left that it’s not such an albatross anymore.

Or, Somewhere Something Cooler Is Happening and I’m Not There

Athfest was awesome. The worst part of the whole weekend was trying to decide who to go see. Here’s how it all went down:

• Dark Meat is not quite as mind-blowing when you’re standing 100 yards away from the stage surrounded by creepy 50-year-old dudes more interested in checking out high school girls than the music. I overheard a few hilarious conversations between parents and their kids involving the parents trying to look hip by saying how much they wanted to see Dark Meat. The band responded to the non-hipster segment of the audience by generally keeping it clean, encouraging the front rows to dance and substituting “hug” for an unprintable word in one chorus. It didn’t go over well – the crowd shrank by half by the end of the set.

A couple things real quick to ponder and discuss for the next few days.

One, the NBAF EIS is out. It’s 1,000 pages long. Guess I know how I’ll be spending my weekend.

Two, I spoke to Carl Jordan earlier today and he is not running for re-election.

Blake.aued@onlineathens.com

When I saw the list of expenses Athens-Clarke Manager Alan Reddish suggested the commission cut during its May budget talks, there were two I immediately knew would cause a stir: traffic patrols and fireworks.

Commissioners did cut the fireworks, saving $13,000. Talk immediately started about rounding up private donors to put on the Fourth of July show. As is our custom in Athens, we waited until the last second to quit talking and do it.

It’s a widely-held believe around town that the fireworks display was a poison pill cut out of the budget to take revenge on the pesky taxpayers who demanded no millage rate increase. A “See what you’ve made us do!” sort of thing.

The story I wrote last week about who’d e-mailed A-CC commissioners about the budget drove some people up the wall.

Yes, the headline was a bit misleading. No, we weren’t trying to imply that the whole Athens population thinks higher taxes are awesome. The point, as I explained in the story’s lede and again to several readers, was to show that the people who’ve talked to commissioners favored higher taxes as long as they funded OneAthens recommendations.

In this week’s Flagpole, publisher Pete McCommons urges Athens-Clarke Commissioner Carl Jordan to run for re-election.

I don’t know if he will. The last election energized Jordan. He believed newcomers Kelly Girtz and Doug Lowry would finally create a political atmosphere where he’d be more than just the commission’s version of Paul Broun: contrary, idealistic, uncompromising and on the wrong end of every 9-1 vote.

It didn’t happen. The commission is just as dysfunctional, paralyzed and easily distracted as ever, and has achieved virtually nothing it set out to do a year and a half ago. Jordan is now leaning toward leaving, unless Pete can talk him out of it, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s down at the Board of Elections as qualifying winds down, if no one to his liking steps up to take his place.

If you think this year’s Athens-Clarke budget battle was bruising, just wait ‘til next year.

Commissioners couldn’t quite bring themselves to cut the $1.75 million necessary to avoid a tax increase, settling at about $1.2 million after Manager Alan Reddish told them gas prices and other expenses are rising even more quickly then anticipated. I just finished writing a story about it, and if you’re reading this on Thursday, it’s in the paper (that’s why no link).

Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well I got down on my knees
'Cause they were marryin' gays

As many readers no doubt already heard, the California Supreme Court recently legalized same-sex marriage.

No right-thinking Georgia Republican could let this pass. Gays + California = an election-year gift from God. Of course, He disapproves of both, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. What’s a few Adam and Steves on the Left Coast if you can drum up support at the ballot box in the flyover states? Heck, maybe Hillary will divorce Bill and marry Nancy Pelosi. And maybe Jeremiah Wright will officiate. Then the GOP could really go to town.