You Know, As Opposed to those Lazy Americans.

This morning in USA Today, Clinton says:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states [...]

I Know I’m Going to Play This Here Banjo Right After I Get Done with This Meth

Lauren has a great piece up at the American Prospect about what is an ongoing problem with how the power brokers in this country seem to revel in imagining and portraying the middle of the country as a bunch of in-bred slack-jawed yokels.

The Tension is Killing Me

The TNGOP hates Mexicans.  Then they love Mexicans.  Then they hate Mexicans again.  Now they love them again.
When, oh when, will the TNGOP just kiss Mexico already and get it over with?

News Flash

When your state ties its tax revenue to sales tax instead of income tax, your state will face financial hardship when folks curtail their spending.
And, when your state is facing financial hardship because people are spending less, this is, quite possibly, not the time you should be cutting jobs.  Don’t you need as many people [...]

Hey, Representative Lynn! I Bet Some of These Kids Would Look Good Behind Bars

One of my readers has brought me the story of cute, but apparently potentially evil, children overthrowing the social order of the U.S. by learning English and putting out a newspaper.
Now, I don’t know if any of these kids are the children of illegal immigrants, but, on the off chance they are, I think the [...]

What Kind of Person Steals from a Baby, Representative Lynn?

Today, I was standing around flirting with a wee baby when I heard about something so stupid and evil I thought “This must be a mistake. Surely, the man who is telling me about this has suffered a bump on the head right before I got here or is high on gasoline fumes from [...]

Weekly Liberal TN Blogger Round-up

I didn’t make it on this week.  I can only assume that’s because the Butcher was right to point out that no one is going to hire me to do documentaries, no matter how crappy.  Shoot, I should have kidnapped the documentarians who were here and taken them over and then posted the video here [...]

Every Once in a While, I Worry John McCain Might Just Win This Thing

And then I read Terry Frank:
North Carolina reminds Senator McCain that this November isn’t all about him.  And the nerve of McCain.  McCain has stabbed the GOP in the back more times than Jason has stabbed teens in Friday the 13th and now he wants to give all the orders?  Ain’t gonna’ happen.
You know, she [...]

Back in My Day…

We didn’t use Facebook, of all things, as a venue for reporting news.
It’s just tawdry.  Get a blog like the grownups.
Ha, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a curmudgeon.  That felt kind of good.  All I need now is to get me a cane and a porch from which to shake [...]

The “Wife as Personal Prostitute” Model

Every once in a while a discussion will wind its way through the local blogosphere that is so ridiculous to me, I hardly know how to begin to comment on it.  Right now, folks are again debating a series of legislation designed to make sure that women don’t run around stealing men’s money by lying [...]

Oh, Kleinheider

Oh, Kleinheider, Oh, Kleinheider
Oh, Kleinheider,
You are back
You’re still grouchy and curmudgeonly
And folks will call you hACK.

When Will Hobbs Finally Just Come Out and Say It?

Yesterday, Mack used this delicious phrase–”uppity elitist”–when describing Obama and I wish I’d thought of it, because it seems to me to capture exactly how the Right is trying to portray him.
In the past couple of days, we’ve had two Republican big-wigs at the state level reminding us that Obama is getting a little too [...]

A Couple of Quick Things While My Internet is Working

–Considering what a piss-poor job AT&T does of keeping the internet flowing to my house, I don’t think Comcast has to worry about losing me as a cable customer.  If I had TV as infrequently as I have my internet connection, I might pass out.
–Guess which Flying Spaghetti Monster got a shout out in Rolling [...]

Low-Income Households

So, I’m perusing Joe Powell’s discussion of AT&T’s entry into the cable market and I note this passage:
Twenty-five percent of households with access to AT&T’s TV service would have to be low-income, defined as households with income of $35,000 or less, within three-and-a-half years.
And it made me wonder–low income as compared to what?  So, I [...]

Hobbs Opposes Newspapers’ Right to Post His Junk Mail List

I’ve now stayed up as late as I can to see what the reaction of the local gun-nut community would be to Bill Hobbs’s latest piece of nonsense, but my connect is strangely silent on the matter.
Here’s the deal.  We have a kind of fuckerly paper here in town and they pretty regularly post information [...]

Hmm, If Only There Were Some Mechanism for Collecting Money from the People who Work in Your State…

Passed along from S-town Mike without comment:
In general, sports teams do not generate much, if any, local economic impact …. The reason is simple. Sports teams, and especially those in leagues that play weekday evening games, attract insufficient “new money” into an area to overcome the large leakages created by players and owners who live [...]

I Feel Like I Should Oppose the Opposition to Toll Roads on Principle

So, the conservatives of our fine state are up in arms because the governor wants to put in some toll roads and I’m really suspicious of anything the conservatives want that appears to make sense on the surface.
Are the opposing the toll roads because toll money is going to be used to provide healthcare for [...]

Everybody Wins (Well, Except for the Mexicans, but What Can You Do?)

I want to say something bitingly clever about the 287(g) program, but I just don’t have it in me today.  Last night, on all the news channels, they were talking about what a great success this has been, so great, in fact, that there’s now talk of petitioning the Feds to give us an immigration [...]

Is Erica Jong on Drugs?!

Sincerely, America.  I had to get up out of my sick bed and come here to ask you “Is Bill Maher writing Erica Jong’s columns for her while she is in a coma or something?”
If this had been in The Onion verbatim I would have laughed until I cried.
First, let’s just overlook the ridiculousness of [...]

An Open Letter to My Fellow Democrats

Dear Fellow Democrats,
As I’ve been sick, I’ve been perusing the internet and I’ve noticed both pro-Obama folks and pro-Clinton folks threatening that, if their candidate doesn’t get the nomination, then they just won’t vote or they’ll vote for McCain (see this letter here as an example).
I realize that tensions are running high and that we [...]

BREAKING NEWS! Bill Hobbs Still Hates Muslims

Dang, head propagandist over at the TNGOP, Bill Hobbs, is the gift that keeps on giving. Every week, it seems, he manages to draw attention to how much he hates Muslims.  Well, and Barak Obama, who is, as you may know, secretly a black nationalist, funky Christian, terrorist-sympathizing, gay, homophobic, church-choir-member-murdering, shrill-wife-having, affair-having, secret Muslim, [...]

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

America, I–the hippie liberal commie lefty no-make-up-wearing, man-hating, lesbian, abortionist, feminist rear-guard–should not be reading things in The American Spectator that make me go “Well, I disagree with this and this, but I think his overall point is probably true.”
But anyway, here’s the thing that George Neumayr says that I sadly grow more and more [...]

I’d Like to Report a Potential Crime

So, this nonsense has passed the State Senate.
Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if we struck all the non-English out of the bill. Curious?
Here’s the bill:

SENATE BILL 2849
By Johnson
AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 4 and Title 50, to enact the “Protecting English in the Tennessee Workplace Act.”
BE [...]

1870 Tennessee Constitution Actual Disqualifications for Holding Office

ARTICLE IX.
Disqualifications.

Section 1. Whereas Ministers of the Gospel are by their profession, dedicated to God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their functions; therefore, no Minister of the Gospel, or priest of any denomination whatever, shall be eligible to a seat in either [...]

If Only We Had Some Kind of Institution that Allowed Us to Force Non-White People to Work for Us for Free…

In pre-Civil War Tennessee, it was pretty straightforward, in exchange for minimal room, food, no legal claim on personhood, and the right to be whipped and have your family torn from you and moved far away from you where you’d never hear from them again, you got to work your whole life so that others [...]