By now it's quite apparent that Hillary is setting up Ohio and Texas as a firewall against Obama's momentum. The Giuliani analogy aside, take a look at how precarious this strategy really is. Texas has a combined primary-caucus system that doubly screws the Clinton campaign. First, she's proven herself completely unable to organize for caucuses. And 1/3 of all delegates are chosen at caucuses, which can only be attended by those who voted in the primary earlier in the day. Yes, you vote twice!

But then there's the delegate apportionment system for the primary component (2/3 of delegates). The statewide primary is utterly meaningless. All that matters is how you do in State Senate districts. But the delegate apportionment in each district is determined by how high Democratic turnout was in 2004. Thanks to Tom DeLay, a few heavily black and liberal districts will get a much greater say in delegate apportionment than the more scattered Latino majority districts in the Rio Grande Valley.

Here is a great analysis of the Texas race, district by district. Short answer: if Hillary thinks the demographic advantages of Texas will give her a big delegate victory, she is sorely mistaken.

Texas analysis

I salute Fred Thompson for one thing and one thing only. He managed to waste millions of dollars from Tennessee Republican donors on an idiotic campaign. I don't know how many millions the TNGOP bigwigs wasted on Old Freddie but it sure wasn't money well spent. It isn't just that Fred Thompson lost. It's how he lost, putting virtually no effort into the contest.

So do the arch-conservative Fredheads get behind John McCain now? We all know Fred himself has a close relationship with McCain, but the same cannot be said for Fred's supporters. Do they gravitate to Romney as the establishment conservative and business choice? Do they go with the Huckster from across the river? Or do they suddenly forget all the mean and nasty things they said about John McCain over the years?

When I first moved to Maryville I heard all the horror stories of rebel flags and redneck idiocy surrounding the Maryville HS Rebels. And I vowed, in principle, to root against Maryville High School in football. But I went with a neighbor to the game last week against Powell and not only found no Confederate flags (they've been banned) but no likenesses of them on t-shirts or elsewhere. It occurred to me at that point that the Maryville Rebels were not so hopelessly associated in the general public with neo-Confederatism or its associated brands of political retardation. So I became a fan, reluctantly I suppose, but a fan nonetheless. It seemed safe to root for the Maryville Rebels football.

That brings us to this week, where the Marvville HS Rebels take their 50 game winning streak against Blount County rival and rising 5A state power William Blount HS. I've been listening to the game on local wingnut radio - aka "truth" radio at WBCR 1470. It's been a riveting game so far. Maryville is up 13-6 late in the 3rd quarter.

I had a very culturally fulfilling day today, in an East Tennessee sense, and I'll blog about more of it tomorrow. But I just wanted to mention that Music Row of Maryville is just about the coolest place I've ever been. Where else can you go and watch dozens of musicians of all ages - and I mean ALL ages, from 10 to 90 - improvise, play, perform and chat for free. Yes, you must appreciate East Tennessee music, which means bluegrass and traditional country music.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

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I just wanted to cross-post something I wrote on The Moderate Voice about the motivations of Sunnis who turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq. It deals with what I think is one of the least discussed and most important elements of future US strategy in Iraq.

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You think it's hot in East Tennessee? Check out how our friends on the other side of the state are doing. Pay special attention to the "low" numbers at night...

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According to a SUSA poll Hillary Clinton beats all three top GOP challengers in Virginia and Kentucky, and beats Romney in Alabama. She loses to Giuliani in Alabama by 6. But the real shocker is that the Southern, Alabama-born, good old boy Fred Thompson only beats her by 2 points.

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That she wins in Upper South states like KY and VA is noteworthy but not terribly surprising; Bill Clinton won KY twice, and Virginia is clearly trending blue with the massive growth of northern Virginia. But Alabama is as red as ever. In fact, one of Hillary Clinton's most infamous moments in the campaign season so far was her failed attempt at code switching at a black church in Selma - an event that drew ridicule throughout the South. Yet there she is, just 2 points below Fred Thompson.

If this poll is accurate then the backers of Fred Thompson have to be asking themselves if he's really the right guy. Bush won Alabama by 26 points in 2004. Any Republican should expect to win Alabama by 12 points at least; Bill Clinton came fairly close in 1996 with the help of Perot. But Hillary has none of the charisma of her husband. And Alabama is even more Republican now than in 1996. So how could she poll so well there? And more importantly, why does Fred Thompson do so poorly against her, vis-a-vis Giuliani?

I admit that this poll is a shocker. A recent poll from Arkansas showed her absolutely crushing each of the GOP nominees by double digits. As conservative as Arkansas is, I can see that happening because the state still leans Democratic (though conservative Democratic for sure) and people there still love the Clintons. Even Mike Huckabee praised the Clintons.

But Alabama is not Arkansas. Alabama has no history with her or Bill. Moreover, it's the state where Fred Thompson was born. What's going on here? Are fears of her negatives in the South overblown? Are her negatives played out? Can Hillary Clinton win multiple Southern states like her husband did? If KY and VA look so good for her, surely MO, OH and NC are in good shape too. And if it's Giuliani leading the ticket I'd say our great state of Tennessee is in play for Hillary Clinton too. Who'da thunk it?

I also blog on occasion at Joe Gandelman's site, "The Moderate Voice." I thought I'd repost an entry I did there on Knoxviews.

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I took a trip up to Cumberland Gap today and then explored TN-63 east to Sneedville and TN-66 to Rogersville. One thing I kept noticing were these brightly colored squares on barns. Apparently the KNS ran an article a few weeks ago about them and they certainly caught my attention.

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Sneedville, by the way, really is stuck in time. There were dozens of barns in the surrounding area of Hancock County that were probably built in the 1920s and have been decaying ever since. Sneedville itself reminded me of the semi-abandoned coal towns in Kentucky, with a billiard hall and a few old gas stations (old pumps) in business. It was a beautiful drive along 63 and 66 as you switchback over Clinch and Short Mountains. Also, the rocks cropping out of the soil were really amazing; I don't know how anybody could have farmed there. No wonder it's so poor. There is apparently a place called "Elrod Falls" in Hancock County, which, for namesake purposes, I should really check out! My favorite place name was Frog Level Road. Second favorite: Rebel Hollow Road.

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One thing I've found annoying in my two months of living in Maryville is the propensity of drivers to fail to follow through on left-hand turns when a light turns red. Everywhere else I've lived - rural Michigan, Chicago, northern Virginia - when you plan to make a left turn at a light, you go out into the intersection and when the traffic is clear you complete your turn (this is if you don't have a left-turn arrow). Sometimes oncoming cars are beating the yellow so you have to wait until they are through before you complete your turn, even if that means following through on a red. I've seen this done in front of police officers multiple times and I've never seen anyone get pulled over for it. From what I understand, you are legally allowed to complete the left turn if you've begun it under green or yellow, even if the light has just turned right. You just cannot ENTER the intersection after the light is red.

Well, I've seen cars just sit there at the light all over Maryville instead of completing the turn. Sometimes it's downright dangerous to sit there, like when cars on US321 South fail to complete the left turn onto Broadway and find themselves stuck in the middle of traffic (there's an upcoming hilltop but by the time the light turns red, it's obvious that no more cars are coming over the hill.) What gives here? Why don't people follow through in their left turns? Very few intersections have red-light cameras - none in Maryville. Is the law different in Tennessee? Or are drivers just excessively timid?

...on Mt. Leconte.

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Unfortunately, it's hotter than hell everywhere else in East Tennessee. The next few days are going to be ugly hot.

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We've been fortunate this summer to have really pleasant weather. A bit of rain here and there, slightly hot days (high 80s), and comfortable nights (low in the high 60s). That pattern will end this next week...unless you plan to head up to the mountains. Looks like that's where I'm heading.

I'm quickly developing a strange fixation with Loudon County. It seems to be the most cultural incongruous place in East Tennessee, even if it is uniformly beautiful. Or maybe it's just typical of the changing East Tennessee of today.

Yesterday, with my sister-in-law in town, we went to Leo's Pulled Pig in Lenoir City for BBQ and then we headed to the Tic Toc Ice Cream Shop in Loudon for dessert. Last week we went to the Sweetwater Valley Cheese Farm in Philadelphia, just south of Loudon. All of these establishments were as good as advertised. Leo's is the best barbeque I've had in East Tennessee, Tic Toc is a fantastic place for ice cream and sundaes, and the cheese farm is the place to get the best cheese you normally get in the grocery stores but for about 40% off.

And yet, there's something strange about Loudon County. With Dixie Lee Junction at the North and Philadelphia at the South, the county seems upside down for some reason. A drive west on 321 from Maryville shows why. After passing the large Bush-Cheney sign on a rotting barn (an apt metaphor for Bush's support around here; once huge and now largely decayed) you go over the massive Fort Loudon Dam. Along the lake are gigantic homes with expensive boats. The highly enjoyable Lenoir City Park, with Calhoun's at the Marina, sits off to the right on the other side. Tellico Dam is off to the left, opening up development to thousands of Northern retirees and "half-backers" escaping the insurance costs of hurricane-ravage Florida. The dislocated poor from Tellico Dam are scattered hither and thither in Loudon, Monroe and Blount County, mostly anonymous, only to reappear when the Daily Times decides to trumpet some domestic violence incident.

Then there's Lenoir City itself. It seems a bit run-down, even with all the new wealth in the area. It also has a surprisingly large Latino population. At Leo's there was a healthy mix of Anglos and Latinos, along with a man wearing a T-shirt saying, "In event of the Rapture: You cannot have my t-shirt." The music at Leo's was classic gospel country and bluegrass, with Hank's "I Saw the Light" and the Carter Family's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." I'm not a huge gospel fan being a non-Christian and all, but when gospel is good, it's REALLY good. And Leo's seemed to play the best on some sort of CD mix. Across the street I saw two open lesbians with conspicuous bright orange shirts and rainbow necklaces, holding hands, right next to some Pentacostal church. Yes, this was the cultural incongruity of the modern small town South at work.

In Loudon I saw the same strange mix. The downtown is very cute, with the Lyric Theater advertising an upcoming show by Pine Mountain Railroad, a great bluegrass band. The Tic Toc was as close to a Midwestern ice cream parlor I've seen (one of my favorite things about small Midwestern towns is the independent, full-fat ice cream parlor.) Unfortunately my 3-year old son had an "accident" so we had a somewhat embarrassing exit, but it was a wonderful place overall. The clintele seemed a melange of small town traditional South and a few aging hippies, one of whom was wearing a John Prine t-shirt.

So maybe Loudon County is not that much different than the rest of East Tennessee today. A peculiar blend of deeply conservative Christianity, open cultural rebellion, increasing Latino population, newcomers and oldtimers rubbing shoulders, wealth and poverty within shadow of one another, and, of course, beautiful scenery.

First there was tape footage of the 1994 Senatorial debate where Fred Thompson clearly marked out a moderately pro-choice position on abortion. Then there was the Christian Coalition survey where he checked off the box that said "pro-choice." Now comes more evidence that Fred Thompson was pro-choice on abortion.

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In 1991, Fred Thompson was hired by the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) to lobby President George H. W. Bush to lift the so-called abortion "gag rule," under which clinics receiving Federal money could not counsel patients on abortion. At the time the gag rule was one of the most controversial issues in the abortion debate, coming off the heels of the Supreme Court's Rust v. Sullivan case that permitted the White House position.

Fred Thompson's spokesman is trying to deny this even happened. But the former Maryland Congressman and fellow co-worker with Thompson who actually recommended him for the NFPRHA gig calls Thompson's denial "absolutely bizarre." Others who worked with NFPRHA said they were looking for a Republican to lobby John Sununu, then Bush Sr.'s Chief of Staff. And Fred Thompson seemed to be just the right guy.

This seems to strengthen the case that Fred Thompson was solidly pro-choice in the 1990s. He likes to say that seeing his child's sonogram 3 years ago has made him more pro-life. It's certainly plausible that somebody would become more pro-life after seeing a sonogram, but this child is far from his first. Sonogram technology goes back a few decades - admittedly not as sophisticated. One could at least listen to a fetus's heartbeat many years ago. Either way, this will certainly complicate Fred Thompson's bid to win over social conservatives. He appears to be as pro-life as Mitt Romney, which is to say he's pandering.

Note to social conservatives: if you want a Southern, proudly evangelical Christian, pro-life conservative Republican, your man is not Fred Thompson. Your man is Mike Huckabee. Hell, Huckabee even has gubornatorial experience. And if Huck isn't your cup of tea, you've got Senator Sam Brownback, no marginal figure in American politics.

So today the whole family decided to take in one of those legendary Blue Plate Specials that WDVX puts on every day at noon in the Knoxville Visitor's Center. Knoxvillian Mic Harrison and the High Score was the act, making it one of the loudest Blue Plates in a long time. Anyway, I have to say that the whole experience was just beyond cool. I mean, this was the official city visitor's center and I saw absolutely no evidence of corporate cheese that one usually sees in a visitor's center. Everything from the merchandise to the cafe to the Blue Plate itself put the city of Knoxville in a very good light.

As many readers here know, I was a WDVX fan before I made the move from Michigan to Maryville. When I accepted my new job in Maryville I immediately discovered WDVX and played it over the internet just about 24/7. The music, along with my wallpaper of Newfound Gap made me anxious as ever to get down here. But it wasn't until now that I was finally able to SEE the radio station that did more to stoke my excitement for East Tennessee than anything else. And it did not disappoint. I had imagined the studio to be in some far-off room, not right there in front of you as you walk in. Very impressive.

So if any of y'all ever have the chance, go check out the Blue Plate Special. It's a FREE concert every day and it features the best damn music on the planet. I bet that those who trace 10 generations back in East Tennessee might even appreciate the Knoxville Visitor's Center.

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I was born in the Garden State and moved to Virginia when I was 12. In other words, I've never voted in New Jersey and I've never used the state as a basis for my own political loyalties. Nevertheless, I believe New Jersey serves as an interesting bridge state between the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, which more than ever appears to be an undifferentiated mass of Democratic Party support. That said, New Jersey was also uniquely affected by 9/11 and has had a close-up perspective on Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton. So it isn't a surprise that Giuliani polls well in NJ, both in the GOP primary and in the general election.

But this latest poll spells trouble for the GOP.

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Giuliani's lead over Hillary has dropped to three points in NJ. But no other candidate comes close to beating any of the Democratic contenders.

What does this mean for national politics? Maybe not much since, in the end, New Jersey is an expensive teaser state in which Republicans always poll better than they perform on Election Day (remember Tom Kean, Jr. vs. Bob Menendez?, or Bush dreaming of picking it up in 2004?). Republicans will not win New Jersey in 2008. But the fact that only Giuliani gives the Dems a run for their money in the Garden State should give pause to the Fred Thompson supporters. Yes, Rudy is uniqely popular in NJ. But he is also very popular among non-GOP partisans elsewhere in the country, and I believe only he can win over non-Republicans in crucial swing states. Fred Thompson, on the other hand, will be read as another George W. Bush: a bubba talking phony completely out of touch with the non-South.

This is, of course, the conundrum the GOP has been in all cycle. They can nominate the one electable candidate who happens to hold positions anathema to the social conservative base of the party. Or they can run to some media-produced Southerner in hopes of soothing the base but losing the general. Read outside the Tennessee media and you will see just how unpopular Fred Thompson is as a Presidential candidate.

In today's Metro Pulse, Jack Neely recounts his appearance at some fraternal organization where a "patriotic" gentleman - perhaps a veteran but perhaps not - uttered a fairly well-known poem about all of our freedom coming from soldiers and not from anywhere else.

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I've noticed lots of bumper stickers around here saying pretty much the same thing: "Freedom isn't free," or "Love your freedom? Thank a soldier." The overall message of these sayings is that we should venerate the soldier above all other forces for giving us the freedoms we enjoy; it is not the reporter or the demonstrator or voter or anybody else that makes us free. It's the soldier who gives up his or her life.

Like Jack Neely, I find this notion to be a bunch of bologna. Yes, soldiers dedicate their lives to their nation and for that we should be grateful. But believe it or not, there is a difference between "America" and "freedom." As Neely rightly points out, none of our wars since 1812 have involved foreign adversaries with the capability to destroy our freedoms. Nearly all of our freedoms have been lost because of governmental paranoia in response to these various threats from abroad or from within. For example, it wasn't Osama Bin Laden who suspended habeas corpus rights. It was the US Congress and President Bush who passed a law to do so.

So who really did "give" us our freedoms? Who really are the most patriotic people, not for defending "America" per se, but for defending and advancing the cause of American freedom? The greatest threat to freedom in this country has historically come not from external forces but from internal majorities unwilling to recognize the rights of minorities; a major exception to this is the black slave majority in the antebellum Deep South. Overall, however, the story of American freedom is one of marginalized persons asserting the same access to basic rights as those enjoyed by others. Few of these heroes, thus, were "popular" in their day because they threatened the majority's privileged claim on freedom, and the authorities that represent that majority.

I'll list a few that I think contributed more to human freedom in this country than anybody else (and some did so in addition to serving as soldiers):

Frederick Douglass
Clarence Darrow
Margaret Sanger
Daniel Ellsberg
Judge William O. Douglas
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Judge Thurgood Marshall
Ella Baker
Judge William Brennan
Sojourner Truth
John Stuart Mill
Martin Luther King, Jr.
W. E. B. DuBois
Eugene Debs
Robert Wagner
Thomas Paine
Susan B. Anthony
Edward Coles
The American voter

Who else would you add?

A few weeks ago George Will wrote a column challenging the foreign policy seriousness of Fred Thompson because of a seemingly absurd quote in which Thompson said, "Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people who are suicidal maniacs and want to kill countless innocent men, women and children around the world."

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I thought then that the quote was so outlandish that Thompson couldn't have said it. Could he be so foolish and shameless a panderer as to equate the 12 million illegal immigrants from Latin America who are here to provide cheap labor, with Islamist jihadist suicide bombers? Does he think that voters are so stupid that they'd hear "illegal immigrant" and "suicidal maniacs" in the same sentence and mindlessly mutter "Uh-huh, yeah, git'em all!"? Yes, the porous US borders make the infiltration of terrorists a bit easier. But 99.9% of the illegal immigrants are here for the cheap labor or to join family members laboring for low wages. You're much more likely to find a US citizen willing to commit acts of mass terror than an illegal immigrant willing to do so. Conflation of the two issues is just sloppy rhetoric, not serious policy.

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None of this is news to those who follow Fred Thompson closely. Andy Axel has done a fine job pointing out what a DC insider Thompson has always been, especially as a lobbyist. It's interesting just how much of his time and income relates to lobbying work. He is a true revolving door politician. But he leased a red pickup truck and gives pithy slogans in a drawl so he's a sure winner!

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BTW, this is the sort of article that appears once a candidate starts to get taken seriously. It's a "hit piece," meaning the purpose is to critique a political candidate. Some hit pieces are more legitimate than others. I recognize that many "hit pieces" against Barack Obama are legitimate - especially the stuff about Tony Reszko. What really matters is how a candidate reacts to it. It'll be interesting to see how Thompson and his cronies (many of them beneficiaries of his lobbying work, I'm sure) will respond to the charge that he served them well. One of the central appeals of Fred Thompson has always been that he's a sort of outsider, in appearance and reality. The truth shows otherwise. Will it matter? For now, Rudy McRomney will benefit most from this.

In a head-to-head matchup between Hillary Clinton and each of the GOP candidates for President, Hillary wins comfortably. That's according to a Newsweek poll just out:

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Closest to beating her is John McCain, down by 5, followed by Rudy Giuliani down by 7. Then there's Fred Thompson, the great dream candidate for the GOP. He loses to Hillary Clinton by 11 points, barely ahead of the pathetic Mitt Romney, who loses by 15.

I have a few thoughts on this:

1) Caution: It's early in the race, and voters still don't know much about Fred Thompson. A lot can change in a year and a half. But this isn't a Mike Dukakis situation, where he stood 19 points up in July 1988 before the oppo men destroyed him (and he self-destructed). Hillary has gone through everything politically. She won't self-destruct because she plays things so agonizingly safe. In other words, she won't beat herself the way Dukakis, Gore and Kerry did. She knows how to win and she plays hardball.

2) Despite the earliness of this poll, Hillary is as close to a known entity as you can get in American politics. Everybody has an opinion on her one way or another. Going negative on Hillary won't change many votes because she's weathered just about all the GOP can throw at her. For Fred Thompson to win against her, he has to offer himself as a compelling alternative, not just "I'm not Hillary." And this can't just be his image. It has be on matters of policy and vision.

3) The CW is that Hillary has an electability problem. She has none of the charisma of her husband. She has very high negatives. But in a polarized country after 8 years of George W. Bush, she might be the known alternative to Bush that people will flock to, despite her naked ambitiousness and calculated cynicism. My candidate is Barack Obama, mostly because I think he offers a compelling vision for the country different from the past. He's the first post-boomer candidate and he really speaks to my generation (20-40). But part of my support for Obama is the fear that Hillary is unelectable. This poll, if true, shows that fear to be unwarranted. I still want Obama, and I think his candidacy will help us downticket (especially in Tennessee) much better than Hillary Clinton.

Fred Thompson would not lose a head-to-head matchup with Hillary Clinton by 11 points. But if GOP voters think he'll beat Hillary by just showing up and speaking Reaganisms in his deep, Southern voice, they will be disappointed. The only surprise to me is that McCain fares better against Hillary than Giuliani. Thompson's poor showing really isn't that suprising.

So Tennessee has just enacted a law that requires vendors of off-premises packaged beer to card EVERYBODY that buys. This includes 90-year olds.
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I understand the desire to be consistent on this and not put vendors on the spot, but this whole drinking age business is just ridiculous. We are the only country in the world with a 21-year old drinking age. We enforce that drinking age more strictly than every other nation in the world. And yet, it is the United States that has more problems with binge drinking and - to some extent - drunk driving than others. Why?

I vigorously opposed the 21-year old drinking age when I was underage myself - as did just about all under 21 folk. But at 33, I still think it's just an idiotic law that does nothing to control the effects of alcohol abuse or drunk driving.

Supporters of the draconian American drinking age cite the dramatic drop in drunk driving deaths after the Federal government passed the 21-year old drinking age law (revealing Ronald Reagan's so-called federalism to be a fraud). A big problem with this argument is that the same time the Feds and the states raised the drinking age, they also jacked up the penalties for driving drunk. As recently as the late 1970s, many states gave drivers nothing more than a reckless driving ticket for drunk driving - and that was only when the driver was OBVIOUSLY intoxicated and out of control. Of course the drunk driving deaths were going to drop when states started actually punishing drunk drivers. There is no evidence that the increased drinking age alone accounts for the drop in drunk driving deaths.

Here's the reality in high schools and on college campuses today: alcohol is abused in large part because it's illegal. I vividly remember turning 21 and being thrilled about it for about a week. I got into all the bars I never tried to before. And then, quickly afterward, a big part of the drinking appeal wore off. It wasn't "cool" anymore because it was perfectly acceptable. In the end, the drinking age works just as effectively as sex abstinence campaigns: not at all.

It's time to encourage responsible drinking to young people instead of threatening their livelihoods even when they drink responsibly. Cracking down on "underage drinkers" may drum up votes from the MADD crowd and from neo-prohibitionists, but it does nothing to stop or control binge drinking or drunk driving. If anything, let's lower the drinking age to 16 and raise the driving age to 18. Learn your limits with alcohol - with adult supervision - before getting behind the wheel of a car. Every other culture around the world does it that way. Why not us?

The latest Newsweek poll has George W. Bush's approval rating at 26 percent: the lowest ever for him and the lowest for anybody since Nixon at the end of his Presidency.

So I have two questions from this point, one local and one national. Locally, what is Bush's approval rating in, say, Blount County right now? If he got 68% of the vote in 2004 compared to 51% nationwide then perhaps his approval rating is 17 points higher here than nationwide: 43 percent. But I wonder if it's even lower than that, given the large recent drop among Republicans. And besides, the 17 point margin shrinks a bit as you get closer to zero...percentages and all that. My guess is a real scientific poll in Blount County would put Bush's approval rating at around 39 percent. What does that mean for the GOP here? He's the leader of the party, and local Republicans wholeheartedly embraced him in 2004. Does that give local Democrats a chance to make gains the way they did in the 2006 Blount County Commission elections? Does Bush's catastrophic approval rating hurt Tennessee's Republican Party in its attempt to retake effective control over the state senate next year (after Mike Williams's exit)? Would it have any effect on Lamar Alexander? It seems Lamar has already backed away from Bush on many issues, coming up fourth among all GOP Senators in voting against Bush this year.

Then there are the national implications. It will be virtually impossible for a Republican - any Republican - to win a general election on the heels of a Republican incumbent with such comically low approval ratings. Again, all the GOP favorites stood by Bush on substantive matters all the way through. Immigration certainly contributes to some of the recent discontent, but the pollster.com analysis links the latest plunge to the Iraq debates in Congress, not the immigration bill debate. The American people want out of Iraq, and now. None of the GOP hopefuls (sans Ron Paul) have broken with Bush on Iraq. They will all likely pay the price for that in 2008, even if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton.

I've only lived here about a month and I've seen more W stickers here than anywhere else I've been. But most people say the number of W stickers is a mere fraction of what there were in 2004. I've also seen zero Corker stickers, but quite a few Ford, Jr. ones. Oh, and in the parking lot of Maryville High School I saw a car with an Obama '08 bumper sticker.

If the GOP brand sinks in East Tennessee, it's lost everywhere.

Who the hell is this nimrod?

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He's actually still fighting against flouride in the water. And his radio station broadcasts high school and college football games? Funny thing is that he's so right wing, he actually agrees with the left in the fight against excessive development.

I got into NASCAR in 1997 when some college friends of mine held their annual Daytona 500 party in our house in Washington, DC. All of us hailed from the North and came to NASCAR fandom far from its traditional Southern origin. Yet there we were, drinking to any Dick Trickle reference or any yellow flag. We never really saw it as redneckish, but we knew the sport was much more popular across the Potomac River and 40 miles to the south. Most of us saved up and went to the various races within an easy drive from DC: Dover, Richmond, Martinsville, even Bristol or Charlotte. It seemed strange that the fastest growing sport had several of its premier tracks within close proximity to DC, yet the sports page barely paid it any attention. Nevertheless, there we were, the great new base of the fastest growing sport in America.

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So today the family went out to El Jimador, a great Mexican restaurant on US321 just east of downtown of Maryville. It was a great restaurant, and we'll surely be going back. When we parked in the parking lot of the somewhat dilapidated Brown's Creek Shopping Center I noticed the truck next to mine had two Confederate battle flag stickers on the bumper with some small writing. After helping the kids out of the car I quietly checked out the bumper stickers. The first said something to the effect of "It's great being right." I'm not sure what the hell that means next to a Confederate flag: the Confederacy lasted all of four years and its central organizing principle and social institution was destroyed along with it. I suppose this feller still believes in the Lost Cause after all these years.

But the second bumper sticker was a bit more explicit. It said, "My ancestors fought the first terrorists." Now I've heard all the neo-confederate arguments out there about "state's rights" and "Southern sovereignty." Surely, criticism of Sherman's March for its brutality is not restricted to Lost Causers. But there was a third sticker on the cab of the truck - W '04 - that spelled out the total irony of the "terrorists" claim.

This driver seems to view George W. Bush as a neo-Confederate too, willing to take on terrorists just as the driver's grandfather supposedly did. But George W. Bush comes from the party that, more than anything else, was responsible for the so-called acts of terrorism in the Civil War. I guess the Southern Strategy worked well on this fool. I wonder what folks like Rudy Giuliani, who regularly quotes Abraham Lincoln, would think of the Southern Republican rank-and-file who view the party's original hero as a terrorist. Note also that while Bush spent most of his life in Texas, his family is thoroughly New England Yankee.

There is another sordid irony in this, which I've discussed elsewhere. In June 1861, Tennessee held a vote to ratify the decision of the legislature to secede from the Union (actually it was to effect a "revolution"). Nearly all Middle and West Tennessee counties voted overwhelmingly in favor of the secession ordinance. But as we all know, it was different in East Tennessee. According to historian Neol Fisher, Blount County gave 80.9 percent of its June 1861 vote in support of the Union and only 19.1 percent to secession. Remember, this vote was merely to ratify Tennessee's decision to secede. And this was after Fort Sumter. Folks who voted for the Union in June 1861 likely stayed Unionist throughout the war. There were some more militantly Unionist counties elsewhere in East Tennessee: Scott County was 96.5% Unionist, Sevier County 96.2% Unionist, Anderson 92.9 Unionist, and Carter County 94% Unionist. The Blount County War Memorial lists about 40 names from the Civil War, 35 of which were "Unionist." There is no doubt that Blount County was one of the banner Unionist counties in Tennessee during the Civil War. Surely the residents of Maryville in the 1860s would chafe at being called "terrorists" by one of their descendants today.

Perhaps the man really did descend from the 19.1 percent who supported secession and aided the Confederate Tennessee government when it controlled the East in the first three years of war. Perhaps the suffering wrought on the pro-Confederate minority after Union General Burnside's liberation of Knoxville stuck in the family craw for generations. Or maybe the man came from another part of the South where support for the Confederacy was more uniform among the white population. Who knows?

But the stridency of the message was quite disturbing. I really don't care if people fly the Confederate flag, even though I think it's racist. Most people who fly it are just ignorant about what the Confederacy was created to do (read Charles B. Dew's "Apostles of Disunion" if you want to read the Confederates' voices in their words in 1861; hint: it wasn't "state's rights"). Or they just view it as some vague banner of "Southern pride" and insist that it carries no political overtones. Some more earnest rebel flag wavers believe they can reclaim the flag from the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists; the "Heritage not Hate" movement has struggled, largely unsuccessfully, to decouple the rebel flag from vehement racists. And then there are those who just like the way the flag looks; I can respect this to a point because I absolutely love the Scottish flag that served as the model for the Confederate Battle Flag. Aesthetically speaking, the rebel battle flag is pretty neat looking. And then there are those, both in the South and elsewhere, who simply use the flag to stand for some all-purpose "rebellion." Apparently that was the original basis of the Maryville High School "Rebels" name - not to praise the Confederacy.

But the wording on the truck in question makes clear that the driver views the flag in highly political terms. The Unionists - both within Blount County and across the North - were "terrorists." So here's my question: When are descendants of East Tennessee Unionists - aka as the majority of people here - going to take some pride in their own families' contributions to saving the United States between 1861 and 1865? Why must the sons of Southern Unionists still feel ashamed, or become belated Confederates themeselves?

In 2004 Republicans won a majority in the Tennessee Senate for the first time since 1869. They couldn't agree on a Majority Leader so the Dems maintained effective controlled under John Wilder. In 2006 the margin stayed the same but Rosalind Kurita helped the Republicans elect Ron Ramsey as Lt. Governor, giving the GOP control over the State Senate for the first time. The GOP quickly set up committee chairmanships and considered how they'd realign legislative priorities.

But just a couple months in, one of their own jumped ship and became an Independent. With Mike Williams of Maynardsville now a Democratic-leaning Independent, the Senate is back to 16-16-1, with Dems in legislative command. Never was this more apparent than today's vote to pass the 42 cent cigarette tax. The measure passed by a 17-16 margin, with Williams voting with all the Dems, and all the Republicans voting against.

AC Kleinheider made the point a week ago (I can't find the link) that Kurita's move was actually a good one for Dems because it lets us flush out DINOs like Wilder and start over with bona fide Democrats. Republicans still control committee chairmanships but they don't have the votes to pass anything. The cigarette tax was the first major party-line vote and it proved ACK right. Kurita even ADDED 2 more cents to the measure. The Tennessee Senate has effectively passed back into Democratic hands with this vote.

I drove the entire length of Kingston Pike today, from UT to Dixie Lee Junction. It is, indeed, the longest strip mall I've ever seen. But I was pleasantly surprised at how many independent businesses there were along the way. It wasn't all big box hell as most suburban strips tend to be. It also was much greener than suburban strips of this ilk usually are. Maybe my years in dreadfully flat Chicagoland have soured me on the possibilities of suburban beautification but I was quite surprised to see such a heavily commercialized strip with actual live trees astride it.

Oh, and the Dixie Lee Baptist Church may just be the most Southern-named place on Earth. Of course the name has to do with the old crossroads of Lee Highway and Dixie Highway and not to any particulary "Southernness" but still, the name is pretty neat in its own way.

I also saw Lenoir City for the first time. What gives the right of small villages like Lenoir City and Tracy City the right to use the word "City" in their names?

Well, now that I've spent just about a week here in Maryville I can offer my first-glimpse perspective on things I like and dislike about the area. I'll start with the dislikes. Fortunately, none of them have been "surprises." In fact, all of them have been thoroughly discussed right here on Knoxviews many times. They are:

1) Politics. The place is just too Republican. We all know that and folks here on Knoxviews and elsewhere are trying to change that, bit by bit. But there are some important caveats that I've discovered. First, liberals and Democrats aren't scared to speak up here. There's a dude with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on his Camaro just four houses down. And two blocks away, next to a car with a W sticker on it (the only one I've seen here this week except for one in front of Home Depot in Alcoa) is a guy with a huge Peace on Earth bumper sticker. Based on anecdotal evidence, the place is no more Republican than south central Michigan where I used to live. Oh, and Knoxviews is probably the highest profile East Tennessee political blog, and it ain't exactly reactionary:)

2) Religion. There are an unbelievable number of churches down here, most of them deeply conservative denominations (Baptist, Church of Christ, Pentecostal). But again, there's a caveat. Some of the biggest churches here are theologically moderate or liberal, including the Methodist, Presbyterian and even First Baptist, which is a Cooperative Baptist Church (Jimmy Carter's creation) that broke away from the SBC in the 1990s. People speak often about church here, but I've found their motives to be much less conservative than I had originally imagined.

3) Maryville Rebels. The school system is a point of pride for folks here, and justifiably so. That Maryville High School can excel both academically and athletically is something that everybody should celebrate. Unfortunately, the team is stuck with a name that divides the community in half. I've found many people here hate the name precisely because it is so divisive; here again I thought support for the team name would be more widespread but it seems mostly to get support from a minority. Everybody from the school board to the football coach to the school administration despises all the Confederate flag crap surrounding the school. Why don't they just change the name? It'll cause a big stir but so what? In two or three years it will all be history.

Likes:
1) The people: I've never encountered more friendly, hospitable, helpful, empathetic people in my entire life than the people here in Maryville. This goes for people from all walks of life, from neighbors to store workers, to teachers to just general strangers.

2) The scenery: Stunningly beautiful. I drove the Cherohala Skyway today and was in heaven the whole time. The Smokies are a treasure, of course, but the surrounding forests are just as good and a quarter as crowded.

3) Schools: Flip-side to the "Rebels" issue, Maryville city schools seem to be as good as advertised. The pedagogy at Fort Craig Elementary is the most progressive I've ever seen in any part of the country. That it's free is just amazing.

4) Maryville College: The college is what drew me here in the first place, of course, and I've found that it garners a lot of respect in the community. There seems to be very little town-gown trouble. Quite the opposite, it seems.

5) Music: This morning I got into my car and turned on my radio and heard John Prine, Gillian Welch, Neko Case and Junior Brown in succession. Yes, I'm already a WDVX junkie. The live music scene is just as impressive, and in Maryville it's getting better with the Shed, Brackin's, the future Civic Arts Center, and the Palace.

6) The vibe: It's hard to nail this intangible thing but I just get a very good feeling being here. The things I dislike have already faded into the background and the things I like are front and center all the time. If anything, this area is too good and will become inundated by people moving in from Florida, the Midwest and the Northeast. It reminds me of northern Virginia in the mid-1980s in a way, just before the population exploded. I might be just a bit too up on the place what with all the problems we discuss here on a daily basis. But at the end of the day, Maryville and East Tennessee in general is one of the nicest places you can live.

While I'm thrilled that fundamentalist Christian fanatics now have a "museum" of their own - the new Creation Museum in northern Kentucky near Cincinnati - I was furious to discover that firearms are not allowed on the premises. Surely no Bible-believing Christian would harm another human with a gun, right? And surely an armed fundamentalist citizenry would be able to prevent some poor deluded soul from trying to bring in the rapture prematurely, right? It's so disappointing that Christian fundamentalists have bought into gun-grabbing liberalism lock, stock and barrel.

Link...

I've finally made it to Maryville! My first observation now that I'm an East Tennessee resident is that this region worships a God other than that of the Bible. That God is called "T". He seems to love the color orange and graven images of his likeness appear on all sorts of mobile and immobile property throughout Blount and Knox County. In order to demonstrate my own reverence for "T", I even put semblance of "T's" likeness on the back of my new car. Sometimes "T" appears surrounded by other sacred letters, including "Vols" or "enessee." But usually that God of gods - the letter "T" - appears solo.