A little worried about their opening, but in the end they pulled it out and rocked the Super Bowl. (The Mrs. noted, though, that you didn't actually see Roger Daltrey do the scream.)

UT Issues Committee presents Gen. Wesley Clark speaking on "United States Military, Military Politics, War and the Media"

Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Cox Auditorium (opposite the University Center)
7:30 pm
FREE admission

A little Midway snark

"For dessert, we have several possibilities," said Shush. "Here's something jee-est a little bit different: A giant Swiss-cheese-and-sorghum-covered pretzel, inspired by the MPC's and KCDC's never-ending, labyrinthine attempts to justify forcing an industrial park on the karst-ridden terrain of the community of Midway. Just a little bite of this snack will fill you up, and you'll get tired of it fast, but once you pick it up, you can't put it down."

A small correction - it's not KCDC, but rather The Development Corporation of Knox County (TDC) who is planning the industrial park. All the acronyms tend to run together after a while.

I wonder how much of this industrial park push is because they don't know how to acknowledge that they made a multi-million dollar mistake?

What are the 3 things that need to get done once we have a conservative majority, Sarah Palin?

Greg Jones wins at the internet today. Stefan Sirucek at Huffpost had the scoop, but "Alaskan palm pilot"? Winner.

Sarah Palin Hijacks The Tea Party Movement:

But the media now have their definition of what it means to be Tea Party. This convention gave them simplistic nativism, birtherism, media bashing, homophobia, and a heavy dose of neoconservative foreign policy.

That is the image of tea partydom that Judson Phillips poured out to the eager media this weekend and is now percolating through the many channels of mass and new media.

By Monday afternoon, it will begin to harden and the tea party movement will be Sarah Palin’s movement.

Kleinheider eulogizes the Tea Party movement, which Judson Phillips "held down" while "Sarah Palin drove a stake right through its heart" on live TV.

The more rational part of me didn't want to believe that the 2008 financial crisis was engineered by the Illuminati and its puppet Bush regime as a parting gift to the incoming socialist apparatchiks. Yet nagging suspicions remained, particularly with regard to the impeccable timing and the resulting political fallout that elevated even lesser, poorly crafted and expendable marionettes of mass distraction like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to the national stage, imparting folk hero status no less.

I read books (House of Cards, a look at the personalities and the gamesmanship, and Too Big to Fail, a relatively sterile AP stylebook chronicle of events with some looks behind the scenes based on contemporaneous emails and notes), in hopes of understanding what happened. These books sort of answer what happened, but, for me at least, didn't pin down the "how" or "why."

A more cynical person might long ago have concluded that the disaster was engineered as one last frat boy raid on the Treasury liquor cabinet before the cops came to shut down the party. So that would be the "why." But the question remains: How? Who pushed what little red button to activate what weapon of mass financial destruction as they ran out the back door?

This article may be the final piece of the puzzle, or at least provide clues between the lines.

Meanwhile, the Masters of the Universe have retreated to the caves (which for some are corner offices at the Treasury and the Federal Reserve), waiting for the political carpet bombing response that never came. The marionettes, strings once connecting them to the Invisible Hand severed, continue twitching and flailing about on stage with reflexive muscle memory. And disaster victims gather in places like Nashville to idolize the marionettes and deify the "free market" grifters who wiped out their 401Ks.

OK, then.

</tinfoilhat>

Apartheid Education

The study's key findings suggest that charter schools, particularly those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation from public schools; requirements for providing essential equity data to the federal government go unmet across the nation; and magnet schools are overlooked, in spite of showing greater levels of integration and academic achievement than charters.

The study offers several recommendations for restoring equity provisions and integration in charter schools, including... federal funding opportunities for magnet schools, which have a documented legacy of reducing racial isolation and improving student outcomes; and incorporating some features of magnet schools into charter schools.

Also, "Across the country, race and education levels have emerged as central fault lines in the division of House seats between Republicans and Democrats"

The pattern vividly captures the class inversion that has remade the two parties' electoral coalitions over the past several decades. Since the days of Andrew Jackson, Democrats have viewed themselves as tribunes of the working class, yet they now principally rely on a bifurcated coalition of minorities and well-educated whites. And although Republicans often view themselves as the party of business, their most reliable supporters now tend to be working-class whites with conservative views on social, foreign-policy, and spending issues.

Forwarded from:
Edwin Bender
Executive Director
National Institute on Money in State Politics

In the U.S. Supreme Court's recent "Citizens United" ruling, justices overwhelmingly endorsed the value of transparency in political spending, writing, "The First Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages."

While we agree wholeheartedly, where disclosure is concerned, we at the
National Institute on Money in State Politics have found that the devil is in the details.

In 2007, Institute staff conducted a review of disclosure requirements for
independent expenditures in all 50 states, and found:

Official Tea Party spokesman commenting on how the convention is a lesson to the rest of the world on "peaceful political dissent."

First there were the environmental justice concerns regarding the landfill site in Alabama.

Then the landfill operator filed for bankruptcy, claiming the Knoxville-based contractor handling the TVA disposal operation had been withholding TVA payments. The contractor claims it is owed money from the landfill which it withheld from the TVA payments.

Then residents of Perry County AL, where the landfill is located, announced they are filing a class action lawsuit against the landfill operator, claiming "foul odors that have been making life miserable."

Now, the industrial waste water treatment company that has been processing toxic leachate (runoff) from the landfill before it is released into local waterways has announced they will no longer accept waste water from the landfill. TVA says this is not their problem and the company they contracted to dispose of the coal ash will have to deal with it.

TVA's toxic waste shell game is busted.

Several users have reported getting a bogus 'you have a private message' alert. This has been fixed and it should be working correctly now.

NASHVILLE -- Hundreds of families, friends and well-wishers turned out Friday for departure ceremonies at Camp Shelby, Miss., for over 3,000 soldiers of the National Guard’s 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment.

The regiment is bound for Iraq, marking its second deployment to that country, the first coming in 2004. Governor Phil Bredesen and his wife, Andrea Conte, were at the military post Friday to see off the Tennesseans, just as they did five years ago. The governor told the assembled soldiers, “Nothing humbles me more than to serve as your Commander in Chief.”

Read the article here.

Tennessean:

After some hesitation, convention founder Judson Phillips finally agreed to allow the Tennessee media brief access to Tea Party grounds.

A dozen or so statewide reporters and camera crews genuflected and were ushered into the main convention lobby around noon.

There we joined the credentialed media — who now number 200, we’re told — including at least one freelancer for the Huffington Post and two pre-teen girls who had some questions for their blogs.

Genuflected. Heh.

(By way of ACK)

Join us for First Friday down in the Old City at our office on Jackson Ave. We'll have veggie sushi from Nama and wine until 9PM. Our location is right around the corner form the Emporium Galleries and we hope to see you after (or maybe just before) you take in some art and jazz!

Includes the Ochs study; East County Sector Plan is item 14 on the agenda.

http://agenda.knoxmpc.org/

Larry Van Guilder

The State of Tennessee announced today that a $35 million expansion at Korean owned parts supplier SL Tennessee in Clinton will bring 300 new jobs to Anderson County. The company landed a contract with VW to provide parts for their new Chattanooga factory.

More info: TN Economic and Community Development

Today's scheduled sessions include How to Involve the Youth in the Conservative Movement, Defeating Liberalism via the Primary Process, US Govt. Bankruptcy, and Emergency Preparedness.

The last day of the convention opens tomorrow with the morning address, "Correlations between the current Administration and Marxist Dictators of Latin America," and closes with the $100K stylings of Sarah Palin.

And unlike yesterday's joke, I'm not making any of this up.

For an ongoing roundup of remarks, video, etc. from the ground (most national and local media has been shut out), see Pith in the Wind and Kleinheider.

The City of Knoxville is requesting bids from contractors to install a 100Kw 500 panel solar PV system on top of the Convention Center.

The City has allocated $250,000 from its $2 million American Reinvestment Recovery Act Energy Efficiency & Conservation Block Grant. The plan is for the installer to finance the rest of the est. $1 million project by leveraging related energy tax credits and revenues from the TVA Power Generation Partners program.

Press release after the jump...

This ivory gull, an Arctic species, found its way to West Point Dam in southwestern Georgia last week. Hundreds of birders flocked to the dam to add the bird to their life lists, including David Hollie, who took this photo.

Sadly, the bird was injured, apparently attacked by a bald eagle, and died. More at my blog.

I'll be on DTV tonight as a guest (I no longer host the program}. We'll be talking about the Supreme Court decision I satirized on these very pages/electrons.

DTV, 8pm, Comcast access, channel 12.

--Mark Harmon