Just sayin'. We saw our first, I believe it was, Tuesday. Get your feeders and your eyeballs ready.

Jason Emert is really pulling out the negative stops in his bid to unseat our successful and popular incumbent, Gloria Johnson. We received several of his attack mailings last week and there were two more in the mail today. One of them is totally negative and only tries to whip up enough misdirected hate to vote against Rep. Johnson. The other is equally negative on one side, but presents Mr. Emert on the other, as he is quoted to state, "Obamacare will not come to Tennessee on my watch. ..." (It also states that Emert is "Fighting Medicaid Expansion...")

If I may: OK, then.

This level of negative campaigning should be enough to disqualify anyone, but could he possibly be so misinformed himself as to think that Obamacare is not already our law? Or is Emert just banking on his voters being as ignorant as he claims to be?

If voters think Obamacare is not yet the law here, they must not have a problem with living under it. Who's going to break it to them that Emert takes them for fools?

I was surprised and delighted to see this posted on ThinkProgress tonight about our city. Frankly, I can't read fast enough to get very far tonight, but please check it out and provide comments. Here are some teasers:

It wasn’t just that that the Knoxville city government’s push to green the city was impressive, though it was: over the past seven years, Knoxville has reduced the city government carbon footprint by 17 percent, multiplied its solar capacity by 133 times, saved millions per year through an energy efficiency push, and (by one metric) become the fastest-growing metro area for green jobs in the country. And they’re just getting started, with plans to tackle big remaining sources of emissions like urban sprawl and agriculture.

But beyond the concrete policy successes, there’s a deeper, human story about how a town where climate change, formerly a four-letter phrase in this right-leaning region, grew into a watchword.

There are broader lessons, too. Knoxville’s experience shows how even staunchly conservative coal country can be sold on commonsense efforts to save the climate. The rapid change, spearheaded almost exclusively by a tiny group of people, is a testament to the ways in which government, rescued from the clutches of enshackling ideologists, can serve the common good. It’s also, weirdly enough, proof of the far-reaching benefits of the 2009 stimulus package and the complex ways in which even minor-seeming federal action on climate change can make a big difference locally.

Major kudos to Mayor Rogero, Dr. Bill Lyons and their team, and even the mayor's predecessor.

We're getting infested with these little insects they way ladybugs usually do. You know the ones. I started calling them turtle bugs a few years ago because their wings look like the shallow shell of a snapping turtle. What's funny is that I've since noticed that if they get upside down, they can't seem to right themselves even though they can fly and crawl perfectly well otherwise. They're worse than ever now in their numbers.

I don't think I need to take pictures. I bet Rikki knows.

Driving down John Sevier Highway about a week ago I saw a large sign in front of gas station/mini-mart that said "REGISTER TO VOTE FOR THE REAL AMERICAN." Did I really see that? Anyone else?

I meant to take a photo, but I had passed it and my phone camera is poor, but I can't stop thinking about it.

Pot at the end of the rainbow...

When a reporter asked [Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom] Smith [Repugnicant] to clarify what kind of situation was similar to becoming pregnant from rape, the candidate responded, "Having a baby out of wedlock."

He added, "Put yourself in a father's position. Yes, it is similar."

(link...)

Speaking of coffee downtown, which can still be hard to come by early in the morning, here's a noninclusive list. YMMV.

Cafe 4. Very good coffee (maybe excellent--not tasted in a while), outstanding latte.

Tomato Head. A fresh cup/pot can be pretty darned excellent. Not always, though.

Trios. Can have very good coffee, but haven't been there in a long time. I've decided I don't like the format of being expected to tip at a walk-up and prior to getting any service at all. And the last few times I went the place was trashed of dirty tables, etc. Airplane wine bottles are a turn-off too.

Coffee and Chocolate. Never had it except at night. Can be good, but they store it in those pump canisters, which is just wrong for a premium cup (some Starbucks do that too, see below) and I've had good and bad.

The Coop at Knox Visitor Center (and WDVX). Usually very good.

SBUX @ Hilton. I approve, though the kiosks aren't usually as good as their stores where the brew is less likely to be stored in those pump things (except the Bearden one does that with decaf).

Java and Remedy in Old City. Both places very good to excellent, similar to Cafe 4. I prefer lattes at Cafe 4 and Remedy to plain coffee. Just my opinion.

Farmers Market. Jeff Scheafnocker sells superb coffee he roasts himself and this is also sold at Just Ripe. This is is what we've been buying for home. He also sells by the cup from his blue hut.

French Market. Very good French/Italian coffee, which is a little different from premium coffee here.

The Cedar Waxwings are here! The Cedar Waxwings are here! Actually yesterday, but the weather scared them off.

This was complete news to me. So there's no magic pill for crops to be weed free and Clarence Thomas's favorite non-charity cannot (yet) own the Earth. Does anyone else see this as probably being really good news for the world?

45 degrees F.

There has only been one day below 100 so far this month, and it's expected to top the century mark through at least next Friday.

"I think if we have a lot of people praying, it moves the heart of God," [Oklahoma Republican] Gov. Mary Fallin says.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with burning unlimited amounts of fossil fuels.

The ones here are the best I've seen. Here's a sample that may hold a special place in the hearts of long time KV'ers:

Did anyone else get a local Tea Party flyer on top of their Sunday News Sentinel? It may have been our delivery person who added it, or maybe someone else delivered it after the paper was placed in our box. But if it came separately, care was taken to integrate it into the stack. The circulation desk at the KNS is supposed to get back with us on whether it originated with them. Seems like they'd be committed to keeping political organizations' separate propaganda from being distributed with the news.

Went to Lowes in SoKno today. Checking to see if there was anything new on the lighting aisle, we found they are clearing out the non-dimmable versions of Sylvania LED bulbs. There are several types included. I didn't check the exact discounts, but they're a good 50% off or so--maybe more. We bought a whole lot of regular light bulb replacements--the ones that look like little snow cones. 8 watts and 350 lumens. (Here is the new dimmable version.) We've installed just one yet, for test purposes, and it looks real nice. (Read more after the jump...)

UPDATE: Not so good news, everyone! I thought: wouldn't it be nice to have such bright spots in the garage? Since there were other items we were unable to buy yesterday, I decided to trek to the Cedar Bluff store today to do a doubl-icious dosage of Lo Depot shopping! I could check WeKno's offerings and hopefully buy two more spots. Well, this morning, after just a couple hours use, one of the three PAR30 bulbs had failed! Oh well, if I could find some more, I could replace the one (& get a refund for the dud) and put any extras in the garage where they could be mixed with an odd number of other types. The Cedar Bluff store had closeouts, but I didn't see any really good deals. They have a few other types of leftovers from the same series, but not the two kinds I liked, and their prices are more like $40 marked down from $60. Not worth bothering with, IMO.

Since I probably won't be able to find a replacement for the dud, I may have to pull the two remaining spots, since we no longer have a matched set of three. These will probably go in the garage and we'll go back to incandescent floods until the next great deal arises.

LED bulbs are probably where CFLs were 5-8 years ago. Idiosyncratic and not so reliable. Oh, well. They're coming around.

While today's top headline of the KNS trumpeted up to 250 of new, low wage, low skill jobs for the area, how many high skill, high wage jobs (relatively to the different economies) did most similar sized cities in China add today (and without fanfare)?

Did anyone happen to notice that the KNS recently published (Sunday before last, I think) a top list of local private employers of software engineers which cumulatively totaled about 50 workers? (Presumably the public sector in these parts (TVA, UT, and Oak Ridge contract) do MUCH better--in this politically deep red region that hates government and gov't jobs.)

What more proof is there that we're on a rapid race to the bottom, and that we're winning? (And IMO every time somebody shops at Sprawl-Mart, America's decline is accelerated.)

There needs to be a real tea party-like (but serious) movement in this country based on the proposal put forth by Andy Grove, which was published on Bloomberg. Seriously, I think his suggestion is a good first start, no matter how politically DOA it may be. The Democratic Party should embrace it as a major theme, and not be afraid to defend its consequences.

Barred owl(s) seen in various places around our house lately.

h/t

This may be a modern day John Bean, but it's pretty darn funny. Then again, it's hard to tell with today's Republicans. Might just be a new centrist in the Palin party.

"How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough?" he continued, his voice breaking.

At 50 years. Which car do you think would most embody today's safety standards if Glenn Beck or Racist Limbaugh had been in charge? And wouldn't you know, it seems like most commenters think it's a hoax. No wonder so few recognize anthropogenic global warming.

Just saw Frontline. Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, et. al., are the worst people in the world to have tending our economy. How did we let Obama keep these criminals? Even if they've seen the error of their ways, the president should demand their resignations as a show of good faith with the American people who elected him to clean up our financial mess. Too big to fail, my ass. The guys who made up that cheap self-defense should be in prison for life for the failures they helped allow to happen. MoveOn should turn its sights that way.

Brooksley Born would make a good Treasury Secretary.