Thu
Jan 29 2009
12:44 pm
By: R. Neal
Tennessee politics has become a TNGOP free-fire zone, with Hobbs and Company firing at will at any moving target with impunity. There's no return fire, the Democratic Party appears to have gone MIA or deserted, and our distress signals have vanished into the ether unanswered.
But maybe we are jumping the gun, so to speak.
For all we know, newly elected TNDP chair Chip Forrester is hunkered down in the bunker with the top political generals and money men from around the state, laying out the battle plan, drawing up the maps and supply lines, and putting together an arsenal of ideas that will blow us away with its brilliance and audacity when it's unleashed.
Hey, it could happen!
Anxiously awaiting the bombshell announcement...
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Discussing:
- A message to our Republican family members and friends (1 reply)
- Don't get scammed. Don't respond to emails, texts, phone calls. (4 replies)
- Trump versus Harris has echoes Roy Cohn versus John Henry Faulk (1 reply)
- Grief and anger mix as Tennessee plastic plant survivors say permission to leave came too late (5 replies)
- Medicare [drug plan] changes for 2025 (2 replies)
- “There are places that are designated floodplains that never flood” (4 replies)
- 50+ people stranded on top of Unicoi County Hospital, Erwin, TN (7 replies)
- Knox Area survey Re Climate Pollution Reduction (1 reply)
- Burchett: have gun will campaign (1 reply)
- Dozens of threats made against Knox County Schools. Students afraid. (7 replies)
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an energy hog (6 replies)
- It's the guns, stupid. (1 reply)
TN Progressive
- Friday Toons (RoaneViews)
- Toons...It's Friday, isn't it? (Don't tell me if I messed this one up as well...) (RoaneViews)
- Friday Toons Saturday (RoaneViews)
- Kamala! (RoaneViews)
- Alcoa, Hall Rd. Corridor Study meeting, July 30, 2024 (BlountViews)
- My choices in the August election (Left Wing Cracker)
- July 4, 2024 - aka The Twilight Zone (Joe Powell)
- Chef steals food to serve at restaurant? (BlountViews)
- Blount County, TDOT make road deal for gun mfg ignoring town of Louisville,TN, (BlountViews)
- It's voting time again. Let's get out the vote. (BlountViews)
- Winter at the Big Rocks (Whitescreek Journal)
- Secrets from My Radio Days (Joe Powell)
TN Politics
- State penalized private prison operator $29.5M since 2022 for contract shortfalls (TN Lookout)
- Vanderbilt grad students look for increased pay, better benefits with United Auto Workers (TN Lookout)
- Foreign policy: Where do Harris and Trump stand? (TN Lookout)
- U.S. Supreme Court considers Biden administration regulation of ‘ghost guns’ (TN Lookout)
- John Cole’s Tennessee: Dog whistling. (TN Lookout)
- Registry members say Congresswoman Harshbarger’s treasurer should be subpoenaed (TN Lookout)
Knox TN Today
- ‘Straightening our crowns’ (Knox TN Today)
- Gators in the way of Vols’ recovery (Knox TN Today)
- Cedar Lake re-set (Knox TN Today)
- Fulton Bellows building brings $13.5 million (Knox TN Today)
- KPD honors 6 civilians as top 2024 employees (Knox TN Today)
- ‘The hands and feet’: FCPC sends trucks to Greeneville (Knox TN Today)
- Knoxville Charter: Vote on future council representation (Knox TN Today)
- Smoky Mountain Hiking Club celebrates 100 years (Knox TN Today)
- Knoxville Jazz Orchestra celebrates 25 years (Knox TN Today)
- Massey on roads + who’s on your ballot? (Knox TN Today)
- Stargazing at Marble Springs on Saturday (Knox TN Today)
- Marble City Opera presents ‘driving while black’ (Knox TN Today)
Local TV News
- Knoxville Evacuation: Half-mile area around Lonsdale told to evacuate as bomb squad responds to possible explosive device on Western Ave. (WBIR)
- Officials draft plan to begin debris removal across Cocke County (WATE)
- Woman turns her Newport coffee shop into volunteer coordination center for flood relief (WATE)
- Loudon County School Board to join 'mass action' lawsuit over insulin prices (WATE)
- Dented cans, no date marks found at Hardin Valley restaurant during inspection (WATE)
- A 'staple' of Mexican culture: Behind the scenes at a Knoxville tortilla factory (WATE)
- Knoxville man accused of committing two downtown killings on the same morning to stand trial (WBIR)
- Soccer Talk: One Knox books playoff place with last-gasp goal against Chattanooga (WATE)
- TDOT reopens section of I-26 for local traffic; commercial vehicles and thru-traffic still restricted (WBIR)
- Hartford businesses working to rebuild after devastating flooding from Hurricane Helene (WBIR)
- Reba's new NBC sitcom 'Happy's Place' will be set in Knoxville (WBIR)
- 'She was a Godly woman' | Family remembers flood victim after Hurricane Helene brought historic flooding in Unicoi Co. (WBIR)
News Sentinel
State News
- Three prep football games to watch in the Chattanooga area - Chattanooga Times Free Press (Times Free Press)
- ‘Flush’ has been the word of the week for Vols - Chattanooga Times Free Press (Times Free Press)
- Washington state woman calls 911 after being hounded by up to 100 raccoons - Chattanooga Times Free Press (Times Free Press)
- Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly and wife Ginny are divorcing - Chattanooga Times Free Press (Times Free Press)
Wire Reports
- Tesla’s soon-to-be-unveiled robo-taxi may already be behind its Chinese competition - Fortune (Business)
- Ethel Kennedy, Passionate Supporter of the Family Legacy, Dies at 96 - The New York Times (US News)
- Milton knocks out power to millions and spawns tornadoes across Florida. At least 5 dead - The Associated Press (US News)
- Solar storm expected to bring northern lights: How, where to see aurora this week - Axios (US News)
- Wall Street ends slightly lower after higher than expected inflation, unemployment - Reuters (Business)
- TD Bank Pleads Guilty and Pays $3 Billion to Settle Money-Laundering Case - The New York Times (Business)
- Biden tells Trump 'get a life' over hurricane misinformation - ABC News (US News)
- Ratan Tata is cremated with full state honours in Mumbai - BBC.com (Business)
- How did FEMA spend $9 billion so quickly? Back-to-back disasters - CNN (US News)
- Federal appeals court is skeptical of DACA but could narrow the ruling striking it down - CNN (US News)
- Boeing Would Be Biggest-Ever US ‘Fallen Angel’ If Cut to Junk - Yahoo Finance (Business)
- Trump proposes new tax break on car loan interest - CNBC (US News)
- The Fed is finally cutting rates, but banks aren't in the clear just yet - CNBC (Business)
- Palantir Stock Has Gained 16% Since Being Added to the S&P 500. This One Did Better. - Barron's (Business)
- Furious Trump Calls for CBS to Be Shut Down Over Harris Interview - The Daily Beast (US News)
Local Media
Lost Medicaid Funding
To date, the failure to expand Medicaid/TennCare has cost the State of Tennessee ? in lost federal funding. (Source)
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It could happen!
It could happen!
I've been preaching this as
I've been preaching this as well.
**sigh**
(link...)
Why do we act...
like the campaign is only between Labor Day and Election day. The TNGOP recognizes that the campaign is FOREVER. We should come to recognize this too.
When we stop, we create a vacuum that the GOP can exploit. I just don't get why they don't get it.
Communication goes a long way
Yesterday, we learned our President met "in the tank" with the Joint-Chiefs. Who knows what they said or what they decided. What we know is our President is presidenting and taking the threats we face seriously.
What do we know the TNDP leadership is doing, achieving or planning? We don't.
If we can know what our President is doing in the most secure location on planet earth, then TN Dems deserve to be able to follow the story of our party's progress. Right now, there is no story of progress. There is only silence. This party cannot afford to continue to operate in a 1995 mode of communicating in 2009.
Again, I don't think it's
Again, I don't think it's always necessary to respond to everything. Maybe it is when you're in a campaign, but if you're not, you might just allow yourself to be dragged down in the mud.
Hobbs and some others might be a little over-confident right now, although the disaster in the House should have been a warning that nothing's certain.
Playing smart doesn't always mean playing along, or playing a game where you allow the opposition to write the rules, or even playing the same game.
The more the TNGOP keeps talking, the more it exposes itself. If your opponent's digging a hole for himself....
If your opponent's digging a
They may be digging holes, but we keep falling into them.
____________________________
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!
They may be digging holes,
Why is that?
Wish I knew. Stupidity?
Wish I knew. Stupidity? Short-sightedness? Incompetence? Corruption? Laziness? Lack of imagination? Inertia? Arrogance? Ineptitude? Consolidating a legacy of accumulating failures going back about a decade? Insanity (doing the same things and expecting different results)? Self-fulfilling prophecy (state leadership constantly opining on the record that "Tennessee is a Republican state")?
____________________________
Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!
That narrows it down. Here's
That narrows it down.
Here's my view.
If you look at how the Republican party changed, it seems to me that some leaders, or activists, inside and outside of the party, saw an opportunity when a group of the population who became fed-up with what they perceived as a cultural laxness, and that feeling was manipulated and channeled into a political movement, and that group of the population become a significant group of voters, with the aim of removing Democrats from power.
That's probably over-simplistic, but in a nutshell that's how it changed. William Bennett, and others, had been preaching for a while before the Republican Revolutionaries attempted to legislate it.
What the Democrats need to figure out is how to take the anger that's out there now concerning the financial bailout and the lack of regulation in the markets, mainly due to a lack of enforcement, and turn that into a political movement.
It's much easier than it sounds, but it can be done.
The county parties will soon
The county parties will soon have their reorganization conventions and then we can see what Forrester has to work with across the state. If we keep electing the same folks to run the party in the counties we will have the same results again and again. It seems we just keep recycling them to different positions. Look around at the Democratic party, we have county chairs, that are on the state executive committee and so on, maybe all the way to the DNC. It seems they are so in charge they have multiple positions. Why? Are they over dedicated? Maybe no else is interested? Are they control freaks? For what ever reason to me it is like we are not running at full staff just a few people doing everything. Would it not be better to have one person in one position and open the other position to someone else. There would at least be more input and more people involved.
It is a shame we dont know what is going on in our party, the TNDP site has not changed in months except to let us know Obama and Forrester were elected. It could use a serious makeover too. Maybe R. Neal could help with that, Knoxviews seems fairly well managed and interesting.
The only ones pushing back are the blogs
You never hear pushback from anybody in the TN Democratic Party. The only place you hear assertive and proud support for the party's values is in the blogosphere.
But remember that it was that way nationally until 2003 as well, when Howard Dean start channeling the blogosphere's anger into the mainstream. At first he was ridiculed and marginalized. But then others took up the mantle and the Democrats soared back into power.
It really does start with us. And it starts with getting good elected officials at all to make the case.