"‘Misleading’: EPA lambasts TVA analysis for Kingston methane project

...EPA says solar would be ‘lower cost’, safer

TVA says that building a gas plant would be cheaper. EPA rejects this claim, which TVA made without disclosing its math, reminding the federal utility of its legal requirement to use “least-cost planning.”

“To meet TVA’s identified mandate, TVA should consider lower cost, lower risk, and more responsible alternatives that are viable,” EPA wrote, such as using a solar and storage system or a blend of renewables with a smaller amount of gas.

An independent study by the Applied Economics Clinic showed that the solar option proposed by TVA could save customers $1.3 billion over 20 years compared to the gas plant."

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"The Tennessee Capitol has always been a colorful place, with interesting characters and drama. But in my time, it was still an orderly body with a general sense of bipartisan fairness. The actions taken against what came to be known as the “Tennessee Three” seemed to be the opposite of any of that. So I went home to see with my own eyes if things were indeed as bad as they seemed.

And honestly, they’re worse than I imagined."

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I have come to the realization that there are two evil movements in America today. The root of both of them is money.

I keep wondering why Trump and his fascist enablers care about abortion and sexuality? They don't. But there are religious extremists to be used, the same creeps that have been around since humanity began, who think they are doing "God's" work. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is a fine example. Bill cares about his money and HIS god. These people want to force everyone else to bend to their own religious fanaticism. It's about dominance and control. This group of evildoers is just made for manipulation by the other faction, the fascists.

The Fascists are all about money. That's it. Nothing else matters; Not you or your children, or the environment or puppies or babies or school children, who are regularly blown to horrible bits so the Military Industrial complex can continue to play golf and bang porn stars while your children die horrible deaths. When discussing school children mutilated by the NRA enabled assault weapons, Donald Trump has this solution: "Get over it!" he said.

The Nation has done some good work exposing the evil plan of the Heritage Foundation:

"On January 20, 2025, conservatives plan to resurrect a 150-year-old defunct law to ban abortion across the nation. This is not a secret plan—far from it. It’s part of the 180-Day Playbook produced by Project 2025, detailing priorities for an incoming conservative president on day one. These 900 pages lay out a Christian nationalist vision of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity; all pregnancies would be carried to term, even if that requires coercion or death; and transgender and gender-nonconforming people do not exist"

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Lest we forget about James Comey attacking the Hillary Clinton campaign with a bogus investigation, Trump appointed this guy, Hur, who has done everything he can to attack President Biden. Republicans are being buried under Honey Pot blackmail schemes, according to Congressman Tim Burchett, and this looks like one of the results.

"In Letters from an American, the historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote last night, after detailing the environment of threats and coercion that led Republicans to back off of the immigration deal that gave them virtually everything they wanted, that “there is a method behind the madness. Trump’s actions are not those designed to win an election by getting a majority of the votes. They are the tools someone who cannot win a majority uses to seize power.”"

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Tracy Chapman has 4 certified Platinum albums and 2 certified gold albums, yet we only get two songs on airplay. Thank you corporate music fr screwing everything up!

What's going on with this, TN Republicans? This guy is a crook and more, you have good candidates in your party ready to run, yet TNGOP protects the crook?

"Ogles appears to have fabricated large portions of his life story, and in November he questioned how the congressman could have self-funded $320,000 in 2022 when he did not report having so much as a savings account on mandatory financial disclosures."

Much More:https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/29/2220286/-Tennessee-GOP-twists-rules-into-pretzel-to-protect-scandal-plagued-incumbent-from-challengers

“Next thing you know you’re in the motel room with them naked, and next thing you know you’re about to make a key vote, and what happens? Some well-dressed person comes up, whispers in your ear, ‘Hey man, there’s tapes out on you. Were you in a motel room on whatever with whoever? And you’re like, ‘Uh, oh.’ And they say, ‘You really ought not to be voting for this thing. And what do they do? It’s human nature."

Congressman Tim Burchett

Why isn't Burchett's statement headlining national News?

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One day short of his first 100 days in the White House, on April 28, 2021, President Joe Biden spoke to a joint session of Congress, where he outlined an ambitious vision for the nation. In a time of rising autocrats who believed democracy was failing, he asked, could the United States demonstrate that democracy is still vital?

“Can our democracy deliver on its promise that all of us, created equal in the image of God, have a chance to lead lives of dignity, respect, and possibility? Can our democracy deliver…to the most pressing needs of our people? Can our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate, and fears that have pulled us apart?”

America’s adversaries were betting that the U.S. was so full of anger and division that it could not. “But they are wrong,” Biden said. “You know it; I know it. But we have to prove them wrong.”

“We have to prove democracy still works—that our government still works and we can deliver for our people.”

In that speech, Biden outlined a plan to begin investing in the nation again as well as to rebuild the country’s neglected infrastructure. “Throughout our history,” he noted, “public investment and infrastructure has literally transformed America—our attitudes, as well as our opportunities.”

In the first two years of his administration, when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, lawmakers set out to do what Biden asked. They passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to help restart the nation’s economy after the pandemic-induced crash; the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (better known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) to repair roads, bridges, and waterlines, extend broadband, and build infrastructure for electric vehicles; the roughly $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act to promote scientific research and manufacturing of semiconductors; and the Inflation Reduction Act, which sought to curb inflation by lowering prescription drug prices, promoting domestic renewable energy production, and investing in measures to combat climate change.

This was a dramatic shift from the previous 40 years of U.S. policy, when lawmakers maintained that slashing the government would stimulate economic growth, and pundits widely predicted that the Democrats’ policies would create a recession.

But in 2023, with the results of the investment in the United States falling into place, it is clear that those policies justified Biden’s faith in them. The U.S. economy is stronger than that of any other country in the Group of Seven (G7)—a political and economic forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, along with the European Union—with higher growth and faster drops in inflation than any other G7 country over the past three years.

Heather Long of the Washington Post said yesterday there was only one word for the U.S. economy in 2023, and that word is “miracle.”

Rather than cooling over the course of the year, growth accelerated to an astonishing 4.9% annualized rate in the third quarter of the year while inflation cooled from 6.4% to 3.1% and the economy added more than 2.5 million jobs. The S&P 500, which is a stock market index of 500 of the largest companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, ended this year up 24%. The Nasdaq composite index, which focuses on technology stocks, gained more than 40%. Noah Berlatsky, writing for Public Notice yesterday, pointed out that new businesses are starting up at a near-record pace, and that holiday sales this year were up 3.1%.

Unemployment has remained below 4% for 22 months in a row for the first time since the late 1960s. That low unemployment has enabled labor to make significant gains, with unionized workers in the automobile industry, UPS, Hollywood, railroads, and service industries winning higher wages and other benefits. Real wages have risen faster than inflation, especially for those at the bottom of the economy, whose wages have risen by 4.5% after inflation between 2020 and 2023.

Meanwhile, perhaps as a reflection of better economic conditions in the wake of the pandemic, the nation has had a record drop in homicides and other categories of violent crime. The only crime that has risen in 2023 is vehicle theft.

While Biden has focused on making the economy deliver for ordinary Americans, Vice President Kamala Harris has emphasized protecting the right of all Americans to be treated equally before the law.

In April 2023, when the Republican-dominated Tennessee legislature expelled two young Black legislators, Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, for participating in a call for gun safety legislation after a mass shooting at a school in Nashville, Harris traveled to Nashville’s historically Black Fisk University to support them and their cause.

In the wake of the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion, Harris became the administration’s most vocal advocate for abortion rights. “How dare they?” she demanded. “How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body?... How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?” She brought together civil rights leaders and reproductive rights advocates to work together to defend Americans’ civil and human rights.

In fall 2023, Harris traveled around the nation’s colleges to urge students to unite behind issues that disproportionately affect younger Americans: “reproductive freedom, common sense gun safety laws, climate action, voting rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and teaching America’s full history.”

“Opening doors of opportunity, guaranteeing some more fairness and justice—that’s the essence of America,” Biden said when he spoke to Congress in April 2021. “That’s democracy in action.”

Best toons of the year from Clay Bennett

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