Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on the bill to keep our government running:

“Here’s what went down: we just won a clean 45 day gov extension, stripped GOP’s earlier 30% cuts to Social Security admin etc, staved off last minute anti-immigrant hijinks, and averted shutdown (for now). People will get paychecks and MTG threw a tantrum on the way out. Win-win[.]”

Dr Cox on the whole thing

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It was a long speech detailing the many Republican travesties against the rule of law and the American Constitution. Heather Cox Richardson has a summary: (link...)

It ends with a call to duty:

“I’m asking you that regardless whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or independent, put the preservation of our democracy before everything else. Put our country first…. We can’t take democracy for granted.”

“Democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle,” Biden said. “They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn the threats to democracy, when people are willing to give away that which is most precious to them because they feel frustrated, disillusioned, tired, alienated.”

“I get it,” Biden said. But “[f]or all its faults…, American democracy remains the best…[path] forward to prosperity, possibilities, progress, fair play, equality.” He urged people not to sit on the sidelines, but “to build coalitions and community, to remind ourselves there is a clear majority of us who believe in our democracy and are ready to protect it...”

“That’s our soul. That’s who we truly are. That’s who we must always be.”

Here's the handy link to the database search tool: (link...)

Here is the first page f results from Senator Yager:

Elected official/Party PAC

Donor name

Amount Donated

Ken Yager, R-Kingston Total:

2,157,950.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

Jack Daniel's/Brown-Forman

93,800.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

Wine And Spirit Wholesalers of Tennessee

65,000.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

Tennessee Association of Realtors

60,000.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

Advance Financial

50,500.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

Dettwiller/Sampson/Hand Families - Wholesalers Assocation Pac

46,500.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

Amazon

33,000.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association

29,500.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD OF TENNESSEE

29,000.00
Ken Yager, R-Kingston

Tennessee State Employees Association

27,750.00

TennGreen Land Conservancy announced today the protection of an additional 115 acres along Whites Creek in Rhea County. Glenn and Holland McConnell, Nashville, partnered with environmental nonprofits TennGreen Land Conservancy and the Open Space Institute (OSI) to expand an existing conservation easement on their land and protect the species-rich waters and forests for future generations. The amended conservation easement now protects more than 200 acres in total and nearly two miles of frontage along Whites Creek.

Located along the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau, Whites Creek is an outstanding scenic river positioned within a steep gorge and is home to rare fish and wildlife. One species found in its waters is the uncommon Tennessee dace (Chrosomus tennesseensis). The Tennessee dace, and many other native species, rely on connected corridors of land and undisturbed habitat to survive and adapt to environmental changes. Intentional conservation, like protecting land through conservation easements, is critical to help them withstand and recover from disturbances, natural disasters, and the effects of climate change.

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Letter From an American:

...Tennessee shows what gerrymandering does at the state level. There, Republicans tend to get about 60% of the votes but control 76% of the seats in the House and 82% of the seats in the Senate. This supermajority means that the Republicans can legislate as they wish.

Gerrymandered seats mean that politicians do not have to answer to constituents; their purpose is to raise money and fire up true believers. Although more than 70% of Tennessee residents want gun safety legislation, for example, Republican legislators, who are certain to win in their gerrymandered districts, can safely ignore them.

Tennessee shows the effects of gerrymandering at the national level as well. Although Republican congressional candidates in Tennessee get about 65% of the vote, they control 89% of Tennessee’s congressional delegation. In the elections of 2022, Florida, Alabama, and Ohio all used maps that courts have thrown out for having rigged the system to favor Republicans. The use of those unfair maps highlights that the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives by only the slimmest of margins and explains why Republicans are determined to keep their gerrymanders.

Read the full article and understand!

Blackburn, who is notorious for ducking public debate, has never been effectively called to account for opposing price controls on insulin or for protecting the interests of opioid distributors and gun dealers and inhumane animal trainers or for taking credit for popular measures like broadband expansion that she never supported. These issues were around in 2018, but were never effectively examined. Over the coming year, we’ll see how they look in the light of day.

And however this campaign shakes out, Gloria Johnson won’t cut and run.

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More

While all flights were halted following the terrorist attacks, there was one exception made: The White House authorized planes to pick up 140 Saudi nationals, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, living in various cities in the U.S. to bring them back to Saudi Arabia, where they would be safe. They were never interrogated.

The leading Republican candidate for President of the United States is a unrepentant seditionist currently under criminal indictment in four jurisdictions (and likely soon to be five), charged with nearly a hundred major felonies and who was recently found liable for sexual assault.

Here's Jim Wright's long version that is well worth your time:

Stonekettle Station

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“We need somebody that’s gonna care about Tennessee families and lifting them up and making sure that it’s them that we’re trying to cut costs and not cutting costs for corporations and billionaires,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to make sure that Tennessee families are earning a good wage, have access to affordable health care, have great schools for their kids, and can live in dignity and be able to retire.”

Those are real issues that affect actual Tennesseans and not a third-margarita rant about “damn libruls” taking your inefficient lightbulbs and precious guns that you use to shoot the lightbulbs when they burn out on you.

Johnson’s campaign ad contains more of this good stuff. We also learn that she’s 6 foot 3. Damn.

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Go see them at Juanita's.

I'm sticking with Jimmy Buffett music for a little while.

International corporations are evil on so many levels that it is easy to forget that they also destroyed the culture of the afternoon siesta everywhere they wanted to set up factories. I treasure my after lunch naps. Have for a long time now. With equatorial heat running rampant in formerly moderate zones, I would suggest adopting it further north, like say Tennessee.

We’re born to nap

According to Dr Michael Breus, an American sleep expert and author, our post-lunch languor is all but inevitable. He says humans are naturally biphasic sleepers, meaning afternoon somnolence is hardwired into us. An afternoon snooze, or at least a spell of rest, is practically a birthright.

He explains that along with a spike in melatonin production around 10.30pm to remind us to go to bed for the night, we experience the same phenomenon during the day, often between 1 and 3pm.

Succumbing to this innate call to calm, according to a wealth of research, can boost our mood, cognitive function, memory, creative thinking and physical performance.

(link...)

Joe Biden and Democrats are fighting Republicans to bring down the horrendous cost of healthcare. Step one is the high cost of prescription drugs.

A 2021 study by the RAND corporation found that drug prices average 2.56 times higher in the U.S. than in 32 other countries. For name brand drugs, U.S. prices were 3.44 times those in comparable nations.

...In 2022, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act without a single Republican vote. That law permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices the government will pay.

(link...)

Tennessee Republicans have no heart, shame, conscience, or apparently brains:

“What our schools need are mental health professionals. We need funding for mental health, for counselors. We need to pay our teachers better. We don’t need more police in our schools.”

The statement that Rep. Justin Jones made for which Cameron Sexton declared him "out of order" and triggered the House vote to silence him.

(link...)

Sickening! Rockwood, TN:

"Upon arrival, Runions told investigators that the child and another minor child were being punished for not following rules and were sent to stand in the corners of her bedroom. Documents state that Runions removed her Taurus Millennium 9mm handgun from its case, then removed the magazine and called the 4-year-old child over to her, “at which point she pressed the barrel of the gun into the front of (the child’s) torso and pulled the trigger, discharging a round into (the child).”

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My granddaughter was shocked to learn that in America, black men had the right to vote 54 years before women. Republicans, who were such a force for equality in the 19th century, now hate both the 15th and 19th Amendments(And surely the 14th). Tennessee was such a force for good. Now look at us! Fascists have switched parties often as opportunity presents (currently in the GOP), but are women of all parties going to step up and vote for their own self reservation?

And now women are the crucial demographic going into the 2024 elections. Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg noted in June that there was a huge spike of women registering to vote after the Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion, and that Democratic turnout has exceeded expectations ever since.

Dr. Heather Richardson's Letter From an American for today

Too many good ones this week!

OK, Frumpers, defend this:

This is the best thing on the internet tubes right now:

A large and ever-growing number of senior-level staffers in the Trump administration— most of whom he hired or appointed — have since denounced him, with many saying he is unfit to hold office. The list includes Rex Tillerson, Mark Milley, Bill Barr, Michael Cohen, James Mattis, Richard V. Spencer, John Bolton, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Tom Bossert, Gary Cohn, Ty Cobb, Kurt Volker, Bill Stepien, B.J. Pak, Eric Herschman, Betsy DeVos, Stephanie Grisham, Alyssa Farrah Griffin, and Mark Esper.

Are all of these people wrong about Trump? Do you put any significance in the fact that Trump himself hired so many people who now denounce him, and whom he now disparages?

(link...)