Lies and the lying liars...

Just saw a bit of Karl Rove being interviewed by Tom Brokaw on MSNBC. In the 30 seconds or so I could stand to watch, he repeated the lie at least three times that MoveOn had run ads comparing Bush to Adolf Hitler.

I never saw any such ad. I saw some amateur piece of crap entry in an ad contest months ago from some guy who made it up on his kitchen table with his Macintosh. I don't think it made the cut. I don't think it was ever produced or ever aired. In fact, as I recall it was pulled from their website pretty quickly after it was submitted.

The Knoxville News Sentinel printed a letter from some yahoo the other day repeating the same lie. They didn't include an "editor's note" correcting the lie like they do for other letters that contain "creative interpretations" from the left. I don't know why they even print letters with outright lies in the first place. Oh wait...

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Nashville Kerry Alert

All you good Democrats over there in Middle Tennessee be sure to turn out for the Kerry Welcoming Party:

Tuesday, August 31st
Mercury Air Center
547 Perimeter Road
Hanger Two

Doors Open at 6:00 p.m.

Tickets Required for Entry

Tickets may be picked up at the following locations:

Tennessee Democratic Party
223 8th Avenue North, Nashville
(615) 327-9779

Davidson County Democratic Party
227 French Landing Drive, Nashville
(615) 251-8823

Tennessessee AFL-CIO Headquarters
1901 Lindell Drive, Nashville
(615) 269-7111

(Thanks to Andy Axel for the tip)

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An urgent plea

In light of revelations about Israeli involvement in U.S. intelligence operations and policy making, Gen. J. C. Christian issues an urgent plea for help.

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Other local convention blogging

By way of Adam Groves, the Tennessee GOP chairperson is blogging from the convention. Also, Knox County GOP chairman Chad Tindell and other local GOP operatives are blogging for WBIR.

After taking a quick look around, it appears that all the action is at Crosswire.

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Postcards from Hell

Chris Bellomy, co-host of "The Good Show" on 88.7 KTCU-FM in Fort Worth, Texas, has produced a hilarious radio spot inspired by SKB's Alabama Mailroom Vets for Bush.

"Postcards from Hell" aired last night on The Good Show, and you can hear it here (mp3 format). Nice work, Chris!

P.S. Chris also runs a great blog called "Southpaw". Check it out.

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Happy blogiversary

SayUncle's blog is two years old today! Stop by and congratulate him.

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That liberal media

Cable news, and CNN in particular, has been flogging this swift boat story for what, three weeks now? And every time CNN is talking to somebody about it, in the background they show the ad where Kerry is testifying before Congress with the banners "murdered civilians"... "cut off limbs and heads"... etc. You can't hear the swifty voiceover saying that this is what Kerry testified about and that this is why they are upset with him. CNN has done this dozens of times.

But if you had never seen the actual ad and heard the voiceover (which you don't hear when CNN does this over and over), you might get the impression that Kerry did these things. I wonder how many people come away with that impression? That's the imagery that CNN is burning into the minds of viewers.

And another thing. All these defenders of Bush and the swifties keep talking about these terrible MoveOn ads that attack Bush. But I've never seen one run in the background as an example of what they are talking about (like they do with this swifty ad, over and over). In fact, no one has even been able to describe one, even when asked directly.

The only one I ever saw was a long time ago during the primaries. It was a bunch of kids working in a factory, with a voiceover saying that these were the people who would be paying for Bush's economic policy decisions.

Ooohh, vicious!

Anyway, what it amounts to is that CNN and the other cable news outlets are giving Bush and the swift boat liars hundreds of free shots and hour upon hour of free airtime. And they're engineering it so as to put Kerry in the worst possible light, with no equal time for the opposition.

Disgusting.

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Crosswire: West Knox Momma v. South Knox Bubba

Check out the Knoxville News Sentinel's new Crosswire blog.

By invitation from KNS reporter/blogger Michael Silence, SKB is representing the left in this online debate/coverage of the Republican National Convention. Michael's wife West Knox Momma, a paid GOP Operative, is representing the right.

West Knox Momma will be covering the convention from her headquarters at a luxury suite in NYC as she networks with other powerful GOP Operatives at the convention. South Knox Bubba will be covering the convention from his Barcalounger courtesy of C-SPAN.

I'll do my best to represent us East Tennessee Democrats in the debate. I'm no James Carville, but I met him once at the CNN Center in Atlanta on the bloody morning after the 2002 elections. We shook hands, and maybe some of that Ragin' Cajun magic rubbed off. We'll see.

Anyway, head on over to Crosswire and join in the fun (but play nice). We'll be there all week.

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Better hurry...

Allman Bros. Band, Knoxville Civic Auditorium, October 4th.

Better hurry if you want tickets. They went on sale at 9:00 AM (just now). We had to redial about twenty times to get through, wait on hold for about five minutes, and the closest we could get was row F. (It started out in row P, but F suddenly "became available" after some coaxing).

Tickets Unlimited, Tickets Unlimited outlets including Disc Exchange, or by phone at 656-4444 (877-995-9960 outside the area).

This will be awesome. Intimate setting, great acoustics, oh my!

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Comments

About an hour or so of comments may have been lost due to backups/restores/cleanups of the recent unpleasentness. Apologies for the inconvenience. Everything is back to "normal" now.

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Friday Bird Blogging

Heron at (the former) Maxey's Boat Dock, soon to be condos.

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Do not feed the trolls!

UPUDATE: Tom Neven writes:

Bubba

You have to help me. I've gotten two harassing phone calls now, and I
had no idea what they were talking about until I was directed to your site. I don't know how to say this, but whoever mojoman is, he's not me. I was surprised (and horrified) to see everything that's being done in my name on the site.

I never went back to your site after we had that e-mail exchange a few
days ago.

You have a lot of stuff about me that's true, but a lot that's false. I never served in Vietnam (although I was in 9th Marines, but that was 1977,
on Okinawa, not Vietnam). I did go to Seabreeze, Wheaton and Columbia, but Idon't know anything about any of this other stuff. I looked through some of "mojoman's" postings, and trust me, I don't use that language and I don't talk to people in that manner. I have several brothers, although none of them is a lawyer. The e-mail address listed is my home e-mail, but I went through the browser history on my computer and that one has never been to your site.

I called our MIS people, and they say our IP address is spoofed all the
time from people who want to discredit us. I'm technically clueless, so I
have no idea what's going on and if that's true or not.

I have to ask you to trust me on this. We may disagree politically, but
I always try to have a civil debate, and if I make a mistake, I always
try to correct it. Mojoman may be a terrific liar, but I'm not.

Tom Neven

OK, then. Fair enough. End of story. I have deleted all of the impersonator's posts.

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The Bush tax cuts are working!

Ranks of Poverty, Uninsured Rose in 2003

WASHINGTON - The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.

It was the third straight annual increase for both categories. While not unexpected, it was a double dose of bad economic news during a tight re-election campaign for President Bush.

[..]

Nearly 45 million people lacked health insurance, or 15.6 percent of the population. That was up from 43.5 million in 2002, or 15.2 percent, but was a smaller increase than in the two previous years.

Prosperity is just around the corner! Yep, here it comes up the street right now. Don't look, you'll scare it off. Trust me, it's on its way.

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All your base are belong to us!

If you didn't see Hardball yesterday you should read the transcript. The Chairman of the Federal Election Commission came on and gave a partisan and blatantly pro-Bush, anti-Kerry performance.

Among other things, he said that Kerry had better be careful about calling for any investigations into connections between the Bush campaign and the SBV 527 because Kerry has "big, big problems" of his own. He also said that even if the FEC was asked to investigate any ties it would take 60 days, so the outcome would be so close to the election as to make any investigation impractical.

I couldn't believe it. I knew the fix was in, but I didn't realize how deep it went. I'm even more amazed by how smug and arrogant they are about it. What a bunch of thugs. Kerry doesn't stand a chance. This is going to be the most corrupt presidential election in American history. The 2000 election was just a b-team warm-up scrimmage in comparison.

(Oh, yeah. Max Cleland was on and he was great. Forceful and articulate. Matthews invited the GOP to participate but they declined, so Cleland got the run of the house during his segment and Matthews just sat back and let him riff. It was excellent.)

UPDATE: FEC chairman Bradley Smith also defended the SBV in other venues yesterday:

"I think it's great we live in a country where 260 average guys can go and put their point of view out there before the public and influence a major presidential race,"' Smith said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Even if they are lying?

UPDATE: Here are some Hardball quotes from the guy who is overseeing the election to make sure it's on the up and up:

MATTHEWS: How do you prove that some guy like Bob Perry didn‘t get a call from somebody like Karl Rove or anybody else in the Bush world and said, You know, we could use a little money. Shake some money loose for these vets.

SMITH: Well, this is very hard stuff to prove. I mean, how do you prove that Americans Coming Together isn‘t coordinating with the Kerry campaign? They‘ve got offices next to one another. Kerry‘s former campaign manager runs one of these...

MATTHEWS: Well, do you have the money to check these things out?

SMITH: We have money. We could almost always use more. We have subpoena power and deposition power. But these are fact-intensive investigations, and they take quite a bit of research and, you know, shoe leather.

[..]

SMITH: You‘ve got 260 veterans who are making charges. I don‘t know about the president. I don‘t know about his people. I have no idea whether these charges are true. I know it‘s unusual for me, from the vets I know, to imagine 260 of them telling falsehoods.

[..]

SMITH: I‘m not sure how some of these people who weren‘t there, either, are going around saying these ads are false. But I‘m not a political commentator. At the FEC, we don‘t care whether the ads are true or false.

No kidding.

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Oh, the irony.

Check this, (By way of Catch).

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Take a break from all the insanity...

This photo doesn't nearly do justice to this big ol' patch of sunflowers at a farm on Little River Road across from, well, Little River. But I like it and hope you do, too. The sunflower patch goes way back up in the holler as far as you can see.

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Beyond silly into surreal

The the 101st Fighting Keyboard Brigades are now damning Kerry for not answering a joke question on a fake news show intended to highlight the absurdity of this campaign.

Unbelievable.

If they'd actually seen the Dailly Show, they might understand (but I doubt it) that Jon Stewart was making the point in a humorous way that the GOP is keeping this campaign in the gutter so they don't have to discuss their dismal record on issues.

Or, as Bush himself said on Monday: "We've had a great record. But the only reason to even talk about the record is to say, give us a chance to move the country forward."

I guess he means "another" chance, since he failed the first time.

UPDATE: Now they're saying Kerry was lying about even being in the Navy in 1968.

Which reminds me of another thing. All the wingnuts and wobbly bobble-heads on TV keep talking about Kerry's "four-and-a-half month" tour of duty in Vietnam. They conveniently fail to mention that he completed one full tour of duty onboard a ship off the coast of Vietnam before volunteering for inland combat duty. He could have come home, but instead volunteered for combat duty.

His opponent, on the other hand, volunteered for transfer to a mail room in Alabama to drink beer and work on a political campaign after the taxpayers had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars training hm to be a pilot. He also refused to take a mandatory physical and drug test and got himself grounded. In other words, he was unfit for duty.

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Airport insecurity

Here's a scary article about the state of post-9/11 airport security (free registration required):

All runway personnel at Orlando International Airport now face security screening after the weekend arrests of five current and former co-workers on charges of sneaking drugs and guns aboard commercial aircraft.

A four-month investigation found that the targeted baggage handlers and ramp workers easily bypassed all the post-Sept. 11 measures designed to protect travelers from being hijacked, according to a hearing Monday in federal court in Orlando.

"Such willingness put at risk everyone on that airliner," U.S. Magistrate James G. Glazebrook said in declining to set bail. "Anything could have been in those bags, and they did not know if they were dealing with terrorists."

As our president would say, "is our airports safer?" Apparently not. Nice work, Tom Ridge.

(You might recall that several of the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. through the Orlando airport. Based on this administration's past record of invading the wrong country in response to terrorist attacks, I guess they've been busy securing Greyhound bus stations instead of airports.)

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Venable-ism

Sam Venable had a column yesterday about some guy who complained that the Downtown Grill and Brewery's 16 oz. drafts weren't really. The State of Tennessee sent a weights and measures guy to check it out, and found that they are indeed one pint. So the Downtown Grill and Brewery is now the first known Knoxville establishment with state certified beer mugs.

Anyway, what was odd was the way Sam opened his column:

A pint's a pound the world around. Including a certain tavern in Knoxville.

He's always good for a witty turn of phrase (including the headline, "Pints pose peculiar predicament").

But the thing is, when they taught us weights and measures in, like, the fourth or fifth grade, a pint was a measure of volume, and a pound was a measure of weight.

Now, I can see where a journalist might consume too many pints in researching his story and get confused about the different meanings of "ounce" when referring to liquid volume versus weight (i.e. "fluid" ounces versus "avoirdupois" ounces). And 16 oz. does indeed make a pound, although I was not aware that beer was sold by weight.

But, perhaps he was referring to the specific gravity and weight of beer. Water weighs (depending on the temperature) 8.34 pounds per gallon, which works out to approx. 1.04 "avoirdupois" ounces per "fluid" ounce. Beer would be in the same ballpark as water, except slightly heavier.

Therefore, a pint (16 fluid ounces) of beer would work out to about 16.46 avoirdupois ounces, which is pretty darn close to a pound.

So that's most likely what he meant and he was probably just showing off. The lesson is to never question Sam Venable's expertise in all things beer related.

OK, then.

UPDATE: Thanks to Andy for pointing out in comments that "a pint's a pound" is apparently a "popular rhyme" for remembering that a pint is 16 oz. and a pound is 16 oz. (except different kinds of ounces, of course).

I guess I skipped school that day. I was probably learning about metric conversions and other measurements, i.e. there are 28 grams in an ounce, four ounces in a quarter pound, etc.

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"Shadowy groups"

Seems Bush's campaign lawyer is also a lawyer for one of these "shadowy groups" with which Bush has no connection whatsoever and that he dislikes so much.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Except Bush doesn't really need any more practice. He's quite the accomplished liar.

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Is this anything like what the meaning of 'is' is?

Video of Bush's "tribal sovereignty" remarks from a while back (Quicktime). What an embarrassing doofus. (Thanks to F-Stop for the link).

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Dachsund v. bear

Bear wins in first round TKO. Fortunatlely "Swartzie" survived with a couple of broken ribs and a puncture wound or two. He should get a medal for bravery, though.

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Riverfront development

Big news in the local paper today. There are plans to demolish the old Knoxville Glove Factory building on the river to make way for condos.

This is an outrage. I call on the City of Knoxville to impose historical zoning on this property at once. This unique brick factory/warehouse structure has been an integral part of the downtown riverfront for decades. Taking this property and dislocating the fifty workers there just to build riverfront condos for rich people is a travesty that must be stopped.

UPDATE: There's precedent!

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KNS GOP propaganda machine

Georgiana Vines repeats the lie that Bush condemned the swift boat liars for Bush ads. The same lie the KNS ran on the front page of their paper yesterday.

(Her column is curiously not online, so you'll have to read it yourself in the dead tree edition or just take my word for it.)

UPDATE: CL says in comments that it's online now. Here it is (registration required). The column is about accomplished artist and sculptor James Watt, who designed the Vietnam Memorial (with the aid of some college student). It's interesting how the media can use any tiny tangential excuse to work in more lies by and about the swift boat liars.

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Blackhearted Dick

In case you missed it yesterday, Cheney acknowledged that he has a lesbian daughter, who was there at the event, and that while he personally disagrees with Bush on a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage, Bush makes the policy so that's the way it is.

When I saw Cheney's remarks, at first I was surprised that he actually seemed to exhibit a tiny spark of humanity in approaching the issue with some measure of understanding and compassion.

Then I realized that a) he just politicized his daughter's sexual orientation during his own carefully managed campaign event, perhaps looking for "sympathy" votes from both sides, b) he put Bush's conservative "Christian" agenda of hate and intolerance above respect and dignity for his own family, and c) he does not have the courage of his own convictions.

All this nonsense about "state's rights" (which is also Kerry's ridiculous and gutless position) is a smokescreen, too. I guess we'd still have slavery in Mississippi under the conservative Christian program. As it is, I'm not aware of any state that does not recognize a marriage license (or a driver's license for that matter) from another state. Or of any state where slavery is legal.

UPDATE: Family Research Council President Tony Perkins: "I find it hard to believe the Vice President would stray from the administration's position on defense policy or tax policy. For many pro-family voters, protecting traditional marriage ranks ahead of the economy and job creation as a campaign issue." Could these people be any more stupid or insane?

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Duncan on postponing elections

Reader Tess sent U.S. Rep. John Duncan (R-Tennessee) a letter voicing her concerns about the November elections being postponed in the event of a terrorist threat (as was recently shopped around by the Department of Homeland Security).

Duncan sent back this letter with a detailed, thoughtful response (PDF format). In the letter, he says:

"...I am very skeptical about any proposal to grant any federal officials any authority that would grant any federal official the power to intervene in the electoral process."

That's one of the good things about John Duncan. Whether you agree with him or not, he's one of the few Republicans who can speak his mind even if it goes against the party line because he knows he is virtually guaranteed reelection. I have even voted for him, and may again. (But don't tell anybody).

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This just in...

John Kerry will be on the Daily Show tonight. Set your TIVOs accordingly.

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Looks like a Bush win in November

Bush criticizes ad attacking Kerry's military record

That's the headline for the AP story that appeared on the front page of today's local paper. Except I read the article, twice, and could not find the quote where Bush specifically mentioned or condemned the swift boat liars for Bush ads.

After watching this theater of the absurd for the past couple of weeks, I am convinced that the Bush campaign goons are the masters and that John Kerry and the Democratic Party are being played like a cheap fiddle and beaten like a rented mule.

Bush's goons have successfully kept the disaster in Iraq out of the news leading up to their convention. 24 American servicemen killed in Iraq during this time? Freedom isn't free, and besides they volunteered.

Abu Ghraib? Where's that? Oh, where that one little girl from West Virginia posed for funny pictures with those evildoers? Old news.

Weapons of mass destruction? What are you talking about? A free Iraqi soccer team can participate in the Olympics for the first time. That's what we spent $200 billion and countless American and Iraqi lives for.

Record trade and budget deficits? Big deal.

Record oil prices funneling money from the pockets of working people to Bush's rich Saudi pals? So what?

Bush's total lack of a rational energy policy and rollback of environmental protections? Who cares? It's all junk science anyway.

Nonexistent job growth and Bush's Labor Department cooking the books? What's the difference?

Forty million Americans who can't afford health care? Too bad. Health care isn't a right. It's a privilege for the wealthy. What are you, some kind of communist?

Instead of debating actual issues they've had Kerry on the ropes, defending his honorable military service while getting free 7X24 news coverage of lie after lie about stuff that happened 30 years ago. All swiftboat, all the time. It's even pushed the Scott Peterson trial out of rotation.

It would be more interesting if they picked something to smear Kerry with that was somewhere in the same zip code as the truth. But they can't seem to find anything on the guy. Go figure. I don't understand why McAullife doesn't have his goons out digging the dirt on Bush. I don't think you'd have to dig too deep because most of it is already well known. Some people just don't seem to care as long as he's a Republican. Birds of a feather, I guess.

But hey, if we're going to talk about stuff that happened thirty years ago, why aren't we talking about Bush's sterling record during his drunken stint in the Air National Guard? Why aren't we talking about his curious absence from his post defending the Alabama mail room from the Viet Cong Air Force? Why aren't we talking about Rumsfeld and Cheney and their pals selling poison gas to Saddam to kill all those people who ended up in those mass graves? (Fact-checking GOP pedants will note that this happened only twenty years ago, not thirty, so it's a lie and therefore I am a liar and a traitor).

Anyway, with control of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, the media, and the people who make the black-box voting machines that can't be verified or audited, I really don't see how Kerry has a chance in November. And the way he's running his campaign makes me think he wants to lose. It's almost like some kind of deal has been made to put up a sacrificial lamb as token opposition because McAuliffe and the Democratic leadership convinced themselves going in that there is no way to beat Bush.

So sit back and enjoy the show. And get ready for the freak show that starts at noon on January 20, 2005. You ain't seen nothin' yet!

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FUD meeting

AC Citizen files this report from the meeting...

I have just cleared my head from the most unreal, surreal, and unnatural experience I have ever had. It was like being trapped in a Senate filibuster where time did not exist. I knew this would be different when a packed room full of people were told by the Chairman of the FUD Board of Directors that they had 15 minutes to make their case and they had to elect a single spokesman to speak to the Board. The only thing he left out was to say, "If they have no bread then let them eat cake." Have you ever been in a place where you thought that all hell could just break loose?

The Board of Directors sensed quickly the only exit was through the crowd of the proletariat so they decided to pretend to listen.

In a 90-minute exchange in which many questions were asked by many people the very few answers from the aristocracy that were given boiled down to this:

1) When someone asked if FUD directed its engineers to consider alternatives, the engineer from Jordan Jones & Goulding shook his head "no," while Ralph McCarter the General Manager said, "yes."

2) When someone else asked if FUD would agree to forestall the condemnation until the safety, environmental, and other concerns could be investigated and alternatives evaluated in a public forum, there was dead silence, followed by Ralph McCarter saying, "We can do all of this without any input from the community."

3) When Charles VanBeke (the Ralston’s attorney) pointed out that County Commission today voted 19-0 that FUD should work with the community, Ralph McCarter said, "We don’t answer to County Commission."

This whole thing is getting more and more disturbing. Now it moves to court. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for September 3. Let’s hope the judge can see the breathtaking arrogance FUD has shown. At least they won’t be able to dodge the court’s questions.

I have never seen such avarice and arrogance in my life. The Chairman of the FUD Board of Directors spoke for five minutes on how FUD customers pay the lowest rates in the entire state. One man kept asking questions about the safety of the proposed expansion and the Chairman told him to sit down so he could answer some other question. There will be a story in the KNS tomorrow.

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Unfortunate headlines..

Police probe body found in woods

Ewww...

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Random notes

Just saw Bush and Cheney and maybe Rumsfeld and some other jokers on CNN. I don't know what he was talking about, but Barney the dog was in the background, right behind Bush, taking a big dump on the grass while Bush talked.

Oh, and how long before the wingnuts start demanding to see x-rays of the alleged shrapnel in Kerry's leg?

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He threatened to veto the $87 billion before he signed it!

What's even worse is why he threatened to veto it. Dagley Dagley Daily has the scoop.

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More KNS cheerleading

Budget proposal pondered

Some Knox County commissioners said it was too early Sunday to evaluate a proposal that would shelve plans for a new downtown library, fund a new high school and slash the county's wheel tax by 10 percent.

Translation: Ragsdale's PR guy Mike Cohen hasn't faxed us to tell us what to report about this. But it sounds pretty good, because it "slashes" the proposed wheel tax. (Translation: now it's only a 450% increase instead of a 500% increase).

By the way, on this referendum, as I have mentioned before this is bad public policy to micro-manage local government this way. Elect people you trust to manage the city/county finances responsibly, or vote them out if you don't think they are.

Speaking of that, do you suppose more people signed the anti-tax petition than voted in the recent County general election? I wonder how many people signed the petition but didn't bother to vote? Maybe some local election-data whiz like Ricky (oops, Rikki, sorry about that) Hall can run some of his magic on his databases and find out?

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When the only tool you have is a hammer...

...every problem looks like a nail. I'm not exactly sure what's going on with this Austin Homes demolition, but applying historic overlay zoning to stop it seems silly. If these people keep doing this nobody is going to take historic zoning seriously.

By the way, other than excuses about "hard to maintain and upgrade", why is this housing project being demolished and what do they plan to replace it with? The article doesn't say. For some reason, though, this recent Metro Pulse article comes to mind.

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For your Monday tin-foil hat amusement...

JT at GrannyRant (who else?) brings our attention to this guy and his shocking revelation (PDF format) of the connection between the Nashville and Baghdad clock towers and its significance to the pending Earth-Martian hookup. No, seriously.

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Republicans gone wild

A guest post by lobbygow:

This article caught my eye in the times this morning:

G.O.P. Centrists to Speak at Convention, but Will They Be Heard?

One thing we don’t hear so much anymore from the Republicans is the voice of the loyal opposition from within the party. Perhaps it’s the result of the fact that Bush is vulnerable in the polls, and most of the Republicans who are unhappy with Bush figure biting their tongue is better than losing the presidency. But what if it’s something more troubling? What if the classic conservative been consigned to the dustbin in favor of the Bauer/Norquist/Delay model?

According to the article, Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, acknowledges that his organization’s goal is to make moderate Republicans and endangered species. Does this keep the McCains, Snowes, Chafees, Lugars and Hegels awake at night? Or are they biding their time, plotting their own takeover?

Tom Delay offers "we still have moderates in our party... We have so many moderates that that is all that is speaking at our national convention."

TRANSLATION: We have so FEW moderates that we have to thrust them all into the spotlight during our convention to avoid scaring the bejeezus of any swing voters that may be watching.

Apparently even arch-wingnut Pat Buchanan has concerns about the conservative wing of the Republican party.

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Breaking news (bump)

(Originally posted 8/18/04 at 3:30 PM. Will stay on top today, new posts follow).

Reader A.C. Citizen reports that First Utility District "just condemned" the Calloway's Landing property "about an hour ago." (I didn't know a utility company could do that).

A.C. is urging residents to attend a protest Monday, August 23rd, 7:00 PM at FUD offices on 122 Durwood Road in West Knoxville.

UPDATE: AC has more details...

Yesterday FUD filed legal proceedings to condemn the 18 acres of Lee Johnson's family land known as Callaway Landing.

Once the land is condemned only a court case can stop FUD from proceeding. Lee Johnson's lawyer Charles VanBeke will file an appeal Friday.

Lee Johnson is meeting with Mike Arms today at 1:30 PM to see what the County Mayor will do concerning the condemnation.

UPDATE: AC has the "poop" (so to speak) on the geological concerns relating to the FUD wastewater treatment plant expansion. Here are two documents (PDF format) that you might want to print out, study, and take with you if you plan to attend the meeting tonight.

The first one is a geologic survey showing two major sinkholes on the property where FUD plans to build new sewage treatment holding ponds and discussion of cave systems and groundwater in the area. The second one is a map of faults in the area.

Here's a summary of the first document:

The First Utility District of Knox Co. (FUD) is planning to expand the capacity of their wastewater treatment plant on Concord Road from 15 MGD to 30 MGD. Since the discharge point for this treatment plant is a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Lake, Fort Loudoun, both TVA and the Army Corp of Engineers are involved in the approval process for a new or revised discharge permit.

Safety issues have arisen regarding the geologic stability of the site. Raw sewage poses a biohazard threat and sinkholes in karst formations provide a direct drainage conduit to ground water aquifers. The consequences of even a small leak are severe and catastrophic failure could lead to a massive public health crisis.

At least one sinkhole was located on the Existing FUD WWTP site during the last phase of construction and was stabilized with great difficulty. Several large sinkholes and depressional areas suspected to be sinkholes have been located in the area of the proposed expansion. Two large sinkholes were confirmed a geologist with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation on 7/7/04. The geologist was unable to inspect several other depressional areas due to dense overgrowth conditions.

OK, then.

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