Let's see who argues with this?

Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents

Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)

Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents

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The Harriman Lions Club will be hosting the 2nd Annual Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre to benefit their annual community projects. And that means that YOU get to enjoy a great dinner, amazing entertainment, a little mayhem, murder, revenge, payback, ... anyway, you get the idea.

So, here are the details:

This is one more example of the abuses of the pharmaceutical industry in the USA. Particularly, as the article states, that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs work as well or better.

Opioids for Wisdom Teeth Extraction Increase Liklihood of Addiction by 2.7 times

Young people ages 13 to 30 who filled an opioid prescription immediately before or after they had their wisdom teeth out were nearly 2.7 times as likely as peers to still be filling opioid prescriptions months later.

I always thought Brummett was the class act of the County Commission.I like new blood but somebody has to call the class to order.

After coal barons, the for-profit prison industry may be the next most evil entity in America. Our state reps don't work for us any more.

CoreCivic, the largest for-profit prison operator in the country — which changed its name from Correction Corporation of America last year, rebranding in an effort to refresh its public image — runs seven prisons in Tennessee and also has contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company's Tennessee facilities have been repeatedly exposed as sites rife with understaffing, poor conditions and mistreatment of prisoners and visitors. For years, it has paid a squad of lobbyists to patrol Tennessee's state legislature and been a big donor to state politicians.

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...I love my country, I believe in it. I believe in the notion of a deliberative process in Washington where you talk about things and argue about things but then you decide and move forward and somehow over the last 10, 15 years, we’ve lost that. We’ve just turned into a country where everybody stands on opposite sides of the room and shouts at each other. I’d like to be part of the fix for that, to start bringing us back together to find some solutions and to do some things together...

I encourage you to read the entire piece. Phil is an amazing man!

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U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) is endorsing former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean’s bid for governor.

Cooper joins fellow U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) and former U.S. Reps. Lincoln Davis and Bob Clement in giving the nod to Dean’s bid against state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Personally I give Dean the edge over Fitzhugh, but whether Craig Fitzhugh (who I totally love and respect) or Karl Dean (Who I support enthusiastically and monetarily) wins, I will give my dedicated support, because the lessor of those two noble public servants is better by far than the best of the GOP trump sycophants their ads show them to be.

Voting Leave

Tennessee law requires employers to provide employees with a reasonable amount of paid time off to vote up to three (3) hours. To be eligible, an employee:

must not have three (3) or more hours before their shift begins or after their shift ends in which to vote while polls are open, and
request the paid voting leave by twelve o’clock (12:00) noon on the day prior to the vote or election.

TN Stat. 2-1-106

Five days ago, the Tennessee Democratic Party stated emphatically that in 2012 Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) met with Alexander Torshin, a now-sanctioned Russian official at the heart of Russia’s efforts to infiltrate the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Blackburn, who is currently running for Tennessee’s open Senate seat, has dodged questions about such a meeting since — but has not yet issued a denial on the topic.

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I don't drink any of the stuff, preferring to get my caffeine from fresh ground and brewed coffee which I'm done with by 10 A M. But, this is just one more unintended consequence of Trump's incompetence and meddling in things he knows nothing about.

Coca-Cola is about to cost you more — thanks to Trump's tariffs
Trump reportedly sips a dozen Diet Cokes a day. His own tariffs mean that habit is about to cost him just a little bit more money.

Steel by the numbers

Facebook’s predatory corporate culture and dubious uses of data are too deeply embedded in its business model to be easily extracted. And it may not be possible at all, not while sustaining the fantastical profit levels the company and its stock prices are based on.

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But corporate profits??

Russia interfered in our elections to help Trump and is most certainly doing it again. Republicans know it they are being helped by Russia. How else do you explain this?

Republicans Block Bid to Extend Election Security Grants
By The Associated Press
July 19, 2018

WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House on Thursday eliminated new funding for states to strengthen election security, drawing protests from Democrats who said Republicans are not doing enough to prevent Russian meddling.

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It was the Republican majority in the TN legislature that reduced voting days and hours to what we have now. Looks like working people don't have but 4 hours this coming Saturday to cast their votes.

Make sure you VOTE!

Early Voting Locations

Kingston Community Center at 201 Patton Ferry Rd., Kingston TN 37763
Harriman Community Center at 631 Clinch St., Harriman TN 37748
Rockwood Community Center at 710 N. Chamberlain Ave., Rockwood TN 37854
First Christian Church at 100 Gum Hollow Rd., Oak Ridge TN 37840

Early Voting Dates & Hours:

July 13 - July 28, 2018 {Mon-Fri 9AM-5PM, Sat 9AM-1PM}

Sample Ballot

● TN-Gov: While Rep. Diane Black and businessman Randy Boyd have mostly attacked one another ahead of the Aug. 2 GOP primary, they're each out with a new spot taking aim at businessman Bill Lee. Two recent polls showed Lee in third place while Black and Boyd were ahead, so this could be sign they're both worried he's surging in the final weeks of the contest.

Black's commercial sarcastically asks if Lee would be voting in the Democratic primary because he'd "see some familiar faces on the ballot." The narrator says that Lee gave money to both former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, who is the Democratic frontrunner, and former Gov. and Senate candidate Phil Bredesen. He then declares, "Too bad disgraced [former Nashville] Mayor Megan Barry isn't on the ballot—Bill Lee supported her too and she pushed sanctuary city policies, gun control and abortion."

According to The Tennessean, Lee donated a total of $1,750 to the three of them since 2005, with his Barry contribution coming in 2015. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands he's given Republican candidates, but of course Black doesn't care about that.

Neither does Boyd, whose spot accuses Lee of having "donated to disgraced liberal Democrat Mayor Megan Berry, who supported sanctuary cities." It also says Lee served as "state president of a group that lobbied for amnesty for illegals," and argues that Lee "didn't support Donald Trump in 2016," which is also a charge Black recently leveled against Boyd.

Boyd isn't letting up on his attacks on Black, though. He's out with a new spot declaring that in Washington, Black's "net worth increased by more than $40 million," and argues that while "enriching herself, D.C. Diane worked to raise our taxes by $160 million, while cutting her taxes by millions." While we initially wondered if that last bit was actually Boyd attacking Black over the GOP's tax bill, his campaign says he was really going after her for a 2002 vote in the state legislature to raise a tax on cigarettes.

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The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it is relaxing rules for the disposal of spent coal used to fuel hundreds of power plants nationwide.

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From Steven Hale at the Nashville Scene speaking about Diane Black:

This is a person — a gubernatorial candidate who may well be the Republican nominee a couple weeks from now — who thinks her constituents can be easily lied to, or perhaps worse, that they prefer lies to the truth. The fact that she may be right is only more distressing.

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Surrender is certainly one way to make peace with a hostile nation that has been an enemy of the United States of America for several generations. Two of those Republicans who nominated Trump?

Marsha Blackburn and Diane Black. Scott DesJarlais was the third.

Right now tonight...If you have a 10 x pair of binoculars you can see four moons of Jupiter. There are 75 more!

These moons are all pretty tiny, ranging between less than a mile and nearly two miles wide. And they break down into three different types. Two orbit closer to Jupiter, moving in the same direction that the planet spins. Farther out from those, about 15.5 million miles from the planet, there are nine that rotate in the opposite direction, moving against Jupiter’s rotation. But in this same distant region, one strange moon that astronomers are calling Valetudo is moving with Jupiter’s spin, like the two inner moons. That means it’s going in the opposite direction of all the other moons in the same area. “It’s basically driving down the highway in the wrong direction,” Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at Carnegie who led the discovery team, tells The Verge. “That’s a very unstable situation. Head-on collisions are likely to happen in that situation.”

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I am working up my thoughts on the broadband meeting from last Friday morning. We appreciate Ron Berry and Darrell Meadows getting it together but nothing came out of it except a renewed feeling that service providers don't have any interest in serving rural America. The only people who count are shareholders.

Let's note that the Trump tax cut just gave Charter an $8.5 BILLION increase in profits in ONE QUARTER year over year. That is an obscene 17 times increase in profit. That they did not work to earn.

The solution is simple! Reinstate their original taxes and use that money to fund high speed internet to the entire nation.

The average internet speed for Tennessee is around 7 megs.

South Korea has an average of 26 megs.

More later.

The Senate is divided 51-49 at the moment. Senator Bob Corker is retiring in 6 months. Basically Corker has the power to stop Russian tool Donald Trump from destroying American foreign policy. So what does he do?

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), another retiring senator who helped champion yesterday’s symbolic resolution, warned Americans yesterday that Trump is “diminishing” the United States’ international influence, adding that he’s “troubled” by the president’s antics on the global stage.

Those are certainly worthwhile sentiments, but the Tennessee Republican is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

All this huffing and puffing and total lack of real action begs the question: Can Bob Corker get any smaller?

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After working during the hot months with a survey crew last year I conducted an independent study all on my own. Tick bites went from several per day to none at all. I also spray up with DEET to stop chiggers and no-seeums. The deep Tennessee woods are amazing but treacherous if you aren't prepared.

The official study is very carefully worded in a scientific way that I find over cautious. The stuff works. Say it!

"There are several studies that provide pretty compelling evidence that wearing permethrin-treated clothing has the potential to reduce tick bites," says Neeta Connally, a medical entomologist who oversees the Tickborne Disease Prevention Lab at Western Connecticut State University.

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I was a manufacturer of plastic products. Yes it's true. Thankfully, they weren't "single use" products and some are still in use 30 years later. We recycled everything we could and used post consumer recycle plastics everywhere it was feasible. There weren't many manufacturers who did this but the canoe and kayak industry in particular and the outdoor industry in general have always been committed to environmental awareness and action. This was not true of the plastics industry as a whole and we all suffer for that. Our world is at a tipping point.

I think that if there is an anti-christ it is not Dick Cheney, rather it is the corporation that paid him. Corporations have no soul, no conscience, no heart and they rule the world. It is only when their Chief Financial Officer informs them that they face annihilation, or are simply losing money, that they will consider change. A portion of the plastics industry is now facing the reality that all those "extreme environmentalists" were right all along and something must be done.

Here are the words of Ron Larson, a spokes person for a plastics manufacturer:

Bottles...must have improved design for recycling guidelines to help promote their recovery. And this, he said, is a big one, a "cuss word" to some in the business — more bottle bills.

"That's a nasty word in this industry," he said, "but it works."

Bottle bills will help improve the supply available to meet recycling demand. "Something has to happen," he said. "We need people to lobby for it, not against it, in this industry."

Larson is staring into the crystal ball at the future of his industry and sees it dying. Me too.

So what do we do? Sure, it's good to refuse drinking straws. Don't buy bottled water if at all possible. Recycle your plastic waste. That's all nice but it won't save your children's planet. We have allowed the most anti Planet Earth administration in history to rise to power in the United States of America.

Vote them out! All of them. The big ones and the little ones. The anti science ones. The global warming deniers and their enablers. All of them. VOTE THEM OUT!

There, I feel better. Now let's get to work!

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Diane Black got disgraced EPA Director Pruit to allow super polluting diesel trucks back on the road as he walked out the door...

Tom Humphrey noted last month, the Crossville company blamed the EPA and government regulations for layoffs and cutbacks in production. They also donated $225K to Diane Black's campaign for governor. Rep. Black had previously fought to get the law repealed.

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And then there's this:

"All told, the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks could lead to at least 80,000 extra deaths per decade and cause respiratory problems for more than one million people, according to a recent analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard University. That number, however, is likely to be “a major underestimate of the global public health impact,” said Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health."

Land Between the Lakes spokesman Chris Joyner tells news outlets that the man approached the bison after illegally entering the enclosure and was rammed Wednesday night. The man was at the South Bison Range, which has no driving trails.

Idiot!

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We've added the TN Journal and the Nashville Scene to our Eco Warriors and Politics feed over on the right. Tom Humphrey cannot be replaced but perhaps these voices will ease the pain somewhat. It's election crazy time in Tennessee and America and we will need all the rational information we can find to wade through the muck.

Just please remember to think for yourself and don't trust anybody without doing some of your own research.

It's no secret that I am very critical of our current media and it's failure to fulfill it's constitutional mandate to inform citizens of what people in power are actually doing. One bright light in Tennessee has been Tom Humphrey. Not only did he tell us what was going on but what the goings on actually meant to us. He's been retired but not really. Now he's moving on to being really retired. Here is a comment from the On The Hill announcement"

Connor Coffey says:
July 2, 2018 at 7:09 pm
The continuing disintegration of thoughtful, local political journalism, especially in medium sized media markets like Tennessee, will only serve to reduce civic awareness & engagement and diminish our government’s accountability to its citizens.
It is tragic – and ultimately dangerous – that this type of journalism, often the one true lifeline from constituents to their respective state capitals, county seats and city halls, is now considered by publishers to be an unaffordable luxury.
Mr. Humphrey, I will miss your dedication, insight and equilibrium – attributes needed more than ever in times like these – good luck to your successors and may they keep your flame burning.

It's a darkening day in Tennessee.

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It was fun seeing old friends hanging out and talking about "stuff". Phil Bredesen made a point to speak with everyone there. Maurice Grief holds his attention in this picture.

Click on the photo to see more.