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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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President Joe Biden:

“Republican lawmakers—who had no problem with the government forgiving millions of dollars of their own business loans—have tried everything they can to stop me from providing relief to hardworking Americans. Some are even objecting to the actions we announced today, which follows through on relief borrowers were promised, but never given, even when they had been making payments for decades. The hypocrisy is stunning, and the disregard for working and middle-class families is outrageous.”

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Let's remember that our GOP dominated Legislature recently passed a bill outlawing local taxpayer oversight of County Sheriff offices. This is scary stuff, people!

At least one state, Texas, canceled credit for the sheriffs’ training after determining the course content – which it said included a reference to “this is a war” – was more political than educational. But other states, such as Tennessee, have approved the training, in part because it was hosted by a local law enforcement agency.

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August 21, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
AUG 22, 2023
The wildfires that raced across Maui, Hawaii, on Tuesday and Wednesday, August 8 and 9, driven by high winds across land that had been suffering a drought, have fed a familiar political narrative.

Monty Fritts is living down to expectations as our State Representative, Demonizing the "left" for supporting the Governor's call for a Red Flag Law, which ask judges to keep weapons out of the hands of demonstrably violent or mentally ill people, such as the person who killed three nine year old school children and three adults at the Christian Covenant School in Nashville.

One has to wonder if Fritts is receiving enough campaign money from weapons lobbyists or if he's just enamored with guns? Senator Yager, who I usually think has kinder leanings, seems to be on the side of the shooters as well. Why is this?

How deep does the gun lobby have its claws into our legislature? The legislature continues to vote against the will of Tennessee citizens:

Vanderbilt Poll: majority of Tennessee voters support red-flag laws
Conducted three weeks after Covenant School shooting, the poll found 3 in 4 Tennesseans support measures taking guns from people at risk for harming themselves or others

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The Roane County News story on this is as unbalanced as it can get. I am greatly saddened.

"...The latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (Conducted prior to this week’s Fulton County indictment)...found that 53% of Americans “approve of the Justice Department indicting Trump over his efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election.” Wonder how that needle has moved AFTER the GA indictments?

Here are even more fun toons from Juanita!

We own a cabin in the mountains of South Carolina. It is rural and remote and 1700 feet from the county road. Our electric co-op just hung a fiber-optic box on the wall and we are waiting for the modem and router installation. Here in Tennessee there is no future in sight for high speed broadband in most of our rural areas. Here's why:

An initial draft of the broadband investment act included a provision to remove barriers for nonprofit electric cooperatives to build more high-speed networks in rural areas. But AT&T successfully lobbied for the bill to change into only a tax cut. As the largest private broadband company in Tennessee AT&T is likely to receive the lion’s share of the tax benefit versus the nonprofit cooperatives that are, in most cases, not paying sales tax.

Last year, lawmakers passed a $204 million sales tax exemption for broadband companies.

On the surface, the tax break looked mild and was innocently named the Broadband Investment Maximization Act. But after diving into the bill's history and who will benefit, the legislation is anything but.

The act was initially designed as a compromise between electric cooperatives and AT&T, Tennessee's biggest political spender. But after some lobbying from the telecom giant, lawmakers removed the part benefiting cooperatives. All that was left was a tax cut primarily helping AT&T.

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For those of you playing along at home the total is now over 90 felony indictments in four separate jurisdictions for court adjudged rapist, Donald Trump.

There are lots of good journalistic stories for you to choose from today. Here's a good one:

Trump faces thirteen counts, including RICO. Those include charges of solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to commit false statements, conspiracy to file a false document, filing false documents, and making false statements.

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