Do you recall the last time you saw Phil Bredesen stumping at a Wal-Mart on bread-&-butter issues?

Yeah. Me neither...

"I particularly hope he strengthens his economic message — even Senator Obama can speak more clearly and specifically about the kitchen-table, bread-and-butter issues like high energy costs," said Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio. "It's fine to tell people about hope and change, but you have to have plenty of concrete, pragmatic ideas that bring hope and change to life."

Or, in the blunter words of Gov. Phil Bredesen, Democrat of Tennessee: "Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives."

[snip]

Mr. Bredesen, of Tennessee, said that while the Democrats had little chance of carrying his state — the Obama camp is sending Mr. Bredesen to campaign in other states — Mr. Obama could still take steps to appeal to undecided Democrats there that might increase his chances elsewhere.

"I would really like to see him do things in Tennessee that would help in other working-class and blue-collar places, like Ohio," Mr. Bredesen said. "Job security and health care are huge here. He needs to come to the aisle of Home Depot and show them that a Harvard graduate — which I am as well — knows how to help them."

Thanks, Phil. Thanks for using your leadership position to help keep Tennessee in the "net export" column for the Democratic Party.

(Surely a Harvard man like Phil ought to be able to quickly translate, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." Naturelment. Certainly, job security and health care are huge here - with an unemployment rate a full point & change worse than the national rate and 15.7% of the population currently uninsured - they're huge, festering problems. And in a lamentably predictable tradition befitting this deeply conservative technocrat, the "answer" is apparently to keep making deeper cuts.)

Q: What's the difference between Osama and Obama?

A: The Republicans are actually trying to stop Obama.

Now that the United States manufacturing base has eroded to next to nothing, and with the sharp spikes in the price of commodity items (owing largely to the fact that these are priced in heavily devalued dollars in commodity markets), the latest economic crisis is causing acute pain in the service industry.

What does it take to raise our collective consciousness about this? Well, it appears to be that Starbucks is poised to create what amounts to an inconvenience for many - having to drive out of the way to get a cup of second-rate, boutique-brewed coffee. This is not to trivialize the experience of the people losing their jobs; however, it does point up the sort of thing that will stir the populace into action.

I sort of had to laugh when I found out that people were organizing to "Save Our Starbucks," as if a community would be endangered by such an economic sucker punch. Could it possibly be that Starbucks has overextended itself, has become a victim of its own exuberance, and that they have passed the point of market saturation in many locales?

Never mind that businesses that have had major presence in Tennessee, such as Murray or Carrier or White Lily or Electrolux or Whirlpool or Modine or Superior Industries or Brown Shoe Company or Aleris or Horace Small Apparel or Huttig or Federal-Mogul or Siegel-Robert Automotive South or Eastman Chemical or GM/Saturn or La-Z-Boy or RH Donnelly or Goodyear or JC Penney or Paccar or Fedders or Levi Strauss have reduced or eliminated thousands of good paying jobs over the last decade...

And it occurs to me: We, as a country, don't really make goods anymore. We make coffee.

That's pretty weak tea for what used to be the most developed country in the world.

...or, "Rocks are Hard, Water is Wet, and the Texas Republican Party Doesn't Even Bother With Dog Whistles Anymore."

Vile.

(via: Link...)

After having a brief lunch with a co-worker this afternoon, I walked with him up to the local RegionsBank HQ in Nashville so he could deposit a few checks.

As we're standing in the atrium, I observe that there are a couple of wall-mounted LCD widescreens, and they're showing Happy Feet on them both. So I muse aloud, "Hey, when I was a kid, my sisters and I didn't get to see a movie. We did, however, get a Dum-Dum lollipop after my mom concluded her business at the bank, so I think I got the better end of the deal." He nodded in agreement. "I like the root beer ones the best, I think. Cream soda is a close second."

Continuing, I wagered a Special Lunch Numero Cinco that as part of a cost-cutting measure, the bank had stopped giving out suckers at the tellers' window (I don't bank at Regions; I use a local credit union). "Something like that," I surmised, "just doesn't pass muster for this neo-Dickensian corporate age."

We approach the counter, and we ask the teller about this, couched in terms of "help us settle a bet."

Unfortunately, I lost, but only on a technicality. RegionsBank does in fact give out suckers, but they do so with a monthly allocation at the branch that runs out in approximately two days. Feh. In spirit, I think it's fair to say that they don't, in fact, make this a priority.

However, they're supposedly trying to "figure out a way" to pay for the suckers, as a lot of people have been asking about what happened to them. (Translated: The company is too cheap anymore to fund them out of petty cash, and some humorless bean counter probably won't consider them an allowable expense.)

So, the question remains: What financial institutions (branch or main office) still maintain this, one of the least among life's simple pleasures?

A single red-headed woodpecker is something of a rare spot.

I imagine that two is even rarer.

(Cropped and 'shopped for color/tone, but otherwise intact.)

Based on descriptions of the bird, I imagine that this is possibly a mated pair. They typically lay eggs in early May with a two-week gestation. Both were spirited browsers, but I don't know that I saw them simultaneously except for a fleeting moment.

(I also watched a male bluebird, at 1/5th of the size, chase one of these fellers out of the yard. The description I mentioned earlier indicates that RHW's are famously omnivorous, eating not only nuts and insects, but also hatchlings and eggs of other birds. The blues are in a nestbox and have a clutch of five, and are fiercely protective of same.)

"Verified Voting" will soon be the law in Tennessee.

Legislation requiring a paper trail for all ballots in Tennessee by 2010 passed the House earlier this week. It passed the Senate today, and goes to Bredesen's desk for signature.

Too funny - a new Roy Edroso feature in the Village Voice profiles various right-wing blowhards, just in time for the 2008 election season.

Glenn Reynolds profile here.

Heh. Indeed.

(VRWC = vast right wing conspiracy)

I'm glad Edroso reads this stuff... so I don't have to.

Bill Hobbs is now officially a Tabloid Bully Boy (™ Brian Hornback).

In this week's National Enquirer, no less:

Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, revealed there are other links between the senator and America's enemies.

"Obama has a foreign policy advisor, Robert Maley, who blames Israel for anything bad and suggests we ought to be doing business with Hamas (the radical Palestinian militants dedicated to Israel's destruction)," Hobbs told the enquirer.

Batboy could not be reached for comment.

There will be no Constitutional amendment on abortion in 2010:

A House subcommittee voted along party lines on Tuesday to kill a contentious constitutional abortion amendment amid open partisan sniping over the legislation.

“The resolution fails,” Rep. Mary Pruitt, the Democratic chairwoman of the House Public Health and Family Assistance Subcommittee, declared after the subcommittee voted, 6-3, to defeat the measure.

The measure proposed to amend the Tennessee constitution to specify that nothing in state law explicitly protects abortion. The Senate approved the proposal earlier this year, but it was widely expected to die in the House committee, as in previous years.

Proponents said the amendment was needed for future abortion regulation; opponents have decried it as an election-year gambit and an attempt to eventually ban abortion outright.

Knox County Democrat Joe Armstrong, who sits on this committee, heaped scorn on the Republicans:

Democrats have criticized Republican sponsors of the resolution, saying it's a partisan issue that comes up almost every election year.

"Democrats and Republicans have worked together to create quality legislation," said Rep. Joe Armstrong, who voted against the resolution on Tuesday. "But it's funny this comes up ... when there's an election on the line and yet on an off year this is never mentioned."

The Knoxville Democrat emphasized the partisanship of the resolution by referencing a fellow Democrat who said he wasn't allowed to sign onto the legislation because of his party affiliation.

"By telling a pro-life Democrat he can't sign on, that proves it's not about saving life, it's about politics," Armstrong said.

Congressman Rick Renzi, R-AZ, was today indicted for charges related to an allegedly corrupt federal land swap in Arizona:

John McCain said that Rep. Rick Renzi (R) would probably step down as co-chair of his Arizona campaign. McCain was unaware of the Arizona congressman's indictment until asked about it this morning after a town hall in Indianapolis, at which point he said that you always think about the family in these circumstances and he would look into Renzi's role in his campaign.

This has been a while in coming. The FBI raided Renzi's office in 2007 and it was widely assumed at the time that he would step down, although he's been protesting his innocence all along.

McCain, for his part, said you "always feel for the family" when incidents like this occur. (Funny, I didn't think this quite extended to the Republican Party, yet I know of other crime syndicates often referred to as "the family." It remains to be seen if Renzi is the latest in a string of drunken uncles at the reunion to be convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, insurance fraud, or criminal forfeiture - but this sure would sound like racketeering if this was a mobster being brought up on this particular billet of charges.)

We've sorta been through this with McCain already, haven't we? He sure knows how to choose his associates.

As if these charges weren't quite enough (from May of 2007):

Renzi’s case was opened by former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who was fired as part of the Bush administration’s purge. In Oct. 2006, word leaked to the media about the investigation. Renzi’s top aide, Brian Murray, then called Charlton’s spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle to inquire about the investigation. Such calls are highly improper and potentially illegal.

Yesterday in an interview with Phoenix’s KPNX, Renzi spoke for the first time since the FBI raid and said that he believes he is being smeared by the Justice Department. He refused to take any responsibility for the land deal, instead charging — without any evidence — that the leaks on the investigation were “lies.” He added that “to make that up and put that out means the Department of Justice was engaged in electioneering and that needs to be investigated.

But as we all know, US Attorneys "serve at the pleasure of the president." They're never like, targets of politically motivated firings or anything.

Right.

Federal charges may soon be forthcoming for the three self-described "Christian" men who sprayed [illiterate] racist graffiti upon and later firebombed a Middle Tennessee mosque:

The call came in to the Columbia, Tennessee 911 call center at 5:20 on the morning of February 9. A fire was raging at the Islamic Center. When local police arrived a few minutes later, they found the broken glass of a door and heavy dark smoke billowing out of a broken window. At the scene, the officers also discovered a black swastika painted on the front of the building, along with two black swastikas and "We run the wold" (sic) and "White Power" painted on the side.

Later the same day, law enforcement officers arrested three local residents: Eric Ian Baker, 32, Michael Corey Golden, 23, and Jonathan Edward Stone, 19. The three men are accused of using empty beer bottles filled with gasoline and rags to set fire to the storefront mosque. They face federal charges of unlawful possession of a destructive device and state charges of arson.

According to the criminal complaint filed in federal court, at least two of the perpetrators of the arson and vandalism of the mosque were Christian Identity Movement adherents. (See the affidavit here.)

Christian Identity is a racist and anti-Semitic religious doctrine which teaches that European whites and their American descendants are the Biblical "chosen people,” while Jews are the literal descendants of Satan and that people of color are subhuman. It has been the theological glue binding together neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan devotees, militia members and others into the white nationalist movement.

Eric Rudolph and Buford O'Neal Furrow are a couple of other "Christian Identity" names you might recognize.

For those wishing to donate to the rebuilding fund for the mosque...

Community First Bank and Trust
501 S James Campbell Blvd.
Columbia, TN 38401
931-380-2265
Islamic Center of Columbia Rebuilding Fund
Account Number: 0026123

Red-bellied woodpecker, Sunday Feb. 17, 2008

The Great Backyard Bird Count was this weekend.

It was a good year at our house.

Species observed after the jump...

Do Americans care if we're in Iraq for 10,000 years? Of course not!

Groovin' to the oldies with McCain.

What a maverick!

Vlad the Candidate Ron Paul is shifting to his re-election bid.

Door, ass, etc.

The worst thing about this guy's campaign: Otherwise sensible people thought that Paul represented something genuine. Oh well.

Maybe the Huckabee campaign can use the leftover spray-paint.

Among the five states that he took today, Huckabee takes TN primary.

The evangelicals turn out for the Reverend, throwing a stick in the spokes of the McCain juggernaut.

West Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Georgia. The solid south comes through.

(And boy, how about Utah? The biggest surprise is the margin - 89% Romney, 6% McCain. I mean, I imagine that the LDS are going to turn out for their own, but hooooooooooooooooo buddy. That's a pants-down spankin'.)

Mordant chuckles echo around the house.

Start the Rush Limbaugh suicide watch...

8:00 ET... Oklahoma (MSNBC)
8:15 ET... Tennessee (MSNBC)
8:30 ET... Arkansas (MSNBC)
9:00 ET... New York, Massachusetts - so much for the Kennedy endorsement (MSNBC)
9:20 ET... New Jersey - despite the insurgent campaign for Rikki Hall (MSNBC)

Delegate count as of 9 ET: Clinton 447 (CBS)

Taking cover around 10:30... see you on the other side of this supercell.

Crunching a few of the state numbers... Obama won 9 counties of Tennessee's 95 (Davidson, Fayette, Hamilton, Hardeman, Haywood, Madison, Shelby, Van Buren, Williamson).

Some might assert that Obama would have done better if the storms hadn't hit West Tennessee so hard. Well, one: that storm sent Clinton voters home as well. Two: this ignores the fact that Clinton took victories in 66% of the counties in the state. Total of 631,680 votes cast statewide.

Hillary's average margin of victory was something like 50 points (yes, five-zero, you read that right) in counties over west *and* middle *and* east Tennessee - granted, these counties don't have as much population as the ones that Obama carried, but still, they add up. This is the rural/urban divide showing up again, and depending on the demographics of the state involved, this can really cut against your candidate. (The exit polls may highlight some of this. In general, Tennessee's population skews caucasian - certainly more so relative to neighboring states Georgia and Alabama, which Obama carried; certainly more so in rural areas of the state, which Clinton overwhelmingly carried.)

Notable: Montgomery County - home of Fort Campbell - went to Clinton. That may not amount to a referendum on the Iraq issue, but it is certainly interesting. This county also went for HFJ in the general in TN-Senate '06.

7:30 ET... Georgia (MSNBC)
8:00 ET....Illinois (MSNBC)
9:05 ET... Delaware (MSNBC)
9:25 ET... Alabama (MSNBC)

Sometime between 10 and 11 while the supercell rolled through... North Dakota, Minnesota, Connecticut, Kansas

Delegate count as of 9 ET: Obama 392 (CBS)

Rewinding McCain, via The Carpetbagger:

Over the last year or so, when John McCain was struggling to get his presidential campaign back on track, one of his more notable challenges was reinventing himself — again.

When he got to Congress, McCain was a rather conventional conservative Republican. After his role in the Keating Five scandal, McCain took on a reform-minded persona. By 1999, he was a self-described “maverick” and moderate, who would move the GOP to the center. By 2004, McCain was back to being a conservative again. By 2007, he had positioned himself as an establishment Republican, and when that didn’t work out, McCain decided he’d become some kind of hybrid of the various McCains of the recent past.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say McCain has very few core values, and is willing to shift with the wind to get ahead. It’s one of the reasons he’s flip-flopped all over the place throughout the campaign.

Read that article in its entirety. An important point gets made: In this process of self-re-invention, McCain is now opposing legislation that he actually championed, or worse, wrote. See: the McCain immigration plan. He's now publicly condemned the very policy he wrote.

Since you won't hear about this in the news (because of that big ol' liberal bias in the news, doncha know), let's take a quick visit to McCain and his relationship with convicted bank felon/S&L fraud/influence pimp Charles Keating:

McCain defended his attendance at the meetings by saying Keating was a constituent and that Keating's development company, American Continental Corporation, was a major Arizona employer. McCain said he wanted to know only whether Keating was being treated fairly and that he had not tried to influence the regulators. At the second meeting, McCain told the regulators, "I wouldn't want any special favors for them," and "I don't want any part of our conversation to be improper."

But Keating was more than a constituent to McCain--he was a longtime friend and associate. McCain met Keating in 1981 at a Navy League dinner in Arizona where McCain was the speaker. Keating was a former naval aviator himself, and the two men became friends. Keating raised money for McCain's two congressional campaigns in 1982 and 1984, and for McCain's 1986 Senate bid. By 1987, McCain campaigns had received $112,000 from Keating, his relatives, and his employees--the most received by any of the Keating Five. (Keating raised a total of $300,000 for the five senators.)

After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights.

And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.

Oh, for cryin' out loud...

Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate who was blamed by many Democrats for Al Gore’s loss in the 2000 presidential election, launched an exploratory committee Wednesday for another White House bid, and told CNN he is likely to get in the race if he can put the resources in place.

"John Edwards, the banner of Democratic Party populism, is dropping out, and Dennis Kucinich dropped out earlier, so in terms of voters who are at least interested in having major areas of injustice, deprivations, and solutions discussed in a presidential campaign, they might be interested in my exploratory effort," Nader said.

Nope. Never again, Ralph. Never again.

As of 10:30 ET, MSNBC is forecasting a Hillary Clinton NH victory.

The split, as of this hour:

39 (Clinton) - 36 (Obama) - 17 (Edwards)

With over a third of ballots presently counted, Fred Thompson is 2nd to last in the NH primary behind Ron Paul.

Now, if you "google Ron Paul" as the spray-painted signs are so fond of saying, you may find this little trove, linking to writings such as this:

On anti-Semitism:

I'll believe establishment liberals are really committed to free speech when I see Norman Mailer and his cohorts wearing "I am Ernst Zundel" buttons and holding readings of his works.

(Zundel is a well-known Holocaust denier.)

On the growth of militias:

This radical new movement is a magnificent sign of the times, one of many indications that the central state faces massive resistance from average people and is losing its grip on political power ... It's the domination of Washington that is driving the militia and other heroic movements around the country.

On gun rights use:

"If you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example)."

On homosexuality and AIDS:

I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities ... AIDS was originally called GRIDS - the Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Political pressure forced a name change to try to hid the origin of this plague.

On race relations:

A mob of black demonstrators, led by the "Rev." Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City "to reclaim it for our people."

Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?

But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.

Boy, good luck in the NY primary. Google is forever, "Doctor."

Yes, please. Google Ron Paul. Google away...

It speaks volumes that the hapless Thompson can't put up even a one-point victory on this lunatic...

ETA: Yes, many of these writings are unattributed - but they do appear in a newsletter bearing Ron Paul's name. As ever, plausible deniability ---> improbable deniability as stuff like this keeps cropping up.

As of 9:25 ET - and MSNBC calls it...

SENATOR BARACK OBAMA : 35.06% (x)
SENATOR JOHN EDWARDS : 31.19%
SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON : 30.87%
GOVERNOR BILL RICHARDSON : 1.78%
SENATOR JOE BIDEN : 0.97%
UNCOMMITTED : 0.11%
SENATOR CHRIS DODD : 0.03%
PRECINCTS REPORTING: 1262 OF 1781

NBC calling Iowa for Huckabee as of 9 ET, followed by Romney. Thompson a distant third with 25% of precincts reporting in the straw poll.

A break from the tropical birds - one from my archives. Canada geese on Foothills Parkway.

Presented without comment:

A majority of the mayors of the Nashville area's largest cities and counties oppose a plan to loosen the state's open meeting laws, according to an informal Tennessean survey.

More members of elected boards and commissions would be allowed to discuss public affairs behind closed doors if a change approved in October by a legislative subcommittee continues to advance.

Proponents of the change say it will help politicians conduct business more efficiently and steer clear of embarrassing imbroglios like a recent court case involving illegal closed meetings of the Knox County Commission.

But nine city and county mayors contacted by The Tennessean echoed concerned citizens when they said they liked the law the way it is.

Five others did not return phone calls.

More Galápagos endemics:

(click for full res)

Red footed booby (I think) on the wing, off Wolf Island.

(…and no, I'm not talking about our blog host. SKB is very real.)

I meant to post a snippet of this the other day, and recent comments about a projected Clinton campaign swoop through the South reminded me…

Remember that book of TRVTH entitled Whistling Past Dixie that came out shortly after the last election? Blogger Digby wrote at the time that…

the conservative majority in the south is much more conservative than the rest of the country and the Democrats simply cannot win by trying to accomodate it

Turns out that, well, that actual numbers don't support Tom Schaller's case.

It’s relatively high-income Southern whites who are very, very Republican...

Contrary to what you may have read, the old-fashioned notion that rich people vote Republican, while poorer people vote Democratic, is as true as ever – in fact, more true than it was a generation ago. But in rich states like New Jersey or Connecticut, the relationship is weak; even the very well off tend to be only slightly more Republican than working-class voters. In the poorer South, however, the relationship is very strong indeed.

This is why it’s true both that rich voters tend to be Republican, and that rich states tend to be Democratic.

Important stuff to re-iterate as we head into 2008. Are any of the major Democratic campaigns listening? Or are they busy whistling?

Pandering to the xenophobes, Rodolfo Giuliani* demonstrates that Hispanic is the "new black" for GOP politics:

Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that if elected president he would end illegal immigration in as few as three years by employing the same police tactics he used to reduce the crime rate as New York mayor.

Stopping illegal immigration "is not impossible," presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday.

"It can be done. It is not impossible," Giuliani told his audience at a town hall-style meeting. "You can do this, you can stop them at the border."

Giuliani said he would boost the number of border security agents to 18,000 from the current 12,000, and build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border with technological monitoring to reduce illegal immigration.

Maybe he can simply arm the blind and send them to la maquiladora.

"I believe in America. America has made my fortune." - Mario Puzo, in the voice of Amerigo Bonasera

* Even for the irony-impaired, this one's a gimme.

The Friday Bird Blog introduces the Galápagos Endemics series...

This 'chere is a Galápagos Penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus) on Bartolome Island. (I'd mistakenly had this labeled as a Magellanic when I uploaded it yesterday.)

(click for full res)

Taken on July 25 of this year as I toured Las Encantadas on summer vacation.