We have a lot of readers and fans in Tennessee (not to mention Leon) and after reading this article by A.C. Kleinheider I think it is time for all of us nationally to focus a bit on Tennessee.

For the longest time Tennessee has elected squishy moderates state wide. Howard Baker was conservative, but in a “compromise his mother to advance his goal” sort of way. Arguably Lamar Alexander is even worse, refusing to do anything that does not advance bipartisanship, even at the expense of core conservative goals. Hell, Alexander is not even and does not consider himself to be, a conservative.

Bob Corker, who I know and like, is definitely and defiantly to the right of Alexander, but even Corker is more a pragmatist, willing to compromise on big and small issues — no doubt affected by his time as a mayor. I’m finding that municipal politics can skew one’s perspective on the need to work across the aisle.

Tennessee has never elected to state wide office rock-ribbed movement conservatives. They’ve elected George W. Bush types who have conservative inclinations, but are not conservatives. As Kleinheider puts it:

Republicans will run Tennessee but which Republicans hold power and in what capacity will make a huge difference. Traditionally, Tennessee Republicans have talked a conservative game, but there’s a difference between being conservative — adjective —and being a conservative — noun.

A movement conservative, for example, has never won a statewide primary and gone on to win a general election.

But as Tennessee grows further right and expands its Republican domination of the state next year — the GOP just took the State House and have expanded its margin in a special election — and becomes the entrenched party of power, we’re going to see more and more actual, factual conservatives moving up.

That brings me to two races.

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Can someone fly in some Honduran soldiers to load Lamar Alexander (R-TN) up on a plane and fly in to Costa Rica? Get him out of the country. Come on — if this is the future leadership of the Republican Party, we need a coup*.

Jim DeMint has scored some damn effective points against Barack Obama this week by calling healthcare Obama’s “Waterloo.” It got under his skin so bad, Obama flubbed his press conference and saw his poll numbers dip below 50% for the first time.

Independent types should read that as “Jim DeMint is on to something.” Lamar Alexander reads it as “time to get on my knees and kiss the Democrats’ backsides.”

Behold this exchange on the floor of the Senate.

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Call Jim Cooper at 202-225-4311 and tell him to vote against H.R. 2346.

The vote is today. Call now.

Jim Cooper, who claims to be in to “paygo” and a budget hawk, is saying he is leaning toward voting for H.R. 2346, the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations Act.

The legislation would

• send money to the International Monetary Fund;
• provide billions to bail out European national banks; and,
• provide money to the present Iranian regime.

Now, Cooper denies that, but the legislation very clearly provides fund for the IMF and the IMF has very clearly said it would use those same funds to bail out European banks and prop up Iran.

The vote on the legislation happens today after 10:00 a.m.

Call 202-225-4311. Tell Jim Cooper to vote no on H.R. 2346.

Trevor Hill owns what was once a blighted, rundown building in Knoxville, Tennessee. Hill has upgraded and repaired the building and built a restaurant there that he’s christened The Hill restaurant. It’s a full service restaurant and that means it is to serve alcohol. And that last fact seems to be causing a conflict with the folks that own the neighboring building: the Anoor mosque.

Apparently one of the mosque board members, Nadeem Sidiqqi, is upset that an American property owner could possibly serve alcohol in his own business. Sidiqqi thinks he should be able to tell the owner of The Hill restaurant that he shouldn’t be allowed to serve alcohol so close to his mosque. He thinks that the city should invent a law that would mandate a “buffer zone” so that his religious tenets can be enforced on his neighbors. Sidiqqi wants to prevent neighboring property owners from doing as they wish with their own property.

So, is this America or Saudi Arabia?

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If you might remember, back in February it was reported that Bart Gordon (D, TN-06) went to Europe on taxpayer money to… essentially, ski. He wasn’t on any relevant committee that would justify his presence in that particular junket, but he is a twelve-term Democrat whose party overwhelmingly controls Congress right now, which apparently is justification enough. Now Dave Evans, Gordon’s most likely Republican challenger in the general election, has come out with an estimate that Gordon’s travel costs were approximately $7,250; he’s calling for the Congressman to give that money back, fully disclose how much was spent by Gordon and his family on the trip, explain why he didn’t disclose earlier, and explain why the Congressman was on this junket in the first place.

What makes this potentially damaging is that Bart Gordon is a Blue Dog Democrat; their primary distinguishing feature is supposed to be fiscal conservatism. While this has been overshadowed by their willingness to vote for things like the miscalled “stimulus” bills - which Gordon voted for - individual members of that caucus still hope to run on individual records of financial probity. Which is quite probably why Gordon has been notably uncommunicative about his reasons for going to Europe at taxpayer expense. If there was anything resembling a valid reason for it, he would have said so by now. Early days yet for the race, but that’s sometimes necessary when a long-time incumbent is being challenged.

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See, the thing that makes crazy people, well… crazy, is that they don’t do things like normal people. Laws, rules, even simple human kindness is meaningless to such unbalanced people. The same can be said of criminals. See the thing that makes them criminals is that they don’t obey laws. But the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s Rich Locker seems to think making a law will magically make a wacko suddenly heed reason. On top of that, to illustrate his allusion he conflates the criminal actions of a man in Alabama to laws in Tennessee in order to justify his anti-gun sentiment for Tennesseans. Will these disingenuous Old Media types never learn a love of logic?

The tragic and criminal actions of the nut in Alabama that killed 10 people in a wild traveling rampage served as Locker’s platform to advocate for a Tennessee law that would make illegal the carrying load guns in a vehicle. He seems to insinuate that such a law would have prevented the sicko in Alabama from driving around killing people. Locker neglects to reveal how some words on a piece of paper, though, could prevent a madman from transporting a loaded gun in a car.

The opening paragraph is a perfect example of this conflation in order to draw out an emotional reaction in the reader.

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My good friend, Ken Marrero over at Blue Collar Muse, did some interesting research into where the money from Tennessee’s share of the so-called stimulus payoff ends up going. Ken notes that there is a lot of money floating around but little of it goes to stimulate the economy. In fact, it seems that the lion’s share goes to government and its grasping needs as opposed to the economy.

According to Marrero, The Volunteer State stands to have a windfall of $3,779,708,000 thanks to the pork-laden bill passed by Congress and President Obama. The list of payouts is impressive, but it really does show that only a small amount of the total could be considered an economic stimulant.

The list of recipients is instructive:

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Apparently, he’s going to be part of quite the throng. Via Red County and Dave Evans for Congress comes this WaPo report:

Hurry, hurry, hurry. Congress will begin its 2009 travel season in earnest this weekend with two spectacular codels — trips for House congressional delegations — that are not to be missed.

On Saturday, Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House delegation to NATO’s parliamentary assembly, and his wife will lead a delegation of 13 lawmakers — plus 10 spouses — on a fine nine-day jaunt starting at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

[snip]

The huge number of members, spouses and staffers, plus military escorts, will require taking one of the bigger military jets, but we’re told these trips are an important use of taxpayer money.

No, of course he has no obvious legislative reason to go. As Dave Evans further notes:

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Well, everyone has been saying she’s gotten on her high horse. In Washington, people have been referring to her as President Pelosi.

Obama seemingly has decided to smack her down.

But he probably did not expect Congressman Jim Cooper (D-TN) to admit it on the radio.

Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I actually got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks for what I’m doing,” said Cooper, one of about 55 House Democrats to sign a letter criticizing Speaker Nancy Pelosi for suspending normal debate and committee rules on the $819 billion package.

He went on — and on:

“They know its a messy bill and they wanted a clean bill. Now, I got in terrible trouble with our leadership because they don’t care what’s in the bill, they just want it pass and they want it to be unanimous. They don’t mind the partisan fighting cause that’s what they are used to. In fact, they’re really good at it. And they’re a little bit worried about what a post-partisan future might look like. If members actually had to read the bills and figure out whether they are any good or not. We’re just told how to vote. We’re treated like mushrooms most of the time.”