Nashville

Hello, Liberal Drinkers! Come join us this evening, 6pm at the Flying Saucer, for another round of Drinking Liberally!

I believe it was Sheryl Crow who once said, "A change will do you good!" In that spirit, friends, we're going to try something a little different tonight and meet in the main bar room at the Saucer. The manager is reserving a whole rail for us, so there should be plenty of room. We'll see if this cuts down on the wandering-off which, though understandable, was totally harshing the vibe.

See you tonight! (Actually I won't personally see you tonight, because I'm moving to my new digs tomorrow! Woot!)

-amie

Hello, Liberal Drinkers! Come join us this evening, 6pm at the Flying Saucer, for another round of Drinking Liberally!

Tonight we're celebrating tomorrow's kickoff of Early Voting in Tennessee, woot!

"STATE PRIMARY AND COUNTY GENERAL ELECTION

EARLY VOTING
JULY 18 - AUGUST 2

Election Day - August 7

State Primary Ballot - US Senate, US House of Representatives (Districts 5 and 7), Tennessee Senate (District 20), Tennessee House of Representatives (Districts 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59 and 60)

County General Election Ballot - Chancery Court Part IV, Circuit Court Judge Division 5, Assessor of Property, County Board of Education (Districts 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9)"

(hat tip to the DCYDs for the email heads-up!)

The Nashville election web page (http://www.nashville.gov/Vote/) has a super-handy tool to Find Where I Vote, so check it out.

I know we have some folks on this email list who will be voting for the first time in the Presidential election, and who maybe haven't voted in a state or county primary before. I've been in those shoes, and the obvious question is, "Why bother?" Sometimes primary voting, especially at the local level, seems like something only diehard political junkies do.

And in all honesty, maybe it IS something only diehard political junkies do. But allow me to drop a little knowledge on you:

1) There are (give or take) about 450 people on this email distribution list.

2) In 1998, the last time the 52nd district was open, Rob Briley beat Kathy Austin 2013 to 1721 in the Democratic primary.* (Note that the 52nd district primary is between Eric Stansell and Mike Stewart, our guests.)

3) In 2004, challenger Gary Moore beat St. Rep. Tim Garrett 1819 to 1419 in the Democratic primary.*

4) The spread on those two elections was 292 and 400 votes, respectively.

So while not everyone on the DL list will vote in the same district, you're all getting this email. You all work with, live with, and interact with other potential voters. Speak up. Take a neighbor with you to the polls. Wear your 'I Voted' sticker. Think about how loud one voice is in an election decided by 400 people. Elections matter.

See you tonight!
-amie

*Stats provided by David Bone.

Hey there, Liberal Drinkers! Come join us this evening, 6pm at the Flying Saucer, for another round of Drinking Liberally!

So I'm sitting here, minding my own business, clearing out ye olde gmail inbox, when another MoveOn missive comes through the series of tubes that John McCain "is aware of." This particular ditty is about how our good friends at Fox News have added yet another star to their shining firmament of racist hits, this time combining the word "lynching" with "Michelle Obama."

I was surprised. Not because this is their idea of quality programming, no, but because they've really lost any pretense whatsoever that in their particular brand of conservatism, it's not All Racism All the Time. I mean, it would be difficult to be *more* blatant that they were, yet here they are topping themselves again!

That all led me to thinking that it must be a really difficult time to be a Conservative, or to be conservative but not necessarily card-carrying. I think of the "conservative" views of my family as I grew up, and it was rooted in an intellectualism (think Bill Buckley) that I could respect, even while finding it in opposition to my own beliefs. I feel so bad for people who believed "compassionate conservatism" and "contract with America" when I think about how bleak a moment this must be for them. Empty slogans, no leaders to speak of, nothing of substance or principle, just a frighteningly out of touch war hero promising to deliver more of the same.

Look: I know most conservatives aren't racist, at least not any more than the average liberal. It's our national legacy and burden to continue to grow past our collective shame so that the generations to come will each move another step beyond that hateful history. I also know that we live in the South, a blue dot in a red state, and that our families and friends and colleagues are probably not all that liberal in their politics. Heck, liberals here aren't all that liberal in their politics! But we *are* liberals, so we actually care about our fellow Americans.

So I encourage you to continue having conversations with people who aren't gung-ho for one Presidential candidate or the other, because life must be awfully uncomfortable for them right about now. Maybe we could actually be satisfied with an intelligent, thoughtful leader who believes we're all in this thing together, conservative and liberal alike. We just might get to a better place.

See you tonight!
-amie

Happy Almost Fourth, Liberal Drinkers! Come join us this evening, 6 pm at the Flying Saucer, for another round of Drinking Liberally!

First up: District 52 debate this Saturday! Sponsored by TAP:

The Lockeland Springs Neighborhood Association and The Tennessee Alliance for Progress are proud to be sponsoring the District 52 debate. The momentum is growing. The media has picked up on the debate and will be covering.

District 52 Candidate Debate
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Doors open at 9:15 am
Debate starts promptly at 9:30 am
East Police Precinct, 396 East Trinity Lane

~~~~

So let's chat for a moment about the Fourth of July in America. This week is usually thought of as a slow one, news-wise; the Olympics aren't here yet, the nominating conventions won't come until the Olympics are over, and basically, everyone's on vacation and phoning it in. But under the calm and glassy surface on which we seriously debate whether the proper deference was paid by one military man to another, a riptide lurks.

Wars never really go away, you see, not even when you've vanquished the enemy. Part of winning includes studying the Bad Guys and learning how better to beat them in the future, so that you may always be fighting your last war. They spawn one another. This week we learned that our "harsh interrogation" of prisoners at Gitmo -which is not American soil, so the terrorists we capture --anywhere, because it's a Global War on Terror-- have no right to know why they are being "detained" for 6+ years- anyway, we learned how to do what we're doing to them from Chinese communists. Turns out, you see, that they were quite good at torturing people, so we just took a U.S. Air Force report on exactly how China tortured people in the late 1950's, slapped a new title on it, and trained our people to do those things to this decade's crop of Bad Guys.

The New York Times delicately says our "harsh interrogations" are "inspired" by Chinese torture techniques. Because "cribbed from" is a bit too pedestrian a phrase. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?ex=1215662400&en=6355...

So what, exactly, are we doing to the Bad Guys at Gitmo and other spots of hell we've created around the globe? We're "waterboarding." Which is Not Torture. Who doesn't like a little cool water splashed on the face, especially with the weather what it is? (p.s., global warming is a myth.) Christopher Hitchens has, helpfully, decided to see for himself in order to better understand "whether or not it's torture."

Shock and Awe: it's torture. http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2008/07/02/hitchensboarding/.

That link includes another jump to the video of the event, which you might consider forwarding to some of your more hawkish friends. I'm sure Faux News will be playing it any day now.

And why, again, are we doing this to people? The short answer is, of course, that we're Doing It For Freedom. We're doing it because they're Bad, Bad Guys. The longer answer is that we're doing it because we like it, because it makes us feel good to hurt other people, and because we don't particularly care who those other people are. "But it's inhumane!" you say? We're okay with that. As Stanley Milgram showed in his famous Mind Studies, we'll hurt other people in the name of simply being obedient. And we Americans are nothing if not obedient. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/health/research/01mind.html?_r=1&adxnn...

Except, you know, we weren't so obedient a long time ago. In fact, we made quite a big deal about not simply obeying a King, and we didn't even bother to tell him to his face; we sent a letter, a Declaration, a condemnation, to his local newspaper.

Because of that little bit of disobedience, we are one of the few places on earth where the people of a country not only choose their leaders, (because we know that "choices" can be false; tip of the hat to Zimbabwe) but we can look forward every four years to a peaceful handover of awesome power from one elected official to another. From the very top of the heap all the way to the local schoolboard, we pick and choose among those who step forward.

So perhaps it hasn't been such a slow news week after all. Happy Fourth, everyone. Come have a beer with us and celebrate.

see you tonight,
amie