Newscoma

After last night’s drama, I realized I was fortunate enough to have Tivo’d Bill O’Reilly and Stephen Colbert’s appearance on The O’Reilly Report.

I thought, in all honesty, that Colbert was better on O’Reilly’s show than he was on his own show but there were some moments I found to be very interesting. Let me start off by saying I do not like Bill O’Reilly, and I can’t help but wonder if shilling his new book “Culture Warrior” on a show that satirizes him very effectively wasn’t a case of masochism. Colbert can take a hit better than anyone and turn it into biting political commentary. O’Reilly seems a bit thin-skinned to me.

Colbert survived the White House Correspondent’s Dinner by lampooning the president while simultaneously praising him. The White House press corps is still reeling that this year they have asked Rich Little to be the keynote address.

Cutting edge? Yeah, right.

Sharon Cobb commented on the show as well and said that she, and I’m paraphrazing here, thought it was a missed opportunity. I think it was hit or miss as well, but I enjoyed it.

O’Reilly presents himself as a “serious” news pundit and honestly had a hell of a lot more to lose than Colbert did. Colbert is a comedian who has, smartly I must add, stayed in character to the point that he has mastered that “I’m right” attitude of right-wing pundits better than even right-wingers do. With that said, I almost felt, almost campers, felt sorry for O’Reilly.

The funny thing is I think Colbert did too and backed off a bit on him on his show. I could be wrong but that’s my take on it. O’Reilly has the highest rated show in cable right now, but what goes up must go down. I think conservative commentators are scrambling now because not everything is as black and white for them as it was two years ago, or even 12 months ago for that matter.

And I do agree with Cobb that the show could have been legendary, and, alas, it wasn’t. But on the other hand I think it was telling that Colbert does O’Reilly better than O’Reilly does.

Charles O’ Brien has passed away in Crossville.

Former Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Charles H. O’Brien died today at age 86.

He was married to  former State Senator Anna Belle Clement O’Brien. Of course, the Clement family have deep roots in Tennessee.

 Political History here :Her father was Robert S. Clement was the patriarch of a Tennessee political family.

Mr. Clement, a Democrat, served as the city attorney in Dickson for 40 years. He was the father of the late Frank G. Clement, a former governor, and of State Senator Anna Belle Clement O’Brien. He was the grandfather of Bob Clement.

End of political history lesson.

O’Brien was elected to the State Court of Criminal Appeals in 1970, and he served there until then-Governor Ned McWherter named him to the state high court in 1987 retiring from the bench in 1994.

Being that Ned McWherter is from our humble abode of Hooterville and he appointed O’Brien to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1987, I thought I’d post this.

Tonight, dealing with the joys of ralphing periodically throughout the day, I got a phone call from Big Daddy.

“Where’s your sister?” he said on the phone. He had a tone in his voice that was, quite frankly, disconcerting. He’s my father. I know when he’s upset. “I need her phone number, my numbers are out in the car and I need to talk to them right now.”

“She’s taken Bear to tumbling,” I said. The tone was sorta scary.

“The building, their building outside Clockworks is on fire,” he said. “I need to find her.”

“I’ll call her,” and I went into overload. As I called her, I was getting out of the everpresent muumuu, throwing on a sweatshirt and falling down trying to get my jeans on. You see, there are times that you just have to go and it’s just the way it is.

Squeegee Monkey answered the phone and I told him what was going on. I told him I’d meet him there as he was about ten miles away and I was about two minutes down the road.

“I’m turning around,” is all he said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He said later that he could see the flames from Martin, which is about ten miles away from their business, which is in Dresden. You can imagine the terror they felt. Hell, I felt it. They’ve worked for ten years to get their business off the ground and to think it might have all gone up in smoke was terrifying. Every dime they have is tied up in that T-shirt business.

We ran to the car. Squirrelly and I went flying down the road and as we pulled out of the driveway, you could see the smoke and flames which were about a mile away in the falling dusk. I drove like a maniac, SQ bitched at me, I bitched back but was really on our minds that we didn’t know which building it was (there are a couple on their property) and we were frightened.

SQ and I got over our bitching and I pulled in about 100 yards from the back end of the firetruck. We ran toward the building and fortunately, the portion that has their equipment in it was okay. They bought this piece of property and it has these huge metal sheds on them that were built like a million years ago. The building used to be a used furniture store that also rented out U-Hauls. Welcome to Hooterville. On the outside of the main property is was this funky metal building. They’ve only owned the property for a little while and my sister even said she’d never even been in the building that burned. (There was an issue of a fear of snakes. Snakes mess Homer up and she will kill you if you even tease her about it.) A man in town was using it for storage and when they moved in, they let him keep his stuff in it in an arrangement made through Big Daddy.

Anyway, the fire was hot and really scary and when Homer and Squeegee Monkey showed up, they looked in shock. I could tell Homer had been crying. The girls were in the van with a police officer watching over them, so I told my sister I’d take them home. They are little. They were crying and they didn’t understand what was happening so I grabbed the keys and we went home.

There’s quite a bit of damage (well the metal building is flattened toast) but the main area is okay although the fire broke a couple of windows.

No one was hurt.

Tomorrow will be filled with insurance, fire investigators and the like. We can’t figure out why the building went up in flames, because the thing was engulfed when we got there.

We all stunk to high heaven with the smell of smoke and soot. I didn’t get it as bad as they did because I left with the nieces who needed to get out of there. They were freaked out. One of them asked me if CSI was coming to check it out. The oldest one asked if the fire investigators were as smart as Nancy Drew. I said I thought they might be.
I assured them that the authorities (I couldn’t think of an other word) would come and investigate how the fire started and we should have some answers in a few days. I also reminded them that is was really a blessed day because no one got hurt. (It was a huge fire, campers. I’m talking huge and scary.)

Homer and Squeegee are okay. We all are.

The local boys have been busy in Nashville today.

The Tennessee Broadband Task Force spent much of the last six months
studying the deployment and access to high-speed Internet – or broadband.

“Every Tennessee home and business should have access to broadband service,” said Rep. Mark Maddox, D-Dresden, who co-chaired the task force with Sen.
Roy Herron, D-Dresden.

The General Assembly charged the task force with determining Tennessee’s
level of broadband availability. Broadband is used to describe almost any
always-on, high-speed connection to the Internet. Broadband users can
quickly view and download video and graphics, shop online or surf the Web.
Students can take high school or college courses online. Rural physicians
can get medical diagnoses from specialists while patients never leave home.
Broadband will help Tennessee businesses compete with their global
neighbors.

But broadband is not widely available in Tennessee, only one in four
households has adopted it, which ranks the state 37th in the nation in
usage. The United States ranks as low as 21st in the world in broadband
usage. In Tennessee, the service most often is provided by local phone
companies, such as BellSouth, or cable television providers, but the task
force report recommends expansion to other potential providers to spur
competition.

cut

The report said, “Tennessee needs to make a purposeful effort to serve rural
areas with broadband service. Until that occurs, Tennessee will lose
ground-and jobs and educational opportunities-to states willing to make that
commitment.”

Read the rest here. Yeah, I’m one of those rural Tennesseans and I’m looking at this carefully.

UPDATE: Sorry about the jumpiness of the actual press release, but I can’t seem to fix it. It still reads the same but crud.