Slash that Budget Bredesen

Guess what Bredesen and the state legislature are aiming to do now? Make a peach cobbler, legalize gay marriage, something useful? If you guessed any of those you'd be wrong but if you guessed budget cuts you'd be right on the money. All of a sudden Bredesen and his friends on the Hill have found out they don't have the money to run the state next year. So what does Bredesen suggest to do about this? Cut the workforce, gut Tenncare even more, cut education spending, extreme cuts across the board, yet he made sure to come out in full force for banning gay marriage during his reelection campaign.

With the cuts against Tenncare, higher education, and against labor, no wonder many in liberal circles regard Bredesen as a Democrat in name only. This man has no good side, and I can't imagine our state would be very different if we had a Republican in control.

Liberal Tennesseans did not receive an ally when we elected Bredeson to be Governor of Tennessee. So often do we compromise our core values to get the (D) next to a candidates' name. This is one man that I'm glad will be term limited the next election cycle. Hoping against hope that someone better will grace the state stage, and we won't be forced to pick between dumb and dumber.

The "race" for Alexander's Senate seat...or what race?

Many of you may know that seats are up for grabs in the US Senate in states like Virginia, Maine, Minnesota, and Oregon but there is also a Senate race right here in good ol' Tennessee. Wait, you haven't heard about it? I'm not surprised. The powers that be in the TN Democratic Party are making no more than a whimper challenging Lamar Alexander(R-TN) for his seat, and I can find little, if any information about the race. Here's what we know. Bob Tuke, former TN Democratic Party chair, is running against Alexander, but being a Tennessean, I didn't know he existed until oh roughly 20 minutes ago, and I'm assuming that holds true for most Tennesseans.

This is a race that can be won, even though Alexander is popular, if we run someone that is known state wide and is popular in the state(i.e. Bredesen), yet most people believe that the popular Democrats in the state aren't willing to waste their chance against him and I think they are waiting for Corker's seat to be up for grabs(people in TN still don't know who he is and he's been our Senator for 2 years), or for the 2014 election where, if keeping with TN tradition, Alexander would retire leaving the race open.

It will be interesting to see if the Anti-Republican sentiment in the state will be enough to carry it for Tuke, or if the Democrats have once again blundered an opportunity in this purple state which they all but ignore every single election cycle.

If Al Gore would have carried the Clinton territory of Tennessee, Arkansas, and West Virginia then we wouldn't have had 8 years of George W. Bush.


-Zak