Driving past UT with Shannon -- we didn't realize the Kentucky game just got out. We may be on Cumberland for a while. Oh well, at least the Vols won, so it's happy traffic. :)

Shannon’s visiting us this weekend, and today we drove out to the Smokies. Here we are in Cades Cove with a sleepy Loyette:

Shannon, incidentally, sat next to Lady Vols star Nicky Anosike’s 6-foot-10 brother, Ifesinachi (a.k.a. “E”), on her flight into Knoxville on Thursday. (He had requested to change seats because he couldn’t fit well in his original seat near the back of the plane, and being next to 5-foot-3 Shannon worked well.) She said he was a really nice, friendly guy, and they had a nice time chatting on the flight. Their flight ended up making the news, in the lede of the AP article about Tennessee’s senior-night win over Florida on Thursday:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nicky Anosike’s family arrived just after halftime to see her play in her final home game at Tennessee on Thursday night.

By then she and the third-ranked Lady Vols had already taken care of business.

“They are always late. I expected that, and I was prepared for it,” she joked after her family’s flight from New York was delayed.

Heh.

Anyway, back to today’s trip to the Smokies… I also got a couple of nice photos of deer:

*See note below about the changed title of this post.

There are no adequate words of condemnation for this.

I’ll try a few, though. Indefensible. Inexcusable. Disgusting. And, yes, racist.

The Tennessee Republican Party apparently thinks it’s appropriate to smear Barack Obama — or as they put it, Barack Hussein Obama — with an official press release accompanied by an all-too-familiar irrelevant, inflammatory photo of Obama in Somali garb, described pointedly as “Muslim attire.”

And they aren’t backing down. Far from it, in fact. They say this deliberately divisive nonsense is necessary to "inform the Republican base." Oh yes, how “informative”! Good grief!

[UPDATE: The press release has been altered, with some of the offending material removed. You can see the original here. I’ve published a new post here addressing the state GOP’s grossly inadequate “clarification.”]

The people propagating this piece of trash may not themselves be racist or bigoted — I strongly suspect they aren’t, in fact — but there’s no question they are deliberately playing the race/religion card in a way specifically designed to appeal to those who would reject Obama because of some combination of: 1) the fact that he has black skin and Muslim ancestry, and 2) the utterly discredited, Internet-fueled rumors that he’s some sort of radical-Islamist Manchurian Candidate.

And I’m just talking about the photo and the middle name (the use of which John McCain has specifically rejected as inappropriate). That’s not even getting into how misleading and mendacious that "discussion" is, engaging in the sort of guilt-by-association via six-degrees-of-separation tripe that could land any politician in hot water. (Obama would be an anti-Israel president because… wait for it, wait for it… the board of a nonprofit organization on which he once served, once gave money to a "controversial Arab group," that once said it’s opposed to Israel’s existence? Really? … I daresay I don’t think it’s terribly wise for Southern Republicans, of all people, to suggest that one’s racial attitudes can be established through such tenuous links.)

But even those who might want to debate the validity of those points will surely agree that, in any event, the inclusion of the photo is utterly indefensible, to a such an extreme degree that whatever legitimacy the press release might otherwise have had is utterly destroyed. In other words, even admitting arguendo that these "anti-Semitic" Obama connections ought to be discussed, this is not the way to do it — not by even the remotest stretch of the imagination. As such, I’m sure everyone will also agree that the Tennessee Republican Party’s disgusting, vile, racist tactics should be roundly and universally condemned, period.

(More here and here.)

All I can say to the Tennessee Republican Party is that, as an independent, centrist resident of your state who leans conservative on a number of issues, this is something that I will most certainly keep in mind as I ponder whether to support the candidates whom you nominate for state office in future elections.

Bill Hobbs, communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, whose name appears at the bottom of the press release, can be reached at billhobbs@tngop.org, or by phone at (615) 269-4260.

P.S. By the way, on the somewhat related issue of Obama’s supposedly "anti-Semitic" foreign-policy advisor, Samantha Power — not raised in the TN GOP release, but oft-discussed elsewhere, including here — check out what the archliberal Max Boot, writing in the noted lefty publication Commentary, had to say. (If you don’t know, both of those descriptions are entirely sarcastic.) More here.

NOTE: As several commenters pointed out, the issue isn’t really whether Tennessee’s Republican leaders are themselves racists — which I’m sure they aren’t — but rather whether they are using deliberatively divisive, racist tactics against Barack Obama in order to appeal to the baser instincts of some of their constituents (which they clearly are).

As such, I’ve changed the title of this post (which was originally “The Tennessee GOP is run by racists”), along with some of the rhetoric in the first few paragraphs, in order to more accurately reflect my point — and avoid distracting from the main issue with overheated rhetoric.

I apologize for going a little over-the-top in the initial version of this post. I was in a hurry and, frankly, quite angry. But the issue here is not whether Bill Hobbs, Robin Smith or anyone else in the party are personally racist. I never really meant to seriously suggest that they are. The issue is whether they are using racially (or religiously or ethnically) divisive tactics. That’s what we (and I) should be focusing on.

A pair of dual-propeller military helicopters just flew loudly over downtown Knoxville. Has the Georgian invasion begun? ;)

The orange blazer had no magic last night, as #1 Tennessee lost to Vanderbilt.

So, who’ll be #1 in the polls next week? Does Memphis take it back? Or perhaps North Carolina? More importantly, is Tennessee still a #1 seed? I’d think that, if they win out (including the SEC Tournament), they’d have to be.

Now, enough of this Go Big Orange business. :) It’s time to start getting excited about tomorrow night’s Notre Dame-Louisville game. GO IRISH!

Barack Obama isn’t the only frontrunner who will be on national TV tonight trying to defend his recently acquired top-dog status against a rival’s onslaught. At 9:00 PM EST — the same time as the Democratic debate on MSNBC — the #1-ranked Tennessee men’s basketball team will face #18 Vanderbilt on the Commodores’ home floor. The game will be on ESPN, and Bruce Pearl will be in his orange blazer.

Go Vols & Go Barack!

P.S. I’m looking ahead a bit now, but take a gander at the Big East standings, and then ponder for a moment Thursday night’s big game: Notre Dame at Louisville, 7:00 PM on ESPN. Holy cow. Mike Brey’s boys playing, maybe, for a Big East regular-season championship? I love it! Oh, and did I mention it’s part of an Irish Trojan doubleheader? USC visits Arizona at 9:00 PM Thursday, also on ESPN. Sweet.

(more…)

Heh:

A resolution drafted for filing in the state Legislature today rejects what the resolution calls "an assault on the sanctity of the borders of our great state of Tennessee."

Says part of the resolution: "The state of Tennessee elects to take the high road relative to this mythical dispute, instead of becoming embroiled in an election-year ploy initiated by the Georgia General Assembly through legislation which, while purporting to settle a boundary dispute in a friendly manner, is actually nothing but a veiled attempt to commandeer the resources of the Tennessee River for the benefit of water-starved Atlanta, which is either unable or unwilling to control its reckless urban sprawl."

Oh, snap! Georgia, you just got served!

(Previous post here.)

I’m expecting a busy afternoon and evening, and thus probably won’t be able to watch as much basketball as I’d like. But there’s plenty to talk about, with the day’s biggest games being Drake @ Butler at 5:00 PM on ESPN2 (the BracketBusters marquee game) and, of course, Tennessee @ Memphis at 9:00 PM on ESPN2. Although, don’t sleep on Kent State @ St. Mary’s at midnight on the Deuce, which Kyle Whelliston says is potentially the most consequential ‘Busters game of them all, bubble-wise.

Anyway, here’s the scoreboard. If you’re watching the games and you feel like commenting, fire away.

P.S. Nice wins for USC and Notre Dame on Thursday night, eh?

P.P.S. Check out 4th through 9th place in the Pac-10 standings. Wow. Is that conference balanced or what?

UPDATE: Tennessee wins, 66-62! Come Monday morning, the Vols will be #1 in the nation for the first time in school history. (Er, on the men’s side, that is.)

And so ends Memphis’s bid for an undefeated season. The Tigers were 8-for-17 from the free-throw line, and they didn’t hit a single three-pointer after their white-hot start in the game’s first 12 minutes.

Oh, and Drake beat Butler in another very exciting game.

On the eve of perhaps the most important college-basketball game in the history of the state of Tennessee, tomorrow night’s #1 vs. #2 showdown between Memphis and UT, the sports world here in Knoxville is, as you’d expect, abuzz with talk about… football.

Wait. What?

Well, it seems Knoxville News-Sentinel sports editor John Adams has created a mighty kerfuffle with his commentary on the Tennessee football team’s recent discipline problems. On Tuesday, Adams wrote that Phil Fulmer should be fired for allowing his team to become "the college equivalent of the Cincinnati Bengals." He harshly criticized Fulmer for responding to punter Britton Colquitt’s arrest by suspending him for five games, rather than dismissing him from the team. "Keep in mind this wasn’t Colquitt’s first brush with the law. Or second. Or third," Adams wrote. "How could Fulmer not dismiss Colquitt from the team after what could be fifth alcohol-related offense? Answer: Colquitt is a starter."

Oh, snap!

But Fulmer didn’t take this lying down. Oh, hell no. He’s a man! He’s 57! So, in today’s paper, at the very top of the sports section, there is a column by, ahem, guest columnist Phillip Fulmer. Explaining that the importance of the issues raised in Adams’s column "compels me to do something I have never done in my career - respond directly in writing to a negative column in the newspaper," Fulmer writes:

Mr. Adams has never sat next to me in a prospect’s living room, looking his mother or grandmother in the eyes and promising to treat the young man like he was my own child - giving him tough love when necessary and an opportunity to straighten up when that’s in order. It is a promise I take seriously and will never abandon to please any columnist.

Ouch! He goes on:

(more…)

Three items of news today (or in one case, yesterday) concerning the Volunteer State. First, as you may already have heard, Georgia has declared war on Tennessee — er, legislatively speaking — in a border dispute over water. To arms! Fear, fire, foes, awake!! The Georgians are coming, the Georgians are coming!!!

Second, the epidemic of Tennessee coaches getting divorced continues, as Titans coach Jeff Fisher is divorcing his wife of 21 years. Vicky Fulmer, you may want to get a lawyer, just in case. ;) No, but seriously, that’s sad. Divorce sucks.

Last but not least, Lady Vols superstar Candace Parker is skipping her senior season to go pro.

Move over, Kentucky. Out of the way, North Carolina. The center of the college-basketball world is the state of Tennessee.

Thanks to losses last week by #2 Duke and #3 Kansas, the Tennessee Volunteers have climbed to #2 in the polls this week, just in time for their Saturday showdown with in-state foe Memphis, the nation’s #1-ranked and only undefeated team. The Jay Johnson Invitational is now also the Game. Of. The. Year.

The Tigers and Vols each have one tune-up remaining before the big game: on Wednesday night, Memphis visits 15-9 Tulane and Tennessee hosts 13-10 Auburn. Both with be heavily favored, of course, but even if they lose, it’ll still technically be a #1 vs. #2 game on Saturday, since the new polls don’t come out until Monday.

Memphis-Tennessee actually almost happened in last year’s Elite Eight. If the Vols hadn’t blown an 8,000-point lead (okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but they were way ahead) against Ohio State in the Sweet Sixteen, the South Regional Final would have been an all-Tennessee affair, with a trip to the Final Four on the line. Alas, that wasn’t to be. But hey, a regular-season #1 vs. #2 showdown is a pretty good consolation prize.

Anyway, it should be a hell of a game, and I’m looking forward to watching it. Jay will be rooting for the Tigers, his undergrad alma mater, over the Vols, his law-school alma mater. I definitely know what that’s like. :) Personally, though, given that I have no allegiance to Memphis, I think I’ll stick with the local boys, and root for the East Tennessee team over the West Tennessee team. Go Vols!

You’ll be hearing about it in the articles, seeing it on SportsCenter, etc., but … wow.

I’m sorry, but there’s nothing legitimate about that Tennessee win. I don’t understand why the announcers are being so equivocal and opaque about it. The timekeeper stopped the clock with 0.2 seconds left for no apparent reason, a Tennessee player was fouled with "0.2 seconds left" — after the game should have ended — and that’s the only reason the Lady Vols "won" that game.

Home job.

UPDATE: Looks like it may be overshadowed by the similarly bulls*** ending of the Georgetown-Villanova men’s game.

UPDATE 2: A commenter writes, "The Thompson-Boling Arena clock, like the timing systems at most
college arenas, is started and stopped by the officials on the floor. A
whistle by any of the three officials stops the clock, and one of the
officials pushes a button on his/her belt to start the clock. So your
assertion that someone at the scorer’s table caused the problem is a
utterly unfounded."

I don’t know who controls the clock, but I do know that what happened at the end of that game was very, very shady.

UPDATE 3: From the Knoxville News-Sentinel:

The game clock can only be stopped by an official’s whistle, according to Tim Reese, the arena manager.

"Officials are using a precision-timing device, which is used by the
SEC and most of the major conferences," he said. "It’s tied into the
control panel, and controls the game clock."

In addition to the whistle and an attached microphone, the officials
also are armed with a belt pack, which sends a wireless signal to the
clock.

That’s interesting, but it doesn’t explain how or why the clock stopped at 0.2 seconds, then started up again and ran down to 0.0. There is no possible explanation for what occurred that doesn’t involve a screw-up by somebody. If it was the referee who screwed up rather than the timekeeper, then fine. But it was still a screw-up, and Rutgers still won that game, 58-57.

P.S. Here’s some of what Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer had to say about it:

It was a great game with two ranked teams in a great atmosphere for a
great cause for all the right reasons. It’s just unfortunate that those
kinds of things happen. I’ll probably write a book on all that. I’m
getting used to it by now, but we’ll learn from it. It doesn’t take
away from a great Tennessee team and a great coach and a great
everything. …

(On whether she asked the officials about the clock) "Yes.
They said everything was fine. The foul was called before and they had
looked at the clock on the monitor and the foul was called before time
went off the clock. So now we’ve got bad eyes too." …

(On the final outcome of the game) "The two teams
are too good for that. It’s not Pat’s (Summitt) fault and it’s not
Tennessee’s fault, unfortunately. Probably what I would have to say
about that situation is that I just want to be able to coach my team in
the next couple days. It has nothing to do with Tennessee and it has
nothing to do with those players and those coaches. Unfortunately, that
is human error. I just happen to be on the end of human error too many
times with too many erasers at the end of my name and I’m so sorry,
because these young women deserve better. The clock froze."

"The game did not deserve this. Tennessee didn’t deserve this. Pat
didn’t deserve this. Those great players didn’t deserve this and
neither did my great team deserve this. It is what it is."

Indeed.

Dr. Jeff Masters: “The death toll from the 2008 Super Tuesday Tornado Outbreak makes it the deadliest tornado outbreak in the past 23 years.”

And it’s the deadliest tornado outbreak this early on the calendar since 1949.

The death toll is at least 54.

As Dr. Masters’s map demonstrates, East Tennessee was spared. By the time the thunderstorms got here around 8:00 AM this morning, they were producing only torrential rains, gusty winds and lightning — nothing too terrible. Later in the day, after the cold front that produced the storms had moved through, we got (and are still getting) some pretty strong winds on the back side of the system, causing the Tennessee River to look rather choppy from the parking garage where I park for work:

But yeah, no tornadoes or anything similarly devastating, thank goodness.

In West Tennessee (see also here) and Middle Tennessee, of course, it’s an entirely different story.

Here’s my Super Tuesday photo gallery. And here are couple of pictures from it:

I also like this shot of a very lonely-looking Romney sign on the Kingston Pike. I think Mitt feels a bit like that sign after tonight’s results.

These kids, by the way, are the Cedar Bluff Middle School Student Council members who were giving away free coffee and donuts to voters. I promised I’d put their picture on my website, so… there you, guys. Here’s a larger version of the photo, and here’s the full-size version.

Again, here’s a link to the full gallery. It’s two pages long, by the way, so don’t miss page 2.

There’s an article in today’s New York Times about the recent shenanigans in Knox County government, which have caused a wholesale public uprising against the county commission. "A longing for reform, for fresh faces and new ideas, has overtaken Knox County," the Times writes, "so much so that many people here cannot wait to vote in the Super Tuesday primary. And it has nothing to do with who might be the next president."

I wonder, though, if it might affect the presidential race. Knox County is heavily Republican — Bush got 62% of the vote in 2004 — but there has been talk that Democrats might have a chance of getting elected to local offices that they normally don’t have a prayer of winning, because of all the recent corruption and the resultant "kick the bums out" mentality. Tomorrow’s election, of course, does not pit Republicans against Democrats, but it does give voters a choice of which party’s ballot they want when they walk into their polling place. (Tennessee does not have party registration. Everyone is unaffiliated, and then you pick your party-for-a-day whenever there’s a primary.)

With competitive Democratic primaries in four of the eight open County Commission seats — itself an anomaly — and the countywide Democratic primary for County Clerk (between an old-guard insider and a former deputy clerk who claims she was fired for announcing her candidacy) to boot, and with voters ticked off against the mostly-Republican ruling clique, I wonder if an unusual number of normally Republican-leaning voters will ask for Democratic ballots, motivated by the local races rather than the national ones, and then will find themselves confronted with the prospect of choosing between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. If so, I imagine it will help Obama; rock-ribbed East Tennessee Republicans are not going to vote for Hillary. And racial politics isn’t that big of a deal in East Tennessee (we’re more Appalachia than Deep South), so I don’t foresee a big anti-Obama racist vote here.

Bottom line, I think the turmoil in Knox County politics might net Obama a handful of votes that he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. It probably won’t make a difference in the delegate count — the 2nd Congressional District has an even number of delegates, four, so it doesn’t matter — but a Knox-for-Obama surge could decrease Hillary’s statewide popular-vote margin ever so slightly. That could sway an at-large delegate this way or that, and anyway, every little bit counts in the perceptions game, right?