Sharon Cobb has a post that reminds me of a girlfriend-to-girlfriend “talking to” that you can hear on college campuses on Monday mornings across the country: “America, If You Let Barack Obama Slide Through Your Hands Because Of Some Bumps , Then You Don’t Deserve Him As Your President.” I doubt that Sharon’s post was directed at me (I’m a Republican, plus I’m already spoken for in the “messiah” department–just kidding, just kidding), but I guess I just “don’t deserve” Obama.

From a somewhat different perspective but in the same vein, Brendan Loy makes his rather earnest case for Obama and directs it toward Conservatives. As I explain here, I’m skeptical. (hat tip: Post Politics).

Vol Abroad is posting on the subject as well. She writes:

Barack Obama has denounced Rev. Wright’s words. He found them offensive. Well, good - I guess. But it struck me that what Obama really found offensive was that Wright wasn’t following the party line anymore, wasn’t giving Obama his due. After all, he’d heard 20 years of Wright’s challenging sermons - but only a few minutes of Wright’s criticisms of one Barack Obama.

(hat tip: No Silence Here) After apparently first believing that the Rev. Dr. Wright had diverged from past policy and theological positions in his most recent media marathon (read her whole post) it appears Vol Abroad is skeptical, too, even if through Hillary-tinted glasses.

Glen Dean has a mini (he didn’t include my post) round up of Tennessee discussions about Obama’s pre-presidential-campaign Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It may become known as Sen. Obama’s Brother Wright moment . . . or maybe his Reverend Wright Moment (ref. Sister Souljah) Time will tell.

But what I enjoyed most was this line about criticism a President McCain will face from within the GOP:

We’ll then see how much President McCain likes Republican “mavericks”. My guess is not so much. In fact, he’ll probably break something.

Perhaps I am overly excited about this but I (literally) stumbled upon a new favorite food blog and much to my surprise it’s local!

Welcome to Love and Olive Oil, the culinary adventures of Lindsay and Taylor. We’re not chefs, in fact we’ve had our fair share of flames and failures. But like any good relationship, cooking has its ups and downs. We’re all about quick and flavorful dishes that don’t hurt the wallet. We invite you to our kitchen (as tiny as it may be) and share in our love for food and our desire to always find something new to eat…

Let’s welcome them to MCB with some blog love.  Ok?  Go over there and say hello.  It’s a total class act - great food and gorgeous photos. 

Oh, and you’ve got to check out how Taylor proposed…

Nigh Seen Creeder remarks that the news of TN Supreme Court Chief Justice Barker’s retirement is “Bad f***in’ news for Tennessee Constitutionalists.”

Upon Barker being replaced, Governor Bredesen will have chosen four of Tennessee’s five Supreme Court justices. Which makes the current controversy regarding Tennessee’s Judicial Selection process all the more salient. Republican leader Ron Ramsey has proposed several changes to the system, one of which allows the governor to choose from up to two five-candidate slates (under the system in place, the slates consist of three candidates and a person cannot be re-considered if s/he is rejected by the governor on the first of two slates).

Although I think that any system short of contested elections violates our state’s constitution, it’s difficult to quibble with reform proposals that bring the politics of selecting Tennessee judges into the sunlight. Here’s a website (www.tennplandebate.com) with information (pro and con) on the issue.

Don’t miss the culinary event of the year!

On Wednesday, April 30th, Whole Foods Market Presents Nashville Scene’s Iron Fork, benefiting St. Luke’s Community House,
at LP Field’s West Club Level Riverside.

The fun lasts from 6:00-10:00 p.m. with samples of award-winning cuisine from Menu of Menus 2008, the Scene’s guide to Nashville dining, two complimentary drink tickets + cash bar, tons of giveaways, and DJ Mindub spinning live. Watch 5 of the best chefs in Nashville battle it out in a head-to-head chef’s competition better than anything you’ll ever see on TV! Hosted by Nashville Scene’s very own Carrington Fox and Jim Ridley. Or enjoy a refreshing glass of delicious Blue Moon ale in the Blue Moon Beer Garden hosted by 107.5’s Woody and Jim.

And it’s all for a great cause! Bring your non-perishable food items to the event and help stock St. Luke’s pantry! Just by attending Iron Fork, you and all of your family and friends will raise money for St. Luke’s Community House. Bring your family and friends and help raise money for St. Luke’s Community House, since food is the very foundation of St. Luke’s services.
Volunteers deliver around 100 hot meals to area seniors every week day through their mobile meals program.
St. Luke’s distributes emergency food boxes to hundreds of our neighbors each year. St. Luke’s began offering culinary classes as part of their job skills training program that serves men and women trying to find a better job.

All 5 competing chefs will be creating their culinary masterpieces with cookware provided by Le Creuset and ingredients from Whole Foods Market. The winning chef will receive the prestigious Golden Fork award and will keep their set of LeCreuset cookware, while the four remaining sets will be donated to St. Luke’s for use in their culinary program.

The 2008 Iron Fork competing chefs are:
Bobby Benjamin – Flyte World Dining & Wine
Clay Greenberg – Lime/Virago
Deb Paquette – Zola Restaurant
Will Uhlhorn – F. Scott’s
Sean Norton – Watermark

Sampling restaurants include Agave Tequila Lounge, Alleycat Lounge & Tex-Mex Grill, Drew’s Brews Coffee, F. Scott’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar, Flyte World Dining & Wine, Green Hills Grille, Hotel Indigo, Mad Platter, McFadden’s, Mere Bulles Restaurant, Nero’s Grill, PM, Qdoba Mexican Grill, Rumours, Rumours East, Ru San’s Sushi and Seafood Japanese Restaurant, Saffire Restaurant & Bar, Star Bagel Café, Watermark, Whole Foods Market, Wildhorse Saloon, Wildwood Oak Fired Kitchen, and Zola Restaurant..

You must be 21+.  Parking is free. For more info call the Iron Fork Hotline at 244.7989 x341

I saw Ben Stein’s Expelled last night and there’s one question that noone will answer for me . . . do you have to have bad teeth to be a PhD?  But seriously . . .

They’re discussing it (the movie) over at TennesseeFree.com.

The BearCreekLedger has seen the movie, too.

The movie’s thesis is that there are legitimate questions about Darwinism, but scientists are not allowed to ask those questions because some people are threatened by certain potential answers to the questions. Tsk, tsk.

Lost in East Nashville. Beloved by Jagadiah. He escaped last night.

He’s the big boy on the right.

If you have seen him, let her know.

UPDATE:  Otto has been found thanks to a lot of wonderful people who helped save the day.

From the Nashville Edge

I’m voting no but that’s just me.

Oh dear Titans. There are questions.

Vince Young: AAAAAAHHHHHHH F**k! I’m on fire! AH AAAAHH AAAAAAAHHH

Fisher: Hello Vince.

Reporter: Coach Fisher! Does Vince Young being in a state of combustion affect the strategy of this team going forward?

Fisher: We have integrated the fire into our larger off-season strategy, but whether we will acquire the means to extinguish it depends largely on cap room and the availability of fire safety equipment on the free agent market.

In fact, I have just been made aware that the Tennessee Titans have just acquired an undrafted wet nap to address the situation.

[Tosses wet nap on Young to no noticeable effect]

Reporter: Will that be enough? The smell of burning flesh is getting to be pronounced.

Fisher: The moisture from the wet nap will extinguish the fire.

Read the rest at Kissing Suzy Kolber.

H/T CeeElCee 

And ESPN people, if you’ve ever seen a Titans game, then you know that Nashville can provide all the drunk heckling fans you need. The only difference is that unlike Jets fans, we heckle other teams, not our own.

Goldnl writes a letter to David Freeman.

Grammy-award winning artist Vince Gill will take a lesson from another “artist” of sorts, Johnny Carrabba – who has “cooked up” a full menu for Vince to prepare for the love of his life, Amy Grant.

“The Art of Expression:  A Celebration of Music, Culinary and Visual Art,” will take place on Friday, May 9, from 6:30 - 11:00 p.m. at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.  

An intimate crowd of spectators will watch Johnny Carrabba take center stage for a cooking demonstration with Vince Gill.  Guests will enjoy an assortment of food and beverages followed by an acoustic performance from Vince in the Ford Theater.  

Tickets are $200, and proceeds from the event will benefit The Campus for Human Development and Room at The Inn, serving Nashville’s homeless community since the 1960s.  

Only 200 tickets are available and are on-sale beginning Friday, April 25, at 10:00 a.m. EST.

Evening Highlights Include:
6:30 p.m. – Welcome reception, hors d’oeuvres and cocktails
7:30 p.m. – Cooking demonstration with Vince Gill and Johnny Carrabba
8:30 p.m. — Carrabba’s food and beverage tasting
9:30 p.m. – Vince Gill acoustic performance

For more information on the event or to purchase tickets, please click here.

Some posts just stop you in your tracks.  ‘A Man’s Gotta Eat’ has done it to me again…

Whenever I want something fast and simple for dinner, I’ll whip up a box of Helper, open a can of peas, and drench the whole shebang in Trappey’s Louisiana Hot Sauce. Heaven in a single skillet, indeed!

The TOTAL Antithesis of EVERYTHING I Believe In…

yet somehow, I love this guy!

It’s the TN Tax Free Weekend! Let’s all get out there and shop till you drop. Clothing, school and art supplies and computers are covered. Now if I’d only won the lottery on Wednesday… (sigh)

Details on what you can buy.

The Country Music Marathon is this weekend too. The bad news is that traffic might be an issue, the good news is that there will be lots of porta-potties available at Centennial Park.

The video in this link is an interesting look at a political campaign where a minority candidate battles a conservative maverick to win the White House. If this sounds like something you hope for later in the year (or dread), rest assured, it’s from the West Wing - but the parallels are, um, there in heaps. Since I suck at embedding video, here’s the link.

As you probably know by now, unless you never lsten to the news, Senator Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary last night by a 10% margin. In the delegate count, Senator Obama still has a lead and he still leads in the popular vote. Senator Clinton has won more large states (and CNN exit polls are showing that half of the people people willing to vote for her aren’t willing to vote for Senator Obama, according to Egalia). The other faction of the Demcratic party points to how little this matters because of the popular vote, delegate count, etc., are still owned by Senator Obama.

From my perspective, George W. Bush, the current President, has now got the highest disapproval rating ever since Gallup started polling. It’s even higher than Harry Truman in the middle of the Korean War. That is significantly phenominal. That disagreement with the direction the nation is going is not reflected in any of the current crop of candidates running to replace the President. None of the polling shows any of these three clowns as a runaway leader to turn the country around. Whether it’s a clueless inability to be able to distinguish one warring faction from another, a huge disapproval rating and mudslinging, or fallout from spoken words, it seems to me that all of them are damaged goods to too much of a degree. I think there ought to be somebody better in the race. Any ideas who or are we truly stuck with this hand?

I found this site, Free Range kids, and the post, through Brittney’s blog. The premise is pretty simple: give your nine-year-old kid a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20, some quarters for a phone call, drop him off at Bloomingdales and see if he makes it home. They’re giving them the same freedom kids of my generation (and maybe yours) had. My mom never had a clue where we were and I’m (somewhat) civilized despite that.

We become so bent out of shape over something as simple as letting your children out of sight on the playground that it starts seeming on par with letting them play on the railroad tracks at night. In the rain. In dark non-reflective coats. …

Meantime, my son wants his next trip to be from Queens. In my day, I doubt that would have struck anyone as particularly brave. Now it seems like hitchhiking through Yemen.

Some of the commenters have expresed the feeling that child protective services ought to be called. What’s your take on this - is it independence training or criminal negligence, parents?

….is the bottom dropping out on any potential trade in which the Titans could get anything of value for Adam “Pac-Man” Jones.

It was really only a matter of time before another negative story with Pac-Man somehow involved hit the presses.   And with it, the value the Titans can get for the Pac-Man drops yet again.  At this point, we just need to cut our losses and turn the guy loose.  I am beginning to doubt he’ll ever play a down in the NFL ever again.

We should’ve traded him while the trading was good….

“A marriage is not about purchasing sole access to a cooter.”

–Aunt B.

Now, please go see why she has imparted this pearl of wisdom upon us. It is an excellent post.

Sharon Cobb posted Michael Moore’s statement in which he endorses Sen. Barack Obama…

There are those who say Obama isn’t ready, or he’s voted wrong on this or that. But that’s looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what’s going on is bigger than him at this point, and that’s a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I couldn’t agree more, and this is coming from somebody who refuses to tow the party line.  I voted for Bush last go-around.  It will be for Obama this time.

Regardless of who wins, I really hope that this country will find a way to unite once again, as we did in those days after 9/11.

I just hope it doesn’t take a catastrophe to make it happen.

Newscoma has a plaintive (legitimately) post about the character of the “political conversation” going on in America right now. She writes,

I’ve talked quite a bit about how I wish we were having a more “adult” presidential campaign right now. It makes me cranky listening to all the political rhetoric when there are more important issues to discuss.I realize that it’s just not “sexy” to have conversations these days about politics when you aren’t looking somebody in the eye. That’s part of what is missing, I think.

I appreciate her appeal for real conversations by real people about real issues, and I agree that any person who is willing to take on the challenge of being president is a different breed of person (frankly, I think the current challenges are no greater than those from most any other time in the last 40 years, save the beginning of Clinton’s or HW’s presidencies). But there is a difference between “conversation” and “making a decision” and that’s the rub. The reality is that the Democrats have two people who want the opportunity to lead our country and settling on one of the two requires focusing on some pretty fine distinctions. I guess the brass knuckles come out when moving beyond what we all know is just conversation to actually deciding which plan is going to be implemented or, in this case, which person gets to lead the charge.

In relation to the real conversations that Newscoma relates, I’d say that this too-long campaign has had two impacts, both to increase the amount of handwringing. First, the length of a campaign to change the party in power is plainly proportional to the mood of the electorate–without regard to political party. Second, the length of a primary campaign certainly raises concerns about how bloodied the eventual nominee will be. In that respect, we can all lament the length of this cycle’s presidential race. As a result of the extended Hillary/Obama contest, Democratic Party leaders have a reason to lament with the rest of us.

“The Crone” is writing (”Fake Funeral Procession For Aborted Fetuses Not Women Who Died From Forced Pregnancy”) about an upcoming event in Knoxville:

For some convoluted reason, a local pastor has gotten permission to have a fake funeral procession the day before Mother’s Day here in Knoxville, to “mourn” abortions.

“The Crone” continues,

Never do you see the crosses and funeral processions for the WOMEN that DIED from forced pregnancies (coerced or lack of abortion providers). Never do you see crosses and funeral processions for the infants that die from their mother’s lack of adequate health care.

“The Crone” may be right, but did I somehow miss the law making it legal to force women to get abortions? or get pregnant? I need to pay more attention to what those legislators are doin’ up in Nashville.

And, yes, this march plainly has political implications . . . just like those divisive, politically-motivated Civil Rights marches of the ’50s, I guess this pastor is trying to cram his morals down all our throats.

Nothing? Well, not anymore! There are lots of events happening in our fair city this weekend! Let’s take a look at a few of them, shall we?

Tonight! Under the lights!

GAME 5 VIEWING PARTY AT THE SOMMET CENTER
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS—NASHVILLE PREDATORS VS. DETROIT RED WINGS

Doors open: 6:00 pm
Game starts: 6:30 pm

The Preds-Red Wings game will be shown Friday night on Nashville’s largest indoor screen — the Megatron — at the Sommet Center.

* Free admission! ($5 parking available in the south lot - just behind Sommet Center)
* Gnash and the Predators Dancers will be there.
* Concession stands will be open with specially-priced food.
* Contests and activities at intermissions.
* Inflatable games for the kids.

Also, some of Music City’s most famous Tweeters will be on hand, as well!

Tomorrow (Saturday, April 19th)

10AM till 8PM at Grimey’s New & Preloved Music

Record Store Day will be celebrated this Saturday all over the world (yep, it’s gone international) as passionate music fans and obsessed record store clerks meld minds and wield their considerable power for good, not evil (we’ll leave that to the corporate ogres). We’ve got a spectacular event planned for you and we hope that you’ll choose to visit our humble emporium at some point during the day and, if you ever buy music - physical formats like vinyl, CDs and DVDs - that you’ll choose to make a purchase on this day to show your support. If you don’t live near Grimey’s, I hope you’ll visit the closest indie record store wherever you are and do the same. Not every shop is weathering these tumultuous times well but we can all use the support to keep these community-based havens for real music alive.

There will be live music, food, and lots of opportunity for people-watching!

Earth Day - Centennial Park - 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Local Living for Global Change - It all starts with me!
Youth Activities

Environmental exhibits and workshops on clean air, water, food and farming, cooking demonstration with local chefs, organic gardening and much more.

Live music from RAUL MALO and special guests: JYPSI, Jen Foster, Sam & Ruby and Five Star Iris

More info on Earth Day activities here.

No matter what you do, I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

My friend Annie over at Forest Street Kitchen, a favorite food blog of mine - is running a contest for suggestions on what to fill this certain special bowl with and well, it is all too complicated to try and explain so I think you should go on over there and throw your name in the proverbial hat.  Knowing Annie, it’ll be worth your while..

The person who makes the best suggestion for an edible substance to fill the bowl on or before Friday, April 25^th will win a surprise. The bowl is about 6 inches in diameter, and about 6 inches at its highest points…

Angela has some words of advice:

As the ad terms “Black-Friday” and “Tax-Free” has been known to create a frenzied aggression amongst American consumers, during these events, shoppers face an increased possibility of being trampled, whacked with a pack of Mead notebook paper,  poked in the eye with a protractor or attacked from behind with the last pair of Hannah Montana sandals.

To ensure your safety while shopping on the tax-free weekend: I’d recommend wearing toe-cleats, a long-sleeved shirt and pants to protect the limbs and shopping with a buddy whenever possible - as this helps eliminate rear-attacks.

If you are planning to purchase larger items, which could also be used as a weapon of self-defense, get those first.  You may also want to develop a menacing  “Don’ F~ck wit Me: I’m one bad Mother” look.

Eye-patches, fake tattoos and t-shirts bearing the image of gansta rap artists are effective in this area - and usually scare away most of the Baptists folks over 30.

If you opt to skip the crowds and purchase items online or over the telephone, allow yourself additional time to explain the holiday to people who have no clue what you’re talking about and don’t care.

There’s a whole lot more. It’s hysterical.

Lesley, our beloved token vegetarian over at Lesley Eats finally made it over to the brand new vegetarian spot in town, The Veggie Cafe.

it’s nice to read a menu and be able to look at everything and know it’s something I can eat–to choose my lunch.

I used to frequent the vegetarian spots in town when they were in Nashville.  Sadly they all went away.  And now The Veggie Cafe is a bit out of the way for some of us.  But if you’re ever on that side of the river and you’re so inclined… Lesley suggests that you check it out. 

As for me, if I’m on that side of town, I’m more of a ‘Marche‘ kinda girl myself…