Day: October 11, 2018

Blackburn Puts Bredesen on Defensive in Second Debate Between Senate Candidates

Tennessee Star Staff

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) put former Gov. Phil Bredesen on the defensive Wednesday night at the second debate between the two candidates for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). Blackburn started out strong at the debate held in Knoxville at the University of Tennessee’s Howard Baker Center, and Bredesen never recovered. “Sparks flew in Knoxville Wednesday night as Democrat Phil Bredesen and his Republican opponent Marsha Blackburn squared off in their final debate leading up to November’s mid-term election,” NewsChannel 5 reported: The candidates traded barbs over everything from immigration, to education, and to the recent battle to appointment Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme court. When pressed on the issue, Bredesen once against reaffirmed his position that despite running as a Democrat he would’ve voted to confirm Kavanaugh to the country’s highest court. “I wanted to take my time with this, the obligation of a Senator is to consider all the facts,” he then went on to address the sexual assault allegations made by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, “All things being equal I did not think those allegations rose to the level of being disqualified from the Supreme Court.” Blackburn quickly seized on…

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FEC Records Indicate Taylor Swift’s Political Contributions to Federal Candidates Total $15 To-Date

Julie Carr

Taylor Swift is making the headlines again but this time, on the political stage. After her statement on Sunday that she is endorsing Democrat Phil Bredesen over Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) in this November’s contest to replace retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), The Tennessee Star tried to find some information about her financial contributions to federal political candidates. A brief review of Federal Election Commission records indicates that Swift appears to have made just one contribution to a political candidate for federal office in her career. That contribution came in 2014, when she generously gave fifteen dollars to a far left candidate campaigning in a congressional district of New Jersey. Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, broadcast Monday through Friday from 5 am to 8 am on Talkradio 98.3 FM and 1510 WLAC, Tennessee Star Report: Early Edition (5 am to 6 am hour) co-hosts Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett talked about the discovery and it’s implications. Kellett:  We were talking about the Presidents comments yesterday about Taylor Swift and he was making these comments while he was swearing in the new justice on the US Supreme Court, Judge Kavanaugh.  And he said he likes Taylor Swifts music…

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On WKRN’s This Week With Bob Mueller, Steve Gill Says ‘Phil Bredesen Is Not A Centrist’

Julie Carr

Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill  was a guest on WKRN’s This Week With Bob Mueller and chatted with Bob about how Phil Bredesen would vote if elected to the Senate and how contrary to popular belief, he was not a “centrist.” Gill commented, “I don’t believe Phil Bredesen at all.  I want Dr. Ford’s team to polygraph him on this because I don’t believe that if he was actually there he would cast his vote.  Only one Democrat Joe Manchin is thinking about.  I don’t think that you would have Phil Bredesen go against the whole grain of the Democratic party if he was actually there.  And I think the real test is not what people believe Phil Bredesen would do in this case, it’s hogwash, but it’s what he would do in the next one.” Gill questioned whether people are paying attention to the news as Phil Bredesen has planned to head to New York City to meet with Michael  Bloomberg who will help raise him a lot of money and wondered how folks can believe, that if he becomes Senator, will actually vote for their Tennessee values. “He’s donated half a million dollars to the most liberal extremists…

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Commentary: Hillary Legitimizes War on Republicans

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by Rick Manning   America was shocked by the screaming, temper tantrum and outright threats by those opposed to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  However, if anyone had any hope that the so-called adults in the Democratic Party would tell the violent children to cool it, Hillary Clinton put an end to it, telling CNN’s Christianne Amanpour, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” Let’s deconstruct what Clinton is saying so it cannot be missed. “You cannot be civil” is an imperative that means you have no other choice but to not be civil. There is no equivocation it is a call to continue and expand the street takeovers in Portland, Oregon, the screaming at the Capitol, and yes even the violent threats and direct confrontations against those with whom you disagree. “With a political party” tells us that this is a mass movement war which justifies virtually any action against those with whom you disagree.  Far from the days of “I disagree with what you say, but will defend with my life your right to say it,” Clinton justifies virtually any action…

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National Federation of Independent Business Endorses Mark Green

Chris Butler
Mark Green

The National Federation of Independent Business has this week endorsed Mark Green for Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District. Republican Marsha Blackburn currently occupies that seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is right now running for the U.S. Senate. In a statement, NFIB Tennessee State Director Jim Brown said Green is “an exceptional supporter of small businesses in Tennessee.” “Over the years, he has proven himself to be a steady advocate for small business in the Senate Commerce Committee. He is a recipient of the prestigious NFIB Guardian of Small Business Award and holds a 100 percent voting record on the issues that matter to small businesses in our state,” Brown said. “As a former small business owner, he has a deep understanding of the challenges that our members face daily. On behalf of our members in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, we are proud to endorse him for election to the United States House of Representatives.” NFIB joins two other national grassroots organizations that have endorsed Green in recent weeks — the NRA and the National Right to Life. The Club for Growth, FRC Action, Combat Veterans for Congress, FreedomWorks, House Freedom Fund, Campaign for Working Families, and GOPAC have…

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Commentary: The Democrats’ Idea of Civility

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by CHQ Staff   Democrats, such as CNN’s Don Lemon, have been labeling President Trump as “the divider-in-chief” practically since the day he defeated Hillary Clinton and won the presidency. Yet, it is Democrats who seem to revel in calls for more violence, more mob action and less civility. And we’re not talking about the usual college-age radicals in their fatigues, berets and Che Guevara shirts or the Soros-funded community organizers pulling down six figures while chanting “power to the people.” And we’re not talking about whack job Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters and her calls for Left wing mobs to “get in the face” of Republicans and Trump supporters. “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere. We’ve got to get the children connected to their parents,” Waters said during a rally outside LA’s Wilshire Federal Building. We’re talking about the leading elected officials and present and former Democratic presidential candidates. No one is…

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College Apologizes for Taxpayer-Funded Protests at Family Farm

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by Troy Worden   The president of Evergreen State College has apologized, more than a year after the fact, for the Washington state school’s use of taxpayer funds to bus students and educators to a workers’ rights protest at a family farm. KGMI, a news-talk radio station in Bellingham, Washington, reported that the college also had “strongly reprimanded” six faculty members in connection with the incident. Evergreen President George Bridges apologized to the group Save Family Farming in a conference call Aug. 30 with its executive director, Gerald Baron, and its communications director, Dillon Honcoop, according to a report on the Protect Farmworkers Now website, a project of the nonprofit advocacy group. Bridges also apologized in a separate conference call the next day with state Reps. Vincent Buys and Luanne Van Werven, Baron told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. KGMI reported that the Everson, Washington-based farm advocacy group filed a complaint against the public college in April after looking over photos and videos of college vehicles taking students to and from the protests in August 2017. According to The College Fix, a conservative-leaning website that reports on campus news stories, the farm is more than three hours north of the…

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Promise Kept: Trump Signs Law That Ends Gag Orders Against Pharmacists Sharing Money-Saving Information

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by Evie Fordham   President Donald Trump signed a law that ends insurance companies’ pharmacist gag clauses in an effort to lower drug prices Wednesday. “If there’s anything bipartisan it’s lowering drug prices,” Trump said while signing the Patients’ Right To Know Drug Prices Act according to CBS News. Currently, insurers and pharmacy benefit managers use the gag clauses to “forbid pharmacists from proactively telling consumers if their prescription would cost less if they paid for it out-of-pocket rather than using their insurance plan,” according to a press release from Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the bill’s sponsor. Trump also signed Democratic Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s Know the Lowest Price Act, which “prohibits Medicare drug plans from putting a gag clause on a pharmacy in their contracts,” according to CNN. The Patients’ Right To Know Drug Prices Act would lead to “a slight decrease in federal revenues,” according to the Congressional Budget Office. That decrease could be offset by another provision in the bill, reported Politico. Collins’s bill also targets “pay-for-delay,” a tactic where a brand drug company pays a generic manufacturer to withhold a product that would compete with the brand drug for market share. Closing this loophole could save consumers and taxpayers money, according…

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UC Berkeley Limits Free Speech … Again

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by Troy Worden   The University of California at Berkeley, regarded as the birthplace of the free speech movement, has done away with one of its historic “free speech zones.”Carol Christ, chancellor of UC Berkeley, last month e-mailed a statement to students, faculty, and staff detailing changes to the university’s policy regarding free speech events on campus.Among the changes is designation of the West Crescent section of campus as a “free speech zone,” meaning it will not be subject to additional restrictions imposed last year on other areas of campus.But Christ also announced that Lower Sproul Plaza, which historically has been considered a free speech zone, along with Upper Sproul Plaza, now will be subject to those restrictions. The restrictions are part of the university’s “Major Events Policy” implemented in the wake of conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos’ aborted “Free Speech Week” event in September 2017. The new policy was proposed by a commission upon review of the Yiannopoulos incident and several other hotly contested events featuring conservative speakers invited in 2017, among them David Horowitz, Ann Coulter, and Ben Shapiro. Christ’s announcement Sept. 10 is in line with the April report of the commission, which recommended the chancellor extend the…

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Bredesen, Who Says He Is ‘Not With the Dems’ On Gun Control, Was with Gun Control Advocate Michael Bloomberg at Posh New York Fundraiser

Jason M. Reynolds

Phil Bredesen, the Democrats’ U.S. Senate candidate in Tennessee, who claimed recently he was “not with the Dems” on gun control, on Tuesday was in fact with the Dems in New York, including gun-control advocate billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Video of the two men entering the venue separately is available here. The Leader (of Covington, Tennessee) on Tuesday said, “Bredesen called himself ‘conservative’ with second amendment issues and said he is a life-long gun owner. …’I’m not with the Dems on that stuff,” The Tennessee Star reported Wednesday. The Tennessee Republican Party said in a press release, “Actually, he is with them, raising money in New York with people who don’t respect law abiding gun owners’ rights. Make no mistake: Phil is bought and paid for by Chuck Schumer, Michael Bloomberg, and national Democrats.” The Star first reported news of the fundraiser on Oct. 4. The event was billed to financiers as an opportunity to “join Mike Bloomberg for an evening in support of Governor Phil Bredesen.” It is likely that Bloomberg is supporting Bredesen because he has a “D” rating from the National Rifle Association. The NRA has been calling for Bredesen to fix an ad in which he claims…

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