Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in studio to discuss federal government overreach and resisting COVID mandates.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by our very good friend, the mayor of Maury County. Wait for it. Everybody in the listening audience can say this. (Ogles chuckles) Maury County, that bastion of freedom, that turbocharged engine of economic growth, the Mayor Andy Ogles. Good morning, Andy.
Ogles: Good morning.
Leahy: Sometimes you grab a phrase. This was your phrase, and I just liked it so much. It becomes sort of the anthem for Maury County and quite appropriate, I would say.
Ogles: We’ve talked about this before, but throughout COVID, we’ve kind of resisted the mandates. We’ve resisted closures. We’ve had public events carefully, of course, and our economy has thrived.
We’re a net importer of jobs and investment for the state of Tennessee. And so it’s a great time to be mayor. It’s been a challenging time, I’ll be honest. I’m a little grayer because of it, but I’m proud of the work that we’ve done. And I’m proud of Maury County.
Leahy: You are not that much grayer. (Laughs)
Ogles: Well, I feel grayer. I’ll tell you, my arm is in a sling. It hurts to roll out of bed. It’s because of COVID stress.
Leahy: Yes, rolling out of bed at that wee hour in the morning to make it here. And we thank you.
Ogles: It’s a privilege to be here. What you do for Middle Tennessee and driving these issues that are not only Maury County, but Middle Tennessee and Tennessee. We’re conservative, and we need voices to cut through the nonsense.
Leahy: It’s interesting you say that because where are the conservative voices in Tennessee? Besides The tennesseestar.com. It’s our online news site that we opened almost five years ago now, in February of 2017.
And we have to say thank you to our early advertisers who helped make that possible. Beeman Automotive. Of course, the great Lee Beeman was there. Advanced Financial. And also DT McCalls. They wrote the checks that were able to get us going. And we really appreciate that.
Ogles: Yes. When you look at print media or, of course, all of that’s flipped over to digital media now. But if you look at digital media, there are really not many sources of conservative news, especially local. And that’s a void that The Tennessee Star fills. And I check it every day.
Leahy: The Tennessee Star Report, the morning program here that we do on the radio is really the only conservative voice in Middle Tennessee. If you’re out there listening right now, tell your friends to listen in to The Tennessee Star Report from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. because you get on Tuesdays at 06:00, the Mayor of Maury County, that bastion of freedom, the turbocharged engine of economic growth, Andy Ogles.
Andy just so many things going on in the COVID arena. We;lll talk with Jack Johnson at 7:05 am about the lightning speed at which the federal government, an Obama-appointed Judge who told Tennesse, you can’t pass laws.
No, you can’t pass laws because we in the federal judiciary will tell Tennesseeans what to do. You saw that too, didn’t you?
Ogles: Yeah, it’s concerning. We’re a Republic of free states. You and I know that. But this judge needs a lesson in civics 101 at the end of the day. And this is where I challenged the governor. I challenged the General Assembly to really assert the 10th Amendment.
Leahy: Well, they should. They should. And Governor Lee signs the COVID bill. It’s a very complicated long process by which a school board can invoke a mask mandate for all the kids in their county and in their area. He signed it on a Friday.
The left-wingers, funded by billionaire left-wingers, their attorneys go in immediately, and they’ve already preselected a judge. I think it’s an Obama appointee.
Shock, shock, shock. I’ll have to double-check that. It’s either an Obama appointee or George W. Bush appointee. But these days, how can you tell the difference?
Ogles: Right.
Leahy:Â But they go in and they use this rubric of the (Whispers) Americans for Disability Act as the reason that they make this new rule. They claim that it is unconstitutional, therefore issue a stay of the law across the state.
It’s just such a dramatic overreach. And Jack Johnson will tell us when he comes in at 7:05 am that the law actually provides a provision for disabled kids and adjustment. And the judge paid no attention to that.
Ogles: Paying no attention, what’s scary during COVID, and I’m not antimask. I’m not pro-mask, I’m not anti-vaccine and I’m not pro-vaccine, right.
But there is something that is liberty and freedom. And you’ve had a federal government that’s totally disregarded HIPAA, which protects your right.
Leahy: Yeah. Health privacy.
Ogles: That’s right.
Leahy: HIPAA says you’ve got health privacy.
Ogles: That’s right. Your employer, just by the fact of HIPAA, can’t ask your vaccination status. But because of COVID, we’ve tossed it out the window. ADA however, is being weaponized to undermine liberty and freedoms in states like Tennessee or Oklahoma, et cetera who try to do these things.
And furthermore, when it comes to religious exemptions. And for hospitals, when you look at title seven, which is civil rights, but it includes religious exemptions, there’s no standard in there for religious exemptions.
Yet the federal government is allowing hospitals and hospital boards to create standards that otherwise don’t exist. Ladies and gentlemen, we are on a slippery slope and it’s getting scary.
Leahy: Well, it is. But I would say this and get your reaction to this Andy. If you look at the public opinion polls and their attitudes towards Democrats and let’s be honest.
If you’re a Democrat with one exception here in Tennessee, John Mark Windle. But he’s grandfathered in because he’s your grandfather’s Democrat.
Ogles: He’s that old-school Southern Democrat.
Leahy: It’s the authoritarian Communist Party. It’s the authoritarian Marxist party. That’s what they are. And, of course, the frustrating part about this for some of us is they got in legally, but not legitimately.
And there’s more stuff to come about the illegitimate nature of this election in the next couple of weeks. But just wait on it. We’ll have that.
This is not Republican versus Democrat. This is individual constitutional liberty versus authoritarian Marxism. That’s where we are right now today.
Ogles:Â I think it was just recently yesterday or the day before there was a Democrat in Texas that left the Democrat Party to come over to the Republican Party.
Leahy: A state representative.
Ogles: There’s this talk for several years now that Texas was going to turn purple. Thanks to AOC and the liberal left, there’s going to be a surge and a lurch to the right across this country.
You’re looking at maybe 50, 60 seats picked up in the U.S. House. And that’s a good thing. The question is, can we survive the next 8-10 months to get to the November elections?
Leahy:Â Speaking of those November elections, the story you just brought to my attention, you go to Offthepress.com That’s the new Drudge Report. Joe Curl, who was the Drudge editor is now running it.
That’s where you should go if you want to look at the good aggregator of the breaking news. They have a story you brought to my attention this morning. Wyoming GOP Votes to Stop Recognizing Representative Liz Cheney as a Republican Following her Vote to impeach Trump earlier this year.
It was like 31 to 29. I don’t know if this will keep her from running in the primary, though it’s called a symbolic vote. What are your thoughts on Liz ‘turncoat’ Cheney?
Ogles: This follows I guess 23 counties in Wyoming, and roughly a third or so of them had already, I guess at the local level no longer recognized Cheney as a Republican. And subsequently, you now have this vote by the Republican Party. And I think that’s the legal question going forward.
Can they keep her off of the ballot as a Republican? I don’t know. I do know in the state of Tennessee, the SEC, which is your election commission for the state for the Republican Party has a lot of authority to allow or not allow someone on the ballot with an (R) beside their name.
Leahy: And Liz Cheney is not an R. She’s an authoritarian. She’s siding with the authoritarians. She’s part of this select kangaroo court put together by Nancy Pelosi that’s going politically going after Steve Bannon. We’ll talk about that in a little bit more when we get back.
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
