I sent a question via a retail business chat bot. A very simple question. They responded 6 times asking me to rephrase my question. There are only so many ways you can provide a very simple question. Alas, I gave up and they lost a sale.

Republican candidate for Knox County sheriff, Mike Davis, is contesting the Republican Primary for sheriff after two of the former candidates were indicted.

The Tennessee Republican Party board has announced that it will meet at the TNGOP Headquarters next week to decide which Knox County Sheriff's candidate will be on the ballot in August...
...
Just days after the election, second-place candidate David Amburn and fourth-place candidate Jimmy "J.J." Jones were indicted on felony charges of theft...
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State GOP chairman Scott Golden told 10News that during the June 10th meeting, anyone will be allowed to express their concerns to the board about the primary results.

Well... I could look at it a different way. The indicted candidates are still considered innocent, thus the primary election is valid, thus whoever won wins.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis, TN) announced that he is filing six articles of impeachment against the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts.
...
The six articles of impeachment were summarized by Cohen in a statement:

1) The Chief Justice has allowed the court to become a partisan force, breaking the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government.
2) Under Roberts’ leadership, the court has systemically given preferential treatment to the wealthy over the people.
3) The Chief Justice has violated his oath of office to do, “equal right to the poor and the rich” by endorsing a campaign finance system that favors the wealthy at the expense of the citizenry.
4) The Chief Justice violated the Constitution and judicial oath by usurping Congressional legislative roles and exempting the President from criminal liability for his conduct.
5) The Chief Justice’s leadership has made decisions in an arbitrary, unexplained, and inconsistent way that violates Constitutional protections.
6) Chief Justice Roberts violated statutory and ethical obligations regarding financial disclosures such as reporting assets which presented the perception of conflicts of interest.

From House.gov
Congressman Cohen Introduces Six Articles of Impeachment Against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

The President "has at various points in the last few weeks said he doesn’t care about the negotiations to end his Iran war, about the upcoming 2026 midterms in which Republicans may take a big hit because of his administration, or about Americans’ financial situations."

“It’s a new message,” Democratic strategist James Carville said. “I’ve never in all my years in politics, I’ve never heard the leader of a political party say ‘I don’t care if we win the election or not, matters nothing to me.’”

Another first for the President.

Comics by Jeff Stahler

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Monday sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that the company marketed ChatGPT to the public without sufficiently warning of its dangers.

I'm not that wild about Florida's government. However, I do think they might have something in this lawsuit. It's amazing how many people don't understand Googling for information much less using AI to get answers.

Indeterminate. Schrodinger's cat. a hypothetical cat in a closed box may be considered to be simultaneously both alive and dead while it is unobserved.

Uncertainty. there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known.

So there you go. Watching Jeopardy turns into some interesting conversations.

Smith & Wesson opened a new facility in the past couple of years. Not sure if they are manufacturing, but they are definitely making some noise.

Smith & Wesson Academy opened in September and includes a shoothouse, pistol range, flex range and rifle range. Instructor and former SEAL Chief Warrant Officer Mark T. Cochiolo oversees the courses offered there. As of publication, none of the academy’s nine listed courses were available for sign-up, though seven included course descriptions.

Those descriptions showed participants could receive between 200 and 400 rounds of ammunition per course. Former Louisville Mayor and attorney Tom Bickers said residents have complained about hearing thousands of rounds fired each day.
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Now the firearms company wants to build a Lodging Facility... "much to the chagrin of residential neighbors who fear the move will only increase activity at the site’s already noisy training facilities."
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"The Industrial Development Board has implemented a process to actually measure that [weapons noise]. The equipment just came in last week, and so they are scheduled to go along the property line and measure."

It's unimaginable how disconcerting it would be to have firearms going off that many times a day where you can hear it from your front porch. Is Blount County losing it's luster? Someone should have to buy these people out so they can leave the noise behind.

The musical lineup for President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” concert series, marketed as the “Great American State Fair,” has been remarkably hard to keep up-to-date. Just one day after it was announced, two-thirds of the musical acts have dropped out — some even saying they had no idea they were performing at this event or were misled about it being “political”

Morris Day and the Time, The Commodores, Martina McBride, Young MC, Milli Vanilli, Bret Michaels have all backed out. Maybe Bruce Springsteen will come up with an acceptable Freedom concert.

White House before and after.

We're so proud. (:

Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett says,

“The thing that I’ve seen when I look at credit card data and other things that I can get from the private sector is that while people have been spending more money at gas stations, they’ve been spending more money on everything else,” Hassett said, with his ever-present grin.
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“[This] means that they’re still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy...

Let them eat cake.

NPR dedicated a week to stories and conversations about how communities are moving forward on climate solutions despite significant political headwinds. As the federal government halts plans to address climate change, states, cities, regions, and even neighborhoods are trying to fill the gap by cutting climate pollution and adapting to extreme weather.

In conservative Utah, some communities are ditching fossil fuel power for clean energy

Denver has a plan to heat and cool buildings without fossil fuels. It involves … sewage?

How one Oregon city has raised a billion dollars for climate change

As floods get worse, Britain tries a new solution: beavers

A guide to converting your lawn into a wildlife friendly garden

Barnett has priorities that meet the needs of Tennesseans and the United States. Burchett is just having fun.

Barnett:
A Government that Actually Represents Us
An Economy that Works for All
Healthcare Focused on People, Not Profits
Building Better Infrastructure
Invest in educaton.
Protect our environment.
Affordable housing.

Burchett:
Is a follower of Big Foot
Worries about UFOs
For term limits but he's running for a 5th term
For government transparency but crickets when DOJ removes Jan. 6, 2021, documents from the public eye.
For healthcare but wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Protecting gun owner rights but not the rights of citizens to be safe from encountering open carry gun owners.
Crickets on the economy.

Isn't it time for a change? It appears Burchett has been in DC too long.

The Department of Justice is acknowledging it has removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, calling the information about the prosecutions “partisan propaganda.”

The purge of news releases documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings is the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically rewrite the history of the assault on the Capitol, when hundreds of supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to halt the congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

When will it end? Will it end? Whatta ya gonna do?

House Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) baselessly claimed that the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol was “made up” when asked whether he supported giving federal payouts to people who had assaulted police.

“Look, January 6 is an issue that was made up in the first place,” Norman said. “That was a staged thing from day one.”
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Norman was among those who condemned the insurrection at the time, releasing a statement saying, "This is utterly unacceptable. This is NOT who we are, and I condemn in the STRONGEST possible terms the actions of rioters who have breached the Capitol Building."

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) took the Senate floor Thursday to lie repeatedly about what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, amplifying the wild claims of conspiracy theorists who willfully distort the truth.

Sad but funny. Funny but sad. What is wrong with these people? They keep getting elected. Whatta ya gonna do?

I was with my walking group the other day and someone said his wife got a free ticket to Savannah Bananas. We all looked at him and I asked, what is the Savannah Bananas. He actually did not know if it was a band or what. Then the next day it starts coming out in the local news. The Savannah Bananas are the Harlem Globetrotters to baseball.

Wow! Pretty cool.

The line stretched around the Dairy Queen on West Broadway in Maryville as Savannah Bananas fans from near and far traveled to meet their favorite team.

“We have over 7,500 people for the Thursday game at Covenant Health Park, which will be the largest attendance at that venue since it opened,” said Kim Bumpass, the President of Visit Knoxville. “And then we’ve sold over 110,000 tickets at Neyland on Saturday.”

David Byrne on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

The Knox County Commission voted to approve a proposed resolution aimed at regulating data centers, impacting their location, design and operational requirements.

There are already "three data centers, two in Knox County... a smaller one located in Downtown Knoxville on Summit Hill"... A "larger center has a contracted demand of around 70 megawatts as compared to one of the KUB's big users, UT Medical Center, which uses 12 to 15 megawatts."

From TDOT,

Beginning at 9 a.m. on Monday, June 1, crews will close Woodson Drive and Wye Way at the intersection with Alcoa Highway while crews place fill material, install storm drain and utilities, and construct the new roundabout and curbs.

As part of the improvements to Alcoa Highway from Woodson Drive to Cherokee Trail, TDOT is building a new roundabout at Woodson Drive to make the intersection of this essential roadway with the collector road and Wye Way safe and efficient. This location is close to where Woodson Drive connects to Alcoa Highway.

The detour will take drivers to Cherokee Trail and the UT Hospital entrance. It's bad enough they are directing people to Cherokee trail, a skinny, dangerous, steep road, but then they are putting more traffic at the entrance to UT Hospital. Being a local, I'd probably go to Maloney Road. It is a little out of the way, but a much better road. Although, that underpass at Mount Olive School would probably slow down traffic.

With no more Front Page Follies, I need some outlet for song parodies that come to me. Roger Daltry originally sang these Pete Townshend lyrics, but imagine Cameron Sexton trying to defend the legislature's racist redistricting:

[Verse 1]
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man, to be the sad man
Behind our lies
No one knows what it's like
To be hated, to be fated
To telling only lies

[Chorus]
And my maps, they are as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I will punish those who object
I do Trump’s vengeance; that's never free