Archive for the ‘Tea Party’ Category

7 Festive 4th Of July Events This Weekend In Tennessee – TravelAwaits

Tennessee is celebrating the 4th of July with parades, festivals, and special events all across the state. Heres where you can catch some of the more unique events across the Volunteer State:

Perhaps the very first celebration in the state is Gatlinburgs 4th of July Midnight Parade. Starting at exactly 12:01 a.m. on July 4, this award-winning parade stretches more than a mile and is a highlight for locals and visitors. The parade started in 1975 and has been kicking off Independence Day ever since. It includes colorful floats, balloons, and a massive fireworks display at the end. Heres another nighttime activity to check out while youre in Gatlinburg.

Jonesborough is Tennessees oldest town and it celebrates its heritage with the annual Jonesborough Days on 4th of July weekend. A traditional low-country shrimp boil paired with live music kicks off the festivities on June 30. On July 2, the family-friendly festival begins with a parade through town. Music, contests, and magicians run through July 3, when a large fireworks display wraps up the event. A market will feature local artists selling homemade items and food trucks will be on hand to serve up festival favorites like funnel cakes and ice cream. There will also be storytellers on hand because Jonesborough is considered the Storytelling Capital of the World.

Forget fireworks and parades, why not celebrate the 4th of July with anvils? Thats right, head to the small town of Norris, north of Knoxville, to watch 200-pound anvils shoot through the air. Why anvil shoots? Its how pioneers used to celebrate special occasions like holidays and elections. The Museum of Appalachias celebration also includes a bell-ringing ceremony, live music, and demonstrations from beekeepers, blacksmiths, and more! This is a ticketed event; you can grab them here.

Other 4th of July celebrations in eastern Tennessee include:

Celebrate true Appalachian culture at the 51st annual Smithville Fiddlers Jamboree and Craft Festival. Every 4th of July weekend, the event brings in traditional bluegrass musicians to delight festival-goers throughout the 2-day event. There will be more than 35 dancers and musicians, as well as local crafters selling handmade items. The family-friendly festival also includes food trucks and kicks off on Friday, July 1.

Classic cars are at the center of this Independence Day celebration. The annual Red, White, & Boom 4th of July Celebration kicks off on July 3 with a class car show, where cars, trucks, and cycles will be on display during the day. At night, the 129th U.S. Army Band puts on a patriotic concert. The celebration continues on July 4 with an evening concert before the states second largest fireworks show. Round out your trip to Cookeville with our favorite nearby activities.

Other 4th of July celebrations in middle Tennessee include:

You cant celebrate the 4th of July in Tennessee without a tribute to the legend himself, Elvis Presley. The All-American 4th of July Weekend at Graceland features southern barbecue, an Elvis tribute concert, gospel brunch, and hidden tours of Graceland all with the backdrop of the historic Graceland mansion lit up in red, white, and blue. The events begin Saturday, July 2, and end with an Elvis-inspired fireworks show the night of Sunday, July 3. Most of the events are ticketed, so securing your spot in advance is a must. You can buy individual tickets or opt for a package. Get all the ticket details here. If you arent too full from all the barbecue, check out our favorite places in Memphis to get local cuisine.

Getting back to the roots of Independence Day is at the core of this 4-day event. The West Tennessee Independence Day Celebration features a reading of the Declaration of Independence, a re-enactment of the Boston Tea Party, and the ringing of the bells. There are also traditional celebrations as well, like music, food, and a fireworks display on Sunday, July 3. This is a family-friendly event that has a healthy dose of history incorporated into the fun.

Other 4th of July celebrations in western Tennessee include:

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7 Festive 4th Of July Events This Weekend In Tennessee - TravelAwaits

Why were Democrats caught flat-footed by the end of Roe v Wade? – The Guardian

With Roe v Wade overturned by the US supreme court and American women now living in a nation where our most fundamental rights are dependent on the state in which we reside, a lot of us are looking around and asking, how did we get here?

There is much blame to go around, and the bulk of it rests on the shoulders of the right-wing anti-abortion movement that sprung out of the white supremacist movement that fought to maintain Jim Crow and school segregation. The racist, misogynist Religious Right gained tremendous power within the Republican party; the Republican party proved itself willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get their way; and as a result, Americans are now living in an undemocratic nation of reactionary minority rule.

But the Democratic party hasnt done enough to help itself, its supporters, and women more broadly.

There are a great many points where Democrats could have kept the country on the rails. Chief among them is in the aftermath of the 2000 election, when Al Gore won the popular vote, but the supreme court, along partisan lines, installed George W Bush as president. If the reverse had happened if our arcane Electoral College system had put a Democratic loser in office over a Republican who won more votes rest assured that the Republican party would have gotten rid of that undemocratic institution as soon as it had the chance.

Democrats, though, did nothing even though one person, one vote is likely how most Americans believe our system works, and is an easy advocacy line. When Obama took office, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. In the states, Democrats controlled more legislatures than Republicans did; more states had a Democratic trifecta (Democratic governors plus both state legislative bodies) than a Republican one. There was a brief moment here to get a lot done in the name of both democracy and womens rights: get rid of the undemocratic Electoral College; codify Roe; rescind the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal Medicaid dollars from funding abortions for poor women, and the Helms Amendment, which bars US funding from paying for abortions for women overseas. Advocates asked the Obama administration to do all of that; they did none.

If there is one moment that portended all of what were seeing today, it was Bush v. Gore in 2001. Democrats had a chance to correct it. They had a base that was livid about what had happened, and a country primed to accept a one person, one vote rule for elections. And despite a huge win in 2008, they did absolutely nothing to prevent such an undemocratic result from happening again.

Two years after Obamas big win, Republicans swept the midterms in what remains one of the most significant shifts in American political power in the last century. It wasnt just standard Republican candidates who won it was Tea Party enthusiasts, right-wing extremists, conspiracy nuts, hardcore misogynists and unrepentant racists, all of whom set the state for Trumps rise and his eventual party takeover. Once in power, they focused on restricting abortion rights, passing hundreds of laws and imposing a smorgasbord of new restrictions.

They have controlled both chambers of the legislature in more than half of US states ever since.

Once in power, Republicans focused on keeping themselves there, democracy be damned. They scaled up efforts to restrict voting rights, carefully calibrating their laws to decrease Democratic turnout that is, to make it harder for people of color to vote. They used whatever power they had to deliver for their constituents not stuff like healthcare or poverty alleviation that people might actually need, but the culture war stuff that satisfied a punitive desire to screw over perceived enemies.

Democrats, on the other hand, made endless compromises.

When supreme court justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, Barack Obama was still the president, and he had the right to appoint a judge to fill Scalias seat. The Republican Party, though, had control of the Senate and blocked him, claiming that, because it was an election year, the American people had the right to pick the president who would pick the next Supreme Court judge. They did not apply this same rule to themselves just four years later, when Trump was in the same position he appointed Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And while some Democrats complained, they certainly did not play hardball; Sen. Dianne Feinstein even applauded Barretts speedy and illegitimate confirmation hearings.

And Donald Trump, of course, lost the popular vote; millions more American voted for Hillary Clinton. But, thanks to an Electoral College system kept in place despite its long-apparent flaws, the majority lost in 2016. We all know what happened next.

In early May, a draft of the supreme court opinion to overturn Roe leaked to the press. It was a shock, but not a total surprise supreme court watchers and reproductive rights advocates had been warning that this particular court was ready and willing to overturn Roe, and that they might use the Dobbs case to do it.

But even with that heads up, the day the Dobbs opinion was published, Democrats seemed to be caught flat-footed. Democrats offered poems and made fundraising pleas. They asked us to vote even though we did, in huge numbers, in 2016 and 2018 and 2020; even though three million more Americans voted for the Democratic nominee in 2016 than the Republican one.

Only a small handful of Democrats, led most notably by Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suggested anything even remotely resembling an innovative response. And even they seemed to be coming up with it on the fly.

The unfortunate reality is that there is no immediate perfect solution for the problem at hand. The supreme court has struck down basic rights for women, giving conservative states enormous control over womens bodies. Even a federal law codifying Roe is vulnerable to Republican takeover, and tricky to pass given the current make-up of Congress and the fact that the slim Democratic majority in the senate includes conservative Democrats Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.

But that doesnt mean there is nothing Democrats can do. Joe Biden, for example, could make securing abortion rights for as many women as possible his number-one priority; he could rescind federal amendments that limit abortion access; he could give permission for clinics to open on federal lands; he could go to the mat for medication abortion availability; he could be clear that he will expand the court and end the filibuster.

Instead, hes setting off on a national tour to remind Americans that they think hes to blame for inflation.

Voting for Democrats matters. One problem that Democrats are currently facing is that they simply dont have enough of a majority to get done what their base wants, and they have two feckless narcissists with Ds next their names who are hampering the partys agenda. The midterms matter; more Democrats in office means more opportunities to pass laws that protect women and human rights more generally.

But that doesnt mean Democrats powerless now, or that they have any right to pin the blame on voters. At the very least, Democrats should take a look at what has happened since 2001, and recognize the situation for the emergency that it is. Most of the conservative judges on the court most of the judges who just overturned Roe v. Wade were appointed by presidents who initially lost the popular vote but took office anyway. This has happened twice in just 20 years.

Abortion rights and democracy go hand in a hand. A nation is not democratic if half of its population do not have basic rights, let alone equal rights. As the US faces a series of crises of democracy, from an attempted coup to a hostile takeover by a reactionary minority to an unprecedented rollback of civil rights, there is a straight line that runs from Bush v Gore to Dobbs v Jackson Womens Health.

Democrats cant fix the past. But the least they can do is learn from it and change course accordingly.

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Why were Democrats caught flat-footed by the end of Roe v Wade? - The Guardian

As the NHS turns 74, it launches its ‘biggest NHS Big Tea ever’ to raise funds – PMLiVE

NHS Charities Together is urging people to take part in the biggest NHS Big Tea ever on 5 July 2022 to mark the NHS turning 74.

Led by NHS Charities Together, the NHS Big Tea aims to bring the nation together to celebrate the birthday of the NHS, while raising funds to provide extra support for staff, patients and volunteers.

NHS Charities Together is the national charity partner of the NHS and an umbrella organisation made up of over 230 NHS member charities based in hospitals, mental health trusts, ambulance trusts, community health trusts and health boards across the UK.

Last years NHS Big Tea raised funds to support over 600 projects across the UK. This years efforts will support 1.5 million NHS staff and volunteers, with a collective fundraising target of over 775,000.

Ellie Orton, chief executive at NHS Charities Together, said: The NHS can't face every challenge alone, and the network of NHS charities is proud to have funded hundreds of incredible projects supporting staff, patients and communities. Taking place on the NHS birthday, the NHS Big Tea allows us all to come together and say an enormous thank you to our incredible health service and its staff especially after all theyve been through these last two years and the ongoing challenges they continue to face.

So, were asking the nation to pop the kettle on, grab the biscuits and raise vital funds to help the NHS go further this July.

Morrisons is the headline sponsor of the fundraising campaign again this year, having been supporting NHS Charities Together since 2020 by raising funds through its colleagues, customers and suppliers.

PG tips is also an official sponsor of the event and will be donating 5p per pack of Original 160 Tea Bags sold in Morrison stores and online.

Those hosting a tea party will receive a welcome pack after signing up, including posters, invitations, bunting and fundraising ideas. Hosts will also get their own NHS Big Tea fundraising page to collect donations online. Participants are encouraged to share their celebrations with the hashtag #NHSBigTea.

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As the NHS turns 74, it launches its 'biggest NHS Big Tea ever' to raise funds - PMLiVE

Right-wing media want to replace seasoned election workers with conspiracy theorists and extremists – Media Matters for America

OAN has long been a hotbed for election related conspiracy theories, extending far beyond recruiting extremist election workers. During the summer of 2021, Bobb used her platform on OAN to promote the sham audit of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. She founded a non-profit called Voices & Votes that donated over $600,000 to the effort. During that same period, OAN promoted MyPillow CEO Mike Lindells cyber symposium more than 150 times, and aired over 30 hours of the event live. Bannon has also been giving publicity and support to this recruitment plan starting February 2021, when he partnered with Dan Schultz, a former tea party activist, to encourage infiltration of low-level positions in the Republican Party apparatus to take over election administration.

In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, Schultz started appearing on Bannons show in February 2021 to promote his precinct plan to take over the Republican Party through grassroots organizing. This plan, galvanized by the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump by Democrat-favoring election workers and machines, quickly spread through far-right and QAnon-supporting online spaces and was hailed as The Best Kept Secret to Taking over the Republican (GOP) Party. And at the end of February, Trump endorsed the plan as a way to take back our great Country from the ground up.

In September 2021, ProPublica showed that the call to action is working, with a team of reporters writing that they contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannons campaign began. At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers (or equivalent lowest-level officials) joined those county parties. We also looked at equivalent Democratic posts and found no similar surge.

More recently, Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who worked to overturn the 2020 election with unsubstantiated accusations and debunked claims, appeared on War Room in May and June to advocate for the Election Integrity Network, a conservative coalition that hosts training events for those interested in becoming election workers and surveilling for election fraud. She claimed that for more than a decade, the left has been infiltrating our election offices. They have subverted the election process.

Many precinct plan advocates claim that poll watchers are biased toward Democrats and that Republicans must balance that out in order to make sure elections are secure. However, since the overwhelming uptick in election worker signups appears to be a result of election denial on War Room and in other far-right spaces, it is clear that what is presented as a bipartisan effort toward fairness is being advertised on right-wing media as a key method to not lose America.

As The New York Times points out, of concern is the [Election Integrity Networks] intent to research the backgrounds of local and state officials to determine whether each is a friend or foe of the movement. Many officials already feel under attack by those who falsely contend that the 2020 election was stolen. Election workers like Moss and Freeman may continue to suffer conspiracy theory-fueled harassment thanks to the plans proposed methods.

Politico revealed that in a Michigan-based training, grassroots activists and Republican Party operatives called for actions that could quickly become bigoted harassment, telling recruits they could contest voters if they have good reason to believe that an individual is not a citizen, that an individual is not of legal voting age. If an individual does not live at the location that theyre registered at, or if the person is not registered at all. They were also told they should stand behind voter registration tables to oversee the electronic poll book to make sure the person that is coming in to vote is who they say they are.

The danger lies not only in low-level local poll worker roles, but also in state-level political positions. As midterm primaries roll through, the GOP is pushing Trump-backed election deniers such as Arizonas Mark Finchem, Nevadas Jim Marchant, New Mexicos Audrey Trujillo, and Michigans Kristina Karamo for secretary of state, where they could have the power and the support to overturn their states results.

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Right-wing media want to replace seasoned election workers with conspiracy theorists and extremists - Media Matters for America

Uranus In Taurus & The Battle For Embodiment – NYLON

From 2018 through 2026, the great harbinger of change, Uranus, blasts through the sign most resistant to it, Taurus. Though this transit will occupy the better part of a decade, with retrogrades and dips into other signs, 2022 brings us to a precarious cliff on the event horizon of fate, with this years eclipses going down in Taurus. In real time, a volcano of repressed animus erupts, in the Taurean domains of sensuality, embodiment, and autonomy.

On July 31 and August 1, Uranus collides with Mars and the north node, and from September 15October 23, Uranus comes close to a square, or confrontation, with Saturn in Aquarius. Weve arrived at a jagged crossroads in the Taurean epic. Heres how Uranus in Taurus will reshape your world beyond 2022.

For eons, our solar system was thought to be made of seven planets, with Saturn at the very end of the line. That all changed with the discovery of Uranus in 1781, a breakthrough in technology and consciousness that would forever alter our accepted notions of the cosmos. According to astrologer Ruby McCollister, the arrival of Uranus brought the flourishing of science, technology, philosophy, literature, music, social opportunities and, in virtually every aspect of human life, exploded Western civilization toward liberation, freedom, and choice.

Uranus, then, is associated with change, revolution, youth movements, and new technologies. Its domain, of course, could be nowhere else but Aquarius. This all sounds perfectly promising in theory, but, in the words of Magneto, mankind has always feared what it does not understand. And so, as in the myth of Prometheus delivering fire to the people, Uranian progress often catalyzes swift retribution from the old gods and their institutions. Through chaos comes reinvention, but who wouldnt struggle to hold on to the world they knew?

For the sign that declares mi casa es mi casa, Uranus arrives like the big bad wolf to blow the house down. Anyone with prominent planets in Taurus will experience some mythic ego dissolution and surrender over this transit, as the planet of global progress rips off the straightjacket of myopia and willful obtuseness. But Taurus is also the sign of value, worth and money; of fertility and sexual embodiment; and of the healthy (or, as is often the case, megalomaniacal) cultivation of an ego. The body and the land, and their interconnected freedoms, are up for reinvention, revolution, and, of course, backlash.

Uranuss last Taurus transit, from 19351942, coincided with the Great Depression and WWII, an age of dramatic scarcity and unprecedented power which uprooted Taurean themes in science, culture, and diplomacy. By the time Uranus made its mid-century transit, unsustainable farming practices had led to the dust bowl famine, a climate crisis which displaced millions. The Indian Rights Act and Social Security Act were first steps towards restitution and dignity towards all the countrys inhabitants.

The outbreak of WWII delivered a new type of woman, embodied by the brassy, Artemisian Taurus Katherine Hepburn and the scathing Bette Davis, and glamorized through the creation of some of modern cultures most enduring characters: Lois Lane, Catwoman, and Wonder Woman. Unbound and unbossed, this new generation served a higher ethos than domestic bliss, blasting open a new and varied pantheon of archetypes.

Of course, Taurus is the sign of autonomy, explaining its high probability among divas and dictators. The last Uranian tour saw the rise of some of the 20th centurys definitive autocrats, including Mussolini and Hitler. As the Taurus Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japan, so the human race would fail its Taurean calling of regenerating a fertile earth and instead answer to the destroyer, waiting to rise from the Scorpionic underworld. Our gift of choice the bulls crown jewel had been abused. If one man could command nuclear power, then any person could be capable of godhood. Kingdoms fell, states were redrawn, and in the dissociative haze of mass consumption emerged something novel and intractable, craving unprecedented freedom: the individual.

As Uranus approaches the north node, the cycles of expansion and regression, progress and backlash, come into faster revolution. The discourse around the current climate crisis has narrowed in on the bulls trenchant gluttony, entitlement and inability to change. Can we collectively achieve a Taurean impossibility: convincing human beings to compromise their entitlement for the greater good? Of course, for standards of human decency to improve, so that, say, our meat doesnt have to be processed by underpaid, uninsured workers with no rights, Uranus will force Taurus to part with its creature comforts, and to question the consequences of a gentrified standard of living.

No discussion of Taurean themes would be complete without considering cold, hard cash, which, over this transit, undergoes a literal metamorphosis. Even if NFTs and crypto prove to be fads, the value of money will never be the same. Nor will previous assumptions around work and compensation. In the limited support people received from their leaded officials and employers during lockdown; the rise of digital entrepreneurship, self-merchandising, and self-published erotica through sites like OnlyFans; and in the growing public disinterest to return to office culture, Uranus has made individuals question why theyve settled for the abuses of corporate life and capitalist labor, what their talents are worth, and how they believe they should be compensated.

Meanwhile, femininity and womanhood have undergone a rapid metamorphosis through the filters of capitalism and consumption. Posting a pic, finna make me a profit, raps Megan Thee Stallion, one of the breakout stars of the era, in "Thot Sh*t. Megan may be the archangel of Uranus in Taurus, arriving, like Prometheus, to deliver a new fire to the masses: an unrestrained, insatiable embrace of pleasure, power, beauty, and capital. Seduction has always been a cash game; now everyones in on it.

Of course, as it blasts forward to progress, Uranus uncovers buried, atavistic resistance to change. The defamation trial against the Taurus Amber Heard, which raged during a Taurus stellium and the launch of the Taurus-Scorpio eclipse cycle, revealed the threat of a woman who doesnt hew to the dominant standards of clean, uncomplicated morality. For depicting the complex reality of relationships and the ways that love, power, and abuse cannot be easily disentangled, Heard, like so many Taurus women before her, would be locked away in the dungeon of the Minotaur, bound as a bull sacrifice on the altar of virtue. .

The empire has struck back. But Taurus answers to a more ancient authority, unimpressed by the construction of pretty pyramids and systems of rulership. Real power, imbued into all bodies and expressed through the becoming of self and the creation of another, cannot be limited, literalized and compromised. So much for free will, Liz Greene writes, in The Astrology of Fate. It exists, for the Platonist, only in the non-corporeal. The body, brimming with passion and the seeds of mortality, is full of fate. What fate will our bodies lead us to next?

The core tenet of liberalism is that society is moving towards progress, a vision furthered by Aquarius. At stake under the legislation of so many deflated old dudes on the senate floor is the primal power of creation and the divine gift of becoming; what if, after all, the ancient, volcanic ore of the earth, and of its inhabitants, cant be reconciled with a civil society at all? Taurus the avatar of the crescent moon, fallopian tubes and pre-Judeo-Christian pagans holds the fertility traditions of ages past, and as the state falls, so erupts a primeval, Dionysian rebellion of the body.

The Taurean promise of freedom is at stake, and conspiracy theorists, mass shooters and capital rioters have already made their warped case for it. Perhaps the rest of us, bound to the breast of the state, are missing the point. Prometheus delivered the fire of revolution to all humankind. 2021s GameStop coup went down during a Uranus-Saturn square, and the Staten Island unionization against Amazon, however precarious and embattled, marked new possibilities for rebellion in a corpocracy. Previous Uranus in Taurus eras brought on the French Revolution, Boston Tea Party, and Indian revolts against the British. No more hoping for change from inside the system. Its time to build a better one.

And it all begins with the individual. Over the past decade, the body has been exploited in the development of the personal brand, making each of us a unit of trade and consumption, in a rat race for followers and corporate funding. Perhaps that same spirit of self-embodiment, which makes each of us a vessel of the cinematic, erotic and fantastic, which has immortalized legendary Taurus divas like Cher, Grace Jones and Barbra Streisand, can be weaponized, or, at least, fully realized. What if the public personality each of us inhabits begins to live, in the eyes of its followers, not a life of meaningless consumption or even worse virtue signaling, but incandescent creative fulfillment and authentic transgression?

On the eve of the Uranus-Mars-north node collision, Beyonce drops her album Renaissance and the Taurus Lena Dunham releases her new film Sharp Stick. As the centurys most indelible feminist archetypes have demonstrated, every action of creation can shake the world, start a discourse, and make you a god or an antichrist. Your body is a vessel of the rapture, and in the age of surveillance, its always being watched. Show them something they wont forget.

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Uranus In Taurus & The Battle For Embodiment - NYLON