Monday, April 27, 2009
40 Jealous Whores / Kotz / Law and Order / Legislature / Politics / The Economy Kook Power: Dumb Ideas Carry This Week's Rankings
Posted by Pete Kotz on Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 5:41 AM
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With all the big names missing in action, an entirely new cast of Relatively Smart Guys With Really Kooky Ideas surges to the top of our Power Rankings this week. 
1. Nursing Home Nurses: It's hard to call them kooks, but their repeat performances before the legislature would beg to differ. The nursing home lobby has convinced a group of nurses to push for lawsuit caps in elder abuse cases in exchange for promises of wage increases. But trusting Tennessee's nursing homes, considered among the worst in the nation, is like trusting a preacher with a Cadillac's promise of eternal salvation -- if only you buy him some Sprewell Spinners. Can you say "suckers," boys and girls?
2. Rep. Jon Lundberg: The Bristol Republican is a sponsor of the bill to put caps on nursing home abuse cases. Strangely enough, his district also houses a National HealthCare Corp. home that apparently allowed a serial molester run run free for seven years. Could his soul be considered a toxic asset, and thus eligible for federal bailout money to buy him a new one?
3. Mayor Karl Dean: He's actually a smart and genial man. But he's also the 237,876th U.S. mayor to blindly follow the convention center gambit as an easy road to prosperity. Next on the mayor's plate: Investing in VCRs. You know they're gonna make a comeback. They just have to...
4. Columnist Gail Kerr: Speaking of impeded sight, the equally genial Tennessean columnist jumped on board last week with gushing support for the convention center. She just forgot to... well... know anything about the convention industry. But as we learned during the Bush administration, blind support of our leaders is always a good thing -- if your goal is to end up totally f&*%$#@.
5. Councilman Charlie Tygard: He accused Councilwoman Emily Evans of striving to prove she's the smartest person in the room. This is apparently a bad thing, because you only want the intellectually lazy making multimillion dollar decisions. Thankfully, we still have Charlie Tygard to cover that.
