Rush to War

A shadowy terrorist group with Dark Ages savagery and Digital Age media savvy beheads two journalists and posts a video. So – 13 years to the day after 9/11 – we’re off to war!   Talking TV heads spin us into a frenzy. Democratic and Republican politicians race to the cameras to out-hawk each other.…

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Simple Math

When it comes to teacher pay, Republicans must feel like they’re pushing a truck up a hill with a rope.   Thom Tillis claims the legislature passed a 7 percent pay raise. Then Governor McCrory sends teachers a letter telling them it’s a 5.5 percent average pay raise. Then teachers like Michelle Pettey in Wake…

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Now THAT Was a Debate

A TAPster unimpressed by the Hagan-Tillis debate says, “If you want to see a real debate, watch Jim Hunt debate Jesse Helms in 1984. That was like Ali and Frazier.”   Ah, take me back to those thrilling days 30 years ago. Here’s a link so you can watch two heavyweight champs. (This is the…

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‘Kay’ and ‘Speaker Tillis’

Candidates and their advisers spend a lot of time during debate prep thinking about how to address their opponent, so it was no happenstance that Tillis called Hagan “Kay” and she called him “Speaker Tillis.”   Tillis didn’t want to give her the benefit of incumbency, so he took the risk of looking sexist and…

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He Said, She Said

The Senate race is all about sex. It is Supportive Mommy against Stern Daddy.   And the debate may make me amend my rule about how the most comfortable, confident and commanding person in the room always wins: Except when it’s a man against a woman and his “commanding” slips over into “condescending.”   Thom…

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Debate Prep

Several reporters have called to explore “what’s at stake” in tonight’s U.S. Senate debate and “what Hagan and Tillis have to do.”   Well, the answer is a lot simpler than we make it sometimes in politics.   The media will bravely try to focus on substance and whether either candidate “said something new.” (The…

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Tillis an IBM ‘Partner’?

A sharp-eyed TAPster thinks that Thom Tillis is stretching the truth (again) on his biography.   The TAPster notes that Tillis says in his new “Kitchen” ad: “I’ve been a paperboy, a short order cook, a warehouse clerk and eventually a partner at IBM.”   “Freeze it!” as Dick Vitale would say. The TAPster protests:…

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