David Crabtree and Mark Binker of WRAL hosted Carter and me for this weekend’s “On the Record” show. We talked about the new Congress, the political landscape, Richard Burr’s reelection race, Governor McCrory and Medicaid, Paul Tine’s switcheroo and Jeb Bush. The show airs Saturday at 7 pm, or whenever basketball ends. It will…
Read MoreAt 76, the California governor is still young at heart, bold of vision and quick of wit. Brown was sworn into his fourth term this week, and he’s off with a bang. He wants to attack global warming by reducing California’s energy consumption over the next 15 years, slashing gas consumption by cars and…
Read MoreA poor boy of seventeen Jomah joined ISIS for money then landed in a class to train children to be soldiers; the morning he received his first lesson teachers holding not guns but knives led in three captured soldiers and after the lesson the circle of boys passed around the severed heads. Ismail, also…
Read MoreJohn Boehner, Jeb Bush and Pat McCrory took their first steps this week along a Republican Party fault line that offers peril for each of them – and peril for Democrats if they succeed. Boehner had to fend off a conservative challenge to his reelection as Speaker. Two dozen right-wing Republicans abandoned him. Lucky…
Read MoreIn a realm filled with rumors in the blink of an eye fictions take root in fertile soil and blossom adopting the image of spoken truth like this one you’ve heard a hundred times: ‘Romney lost because he shifted too far to the right during the primaries.’ In fact, the polls told a completely…
Read MoreYou’ve got to love Harry Reid, especially since Republicans hate him so bad. The Harry-haters were hee-hawing and high-fiving last week after Reid hurt himself exercising. One wrote, “It Couldn’t Happen to a Nastier Guy.” Another speculated that Reid is into kinky sex. Here’s hoping that Harry will get well and keep giving…
Read MoreNo predictions or resolutions! Instead let’s ask the big questions for 2015 for the state’s big three political forces: Governor McCrory, Republican legislators and Democrats. For Governor McCrory, will 2015 be about policy and politics, or about personal ethics? As we tuned out for the holidays, he was eyeball-to-eyeball with the capital media, AP…
Read MoreThe President, unhappy with North Korea, announced he was going to ‘proportionately’ respond and the next day North Korea’s Internet went black which possibly is a coincidence but may also be proportionate. Now, to be clear, getting hacked by North Korea is a little like getting bitten on the ankle by a small varmint.…
Read MoreA reporter at The Hill newspaper up in Washington let Jeb Bush have it right between the eyes, reporting there’s ‘no love lost’ between Bush and the Republican base and that in Iowa the Tea Party activists are torching Bush’s conservative credentials. “Jeb Bush,” he quoted a radio talk show host as saying, “is…
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