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A Simple Prayer

By biglu January 29, 2013

  Gary is taking a break from blogging. Here’s one from another Tapster.   When the legislature makes its biennial return to town, our usual tendency is to ridicule the members’ narrow mindedness, laugh at their lack of political sophistication and hold our collective breath that they won’t destroy the state.   The gavel drops…

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A Train Wreck

By Carter Wrenn January 29, 2013

The other day down at the News and Observer John Dresher wrote about the most enticing opening to an article I’ve seen in awhile. He wrote: “For their first date, Pat and Tiffany walk to a neighborhood diner for dinner. Pat orders Raisin Bran. Tiffany, perhaps already giving up on Pat, orders tea. They proceed…

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Wanted: Perfect Party Chair

By biglu January 29, 2013

  Our guest TAPster is Mark Ezzell, long time political observer and founder of Englewood Planning Group, a Raleigh-based public affairs firm:   I love a good Barack Obama speech as much as the next Democrat, but I always cringed when he used the banal sounding line “we are the ones we’ve been looking for’.…

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Talking About (Their) Generation

By jstewart January 28, 2013

Gary is taking a break from blogging. Our guest today is Joe Stewart.   Currently reaching their 18th birthday at a rate of 13,000 a day, the 80 million-strong Generation Y (those born 1982 – 1995) will be the majority of the US workforce and a full third of the voting population by 2015. This…

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Big Thinking

By Carter Wrenn January 28, 2013

When it comes to climbing up on a soap box and waving his arms and hollerin’ like a banshee there’s hardly anyone who can hold a candle to Newt Gingrich. But there’s a peculiar trait about people who talk a lot about their ‘bold ideas’— when you boil away their highfalutin rhetoric a lot of…

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Two Views of the World

By nationhahn January 25, 2013

Gary is taking a break from blogging. Our guest blogger today is Nation Hahn.   In recent weeks North Carolinians have heard two inaugural addresses. One, from Governor Pat McCrory spoke to “Unlimited Opportunity.” The other, from President Barack Obama, was a call for the “country’s reasonable majority” to act.   For North Carolina Democrats,…

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McCrory’s Mouthpiece

By biglu January 25, 2013

Gary is taking a break from blogging.  Today’s pinch-hitter one of our Tapsters.   The choice of a press secretary is a blip on the personnel radar of North Carolina’s new governor, but this choice provides insight into the kind of governor Pat McCrory may become.   McCrory’s choice for media mouthpiece has plenty of…

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Old-Fashioned Tolerance

By Carter Wrenn January 25, 2013

The other day one of my more peculiar Jesuit friends emailed me an article written fifty years ago by Bishop Fulton Sheen who, contemplating the sharks and villains of his era, had lamented, ‘Our country is not so much overrun with the bigoted as it is with the broad-minded.’   After glancing at the opening…

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A Serious Man

By Carter Wrenn January 24, 2013

It was a very serious man who stepped up to the podium in front of the Capitol to give his Inaugural Speech but what he said wasn’t nearly as earthshaking in the reeling world of Republican Congressmen as what he’d already done.   Barack Obama raised $1 billion in his reelection campaign and built the…

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