Watching the Dalton and McCrory TV ads, you see the opening that Dalton could exploit if he has enough time and money. McCrory’s ads are content-free. Apparently, he’s going to solve unemployment and $4 gas by drilling everywhere under our feet and off the coast. And he’s responsible for Charlotte’s success. How would he…
Read MoreHere’s betting that, whoever wins the presidential race, Erskine Bowles ends up in Washington. He’s being mentioned as Obama’s Secretary of Treasury. And wouldn’t Mitt Romney be smart to put Bowles – a Southern, Clinton Democrat – in a top position? Maybe Treasury, Budget Director or something out of the box like Defense? …
Read MoreUNC Chancellor Holden Thorp made one mistake. When the News and Observer first asked him for Matt Kupec and Tami Hansbrough’s travel records, Chancellor Thorp said, I’ll get back with you. When he got back with them a week later he told them Kupec and Hansbrough had taken the trips together at the University’s…
Read MoreMitt Romney is going to make me a sorry seer. I blog that he’s bound to come back, then he says the dumbest, most damaging and most unintentionally revealing thing I’ve heard in politics in ages. Romney’s “47 percent” remarks hurt him on so many levels. One, he’s wrong. I’m voting for Obama.…
Read MoreN&O Executive Editor John Drescher retweeted my blog about UNC and the N&O, but took issue with another blog, in which a TAPster criticized the N&O for dedicating much of Sunday’s front page to a “40-year-old murder mystery.” Drescher responded: “At the moment, today’s MacDonald story is No. 3 on the newsobserver.com most-read list (which you…
Read MoreEverything is going wrong for the Romney campaign, but one thing is certain in politics: This too shall pass. So look for the story line to change dramatically at some point before the election. Election Day is seven weeks from today. That’s too long for the media to keep saying Romney is a terrible…
Read MoreWhen I worked at the N&O eons ago, I remember seeing Bill Friday and several key aides frequently coming in to meet with then-Editor Claude Sitton and the editorial-page staff. Therein lies a lesson for UNC and Holden Thorp’s successor. In the end (see my blog last week), Thorp concluded he couldn’t hold on.…
Read MoreA TAPster takes an admitted “cheap shot” at the N&O: “In the middle of a game-changing election season, the newspaper’s Sunday edition underscored its irrelevance by living in the past. “It ran an exhausting front-page rehash of a 40-year-old murder mystery and dragged former columnist Dennis Rogers from retirement to add his dusty…
Read MoreA TAPster writes: “Ironically, or maybe not, the talking heads at Fox News who created the term ‘Obamacare’ as a derisive term for the Healthcare Reform Act have actually done the opposite. They defined the debate in Obama’s terms and not their own. How stupid! “Think if you are Ford Motors and BMW…
Read More