We need a break from Trump. So I’m reading and blogging about other, greater leaders. Monday, it was Nelson Mandela. Today it’s Ulysses Grant, always rated one of the worst Presidents. Until Trump. Ron Chernow’s thousand-page biography hasn’t done for Grant what Chernow did for Alexander Hamilton. Maybe Grant needs a Broadway musical. Before I…
Read MoreGiven what passes for leadership today, let’s look at what a real leader once said. This is from a speech by Nelson Mandela when he was rebuilding a country that had been torn apart by apartheid and racial hatred: “During my political career, I have discovered that in all communities, African, coloured, Indian and white,…
Read MorePolicy Watch broadsided Duane Hall, claiming he’d sexually harassed women; in a flash, Democrats from Roy Cooper on down demanded Hall resign from the legislature. Hall slipped, said he’d only kissed one woman who didn’t want to be kissed, then, a day later, said Policy Watch slammed him because he (a 50-year-old man) had once…
Read MoreWhen President Trump nominated Tom Farr for the vacant federal judgeship in eastern North Carolina, Anthony Spearman, the head of the state NAACP, headed to Washington to disagree. But his pilgrimage took an odd twist when he compared Tom Farr to Adolph Hitler. Trump appointing Hitler? Pure political bluster. But fiction took on a life…
Read MoreWhen companies like Delta, Dick’s, WalMart and Kroger adopt their own gun control laws, you can bet public opinion is changing. And you can count on the NRA and its wholly owned Republican politicians firing back. A TAPster offers these thoughts on what happened to Delta in Georgia: “It’s been a scary couple of years…
Read MoreI can’t believe I’m even asking. I grew up with the N&O. When I was a year old, my parents moved here from Hertford County so my Dad could take a job in the N&O composing room. When I was 16, I went to work in the newsroom as a copyboy. I stayed there 10…
Read MoreThe best answer to a bad guy with political power is good guys and girls with political power. To beat the bad guys, you need to understand how political power really works. The NRA’s real power doesn’t come from the money it gives to politicians. The New York Times’s lead story Sunday spelled it out:…
Read MoreA veteran Raleigh hand speculates about what’s behind the Republican shenanigans on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline mitigation fund: “The kerfuffle over the natural gas pipeline fund proves once again that nobody in Raleigh knows what they’re doing. Or does it? “On the surface, the Governor and his team appeared seriously naïve to think the mitigation…
Read MoreHooray for the high school students in Florida and North Carolina who are mobilizing, marching and pushing politicians to stop mass school shootings. These teenagers need to be in it for the long haul. They already see politicians ducking the debate and offering up stupid ideas like arming school teachers. The outspoken survivors in Florida…
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