Posts by Carter Wrenn
The Price of a Fiction
In the Senate of the world’s oldest democracy the Honorables sat down around a giant horseshoe-shaped table to hold a hearing to ask the Secretary of State how he figured bombing Syria was a good idea – but a strange thing happened: As soon as each Senator asked his first question the Secretary of State…
Read MoreA Heart Attack?
The Governor climbed into the ring with the State House Monday morning and thirty minutes later he was lying sprawled flat on his back on the canvas then, the next morning, he climbed back into the ring – this time with the State Senate – and the same thing happened again. Pat McCrory’s…
Read MoreNot One Overheated Washington Politician…
Broken politics and posturing politicians present one degree of mendacity when it comes to passing a budget – but the moment a war appears on the horizon that same devilment turns lethal. A few days ago the President declared that, as leader of the oldest constitutional democracy on earth, he needs the support of…
Read MoreTwo Skunks
In the desert land where the Lord struck St. Paul blind then showed him a vision, a pair of skunks are fighting a Civil War and five-thousand miles away in the world’s oldest democracy a great hue and cry has arisen to bomb one of the skunks. Now in the oldest democracy politics is…
Read MoreA Sea Change
Republicans have been riding high since the 2010 elections but, now, there’s a bushel basket full of polls – by both Democrats and Republicans – floating around Raleigh that tell a sad tale. At their zenith, last fall, Governor McCrory was the most popular political leader in the state. Better still for Republicans, the…
Read MoreDemocratic Morale
Last Thursday a tiny cloud appeared on the horizon, and instead of dissipating, by Friday it was hovering right over Governor Pat McCrory’s head. If you want to see how Democrats’ morale is fairing, just read Gary’s or Thomas Mills’ commentaries. This week they’re happy folks. Because last week Governor McCrory said it…
Read MoreBack to the Dark Ages
It’s a bleak landscape. A nightmare vision of a counter-revolution roaring down the tracks, turning back the hands of the clock, rolling back progress to the days before indoor plumbing, air-conditioning, and daylight savings time. Republicans, Reverend William Barber howls, are turning back the clock to the days of Jim Crow. Republican tax…
Read MoreThe ‘Voting Rights’ Foo-Fa
This isn’t a story of sin begetting sin but of foolishness begetting foolishness. Years ago, somewhere, some Democratic political guru sat in a room with reams of demographics of people who never had voted and when he finished studying those pages of statistics one fact was clear as a bell: If those folks started…
Read MoreThe Smell Test
All I can say about Gary’s column on D.G. Martin is – “Amen.” In the fourteen years I’ve known D.G., I’ve never heard him say an unkind word about anyone – so Claude Pope claiming he’d called Republicans Nazis just didn’t pass the smell test. Here’s the column D.G. wrote. Take a look…
Read MoreThe Sum of Human Foibles
Some fellow up in the mountains decided it would be a cute idea to drop a possum in a tinsel draped cage twenty feet onto a stage on New Year’s Eve at a party. To the possum’s chagrin, the State Wildlife Resources Commission agreed it was a cute idea and gave the fool a…
Read More