Posts by Carter Wrenn
Obama and the Terrorists
Last week President Obama’s ‘favorable’ rating was an eye-popping 70% and after the last week of canonization it may now be 90% and rising. But there are shoals in the waters. Tuesday, during his inaugural, the president proclaimed, “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,”…
Read MorePublic Service or Politics?
I’d like to know if one day last week President Obama woke up and said, The day before I’m inaugurated I’m going to paint the walls in a homeless shelter to encourage public service. Or if, instead, someone in his campaign said, We’ve got a great idea for a photo-op – then invited the press…
Read MoreBeing Lincoln
All this talk about Obama being Lincoln is getting downright troubling – either our new president’s contracted a bad case of idol worship, or this is a ploy to wrap himself in the cloak of Lincoln because he’s gotten into the business of presidential myth-making even before he’s taken the oath of office. I don’t…
Read MoreThe Sorcerer’s Apprentice
At first glance it looks like Barack Obama’s sitting on top of the world, but this poor fellow’s actually sitting on a dozen time bombs. Running the American Empire these days is first cousin to being assigned hazardous duty in the bomb squad. The war we were winning, Afghanistan, is going downhill – so the…
Read MoreGovernor Perdue: It’s Not a Handout
Her fourth day in office Madame Governor trooped up to Washington, held out her hand, and asked Congress to give her $18 billion – plus, another billion or so she needs to balance the state budget. She sat down with North Carolina’s Congressional Delegation, then with Obama’s transition team, handed them a list of things…
Read MoreThe Shortest Honeymoon on Record
Last fall, after Obama got elected, Richard the Intellectual got so discouraged about politics he took to reading religious poetry – The Divine Comedy about cured him of that but, then, he switched to the Civil War and when he got to the Battle of Antietam the gloom thickened. The way Richard tells it the…
Read MoreThe Republicans in Raleigh
Monday Madame Governor signed a spate of executive orders and it’s time for the Republicans in the House and Senate to strap on their shields and bucklers and have at it. They’re supposed to be the loyal opposition and this session they would be wise to take the job seriously. For instance, not long ago,…
Read MoreThe Governor Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight
It was hard, personally, not to like Mike Easley – at times Easley showed a lack of pretension rare in governors which, by most reports, made him immanently likeable. But he also showed a void of interest when it came to the workings of his own government that the word ‘detached’ doesn’t begin to cover.…
Read MoreRoy Cooper for Senate: The Case that Won’t Go Away
You have to credit Raleigh attorney Gene Boyce with the virtue of stick-to-itiveness. Eight years ago Boyce’s son, Dan, ran for Attorney General against Roy Cooper. If I remember the facts correctly, during the campaign Cooper ran an ad attacking Dan Boyce (and his father) for their handling of a lawsuit on behalf of state…
Read MoreThe Mean Ole News and Observer
People have been dying in our state mental hospitals for lack of care; our parole system is so broken criminals on parole have murdered 580 people – and, now, Governor Easley says, at the end of his term, that it’s a shame the mean ole News and Observer hasn’t treated him ‘nicer.’ The governor puts…
Read More