Posts by Gary Pearce
Holden On
Can Holden Thorp escape being sacked by an all-out Rams Club blitz? Even worse, he’s catching hell both ways: from people mad he fired Butch Davis and from people mad he didn’t fire Davis earlier. No good deed goes unpunished. Here’s the story I hear: Davis’ firing was Thorp’s doing, not new…
Read MoreChickens**t
Front-page headlines and much gnashing of teeth greeted the news that a Ukrainian billionaire pulled the plug on the jobs of 1,000 North Carolina chicken plant workers last week. But the stories missed the irony that a TAPster caught: “If, instead, a Ukrainian billionaire announced he was building poultry processing plants in central…
Read MoreThe Glass Debt Ceiling
A TAPster passes along a link raising the question: What if Congress was more than 13 percent women? A NPR commentator is quoted as saying: “In experiments, when men feel there are lots of other men around, they tend to pose more, they tend to talk tough, they become shortsighted, they take bigger bets.…
Read MoreSuper Power
If reincarnation is real, I want to come back as a credit-rating agency. They apparently are the most powerful beings on the planet. They even forced Congress to act!
Read MoreIs the Center Right?
If both Tea Party Republicans and Democratic liberals don’t like the debt deal, does that make it a good deal for America? There is a line of thinking today that what is missing in politics is a “vital center” – those supposed wise men and women who find the right answer to our problems…
Read MoreSecret Sharers
Two recent stories make the “what were they thinking?” list. First, the leaders of Peace College kept secret a plan to take the historic school coed, then sprung it as a done deal. Did they really expect that to go down well? Then the N.C. Department of Commerce told PCS Phosphate to…
Read MoreGOP Joblessness
Are Democrats asleep? Below are two news reports that ran a week ago. They are rich fodder for North Carolina Democrats to use against Republicans. But I haven’t seen them do it: “State cuts push up NC jobless rate – North Carolina’s jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent in June, the highest level since…
Read MoreThird-Party Dreams
“We need a third party.” That’s a recurrent fantasy among citizens and commentators frustrated by the bump and grind of politics as usual, like the current debt-ceiling stalemate in Washington. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times gave voice to this longing in recent columns. The fantasy goes like this: A heroic group…
Read MoreTackling Thorp, Baddour
I’m impressed by the timing of the TAPster who contributed the item below on UNC football. I posted the blog yesterday, timed to go up this morning. Apparently, its mere presence in cyberspace got action. Bill Friday told the N&O the firing of Davis ends the story. I doubt it. Chancellor Holden Thorp…
Read MoreFumbling at UNC
A TAPster writes “there’s a case to be made that the political leadership of the state should fix the glommed up mess in the UNC football program.” True, but I think the ball is now in the hands of UNC President Tom Ross. Not UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp; he climbed out on a…
Read More