General
A Darker Power?
The Reverend William Barber got up to pray at a memorial service for three Muslim students killed in Chapel Hill and, right in the middle of his prayer, pointed his finger straight at Reverend Franklin Graham and said Graham lit the fuse to the powder keg that led to the murders. Barber’s thinking went…
Read MoreTata on Ice
The saga of Tony (Thriller) Tata continues. You can just hear that guy who does the movie trailers: “By day, he’s the powerful commander of DOT. At night, he’s A.J. Tata, mild-mannered novelist.” Tata’s two roles collided last week when icy roads caused thousands of accidents back home while Thriller was in Chicago flogging…
Read MoreInclined to Devilment
The local school board has a new training program to teach teachers that all cultures are equal and to move away from the ‘belief any culture is superior to another’ – which sounds fine except the concept of cultural equality rests on a kind of moral relativism that leads to odd places. Take ISIS.…
Read MoreGOP Mysteries
Back when ex-Sen. Lauch Faircloth was a Democrat, he’d joke: “There are two things I’ve never understood: electricity and Republicans.” Evidently, he figured out Republicans, because he became one. But some of us still struggle. Three cases in point: First: Republicans fought Obamacare because they said millions of Americans would lose their health insurance.…
Read MoreShameful
A loyal TAPster outraged by Thom (No Clean Hands) Tillis contributes today’s blog: Just when we thought it couldn’t get any colder last week, Senator Thom Tillis embarrassed North Carolina again, voting against Loretta Lynch’s nomination as US attorney general. Lynch is the daughter of a Baptist minister from Greensboro who opened his church to protesters…
Read MoreDuke’s PR Outage
Once upon a time, in the Shire of Raleigh, there was a company called Progress Energy, nee CP&L. The residents of the Shire oft complained about the company, but with affection. After all, its employees and managers and overlords and even its King lived amongst the people and even walked amongst them. The people knew…
Read MorePolitics Gone Wild
A snow-day deep-dive into current political commentary finds three things. One, Republicans are becoming more and more deranged. Two, Democrats are falling deeper and deeper into despair. And, three, it’s all about President Obama. Politics has come unhinged since Election Day 2008 and the election of a black President. It just gets worse as…
Read MoreShuttering the Center
The fur’s flying over in Chapel Hill – Dean Boger (at the Law School) along with a cohort of professors have lit into the Board of Governors saying closing the Law School’s Anti-Poverty Center leaves them with only one conclusion: The Board is for poverty. The Dean lamented the Board was guilty of every…
Read MoreSnow Day MIAs
Something was missing from the usual snow day TV fare. Bill and Renee ran down the shutdowns. Elizabeth and Greg kept predicting the snow would end any minute. Gilbert was giddy. Various teams showed us various roads. But…something just wasn’t there. Oh yes! The Governor’s snow briefing! Where was Governor McCrory warning us not…
Read MoreFeed the Birds
A TAPster reminded me of a snow day blog I did once in memory of my father. It’s apropos today. My dad, Jim, was a printer and, at one time, foreman of the N&O composing room. In those hot-type days, printers used house ads to fill in columns of type. The ads would tell you…
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