Prodding a Sleeping Tiger

ISIS lined up a firing squad to machine-gun 13 teenage boys for watching a soccer game (which violates Sharia Law).   They flung two men off a tower in Mosul (they were homosexuals).   They threatened to cut off two hostages’ heads unless Japan paid  $200 million then, when the ransom wasn’t paid, they killed…

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1K = 3 Front Pages

Yes, 1,000 wins in college basketball is remarkable. But three front pages? That’s what greeted readers of the N&O print edition Monday morning.   First there was Page One of the main news section. In approximately the same size type that might say “WAR!” was “1,000” – in Duke Blue, of course. Beneath were a…

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Answering Obama

It was a rare feat: Frank Luntz somehow found the twenty maddest-at-Obama people in the country and put them in a ‘focus group’ on Fox News after the President’s State of the Union speech – and they didn’t have one kind word to say.   But you have to give the devil his due: Barack…

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Big Government

The government is too big, Republicans say. Too much bureaucracy, too much waste, too many overpaid, do-nothing chair-sitters mooching off hard-working taxpayers.   Presumably, House Speaker Tim Moore agrees. He’s as eager as any other hard-nosed Republican to cut out the deadwood.   But first he has to hire a staff. Here, thanks to Under…

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All in One Week

She said Yes. Then No. Then Yes, again.   Four years ago, running for Congress, Renee Ellmers told voters she was a nurse who had “held the hands of new born infants.” Yes, she said, she was Pro-Life.   Then, last week, she said No to banning abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy. The idea,…

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Elizabeth Warren

Most of us older white conservatives just naturally see a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts who taught at Harvard and figure – barring a miracle – she’s got to be a liberal so it came as a shock the other night when a young conservative posted a link to one of Elizabeth Warren’s speeches with one…

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Chasing Pat from the Left

The liberal folks over at ProgressNC let fly with a broadside at the Governor about his ethics, then let fly again with a press conference and, by then, they had the folks at the Charlotte Observer so stirred up they let fly with broadside of their own asking, Was Pat McCrory fibbing then, or is…

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Just a Matter of Time?

Awhile back Ted Cruz got some unusual praise from two odd places.   “I think he’s the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years,” James Carville said in an interview on ABC. Then, on his TV program, Dick Morris compared Cruz to Ronald Reagan.   When Jeb Bush and…

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The Comeback Kid

President Obama’s speech last night showed he has a knack for coming back after a setback – and a knack for the comeback quip.   Three things about the night: (1) How Obama framed the debate (2) the partisan debate over bipartisanship and (3) the split-screen social media experience of watching political events like what…

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Party Pooper

There’s good news and there’s bad news about the true state of the N.C. Democratic Party.   The bad news is that the actual financial situation is worse than it looks. Much of the $42,700 that the party has on hand belongs to the House and Senate caucuses.   That’s also the good news, because…

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