General
They Walk the Line
John Boehner, Jeb Bush and Pat McCrory took their first steps this week along a Republican Party fault line that offers peril for each of them – and peril for Democrats if they succeed. Boehner had to fend off a conservative challenge to his reelection as Speaker. Two dozen right-wing Republicans abandoned him. Lucky…
Read MoreRumors and Fictions
In a realm filled with rumors in the blink of an eye fictions take root in fertile soil and blossom adopting the image of spoken truth like this one you’ve heard a hundred times: ‘Romney lost because he shifted too far to the right during the primaries.’ In fact, the polls told a completely…
Read MoreGive ’em Hell, Harry!
You’ve got to love Harry Reid, especially since Republicans hate him so bad. The Harry-haters were hee-hawing and high-fiving last week after Reid hurt himself exercising. One wrote, “It Couldn’t Happen to a Nastier Guy.” Another speculated that Reid is into kinky sex. Here’s hoping that Harry will get well and keep giving…
Read More2015 Questions
No predictions or resolutions! Instead let’s ask the big questions for 2015 for the state’s big three political forces: Governor McCrory, Republican legislators and Democrats. For Governor McCrory, will 2015 be about policy and politics, or about personal ethics? As we tuned out for the holidays, he was eyeball-to-eyeball with the capital media, AP…
Read MoreRespect
The President, unhappy with North Korea, announced he was going to ‘proportionately’ respond and the next day North Korea’s Internet went black which possibly is a coincidence but may also be proportionate. Now, to be clear, getting hacked by North Korea is a little like getting bitten on the ankle by a small varmint.…
Read MoreA Little Nuance
A reporter at The Hill newspaper up in Washington let Jeb Bush have it right between the eyes, reporting there’s ‘no love lost’ between Bush and the Republican base and that in Iowa the Tea Party activists are torching Bush’s conservative credentials. “Jeb Bush,” he quoted a radio talk show host as saying, “is…
Read MoreHappy New Year!
2015 will mark the 10th year Carter and I have been doing this blog, as best I can tell from my records. The first posts I could unearth were in late 2005. If memory serves, this was Carter’s idea. He and I worked together with a (non-partisan) client, and we traveled around the state…
Read MoreWhat on Earth is Next?
Obama may be aloof but he’s also soft-spoken and temperate and if he’s unpopular (due to his failures) beyond his failures he’s a genial man – a traditional liberal who believes government should help people out by providing healthcare and school lunches and so on. But now and then, standing at a podium, the…
Read MoreJumping Out of the Frying Pan…
Gary has a point in his column (below) ‘Pat and Jesse’: Pat McCrory’s fight with the Associated Press isn’t like Jesse’s long-running battles with the media. In Jesse’s eyes, the media was biased. It didn’t like his conservative philosophy. Plus, as Senator John East once said admiringly, Jesse was a brawler. Part of him…
Read MoreBest Column
Here’s, as Paul Harvey used to say, ‘The rest of the story’ about Louis Zamperini – from John Drescher’s column Angelina Jolie’s ‘Unbroken’ misses subject’s deep faith.
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