General
E.T.
When I saw the headline I thought it must be a hoax but it turned out to be true: Congress, which hasn’t passed a budget in memory, had held a dead-serious, high-level, official hearing to establish whether there is extra-terrestrial intelligence in the universe. As one wit quipped on the Washington Post’s website, First, they…
Read MorePickpockets
You would think by now out of sheer boredom Congressmen would be looking for new ways to fool voters but, undeterred at using the same old worn-out trick again, just before Christmas eager-beaver Paul Ryan rolled out his new budget, saying how he’d made a deal with the Democrats to cut spending and cut the…
Read MoreA Symbol
The newspaper headline read: Dome, full of cracks. And the newspaper reported: The aging iron dome ‘is slowly crumbling…riddled with hundreds of cracks and rust.’ The dome is the Capitol Dome. But the newspaper could just as easily have been writing about Congress itself.
Read MorePossums
Up in Brasstown deep in the Smoky Mountains, on every New Years Eve a local merchant holds a ‘Possum Drop’ – a western North Carolina version of the Yankees’ ball drop in Times Square. What the mountain folks hadn’t counted on was PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) taking umbrage at the…
Read MoreA Great Success
Years behind schedule, millions of dollars over budget, and riddled with 3,200 computer programming errors NC Tracks – the state’s new $486 million computer system for processing Medicaid checks – landed in the newspaper again. The News & Observer reported the Department of Health and Human Services still has no plan to right the ship and clean…
Read More2014: Another 2010?
Maybe I should apologize. But would Bob Rucho apologize? No sir! So I’ll double down, as they say. My blog yesterday – warning that the next Congress might be run by people who think like Rucho – apparently ruined the Christmas spirit for some Democrats. My friend Jerry Wayne Williamson of Boone (follow…
Read MoreA Christmas Truce
Americans are so polarized politically, we argue about Christmas and Santa Clause’s race. I propose a truce. And I’m going first. Through a blessed accident of calendar, Christmas and New Year’s Day are on Wednesdays this year. That effectively wrecks two work weeks. Good riddance. But let’s go farther. Like German and…
Read MoreFlexible Ethics
Governor McCrory and Republican legislators said they would do away with “pay-to-play” and “corruption” in Raleigh. Then a group of lobbyists held a fundraiser in Raleigh. It’s illegal, of course, for lobbyists to contribute to legislators. But the fundraiser was for a congressional candidate named Phil Berger Jr. Yes, the son of State Senate…
Read MoreRepublican Vs. Republican
Don’t underestimate the chances that people who think like Bob Rucho might control Congress a year from now. Behind Rucho’s tweet and the budget battle in Washington is a death match between the Tea Party and the GOP Establishment. If the Tea Party wins that war, and if Obamacare sinks Democrats in November, the…
Read MoreRucho’s Tweet
Sometimes all you have to do is repeat a politician’s own words. Like Senator Bob Rucho’s tweet: “Justice Robert’s pen & Obamacare has done more damage to the USA then the swords of the Nazis,Soviets & terrorists combined.” (Note to grammar cops: Yes, his tweet said “has,” not “have” and “then,” not “than.”) …
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