General
A Sea Change
The other night at dinner a Democrat (who’s also a lawyer) started talking about growing up in a small town then stopped in mid-sentence and said, You know, that world no longer exists; then, a few mornings later in the News and Observer columnist Froma Harrop wrote about the TV program Mad Men’s aura of…
Read MoreStorm Warnings
Democrats remind me of my friends on the Outer Banks last week: battening down, nervously watching the approaching storm and hoping it turns out to be a Category 1 that spares the house â and the Senate. There are dire warnings of losing the state Senate and possibly even the House â or a…
Read MoreCarter’s Religious Test
In a recent blog, Carter posed some lofty questions to me about religion, like: Are all religions equal? Is Islam a violent religion? And so forth. I’ve pondered posting some lofty thoughts that might help our readers in their own struggles with these vital issues of theology and faith. In the end, I’ve…
Read MoreHope Springs Eternal
This headline on a Wilmington Star-News editorial represents the apex of either naïveté or optimism about politics: âMisleading ads won’t work if voters are savvy.â
Read MoreTake Off
It’s Tom Fetzer’s job to run around the state sounding alarms. But it’s not the media’s responsibility to salivate every time he rings the bell. There is no greater example than the Perdue flight flap. In the end, that looks to be nothing more than a few small licks of flame. Fetzer did…
Read MoreA Tough Speech
When President Obama stared into the cameras Tuesday night he must have felt more than a tremor of foreboding. Nonetheless, he folded his hands in front of him and marched resolutely into the first minefield and announced we’re pulling out (except for 50,000 men) of a war we didn’t win. There hardly seems any…
Read MoreThe Marshall Plan
Senator Richard Burr’s ad shows he knows he could be vulnerable. Voters don’t know him or what he’s done. Which supports Elaine Marshall’s case for getting the $10 million she needs from the DSCC to be competitive. Senate Democrats are playing defense most everywhere this year. It would be nice to make one…
Read MoreGovernment Jobs
A reader called today with an interesting thought spurred by Richard Burr’s ad. She took issue with his suggestion that all jobs come from the private sector. She pointed out that government contracts with Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR and a raft of defense contractors sure created a bunch of jobs. She has a point.…
Read MoreA Win for Perdue
Remember the furor last year when Governor Perdue announced that dozens of long-term, convicted criminals might get out of prison early because of an issue over “good time”? Remember how everybody said what a disaster this would be for her? Remember how critics said she overreacted by threatening to stand in the jailhouse…
Read MoreFlight of Fancy
My friend Damon Circosta, executive director on the N.C. Center for Voter Education, gets an A for effort but an F for persuasiveness. Circosta, according to Under the Dome, says the flap over Governor Perdue’s campaign not reporting some flights is an argument for “voter-owned” (publicly financed) campaigns. http://projects.newsobserver.com/dome#ixzz0yBS20BU0 The logic goes over…
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