General
Burr at Year End
Back when Lauch Faircoth was running for Senate the first time ole’ Tom Ellis launched the campaign two years before the election and he had a good reason – the first time he took a poll and looked at the political chessboard what the pieces said back to him loud and clear was Lauch was…
Read MoreThe New Economy
Go back 50 years in North Carolina. To 1960. The year Terry Sanford was elected governor. Tobacco was king in North Carolina – politically and economically. WRAL-TV started its broadcast days (after a devotional) with the Farm Report. The News & Observer had a regular farm reporter. And the health of the…
Read MoreSuperdelegates Under Attack
A national Democratic Party reform that Jim Hunt pioneered nearly thirty years ago is under attack. And state Senator Dan Blue is defending the reform. There is some irony here. When Hunt was Governor and Blue was House Speaker in 1993-94, the two didn’t always get along. They clashed especially on Hunt’s crime…
Read MoreThe Decade of Obama?
The Teens may come to be Barack Obama’s decade the way the Eighties were Ronald Reagan’s decade. Ideology aside, the two Presidents have much in common. Both were outsiders who ran campaigns that upset conventional wisdom. Both had lives before politics – Reagan as an actor and union leader, Obama as a…
Read MorePolitical Terror
Republicans – including Senator Richard Burr – couldn’t wait to blame the Obama administration for the Christmas Day terrorist scare. In other words, to indulge in the kind of politics they called unpatriotic when Bush and Cheney were in charge. Let’s look at some facts. A. Burr agrees with the President that…
Read MoreBev and New Year’s Resolutions
At breakfast the other day, a friend pointed to his mocha and cinnamon-crunch bagel. “I’m doing this today because starting January 1 I’m losing 20 pounds,” he vowed. I congratulated him. And wished him luck. That’s a hard resolution to keep; most resolvers fail. But Governor Perdue has done it. She recently…
Read MoreEat the Rabbits
Sometimes folks get so carried away with their passions they just go plain crazy – and I’m not talking about Tiger Woods. I’m talking about two Environmentalists at Victoria University. In addition to wrestling with the problem of trying to be open-minded instead of blinded by their passion to save the planet Environmentalists…
Read MoreRelatives and ‘Recusals:’ Democrat Style
Tony Rand is Chairman of Law Enforcement Associates, and when he got accused of insider trading he told shareholders there’d be an ‘independent’ investigation – then picked his buddy Lyndo Tippett (the former Secretary of Transportation) to lead the investigation. About the same time a lady in Florida was suing Rand’s company, saying it…
Read MoreOne Year
A year is a long time in politics. One year ago: Barack Obama was a colossus, a superstar who had transformed politics Bev Perdue was about to enjoy a (short) honeymoon The clouds over Mike Easley were just gathering Tony Rand was ready for another turn as second-in-command of the Senate Wake County Democrats were…
Read MoreControlling the Narrative
The cable-TV blabbermouths are all over the Obama administration over the Christmas Day terrorist scare. The know-it-alls proclaim that this is a PR disaster for the White House. The message machine was asleep. Obama was slow on the uptake. Janet Napolitano blew it. Napolitano did blow it. But I’m not so sure Obama…
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