Helping storm victims – or politicians?

Will next week’s legislative session be about hurricane and fire relief – or political relief? Will the legislature help people who lost loved ones, homes and property – or help Republicans who lost elections? And will Republicans give Roy Cooper a nuclear weapon to use against them in 2017, one that dwarfs HB2? Senate Republicans are…

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Klansmen for Trump, Again

A troop of determined anti-Klan demonstrators, who’d probably read the News and Observer’s story – based on an Internet website – about a ‘Klansmen for Trump’ rally in Pelham, showed up at 9am to protest. The same day – last Saturday – anti-Klan protestors gathered in Moore Square in Raleigh and across the state. There…

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Caesar’s Wife and Smelly

An ally of the Governor’s – The Civitas Institute – sued to stop the State Board of Elections counting 90,000 ballots cast by people who’d registered and voted on the same day; normally the State Justice Department would have defended the Board but, since those voters cast ballots in Attorney General Roy Cooper’s race against…

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Alas, Poor Pat

As his hopes and his days dwindle down to a precious few, you almost feel sorry for Pat McCrory. Almost. It has to be hard being the first North Carolina Governor to lose a reelection race. He couldn’t do what Jim Hunt, Jim Martin, Jim Hunt again and Mike Easley did. Bev Perdue was a…

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Elections 2017?

This ball game may have just changed big-league, as Trump would say. The referees in federal court threw the penalty flag on the Republican legislature for unconstitutional gerrymandering. This means loss of down, possible loss of possession and maybe a replay in just 12 months. No doubt candidates and contributors, still exhausted from this year,…

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Pat and Roy

Pat laid his offer on the table Saturday: Recount Durham’s votes and I’ll drop my request for recounts in other counties, he told the State Board of Elections. It sounded reasonable. And fair. But like a lot of knotty problems there’s more than one way to look at it. The chance of a Durham recount…

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Connecting the Dots: Broken Journalism

After a year of waking up every morning to listen to name-calling and howling on TV I figured, Enough politics – after the election what everyone needed was a break to calm down. About a week later I read an article about the demise of journalism during the election, thought, Amen – then a couple…

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Twenty-Something Gunslingers

Ole Pat labored faithfully day-in and day-out and did his best to whip Roy for almost two years but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t quite catch up – on Election Night when the first returns rolled in it looked like the polls were right: Pat trailed. But within an hour the world…

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You lost. Give it up.

This message is for Pat McCrory AND for Democrats who want the Electoral College to dump Trump: It’s over. You lost. Move on. Prolonging these fights is doomed, divisive, delusional, self-defeating and just plain dumb. Doesn’t McCrory know this? He should break free of the lawyers, consultants and spokesmen who want to keep fighting so…

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Therapy for Democrats

My Facebook page looks like a mass therapy session for Democrats cycling through the various stages of grief. They not only vent their anger at Trump and his angry voters, they also lash out at other Democrats and lecture them on how they should feel and what they should do. No. You should feel how…

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