Oh Shut Up

 

"[Mitch] McConnell said he hopes Trump will ‘pay a price’ for Jan. 6 role, new book reveals"

--Headline, The Hill, 10/21/24

 

New Hope in Transylvania County

 

My friend Deda Edney in Transylvania County sent me this video featuring seven Democratic candidates running for school board and county commission there -- an unusual approach, as some local candidates resist running as a unified group, a partisan team, but in this Transylvania instance, it's a positive presentation for community building and solidarity.

I've watched the Democrats in Transylvania for years now and feel their pain. Deda's husband Sam Edney ran a great but losing race for House Dist. 113 in both 2018 and 2020. He's now the party chair in Transylvania, and he's not given up rallying Democrats and carrying the flag for progressive change. This year's team of local candidates proves it. Deda and Sam are the type of local leaders that state party Chair Anderson Clayton has called for in every corner of rural North Carolina.

Two years ago, Transylvania elected to its school board a trigger-happy Christian nationalist and a Moms-for-Liberty-adjacent woman. The defeat of reasonable Democratic candidates would depress the energies of any activist, as Deda wrote after the 2022 losses, but the Democrats of Transylvania didn't stop, didn't give up, kept recruiting good people to put their names on the ballot under the banner of Democrat. These folks represent the best of hope, endurance, and a vision for the future that doesn't include hurting other people.

Trump-Appointed Judge Rules Against MAGA

 

Judge Myers, during his UNC Law School days

This was breaking news on Friday, and it's big as legal news goes. Will Doran, for WRAL:

The Republican Party has failed in its attempt to throw nearly a quarter of a million North Carolina voters off the list of registered voters for this year's elections. A federal judge shot down their request Thursday, the same day early voting began.

The lawsuit was based on two legal claims. Judge Richard Myers II, the chief district court judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina and an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, ruled against one claim and declined to rule on the other. He said there's no reason to believe that either judges or private citizens, including political party leaders, have any right to throw people off the voter rolls in North Carolina. State law explicitly gives that duty to elections officials — who months ago investigated allegations connected to the lawsuit and found nothing....

Judge Myers was the Henry Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law at Chapel Hill prior to his appointment to the Federal bench by Trump. And he obviously cares more for the Constitution than some people.

Master Class in the Art of Timing

 

That's one of the best put-downs I've ever seen.

How Bad Is Michele Morrow?

 

Nobody pays attention to newspaper endorsements any more. People may have once cared what leading state newspapers all across the nation editorialized about, and whom they endorsed for office, but who cares these days? Sure, the endorsed candidate cares, his team, his family, a few close friends, but nobody else. Nobody reads any more. They look at their phones, and newspaper endorsements don't even register.

But some newspaper evaluations of candidates who didn't win endorsement just beg for memorialization. The NandO today:

For a moment, forget all the worst things you know about Michele Morrow. Forget that she advocated for a pro-Trump military coup on Jan. 6, or that she called for the public execution of former president Barack Obama, or her disturbing video post about seeing people who didn’t look or sound like her in a local retail store. 

Take away all of that — alongside so many other troubling and bizarre comments — and what are you left with? A Republican nominee to lead the North Carolina’s public school system who has no experience working in public schools, no children who were enrolled in public schools, and no experience in leadership or public office. 

Extremism aside, Michele Morrow is wholly unqualified to hold the office she seeks, more so than any major party state superintendent candidate in our state’s history.

Early Voting, Day 1 in NC -- Photographic Evidence

 

Weaverville

West Charlotte

Wake County

Durham

Black Mountain

Unspecified "Small Town NC"

The Early Voting Line at AppState, 1st Day

 

This photo is time-stamped 12:15 p.m. today. The line continued behind the photographer and down a long hallway.

NC's GOP Commissioner of Agriculture Says Trump's Tariffs Will Be Terrible for NC

 

Steve Troxler, right; Sarah Taber, left

Steve Troxler, the popular Republican Commissioner of Agriculture -- who put the "ol" in "good ol boy" -- told Cory Vaillancourt of the Smoky Mountain Times that he knew Trump's plans to slap tariff's -- even 100% tariffs! -- on many products coming into the country, to punish and torment nations he wants to punish and torment -- that those tariffs would end up hurting the markets for North Carolina farmers. Those farmers are some of Trump's most dependable supporters. (Why? Because of God and guns? Abortion? Queer-fear? Whatever. They support Trump, not their own best interests.).

Trump's proposed tariffs "would amount to a 20% tax on American consumers and likely prompt retaliatory tariffs by trading partners." How do we know? Two days after Trump's effing inauguration in January 2017 -- two days later -- Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade agreement with Pacific Rim producers. And started a trade war with China which soon cost North Carolina farmers (tobacco growers, particularly) collectively $1.8 billion (Carolina Forward). Sarah Taber, Troxler's Democratic opponent, calls that "a bad deal that cannot be recovered from.”

But here's Troxler on Trump's newest bad deal:

“We have the most efficient system for the production of agricultural products anywhere in the world, but tariffs do get in the way, and we went through the trade war and retaliation with China, and that is not beneficial to us. There’s no question,” he said. “But the question becomes, how do you get fair trade? A lot of our products going into these other countries are hit with very high tariff rates to be protected, and so you got to negotiate to the point that is fair on both sides. And in many cases, we’re being slapped with these tariffs, and it kills us.” (Emphasis most assurdedly added)

As Agriculture Commissioner, Sarah Taber will be a more current authority on all kinds of profitable, alternative crops not being grown here, including legal cannabis (if the NCGA ever catches up with the rest of the country and the 21st Century). Taber is an educated and experienced expert in alternative aquaculture and greenhouses, and she's full of the energy it'll take to sell innovations to the most traditional cohort of our very diverse society. 

Taber has interesting things to say about saving North Carolina farmland from disappearance, which even Steve Troxler thinks is our number one problem going forward. Says Taber,

“It is not population growth that’s causing our farmland to go under. That’s what happens to farmland after farms go out of business. When farms go out of business, it’s that they’re not making as much money as they should be,” she said. “Farmers here in North Carolina are often making as little as half as much per acre as their peers in Georgia and Virginia. That’s us not putting our land to work effectively.”

If North Carolina’s farms were more profitable, Taber says, "developers would have fewer tracts available for development."

Rachel Hunt Promises To Clean Out Mark Robinson's Office with Hydrogen Peroxide