Buck Fever

Alexander H. Jones, writing for "New Branchhead" on Substack, very recently called NC Sen. Buck Newton "the worst of the South," meaning Newton is a walking PowerPoint of the worst traits of bigoted Southern politicians. Newton ran for Attorney General against the then-incumbent Josh Stein in 2016, and he came perilously close to beating Stein. Newton, a lawyer in Goldsboro, is a graduate of AppState. One of his former classmates posted a now-famous take-down of Buck's character during his student days in Boone, a post which Pam'sPicks found and published before the 2016 elections (reprinted below).

Here's NC Newsline's blow-by-blow of Buck Newton's most recent hijacking of legitimate legislation to continue his crusade against queer people: 

Democrats serving on the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee asked Republican Sen. Buck Newton (R-Greene, Wayne and Wilson) a week ago to reconsider his efforts to amend House Bill 805 — a noncontroversial measure designed to prevent sexual exploitation of women and minors that won unanimous support in the House — into a vehicle to advance the conservative social agenda on issues of gender identity and sexuality.

On Wednesday, Newton gave his answer: “No.”

As Newsline reported last week, when the bill was first considered by the Senate Committee, Newton — a committee co-chair — put forth a proposed amended version that defined the state’s recognition of two biological sexes: male and female. Newton also proposed the state maintain the vital records of anyone seeking to change the sex on their birth certificate.

At Wednesday’s committee hearing, Newton went a step further by introducing new language aimed at transgender individuals and school libraries....

...Newton’s new version of the legislation would also provide parents with access to a searchable list of library books available at each public school.

Local boards of education would be required to adopt policies to allow a student or their parent to request that the student be excused from specific classroom discussions or assigned readings if they believe it “imposes a substantial burden on the student’s religious beliefs” or invades the student’s privacy by calling attention to the student’s religion.

 

Pam'sPicks, Oct. 2016:

Newton graduated from Appalachian State University (sorry about that) with a political science degree and went immediately to work for Jesse Helms. Newton got his seat in the NC Senate during the 2010 Tea Party wave and has held onto it until announcing in late 2015 that he'd be leaving to run for Attorney General.

He made headlines in 2016 by loudly proclaiming his support ("keep our state straight!" he shouted to a rally in Raleigh) for HB2, the "bathroom bill" which has so tarnished the state in more ways than one, and for helping get it passed in a special session of the NC General Assembly.

His support for HB2 prompted this post on a Facebook thread:

I knew Buck Newton when he was in college. He was always very opinionated, angry, looked down on others, always saw things in simple terms, always quick to jump to conclusions, always claimed things were "common sense". He was always very judgmental and used bully tactics on others to make his opinion appear correct. He was always full of confidence based on simple, black and white views of the world. Several of us thought he was an idiot because of his lack of ability to see and understand what was beneath the surface of issues. This bill/law [HB2] sounds exactly like something college-kid Buck would do. Apparently, he has not grown much. There are many smart and wise people in North Carolina who see God's creation as it truly is - a very complicated marvel, so it is absolutely shocking that such a person of low understanding could rise to such power based on such a superficial foundation. Shocking. At one point in time, the earth being flat was "common sense", blacks being inferior was "common sense"... And, here we are... again.

Not for nothing did Buck Newton receive his perfect score from the American Conservative Union. He has voted to prohibit wind farms, to repeal the state's recycling program, to increase sales taxes on working families, and he has a 100% rating from the NRA (among many other things).

 

 

The Man Is Weak

 

May 28th: White House assistant Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump’s immigration policy, pushes ICE officials to dramatically ramp up the arrests — calling for 3,000 illegal migrants to be picked up per day. (Trump had campaigned on the promise to deport 1,000,000 illegals a year.)

June 11th: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested more than 70 people at a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Neb., and other federal agents targeted farms north of Los Angeles.

June 12th: Clearly feeling heat from big farmers and meat processors and the hospitality industries -- who were complaining loudly to the White House about the disruptions to their operations, Trump stumbled into a change of policy based on favoritism: "We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not," Trump said. The New York Times reported that a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official quickly ordered a pause to immigration raids at agricultural businesses, meat packing plants, restaurants, and hotels. 

June 14th: President Donald Trump directed federal immigration officials to prioritize instead deportations from Democratic-run cities.

June 15th: President Donald Trump said on social media that he is willing to exempt the agriculture and hotel industries from his nationwide immigration crackdown. The surprise move came after executives in both industries complained to Trump about losing reliable, longtime immigrant workers in immigration raids and struggling to replace them. Plus there had been pushback from some farm-owners -- some had slammed their gates shuts and wouldn't let ICE in without a warrant. 

Also June 15th: ICE and HSI field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy, after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal. During a morning field call, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told leaders representing field offices across the country that they must continue to conduct raids at worksite locations, "a reversal from guidance issued days earlier under pressure from certain industries that rely on migrant workers."

June 16th: The Department of Homeland Security told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants. Agents are ordered to continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels, and restaurants. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.

"No Endorsement" in NYC Mayor's Race, Sez NYTimes

 

Mamdani

I've been just recently reading about the New York mayor race and the two apparent front-runners, former Guv Andrew Cuomo and sudden rising star of the Left, Zohran Mamdani. Today comes the extraordinary announcement that the New York Times will not be endorsing in the mayor's race. What they said about Mamdani is pretty arresting:

Zohran Mamdani, a state legislator who represents a Queens district. Mr. Mamdani, a charismatic 33-year-old, is running a joyful campaign full of viral videos in which he talks with voters. He offers the kind of fresh political style for which many people are hungry during the angry era of President Trump.

Unfortunately, Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges. He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing.

Most worrisome, he shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade, even though its costs have fallen hardest on the city’s working-class and poor residents. Mr. Mamdani, who has called Mr. de Blasio the best New York mayor of his lifetime, offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.

The editorial board's estimation of the disastrous Bill de Blasio's term is worth reading in the same long statement -- if you want to understand "the typical Left agenda that's alluring among elite progressives."

Character Is Still Trump’s Achilles Heel

 

Carter Wrenn* dissects the poll:

Last week, opening a poll, turning pages I read about voters in a NC district: Trump’s approval rating was Approve 51%, Disapprove 47% – not bad. But buried between the lines was a subtle hitch: The voters who approved of Trump split into two groups – 70% liked both Trump’s policies and his character. But 30% liked his policies but not his character....

That second group is ambivalent. They see things they like but also see things – about Trump – they don’t like. What that means is simple: Those voters could tilt against Trump. ...

There was also a generic ballot question in the poll: If the election were held today would you vote for the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate? The Republican trailed by 2 points – in a district Trump won by 7 points.

More troubling: One-fourth of the people who said they’d vote for the Republican candidate also said they ‘dislike’ Trump’s character. That should scare the hell out of Republicans. Those ambivalent voters could switch sides and vote for a Democrat. Or simply not vote. And that could turn the off-year election into a disaster for Republicans.

*Carter Wrenn was the conservative operative and guru behind Jesse Helms. Now he's one of two opinion writers at Talking About Politics, paired with Democrat Gary Pearce.

Wet and Saggy

 

Hard to project strength when you can't stay awake

Veterans For Peace Hold a Mirror Up to MAGA

 

Trump appears eager to create optics that support his claim that public dissent constitutes an existential threat to the nation.

--Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Trump generously suggested that protests at his birthday bash and military parade would be met with "very big force." 

One contingent of Trump protestors set out Friday evening in DeeCee to test the president's line. Veterans for Peace had organized a Supreme Court protest that was actually a feint, as the real plan was to get on the nearby Capitol steps and stage a sit-in. Photos exist. They were just as quickly arrested and removed from the grounds. 

Here's how it upfolded, according to CBS News. Approximately 75 people recruited by Veterans for Peace had been protesting at the Supreme Court when some 60 broke off and headed quickly for the West Front of the Capitol. Uh-oh. The Capitol police began dragging barriers "to establish a perimeter." 

Capitol Police said the protesters then "crossed" a police line "while running" toward the building.

"A few people pushed the bike rack down and illegally crossed the police line while running towards the Rotunda Steps," Capitol Police said. "Our officers immediately blocked the group and began making arrests."

All 60 were arrested, of course -- most of them veterans. Two went to the hospital. They're charged with unlawful demonstration and crossing a police line (additional charges alleging assault on a police officer and resisting arrest may be brought on a handful of them). 

I'm impressed by their creativity and daring both. They held up a mirror to January 6th, using street theater that satirized a previous storming of the Capitol and risked personal physical harm in the process. What's not to admire about Veterans for Peace?

"President Trump threatened Americans coming to exercise their first amendment rights would be met with 'great force,'" Michael  T.  McPhearson, director of Veterans For Peace, said in the post. "We are the actual people who put uniforms on because we believe in the freedoms this country is supposed to be about and we will not be intimidated into silence."

The Southern Baptist Church Has Always Been Safe Harbor for ... Flamboyance

 

Southern Baptists are hilarious. The largest Protestant denomination in the nation, wagged by the tail of 10,500 "messengers" (out of way-over 12 million total members), voted overwhelmingly at this year's annual convention in Dallas (happening this week) to approve a resolution calling for the reversal of Obergefell, the Supreme Court's decision 10 years ago legalizing gay marriage.

Andrew Walker, an "ethicist" (what?) at a Southern Baptist seminary in Kentucky, wrote the resolution and admitted that he and his anti-gay allies in the church are playing the "long game," like Maoists of old, never giving up their longshot at reversing the Law of the Land -- a public policy of sweeping and basic humanity, the legal right for gay couples to form family units, which is actually supported by a huge majority of Americans in poll after poll. The long game of people like Andrew Walker is based, after all, on what worked just fine in eventually getting rid of abortion rights. Their fanatical patience to outwit, outplay, and outlast majority opinion seems blessed right now by the general run of authoritarianism taking over the nation, not to mention the current membership on the Supreme Court (Messrs. Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and no telling who else). Political evangelicals -- those whose piety is most influenced (or dented, actually) by the colossal sinners they need to keep in power -- they know whose feet to kiss, who deserves a laying-on-of-hands. 

Anyhoo, I'm about to draw on decades of fairly intense immersion in the Southern Baptist ethos of West Texas -- as I contemplate how those Baptist messengers in Dallas must rationalize the implicit insult their vote against gay marriage must be to the closeted gays and, yes, queers, including frequently the church organist and music director, that sit in pews in every last one of those strict churches (I'm betting). Some LGBTQ Baptists, raised from infancy in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School and Sunday night preachings and spring revivals and special youth activities, never left home, physically or psychologically, and never gave up their innocent and true faith that they have been saved and born again by the grace of Jesus Christ. They can't quit the church that nurtured them, the family and neighbors they enjoy dinner-on-the-ground with, and besides, they don't cause any trouble, stay to themselves, and anyway, everyone knows already, like everyone also knows you don't mention it, you don't speak of it, you pretend it isn't even there. Good Lord! Gay people -- many who admittedly didn't know (yet?) that they were gay -- they were everywhere in the Southern Baptist world I grew up in.

Not that I was a Baptist at first. I was the sole Pentecostal -- speaking in tongues, the works! -- in school with mainly Baptists, and a smattering of what everybody called Campbellites, and one or two Methodists. (Loved the Methodists because they weren't afraid to have fun. People said they held young-people dances in the church basement.)

I was actually good friends with at least two queer Baptists in high school, though in those days I didn't have a clue what that meant and probably neither did they. I did know that queer was something you didn't want to be called, without understanding at all the physical implications in that word. Queer kids from good families were common, not numerous but certainly there, and I later understood that they knew how to pass, to fit in, to be a part of the social fabric of that society -- accepted for their quirks, especially their unusual talents and high IQs. Whatever went on in private in the dark was beyond my ken, not to mention my elementary understanding. I was not just a nerd. I was an oblivious nerd. My obliviousness actually got joke-awarded as a senior when I received the Out to Lunch Award at a graduation luncheon (where else but at the local Baptist Church). My classmates were trying to tell me something, which I still didn’t get. I took the trophy and turned to my (closeted gay) friend, “What does this mean?”

I began to get more of a rough education in definitions when I attended Wayland Baptist College on a scholarship, the only Pentecostal on campus. Ironically, despite the macho reputation of a Texas-upbringing, the place was pretty well supplied with soft boys and what I heard for the first time called "squishes," actually really nice guys who were kind and generous and often very funny, who were majoring in music and psychology and English, pursuing the trajectory of their religion into church music and counseling and teaching -- hell, some of those nice boys actually thought they wanted to be preachers and were heavy into religion classes -- hiding or playing games with their identities and (I guess) suffering in the hollow silence. Some dated girls. Some even married girls and enjoyed by all appearances long, successful marriages. They never unraveled an inch of their carefully ironed fabric of denial and conformity.

Here’s a confession: I wasn't baptized into the denomination, at a fairly big church in Plainview-By-God, Texas, where I was a Junior in college, until I decided to social-climb. I had been dating a brainiac Southern Baptist woman, and we were going to get married. Her whole family was Southern Baptist. I thought I needed to be too. I had grown tired of being the only holy-roller, and had begun to think for myself. Some of my humanist teachers were making me less doctrinaire. I had become a skeptic who asked a lot of questions.

Considerably later came the scandals that ripped at our pious smugness -- the literal outings of Bible-thumping evangelical shouters who were discovered to be covering up a secret life, or revealed to be imposing themselves on young acolytes, or proving to be blabber-mouth drunks. I seem to remember one of those coming out of Jerry Falwell University recently. Hell, Jerry Falwell hisownself had a gay speechwriter named Mel White who also ghost-wrote Falwell’s autobiography as well as the official autobiographies of Pat Robertson and Billy Graham.

So this is the message the Southern Baptist majority have sent: Gays are just fine in church and serving as amanuenses and organists and music directors, even counselors and youth directors, as long as they live the lie, stay invisible and undemonstrative about any secret proclivities, not to mention any legal rights they might wildly and mistakenly think they need.

That’s why the Southern Baptists are unintentionally hilarious.

Introducing Dr. Annie Andrews, the South Carolina Pediatrician Who Says Lindsey Graham Is Full of S**t

 

Trouble in Bergerland

 

According to Lucille Sherman and Jeffrey Billman, writing in Bryan Anderson's Caucus newsletter, Patrick Sebastian, a partner at the polling firm Opinion Diagnostics and a nephew of former Gov. Pat McCrory, has signed a memo reporting a poll that found Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page leading Phil Berger by some 18 points in next March's Republican primary for Berger's NC Senate seat. Sebastian had been behind similar polling in 2024 hypothetically testing Sam Page's political strength against Berger, but Page opted to run for lieutenant governor instead in the crowded 2024 primary. He came in 5th. But Page announced his candidacy for Berger's seat all the way back on Valentine's Day.

The undisputed boss of the NC General Assembly may be in trouble, but he has a huge war chest of cash. Sam Page, an ultra-hardliner on immigration, appears to be angling for Trump's endorsement.