On the Wrong Side of an Environmental Disaster

Gov. Perdue used to be against off-shore drilling for North Carolina "but in recent months has said that it appears inevitable" (N&O).

Inevitable?

She wants more experts to advise her. Yeah, like those experts are gonna pull on their hip-waders and clean up the only thing that's absolutely inevitable ... an accident, a careless screw-up, a failure to focus on what's valuable rather than on what's profitable.

And Senator Kay Hagan? The Greensboro News&Record's Mark Binker asked her directly about the lessons of Louisiana, and only pure mush came out of Hagan's mouth. She's obviously in the "drill, baby, drill" choir, only she's now singing the chorus as softly as possible, trying to be inconspicuous in her lack of leadership as an oily environmental nightmare insinuates itself into every inlet, marsh, and wetland of the Louisiana coast.

The British Petroleum Blob has only begun its reign of terror. Still to come ... the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida ... and, oh yeah, TEXAS!

Questions for the Tea Party Folks

Guest Blogging: Matt Robinson

Barack Obama's election and relentless pursuit of health care reform led to the emergence of a new political movement -- the "Tea Party" -- which claims the Obama presidency is reckless and irresponsible in its spending. Their evidence is quite limited and includes the new health care law, priced at $940 billion over 10 years, or $94 billion per year. Never mind the fact that the costs of the health care law are paid for without adding a penny to the national debt.

What I'd like to know from any "Tea Party" member is ... where were you during the Bush administration? The costs of the war in Iraq are now $721 billion over seven years, or $103 billion per year, more than the health care law. And all of the war costs under President Bush were paid for using emergency appropriations outside of the normal budget process. Thus every penny spent on the Iraq war is added to the national debt!

Perhaps "Tea Party" members see war and health care reform as apples and oranges. I agree. The health care bill pays for itself and helps people, while the war adds to the debt and kills people! Assuming we just ignore the war, though, what about President Bush's Medicare expansion in 2003? This law costs $720 billion over 10 years, or $72 billion per year, and every penny of the costs were added on to the national debt. Yet this did not upset you enough to form a "Tea Party" movement.

And what about the $700 billion bailout of big business by Bush? No "Tea Party" movement for that either (in fact, you guys seem to think it was Obama that organized the bailout!). Yet you attack Obama for the 2009 stimulus plan, priced at $787 billion. Criticisms of the stimulus aside, many economists say it did save our economy from a major depression, and it is even helping expand Highway 421 here in Boone!

Your lack of criticism of President Bush is clear proof that your criticism of President Obama is not rooted in principles such as small government or fiscal responsibility but instead in partisan ideology. In other words, you are out in the streets because Obama is a Democratic president, plain and simple. So spare us the "devotion to the Constitution."

Analysis of White house budget data shows that the three presidents who most added to the national debt were all Republicans, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Yet neither of the Bush administrations prompted a "Tea Party" movement, and you hold President Reagan up to be this godlike figure who supposedly stood for conservative values such as small government and fiscal responsibility. It is just not true.

Almost nothing the "Tea Party" members say can be taken seriously. I'd laugh out loud if it were not so scary and dangerous. There are thousands of angry and uninformed people who actually believe Obama is a socialist, a communist, a Muslim, a totalitarian dictator, a foreign citizen, and even the anti-Christ who wants the terrorists to win! And they're generating societal unease based on these absurd beliefs.

So I ask you again: Where were you during the Bush administration? And the other Bush administration? And the Reagan administration? And why do you believe these ridiculous things?

Additionally I am curious if you know that your movement is led by lobbyist-run think tanks including "Americans for Prosperity" and "FreedomWorks"? These groups are not about fiscal responsibility or small government. They are for getting Republicans elected, no matter what. It's just politics, plain and simple. Finally, why do you even call yourselves the "Tea Party"? You are citizens, and you have representation! So there's no need to dump tea in the harbor!

Mount Airy Baptists Turn Wine Into Gall

About 100 Mount Airy Baptists say that drinking wine is "not a Christian thing to do," and intend to be obnoxious this weekend to people attending the Mount Airy Budbreak Wine Festival on the obviously sinful streets of Andy Griffith's hometown.

The Baptist preacher leading this sanctified effort said, "We are taking an opportunity to proclaim Christ. We will be holding signs and banners so people driving in and out from the event can see our message-- Jesus saves."

People driving in and out of the event should hold up signs too: "Jesus made wine."

The Gospel of John, Chapter 2:
6. And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.

7. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.

8. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.

9. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,

10. And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk , then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

11. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.

Holy Crist!

The tea party purge of the Republican Party continues apace. Godspeed!

Charlie Crist, prominently trotted out in 2008 as a potential running mate for John Blowing-in-the-Wind McCain, leaves the Republican Party today at 5 p.m.

The poor, poor one-term governor of Florida, who blew a 30-point lead in the Republican Senate primary to tea-party darling Marco Rubio, is now determined to run a lonelier race as an independent.

The likely Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek is generally regarded by the gasbags as a weak candidate, but at this point anything can and probably will happen. Florida's Senate race has just gone from safe Republican to who-the-freak-knows?

Is Harry Reid Educable?

Looks like the threat of making the Republicans in the U.S. Senate actually filibuster, rather than merely say they'll filibuster, plus their public tarring for being so solidly aligned with Wall Street bankers, has been enough to break Republican obstructionism on the financial reform bill.

Maybe -- though we ain't holding our breath -- the Majority Leader will learn a valuable lesson here: make 'em talk, make 'em flap their gums all night long, let the American people see the full extent of their obstruction.

No Slanted Reporting Here!

Linda Burchette's lead paragraph in her coverage of Saturday's tea party in Ashe:

The basic idea is to return to conservative values and fix the tax system, two things most any American would probably agree with. That is most likely why the Tea Party movement is gaining momentum all across the United States and even in some foreign countries.

With reporting like that, you can probably scrap the editorial page altogether.

Drill, Baby, Drill

Yum! Can't wait for some of that off-shore drilling magic for the North Carolina coast!

"We Don't Need No Stinkin' Debate!"

Go ahead, Republicans, protect Wall Street bankers from reform and see if we care! And you, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, go ahead and vote with your fine-feathered friends because Warren Buffett has an investment company based in your state.

Just see if any of this coddling of Wall Street bankers makes any impact whatsoever outside the bubble you well-heeled Senate types live in!

Nobody out here in the hinterlands knows anything about banking, so we think you guys are totally safe in maneuvering to shield your Wall Street buddies from accountability.

Don't worry. Cash those checks. We're all too addled by Fox News to pay any attention.

Seeking an Audience with a Gun

A 23-year-old Ohio man was arrested at the Asheville airport yesterday as the President's plane was taking off. He was wearing a Springfield XD 40 handgun and had been, according to investigators, monitoring police radio from his car. When he got out of his car, he was talking on a hand-held radio attached to a remote earpiece. His driver's license proved to be invalid. "Officers also found a siren box under his steering wheel, several pieces of paper with agency radio frequencies written on them and a sticky note in the cup holder with rifle scope formulas on them." The man told police that "he heard the president was in town. He stated he wanted to see the president."

But get this: his name, or at least the name on the invalid driver's license, is McVey. Eerie, even though the other McVeigh spelled his name differently.

Famous for Racial Gaffs? Come on Down to NC!

Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) crashes and burns after calling a South Asian "macaca" on-camera and is immediately invited by powerful North Carolina Republican interests to make a speech in Lenoir (with none other than Virginia Foxx fawning from the wings, in between trips to the buffet table).

Then current Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell asks the white citizens of his state officially to celebrate Confederate History Month and thoughtfully omits any mention of the fact of slavery, lest anyone be unfortunately confronted by actual history. McDonnell is now the featured headline speaker at a NC GOP fundraiser tomorrow night in Raleigh.

Racial politics in the Old North State. And proof of what Michael Steele was saying earlier this week.

I Am Woman, Hear Me Bloviate

Sarah Palin in Wilkesboro in June! Not.

A non-profit Wilkes County org with ministerial leadership, BlueRidge Educational Resource Group, had touted appearances by both Palin and former First Lady Laura Bush on a stage together at a Wilkes Community College venue, but the event is being moved to the Charlotte Time Warner Cable Arena for "better security, safety and parking."

The event is being called "the Complete Woman Expo 2010." We should say so! The pro-choice and quiet-spoken Laura Bush together on the same stage with the sheet-metal stylings of paleo-Palin. It's at least about as complete as one can get on the Republican distaff side. (But ... what? no Ann Coulter?)

We suspect the real agenda behind this gathering will not emerge until the loud speakers get warned up.

Rediscovering History

Hat-tip to Ed Cone for sharing the link and for making the observation that Michael Steele was telling the truth when he told a DePaul University audience this:

"We [the Republican Party] have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans. This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don't walk away from parties. Their parties walk away from them. For the last 40-plus years we had a 'Southern Strategy' that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South."

Look for fresh calls for Steele to resign his chairmanship, for daring to tell the truth about the last four decades of Republicans' taking over the old Southern Democratic playbook on racial politics.

Playing Chicken

What is it with the women the Republican party is finding these days to carry their banner? Sarah Palin, Carly Fiorina, Virginia Foxx, and now Sue Lowden of Nevada, the leading Republican candidate to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

She said, quite seriously, that perhaps the health-care crisis could be solved by patients' bartering with their doctors: "You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor; they would say 'I'll paint your house.' I mean, that's the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I'm not backing down from that system."

This was not a gaff. This was a policy statement.

The totally foreseeable TV ad followed at warp speed. I like a dancing chicken as much, or even more, than the next guy (having known hundreds of them in my West Texas childhood), but these dancing chickens are hard to beat!

Sue Lowden is a casino owner, which perhaps makes her even more sympatico to Virginia Foxx (aside from the bizarre political views about how poor people ought to comport themselves). Foxx happens to be taking a tidy pile of campaign cash from Las Vegas zip codes.

Hmmm.

Billy Kennedy Matching Foxx $-for-$ in the 1st Q of 2010

Federal Elections Commission reports are in for the 1st Quarter of 2010 (January 1 - March 31), and Billy Kennedy took in over $100,000 to Foxx's $102,000. Wha???

Take a look at the FEC filing documents for yourself: Here's Foxx's. And here's Billy Kennedy's.

This is huge news. To our knowledge, no Democratic candidate in the NC-5 has ever shown this kind of fundraising prowess ... especially not against The Madam.

Furthermore, the Kennedy campaign is reporting that most of their money is coming from small donors, over 900 of them. Most of Foxx's money is coming from big Special Interests, including the American Bankers' Association, the National Association of Health Underwriters, and the National Association of Realtors PAC.

For a two-term professional politician like Virginia Foxx, this is a major embarrassment and proof of vunerability.

A Note on Commenting

If anyone wants to comment on a thread here and say something more-or-less germane, while refraining from tiresome personal insults and other political trash-talk, we'll consider posting it.

Otherwise, go someplace else to spew.

Friday Smorgasbord

Apparently, Republican senators are rethinking their determination to protect the big Wall Street banking institutions at all costs. Ahhh. But we ain't holding our breath. You know, right? that a tiger's stripes are not just an exterior, furry sort of adornment. Those stripes are a part of the dermis of the animal. Republican senators are gwine to do what Republican senators do best (and, unfortunately, too many DemSenators too!) ... protect Big Money.

Franklin Graham can't shake the memory of what he said about Islam. Not that he wants to. (HT: Watauga Democrat for calling attention to this controversy.)

We laughed ourselves silly last night at Jon Stewart's gospel-choir approach to responding to Bernie Goldberg and Fox News: "Fox News is such a crazy over-reaction to that perceived threat [of the supposed Liberal Media], you're like an auto-immune disorder...."

Making Tea From Briars

Republican Congressional candidate, Machine Gun Tim D'Annunzio in the NC-8 (remember him?), appears to be deeply connected to a Tea Party effort to smear his chief rival, former Charlotte sportscaster Harold Johnson, as a convicted federal "tax cheat."

Turns out that such charges are actually fairly easy to disprove.

We're still rooting for D'Annunzio to win that primary, though there's a possibility, we suppose, that 50% + 1 of Republicans in that district have not drunk this particular pot of tea.

Federal Taxes at Historically Low Levels

Analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which will no doubt be labeled now as a notorious mouthpiece for Socialism:

"Middle-income Americans are now paying federal taxes at or near historically low levels, according to the latest available data. That's true whether it comes to their federal income taxes or their total federal taxes." HT: Rob Schofield at The Progressive Pulse for putting us on to this info

It pleasures the tea-partiers no end to scream about being taxed to death, when the evidence is exactly the opposite. Our tax bill on April 15th certainly went down, though nothing else in our personal situation had changed from last year.

The tea-partiers won't hear it. Their ears are stuffed with the noxious cotton-wadding of Fox News. Either that, or they're part of the filthy rich who can and should pay more for the sake of the commonweal and are terrified at the thought of funding anything other than senseless wars against third-world enemies.

Hedging

John A. Paulson, the billionaire hedge fund manager at the center of an alleged fraud hatched at Goldman Sachs, gave $1,000 to Congresswoman Virginia Foxx on March 20, 2008. Since it's in the nature of hedge funders to hedge their bets, Paulson also gave big bucks to various Democratic power players.

Being bought off is not endemic to just one of the two major political parties.

Applause for the Forward Thinkers of Boone

Boone Town Councilman Andy Ball took the lead with the Boone Town Council in introducing a resolution endorsing wind power as an untapped resource for a sustainable future ... in the face of a movement in the NC General Assembly to ban any commercial development of wind power in the NC mountains.

Those General Assembly folks out to kill the future of wind power -- led by Sen. Joe Sam Queen who represents Avery, Haywood, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, and Yancey counties -- are misguided. They are wrong. They have been influenced by special interests who do not want the million-dollar views from their quarter-million-dollar decks spoiled by wind turbines.

Spoilment of the view is obviously in the eye of the beholder. To me, the sight of the ASU wind turbine revolving in the moving air is sheer beauty. It's flight and freedom ... and independence from freakin' oil.

It's also the future, or at least a large part of the future. The Town of Boone, which gets nothing much from the big wigs of Watauga County but insults and contempt, deserves accolades for embracing the future and fighting for it.

Foxx Votes Against Workers (Again!)

The U.S. Congress busted the Republican impasse in the Senate yesterday (Jim Bunning, anyone? ... among other obstructionists) and voted to extend unemployment benefits for those thrown out of work in the first year of the George W. Bush Recession. Three Republican Senators voted for the bill and 49 Republicans in the U.S. House voted for it.

Virginia Foxx voted against it. I know ... HUGE surprise.

Why should she care about people out of work and grasping at any life raft on the tossing sea? Her net worth has done nothing but go up since she was elected to Congress. Congress critters are allowed to report the "range of worth" of their assets and not exact amounts, so Foxx's financial disclosure forms reveal a very wide and capacious berth for her personal wealth.

In 2004 she reported assets totaling from $2,377,042 to $5,369,000.

In 2008, after two full terms in Congress and a whole lot of kvetching about how hard she works for such little pay and bragging about how poor she used to be, she reported assets totaling from $2,637,053 to $8,982,000. (All figures publicly available at Open Secrets.)

She's getting filthy rich while the unemployed get a few more months of unemployment benefits, but to hear her tell it, the unemployed, purely by virtue of having their grubby little hands out, are simply RUINING the Republic for the likes of her and her rich, richer, richest friends.

HOLD THE PHONE, JETHRO!
Just noticed that U.S. Congressman Patrick McHenry was one of the 49 Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote for the extension of unemployment benefits. OMG!

ADDENDUM
Congressional candidate Billy Kennedy issued a statement about Foxx's vote this morning, which is quoted in full over at Down With Tyranny:

"Virginia Foxx continued her assault on working families in the fifth district with a vote against the continuation of unemployment benefits. With unemployment now reaching as high as 15% in many counties of the 5th district, Foxx shows how callous and indifferent she is to her constituents. You see, Foxx doesn't have to sit around the kitchen table trying to figure out whether to pay the electric bill or the mortgage because she is the richest North Carolina representative in the House. While the people of the 5th district try to figure a way to keep their homes out of foreclosure, Foxx continues to accumulate her extensive real estate holdings. Virginia Foxx, in other words, is making a killing off her incumbent political position while blaming her constituents for financial woes they are experiencing through no fault of their own. Foxx's message to those in distress in the 5th district: 'tough luck.' "

Child Abuse

The Statesville Christian School thinks it's just fine & dandy to have this woman teaching little children about the meaning of the American Constitution. According to Jim McNally in the Statesville Record & Landmark, Virginia Foxx confirmed the local prejudices that this is a Christian nation, divinely inspired yada yada yada to do unto others as we freakin' well please.

Foxx advised the students that they should read the Constitution. Amen to that. But she suggested that because the Constitution does not mention an Air Force, which should be a prerogative left up to the states, according to the 10th Amendment, the U.S.A.F. is therefore unconstitutional. No, wait. She said Obama's health care reform isn't in the Constitution, and therefore we have no right to expect insurance, unless we happen to get elected to the U.S. Congress, and then we can have it.

(Marvelous thing, that 10th Amendment! If guvmint activity ain't spelled out there, specifically and explicitly, then we lazy socialists got no right to expect it. 'Course, the Foxx cum Tea Party "constitutionalist" philosophy does conveniently ignore the Preamble to the Constitution, with all that gooey "promote the general Welfare" stuff, but never mind. Now, about that Air Force...)

After defining what was and was not in the Foxx version of the Constitution, you know what Madam Foxx told the little children? That they should read the writings of one David Barton, a fairly notorious Texas Christian conservative and Republican activist who's been rewriting American history to claim that our Founders never intended the separation of church and state. Old Thomas Jefferson was really all about establishing Christianity, saith Brother Barton, and Foxx thinks that kind of propaganda would be educational nourishment for tender minds.

Foxx is the sort of Constitutional "expert" who not long ago (April 15, 2008) told a reporter for the High Country Press that the 16th Amendment is "unconstitutional." There's a keen legal mind at work! Let's see, a duly and properly ratified Amendment to the Constitution, done following the procedures laid out in the Constitution for amending the document, is "unconstitutional." About as sound in its reasoning as suggesting that Thomas Jefferson was really Jerry Falwell in a wig.

Come to think of it, Virginia Foxx may be Jerry Falwell in a wig.

At Least It Wasn't Me...

...making rude comments about the Family Foxx, but rather this Cary blogger who picked up on the fact that taxpayer dollars (several of them) went to put out the wildfire accidentally started by guvmint-hatin' hubby of Madam Virginia Foxx.

So we're not the only connoisseurs of Rank Irony, eh?

If you take guvmint help, or cause the expenditure of taxpayer funds, and nobody hears about it, aren't you still an enabler of Socialism?

Must have been a lively debate yesterday, with clearly defined distinctions between the two Democrats in the May 4th primary ... incumbent NC Rep. Bruce Goforth and challenger Patsy Keever, a former Buncombe County Commissioner.

Keever's got a real grassroots organization going. Goforth's got the inertia of incumbency, which may not be such a help in this year of anti-incumbency fervor.

2010 Is Not 1994

The failure of the Democrats to get a public option for health insurance makes them unpopular ... for being inept or bought off or both. But the failure of the Republicans to be for anything other than defeating the other guy's ideas doesn't exactly make them the saviors of democracy either.

Public Policy Polling found just 18% of (the all important) independent voters who thought the Republican Party was on the right track. Generally speaking, PPP found that "only 28% of voters in the country say they approve of the current direction of the GOP with 51% disapproving."

I've never been convinced that 2010 was going to be 1994 all over again. There are some incumbent Republicans who'll feel the wrath too. And should.

Your Lyin' Eyes

Jon Ham, a John Locke Foundation blogger, is practicing preemptive spin. He sez that if you see "inappropriate signage" at a tea party event, it's "liberal plants" sent in to embarrass the tea partiers.

Gosh, judging from almost any random photo of any tea party event, there must be more liberals attending these affairs than John Locke conservatives.

$3.95 each, available from Irregular States.

Fetzer to Steele: I'm Praying for You (To Drop Dead)

This news broke late yesterday p.m., while we were on the road in Stokes County (thunder, lightning, missing bridges), so we're catching up:

Tom Fetzer, chair of the N.C.G.O.P. and hence a voting member of the Republican National Committee, which has the power of life or unemployment over national Chair Michael Steele, is the first such Prominent Republican to call for the resignation of Mr. Steele. You know you're in trouble among Republican pooh-bahs when the letter opens like this: "Dear Michael, I have prayed for you...."

Oh, dear.

That's pulling rank as only the self-righteous can pull it.

Hearing the news about Fetzer's letter, North Carolina Committeewoman Ada Fisher, who had previously made her disdain for Mr. Steele perfectly clear, piled on with her own call for resignation.

Can a full crackup at the RNC be far behind?

This Law Don't Blink

This is Willie Tharp, one of three Republican candidates for Sheriff of Wilkes County. He took out a full-page ad using this picture of himself. You can't make this stuff up.

He ran for sheriff of Wilkes twice before, in 1976 and in 1990. He told the Wilkes Journal-Patriot that he would "like to give the deputies who are working now enough of a raise so that they don't have to work a second job," and who could quarrel with the wisdom of that? Tharp added, "My main priority, though, is opening up some of these unsolved murder cases. I want to solve some of those cold cases."

Only in America. Maybe only in western North Carolina!

The Downside of Prostitution

Jon Stewart destroyed John McCain last night.

Or, if you blanch at seeing the tired old non-maverick exposed for selling himself cheap, you can sample the downside of being anointed by the DSCC.

Babble

"Americans have by and large lost faith in their institutions." So saith Charles "Chuck" Colson, the convicted felon who helped mastermind one of the great governmental conspiracies in American history, the "Watergate Affair."

"People have lost faith in their fire departments," said the habitual arsonist.

Excuse me if I don't want to listen to advice about fire insurance from such as that.

Out of Control

Virginia Foxx's husband cited for allowing a brush fire to get out of control.

Do you believe in metaphor?

Supreme Court Chickens

...are coming home to roost.

The Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC last year ruled that corporations could spend as much as they please trying to elect people who'll do their bidding or defeat people who didn't do their bidding. That decision was based on the legal reasoning that a corporation is the same as a living, breathing, eating, excreting human being and deserves the same rights under the 14th Amendment. (The 14th Amendment, O my brethren, was enacted to protect the weak. So, see how warped the legal minds of the John Roberts Court have become.)

Anyhoo ... if you've followed the nastiness in Stanly County, NC, over the polluting of the Yadkin River by the Alcoa Corporation, which I confess I haven't, you might be interested to know that Alcoa is now unleashing its corporate "personhood" to defeat through advertising $$ the sitting county commissioners who dared to sue them for the pollution.

Carter Wrenn (of all people!), the man who unleashed Jesse Helms on the universe, is now outraged about corporate power and gives the only summary we've so far seen of the "coming storm" of corporate muscle crushing ordinary American citizens and how that's currently playing out in Stanly County. The most conservative Republican we can personally think of can clearly see the poison the Roberts Supreme Court has spilled on the landscape.

Yet there are Republican voices in the state, and even in Stanly County, who still scream that the sacred Free Enterprise System demands that a company like Alcoa cannot, must not, be called to account.

Republicans Suffering From "A Terrible Case of Amnesia"

Ron Fitzwater's write-up of the FDR Dinner in Ashe County last Saturday is well worth a read, particularly for the high points of Seth Chapman's keynote speech.

No one in 21st Century North Carolina can deliver the goods like Seth Chapman, the retired 30-year veteran of the Clerk of Court's office in nearby Alexander County.

We count ourselves truly blessed to have been there in person.