Happy Birthday, America!

 

Your new king can't wait to enjoy your obeisance!

I've Stopped Going to Tractor Supply

 

I was pleased when a brand new Tractor Supply store got built about a mile from my garden, which saved me a much longer trip to the garden center at the local Lowe's, and I spent a lot of money there on everything from a new manure fork to dog food. If I wanted to mingle with rural folks, Sunday just after noon was the time to visit, because lots of church-goers in their Sunday clothes made a stop there on their way home from church.

During the height of COVID, you never saw anyone in masks, including the cashiers, so I tended to stand out as maybe the only liberal in the store. I got a few side-eyes, but at my age the stinkeye doesn't much faze me.

The company had a good reputation nationally, especially for its diversity programs that encouraged voter registration and PRIDE festivals. Bloomberg praised it for promoting gender equality, while Newsweek called it one of the best U.S. companies for diversity.

But the current reign of MAGA hatefulness was bound to notice. So a conservative podcaster with a big following in Tennessee, where Tractor Supply is headquartered, posted a denunciation of the company because it supports queers. An employee had messaged the podcaster the inside poop that Tractor Supply was way too woke for his taste. “Start buying what you can from other places until Tractor Supply makes REAL changes,” the podcaster wrote on X on June 6. Other MAGA soldiers joined the boycott, and the company’s share price fell by 5 percent in the past month, according to the Financial Times.

So Tractor Supply caved to the bigots, issued a public letter recanting all its diversity efforts, and why on earth would I want to give any more money to a company with that little courage of conviction?

Chief Justice Paul Newby's Flag Merely Confirms What We Already Knew About Him

Paul Newby, Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court, waited just hours (it seems) after the 2022 elections gave him his conservative majority to reverse the Court's previous ruling that gerrymandering of legislative districts violates the equal rights of citizens. Newby's newspeak: It's perfectly all right for the Republican majority in the General Assembly to stack the deck however it damn well pleases. Short version: Newby is an enemy of democracy.

So it came as no great surprise that the same Christian nationalist/MAGA escutcheon, the "Appeal to Heaven” or Pine Tree flag, that got Samuel Alito into hot water, was flying over Newby's beach property in Cartaret County (a house technically owned by Newby's wife, so there's another "my wife did it" excuse in the making) as recently as May 23rd.

Picture and story, NewsAndObserver, June 27

Newby told the N&O in a statement that he was given the flag as a gift before Jan. 6, 2021, and flies it during national holidays such as Memorial Day. 

“Until recently, we had no idea of the association of the ‘An Appeal to Heaven’ flag with anything other than its actual history — a history that reminds us to pray for our nation,” he said. “At no point did we intend the display of the flag to be a political statement, only a statement of our faith.”

Uh-huh. So Newby -- wholly innocent of political intent -- runs a flag up his pole, the sign-of-the-times meaning of which is totally mysterious to him. May 23rd, just incidentally, is the day after the New York Times ran its story on Alito's flag, which became the news of the nation.

And please forget any enforcement of judicial ethics in Newby's case. The Judicial Standards Commission is totally under Newby's thumb. He appoints six of the 14 members himself, and another eight are appointed by Berger/Moore in the General Assembly. 

Just Another Day in the Clown Car

 

Rep. George Cleveland,
cheerleading his H 1071 last Thursday

Let's put election deniers in charge of purging North Carolina's voter rolls! Yeah, baby!

Can't imagine why it's taken this long to think of the next brilliant solution to the greatest problem vexing North Carolina -- too many people voting.

NC House member George Cleveland (R-Onslow) just last Thursday introduced H 1071, a bill that would force all county boards of elections to establish a new system for investigating and correcting data provided by “election integrity” organizations to assist in maintenance of the state’s voter registration lists.

In case you haven't been paying attention, "election integrity" is code among election deniers for using idiotic claims of massive voter fraud to harass as many progressive voters as possible, particularly those with skin pigmentation slightly darker than George Cleveland's. This is merely another attempt to take power away from our State Board of Elections and give the right to vote to partisan manipulators who can, on any given day, find hoards of people who need to be eliminated (and not just from voter rolls).

In a House discussion of Cleveland's proposed legislation (reported on by Clayton Henkel),

“How is a voter integrity group defined?” asked [Democrat] Rep. Ashton Wheeler Clemmons.

“Actually, it’s two or three people who have years of experience in data collection and data usage. There’s two that are prominent here in North Carolina,” Cleveland responded....

“So my question is can you name a group?” asked [Democrat] Rep. Allison Dahle.

“I can name two,” said Cleveland. “I don’t know what the gentleman’s real name is. It’s Totes Legit. He has consistently over the past several years sent voter list problems to the state board. And there’s a Ms. Snow out in Morganton.”

“I didn’t hear the names,” Dahle asked him to repeat himself.

“Totes Legit. That’s what he calls himself. I don’t know what the gentleman’s name is.”

Seriously? Reporter Henkel went looking for Ms. Snow and "Totes Legit" (who sounds totally legit):

In Georgia, anonymous claims of voter fraud from someone going by the name ‘Totes Legit’ were dismissed last October. It’s unclear if that is the same person Cleveland was referencing.

The second person Cleveland mentioned, Carol Snow of the NC Audit Force filed a complaint with the elections board claiming inadequate maintenance of the computerized registered voter list put the state out of compliance with the 2002 federal voting law.

Snow presented examples of what appeared to be duplicate voter registrations. In one example, a son with the same name as his father was mistakenly checked in as his father. The father and son both received ballots and each voted once.

As NC Newline reported in April, the Board of Elections rejected Snow’s complaint about duplicate voter registrations

What is funnier? That this walking joke from Onslow County has introduced his bright new idea for interfering with the work of election officials or that H 1071 by last Friday had been fast-tracked through the House Rules Committee and three subsequent floor votes (66-45) and now heads to the Senate. Though it didn't get there in time for action, as the Senate adjourned sine die. Thank God. But this will come back next term. You can bet on it.