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.

Drafted Into Trump's Economic Suicide Mission

 

I read Pat Dennis's admonition this morning that Democrats are making a tactical blunder with their endless TACO jokes and memes, for you-know-what. Dennis is a well connected progressive activist, and I believe he's totally right:

Trump hasn’t “chickened out” on his tariffs. He is — at this very second — inflicting great harm on American workers, families and the entire U.S. economy. With Trump in charge, prices are up, small businesses are struggling, loan delinquencies are rising, and economic growth has slowed. Polling from Navigator last month showed that only 30 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Trump’s tariffs, including an abysmal 20 percent of independent voters.

...when the Democratic Party yells “TACO,” Americans feel hope that these harmful tariffs are only a negotiation tactic, rather than the economic suicide mission they are. The entire conversation feeds into the decades-old, TV-fueled perception of Trump as a master businessman, just as Democrats are finally gaining traction with a more negative impression [i.e., Donald Jethro Trump is actually terrible at business].

 

How This Mtn Republican Drew a Primary Challenger

 

A disgruntled Mark Pless.

NC House Rep. Mark Pless (Dist. 118, Haywood and Madison) has earned a reputation for putting his thumb in the eye of local government. He gets yelled at (but he could give a shit). Because he's safe (he assumes) in his heavily Republican district. He's never had a primary, and he never gets less than 60% of the vote against weak Democratic challengers. No primary until now.

Like Senator Ralph Hise, Pless likes to mess with "local bills" which can't be vetoed and which always represents some get-even move against local officials who have offended him or one of his buddies.

For example, last February, Pless filed a bill that would have stripped the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority of its ability to collect the county’s 4% room occupancy tax, effectively dismantling the organization. What actually passed upped the room tax to 6% and cut municipal officials out of membership on the board -- sticking it to Waynesville, Maggie Valley, and Lake Junaluska.

In April 2025 Pless introduced two bills that would eliminate county control of ambulance services statewide and change certification standards. Paramedics, medical technicians, and emergency service directors -- not to mention county commissioners -- got loud in their opposition. Rep. Pless doesn't take criticism gracefully (see photo above).

Pless has particularly been at war with Waynesville town government. He tried back in 2022 to get a bill through that would make all town elections in Haywood County partisan, but that failed in the Senate. He later backed a trio of candidates to beat the incumbents and take control, but every last one of Pless's guys lost.

Ken Brown

Cory Vaillancourt: "In 2023, Pless introduced legislation that removed Maggie Valley’s authority to exercise powers in its extraterritorial jurisdiction, effectively eliminating the town’s ability to regulate development in areas just outside its boundaries. This move was seen as retribution for the town’s temporary moratorium on RV parks and campgrounds, which Pless opposed .... Jim Owens, a Maggie Valley alderman, said at the time, 'A junior representative in Raleigh wants to decide what’s best for Maggie Valley. I don’t think that voters and the citizens in Maggie Valley appreciate that.' ”

We'll see next March whether enough Republicans in Haywood and Madison counties are fed up sufficiently with Pless to vote for a primary opponent (there may be up to 5 Republicans against him, according to rumor that Cory Vaillancourt reported, which is both a measure of dissatisfaction and a kind of guarantee that Pless can eek out a victory, with his opposition divided four ways).

A hotshot "sales executive" ("large corporations are my comfort zone" -- he really said that in his announcement) named Ken Brown is the first newbie Republican to announce against Pless for the primary. Brown's campaign theme goes directly to the heart of Pless's arrogance toward local government. Brown said, "I don’t care if local municipal governments are even doing something that I disagree with — if they’re duly elected and the people knew why they voted for these people and what they stood for, who am I to tell them what they ought to do?”

We'll see if that rhetorical question has legs.

Rock, Meet Hard Place (You Deserve Each Other!)

 

Annie Karni and Theodore Schleifer, reporting for the New York Times:

Photo Larry Taylor

House Republicans suddenly find themselves scrambling to mollify Elon Musk, who has been venting his rage at them for voting for a Trump-backed domestic policy bill he calls a “disgusting abomination.”

After Mr. Musk threatened to “fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” Republicans from Speaker Mike Johnson on down are trying to manage an unmanageable tech billionaire who has become one of the most powerful figures in Republican politics....

Mr. Musk’s opposition to the bill has put House Republicans, who tend to fall in line behind whatever Mr. Trump demands, in the awkward position of straining to satisfy two authority figures in their lives who are now at odds. They cannot afford to break with either. Their voters want and expect them to support Mr. Trump no matter what....

 

Invisible Hands Make Evil Magic

 

A provision tucked into the proposed budget passed by the North Carolina House of Representatives last week would apply only to Buncombe and to Watauga counties. The provision would create an exemption from local codes for state building projects at UNC-Asheville and Appalachian State University -- only, of all the universities in the state.

According to Jack Evans in the Asheville Watchdog, the exemption provision first applied uniquely only to UNC-A; Watauga got added mysteriously as "part of a package" when the bill went through amendments in the House Appropriations Committee.

There's currently a controversy going on in Buncombe over UNC-A's administration's announcement earlier this year that it will seek to tear down a wooded area on campus in pursuit of an as-yet-unannounced project, which triggered a movement among Asheville voters to quash the development via zoning laws. Oops. This secret budget provision takes care of that -- by rendering public opinion, let alone local development ordinances, of no consequence whatsoever.

Bring It

 

Yellowstone National Park is actually a very active supervolcano that last blew its top some 631,000 years ago, creating the current caldera that is approximately 45 miles wide in one place and 30 miles in another, taking up space in three Western states -- Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana -- and making the Yellowstone supervolcano one of the biggest in the world. Hyper-active with hot spots, geysers and bubbling mud and other emanations. The ground under Yellowstone is constantly deforming, swelling up inches and then declining, as though the supervolcano were breathing deep, like an old man trying to calm himself down. Two magma chambers underlie Yellowstone roughly 5-7 miles underground, each measuring 30-plus miles across.

If Yellowstone exploded it would put enough ash into the air to stop all air travel, blot out the sun world-wide, kill most plant life including food crops, introduce a perpetual winter, and it would end Donald J. Trump. Like maybe nothing else can. Congress is worthless. The Supreme Court is squishy, the rest of the judiciary under constant threat.

Like maybe nothing else can.  Well, there's one thing -- a reconstituted Congress. That's the midterm challenge for next year. Put Virginia Foxx back in the god-blessed minority.

Lotta Love For Doomsday

The English Pilgrims who famously landed at Plymouth Rock were essentially a doomsday cult.

--Jane Borden, "Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America"

Borden attributes to those Pilgrims seven key elements of belief that have shaped America. I'm not saying which of these seven apply very much to moi, but some do. Because I evolved from the same social reality as everyone else. Our history shapes our propensity for self-destruction. (I've used as a source an interview with Borden by Paul Rosenberg in Salon.)

1. "Our innate desire for a strongman to fix our problems and punish those who aggrieve us."

The story so far: "A small Edenic community is under threat and unable to save itself. The police are inept. The politicians are corrupt. What are we going to do? Then suddenly out of nowhere appears this outsider, or sometimes this loner from within the community. This person saves the community through violence."

 2. "The temptation to feel chosen."

The idea of being a chosen people.

The whole of exceptionalism.

God wants us to help get there, and we have the ability to do so.

If we listen to and follow our Fathers.

3. "Both knee-jerk anti-authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism."

"Classic American conspiracy theory always has an evil leader or group of leaders behind it, who are unfathomably powerful, typically world leaders -- a.k.a., the story of the Antichrist. These evildoers are also brainiacs, apparently incredibly intelligent. They use that intelligence — which is part of what corrupted them — to prey on more simpleminded folk who are virtuous."

But there's something the simpleminded folk can do about it, dammit.

 

After all, the word protest is the base of Protestant.

4. "Our impulse to buy and sell salvation on the open market."

"The Puritans were also obsessed with self-investigation. They literally made themselves sick with the practice -- mostly self-investigating to figure out if they were chosen. They believed no one knew who was and wasn't chosen, but they were pretty sure they were, and that they could find out if they just looked within. So these trials of self-investigation have always been with us and self-help is now a $5 billion industry."

5.  "Hard work is holy, while idleness is a sin."

"This idea that work is holy became a justification for acquisitiveness. Because if you're working a lot to show how much you love God, you're naturally going to accrue wealth. Isn't that wealth just a sign also that God loves you in turn? And if that's true, wouldn't it also be true that those who don't have money are not loved by God, or are not working enough to worship God?"

Sin should be punished, not rewarded. The down-and-out caused their own poverty. 

The flipside -- the wealthy deserve what they have.

"I believe the American dream has become a pyramid scheme. I don't think it was always that way. I think the American dream used to be realizable by a huge and booming middle class, and that's been pilfered. We see this in a variety of ways — lobbying for tax breaks and removing regulations for risky behavior, moving manufacturing overseas. All these things that facilitated the redistribution of wealth occurred, in my opinion, because of this doctrine that work is holy and therefore wealth is a sign of being chosen and poverty is a sign of sin."

6. "How quickly and easily we fall into us-versus-them thinking."

"The first thing to acknowledge is that cults increase during times of crisis. Times of technological upheaval, social upheaval, general crisis, natural disasters -- all these things that cause someone's world to wobble and shift can lead us to cult-like thinking."

"When cult-like thinking is being utilized, it's usually by a demagogue who's just trying to activate people to behave in a way that benefits the person pushing those buttons."

"We evolved in kin-based communities, usually with one patriarch or small group of patriarchs in charge. Those kin-based communities had an instinct to fear outsiders, and they managed firm boundaries. Kin-based communities were and are very cult-like. We evolved as a species in these kinds of groups."

7. "An innate need for order, which makes us vulnerable to anyone screaming, 'Chaos!' and then offering control."

Sadist

 

Last Friday, what's left of Trump's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) slammed the door in North Carolina's face, saying that Gov. Josh Stein's request for an extension of 100% of the federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene were "not warranted."

The president and his henchmen have swept away so much that was good about the Federal government. They did so with relish, with obvious joy at the destruction. The man himself always gloats when he causes others much pain. Take his Oval Office ambushes of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Cyril Ramaphosa, meant to inflict the maximum of embarrassment and discomfort and actual anguish. That's what he loves: the embarrassment and discomfort and actual anguish of others.

We call that sadism, the delight in the pain that can be induced in others. I have little capacity for understanding why a man this twisted has become the idol of millions, worshipped not for his good deeds but for the size of other people's misery. Until we vote. Until we vote.

Until we vote I go to my garden and bury my hands in soil. On my knees I take care of plants. But don't be fooled by my kneeling posture, because I am only bending to nurture, not bending to the sadist, this evil, incredibly evil man. I am praying to all the earth gods and the sky gods to give me and every other resister in this nation the resolve to stand when the time comes and vote against every person who holds allegiance to that man by belonging to the same sadist party.

I know no other way to salvage any goodness in this world.

Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg

 

Reporting by David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton:

STERLING, Va.President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.

The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.

At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”

It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations....

Mr. Trump and his business partners organized the dinner to promote sales of his $TRUMP cryptocurrency, a memecoin launched just days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration. A memecoin is a type of digital currency tied to an online joke or mascot; it typically has no function beyond speculation. But Mr. Trump’s coins have become a vehicle for investors, including many foreigners, to funnel money to his family....

Maybe 2026 Will Be the Year of the Blue Collar

 

I tend to think that a lot of the Democrats’ problems can be solved through candidate recruitment, and just recruiting people who come from the communities that they want to represent, who sort of are fluent in the cultural norms of the places that they come from.

--Michelle Goldberg

Dan Osborn

Goldberg brought Nebraskan Dan Osborn to my attention. A tough ex-Navy and rock-hard union man whose social compact virtues make him also attractive to the Left (in a state where there's barely any Left left) -- he's liberal on abortion and on the rights of organized labor -- yet he ran for Federal office as a hard-nosed critic of both Democratic and Republican machines and said he agreed with Trump about the border and about confronting China. He presented as an irritable independent, a somewhat shocking emanation of working-class anger, running for US Senate in Nebraska in 2024 against a two-term Republican incumbent, Deb Fischer. No one took him seriously at first. The Democratic Party was initially more than merely cool toward him, but with no Democratic candidate on the ballot, the Party reportedly offered to endorse Osborn. Osborn rejected it. His determination not to be beholden to any damn clique was the final straw for the Democratic Party establishment, but many registered Democrats nevertheless discreetly flocked to his campaign. Osborn became a phenomenal money-raiser -- almost $8 million, just from out-of-state donors alone. How did he do that? (And by the way and to give away the ending, Osborn scared the wits out of Sen. Fischer and took 46.52% of the vote in 2024. He's already formed a campaign to try again in '26 against the other incumbent Republican Senator, Pete Ricketts.) 

Osborn set out to hold a series of at least two and possibly three in-person events in every single county in Nebraska, getting out among the people in a way his Republican opponent never did. The breakthrough came in September, in the heat of the campaign. A new poll suddenly put Osborn ahead of Fischer, turning a lot of heads. Boom! Osborn is appearing in a lengthy interview on MSNBC, and everybody wants to get him on camera. Money came in.

A beneficent cash-flow allows you to compete, and Osborn didn't pull punches in his TV ads.

Not only is Osborn running again in '26 -- a recent 2025 poll showed him leading the incumbent Ricketts -- but he's also now financing other authentic working-class candidates with a new PAC, the Working Class Heroes Fund, aimed at candidate recruitment, whether Republican, Independent, or Democratic. The Fund is "dedicated to uniting and mobilizing working people across party lines to give the working class a seat at the table" (website).

 

Shit-Canning Donald J. Trump

 

The most common modern usage of “86” is as a verb, meaning to throw out, dismiss or eject. Customers who are tossed out of an establishment for being too drunk, having a history of walking out on the check or generally acting obnoxious, for example, are said to be 86’d.

--"What Does '86' Mean?" 

Former FBI Director James Comey took a photo of some shells arranged on a beach and understood it as a political message about Donald J. Trump. He posted the picture. The MAGA crowd went nuts, including Watauga Watch's own resident troll Wolf's Head. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, who oversees the Secret Service, described the post on Thursday as a “threat” and a call to assassinate Trump. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said on Fox News that Comey should be put behind bars. By Friday, the Secret Service had launched an investigation and interviewed Comey in D.C. FBI Director Kash Patel said his agency would “provide all necessary support” as part of the investigation.

The accusations are preposterous bullshit. This isn't about anything but the suppression of speech and Trump's "retribution" tour to get even with people who have crossed him or proved insufficiently subservient.

Pot, meet kettle. Last year Trump posted a video on social media showing an image of President Joe Biden tied up in the back of a truck, a much more direct and palpable threat of violence against a sitting president. Did the Biden Justice Department rush to open an investigation over that speech?

Bi-partisanship Worth Praise

 

I'm a partisan Democrat. Never tried to deny it. My druthers are totally out in the open. But I hope I'm not a "partisan hack" -- one of those robotic hatchet-men who can always be depended on to cheerlead the Party, no matter how wack, and attack the other side, no matter how sensible and sane. Partisan as I am, I know a really good bi-partisan deed when I see one.

The best recent example: The agreement between the Watauga County Commission and the Boone Town Council to build a bridge at Brookshire Park to link the county's walking path with the Town's 30 acres of public land, which will have trails and plantings along the South Fork of the New River. A good idea, well executed.

Chair Braxton Eggers led the initiative on the County Commission, and Boone Mayor Pro Tem Dalton George led the Town Council. This proposed new infrastructure will benefit the wide population who enjoy the outdoors at Brookshire Park and the adjacent soccer fields.

This Is Worth Watching

 

Back in April, Democrat Nathan Sage beat everybody to the punch by announcing his candidacy first in what might end up being a crowded Democratic primary to take on veteran Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst in '26. I've kinda had a thing for Iowa Democratic candidates on this site for years now. (Don't believe me -- use the search engine, upper left.) Nathan Sage catches my attention for this: "He said his campaign will be about repairing the party’s connection to working-class voters" (Iowa Public Radio). 

Sage's introductory video is both a vindication of working-class as a valuable designator and a sort of bitch-slapping of establishment Democratic attitudes -- a direct challenge to a ruling class that looks down on blue-collar grunts. "We built the damn table," Sage says. "We need a seat at it!"

Sage doesn't talk like an establishment Dem, doesn't look like an establishment Democrat. He projects a smart, bullshit-detecting analytical understanding of exactly how the deck has been stacked against workers.  And Sage's video production reminds us what a little early campaign money can buy (money, which is often the hurdle for any brilliant working-class candidate, like for example Darren Staley who ran as a Democrat for the NC Senate down in Wilkes last fall -- Senate Dist. 36, one of the most heavily Republican districts in the state. If Darren had only had the early money like Nathan Sage clearly does!)

He's Rotten to the Core

 

How long will citizens accept the brazenness of his self-interest and obvious corruption?

Headlined this morning in the WashPost: "Trump’s Middle East trip marked by potential private business conflicts -- The Trump Organization has entered into real estate deals in all three countries the president plans to visit this week."

President Donald Trump kicks off the first major international trip of his second term Tuesday in a region where his family business has grown significantly in recent months, presenting his administration with more potential conflicts of interest than ever.

The president’s sons, who head the Trump Organization, have spent the past few weeks crisscrossing the Middle East, laying the groundwork for deals that will benefit the company and, in some instances, Trump himself. Government watchdogs, presidential historians and other critics say it is an escalation of unethical and even unconstitutional conflicts between the interests of the United States and its president.

 

If You Think Trump Is Greedy and Corrupt, Get a Load of Elon!

Interesting intel in a series of posts on BSky by @altnps, an anonymous Federal worker in the National Park Service:

Elon Musk’s regulatory troubles [with Federal regulators]? Vanishing fast. Since Trump returned to the White House, federal agencies that once scrutinized Musk’s empire are being gutted or redirected. At the USDA, Trump fired the official investigating Neuralink.

At the CFPB [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] and beyond, Trump and Musk allies are slashing staff weakening regulators that once held Tesla and X accountable. In recent months, Trump’s DOJ dropped a case against SpaceX. Labor Department canceled a civil rights review of Tesla.

And a separate SpaceX case is quietly moving into settlement talks with the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board]. Meanwhile, more than 40 other federal investigations into Musk have gone silent with no public updates in months. It’s starting to look less like oversight and more like a cover-up.

 

What's the Good of Public Corruption?

 

On January 25, 2021, the Supreme Court put an end to lawsuits alleging that President Donald Trump violated a constitutional anti-corruption prohibition by profiting from his business empire while in office -- particularly from that big luxury hotel in DeeCee a few steps from the White House where foreign governments rented very expensive blocks of rooms, drank over-priced cocktails in the lounge, and ate not very good but super-dear food in the restaurant. The Supreme Court declined to answer whether Trump's private profit amounted to a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, declaring the issues moot because Trump had been thrown out of office. In other words, the stupid Supremes opened the door to massive new corruption. Plus they thoughtfully decided that a second coming of Trump could never be charged with crimes. 

Right now today this very minute...

Anyone, including foreign actors, can enrich the Trumps by buying up shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social, or through any of the family’s several cryptocurrency schemes.

Also now:

So how can the royal family of Qatar give Trump a $400 million “flying palace” of a plane, one that will act as Air Force One during his presidency but remain his afterward?

I have no appetite for the shit being dished by that man, and I'll be damned and split hell wide open if even sizable parts of MAGA also have a sensible big problem with public corruption, particularly when it's so spectacularly open. 

My God, people!

Corruption Does Not Slack Off. Corruption Does Not Sleep

The breath-taking, totally-out-in-the-open grift and graft of Trump 2.0 has not yet come into focus for far too many low-info voters. So I'm especially grateful for compilations like this one by Heather Digby Parton:

Politics was immensely lucrative for the Trump family during the first term, but that looks like chicken feed compared to what they're doing now. This time it's no holds barred, straight-up grift and corruption in the billions, featuring foreign governments, sleazy scam artists and a big play in the arcane world of cryptocurrency.

Mind you, some things don't change: Trump is still promoting his properties every chance he gets. This time he's also involved in LIV Golf, which is also funded by the Saudis and holds several of its tournaments at Trump's golf resorts. Trump makes money from the tournaments coming and going, both as an investor and as the host. It's a sweet little grift that gives the Saudi sponsors an easy way to stuff more money into Trump's pockets. But honestly, that's nothing compared to the rest of Trump's ongoing involvement in the Middle East....

But that's not where the real action is. The Trump sons are heavily involved in crypto and are using every bit of their access to make some serious bucks. Lipton and company have reported extensively on their play with the presidential memecoin called $TRUMP, which seems like a quick and dirty con that has resulted in thousands of ordinary people losing lots of money while Trump and a few other investors made a bundle. Now they've taken it to another level, holding an auction in which whoever buys the most craptastic coins gets to have dinner with Trump and a select few get to visit the White House. This could hardly be a more obvious way for rich people to siphon money directly into Trump's coffers, and so much more convenient than a paper bag full of cash.

And then there's the Trump-owned crypto company, World Liberty Financial. Its co-founders, alongside Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., include the son of real estate magnate Steve Witkoff, who happens to be Trump's designated envoy to Russia, Israel, Iran and almost everywhere else. These guys have their hands different areas of the crypto world, but World Liberty's primary goal is to get the type of cryptocurrency called a stablecoin officially recognized as a legitimate financial instrument.

Trump has called on Congress to pass something called the GENIUS Act, which would do just that. Immediately thereafter, World Liberty started selling its own stable coin known as USD1; its price went through the roof, netting the Trumps another bundle. At the time, it was widely assumed that Congress would going to pass the law, but after the reporting in the Times, Democrats who'd previously backed it balked (along with a couple of Republicans) and this week the bill failed in the Senate. Apparently the stench of Trump at both ends of this deal — as the regulator in chief and the financier being regulated — was just too pungent.

 

Our Stable Genius

 

Kai Ryssdal

‪@kairyssdal.bsky.social‬

I just really need everybody to understand that everything that’s happening in and to the global economy now (and all the businesses and people in it) is the entirely predictable result of the intentional decisions of one guy who doesn’t understand how the global economy works.

May 10, 2025 at 10:53 AM

How an Ulcerated Board of Elections (Mis)Behaves

 

Four Eggers

Video surfaced of the grim closing moments of yesterday's meeting of the new State Board of Elections. "New" in the hair-raising sense that it's now and very suddenly dominated by a 3-2 Republican majority (counting Watauga's Four Eggers) --  all appointed by a newly elected Republican hack Council of State member, Auditor Dave Boliek, just because the Republicans in the General Assembly still have a lot of revenge flowing through their capillaries, and they love torturing our new Democratic governor.

The moment the video memorializes is immediately after the Republican majority has terminated the employment of SBOE Exec. Dir. Karen Brinson Bell, who has run the operation only since June 2019 and who has been attacked by right-wing election deniers as a partisan Democratic operator, which is absurd. By every metric Brinson Bell was even-handed and above-board, and I might remind the election deniers that it was under her six years directing elections that Republicans maintained and extended their hegemony in the General Assembly. (I realize the tit-for-tat history behind Brinson Bell's appointment in 2019: The Democratic majority summarily fired the Republican Exec. Dir. at the time, Kim Strach, who had also been a fair and even-handed administrator (IMO). So I get the revenge, even though I don't believe in it.

So ... teeing up the video ... Brinson Bell has just been fired. One of the Republicans quickly moves for adjournment, and Brinson Bell requests a minute of their time to make a comment on her tenure as executive director. Instead of saying a gentlemanly "sure you may speak!" Four Eggers quickly seconds the motion to adjourn, and the Republican members all stalk out, like milk cows going to stall, while Brinson Bell begins reading her statement.

Worried that blindly and maliciously partisan drones have taken over the administration of voting and of voters and of elections in North Carolina? You bet I'm worried. Here's a very serious open question involving the barest operation of any imagination: What would have happened in the Jefferson Griffin v. Allison Riggs case if the Four Eggers crowd had been in control the whole time? When Griffin first started his bizarre legal theorizing -- that elections can be overturned by rewriting the rules later -- he made his argument about throwing out 60,000+ ballots first to the State Board of Elections -- 3-2 Democratic at the time -- which quickly rejected Griffin's arguments as belonging in the "You've Got To Be Kidding Me!" bin.