![]() |
Dan Crenshaw (R) |
"There is absolutely no way that Donald Trump will be seen -- he will not let himself go down in history as having sold out to Putin. He will not let that happen."
Up-to-date analysis of the local political landscape
![]() |
Dan Crenshaw (R) |
Pactiv Evergreen closed the Canton paper mill in 2023, a year and a half earlier than the company had agreed to under an economic development deal with the state that included millions of dollars in incentives.
![]() |
Sheriff Sam Page |
Multiple people had tried to talk Page, who's been sheriff in Rockingham since 1998, to run against Berger last year over Berger's`apparent corrupt pushing of new gambling casinos, one of which was planned for Rockingham.
Page is as self-righteous as Berger is complacently unethical, so it might prove to be an interesting contest.
quid pro quo -- Latin, literally, "something for something"; in English, noun, a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something.
![]() |
Danielle Sassoon, an honest lawyer who resisted Trump's corruption of justice |
As previously noted here, Eric Adams has been sucking up to Trump like a groveling underling who knows he's destined for prison. In pre-trial conferences, according to Sassoon, the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the [DOJ’s] enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.” Those "enforcement priorities" primarily apply to the capture and deportation of undocumented immigrants. New York City has laws that make it a so-called "sanctuary city," which simply means that it demands due process: The New York Police Department can only work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when it comes to a criminal detainer, which is ordered by a judge. Adams, to please the man who has control over the Justice Department, had decided to allow ICE agents into the city's jail on Riker's Island to arrest and deport anyone with a funny name.
![]() |
Emil Bove III |
When Sassoon, a very conservative lawyer in good standing with the Federalist Society, wouldn't perform the corrupt dismissal of charges against Adams, Bove moved the indictment to the Public Corruption section of the Department of Justice and demanded that the ranking officials there dismiss the charges. Five more lawyers (at last count) also resigned rather than carry out the corruption. It was a Thursday night massacre.
As far as I can tell neither Bove nor Bondi has been able to find a chump lawyer to dismiss the charges against Adams, and the knowledge of Trump's outrageous corruption of the DOJ is blossoming beyond his ability to contain it.
UPDATE
When Emil Bove couldn't brow-beat any career prosecutors to sign the motion to dismiss the charges against Eric Adams, he was forced to sign the motion himself (according to the NYTimes). The motion for dismissal still has to go to the judge overseeing the Adams case in Manhattan.
![]() |
Irony is dead |
Okay, the mandate for today: Understand everything possible about Charlie Kirk.
![]() |
The King's Touch |
Kirk was among a select group at Trump’s private party two days before the inauguration at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia. The night before Trump was sworn in, Turning Point hosted a black-tie gala at which some 1,500 attendees paid from $5,000 to $15,000 (with some V.I.P.s paying more) to be in the company of Trump luminaries including Vance; Trump’s nominee for director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel; and Don Jr., who described Kirk onstage as “one of the true rock stars of this movement.” The following evening, an S.U.V. ferried Kirk from one inaugural ball to the next. Two days later, he was visiting the 47th president in the White House — and again the day after that.
New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, had been charged by Federal prosecutors with bribery, fraud, and the solicitation of illegal foreign campaign donations. The case was set to go to trial in the spring. But hold on, Snoopy, because Trump's Justice Department just ordered New York prosecutors to drop the cases against Adams.
Boy howdy! How flattery of Trump seems always to pay off for some of the worst people in the nation.
Adams began sucking up to Trump immediately after the November elections, clearly angling for a presidential pardon for his money-grubbing in forbidden places and the fraud that went with it. Adams got himself to Mar-a-Lago even before the Inauguration, Jan. 17th, to kiss ass and heap appalling praise on the man who could -- and as it turns out, did -- save his ass from prosecution for crimes against civic integrity.
Yesterday, Trump's Justice Department ordered the prosecutors in Manhattan to drop their charges against Adams, who had, incidentally, stepped up his ass-kissing campaign substantially, meekly meeting with Trump's border czar, apparently promising to help deliver on demand his quota of illegal brown people into the gentle hands of ICE. And just yesterday, before Trump's DOJ demanded the charges be dropped, Adams was telling other high officials of NYCity not to criticize the king -- whatever the hell you do!
Does public corruption ever get more ... uh, public? Flatter the effing king, and he might just kill a fat goose for you.
Presidents Trump and Musk have merged their cult followings, attention addictions, conspiratorial mind-sets, disinformation artistry, disdain for the Constitution, talent for apocalyptic marketing and jumping-from-thing-to-thing styles.
--Maureen Dowd, "Musk’s Lost Boys and Trump’s Mean Girls," NYTimes
Musk has employed his flying wedge of 20-something hipster lords of the new universe. “Muskrats,” career bureaucrats call them, who are themselves referred to as the “dinosaurs” by the Muskrats in their campaign to rifle every government computer system. Some of the Muskrats have become infamous: "A 19-year-old with the internet pseudonym 'Big Balls' lost an earlier internship for leaking company secrets; a 25-year-old was ousted over racist posts. He wrote on X, 'I was racist before it was cool,' and 'You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,' and 'Normalize Indian hate.' Even though he is married to an Indian American, Vice President J.D. Vance rescued the 'kid,' as he called him, and helped him get his job back."Trump loves to be admired by the elites, and he adores money. Musk has gotten the keys to the American kingdom so he can attack “the woke mind virus,” which Musk says “killed” his “son,” who transitioned as a teenager. Both men are driven by revenge to smash up the government.
More than 40 lawsuits seeking to stop Donald J. Trump's ExecOrder fantasies have been filed since January 20th by state attorneys general, unions, and nonprofits. As a result, judicial orders in nine Federal court cases will, for a time, partially bind the administration’s hands -- at least on paper. Those things Trump sought illegally to do include ending automatic citizenship for babies born to undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil; transferring transgender female inmates to male-only prisons; potentially exposing the identities of FBI personnel who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; coaxing federal workers to accept “deferred resignation” under a tight deadline; and freezing as much as $3 trillion in domestic spending -- all those ExecOrders are now enjoined by judges.
Last December, before Earth went wobbly on its spindle, the US Department of the Treasury wrote a letter to Congress informing it that a Chinese intelligence group had broken into its systems and stolen unclassified material. "A full assessment of that damage has not been made public. But it was a reminder that the Treasury Department — as much as the Pentagon and its contractors, the C.I.A. and the White House — is high on Beijing’s target list" (David E. Sanger, NYTimes).
Outside experts have described, in detail, what could happen when an outsider gains sudden access to a locked-down system: Personal data could leak, payments could be diverted and information about political rivals could be collected.
Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert at Harvard and the author of a series of books on security vulnerabilities, including “Click Here to Kill Everybody,” called the entry of Mr. Musk’s force “the most consequential security breach” in American history.
Mr. Schneier noted that the intrusion came “not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role.” ...
“Hostile intelligence services are likely already at work trying to assess which Musk team members might be sloppy with their digital devices or vulnerable to entrapment or coercion.” (NYTimes)
Wired magazine named six of Musk's "Spartans" (as they like to call themselves, mythologizing their own personal pains), ranging in age from 19 to 24. They've been raised all their life on computers and social media, which means sarcasm and spite, so what could possibly go wrong giving them full access to all our information?
Wake County Special Superior Court Judge William Pittman rejected Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to overturn his 734-vote loss to Justice Allison Riggs in last year’s state Supreme Court race on Friday, ruling that the State Board of Elections had not erred when it dismissed his challenge in December.
Subhead sez, "The decision isn’t the end of legal battles over the state Supreme Court race, but it is a setback for Griffin’s effort to throw out thousands of votes." All of the issues will eventually meld together before the NC Supreme Court led by partisan Republican Paul Newby.
Griffin has gone largely into hiding since he launched his highly irregular attempt to overturn the last election. But he was present Friday in Judge Pittman's court -- blue suit, yellow tie.
![]() |
A king needs lots of (fake) gold |
So yesterday Jethro announced he would be firing the current Kennedy Center board of directors and installing himself as chair. "Real tinpot dictator stuff," commented Molly Jong-Fast on Blue Sky. My gawd! Don't you see the moments coming when he enters the Presidential Box for a big gala performance like the Emperor Commodus entering the Coliseum to the cheers of the bread-'n'-circuses chumps.
Trump always needs a fig leaf to cover up the embarrassing details of his naked ego. In his announcement yesterday, he hilariously blamed drag shows that "corrupt our youth" (thought that was his job!) for his seizing of the Kennedy Center. All sorts of community events happen at the Kennedy Center in addition to the high art of opera, symphony, dance, and the Kennedy Center has hosted events specifically for LGBTQ youth in the DeeCee Metro area. How convenient a "cause" for a man who needs grandiosity to prove he exists, so Trump feigns outrage! I tell you, he's outraged. So much so that he's prepared to install his own gaudy lack of taste and tacky pursuit of gilded elegance into the character and the programming of the Center.
Hard pass.
![]() |
Emil Bove III. Is the face a reflection of the soul? |
"At no time has Mr. Bove offered evidence those he targeted had done anything improper, illegal or unethical. Instead he has cited the president’s authority under the Constitution." (NYTimes)
MUMPS (the "Musk-Trump Syndicate" -- that's what Thomas Mills calls the junta currently wrecking the furniture and derailing actual human lives) caused the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to abruptly withdraw financial support for testing in clinical trials (in Africa among other places) of new health-care devices and medicines. MUMPS issued a stop-work order to all organizations around the globe that receive its money. ("The abrupt move followed an executive order by President Trump freezing all foreign aid for at least 90 days. Since then, the Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the agency entirely.") (NYTimes)
The Times focused some reporting on just a few of the persons impacted negatively by this stupidity. Like the 22-year-old woman in South Africa who was participating in a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection -- a device that was surgically inserted into her vagina which required constant monitoring.
In interviews with Times reporters, scientists — "who are forbidden by the terms of the stop-work order to speak with the news media — described agonizing choices: violate the stop-work orders and continue to care for trial volunteers, or leave them alone to face potential side effects and harm."
Not just stupid, but cruel too, and totally irresponsible with other people's lives and health.
The United States is signatory to the Declaration of Helsinki that lays out ethical principles under which medical research must be conducted, requiring that researchers care for participants throughout a trial, and report the results of their findings to the communities where trials were conducted.
malaria treatment in children under age 5 in Mozambique
treatment for cholera in Bangladesh
a screen-and-treat method for cervical cancer in Malawi
tuberculosis treatment for children and teenagers in Peru and South Africa
nutritional support for children in Ethiopia
early-childhood-development interventions in Cambodia
ways to support pregnant and breastfeeding women to reduce malnutrition in Jordan
an mRNA vaccine technology for H.I.V. in South Africa
These protests appear to be largely spontaneous. Tillis needs to be confronted by his craven obeisance to King Trump.
![]() |
Paul Garber for WFDD |
![]() |
Snotnose |
Gable is an Onslow County Republican who just won election to his first term in November as a 22-year-old East Carolina University student.
Did he not realize the enthusiastic participation by Republican voters in early voting last November? Republicans have caught on to the pleasures that they had eschewed because early voting had been such a consistent practice among Democrats. But Republicans out-voted Democrats in 2024 early voting by over 166,000.
Yet genius Gable wants to inconvenience everyone. Republicans don't seem capable of pausing their assault on voting rights, even when a particular option has greatly favored them.
On January 21st, the day after Donald Jethro Trump issued an executive order supposedly changing the Constitution to deny citizenship to any person born in these United States, NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined 20 other attorneys general to file a lawsuit in DeeCee seeking to block the "flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands [of] American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage."On Wednesday, Feb. 5, three North Carolina Senate Republicans -- Tim Moffitt, Eddie Settle, and Bobby Hanig -- filed a bill to restrict Jeff Jackson, from suing to block any flagrantly unlawful presidential executive orders and from taking legal action against any bills passed by the General Assembly.
Monday, February 17, 4-6 p.m.
Hatchett Coffee, 150 Den Mac Drive, East Boone
Here's the link for registering to attend: https://www.mobilize.us/commoncause/event/753571/
On February 5th (yesterday), the U.S. Department of State published this on its Facebook page:
That announcement came after not one but two new Jethro lapdogs, Little Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, met with Panamanian officials over Low T's threat to take back the Canal and his complaints that Panama charged too much for passage through.
This morning the President of Panama, Jose Raul Mulino, said that was a big fat honking lie (and by implication, Marco and Hegseth are little eager bitches who hit "SEND" too quickly). Speaking to journalists, Mulino expressed his "absolute rejection" of the US State Department's announcement. "Mulino said he had told U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday that he could neither set the fees to transit the canal nor exempt anyone from them and that he was surprised by the U.S. State Department's statement suggesting otherwise."
And by the way, Fat Boy, the Canal is the property of Panama and is not up for sale, lease, or gifting.
![]() |
Gov. Stein in Boone recently. Noah Williford, The Appalachian |
In December, when Roy Cooper was still governor, the legislature went back into session, supposedly to address the needs of hurricane victims. Instead, they used the time to strip power from Democrats who won seats on the Council of State in November. They shuffled money around from existing funds but refused to allocate additional resources to the region.
As Republican Representative Mark Pless told The Assembly at the time, “The disaster portion of it doesn’t do anything …. [I]t was just moving money from one account to another without actually appropriating it for anything.”
Stein's request included grants to businesses wiped away or severely damaged by Helene, but Berger/Hall's bill prohibits grants to businesses. Bastards. I know of at least one thriving landscaping business in western Watauga that was totally wiped out -- greenhouses, equipment, plants, the whole livelihood. FEMA does not give disaster money to businesses. It's up to the state. And those Republican SOBs think they can get away with turning their backs on some 30 majorly Republican counties they consider "theirs."
At least Gov. Stein engineered a public-private fund of some $30 million to help businesses specifically, but that's a mere drop in the bucket. A small Kubota front-end loader, back-end digger will run you over $80,000.
We saw Pam Bondi the mean girl coming a mile off -- that polished gleam of pure contempt for everyone not blond enough. Or not trumpy enough.
Within hours of being sworn in as US Attorney General, Bondi sent a memo to all employees at the Department of Justice that the goal formerly known as impartial justice is now replaced by "whatever Trump wants," and any lawyer previously sworn to uphold the Constitution is now expected to uphold Donald Jethro Trump. Anyone who resists the whims of Trump will be harshly dealt with:
“Any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law,” Bondi wrote in a memo.
It's every bit as bad as we all predicted: Trump has guaranteed himself a secret police force to serve his ambitions and a complacent and compliant justice department to wink approvingly. He is hollowing out our government and replacing it with a cow he can milk. Jethro often vowed on the campaign trail that he would use the Justice Department to exact retribution on his political enemies. It's happening. We have our petty tyrant, served slavishly by his ass-kissers.
The complete 20-minute briefing Congressman Jamie Raskin gave Brian Tyler Cohen on the coup happening in real time. Watch it.
...in the House, Republicans have largely taken on the role of cheerleaders .... Competition of sorts has broken out for whom the Republican base will see as the most pro-Trump member.
--Luke Broadwater, NYTimes
Representative Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) filed legislation to make President Trump eligible for a third term. In one of his first acts in office, freshman Addison McDowell (R-NC) submitted a bill that would change the name of Washington Dulles International Airport to Donald J. Trump International Airport. McDowell said he wanted to put Mr. Trump on "even standing" with former President Ronald Reagan, who has a D.C. airport named after him. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), filed legislation to expunge the two impeachments of Trump, an attempt to clear the record of any mention of his alleged offenses and make it as if the impeachments “had never passed the full House of Representatives.” And just last week, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) submitted a bill to add Trump’s scowling likeness to Mount Rushmore, placing him alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
“It shows the power that Donald Trump has within the Republican Party these days, and that Republican members want to stay on his good side,” said Sean M. Theriault, government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “A lot of these people are in really safe districts, but they’re also thinking about what their next step is. And so if they have designs on being in the Senate or running for governor or even a position in the administration, then there’s no better way to get on his good side than to do these over-the-top moves toward him.”
Ms. Greene, for instance, has traveled with Mr. Trump so extensively that she feels she knows what he wants before he asks for it. When Mr. Trump proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, Ms. Greene was quick to file legislation on the topic.
“I’ve spent the past five years traveling the country with President Trump, campaigning for him, going to probably more rallies than any member of Congress, and I know how he thinks. I know what’s on his heart, and I know his agenda for America,” she said, adding: “So being quick on those things, it’s not difficult.”
Bottomline: Kiss the tyrant's Gucci feet, you get definite rewards. For example, Marjory Taylor Greene has gone from a virtual pariah deemed unfit to hold a committee seat to the chair of a new subcommittee aimed at cutting government spending. Last week, federal prosecutors in Nashville withdrew from a criminal investigation into Ogles that he said was focused on his campaign finance transactions.
Equal justice under law? Naw. Not for the ass-smoochers, especially for those valiant few who get up right next the hole, where it's black and red and bitter.
Laura Saavedra Forero, a UNC senior, a neuroscience major, and until very recently, part of the prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholarship program, was told on Jan. 6 (a date that already lives in infamy), that the Morehead-Cain Trustees had decided to terminate her scholarship.
In her application [for the Morehead-Cain], Saavedra Forero said she wrote about her activism, citing her work surrounding climate justice, the Black Lives Matter movement and for the Latino community in her area. She said in her interviews she talked openly about her use of “nonviolent direct action," her chosen form of protest method.
“I never hid who I was or what I did,” she said. “I always made it very clear, throughout my entire college application process, that if a program or a university did not want me for who I was at my core, and that is someone who organizes for the community, then I did not want to be there.”
But what really pissed off her superiors, all of whom are now either terrified of the partisanship of their governing boards or totally agreeable with suppressing dissent -- the activism that doomed her scholarship were her very loud protests of Israel's campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza, because evidently people like Virginia Foxx and her fellow travelers take a huge leap in equating any criticism of the Israeli government -- which has been a dick -- to "anti-semitism." I reject that.
But she started out as an advocate for handicapped access on campus:
When a broken elevator at her residence hall left Saavedra Forero [who depends on a wheelchair] stuck in her dorm room for 32 hours, she mobilized press and campus activists to start a years-long campaign calling for more accessibility at the University.
She subsequently crossed the apparent "redline" for the increasingly politicized bosses above her -- they are justifiably terrified of what the General Assembly might do next to hurt higher education -- when she organized a noisy protest of a appearance on campus of NC House Speaker Tim Moore, because of his meddling in university governance.
A Morehead-Cain scholarship official named Chris Bradford confronted Saavedra Forero over a graphic she had posted on her Instagram account, indicting Starbucks' pro-Israeli connections -- a bloody depiction of Palestinians being fed into a coffee grinder. That earned her a vague threat about her behavior, that it was under scrutiny. Saavedra Forero wasn't deterred, even though genocide in Gaza ... very verboten. She organized a protest with Starbucks Workers United outside of the Carolina Inn on Oct. 12, 2023. Bradford wrote her another email: “I am very clear that you have a right to free speech, and I do not believe that anyone has a right to not be offended,” he wrote in his email. “But I am equally clear that this scholarship is a privilege, and that the behavior of scholars should be a model for the behavior of others on campus.” Free speech as long as the new political correctness isn't offended.“I think there was a moment in time where Laura's boldness went from inspiring to threatening the Foundation,” they said. “And their only understanding of how to react was to assert dominance in this relationship, which is to remind Laura that she is being paid ... by the Foundation.”
Yesterday Donald Jethro Trump proposed taking over the Gaza strip for the U.S., clearing out all 1.8 million Palestinians who actually survived Israel's bombing campaign, deporting them to "other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts." He actually said that. He pointed out the hearts of other peoples while having none himself -- a self-own if there ever was one.
With the Palestinians distributed to other countries, like foundlings left on the doorsteps of nunneries, Trump envisions something grandiose and befitting his thoroughly materialistic mind-set: "the Riviera of the Middle East." Jethro actually said those words too.
In other words, "level it!"
He wants to take this:
And turn it into this:
One thing you can say about Jethro: Like the scorpion in the fable of the frog, he's always true to his character. Which is vicious shit.
Brian Driscoll, the acting director of the F.B.I., has become an improbable symbol of quiet resistance toward the Justice Department’s campaign to single out F.B.I. employees who investigated the Jan. 6 riot.
--NYTimes, Feb. 5, 2025
![]() |
"Drizz" |
Drizz's demeanor has been celebrated at the FBI with artificially generated memes. One video, a compilation of scenes from the movie The Dark Knight Rises, portrays Driscoll as Batman doing battle with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Driscoll as unflappable. He was a special agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service in San Diego before joining the F.B.I. in 2007. His first assignment was in the New York office....
In 2011, he passed rigorous tryouts and was selected to the F.B.I.’s Hostage Rescue Team, a highly trained unit formed in the years after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972....
Former members of the rescue team said that Mr. Driscoll was dispatched in 2013 to Alabama, where they successfully rescued a 5-year-old boy who had been taken hostage in a bunker. He was a gunfighter on the blue squadron.
He also took part in a dangerous raid with U.S. commandos in May 2015 in Syria in the hopes of finding clues about Kayla Mueller, a young woman from Phoenix who was kidnapped by the Islamic State. (Ms. Mueller died in captivity.)
During the operation, Delta Force commandos killed a top militant leader and captured his wife. Mr. Driscoll later testified in a criminal trial in Northern Virginia about the evidence he collected at the scene, including a red laptop that the Islamic State had used to force Ms. Mueller to watch jihadist videos.
In 2020, Mr. Driscoll returned to New York, where he supervised terrorism cases in Africa, Western Europe and Canada. He then took over the Hostage Rescue Team in 2022, which handles the most dangerous missions inside the United States, like disabling a nuclear weapon or rescuing a hostage held by a terrorist.
He's a stand-up dude, and he's the type of government employee that might yet save some portion of the Republic from the tyrant.
BREAKING
"Mr. Trump has ordered the DOJ to conduct a review and purge of FBI personnel involved in these investigations and prosecutions [J6 and Mar-a-Lago documents]. This directive is unlawful and retaliatory, and violates the Civil Service Reform Act 5 U.S.C. §§2301 and 2303....
"Plaintiffs were instructed to fill out a survey that would identify their specific role in the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases. Some Plaintiffs were required to fill out the survey themselves, others were told that their supervisors would be filling out the form. Plaintiffs were informed that the aggregated information is going to be forwarded to upper management. Plaintiffs assert that the purpose for this list is to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer other adverse employment action. Plaintiffs reasonably fear that all or parts of this list might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution by the now pardoned and at-large Jan. 6 convicted felons. Defendant’s gathering, retention, and disclosure of Plaintiffs’ activities related the acts of former President Trump is a violation of Plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendments to the Constitution. It is also a violation of Plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment substantive and due process rights....
This is police-state shit.
Trump is building his own secret police force, and with Patel at the FBI, and Bondi at Justice, no one will ever tell him nay.