Did NC Somehow Elect a Non-MAGA Republican as Our Treasurer

 

NC Treasurer Brad Briner

Bryan Anderson has the scoop: Brad Briner calls Trump's tariffs a tax that hits us all, with only "bad choices" ahead:

Republican State Treasurer Brad Briner likened the president’s new tariffs to a corporate tax, and he sees more pain ahead. He said the tariffs will result in some combination of three outcomes for North Carolinians: Companies raising prices at consumers’ expense, companies cutting costs (and presumably payrolls) to protect their margins at the expense of workers, or companies accepting lower profits at the expense of investors.

“We don’t know if these tariffs will stick, or which of the three bad choices companies will make as a result,” Briner told The Assembly in a statement. “I also don’t think humpty dumpty can be put back together again. At the very least, countries and companies will be much more hesitant to trust that U.S. policy will remain constant, which slows decision making and lowers economic activity definitionally.”

 

January 6th Participant Becomes Apostle

 

Nathan Baer, Jan. 6th convicted participant

A week ago (April 1st), Kyle Perrotti published the most fascinating report on a pardoned January 6th rioter apostle, Nathan Baer. ("Not a rioter." He tells a fascinating story of being actually led to the front-lines of battle by the hand of Jesus, for the singular purpose of spreading peace.) Baer was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Macon County Republican Women's Club. He spoke for almost two hours -- a tale of his personal journey that had some of those women in tears by the end. 

Perrotti has a hell of a lead:

On Jan. 6, 2021, Nathan Baer stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C. On April 26, 2023, he was arrested in Asheville and hit with numerous charges. On April 5, 2024, he pleaded guilty to one felony and was sentenced to four months in federal prison. On Jan. 21 of this year, he was pardoned by President Donald Trump and released from incarceration. On March 19, he spoke to the Macon County Republican Women’s Club in Franklin. (Smoky Mountain Times)

I come away from the article understanding this man Baer as a visionary libertarian, and not a little paranoid, seeing Jesus in all things and understanding the whole world otherwise as a giant ganging up that must be opposed. Baer told those Republican women that "while he wanted to support Trump, it was also something bigger — it was a sort of calling to take a stand against the cabal he perceives has corrupted the whole political system. His talk, which seemed at some times like an academic lecture and others like a sermon, verged into moral philosophy and religion." 

Baer had become a fairly notorious fugitive before he was finally identified on Feb. 21, 2021, because of indisputable photos with Baer easily identifiable, front and center during the infamous "Tunnel assault" on the West Front of the Capitol. One photo shows him nearly nose-to-nose with Officer Michael Fanone. Another shows him hefting a police shield over his head to pass it forward to the frontline. Identified by a tip that a particular musical performer pictured on a Brooklyn theater's website bore a striking resemblance to Baer. Yep, Baer, an aspiring actor/singer. The FBI didn't arrive to arrest him in Asheville, where he was living with his sister, until June 2023. 

The infamous photo of Baer face-to-face with Officer Fanone

A singer? You bet! Baer apparently has an astounding baritone, "seeming to fill the room as if coming from a surround-sound stereo system." Baer punctuated his talk with resounding, a capella renditions of "America the Beautiful" and "How Great Thou Art," the old George Beverly Shea number guaranteed to put everyone in the right frame to receive the Lord. 

He veered into both the "visionary" and the Libertarian -- Ron Paul is his hero, "who showed me what godly courage means,” Baer said. He also served up a big slice of that inherent paranoia. He said he wasn't so opposed to Obama and Hillary as he was on his guard against the “military industrial complex” (that old warhorse) nefariously running everything, running the bigwigs, running the economy. The reactions of the women: "Some topics, like how Wikileaks leader Julian Assange should be pardoned seemed to receive mixed results; some more obscure topics, like how a corrupt economic system based off the model used for the Bank of London has undermined the United States’ Hamiltonian economic system, seemed off people’s radars entirely."

Baer's saga about his few months' behind bars before Trump liberated him deepens the ambiguities. Perrotti:

There were cliques and gangs. Men would dominate others they perceived as weak. Some correctional officers were crooked and some were territorial. The thing Baer seemed to dislike most about prison was the lack of human connection; even looking someone in the eye is a faux pas worthy of immediate conflict. Callousness is a virtue and loneliness is the byproduct.

He began to teach singing to fellow inmates, making himself useful, fulfilling WWJD.

Every Prick Wants To Rewrite History; This Prick Did

 

Donald Jethro issued one of his ExecOrders late last month directing the Smithsonian Institution to eliminate “divisive narratives.” It's time to whitewash history, boys!

A Washington Post review of websites operated by the National Park Service — "among the key agencies charged with the preservation of American history — found that edits on dozens of pages since Trump’s inauguration have already softened descriptions of some of the most shameful moments of the nation’s past."

Some were edited to remove references to slavery. On other pages, statements on the historic struggle of Black Americans for their rights were cut or softened, as were references to present-day echoes of racial division. The Post compared webpages as of late March to earlier versions preserved online by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

Changes in images, descriptions and even individual words have subtly reshaped the meaning of notable moments and key figures dating to the nation’s founding — abolitionist John Brown’s doomed raid, the battle at Appomattox and school integration by the Little Rock Nine.

An educational page on Benjamin Franklin, which examined his views on slavery and his ownership of enslaved people, was taken offline last month. Mentions of Thomas Stone, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, owning enslaved people were removed from several pages on the website of the Stone National Historic site in Southern Maryland. ...

At the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, political appointees directed senior career officials to identify webpages that might need to be changed, according to two Park Service employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution....

For years, a National Park Service webpage introduced the Underground Railroad with a large photograph of its most famous “conductor,” Harriet Tubman. “The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage,” the page began.

Tubman’s photograph is now gone. In its place are images of Postal Service stamps that highlight “Black/White cooperation” in the secret network and that feature Tubman among abolitionists of both races.

The introductory sentence is gone, too. It has been replaced by a line that makes no mention of slavery and that describes the Underground Railroad as “one of the most significant expressions of the American civil rights movement.” The effort “bridged the divides of race,” the page now says.

 

Unpaid Protest

 

Posted on Twitter by @herotimeszero. I consider it a masterpiece of the genre:

MAGA is screaming that the anti-Trump protesters are all paid actors.

Just so I’m clear. The guy who was hated by his spouses for cheating, hated by his contractors for not paying, hated by his partners for lying, hated by his staff for being a bully, hated by his first administration, hated by his chiefs of staff, hated by his generals, hated by the intelligence community, hated by his “friends” with Trucker texting "I hate Trump passionately,” hated by Americans for ignoring a pandemic, inciting an insurrection, destroying our government, firing millions of Americans, stealing our retirement, torching our constitution, and crashing our economy, the guy is possibly the most hated man in America, if not the universe, and you think we need to get paid to loathe his vile slithering ass?

 

(Keep Your Thieving) HANDS OFF!

 

Forget the millions who turned out in the big cities yesterday to protest Trump 2.0. Look what was happening in the little towns. Impressive by any standard.

Photo by Donna Lisenby

Judge Toby Hampson Dissents

 

Judge Toby Hampson

Friday was a bad day on the thoroughly corrupt NC Court of Appeals. Two Republicans on a three-judge panel defied logic, agreed with the man who lost his race for the Supreme Court, and against all precedent ordered that some 61,682 challenged voters will have to prove their identities and their eligibility to vote last November. Last November. If any of those 61,682 voters don't get the message "to cure their votes" or otherwise don't answer to the demand, their votes will be thrown out. The Republican end-game, of course, is to declare Jefferson Griffin the winner.

Judge Toby Hampson, the 3rd justice hearing the case, dissented: 

To be clear: on the Record before us, Petitioner [Jefferson Griffin] has yet to identify a single voter—among the tens of thousands Petitioner challenges in this appeal—who was, in fact, ineligible to vote in the 2024 General Election under the statutes, rules, and regulations in place in November 2024 governing that election. Every single voter challenged by Petitioner in this appeal, both here and abroad, cast their absentee, early, or overseas ballot by following every instruction they were given to do so. Their ballots were accepted. Their ballots were counted. The results were canvassed. None of these challenged voters was given any reason to believe their vote would not be counted on election day or included in the final tallies. The diligent actions these voters undertook to exercise their sacred fundamental right to vote was, indeed, the same as every other similarly situated voter exercising their voting right in the very same election. Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution.