Steele's 2006 False Advertising

Via Joshua Micah Marshall ... one of the yard signs that "proud Republican" Michael Steele used in 2006 in his run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

Limbaugh: "This Was All About Race"

Michael Steele, the new Chair of the Republican National Committee (who, incidentally, has been known to pal around with Republicans), said yesterday after his election, "This is the dawn of a new party moving in a new direction with strength and conviction."

Mummies on the march!

Steele also said, somewhat cryptically, "We're going to say to friend and foe alike: 'We want you to be a part of us, we want you to be with us.' And for those who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over."

Obstructionists? Was he talking about Republican members of Congress? Did he clear those remarks with Rush?

Steele's an interesting politician. A black Republican in the heavily Democratic state of Maryland, he was elected lieutenant governor of the state partly by posing as a Democrat. Really. He used bamboozlement. And his campaign recruited homeless men and women from Philadelphia (twice) to hand out flyers on election day that identified him as a "Democrat."

Steele was supposedly the most moderate of the candidates running yesterday, but he has struck poses that look remarkably similar to the far right. During his failed Senate campaign in 2006, he said stem cell research was like Nazi experimentation.

He didn't say a word, however, about the morality of reanimating the dead.

The New Republican Party Chair

As predicted down-column, it's Michael Steele on the 6th ballot.

Came down to a contest between Steele and South Carolina's Katon Dawson, who was apparently the favorite of the party's most conservative elements.

One North Carolina conservative sounds unhappy at the prospect of Michael Steele, whom she labels a "squishy moderate" and then a "main street Republican" (apparently, that's a bad thing) but then backpedals and says she's happy happy happy to have any new chair of the Mummy Party.

Looks like a lot of the same old dust to us. But time will tell, as it always does with mummies.

Unemployment in Watauga

The Employment Security Commission of North Carolina released new out-of-work figures for every county in the state today, and Watauga's unemployment went up from 5.1 (Nov. 2008) to 5.7 percent in December ... a much smaller increase than in several other counties. North Carolina counties with unemployment rates over 10 percent exactly doubled, from 17 counties in November to 34 counties in December.

Worst city for jobs: Rocky Mount, with 11.7 percent unemployment.

Best city for jobs: Durham, with 6.1 percent unemployment.

Furloughs Coming to ASU?

UNC President Erskine Bowles says he's going to ask for authority to furlough university employees in response to cuts in state appropriations. The Chancellor of NC State jumped in and said that "faculty leaders" at his institution are willing to volunteer for unpaid furloughs in order to save support staff jobs. Mighty nice of 'em.

Hard times comin' for the North Carolina higher education workforce ... as for everyone else.

Meanwhile, Virginia Foxx and the Mummy Party say (a) the American economy can still basically take care of itself and (b) it's all the Democrats' fault.

The Head Mummy

The Mummy Party is supposed to be choosing its Head Mummy today at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting. According to The Politico, incumbent RNC Chairman Mike Duncan is in the lead, followed by former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele and South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson, with Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell far back. Former Tennessee Republican Chair Chip Saltsman, he of "Barack the Magic Negro" fame, dropped out of the race yesterday (bless his heart).

We're betting on Michael Steele to win. Republicans may feel that they need their OWN magic Negro to counter-balance President Obama.

Not that any of this matters very much. Whoever becomes the new Republican Chair will have to answer to the REAL party boss, Rush Limbaugh, who's already decreed that President Obama must be made to fail at all costs. Madam Virginia Foxx and all the other little Republican foxes in the House instantly obeyed their leader and voted for Obama's failure in the stimulus bill. Even Congressman Phil Gingrey of Georgia was forced to apologize to The Great One for asking him to pipe down about hoping for Obama's failure. You DO NOT cross the Limbaugh!

All of which is yummy pudding for Rush's fragile ego.

Perdue Will Stand Strong for Abortion Rights

The Guv told a breakfast of Lillian's List supporters in Raleigh, "North Carolina is going to be a state where choice is safe under my watch."

Not that anybody in the know is predicting that an anti-choice act could get out of committee in either the NC House or the Senate, but still, it's good to hear.

Strip Tease

The Charlotte Observer, in a series of investigative reports last year, found that NC Commissioner of Labor Cherie Berry was NOT enforcing workplace safety laws, preferring rather to be "cooperative" with big business, meaning, she preferred to cover both eyes with her hands while simultaneously pinching her nose closed.

Sen. Doug Berger has introduced a bill that would strip Berry of her (unused) authority to enforce workplace safety. Berger's bill would transfer that power instead to the Employment Security Commission.

We applaud that proposed law. Anything that removes that particular hairball from the state's plumbing would be welcome.

The Mummy Party

We were on the road to Raleigh (and beyond) when the House voted on the stimulus package and didn't get any state papers into our hands until this a.m. We were not at all surprised that NOT ONE SINGLE Republican voted with the president nor that 11 Blue Dogs jumped off the porch and went hunting with a strange pack of flea-eaten hound dogs.

Eventually, we figger, President Obama's gonna learn who he's dealing with.

Le'ssee here ... the American people rejected Republican economic policies in both 2006 and 2008, wrapped up that whole philosophy in surgical bandages and buried the whole shebang in a deep crypt, yet the Republican remnant in the U.S. House (along with those bright Blue Dogs) are stubborn in demanding that the president and the rest of us just lie back and accept more Bushian economics ... more tax cuts for the rich, more enabling of corporate robber barons, more deregulation, and unless we accept a continuation of what they've been doing since 2001, and accelerate it, they're not going to cooperate. Big freakin' surprise!

This a.m., Madam Virginia Foxx is quoted in the Raleigh N&O. Foxx is busily rewriting history and twisting logic out of all recognizable shape. She says that "President George Bush's signature tax cuts in 2001 had spawned years of growth, but the nation's problems started when Democrats regained majorities in Congress in the 2006 elections." With this abysmal representative, it's always the Democrats' fault, and the year is ALWAYS 1929.

We guessed (before we could confirm it) that Heath Shuler (NC 11) was one of those 11 Blue Dog Democrats, and he was. Even Mike McIntyre (NC 7), one of the most dependably Republican of "Democratic" representatives, voted with President Obama. Shuler, evidently, likes hanging with the Foxx.