Republican "Family Values"

Republican Senatorial candidate in Missouri sez that "free enterprise" means it's perfectly all right to deny equal pay to women. Seriously.

Two "Yeah, Right!" Moments from the Morning's Papers

Full steam ahead with fracking in North Carolina. The new Mining & Energy Commission, which is supposed to oversee the controversial practice (and protect NC's water?), elected its own chair, the most unabashedly pro-fracking person on the new commission. Protect NC's water? Uh-huh.

Meanwhile, Big Pharma Dude Fred Eshelman, a principal funder of RightChange which smeared dozens of good men and women running for the NC General Assembly in 2010 (including our own Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss), tells the Wilmington Star-News that politics will have no place in his deliberations on two key University of North Carolina system committees. Uh-huh.

The Worms in the NC Higher Education Apple

Chris Fitzsimon actually attended the first meeting of the UNC Advisory Committee on Strategic Directions and wrote this report.

Nothing much happened yesterday, but I'm so glad that Chris Fitzsimon is on the case and will presumably be watch-dogging this particular bunch.

Q: Where Is Mitt Romney?

A: All over the map.

In Ohio, he muddles his tax message.

And now he's bragging about bringing socialized medicine to Massachusetts.

Joe Scarbrough: "O Sweet Jesus!"

I witnessed this moment on "Morning Joe" this a.m. and found Joe Scarbrough amazingly appropriate in his response.

The Outlook for Higher Education in NC

A group of 30 Big Heads with the portentous title "UNC Advisory Committee on Strategic Directions" is meeting for the first time today, and a student group has formed to protest the makeup of the committee, which is apparently charged with setting goals and directions for the 16-member University of North Carolina system.

The protesting student group, calling itself N.C. Student Power Union, is upset about the old, rich, white man  lack of diversity on the committee. There's only one student representative. There's only one faculty member representative. There's only one staff employee representative.

The N.C. Student Power Union didn't tell the half of what's wrong with that committee, seeing as how it also includes the power base of the NC Republican Party, particularly the ultra-right, Tea Party wing, the very people primarily responsible for the major, crippling budget cuts to the university system in the last two state budgets (both vetoed by Gov. Perdue, whose vetoes were overridden) and for the general weakening of all public education in the state.

Thom Tillis, Republican Speaker of the NC House, is on the committee.

Phil Berger, Republican NC Senate President Pro Tem, is on the committee.

Lew Ebert, President of the NC Chamber of Commerce, who is very actively supporting Tea Party darling Paul Newby for the NC Supreme Court, is on the committee.

Robert Ingram, former president & chief operating officer of GlaxoSmithKline, who according to OpenSecrets has given some $96,000 to Republican causes, is on the committee.

Fred Eshelman, a  Big Pharma mogul who principally funded RightChange in 2010 and who was therefore directly responsible for much of the sleaze that was directed at Cullie Tarleton and Steve Goss, is on the committee.

Art Pope, the prelate of predatory conservatism, the Death Star of the NC political universe, the Big Boss who bosses around Tillis and Berger (see above) and got his own puppets on the Tillis and Berger payroll, is on the committee.

The very people who have been most consistently and tenaciously critical of a Liberal Arts education in North Carolina are going to be setting priorities for our best institutions of higher education. Students ought to be organizing to call attention to the radical tilt of this crucial advisory committee.

And incidentally, ASU Chancellor Ken Peacock is also on the committee.

Wake County Schools Fires Its Superintendent

Remember this guy?

He ain't there no more.

Fired this afternoon by the new majority on the Wake County School Board.

Is This What REALLY Made Limbaugh's Penis Shrink?

I'm not about to cast any doubt on scientific studies coming out of Duke University, and if I were going to cast doubt on the work of a noted Duke neuroscientist, it certainly wouldn't be this particular study. The findings here were not the catalyst for Rush Limbaugh's emotional whining on the radio last week about his shrinking penis, for which condition he proclaimed "femi-Nazis" to be the proximate cause.

But this Duke study found that the election of Barack Obama had a decided testosterone-lowering impact on Republican men.

Really.

On election night in 2008, a Duke University neuroscientist took saliva samples from both men and women both before the declaration of Obama as the winner and at 20-minute intervals afterward. Participants in the study also filled out a questionnaire about political beliefs and about whom they had voted for in the election.

Dum dum dum!

"The results were clear-cut. Men who had voted for McCain -- or the libertarian candidate Robert Barr -- experienced a 28 per cent loss of testosterone almost as soon as the contest was over."

Oh my good Lord! Are Republican men tender wilting flowers, or what?

Civitas Poll Puts Obama Ahead in NC

OMG! Civitas poll (Civitas!) has Obama up over Romney in NC by four points.

In related news, it seems crystal clear that Mr. Romney manipulated his 2011 taxes, declining to take all the deductions he could have under the George W. Bush tax cuts for the filthy rich, so that he could show he paid 14%, rather than an incendiary 9%. Uh, 14% is incendiary enough, especially when Mr. Romney insists that it's perfectly fair for him to pay such a low rate on $20 million in income, while someone making $55,000 pays twice the rate.

Plus Mr. Romney wants roll-down windows on jet planes.

Perhaps the voters of North Carolina are catching on that in Mr. Romney's case, wealth breeds cluelessness. He's not just a rich jerk. He's a rich doofus.