Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: The 4th Republican Presidential Debate

9:10 p.m.

Trump, Carson, and Rubio are hitting the first question outta the Republican ballpark: Should we raise the minimum wage? No, they say, but in this ballpark, it's a display of pure charity. Trump actually allowed as how wages are "too high" now and that "people have to go out, they have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum." I'm doing you a favor to keep you at $7.25 an hour. (Or you could borrow a million dollars from your daddy!)

Carson, always ready with a line that can be demonstrably disproven: "Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases." Fact checkers, go! (And, indeed, that statement isn't true.)

Rubio danced. My parents made minimum wage, and look at me. Ain't I purty?

9:20 p.m.

Bush would repeal every law that Obama even breathed on during the last seven years. Internet. Clean Power. Water. Repeal 'em all. Bush is Mr. Strong Man this evening!

9:23 p.m.

Someone pushed "play" on the Fiorina machine! When she starts, she doesn't stop. Most rehearsed candidate by far, except for Cruz, who has his zingers queued up and ready to go.

9:26 p.m.

Rand Paul: "I think that we ought to look where income inequality seems to be the worst. It seems to be worst in cities run by Democrats, governors of... [APPLAUSE]. States run by Democrats and countries currently run by Democrats." Well, now. North Carolina is completely run by Republicans, and how do we stack up? Higher unemployment, a new tax system that favors the rich.... How about Kansas, that model of Republican management?

9:38 p.m.

Scuffle has broken out over immigration. Kasich starts a fight with Trump after Trump reaffirms that he's going to ship 5 million people out of the country. Kasich says, "Come on, people. It's a silly argument." Trump disses Ohio. Kasich defends Ohio's honor. Trump: I'm rich. I don't have to talk to Kasich. Boos.

9:42 p.m.

Cruz is ready with one of his rehearsed lines: "If Republicans join Democrats as the party of amnesty, we will lose." Then, because attacking the media got him the biggest applause in the last debate, Cruz goes after the press in a clever way: "I will say the politics of immigration will be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande. Or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press." Best line of the night.

9:45 p.m.

Fiorina: "We need free-market health care!" The mind develops an instant absess.

10:00 p.m.

The Cruz polish gets a scuff mark: He sez he would cut five agencies: IRS, Commerce, Energy, Commerce, and HUD. Paging Rick Perry!

10:05 p.m.

Paul and Rubio in a fight over Rubio's child tax credit proposal, which Paul calls an entitlement and which therefore means Rubio is not a conservative. Rubio: Family values, family, fam'bly! Rubio fights back, implying Paul is a big wimp because he doesn't want to pour more money into the military. Everybody else begins to pipe up like hungry sea gulls that they want a big military too, goddamn it! Fiorina is positively gonna stomp all over this globe with her armed forces!

10:11 p.m.

Trump says the TPP trade deal is the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals because it advantages China, which is burying us. Paul calmly zings back: China isn't a part of the TPP deal. Trump falls silent.

10:18 p.m.

Carson's plan for ISIS: We have to make them "look like losers." We do that by taking their oil fields and then destroying them. "We could do this, I believe, fairly easily." Carson says he learned that from "several generals." Come on, folks! ISIS is just like 8th grade nerds. Take their lunch money, pants them, and shove 'em in a locker!

10:28 p.m.

Fiorina says she's met Putin not in a green room, like Trump, but in a private meeting. Fiorina is like the president of the most exclusive sorority on campus, putting a rival sorority in its place. "There's that Vladimir Putin. Let's not talk to him!"

10:31 p.m.

Trump comes mighty close to saying STFU to Fiorina. "Why do you keep interrupting everyone? Terrible!"

10:37 p.m.

Kasich, who's barged into other candidates' statements several times and is the real interrupter, is now whining about not getting enough time in this debate.

10:57 p.m.

Fiorina sez for at least the third time: "We have got to take our country back." But did anybody keep the receipt?

Donald Trump said that no debate should go more than two hours, so we break away now to watch Trevor Noah.

Wake DA Reopens Pay-to-Play Investigation of Video Sweepstakes Donors

"Some members of the five-member Board of Elections expressed frustrations that campaign finance laws were insufficient to cover what might be other criminal violations. They noted records showed millions of dollars moving through Burns’ personal and business accounts, and subsequent payments and political contributions in North Carolina." N&O, yesterday

Kim Strach, Executive Director at the NC State Board of Elections (SBOE), spent two years exonerating North Carolina politicians who took $274,000 from Chase Burns and his wife, the convicted owners of sweepstakes gambling operations. Much of that money went to Governor McCrory and other Republican leaders who could have theoretically helped out Burns by overturning NC's ban on sweepstakes gambling. (The SBOE looked at a total of some $700,000 in
questionable spending" by Burns in 2012.) The politicians took the money, but they didn't overturn the ban.

"Though the elections board did not refer the report for prosecution, members made it clear that the board’s scope and legal tools were limited and that there could be room for a deeper look."

The Wake District Attorney has decided to take that deeper look:

...Strach said her investigation was unable to determine if illegal money from Burns flowed into North Carolina. State investigators were not able to interview Burns, nor obtain his federal tax records.

Some members of the five-member Board of Elections expressed frustrations that campaign finance laws were insufficient to cover what might be other criminal violations. They noted records showed millions of dollars moving through Burns’ personal and business accounts, and subsequent payments and political contributions in North Carolina.

"Millions."

Kim Strach's investigation did collect one political pelt: SBOE member Paul Foley was forced to resign in disgrace after it was revealed that his Winston-Salem law firm also represented Chase Burns. So there's that.

The Corporation and the Captive Fish

Greenwashing (a compound word modelled on "whitewash") -- a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that an organization's products, aims, or policies are environmentally friendly.
Sea World's announcement that it will discontinue its killer whale shows in San Diego is classic greenwashing. The corporation still intends to continue breeding killer whales in captivity. The corporation still intends to continue keeping those highly intelligent and family-oriented animals in concrete troughs, isolated from their natural family units. The corporation still intends to continue exploiting them for profit. The corporation is an unreconstructed dick.
The corporation makes its supposed "reform" under severe pressure. The 2013 documentary Black Fish moved the public against Sea World's cruelty, which has ended in death and injury for some Orca trainers because the conditions of captivity actually make some killer whales psychotic.
Sea World stock has plummeted. Ticket sales at San Diego have flat-lined. The paying public has decided they don't like this corporation and the way it's making money.
What gives away the greenwashing is that while the company announced no more Orca shows at Sea World San Diego (by 2017, mind you), the company remained mute about identical Orca shows at Sea World San Antonio and Sea World Orlando, where protests have been more muted. No more Orca "shows," the company told its investors; now they're gonna have an "orca experience."
Seriously? If there ever was a distinction free of any actual difference, it's that promise.

North Carolina Gets a "D" Grade for Openness, Honesty in Government

North Carolina government got an overall grade of "D" on the 2015 State Integrity Investigation, "a data-driven assessment of state government by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity."

Our state government -- particularly Governor McCrory's office -- is fighting lawsuits from multiple media outlets for failing to turn over public records in a timely manner -- and as provided for by state law.

The report points out that the State Board of Elections (SBOE) "is years behind in auditing campaign finance reports. That means it could be months or years before a violation, such as a candidate spending campaign funds for personal use, is discovered."

For example, just this past summer the SBOE "called Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, R-Cabarrus, on the carpet for inappropriate expenditures of campaign funds on personal expenses. The inquiry marked the first time a full audit had ever been done of his campaign committee, despite his serving more than two decades in office. A pair of state laws require the State Board of Elections to give each report filed a once-over within 30 days and a complete audit within four months." But that's not happening.

Most alarming, perhaps (considering the recent arrest of a Superior Court judge for attempting to bribe an FBI agent), in 2013, "the Republican-controlled legislature limited the power of the State Judicial Standards Commission to discipline judges."

That 2013 bill stripped the Judicial Standards Commission of its authority to issue public reprimands and placed all forms of public discipline in the hands of the North Carolina Supreme Court. All disciplinary hearings are now private, and case records are confidential unless the Supreme Court decides to take disciplinary action.

Secrecy is always the fertilizer for corruption.

Some of the lack of openness is the result of budget cuts, a specialty of our Republican General Assembly. And isn't it nice for them that saving government money coincides so nicely with blocking public access to what they're doing behind the scenes?

When "History" Becomes Religion

So the North Carolina Museum of History allows the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to design and execute a special Billy Graham hagiography in 5,000 history-free feet of museum space, whitewashing over and airbrushing out anything that doesn't tend to suggest that the man is a living saint and all-round useful Republican symbol. The whole exhibit capped off by video of heir and theocratic bully Franklin Graham lecturing the museum-goer on the true meaning of being such a Towering Figure of Godliness.

This is Billy Graham without context, completely outside history and therefore unhistorical, mounted proudly and non-transparently (no info anywhere that the exhibit is 100% financed and scripted by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn.) in the state history museum.

And once he's shuffled off this mortal coil, we'll have his graven image set up in the U.S. Capitol as the living embodiment of everything North Carolina stands for since the Republican Right took over every lever of power in this backward-moving state.

What will history say about that?

McCrory's Growing Political Corruption Scandal

North Carolina's real bossman, Phil Berger, is obviously pissed about the evolving scandal over the private prison maintenance contract given to McCrory pal Graeme Keith's company, and he's launching an investigation.

The Government Operations Committee, which Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore jointly chair, will convene a hearing on the contract on Nov. 18. The committee is calling three key men to testify: Secretary of Public Safety Frank Perry (who had warned that the contract was going to taint the governor's office), Commissioner of Prisons David Guice, and major playah Lee Roberts, director of the Office of State Budget and Management, who appears to have misled bossman Berger in getting a no-sweetheart-contract clause out of the state budget.

From this N&O report, it really seems that Lee Roberts was a considerable enabler of the governor's corruption. You'll remember perhaps that Roberts, who's the son of political commentator Cokie Roberts, replaced Art Pope as McCrory's budget director.

Ben Carson Now Leading the Pack in NC

Yep. In the latest ElonUniversity poll of slightly over 1,000 North Carolinians, Ben Carson pulls over 30% support from Republicans who say they'll vote in March's primary.

Pity former Strong Man Donald Trump. He's fallen to just 19%. That brand isn't wearing well.

But get a load of that Ben Carson brand! Christian triumphalism wrapped in the soft-spoken guise of a divinely inspired death angel who looks with disdain on the Jews for not shooting their way out of Auschwitz, who thinks prison makes you gay, who thinks that having health insurance under Obamacare is worse than slavery, who denounces evolution as the work of the devil, and who has certain astounding insights into the true function of certain world archeological monuments.

Not that I want to discourage this state's born-again Republicans from voting for this candidate. Perhaps he really is the "conservative Obama" that y'all have been seeking to lead you out of the wilderness of weak Bush/Boehner/McConnell Republicanism.

Assuming Carson's appeal to church-goers is not a polling mirage, he's going to inspire people in March who don't always vote, or even ever vote, because he represents righteous America besieged by godlessness. He can fly like St. Michael, the guardian angel, armor and drawn sword flashing in the sun, and some people -- perhaps a majority of Republicans in North Carolina -- will vote for that.

But he will not take the nomination, and what will become of those voters in November if their man doesn't ultimately make it? Will they also come out next November with the same sense of purpose if the Republican candidate is Rubio?

Cronyism and Falsified Documents Are Now the Political Gold Standard in NC

The hilariously misnamed state "Ethics Commission" has decided that the numerous complaints about Governor McCrory's falsified "ethics disclosures" are perfectly fine by them. But should we be surprised by this outcome, since a majority of this board were appointed by the governor and the Republican leaders in the NC House & Senate?

Let's recap:

Last year, McCrory did not properly report ownership of stock in Duke Energy, where he worked for 29 years. The governor said he misunderstood a question that wasn't worded clearly.

McCrory also did not disclose his position as a board member of the parent company for online mortgage firm LendingTree.com. McCrory resigned from the board during his first month in office, and the Tree.com board voted to let him cash out his shares early.

"The governor was paid $185,000 by Tree.com after he was sworn in as governor in 2013," Gerrick Brenner, executive director of Progress NC Action, said during a news conference. "In his first year as governor, McCrory made more money as a board member of Tree.com than he did as governor of this state, and he did not report it on his ethics forms."

The group is also accusing McCrory of misrepresenting his role as a partner in his brother's firm, McCrory & Co., which does business with the state as well as with major political donors.

"I was paid staff for my brother," he said when asked about the ethics complaint during a news conference to announce a deal to sell the Dorothea Dix property to Raleigh for $52 million.

He said he hasn't worked for McCrory & Co. since he became governor and declined to answer further questions about the issue.

He previously said that any errors he made were honest mistakes.

"There are so many troubling omissions that a reasonable person could not simply chalk this up to one innocent simple mistake," Brenner said.

Read more at http://www.wral.com/group-seeks-ethics-investigation-of-mccrory/14349204/#sdk7Jf08WIVWGUL8.99

"Honest," "simple" mistakes. That our governor is something of a simpleton, he's made perfectly clear numerous times, but "honest"? No. "Honest" as in his most recent howler, saying he didn't hear a major donor he was fawning over pronounce out loud in a meeting with state prison officials that the donor had given plenty of dough and now expected something in return. This was a meeting that McCrory had organized, and convened, and during which he introduced major donor to the others, and for whom his administration engineered a contract about which the FBI is now curious.

Tom Sawyer couldn't have organized a whitewashing any faster than our public joke of an "Ethics Commission" did.

Something in the Air

By our count, we're now up to 11 Republican members of the General Assembly who are not running for reelection next year. Some say they're retiring. Some have taken other jobs. Some plan to run for other offices. It's all very interesting, to see that many rowboats pulling away from an ocean liner.

The latest to announce is Rick Caitlin of Wilmington.

Others:

Bryan Holloway of King took another job.

Buck Newton of Nash County plans to run for Attorney General.

Sen. Stan Bingham of Davidson wants out.

Rep. Brian Brown of Pitt County took a better job as a staffer with Sen. Thom Tillis in D.C.

Paul Stam of Wake County is out.

Leo Daughtry is gone.

Rayne Brown, also of Davidson County, won't run again.

Jacqueline Schaffer of Mecklenburg ... ditto.

James Langdon of Johnston County ... ditto.

Rep. Paul Tine, who was elected in 2012 and 2014 as a Democrat, changed his affiliation to "U" and started caucusing with the Republicans ... ditto.