The Western NC September 27th Flood

 

"While most of the images are coming out of Asheville, Boone, and more populated areas, there are hundreds of small communities off narrow, winding roads that are difficult to reach in good times. I fear for those people and wonder how long it will take to reach them."

--Thomas Mills 

Many roads on creeks have simply ceased to exist for long stretches. Big trees are down everywhere, many still across one or more lanes of traffic. Untold numbers of people cut off and without electricity. Some are considered "missing" only in the sense that friends and families can't reach them and haven't heard a word about how they're faring. Cell service, Internet connection, WiFi went dead for thousands, and is still spotty.

I know of people in a rented house on Winkler's Creek who watched a mudslide come down the mountainside from an upslope development that had clear-cut. Big timbers, riding on the cushion of moving mud, slammed into their house, knocked it off the foundation. They had to break a window to get out.

The rescue people and the restore-electricity people and particularly the water department in Boone and the people cutting trees off roads have been saviors, often self-sacrificing and always dedicated to the tasks. Quiet heroism. The volunteer spirit is alive and robust and downright inspiring.

Yesterday, Jon-Dalton George, the 25-year-old Mayor Pro-Tem of Boone, was wading through mud to knock on every door in a flooded-out trailer park, doing wellness checks, and coming back where necessary with water and other supplies. Another young man, a student at AppState, joined many others who showed up at a staging area for volunteers in the recovery and offered his help. He got teamed up with Councilman George, door-knocking trailer parks.

This disaster should occasion an honest assessment of modern development in narrow Appalachian valleys in the context of climate change which brings bigger storms and more sudden water. The historic development all along what is known locally as Kraut Creek in Boone, the whole Blowing Rock Rd. corridor, is historically and morphologically a natural floodway that has been culverted and covered over with asphalt and concrete. In the new reality, we can't keep the lid on that creek without more major damage. It's gonna happen again.

Boone, Friday Sept. 27, 2024

 

Carolina Forward Indicts the NC Judiciary

 

A powerful and necessary reality check on just how partisan and corrupted by power politics the North Carolina judiciary has become, laid bare in this instance by the RFK Jr. legal saga of getting on and then getting off the November ballot. An unsigned posting on Carolina Forward succinctly lays out the indictment of our highest courts:

From beginning to end, the sordid affair of the Kennedy campaign in North Carolina revealed just how weak the rule of law has become in our state, compared to the raw exercise of partisan political power.

Robert Kennedy Jr. was allowed, in multiple instances, to evade, ignore and manipulate North Carolina state law, and was permitted to do so by Republican political actors – specifically judges – seeking to give Donald Trump an electoral boost. The laws of the State of North Carolina had very little impact on what the Kennedy campaign did; only the whims of opinion polling made a difference. That is not a sound system of election administration. While the NC State Board of Elections generally made the correct calls under the law, our state’s politicized judicial system failed to uphold the supremacy of those laws, and opted instead for their own circumstantial partisan interest.

We don’t know yet who will win in November. But at least in this case, the people of North Carolina lost.

 

When the Enemies of Democracy Are Judges

 

"The order didn’t give the legal reasoning to grant the GOP’s requests."

--Gary D. Robertson, reporting for AP 

As I predicted last week (wasn't it?), the Republican-heavy Court of Appeals has reversed the Wake County Superior Court judge who refused to stop the usage of UNC-Chapel Hill's brand new ID system, the "UNC One Card," as the approved NC ID for voting. The One Card meets all the standards of what a valid photo ID must contain, as written in the Republican law -- that was the ruling of the State Board of Elections (SBOE) which the Wake judge was upholding. 

But according to the NCGOP, the very notion of "digital ID" was a red flag, like "digital" identity -- flashed via hand-held phone -- was a new witchcraft for voter fraud. The Republicans actually chose to argue against the One Card that it just wasn't fair to all the other universities, which were forced to use physical, laminated plastic cards containing a photo -- letting Chapel Hill alone get away with this flashing of a cell phone to vote. Especially if the device was in the hands of a young voter. Why, Good Lard, with the UNC system you'll have ineligible voters by the billions casting ballots through electronic manipulation. That was the argument that caused three appellate judges to reverse the Superior Court. 

Oh yes, we're familiar with the Robinson Calculation, that someone nefarious is somehow and somewhere faking things on-line to make conservatives -- Robinson particularly -- look like frauds, because A.I. and gawd-knows-what-else can manipulate a computer to delete whole identities and steal votes and write bad checks, and they're doing it all the time to benefit Democrats. 

The Democratic National Committee and a UNC student group who joined the case defending the use of the One Card said the SBOE rightly determined that the digital ID met the requirements set in state law. The DNC attorneys wrote that preventing its use could confuse or even disenfranchise up to 40,000 people who work or attend the school so close to the election.

The NC Court of Appeals has an 11-4 Republican majority. The ruling discussed here. unanimous among three judges whose names are being kept secret for some reason -- just incidentally also "didn't give the legal reasoning to grant the GOP's requests." Three separate judges, eyeing each other across a conference table in Raleigh, agreed to do a favor for the NCGOP and rule that the Chapel Hill system did not constitute a valid photo ID. Is it not remarkable they won't put their names to this decision? For reasons we can immediately and accurately guess, if I were guessing. 

There's a Silver Lining: Students and permanent employees can still obtain a physical ID card instead -- conveniently at Chapel Hill locations and at no charge for those who received a digital ID but want the physical card for voting. There has got to be a major informational push on that campus to tell students where to go to get the other ID.

Sad News, For All Who Love Their Conspiracies

 

Kyle Ingram, in the News&Observer:

RALEIGH After the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced Thursday that it had removed nearly 750,000 registrations from the voter rolls, misinformation spread on social media regarding the scope and circumstances of this decision. 

“They’re trying to steal this election,” one X user wrote. 

“I’m sure it’s one big, giant, coincidence that NC is doing this a month before Election Day,” another wrote. 

Others fretted that the removal was a ploy by the Republican Party to influence the outcome of the election in a battleground state. The truth, however, is that this was a routine process carried out over the course of nearly two years by a state agency with bipartisan oversight. 

“Eligible voters do not need to worry that they were removed from the system,” Pat Gannon, a spokesperson for the board, said. “However, election officials always encourage voters to check their registration through the state board’s voter search tool.”

Thomas Mills Dismantles Senator Thom Tillis

 

From the title -- "Some Hot Tillis-on-Robinson Action" -- to the last paragraph, which is bitter, the bitter end, this piece of writing makes a master class in Swiftian sarcasm, that form of irony that tears flesh, or seeks to. Political commentator and long-time Democratic operative Thomas Mills takes down Sen. Thom Tillis as a hypocrite in epaulets, a self-described "SERIOUS PERSON" who theatrically sez he upholds Truth and the American Way, but who turns out substantial as cardboard. That "SERIOUS PERSON" mainly shows up, says Mills, "when Republicans are about to do something bad or stupid. He puffs up, issues muscular declarations, and promptly folds like a cheap tent." 

Mills has the receipts on those "folds," times when the senator announced a policy principal he would not breach and then breached it. Like when he wrote an editorial opposing Trump's declaration of emergency at the border -- the better to divert Federal funds to his wall -- and then promptly repented, after a dose of fury from MAGA loyalists who'll crucify anybody who offends Trump. Tillis had to swallow a lot more than his tongue to take it all back. He's abandoned his stated principles on immigration compromise more than once. It's the Tillis straddle: feint to the left with condemnation of a clown like Mark Robinson and then to the right with continued obeisance to El Hefe: 

Tillis doubles down on his support for Donald Trump who is now focused on fleecing his supporters by selling commemorative coins and $100,000 Trump watches. That’s what you call Republican coalition building. The grifter wing of the party is taking advantage of the rube wing and everybody is happy. That is some serious, principled shit.

 Sen. Tillis, according to Mills, is pure show but with muddled intentions: 

While other [Republican] candidates are trying to avoid talking about Nude Africa, Tillis is delivering vague ultimatums that sound tough, just like his op-ed and principled support of the immigration bill he voted against. Just follow his lead. Let reporters and others know about your grave concerns and hint at skepticism about Robinson’s denials.

With "SERIOUS PERSON" (always ALL CAPS) Mills puts a verbal duncecap on Sen. Tillis, mocking his occasional and sudden eruptions of principle even while sticking with a party "full of tinfoil hats, snake oil salesmen, and rubes." 

Sen. Tillis seeks reporters' ears to sound-bite strategically like a maverick in a party that despises mavericks. He suffered a censure by the NCGOP, yet he's become something of a bridge-builder behind the scenes in the Senate. Somehow, he persists, even after his privates hit the top rail of the fence he's been straddling, maybe largely because Trump hasn't sicced his dogs on him. (Remember what Trump did to independent John McCain and to Liz Cheney and to several others.)

Did I say the end of Mills's piece is bitter? He makes a point of speaking directly to Mark Robinson about Sen. Tillis's very recent ultimatum that Robinson either disproves "the CNN lies" or steps down: 

Hang in there, Mark. Don’t let the haters and the RINOs get you down .... Just grit it out, because even if you lose, you can run against Thom Tillis in 2026.

You know what I think? I think Thom Tillis would love to be a Democrat and actually hates being a Republican, especially right now when the Party-under-Trump appears to be sitting in an airless booth pleasuring itself with peculiar fantasies.

She's Always Enjoyed the Shadow of Big Men

 

Virginia Foxx had to request that photo, of course. He didn't have a clue who she was.

The Lawyer Mark Robinson Hired

 

Jesse R. Binnall

Mark Robinson announced on Tuesday that he has hired Jesse R. Binnall, a well known trumpist litigator and a partner in the Binnall Law Group of Alexandria, Va., to find out who in the world who isn't Mark Robinson was posting outrageous comments on porn sites under Robinson's own screen name Minisoldr.

According to The Daily Beast, Binnall represented Trump after the 2020 election in his failed attempt to overturn the electoral vote in Nevada, and he also was "one of several lawyers Trump hired to represent him in his failed racketeering lawsuit against Hillary Clinton. In January 2023, a judge in Florida ordered the case thrown out and fined Trump and another attorney, Alina Habba, $1 million for filing a frivolous lawsuit." Binnall has (so far) escaped any sanctions imposed by judges and bar associations, unlike many of the other lawyers who've worked for Trump. According to the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Binnall has been previously paid at least $4.2 million by the Trump campaign. "Even after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Binnall continued to spread false claims of voter fraud."

Binnall was one of several lawyers who represented retired Gen. Michael Flynn when he withdrew his guilty plea for lying to the FBI, ABC News reported. Flynn was eventually pardoned by then-President Trump that December [of 2020]."

In other words, Binnall may be exactly what Robinson needs, someone adept at pointing the finger elsewhere.

Mo Green Takes the Gloves Off

 

About time. We don't need this pleasant-faced insurrectionist running North Carolina's schools.