Rest in Peace, Joe Bageant

It pained me so much to hear about the death of Winchester, Va., native Joe Bageant that I turned my face to the wall and refused to study on it, such a loss he is to what David Fellerath calls "radical underground journalism."

It's Fellerath's tribute that I just came across, one of those "wish I'd said that" moments, that now lets me grieve in public.

It was Bageant's 2007 book, "Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War," that made me a huge and endearing fan, though I'd run across some of his self-defined "redneck socialism" before.

We corresponded a bit. I invited him to come to Boone and give a speech. I didn't know at the time that he was already suffering from cancer. He never mentioned any illness but said this:

There's nothing I'd rather do more. I LOVE Boone! ... HOWEVER, please don't write me off. My new book, Rainbow Pie, is the last one I intend on writing. Then I'll have time to do things like go to Boone, Eastern Kentucky...and a whole lotta other places where a hillbilly can ease his troubled mind among kin and kilth. (My mama's people are from North Carolina)....

That last book, "Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir," was published in Australia late in 2010 and is now listed on Amazon.com.

I'll read that book, and I'll toast the memory of a great American hell-raiser who loved poor people and understood and sympathized with them like very few others.

P.S.
I found what I originally wrote here about "Deer Hunting with Jesus" back in 2007. I don't take back a word of it.

Why Are You Supporting This Corporation?

Connections to extreme anti-gay orgs.

It goes like this: "Chick-fil-A is a restaurant where franchises frequently donate to anti-gay organizations like the Pennsylvania Family Institute, Focus on the Family and others. The restaurant's charitable arm, WinShape, holds conferences for opponents of gay marriage and praises their work. And this charitable arm's Retreat program puts a blanket ban on gay couples using their facilities, because they 'do not accept homosexual couples.' "

The Voter ID Bill Gets More Ridiculous

Do you know where your voter registration card is?

Haven't seen mine in years.

But now the bill being considered as a "compromise" voter ID law in the NC House would require both your voter registration card and "one of seven approved photo identifications."

But wait! There's a new hoop for a voter to jump through (according to AP reporter Gary D. Robertson) which will involve hardly any headaches for Board of Elections workers and certainly no slow lines at all on election day (and I'm not making this up!):

...two poll workers first would decide if the signature of the person presenting a voter registration card matches the signature used when the person registered to vote.

The original signature would be scanned and placed in the voter rolls at the precinct. The person would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot if one or both workers don't accept the signature as authentic and prove their identity with county elections officials to ensure it's counted.

Good to know that my right to vote freely and unencumbered will be entrusted to nothing more complicated that the eye-sight and lack of befuddlement of a poll worker given the power to divine if my signature on Election Day exactly matches my signature when I registered to vote in Watauga County 40-odd years ago.

Naw! No problems with this plan!

BREAKING: NC GOP Blinks on Voter ID Law

Far as we can tell, Barry Smith is the first out with news that NC House Republicans have caved on requiring a photo ID of every voter.

More about this after the new version of the bill becomes available ... presumably after the 1 p.m. hearing today in the Education Committee.

Ugly Is as Ugly Does

Mexican-bashing becomes official public policy for the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly.

What took you so long?

Ideology, Meet Humanity

We need a new Constitutional amendment in North Carolina: Marriage should not be between a man and his political ego, nor between a man and his ideology.

The new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly intend to deliver mass pink slips to hundreds of teachers and other public workers, cripple public education, gut childhood development programs, abandon mental health programs, lift anti-pollution requirements and starve to death other life-line services because they mistake their rigid ideology for the "public good."

Chris Fitzsimon summed it up today:

...At a recent meeting in Charlotte, parents told a group of Republican legislators that they would be willing to pay higher taxes to save teachers’ jobs and protect their children’s schools.

Republican Rep. Bill Brawley told them that was impossible because Republicans ran for office on a no tax increase pledge. They have also said that the pledge means they will not extend the temporary tax increases passed in 2009 to protect schools and services for the most vulnerable people in the state.

That’s what most likely behind much of the [recent polling] decline in Republican legislators’ approval numbers, that voters perceive they are more interested in keeping an absurd political pledge than keeping teachers in classrooms and preschool programs helping at risk kids....

Sen. Hagan has a "Third Way"

Sen. Kay Hagan is honorary co-chair of the new-ish blue dog group, Third Way.

Third Way has THE PLAN for Democrats:

Give up on everything you've ever stood for, including Social Security and health care for all, and follow the Republicans into the abyss.

Tighten your friggin' belts, citizens, 'cause the Corporations/Banksters are feeling peckish (which is to say, "deprived" and "put upon").

Par-TAY! Let's all model ourselves on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Jerry Falwell Knew His Bible!

As in, "If Caesar wants to render unto you big heaping and stinking piles of federal aid, then who art thou, O paragon of Do-As-We-Say-Not-As-We-Do, to turn it down?"

The Lynchburg News & Advance, one of the most Republican newspapers in that state, reports today that Liberty University is the single biggest recipient of federal aid to students in the state of Virginia ... the 8th biggest in the whole friggin' nation.

Just saying "no" to demon socialism do have her benefits. Can we get an "amen"!

Too Dumb for School

The short-sightedness in the new Republican General Assembly can't be surpassed in any deliberative body currently in operation on the face of the earth.

The new Republican bunch, who claimed their Number One priority was jobs, is seriously considering in the NC House Transportation Committee this afternoon this piece of true troglydytism, a petulant Teahadist refusal to accept a federal grant to improve rail service in the state.

But I'll let Winston-Salem City Councilman Dan Besse sum up the dismal prospect of politicians who first enclose themselves in (wet) paper bags and then fail to fight their way out of them:

[Via Facebook] Bad news: NC's jobless rate is still near 10% and we're short on dollars to modernize our transportation system. Good news: We've won a federal grant of over $500 million to modernize rail tracks and crossings on our most heavily used state rail lines--creating 5,000 construction jobs. Crazy news: A dozen NC House Republicans have a bill being heard today which would force the state to turn down the grant.

Seriously, isn't there a point when wrong-headedness can become life-threatening?