Hump Day Smorasbord

Whaaa? Another Republican senator in the NC General Assembly, Southport's Bill Rabon, publicly queasy about mucking up the NC Constitution with a ban on gay marriage?

A new "Fire Renee Ellmers" Facebook page. Dyspepsia, thy name is Tea Party.

Heath Shuler's got that Blue Dog shuffle down pat.

It's official: NC GOP will use queerfear to try for a voter stampede in Nov. 2012. What fine human beings we have serving us in public office!

GOP to Constituents: Stifle Yourself!

We all know how allergic Congresswoman Virginia Foxx is to facing the voters in open town halls. She managed to get through the month-long Congressional recess without holding a single public meeting anywhere in the 5th Dist. where voters might question her values or comment on her ethics.

Talking Points Memo informs us this a.m. that this unavailability has become a national trend among Republican reps in Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac.

Blacklists, camera confiscations, pay-for-view events, showing up only when the crowd is guaranteed to be kissing their butts or writing out fat checks.

Courage of their convictions?

The NC GOP to NC Towns & Cities

As if the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly gave a fat rat's ass about the implications of their actions and the ultimate impact of their policies, but Rob Christensen is right:

The future of North Carolina's cities got a lot less bright because of Republican legislation in 2011.

Thom Tillis's "Jobs Jobs Jobs"

The closing of the Broyhill Inn and the loss of jobs there is only the tip of a big Republican iceberg.

Although the local school system managed to survive major job losses, because the county commissioners caved on additional funding (after they totally botched the quarter-cent sales tax increase), Appalachian State University is going to take it in the neck.

And who's going to lose those jobs? Support staff, mainly, the people who can least afford it.

And how many of them voted for Dan Soucek and Jonathan Jordan because they were served a big, steaming cup of tea and thought it would taste good?

Thom Tillis, the Republican Speaker of the NC House, campaigned on the main issue of "jobs, jobs, jobs." Too late we find out he meant "fewer jobs, lower-paying jobs, no jobs." One major state analyst, the NC Budget & Tax Center, is forecasting tens of thousands of new unemployed as a direct -- direct -- result of $4.6 billion in cuts in education, health care, public safety, and other services wrought by the wrongheadedness of the new Republican majority in the NC General Assembly.

Prevarication, noun

"Americans for Prosperity is a nonpartisan, issue-based policy organization and does not support or oppose candidates for public office."

--Dallas Woodhouse, NC State Dir., Americans for Prosperity

Hattip: Greg Flynn

For an outfit that had a fat finger in the effort to defeat both Sen. Steve Goss and Rep. Cullie Tarleton last year, that's a hell of a whopper.

Greg Flynn lays out the documentable $$. Both Jonathan Jordan and Dan Soucek are on that list ... twice.

Watching a Blue Dog Position Himself

Heath Shuler gave a speech to a business group in Asheville yesterday and apparently wants everyone to forget that he's a registered Democrat. He's certainly not gonna fight for Democratic values. "Compromise" is the word he used over and over.

Leading from behind.

Shades of Barack Obama.

The Republicans in the room loved the speech. They like seeing Democrats play Old Maid while they play poker.

McHenry Draws a Primary Challenger

Ken Fortenberry, editor and publisher of news@norman, a community news site in Denver, N.C., has announced that he will challenge Congressman Patrick McHenry in the 2012 Republican primary.

Mr. Fortenberry is taking a populist approach, unlike McHenry's previous Republican opponents, who generally (and dependably) try to portray the incumbent as not conservative enough.

No such poppycock from Fortenberry, but rather this:

He decided to run for the House seat after a conversation with his son, who graduated from Appalachian State University in Boone about a year and a half ago. Many of the junior Fortenberry’s fellow grads were struggling to find work.

“Nobody is speaking up for real people and for the younger generation,” Fortenberry said. “I have an incredible fire in my belly to stand up and speak out from every rooftop I can find on behalf of the people of this district who need representation.”

Fortenberry accuses McHenry of supporting banks and Wall Street powerbrokers at the expense of average Americans. The challenger said he would represent the working-class men and women of the district.

“I think this guy’s very vulnerable,” Fortenberry said. “People are angry. They’re frustrated.”

Snakepit

Who cares when one viper starts biting the other vipers?

Why, we suspect that every Sunday morning gasbag show will give the odious former vice president air time so he can hawk his get-even-with-everybody book this coming weekend.

Then, inevitably, following Cheney's new 15 minutes of fame, during which he will bash George Tenet, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and other co-conspirators in the 2nd Bush administration, we'll be treated to more endless blather from George Tenet, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and other co-conspirators, so they can defend themselves against Cheney.

Sigh. Who the freak cares about any of those versions of history?

Well, at least Jon Stewart will have some fresh material for cracking wise.

The WataugaConservative Defines the Brown Menace

Blogger girds himself over at the WataugaConservative and tells us in no uncertain terms that he does not "romanticize the illegal aliens from Latin America" ... because he once lived there.

For the record, Mohamed Atta once lived here and did not end up romanticizing us. So much for the excuse of "I've lived there, so I know what I'm talking about." One takes one's biases across international borders as easily as carry-on luggage.

It's rare to see expressions of this kind uttered with such bland matter-of-factness -- moralistic and racial assessments of the "values" of others that have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. "Immigrants, illegal" (but not the legal variety too?) clearly don't measure up to the superior "values" of Mr. Blogger at Watauga Conservative.

The arrogance of that -- not to mention the chilling echoes of cultural superiority from, say, 1933 -- is fairly breathtaking. Show us your passport, indeed.

And then there's this:

"The bottom line is that in the past when aliens brought their values to this country, they came in such small waves, we could absorb them. Soon they learned what makes us prosper and they adopted our ways and language. This time they overwhelmed us so fast and stayed under the radar so long, that we can’t think of these illegal aliens the same as we did aliens in the past."

Mr. Blogger feels "overwhelmed" by something that he didn't notice until it was ... too late for self-protection? He's so unnerved that he can't think of "these" the same way. Which sorta begs a question.

This is cultural paranoia suitable for "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," the vastly superior original version from 1956.

Whatever it is, it's not something that I recognize as superior Americanism. Nor superior Christianity.