Politics

Politics

There are 1,058 posts filed in Politics (this is page 95 of 106).

Misleading

Today’s News and Observer headline story about Mary Easley’s so-called pay raise may be the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my being an N&O subscriber goes. I have no great love for the Easleys but the only way to describe this is overblown if not downright misleading.

Mary Easley is an accomplished lawyer in her own right. She lectures at NCSU and she recently went from part-time to full-time there. Her salary, while quite large from my point of view, is a pittance to what most attorneys earn. The N&O is twisting the facts. I can’t hep but think its punitive after the governor ducked out on an N&O reporter and his email deletion policy came to light.

Trust is critical to any news source; lose it and its gone for good. I have been an avid newspaper reader since I learned to read but that’s about to end. Unless the News and Observer cleans up its act pronto, it will find itself with one fewer subscriber. At least.

Why Pat McCrory is an idiot

Infamous bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks allegedly replied “because that’s where the money is.”

In a press release explaining his position supporting offshore drilling, N.C. Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory asked:

“If we’re not willing to drill off our own coasts, then where will you drill?” he asked. “Off Venezuela? Off Nigeria? Saudi Arabia? Russia?”

Um, maybe someplace where there’s actually oil, Pat? Have you noticed that Venezuela has four times the oil, Nigeria has almost twice the oil, Saudi Arabia has ten times the oil, and Russia has three times the oil we do? And it would be even more lopsided if Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay was excluded?

There is more oil in the Middle East than all other world regions combined. We don’t drill off North Carolina because that’s not where the oil is!

Please get a clue, Pat.

Offshore drilling

Anyone who wants to drill for oil off our beautiful North Carolina coast needs to check themselves into Dorothea Dix Hospital. Any oil there is too miniscule to make a difference in supply, it will take at least a decade to get anything from it, and one spill would absolutely devastate our coastal tourism industry: about the only thing Eastern North Carolina can depend on. Possibly for years to come.

McCrory and Dole need to get a clue. Bev Perdue wins on this issue.

Truman

I’ve become addicted to PBS’s American Experience series profiling the Presidents. Last night was the second part of their program on Harry Truman and it didn’t disappoint.

I knew of some of the important things Truman accomplished but the program really put them into perspective for me. Here was a guy who had been a farmer and a failed small businessman that was chosen to be Vice President. Less than three months later, he becomes President and has to pull himself up by the bootstraps as Roosevelt had basically ignored him.
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