In the center of this paper you will find 16 pages of the September edition of the Carolina Journal, with articles on state government, investigative reporting and political analysis you won’t find anywhere else. If you like what you see, you can subscribe to the Carolina Journal and have the full 24-page edition mailed to you each month at no charge. Information on how to subscribe is on the front page of the Carolina Journal.
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Politics is really funny, especially the liberals who expect to be taken seriously. Now the Democrats are all up in arms about the districts drawn to favor Republicans, because Republicans in the first time in 130 years got to draw them.
If having an independent commission draw the district lines was such a good idea, the Democrats could have voted to do so at any time during the past 130 years. Most of that time they wouldn’t have needed a single Republican vote to get it done. The fact that when the Democrats were drawing the lines to benefit Democrats, they didn’t think an independent commission was a good idea at all, proves this is pure politics. But the mainstream media ignore history and completely support the Democrats’ arguments as commonsense arguments. They are common sense only if you happen to be a Democrat who is out of power.
By the way, there is nothing illegal or unconstitutional about drawing district lines to favor a political party. However, it is both required by the Justice Department and has been ruled unconstitutional by the courts to draw lines based on race. It seems the problem is not with the Republicans in state government but with the Democrats running the Justice Department and the courts. They can’t get their act together and are blaming everyone except the people at fault.
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Monday I learned again why I always wear a hat outdoors in the summer. I got a mosquito bite on my forehead. This is in an area that used to be called the top of my head, but my forehead has been growing at an alarming rate and if it doesn’t slow down it will soon include the back of my head also.
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San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick has every right to stay seated during the national anthem. The First Amendment, the same one that protects a free press, also protects free expression. However, the people of the US also have the right to express their opinion with their pocketbooks. If a couple of million people would not watch San Francisco games while Kaepernick is on the team, and not buy products advertised during those games, it wouldn’t take long for the National Football League to take action. Some diehard football fans might miss a game or two, and some beer drinkers may have to buy locally brewed beer instead of a national brand for a couple of weeks, but it would all be over pretty quick. The NFL is big business, if its bottom line is affected, it notices.
Maybe Kaepernick would prefer to play in the Canadian Football League.
But if you are offended by Kaepernick, take a look at press row the next time you are at an event where the pledge of allegiance is said and check out how many reporters are standing with their hands on their heart repeating the pledge. I can tell you at Greensboro City Council meetings that number is one.
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The News & Record’s infatuation with all things Rockingham County is getting pretty weird. Monday on the front page of the N&R, above the fold, was an article about some road project in Reidsville that is behind schedule. A road project being behind schedule hardly falls into the news category. A highway project that is completed on schedule and under budget, now that’s news. But why is a road project in Reidsville being behind schedule considered the most important news of the day by the News & Record?
Guilford County has a population of over 500,000. Rockingham County has 92,000. Greensboro has a population of over 280,000 and it’s growing. Reidsville has a population of 14,000 and is shrinking. So what is the deal that week after week, the newspaper that still calls itself the Greensboro News & Record when it sends you a bill, constantly puts large articles from Rockingham County on the front page?
One theory is that the News & Record is planning to sell its expensive piece of property in downtown Greensboro and move to Reidsville where real estate is much cheaper and taxes lower. The articles are just a way to pave the way for a warm greeting when it makes the move.
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The Republicans are doing it again. Gov. Pat McCrory has agreed to a debate with Attorney General Roy Cooper, moderated by Chuck Todd from MSNBC, a network that makes CNN look conservative. We now know that Todd took marching orders from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who at the time was chairman of the Democratic National Committee. That should be enough to disqualify him.
You would think that the fiasco with Candy Crawley from CNN would be enough of a lesson for Republicans. Crawley was supposed to be moderating the debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, but stepped in to give Obama a helping hand and corrected Romney about Benghazi when Obama got in trouble. Crawley turned out to be wrong, but that was the end of the Romney campaign right there.
McCrory could ask that John Hood of the Locke Foundation be the moderator. Hood knows a lot more about state politics than Todd.
