Whereas, we don’t like where this is going…

The legislature eliminated primaries in judicial races this year.  As a result, we have a three-way race for one seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court.  There are two Republicans and one Democrat in the race.  One of the Republicans hasn’t been a Republican very long.

Republican leaders are upset at the way their best-laid plan to take back the Supreme Court is playing out.  They have a fix in mind, filed today.  They will eliminate one man’s right to run as a Republican to make it easier for the other Republican to win:

bill

Full PDF of the bill

Please vote in November.

McCready’s Choosing the Battlefield (NC-09)

Andrew Dunn over at longleafpolitics.com wrote an interesting post criticizing Dan McCready’s response to controversy surrounding a sermon given by his opponent, Mark Harris.  McCready (D) and Harris (R) are set to battle it out in November for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.

Harris gave the sermon in 2013, but it found its way to the internet and made national news.  In sum, it lays out traditional “biblical womanhood” with man as “head” and woman as “helper” and criticizes society’s treatment of young women:

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N.C. Republicans Gasping For Power

If you ever fish a blackwater river in Eastern North Carolina this time of year, you’ll come across an interesting phenomenon.  Bowfin (aka blackfish, dogfish, or grindle) are a prehistoric fish that can survive in hot, oxygen-starved water by inhaling air into a swim bladder that works like a lung.  In short, they can breathe if they have to.

Pull your boat into any oxbow on a really hot summer day, turn off the motor and sit still.  You’ll soon see and hear the bowfin rising to the surface, holding onto life, one gulp at a time.  Pull up on Jones Street on a hot day this week.  Listen.  You’ll hear something similar.

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Fox News or the Fayetteville Observer???

Where do you get your political news?

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting article up about the nationalization of our news sources and the increasing partisanship and polarization of our politics.  In short, even the smallest of local issues is now examined through a national, partisan lens.

The article even gives a shout-out to the Fayetteville Observer:

Americans today are far more engaged with and knowledgeable about national politics than state or local politics, a gap that has been growing in recent decades. And it turns out that the changing media environment is a key engine of today’s nationalization. More and more, Americans are turning away from the media outlets that are most likely to provide a modicum of state or local coverage. They are substituting Fox News (or maybe FiveThirtyEight) for the Fayetteville Observer, and The New York Times’ website for the Nevada Appeal.

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Setting Fire to the Big-Tent

By: Andrew Porter 

orange tent

Last week, I went to a town hall with U.S. Senator Thom Tillis and Rep. Richard Hudson at the Greater Fayetteville Chamber. The topics ranged from as broad as taxes and tariffs to as specific as Dodd – Frank. However, it wasn’t the content that struck me; it was Tillis’s demeanor and candor. Tillis had a fairly conservative, wealthy, and friendly audience in front of him, yet he spoke as a centrist. While Hudson was towing the party line, Tillis was challenging the folks in the room to discard extreme ideologies and to think of your fellow man when making business decisions; cautioning some of the wealthiest people in Fayetteville about the dangers of greed. I was stunned and dismayed. Dismayed because he’s going to be Senator for life if he wants it.

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