Good AM, folks!
OK, I remembered before I left work this time.
I note that a federal judge has tossed out NV's None of the Above voting option for one reason or another. I am saddened for the good people of NV, with whom I talk daily. I am also saddened that the option is unavailable here.
"No preference" was available on the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian presidential ballots in the May primary.
ReplyDeleteDon't know if we will see that in November.
In NC in May, 20% of Democratic voters chose the "No Preference" option, versus 80% for Obama.
ReplyDeleteOnly 5% of Republicans chose the "No Preference" option. But another 25% voted for Republican candidates whose run for the nomination was already over, leaving Romney with a mere 65% approval from his own party.
Since then, not much has changed for Obama. He still has about 80% approval from his party. But things have gone downhill for Romney. The latest polls show that only 59% of Republicans are "satisfied" with him.
But his biggest problem is with independents. In May, 40% of independent voters had negative views of Romney. Three recent polls taken this month show that that percentage is up to 52%.
His choice of the extremist Paul Ryan has not helped him at all. And the continuing torrent of lunacy from the Republican right, from Allen West in Florida to Todd* Akin in Missouri to the stupid "party plank" regarding an anti-abortion amendment, will only continue to drag him down.
Two months ago, the non-partisan Real Clear Politics electoral map showed the President winning 332 electoral votes, 62 more than he needed to win. Romney had the lead in all of the redneck/gun nut states, while Obama had all of the civilized places. If things continue as they are now, the women's vote alone might convert some of those redneck/gun nut states as well, giving Obama a bigger electoral margin than he had in 2008.
* What the hell kind of name is "Todd"? Is Akin descended from Mary Todd Lincoln? Quite possible. She was the nuttiest fruitcake ever baked in the White House.
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DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete"It's a big deal"
ReplyDeleteThe writer of the letter "Chick-fil-A dust-up" (Aug. 16) writes, "OK — we get it — you're gay — big deal! Now let's move on to more important issues." Well, we could, if the writer and those like him truly got it.
Maybe it's no big deal to him, but for the people who are being denied the right to marry the ones they love, who are denied visitation rights and parenting rights, it's a very big deal. It's also, apparently, a very big deal to those who are "voicing their opinion" that gay people don't deserve to have the same rights as straight people — otherwise, they'd say, "Go ahead, get married if you want, then let's move on to more important issues." Instead, they fight to keep their fellow Americans from having the rights they have themselves.
It's easy to sit on the sidelines and say "big deal" when it's someone else's rights that are being denied.
He's also wrong to call this a First Amendment issue. No one was trying to censor Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy, nor could they — only the government has the power to censor. Cathy is quite free to say what he wants, and everyone else is free to respond. But when the opinion that he voices is that gay people shouldn't have the same rights he has, it's very much an anti-gay issue.
TOMMY H. SIMMONS
Winston-Salem
"Fracking could ruin progress"
We have started a local food movement in Stokes County via North Carolina's local-food 10 Percent Campaign. My husband is the agriculture extension agent, and we live on a fifth-generation tobacco farm. If our water is polluted from fracking, it will nullify all progress.
This county's Hanging Rock State Park is the most-visited state park. Our farm is in the new viticulture region, the Yadkin Valley. We were part of the Old North State Winegrowers Cooperative and spent a large sum of money to put in vineyards. Agritourism, state-park tourism and local-food economies do not co-exist with fracking.
I know energy is our future. But instead of fossil fuels, I think we need to focus on solar and wind energy, which are sustainable, meaning they never go away! Once they have polluted our waters and extracted their profits, the frackers will be gone. But the jobs on the TV show "Turbine Cowboys" are great jobs for our citizens who like to rappel down Cooks Wall.
Nanotechnology solar is promising, too. I think we should be promoting this, especially since I am sure it will be center stage for our new research park in Winston-Salem.
I think we all want our area to prosper responsibly for our children and grandchildren. I want them to think highly of our decisions for five generations, like I think reverently of my husband's heritage that cleared this farm with mules, backs and tears. We can do no less.
VIVIAN FULK
King
The writer's husband, Randy Fulk, is a Stokes County agriculture extension agent. — the editor
'Finish the Thought"
DeleteSaturday, we asked readers to complete the sentence: "Paul Ryan's budget plan is ..."
* * * * *
"… a typical GOP scheme to squeeze the middle class to enrich the rich. (Remember the Catholic Bishops condemned the budget as "cruel" and "immoral.") It will not balance the budget, nor will it reduce the deficit, but it will starve public education and lay off teachers."
BOON T. LEE
* * * * *
"… a disaster for senior citizens, women, the poor and disadvantaged, education and health care. It is a windfall for the very rich. It is an anathema to all that the USA stands for."
ERNEST V. LOGEMANN
* * * * *
"... a good start. It's not perfect, but it's far better than any of President Obama's budget proposals, which were so unpalatable that they garnered not a single Democratic vote in the Senate. It's time for truthful, rational dialogue on achieving economic growth, realistic entitlement reform and debt reduction. Paul Ryan's budget ideas deserve the consideration of the American people."
DEB PHILLIPS
* * * * *
"… irrelevant, because the budget deficit is not the cause of our current financial problems. Balance the budget tomorrow and we're still be in recession for years. The Republicans and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan distract us by talking about the deficit instead of their collusion with Wall Street. The deficit as a percentage of GDP, not an actual figure, is not much more than it was under Bush. An unregulated financial-services industry is the cause of the current recession, and that blame rests clearly with Bush."
KAM BENFIELD
* * * * *
"Ryan's budget will kill this nation. We as the middle class cannot take what he is trying to do.
"Social Security is a program that Republics did not vote for anyway. A lot of our seniors will die if this is not in place. After all, this has been paid for by the people. We as voters should go vote so that we can make sure that Ryan is not elected."
BRENDA CLARIDA
* * * * *
"… the only legitimate proposal on the table that attempts to address this nation's fiscal crisis. It's not perfect, but it's a place to start."
CORBY WOLFE
* * * * *
"… a gift to insurance companies at the expense of seniors. Ryan plans to replace Medicare with a voucher program and privatize Social Security."
CHARLES E. WILSON
* * * * *
"… the best to protect Medicare and Social Security for seniors and all generations to come, without raising taxes (and with no class warfare)."
JAMES P. SELIGMAN
* * * * *
"… sinful. It robs the programs for the poor to give more tax breaks to the wealthy, it destroys Medicare as we know it, it adds to the deficit and won't balance the budget before 2030, if then."
CYNTHIA GOUGH NANCE
* * * * *
"… a step in the right direction."
WILLIAM SAMS
* * * * *
"… the best thing that could happen for this country to get it straightened out from the mess that we are in right now."
HAROLD DYSON
* * * * *
"… 'sensible, straightforward, honest and serious,' according to Erskine Bowles."
DONALD WOLFE
* * * * *
"… a start. It is probably flawed in some areas, will need tweaking if not some major changes, but it is a start.
"The Senate has been unable to do a budget for over three years, obviously the Democrats are afraid to make a stand. So instead of trying to count Romney's money, how about they start counting our money and do a budget?
"Ladies and gentlemen, beware; austerity is coming because of our government's profligate ways over the last 30 years. When you hear the rooster, remember the chickens are on their way to roost and you will be paying, and you will be paying a lot more than you can imagine.
"Uncle Sugar is no more."
KEN HOGLUND
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ReplyDeleteA little too gratuitous, me Bucko. Fine effort, though.
Delete"Paul Ryan's budget plan is ..." A non item as it no longer exists except as a discussion point for terrified status quo hacks. Some of the replies to this Journal question are starting to get it. Then some, like Mr Logemann whom I know professionally, probably get it privately but just can't say so publicly....yet. The "fiscal cliff" we keep hearing about on January 1 is not going to happen. Besides, it is not the "cliff" we should worry about. That is in our near future no matter who wins in November.
ReplyDeleteOT -- I saw where Fam was quoted in SAM:
ReplyDeleteFun with DDT
Let's try that again...
DeleteFun with DDT
Arthur...I see you have repositioned yourself to Forsyth County? You are now mightily employed there?
DeleteYes, I'm afraid that I was one of those idiots as well...we all were. At least it wasn't DDT, but malathion is not exactly good for you. The mosquitos had the good sense to take cover when they heard the sprayer motor, but we didn't.
DeleteFam is always getting quoted...he is the walking encyclopedia of Winston-Salem. People from California walk into the NC Room and ask for him by name.
When he launches into one of his oral dissertations on the Fries family or Colonel Ludlow and the coming of modern sanitation it is like being in a graduate seminar.
I believe it OT.
DeleteWW, I'm having to hustle a bit these days. I've got a part-time job for money, am volunteering at the public library to keep a foot in that world (it's how I met Fam), and am waiting to hear back about a full-time position after being interviewed. It's with the federal gov't, so it's taking for-bloody-ever, but would be a pretty sweet gig if I got it.
Sounds promising. If you go to work for the Federal government, you will be working for me...or I will be working for you?
DeleteI'll be working for you, of course! I'll be a good servant to the public.
DeleteYes, I remember those DDT trucks coming through Ardmore, and like Fam and OT, I played in the poisonous mist. Fam's recollection of those times is spot on, but I really think our simple childhoods were more fun than childhoods nowadays. We pretty much roamed the neighborhood til dusk, except at mealtimes, played cowboy and Native Americans, or army, or committed (usually) minor bits of mischief. Time passed a lot slower than now.
DeleteHi cuz...I feel sorry for kids today. They live in suburban ghettos where the ratio of kids per square mile is very low.
DeleteIn Ardmore, we couldn't walk, a key word, 200 feet without bumping into a half dozen kids our own age. And unless it was pouring down rain or freezing cold, we were outside year round, in the afternoons and on weekends during the school year and every day in the summer.
So we had to come up with our own entertainments and did so, as you mention, although I don't recall the term being "Native Americans" (I always wanted to be Geronimo or Crazy Horse, because we knew intuitively that they had been great leaders, no matter what the text books said).
But everything that we did required us to make rules and enforce them, because adults had more important things to do than stand around with clipboards calling the roll and refereeing our disagreements.
When we played football, we decided who played on what team and what a foul was and when fouls were committed, we were expected to call them on ourselves. Cheaters who would not do that were simply excluded from the game. And if the score got lopsided, we would stop and swap players around until the sides were more even. A rabid Carolina fan may enjoy beating Duke 50-0, but it has never been much fun for the players on either side, and we were the players.
We learned so many social and other life skills from each other. To this day, my schoolmates and I are a tight bunch. Our high school reunions draw huge turnouts. And although we have gone in many different directions politically, you will never hear, at those reunions, such stupid terms as liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.
Instead, we are simply enjoying being together one more time and telling each other the thousands of shared stories that have defined our lives since day one.
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ReplyDeleteLTE #1 - Had enough Chick-fil-A, and I don’t mean eating those chemically complex sandwiches, because I haven’t had one of those since the week after the first local CfA opened in Hanes Mall about a century ago.
ReplyDeleteBigots are bigots and nothing is going to change them except death, which cannot come too soon.
LTE #2 – It is ironic that so much of this fracking business has centered on Stokes County, because it is one of the most vulnerable counties because so much of its water supply comes from wells.
All fracking in the US should be suspended until complete studies about its safety or lack of same are established and strict regulations are established. At the moment, fracking companies are not even required to make public the names of the chemicals that they are injecting into the ground, despite hundreds of lawsuits against them. There is never any justification for endangering people’s health and well being.
I have known Vivian and Randy Fulk for many years. Good people.
Finish the Thought: “Paul Ryan’s budget plan is…” a crackpot scheme that has no basis in reality. Ryan himself has inadvertently confirmed that by failing to provide any actual numbers that might emerge from such a plan and being unbable to say when his plan might actually bring the budget into balance.
As to his rep as a “towering intellect”, consider that those who say that are the same dunces who think that Newt is also an “intellectual”. Ryan and Gingrich are both a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person is like.
Since I am not a part of the “chicken little” crowd when it comes to financial matters, I see the economy as a far higher priority than either the deficit or the national debt. Unless the economy gets back on track, nothing that we do will cut or eliminate budget deficits, so no debt reduction will occur.
It’s not an urgent matter…any 1st year economy major can tell you that the US can easily carry considerably more debt than we now have, but not unless the economy can get back into at least medium gear.
Anyone who blames the President for any of this is simply misinformed. The cooperation of Congress will be required in making budget repairs. Unfortunately at the moment, the House is in the grips of political ideologs and the Senate is frozen by the filibuster.
You're right dotnet. These homosexual bigots should leave the religious types alone. If religious types want to eat at Chick-fil-A, let 'em. They're entitled to their views about marriage, just as much as gays are.
DeleteDemocrats blame GW Bush, why can't we blame Obama now? Because he's a Democrat? Puleaaaze.
I always try to put a little logic into my posts. It helps in the believability of them. However, some people are just not that savvy.
Sorry Rush, all the liberal gibberish runs together after a while.
DeleteOT or anyone who might know, I am in the end game of settling my Mother's estate and she has the folded and sealed American flag from my Dad's casket. There are 3 of us siblings, each would like it, but we live too far apart to pass it around without it getting lost. Question: do you know any organization that can take it as a gift? I asked a local VFW but they only dispose of flags that should be disposed of. Any ideas? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAmerican Legion...they do disposal too, but they also donate a lot of flags to those who need them.
DeleteTriad Viet Nam Veterans also do donations.
I also note that Deb Phillips is up to her usual stunts, a stew of lies and ignorance.
ReplyDeleteThe President’s budget has indeed been twice defeated unanimously, by votes of 97-0 and 99-0, except that it wasn’t exactly the Presiden’ts budget, because it had been stripped of all policy language, and was presented by the Republicans, at which point the President recommended that everyone vote against it.
On the other hand, Ryan’s budget has already been voted on twice by the Senate as well, going down 58-41 and 57-40, both times with several republicans joining the nay voters.
It has been three years since Congress passed a budget bill…both parties share the blame.
And Ken Hoglund is rattling on about his usual nonsense: “…beware, austerity is coming…”
Well, that’s good, Ken. We’ve seen the wonders worked by austerity in Europe. Just imagine how it would work applied on a grander scale.
Can you spell D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-O-N?
Good afternoon folks!
ReplyDeleteLTE 1: "It's easy to sit on the sidelines and say 'big deal' when it's someone else's rights that are being denied." - ain't that the truth. I guess some also thought it was no big deal when people were denied access to restaurants, hotels and schools due to the color of their skin. Unless you've walked in the shoes, you have no clue.
LTE 2: I've heard there are companies out west who go into schools that offer wind turbine technology degrees and make job offers to everyone in the curriculum due to the shortage of workers who know how to work on them. Solar nanotechnology is another very promising field. I am not opposed to the use of fracking, but it definitely should be limited to sparcely populated areas to minimize risks.
Finish the thought: already rejected. Mr. Benfield once again nails it when he states "budget deficit is not the cause of our current financial problems". The deficit is a symptom of our problems. The deficit could actually be taken care of rather easily by either printing enough money to pay it off, or by a combination of drastically higher taxes and drastically lower spending. Of course, both scenarios have major consequences which would be far worse than caring the current debt load. I find it rather ironic and amusing that the party which once proclaimed "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" are now all up in arms over the deficit when the opposite party is occupying the WH. Apparently, Mr. Hoglund has missed the fact that austerity is already here for the states who are forced to balance their budgets on a shrunken tax base. That's why the UR is remaining unchanged. The gains in private employment are being negated by the loss of govt jobs.
Oh my!!!! I just watched the OPSEC Seal video, Dishonorable Disclosures. The Navy Seal, Ben Smith, who spoke on the video is a very close friend of mine, a pole vaulter, and fraternity brother. We used to ride motorcycles together.
ReplyDeleteHe must have ridden without a helmet and had a mishap:
Delete“You are an Imposter, You are a Muslim (Cassius Clay, Lew Alcindor, Barry Soetoro), You are the Manchurian President and may you go back to the country you were born in when you are deposed you little, little man (and take all your communist sympathizers with you),” Smith wrote. “You insult everything that was considered American. May you and your administration be a lesson to history and your posterity be lost to the rebirth of AMERICAN PATRIOTISM!”
By Josh Rogin, Foreign Policy
Posted Aug. 23, 2012, at 5:57 a.m.
Ben's a great guy but he's always been a bit out there. When I first became disabled back in the mid-90's, he was one of my biggest supporters. He and Art Pope's nephew, Dave Pope.
DeleteBen helped Cal Cunningham get elected student body president at UNC in 1995
DeleteWe have stayed in touch. He's on my facebook friends list.
DeleteThose SEALs and Deltas are probably the finest warriors on earth, and can be extreme elsewhere, too. Some remind of a remark made in one of Eastwood's movies where a major on the make sneers at Eastwood's gunnery sergeant character and says that the gunney needs to be locked away, with a sign beside his storage bin that reads, "Break glass in the event of war."
Delete:) So Bucky, you mess with me and you mess with Ben and I assure you, you don't want to do that.
DeleteA Delta operator took over a Humvee after its driver was wounded or killed during the famous Black Hawk Down battle in Mogadishu. He drove the vehicle with one hand, fired his M16 out the window with the other. According to soldiers in the Humvee, he was consistently hitting the gunmen at whom he aimed. Try one-handing a rifle at a stationary target while seated stationary and see how you do. Then, try doing the same while driving a car. Those guys aren't like you and me.
DeleteWordly is right…Smith and his pal Scott Taylor must have gotten a bump or two on the head. They are obviously a handful of low level jerks, just the latest to emerge in this insanity laced election process. And they are way out of line.
DeleteThe leader of the raid on Bin Laden, Admiral Bill McRaven has already countered their nonsense by saying "Make no mistake about it, it was the president of the United States that shouldered the burden for this operation, that made the hard decisions."
"This is an unprofessional, shameful action on the part of the operators that appear in the video, period," U.S. Army Special Forces Maj. Fernando Lujan wrote last week on his Facebook page, to a chorus of approval from colleagues.
A Green Beret who returned last year from Afghanistan, Lujan says that attaching the title of special operator with any political campaign is "in violation of everything we've been taught, and the opposite of what we should be doing, which is being quiet professionals."
As we used to say in Viet Nam "There's always the ten percent who don't get it."
as a pole vaulter, he landed on his head a few times
Delete"He must have ridden without a helmet and had a mishap"
DeleteI know he's your friend Bob, but...HAHAHA!
(Good for him for supporting Cal though. He's a good guy.)
I have several friends that are nutcases. :)
DeletePhargo, pole vaulters have always lived in a different world.
DeleteWhen I arrived at RJRHS, I was a one sport wonder...basketball. But the basketball coach told us if we wanted to play for him, we had to participate in a spring sport as well. Having recently observed my first in person curve ball, I knew that I had no future in baseball. I was too short and slow for tennis and golf was simply boring.
The RJRHS track team at that time might have been the worst in the state. The season before they had lost a dual meet to Charlotte Myers Park by a score of something like 125-4.
But the school had just hired a new track coach who was intent on winning the state championship. And so he declared open tryouts for every event.
Well, everybody wanted to be in the sexy events, the 100, the hurdles, anything under half a mile. It was hard to tell who won the dash tryouts because of the cloud of dust raised by the dozens of participants, although it wasn't hard to spot me chugging in last after the cloud had cleared away.
And the hurdles turned out to be a comedy event, because I had to turn each hurdle into a high jump event.
The field events had the lowest sex appeal of all. We were, quite rightly, not allowed to do the javelin. I would have liked that one, considering the possibility of accidentally taking out my rival for the favors of Sweet Sue. I liked the broad jump, because it allowed me to soar like a bird for up to ten feet. But its sex appeal quotient would soon drop as political correctness, dictating that jumping broads was not appropriate, changed its name to the long jump.
The high jump looked dangerous. And lifting a 12 pound iron ball and throwing it looked like hernia territory to me.
But the least popular events were the mile run and the pole vault. Only a masochist would submit himself to running for over five minutes at a time, but at least the mile got a lot of press in those days. But if the high jump looked dangerous, the pole vault looked like suicide. And a big crowd for the pole vault final included the participants' mothers. All the hot girls were over at the hurdles finish line.
I think 3 guys tried out for the mile, and only 2 for the pole vault. One of them quickly skipped to the tennis team, but the other, Dave, may have been the best athlete in the school. And he had determination. The school record quickly went from 8'6" to 9', to 10', to 11'.
By then I had found my niche on the team. I fetched water and served as a judge in the field events. I don't remember Dave ever saying a word, on or off the field, in the 4 years that we spent in high school, and I may have been his best friend.
But I was there, standing next to the landing pit, holding my clipboard, on the day that we placed the bar at 12 feet and Dave, straining every muscle of his body, slithered over it. He watched from the pit as the bar vibrated, then quieted. When it was clear that the bar was not going to fall, Dave's upper lip rose a couple of millimeters and his bottom lip took on a small curve, then saying nothing to anyone, he jumped up and trotted up the hill to the gym, having managed to ignore an earthshaking event.
Of course, his father was an FBI agent, so what did you expect? Pole vaulters are from Mars.
We all know that the deviant homosexual culture is infiltrating a lot of our society. Primarily, because it's politically correct or acceptable. I predict that won't last long, as the ugliness of that world starts to be exposed.
ReplyDeleteHere's an example of how it's even in pop music.
'Call me maybe?'
Watch 'til the end to see what happens, if you don't know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWNaR-rxAic
Don't call me Rush, I don't want to hear from you. Hee Hee.
Not EVEN maybe.
DeleteCity Councilman James Taylor must be a piece of work.
ReplyDeleteThe guy goes riding around at 3am with a loaded gun (and! he doesn't have his permit), he's speeding and gets stopped by the police. And he has the audacity to raise a stink?
I've seen him on TV13, and he looks competent and reasonably on the ball. So, I'm a little bit surprised.
Of course, when you throw in the fact that he's a liberal Democrat, things get a whole lot clearer, a whole lot faster. Hee hee.......!
Hey Arthur, looks like he could use your help. Why don't you help a brother out?
DeleteMr Taylor is a nice guy. I've met him and he has a beautiful family. Guess I should call my cousin and help him out a bit in Walnut Cove. My uncle Harvey was Sheriff of Stokes county for 16 years.
DeleteI figure the punishment should be: He has to tell the policewoman he's sorry for showing his butt on the side of the road (which I'm sure he did), and he can enter an Alford plea to speeding, and he'll be on his way with a fine and probably no points.
DeleteTo all the lawyers in here-wanna 'bees', and real, what do you think?
Bob, if you say he's a good guy, I'm sure he is.
DeleteI met Mr. Taylor when I early-voted against the marriage amendment. He was outside the County building. We talked for a couple of minutes, until someone else approached, and I moved away so he could speak with that person. Mr. Taylor was very courteous and respectful, very serious-minded. I like the guy.
DeleteI too have met and talked with Mr. Taylor. He is very bright and a breath of fresh air on the City Council.
DeleteHe won't need an Alford plea, because even a kid who just passed the bar yesterday knows how to handle an estimated speed case.
You do two things. You go to the scene and make a few measurements and a map. Then when the case is called, you ask the cop three questions:
1. Where was the defendant's car when you began assessing his speed?
2. Where was his car when you finished the assessment?
3. How long did the assessment last in seconds. If the cop says "Three", you get him to admit that it might have been four...the longer the better.
Then, with a calculator in your hand, you do a simple calculation based on distance traveled in x seconds and you have the actual speed, usually less than 2/3 of what the cop estimated.
Having discredited the cop's estimate, you then ask the judge for dismissal. Whatever happened after the stop is usually thrown out as well.
The 4th circuit just threw out a fairly serious drug case because of the estimated speed bit. Most real cops are taught never to make a stop based on estimates, but to either pace the car or use radar or laser. In fact, that is the policy of the NC Highway Patrol.
As always...you know the rest.
BTW, the Alford plea was invented right here in W-S, not by a lawyer but by a defendant in a murder case and is named for him.
And you can tell the rest NW.....,the officer has to have an opinion about the speed of the vehicle, beyond the radar, and/or the speed detection device. In fact, the officer's opinion is the most salient part of a speeding case's testimony.
DeleteThe case will be tried in Stokes County too, so that will be a factor.
As usual, you leave out the stuff that really matters Rush. I guess Forsyth Tech Law School taught you well.
You're pathetic.
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Delete