Alarmism and hyperbole
This week, we started edging back into COVID panic again. Some places started masking up again. One friend said an organization with which he works is considering cancelling or delaying a retreat. I think it’s all alarmism, driven largely by bad headlines and spiking...
Underminiing the outrage machine
Yesterday, Governor Roy Cooper angered conservatives by not imposing a mask mandate. Instead, he left decisions up to local authorities and business owners as to whether or not to require masks. In doing so, Cooper stripped away a conservative outrage platform,...
Notes from Scandinavia
I’m back from Sweden. It was a great trip. I learned quite a bit and look forward to going back to learn more. The first lesson I learned is that magnesium gel caps explode under pressure. They cover everything in a white pasty substance that’s hard to get out...
The GOP’s new best friend
I’m so tired of the Critical Race Theory debate. I’ve been hearing a version of it all my life. It’s just more dog whistles designed to scare and motivate the GOP’s White, predominantly rural base. In the past, Black men were going to take White women. Then, they...
The money race in North Carolina
The fundraising numbers are in for the second quarter and the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina is taking shape. That said, fundraising has changed dramatically in the past few election cycles and what would once have gotten an eye-popping response gets little more...
Schools are safe places. Counties that voted for Trump are not.
We are quickly getting past the midpoint of summer. Schools will re-open in just five or six weeks. It’s time to take the masks off our kids. With mitigation measures, COVID is not much of a risk them and they are not a risk to us. There is little scientific reason to...
The damage is real
Joe Killian is killin’ it. The Policy Watch reporter got most of the scoops in the Nikole Hannah-Jones debacle and he’s been documenting the damage that the GOP has done to the University of North Carolina. Snubbing Hannah-Jones certainly grabbed national attention,...
Indoctrination instead of information
During the last significant political alignment, conservative Democrats left their party to join the Reagan Revolution. Many had been supporting or voting with the increasingly conservative GOP on most issues for years. Southern Congressmen, a US Senator, and a...
the war on knowledge
When the UNC Board of Trustees initially refused to consider tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones, they laid bare the GOP’s tendency to politicize our university system. They ignored historical precedent and they rejected the recommendations of the faculty and...
When history is dangerous
Former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out conservatives’ opposition to teaching the truth about our nation. He tweeted, “If we teach that the founding of the United States of America was somehow flawed. It was corrupt. It was racist. That's really...
