Oh, Hail!

We got hammered with a mighty hail storm this afternoon. It was only about nickel-sized, but there was a lot of it, driven hard by wind. It crushed our previouly healthy tomato plants (you'll see them on the patio) and punched a dozen holes in our sunroom skylights, allowing the rain to pour in. There wasn't anything I could do while it was happening, so I just shot some video. Here it is.

Hammer Watch: Rhino Times editor puts on his tinfoil hat

In his Under The Hammer column in this week's Rhinoceros Times (a Greensboro, NC weekly newspaper, article not online), editor John Hammer regurgitates as serious the intellectually bankrupt idea that "[P]eople who might cause problems for the Clintons have had a habit of dying in unusual circumstances."

Hammer proceeds to offer his "evidence." It requires his readers to suspend their good judgment and abandon all reason. Why Hammer perpetually expects his readers to be so naive, I don't know. It seems rather contemptuous of his audience, as if he must be thinking to himself, "My readers are dumb enough to buy this crap."

First on Hammer's list is the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. Hammer writes "[W]hen a top White House official dies of a gunshot wound, you would expect there to be a full autopsy and there was not." Hammer is quite simply wrong about this. A full autopsy was performed. Doubt it? Read this exhaustive investigation into Foster's death. The investigation was conducted by Kenneth Starr, yes that Ken Starr. It concludes that Foster's death was a suicide. To believe otherwise, is to ignore the empirical evidence and assume that Clinton nemesis Starr was in on "it."

Next up, Hammer turns to the plane crash in which former Secretary of Commerce Ron Borwn died along with 34 other people. Hammer describes the crash as "bizarre," although he doesn't explain why the crash was bizarre. In truth, although Hammer incorrectly writes that the crash occurred on a "relatively clear day," the cause of the crash was an improperly executed instrument landing -- tragic, but not bizarre. Hammer reminds us that Brown had a wound in his head that looked like a gunshot wound. He fails to tell us that an examination of Brown's skull by military officials "revealed no bullet, no bone fragments, no metal fragments and, even more telling, no exit wound."

Finally, Hammer offers former White House intern Mary Mahoney who was murdered in a botched robbery. The perpetrator, who was also "accused in the shooting homicide of a security guard in 1993, the attempted murder of a police officer, and four armed robberies" confessed to Mahoney's murder, plead guilty and received a life sentence without the possibility of parole while not once attempting to mitigate his punishment by claiming to be a Clinton operative.

Hammer also incorrectly asserts that victim Mahoney was "going to go public with her story of sexual harassment at the White House." There is zero substantiation of this. Prior to the Monica Lewinsky scandal breaking, Newsweek writer Mike Isikoff hinted that a White House staffer with the initial "M" was about to talk about her affair with Clinton. The "M" was Monica, not Mahoney. Doubt it? Ask Hammer how he "knows" that Mahoney was about to go public.

Snopes has a thorough examination of the distortions, misdirection, fabrications and just plain wrong assertions that people must resort to in order to put forth, as Hammer did, these tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.

If you suspect that your readers are unwilling or incapable of critical thinking, you may think you have an audience for these kinds of conspiracies. Since that seems to be where Hammer is coming from, maybe next week he will write about People With Connections To The Bush Dynasty Who Met With Suspicious And Untimely Deaths.

From local blog post to national news: Ed Cone on Fox Business

Inspired by his blog post about poor airline service, Fox Business invites Ed Cone to discuss his experience on-air with Neal Cavuto.

Another N&R letter-writer gets his facts wrong and once again, the editors let it ride.

A letter to the editor in today's News & Record by Robert A. Hahn of Greensboro claims that gas prices are going up because Democrats took away subsidies for the oil industry. Specifically, Hahn writes:

"The Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007. At that time, the economy was doing pretty well. One of the first things that the Democratic Congress did was to “punish” big oil by reducing subsidies."

Not true. The House of Representatives approved an energy bill in 2007 that would have reduced subsidies, but those provisions were rejected by the senate and the final bill, with subsidies intact, was signed into law by President Bush.

I don't know why the N&R continues to allow letters that contain factual errors. This is not an isolated incident. These are not matters of opinion that writers should be free to express. These are empirical untruths. One would think the N&R would not publish such inaccuracies, but they seem to have no compunction for doing so.

Site Launch: CobleForCongress.com

[UPDATE: Some visitors may have still been seeing the old site this morning. That problem has been rectified and everybody should see the new site now.]

We launched Congressman Howard Coble's new campaign web site this morning. It was one of the most challenging and most engaging web site design projects I've done. It's a real professional joy when a project requires one to spread the creative wings.

This was the first project for which I shot and edited video (on the home page). Tom Lassiter's and Stewart Pittman's how-to session at ConvergeSouth was a great headstart.

We also incorporated a nifty news management system that allows people to self-subscribe to the campaign's email news announcements. On the back end, the system gives the campaign a one-stop method of sending news to supporters and/or the press and simultaneously publishing the announcement to the web site.

The interface makes good use of the Spry javascript framework, doing the kinds of things that I think good web sites do, like minimizing the need for page reloads to display user selections. I also included a great Google Maps mashup from GovTrack.us that allows people to explore Congressman Coble's district down to the street level. (I knew that I was in the thirteenth congressional district, but I didn't know that my neighbors across the street are in Howard's sixth.)

I thank Howard Coble and his friendly staff for the opportunity to work with them. And thanks to to Bill Knight for the referral.

An Honest Campaign Ad

In response to an on-air caller yesterday, WZTK's Britt Whitmire improvised this "honest campaign commercial" . It's hillarious. (Thanks for the audio file, Britt.)

To "Operation Chaos" morons, uh, I mean "operatives"

Despite my prediction that North Carolina Republicans would be too smart to follow Rush Limbaugh's advice to switch parties in order to vote for Hillary Clinton, some apparently did. I heard one "operative" bragging about doing so on the Brad and Britt show on WZTK (101.1 FM) yesterday.

How did that work out for you, moran? Did your preference for governor win the Republican primary? How about your party's congressional candidates? Did your prefered county commissioner candidate win? Are you glad you left the choosing of the Republican candidates to others so that you could, uh, waste your time and your vote? Mission accomplished?

You are a great American.

I voted

I voted at 10:00 this morning -- was the 179th voter at my precinct.

Obama 58%?

I spent a little time last night looking at North Carolina voter demographics, new registrations, early voting turnout and historical voting patterns. Then I ran some "what-if" scenarios, making assumptions about how the vote might break down tomorrow. I came up with Obama winning 52% to 62% of the vote, with 56% - 58% coming up most often.

TV pundits are speculating this morning that the Clinton's strong presence in the state today might portend an upset. The only way that happens is if Obama gets less than 33% of the white vote or less than 70% of the black vote.

Hillary Clinton: "I was against the Michigan primary before I was for it."

Okay, not a real quote, but it might as well be. More than just a change of position, Clinton broke a signed pledge.

In September of 2007, all of the Democratic presidential candidates signed a pledge promising "I shall not campaign or participate in any state which schedules a presidential election primary or caucus before Feb. 5, 2008, except for the states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina..." Here is the pledge. Here is Clinton's press release announcing that she will sign it (which she did).

When Michigan decided to move its primary to January 15th, all of the Democratic presidential candidates honored their signed pledge, kept their word, and had their names removed from the Michigan ballot-- every one of them, except for Hillary Clinton.

Now Clinton is insisting that her broken pledge be used to her political advantage by calling for the Michigan vote to count.

We don't need another candidate of political expediency. We don't need a candidate who will so easily go back on her word when keeping it has a political cost. That's the same ol' same ol' that frustrates Americans of both parties. It's time for something new, something better. Hillary Clinton is not it.

News & Record editors offer misleading look at Congressional 6th district Dem primary

The News & Record opinion editors offered their analysis of the Congressional 6th district Democratic primary yesterday. The winner will go on to face 12-term Republican incumbent Howard Coble. Vying for the chance are Teresa Sue Bratton, Jay Ovittore and Johnny Carter. The editors endorsed Bratton, but then did something very strange. They wrote that Carter "doesn’t offer voters much to distinguish himself from the crowd."

Hardly. On his website, Carter offers some unique propositions, especially for a Democrat. Among them:

• He asserts that a plan is under way to dissolve the sovereignty of the United States and says "Our elected Global elitists will seal this program with a new money called the 'Amero'."
• He proposes a year-round school schedule to allow children to "graduate" by 9th grade.
• He would, "Remove all illegal non-citizens from this country."
• He says we should "Accept no visitors from known terrorist countries"
• He claims that the Pledge of Allegiance has been legislated out of our schools.
• He says that for a church to keep its tax-exempt status, "THE CHURCH MUST NOT CRITICIZE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES OR BUREAUS, THE WHITE HOUSE,NEW WORLD ORDER, CONGRESS, FEDERAL RESERVE, SUPREME COURT, ANY PENDING BILLS OR LEGISLATION, WELL KNOWN PUBLIC FIGURES OR INSTITUTIONS, ORDER OF SKULL AND BONES, OTHER SECRET SOCIETIES, FAITH GROUPS, CULTS OR RELIGIONS, NEW AGE MOVEMENT, UNITED NATIONS OR GLOBALIST GROUPS."
  

Carter also says he would, "Require the U.S. Arab Community to publicly denounce terrorism of any form or else remove their tax-exempt status. It is time to evolve." I wasn't aware that the U.S. Arab community had tax-exempt status, but saying so, and doing it with the implication that Arabs are less evolved, is something that certainly sets Johnny Carter apart from his opponents.

Another thing unique to Carter: According to the NC State Board of Elections, Carter has never voted in an election in this state. The N&R apparently avoided reporting this too, even though it was brought to their attention on at least two occasions.

Why would the N&R avoid giving readers an accurate and complete picture of Carter? I cannot be sure. Comments on the editorial's shortcomings have gone unanswered. I have a theory, though. If the N&R wants Bratton to win the primary, they benefit her by endorsing her then leaving readers to think that, if not her, there are two alternatives. If they had offered an honest assessment of Carter, they would have revealed him as not viable in a Democratic primary, casting the contest as a two-person race, which would make a win harder for Bratton. Either that or they got very lazy on this one. Hard to know.

Why "Operation Chaos" dies in North Carolina

Rush Limbaugh has been encouraging his Republican listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton in their state's primaries. The race for the Republican nomination for governor will keep that from happening in North Carolina.

Our state has a "modified closed primary" which means that voters registered to a party must vote in that party's primary. Unaffiliated voters may choose which party's primary in which to vote. Like other states with closed primaries, Republicans would have to switch their party registrations in order to vote for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, presumably to later switch back before the general election. North Carolina Republicans won't find that idea appealing because of what they would have to give up--a chance to nominate a candidate for governor with a good chance of winning.

There are four candidates running for the nomination, each has appeal, although it appears as if it will come down to Fred Smith or Pat McCrory. With the Democratic incumbent governor Mike Easley not running for re-election, this will be the best chance in years for Republicans to have a shot at the governorship. North Carolina Republicans are not going to ignore a serious good chance to nominate their best gubernatorial candidate in order to participate in pointless tomfoolery.

There's one more reason why the governor's race will keep Republicans in their primary. It seems possible, if not likely, that none of the Republican candidates will get above the requisite 40% to win the nomination in the first go-round. That would mean a runoff election and in North Carolina, if you vote in one party's primary, you cannot vote in another party's runoff election. North Carolina Republicans just have too much at stake to waste their vote at a time when it really will matter.