persondem's blog

So what is a name worth? Well, for me it was worth the 130 votes I didn't get Tuesday night. If you look in the Person County phone book you will find that a certain eight to ten last names run for several columns. Mine is not one of them. Name recognition is a key in voter decision making, and I just didn't have enough of it. The other gentlemen running for county commissioner have deep, multigenerational roots in the county, and a little more than two months just isn't enough time to introduce yourself to nearly 13,000 democratic voters.

Admittedly, Person County is not an "A" list county in the world of statewide politics. Other counties have more votes, more money and are easier to get to. so it is understandable that we are not overrun with statewide candidates.

But this year we seem to be especially overlooked, ignored even. We have well over 12,000 democrats who vote rather well and are only 30 minutes north of Durham and the I-40 corridor so we are not that far out in the sticks.

Today the Executive Committee of the North Carolina Democratic Party met in Hamlet, NC. Let me set the stage for the gut check. Due to some negative press concerning the naming of the Vance-Aycock dinner,which is the marquee fall event for the NCDP, a motion was presented by the district chairs of the 11th and 1st congressional districts to refer the idea of renaming the dinner to a select committee. You see, Mr. Aycock was quite the racist. The district chairs hoped for a committee with White, Black, Native American and Latino members to address the issue of just what, if anything, should be done concerning the naming of the Vance-Aycock.

The first Saving our Schools forum was held Nov. 13 at Southern Durham H.S. from 7:00 - 9:00. The event was sponsored and planned by the Young Democrats of NC, and major congratulations are due to Zack Hawkins and Melissa Price.

Just before the publication of On the Road made Jack Kerouac famous, he spent a summer on Mt. Desolation as a fire lookout. Desolation Angels (1965) is one of his autobiographical novels that he wrote about the year in his life that followed his summer of solitude. Though known primarily and rightly for novels that are full of parties and wild travels and certainly rather apolitical, Kerouac was too well informed, too aware of the world around him, too well read, to keep the occasional political comment from creeping into his spontaneous prose.

The fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Ah Sushi, one of my favorite foods and here a metaphor for things liked ...

I spent a few hours Saturday down at NCDP hq in Raleigh attending the Fall Teen Dem rally. One of the local teen dems wanted to go so we went. Speakers at the event included Jerry Meek, Larry Kissell, Ed Ridpath, Tricia Cotham and Pat Smathers.

I tried this post on Kos and it didn't get much play and what it did get was slightly on the negative side. The post had links embedded which didn't copy to BlueNC, but the full post with links can be found here. It might make for more entertaining reading there.

Perhaps you were a fan of the movie A Beautiful Mind which was a biographical look at the troubled life of mathematician John Nash. You might be a mathematician yourself, versed in the details of gaming theory, or you might well be sick and tired of so little getting accomplished by the political leaders of this country as they spend more time looking to beat 'the other guys' than they do practicing thoughtful governance.

My guess is that most of you fall into the third category. If so, or out of general curiosity, please continue reading below the fold to see what may be done, both theoretically and practically, to get our leaders to lead and so lend hope to our now uncertain future.

You don't have to take it folks. You don't have to stand by and watch bad things done in your communities. I just left a group of people who are a living testament to that fact.

or not. That is the question facing Person County. We already have two large coal fired power plants in place in the northern part of the county; the Hyco lake plant is one of the most polluting power generating facilities in the country. We have a midsized commercial landfill in the southeast corner of the county that handles our trash and some trash from adjacent counties. We also have a Georgia-Pacific paper operation and a few lesser industries already in place.