After dark

The year of the pink slips, 2nd edition

NC GOP solution to unemployment crisis: Make more:

Nearly 7,600 state workers, including teacher assistants, community college and university staffers, lost their jobs in June, driving North Carolina’s unemployment up to 9.9 percent, the highest rate since last October.

And the next brilliant move by NC's intrepid Republicans: Solve NC's mental health issues by importing meat tainted with the Bovine Spongiform (Mad Cow, for you Fox watchers) Virus, so at least we'll know what the problem is. Idiots.

Congrats to the Sierra Club

And a hearty thank you to hizzonor Michael Bloomberg:

Today's $50 million commitment by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's philanthropy to the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign will be used in North Carolina to promote offshore wind, a spokeswoman says.

Bloomberg's not only a man of vision, he's got a damned fine sense of humor, too:

I'll help you move, Brad

Hopefully he doesn't have a piano:

According to Miller, he'd only need to move 50 yards or so to be back in the 13th. He says Republicans split Raleigh voting precinct 36 "to shave off the apartment complex where I live. The rest of the precinct is still in 13. My apartment complex is in 4."

Even if you do have a piano, I'll help you move. I'll just trick a couple of Republicans into giving a hand when it comes to the stairs and such.

After Dark

Another sad story re NC's mental health system

Falling through the Grand Canyon-sized cracks:

The man was arrested June 12 after he went to seek help at the emergency room at Wilkes Regional Medical Center. But instead of being committed to a state mental hospital, the man was arrested after he became combative with a police officer. He spent three weeks in jail, where he was beaten. He also says he was sexually abused

There has to be a point where we can no longer describe NC's mental health as a "system", since that word alludes to some form of interconnectivity between providers.

Is Fred Eshelman putting on the red light?

This statement is even more ambiguous than his usual blather:

Though the company says it usually doesn’t comment on speculation, Executive Chairman Fred Eshelman said, “We are not engaged in any discussions around a combination with other clinical research providers.”

Of course PPD's stock is up, since those Wall Street idiots love it when somebody says something they can't comprehend. If we're lucky, Eshelman will declare "mission accomplished" here and move to another state so he can fuck up its government. I usually don't condone pushing my problems on somebody else, but...

Anti-Obama idiots endanger motorists

Hacking into a NC DOT warning sign:

An electronic road sign in Union County carried an "Impeach Obama" message during part of the weekend, several motorists reported...it was placed there by the N.C. Department of Transportation to warn motorists of construction work ahead.

Cue the apologists to declaim "no wrecks occurred" on that stretch of highway, so there was no harm done. Or something equally wormish.

Citizens United and the erosion of 1st Amendment protections

In an effort to break a debate stalemate which seems to have wandered down the lost-in-the-woods side trail of "one voice or many voices" when describing the Citizens United decision, I thought it prudent to refocus on the two most important words of said decision: "General treasuries". It's within these two words where our 1st Amendment freedoms and protections are being weathered under the landscape-changing forces of money, and we should at least be able to recognize the threat, even if we can't escape the storm.

Koch & AFP's dirty war against clean energy

The battle lines are being drawn, and we're right in the middle:

The war over America’s coastal-energy future has officially begun, and the result could determine whether we see wind turbines or catastrophic oil spills along our coastlines in coming years.

This isn't just about offshore contraptions, though: The Koch brothers make the bulk of their money from pipelines, quite often of the rusty and leaky type, which the East Coast has (so far) not had to worry about as much as other regions. That could change, and very soon.

BlueNC

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