UNC's Gene Nichol roasts Republicans for their deficit hypocrisy:

My own sense of it is the national Republicans are now saying, clearly, even if by indirection, "We're the party of the 2 percent." We're willing to further bust the budget, to countenance massive teacher and first-responder layoffs, to leave millions out of work, to permit our beyond-frayed social safety net to crumble, to increase what is already the steepest income inequality in the Western industrial world and to flatly discard the concerns of "the least of these" in order to bolster the economic prospects of a relative handful of the wealthiest people in the United States. Some mission that.

Have they rented a certain amount of page space from the N&O, or what?

North Carolina is trying to prepare for the future economy by putting recommendations from Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton's JOBS (Joining Our Businesses and Schools) Commission into practice. Two bills that Gov. Bev Perdue recently signed into law come directly from the commission's report.

Unfortunately, the JOBS Commission recommendations - and therefore the new laws - are based on false assumptions and unrealistic projections.

Here we go again: dueling studies about the value of studies, all in the interest of partisan politics.

Bob Geary from the Indyweek crunches some numbers for energy generation and efficiency:

In North Carolina, the institute study found, renewables could supply 40 percent of the state's electricity by 2025. Costs would be comparable to those of conventional power sources—coal, nuclear, natural gas—but with major advantages in air quality, reduced water consumption and zero "climate impacts," it said.

North Carolina could reduce electricity usage by almost one-fourth by 2025. In the next 20 years, renewables (40 percent) combined with energy-efficiency (24 percent) could account for nearly two-thirds of the state's electric-power needs.

But there is a debate amongst proponents on whether (or not) we should reopen SB3 (REPS bill) for modification.

It's a popular misconception that Republicans are concerned about our nation's debt problem. It's maybe less inaccurate to say they're concerned about government debt, but that's not really their root concern either, is it? In reality, it's the collective management of our resources they are opposed to, because this puts power in the hands of the people, not (business) corporations.

How have I arrived at this conclusion, you may ask? Because of the way they approach individual (personal) debt. Not only is that kind of debt "okay", Republicans go out of their way protecting their corporate masters' freedom to enslave us with usurial and wealth-destroying practices.

And whatever gets in its way is going to have a bad day:

An island of ice more than four times the size of Manhattan is drifting across the Arctic Ocean after breaking off from a glacier in Greenland. Potentially in the path of this unstoppable giant are oil platforms and shipping lanes - and any collision could do untold damage.

Few images can capture the world's climate fears like a 100-square- mile chunk of ice breaking off Greenland's vast ice sheet, a reservoir of freshwater that if it collapsed would raise global sea levels by a devastating 20 feet.