Republican idiocy

This is what sending a conservative lawyer to Congress will get you:

Bills like H.R. 2804 will make sure that the people always pay the price. #NC13 #ncpol Deregulation efforts caused the #coalash problems

— Virginia Conlon (@Conlon4NC) March 11, 2014

Justice for the corporations, not the people.

And, here are a few others:

Disaster on the micro-level:

On the Dan, determining the health of low-lying river creatures such as mussels, clams, crawfish and dragonflies will determine the health of the fish in the river, and later, the birds and animals that feed on those fish. The fear, said Brian Williams, also a Dan River Basin Association program manager, is that the entire food chain along the upper Dan could be imperiled by the presence of coal ash and its poisonous heavy metals. (The Dan River stretches some 200 miles; about 70 miles is affected by the spill.)

Already, though, Williams described the river bottom on the Dan a mile or two below the spill as a virtual “kill zone” for macroinvertebrates because of the amount of toxic sludge that’s settled. At the spill site, there is a coal ash bar some five feet thick and 75 feet long. Coal ash has been detected along the river bottom some 70 miles eastward downstream — all the way to the John Kerr Reservoir north of Raleigh.

Even those critters who survive this calamity will absorb toxins and heavy metals, which will form a bioaccumulation chain that will eventually make any fish pulled from the river or Kerr Lake inedible. Or, more precisely, fish that shouldn't be eaten. Humans are also subject to bioaccumulation.

We'll start with a chain of causality:

“We need to quit treating ‘union’ like it’s a four-letter word. And folks, I am not just talking about... http://t.co/1ExSkOuUwO

— NC State AFL-CIO (@NCStateAFLCIO) March 3, 2014

Prejudice against unions in North Carolina is both persistent and illogical. What has being the least-unionized state in the country brought us? Better and more secure jobs? Oh, hell no:

We'll start with an unfortunate truth:

Where are the women in North Carolina politics? http://t.co/hu7dkmulLP (via @newsobserver) #ncpol

— Women AdvaNCe (@WomenAdvanceNC) February 25, 2014

The short answer? North Carolina's outdated yet persistent patriarchal society is well-represented in our business community, and those wealthy (white) men are loath to give up their dominance by nominating or supporting women candidates for office. Aside from the sexist angle, these men fear the variables that would result, like the propensity for doing the right thing. Don't like that opinion? Prove me wrong. Please.

Yes, Pat McCrory really did say this:

The golf championships are being played in back-to-back weeks at the same venue for the first time. McCrory said Commerce Secretary Sharon Allred Decker has told him to "wipe my schedule clean for those two weeks."

"We are going to be meeting with business development people at the two Opens," McCrory said. "In fact, we’re going to use the Women’s Open to concentrate on Asian companies because of all the Asian golfers.

Right, because Asians are all one type, and they hold off on their important business decisions until their female golfers finish the tour. What if they play poorly? Aside from the fact that North Carolina is already well-known for its golf courses, the popularity of the game itself has been on the decline for several years:

Everybody's a critic:

@JamesProtzman But #BlueNC seems more interested in preaching to choir than in being effective, making change or elevating the dialogue.

— ModernSouth (@TheModernSouth) February 16, 2014

If by "elevating the dialogue" you mean ignoring all but the worst examples of prejudicial human behaviors, and/or trying to carry on an intelligent conversation with somebody who would conceal their bigotry by spinning a convoluted argument that employs slippery-slopes that don't exist and red herrings marrying bluefin tuna (or is it tunas?), then no. We won't be elevating the dialogue anytime soon.