I realize that any press is good press, so therefore, I should just completely ignore those who are running against our incumbents. But, I was passing through Barry Welsh's 50 state page and came across Dan Mansell, Republican candidate for the NC-02. I thought it would be fun to highlight his policies and where they differ from Progressive policies.

This excellent entry triggered an email from a friend about the state of the legislature:

It’s the witching hour and strange things can happen. People will be using the perceived need to get out of town as an excuse to get some bad things done and also to leave some good things undone.

I'll say. If you've been around North Carolina for as many years as I have, you're well familiar with the 'get out of town' drumbeat. Government-haters want to cut taxes, wash their hands, and wrap things up. Progressives see much that needs doing and struggle to get a hearing. And the big middle is where compromise emerges. (My daddy would call it half-assed.)

Hi, you. Welcome back to another wild and woolly week of NC politics, BlueNC style. Here's what happened this weekend.

The top story has to be the mysterious multipresence of NC-8 representative Robin Hayes (R), who seems to have the ability to average 90mph on country roads to attend a meeting with President Bush, all the while avoiding appearing in any photos or news accounts. (Vampire?) Working for change put nails in the coffin with Where’s Waldo, Wormhole Edition or Andy Curliss gets manipulated by Robin Hayes, a follow up to Rep. Hayes Plays Where's Waldo from last week. Read these posts.

I'll be less wordy with this weekend's other posts, mostly because I forgot my power cord today and my battery is old.

The legislative session of the General Assembly is set to end on Friday, but there are still many items that need to be taken care of. First on the list is the minimum wage increase, which needs to pass the Senate as a stand alone bill, the ethics reforms, which need to work their way through the Senate, the landfill moratorium, which needs to pass both as a stand alone bill, and a number of bills that passed each chamber in slightly different forms. So as you wake up this fine Monday morning (at least here in Raleigh) remember that the legislative session does not end with the budget. We will need your help as the week wears on to let the representatives know that the people are watching as the lobbyists will be trying to influence these last few bills.

Until this morning, John Edwards didn't even have a tag here at BlueNC, that's how far removed he's been from North Carolina politics. After serving only two-thirds of a term in the Senate on his way to an eventual vice-presidential bid, John Edwards was at once both an inspiring hope for the future and a hard disappointment. One one hand, he brought an important new dimension to the national political debate, but on the other hand, he didn't help Kerry win North Carolina and he didn't help Democrats retain control of the US Senate.

On any given day, nearly 30 million individual items are bought and sold on eBay. Seven hundred thousand Americans report eBay is a primary or secondary source of income. Are you one of them? Do you do eBay?

Raleighing.com is reporting that there will be a new farmer's market downtown at the City Market starting Wednesday July 12. This gives our community another option in buying local produce which also reduces greenhouse gases (see June 25 entry).

Raleigh is really laying the foundation for a vibrant downtown community with farmer's markets, grocery stores, dense residential development, restaurants, and shops all within walking distance of each other.

I have seen a plethora of articles like this one on MSN proclaiming that now is the best time ever to jump into an SUV. The articles invariably point out the low price point and their prediction that gas prices will go down to "normal" levels in the future, which in turn makes SUVs less costly. Of course, these articles completely ignore the why the price of SUVs are so low and how exactly gas prices are going to go back down.

The simple economics explanation for the low SUV prices is that demand has dropped. And an economist would assume that people were acting rationally and decided that the costs of an SUV were not worth the benefits. Of course, markets can be wrong, but a basic presumption of all economics is that markets work efficiently. The price is set by what the collective society values a product as. It is true that emotion (something economics struggle to grasp) can disrupt markets and many of the articles point out negativity towards SUVs now, but there is no evidence that this emotion is what is dragging down prices. In fact, it is pretty clear to me that emotion was artificially boosting SUV in the past; people were feeling patriotic about driving Hummers, and SUVs were the new it product. Regardless there is no credible evidence that SUV prices are going to rebound in the future; the entire argument rests on the assumption that current prices will trend back to past prices over time, but this assumption is fundamentally flawed, just ask anyone still looking for tech stocks to hit 2000 highs.

When you're out explaining to your friends and neighbors why our Republican representatives in Congress are so pathetic, consider drawing on this excellent column by Tom Teepen.

In his uphill election campaign in 1948, President Harry Truman not only ran against Republican nominee Thomas Dewey but against, as Give-'em-Hell Harry had it, that "do-nothing, good-for-nothing Congress." In fact, the 80th Congress had been about ordinarily productive. No matter. Truman won. Imagine the mincemeat Truman would make of this year's outfit.

In a couple of days, my wife and I will drive to the beach at Emerald Isle for a 10-day vacation. On the way, we will pass through Jacksonville. As we prepare for the trip, I've updated something I wrote last year at this time.

According to MapQuest, the distance between Jacksonville, North Carolina, and Chapel Hill is only 145 miles. It seems more like a million. In Jacksonville, United States Marines rule the flat landscape like a swarm of killer bees. Hard men with tight haircuts, spreading democracy through brute force. Here in the southern part of heaven, Grandmas and Greens run the hilly streets, worried more about the stock market and stormwater.