Jack Hawke

The sick state of North Carolina's Republican Party came into sharp relief this week when one its masters of sleaze, Jack Hawke, resigned as an adviser to Paraclete, aka Tim D'Annunzio, aka Jesus Christ. Steve wrote about this yesterday, as have others, but I want to cover it from a different angle.

As you know by now, D'Annunzio is a Republican candidate of Congress, running in the 8th district to unseat Larry Kissell. Up until now, the full-time war profiteer and part-time blogger has been operating under the guiding hand of Jack Hawke, a GOP operative and long-standing ringleader in Art Pope's Puppetshow. Hawke had warned D'Annunzio to keep his lunatic late-night rantings to himself.

It's not me, it's you:

Hawke said he parted ways in part over D'Annunzio's posts on a blog called "Christ's War," which combines politics with Biblical references and end-times theology. Hawke said he advised the candidate to take it down after a February Observer story quoted passages from it.

"He took it down, told me it was down and down to stay," said Hawke, who advised former Gov. Jim Martin and gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory. "Next I knew it was in the N&O telling me it was back up. ... I don't think any candidate should get up at 3 or 4 in the morning, sit down in front of a computer and pour your heart out. It's just not a smart thing to do."

Jack, you just can't reason with a megalomaniac.

Friday funnies at the Puppetshow, courtesy of Sir Jack the Hawke.

With Jack Hawke, ex-ringleader of the Civitas Circus, now blowing hot air into Pat McCrory's corporate sails, the shape of the general election for governor is clear: On the Democratic side, you'll have a dedicated public servant who understands how government works and why it's important to work toward the common good. And on the other side you'll have a guy like Pat "Duke" McCrory, purveyor of free-market talking points galore: Gummint is bad, greed is good, and I'm the man to protect yo wallet from the pinko comminists in Raleigh.

Map now updated with Myers Park Pat!

I admit to spending less and less time worrying about the "reports" and political activities spewing steadily from the Art Pope Puppetshow. Funded to the tune of $3 to $4 million annually by the knight of the right, the increasingly irrelevant John Locke Foundation and Civitas appear to have attracted all the converts they're going to get.

But as our handy-dandy (and updated!) map of the Show suggests, the Puppetmaster has infiltrated major media outlets and at least one major university, so they are definitely worth keeping an eye on. Which is why I was so pleased to see this post by Rob Schofield at NC Policy Watch yesterday. It's a doozy.

A couple of items of interest today.

First off, Chris Fitzsimon at NC Policy Watch smacks Rick Martinez (News Puppet at WPTF-AM) upside his wooden head with a great column on public education.

The market fundamentalists are relentless in their crusade to privatize public schools and don’t mind ignoring facts and social science if they have to. They are even willing to temporarily put aside their normal demonization of the poor.

I was reading a new post at Progressive Pulse this morning, where I learned that one of the regular commenters there is being paid to blog by the Puppetmaster. His name is Max Borders (no, it's not a joke) and he is a self-avowed soldier in the so called freedom movement.

I've seen Max's name many times, but always assumed he was an honest broker, another run-of-the-mill free-market fundamentalist without a real job. When I discovered he's actually a shill for the Civitas Circus, I wrote this:

I appreciate the background on Max. Even though I’ve seen scores of comments from him here, I never realized he’s a paid shill for the Puppetmaster. Thanks for saving me the trouble of reading his future commentary.

Note to Civitas: If you’re going to spend a boatload of Art’s money upgrading to a fancy new website, why on earth would you plaster the incoherent ramblings of Jack Hawke on your welcoming video? Just sayin’.

There are probably some things more annoying than whining Republicans, but I can't think of any today. That's because I just got my very own copy of Citizen News, the bi-monthly newsletter from the John William Pope Civitas Institute. The lead story in this edition is by Puppet President Jack Hawke, entitled "Republicans Win the Vote, Lose the Election."

In the 2006 election, Republican candidates for the state House received 31,703 more votes than Democrat candidates. The Republicans also received a majority of 51 percent of the vote in state House races. Yet, in spite of receiving more than 31,000 more votes than the Democrats, the Republicans not only failed to gain the majority, they lost five seats.

I'm not sure why reporters at the N&O feel obliged to report on the monthly coven meetings of Art Pope's Civitas organization, but I'm glad they did this week.

Conservatives poked through the rubble of last Tuesday's mid-term elections and decided that North Carolina Republicans didn't do a good enough job in providing a coherent message or raising enough money. At a luncheon sponsored by the Civitas Institute, Jack Hawke, the president of the conservative think tank, said the Democrats had a substantial money advantage.