NCPW

Given all the legislative "successes" achieved by the GOP in Raleigh this year, you'd think they'd be touting their accomplishments on behalf of the people of North Carolina. Instead, they've spent the past week playing gotcha over a silly joke. It's easy to understand why.

Always a good way to start the weekend. Chris Fitzsimon taking on the Show.

Leef has a theory about why liberals encourage kids to go to college. It's not to get a better education, to expand their minds, even to improve their job prospects. It's all part of a subversive plot by the liberals to enrich themselves and most importantly, to preserve their power.

"Putting more kids through college means more money in the pockets of the overwhelmingly leftist administrators and professors. Furthermore, since the intellectual influence on college students is much more apt to drive them toward statism than toward individual liberty and free markets, the more young people go to college, the bigger the voting bloc for leftist candidates."

Rob Schofield often writes things I've been thinking, much more effectively than I ever would. Take a look.

It's one thing for a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank to attack or "report" on politicians with whom they disagree, to rev up their friends and supporters to mobilize to become engaged in the political process, or even for its employees to be active in political campaigns in their private lives. It's another, however, for the think tank to manufacture faux news about a partisan group's endorsement of a politician and then package and distribute that partisan group's ratings as "exclusive" news. Moreover, when that "news" is then immediately repackaged and distributed by the candidate herself, the whole thing just smells bad.

Actually, I'm only sharing the top five, because I want you to go to Progressive Pulse to see the others benefits.

• Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans
• Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool
• Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans
• Lower seniors prescription drug prices by beginning to close the donut hole
• Tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage
• Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans

From Chris at NC Policy watch.

The candidate filing period is over and Republican Party Chair Tom Fetzer and other GOP leaders are touting the party's full slate of candidates as more evidence that all signs point to big Republican gains in Raleigh and Washington in November. But it's more than a little premature to start ordering the champagne. There are small, but growing signs that the predicted Republican wave may have already crested and that voters have just as many doubts about GOP candidates as they do about Democrats.

I'm with Chris. The mighty tempest in the Tea Party cup is already on its way out to sea, as right wing extremists show themselves to be devoid of solutions, compulsive liars, and wildly out of touch with reality. Clearly about 15% of voters are stupid enough to fall for their happy horseshit. The only risk in November will be if the other 85% of voters are too demoralized by spineless Democrats to even bother to go to the polls.

Chris Fitzsimon reminds us today that no matter how much money the Puppetmaster spends to put on his show, the serious work of governing is for adults, not three-year-olds.

• Pope and Luddy may be able to buy an election but their money can't change reality. The more the plans of their Gang of Five are scrutinized, the more absurd they seem. Hogwash doesn't begin to describe it.