Pan-Carolinas Nuttery
Sanford, Brannon, McCrory, nuttiness
Following up on the Bob Pittenger crazy, we bring you more crazy from the gentlemen we have chosen to represent us in the halls of buildings with columns (and one who wants to).
The Mark Sanford crazy. Via BuzzFeed, Sanford tells us that the fall government shutdown was not a shutdown. It was merely labeled as such.
I am going to exercise a truly heroic degree of restraint here and steer away from Rep. Sanford’s own problems with publicly misidentifying things while conceding that he has, in the most general sense, a point. The government didn’t shut down entirely. People could still drive on the roads and fly on planes and get Social Security checks, so it wasn’t really a “shutdown,” just as government setting up new rules and guidelines for private health insurers does not constitute a “government takeover of health care.”
The Greg Brannon crazy, his default mode. The tea party U.S. Senate candidate says Planned Parenthood erects a slippery slope toward infanticide of children as old as three months. He bases this on God knows what; Mother Jones has a theory, but it’s just as likely he consulted the chiroptera fluttering around in his head.
Brannon and Thom Tillis are now tied in the polls for the GOP primary in two months.
The Pat McCrory crazy, featuring a textbook example of psychological projection.
From the Observer:
Gov. Pat McCrory criticized Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office on Wednesday, suggesting Cooper was politicizing the cleanup of Duke Energy’s coal ash spill on the Dan River last month …
McCrory said the attorney general’s office shouldn’t comment on the situation while authorities are still trying to get to the bottom of what happened.
McCrory, a former Duke employee, said he would let the N.C. Utilities Commission decide financial matters on the cleanup. The governor appoints the members of the commission.
“You make decisions based on data and research, not based on politics,” he said. “What we don’t need to do is have every politician get in the details of that, because they are not themselves going through the complex study that this engineering and environmental issue deserves.”
Asked if that was a reference to Cooper, McCrory replied: “I frankly think it’s inappropriate for that office to comment on this because they are involved in the process both past, present and future.”
McCrory worked for Duke Energy for 28 years.
Self-awareness is not the man’s strong suit. If McCrory and his appointees had made their decisions based on data and research, those coal ash ponds on Mountain Island Lake would be in lined landfills by now instead of piled above the water we drink.
