TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalBiden launches Iowa trip with focus on Trump, rural America
COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA -- Joe Biden launched an eight-day bus tour of Iowa on Saturday projecting confidence, ignoring his many Democratic presidential competitors and pledging that he will unseat President Donald Trump in 2020.
The former vice president pledged first to win the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, despite recent polls suggesting his standing there has slipped in recent months.
“I promise you, I promise you,” Biden told a few hundred supporters outside his Council Bluff campaign office, “we’re going to win this race, and we’re going to beat Donald Trump, and we’re going to change America.”
Behind the optimism, Biden aides acknowledge he must sharpen his message and bolster his voter outreach operation ahead of the caucuses that start Democrats’ 2020 voting. But his advisers also insist he has wide support and remains well-positioned to recover any lost ground.
Read more: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article237912124.html
Richland senator accused of threatening county employee's job in profanity-laced rant
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- When state Sen. Dick Harpootlian saw that the annual press release advertising open spots on Richland County boards had mysteriously left out four controversial openings at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport, he had one question:
“What the f--- is going on?”
But the Columbia Democrat’s decision to confront the county employee responsible and ask that exact question has led to a letter accusing Harpootlian of threatening that employee’s job in a profanity-laced tirade.
Harpootlian’s impromptu meeting last Friday with James C. Brown, a top aide to Richland County’s legislative delegation, has stirred up controversy yet again among Richland County lawmakers who are divided over the freshman senator’s slash-and-burn campaign against a government he perceives as broken.
“That is no way to treat anyone, much less someone that works for you,” said House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, a Columbia Democrat who has periodically quarreled with Harpootlian. “It is beneath the dignity of being a South Carolina senator, and he owes them an apology.”
Read more: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article237756859.html
30 years after Hugo tore it down, South Carolina coast builds back in the danger zone
LITCHFIELD BEACH, SC -- When Hurricane Hugo hit Georgetown County 30 years ago, the big storm pounded a barren sand spit at the south end of Litchfield Beach, chewing up dunes and eroding the oceanfront, before cutting through South Carolina on a trail of destruction.
At the time, no one said much about Hugo’s impact on the narrow spit because not much was there.
Then in the late 1990s, construction workers arrived on the property, building the first grand home in a row of new oceanfront houses. Today, about three-dozen houses perch precariously on the sand spit, between the Atlantic Ocean on one side and a tidal creek on the other. Some are fortified by an unapproved seawall, built as protection from the rising seas.
The story of south Litchfield is a familiar one in South Carolina three decades after Hurricane Hugo ripped the state. Despite causing $7 billion worth of damage on Sept. 21-22, 1989, Hugo did little to discourage new or more intense development on many stretches of the state’s coast.
Read more: https://www.thestate.com/news/weather-news/article235034477.html
GOP candidate in first TV ad suggests Democrat Joe Cunningham's impeachment vote was bought
A Republican in South Carolina’s most competitive U.S. House race is releasing her first television ad of the 2020 congressional campaign, casting herself as Democrat Joe Cunningham’s rightful challenger some seven months out from the GOP primary.
In a sign that Kathy Landing is seeking to introduce herself to as many voters as possible, the 30-second spot will air Saturday during the state’s biggest college football game of the year: the South Carolina-Clemson game.
The 30-second ad buy cost $4,500 on ESPN, according to filings with the Federal Communications Commission.
Called “Real Quid Pro Quo,” the commercial focuses on Cunningham’s recent vote for the House impeachment inquiry.
Read more: https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/gop-candidate-in-first-tv-ad-suggests-democrat-joe-cunningham/article_6daf73ca-112f-11ea-8650-df6ef09de775.html
Teachers Know Who Their Friends Are
Republicans have spent eight years insisting that the plain truth about their education policies is a Democratic lie. A mind-bending cavalcade of twisted statistics pours forth to obfuscate the facts about a policy of harsh parsimony. As the 2019 legislative session finally adjourned, they shifted to a simpler message: Blame Roy Cooper.
In a Hail Mary move executed in the closing days of the “short” session, Republicans passed a teacher pay increase of 3.9% over two years. Cooper promptly and bravely vetoed it. The GOP, surely having anticipated this decision, energetically moved to define Cooper as an enemy of teachers’ interests. As usual, they looped in their eternal bete noir, the North Carolina Association of Educators, with gubernatorial frontrunner Dan Forest questioning “who they really represent.” Together, they insist, Cooper and his progressive allies failed public-school families.
There are no doubt some exceptions scattered through a 100,000-person workforce, but I am sure most teachers know who really stands with them in the state’s ongoing budget battle. Basic arithmetic reveals that the Republican teacher-pay “raise” was not really a raise at all. Inflation grows at 2% per year; adjusting for CPI growth, a 3.9% raise would leave teachers treading water at best. Note also the timing of their rather calculated move: Republicans unenthusiastically pushed through their bare-bones pay package on the heels of a $250 million corporate tax cut. After slashing corporate taxes for seven straight years, bull-headed Republicans refuse to throw more than a token amount of money at public education.
Cooper, on the other hand, has placed education at the center of his vision for North Carolina. His budget would have allotted a 9.6% raise to the average teacher–more than enough to supersede inflation and a real step toward decent pay. Contrasting sharply with Phil Berger’s punitive rhetoric, Cooper celebrates schools and educators. And yes, it tells you something that the NCAE–the voice of thousands of working teachers–is solidly behind the governor.
Read more: https://www.politicsnc.com/teachers-know-who-their-friends-are/
A once-famous, long-lost corn variety returns from the dead
One of the endearing aspects of the Thanksgiving meal is the way families bring their additions to the common fare and, in time, forge their own culinary traditions.
For the Farmer family in Landrum, South Carolina, the day is usually marked with a cornbread dressing. The cornbread comes from a dent corn variety that the aptly named Farmers actually grow on their 60-acre farm 10 miles south of the North Carolina border.
Making your own cornbread is not as easy as you might think. You can cut a head of broccoli or pull a tomato without undue fuss, but to get corn meal from the field to the kitchen, you have to shepherd the corn through an entire growing season and put it through the mill. Fortunately, the family's 97-year-old patriarch, Manning Farmer, has been doing this for most of his life and, to boot, has his own gasoline-powered grinding stones.
He grows a variety of corn that is remarkably large and white, and when it is ready on the stalk it is wrapped in papery husks the color of linen. The kernels - indented, hence "dent corn" - look as if they were carved from ivory.
Read more: https://www.greensboro.com/news/trending/a-once-famous-long-lost-corn-variety-returns-from-the/article_2c1adee0-6437-5960-ac74-6f46807e27de.html
Town parade canceled over possible Confederate float issues
GARNER, N.C. -- A North Carolina town has canceled its annual Christmas parade over possible issues with a float sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Garner spokesman Rick Mercier tells The News & Observer that online chatter about the float led officials to conclude the event could be targeted for disruption.
He says online posts didn’t threaten to disrupt the parade, but officials wanted to err on the side of public safety given protests about Confederate monuments and symbols in recent years. Video of last year’s parade was shared and criticized Monday by the “Move Silent Sam” Twitter account.
Members of Col. Leonidas L. Polk Camp No. 1486 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans have been involved in the parade for years. Group commander Don Scott says he understands the town’s concerns.
https://www.heraldsun.com/news/nation-world/national/article237879394.html
(Durham Herald Sun)
Clinical research company plans 749-job expansion in Durham after landing incentives
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK -- A clinical research company is planning a two-part expansion in Durham County after landing an incentive package potentially worth nearly $10 million from the state.
Q2 Solutions, a joint venture between IQVIA — formerly known as Quintiles — and Quest Diagnostics, will create 749 jobs in Durham County over the next eight years, according to the N.C. Commerce Department.
Q2, referred to as Q-squared, will invest $73 million in the county as it plans to expand its laboratory space there. The company, whose global headquarters is currently in Morrisville, runs clinical trials for biotechnology companies, specifically focusing on genomic testing, a rapidly growing part of the field.
With its planned investment, the company will be shifting its headquarters and lab operations to a new facility in RTP, company CEO Brian O’Dwyer said in an interview.
Read more: https://www.heraldsun.com/news/business/article237830144.html
Lack of NC budget leaves school construction money, other education items in limbo
RALEIGH -- Teacher pay raises aren’t the only education issue left in limbo due to the ongoing budget stalemate between the Republican-led state legislature and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
The $24 billion state budget vetoed by Cooper has a variety of education-related items, including new funding for school construction, paying school lunch costs for low-income students and new curriculum requirements for students. It’s unclear whether the items will be addressed when state lawmakers return in January or later next year during the short session.
Cooper said he vetoed the budget because it did not expand Medicaid and because he felt the proposed 3.9% raise for teachers wasn’t enough.
“The governor has continually refused to sit down with the legislature to work these things out,” said Rep. Craig Horn, a Union County Republican and chair of various education committees. “Honestly, this is terrible.
Read more: https://www.heraldsun.com/news/local/education/article237825789.html
(Durham Herald Sun)
UNC resolves anti-Semitism case with feds that grew out of rapper's performance
UNC-Chapel Hill has resolved a federal anti-Semitism case with the U.S. Department of Education that alleged the university discriminated against students of Jewish descent at a conference in March.
The complaint was filed in April following controversy over Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar’s performance at the “Conflict over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities” conference. Video showed him performing an anti-Semitic song called “Mama, I Fell in Love with a Jew.”
U.S. Rep. George Holding, a Republican from Raleigh, called for a federal investigation into the Middle East conference co-sponsored by Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill.
UNC did not admit to violating any laws but agreed to revise its policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment and Related Misconduct, to include that policy in training and orientation sessions, to issue an anti-harassment statement and to hold a listening session next semester for students, faculty, staff and administrators to discuss concerns about harassment.
Read more: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article237764269.html
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
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Current location: Bryan, Texas
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