north carolina

Chris Knight's avatar

I don’t mind saying this: I’ve never liked or trusted Mike Easley, before or after he became Governor of North Carolina.

When I was a reporter in Asheville, I saw how Easley, who was then the state’s Attorney General, practically stole land from a private owner. Easley’s claim was that the land needed to be environmentally protected, as if it were pristine wilderness. Then an aerial photograph showed that there were already not only housing developments nearby but a chemical plant also. I saw the plans that the guy had for the land and there’s no question in my mind that he was going to responsibly manage the land and make it into something that everyone could enjoy. He was certainly going to do a much better job at it than the state government ever would.

Easley had the state take it anyway.

So now Mike Easley is on his ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Last night north-central North Carolina got severely thrashed by a line of thunderstorms, and that might be putting it too mildly. It was more like a series of supercells that rolled through the region. There were numerous reports of tornadoes that touched down, particularly in Guilford County directly south of us and there’s been at least one death reported there. The local television stations were providing live coverage well into the early morning hours, including Reidsville’s own WGSR Star 39: major props to Matt Smith, Mark Childrey and Charles Roark for all that they did to keep the viewers in this area informed.

For most of the evening our TV was tuned to WXLV, the ABC affiliate out of Winston-Salem, so we could catch this week’s Lost. The teasers had implied that it was going to be a Locke-centric episode, which always means that it’s going to be a ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Lisa and I had an unusual perspective from which to watch the returns of yesterday’s North Carolina primary election: since I’ve been treasurer for Eric H. Smith’s campaign for statewide Superintendent of Public Instruction, we spent the evening at “campaign headquarters”. That being Eric’s house.

We had a very fun time! In addition to getting to play with Eric’s eighteen-month old son there was also good food courtesy of Eric’s wonderful wife Kelly. We had their high-def television tuned to one of the regional stations while Eric’s computer fed us constant returns from the North Carolina Board of Elections website.

When all was said and done, Eric came in 2nd in the Republican primary for Superintendent of Public Instruction, with 25% of the votes cast. Richard Morgan will go on to the general election in November with 51% of the votes.

So are we disappointed? If we were, I didn’t ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

My precinct is at Reidsville Middle School. I just returned from there. Here is a photograph that I took of my ballot in today’s North Carolina primary election. As you can see I cast my vote for Ron Paul for President… and it’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed having so clean a conscience in voting for a presidential candidate! None of that “hold my nose and pull the lever” here.

How many other people will be able to say that? Not nearly enough, probably.

I also voted for Eric H. Smith for statewide Superintendent of Public Instruction. But since I’m his campaign treasurer, y’all probably knew that was a given, too.

There may or may not have been other candidates and/or measures that I gave consideration toward. Parse that however you will.

On an ironic note, someone has told me that over at Free Republic there are many ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I’m the treasurer for his campaign, but this is the first time that I’m getting to see this. In this video of his appearance at the Wake County Republican Convention a few weeks ago, Eric discusses why North Carolina parents should be fully liberated to send their children to the schools of their own choice – including private school and homeschooling – and he hits on one of the biggest problems facing this country and the one that politicians seem the least determined to address: illegal immigration.

Thanks to Katy’s Conservative Corner for providing this!

The North Carolina statewide primaries will be next week on May 6th. Eric is running on the Republican ballot....

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Chris Knight's avatar

Anyone left who still believes that we have to “work within the system” to effect change in this country had better read this and think real hard about what they’re advocating.

Because the undeniable truth is: the system no longer works. The system has not worked in a long time. The system is hopelessly broken. We’re just now becoming able to see how bad the damage is.

And anyone who still believes we must abide by the status quo and stay within the confines of the system is… well, an idiot.

The status of the Republican Party of the United States isn’t much different from that of the Communist Party of China, when you think about it. Both are controlled by hardliner old guards who won’t bend and will crush like a bug any new blood that tries to bring fresh ideas to the scene. I’m not talking about Republicans ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Averaging about $3.39 a gallon. Up about 10-15 cents in just a few days’ time. And $4.45 has been spotted in at least two places around town. I had to pay a bit more than $50 to fill up my Toyota Camry.

While gassing-up at a convenience store on Scales Street I had a spirited conversation with one guy and his mom, about the high gas prices. We all agreed: we are being led by “lunatics and madmen” who probably can never remember the last time they had to touch a gas-pump nozzle.

The funny thing of it is, it’s not necessarily that the oil is “running out” or even refinery problems right now that’s causing the outrageous jack-up of prices. It’s inflation, a primary reason for that being that the federal government for the past few weeks has been injecting about $38 billion per day into the economy to ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

A few days ago RF Micro announced it would relocate much of its work from its Greensboro, North Carolina plant to China. 80 local jobs will be lost at the microchip plant.

And yesterday Dan River, a textiles plant that has been in operation for 126 years in Danville, Virginia, announced it would be closing down. It was a little over a year ago that Dan River was bought by a company based in India.

About time to post on this blog a video of James McMurtry declaring the obvious: “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore”.

(By the way, I don’t agree with everything depicted in this video, especially about blindly supporting unions and the Democrat party… but I think otherwise the style of this clip describes things pretty darned well.)...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Longtime readers know already that I’m very hesitant to hand out endorsements of candidates. Someone running for office has to sincerely persuade me that he or she is the right man for the job.

In this case, that wasn’t a hard thing at all…

As of today, I’m announcing that The Knight Shift blog is officially endorsing Eric H. Smith in the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of North Carolina.

Smith is running as a Republican candidate in the North Carolina primary on May 6.

For disclosure’s sake, I am compelled to notify my readers that in addition to my support of Eric in this way, I am also the treasurer of the Smith For NC Kids campaign committee. That’s already been public record ever since Eric filed the paperwork to run. Eric offered me the position when he first considered “throwing his hat into the ...

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