Hillary: Ready! . . . for irony

Hillary Clinton's campaign has put out a new ad that uses Osama bin Laden and other frightening images of war and disaster to make the point that she's the person you want in the White House.

Hubby Bill had something to say about that sort of campaigning back in 2004:

"Now one of Clinton's Laws of Politics is this: If one candidate's trying to scare you and the other one's trying to get you to think; if one candidate's appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope."

Discriminate? Who, me? Never!

Most adults in North Carolina care more about personality, religion and sexual orientation when choosing a candidate for public office than they do about race, gender and age. So found the latest Elon University poll.
Yet when respondents were asked if they knew someone who would not vote for a candidate based on race, gender and age, most said they did. Here's how the numbers broke down:

• A presidential candidate who is a woman: 63 percent
• A presidential candidate who is black: 54 percent
• A presidential candidate who is “too old”: 44 percent.
  

Those obviously conflicting results raise an equally obvious question: Are people telling the truth about their own attitudes? Are they more apt to admit to others’ prejudices than their own?What do you think?

Obama in 'land of guns and God'

Wonder whether bitterness, guns or anti-immigrant sentiment will come up when Barack Obama visits North Carolina today on the campus of East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.?

That’s the heart of small-town N.C., and his visit comes just days after he put his foot squarely in his mouth with a remark describing people in small-town Pennsylvania:

"It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion
or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or
anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Greenville is some 245 miles from Charlotte, in northeastern N.C., a region among the most rural in the state. Its small towns and crossroads wrestle with the same economic challenges and changes Obama confronted in Pennsylvania.

Guns and God are both important to many people there. There’s also nervousness at the pressure Latino immigrants put on local resources and their impact on a limited job market.

But is small-town N.C. the land of guns and God? Are Obama’s remarks about turning to bitterness and xenophobia on target? Or are they out of touch and a slap in the face?

(To see what he says to small-town North Carolina today, read this live blog of his speech from Reflector.com, beginning at 4 p.m.)

What do you think? Does Obama know enough about small towns and the people who live in them to accurately understand their plight, their lives and their concerns? What should he have said?

We don't want no stinkin' Chapel Hill

Order up! We’d like one re-do on University City, please. Make it over easy with a college-town feel. Not in the image of some clique, mind you, such as (dare we say it?) Chapel Hill or Madison, Wis.


Instead, let’s break away and be distinctive. How about a place that’s not afraid to be both urban and suburban, a place with new history that’s walkable, safe and hip?

That’s the central vision offered by readers of this blog for making the area around UNC Charlotte feel and function more like a university community. Currently, it’s sterile and congested. You’d hardly know the fourth largest campus in the state is there.

What would change that? Readers recommended the following:

• Sidewalks and bike lanes


• A light rail line through campus.


• Redo John Kirk Road with stores and nightlife.


• Bulldoze apartments and replace them with neighborhoods.


• A campus radio station (hey, that would be cool.)

This post sums it up:


“I think it is simple, stop building developments with giant parking lots around them so no one wants to ride or walk and build wide highways around the university. Get the light rail line through the campus and build some Southend type development around it. Also, fix the roads that surround the university with landscaped medians, bike lanes and wide sidewalks. Create pedestrian refuges and bulbouts (sic) to slow down traffic rather than trying to get traffic out to Cabarrus County as fast as possible."

(To read other thoughts on what makes a college town a college town, check out Get Schooled).

Here’s the question: What will it take to get additions such as sidewalks and bicycle lanes done? Should the university or the city take the lead?

UNCC: College, but no college town

Charlotte is home to a 22,000-student public university, North Carolina’s fourth-largest campus. But you’d never know it.

UNC Charlotte is tucked away off N.C. 49 and North Tyron Street, and it’s lovely, with wooded paths and crisp, new brick buildings. But University City, the area of Charlotte around the campus, looks and feels nothing like a collegte town or university community. It’s commercial strip-mall, chain-restaurant, big-box-store hell, complete with horrendous traffic, no accommodations for pedestrians or bicycles and very little that’s distinctive.

Sterile. Congested. And that’s a shame.

UNCC, a young university still struggling to find its identity and nurture vibrant campus life, suffers along with University City. This is no Chapel Hill or Athens or even Columbia, S.C.

That holds UNCC – and Charlotte – back. But there are things that can be done to change it, both on campus and off.

What do you think the perfect college town ought to look like and include? What kind of changes would it take to give University City a college-town feel and appearance? Do you think it can be done?:

Economy got you blue? You're not alone

It's the economy, stupid! That's what the middle-class yelled loudly in a new Pew Research Center poll. According to the Associated Press, middle-class Americans say they aren’t better off than they were five years ago, reflecting economic pressures amid growing personal debt, the study released Wednesday found. Their short-term assessment of personal progress is the worst it’s been in nearly half a century.

About 53 percent of adults in the country define themselves as “middle class,” with household incomes ranging from below $40,000 to more than $100,000. A majority of all Americans said they haven’t progressed in the last five years. One in four, or 25 percent, said their economic situation had not improved, while 31 percent said they had fallen backward. Those numbers together are the highest since the survey question was first asked in 1964.

Among the middle class, 54 percent said they had made no progress (26 percent) or fallen back (28 percent). Asked about their financial experiences in the past year, 53 percent of middle-class people said they had to cut spending because money was tight. Nearly one in five, or 18 percent, said they had trouble getting or paying for medical care, while 10 percent reported they had been laid off or otherwise lost their jobs. Half of the middle class surveyed said they expected to have to cut more spending.

By contrast, from 1983 to 2004, the median net worth of upper-income families – defined as households with annual incomes above 150 percent of the median – grew by 123 percent. The median net worth of middle-income families rose by just 29 percent. Two-thirds, or 67 percent, of middle-class Americans say their standard of living is better than the one their parents enjoyed at the age they are now. In contrast, 80 percent of richer people said they exceeded their parents’ standard of living. Among the lower class, only 49 percent reported better conditions. For more results from this poll go to: http://pewsocialtrends.org/

What about you? Feeling pinched financially? What would you tell the presidential candidates they should do about it?

Longer in Iraq, more lost lives

Emanuel Pickett, 34, worked as a police office in Wallace, in Duplin County, N.C., for 13 years. He died Sunday in Baghdad. The Wilmington Star News reported he was married and had three children. His fellow officers described him as a tireless worker and someone who loved Atlantic Coast Conference basketball.

The loss of Picket’s life shows why talk about slowing the pullout of troops in Iraq hits North Carolina squarely in the chest. Thousands of other men and women in this state are similarly in harm’s way, either with the guard or troops deployed from Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune, two of the largest military bases in the nation.

Here's how Gen. David Petraeus put it in his testimony on Capitol Hill.

“We and our Iraqi partners recognize that improving security for the Iraqi
people is the first step in rekindling hope. The upward spiral we all want
begins with Iraqi and coalition forces working together and locating in the
neighborhoods those forces must secure.” But the operation “will take months,
not days or weeks, to fully implement,” and “will have to be sustained to
achieve its desired effect.”

Petraeus’ testimony “indicated no letup in deployments to Iraq for a weary Fort Bragg community,” wrote Henry Cunningham, military editor of the Fayetteville Observer.

Keeping more soldiers in Iraq longer inevitably will mean more North Carolinians such as Pickett will die - a loss that families and communities will never recoup.

It’s been more than five years. More than 4,000 American lives have been lost. Is it imperative to keep troop levels up? Is it fair to troops and families to slow the pullout? Or would a slowdown be an unneccesary risk of more valuable lives?

Conserve? Us? Why?

In a recent interview with the Observer’s editorial board, Doug Bean, the director of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities, had this to say about water use, and conservation:

"I do not believe we will ever go back to our old habits (before the drought). I think this experience has brought about a change in thinking for many people."

He was talking about the exceptional heat and drought last year that forced tough water restrictions on Charlotte (and most of the Catawba River Valley, too.) Even with recent above-normal rains, the area remains more than a foot below normal precipitation since January 2007.

Is Bean dreaming? Or is he dead-on? Can one year of conservation persuade an affluent community to adopt a new way of thinking about water? Will a big scare and higher prices curtail waste, or will we just pay more and continue to irrigate, flush and spray at will?

Already the utility has eased restrictions on lawn watering in the face of a budget shortfall due in part to conservation. So has Raleigh, where the water crunch was even worse than in Charlotte before rains helped out and refilled reservoirs serving the capital.?

What do you think? Have we learned a hard lesson and become conservers? Will our elected leadership make different policy choices about water from now on? Or will all those good intentions evaporate quicker than raindrops on a 100-degree day?

Trust politicians? How do you decide?

North Carolinians want to trust their president. They rank that as the top consideration for which candidate they support, according to a new Observer/WCNC Poll. Nearly nine out of 10 of likely voters surveyed said trust would play a big role in determining their vote.

Most of those surveyed (54 percent) give John McCain the highest marks for trust. Close behind is Barack Obama, at 48 percent. Only 25 percent think Hillary Clinton can be trustedIt makes sense that we Tar Heels value honesty. The state motto is “Esse Quam Videri.” That means “To Be Rather Than to Seem.”

But how to define trust? And how to gauge whether you can trust a presidential candidate? With local (and some statewide) candidates it’s easy: Chances are, you know their reputation, their business and even their families. Not so for presidential politics.

How do you identify honesty and trustworthiness in a political candidate? And who has it this time around and who doesn’t?