Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

BidenMart is a brilliant idea on communicating to voters just how much harm Biden has done to consumers. Maybe they ought to add gas prices, too. Those who are on social media need to help push this site out there.

Commented: Monday, April 1st, 2024 @ 12:51 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Don't forget that other "green energy" scam, biomass, where they chop down old growth forests in the US and Canada to make wood pellets to burn to make electricity in Europe and in the US. Burning wood pellets emits more CO2 than coal, so what is the point other that chopping down our forests?

Commented: Saturday, March 30th, 2024 @ 8:24 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The very worst system is the one we have now, called limited voting. It is the same concept that the Red Chinese proposed in their negotiations with the British for the Hong Kong election system after the handover, and the British rejected as totally undemocratic. It is also a system that the appellate courts in the US have ruled cannot be imposed by a judge as a remedy in a Voting Rights case, unless all parties agree to it.

A true at-large plan with voters have full voting rights for all seats would need all the seats to run at the same time to pass muster with voting rights challenges. That is how the old Washington City School board was set up, during the period it had to get DOJ preclearance, and it passed with flying colors.

It is also true that four year staggered terms is absolutely the very worst thing you could have in terms of accountability and responsiveness of elected officials, because it always has about half the board with an intervening election before their seat comes up again. That means voters are likely to forget anything they do in the first two years of their term when they come up for election again.

There are plusses and minuses to both a district plan and a true at-large plan, but either is light years better than what we have now.

Commented: Tuesday, March 26th, 2024 @ 1:54 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Let me tell you my own personal experience with how Democrats treat our Electoral College. I was one of the North Carolian members of the Electoral College elected in the Bush / Gore contest. The Democrats distributed the email addresses they could find of Electors, and I received hundreds of unwanted emails from Democrats demanding that I violate North Carolina law and vote for Al Gore instead of George Bush, as I was pledged to do. This coordianted Democrat effort demanded that I and other electors BREAK THE LAW to do what they wanted, and some of them were threatening in nature.

Commented: Friday, March 15th, 2024 @ 9:27 am By: Steven P. Rader

Wildfire has indeed been used as a weapon of unconventional warfare. A case in point is the group of wildfires that severely damaged the olive orchards of Turkish controlled North Cyprus a couple of decades ago. After a bitterly fought civil war between Greek and Turkish Cypriots led to a Turkish invasion and Turkish control of the northern third of the country, the wildfires on the Turkish side were initially blamed on Greek Cypriots to the south, but evidence ultimately showed that it was not the Greek Cypriots who set the fires after all. It was the Kurdish guerillas who were fighting Turkey's government in eastern Turkey, a long way from Cyprus, who were responsible.

I never got to experience the Checkpoint Charlie crossing between east and west Berlin, but I did personally get to experience the closest thing, the Leda Palace Crossing in Cyprus between the Greek and Turkish run parts of their capital of Nicosia, first through the Greek Cypriot checkpoint, then the UN peacekeeper checkpoint, and finally the Turkish Cypriot checkpoint, with the fortifications from the military conflict all around, and the no man's land still very much separating the two sides along the Green Line.

Commented: Saturday, March 9th, 2024 @ 2:07 pm By: Steven P. Rader

I had an interesting report on the extent to which liberal dirtbag Sen. Jim Perry is engaged in backing Bob Brinson. A Beaufort County Republican put up a pro-Speciale post on Facebook, and Perry personally responded by posting the hatchet job that far left WRAL did on Speciale a few years ago. That reporting was widely discussed in the legislature at the time as exposing the leftwing media grossly twisting things out of context to smear Republicans, so Perry had to know it was a highly dishonest smear when he posted it. That he posted it speaks volumes about the dishonest low life that Perry is.

Good riddance to liberal Perry as our state senator. Perry not only frequently voted liberal but was out there pushing other Republican legislators to vote for Roy Cooper's key liberal agenda items like the Green New Deal and the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, as well as other dubious programs like scattering casinos across our state. Perry was one of the top recipients of casino and marijuana money in the legislature, and was named national gambling industry "policymaker of the year" even though he failed on that one. Perry even would go over to the House to push the liberal agenda. For example, he approached Rep. Keith Kidwell and asked what Kidwell needed for changing his vote to support the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Kidwell thought a minute and replied "Roy Cooper's resignation as governor" and Perry stormed off.

Bob Brinson came to a county GOP meeting early on in his campaign and after acknowledging that Perry was a liberal said he would not follow Perry's liberal mode. Brinson also recognized that Phil Berger was leading the Senate in a liberal direction and he would stand up against that. Funny thing that Perry and Berger have now been revealed as Brinson's most important backers. The more I learn and see of this race, the more I conclude that Brinson was not being truthful with what he told local Republicans on this race or in the flood of election mailers he has put out or were put out on his behalf by groups linked to Berger.

Commented: Monday, March 4th, 2024 @ 3:26 pm By: Steven P. Rader

One of the more monopolistic features of smart phones is that both Android and Apple come with Google pre-installed as the search engine. Consumers should be given a choice. One of the few things in the EU that offers more choice than the US, is that smart phone sellers, and I think computer sellers as well, are required to offer a choice in search engines. I know that DuckDuckGo is one of the options, as it was when I was working in Europe and bought a cell phone. BraveSearch was not up and running yet, but I hope they are now one of the options offered.

I have been through with leftwing Google for years. I never use their corrupt search engine, and my cell phone is a fully de-Googled android. If you want an already de-Googled smart phone, go to eBay and put than in the search. You will find lots of them on offer, with at least five non-Google operating systems to choose from. Plus nobody selling your data like Google does, so more privacy. It is not just the Google search engine that is removed but anything and everything to do with Google.

Commented: Monday, February 26th, 2024 @ 8:38 am By: Steven P. Rader

We have to remember that a couple of decades ago when a federal voting commission headed by former Democrat President Jimmy Carter issued its report, it identified mail-in voting as being, by far, the most prone to election fraud. The Carter Commission recommended reducing the use of mail-in voting for that reason. But what have the Democrats done in the last few years? They have greatly expanded the use of mail-in voting, just the opposite of what Carter recommended. For Democrats the quest for power overpowers any respect for honest elections.

Commented: Sunday, February 25th, 2024 @ 12:38 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The word "conservative" does get used all too often by politicians who by no stretch of the imigination are anything close to a conservative. The one that always got me as particularly tone deaf was Democrat Sen. George McGovern, after running what at the time was by far the most far left campaign for president in US history in 1972, followed that up in his next reelection campaign in South Dakota calling himself a "conservative". Of course, most voters remembered his presidential campaign, and knew he did not have a conservative bone in his body, and he lost reelection. But there are politicians like McGovern out there who think voters are that gullible.

Voters need to look at actual political records much more than they do rhetoric. What candidates actually DO matters a whole lot more than what they SAY.

What I would like to see in local campaigns is endorsements based on issue quetionaires. Those questionaires should ask for examples in candidates records that prove their answers are genuine. That is the best way to do endorsements. It should not be based on personalities or factions, but where candidates actually stand on real issues.

Commented: Friday, February 23rd, 2024 @ 8:10 am By: Steven P. Rader

Well, as a Hamas apologist, Bob, you might consider hundreds of dead and sometimes tortured Jews to be funny, but most of us do not. And in the previous century, if not for Hitler's Reich Gun Law of 1938, Germany's Jewish citizens might have had some means to defend themselves against being sent off to the camps.

Commented: Sunday, February 18th, 2024 @ 9:07 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The GRNC is not as well known to the general public as the NRA, but those involved in gun rights issues know that GRNC is the organization that gets things done in the legislature. The NRA's NC lobbyist is based in Richmond, VA and only occaisionally shows up in Raleigh. GRNC volunteers, on the other hand, have an almost constant presence and they are the driving force in pro-gun legislation in our state. Indeed, other national pro-gun groups like Gun Owners of America, and the National Association for Gun Rights have a greater presence in our legislature than the NRA. GRNC is state-based and works with all the national groups.

Commented: Saturday, February 17th, 2024 @ 7:41 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Those issues were dealt with in the mid 1960s, Bob. You are history challenged again. Those things were gone where I lived in North Carolina when I was in high school in the late 1960s and college in the early 1970s. During that period, minorities not only had equal rights, they also had affirmative action. You apparently mis-remember things to try to push your race-based agenda.

Commented: Tuesday, February 13th, 2024 @ 11:54 am By: Steven P. Rader

Sad to see Randy and Carolyn caught up in this controversy, but as a former Methodist myself, I was pleased to see the emergence of the Global Methodist Church and proud that Washington's own First Methodist joined it. I myself bailed out of the United Methodist Church back in 1971 over the "social gospel" when I went away to college. I had grown up active in the Methodist Church, and our own congregation and minister were great, but in high school I became aware of the impact of social gospel on the overall church organization. I was going to have to join a new church in a new location anyway, and due to the social gospel decided it would not be a United Methodist Church. My family was historically Lutheran from the time they settled in North Carolina in the 1740s until my parents decided to join a Methodist church many of their friends and neighbors were members of, so I researched the Lutheran Church and found way too much social gospel in its dominant branch, so I ended up joining the traditionalist Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, which met my expectations. If the Global Methodist Church had been an option in 1971, that is probably where I would have gone.

Commented: Monday, February 12th, 2024 @ 7:30 pm By: Steven P. Rader

A comparision of how two eastern senators were treated by Berger on being forced to vote Berger's way on legislation or not shows how much Berger considers he owns those senators who rely on his campaign money to get elected. The first senator, whose name I will not call, is a staunch conservative who was a leader in the House Freedom Caucus before running for the senate and taking major support from Berger in his general election race in a marginal district. The second is Norm Sanderson, a staunch conservtive former House member who beat back a well financed challenge from a Berger henchman in his first primary. The Berger machine recruited wealthy businessman Randy Ramsey, a lifelong registered Republican who had nonetheless been a major Democrat political contributor to run against Sanderson in the primary. Ramsay outspent Sanderson by a lot, mailing a blizzard of postcards, but Sanderson won the primary by a wide margin.

When Berger started pushing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, which was then the top objective of liberal Governor Roy Cooper's agenda, Berger's operatives pressured the first senator to vote for it, while they left Sanderson alone and he voted against it without any attempt by Berger to force him to go Berger's way. Berger clearly considered that due to the political support he gave the first senator, he owned him, but Berger clearly knew he did not own Sanderson.

Berger's operatives approached the first senator and told him Berger expected him to vote for the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. The senator told them that he had made opposition to that expansion a major issue in his campaign and and promised voters in his district he would oppose it. Further, he was receiving a lot of comments from voters in his district opposing it. Berger's operatives told the senator that none of that mattered, and the only thing that did matter was that Berger insisted he vote for it. The senator pointed out that Berger already had enough votes to pass it without his vote, and was again told that did not matter and Berger insisted he vote for it, too. The senator then suggested that at least he could maybe take a walk during the vote and not vote at all. Berger's operatives told him that was not sufficient and he had to affirmatively vote for it. Further they told the senator that if he did not, then none of his bills would get out of committee and no money would be going from the budget to his district. The sanator finally decided in good conscience, the most he could do was take a walk, so that is what he did. While he did get some retaliation from Berger for that, it was not as total as threatened.

There is only one candidate for State Senate in the Third District who would not owe his political soul to Phil Berger in the senate and that is Mike Speciale. He is the Norm Sanderson of this race. If citizens want to have a voice in Raleigh representing us, instead of beholden to the backroom Raleigh establishment bullyboys, Speciale is the only one we should consider voting for.

Commented: Friday, February 9th, 2024 @ 11:06 am By: Steven P. Rader

Bob, you attack those who take an America First position, so what do you have to say about one of your ilk, a "Squad" member, Ilhan Omar a US Congresswoman who has openly taken a "Somalia First" position, saying among other things that the president of Somalia is her president? www.breitbart.com

Commented: Wednesday, January 31st, 2024 @ 9:48 am By: Steven P. Rader

Mike Speciale represented Beaufort County or at least a part of it for several of his terms, so we saw firsthand what sort of legislator he is. Mike was the real deal who walked the walk as a staunch conservative as well as talking the talk, and was a strong voice for the interests and principles of the district. He was approachable by citizens either at his office in Raleigh or in the town halls he held regularly in each county in his district, where constituents were encouraged to ask questions and make comments. He stood his ground in Raleigh on policy and in doing so often moved the needle significantly to the right. While keeping a respectful relationship with the more liberal leadership, he was adept at finding ways to manuever around them to achieve conservative results.

With no conservatives in the senate willing to engage with the leadership as Mike did in the House, Mike is exactly who conservatives need in Raleigh to make a real difference for the whole state, not just for our district but for all conservatives.

His opponent does talk a good game, but does not have the record of action that Mike does. He may talk the talk, but if he got to Raleigh, it would be an open question if he would walk the walk. If Berger is pushing money toward him, that means at least Berger beleives he would not.

We have seen too many politicians talk a good game but then do the opposite like Thom Tillis, or talk a good game and then sit on their hands and do nothing like Mark Robinson. All talk and no "do" gets us nowhere. When we have a sure thing, why take a chance on a "maybe"?

Commented: Sunday, January 28th, 2024 @ 11:36 am By: Steven P. Rader

I was astounded at what I read from President Trump's attorney in that civil case on the behavior of the judge which clearly denied Trump a fair trial. In any honest judicial system, he would be removed from the bench. Here is what she related:
Attorney Alina Habba: "Ladies and gentlemen, you are not allowed to be stripped of every defense that you have. You are not allowed to be told that you can’t bring it up. And imagine a point where a judge tells the lawyer before your client, the former President of the United States, the leading candidate and obvious nominee for the Republican Party, before he takes the stand to defend himself. Ms. Haba, tell me the questions you’re going to ask in open court and tell me exactly what he’s going to respond. And then edited my questions, edited the response he was allowed to give."

That is not the American system of justice. It more resembles the old Soviet Union.

Commented: Saturday, January 27th, 2024 @ 9:04 am By: Steven P. Rader