If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral.
Max Borders, right wing think tank employee in North Carolina
With all the furor in national politics, it's easy to lose track of the Republican sleaze oozing from sewers in various states - including our very own North Carolina. In the interest of shining a bright light into the right wing cesspool, I hereby introduce you to the many minions of the Art Pope Puppetshow.
First you'll need a clickable map to find your way around Pope's Rovian Kingdom. I update this map every few weeks as various Puppets slide through different jobs in a never-ending game of musical chairs. You'll find at least one Republican candidate for governor, as well as newspaper columnists, reporters, apprentices to Jesse Helms, academics, and even a full-time blogger.
It is the full-time blogger I want to focus on today. His name is Max Borders, and he is the newest bad boy in a sideshow to the circus called the Civitas Institute. Max is also the author of the quote from which the title of this diary is taken.
Like most free-market think tanks, Civitas is funded solely through the largess of our state's own little Karl Rove, a wealthy robber-baron named Art Pope who is trying to remake the North Carolina Republican Party in his own extremist image.
After a recent dust-up with Max, the clever boy vandalized the Civitas website, replacing his own picture with one of a baby flipping the bird at the camera.
The picture was scrubbed by this morning, but the deed is done, and now the reactionary right in North Carolina has a new face, for which I am most appreciative.
As I wrote last night:
Thanks for the memories, Max. I hope you still have a job tomorrow because I really do love having a target-rich environment.