Upsets happen every day. We spill our coffee. The water heater fails. We have a fender-bender. The contractor doesn't show up. Somebody says mean stuff about us or our friends or some candidate we support.  And the truth is, there's nothing we can do to stop them from happening.  Nothing.

How cool is this?  The first-ever virtual (online) debate among the Democratic candidates for Governor in North Carolina.  It's been months in the making and tonight it's happening!

My wife Jane is a feminist's feminist from way back. In the 60s, she helped poor women in Kentucky get to New York for safe abortions. Her office at her university is cluttered with decades of Ms. magazines, and countless awards for her work in mentoring young women on her faculty, Ph.D. students and more. She has marched in the streets, burned bras, testified before Congress and otherwise worked her ass off to make the world a safer and more supportive place for women.  

When Bill Clinton ran for President, she helped raise several hundred thousand dollars to support his two campaigns. She's given money to virtually every Democratic woman who has bothered to ask.

This week, she became an Obama supporter.

It wasn't a single event that crushed her commitment to Hillary. It wasn't the gushing about McCain's experience. It wasn't the race-baiting games involving Reverend Wright.  It wasn't even the lying about her role in foreign affairs as First Lady.  No, it was all of the above, the steady drip-drip-drip of Hillary's integrity going down the drain.

Many have joined the ranks of those begging Senator Clinton to abandon her destructive campaign. But when Jane joins that chorus, there's no going back.

All that's left of the Clinton campaign is the ugly, tragic ending.

With so much drama being generated in the Primary Wars, I've found myself getting burned out on blogging. I told the other front-pagers at BlueNC on Friday that I was slipping into an obsessive compulsive spiral and needed a break for a week or so. That was before I got another email yesterday from my friend Alex, in Kenya.

Blackwater isn't doing its own political dirty work this time, they're depending on a wannabe used car salesman.

Marshall Adame, Democratic Congressional candidate in NC-3, received the following letter today from Jim Edwards, the chief staff officer of the Carolinas Independent Automobile Dealers Association. Like his ally at the mercenary company itself, Mr. Edwards apparently has more time on his hands than he has sense.

Mr. Adame:

I am NOT a contractor for Blackwater, I do not deploy to places where others fear to tread and yet I'm very familiar with Blackwater, their personnel, and more importantly their high-level, ethical business practices.

I am the CEO of this country's largest trade association of its genre' and am pleased to call Blackwater a member.

Yesterday you learned about Blackwater's organized campaign of intimidation against Marshall Adame, a Democratic Congressional candidate. So guess how much news coverage the story generated in North Carolina's mainstream corporate press?

Exactly none.

******************

Updated with question mark at the end of the title. Some are arguing this doesn't constitute a threat. So let's frame it as a question. Threat? Pure stupidity? What's really going on here?

Things are heating up here in North Carolina, folks. And we need your help. An Executive Vice President at Blackwater USA  has threatened Mr. Marshall Adame, the Democratic challenger to Walter "Freedom-Fries" Jones in NC-3. We need to get Mr. Adame's back.

The email below was posted today at the Raleigh News and Observer's Blackwater Blog. It is an email from one of the @$$holes who works for Erik Prince in the war-profiteering business:

Back in October, I wrote about the unintended impact of Robin Hayes' abstinence only agenda on teen pregnancy here in North Carolina.

There are plenty of reasons to consider Robin Hayes a disgusting and vile creature, but one reason very close to my heart has been largely unaddressed.  Robin Hayes is personally responsible for thousands of teen pregnancies in North Carolina every year. Here's the story.

It's funny that the Charlotte Observer bills this story as an exclusive given how much it has been debated and discussed around BlueNC over the past month, but I suppose it's better late than never. And perhaps now that it has been finally covered by the mainstream media, the issue may be finally put to rest.

Former Wall Street investor Jim Neal of Chapel Hill announced he was running for the U.S. Senate. N.C. Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro declared a week later that she was not running for the U.S. Senate. Both are Democrats. Guess which one received a phone call from U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, who heads the Democratic Party's efforts to recruit Senate candidates?

Veterans Day arrives every year like a hand grenade that has been rolling around the floorboard of my life for months. My earliest memories of the day go back to my father’s military service, back when he wore the uniform of a US Navy hospital corpsman.

My father, I suspect, was a victim of post-traumatic stress syndrome. If not that, he was a least clinically depressed. Not because he was shot in the leg during the Korean War, but because of the hundreds of Marines he watched die on the battlefield. As a corpsman, he spent more time than anyone should spend in blood up to his elbows, working against hope in one of our many wars without end.

I've been working for Democrats since 1972 when I went door to door for McGovern. I was an Ensign in the Navy at the time, and I learned first-hand what it's like to be on the receiving end of right-wing hate.

Since 1972, I've worked hard and raised money for nearly every major Democratic candidate for state and federal office here in North Carolina. In the past ten years alone, my wife and I have given approximately $80,000 to Democratic candidates. We hold an average of seven fundraisers in our home every year, and have generated more than $500,000 in contributions during that same ten year period.

Last week, the Democratic Party establishment, including ex-Governor Jim Hunt, Governor Mike Easley, and the leadership at the DSCC panicked in the face of a gay businessman (Jim Neal) running at the top of the ticket.  Within a few days of Neal's coming out, they recruited a state Senator named Kay Hagan to run in the primary.  Less than three weeks earlier, Hagan had announced unequivocally that she would not run. She specifically said she could serve the people of North Carolina better by working in the NC General Assembly for her district.

If you weren't at BlueNC on Saturday morning, you missed the biggest story in North Carolina politics in decades.  Live-blogging for an hour, Democratic candidate for Senate Jim Neal hung George Bush around Liddy Dole's neck, and then dropped some big news in response to this comment:

I've heard . . .
Submitted by omega_star on Sat, 10/20/2007 - 10:09am.

I've heard you're gay...

Gay
Submitted by JimNeal on Sat, 10/20/2007 - 10:18am.

I am indeed. No secret and no big deal to me -- I wouldn't be running if I didn't think otherwise

And just how do you think the mainstream media in North Carolina responded to the news?  48 hours after the story broke . . . nothing but deafening silence.

If you weren't around BlueNC yesterday morning, you missed what may very well be the biggest story in North Carolina politics in decades.  Live-blogging for an hour, Democratic candidate for Senate Jim Neal hung George Bush around Liddy Dole's neck, and then dropped some big news in response to this comment:

I've heard . . .
Submitted by omega_star on Sat, 10/20/2007 - 10:09am.

I've heard you're gay...

Gay
Submitted by JimNeal on Sat, 10/20/2007 - 10:18am.

I am indeed. No secret and no big deal to me -- I wouldn't be running if I didn't think otherwise

And there you have it.  A successful businessman who happens to be gay is going take Liddy Dole down, right here in the southern part of heaven.

Much of the debate at Leavenworth has centered on a scathing article, "A Failure in Generalship," written last May for Armed Forces Journal by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran and deputy commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment who holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Chicago. "If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results," Colonel Yingling wrote.

Go read this article in the New York Times. It's about Army officers stationed at Fort Leavenworth - and they're discussing the Debacle in Iraq. It ends this way:

One question that silenced many of the officers was a simple one: Should the war have been fought?

"I honestly don’t know how I feel about that," Major Powell said in a telephone conversation last week after the discussions at Leavenworth.

"That’s a big, open question," General Caldwell said after a long pause.

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

While I appreciate the hard work of Congressman Price to begin the long process of bringing mercenary armies under control, the legislation approved today goes not nearly far enough to mend the disastrous policies of George W. Bush.  

The next step is clear.

Effective January 1, 2009

Except as specifically authorized by Congress, no contractor of the United States government or any of its agencies or departments shall be permitted to carry weapons while engaged in work for hire.

Write to Congressman Price and encourage him to help restore America's integrity and end our nation's reliance on hired killers.

When we look back at how the Blackwater Empire came tumbling down, one of the most important dates will be September 26th, the day Blackwater backed out of a contract to buy more land in North Carolina.  In some ways it's a small thing, but in other ways, it is the beginning of the end.

There's a new dimension to the fallout from the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead: Blackwater USA apparently has stopped all its expansion projects.

On Wednesday, the North Carolina private military contractor canceled a $5.5 million real estate deal to buy 1,800 acres of farmland near Fort Bragg, where the company was going to set up a training ground for soldiers and corporate executives.

The diplomatic and public relations damage from the shooting, combined with Tuesday's scheduled testimony at Congress by Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince, prompted Blackwater to put all new projects on hold, according to the president of a company that had a deal to sell the land to Blackwater.

Over the past five years, the United States of America has become a heinous distortion of itself. We are now outsourcing our wars to mercenaries with a vested interest in conflict without end.

That is wrong for more reasons than you can count.

The very existence of Blackwater USA is an affront to our nation's most basic values. And it is time to put a stop to it.

Congressman David Price is out in front on this issue and is correctly positioned as chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security to go all the way.  He should be the person who leads the take down of Blackwater.  The person who stops our slide into the Blackwater gutter.

Please write to Congressman Price and encourage him to act aggressively. It is time to cut off funding to this monstrosity.