Good morning!
This is the weekly DKos Asheville open thread series that randallt and I try to deliver every Saturday morning. We would like this to become a hub for talking about our 4/20 meet up (that's just two weeks from today!) to help make it a great event. So please come say hi, talk about food, talk about what you would like to see at the gathering or what you would like to see us all get out of this opportunity. And for those not coming (we know you want to but you live in a separate reality), ideas are always welcome.
We would also like this series to reinvigorate us locally and regionally here on Daily Kos, building on the sense of community that's grown through our online engagement. DKos Asheville can give us all a better sense of connection if nothing else. We hope, through this meet up, that we can do a better job of leveraging our orange passion for progressive politics to help elect more and better Democrats.
Just two weeks until our meetup! And the weather is finally warming up; after sleet and freezing temps Thursday, the sun came out yesterday afternoon for a very nice day, and today looks to be wonderful. Our official start time for the meetup will be 1:00, although some of you might want to show up earlier to help setup. Randall mentioned on the radio show that kayakers sometimes grab the good spots there at the Bywater, so getting there early to stake claims on real estate seems part of the plan as well.
Entertainment! The location is a great place for playing music, so if you are so inclined, bring your guitars and banjos! Gift bags are coming together and I'll be doing a call in to the local progressive talk radio show lined up for next week.
T-shirts! I have a line on a great price for local shirts with a cool DKos Asheville logo. I'll be Kos mailing for reservation requests but you can also give me a yes here in the diary. $10 only! Have a great day, the count down is on!
randallt
Politically, this seemed like an even crazier week than usual as even frontpagers were writing about the extraordinary legislation our state government has been proposing and numerous diaries were hitting the recent list. Here are some that caught my attention ..
* Laura Clawson's diary, North Carolina Republicans plan to deregulate charter schools and force them on local communities, hit the front page last Saturday night and got a lot of attention.
* On Monday there was Action: NC Legislature's Move to Take City's Water System about the legislature's targeting of Asheville's water system.
* On Wednesday, bepanda wrote The Southernization of North Carolina: New Bill will allow NC to declare an official Religion, which made the rec list.
* Staying on that topic, Joan McCarter added State religion? North Carolina GOP is there, our second trip to the front page.
* Then we hit the front page again with Laura Clawson's North Carolina Republicans seek to suppress the college vote.
* And then on Thursday bepanda diaried The Southernization of North Carolina: House Committee approves rollback of Renewable Energy, an excellent and important diary that didn't get the attention that it and the subject deserve.
So North Carolina got a lot attention here in the Daily Kos community this past week, for all the wrong reasons. Our legislature seems determined to roll back all of the progress our state has made over the past several decades.
Feel free to share with us anything going on around town, or any further disturbing developments in Raleigh, that you think we might want to know about.
Enjoy your Saturday,
David