Just to state the obvious: given the number of attacks by drones and cruise missiles on the area between Boston and North Carolina over the last decades, I'd say this pair of blimps is welfare for Raytheon and a means to intensify surveillance on people in the area covered by them.

Coincidentally, North Carolina also has a state-run monopoly on its liquor sales, and NC average teacher salaries have declined by fifteen percent over the past decade.

If I were cynical, I might even say NC is deliberately cultivating stupid people as a resource.

Even in the nuclear world. we're human, and we fuck up. I get that. So to be quite honest, the idea that a armed nuclear bomb was almost accidentally dropped on US soil really doesn't bother me too much.

What bothers me, is that...you bet your sweet ass that if that bomb had detonated.....we would have covered it up.....There is no way in hell the military back then would have admitted we dropped a bomb on ourselves. we would have blamed the Russians, and we would have gone to war.

An accident, I can forgive, but turning an accident, no matter how big, into WW3....

Granted, I know I am speculating. I just cant see the US military saying, "oops, our bad. sorry about that whole "wiping you out of existence" thing, North Carolina"

http://www.photographyisnotacrime.com/2013/03/23/north-carolina-deputy-rehired-days-after-resigning-over-road-rage-incident/?utm_source=feedburner&utm
_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PhotographyIsNotACrime+%28Photography+is+Not+a+Crime%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Edit: I can't get the url to paste correctly, sorry.

The cop in question has been rehired, now.

http://www.photographyisnotacrime.com/2013/03/23/north-carolina-deputy-rehired-days-after-resigning-over-road-rage-incident/?utm_source=feedburner&utm
_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PhotographyIsNotACrime+%28Photography+is+Not+a+Crime%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

All kinds of interesting here.

If I'm understanding it right, it's a NC cop, in SC, so traffic regulation is definitely not one of his duties.

A bit of homework that makes this more interesting (though no more acceptable): There are 5 states with no "keep right" law, and North Carolina is one of them.

South Carolina, however, has a very detailed one. As an ordinary motorist, the cop was definitely breaking the law in SC (though an SC cop could have done that as part of his duty, that's specifically in SC's law).

No one got injured or imprisoned, cop quit, everyone wins. Hopefully they dropped the charge against the our driver. Best solution to a bad situation, as long as we keep it nice and visible.

Think i heard It said that it was a North Carolina cop off duty in South Carolina (said at about 1:00, comments that hes a jackass). He wouldn't have any jurisdiction to pull anyone over. Hes just some guy in the "company car".

It was a complete set up and prank - The salesman was NOT in on the prank. I'm going to call this REAL!!

"...But the incident wasn’t as spontaneous as it appeared. According to the owner of the car dealership where the video was filmed the setup started long before Steve met Gordon. It was also reveled that the actual car used didn’t belong to the dealership.
Jeff Gordon and Pepsi MAX go to a car dealership where a disguised Jeff Gordon takes an unsuspecting car salesman on the test drive of his life. #GordonTestDrive
Pepsi MAX & Jeff Gordon Present: "Test Drive"

“We started early in the morning,” dealership owner Wayne Troutman said in an interview with the syndicated show ‘RightThisMinute’. “Probably 6:30 in the morning that they did that video and they were there until dark that night. They supplied the car it was a very high performance car since they knew they would be going with some special tricks with that one."

Troutman praised his unknowing salesperson Steve.

"He did a great job,” Troutman said. “He fell right in to it and a lot of his reactions were very realistic because they were. Once he realized he'd been punked he settled down, but he was really hot when he came back in as you could see from the video. In fact he actually went out on another normal ride with Jeff.”

In fact Troutman added that Gordon himself had a great deal of involvement with the project.

"Jeff had a lot of input in this,” he said. “Not only to the car that was selected to the disguise to the…he actually tried to ahead of time pick the salesman he thought would be the best one to try to pull the prank on. We actually loaned Jeff a 1998 Chevy Venture Van to ride in so he looked like he was another normal North Carolina redneck."
http://www.examiner.com/article/what-happened-behind-the-scenes-of-jeff-gordon-s-pepsimax-prank?cid=rss

There are ones that don't come from Burma. I know they come from Montana and North Carolina (and nearby places)

North Carolina IS more beautiful than Texas...and the sand on the beaches is much better...and their accents are way more hickier...and sexy.

Texas politics be-damned, I gauge a state's appeal on much more fundamental aspects of humanity, not the robotic responses to world events prompted by indoctrination through higher education. That was sarcasm KnifeWielder and Texas be just as fucked as NC with regards to informed decision and perception of how the world REALLY works.

I live in North Carolina, yet another red state that think's its the "Real America".

Inside election trivia, David Axelrod has won his moustache bet with Joe Scarborough. Obama has now carried all of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota.

Playing with an EV calculator, even if I give Romney all of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina AND Virginia, he still needs another state to get to 270. If Obama wins ANY of those states, he's getting a second term.

Oh, and I get the feeling the networks are just playing it safe on Ohio, all the outstanding votes are in blue counties, and Obama's in the lead.

We're (blahpook + me) about 4 hours inland in North Carolina and we were spared from the large majority of the storm. It's a bit windy now and was all throughout the day today, but with only a few sprinkles of rain, it seems that we got away mostly clean. It must've just skimmed North, because I've heard that SE Virginia is flooded with school closures through Wednesday.

Unrelated bonus material:

(North Carolina) voters say ballot cast for Romney came up Obama on machine

I wish they could get the Carolinian (runs from Charlotte, North Carolina to New York City) going that fast. I love taking the train up north.

Too bad it runs on shared tracks.