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It's set: Ron Paul will appear at UNC's Carmichael Auditorium, Friday May 2 at 3:30 PM.

Paul will meet with the press from 3:00 to 3:30pm in an auditorium press room.

Previously: Carroll ain't big enough to hold 'em all.

Don't forget -- tonight is the big Send Them to Cannes fundraiser, featuring Walrus, Evan Olson, Mark Kano, Chris Carroll, Mike Garrigan and more.

Food, too.

Rooftop bar at The Greene Street Club from 5-10.

$5.00 gets you in the door.

UPDATE:

Sharp-dressed man Brian Clarey works the crowd; alt-media machers Clarey and Scott Yost plot world domination. I had to bail early, but it will be going on for a while yet.

Don't forget -- tonight is the big Send Them to Cannes fundraiser, featuring Walrus, Evan Olson, Mark Kano, Chris Carroll, Mike Garrigan and more.

Food, too.

Rooftop bar at The Greene Street Club from 5-10.

$5.00 gets you in the door.

UPDATE:

Sharp-dressed man Brian Clarey works the crowd; alt-media machers Clarey and Scott Yost plot world domination. I had to bail early, but it will be going on for a while yet.

"The core credibility of war reporting by Brian Williams and NBC News has been severely undermined by a major NYT expose. That story involves likely illegal behavior by the Pentagon, in which NBC News appears to have been complicit, resulting in the deceitful presentation of highly biased and conflicted individuals as 'independent' news analysts. Yet they refuse to tell their viewers about any of this, and refuse to address any of the questions that have been raised." More here.

Robo-calls in NC aimed at voter suppression?

UPDATE: AG Cooper is on the case.

Q-Notes interviewed Obama and Clinton.

Clinton: "I believe gay and lesbian couples should have all the same rights, responsibilities, and benefits as all Americans. As President, I will work to ensure that all Americans in committed relationships have equal benefits - from health insurance and life insurance, property rights, and more - through civil unions."

Obama: "The State of North Carolina has recently taken an important step forward by including equal hospital visitation rights for the loved ones of all North Carolinians, including LGBT people, in its Patients’ Bill of Rights...As for the other rights that same-sex couples still lack, I believe LGBT Americans are entitled to the same rights and benefits as straight couples and I will fight for equality as president."

Sounds good to me.

Ian McKellen will reprise his role as Gandalf in the upcoming Hobbit movies.

He's really good at pretending, Sir Ian is:

GDP numbers better than estimates.

Definitely better than bad news, of which there is still plenty.

Assessing the readiness of the Iraqi army.

Saul Hansell tries to decode rumors about a subsidized 3G iPhone.

Albert Hofmann, creator of LSD, dies at 102.

Jim Fixx died at 52. Draw your own conclusions.

From Hofmann's "LSD -- My Problem Child":  Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous—that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego.

Nick Carr: "Might I just point out here that both LSD and the Web were invented in Switzerland?"

Suspending the gas tax is a bad idea because it encourages consumption -- it's a short-term, feel-good fix that only makes the underlying problem worse. It reminds me of Bush I tooling around on his speedboat to show that Iraq War I could be painless.

Friedman says it well: "The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: 'Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.'"

More: "But here's what's scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy...when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies."

It's a crowded field, but energy policy is a contender for the worst failure of the GW Bush era.

Obama works out with the Tar Heels.

Lisa was sorry to miss my CreateSouth trip to Myrtle Beach, so back we went last weekend. On Saturday we ventured off the strand in search of some real South Carolina, and we ended up in Conway, where we ate lunch at the Ocean Fish Market. It's a small building on the Waccamaw River, a working seafood store with a tiny kitchen in the back where the staff fries up fish and serves it on white bread with sweet hush puppies and Texas Pete. Photo by Lisa (as always, click to enlarge the image).

Ron Paul's appearance at UNC is being moved to Carmichael Auditorium to accommodate expected turnout, which is running at about 3x capacity of the original venue.

Organizers expected maybe 300 people to show up, but RSVPs are over 1200 and climbing for the May 2 event.

You can watch the Democratic Senatorial candidates debate live on the interwebs tonight at 7.

Don't forget -- tomorrow night is the big Send Them to Cannes fundraiser, featuring Walrus, Evan Olson, Mark Kano, Chris Carroll, Mike Garrigan and more.

Food, too.

Rooftop bar at The Greene Street Club from 5-10.

$5.00 gets you in the door.

Clay Shirky on participatory media: "This isn't the sort of thing society grows out of. It's the sort of thing that society grows into." Transcript at the link. My recent interview with Shirky here.

Betts questions the organizational muscle behind Easley's endorsement of Clinton.

Atrios questions the rhetoric of Easley's endorsement of Clinton.

I'm starting to think there may be some problems in the housing market.

Charlotte's the only major metro region reporting an increase in prices since last year.

Remember the chart.

There's been some criticism of the business press during the recent unpleasantness -- I guess I'll pile on.

How do organizers and journalists handle no-press events in the age of ubiquitous recording devices and personal publishing?

JR: "I think it has been suggested before that the Clintons are working under a 20th century media mentality which is no longer operable in the age of citizen journalism. Yesterday was an up-close taste of that."

Binker: "The campaign made the point to me, before and after the event, that it was closed press."

I didn't hesitate to post audio of Hillary's GSO appearance, which was sent to me by a non-journalist who attended the event. That's the reality we live with now.

Previously: "The Internet takes things that used to be hidden and puts them a mouse-click away from ubiquity."

This reminds me of an earlier discussion of fans using cameras to capture video at the Dean Dome.

I guess campaigns could ask people in the audience not to record anything, although enforcing it would be tough.

There remain some ethical questions for professional journalists, but the lines are blurry when everyone else is operating without constraints. Could Binker have recorded the event in good faith? Would the N&R run a bootleg sent by a non-journalist? Could I have attended and recorded as a citizen with a weblog who is also a working journalist?

N&O offers buyouts to trim staff.

I hear that some of their bureaus already have tumbleweeds blowing through them.

Exile sees a pattern: "Newspaper runs big take out thumbsucker fretting over the dying newspaper industry then a few weeks later offers 'voluntary' early retirement packages to most of the people making decent money."

Unintended consequences of a ban on lead in electronic components:

[T]raditional solder, which contained lead, had to be replaced with a lead-free alloy that was sufficiently cheap and also had the attractive mechanical, thermal, and electric properties of lead. Many such alloys, however, tend to sprout tiny "whiskers" over time, potentially causing short-circuiting. In 2005, for example, a nuclear reactor at the Millstone Power Station, in Connecticut, was shut down because some of its diodes had malfunctioned after forming whiskers, and in 2000 a $200 million Boeing satellite was declared a total loss after whiskers sprouted on a space-control processor. Both the unavailability of lead-based parts and the unreliability of some of their replacements are very real issues that plague longer-lasting systems.

From "Trapped on Technology's Trailing Edge," an article on the obsolesence of high-tech components in IEEE Spectrum; more here.

Maxton, NC, yesterday.

Audio of Hillary Clinton's speech this morning in GSO.

Intro by Terry McAuliffe, followed by Chelsea and then HRC.

Clinton: "The issues that are important to North Carolinians are on the front burner."

In a part of the state that has bled textile and furniture jobs, she drew applause for her remarks on trade.

"We are going to get the economy going...we are going to have a new trade policy...I hear it and see it here in North Carolina. We are going to have new trade agreements that will really enforce labor and environmental standards...we will renegotiate NAFTA...we will get tough on China, because after all China has been not only manipulating their currency, importing into our markets contaminated pet food and [garbled] pharmaceuticals and lead-laced toys, but has engaged in broad-based intellectual property theft and industrial espionage, and it's time we had a President who stands up to say 'enough.'"

Lots more at the link above.

Thanks to alert reader Anonymous for the file. I did not attend the event at the Carolina Theater; I'm told it was closed to the press, but what does that mean anymore?

My interview with Clay Shirky is posted here.

On the simplicity of Web 2.0 tools: The cognitive model is to treat the computer not as a box, but a door. It’s something you need to get through to get to the value on the other side. People don’t want a door with 32 different kinds of handles; they want a relatively transparent view of the other people who are using the system.

On the role of an economic downturn in driving corporate use of 2.0 technology: A lot of this is going to move into the enterprise as a brute cost-cutting move.

Making a case for business adoption: For all the rhetoric about letting everything be open and free, there's a large pool of collaborative talent behind the firewall, and that's a really good place to look for coordinated value.

Lots more at the link.

Jay Rosen: "The presses have stopped but the press goes on...The Capital Times is a newspaper trying to pass its along its DNA [...] and possibly influence the course of the press after the 'jump' into another frame. Will it work? I have no idea. But it makes sense, what they’re doing."

The distribution deal to maintain a print presence is especially interesting.

Assault charge dropped against Kohanowich.

Tax Policy Center on McCain's tax proposals:  "Slashing pork, earmarks, and underperforming programs would offset only a fraction of the revenues. Cuts the size of those he proposes will require slashing discretionary spending and entitlements, and probably even reining in defense spending."

We know that ain't happening. Thus, says Krugman, the cuts would "pose big problems for the government's solvency."

This country cannot afford to continue its binge-debting.

Previously.

"We have seen this before -- North Carolina Republicans using racially loaded commercials only to be disowned by their national leaders." Christensen says the ad is rumored to have been created by a former Helms operative.

Risk management on Wall Street: "[L]ike an air bag that works all the time, except when you have a car accident."

Einhorn's not crazy about the SEC, either, and says "It is hard for me to see how the rating agencies survive this debacle with their franchises intact."

Related: "People say, 'How can you create triple-A out of B-rated paper?'" notes Arturo Cifuentes, a former Moody's credit analyst who now designs credit instruments. It may seem like a scam, but it's not.

Related: "In recent years, regulatory failures have occurred less because of bad rules than because of bad regulators. This is partly because Congress, following the Bush Administration’s lead, has underfunded regulatory agencies."

Previously: "'The truisms of the Greenspan era don't look so true anymore."

A great power sets its sights on a smaller, strange, and faraway land—an easy target, or so it would seem. Led first by a father and then, a decade later, by his son, this great power invades the lesser country twice. The father, so people say, is a bland and bureaucratic man, far more temperate than the son; and, indeed, it is the second invasion that will seize the imagination of history for many years to come. For although it is far larger and more aggressive than the first, it leads to unexpected disaster. Many commentators ascribe this disaster to the flawed decisions of the son: a man whose bluster competes with, or perhaps covers for, a certain hollowness at the center; a leader who is at once hobbled by personal demons (among which, it seems, is an Oedipal conflict) and given to grandiose gestures, who at best seems incapable of comprehending, and at worst is simply incurious about, how different or foreign his enemy really is. Although he himself is unscathed by the disaster he has wreaked, the fortunes and the reputation of the country he rules are seriously damaged. A great power has stumbled badly, against all expectations.

Except, of course, the expectations of those who have read the Histories.

Daniel Mendelsohn revisits Herodotus.

I hear a lot of people discussing the Democratic contenders in terms of policy and possibility and excitement. It's as if North Carolinians are registering to vote in record numbers because they see this as a choice between two strong candidates at a critical moment in history. But that kind of attitude is only going to make us look like rubes to the folks who do the network news...

My newspaper column urges North Carolinians to focus on the important things in the upcoming primary -- you know, lapel pins.

Read the whole column after the jump.

Update: Elizabeth Edwards has some related thoughts in this morning's Times, but she misses the point completely by not devoting several paragraphs to her husband's tonsorial regime.

Britt and Brad, media hos.

RS,J: "I've bemoaned the N&R's unwillingness to fact check reader contributions in the past. I'm doing it again."

I've moaned about the same thing.

Pentagon suspends propaganda program.

Of hedge funds and hookers: It was like [former New York Gov. Eliot] Spitzer: "I am doing something dangerous, but because of who I am, and how smart I am, it is not going to come back to haunt me."

A not-very-cheerful interview with the venerable Peter Bernstein.

John Young gives a little background on the Guilford County Open Space Committee, and concludes with this gem about a current project: "If approved the state funded Mountains-to-Sea Trail should connect through this area and eventually allow hiking from downtown Greensboro to the Haw River State Park."

With the economy in a lull, this would seem to be an excellent time to secure as much land as possible at reasonable prices. If Guilford booms in the next upswing, open space will be all the harder to find.

This site has info and links on the MST.

Lisa Scheer took this pic quite recently in GSO.

"Of the 31 primaries held thus far, Democratic turnout records have fallen in 27. And in 13 states, the number of ballots cast this year was at least 50% higher than the previous Democratic high for a presidential primary."

More from Rhodes Cook: "Yet like a good movie, we will have to wait for the ending of the Clinton-Obama contest to tell for sure. If their race concludes in acrimony, the banner Democratic turnouts this winter and spring may count for nothing. But if their contest is resolved in a way that leaves the party united for the fall, the Democrats may yet realize their dreams of success up and down the ticket."

The National Conference of State Legislatures says "state finances are deteriorating--in some cases considerably. Many state lawmakers are confronting a two-fold problem: keeping their fiscal year (FY) 2008 budgets in the black and enacting balanced budgets for 2009."

North Carolina is on the long list of states said to be "concerned" about budget problems.

NCSL executive director William Pound: "The fiscal situations have declined so much in some states that they appear to be in a recession."

TypePad changed its software so that long comment threads (and archive pages) now are broken into separate pages.

The problem is that a link to a comment that appears past the first page doesn't take you to the comment, but to the top of the original page. You have to scroll to the bottom of that page, and then click "next" to get to the right page.

TypePad says the page-breaks make sense at their end. Super, I'm all for efficiencies at my blog service. But the user experience is degraded by this change, and I'm not for that at all.

Guilford commissioner and RNC member Linda Shaw distances herself from the NCGOP ad.

The direction and voice of the state party have been the most interesting aspects of this story all along. We'll see how the business-oriented wing of the party, led now by Pat McCrory, fares against the rusty machine.

Dan Besse, a Democratic candidate for Lt Gov, spoke about the NCGOP with Pam Spaulding before the current flap: "I think there is an element, as in many states of course, for whom that kind of explicitly unwelcoming, unaccepting and intolerant spirit is a selling point...An element of the business-based Republicans is worried about that, and rightly so, that it's bad for business, and that's the only thing they care about. They would rather have someone who has the image of being moderate on social issues."

Fec is not feeling the love for Fred Smith or Lee Greenwood.

I just can't take a guy seriously as a fiscal conservative knowing that he paid Lee Greenwood $100K for a campaign song.

Errol Morris talks about his Abu Ghraib documentary, Standard Operating Procedure: "It's not that I think they were given instructions to abuse them, they were!"

Previously.

Ron Paul will speak in Chapel Hill on Friday, May 2.

Nice ad, too:

Counter-Reformation:"Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin's surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. They have all but banned proselytizing by Protestants and discouraged Protestant worship through a variety of harassing measures."

Sykes speaks to his fellow NC conservatives: "[M]any of you would be content to wall off the GOP into a corner from which we would never escape."

That's what I'm talking about when I say the state and Guilford County parties are their own worst enemies. The messages I get from them tend to be negative, even hostile. They don't tell me why I should vote their way, they tell me how bad I am if I don't.

Whenever I talk about the internet and politics I stress that the internet is more than just an ATM for candidates.

But damn it sure is a good ATM.

"In this corner of the state, residents and workers agree on this much: The economy feels horrible. And they aren't certain how the next president can reverse the trend."

"This corner" being our corner, more or less.

Rationing rice, right here in the U.S. of A.

Strange days.

An old joke has a waiter telling a Russian, an American, and an Israeli, ''Excuse me, there's a shortage and we're out of meat." The American says, "What's a shortage?" The Russian says, "What is meat?" And the Israeli says, "What is excuse me?"

I guess that one's kind of outdated for a couple of reasons.