We first noticed the slogan “Don’t Asheville My Hendersonville” on the T-shirts of some of the attendees of the annual North Carolina Apple Festival over Labor Day weekend — and, somehow, the shock from the message remains with us today.

The slogan, which also is available for purchase on ballcaps and bumper stickers, amounts to quite a slam from conservative-leaning Hendersonville (the second-largest city in Western North Carolina) versus the ultra-progressive Asheville (the largest city in WNC), its neighboring rival that has long been nicknamed “The Paris of the South.”

The website theculturetrip.com stated, “With the arrival of the Vanderbilts, tourism jumped and helped steer the city (Asheville) into a prosperous era that saw a number of Art Deco buildings go up downtown, many of which still exist today and have been transformed into shops, restaurants, and bars that give the walkable city a bustling feel — a crucial Parisian element.”

But that was then and this is now — and almost everyone with whom we have spoken recently agrees that Asheville has radically changed ... into a trashy, crime-ridden, traffic-clogged city that is crowded with homeless people begging for money. 

Suffice it to say, a Facebook posting, including the picture above, asked the following about the slogan appearing Asheville Real Politicson March 19, 2022: “They are selling theses items in Hendersonville, that stings!!”

Among the many responses to the posting were the following:

• Benjamin Townsend — “One is liberal and going to s--t. The other wants to remain awesome. We do it here. Don’t NewYork my South Carolina.”

• Becca Crouch — “Now I need a ‘Don’t Asheville My Candler.’”

• Beth Campbell — “Speaks volumes to what’s been going on in Asheville for far too long”

• Mellie Rebecca — “It’s to the point where I have to have an escort to attend weekly doctor’s appointments in Asheville. The trashy place has become a war zone. I hate it.”

Goodness knows, Asheville’s collapse is a cautionary tale for what not to do, while Hendersonville, which remains clean, green and relatively crime-free, sparkles.

Asheville needs to clean house, end one-party rule and, as urged  in the classic disco hit by Gloria Estefan & the Miami Sound Machine: “Turn the Beat Around!” 

Americans of a certain age will remember the fun of coming up with a new oxymoron. 

Three of my favorites were “airline food,” “military intelligence” and “jumbo shrimp.”

The game is back! Under hapless Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans have come up with a brand-new oxymoron: “Biden crime family.” 

It’s a huge contradiction in terms, with no basis in reality. Yet they shout it from the rooftops and they’ve held half a dozen congressional hearings to “expose” it. 

The only problem is, 18 months after taking control of the House, they’ve come up with not one shred of evidence of any crime committed by anybody named Biden.

But that lack of evidence hasn’t stopped them. Just the opposite. McCarthy recently announced that one of his first priorities for Republicans after Labor Day is to impeach President Biden! 

“How do you get to the bottom of the truth? The only way Congress can do that is to go to an impeachment inquiry,” the speaker of the House told CNN.

Of course, what everyone wants to know is: What exactly are you going to impeach President Biden for? That’s the $64 million question. Which, so far, not one Republican — not Speaker McCarthy, not Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, not Oversight Chair James Comer — can answer. 

Why? Because they don’t have the goods. And efforts so far to prove any wrongdoing by Biden have only backfired.

On June 13, for starters, Comer accused President Biden of having been “allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national.” 

According to Comer, based on an FBI interview with a since-discredited informant who met with Mykola Zlochevsky, founder of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, of which Hunter Biden was a board member, then-Vice President Biden accepted a $5 million bribe to push for the ouster of Ukraine’s attorney general, considered unfriendly to Burisma.

Sounds serious, except there’s nothing to back it up. In fact, in the last few months, it’s been totally disproven. Zlochevsky himself has denied having any contact with or receiving any assistance from Joe Biden. 

And on July 31, in closed-door testimony before the Oversight Committee, Comer’s key witness, Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer, testified under oath that VP Biden never intervened to help his son or Burisma and that he had no knowledge of bribery payments. Because there weren’t any.

The only thing we know for sure about the Burisma issue is that Hunter Biden exercised bad judgment by trying to capitalize on his father’s job in order to line his own pockets. 

That was wrong, although he’s hardly the first member of any political family to do so. But there’s no evidence he did anything illegal, except maybe fail to pay all taxes he owed. And whatever mistakes Hunter made were made by him, not his father.

Yet McCarthy’s determined to plow ahead with impeachment — for two reasons. First, to pacify extremist members of the Freedom Caucus who are demanding a government shutdown. You agree not to shut down the government, he’s reportedly told them, and I’ll let you have your impeachment hearings.

Second, McCarthy’s eager to help Donald Trump, who’s been begging House Republicans to impeach Biden in the hope they’ll take the spotlight off his own monumental legal problems. 

And whatever Daddy Trump wants, My Kevin delivers.

In other words, McCarthy’s guilty of what Republicans accuse Democrats of: “weaponization of government” — using the powers of Congress, not to solve problems, but to attack their political opponents. And they do so at their own political peril.

Efforts to impeach Joe Biden will fail, not only because of lack of evidence, but because they could backfire on Republicans and cost them control of the House in 2024. 

A poll by the Congressional Integrity Project this week shows that 56 percent of Americans already think trying to impeach Biden is a “political stunt.”

It’s insane for Republicans to go down this road. Especially when there’s a ready alternative. If their goal is really to expose a major “crime family,” they’re looking in the wrong place. 

There’s another family nearby in which the father’s been charged with 91 crimes and whose sons and daughter made business deals all over the globe in their father’s name while he was in the White House.