Jake beats up Mickey, etc.

Sorry to have fallen so far behind with my notes from endorsement interviews. I hope to get caught up in the next week.

In the meantime, I’m still honing my video editing skills. I’ve now learned how to cut clips so I don’t have to give you the whole file, just the best bits. My cutting is rough, but I continue to learn.

Here are two short clips from interviews with the candidates for the 2nd Congressional District — incumbent Republican Joe Wilson, and Democrat Michael Ray Ellisor. These meetings were more fun than usual because these guys are actually good, longtime friends, so we were able to skip the acrimony on both sides.

In the first clip — and it you only watch one, watch this one — shows Mickey Ellisor telling about how he became friends with Jake Knotts. It happened when they were both in the 4th grade in Cayce, and it all started with Mickey making some wisecrack to Jake, and Jake whuppin’ the tar out of him for it. The story had already begun when I cut on the camera, but he repeats enough of the main points that you get the gist. It’s a fun piece.

The second clip is less fun, but I thought it was interesting. Joe Wilson is explaining that you can’t do away with earmarks, and that the money’s going to go somewhere, so a conscientious congressman needs to get what he can for his district.

33 thoughts on “Jake beats up Mickey, etc.

  1. Mark Whittington

    Yeah Brad,
    You neglected to link Michael Ray Ellisor’s website to this page, so I am going to do it for you. You try downplay the very different political views of the candidates by implying that they’re both part of the backslapping good ole boy network that you are entrenched within. You and Wilson may be in bed with big money, but Ellisor is different. Ellisor has good, practical ideas for getting this country back on track.
    A VOTE FOR WILSON IS A VOTE FOR BUSH!
    A VOTE FOR ELLISOR IS A VOTE FOR OUR TROOPS AND, OUR COUNTRY!
    Oh, and big military Joe, what were you doing from 1965 when you were eligible for the draft until 1972 when you finally joined the National Guard? You weren’t dodging the draft were you? I’m a vet, and I want to know.
    Yes, Ellisor is much different in that he can think for himself, unlike Wilson who has been Bush’s, Abramoff’s, and DeLay’s water boy.
    Here is Ellisor’s agenda-what a night and day difference:
    Michael Ray Ellisor

  2. Brad Warthen

    I am always fascinated by the motives Mark ascribes to me. I don’t even understand what he’s saying, but he sure does seem sure of it.
    He seems to have his own personal lingo. I say that not to be critical, but to express my genuine bewilderment…

  3. Roy

    as a Vietnam veteran and long time supporter of both Joe Wilson and President Bush I will take issue with the above posting by saying that we as veterans have some unsavory characters in our midst. How about Al Gore and John Kerry both vets. and both turn coats toward their country and fellow vets. As for me, I will stand with my congressman and my president aganist the likes of them any day.

  4. Doug

    Not to speak for Mark, but let me attempt to translate for you, Brad:
    You seem to favor politicians who have been around a long time and work as part of the “system” versus for the people they represent… backroom compromisers who barter political favors within their own little network versus independent thinkers.
    Still waiting on your Patterson/Ravenal endorsement… really want to see how honest you’ll be about Grady’s capabilities.

  5. bud

    I don’t like Joe Wilson’s politics but he’s not your classic, Republican chickenhawk. He has a son that served in Iraq so whatever his service record was the fact that his son has been in harm’s way nullifies his past lack of service. Even so, Ellisor has my vote. We really need to counter-balance the runaway madness of the Bush administration with a strong legislative branch.

  6. Brad Warthen

    Why are you waiting, Doug? It ran yesterday. Sheesh.

    And bud, there’s something really atavistic about the way you … what’s the complementary term for "chickenhawks" — "ragingly hostile doves?" … seem to demand blood sacrifice before anyone can have an opinion. You might let Abraham have an opinion because he was willing to slay Isaac, but no lesser beings are qualified.

    It’s weird. It’s extremely primitive and anti-intellectual. You demand that someone have a vested, emotional interest — the very thing that a civilized society tries its best to weed out of decision-making processes. In other contexts, it would be called having a conflict of interest, but to you, it confers legitimacy.

    It’s good for folks like me to hear from you, though. When you have to avoid most foods that nourish other people in order to stay healthy enough to function daily, and have to spend thousands a year for drugs and other therapies to frickin’ breathe, a lot of people tend to extend pity. And those of us who have had a lifelong yearning to serve in the military and were prevented by the stupid health requirements get sick of that. It’s refreshing to have the nagging ailments that we daily despise in ourselves called "goldbricking," "laziness" and "cowardice."

    I certainly hate these wretched lifelong maladies. Thank you for joining me in despising them. It gives us a certain bond that discussions of policy would deny us.

  7. Dave

    Brad, kudos to you for saying what needs to be said. Bush wore the uniform and still the left constantly condemns his service. Cheney had very real, and still does, health issues. By the way, did you ever get your teeth checked. Dont underestimate that aspect.

  8. Doug

    Brad,
    My apologies. I am out of state this week and only have been reading the blog, expecting to see a link to the endorsement here. Sorry.
    You made the right choice with Ravenal.

  9. Doug

    >>>Cheney had very real, and still does,
    >>>health issues.
    That wasn’t the excuse he used. I believe he said he had other priorities.

  10. bud

    Brad, with all due respect, you’ve twisted the chickenhawk charge around to where it’s not recognizable. I remember the Vietnam era quite vividly and what I remember most is the near universal commitment on the part of young men to try to avoid combat. There were a few gungho types but they were in the minority. There were others, like Kerry and Gore, who felt a duty to serve in uniform and did so honorably.
    But what separates the chickenhawk from others who avoided service was thier intense and passionate support for the war effort. Bush and Cheney are two examples. They used every means available to avoid putting themselves in harms way, yet had no problem sending others to risk thier lives. And they continue to do so. Neither Bush nor Cheney served in combat and today neither has a close family member in harms way. Yet they continue to follow policies that reek havoc on hundreds of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. They are not making decisions based on any intimate understanding of sacrifice.
    So what’s really the bottom line here is the decisions that are ultimately made. The Chickenhawk Decider and others have made horrible decisions because they simply don’t possess the personal understanding to properly formulate a good decision. And we’re all paying for it. Murtha, Kerry, Gore, McCain and Colin Powell would have been far better “informed” to make good decisions. Bush and Cheney can have opinions, but their Chickenhawk history and current lack of second generation sacrifice should disqualify them from making these decisions. They’re nothing but cowards.

  11. Ed

    Bud, so in your world the only people qualified to be president or vice president in time of war are people who have actually been in combat? Nonsense my friend. I am thankful every day that we have President Bush and Vice President Cheney to lead this country in perilous times and against enemies that are extremely dangerous and care not a wit for our way of life, but rather are committed to its’ destruction. The American people did not elect someone like Murtha, Kerry, Gore, McCain or Powell to be president or vice, and we had very good reasons for not doing so…which are becoming increasingly evident as we see these clowns pontificate about “redeployment” and negotiation with people who kidnap and decapitate to get their way. I am thankful that people like you lost Bud. Very thankful. I am praying that the American people will do the right thing again and hand you another stinging defeat.

  12. bud

    Ed, the Repugs spoke a very different tune during the 1992 and 1996 elections. A man’s service record was a critical qualification (according to neo-cons) in the presidential elections those years.
    Speaking of chickenhawk cowards, Rush Limbaugh takes the cake. I’m sure everyone has heard this rant by now from Mr. Oxymoron himself (about Michael J. Fox):
    “He is exaggerating the effects of the disease,” Limbaugh told listeners. “He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. . . . This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting.”
    That mean-spirited rant may have just cost the Republicans the senate seat in Missouri. We can only hope.

  13. bud

    Brad, you’ve indicated that you intend to visit Afghanistan and possibly Iraq. I haven’t heard any more on that lately. What’s the latest? Also, are you visiting the VA regularly? You could help lift the spirits of our seriously injured service men and women. That would be a good way to help in the war effort.
    Brad, I’m not impuning your character but you do your cause a great injustice when you constantly beat the drumbeat of war then do absolutely nothing concrete to support it. If I’m wrong just indicate how you’ve sacrificed. Mary Rosh and I are waiting.

  14. Phillip

    With all due respect to Bud and Mark, with whom I’m sure I agree on 98% of the issues, the whole “chickenhawk” thing is, to me, going off on a wrong track, playing into the hands of the right-wing technique, that is to say, the politics of personal attack, of character assassination.
    This is the reason why we have a civilian government that controls the military, not vice versa. The President, regardless of his own military record or lack thereof, is entrusted with the decision-making power, with the consent and oversight of the Congress (circumvented by Johnson and Bush) as to whether or not military action is advisable. If Clinton had taken us to war for a cause that most Americans thought was just and wise, I doubt so many progressives who cry “chickenhawk” now would have done so in that case. Afghanistan was a necessary response, Bush was right (regardless of his service record in the 1970’s). Iraq was a very bad idea from the start, Bush was wrong(regardless of his service record in the 1970’s).
    However, there is a larger issue of class burden with regard to our armed forces. The price of our actions in Iraq is being borne unevenly, and in this larger sense, Bud and Mark are right in portraying Bush and Cheney as symbols of that inequity. Any candidate who favors MORE troops in Iraq, not fewer (McCain, for example) needs to be pressed on his position on the draft. I tend to favor a draft because I believe it would spread the price of military involvement more evenly across socio-economic boundaries, and thus make it less easy for the comfortable and well-off to assent to war without really understanding the consequences.

  15. bill

    Oh,yeah,about Wilson,I drove by his law offices this morning and they have a huge “Republicans for Moore” sign out front.So,maybe he’s not towing the party line as hard as we think.

  16. Phillip

    But back to Wilson vs. Ellisor…aside from his ridiculous Iraq-and-Lexington-County comment, reason enough to vote against Wilson can be found in his horrendous environmental voting record and his being one of only about 100 out of 500-something House members not only to oppose maintaining National Endowment of the Arts funding, but to favor CUTTING it by $30 million. And before you libertarians and “market-takes-care-of-everything” folks start squawking about how we can’t afford to spend money on the arts in this nation with all our global challenges, may I offer a little perspective.

  17. Herb Brasher

    Phillip, I probably agree somewhat less with Bud and Mark than you do, but your remarks above about the “chickenhawk” bit and also the class burden on the military are right on, I think. Thank you.

  18. Mary Rosh

    Once again, Warthen tries the same dishonest misdirection that he has tried so often in the past. No one is saying that only those who have served in combat are entitled to make foreign policy judgments. The fact that Warthen’s cowardice and laziness kept him out of Vietnam doesn’t disqualify him from having views on foreign policy.
    Chicken-hawkery isn’t simply the good-faith belief that a particular war is necessary, even when the person holding that belief hasn’t served in wars in the past. Chicken-hawkery is the contention that personal courage is manifested by a willingness to advocate policies that require sacrifices of others, by someone who is not willing to make those sacrifices himself. Warthen, like other chicken-hawks, doesn’t simply argue that the Iraq war is necessary. No, he casts it in terms of “resolve”, as if resolution in pursuing a course of action were more important than the rightness or wrongness, wisdom or unwisdom, of the course of action. To Warthen, the majority of Americans who do not see the Iraq war as a worthwhile project “don’t love their country enough to support our vital mission.” They are “weak” and “defeatist.”
    Warthen is not willing to undertake any sacrifices himself; he wasn’t willing to undertake any sacrifices for the Vietnam war beyond advocating the continued danger and death of others, and he’s not willing to undertake any sacrifices for the Iraq war beying advocating the continued danger and death of others. Nevertheless, to him, his advocacy of sacrifice, hardship and expense represents personal courage. Warthen characterizes as weakness the unwillingness of the war’s critics to countenance continued suffering and death of our soldiers.
    Warthen sat on his sofa, just as he did during the Vietnam war, and spun out romantic, racist fantasies of American hegemony. His cowardice kept him then, and keeps him now, from undertaking any personal sacrifice to bring those fantasies to fruition. Yet he would have us believe that his willingness to allow OTHERS to die in pursuit of those fantasies makes him a brave man.
    It isn’t Warthen’s cowardice that makes him a chicken-hawk. It isn’t the combination of his cowardice with advocacy of the Iraq war that makes him a chicken-hawk. What makes him a chicken-hawk is the fact that he presents a willingness to ADVOCATE war from a position of safety, as a hallmark of personal courage.
    That’s what makes Brad Warthen a chicken-hawk.

  19. Brad Warthen

    Oh, sure, bud. I was there all day. Those silly editorial pages can run themselves; I had really been wasting my time at the office 14 hours a day. What was I thinking?
    But I didn’t see YOU there. Where you been?

  20. Dave

    Brad, you should be laughing or mocking these so-called peaceniks. All we need now is for Mark to question why your daughters arent over in Iraq fighting and it will be deja vu all over again. Their kind of thinking is in the minority, thank goodness, so let them rant and rave and see the comedy of their sorry desperation.

  21. Mary Rosh

    Yeah, what Warthen is saying is that he has other stuff he’d rather do than volunteer at the VA or contribute in any other way to “‘our’ vital mission in Iraq”.
    What Warthen is saying is that “our” mission in Iraq is important enough to inconvenience others, but not important enough to inconvenience him.

  22. Wally

    Roy, I find your devotion to the current President at odds with the majority of other Vietnam Vets. We have a word for someone who hid in the National Guard and remained hard to find. He was just one step away from being just like those who ran to Canada.

  23. Dave

    Really Wally, have you taken your own poll on this? But he didnt run to Canada, did he now, and he didnt loathe the military like another ex-president, did he now. Stick a sock in it Wally.

  24. Mark Whittington

    Wally,
    I much appreciate your comments and observations. Please do not be intimidated into silence. I also happen to agree with your assessment concerning the opinions of Vietnam Vets. Thanks.

  25. Herb Brasher

    Brad, this is about the third similar comment I’ve written this morning, but just so you know that a lot of us read and profit from your analysis of candidates, even when we don’t post comments. As a relative newcomer to South Carolina, I appreciate the insight, even if I don’t always agree with you. I figured out fairly soon after moving here that I was going to have to do some work if was going to vote intelligently, and it is hard to find an analysis that really tries to take the hard data to heart, rather than filtering everything through a pre-conceived ideological filter. You have your bias of course, everybody does, but you don’t try and pretend you don’t. We are lucky to have you in SC. I hope you continue to hang tough.

  26. bud

    Brad you just made my point. You’re not willing to sacrifice for the cause. So what if you work 14 hours a day. Compare that with the sacrifices made by the troops. You could make time for 3-4 hours a week to do volunteer work at the VA. (Again if you are doing that say so and I withdraw my criticism). You could help raise money to supply our troops with better body armor. You could start a foundation to help to entertain the troops or educate the orphans of soldiers killed in Iraq. You could write a column condeming the cutbacks by the administration in funding brain injury treatment. All I ever see are flipant comments attacking sensible proposals to end the quagmire. At least conceed that we need to consider something different.

  27. Dave

    Bud, to attack Brad Warthen on those counts is really ultimately crass and boorish. If you are typical of the Democrat types, no wonder your party is in the minority and falling fast. How petty can one get? As Brad would say, Sheesh, and a double Sheesh from me.

  28. bud

    Dave, it’s folks like Brad that have gotten us into the foreign affairs disaster that we find ourselves in. First they support the idiotic decision to go into Iraq in the first place. Then, generals pleading for more troops and equipment are ignored. Next, the Chairborne Rangers (I love that phrase) take charge and begin making all kinds of excuses for why we’re not winning. It’s the press, liberals, the French, Democrats, Bill Clinton and on and on and on. The real problem is we don’t have enough troops, equipment and international support to properly accomplish the job. Why? The fault lays in the lap of people like Brad who simply have no interest in making any concrete contribution to the cause. It’s just lip service.
    What’s really crass is to continue down this hopeless path we’ve gotten ourselves into. The situation in America today is that virtually no Americans actually support the war. They fall into two camps. First, there are those, like me, who believe the war is wrong and not worth fighting. Many have always thought this way, others (George Will for example) came around later because of an overwhelming preponderance of facts. Either way, the facts overwhelmingly support this position.
    And then there are the pretend supporters, those, like Brad, who don’t actually support the war any more than I but instead of admitting it they sit back and spout worthless platitudes about how we MUST win. They never say how. They never lift a finger to help but mock and ridicule those sensible folks who recognize the situation for what it is.
    Since it’s crystal clear that virtually no Americans actually support the war, it’s time to bring the troops home.

  29. Wally

    Mark, Dave isn’t gonna run me off, it’s crystal clear where he’s coming from, there’s months of his posts that show that. But I don’t think Dave is a Viet Vet nor do I believe he spends much time at the VA Hospital talking to Vets like I do, so there’s no qualification to his comments.

  30. Brad Warthen

    As I keep explaining, the people who want us to be in Iraq ARE liberals.
    Folks like my friend Mickey Ellisor, who wants to bring all troops home from everywhere and post them along our borders, are the conservatives.
    … if the words mean anything.

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