Just in case you thought the GOP might get a grip on itself and find a positive way forward after last week’s election (and if you did, silly you — it is, after all, a political party), this should destroy your hopes:
MIAMI — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was elected the new chairman of the Republican Governors Association on Friday.
Sanford
succeeds Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who will now serve as finance chairman.
The association has been meeting this week in Miami – and some
discussions have revolved around what went wrong for the party on
Election Day."I am honored and excited to become chairman of the
Republican Governors Association as we work together to win a majority
of governors by 2010," Sanford said in a statement released by the
group. "Republican governors are natural leaders who will find
solutions to our nation’s challenges and bring back the party."…
See, you people out there who wanted me to be all horrified over Sarah Palin just couldn’t understand that, all along, I was perfectly conscious that McCain could have done a lot worse in picking a running mate — as the Republican governors just demonstrated. Come on, guys — Mark Sanford isn’t even a governor, in the sense of anyone who takes any interest in governing. Normally, governors stand out as people who are pragmatic, and unburdened by the whacko ideologies one finds inside the Beltway. Sanford never lets reality get in the way of his ideologies. He is utterly "unspoiled," in that regard, by the experience of holding the office of governor.
Now that your hopes are utterly destroyed, Republicans, consider the UnParty. Of course, before we accept you, you’ll have to leave a lot of baggage behind.
Related Posts
> Of course, before we accept you, you’ll
>have to leave a lot of baggage behind.
Correct. Please leave your logic and personal responsibility at the door.
Is Mark Sanford the worst person in South Carolina politics right now, Brad? or just the one you feel you can demonize the most without fear of reprisal?
No. He’s just a really, really lousy governor. And our state really, really needs a good one.
Hooray….I’m with you all the way Gov…but, alas, I’m afraid we are a dying breed…..As proud as I am for you for your appointment, I would much rather see you try to start a revolution in this country with the Libertarian party as the catalyst……Keep up the good work
I saw Michael Cooper, reporting from the RGA convention for the NY Times, identify Mark Sanford as the governor of North Carolina in his video file on http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/us/politics/14palin.html.
Imagine that — Mark Sanford governor of a state that believes in investing in education.
Brad –
Too bad term limits won’t free us from you.
Brad and his love/hate relationship with the governor is old news. It was old two years ago, it’s nothing but horse bones and hooves now and Brad still standing there with his horse whip. Yawn…
Unfortunately, I don’t think North Carolina would agree to take Mark Sanford from us.
Maybe if we hid him inside a giant cake, Trojan horse style…
Good ole Brad. He can’t resist rattling the libertarian cage. And what better way to do it that piling on to Gov. Sanford. Coming from someone who supported the excrutiatingly awful George W. Bush and Sarah Palin for high office I don’t give these comments much credibility.
Oh great, Brad found his broken record!!!
Bad old Mark Sanford has done so much to hold back education in South Carolina with all those vouchers he has implemented.
Oh wait. He didn’t.
What has Jim Rex done in two years? other than continue the do nothing/public relations tradition of Inez?
Me either, bud. Nor his catechesis on faith.
I suppose Mark Sanford is responsible for this news from today’s paper:
” The State Department of Education is out about $300,000 in printing costs, and parents won’t see annual report card ratings for their students’ schools for two more months.
Thursday — one day before report card ratings were to be released to the public — the department found that one of its scoring/reporting vendors, Iowa-based Pearson, had miscalculated end-of-course test results for more than 9,000 of the state’s middle and high school students.”
300K would pay for at least 3 educrats…
Brad has Sanford ranked below Palin?
Gee, Brad, you’re nothing if not predictable, are you?
I find it amusing that you think you can stand up to a governor, who probably sees you as nothing more than a gnat, but you can’t tell your wife in no uncertain terms that you want more the basic cable package, not just the broadcast channels.
You are so far out of the loop it’s not even funny.
“Years from now, we will look back and marvel at how, time and again, Mark Sanford had the courage to lead, while others merely stood by. We’ll marvel at how he restored our state’s stagnant economy…revitalized our failing schools…renovated and modernized our crumbling infrastructure….but most of all we’ll marvel at how he did it all while being so gosh-darn humble, passing up countless opportunities for photo-ops, op-eds, CNN spots, and ceremonial national chairmanships, all for the sake of working smarter, harder, and longer for the good citizens of SC who gave him the privilege to serve and to lead. We’ll marvel that a man who could have easily faded into the insular solace of a party herd mentality struck out instead for a singular vision and a grand purpose, becoming along the way a true American Maverick like his good friend and personal hero John S. McCain.”
And then Doug Ross woke up.
That’s pretty funny, jfx. It reminds me of the classic "President Reagan, Mastermind" skit from SNL back in the 80s.
And as long as we’re sharing the fun… when I was looking for that link, I ran across the wonderful Phil Hartman skit, "Clinton at McDonald’s."
"Warlords!"
jfx,
I have no idea what you are talking. Brad knows better than anyone that Sanford does not have any real power to do anything in this state. The state government is run by a bunch of multi-decade career politicians from East Bumpkin, SC.
If Sanford had the power to do government the way he would like to do it, we’d see a state that wasn’t at the bottom of every measurable category related to education and progress.
Sanford is smart, principled, and conservative. He doesn’t play the games or kiss the butts in the way that Brad thinks an effective politician should.
Brad,
We’ve found a point of agreement! Gov. Sanford has been virtually invisible for two terms and has done nothing proactive. His relationship with the legislature has always been nothing short of dysfunctional, particularly in a polity such as ours in which the Great and General Assembly of Political Cronies is the pre-eminent branch of government.
What we need is a constitutional convention in S.C. to get rid of the 1895 Tillman constitution to restore a balance of power between the branches of government and firmly subordinate all boards and commissions to executive control.
Then we need to take the next step and stop electing inarticulate bumpkins like Elmer Fudd Sanford (Sanford always reminded me of good ole Elmer).
And if we can’t have competence, why can’t we at least have THEATRE, as they do in Louisiana!
Mark Sanford is dumber than wheat paste dumb. His apologists admire talk more than accomplishment. He is pathologically rigid and can’t play well with others.
Read the Post and Courier series about the scandal at the Berkeley Dorchester EOC Headstart to learn how ineptly the Governor’s office managed that program. How about the ongoing investigation at another cabinet agency about employees stealing with the agency gas credit card; at least 5 fired at a Richland County office alone. But no prosecution, cause you Sanford supporters would discover the emperor has no clothes.
Yes, Mark Sanford and his wife, who made millions on Wall Street, are dummies. Every government employee just knows this to be true.
Just like President Bush, another self-made millionaire, and Harvard MBA, is a dummy, compared to flunk outs Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
And the fact that Bill Bradley got into Princeton with an SAT below 900 shows how really smart he was.
Obviously Mark Sanfords’ disconnectedness (detachment would have been a kinder word but it doesn’t really capture the ineffectiveness and broken nature of Sanfords tenure as guv) has been problematic.
His committment to conservative principles has been strong however. Conservatism wins every time it is tried. Once we’ve had four years of capitulation, ineptitude and smothering taxes from Obama and the flying monkees in congress, someone like Sanford may actually look fairly good.
Dave
You know, for president…or dog catcher…or whatever.
Dave
Sanford’s goose of career ambition is cooked, although I’m sure he’ll live comfortably at some level of the GOP party apparatus for at least another decade. He’s going to be markedly overshadowed by Pawlenty, Jindal, and, yes…God help her…even Palin.
Obviously, he’ll attempt a wobbly run at the Presidency, likely marketing himself as a “reformer who will shake up Washington”. However, under withering fire over a gubernatorial two-term record of…well….regular meals and not much else, he’ll fold early in the primary season. It won’t help him that in his primary debate performances, he will be likened to a “thinner, hairier Fred Thompson”.
Mark Sanford the Image looks like a very fine, practical, independent-minded conservative. What a nice-looking, agreeable white man! But Mark Sanford the Real Politician is the same sort of gutless opportunistic machine pol “conservative” the GOP has been belching out since the Gingrich revolution.
Doug, you’re basically saying Sanford is a figurehead. Smart, principled, conservative….and oh yeah, powerless. But that’s just the sad parody of a real governor…”one who governs”…that he’s become. Doug, you make it out like he’s the victim of those mean ol’ career pols who won’t let him govern like he wants to! Poor Governor Sanford!
It takes real political courage to take on tenured cronies as a chief executive at any level. Sanford just doesn’t have the balls to do that. It’s easier just to win an easy re-election in a socially conservative state, and kick the can down the road. Let the next governor soil his suit trying to fix this mess. And the next governor. And the next. Sanford has become a turtle that ceases to poke its head out of its shell altogether. You can’t get more conservative than that!
Wow, Rich, you think Sanford is an inarticulate bumpkin when he looks and acts Ivy League compared to his lamebrained predecessor, who actually resembled Elmer Fudd?
Or were you up the road when harebrained Hodges had inmates making whoopee in the governor’s mansion?
Lee wrote:
>Just like President Bush, another self-made millionaire,
You couldn’t support that statement in a thousand gigs’ worth of blog postings. The son of a president, grandson of senators and bankers is “self-made?”
Yes yes, my boy. Certainly he is.
jfx,
It’s not Sanford who is powerless, it is the position. I’ve lived in SC for 20 years and Sanford is the only governor who actually DID take a stand against the good old boys who steal our money on a daily basis.
Both Sanford and his wife were born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. Neither has had to work an honest day’s labor in their life.
Michelle, you may disagree with him politically, and I agree that he’s really not much of a Governor. But I don’t think you know what you’re talking about with the “silver spoon” business.
He was born in Ft Lauderdale, and his family moved to Beaufort when he was young. He earned a Bachelors at Furman and an MBA U of Virginia. He was then successful at Goldman Sachs, and got elected to congress in 1990 I think.
What is silverspoon about that? If he had simply been riding on his daddys’ coattails and been a rich boy, don’t you think he’d have gone to Harvard Business School or some other prestigious Ivy League school?
He might suck as Governor…that is debatable. But certainly he worked hard before he entered elective politics, and he was fairly successful in his own right, independent of his family’s wealth.
You should try making your case using facts sometime. You know, just for a change of pace.
Just sayin.
Dave
And by the way Michelle, what’s up with the “honest days’ work” comment? Sanford is obviously a hard worker.
You want to talk about dishonesty? I’ll tell where I see the highest concentration of dishonesty: It is found most commonly in scabbed out, purely partisan left wing liberal hacks who don’t deal in fact, but find it immediately necessary to resort to petty little slurs and character denigration.
You’re not one of those are ya?
Dave
Let’s not forget that Hodges got rid of the scourge of videopoker in South Carolina as well brokering the compromise that brought down the Confederate flag from atop the State House.
He was an active governor who was physically present doing his job, even if a little too colorfully at times. We got the education lottery under Hodges as well as a very good “middle-class entitlement” in the form of a lottery-based scholarship for students who maintain B averages in high school.
Let’s also not forget that Hodges supported the State Dept. of Education initiatives such as National Board certification that have strengthened the teaching profession and helped S.C. improve education in this state. While it is true that education in this state is not as good as what can be found in states outside the South that have a long history of public education based on equal opportunity, we have made great strides and I believe we will continue to do so.
This does not always mean more money, but it does mean a commitment to secular, non-partisan education in which students are not taught nonsense such as intelligent design or the idea that “the South was right”. Desegregation cannot be considered true integration if black students now sit side by side with white students to hear a culturally white supremacist message in the schoolhouse.
Kids need to feel that America belongs to all of us, not just the white founders. In social studies, they need to know that the African American experience is the decisive factor in the progressive widening of the American circle of freedom and democracy since 1776. We’ve had some setbacks along the way: the virtual extermination of the Indians, the Trail of Tears, the persecution of the Mormons (whatever you may think of their religion), lynching, Jim Crow, the disenfranchisement of blacks after Reconstruction, etc.
We’ve come a long, long way even though we still must fight to preserve freedom and struggle to make certain that the American circle of freedom continues to widen to include everybody. E pluribus unum!! It’s an ideal we have to make real!
Public education needs to provide hope and our government needs to speak directly to the needs, hopes, aspirations, and fears of our people. This is why politicians like Barack Obama and JFK get elected in the first place. Unlike Republicans like Sanford, they believe that government IS the people doing the right things for themselves. They don’t throw up their hands like Hoover and wait for the day when the rich decide to repatriate their assets and invest in their own country. They get out there and experiment; they DO things that inspire hope and keep people from starving. In our day, that’s helping keep families in their homes.
It’s not fun having to deal with distraught parents losing their homes while their bewildered children (who are now sometimes hungry in my school!) attempt to have a normal day at school. It’s hard to keep your mind on factoring algebraic expressions or conjugating Spanish verbs, or reading some poem and writing about it, when you don’t have enough to eat or your parents are coping with foreclosure on their patio home in Avebury or their small house in one of the communities of the Summit. On the outside, everything looks leafy green, prosperous, and peaceful. On the inside, families are trying to cope with America’s financial meltdown, occasioned in part by the greed of the rich who control unfettered the commanding heights of the economy and are quite willing to send America’s young people off to some useless wars. Tell me when we can expect an invasion from a Middle Eastern country?? Tell me what we would do if a nuclear device exploded here on an American city without our knowing exactly where it came from? What do we do? Bomb, bomb, Iran? I hope not.
Hodges for me represents the good ole days when the rising tide of the Clinton administration was lifting all boats. Sanford represents Hoover. I do believe he would throw up his hands in the face of a depression.
Oh well, let the peasant of our state eat cake!
It says a lot about someone when they begin telling you how they see America. Do they see good American ingenuity and excellence? Do they see a country that has been a land of tremendous promise and vast opportunity, and which still extends those values and opportunities to people today who are willing apply themselves and work hard? Do they see a country that has been the cradle, steward and launching pad for freedom around the world? A country that has defeated evil and rebuilt countries and fed the world?
Or do they see the Trail of Tears, extermination and persecution? And a land where only the rich get richer and no one stands a chance unless they get government assistance?
World view is everything.
David
we’d see a state that wasn’t at the bottom of every measurable category related to education and progress. – Doug
Doug, that is patently false.
From the NAEP 2007 results, the only national apples to apples comparison of states:
*4th grade math, SC is tied with or higher than 22 states.
*8th grade math – SC is tied with or higher than 30 states.
*4th grade reading – tied or higher than 13 states
*8th grade reading – tied or higher than 17 states
*8th grade writing – tied or higher than 12 states (out of 45, 5 states had insufficient data)
Obviously, SC should not be proud of the reading and writing rankings but SC is NOT at the bottom as you claim. Floyd ran for state superintendent on the distorted claim that SC has the worst education system but she based this on SAT scores and drop out rates. Both are completely invalid for evaluating an entire school system as individual indicators.
You once asked about the difference between Connecticut and SC school systems. To a large degree, the difference is associated with demographics. SC has an agrarian tradition in which education was not valued or not accessible as it is in more industrialized states. The urban areas up here – Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven – are like giant Richland 1 districts. But the rest of the state is like Lexington 1 (in terms of socio-economic but not culturally – we are a big Obama state). The vast Lexington 1 areas we have overshadow our urban areas that have very poor test scores.
I respect your insightfulness in regards to what happens in our schools, but I take issue with the characterizations based on assessments.
Randy,
How about high school graduation rate? Isn’t that ultimately the measure of an education system?
For 2006, the graduation rate for SC was either 47th or 48th of the 50 states.
Nearly half of the students who enter SC high schools do not finish. Connecticut graduates about 3/4.
Mark Sanford has nothing to do with the education system in South Carolina. Zero.
Doug, we debated this before and I’ll ask the same question. How is it the school’s fault if a parent allows a kids to skip and ultimately drop out of school? How is it the fault of the school if the kid doesn’t leave the house to go to school?
I had a student once who was disruptive and unengaged. I called his mother repeatedly. When she came on to campus for a meeting, the kid cussed at her then ignored her. He ended up dropping out. How was that the school’s fault? How is his contribution to the drop out rate an indication that the school failed him?
Randy’s observations on education here in S.C. are right on the money!!
South Carolina public education is mostly very good, except in the heavily Afro-American districts, especially rural ones.
The average scores and graduation rates are skewed heavily downward by the black students.
That problem is not going to be solved as long as 70% of black children have one or zero parents at home, because that many were born out of wedlock, and so many of the mothers are dropouts, drug addicts and prostitutes.
As long as blacks participate in the welfare programs designed by white socialists and liberals, they will remain at the bottom of every social measure.
Those who have walked away from welfare and accepted the Americanism of freedom and responsibility, have done quite well in education, employment and business.
racist
Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, Lee Muller, Pride of the New Confederacy. Wave that battle flag, Lee! Rise Up, Oh Brothers Of The Cross!
jfx, you may not like the way he’s presented it, but what Lee has said is essentially the truth:
– It is true that for the most part, test scores for South Carolina school children are skewed downward by black kids.
– It is true that about 70% of black babies are illegitimate, and many are brought up in homes with only one parent.
– It is argueable, but probably true that welfare programs designed by white liberal elitists has done black people more harm than good.
Whether you like the unvarnished truth or not, it is undeniable that black people in this country have fallen and are falling behind. And it’s clear to me that the concrete things cited above have a LOT more to do with that than any weak, emotional and anecdotal case you might make that racism is responsible for the bad shape black folk are in.
Truth is tough to swallow, but we need to face it courageously if we are to find solutions. I wonder what folks like you will say in four years when blacks are no better off after Obamas’ first term, and are really probably worse off.
David
David:
I don’t dispute the statistics you or Lee cited.
I dispute the inferred premise made here by Lee, and in just about every other blog post where Lee deigns to pontificate on blacks, and how screwed up he thinks they are.
Of course, that ugly inferred premise is that blacks are inferior to whites.
It is very sad, but there are still far too many Lee-Muller-esque old-school white wanna-be-alpha males romping around in the remnants of the old Confederacy who wish to high heaven that the glory days of slave ownership would return, so they can finally get someone to cook and clean for them without having to either marry for it or pay for it.
Sorry to be so damn unvarnished about it, but you know it’s true. If you don’t think so, then please tell me, sir…at what point in our still-young national history should blacks in South Carolina, in your opinion, have turned the corner and risen up out of their welfaric despondency and self-inflicted destitution?
Was it just after emancipation, when freedom didn’t mean jobs, or respect, or education, even if you packed up and moved north? Or how about after integration, when blended culture still didn’t necessarily mean jobs, or respect, or equal education?
It’s very easy to kick dirt on blacks and say they are dragging us down and need to get their act together. It’s also easy to buy into the mythology that elitist liberals have been harming blacks by trying to help them. “Government needs to back off, and let these people pull themselves up by their bootstraps!”
But, of course, first you need bootstraps.
The unvarnished truth is that black people here in SC have been “falling behind” ever since they were forced off ships at gunpoint at the end of a long sail from West Africa. It’s bitterly ironic that people like Lee Muller are eager to constantly harp on a long string of black failure statistics, when it’s the Lee Mullers of SC and their ancestors who’ve had a vigorous role in first owning, then segregating, and….still to this day!….demonizing blacks!
But…ya know…it’s a slowly but surely shrinking margin of reactionary power. “Well, I can’t own ’em any more….hell, I can’t even segregate ’em any more…..but I can sure as hell talk sh!t about ’em all day and all night!” Consolation for a dying breed, the soon-to-be-extinct Confederate racist, the Carolina dinosaur. The same kind of cold comfort you find in that stack of “literature” at the counter in your local Maurice’s Piggie Park.
I’m really not sure how Obama’s presidency will turn out. That book’s not written yet. But I know that after his first term, the situation for not just blacks, but all minorities, will still be quite difficult in many parts of our country….especially here in the ol’ Confederacy. I think it will still take several generations of old bad Lee Muller blood dying off before we see the kind of truly integrated culture in SC that makes for dramatic improvements in education across all demographics.
jfx,
Blacks are not genetically inferior to whites, but racist, whether slave owners or modern, patronizing liberals, have told blacks that they are inferior, incapable of making it without directions from whites, and have created the INFERIOR LIVING CONDITIONS for blacks.
Those non-whites who dare refuse to buy the patronizing racism of modern white socialism, and become successful by buying into the American ideals of hard work, risk and reward, are demonized by those whites and the blacks they control, in the most vile and racist language.
Just look at the racial slurs hurled at GEN Colin Powell and Condeleza Rice by the liberal white press and and their annointed “black leaders”.
As for the ignoratnt speculation about my ancestors, they owned the Marketplace in Charleston, and permitted the public use of it for trade, on the condition that it not be used for the sale of slaves. That took place on federal property, a few blocks away.
Lee,
I think I speak for a lot of people on this blog when I say that you are an idiot.
Way to go Rich. You’ve raised the knack for adding no value to an art form.
jfx, I know you’re passionate about this, but I don’t think Lee is your enemy. I don’t believe he’s really the racist hate monger you think he is, but in any case your transferred hatred for Lee seems to me to be getting your eye off the ball. Specifically:
– Blacks have NOT been falling behind ever since they were forced off slave ships at gunpoint. I am in NO way defending slavery, but I think it’s a little silly to argue that black people in America today aren’t WAY better off than they would have been if they had been left in Africa 250 years ago. America was wrong to engage in slavery, and its’ effects were unfair to blacks for a long time even after slavery was abolished. But to her credit, America recognized that slavery was wrong and set about to right that wrong. And black folks have been the benefactors of freedom and opportunity – they are fantastically better off today in America than they would have been left in Africa. This truth is undeniable, and it ought to be embraced by black folks and then built upon. By this I do NOT mean black ought to feel “beholden” to whites. I simply mean black folks ought to embrace and capitalize on the opportunities America offers, since they are here anyway. Most are doing exactly this.
– Second, you assert that rather than harming black people, government assistance has been “”the bootstraps” they’ve needed in order to pull themselves up. Really? From what I know and understand, the black family unit was largely intact and functioning as late as the forties and fifties. Jfx, what has happened to the black family since then that caused its’ destruction? I don’t know what your answer to that would be, but to me it’s pretty clear: The aggressive intervention of government and the marginalization of black fathers through welfare and the “war” on poverty.
This so called war, if not actually against black families, has at least made black families the victims of collateral damage, and they have been devastated.
What say you?
Dave
jfx, what I meant to say and didn’t was that for the last 45 years this country has engaged in the most massive transfer of wealth from haves to have nots in the history of man. We have done it through welfare payments, unemployment benefits and social handouts. We have done it by conferring preferred employment status on certain ethnic groups and in doing so have ensured that the best qualified person is not always the one hired. These government programs have largely been engineered and implemented by liberals.
All this, and the groups these efforts were intended to help are worse off now than they were to begin with.
For this reason it is astonishing to me that black people today still vote almost exclusively for democrats. What exactly have they done for black people? Where and how has the plight of the black people been improved by democrat liberal give aways?
Just sayin.
Dace
And when at the end of four years of increased wealth redistribution under Obama we find that black folks are in even worse shape than they are now, (and it is inevitable-fifty years of data bears it out), will there be any acknowledgement of the failure and folly of these giveaways?
Probably not.
And frankly, I think it’s hopeless unless and until we admit what we’ve been doing is an abject failure.
Dave
There is a bottom line to sum up a lot of the back and forth written above about white-vs-black history and present day facts.
Public education is for all children. Whether or not you take advantage of all that is offered and all the special programs is up to the individual.
No blame game. The brain is either you use it or you lose it. Your future depends on using the brain.
David, just a few points:
1) You might reconsider what you said about Americans bringing blacks from Africa, and your “undeniable truth” that they are better off here, slavery and segregation and all, than they would have been had we just left them in Africa. And having a strong opinion doesn’t constitute “undeniable truth”.
As I understand it, your thinking is that the blacks who stayed in Africa have been worse off for staying. They didn’t get the glorious “opportunity” to come to America like their slave brothers. Oh, they could have been so much better off! David, are you saying that Africa is inferior, or that the “natives” of Africa are inferior? Are you thinking that black African history was a rigidly fixed thing, and that since Africa is “inferior”, the slaves who came over here by force were “spared” from a life of squatting in huts, and famine, and war, and exploitation by industry?
Hmmmm. Because the fate of the blacks in Africa who had their continent gutted by European colonial interests is pretty much the same fate that black slaves suffered here in America. And there’s been significant progress for blacks, IN SPITE OF racist controlling interests, in both America and Africa.
So, I don’t accept your premise that slavery has somehow been “redeemed” by the glorious opportunities of blacks in America, versus what they would have had “back home”.
2) As regards the “black family unit”….hello! Myopia much? David, your disintegration of the “black family unit” in America since the forties and fifties is not exclusive to blacks! You can take out the word “black”, and leave the phrase “family unit”. How’s that? What’s happened in black families is a reflection of what’s happened in the larger American culture. You’ve connected false dots between Democratic welfare programs and a general American cultural trend wherein more marriages fail and more kids are born out of wedlock. That’s not a “black thing”. It’s an “everybody” thing.
And, sorry, you can’t pin all that on liberal social programs. There’ve been massive lapses in our domestic education infrastructure, including systemic failures in educating young people properly with respect to science, math, reading comprehension, and, perhaps most importantly, SEX, that have put us at a global competitive disadvantage, and left us unable to regulate ourselves responsibly with respect to family planning.
I can think of no better example of what happens when ideological resistance to properly teaching young people about sex results in ignorant kids having unplanned babies than what we see every day right here in SC. And I’m not talking about just blacks. I’m sure everyone on this blog knows at least a few young white girls who’ve had “Oops!” babies.
It’s certainly not the liberals holding back proper sex ed. Ironically, if sex ed were properly taught, the abortion rate would drop dramatically.
3) Any discussion of black failure statistics in America would not be complete without a quick survey of the Vietnam experience, wherein entire urban sectors of America were blighted by the number of young black males drafted, shipped out, and killed in that war. The Vietnam War was certainly no liberal program. It was a fully bipartisan, wholly American endeavor, with roots going back to Roosevelt, through every administration up to Ford. But the black community, especially the urban black community, suffered disproportionately high losses amongst our electorate in the overt draft phase of that war. Why is that, David?
Incidentally, it’s food for thought with respect to the Iraq war. If you want to consider some of the reasons why Obama was able to roll up New Mexico so handily, and pull in Colorado and Nevada, you might consider the number of Hispanics who serve in our military today….voluntarily, honorably…but whose families have been impacted significantly in a negative fashion by our recent Middle Eastern adventurism.
Yes, why do the blacks….and now the Hispanics…keep voting Democrat?
With regard to Lee Muller and his Market-owning ancestors….Yes Lee, I’m familiar. Having lived in both Charleston and Columbia for many years, I know very well the genteel Southern tradition of smiling, congenial racism. Sure, why bother with the dirty, messy business of selling slaves in the Market, when you can get the Feds to do it for you just a hop and a skip down the street? We have a grand tradition in SC of being civil and tolerant in the broad daylight. It’s only at night that we don our hoods and torch the cross.
My ancestors opposed slavery, so you can give up that racist fantasy as a shield from reality.
In fact, you need to grow up an stop using personal smears, in lieu of debate, because everyone can see your lack of a factual argument.
If any of you think black people cannot make it without monetary subsidies from the government, especially after five generations and trillions of dollars failing to yield any improvements, then you really do think blacks are inherently inferior to whites like yourselves – and that makes you racist.
The armed forces serving in Vietnam, and all wars, have been overwhelmingly white, and better-educated than the general population.
The lies about Vietnam being fought by poor whites and blacks was just more Soviet propaganda spread by useful idiots in the so-called “peace movement”, like John Kerry.
Jfx, I have not defended or even mentioned the rightness, wrongness or morality of European imperialism and colonialism and its’ devastating effects upon the continent, countries and people of Africa. I simply say that the average black American citizen today has a standard of living that far surpasses the standard of living enjoyed by an average black citizen in an African nation. That truth seems manifestly obvious to me. If you are unwilling to concede that point, then I don’t know what else to say to you. You seem to be attempting to make the case that living in 3rd century economies and huts and squalor somehow has a nobility and intrinsic value that we of western European descent are missing. I have to tell you I don’t see it, and I don’t see many black American citizens packing up to go back to Africa either. I really think your desire to disagree is taking precedence over your willingness to admit that black American citizens are enjoying the tremendous legacy of freedom and opportunity. By the way, you’re right: the things I said above weren’t undeniable – you’ve denied them. But in your heart you’ve had to contort the truth to do it.
About your point that white families have crumbled as well as black families…true enough. But we weren’t talking about the condition of whites in America, we were talking about the deteriorating condition of black folks. Typically, you get your feelings hurt about a difficult truth spoken of black families and retaliate by shouting “Oh yeah!? Well you are too!!!” and thereby obfuscate and miss the greater truth.
jfx, I couldn’t finish my thought above because my iPhone got wierd on me, but I’ll finish here, and quickly. I am not trying to be insulting, but I think people like you are delusional. And it is depressing trying to discuss things with you when you distort, contort and deny the truth in order to maintain your delusions.
I am too depressed to continue, and in any case you are free to continue believing whatever you wish about A) Where black folks are, B) How they got there and C) How they get better.
I simply suggest that doing more of what we’ve already been doing for 45 years and that hasn’t worked is probably not the best plan. If you disagree, I’m OK with that.
Dave
I OK with liberals playing massa with their money.
When they want to divert my money from useful projects into their wasteful playing at charity, then I must object.
so many of the mothers are dropouts, drug addicts and prostitutes. – Lee referring to African-Americans.
Dave (Faust) where are your or Lee’s statistics to support this asinine and patently racist statement? It’s clear from the context that he is inferring this.
It’s pathetic for you to even attempt to justify what Flee offers. I’m sure there are some racist blogs on which you could find people willing to engage in such nonsense.
Dave, you seem to think you have a monopoly on the “truth”, and that if my opinions do not fit your version of “truth”, it makes me “delusional”. Thanks!
Yeah, I have this crazy notion that a black African’s lesser material standard of living does not automatically mean the black African is intrinsically more miserable than the black American. Anyone who has seen the Cameroon contingent at the World Cup might agree with me on that.
I get a kick out of listening to Rush Limbaugh castigate Obama for not helping his Kenyan relative who lives in a “hut”. Apparently there’s this notion rattling around in Rush’s overpaid, undercultured brain that a Kenyan living in a “hut” must automatically be miserable. We tend to superimpose our own material standards on other cultures, and presume that what seems awful for “us” must be awful for “them”. Has Rush considered that it might be possible to live in rural Kenya, and be a proud Kenyan, and be happy?
Dave, you took the deteriorating conditions of the “black family unit” and tried to hogtie them to government programs for minorities…and I called you on that as false. You cherry-picked a segment of the demographic, when in fact the entire American demographic has been trending culturally in that same direction. That’s the “greater truth”, and it has more to do with a rut we’ve been in culturally since the end of WWII, particularly an educational rut. One crucial subject that I left out of my litany of critical curricula that America…as a whole…has failed to properly teach its young is HISTORY. Science, math, history, reading comprehension, sex…it’s a holistic failure.
I am heartened by the equalizing power of the Information Age, where a laptop and an open internet connection can bring a global diversity of fact and opinion to all who inquire, especially about the most sensitive things that parents and schools still lack the courage or foresight to teach.
Dave, I’m sorry you feel depressed, and good luck working out the problems with your iPhone, made proudly by the good citizens of Hon Hai industrial park in Shenzhen, China (I’m typing this on a Lenovo laptop, also Chinese). I, too, think it’s a great idea that we stop wallowing in the same ideological rut we’ve been in since WWII…especially here in SC.
Randy, if you go back and look at the parts of what Lee said that I told jfx were true (and that jfx agreed with, by the way), you’ll see that I scrupulously avoided defending Lees’ dictum about “dropouts, drug addicts and prostitutes.”
Lee made some good points. His above pronouncement is probably wrong and is definitely inflammatory, and so does more harm than good to any valid points he makes.
This little incendiary is probably what jfx all wound up, and rightfully so. Too bad jfx can’t shake his anger about that off and move on with rational discussion, but evidently he cannot.
In any case, when it came to Lees’ dropout/drugs/prostitute line, I simply did not go there.
Dave
jfx, don’t worry about me. I’m only depressed (and only slightly and temporarily at that) about the tiny little corner of my life that has been spent discussing this with you. The rest and vast majority of my life is tremendously grand! How can it not be? God is in control, I have all of everything I want or need and I live in the best and most free country in the history of man.
I am determined to go on living in the sunshine even though there are people around me who don’t get it and for some reason cannot admit this countrys’ greatness and revel in it and avail themselves of it.
I can’t let your clouds obscure my sunshine. That wouldn’t be right.
Dave
jfx, you may not like the way he’s presented it, but what Lee has said is essentially the truth: – Dave (Faust)
Dave, two points. First, not only did you not express not even a shred of distaste with his racism, you focus solely on the truth imbeded in his hate. Second, you made an effort to qualify your statement supporting Flee.
I believe you would have been better served by stating “In the midst of Lee’s hate mongering, he does share some valid statistics.”
Flee’s purpose was clearly to express a racist view instead of addressing the ills of our society that should be addressed. You simply attempted to reinforce his hateful position. I went to a David Duke speech in 1988. He said somethings that were truthful but I didn’t reflect on his speech with “gee, he made some good points.”
Dave expressed no distaste, because their is no racism in my posts. A lot of my black friends agree with me, but they are successful on their own, and dislike the condescending racism of white liberals.
I did challenge the racism of white liberals who think blacks are incapable of achieving success on their own, and all they can do is call me a racist. Maybe they are so ignorant they don’t even realize what they are.
Randy claims to be a public school teacher.
Let’s see him post the graduation rates and test scores for the white students in SC and the same data for the black students, then explain how he would fix the problem.
Nationwide, 1/2 of all black mothers are high school dropouts.
70% of them are unmarried
Nationwide, 37 percent of Hispanic, 40 percent of Black, and 50 percent of American Indian or Alaskan Native female students respectively failed to graduate in four years in 2004. While girls in each racial and ethnic group fare better than their male peers of the same race or ethnicity, Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native female students graduate at significantly lower rates than White and Asian-American males.
http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2008/FEB/html/spot-highschool.html
The very fact that Lee, Dave, and a few others raised on the traditional–and inaccurate–narrative of US history could say some of the awful things they have said in their blog entries about black people shows how truly racist they are, and how far we still have to go in the Banana Republic of South Carolina.
These arguments aren’t even an issue to any significant degree in most truly blue states in this country. But in the red states, it’s still an issue.
We talk about the need to improve America’s education in science and technology–and I would agree. But what we really need is a critical civics education that does not whitewash American history. Dave’s idea that Blacks are so much better here than in the Africa from which they were forcibly taken flies in the face of the terrorism, poverty, and enforced ignorance of the contract-labor Jim Crow South.
The way we have treated African Americans (and other minorities!) in this country is every bit as awful as what the Germans did to the Jews, the Turks to the Armenians, and what Pol Pot did to his people in the 70s, except that it was worse in that it lasted for hundreds of years.
Time for Lee, Dave, and others rightwingers here to do a little reading and come to the realization that American historiography has left them, and unfortunately the American public schools in general, way behind.
Speaking of the schools: too many social studies teacher shut down Black kids when they want to discuss Obama or when they express pride in his election. That shit’s gotta stop.
We are just a lot more educated on the factual history than you are, Rich.
You bring not facts to the discussion. You just mouth slogans, insult us and call us names.
Do you think blacks can make it on their own without whites like you helping them with our money?
If not, explain why you consider blacks inferior to white liberals.
By all means, Dave, follow your sunshiney bliss.
I’ll follow a different kind of logic, which says that America’s greatness lies in its diversity, and its progress comes through rigorous debate and vigorous self-reflection.
It’s not enough just to be super-patriots, and trust in God. He helps those who help themselves. I’m not sure we help ourselves by white-washing history, or joining the Sean Hannity America Is #1 Fan Club!
Besides, if God is in control, He seems to be awfully sympathetic to Democrats this year.
The country is trending young and minority. A black reporter pointed out to Palin at one of her rallies that he was the only black person present (she didn’t have much of a response). Letterman described the republican candidates early in the primary as “a bunch of guys waiting to tee off at a country club.” The only black republican politician with any national recognition is Lt. Governor Steele from Maryland (Powell is persona non grata in the GOP now).
Contrast this with the democratic party that had an African-American, woman (who wasn’t a gimmick), and Hispanic in their primary. Duvall and Richardson are governors. Jesse Jackson Jr. has a shot to replace Obama. Harold Ford Jr. almost won in Tennessee and is a party leader. Of course, there is former senator and now president elect Obama.
Lee, a black woman will be first lady of the United States! I will think of you on inauguration day. 🙂
Randy is avoiding the FACT that almost half of all black students, male and female, fail to graduate high school, and that they have much lower test scores.
We are waiting on Randy, the alleged math teacher, to provide the average test and SAT scores in SC by race, and to tell us his solution to the problem. We won’t hold our breaths.
Randy reverts to gloating over electing a half-black, half-white President. It is all about skin color to Obama supporters.
As one who has supported two other blacks for President, my concern with Obama is his lack of experience, ignorance of issues, his Marxist speech, socialist platform, and his pandering to the racism of his followers.
D.C. public schools just not good enough for the Obamas
By LEONARD PITTS, JR. – The Miami Herald
http://www.thestate.com/editorial-columns/story/591807.html
Barack and Michelle are shopping for private schools for their children.
… just like the Clintons did
… just like the Gores did
… just like so many liberals do
… just like so many public school teachers do
D.C. public schools just not good enough for the Obamas
By LEONARD PITTS, JR. – The Miami Herald
http://www.thestate.com/editorial-columns/story/591807.html
Barack and Michelle are shopping for private schools for their children.
… just like the Clintons did
… just like the Gores did
… just like so many liberals do
… just like so many public school teachers do
D.C. public schools just not good enough for the Obamas
By LEONARD PITTS, JR. – The Miami Herald
http://www.thestate.com/editorial-columns/story/591807.html
Barack and Michelle are shopping for private schools for their children.
… just like the Clintons did
… just like the Gores did
… just like so many liberals do
… just like so many public school teachers do
D.C. public schools just not good enough for the Obamas
By LEONARD PITTS, JR. – The Miami Herald
http://www.thestate.com/editorial-columns/story/591807.html
Barack and Michelle are shopping for private schools for their children.
… just like the Clintons did
… just like the Gores did
… just like so many liberals do
… just like so many public school teachers do
Lee,
I am continually amazed at the sheer volume of posts you make. Are you retired and have perhaps have not much else to do??
You also seem almost completely impervious to reason and, for someone allegedly trained in economics, not really up on economic theory.
Socialism is based, not on the idea of government regulation of the economy and transfer payments from one social class to another, but on a comprehensive nationalization program by which the means of production are owned and managed by the state. This sort of illiberal economic program ultimately stifles competition, which is the lifeblood of a free economy.
This does not mean that Adam Smith’s invisible hand does not need state guidance from time to time–sometimes on a massive scale. The state must assure the social and economic welfare of its citizenry. We cannot have people living on the streets and starving the way Hoover allowed them to in deference to an economic theory that neither continues to describe events accurately nor provides a model by which to predict future economic behavior.
To call Obama repeatedly a socialist and a communist begs the question of what these terms mean. In your hands, Lee, these words become nothing more than invective used to assault people with whom you disagree.
Obama clearly is a social democrat and a man of the left. I have no problem with that since I am of the same tendency. But I do not want the state to take over the economy any more than would most Americans who, like me, hope that the current federal interventions will be temporary.
Still, I support a thoroughgoing social democratic welfare state to provide the basics for everyone. I think we owe that to our people as a whole. The rich and the super-rich benefit from paying the taxes they should on a progressive scale because the productive part of the economy–the workers, soldiers, and peasants if you will–continues to provide the economy as a whole with the enormous surplus value of their labor. Educated, well-fed, content working and middle classes are the backbone of the wealth of the very rich investors in this country. Without the infrastructure to support them, the consumer economy that is the goose that laid our golden egg of prosperity, would soon die.
What good is it for the very rich to live in a society of massive poverty, unemployment, crime, ignorance, disease, etc., as happens in many third-world countries where the rich have steadfastly refused to “share the wealth”?
If the rich want to get richer, then they must invest in “the People” who are the human resources working for them to produce their wealth. If not, then they risk a potentially revolutionary situation in which, as in many countries, they would lose all, and possibly their lives as well.
We don’t need that to happen!
As long as “the rich” make money by customers who purchase from them voluntarily, those customers have already received all the benefits they deserve from “the rich”.
Why should I work to support a bunch of porch sitters?
What entitles them to make me their slave?
Finance chairman is Well in this so, Finance is important when we are in risk
Christena
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