Monthly Archives: April 2009

My caricature (an Ariail original, I’ll have you know)

caricature72

My colleagues from the editorial department (both past and present) had a going-away party for Robert and me Sunday night, which was really, really nice. (Why so long after we left? It was the first time that Cindi, who hosted the shindig at her place, could round up enough of us.) Aside from the present crowd, the blasts from the past included Kent Krell, Nina Brook, Mike Fitts, Claudia Brinson and John Monk — plus former publisher Ann Caulkins, who came all the way down from Charlotte just for the party, which really touched me. And a special appearance by Lee Bandy.

Actually, I’m deeply touched by everyone who played a role in the event (some would say, of course, that I am just “touched,” period). It was really great. You know, an awful lot of people just keep doing things to prevent me from feeling bad about getting laid off, so I don’t know when the shock sets in.

Anyway, a highlight of such events is always the reading of the mock page, which I won’t go into, except to say that it was full of relatively inside jokes. Some of it was a little more mainstream, such as this excerpt from a column in which I am announcing my plan to run for governor on the Unparty ticket:

Thus validated, I concluded that
there’s no way South Carolina can
get anywhere without the leadership
of my Un-Party, which we’ll
begin to demonstrate just as soon
as we can settle on what
we believe in.
We’re for a strong,
energy-independent
America, respected
worldwide. As is everybody.
We’re for a South Carolina
that pays workers
the same wages that people
expect in the rest of
America. As is everybody.
We’re for a South
Carolina that takes care
of its citizens, and makes
sure that all its children
have a good education.
As is everybody, except
Gov. Sanford.
I talked about my idea with the
governor, who listened to indulge
his self-image as political scholar.
“At the end of the day, Brad,
you’ve got to decide if South Carolina
now has the right soil conditions
for you to grow your political
endeavor,” he said.
“Well, you’ve certainly added
fertilizer to our soil,” I replied.
“You’ll have a problem convincing
voters that your Un-Party
will be as good at un-governing the
state as I have been. After all, I’ve
given the state a new definition of
un-leadership,” he said.
I then took the opportunity to
take a few quick photos and a
video for the Web. Quality wasn’t
so good, as it turned out, since this
was a phone conversation.
“The question, to me, at the end
of the day, is whether you hate
government enough to want to run
it. I don’t think you do, Brad, but
so it goes. To be continued.”
As I disconnected my telephone
headset, I looked up to see Robert
Ariail waiting for me, sketches in
hand. He might well have been
standing there for 15 minutes, just
waiting. Cartooning is not a profession
for the sane.

I should stop there, because I know most of the stuff my colleagues never intended to see published. Oh, all right, one more sample, and then I’m going away. Here, the wiseguys were making fun of my weakness for pop culture allusions (particularly The Godfather) and my propensity to digress, parenthetically, to an absurd degree:

But just as useful for the purpose of creating thinly connected
film-derivative metaphors about politics, government, society or
whatever we might be struggling to make a coherent point about
is the warning that “When they come, they come at what you
love,” with its implicit imperative to preserve and protect the
family. It is an imperative that is made unmistakably explicit in
the words of Don Vito Corleone in the initial 1972 film, The Godfather,
by far the finest movie ever produced (South Carolina, of
course, does not have a don. The governor should be the don,
and others in the organization should tremble at his approach.
But because he does not have the power to rub out discordant
rivals on a whim, instead we must endure the endless gang warfare
we see at the State House.), when he asks apostle Luca
Brasi, who was very handy with a garrote: “Do you spend time
with your family? Good. Because a man that doesn’t spend time
with his family can never be a real man.” (Of course, if Luca
Brasi had spent all the time that he should have with his family,
the core unit and strength of our society, then maybe he wouldn’t
have ended up sleeping with the fishes.)

OK, so you had to be there (like, in the office for the last 22 years). I thought it was a hoot.

And of course, the don didn’t say that to Luca; he said it to Johnny Fontane. But you knew that.

Finally, there was the cartoon — the original of which Robert gave me, framed. Which is very cool (no one on my block has an original Ariail caricature of them, ha-ha). Yet another thing that makes getting laid off worthwhile.

Otis, tell him what YOU think

A few moments ago, I got this release from the state Chamber:

As the unified voice of business, the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce serves as your advocate at the State House and with regulatory agencies in the state. Currently, one of the biggest issues is if, and how, the state will use the $8 billion allocated to South Carolina in the federal stimulus bill. Governor Mark Sanford is opposed to accepting a more than $700 million portion of the money unless it is used to pay down state debt.

This week, South Carolina Chamber President and CEO Otis Rawl sat down with Governor Sanford for a one-on-one interview. During that interview, the governor shared his thoughts on why he believes the stimulus money is bad for business. The governor also discussed his position on government restructuring, why he’d veto the cigarette tax in its current form and what he thinks it will take for South Carolina to recover from the recession. Click here to watch the interview.

And I went and watched the part of the interview dealing with the stimulus (above). But you know what I was thinking? I was thinking, I know what the governor thinks about this. I’ve been told ad nauseam and beyond what the governor thinks about this, and it didn’t make any more sense this time than the other times I’ve heard it. What I would like to know is what the head of the state Chamber thinks about it, and I’d like to hear him tell it to the governor. That’s what I want my “advocate at the State House” to do.

Unless, of course, he thinks what the governor thinks, in which case never mind; I’ve heard it. (But from what I’ve heard, Otis does NOT agree with the gov.)

Anyway, that’s what I was thinking. But that’s me.

Who’s going to tell Al Gore?

I see in the Spartanburg paper that the “Father of the Internet” spoke to some students in the Upstate yesterday, and then I found to my surprise that his name is Leonard Kleinrock:

Speaking to the 18 students in Adriana Ahner’s Web page construction class — appropriately, via a 90-minute Webcast from his home in southern California, UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock spoke of how he overcame humble beginnings to eventually develop the mathematical theory of packet networks that became the foundation of Internet technology.

“I had a background of curiosity, independence and trying to make new things happen,” said Kleinrock, the son of Polish immigrants who was born and raised in New York City. “When I got to (Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a graduate student in the early 1960s), I decided not to follow the pack. I noticed that we were surrounded by computers that were full of information and interesting applications and capabilities and services, but they couldn’t talk to each other, and I figured that sooner or later that’s going to happen.”

Which makes me wonder — if this Kleinrock guy is the father of the Internet, then the Mother of the Internet needs to have a long talk with Al Gore.

Seriously, though, apparently the headline meant A father rather than THE father, because there were a number of guys involved in siring the ARPANet. Apparently, Mr. Kleinrock is actually the father (or a father) of packet switching, which I don’t really understand any more than I do the rest of how the Internet works; I just know it does.

But all this reminds me of the irony of the Internet — the most open, vulnerable (in a security sense) invention in the history of the world — starting as a defense thing. As we learned from the recent intel breach story regarding the Joint Strike Fighter, the LAST thing you want to put on the Internet is defense secrets. And yet, that’s now the whole thing started.

Did you ever see what Kevin Fisher wrote about me? It was good.

Way back last month when I left The State, I had so much going on that I forgot to share with you this interesting piece Kevin Fisher wrote about me in the Free Times. A sample:

Brad Warthen could cut through the nonsense. He could also add to it. He was an enormous asset to the community. And sometimes just an enormous ass. In sum, Brad Warthen was exactly what the editorial page editor should be.

His combination of independent thought and establishment demeanor (“let’s meet at the Capital City Club”), his firebreathing rhetoric coupled with faux-folksiness (the repetitive and irritating use of “y’all” on his blog) and a determination to make The State’s editorial page matter (his foremost achievement) produced a professional legacy he can take pride in.

Perhaps the circumstances under which I read it caused me to forget. I read it at Goatfeathers on the night of my last day at The State. Robert Ariail and I had driven over to Five Points after we finished loading up my truck and his Jeep with the last stuff from our offices. We went to my usual hangout, Yesterday’s, first. There we ran into the proprietor of Goatfeathers, an old friend of Robert’s, who insisted we visit his establishment also on this auspicious occasion, so we did. Once there, he refused to let us drink cheap beer, but had his employees bring bottle after bottle of the most expensive, esoteric stuff he had. (And no, we didn’t drink it all — we had these little glasses with which we tasted each one.) Anyway, it was in the midst of all that that I read Kevin’s piece.

And I liked it. It was no-nonsense commentary with the bark on. He said nice things about me, but clearly wasn’t trying to butter me up. He kicked me where he thought I needed kicking. He wrote about me the way I wrote about him and others, which from me is a compliment. He said I was “willing to be difficult,” which is almost as good as being, like N.G. Gonzales in Mencken’s estimation, “worth shooting.” So I liked the piece, and I’m sorry I forgot to pass it on earlier.

WSJ slaps DeMint

This morning, The Wall Street Journal set out to say disparaging things about Arlen Specter in this editorial, but at the end turned and gave a slap to Jim DeMint (and, by implication, other impractical ideologues such as the Journal‘s own darling, Mark Sanford):

On the other hand, Republicans shouldn’t follow South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint and welcome Mr. Specter’s defection as an ideological cleansing. “I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs,” Mr. DeMint said yesterday.

We believe in all of those things, but 30 Senate votes merely gets you the same fate as the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, without the glory. A minority party that wants to become a majority needs convictions, but it also needs coalition builders.

It’s the old debate I’ve written about a number of times before, regarding Sanford and in other contexts: Should one strive to be right, or to be effective? For my part, I’ve always tried to dodge the question and insist one can be both. But Mark Sanford unhesitatingly chooses being “right,” by his lights, and doesn’t give a fig for being effective.

One big difference between the Journal and me, of course — aside from their admiring Sanford for all the wrong reasons — is that they actually CARE whether the Republicans hold power or not. For me, the only thing wrong with the GOP drying up and blowing away is that the Democratic Party shows no signs of doing the same.

But they are right about Sen. DeMint — he has become the zampolit of the Senate — it’s all about ideological purity for him. Maybe because that’s all he’s got left; I don’t know.

Sanford wept

Not for the people of South Carolina in general, just for those who agree with him — or one who agreed with him, according to Newsweek:

But even true believers have bad days, and at this particularly stressful hour, it doesn’t take much to set Sanford off. In the halls of the State House, legislators accuse the governor of selling out the poorest South Carolinians to feed his own ambition; outside, his approval ratings have fallen to 40 percent. Asked how this makes him feel, Sanford pauses, then admits to experiencing the “occasional lonely moment.” But he still believes, he quickly adds, that there’s a “silent majority” of voters who support his stimulus stance; it’s just that they’re “too busy to make their voices heard.” Take the Democratic trial lawyer he “completely convinced” in Mt. Pleasant yesterday, or the “70 or so” people who “showed up last week to be counterprotesters to the protesters.” What about them? And what about the “black gentleman” this morning? “I was walking out of a local TV studio, and there he was,” says Sanford. “He’s a security guy for the building, one of these rent-a-cop kind of guys, older guy. And he walks over, and he grabs my arm, and he says, ‘You do what you think is right’.” Suddenly, Sanford stops. His eyes are red and wet. He lets out a quick, pained laugh, then looks up at the ceiling. “I’m gonna lose it here,” he says finally, turning toward his press secretary. “Got to get my head back in the game.” A single tear is running down his right cheek.

So now we know who Sanford’s “silent majority” is. It’s a “black gentleman” who works as “a security guy.” Who knew? Apparently, not even the governor, since the revelation seemed to make him all verklempt.

Speaking of Mike Myers sketches, remember the tagline for “Wayne’s World?” It went, “You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll hurl.”

I’m gonna lose it here… quick, a wastebasket!

Is there a problem with the blog, or are y’all just forgetful?

Today I received a string of “Password Lost and Changed for user” messages from WordPress, all involving blog regulars.

Is there a problem? Are folks getting kicked off the blog and having to re-register? Or are y’all just forgetting your passwords?

If there IS a problem, I may not be able to fix it right away — there is a lot I have yet to understand about WordPress — but I can try…

We need the right kind of politics to become usual

By the way, on the subject of Dems running for governor, I got this release today from Mullins McLeod, which says in part:

In order to clamp down on politics-as-usual in the governor’s office, Mullins McLeod has made the following pledge to the people of South Carolina.

(1) No PAC Money. Corporations and special interests use PAC money to buy influence. Mullins McLeod will ban PAC money from his campaign.

(2) No Future Run for Office. Our current governor spends all his energies focused on his own political advancement. Mullins McLeod will change that by swearing to return to the private sector once his time in office is done.

(3) A Ban on Lobbying by Administration Members. When citizens volunteer to serve in office, it shouldn’t be for the future hope of making money from influence-peddling. Mullins McLeod will require senior staff members to forswear any future employment as a lobbyist while he remains in the Governor’s office.

(4) Honesty and Transparency. Our governor spends too much valuable time bickering over whether economic development and jobless numbers are correct. Mullins McLeod will cut through this impasse by bringing in outside accountants and non-government experts to produce honest figures – which will allow all sides to come together and focus on creating jobs to tackle our record high unemployment rate.

You know what? Not to criticize Mullins, but hasn’t it sort of become “politics as usual” for politicians to promise no more “politics as usual?”

And is “politics as usual” our problem? Actually, I don’t think so. I think one of our problems is that since 2002 we’ve had extremely unusual politics in the form of Gov. Mark Sanford, and it hasn’t served SC very well. He practices a sort of anti-politics, a negation of the practice of working with other human beings to try to find solutions to common problems.

Today at my Rotary meeting, Joel Lourie spoke. He said a lot of things, but one of the last thing he said was this:

Unfortunately, “politics” can be a bad word.

I view politics through the eyes of my parents. They taught me that politics can be a way of bringing people together to find commonsense solutions to our problems.

And I pledge to you to continue to do that…

What we need is for the kind of politics that Joel Lourie believes in to become “politics as usual.”

Another possible candidate: Harry Ott

Friday afternoon, two declared candidates for governor and a third who MAY seek the office in 2010 spoke to “New Democrats” over at The Inn at USC. (The difference between a “new” Democrat and and “old” Democrat seemed slight at the gathering. Rather than coming across as a sort of Third Way alternative, Phil Noble’s forum featured party chairwoman Carol Fowler as moderator, and most of the questions she posed were perfectly orthodox, partisan, us-vs.-them boilerplate, along the lines of asking the candidates to explain why South Carolina must reject those wicked Republicans and elect a Democrat. The candidates all did their best to oblige, which meant none of them was showing his best side, from my Unparty perspective.)

You’ve read at least a little bit here (and on my former blog) about Vincent Sheheen and Mullins McLeod. I thought I’d devote this post to a portion of what the third man, House Minority Leader Harry Ott, had to say.

Harry’s vision of how to run was more old Democrat than new — and by “old” in this instance I mean, pre-1968 Southern.

“Some of you may totally disagree with what I’m gonna say,” he warned, then went on to explain what he thinks a Democrat must do to become governor:

  1. “Number One… we’e got to have somebody who has really good family values,” by which he meant someone comfortable talking about his faith. “You’ve got to have somebody of faith, who’s willing to go to the Upstate and say, ‘I’m a Christian.'”
  2. The candidate must also be “somebody that relates to the value that South Carolinians put on guns.” Noting that he was raised around guns down on the farm, he added, “Don’t throw any rocks at me, but I’m an NRA member, and I’m proud of it. People in South Carolina like their guns.”
  3. “You’ve got to be a strong supporter of public education,” but you have to be able to tell the SCEA that you have no stomach for defending the status quo. “We can’t sit back and say what we have is good enough.” He cited particularly the need to reduce the dropout rate.

As far as the family values are concerned, “I’ve been married 32 years, I’ve raised two sons and have two grandsons; I believe I measure up.” He believes he measures up on the other standards as well.

Anyway, that’s a small taste of the approach of Harry Ott, who adamantly insists he is NOT a candidate yet… but could become one.

Don’t compromise

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Eight days ago, I went backstage at the Koger Center to thank producer Todd Witter for asking me to be on “Whad’Ya Know?” Then I went out on the stage itself, where Michael Feldman was perched on the apron (or whatever you call the very edge), shaking hands, signing autographs and posing for pictures with fans.

While I waited for a break in which to thank him too, some of the fans broke off and spoke to me, congratulating me on my performance, such as it was. People are really polite that way, you know. Anyway, one of them was Elizabeth Rose Ryberg, who happens to be married to Sen. Greg. She was quite gracious as always, and complimentary, but at one point she remonstrated with me in the kindest way, suggesting I shouldn’t be so rough on “Mark” — the governor, that is.

Not that she thought the governor was completely right in his refusal to request our state’s share of stimulus funds. In fact, she noted that her husband and Tom Davis had been working hard to bring about a compromise between the governor and legislative leadership on the issue. This surprised me slightly at the time, since I had thought of Sens. Ryberg and Davis as being two people in the governor’s corner if no one else was. After all, they had recently stood up with him at a press conference to support his position (although I had noticed that they had not stood very close to him in the photo I saw — and take a look at that expression on Ryberg’s face — that’s him at the far right).

But it makes perfect sense that even people who share the governor’s political philosophy would want to pull him in a direction away from the position he’s taken — especially if they are his friends.

A few days later, Sen. Davis and Ryberg went public with their “alternative budget” in an op-ed piece in The State. They say all this confrontation is unnecessary, that they can balance the budget and avoid teacher layoffs and prison closings without a dime of the disputed stimulus money.

You know what? I have not idea to what extent their numbers add up, because frankly I find budget numbers to be a form of math far more slippery than Douglas Adams’ satirical “Bistromath.” I’e seen lawmakers resolve budet crises on the last day of the legislative session, with a puff of smoke and a “presto — we found more money!” — too many times. But I know that Tom Davis and Greg Ryberg are perfectly sincere. I trust their intentions; I know they believe what they’re saying. They’re good guys — I refer you to what I’ve said about Tom and about Greg in the past.

But to the extent that they are trying to find a way to compromise with the governor, I say thanks but no thanks. Aside from their efforts, I’ve heard others speak of compromising with the governor on the stimulus — say, let’s just spent this much, and then use this much to “pay down debt.”

But there are two really big reasons not to go along with that, reasons not to compromise with the governor’s position in any way: First, whether you think the stimulus bill passed by the Congress was a good idea or not (or well-executed or not), South Carolinians are going to be paying for it, and need to get maximum benefit out of it. And as Cindi Scoppe pointed out in her column Sunday, no sane person would pass up the chance to keep a few more of our public servants working and paying their bills for a couple of years, rather than on unemployment, to help us get through this rough patch.

The second reason is this: The governor is WRONG. He is philosophically wrong, and he uses bogus numbers (I refer you again to Cindi’s column) to support his rather sad arguments. This man does not believe in the fundamental functions of state government. He is openly allied with people whose goal is reduce government to a size at which it can be drowned in a bathtub. He sees the size of government ratcheting downward (even though he claims, absurdly, the opposite), and his number-one priority is to make sure the ratchet sticks, that the cuts to essential functions in government are not restored. His insistence on using money that is needed now on something, ANYTHING other than immediate needs — even to pay debts that NO ONE expects the state to pay at this time — is essential to the permanent reductions he seeks. The last thing he ever wants is for the state to be rescued by any sort of windfall.

And that point of view needs to be rejected, flatly and clearly. No compromise with a position so wrong should even be contemplated.

So Obama WON’T be the Energy Party president

Remember last year when I wrote about the fact that, although I really liked both Barack Obama and John McCain, unfortunately neither of them measured up to Energy Party standards? Well, I did, whether you remember it or not:

JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are lucky there’s such a thing as Republicans and Democrats in this country, because neither would be able to get the Energy Party nomination.

Well, I wish I’d been wrong, but I was (yet again) right. I can’t help it; it’s like a curse.

Just as the last administration was too focused on “drill, baby, drill” and wanted nothing to do with conservation and little to do with alternative sources, the Obama administration is looking like a typical, old-school, Democratic “no-nukes,” we-can-do-it-all-with-wind-and-solar bunch of ideologues.

At least, I get that impression from this release I got yesterday from Lindsey Graham:

FERC Chairman Says U.S. May Not Need Any More Nuclear or Coal Power Plants
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today responded to the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Jon Wellinghoff, who said our nation may not need to construct any new coal or nuclear power plants.  Wellinghoff deemed nuclear energy “too expensive” and said he saw no need to build coal or new nuclear power plants to meet future electricity needs.
Wellinghoff was named Chairman of FERC, the agency that oversees wholesale electric transactions and interstate electric transmission and gas transportation in the United States, by President Barack Obama on March 19, 2009.
Graham said:
“I’m afraid if we follow his advice we may be marching into darkness.
“To suggest a few sources of alternative energy alone could handle our future energy needs — in place of new nuclear or coal plants — defies reality.  I support capitalizing on all of our energy options, including deploying more alternative sources of energy.  However, the public is ill-served when someone in such a prominent position suggests alternative energy programs are developed and in such a state that we should abandon our plans to build more plants.  How the Chairman of FERC arrived at such a conclusion — and one which really no one else has arrived at – is not reassuring.
“I am writing Chairman Wellinghoff and want him to explain to me how America can meet its energy needs and remain competitive in the global economy without new nuclear or coal plants.  I hope he was taken out of context because what he has reportedly said is breathtaking.”
#####

Marching into darkness, indeed.

For those of you who are not sufficiently indoctrinated, we in the Energy Party believe you have to do EVERYTHING that will make us energy-independent, with the primary strategic goal of freeing us from the whims of some of the world’s worst thugs, and the side benefits of transforming our economy and saving the planet (without being all ideologically anal retentive about it). Yes, drill. Build nuclear plants. Open frickin’ Yucca Mountain. But push like crazy for electric cars (and, eventually, hydrogen). Support public transit, to get people out of their cars (and besides, I love subways, and it’s my party). Support innovation and experimentation. Lower speed limits to 55, and enforce them. And so on and so forth. Read the Manifesto, so I don’t have to repeat myself so much.

But all we ever get out of Washington in EITHER-OR. And neither ideologically limited approach is going to get us where we need to go.

Another hat in the ring: Mullins McLeod

Another Democrat has openly expressed interest in next year’s race for governor:

Calling for Change, Mullins McLeod Announces Run for Governor

“We Deserve a Governor Who Focuses on Creating Jobs — For a Change,” says McLeod

In a letter to delegates to this weekend’s South Carolina Democratic Convention, Charleston attorney and successful small businessman Mullins McLeod announced his candidacy for Governor today. McLeod is originally from Walterboro, SC and is a graduate of Wofford College and The University of South Carolina School of Law.

In the letter, McLeod says that the state’s current political leaders have “proven themselves powerless in the face of record unemployment” and says that it is “abundantly clear that South Carolina needs a new direction.”

“The current crop of career politicians in Columbia have given us the second highest unemployment rate in the country and done little to help our public schools. We need a governor who will fight for jobs, and stand up for the people of South Carolina. That’s not going to happen if we turn to the usual crowd of politicians,” said McLeod.

McLeod added that, unlike some South Carolina Democrats, he will not back down from his Democratic Party label. “They continue to lose elections because they don’t stand up for our progressive values and fight back against Republican smears.”

“I’ve spent my entire career fighting for working families in this state. I believe that it’s time South Carolinians had a Governor who will fight for them, and a Governor who focuses on creating jobs — for a change.”

McLeod also encouraged delegates to visit his campaign’s web page at www.mullinsmcleod.com.

So with Vincent Sheheen, that makes two.

I don’t know much about Mr. McLeod, beyond the fact that he could hardly come up with a name that shouts “South Carolina” any louder (Maybe “Beaufort Ravenel?” How about, “Charleston Shealy?”), and I read his recent online op-ed piece.

Meanwhile, over on the GOP side, I see that The Greenville News has done a story about Furman prof Brent Nelson, about whom I wrote previously. I was a little confused, though, because the G’ville paper said “Nelsen hasn’t formally announced a campaign,” whereas I thought he had. But then, even after more than three decades of closely observing politics, I get confused over the whole “official announcement” thing.

Ya know what I think I might do?…

Surfing channels a few minutes ago, I ran into an Andy Griffith gem that I had to go to Facebook and share with my oldest friend in the newspaper biz, Richard Crowson (you know, the cartoonist who got laid off about six months before Robert and I did). I wrote to him:

You know what I just saw, not two minutes ago? Andy and Barney were just a-settin’ on the porch, talking about going downtown to get a bottle of pop. Andy allowed as how he reckoned it might be a good idea, and Barney he said the same right back at him, and they were poised to act upon the suggestion when they noticed the fella they were a-settin’ thar with had fallen asleep, and the episode ended on that high note.

Deeply satisfying.

May none of y’all will appreciate that the way Richard would, but I pass it on just in case.

Here’s the actual dialogue:

Andy: You know what would be a good idea? If we all went up town and got a bottle of pop?
Barney: That’s a good idea, if we all went up town to get a bottle of pop.
Andy: You think Mr. Tucker would like to go?
Barney: Why don’t we ask him…..if he’d like to go uptown to get a bottle of pop?
Andy: Mr. Tucker?
(No response from Mr. Tucker)
Andy: You wanna lets me and you go?
Barney: Where?
Andy: Uptown to get a bottle of pop?
(Camera pans to a sleeping Mr. Tucker, with a completly peeled apple skin dangling from
his hand.)

I’ll go to bed now and stop bothering y’all.

Bring ‘stirrups’ back to baseball

OK, that last post was so heavy and depressing, I feel the need to lighten the mood by mentioning another story from the WSJ’s front page, this one about “stirrups” in baseball.

You know, the leggings — the socks you wore over your socks, the colorful ones with the heel and toe cut out.

This piece was about how the major leagues have abandoned the stirrups, mainly because the players don’t want to wear them — you may have noticed that in MLB, they wear their pants right down to their shoes, which means they don’t look like ballplayers any more — and the players are such big shots and make so much money that nobody can tell them what to do. But in the minors, discipline still reins, so the players still wear them.

Some points of interest from the story:

  • It leads and ends with a game in Myrtle Beach. You know, Myrtle Beach has a minor league team and Columbia doesn’t, in case you haven’t noticed.
  • The sole remaining source is a funky, homey little factory just up the road in North Carolina.
  • The fashion started because, starting in about 1905, there was an urban legend in baseball that held that some players had suffered blood poisoning from the dye in their socks getting into abrasions on their feet. This led players to wear white socks under their colored team socks, and that was bulky, so somebody came up with the idea of cutting the heel and toe out of the oversock. (The infections did NOT come from the dye, by the way, but from plain old germs, it was later determined.)

A story such as this appeals to my own particular sort of instinctive conservatism. I believe players should not only be made to wear stirrups but should WANT to in the same way that “woods” in golf should be made of persimmon. It was good enough for our daddies and granddaddies. Of course, as I type this, I’m looking at a picture of my own grandad, “Whitey” Warthen, pitching a game in the 19-teens. He’s wearing full colored socks, not stirrups, because in his day men were men. Me, I’d settle for stirrups. Because I’m still not sure about that blood-poisoning thing. You can’t be too careful.

I love the way the WSJ story ends:

On the field, as the Pelicans and Blue Rocks lined up for the anthem, half-moons glowed along the baselines. Kicking high, Michael Broadway pitched two perfect innings. In the fifth, Cody Johnson stepped into a fastball and sent it over the right-field fence.

It fell apart for the Pelicans in the ninth: walks, hits, errors. They lost, 9-2. “I want my $7 back,” a fan yelled on his way out. But for the stirrup-conscious in the crowd, the final score didn’t matter. On this spring night in Myrtle Beach, the socks won.

More security breaches

Just now got to looking at this morning’s Wall Street Journal, and I see they have another disturbing report about U.S. counterintelligence fecklessness.

Last week, it was Chinese and Russian spies probing our electricity grid to figure out how to shut in down in case of war.

This week, the WSJ reports that Chinese (probably) hackers have done the following:

WASHINGTON — Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.

Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.

The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together. The revelations follow a recent Wall Street Journal report that computers used to control the U.S. electrical-distribution system, as well as other infrastructure, have also been infiltrated by spies abroad…

The good news, to the extent that there was any, was that “while the spies were able to download sizable amounts of data related to the jet-fighter, they weren’t able to access the most sensitive material, which is stored on computers not connected to the Internet.”

Well, duh. So we actually took steps to defend SOME of our most sensitive national security data. Yay for our side.

But beyond that, we’re looking pretty pathetic.

First the Hardwarehouse, now Hiller

I’m sort of enjoying getting the daily business updates from Mike Fitts, which I just signed up for last week. I cited Mike’s work yesterday, and now I come to share some sad news from 5 Points — Hiller Hardware’s going away.

An excerpt from Mike’s report:

An iconic business is heading out of Five Points. Hiller Hardware is planning to leave its longtime location at Blossom and Harden streets, making way for a new branch of BB&T bank.

If the deal goes through, BB&T will tear down the existing structure as part of a 30-year lease on the property, said Merritt McHaffie, executive director of the Five Points Association. The plans will be discussed at the May 5 meeting of the city’s Design Development and Review Commission….

Columbia City Councilwoman Belinda Gergel, who represents Five Points, said she’s been a longtime Hiller customer, buying a wide variety of items, such as rakes or candles….

Hiller has been at its Five Points location since 1951 and in business in Columbia for almost 70 years. A Lady Street location closed during streetscaping there several years ago….

He went on to report that the family business MIGHT open elsewhere, but that’s by no means certain.

The problem is the big-box hardware retailers, and I must confess that I am part of the problem because I’m a regular customer at Lowe’s. My wife, on the other hand, used to always go out of her way to do business with Ace Hardwarehouse in the Park Lane shopping center in Cayce — which closed last year.

That was another local landmark. It was also a prized advertising customer of The State. Once, years ago, a previous publisher decided that we non-business types on the senior staff needed to shadow some ad sales reps just to learn what they did. The rep I was assigned to took me first to the Hardwarehouse, where the owner or manager was so into his newspaper ads that he would put them together himself, pasting bits of file art onto posterboard at a drawing table in his office.

Yeah, the newspaper makes big bucks from big boxes (although not as big as in the past). But an important part of the community that has been dying and taking newspapers along with it consists of businesses like Hardwarehouse and Hiller. And it’s a shame to see them go.

The professor and the pirates

Herb was kind enough to pass on this interesting online exchange with a Davidson College professor about the Somali pirates. The Washington Post ran it on April 10. Two things — two things that have nothing to do with each other, and may even be contradictory — occurred to me while reading it:

  1. First, this is a remarkably intelligent and well-informed exchange. I’m struck by how relatively knowledgeable the questioners are, much less the professor doing the answering. I was impressed. Everyone involved seemed to have heard more about Somalia and pirates than I had.
  2. Second, that aside, the exchange illustrates the limitations of expertise. This was published during the Maersk Alabama drama, while the captain was held hostage in the lifeboat, and before the Seals took out the pirates and saved the captain. The expert, the professor, keeps making the point over and over that military action to save the captain would be futile, that the thing to do is just to play along and pay the ransom. This is a really stark example of the advice we get so often from experts who are just chock full of facts about a situation or a part of the world, who therefore have great credibility when they tell us that trying to DO anything would be useless. And they are so often wrong.

I’ll tell James, but I don’t see how it will help

Today I got this release from the S.C. Chamber of Commerce:

Urge Your House Member to Vote for Comprehensive Tax Reform
Debate Expected This Week!

Thank you for contacting your House members over the past few weeks urging them to move forward on comprehensive tax reform. Your calls have made a difference in the debate! The House is expected to take up the legislation either Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.

Today, please again contact your House member and ask them to:

  • Amend S.12/H.3415 to contain a comprehensive (holistic) approach to tax reform. A complete analysis of taxes should be performed and not looked at individually. The business community is fearful that if a comprehensive approach is not taken, a huge cost shift to the business community, similar to Act 388 (Residential Property Tax Relief), could occur again.
  • The approach needs to examine state and local taxes including: county, municipal, special purpose districts and schools.

Contact your House member today! Click here for contact information, or click here to find your legislator.

That’s all well and good, and I’m with the Chamber on this. The State‘s editorial Sunday did a good job of explaining just what a hash lawmakers have made of the chances for real tax reform. (Two big problems: They want the big tax swap of 2006 that was so awful that it prompted what momentum exists for reform to be off limits, and they don’t want to require a vote on the final product, which is essential.) But I’m ever hopeful, and if contacting my House member will help, I’m all for it.

One problem: The release went on to tell me my representative was James Smith. But I live in Ted Pitts’ district. I’ll be glad to speak to Capt. Smith, but I don’t see how it will help…

Henry explains why court might reject suit

My old buddy Mike Fitts says Henry McMaster says that the state of SC has no objections to the Supreme Court hearing the lawsuit brought on behalf of a Chapin high school girl over the stimulus, but he also listed reasons why the court should reject her petition — including the fact that since she is about to graduate, she will soon no longer have standing.

If Henry’s right, Dick Harpootlian and Dwight Drake will have to run out and get a junior or a sophomore next time.

He had other reasons, which you can read in Mike’s story. One thing that did strike me as interesting, though:

McMaster said the court seems to be setting a quick timeline on the dispute. His office often gets 20 days to respond to an appeal for the court to bypass the lower state courts. This time, the court said Thursday it required a response by midday Monday.

“That indicates the court wants to move very quickly,” McMaster said.

That news is almost as exciting as the Senate taking up the budget this week…