Author Archives: Brad Warthen

Open Thread for Monday, March 3, 2024

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At some point, I need to change the name of this feature. It doesn’t really work. Someone here long suggested that I post an “open thread,” I think so that people could just talk about whatever. But it seemed goofy to post, what — a blank space? So I started offering little variety packs of topics.

Anyway, here’s your variety pack:

  1. Prepositions are permissible, now — will English language be ok? — This is the best story I heard or read today. The NPR story featured a Columbia University linguist who cheered the decision by Merriam-Webster that it’s now OK to end sentences with prepositions. I agree, especially in the case of such awkward constructions as the legendary, even if apocryphal, Churchill quote.
  2. Supreme Court rules Trump can remain on Colorado’s ballot — This was unanimous, which was helpful. But I understand the justices quibbled over the scope of the decision, with a minority saying the majority went too far. Perhaps they did, but I haven’t studied it closely enough to have an opinion yet on that. I’m just glad it was unanimous. Things would have gotten uglier than they already are if there had been a different result.
  3. White House uses Kamala Harris to run Gaza options up the pole — That’s my headline, not one I pulled from any news outlet. This is fascinating. The Biden administration has used the veep to publicly air some (somewhat) stepped-up efforts to push for a ceasefire. She did it in a speech over the weekend, then she met with Benny Gantz, Israeli war cabinet member and rival of Netanyahu. This is an interesting way of working around Bibi in a way that explores his political vulnerability, while at the same time letting Kamala look like she has some foreign policy gravitas. And if it all flops, hey, it was just the veep, not POTUS. I like it. Sort of like 3D chess…
  4. The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin — I first heard this on NYT Audio over the weekend, and it was fascinating. I learned a great deal about the close ties we’ve formed with Ukrainian intelligence over the past decade or so — since long before Putin invaded. It started because the folks at Langley found that the Ukrainians were great at gathering intel we needed on the Russians, on topics such as the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and Russians efforts to get Trump elected in 2016. As a spy novel fan, I ate it up, but it also made me really uneasy — but obviously a decision was made somewhere to give these reporters access, right? Still, I hope that joint underground Ukrainian-American intelligence base was moved right after the NYT was allowed to tour it. Its location was described in some detail.

I guess that’s enough for now. I usually give you more than four, but I’ve got a headache, so… y’all come up with something. After all, it’s an “Open Thread”…

Those Americans are still bragging about their big frigates!

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I used Twitter a couple of days ago to bring this to the attention of the two biggest Patrick O’Brian fans I know — our own Bryan Caskey and my old friend and colleague Mike Fitts (who got me interested in the books to start with). And they politely gave me a “like,” which I appreciate.

I thought I’d post it here as well for anyone else who’s been to Boston and checked out this attraction — I know you have, Bud!

I enjoyed seeing it myself so much — how could I not, since it’s the oldest ship still commisstioned in the U.S. Navy, the Service in which I grew up — that on the one day that my wife’s unfortunate back problem prevented her from sightseeing with me, I went back to see it for the second time in three days. That first day had been glorious — we both went aboard with our twin granddaughters, and that night we went to Fenway to watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees! Boston doesn’t get better than that.

And if I lived in Boston, I’d probably go see the Constitution every week or so. (It’s a lot more affordable than ballgames at Fenway — I’d have to save that for special occasions.)

Y’all know I’m really into military history and as historical sites go, Old Ironsides can’t be beat. She’s alive! She’s still afloat! After seeing her that second time, I hiked up through Charlestown from the Navy Yahd to check out the Bunker Hill site. That was nice, and I learned things from it, but nothing compared to walking the living deck of one of America’s original Six Frigates.

Months after we’d been there, I found myself again rereading The Fortune of War, and really got a kick out of being reminded that USS Constitution was the ship that captured Jack and Stephen when it took HMS Java, and transported them to Boston as prisoners. There are several pages in which they walk the decks — and so did I!

And yes, I know they are — to you people — fictional characters. But Constitution actually did capture Java!

Anyway, I’ll go away now, and try to make myself read something new before the day is out…

Bunker Hill was fine, but didn’t come close to this…

I dunno. CAN they?

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This is just me griping about media again, like in the last post. This one is about headlines.

I’ve been enjoying my NYT Audio app, but some content is better than others. And today, I’m ticked because earlier this week, I found something that sounded intriguing, headlined “Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?”

Well, that grabbed me. Especially since I’m a longtime (since my teens) fan of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, which begins:

So yeah, I wanted to know the answer to the question. Was Heinlein right that “the greatest danger to man was man himself?” And could that challenge be overcome? SPOILER: All that work to build a compatable crew didn’t work out so well in the story.

But would it work better in real life? This NYT Magazine story was heavily hinting that somewhere in its thousands of words, there would be an answer to the question. So, even though it would take 43 minutes and 45 seconds, I thought it would be worth the listen.

It wasn’t. I mean, I was on a long walk, and it was interesting and passed the time. But no answer. Yet I kept expecting it, even when, at the beginning, it went into this long examination of how two people who had applied to be “crew” members felt about being chosen for the experiment. (I put “crew” in quotes because they’re just going to be locked up together here on Earth to see how they deal with it.)

They were excited, by the way. But torn about being away from loved ones for more than a year. There. Now, you can skip the first 30 or 40 minutes. Then, at the very end, one of the two excited folks gets cut from the program and replaced just before the experiment begins. She is devastated.

She goes home, and watches the beginning of the mission on TV, and starts trying to get over her disappointment. Which she gradually starts to do. The last sentence of the story is:

Then she baked a whole-wheat sourdough pizza, and she and Jake ate it, together.

Really. That was it. I think I yelled “WHAT?!?” as I walked down the street. Not a hint of an answer to the question posed in the headline.

Admittedly, the experiment isn’t over. The people went into the biodome thingy back in June, and they have months to go yet. But how about an update? How are they doing? Anybody crack up yet? I searched and found a progress report on the NASA site, and this was the most exciting paragraph in the post:

Over the past 200 days, the crew grew and harvested its first crops grown inside the 1,700-square-foot habitat, including tomatoes, peppers, and leafy greens, participated in a host of simulated “Marswalks” with relevant time delay, tempo, and activities consistent with future Mars mission concepts, and took part in science investigations in biological and physical sciences…”

No word on whether anyone has gone bonkers. Which, I suppose, is something they might not want to report until it’s all over. I get that.

But still. I don’t like it when a headline creates expectations that the story — especially an extremely long story — fails to fulfill.

So don’t do me like that…

The day back in June when the “crew” entered the “ship.” As the story said, “It was not a special hatch with airlocks or anything: It was just a plain white office door.” So it appears to have gotten that right.

The real ‘bias’ in the news

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OK, here’s another point I’ve made many times before, but the reporting on the Michigan Democratic primary offered another illustration of it.

There is one predominant “bias” in news reporting, and it’s very harmful to the country. It’s journalists’ addiction to conflict. This is very harmful to the country. (Another one that may be just as harmful is the tendency to explain and interpret everything, from global security to pop culture trivia, in terms of the next election. But that’s somewhat less relevant to what I’m writing about today.)

I don’t think reporters and editors are doing it on purpose. Their brains are just stuck in this mode. When they encounter a story that lacks significant conflict, they instinctively exaggerate what little they can find. It happens on a subconscious level, I believe. At least I hope it’s never conscious.

Anyway, we saw it in Michigan, where Joe Biden won the essentially uncontested primary with 81 percent. It was a victory margin Trump would kill for (and assume his MAGA mob would still support him, of course).

And yet what sort of coverage did we see, over and over and over? On the GOP side, it was about how Trump continues to crush his opposition. And as he always does, he gloated and boasted, and everything he said was dutifully reported.

On the Democratic side, headline after headline after headline said “Biden wins, BUT…” (The one you see above from my NYT Audio app — “Biden Takes a Hit in Michigan…” — was the most disproportional, unhinged hed I saw. Most stuck with the milder “but” construction.)

The “but” is a reference to the small number of Democratic primary voters who opted to vote “Uncommitted.” How small? 13 percent. This is attributed to a campaign in that state to protest the war in Gaza.

So, what do you think that means? Not much, as I see it. These voters did not choose to vote in the Republican primary.* They would have been crazy to do so, if their goal is to stop the fighting over there. They apparently realize that Trump is FAR less likely to do what Biden is constantly doing — trying to restrain Netanyahu (which is an uphill battle, since Netanyahu’s best chance of staying in office is to prolong the war). But of course, lots of voters do entirely irrational things — a phenomenon you can see amply demonstrated over in the Republican contest.

And they didn’t vote for another Democrat, presumably because one who will magically make them happier about Gaza doesn’t exist.

Mind you, this small “but” isn’t some harbinger of what will happen elsewhere. Michigan has the largest number of Arab-Americans in the country. This is the one place you would expect such a protest. But what if it did happen elsewhere? What would that 13 percent mean in this primary or another? Nikki Haley got twice that percentage in Michigan, but where’s the foreboding language about what a problem that is for Trump?

The only remotely plausible reason I saw or heard presented anywhere for making a big deal of this was the idea that Michigan is a swing state, and anything that might cut into Joe’s vote even slightly could be important in November. But that’s not gonna keep this Biden supporter up nights between now and then. (This brings up a third harmful “bias” we see in political reporting these days — the obsession with trying to predict WHAT WILL HAPPEN far in the future rather than simply reporting what actually has happened.)

Anyway, I just thought I’d point this out before the memory fades. Media outlets were desperate to find a fight somewhere in this boring non-contest, and this is all they could come up with…

This sort of headline was more typical.

There she is, enthusiastically saluting il Duce…

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Haven’t seen our lieutenant governor in a while? I certainly hadn’t.

But then I saw the above image in The Boston Globe over the weekend.

Which prompted two thoughts:

  1. Y’all may get tired of hearing me say this, but I haven’t said it in four years, so: Had we won in 2018, you wouldn’t have gone long periods without hearing or seeing Mandy Powers Norrell. And we’d all be better off for that. As the first lieutenant governor elected alongside the governor in our state’s history, she would have been front and center, playing a vital and energetic role in making South Carolina a better place. She offered talent, experience, and substance. As opposed to… well, what we got.
  2. So I haven’t seen her in a while, and when she shows up, what is she doing — standing on a stage enthusiastically aping the gestures of the Creature. Just to let us know she’s as far gone as her boss. Well, I guess in that respect, she is a real teammate of Henry…

Thoughts about the primary? No? Then we’ll move on…

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I actually meant to write a little bit more about it over the last couple of days, but was busy. I had to take my Mom to the emergency room Friday, and she (and I) spent the night there and she didn’t get discharged until late Saturday afternoon. She’s better now, I’m happy to say.

So I got home pretty wiped out from the hospital, and might have commented on the vote last night, but my wife and I went to a performance of the South Carolina Philharmonic, which we thoroughly enjoyed — especially the Gershwin at the end.

So, if you followed the primary last night, we had more fun than you did. But to go ahead and say a few things:

  • The result was about as I expected. It was somewhat better than the polls I had seen, but about what I expected in the real world — 20 points. Nikki managed to counter some of the crazy, but not that much of it. She was more successful back in South Carolina when she embraced the crazy, in 2010. Back then we called it the Tea Party instead of MAGA, but it was just a different stage in the GOP’s descent into madness. Here’s that picture again of her standing proudly with Sarah Palin, to illustrate the point.
  • Should she drop out now? Of course not. That shouldn’t happen before the money from the Koch organization and others who wish to rescue conservatism from Trumpism runs out. No one but the Trump people want her to drop out — no sane people do — and the fact that her continuing to run frustrates Trump is probably enough reason for a lot of people to holler, “Go, Nikki!”
  • It’s interesting to read the many points of view cheering Nikki on. If you can get past the paywalls, I wish you’d check some of them out: From The Washington Post alone, George Will, Jim Geraughty, and Kathleen Parker.
  • Of course, she won’t win the nomination and she shouldn’t win the general election — the first because the overwhelming majority of Republicans have lost their minds, and the second is that she lacks the qualifications to be president.

I need to stop now because I have another time crunch on my hands. When I come back, I’ll probably write about something else.

Vote ‘no’ to all those questions on the ballot

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Something else that needs to be said before the voting tomorrow (and if you voted early, I’m sorry I missed you).

It’s to answer a question I get a LOT from mystified voters: “How should I vote on those questions on the ballot?”

The simple, easy-to-remember answer is: “Vote NO.” Pretty much always. I would simply say “always,” but of course, there are exceptions to everything.

In this case, the question on South Carolina’s GOP presidential primary ballot are:

  1. Should South Carolina law be changed to give people the right to register to vote with the political party of their choice?
  2. Should South Carolina adopt reforms to increase the independence and accountability of our judiciary by improving transparency and reducing conflicts of interest in the process of reviewing judicial qualifications and electing judges.
  3. Should it be an immediate legislative priority to protect South Carolina’s competitiveness and small businesses by changing state law so that a person’s responsibility for financial damages in a lawsuit is based on that person’s actual share of responsibility?

To address them:

  1. The proper answer to the first one is “HELL no,” but all they offer is “no.” The Republican Party has been trying to close our open primaries ever since I came home to South Carolina in 1987. Sometimes, the Democrats help them. (Remember the “loyalty oath” back in 2004?) I especially love the Orwellian language they used on this one: “give people the right to….” Very Putinesque. If an oppressive power wants to take away your freedom (in this case, to vote in either primary you choose, based on which is offering the best choices), whenever he can, he’ll couch it as giving you a “right.”
  2. The second one isn’t so awful. Its virtues are explored in this editorial in the Post and Courier, headlined, “Manipulative GOP ballot questions deserve ‘no’ votes — even for the good idea.” Note the overall point, though. As the editorial explains, this “taxpayer-funded public opinion poll about sometimes-obscure legislative issues is an affront to the most sacred aspect of our republic: the ballot.” To continue quoting: “The questions aren’t binding, and they don’t reflect the collective wisdom or even priorities of most of our elected officials. They were written by political party hacks, to whom the Legislature has foolishly given the authority to sully our ballots. If party officials get the answers they want, they’ll use them to browbeat legislators into passing laws that were ill-explained. That is to say: The purpose of the questions is to fuel a lobbying campaign, courtesy of S.C. taxpayers.”
  3. The third is an attempt to push legislators to initiate a particular form of tort reform. The editorial mentioned above mentions the efforts of dram shops to escape responsibility for serving too much alcohol.

If you’re for tort reform — this kind or any kind — tell your legislators. But don’t be taken in by this nonsense.

A question such as these on a primary ballot is NOT in any way, shape or form a referendum. Those can only go on a general election ballot. These are just con jobs. And you should feel insulted.

 

 

 

Clare’s with you, Paul — from a different perspective

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I haven’t had time for blogging lately, but I thought I’d better share this before tomorrow…

Y’all know my friend Clare Folio Morris, right? She’s contributed some op-ed stuff here before.

Well, she wrote a piece for the Post and Courier promoting Nikki Haley in tomorrow’s primary, but from a different perspective from Paul DeMarco. An excerpt from her piece:

Are Republican women of South Carolina willing to be pushed around by a man who desperately seeks a political comeback to keep himself out of jail? As the S.C. GOP presidential primary quickly approaches on Saturday, I urge Republican and independent women to give serious thought to voting for his very capable and viable opponent, former U.N. Ambassador and S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley.

It seems a bit of poetic justice that the last one standing in a crowded field of pushy, pugnacious Republican men is a strong, accomplished woman from South Carolina. Sadly, we women in the Southeast are used to being under-represented: Our state ranks 49th in the country in female representation in state government.

Haley, the one lone Republican primary candidate standing in the way of Trump’s coronation, is everything Donald Trump is not. And it’s driving him crazier than he already is.

So many things are bothersome about Trump, I hardly know which tops the list. Is it that he has no policies, only the politics of grievance? Is it his bromance with Vladimir Putin? Or that the big lie irreparably divided and damaged our nation and cost taxpayers more than $500 million in legal fees from dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits, costly repair work at the Capitol and enhanced security around the 2022 inauguration and later due to death threats against poll workers? Or that he enables and empowers Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House?

There are too many more problems to count, but one character flaw about the twice-impeached ex-president that I can’t get past (and you shouldn’t either) is how he treats women….

I should probably stop there (because copyright), but if you can, I urge you to go read the whole column.

Clare is more of less of the same demographic she’s reaching out to: Republican women. Although Clare’s not dogmatic about it. She has, however, worked off and on for Mark Sanford — himself something of a marginal Republican — ever since they were in college together.

Anyway, obviously, you don’t have to be a member of the groups Paul reached out to — Democrats and independents — to want to save the country Donald Trump. In fact, if I were a Republican, I’d be more determined to do it, to save my party from him as well as the country, and the larger world.

And of course, Clare makes good points. But in my case, I’m happy to say I’ve already voted. And they don’t let you vote in both primaries. Although they should. Every American has an equal and vital stake in who ends up on the ballot in November….

Clare, the last time she worked with Sanford.

DeMarco: Democrats and Independents: The Time to Stop Trump is Feb. 24

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The Op-Ed Page

Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Wikipedia

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

Rarely does a state have an opportunity to make history the way we do on Feb. 24 in the Republican presidential primary election.

South Carolina may be Nikki Haley’s last chance to derail Donald Trump’s path to the nomination. It will be hard for Haley to justify remaining in the race until Super Tuesday without a strong showing here.

I won’t rehearse all the reasons Trump is bad for America, just two quick points. First, Republicans could get all they say they want – conservative policies, family values, and respect for the Constitution – from Mike Pence and several other prominent Republicans. Yet they are drawn to Trump’s scorched-earth approach, despite the Sisyphean rock of baggage he bears.

Second, Trump has proven he is dangerously unpredictable. Almost no one on Jan. 5, 2021 would have predicted what happened the next day: a sitting president encouraged his VP to overturn the will of the people, exhorted the gathered crowd to march on the Capitol, and then watched passively for three hours as they ransacked it. When he finally sent out a Twitter video asking the crowd to disperse, his message to the rioters included “We love you; you’re very special.”

S.C. Democrats and Independents propelled Biden to the nomination in 2020. Our task in 2024 will be less comfortable and potentially riskier. Like me, you may prefer Biden over Haley and have deep policy disagreements with her. But this election is less about the candidates than about America herself. Both Biden and Haley will try to leave America better than they found her. Trump has no such desire.

If you are like many in this state and nation, you have had Trump’s number since he first announced for president in 2015. You recognized what a small, soulless human being he was. You understood his drive to be revered and his dearth of compassion and loyalty. Over the past eight years, you have endured his fountain of lies, from the claim that Obama was not a citizen to his claim that he won in 2020. You’ve asked yourself again and again, is this is the best the Republicans can do?

This is your moment. The turnout in South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Feb. 3 was predictably low, since Biden had only token opposition. Only about 131,000 voters participated (about 4 percent of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters). In 2020, when the outcome was not a foregone conclusion, about 540,000 voters participated in the Democratic primary. That means more than 400,000 voters who turned out in 2020 stayed home this year.

So if you’re a Democrat or Independent who voted in 2020 but didn’t vote on Feb. 3, you can make history. If we leave the election to usual Republican primary voters, the latest polls predict Trump will win by 65 percent to 35 percent. If there is healthy turnout, say 700,000 votes, then the final tally will be roughly Trump 455,000, Haley 245,000, a difference of 210,000 votes.

The 400,000 of you who voted in the 2020 Democratic primary but not in the 2024 primary can swing this election. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of others who didn’t vote in the 2020 primaries who could vote this time around. Everyone, yes everyone, except the 131,000 who voted on Feb. 3, is eligible to vote in the Republican primary (South Carolina has an open primary system, so you can vote in one primary or the other, but not both).

There are two ways to use this power. One is cynically, by trying to elect the weakest opponent for the other side so your candidate can beat them in the general. The better way is to help elect the strongest candidate for the other side, so that America will have the best choice possible. If Haley wins and then goes on to beat Biden in the general, I will disagree with some of her policies, but the country will be in sane, stable hands.

Imagine you have an infant child or grandchildren. How will you explain your vote for Trump to them in 15 years, when they are old enough to understand politics? I suspect many South Carolinians regret their vote for Strom Thurmond as candidate for the Dixiecrat Party in 1948 (more than 70% of SC voters chose him) or for George Wallace in 1968 (over 30% of SC voters). How an evangelical Christian will explain his or her vote for Trump in 15 years to intense questioning from a skeptical teenager, I have no idea (although I would pay to watch it).

I am hoping South Carolina plays the role Iowa did in January 2008 in its first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential caucus. In a state with challenging demographics, Barack Obama won and was propelled to a general election victory over John McCain. Whether or not you agree with Obama on policy, his respect for the office was clear. He adhered to essential presidential norms and left the fundamentals of American democracy as strong as he found them. Needless to say, if someone with McCain’s integrity was the Republican front-runner in 2024, this column would never have been written.

On Feb. 24, we can make a statement similar to the one our countrymen and -women in Iowa made 16 years ago. We can signal the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s political career by voting for Nikki Haley.

A version of this column appeared in the Feb. 14 edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

Lindsey Graham throws away his very last excuse

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Graham speaking about the vote in question.

Ever since Lindsey Graham apparently went stark, raving mad in 2016, a person inclined to make excuses for him might have said, “Well, he’s just getting close to the madman in order to be close enough to hold him in check.” Particularly on national security issues, because the madman is particularly dangerous there. (Did you notice him once again attacking NATO and defending Putin the other day?)

That would be the last excuse that anyone could possibly offer for Lindsey constantly licking Trump’s shoes. And occasionally, he has in the past given indications of this, as when he strongly protested Trump’s outrageous abandonment of U.S. allies in Syria in 2019:

“This impulsive decision by the President has undone all the gains we’ve made, thrown the region into further chaos. Iran is licking their chops. And if I’m an ISIS fighter I’ve got a second lease on life. So to those who think ISIS has been defeated you will soon see,” Graham said during an interview on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.”

“I hope I’m making myself clear how shortsighted and irresponsible this decision is in my view,” the South Carolina Republican added….

Yeah, you did. That time.

But look at what he did this week. When Mitch McConnell was trying to pass a deal to send Ukraine the aid it desperately needs, this happened:

This was something that McConnell obviously cared about. You heard him there. But for the senators more closely aligned with Donald Trump’s anti-alliance, America-first wing, this is just not the kind of foreign commitment that makes sense. Let’s focus on South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham for a second. He’s long been emblematic of this kind of pro-military intervention, pro-military aid, robust leader of the free world Republican mindset. But he’s also grown close to Donald Trump, right? Last night, in a statement, he announced his opposition to this deal and called for changes to the bill in the House when it gets to the House that Trump had suggested. In some ways, that’s a surprise coming from him, given his policy legacy. But it’s also just kind of part and parcel of the fact that this Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, John McCain era of the Republican Party is basically at a close…

That’s it, Lindsey. You’ve thrown away your last excuse…

The most interesting SC legislative contest of 2024 (so far)

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Ott leaving the scene of his announcement today…

So far, at least. I just started paying attention. But it won’t surprise me if this remains the most interesting.

I didn’t take an interest in this one until I saw Sen. Dick Harpootlian lashing out at Rep Russell Ott last week, and realized these two very different Democrats would be facing each other in a primary in June.

It wasn’t until today that I finally realized that this is the Senate district I live in! I mean, I knew Nikki Setzler, whose sign I’ve been proud to post in my yard in recent years, would no longer be my senator. But I didn’t realize this was who would be running — on the Democratic side — to replace him.

My Neanderthal mind was already boggled a bit by the fact that somehow these two guys were in the same district. Dick, who lives in — well, I’m not sure of his address, but it’s in the Democratic part of Columbia. Russell lives on Ott Farm Trail in St. Matthews, which is way down the road from Shandon, Wales Garden and environs.

So imagine how much more surprising — what a “Duh!” moment it was for me — it was to learn that this guy from way over in suburban Columbia and this guy from quite a bit down the road toward Charleston were running to represent me, over in Quail Hollow.

But it’s true. I think. I’m still a bit confused. (Which I guess makes me more like most citizens, who couldn’t tell you who represents them to save their lives.)

So… this being my district, I’ve got a decision to make between two serious candidates — assuming I vote in the Democratic state primary this time (meaning I pass up on having a say in local Lexington County elections), which I’m likely to do simply because of this race.

I’ve been really impressed by the job Dick has done since entering the Senate. And as you know, past performance counts for a lot with me. Once, he was the guy journalists loved because he was a quote machine — of the edgy, to-hell-with-what-people-think, Fritz Hollings variety. Now, this wise guy is something of an elder statesman, after his own fashion.

However, the less provocational Russell Ott has made a good impression in the House ever since he succeeded his Dad, Harry, in the seat back in 2013. And I got to work with him a bit during the Smith campaign in 2018 (although we never did quite pull together that presser I wanted to do out in the middle of a farm field, to talk about how Henry’s hero Trump’s embargo was hurting farmers). And as you know, he’s possibly the only pro-life Democrat (or one of very few) in the Legislature, as I wrote back here.

That’s a plus for me, and probably plays better out in the country where Russell lives than it it does in Dick’s stomping grounds. It won’t win him all that many friends among the residents of Shandon, where one of his House colleagues won two years ago by hard-selling her Democratic orthodoxy in the wake of Dobbs.

In fact, I first heard about this contest from a tweet Dick posted last week pounding Russell on this point of party heresy. Thereby causing me to immediately sympathize with Russell — although of course Dick, the former state party chairman, knows that part of the electorate. Which is why Democrats seldom listen to my advice on this matter.

Dick made his announcement last month. Although it was odd that he said he was “running for re-election” when this is his first time running in this district. Still, I’ve give him the edge right now. But we’ll see.

As a voter, I’ve got a lot of studying to do. That’s why I ran downtown today to try to catch Russell’s announcement. But I headed out way too late to deal with the parking challenges. I missed the whole announcement — but the candidate and some supporters were still there, so I got the picture above.

Watch this space. I’ll try to do better as we go along…

From Dick’s Twitter page…

I’m more of a Neanderthal than you are…

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Well, probably. Statistically speaking…

Yes, I got my results back from 23andMe today! And that’s one of the headlines: “Hey Brad!
You have more Neanderthal DNA than 61% of other customers.”

And I’m not a bit insulted, as I will explain. In fact, on receiving the news, I played a bit to the stereotype of my people, taking my phone over to my wife (who gave me the new DNA kit for Christmas) and saying “Uhn!” Then pointing clumsily to the screen with my prehistoric finger, and elaborating, “Errg, uhn, uhn!”

But they were grunts of pride.

You see, the Neanderthal thing is one of the reasons I wanted 23andMe — Ancestry doesn’t give you that.

I will of course in the coming days bore you no end with details as I find them, but for today, here are the top three highlights:

  1. The Neanderthal thing. Actually, less than 2 percent of my DNA comes from this human species that went extinct 40,000 years ago. That’s why 23andMe leads with the 61 percent comparison. More impressive. But let me get started on defending my peaceful people, who were minding their own business, comfortably wrapped in furs in Northern Europe after the last Ice Age, when you people came sweeping up from down South and wiped us all out — after a slight bit of, well, socializing, which led to that little bit of DNA that remains. Anyway, something you should know: You call yourselves “sapiens.” But Neanderthals had bigger brains. Look it up.
  2. The breaking of the Great White Wall. Not the smashing of it, I suppose, but at least a crack or two. You know how Ancestry has been telling me for years and years that I’m the whitest white boy at Bypass High? Well, while 23andMe agrees that I’m 99.8 percent Northwestern European, I have finally found a bit of variety in my heritage. And not just, say, Italian. To find out what I am, I have to click on the “Trace Ancestry” button, which tells me I’m… a tenth of a percent Somali! Which is way cool. No, I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince people to consider me a “person of color,” and they’re still going to hold me responsible for that my Viking and Norman and English and white American ancestors did. And it gives me little in common with most African-Americans, who tend to be from West Africa. But hey, it’s something…
  3. No answer on the Scottish Question. As you know, I’ve been marveling at the way Ancestry keeps recalculating my ethnicity, and for whatever reason deciding I’m more and more Scottish. Which has puzzled me no end — although I have been noticing more and more ancestors who are indeed of the Caledonian persuasion (such as the lady accused, quite unfairly I might add, of being a witch). So I was hoping my second DNA test might shed a little light on the matter from a different perspective. Alas, the perspective was too different. This service slices the pie so differently that I can’t make a clear comparison. Ancestry says I’m 27 percent English and Northwestern European, 8 percent Irish, 7 percent Welsh, and a whopping 47 percent Scottish. 23andMe says I’m 92.3 percent “British and Irish,” and doesn’t seem to breakdowns of that big number in a way that I can compare. Oh, well.

Of course, the main thing to me is the DNA matches to real people. I got into this years ago to help with building my family tree, so that’s what I’ll mostly be concentrating on as I study these results. Some of my relatives (such as my mother and brother) have done Ancestry DNA. Some others (such as three of my kids and two of my grandchildren) have gone the 23andMe route. I’m going to enjoy cross-referencing all those cousins and such to fill out and understand my tree better. That’s the main point.

So far, I haven’t looked much at the health or traits stuff. I figure at my age, if I’m going to get something because of my genes, I’ve probably got it already…

Great, but Jimmy Carter’s the one I’d really love to meet

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I may have mentioned that I finally got fed up with the fundraising texts from Sherrod Brown, which sometimes came multiple times in a day. So I said STOP, and they stopped — except for once or twice, when I assume the algorithm was referring to the wrong list.

So now I mostly only get them from Joe, and that’s fine. I’m happy to keep them coming, and once of these days I’m actually going to send him tiny amount of money — which I know won’t have any effect, and certainly won’t stop the texts, but it will make me happy to do something for Joe.

I got this one today for I think the second time. It has the above image and says:

Biden HQ: Brad, we have an exciting announcement 

We just launched a sweepstakes to give supporters like you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet President Biden, President Obama, AND President Clinton all together.

We’ll cover the flight and hotel costs — all you have to do is chip in $20 now to support the Biden-Harris reelection campaign and Democrats nationwide:
https://m.joebiden.com/vaokewi0

STOP2quit

Again, at some point I’ll give the $20. But I don’t need the sweepstakes thing. I mean, I’ve had the chance to talk at length with Joe several times, and with Obama a couple of times. And I’ve at least been at an event where Bill spoke once, here in Columbia — in ’92, I think.

And I’d be fine seeing all of them again — especially Joe, just to thank him for running (I haven’t seen him since 2018) and to tell him to hang in there with all the gratuitous garbage thrown at him — but it bugs me that someone would be missing.

You know who I’ve love to chat with? Jimmy Carter. I met him once at an event in Memphis, when he was first running in 1976. Which was awesome. I was there to cover a speaking event, and there was this small reception afterward — I guess for donors and such, but somehow I had arranged to get in. And I’m pretty sure I shook hands with him. But since I’m not sure that I did, and I was such a Jimmy fan that it seems I’d remember it, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I was young and priggish as a journalist about acting like a normal person by getting friendly with the newsmaker. But it would have been really rude not to at least shake hand, since I was just there in the small group and not segregated off with media. So I think I did, and I hope so.

But to settle the matter, he’s the one I’d like to meet — among living former presidents who would be likely to support Joe. And I know he’s in hospice, and probably not up to seeing visitors. But I still wish I could. I’d give more than $20, and drive there on my own dime, if y’all could swing that. You three guys could come, too.

That would be something…

Our great national tragedy: No Leo McGarry

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I’ve been re-watching “The West Wing” lately, which can make a guy wistful, if he loves his country.

Most recently, I watched a scene in which Toby presides over a “let’s get serious” meeting with a group of congressmen, including the Republicans who are blocking the Bartlet administration’s effort to allow sampling in the census.

That was a realistic scene, when it was first aired. Such a meeting today would be impossible. The Republicans in the room were raising thoughtful, serious objections to sampling (which even Toby admits privately, after the meeting). Things like that don’t happen anymore. Certainly not with House members.

Anyway, Trey Walker and I haven’t communicated directly in awhile, at least since I was on the opposite side in the 2018 election. But then last night he tweeted:

Well, I had started responding to him before I even saw his followup tweet:

We would live in such a better world if Leo, and of course, John Spencer, were among us.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve discussed Leo here before, of course. And Bryan posted this transcript of one of his best scenes. I tried and tried to find video of it to include here, but the best I could find was this murky still image. Which reminds us of The West Wing’s one flaw — the White House wasn’t that DARK. Nor are congressional hearing rooms…

What happened to Apollo Creed?

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Hey, he looked fit to ME…

You may start seeing more of this kind of post, now that I’m over 70.

But my concern here grows out of something that’s bothered me for decades.

When Carl Weathers died several days ago, The New York Times reported:

His family said in a statement that he “died peacefully in his sleep.” The statement did not give a cause or say where he died.

Come on, people! How did he die?

This kind of thing has bothered me since my earliest days in the newspaper racket. When somebody dies, the cause of death should be right there in the lede. Especially in news stories, but also in obits. This is particularly the case in people who die young.

I see a person who looks about 20 in a photo with an obit, and the first thing I think is, “Maybe it’s an old picture.” Then, when I see it isn’t, I think, “What happened?”

I mean, don’t you? But too often, you’re told nothing. Or maybe, just maybe, the family will request donations to a fund that fights a deadly disease, and at least you have a hint.

And yeah, sometimes I can understand people not wanting to say, if there’s something about the cause — say, suicide or a drug overdose — that makes an excruciating tragedy even worse, and loved ones don’t want to see it in print. But I gather that lots of people simply don’t want to say, whatever the cause is. It has to do with a notion of privacy which I don’t understand.

In fact, I’ve long wished newspapers would refuse to run obits unless the cause of death is stated. That’s never going to happen, since obits are now ads, and organizations as desperate for revenue as our beleaguered newspapers aren’t going to give up a stream of revenue. And back when newsrooms handled them, it still didn’t happen because editors saw obits as a basic public service — you had to reported who had died in the community. But if you ask me, telling readers what’s killing the people around them is a pretty fundamental kind of public service.

But it didn’t bother me so much when people were old. And back when I first cared about obits, I would have seen 76 as old. Of course, I’m wiser than that now (that’s only six years older than I am!), but it still wouldn’t have occurred to me to wonder in this case, until I saw this story this morning in The Boston Globe.

It was about the fact that a Super Bowl ad featuring Weathers is still going to run during the game. Which makes me think, hey: He was healthy enough to shoot a commercial recently, so… he wasn’t wasting away with a fatal disease — that anyone knew, anyway.

Maybe it was a stroke. I know from personal experience how those can sneak up on you (although I was very lucky with mine).

But I’d still like to know. I mean, the guy was only 76…

Glad to be on Bluesky, although it’s not yet all it needs to be

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So I read this morning in The Washington Post that Bluesky is now open to us plebeians who didn’t get invited to join the new Twitter replacement (that’s the way I’m viewing it, anyway) previously.

About time.

You know about Bluesky. It’s the latest brainstorm of Jack Dorsey, the guy who created Twitter long before the barbarians knocked down the gates and started destroying it.

So of course, I immediately signed up and started looking about.

And it looks great. The interface is SO much like Twitter of old that I immediately hope that the new platform doesn’t get sued by Attila et al. Very comfortable. And I’ve tweeted (or whatever we’re supposed to call the action) a couple of times, and gotten a few likes, and it feels like old times.

Of course, a lot of stuff will have to happen before it can be what Twitter was. For instance, more people I’m used to following need to sign up and get busy. And that includes a lot of the media sites I follow, not just individual people.

There were some old friends already there, which prompted that petulant first post from me, which went like this:

Now that I’m finally in here, I see that SOME of my friends were invited long ago. Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph…

I’m sure there will be a lot more people on board tomorrow, and the day after, and so on. I’m very hopeful. But aside from way more accounts, the site will need a few other things to live up to my hopes:

  • Embed codes. Note that I simply quoted my post, rather than embedding. Maybe there’s a way to do that, but it’s not yet readily apparent. I just get a “copy link.”
  • Speaking of embedding… When I’m reading something on one of my newspaper apps on my iPad, and want to say something about it on Bluesky, and click on the “share” thingy, I see all sorts of icons, but not one for Bluesky. I’m not sure whose responsibility it will be to fix this — will each newspaper have to make changes in the app, or is it up to Apple? Anyway, I hope they soon get on the stick.
  • A few publications I’m used to following don’t even have accounts on Bluesky. Are they aware it exists? When will they jump in?
  • Even those who DO have accounts — such as The Washington Post — are only putting a small amount of their content on the platform. Weirdly, they’re posting links to some stories — such as the one about Bluesky itself, and one about Taylor Swift — multiple times. But I couldn’t find one to this story, and together with the lack of a direct link from the newspaper app, I had to do a sort of double workaround to post about it. It worked fine, but it should be way easier. And I’m hoping it will be, soon.

Enough griping. Let me say that even though I had to do some manual stuff to post about that story, when I entered the link, I was immediately asked if I wanted the headline and artwork to automatically appear in the post — the way it used to be on Twitter. There wasn’t a “hell, yeah” option, so I just said yes.

And I’m sure, now that I’ve put this post on the platform, some of those long-time members will respond that I’m an idiot, and all these things are already there, but I haven’t found them yet. Fine. Maybe they’ll help me.

Anyway, I hope to see some of y’all there…

OK, I voted for Joe, but it wasn’t easy…

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I mean, it was easy in terms of not having to wait in a line, and the weather was nice, and the pollworkers were all helpful and professional. And I was unconflicted about it — despite my Hamlet routine the last few days — because I love to vote for Joe.

But in other senses…

I showed up at my usual voting place — for the Quail Hollow precinct — and was greeted by the sign you see at the end of the post. Which made me wonder, WTH, but when I got to Gray Collegiate, one of the pollworkers — who normally works the Saluda River site — explained to me that the party, trying to save money, had asked for the reduction in polling places, to save money.

The arrows were helpful, since I’d never been here before…

OK that made sense, since I and everyone else knew the turnout today would be next to nothing, with Joe having no actual competition. (The weird thing, though, is what I heard later from another pollworker who works at another site across the county — she said the voting places are reduced for the Republican primary on the 24th as well. If that’s correct, THAT is going to be a mess, with all the Trumpistas out to crush Nikki’s bones to make their bread, and 90 percent of Democrats turning out to vote for Nikki. Yeah, I made up the 90 percent, but it feels like that.)

Almost everyone else in the place normally works my precinct, since they’re my neighbors. Everyone addressed me as Brad. And there was no point being cagey about what I was there to do, since all these folks knew me and are used to seeing my yardsigns and bumper stickers. So of course, I wasn’t. Cagey, I mean. Not that I ever am. In fact, I probably blathered more about it than was quite right, but it’s not like I was tying up busy people. I only noticed one other voter the whole time I was there.

I had no line to wait in, which was sweet. I went to my little minikiosk thingy (still haven’t learned a term for those things that are not booths), inserted the paper ballot, pressed the screen to vote for Joe, pressed again to check my vote, and pressed once more to print out the results.

Which is when everything went haywire. There were all these distorted images flashing on my screen, and eventually the screen went white. And there were no sounds of printing going on. So one of the workers had to open the machine and make sure nothing had printed, dig out the unmarked ballot, and give it to me to take to another machine.

So I got to vote twice! Of course, it only counted once, but I had the pleasure of doing it twice. Which was nice.

I didn’t remember to take a selfie with my sticker until I got home. It’s at the top. See my hat? I think Michelle Norris gave me that hat when she interviewed me in 2008. Seemed appropriate — as you know by my recent posts, I do consider all things. Rather obsessively…

Then, on the other hand…

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All that said, let me tell you about something weird that came up just a little while ago…

Another smart friend, not one of those I had called earlier in the day, texted me this evening to say:

“_____ is writing an op Ed urging women to go out and vote for Nikki. She is with me and ______ on Dems skipping their primary and voting for Nikki.”

(Yes, I blanked out the names of two people I haven’t spoken with.)

Another county heard from. I told this friend I was still voting for Joe. And we went back and forth on that for a moment.

Then, the same friend sent me something just received by text a moment earlier (at 7:58 p.m.):

I wrote back to say I had just received the same message (or so I thought for a moment). And I hadn’t finished sending my reply when I got a text from one of the people I had called earlier to talk about this. He had just received the same text.

I was thinking that these had to be from someone supporting Nikki — maybe not her campaign, but a PAC backing her. Maybe that Koch group.

But then I looked back at the one I had received, and saw the wording was different. Instead of the flat, noncommittal statement, “Biden is winning by more than 50 points,” mine said:

President Biden will win a strong victory for his pro-democracy agenda.

Huh. It went on to say:

In the Republican primary on February 24, democracy itself is on the ballot. Former governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is running against Trump, a proud election denier. Make your vote count by protecting our democracy.

All straight from Biden campaign talking points. Which were not present in the other two texts. Those were quite neutral.

I called the second of those two friends, the one I had spoken to earlier in the day. This friend was an old newspaper colleague, and the different wordings perplexed us. This friend votes more in Democratic primaries than I do, and yet I had received the “Democrat” version.

Maybe because I was in James Smith’s campaign? That got me on some lists other than the ones based on primary voting.

I don’t know who’s doing this. Are my friends on the Biden campaign or a related group saying, “Look, Brad, we know you love Joe, but he’s got this. Go help Nikki be a thorn in Trump’s side.”

I don’t know. I don’t think so, based on past experience, and knowledge of these people. But I’ve never seen an election like this, and neither have these people, and maybe they’re doing something I wouldn’t expect them to do.

If so, they should call me on the phone and say it straight to me. I’m going to vote for Joe.

At least, I think so…

 

I’m the only Biden supporter who plans to vote for him tomorrow

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How could I vote for anyone else? (2018 file photo)

OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. It just sort of feels like that, after the conversations I’ve been having in recent days. Especially today.

In response to Paul’s announcement that he’s going to skip Saturday’s Democratic primary and vote for Nikki Haley three weeks later, I said that Paul makes very valuable points, but “I’m not going to do what Paul’s going to do.” Joe’s my boy. I’m proud of him and the job he’s done, and deeply grateful to him for running. And I’m going vote FOR somebody — especially someone I like so much — rather than against someone.

And ever since I said that, I’ve been questioning myself. That reasoning is fine under most circumstances — such as when I voted in the Democratic primary in 2010 because I wanted to express approval for Vincent Sheheen rather than try to stop the worst of the Republican candidates. I felt good about that.

But this time, we’re facing an unprecedented threat to the country, and to the world. And if you doubt the “and to the world” part, go ask the people of Ukraine what they think. Or read this column by Max Boot: “If Trump wins, he will destroy the American-led world order.” It’s a good basic explanation of global realities, and I went away from it depressed that Max felt the need to explain such things. But he’s right. We don’t live in, say, Reagan’s America. Reagan supporters understood those things. But now, far too many of their descendants, on the left and right, come closer to the isolationism of Lindbergh’s “America First” movement.

Joe Biden is running for president at the age of 81, when he richly deserves retirement, because he’s the only qualified person who has a realistic chance of standing in the way of the madness of millions of voters who would instead vote for a malevolent ignoramus who — when he actually WAS president for four years — had to be impeached twice (something he richly deserved both times), who tried to throw out the results of the election that removed him from office, and is currently facing 91 criminal charges in a variety of legal jurisdictions. A guy who daily demonstrates to the world that he is more unhinged and vengefully hostile than ever.

As I say, unique situation. So each day this week, I’ve asked myself, “Don’t I help Joe, and my country, better by voting against Trump than by voting for the good guy?” I was doubting my course enough today that when I went on my regular walk around the neighborhood, I called several people who fit these two criteria:

  1. They are people whose judgment I greatly respect from over the years, to the extent that they might have the power to persuade me to change course. Which is not something you can say about everyone.
  2. They are also people who I’m almost 100 percent sure will vote for Joe in the fall.

They said different things, but they all had one commonality — not one was planning to vote for Joe tomorrow. And they made damned good arguments for what they were doing. But so far (I could still change my mind by tomorrow morning), I’m still planning to vote for Joe.

Here’s the way I see it, in chunks as bite-sized as I can make them:

  • I started making those calls because I was listening to today’s “The Daily” podcast from the NYT. It was headlined, “On the Ballot in South Carolina: Biden’s Pitch to Black Voters.” During the introduction, host Michael Barbaro said, “The question is not who will win, but whether President Biden can fix his growing problem with black voters.” Which kind of set me off on a “Here we go again!” trajectory. A premise that suggests that if Joe doesn’t have a decent turnout in South Carolina — which there’s no reason for him to have, since we all know he will win — I’ll end up reading political analyses to the effect that the poor turnout in the South Carolina is yet another datum demonstrating how the Democratic electorate is unenthusiastic about him.
  • Yes, that would be a profoundly stupid thing to say, as all my friends who are planning to vote for Nikki keep telling me. They’re rational people, and they insist no rational person would expect a big turnout in the Democratic primary when we all know who the nominee will be. And they’re completely right. Unfortunately, rational people make up a distressingly small portion of the American electorate in this moment of collective madness in our country. Every day, we all see idiotic memes take hold around us, and stick.
  • Worse, the current political press isn’t much better. This was demonstrated over and over in 2020. We had 25 or so people seeking the Democratic nomination, but as I kept saying, only one of them exhibited these three qualities: a) he was qualified, as one could amply tell not only from his resume, but by his record and performance over the years; b), he had the skills, bipartisan sincerity and credibility to appeal across a broad-enough political spectrum to win over the moderates who are essential to victory in a country so evenly split; and c) voters knew him. I kept saying that over and over in this venue. And yet what did we keep hearing and reading — not from the drunk at the end of the bar, but from paid professional journalists? Joe’s past it. Today’s Democrats want a new face that represents new concerns — such as, say, culture war battles of identity politics, rather than say, an understanding of international affairs (ho-hum!). How deep did that rot go? Well, I mentioned the NYT above, and as much as I still respect the Gray Lady, its editorial board was in the midst of some sort of psychotic episode in 2020. They didn’t even consider endorsing Joe, the one candidate who clearly could both win and then do the job. Instead, they embarrassed themselves with a “split decision,” endorsing both Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. This seemed to reflect a generational split on the board — Klobuchar for the grownups (she’s who I wanted for Joe’s running mate), and Warren for the kids. This was widely and justly mocked. Vanity Fair said “The New York Times Splits Their Endorsement, Pleasing No One and Inspiring Twitter Bonanza.” Amen.
  • Of course, the good Democratic primary voters of South Carolina schooled those journalists on Feb. 29, 2020. And they all changed their tunes, immediately, as Joe’s Democratic opponents started hastening to line up behind him. Still, just watch — some people, and not just folks on Fox, will be saying “Obviously, Biden’s South Carolina support isn’t as strong as it was in 2020.” There’s a great deal of foolishness out there.
  • No, my one vote for Joe won’t do anything to stop stupid interpretations of the turnout. But my vote for Nikki won’t put her over the top against Trump, either. And here’s where we get to the deep, gut reason I have to vote tomorrow instead of on the 24th: I’ve imagined myself doing that, and I recoil at the image of me, Brad Warthen, voting for Nikki Haley to be president of the United States. Because I know how abysmally unqualified she is (and how wonderfully qualified Joe is).
  • Yes, as unqualified as Nikki is, and as poor a president as she would be, she’s still a normal human being, and having Trump become president again would be infinitely worse. It could well mean the end of this wonderful liberal democracy we have been so privileged to live in since 1789. Got it. I agree completely. But…
  • If somehow all these votes for Nikki that my friends are planning enable her to defy expectations in this open primary enough that she weakens Trump, thereby causing him to slip and her to catch up and overtake him — all unlikely, but possible — then my man Joe would be facing someone I think would have a better chance of beating him than Trump does. Why? Because she’s a normal, very personable candidate (unlike Trump) who has a talent for winning people over to her. Also, that silly “vote for somebody younger” shtick of hers has more resonance than it deserves. Millions of people would vote for her purely on that point, despite her lack of qualification.
  • If she were better qualified — say, if she were as good a candidate as John McCain, or Mitt Romney, or for the sake of you identity politics people, as Hillary Clinton — then I could with a clear conscience wait and vote for her on the 24th, even as much as I like Joe. But she isn’t.
  • And if she weren’t trying to beat such a national catastrophe as Trump, I wouldn’t even be debating myself on this. But she is, and I am, hence this lengthy soliloquy. Maybe I should wait and vote for her. But…
  • We used to have these long debates on the editorial board… Someone would suggest it might be strategically smart to endorse this or that candidate or issue, even though we really didn’t want that outcome. (This post is already way too long for me to go off on a tangent about why that might happen, but such arguments did come up sometimes.) But then someone would say something like “Never endorse an outcome that you don’t want to see happen.” The vote is too sacred and precious to play such games. And I would nod, and agree. And it is especially risky to attempt such a gambit when we’re talking about presidential elections. Anyone who gets the nomination of one of the two major parties has a 50-50 chance of becoming president, regardless of who it is, or who his or her opponent is. That’s how delicately split our country is. We no longer have elections like the ones in 1964 and 1984.

So I’m voting for the guy I actually want to be president, and who has demonstrated how good at the job he is over these last four years.

Of course, I’m still confused at the moment, as the following post will indicate…

South Carolina is everywhere!

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No, it’s not perfect. But let’s see you do better, driving over asphalt with rubber tires.

At least, it’s cropping up everywhere you look in national media right now. For fairly obvious reasons.

That will end soon enough. But I will continue to see it everywhere I look. I always have.

Do you? I’m curious whether this is a South Carolina native thing, or just a South Carolina resident thing. Or (and this seems less likely), do folks from other parts see the same shape?

This tendency is embedded pretty deep in me. My first memories of doing this are from my birthplace, Bennettsville. Behind my grandparents’ home, at the foot of the back steps, were some white flagstones. They gave an impression of being marble because of the color, but had a sort of hexagonal design. Not that they were shaped like hexagons like so many such stones you see. I mean there were these black lines etched across the surface in a honeycomb pattern, with each hexagon a little more than a square inch in size.

The overall shape of each stone was random, like the pieces of some larger slab that someone had broken up with a sledgehammer.

But one of them looked exactly like South Carolina. As a child, there was nothing random about that to me — of course it was shaped like that, I thought. I spent most of my school years elsewhere — in Virginia, New Jersey, Louisiana, Florida, Hawaii and South America. But that house was the one place I always returned to. It was home, or the closest thing I had to a home growing up. And the fact that one of the features of this house was this stone that was “randomly” shaped like South Carolina seemed to be something of cosmic significance.

I’d show you a picture of it, if I could go there and take one. But you can’t see it now. Decades ago, my uncle — who has lived in that house his entire life (he’s the opposite of me in that respect) — built a deck at the back door. I can’t remember whether the stone is just hidden away, or gone. Anyway, it’s no longer in evidence.

But still, since that one perception early in life, I’ve seen the shape everywhere else. In a stone, or a pancake that was carelessly (or extremely carefully) poured into the pan, or a torn piece of a roofing shingle. I’m not just talking about triangles. I’m talking about triangles that manage to imitate the less regular border with North Carolina. Triangles that look intentional.

And it always seems significant to me, in a fundamental, subrational way. Like someone has put it there as a message or something.

I don’t always take pictures when I see one. But the other day on one of my walks around the neighborhood, I saw the road cracks you see above. I don’t know why I’d never noticed the pattern before. Maybe the cracks were new. Anyway, this time, I shot a picture.

Do you see thing like that, too?