Costco looking at Piney Grove again — No sign yet that they’re looking for millions in concessions this time. That’s what caused the deal to break down before.
How Do Companies Quietly Raise Prices? They Do This — The only reason I’m including this is that the story contains a new (to me) phrase that I’m adding to my list of possible band names, when I start a band: “Slack Fill.”
How Jeb Bush’s 2016 bid faltered before it began — Really? Isn’t it a bit early to be writing the political obit for the guy who is still probably going to end up with the nomination? Maybe that’s not what this is, but the headline has an eulogistical tone.
Al-Qaida ‘cut off and ripped apart by Isis’ — Yeah, the enemy of my enemy may be my friend, but somehow I can’t quite work up a lot of sympathy here for the has-been terror organization.
Innovista Greene Street project breaks ground this week — I’m glad to see this finally get under way — this was always supposed to be the centerpiece, sort of the Main Street of Innovista, a pedestrian friendly boulevard running from the center of the USC campus down to a riverfront park. Thanks to the penny tax, it’s now on track.
US strategy on Iraq ‘not yet complete’ – Obama — That’s what he said at the G-7 summit. You know why it’s G-7? ‘Cause we kicked out Russia. Meanwhile, that new guy seeking the Democratic nomination for president thinks we’ve been way too mean to the Russians over Ukraine. Really.
Advisory panel urges FDA to approve ‘female Viagra’ — Hey, I just picked this because it said “female Viagra.” I have no opinion on this. I’m still puzzled about MALE Viagra: If your body doesn’t want to, why not just leave it alone?
It’s a whole new month, and so far a slow one, as hard news goes. And we’ve already talked about Lindsey Graham’s announcement.
Oh, well. Here are some talkers, if you are so inclined:
Man does not quite bite dog— So it falls a bit short of news, but not for lack of effort. The guy is charged with biting a woman after his dog bit her child. Really.
SCOTUS sides with Muslim woman over head scarf — WSJ says “The 8-1 decision heightened the duty employers have to accommodate workers’ religious practices, ruling that federal law requires ‘favored treatment’ of faith-based observances, not simply equal status with other activities.”
Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair: ‘Call me Caitlyn’ — So, disregard what he told Diane Sawyer the other day. That was May; this is June. There’s a picture of Jenner in a skimpy ladies’ garment, if you want to look.
Or, whatever interests you. Oh, one other thing: The head of SC DOT quit, but didn’t say why. I don’t know what to say about it, since before I read this, I could not have named the head of DOT — she’d only been in the job a year.
The presumptive Democratic nominee came back to South Carolina today wielding a middle-class-populist message (is it populist if it’s middle-class, or merely “popular”?).
She kept telling us besieged members of the bourgeoisie that she was going to “go to bat” for us. She used other metaphors for what she would do, but I’m very happy to report that I didn’t hear her say that she would “fight” for us. She may have and I missed it, but I was listening for it, because I hate it so.
So I guess that’s one way in which she’s distinguishing herself from the populism of Elizabeth Warren, while still trying to go after the same segment of the party — so as to, you know, keep what’s-her-name out of it.
Maggie Haberman of the NYT reported that Hillary’s “southern twang is back,” but I certainly didn’t hear it. Maybe you had to be from New York to pick up on it. Nevertheless, the candidate traced her experience with SC back to when she worked for Bennettsville’s Marian Wright Edelman at the Children’s Defense Fund, and later attended Linda and Phil Lader’s Renaissance Weekends down in the Lowcountry.
The candidate’s best-received line was when she said, after noting how much the White House ages presidents, “I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I have one big advantage… I’ve been coloring my hair for years.” She promised we wouldn’t see her go gray in the job.
Beyond that, here are most of my Tweets from the event:
On my way in to get Clinton credentials, ran into Carly Fiorina, surrounded by gaggle. Bonus! pic.twitter.com/Vzin5FjCX4
The Jack Kuenzie thing was out of sync. It was before the event, but got held up for some reason.
By the way, you know that item where I said “Weird situation after @HillaryClinton speech. Her people won’t let us near her, and won’t let us leave…”? Twitter kinda went ape about it, in a modest way: There were 33 direct reTweets and 11 favorites, and lots of reTweets of reTweets. I lost count.
Which made me kind of insecure. I had not tried to leave the hall at that point; I had just heard we couldn’t from another media type. Specifically, on the first of three times I got pushed back by Clinton staff, I told Dianne Gallagher, who was headed toward the candidate, that they weren’t letting us near her. Dianne said something to the effect of that put is in a fix, because they weren’t letting us leave the room, either.
After people made such a big deal about that Tweet, I wrote to Dianne to make sure I had heard her right. She replied, “Oh yeah. They said we had to wait. Wouldn’t open the door for us.”
I was relieved to have heard her right the first time.
It was no big deal, as one Tweeter had the good sense to note. But a lot of people seemed to think it was a metaphor for something…
As you may have read, “they” have finally allowed the president to have his very own personal Twitter feed, which he in theory posts on himself, as opposed to the @BarackObama feed that’s been out there since March 2007 and is written by the Organizing for Action staff.
Now, himself is supposedly Tweeting @POTUS. His first Tweet, on May 18:
Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.
… which is where I got the mysterious “they” reference from.
So, all well and good, except there’s a bit of a two-edged sword here (and since this is POTUS, it’s probably made from Valyrian steel). It’s been eight days now, and he’s only Tweeted seven times! And his last Tweet was yesterday.
I generally don’t follow people if they don’t Tweet more often than that. Unless, when they do, Tweet, what they have to say is pretty awesome. Which, alas, the president’s are not. They’re pretty vanilla. Like something, you know, staff-written. Also, I wonder at the professional-looking photos of himself that are not selfies. Who’s really doing this?
Spent the morning at Arlington. Take time today to honor our fallen heroes. We’re forever indebted to their families. pic.twitter.com/hChhhOVCS3
On the other hand, if he were Tweeting like mad — at the rate I usually do, or someone even more obsessed with the medium — then we’d all be saying, rather pointedly, Doesn’t the president have something better to do with his time? Anyway, I’m going to give him a probational follow. Out of respect for the office. But if he doesn’t liven it up, he’s going on the dustbin…
British pub’s ‘Ye Olde Fighting Cocks’ name challenged by PETA — Get this: “they want the pub to change its name to Ye Olde Clever Cocks, ‘in recognition of society’s growing compassion for animals and in celebration of intelligent, sensitive chickens.'” Really. So help me out: Where’d we get the term, “birdbrain?”
RNC rolls out mini-mockumentary video ahead of Hillary visit — OK, I laughed, a little bit, just because at the moment I’m waiting to find out whether I’ll be approved as one of the few media types allowed to cover her appearance her Wednesday. Here’s hoping posting this doesn’t knock me out of the running, right?
Talk about what you like, but here are some suggestions:
Savannah minor-league team moving to Columbia — It’s going to be single-A, part of the New York Mets organization. Sally League. Didn’t we have the Mets’ single-A team before, or am I remembering that wrong? I mean, I thought that team went to Greenville. Maybe y’all can ‘splain it to me.
And I’m thinking, who would be better qualified than I?
I’ve got the acting chops, and extensive experience in the actual, real-life political world. “House of Cards” has characters who are bloggers and newspaper editors; I am or have been both. As for Washington experience, I used to supervise reporters in Washington; shouldn’t that count?
The casting call announcement advises “House of Cards” hopefuls to come “camera ready” in their “best upscale attire.” Men are asked to “use hair product,” while the ladies should “have your hairstyle and makeup applied as we will be taking your photos for you.”
Dang. I don’t “use hair product,” and can’t we just use this picture below that Kelly Payne took of me at the state GOP convention earlier this month? I mean, the fact that it was taken at such an event, by someone who has actually run for office in South Carolina (which Kevin Spacey has only pretended to do), should count for something.
In fact, why do I even have to show up for a cattle call? Just have your people call my people…
How else to describe a person who thinks it’s all about her, who stands up at a party convention to say most Republican officeholders are not real Republicans because they don’t do her bidding in all things?
“Where’s my army?” Wow. She really thinks the GOP is supposed to be her army. Like Lincoln and the others started this thing in the 1850s just so that Nikki could have an entourage.
I am in agreement with Chris Hayes for perhaps the first time ever. This is news in and of itself.
My response…
That’s a VERY good analogy, and here’s my reply: If you really didn’t like the segment, you shouldn’t run it. If you were on the fence about it, you should decide whether to run it based on its merits.
What the advertiser had to say should have NO bearing on your decision, period. To fail to run the segment BECAUSE of the advertiser’s threat would of course be wrong, and a betrayal of your audience. But to RUN it because of the threat, even if you thought it shouldn’t run, is a stupid, childish and irresponsible gesture that ALSO lets your audience down.
Your judgment about the quality of the segment and whether it properly, professionally serves your audience should be the only consideration.
To elaborate beyond what I told Bryan…
If the advertiser’s threat was public, you will pay a price in terms of your reputation if you decide honestly that the piece was not worth running. All the other kids in the playground will taunt you and say you were chicken, or worse.
And of course, that is more painful to the journalist’s pride than any other scenario.
But a mature and responsible professional will decide on the merits of the content, not on the basis of what may make him seem braver and tougher. You do the right thing, to the best of your ability to ascertain the right thing, and you take the consequences. If the content is worth running, you take the consequences of the advertiser’s ire. If the content doesn’t measure up, you accept the taunts from the crowd.
N.S.A. Program Is Illegal, Appeals Court Rules — Oh, yeah? Well…. let’s see what the Supremes say. Or the whole appeals court. Or the Congress. There’s no injunction to cease and desist, and this is still up in the air.
Borrowing plan for SC colleges, tech schools on shaky ground — Because fiscal conservatives believe government should live within its means, just the way families have to do, and everyone knows families never borrow money. Right? What’s that? What’s this “mortgage” thing you speak of? Some socialist plot?
First, a heads-up — I’m unable to access my blog from the office today. Technical glitch. I’m writing this on my iPad, which itself is awkward. The iPad is connecting to the blog using my phone as a hotspot. Anyway, don’t expect to see much from me today, beyond short responses typed on my phone…
Sen. Katrina Shealy, who was elected 1st vice chair of the state GOP Saturday, got fairly ticked off over her governor’s tirade against most Republicans in the Legislature, and expressed her irritation on Facebook.
I was unable to find the original post, so she may have taken it down. But someone saved the screenshot you see above.
Today I was very upset when I felt like Governor Haley called out the Legislature during her Speech at the 2015 SCGOP Convention. Because it is the right thing to do I will apologize for getting as angry as I did – I don’t apologize for feeling that this is a time when the Republican Party needs to be pulling together and finding common ground instead of finding ways to alienate each other. There are many serious issues before this state. We have 124 House Members, 46 Senators and 1 Governor – we needless to say do not all agree but that does not make us all wrong. As I have said before and I will say again if you expect people to agree with you all the time or not ever have an idea different from you, you need to talk to yourself. You are also going to eventually be very lonely! We have really tried over the last months to pull together and work out issues that are difficult and because of my way or no way attitudes in the House, Senate and yes the Governors Office we can’t. The word compromise isn’t a terrible word – really! I think Governor Jim Edwards used it very effectively. Maybe we need to take a page from his playbook!
Whenever I type dates lately, my first instinct is to type “2016.” I’ve had to go back and correct it several times. I think that’s because I’d read, and typed, “2016” so many times before this year started, that on some level my fingers thought it had arrived. Or something.
Anyway, I’ve had technical troubles all day and haven’t been able to post. But let’s wrap up the week with an Open Thread, shall we? Possible topics:
Six Baltimore cops charged in Freddie Gray death — So, will this be the end of the rioting? Who knows? Once something like that gets started, I’m not sure to what extent we can look for rational cause-and-effect relationships. Of course, we won’t know the upshot of the legal case, or what actually happened, for some time — if then.
Y’all know that my high school classmate Burl Burlingame gets to build model airplanes and rebuild real airplanes — cool ones — for a living. Doug and I have both been to his museum, and seen his handiwork.
So where did it all begin?
As with most of us, Burl started building models as a kid. And today, he posted photographic evidence, with this explanation:
Clearly, the pop-culture image of the model-airplane enthusiast as a callow dweeb is completely self-inflicted, and completely at odds with our self-image as the only cool kids in school:
I’m wondering — is that behind your house in Foster Village? I ask because the background looks a lot like the view from my backyard when we lived in that subdivision. We had this unbelievable view of both Pearl Harbor and the Waianae range in the background. (The lots were terraced so that our backyard lawn was higher than the roof of the house behind us, making for an amazing panorama of southwestern Oahu.)
In fact, I’m flashing on a memory here. Unlike Burl, I wasn’t a master builder of models. I didn’t paint the pilot or other small details. I’d put on the decals, of course, but beyond that my finishing touches didn’t extend beyond maybe heating the point of a pin and using it to melt machine-gun holes in the wings and fuselage.
I definitely didn’t bother with details on the little model of a V1 buzz bomb that I test-flew in that backyard in Foster Village. I built it around a firecracker, wedged into the fuselage tightly by wrapping toilet paper around it, and threaded the fuse out through a hole before final gluing. (The V1, a fairly featureless rocket, was way too boring to look at, and there were no more than five or six pieces in the kit — the only thing that made it worth building was to blow it up.)
Then I took it out there, lit the fuse, and threw it. It worked — green plastic blasted everywhere. But it was over so quick, it didn’t seem worth the time it took to build the model, even as simple as it was. So that’s the last time I did that…
By the way, that’s a SPAD XIII. Burl had to tell me that, after I wildly guessed that it was a Sopwith Camel…
Y’all haven’t been much interested in anything I’ve shown you today. See if you can get into any of these:
BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! — Trey Gowdy says he now has 4,000 documents from the State Department that no one investigating Benghazi has seen before! So that means this is likely to go on and on and on! And on!
Bernie Sanders seeks Democratic nomination for president — Boy, Hillary’s in trouble now! She’s got a socialist running against her! Is there an emoji for sarcasm? He says he’s in it to win. So I need an emoji that’s like really, really sarcastic… Until I find one, I’ll just go with this:
