Kathryn Fenner shares this ABCColumbia clip, in which her husband was quoted as an expert on what to do about the computer virus that caused yesterday’s stir.
I was particularly struck by the dramatic, under-the-coffee table shot of Dr. Stephen sitting on the sofa with his laptop.
Good thing the Fenners keep the underside of that table as neat and tidy as the rest of their home. I didn’t see any chewed gum stuck under there, or anything like that…
… or some comparable application, using my original photo.
I’m still catching up with email from before the weekend. Our own Silence sent me the above picture, under the headline, “cause of the Cayce plastic fire.”
His message read:
It’s a trap!
That blast came from the Death Star! That thing’s operational!
This morning on Twitter, The Washington Post whined that “Today is going to be very hot in D.C.”
I followed the link. You know what they think is “very hot?”
They were expecting it to be between 97 and 102. (OK, actually it turned out to be 104 there; but that wasn’t what was forecast this morning.) Really. What we would consider to be middlin’ warm here in Famously Hot Columbia, SC. A good day for seersucker, perhaps, but no use complaining…
So I reTweeted that, adding the message, “Oh, yeah? Well, it’s going to be 107 here, you wimps…”
As it turns out, I was being modest, as you can see from the actual screenshot from my phone this afternoon.
Earlier, on NPR, I had heard someone marveling over how hot it was supposed to be in various places across the country. No mention of Columbia. And none of the forecasts cited were as hot as it was supposed to get here.
I had been reading about the huge fire over in Cayce on Twitter while eating breakfast at the Capital City Club, and meant to look out the window from the appropriate side (the club overlooks the city in every direction) before leaving. I forgot, but a news bulletin about the fire dinging on my phone as the elevator arrived down in the lobby caused me to go back up and look.
I’m glad I did, because I got a great view from the south side of the club. (The photo is only slightly marred by reflection off the window.)
Everyone I’ve run into has been speculating as to what is burning. Here’s what thestate.com has on it so far:
A fire has ignited a building filled with plastic at CMC Recycling in Cayce.
A large plume of black smoke could be seen early Friday morning over the Columbia area, originating at the property at 2350 Foreman St.
Cayce, West Columbia and Lexington County fire districts sent crews to the scene.
Officials have evacuated Foreman Street up to Frink Street.
The large commercial building was filled with plastic, contributing to the dense black smoke…
No one was injured in the fire…
And if you can’t give blood, maybe you can give to help the needy be fed.
Right after posting the thing about the need for blood, I read this appeal from Denise Holland at Harvest Hope Food Bank:
Two weeks ago, one night about 9:30 pm, returning from Walmart, I walked back into my house sobbing because my heart was completely filled with many emotions. My husband looked at me confused, asking what is wrong as a trip to Walmart normally does not do this.
I sat down and told him the following very true, very moving story…I hope you will feel moved and called to action.
Upon finishing my shopping, I got in a long checkout line in the non-food section. I was there after 9pm to pick up a few last minute items for a children’s activity at church. I was behind a young couple, with a small baby sitting in the infant portion of the buggy. They caught my attention. I was struck at how much the young man with his wife reminded me of my own grown children. A nice appearance, the young man had on athletic type shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops, the young lady had on jeans and a hoodie, the baby was clean and dressed in a little onesie. As I stood there, I noticed a little more. They were wearing very simple wedding bands, and the dad kept putting his hand on the back of his wife and child’s mother, saying “are you feeling ok?” “Do you want to go sit in the car?” She did look in my opinion pale like she did not feel really great. I heard her reply very nicely to him, “no I am fine” and smiled back at her husband.
Well naturally I started playing with the baby, making silly old lady sounds and faces to get the baby to smile and laugh. The baby’s dad (obviously a little girl by the pink onesie) occasionally touched the little baby and bent down to kiss her neck of which she just giggled and smiled. At one point he looked back at me and I said to him, “that little girl certainly loves her daddy’s kisses”. He smiled and said yes. The couple then gave their attention to counting the items in their buggy and began a sorting process counting out 10 jars of baby food, separating them in rows in the buggy. Then it struck me that all they had in their buggy was jars of baby food and several canisters of baby formula. The mom and dad appeared to be in low conversation like they were worried and checking twice everything they had. I continued to play (at a respectful distance) with the baby.
While I stood there, I prayed “Lord this could be my children” and I felt in my heart that they were concerned about the amount in their buggy…
To read the rest of Denise’s story, click here.
It’s a bit long, but here’s the upshot of it: The young husband is about to go away to serve in the military, and he and his wife were trying to stockpile plenty of food for the baby, as the Mom’s transportation options are limited. When they got to the register, they couldn’t afford what they had selected (nothing but baby food), so Denise paid for them.
But there are many stories like this in our community, and while she’s got a really big heart, Denise can’t help them all out of her own pocket. So help out Harvest Hope.
"I'll prove that wall-crawler's a menace if it's the last thing I ever do!"
Forgot to post this yesterday when I saw the news:
Peter Parker isn’t the only man trying to hide his identity by donning a Spider-Man mask.
A robber wearing the web slinger’s mask was spotted in two robberies June 11 in the Midlands.
In the first incident, the masked man and an accomplice swung into Computer MD in the 4400 block of St. Andrews Road, swiped four laptops and ran out the front door, Lexington County deputies say.
The store’s owner tried to chase them but couldn’t catch the men before they made off for the woods…
This, of course, vindicates J. Jonah Jameson, who’s been telling the world that webhead is a crook for years.
We editor types always know what’s really going on.
I’m embarrassed to admit that, because I don’t think it’s happened since the first time I was eligible to vote in 1972. But I was not in town Tuesday, and when I tried to determine last week what I would be missing so that I could vote absentee, I was frustrated.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything, beyond the opportunity to register a symbolic protest vote against Joe Wilson. I guess I could have voted for my neighbor Bill Banning for county treasurer. But you know, I haven’t the slightest idea whether he or incumbent Jim Eckstrom (who won easily) would have been better in the post. Which is the main reason why the position should not be elective.
Oh, as for my bid to find out what I was missing — I went to the project Vote Smart site to check and see what would be on the ballot in my precinct, and ran into two problems: There were no county races listed, and I think the state House district was wrong. At least, Kenny Bingham recently told me that I had been drawn into his district, and Vote Smart still had me in Rick Quinn’s. So I don’t know. In any case, neither had serious opposition that I heard about.
Add to that the mess with all the challengers thrown off the ballot, and I was pretty sure (and still am) that I was missing no significant opportunities.
Still, I feel bad about it. And I’m not consoled by knowing that almost no one else voted (turnout was a record-low 11.85 percent of eligible citizens). I’ve never considered myself to be in the same category as voting slackers. I suppose next I’m going to take up watching reality TV 10 hours a day.
Anyway, a few brief observations about what did happen:
Y’all have any other thoughts to share? Let’s have ’em.
I met a superhero over the weekend.
Not the kind in “The Avengers,” as enjoyable as that entertainment was (I actually saw it that first huge weekend, which is unusual for me). More like… did you see “Unbreakable,” about a very ordinary guy who gradually comes to realize he is invulnerable (except to water) and far stronger than a normal man?
More like that.
We had an eventful weekend. My little grandson had to go into the hospital on Friday night. He had a virus that his sister and cousins had been passing around, with fever, and because he was only three weeks old, they put him in Children’s Hospital and did a spinal tap on him. I would have thought that excessive, except his father, my elder son, actually had meningitis when he was only two weeks old, and it was caught just in time.
The good news, the wonderful news, is that he’s OK (except for a temp slightly over normal) and is home now.
Anyway, Saturday, we were visiting him, and when we got out to the car, it had a flat. I got out all the gear to change it, including one of those ridiculous little dogleg tire irons that never work. And true to form, this one did not. Oh, I got three of the lug nuts off, by standing on it to loosen them. But by then the too-soft metal at the fitting had bent, and it wouldn’t grip the remaining nuts.
So we called the roadside assist number on our insurance card, and waited.
After awhile a man parked next to us in a plain dark-blue pickup. No markings, and certainly not the wrecker we had expected. Very unassuming vehicle — a secret identity pickup truck, if you will.
Out of it got an ordinary, unassuming man in regular streetclothes. He looked sort of like Reginald VelJohnson, the actor known from “Family Matters” (the guy whose life Steve Urkel made miserable) and the first “Die Hard.” No uniform or coveralls or anything. It was when we saw him open his tailgate and start putting on kneepads — serious kneepads, like the ones that the Delta team wore in “Black Hack Down” — that we asked, “Are you here for us?”
Yes, as it happens, he was.
We showed him the tire. I showed him the useless, bent tire iron.
He reached into his unassuming pickup, and revealed his super power. It was … having exactly the right tool for the given situation!
He pulled out a heavy, 25-inch socket wrench with a 3/4-inch drive mounted on its rotating 1/2-inch drive. It gripped the nut tightly enough, and provided sufficient leverage, that it was easy to remove the nuts even one-handed. Like butter. Or like Superman, depending on your preferred metaphor. (I went out the next day and purchased one exactly like it. I works beautifully. Why, oh why, don’t cars come with these, instead of those useless little junior crowbars?)
Oh, but you say, any ordinary mortal could have the right tool once, in a given situation. But he went on to show that this was no fluke. We were wondering how we were going to get that tire repaired over the weekend, when the man said he could do it right there.
He opened his hood, and used jumper cables to power a small air compressor he had in the truck bed. He had the hole from a broken-off screw plugged in a couple of minutes, and slapped the tire back on. Then, he drove off into the streets of Columbia as quickly as he’d come.
The perfect wrench was one thing. The MacGyver-like rig to repair the tire was something else. I resolved that I wanted to be this guy when I grew up.
This is the kind of superhero the world needs, and I was glad to have met him.
Unfortunately, there is a postscript.
With the baby getting out of the hospital this morning, we headed to the beach. At a stop to walk the dog, my wife noticed a bubble popping out of the side of that same tire.
I checked it with a gauge, and it had 40 pounds of pressure in it, instead of the usual 30 or so. I let some air out, and we drove to a tire place (fortunately, in my iPhone I have a computer of comparable power to the one Superman had in the Fortress of Solitude, and found the biggest tire place in Aynor was 1.4 miles away). We had a new tire in about 40 minutes.
Superheroes aren’t perfect. Sometimes, in the midst of struggling against supervillains, or merely life’s pedestrian vicissitudes, they forget a key step. In this case, checking the pressure before putting the tire back on.
As Uncle Ben put it so well: With great power comes great responsibility.
Having been required to leave the house because there’s a bridal shower going on there for a family friend, I came by Barnes & Noble and got some coffee, since I hadn’t made any at breakfast.
OK, technically, I got the coffee at the Starbucks about 50 yards away (yes, I’ve become that sort of coffee snob), and came in here to browse books while I drink it. I’m looking for ideas for Father’s Day — both for my Dad, and to see what there is in paperback that I might want to ask for. I’ve found one of each…
Anyway, I passed by the “Required School Reading” table, and of course it was filled with excellent, worthwhile books, many of which were required when I was in school, plus a few more recent classics. I like browsing the school reading table. It feels so substantial and worthwhile, as well as evoking pleasurable memories, because some of these came to be favorites of mine.
Note that you can see Flowers for Algernon, which I mentioned just yesterday in a comment. There were Catch-22, and Utopia, and Emma, and A Tale of Two Cities, and other usual suspects. Then there were more recent entries, such as Freakonomics and the book that the film “The Social Network” was based on. All things that help kids think, and appreciate language, and understand their world a little better.
Then, I noticed that there were two more “Required School Reading” tables. There I found very different fare. It was all commercial, recent, crank-’em-out-on-an-assembly line “young adult” offerings. You can see them in the picture at the top of this post.
At least a plurality of them were about vampires. Teenage vampires, of course. Filled with all of the usual teenage angst, such as worrying about one’s place in society, finding true love, and of course bloodlust.
I really, really hope this was a case of the wrong sign being placed on a table. I thought of asking one of the employees, “Are these really required reading in school? If so, which school?”
But I was afraid of the answer I might get.
Image from videotape, at WISTV.com.
At least, that was his first story, according to this report from WIS. Then, he blamed it on “that lady”:
LEXINGTON COUNTY, SC (WIS) – Eleventh Circuit Solicitor Donnie Myers finds himself facing new alcohol charges after a South Carolina Highway Patrolman stopped the elected official last month on suspicions of driving under the influence…
“When you pulled out in front of me over here on before we got to Old Cherokee, you were swerve — you were driving down the middle of the road,” Alveshire told Myers.
“You know why?” Myers asks the trooper, “Because I was listening to the Carolina game and it’s good stuff,” Myers said.
“You had anything to drink?” the trooper asks. “Yeah, I had a few,” Myers responds.
The trooper tells Myers to walk to the back of his car when he spots a cup inside the car. Alveshire asks the solicitor what’s in the cup, and Myers responds that it’s some scotch that state Sen. Jake Knotts left in the car.
“Hang on a second,” the trooper tells Myers as he pulls out his radio and calls for backup. “Can I get one of y’all down here to Old Cherokee and Old Chapin?”…
Myers spends several minutes leaning on the back of his car as the trooper sits inside his vehicle working on the case. Myers changes his story as to whom the open container of alcohol belongs to. “That was her drink,” Myers yells to the trooper, referring to a woman who pulls up behind the trooper out of view of the camera…
Sounds a bit like that old Maxwell Smart routine: “No? Well, would you believe…?”
I assume there will be “film at 11.” Or videotape, anyway.
It looked like the sort of facetious thing that people say on Twitter and which are quickly forgotten. Yet Katrina Shealy seems to be pinning her hopes for unseating Jake Knotts on the substance of Tweet sent in 2010.
The Tweet in question is reproduced above.
Perhaps there’s more to it, but one couldn’t find it in either the story in The State this morning, or the post by Will Folks that apparently prompted it. (The story in The State seemed to be of that new variety we’re becoming accustomed to — one that the MSM would never have reported in the past without having nailed down all the facts first, but publishes now so as not to appear out of the loop. Neither Jake nor Ms. Shealy was reached before publishing the story, which speaks of a sense of hurry.)
Here are some of the questions that the story raises in my mind:
I, along with you, await answers to all of the above.
It’s a great shame that Columbia city council voted not even to ask voters whether they would like to inject accountability into city government by moving to a strong-mayor form of government.
But it was predictable that they would do so. I feared that outcome when I saw that the council planned to vote right after a public hearing.
The proposal would have a chance put before the electorate — particularly in the fall, when a much more representative swath of the city’s voters will turn out, as compared to actual city elections.
But the kinds of people who turn up at hearings before council happens to be much the same set of people who passionately oppose such a change — even to the point, apparently, of not wanting their neighbors to have a chance to vote on it.
This is always the way. The people who are most opposed to a reform — or, to use more neutral language, a change of any kind — in the form of government are the very people most invested in the current form. And people who regularly go to council meetings tend to be people who have become comfortable with and accustomed to the current form. They’ve learned to make the existing system stand up and do what they want, so they don’t want it replaced.
I saw this on a much larger scale when we first started pressing for changing the form of state government in the early 90s. We were pushing for a more accountable system in which the will of the electorate would be more likely to be expressed in the way the executive branch of state government was run. We were seeking to replace a bewildering set of mixed-up governing arrangements that varied greatly from agency to agency (and still exists over most of state government).
The system was (and remains) far too complex and fragmented for the average citizen to understand or engage effectively. But what that meant was that the people who DID know how to make it work — experienced lawmakers, skilled bureaucrats, interest-group advocates and lobbyists — had a tremendous advantage in dealing with it. And consequently did not want it to change.
With city government, it’s more likely to be people who are very active in neighborhood associations who oppose a change that would make city administration accountable directly to one person elected citywide, rather than a hodgepodge of at-large and district representatives (with the district people having the majority).
Anyway… Columbia has missed yet another opportunity, and continues to be in the grip of a decades-long rear-guard action against progress.
A postscript… I was quite indignant that council did not wait for new members to join, since I knew that both Cameron Runyan and Moe Baddourah favored strong mayor. It seemed that anti-change incumbents were forcing a vote now to avoid losing.
But then I read in Clif LeBlanc’s report this morning, “Baddourah, who replaces Gergel, said he’s had a change of heart and would not support holding a vote this fall.”
Which really blew my mind, because I saw him on local TV news, either last night or the night before, stating his unequivocal support for strong mayor.
Clif needs to do a full, exhaustive, separate story on what in the world just happened there…
As you may know, Walid Hakim is running for SC House District 88. It is currently held by Mac Toole, who is pretty much a standard-issue Lexington County Republican.
Walid has a different approach.
First, he sent out this release yesterday:
Hakim Wins Endorsement from
SC AFL-CIOWe recently received a letter from Donna S. Dewitt, the President of the SC AFL-CIO, informing us of their decision to endorse Walid Hakim for State House:
Dear Walid:
The SC AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) met April 10th and voted to endorse your candidacy for SC HD 88.
We will be informing our affiliates in the districts with Primary opposition of our endorsement and encouraging them to assist your campaign in any way possible. We will assign key members to work with you and your staff.
While our monetary resources are limited and will be focused on our candidates with opposition, we want to assure you that we will be mobilizing our members around the issues that are important to the working men and women of South Carolina. They will know that you are the candidate the COPE Endorsement Committee has decided best represents those issues.
###
Then, he released the video above.
In it, he calls for a general strike.
On May Day.
On Al Jazeera.
I guess it’s Walid doing this because Mac Toole didn’t think of it, right? Right…
Walid is definitely going his own way, and staying true to his roots.
Something struck me when I was reading this release just now from Mia Butler Garrick:
Friends,
Today, we are just 43 days away from the Primary Election on June 12th and I need your help. Right now in South Carolina, hundreds of special interest groups lobby the good ole boy network here at the State House to vigorously maintain control of the failed status quo that continues to plague our state. They use their influence to ensure that SC remains at the bottom-of-the-best list by continuing to enact policies that wreak havoc on public education, hinder economic development and job creation and foster an environment of partisanship, nepotism and corruption at all levels of government.
I’m proud of the fact that the folks of District 79 always stand firmly against the good ole boys. We stand boldly for jobs, for small businesses, for public education, for better infrastructure and safe schools and communities. But more importantly, we stand firmly and boldly, together. My campaign has never been about me. It’s about what we can accomplish together for the future of South Carolina!
That’s why today, I’m asking all of you to step up just as you did two years ago, and show your support by volunteering now.
Election Day is Tuesday, June 12th.
Did it strike you that that sounded very much like the way the Nikki Haley presents herself to voters? As the lone beacon of transparency and virtue in a squall of self-dealing “good ol’ boys”?
Of course, the difference between them might be that Mia actually means it when she says those things. But the similarity in the general line of expression struck me…
I’m asking because I was somewhat surprised at how easily Moe Baddourah won the runoff yesterday. Nothing against Moe — I wish him all the best, and hope he’s a very successful council member — but that’s not the way I thought it would end up. I thought Daniel Coble would win, although not run away with it. I saw a Baddourah win as possible, but again, I figured it would be close.
My reasoning was as follows. I thought:
But all that reasoning added up to nothing, which leaves me speculating as to the reason it went the other way:
As far as tactics are concerned, I could just ask Moe. And I will when I see him. But I’m more interested in why the tactics worked — that is to say, I’m more curious about what the voters themselves were thinking. And since there was no exit polling, I’m asking now.
So how about it, District 3 voters? Whether you backed Baddourah or Coble, why did you do so? Your answers may bear significantly on the future course of Columbia.
Well, today’s the day for folks in Rosewood, Shandon, Melrose and other nearby parts of Columbia. Get out there and exercise your franchise.
I liked Alex Postic‘s (that is to say, Mr. Shop Tart‘s) take on the election on Facebook this morning:
Don’t forget to vote today Columbia. Either way, I think Columbia wins – and we get a neighbor on City Council.
Which is no exaggeration. Moe told me he’s like next door from the Tart — which puts him across the street from the house I lived in when I was 4 years old — and Daniel’s very close by as well.
This is the kind of politics you get when you stretch subsidiarity to the max (not the max that Paul Ryan would take it to, which would be the individual, but the max the way I’ve always understood the concept — buy I digress).
Here’s hoping that when it’s over, Columbia does indeed win.
Here are the three videos ADCO created for the Daniel Coble runoff campaign. I like the way they came out.
I think you’ll find they’re a little different from what you usually see from a political campaign.
There are no “gotchas” here. We haven’t edited the truth to try to embarrass the opponent or make him look bad. Our purpose was more journalistic, to provide the voter with information they weren’t getting from news media, to help them make up their minds. Yes, we thought Daniel looked a little better than Moe in these clips. But the clips weren’t just chosen on that basis — in fact, we thought Daniel came across better throughout the debate, although Moe handled himself well, too. They were chosen because they struck a nice balance between complete answers, more than you’d get on TV news, without being so lengthy that the viewer wouldn’t lose interest and go away. (For instance, there were some really pertinent passages when the candidates discussed an important issue at some length — such as when Coble explained his position on water and sewer funds being used in the general fund, and did a good job with it — but we felt they were too long for this purpose.)
At the end of this forum, before the Melrose Neighborhood Association on Monday night, Moe Baddourah thanked the group and praised the format. He liked it because he wasn’t limited to 30-second answers as in some such gatherings. I think he was right, and you should be able to see some of what he liked about the format in these clips, even though we didn’t use some of the longer answers.
Each of the answers you see is mostly complete and unedited. I say “mostly” because in several cases, we trimmed the beginning of an answer and started the clip at the point when the candidate settled down to really answering the question — to the extent that he actually did answer it, which didn’t always happen.
You might watch these and decide you prefer Moe to Daniel, although I think most people will not. In any case, you can get a pretty good sense from watching them which of them approaches issues, and public service, in the way that you would prefer an elected representative to do.
I could elaborate here on the three clips and why we chose them, but I’d rather that those of you who are interested (particularly those who live in Columbia’s third district) would look at them with a fresh eye first, and after I see your reaction, I’ll elaborate.
Enjoy.
Some readers seemed confused earlier as to what an “endorsement” of a candidate looked like. It looks like this, in The State today:
COLUMBIA City Council District 3 runoff opponents Moe Baddourah and Daniel Coble are solid candidates who share common priorities, from focusing on district needs to improving public safety and providing long-term funding for the public bus system.
They also share a common drawback: We fear their strong focus on constituent and district needs could lead them to put those interests ahead of more important citywide issues.
While the two men are pretty even in many ways, Mr. Coble does distinguish himself as the better candidate. His knowledge and understanding of city issues and how government works stood out among all candidates in the just-concluded council races….
Now I can’t say it’s a ringing, unequivocal endorsement. Daniel is The State‘s second choice for the seat. My old colleagues initially endorsed Jenny Isgett, who did not make it into the runoff.
Now if I did endorse someone, it would be Daniel. It so happens that the candidate ADCO is doing work for is the one I would choose were I endorsing. But wait, you say! Isn’t my saying that an endorsement?
Not to me. I’ve spent many years of my life doing endorsements, and I have a very clear idea of what one is. To me, an endorsement involves setting forth a series of arguments as to why someone is the better candidate. As I’ve said thousands of times over the years, the value in an endorsement is the reasons why, not the mere who.
That goes to the core of why newspapers do endorsements (and should do endorsements). It doesn’t matter whether a reader ultimately agrees with the endorsement or not. It is valuable to have considered the arguments, whether you accept them in the end or not. For having spent that time reading a carefully constructed case for a candidate, your own ultimate decision will have been better-considered.
The endorsement in The State today is pretty good. It’s not exactly what I would have written, and were I still the editor I’d have made some changes in the piece, but I generally agree with the points made.
Carl Evans over at USC brings this to my attention:
Friends,
Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-Amerian reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize, will be speaking in Gambrell Hall this Wednesday, April 11, at 6:00 p.m. If you care about social justice and especially about issues facing women around the globe you will be interested in WuDunn’s talk.
WuDunn is the author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, co-written with her husband Nicholas Kristoff, a New York Times op-ed writer.
There is also a related colloquium at Columbia College this evening, April 9, from 6-7 p.m. Please read the attachment for additional details about both the lecture and the colloquium.
Regards,
Carl
Personally, I’m not familiar with her work, but I’m a great admirer of her husband’s, and I sense that she’s been a strong influence on him.
Because of his work, I would not expect this lecture to be a string of feminist cliches. I expect that her critique is reality-based, like Kristof’s, based on what she’s actually seen in the world.
That’s one of the things I really appreciate about Kristof. He’s the kind of liberal who routinely flies in the face of the left’s (and anyone else’s) orthodoxy, based on his first-hand knowledge of real conditions. For instance, he’s the guy who persuaded me of how indefensible the Democratic position was on the Colombia Free Trade agreement several years back.
As for the plight of women, there’s little room for argument over the outrages he exposes in the parts of the world where “war on women” wouldn’t actually be true and not absurd hyperbole. I wouldn’t be surprised if his wife has a similarly compelling message. Perhaps even more so.
Got this this morning from Daniel Coble:
In Tuesday’s District 3 City Council three-way race, I came within 60 votes of catching front-runner Moe Baddourah and leading the District. In less than two weeks, I face him again in a run-off election for the City Council seat. I am very gratified for the support of friends and neighbors within the District and around Columbia for getting me to this point!! A lot rides on this election. And with your help, we will win Tuesday, April 17.
The contrast between Mr. Baddourah’s priorities and my own for serving Columbia could not be more stark. While Baddourah has run his campaign solely on the interests of businesses, I am committed to a more balanced approach that protects neighborhoods while growing our businesses and keeping them prosperous. The result of Baddourah’s narrowly focused campaign would block progress for our City and put at risk the capacity of the City to fully fund essential services like law enforcement. He hasn’t answered how he would replace lost revenue. And he hasn’t said what services should be cut.
My focus on protecting our City’s essential services like public safety and neighborhood protection is highlighted by the endorsement of our campaign by local leaders such as Sheriff Leon Lott and current District 3 City Council Representative Dr. Belinda Gergel. I want to maintain the City’s capacity to help District 3 residents, small businesses, and our economy. And know that I will represent your interests and all other important issues in our District to continue to strengthen our great city! I would be honored to represent District 3 and to carry forward the important priorities of our community that are the backbone of our campaign:
- Protecting our Neighborhoods
- Public Safety and Crime Reduction
- Environmental Protection and Sustainability Programs
- Economic and Local Business Development
- Development of our Cultural and Arts Communities
- Improved Public Transportation
- Important Historic Preservation
- Meeting the Needs of District 3 and Columbia Residents!
I am putting together a plan of action to win on April 17. But I need your help to make it possible. Would you support my candidacy by making a donation NOW to support this larger effort? Your gift of $1000, $500, $250, $100, $50 or whatever you choose or are able to give (donations of any size are greatly appreciated and will be well used), would help me communicate and get out supporters for the run-off election.
In order to help, you can give online here or mail your donations to:
Coble for Council
PO Box 50524
Columbia, SC 29250Our city is a breathing, vibrant and growing community. Every new generation of Columbia has been tasked with the job of re-inventing our community anew. This is the work before us. And with your help now, we will make this new vision a reality.
I haven’t received anything from Moe Baddourah. I need to give him a call and make sure I’m on his email list…
