Category Archives: Out There

Another GOP official who “likes” cop-killing post

Politico is now reporting that “Corey Norris,” whom it identifies as “a district director for the Lexington County GOP,” has also approving posted the “When Should You Shoot a Cop” post, saying, “VERY good article. Think about it.”

I don’t know whether that’s the same guy as this Cory Norris out of Chapin, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Sample Tweet:

If you live with your boot on the throat of the masses, don’t be surprised if your ankle eventually gets broken.

Jeff Mattox is looking less like an aberration. As the Sage of Wichita used to say, “That’s twice. Once more and it’s a trend, and we can send it to Lifestyles.”

You need to be careful about your associations

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This devil’s bargain that the GOP has made with the Tea Party since the GOP’s traumatic loss in 2008 — which seems to have driven the party half-mad with grief, and into the arms of the snake-flag crowd — just looks worse and worse. And not just from the perspective of UnPartisans like me. I would feel a lot worse about it were I a Republican. I mean a real one — of the Lincoln, Eisenhower, or Reagan variety.

Of course, the Democrats are eating it up; they think it’s great — the crazier their opponents get, the better they like it.

For the rest of us, watching these extremists drag down the GOP in the debt “debate,” and the GOP still clinging hard enough to drag the country and the world’s economy down with it, is pretty agonizing.

And if you’re a Republican, this has to be really uncomfortable. First, they helped people like Nikki Haley roll right over the actual conservatives like Henry McMaster (and Bob Inglis, and others).

And then, you have to watch stuff like this Kershaw County “when to shoot a cop” thing just getting worse and worse. It gets hard to disassociate yourself from a guy like Jeff Mattox, as much as you’d like to.

Last night, the picture above cropped up in two places — in an e-mail from the Democratic Party, and in a post by Will Folks. It purports to show Jeff Mattox, the Kershaw County GOP co-chair and member of Kershaw County Patriots (which, according to the Camden paper, he calls a Tea Party group) with you-know-who.

If you’re a mainstream Republican, you cringe in private at Nikki Haley being your governor, if you’re paying attention. Now you have to face the fact that all this anti-government stuff takes you to some pretty crazy places. It’s a matter of degrees, a series of steps.

One step: Mere anti-government rhetoric, with a hint of menace. Gov. Haley likes to say people in government “are incredibly scared and it’s a beautiful thing.”
Another step: This Mattox guy “likes” the cop-killing post, but says he doesn’t really want to kill cops: “No. It’s just kind of a conversation.” Eloquent defense, huh?
Next step: “Basic logic dictates that you either have an obligation to LET ‘law enforcers’ have their way with you, or you have the right to STOP them from doing so, which will almost always require killing them.”

And then you have cops in Kershaw County going around wearing body armor.

It’s all connected. And it’s no wonder that Matt Moore and others over at party HQ are trying to cut themselves off from the more extreme end of the rope.

GOP official likes “when to shoot a cop” link

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First, the Facebook page of a Tea Party-related group called “Kershaw County Patriots” posts a link to a blog article headlined, “When Should You Shoot A Cop.” A sample of that content:

Pick any example of abuse of power, whether it is the fascist “war on drugs,” the police thuggery that has become so common, the random stops and searches now routinely carried out in the name of “security” (e.g., at airports, “border checkpoints” that aren’t even at the border, “sobriety checkpoints,” and so on), or anything else. Now ask yourself the uncomfortable question: If it’s wrong for cops to do these things, doesn’t that imply that the people have a right to RESIST such actions? Of course, state mercenaries don’t take kindly to being resisted, even non-violently. If you question their right to detain you, interrogate you, search you, invade your home, and so on, you are very likely to be tasered, physically assaulted, kidnapped, put in a cage, or shot. If a cop decides to treat you like livestock, whether he does it “legally” or not, you will usually have only two options: submit, or kill the cop. You can’t resist a cop ”just a little” and get away with it. He will always call in more of his fellow gang members, until you are subdued or dead.

Basic logic dictates that you either have an obligation to LET “law enforcers” have their way with you, or you have the right to STOP them from doing so, which will almost always require killing them. (Politely asking fascists to not be fascists has a very poor track record.)

The Facebook link, by “Marlene Motley,” includes this commentary:

‎’If politicians think that they have the right to impose any “law” they want, and cops have the attitude that, as long as it’s called “law,” they will enforce it, what is there to prevent complete tyranny? Not the consciences of the “law-makers” or their hired thugs, obviously. And not any election or petition to the politicians. When tyrants define what counts as “law,” then by definition it is up to the “law-breakers” to combat tyranny.’

Then, Jeff Mattox, who has been identified by Politico and the Camden paper as “a co-chair” of the Kershaw County Republican Party, tells the world that he “Likes” the Facebook post.

The Camden Chronicle-Independent quotes Mattox as explaining:

Police sometimes do overstep their bounds… but advocate shooting a cop? No. It’s just kind of a conversation.

The Camden cops are kind of upset, according to the local paper. And they’re not fooling around, according to Politico: “Local police are reportedly wearing body armor in response to the post.”

I haven’t seen anything like this since G. Gordon Liddy recommended dealing with cops with a “head shot.” How about you?

We don’t know what the baby is, but we know what the parents are

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Here’s a weirdie to end your Friday with:

Couple’s gender secret for baby touches off debate

By LEANNE ITALIE
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Ridiculous or ultra-enlightened? A Toronto couple’s decision to keep the gender of their 4-month-old baby a secret has touched off a sometimes nasty debate over how far parents should go in protecting young ones from society’s boy-girl biases.

Kathy Witterick and David Stocker recently landed on the front page of the Toronto Star, explaining that they hope their third child, Storm, can remain untouched by the connotations of pink versus blue, male versus female, long enough to make up his or her own mind.

The decision has online haters and supporters of the family on hyperdrive. Child development experts, meanwhile, question the impact on the cherubic infant later in life and whether the couple has gone too far in their quest for gender neutrality….

Make up his or her mind about WHAT? I mean, that should be a fairly simple process. The baby is in the bathtub or being changed, looks down, and the mystery is solved. Mind made up. Then the baby can turn his/her full attention to pursuing a legal name change…

An idea that is, was, and always will be bad

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Unfortunately, the “defund the schools” crowd was encouraged by the margin of the annual defeat of their execrable tuition-tax-credit proposal:

Nearly all lawmakers have their minds made up at this point on the topic, which repeatedly has surfaced since 2004 when school choice advocates, led by South Carolinians for Responsible Government, first introduced a school tax credit bill.

But advocates say they will continue the fight.

“We’re gaining ground every year,” said state Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Beaufort, a tax credit supporter. “This was the closest vote yet.”

The death knell for this year’s bill was its price tag, according to several lawmakers….

The price tag, of course, is not the reason why anyone with even the slightest sense of responsibility to South Carolina should vote against this thing. The reasons are… you know what? Never mind. I got fed up with repeating all the reasons why this is an awful idea years and years ago, really by the time I started my old blog. It’s just so totally without merit. And it’s dead for this year now, so why even bother looking up the links to when I said it all over and over before, much less repeating myself?

But I know that next year, we’ll have the whole ridiculous argument again. You know why? Two reasons:

There’s a whole cottage industry of interest groups that are funded specifically to push this.
The extremes of the Republican Party have begun to become the core, with recent gains by the Tea Party. Hence the close vote this time, several months after the Tea Party achieved its zenith.

So I’ll just gather up all the painfully obvious arguments against sometime between now and then. Might as well. It’s not like we’re ever going to spend serious time in the Legislature discussing anything that might actually improve the quality of education in South Carolina — like school district consolidation, or empowering principals to hire and fire freely, or merit pay.

No, we’re just going to keep having this same pointless, monotonous argument over and over, year after year. And getting nowhere.

Slight delay in the end of the world

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A couple of quick pop-culture references, and Kathryn will be grateful that neither is to “The Godfather” (don’t worry, fans, I’m sure I’ll get back to the Corleones soon enough). The first is that I’m feeling sort of like Billy Jack…

I want you to know… that I try. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me that I’m supposed to control my tendency to be a wiseacre, and be passive and respectful of other people’s beliefs like they are, I try. I really try. Though when I see this guy… who should know to keep quiet after this weekend… and I see him speaking up again, and getting quoted, and I think of the number of months that we’re probably going to have to keep hearing about it… I just go BERSERK!

I’m referring, of course, to the news that this Harold Camping guy is saying, Oops, the Rapture’s gonna come in October now.

The second cultural reference is more obscure. It’s to The Dirty Dozen. No, not the movie, but the (much superior) E.M. Nathanson novel on which it was based. The novel is so little-remembered that I had trouble finding a full preview of it on Google Books to check my quote. But near the end of the book, when Samson Posey, a Ute Indian, tries to perform a Sun Dance to get the weather to clear over Normandy, and one of the other 11 guys starts making fun of him, suggesting he’s doing a rain dance by mistake, an Army chaplain standing nearby says “Don’t mock him, fellow! Whatever your beliefs — if you have any — do not mock him!”

Which I’ve always thought was a pretty good thought to live by. (Look, if you want a blog that quotes Shakespeare, there are plenty of them out there.) A lot of people believe a lot of unlikely things. In this case, we have some people believing something that is directly refuted by the Bible. Which is inexplicable. OK, so Camping isn’t a biblical literalist. Cool. But we’re talking about a quote attributed to Jesus Christ himself saying No one knows the day or the hour…

But I try, I really try, not to make fun. You’ll note that I did not do so last week.

But this guy is really, really trying my patience, and my resolve to be tolerant and respectful…

Poor Mitt Romney, having to flee his strength

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How weird has it gotten in the GOP presidential field this year? This weird:

Mitt Romney is making it official. No, not that he’s officially running for the White House. (That will come soon enough.) That he really, really doesn’t like the health care reforms President Obama signed into law last year.

“If I am elected president, I will issue on my first day in office an executive order paving the way for waivers from ObamaCare for all 50 states,” Romney writes in an op-ed in Thursday’s USA Today. “Subsequently, I will call on Congress to fully repeal ObamaCare.”

The former Massachusetts governor will take his show on the road later Thursday, when he lays out his five-part health care alternative in person at an afternoon speech at the University of Michigan’s Cardiovascular Center.

The event is Romney’s most direct attempt yet to address what is widely seen as his biggest political liability: his work as governor to establish universal health-care coverage in Massachusetts…

Poor Romney. His chief virtue is that he tried, way out ahead of most of the country, to address our chief domestic challenge. And he showed that he understood one of the fundamentals of ANY reform with a chance of doing any good, that a mandate would have to be part of it. And now, to remain viable in a party that has charged over a cliff into an irrational vacuum on the issue, he has to run from that achievement.

Pretty sad.

… and what Noam Chomsky thinks

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I just shared with you a poll about what normal Americans think about killing Osama bin Laden. Here’s what Noam Chomsky thinks:

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s…

“Uncontroversially,” he said. Which sort of makes him demonstrably, inarguably, objectively — that is to say, “uncontroversially” — wrong, doesn’t it?

As usual.

Ran across that this morning, and had been meaning to share it with you all day. Talk about your outliers. Talk about your people who are very, very lucky that they live in this particular country — or in a pluralistic liberal democracy, in any case.

Chomsky ended his statement with,

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

Yep.

As you may know, bin Laden was a Chomsky admirer. Liked to quote him.

Best way to get a good grade — have a great relationship with the teacher…

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Did you see that our governor has taken a break from writing her memoirs to grade her performance in the few days she’s been in office:

By Dawndy Mercer Plank – bio | email

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) – Governor Nikki Haley is touring the state talking about her first 100 days in office, and her hits and misses so far.

The governor is boasting of changing the leadership of the Budget and Control Board, getting Medicaid reform passed, on-the-record voting permanent law, changes to the budget and getting agency directors approved within six weeks time.

We asked Governor Nikki Haley to grade herself on her first 100 days in office. “Effort, absolutely A+++!” she said. “I sleep and breathe this every day. I want everything done yesterday. For accomplishments, I’d honestly give myself an A. We are so excited for what we’ve done in 100 days. We really, really are.”…

Actually, I only heard her say “A-plus,” not “A-plus-plus-plus.” But still…

So now you know what it takes to be a great governor. That, I suppose, is why our past governors haven’t been as “fabulous” as we might have liked: they weren’t “great” wives and moms.

At least, they haven’t been as wildly fabulous as Nikki. Which she has been. Just ask her, she’ll tell you.

I tell you, folks, I’ve encountered a lot of manifestations of ego and narcissism in my going on 4 decades of closely following politics. But I’ve never encountered anything quite like what Nikki Haley has become.

Some of this might actually be a gender thing: Women can get away with a certain over-the-top enthusiasm, even about themselves, that would brand a man a major jerk. Things that a man could NOT get away with can sometimes be seen as charming when said by a woman with a nice smile.

Or maybe I’m completely off-base. I’m just groping here, trying to figure out why she gets away with this stuff…

The most absurd thing I’ve ever heard a president of the United States waste time talking about

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After a breakfast meeting this morning, as I was about to get out of my car to go into ADCO, I heard, live on the radio, the most insane presidential press conference I’ve ever heard in my life.

Barack Obama was actually taking time out of his day to address the insane birther “issue.”

Above is the image he posted on Twitpic. Here’s a story on it:

Obama’s ‘Long-Form’ Birth Certificate Is Released

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

President Obama on Wednesday posted online a copy of his “long-form” birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, hoping to finally end a long-simmering conspiracy theory among some conservatives who asserted that he was not born in the United States and was not a legitimate president.

The birth certificate, which is posted at the White House Web site, shows that Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is signed by state officials and his mother.

“The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country,” Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, wrote on the Web site Wednesday morning. Mr. Pfeiffer said on the site that Mr. Obama had authorized officials in Hawaii to release the document broadly.

In a statement to the news media Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama said he decided to release the document in an effort to end the “silliness” about his birth that threatened to distract from the serious issues facing the country.

“Over the last two and a half years, I have watched with bemusement,” he said in brief remarks. “I’ve been puzzled by the degree to which this thing just kept on going.”…

Yeah, ditto, Mr. President.

And today in the paper, I see that 41.2 percent of GOP voters in SC belief that Obama was definitely or probably born in another country. Which tells me that 41.2 percent of GOP voters should be barred from ever entering a voting booth again. Yeah, I know that there are certain constitutional problems that raises, but come on. When we talk about the drawbacks of democracy, the fact that people who would believe something like this about a guy, just because they don’t like him (for reasons that don’t bear a lot of close scrutiny, if you’re at all squeamish), get to vote just like everybody else is one of the biggies.

Oh, and for those of you who want to spend more of the precious moments you have remaining in your lives on this “issue,” here’s the president’s correspondence with the state of Hawaii Department of Health, seeking the document he posted today.

Could Obama lose? Well, yeah, but it seems unlikely given current trends

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Saw this this morning on Twitter, from Political Wire:

Yes, Obama could lose… http://pwire.at/hfiOUM

To which I responded, “Yeah, and I could conceivably WIN – anything can happen – but what are the odds?”

ANYTHING can happen over the last 19 months (things that would turn this assessment around 180 degrees), but watching the sluggish “race” for the nomination to run against him — and seeing some of the characters getting the most attention (here’s a question for you conspiracy fans: Is the “liberal media” deliberately overplaying the likes of Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin in order to undermine conservative chances?) — it seems extremely dubious.

Dubious to the point that I’d really, really appreciate it if the opposition would stop acting like he’s somehow illegitimate, and seeking to undermine everything he tries to do (like the health care reform the nation so badly needs, as inadequate as his efforts in that regard may be). Because folks, not only did he win the last election, but he’s probably going to win the next one. And I think the stronger potential GOP candidates know that, which is why we’re not seeing much activity from anyone but the extremists.

By the way, did you follow the link on that Tweet, which quoted a Salon article asserting that, if the economy doesn’t get better, “the GOP will be well-positioned to oust Obama in 2012, provided the party doesn’t nominate a fringe candidate.”

Run that by again: “…provided the party doesn’t nominate a fringe candidate.” Right now, that looks kind of like a big IF.

In 08, we were blessed by having both parties’ nominees being the less partisan options. It seems unlikely that we’ll be thus blessed in ’12. Unlike Democrats, who are cheering for the GOP extremists because they want to run against them, I hope the GOP does come up with a mainstream, sensible nominee because… as I say, ANYTHING can happen, and I’d like to reduce the chance of a having a nut job in the White House. But will that happen? I actually suspect it will. But I do worry.

Some Bachman, in case you haven’t had enough

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For those of you who may have missed Michele Bachman when she was in SC the last few days, here are some things she has said in the past, which a colleague sent to me today:

“Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009

“Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I’m not saying that that’s what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.” -Rep. Michele Bachmann, June 2009

“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” -Rep. Michele Bachmann, on the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak that happened when Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president, April 28, 2009

Hmmm. Wait a sec. This post may not be in my interest. Rep. Bachman has already been throwing around advertising money in SC, way out ahead of other prospective candidates. If she sees this, she’s likely to think, a) I’m glad to see that Brad Warthen is spreading my ideas for free, so I don’t need to send HIM any ad bucks; or b) That Brad Warthen is holding me up to ridicule, I’m not about to spend any ad bucks with HIM. Either way, I lose.

This is one reason why not many people, admire me as they might, see me as a good businessman.

Of course, I could have just shared with you what she said while she was here:

BLUFFTON, S.C. — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann told a packed tea party gathering she doesn’t think President Barack Obama is “on our side anymore” as she blamed him for a “foolish” war in Libya and high gasoline prices…

Oh, and here’s what she said on the State House steps today:

You recognize that in Washington D.C., your rights are being taken away from you…

… something that I did NOT know, by the way. You?

DeMint: Do my will or the U.S. economy gets it!

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Meant to call Robert Ariail today and suggest a cartoon idea to him. It would be based on the classic National Lampoon cover seen at right. Only it would have Jim DeMint holding the pistol to the head of the U.S. economy (some variation on Uncle Sam, perhaps), saying, “If you don’t do my will, the old guy gets it!”

I don’t know if Robert would have done it or not, but it’s the kind of thing I would have been eager to suggest to him in the morning when we worked together. Not that he necessarily would have listened. He probably would have come up with a better idea. But we’d enjoy the brainstorming process…

What brought this on? Oh, this story in the paper this morning:

DeMint to fight debt limit hike

Senator vows to block measure unless future federal deficits banned

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim DeMint, who has wrought chaos in Congress over earmarks, immigration and health care, is preparing to launch a crusade that would make those fights look tame.

DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina early in his second term, is vowing to block any vote on raising the U.S. debt ceiling unless Congress moves to amend the Constitution by banning future federal deficits.

“I will oppose any attempt to vote to raise the limit on our $14 trillion debt until Congress passes the balanced-budget amendment,” DeMint told McClatchy.

DeMint’s stance puts him on a collision course with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is warning congressional leaders of cataclysmic consequences if Congress fails to authorize a higher debt limit by mid-May, when he predicts the current $14.3 trillion ceiling will be reached.

“Defaulting on legal obligations of the United States would lead to sharply higher interest rates and borrowing costs, declining home values and reduced retirement savings for Americans,” Geithner wrote last week in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

“Default would cause a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only now starting to recover,” Geithner wrote….

Our junior senator is really something, isn’t he?

I wonder what he’s really thinking. Does he really believe that he WOULD do it, and destroy the U.S. credit rating, pulling the world down with us?

Does he think everybody ELSE believes he would, and will therefore do his will?

Does power mean this much to him?

Hey, Jim, I’m really disturbed about the towering U.S. debt, too. I have been for as long as I can remember, and never more than now. To be racking up this kind of debt when we aren’t in an existential war (and folks, the proportion of GNP going to military activities in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya is pretty small compared, say, to the kind of national effort required in WWII — or at the height of the Cold War) is pretty scary, and a testament to a lack of political will, courage and wisdom.

But the reason it’s a concern is what it could do to our economy, how it could substantially and materially affect our futures and those of our children and grandchildren. It’s not that it offends us ideologically or something.

And yet, in service of his ideology, he wants to threaten to do something potentially every bit as damaging as out-of-control debt.

Pretty scary.

Is Gov. Haley doing something responsible on health care? (If so, ssshhhh! I don’t want to get her into trouble with her base!)

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Down in this story about how Jim DeMint is putting hurting Barack Obama ahead of good health care or saving millions of dollars (and is it supposed to be news that DeMint places ideology over sound policy?), was this bit:

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley has shared DeMint’s national spotlight in opposing health care reform, challenging President Obama, first, to repeal the legislation and, later, to speed up a judicial review of its constitutionality.

Outside the spotlight, Haley also is using a $1 million federal grant to see how South Carolina might enact the law if it has to.

Wait, run that by me again? She’s doing what?

But even as she pushes against the health care law, Haley has instructed key agency heads to get ready for its implementation.

“We don’t know what the outcome will be, but for the citizens of South Carolina, we have to be prepared for whatever happens,” said Tony Keck, Haley’s new director of the state Department of Health and Human Services.

“Right now, the law of the land is health care reform,” Keck said. “Although we’re fighting it and looking to produce our own alternatives, we also have to prepare to implement it to meet the deadlines. The risk of not preparing for any eventuality is simply too high in the form of penalties from the federal government and interruption to care.”

The state is using a $1 million grant under the law to evaluate whether it will set up and run its own health insurance exchange or turn that function over to Washington, an option under the law.

Keck and new S.C. Insurance Commissioner David Black are heading up a task force, formed by a Haley executive order and to include members chosen by the General Assembly.

With its first meeting scheduled for April 15, the panel will call in experts from states that already have insurance exchanges, among them California, Massachusetts and Utah….

Normally, this would not be news, either. Away from the TV cameras, most elected officials — regardless of the wacky ideological stuff they may crank out publicly — quietly go about their duty, obeying the law and administering the government as responsibly as they are able.

It’s just that with Nikki Haley, she has gone so far out of her way to irresponsible that are NOT consistent with good stewardship — the Darla Moore fiasco comes to mind — that I find this tidbit reassuring. It may not be much, but I take comfort where I can.

Good for you, governor…

S.C. Border Patrol? Can anyone POSSIBLY think of anything more absurd for a state that can’t afford basic services?

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Well, I sort of said it all in the headline, didn’t I? In fact, I already did on Twitter early this morning; I’m just repeating myself here because not ALL my readers follow me on Twitter (even though they should). Also, this is a better place for your comments.

But here’s the report that inspired it:

The S.C. General Assembly would have to find money in its already strapped budget to pay for its version of a border patrol if the latest version of the state’s proposed immigration law wins approval.

The Illegal Immigration Enforcement Unit would fall under the supervision of the S.C. Department of Public Safety, according to a provision added Wednesday by Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington. The unit would have its own insignia, uniforms and cars, and the Department of Public Safety would have to create it as a separate entity from the S.C. Highway Patrol, which already faces a shortage of troopers.

The bill passed the Senate after a session that stretched past midnight and into Thursday morning. Senate leaders and the bill’s sponsors were determined to push immigration legislation through its chambers before the schedule gets filled with budget debates and the task of drawing new legislative districts…

Maybe this is a good thing, though. Maybe this way — authorize it, but don’t fund it — they get all this stuff out of their system so they can move on to significant issues facing the state. On the other hand, given the way they’ve approached some of the critical issues lately, maybe not.

This stuff just astounds me. The “small-gummint” people who are trashing critical services left and right, and seeing that as a GOOD thing rather than a bitter necessity, because their ideology blinds them to the realities in the world, want to create a whole new government apparatus — something that is CLEARLY a federal function, under any rational understanding of levels of government, under the principle of subsidiarity or whatever you choose to apply — to scratch this one irrational itch.

Stuff like this just makes me feel… well, perhaps Billy Jack said it best (apologies for the paraphrase, Billy):

Bernard, I want you to know… that I try. When Jean and the kids at the school tell me that I’m supposed to control my violent temper, and be passive and noncynical like they are, I try. I really try. Though when I see garbage like this… the absurdity of this idiotic moment of yours… I just go BERSERK!

Our young governor’s presumption apparently knows no bounds (and it’s kinda freaking me out)

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Been feeling the need to write this ever since I read the paper early this morning. I haven’t had time before now…

Nikki Haley kind of blew my mind on three fronts this morning, which caused me to go on a bit of a rant at breakfast (Wesley isn’t the only ranter in Columbia), along these lines:

“Haley to grade legislators.” Did you see that headline this morning? I normally eschew text-speak, but WTF? None of the lawmakers quite came out and said this, but I’ll tell you what they were thinking: “This little girl couldn’t even get called on when she raised her hand at the back of the class a year ago, and now she’s going to grade US?” This would be followed by the aforementioned “WTF?” Yep, lawmakers really think like that, the insensitive brutes. Now, before you think this is just a question of whom you like — with reactions divided between Haley fans who cheer, “Go get ’em, Nikki!” and the harrumphers who do not and never will be Haley fans — allow me to point something out to you. It would be presumptuous for anyone to do this. Back when I worked in Tennessee, some writers at one of the Nashville papers would grade all the legislators at the end of the session each year. I thought it presumptuous as all get-out, but… it was still within the bounds of acceptable commentary. And it would certainly be permissible for me to do something like that on my blog, although you would be equally free to tell me to what extent I was full of it. Just an exchange of views among citizens. But here’s the problem with Nikki doing it, in case you didn’t make it through Civics 101: She’s the governor, which means she’s the closest thing to a head of the executive branch that we’ve got (in another state, she’d be the head of the executive branch, but this is South Carolina). For the chief executive to use whatever political influence she has to harass and bully and threaten lawmakers, even in as silly a manner as this (do my will, or I’ll give you a bad grade!), smacks of bossism. Ben Tillman would have loved a device like that for keeping lawmakers in line, and Boss Crump as well. Folks, the best virtue Nikki Haley has going for her is that she advocates restructuring that would make the executive branch more accountable to the governor (and in fact, it’s their positions on reforms like that that she plans to “grade” lawmakers on). But this kind of behavior gives executive power a bad name, and gives lawmakers — who don’t want to give the governor power anyway — an excuse to blow her off, just as Mark Sanford did with his defecating piglets. And that’s what takes this beyond silly, practically to the realm of outrage. The very modest restructuring legislation that just passed the House will have tough-enough sledding in the Senate (where all such reforms go to die) without this nonsense.
“Governor takes aim at state employee benefits.” Wow. Poor Nikki. Last year, she was the darling of the national media (which is how she won the election), making the cover of Newsweek twice. Now, she feels forgotten. Through the lens of this story, you can see the little wheels turning in her head: Look at all the attention that governor in Wisconsin is getting! That’s so unfair? What’s he doing? Oh, he’s trying to take away state employees collective bargaining power. What an awesome idea! I’ll do that too, and then I can get some attention? What? Oh, drat! We don’t HAVE public employee unions in South Carolina, so I can’t strike dramatic poses fighting against them! That’s really, REALLY unfair! What, oh what am I going to do? There must be SOMETHING I can do to state employees here that will draw attention… but what? I know! I’ll go after their BENEFITS…
“The mystery man on Haley’s staff.” THIS one is so weird, that I suspect there’s a typo in it somewhere. So… Nikki has a guy on her staff who supposedly is only being paid $1 a year. He’s supposedly a government-efficiency expert who’s gonna help the gov straighten out waste and inefficiency in our gummint. He uprooted his family and moved here from Pennsylvania for the job — for the $1-a-year job. OK, this causes a lot of people to suspect there’s something else going on, and speculate that he’s waiting around for a real job that could come open soon. This he denies, or at least says he hasn’t been promised anything. But that wouldn’t be my theory anyway, given those facts. MY theory is that he’s being paid by one of those national ideological groups that flock around the Mark Sanfords of the world. Howie Rich, or Grover Norquist or some such. But he says no, that he’s living off his state employee pension from Pennsylvania. Got that? OK… The story also says he’s 32 years old. Twice. In the main body of the story, and in a graphic. After someone suggested it was a double-typo, I Tweeted John O’Connor to ask him. He Tweeted back that “No, that’s his age according to the governor’s office.” So maybe the governor’s office is wrong about his age. But if not — this guy’s able to live on a state pension (and I went back to look again, and yes, the only jobs listed in the published summary of his resume sound like state jobs) at the age of 32 — and he’s here as an expert on government efficiency? That ought to make state employees breath a sigh of relief. No way he’ll have the nerve to urge the governor to reduce their pensions, huh? Unless he’s the nerviest guy in two states. Somewhere, there’s gotta be something inaccurate in this picture, because the “facts” we have definitely don’t add up.

OK, I got all that off my chest. Now, to shift gears on you, and praise our governor for her pushiness — in that same story about state employee benefits, she promised to present lawmakers with a comprehensive tax reform plan. THAT’S the kind of presumption I can cheer for. But I’m going to hold my applause until I see whether it’s comprehensive, and whether it’s reform. The first sign will be whether she steps up and proposes to undo the execrable Act 388.

And… now that I’m cooled down a bit… I’ll go further in that backtracking direction: I still haven’t made up my mind about what I think of the bill I wrote about earlier that would do essentially what Nikki’s saying with state pensions. (Mainly because I haven’t yet seen enough about it — on something that complex and that financial, I sort of need some broad input to make up my mind.) But the truth is, I read items 2 and 3 right after reading item 1 this morning, so it all looked bad while I was in that mood.

And now that I’m looking at them again before hitting “Publish,” I’m still kinda freaked out…

Some other candidate please put me on your campaign e-release list — and hurry!

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Today, I received TWO e-mails from the aforementioned campaign to draft, of all people, Donald Trump, to be, of all things, President of the United States.

Never mind what they were about; it’s the number of them that gets me.

This is disturbing. It rattles my sense of proportion and perspective.

Please… I know the other campaigns are taking their time getting organized this time, compared to the pre-2008 rush, but some of y’all please put me on your mailing list, now. Someone relatively (and I stress relatively) sensible, like Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney.

(Funny, after thinking they were a little out there when they were running against John McCain, I’m seeing those guys as relatively sensible. Shows how much the GOP has shifted since then. In 2008, Romney was DeMint’s guy. Today, he’s … the Father of Obamacare. Who knew?)

Wait a sec — someone was paying THIS person to design clothes?

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Well, you’ve probably heard the shocking news about John Galliano.

Not that he was fired by Christian Dior.

Not that he said all sorts of disgusting, vicious, antiSemitic things.

No, I’m going to the shocking fact that existed before any of that. The one I discovered when I heard of him for the first time, a couple of days ago, and I went “who’s that?” and I looked to see, and was totally stunned that somebody — a name designer house, in fact — was paying this person to design clothes.

I can’t post any picture to support my shock here, because I can’t seem to find anything in the public domain. So I will refer you to pictures of him elsewhere, courtesy of Google Images. Such as this one. And this one. And this one. And this one.

Or the first one I saw, in the WSJ the other day.

And now, if you’ve looked at any of those links, you’re wondering the same thing I am — having had a look at his own, personal expression of taste, who would pay him to design anything?

Dior, apparently. But why, I don’t know.

That’s a whole universe that I just do not get… and I don’t think I want to. You want answers to fashion and stuff like that, check with my friend The Shop Tart.

bradwarthen.com

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