Category Archives: South Carolina

Anybody agree with Barrett about the Navy brig?

29 Replies

Now to the substance of what Mullins McLeod was getting on Gresham Barrett about.

As I mentioned before in one of my last columns for the paper, Rep. Barrett didn’t seem to have a reason for running for governor. He could clearly state what he wanted to do, or anything special that he brought to the job (which is probably why he dodged talking to me for a couple of weeks, until I got really insufferable with one of his staffers — avoiding free media is just bizarre behavior in a gubernatorial candidate, and it really stood out), which was not good.

Now, he’s apparently decided he wants to grab attention and break out of the pack in the worst way — which is exactly what he’s done.

In the playbook of the kind of politician who has a very low opinion of the electorate, he’s doing everything right: He’s appealing to xenophobia, to the Not In My Backyard mentality, to insecurity, and sticking it to the administration that happens to be of the other party. He accomplishes all that by griping loudly and obnoxiously about the idea of the Obama administration bringing “detainees” from Guantanamo to the Navy Brig in Charleston.

Folks, I’d just as soon they stay in Gitmo, because I’ve always thought that was an excellent place to keep them, practically speaking. First, it’s off our soil, which keeps them in limbo as far as our legal system is concerned. You’ll say, “But that’s just what’s WRONG with Gitmo,” but the fact is that prisoners who are taken in such unconventional warfare, many of whom are sworn to do anything to harm Americans if given the chance, are different either from people arrested in this country under civil laws or captured in a conventional conflict.

And it’s secure as all get-out.

But… and this is a big “but”… as convenient as it might be for us to keep people whom we believe to be terrorists on a sort of Devil’s Island, as practical as it might be — it hasn’t been good for our country. Why? Because we’re not the 19th century French. We aren’t governed by a Napoleonic Code. We’re all about innocence until proven guilty. And while we may sound like damnable fools for extending such niceties to people who thought 9/11 was really cool and would like to see another, we do stand for certain things, and Gitmo has given this country a huge black eye that it can’t afford. We have to be better than that.

For that reason, even if John McCain had been elected instead of Obama, we’d be closing Guantanamo. (As Lindsey Graham says, we might have done it in a more organized manner, but we’d still be doing it.) And finding a secure place to put those people is part of that process. Guess what? Our allies don’t want them. So we’re stuck with them.

And that makes the brig down in Charleston as good a place as any. Hey, I don’t want them there, but sometimes, somebody besides our men and women in uniform has to put up with something they don’t like in our nation’s greater interest in this War on Terror.

And does anyone truly doubt the ability of the United States Navy to keep those people secure there? I don’t. I suspect we could always transfer up a few more Marines from Guantanamo if we think we don’t have enough security there. It certainly fits the brig’s mission, which is officially stated as follows:

The mission of the Naval Consolidated Brig Charleston is to ensure the security, good order, discipline, and safety of prisoners and detained personnel; to retrain and restore the maximum number of personnel to honorable service; to prepare prisoners for return to civilian life as productive citizens; to prepare long term prisoners for transfer to the Federal Bureau of Prisons or the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks; and when directed by superior authority, detain enemy combatants under laws of war.

So basically, Rep. Barrett’s attempt to score points on this issue is ugly, petty, and insulting.

Just for the sake of argument, does anyone agree with him?

Mullins grabs some attention, but fails on civility

17 Replies

You may recall that I haven’t been too impressed with Mullins McLeod. I’ve generally dismissed his campaign as being… what’s the word… trite, I suppose. His campaign releases have sort of struck a generic populist pose, trying to project him as a regular guy who’s tired, just as you good people out there are, of all them blamed politicians and their shenanigans.

That pose is tiresome enough when done well, but as I said, his populist pronouncements have been so vanilla, as that genre goes, so as to be easily forgettable five minutes later. As I said back here, Mullins just hasn’t been able to get a hit in his few at-bats.

Well, he made a concerted effort to get on base yesterday, when he told Gresham Barrett to “shove it” on the Gitmo prisoners issue. Well, Gresham certainly deserved to have someone call him on his really ugly NIMBY ploy for attention, but while it might be cool for, say, a Dick Harpootlian to say something like that (except that Dick would be more imaginative, and he’d say it in Dwight’s behalf, not Mullins’), that’s not the kind of language we need from one who would be governor.

So basically, Mullins has managed briefly to get our attention by passing first and running the basepaths, but he’s immediately alienated us by coming into seconds with sharpened spikes high, a la Ty Cobb. In other words, the first time he gets our attention, he fails the civility test.

Hey, if we wanted a guy who talks like this as governor, we could turn to Joe Wilson.

That guy’s a governor? You’re kidding, right?

12 Replies

SenatorJonCorzine

One thing you’ve got to hand to Mark Sanford — he  looks like a governor, even though he has generally not acted like one. This is a key to his electoral success.

I remember back before he was elected — I guess it was about this time in 2001 — he sent out Christmas cards with pictures of himself with his family. As soon as he received his, Sen. John Courson said to me (and you’ve got to imagine that booming bullfrog voice of his saying it), “Faaahhhn lookin’ family! Kennedyesque…” and said that on the basis of that picture, he expected Sanford to be our next governor.

Anyway, I’m reminded of that today, having just seen a picture of Jon Corzine for the first time (this was on the front of the WSJ). As I previously noted, unlike the national media, I don’t pay attention to state elections in other states because they have nothing to do with me. People elect their governors for their own reasons (sometimes things as superficial as how they look, although of course that’s not the only reason South Carolinians went for Sanford in 2002), reasons that I cannot infer meaningfully from afar, so I don’t try to do so.

Anyway, my reaction on seeing this guy for the first time as he was on his way out (having lost yesterday, for those of you who pay even less attention than I do), was this: “What? This guy is the governor of an actual state? You’re kidding. He looks like a college professor, and maybe not even an American college professor at that. He looks more like Leon Trotsky than a guy who could get elected in this country.” And what’s that he’s got in the back in this picture? Is that a ducktail?

I realize that standards of political pulchritude vary from state to state, that we would elect people in South Carolina that New Jerseyites (or whatever you call them) would never take a second look at, and vice versa. But if I had tried to imagine somebody who could get elected up there and not down here, I would have pictured a guy who would have looked at home hanging around in front of Satriani’s Pork Store with Tony Soprano. Yeah, I realize such stereotypes are the bane of New Jerseyians, who deserve better, but that I could have believed in. Whereas this Corzine guy … if Tony had shown up for his first therapy session and his shrink had looked like this instead of like Lorraine Bracco (and that’s the only role I could imagine a guy who looks like this filling on that show about north Jersey), he would have turned around and walked out.

No wonder this Trotsky-looking character lost. That Christie looks like a regular guy, a guy you might actually imagine being in the, uh, sanitation business.

What were Richland council members doing in China?

9 Replies

OK, now that it’s been two weeks since this was in the paper:

With four members on their way home from China, one under the weather and a sixth with a scheduling conflict, Richland County Council couldn’t hold its regular meeting Tuesday.

Chairman Paul Livingston said he couldn’t remember another instance in his 19 years on the council when a meeting was canceled because not enough members showed up.

Absent were Joyce Dickerson, Norman Jackson, Damon Jeter and Gwendolyn Davis Kennedy. They went on a nine-day trip to China with the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce.

Councilman Jim Manning called in sick and Kelvin Washington had to work, Livingston said.

“I know folks can sometimes have a legitimate reason for not attending,” the chairman said, “but, still, it’s embarrassing not to have a quorum.”

After waiting about 20 minutes, he canceled the meeting. The 211-page agenda listed 40 items of business.

… I’ll go ahead and ask the question: What were these four council members (one of whom was voted out of office for an unjustifiable junket to Hawaiit, but was inexplicably returned to the council by voters in the last election) doing in China?

Anybody who knows the answer, please speak up. Maybe the explanation has been published somewhere, and I missed it.

You got that right, Logan (I mean, Daniel)

Leave a reply

Sometimes Twitter allows you to say all that needs to be said about a given subject, and Greenville’s Logan Stewart achieved that this morning with her comment on a certain event coming up tonight:

LOL… yes // RT @danielboan: 10 candidates, 2 parties, and 1 debate sounds like the worst idea I have ever heard

You got that right, Logan….

Oh, wait — that @danielboan means HE said it, and you’re agreeing.

OK. You got that right, Daniel…

C’est moi, l’ancien éditorialiste

3 Replies

Remember when I was interviewed last month by Philippe Boulet-Gercourt, the U.S. Bureau Chief for Le Nouvel Observateur, France’s largest weekly newsmagazine? Well, I was. And a few days ago I wrote to Philippe asking if his piece had run. He wrote back to say yes, a couple of weeks ago, and to share the link.

Here, of course, is my favorite part:

Mais «je ne crois pas que Joe Wilson soit raciste, confie Brad Warthen, ancien éditorialiste du «State», le quotidien local. C’est plutôt une réaction très américaine contre le gouvernement, une tradition encore plus forte chez les Blancs de Caroline du Sud, cette idée que personne ne doit pouvoir nous dire ce que l’on doit faire». La diabolisation d’Obama, en somme, ne serait qu’une variante du vieux procès intenté aux démocrates : «Clinton était une fripouille, il ne s’intéressait qu’à lui, juge Rich Bolen, le républicain de Lexington. Obama, lui, est très idéologique, il est un socialiste de conviction. C’est bien plus dangereux.»

Now personally, I don’t recollect having said all that there Paris talk, but I reckon I did. Seriously, from what I can make out of it (and Philippe was right, although I can’t speak French at all, my background in Spanish and Latin enables me to make out, roughly, what is being said in written French — it’s the pronunciation that foxes me), Philippe quoted me correctly.

As for being an ancien éditorialiste — well yeah, I have a few gray hairs, but come on. It’s interesting the way the same word will come to us through Norman influences and come to mean something quite different. Idioms are cool, but confusing.

Splitting the crucial “Steve” vote

5 Replies

For years, I’ve been telling Steve Morrison that he should run for office. Every time I hear him speak to a community group, I am struck by his quiet conviction, by the fact that he deeply cares about people, particularly the dispossessed (such as the kids in poor, rural school districts, on whose behalf he has led a long, long pro bono quest through the state’s courts).

But he always sloughed it off, modestly, thereby completing the picture of the quintessential Guy Who Ought to Run for Office But Never Does.

And now he’s thinking about running for office, and I’m not sure what to think. Says Steve:

“If I run, I will be running … to stand for visionary leadership over divisiveness, big-picture interests over pedestrian politics, solid management over risky alternatives and unity over racial discord.”

However, the interesting thing about this situation is that if he does run, he will bring not unity but a sword — one that will messily slice apart the set of people likely to vote for long-declared candidate Steve Benjamin.

You see what would happen, don’t you? If he runs, he and Mr. Benjamin will split the all-important People Who Will Vote for a Guy Named Steve vote. (OK, no more bogus Long-Winded Terms in Capital Letters — at least until the next post.)

Seriously, though, Morrison would likely draw from the same sources — heavily black precincts and Shandon — that Benjamin has been almost surely been counting on ever since Bob Coble dropped out. In other words, for those of you who prefer partisan terms (even in a race that should be blessedly free of such), the Democrats.

This means a likely win for Kirkman Finlay III. Which you might think is a good thing, but if you don’t, then you’ve got to look on a development that splits the Steve vote with some concern. You might say to them, “Hey, the essence of democracy is a wide-open selection, and anyone willing to run should be encouraged to do so, especially when it’s a good guy like Steve Morrison.” Which would be the Civics 101 thing to say. But there is a truth universally acknowledge in politics, that a single man in possession of a good fortune… no wait… wrong cliche. What I meant was, there is a truth universally acknowledged in politics, which is that once a guy with whom you might be expected to agree on a lot of things puts in a lot of time and money on the campaign trail, if you announce against him, it’s personal — as in, you’ve got a beef with the guy. Or you’re carrying water for the other guy. Or something.

When I talk to Steve (Morrison), I’m going to ask him about these things, and whether they matter, or should matter. I wasn’t going to post until I HAD talked to Steve, but I needed to go ahead and post something, it having been two days since I read the news.

Thoughts?

Good news for a change: Boeing picks SC

15 Replies

It’s been a long day and I’ve got to go get me some dinner (at 9:21 p.m.), but before I do I thought I’d give y’all a place to celebrate some good news, it’s been so long since we’ve had any here in SC:

Boeing Co. said Wednesday it will open a second assembly line for its long-delayed 787 jetliner in South Carolina, expanding beyond its longtime manufacturing base in Washington state.

The Chicago-based airplane maker said it chose North Charleston over Everett, Wash., because the location worked best as the company boosts production of the mid-size jet, designed to carry up to 250 passengers.

Boeing already operates a factory in North Charleston that makes 787 parts and owns a 50-percent stake in another plant there that also makes sections of the plane…

So, yea us!

And don’t you DARE let SC opt out of health care reform

42 Replies

Here’s the thing that really frosts me about this health care debate: One of the little bargaining chips offered by those milquetoast “liberals” who don’t have the guts to stand up for the public option (and seriously, a “liberal Democrat” who won’t stand up for single-payer or something equally sweeping is a waste of skin) is the idea of letting states “opt out.” For instance, from the WSJ story I mentioned earlier:

Mr. Reid announced his support Monday for a government-run health plan — the so-called public option — while adding an escape clause for states that don’t want to participate.

OK, so you’re going to subject me to all this hullabaloo — the townhall meetings, the “You lie!” nonsense, all of this — and in the end, even if you get the guts to institute the public option, you’re going to deny it to me and mine?

Think about it, folks: If only one state in the union opted out, which state do you think it would be? Hmmm, let’s see … could it be the one that fired on Fort Sumter? Could it be the one where the governor wanted to lie down in front of the truck delivering the stimulus? Could it be the home of Joe “You Lie” Wilson and the “We Don’t Care How You Did It Up North” bumper stickers? Could it be the state with the highest number of elected radical libertarians (on the Eastern Seaboard, anyway)?

As the former governor of the state that would probably be the second one to opt out used to say, “You betcha!”

And folks, that would just be too bitter a pill to swallow.

Delleney’s approach on impeachment was most promising one

5 Replies

I remain unconvinced that impeachment proceedings against Mark Sanford would be worthwhile. As you know, I believe he should have resigned by now (if nothing else, thereby sparing us from Andre Bauer’s candidacy), but I hate to see the State House stroke the gov’s narcissism with another session all about him.

And I certainly thought it appropriate that lawmakers not try to wrestle the subject to the ground in a two-day special session.

All of that said, I was encouraged that Greg Delleney at least took the most promising approach in his impeachment resolution. He didn’t mess around with all of that dull stuff about airplane rides and such, but concentrated on the one most glaring instance of dereliction of duty — the week that the governor ran off to Argentina, the trip that started this whole mess rolling:

Whereas, Governor Mark Sanford was absent from the State of South Carolina and from the United States from Thursday, June 18, 2009, until Wednesday, June 24, 2009, while in or in route to and from Argentina for reasons unrelated to his gubernatorial responsibilities; and

Whereas, from Thursday, June 18, 2009, until at least on or about Monday, June 22, 2009, Governor Sanford was not in official communication with any person in the chain of command within the Office of Governor of the State of South Carolina; and

Whereas, the Lieutenant Governor was not aware of the Governor’s absence from the State and there was no established chain of command or protocol for the exercise of the executive authority of the State; and

Whereas, the Governor intentionally and clandestinely evaded South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents assigned to secure his safety in order to effect his absence from the State; and

Whereas, the Governor directed members of his staff in a manner that caused them to deceive and mislead the public officials of the State of South Carolina as well as the public of the State of South Carolina as to the Governor’s whereabouts; and

Whereas, the purpose of the Governor’s absence from the State of South Carolina served no furtherance of his duties as Governor; and

Whereas, the Governor’s conduct in being absent brought extreme dishonor and shame to the Office of Governor of South Carolina and to the reputation of the State of South Carolina, and furthermore, has caused the Office of the Governor of South Carolina and the State of South Carolina to suffer ridicule resulting in extreme shame and disgrace; and

Whereas, the Governor’s conduct and actions under these circumstances constitute serious misconduct in office pursuant to and for the purposes of Article XV, Section 1, of the Constitution of this State. Now, therefore,

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives:

That pursuant to Article XV, Section 1, of the Constitution of South Carolina, 1895, the Governor of South Carolina, the Honorable Marshall C. Sanford, Jr., is impeached for serious misconduct in office.

Is that enough to warrant impeachment? Maybe not. But it certainly makes the case that this guy shouldn’t be governor, which is not quite the same thing, is it?

Delleney sounds (almost) like my kind of conservative

1 Reply

Not really knowing Greg Delleney, I took some interest in this mini-profile John O’Connor included in his story today:

Often quiet and funny, Delleney is a member of a loose-knit – and often low-brow – lawmaker lunch group, the House Bi-Partisan Eatin’ Caucus.

Prior to this year, Delleney was not among Sanford’s chief critics. “I agreed with him more than I disagreed with him.”

Chester County GOP chairwoman Sandra Stroman said she has known Delleney, who served in the Navy for three years, for 15 years.

“He’s generally a very quiet person,” she said. “He listens a lot.”

Though many South Carolinians are tired of hearing about Sanford, Stroman thinks Chester Republicans support Delleney.

“I don’t think it’s personal,” Stroman said. “Greg Delleney is a man who believes in right and wrong, and I think he comes down on the side of right every time.”

Delleney is among the strongest right-to-life supporters in the Legislature, typically introducing a new bill each year to limit access to abortions.

This year, Delleney successfully shepherded through the House a bill that requires a 24-hour wait before a woman can receive an abortion. He also scuttled a bill that would have provided dating violence counseling for teens by adding an amendment restricting the counseling to heterosexual couples.

Delleney has critics.

“I like Greg. He is very passionate about what he believes,” said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg. “My problem is he is foisting his moral beliefs on public policy. I’m not surprised he’s pushing this, particularly when sex is involved.”

That makes him sound, in general terms, like the kind of conservative I like — as opposed to the Sanford hyperlibertarian type, or the type that gets extremely worked up over illegal immigration. I much prefer the Brownbacks and the Huckabees to the Sanfords and the DeMints.

Not that I would do everything he does. I don’t think I would have adding the hetero clause to the violence counseling thing. That’s the kind of making-an-issue-of-something-that-isn’t-an-issue stuff where social conservatives lose me (at least, that’s the impression I remember having at the time).

So he’s not exactly the kind of conservative I’d be were I to consent to being called a conservative (or a liberal, or any of those oversimplifications). I’m still more the John McCain type.

Actually, Rex faces TWO serious contenders

1 Reply

As I read this this morning:

Rex, the state superintendent of education, is known by more of those surveyed than the other Democrats running for governor. More than 60 percent recognized his name. Forty-one percent had a favorable impression of Rex. In contrast, a majority of those surveyed did not know the four other Democratic contenders — Columbia attorney Dwight Drake, state Sen. Robert Ford of Charleston, Charleston attorney Mullins McLeod and state Sen. Vincent Sheheen of Camden.

… I thought, No, there are not four other contenders. Really, there are two — Sheheen and Drake.

News stories can’t say that, because the reporters aren’t allowed to say that Robert Ford would never be a serious factor (and if you think otherwise, you apparently haven’t followed his career or listened to him), and Mullins McLeod, in spite of having an AWESOME South Carolina name and being the nephew of Walt McLeod (one of the coolest people in the Legislature), hasn’t caught on and seems increasingly unlikely to do so.

I could prove to be wrong about this, of course. McLeod could suddenly kick into gear, or Ford could start acting very unFordlike.  But if that happens, I’ll say the position has changed and include them. Right now, I wouldn’t be too concerned about them if I were one of the other three.

What IS that thing Boeing wants to build?

2 Replies

Stargate

Whoa. I had thought the plant we were trying to bring to South Carolina (a prospect which is looking better, given Boeing’s union troubles elsewhere) was for building airplanes.

But you know what this photo looks like to me? Yep, the Stargate, from the movie of that name starring Kurt Russell.

Now, that would certainly give South Carolina a leg up into high-tech manufacturing…

And yes, I realize it’s a cross-section of the fuselage of the 787. I’m just talking about what it looks like…

Sg1stargatefront

Any thoughts about the Legislature’s return?

12 Replies

It occurred to me that some of y’all might want a chance to comment on some actual news, instead of TV shows from the 70s or comic strips that never were.

Well, OK, but it’s pretty boring out there today.

The Legislature did come back today, and they’re going to make up for a stupid omission (and thanks for catching that, Mr. Spratt), and maybe talk about impeaching the governor (which I’m already tired of hearing about; I just want this guy gone, without another word said), and do some stuff for an ecodevo prospect that might be Boeing.

But I don’t have anything to say about those things yet. Do y’all?

Graham, DeMint and the Angry White Guy Divide

47 Replies

Lindsey Graham, normally one of the most articulate members of the U.S. Senate, apparently misspoke when he said this, quoted today in The State:

“We’re not going to be the party of angry white guys.”

Obviously, he forgot the last two words, “… any more.”

Just joshing, Republican friends. While you may be the party of white guys, you haven’t all been angry, all of the time. Some are pretty ticked off nowadays, though, so much so that they’ll pay good money to hear one of their own shout insults at the other side.

The question the senator raises is, will the party continue to be that way in the future? And the debate over that has broken down on familiar lines. No, not racial lines. And not “statism vs. freedom,” as much as the Sanford wing would like to define the world that way.

The divide is one that I’ve struggled with myself a good bit over the years — whether to be right, or be effective.

Set aside for the moment the fact that Jim DeMint is wrong about many things. He believes he’s right — believes it with a great deal more certainty than you and I believe we’re right (you have to, to be such a committed ideologue) — and he believes in shaping his party so that it includes only those who are “right” as he sees the right. He said that about as clearly as it can be said here:

“I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs,” DeMint told The (Washington) Examiner in a comment that has been widely quoted.

Sen. Graham, by contrast, would rather get some things done. That means working with, and supporting, people who don’t bow down to the same gods with the same ritual intensity. Work with Democrats (such as John Kerry) when that helps. Support Republicans (such as Bob Inglis) who are willing to think for themselves (even though they are sometimes wrong, as Inglis was on the Surge). And finally, bring in enough voters to make a majority rather than a minority.

And no matter what ideologues may claim sometimes about the ubiquity of their beliefs, you will never, ever have a majority if you only let in people who think exactly the way you do.

As for the “right vs. effective” dichotomy. I have written several times about my own struggles with that choice (which I don’t like being a choice any more than anyone else does; in a fairer world you could be both). And you’ll see if you follow that link that I’ve had a tendency to choose “right” when forced to choose. Part of that, though, was that that was what my former job was all about — determining the right answer to the best of your ability, and advocating it as strongly as you can. And I should also point out that my sense of rightness has been very different from Sen. DeMint’s. With me, it was about identifying the best answer on a specific issue under specific circumstances. You would never catch me falling into the absurd error of insisting a certain side or faction was by definition always right, by virtue of its ideological purity.

Similarly, Lindsey Graham has been willing to go down in flames trying to do the right thing — whether it’s comprehensive immigration reform, or the Surge, or reversing man-made climate change.

But for the sake of this discussion, the one raised in the piece in The State this morning, the contrast between the two senators breaks down pretty neatly along right-vs.-effective lines, with Sen. Graham on the pragmatic side, the one where not everyone has to be an angry white guy.

Valerie’s story on the Sheds makes the cut

13 Replies

Remember when I mentioned running into Valerie Bauerlein (formerly of The State, currently of The Wall Street Journal) recently? She was having breakfast at a neighboring table with Tim Rogers, interviewing him for a story on longtime letter writer Clif Judy’s sadly successful campaign to close the Sheds to rehearsing bands.

I told her that sounded like a candidate for the page one feature read in her paper. She said that was what she and her editor hoped for. You know the story I mean — it’s generally at the center of the bottom of the front page. It’s almost always a great read, an excellent example of why the WSJ has long held the reputation of the best-written paper in the country (they told me that in J-school in the 70s, and it’s still true). According to Valerie, this story is called the “A-hed.”

Well, today Valerie’s story made the A-hed. (Although in this case, they ran it on the right-hand side rather than the middle.) So congrats to Valerie.

As for the story itself, here’s an excerpt:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — It looks like any other block of garage-sized metal storage units. But Sumter Street Self-Storage has long been the heart of this city’s rock ‘n’ roll scene.

Located on an industrial strip at the edge of the University of South Carolina, “The Sheds” are legend to local rockers — college kids with guitars, gray-beards still nursing band fantasies and hard-core professional musicians who have been cranking up their amps inside the units most nights for two decades.

It was in one of the 139 bays of The Sheds that hometown favorites Hootie & the Blowfish wrote and practiced hits like “Hold My Hand” and “Only Wanna Be With You.” Those songs, included on the 1994 Grammy-winning album “Cracked Rear View,” sold 16 million copies.

But thanks to a nearly two-year campaign by a local activist named Clif Judy, the music at “the Sheds” is coming to an end…

To me, it’s sad about the Sheds; two of my sons have been in bands that rehearsed there.  First, complaints to police helped shut down the legendary punk club “2758;” now the Sheds. What are kids supposed to do?

They’re begging me to run — BEGGING me, I tell you…

7 Replies

All right, so it was actually back in June that this ran on Wes Wolfe’s site (the good bit’s at the very end):

Word is, since Quinn is currently the chairman of the S.C. Policy Council, he will be running as an SCPC-style candidate, in the Sanford mold, which is a little outside his normal situation when he was in the House. His primary opposition thus far is Danny Frazier, a town councilman for Lexington and entrepreneur with Frazier-Taylor LLC, and Gary Taylor, who by our scouring of the series of tubes seems to be working with Mungo real estate firm Sovereign Homes (but, we could be very wrong — confirm or correct in the comments).

Some people, they have egos that are a little too big. Quinn’s is pushing him to get back into elective office. But, he didn’t seem to consider the sledgehammer of oppo that will be coming down on his campaign, from the get-go. It will be fun, though. And, it will be even better if (pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease) former The State editorial page editor Brad Warthen gets into the mix.

So maybe they’re not, technically, begging me at the moment. But they have in the recent past. Assuming Wes qualifies as “they.”

Anyway, this was just brought to my attention today, and it caused me to smile, so I thought I’d share it…

They’re coming back…

10 Replies

As the day has worn on, I haven’t thought of anything particularly clever to say about the news that the Legislature is coming back to town. I’ll just make these three quick points, and turn it over to y’all:

  1. I don’t know that lawmakers should try to rush into impeachment proceedings — although if they’re going to do it, I’d rather they get it out of the way so it doesn’t waste another legislative session, the way Sanford’s foolishness over the stimulus wasted the last one.
  2. Sanford’s right that the department of Employment Security should report to the governor. Of course, he’s done all he could over the past year to undermine the case. It didn’t help with the commissioners disclosed that this governor had never been interested enough in what they do to have a real meeting with them in his six years in office.
  3. In case you wondered, I don’t have a dog in this fight, in the sense that I don’t think I, as an unemployed person, derive any benefit from what lawmakers are coming back to do. Long story, which I’m not going to get into right now, but suffice to say that as of this moment, I am not claiming unemployment compensation.

That’s all for now. What do y’all think?

Goys will be goys

11 Replies

There is a saying that negroes like watermelon because…

No, that doesn’t quite capture it, does it? By comparison, it’s pretty innocuous. After all, you could end the sentence, “everyone does.” What’s the harm in liking watermelon? Rather insensitive, not the sort of thing you’d go around saying if you had half a brain and cared anything about other people’s feelings, but it’s not in the same league with Edwin O. Merwin Jr. and James S. Ulmer Jr. invoking the myth of the rich, avaricious Jew, a stereotype that helped feed the resentments that led to the Holocaust.

No, for an analogy, you’d have to reach to something that actually resulted in the murders of black people, something like, “There is a saying that black men lust after white women because…”

Where did the GOP find these guys? In case you missed it, these two geniuses Merwin and Ulmer — Republican Party chairmen in Bamberg and Orangeburg counties, respectively — wrote the following in an opinion piece published in The (Orangeburg) Times and Democrat:

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

I find myself wondering, What saying? Who says it?

These guys actually could make a guy sympathetic toward earmarks, which one assumes was not their aim.

Karen Floyd says they’ve apologized, and that’s that. What do y’all think?