Today, he dropped by my office to share an anecdote that he told up in Clemson, one which seems particularly apropos to share today, the day the news came out that his career at The State is coming to an end.
It's about the only other cartoonist The State ever actually employed full-time, back in the days of the Gonzales brothers, and why it took 74 years for the paper to hire one
after its first experience...
My wife and I were walking on the beach this afternoon, and we saw this flock of seagulls — the birds, not the guys with the weird hair — snoozing on the dry sand, up above the tide line. It was cool walking into the wind, warm walking with it.
Anyway, the gulls seemed to be in such a torpor there in the sun that I thought they might let me get really close with the camera. Which they did, although their patience had a limit.
No, I didn't hurt them, so get outta my face. I just thought they were beautiful, and wanted to photograph them. Is that so wrong?
By the way — a few feet away from the gulls was this concentrated pile of shells. They could not have collected this way on their own. My wife's theory is that someone, probably a child, had accumulated this collection in a pail, but had brought them back to the beach and deposited them here.
The Hill reports that John McCain is going to be raising funds for Attorney General Henry McMaster's (yet undeclared) bid for governor in 2010:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is hitting the fundraising circuit to return the favor to a local Republican who proved a key supporter in the 2008 primaries.
McCain and many of his top advisers will throw a fundraising reception on behalf of Henry McMaster, the South Carolina attorney general who backed McCain during his run for president in 2008.
The event's host committee includes McCain loyalists like one-time senior advisors Charlie Black, former campaign manager Rick Davis and former Republican National Committee deputy chairman Frank Donatelli. McCain will make an appearance, a spokeswoman confirmed.
And well he should, because Henry was right with him through thick and thin in his most recent presidential bid. He and Bobby Harrell, all the way, even when people were counting McCain as out of the GOP race. Note the video from above (this is the slightly more extended version of my most-viewed video of all time, at 59,850 views), in which Henry warmed up the crowd for McCain one night in the Vista in 2007 (the night of the first S.C. presidential candidate debate, as I recall).
As promised earlier, here is Andy Haworth's video of Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott at Rotary today. As you can see from this, it was quite a performance, and the sheriff fought his corner well.
You may have noticed that yesterday I mentioned having met with the S.C. Employment Security Commission. Well, I wrote a column for Sunday based in part upon that, and I thought I'd go ahead and post the video that goes with the column.
We talked about plenty of other stuff, but I had terrible luck with catching the good bits on video. Seems like every time they said something interesting, I'd have switched my camera to still photos, and when I went back to video, it was Dullsville. This clip was about the only entire, coherent bit of any interest that I captured in its entirety.
In the wide-ranging discussion, there were high points and low points, for instance:
High point — The ESC members, after having been defiant as recently as the day before, promised they'd get the information the governor had been asking for to him — or 90-95 percent of it — by Feb. 9. They said the rest of it is just stuff they don't have because they don't collect that kind of data. Anyway, John O'Connor of our newsroom, who sat in on our meeting, wrote about that in today's paper.
Low point — We asked why in the world they have their own TV studio, and the answer wasn't satisfactory — to me, anyway. But then, how could it be? No, it doesn't add up to a lot of money, and it's a bit of a red herring compared to the actual reason why the unemployment benefits trust fund is out of money: Several years ago the Legislature cut the tax that businesses pay into the fund, and we've been paying our more than we take in since at least 2001. That said, the TV studio does sound ridiculous.
But the subject in the video was the thing that grabbed my attention, because it spoke to the problem of the gross failure to communicate between the Commission and the governor. After all this silly back and forth the last couple of months — and it IS silly (of COURSE the Commission needs the money the governor is trying to hold back, as anyone who has seen what's happening in our state can attest, and of COURSE the Commission was being absurdly petulant by trying to hold info back from the gov), not to mention just plain wrong — I had to ask them if they ever sat down to talk to the governor face to face.
I asked that for a couple of reasons. First, people who are sitting down talking to each other don't act the way the governor and the commissioner had been acting. Once you're dealing with someone as an actual person, rather than some faceless opponent out there, you show them more respect than this. Second, I asked because our governor is Mark Sanford. Most governors are interested enough in actually governing that they try to maintain contact and communications with the various parts of government on a regular basis. Not this guy — for him, it's about the press release, the statement, the op-ed piece, the piglets in the lobby; NOT about sitting down with people and reasoning with them.
The commissioners went on at some length about how the governor had never sat down for a meeting with them in his six years in office, and how he had never accepted an invitation to speak to their big annual luncheon — unlike every previous governor they had known. (And that latter bit REALLY rang true, as one thing I've noticed about this governor is that he has little affinity for the rubber-chicken circuit — not that I do myself, but most governors hit all those events they can.)
Anyway, what is NOT on the video is what Joel Sawyer in the governor's office said to Cindi Scoppe the next morning (and I'm copying and pasting some notes Cindi sent me):
We actually found where the gov did indeed meet with them in 2003, and had a letter from ted halley thanking him for meeting with them. he’s also had conversations with all of the commissioners over time. we looked for more recent requests for meetings, and the only one was I guess a week before they ran out of money. at that point it was just on such short notice that the gov couldn’t attend, but scott english and joe taylor did…
Here's a copy of the 2003 Ted Halley letter
Joel mentioned.
So I called Commissioner McKinley Washington to ask about that, and he said the 2003 "meeting" was one of the incidents they talked about on the video: The commissioners were meeting with Eddie Gunn of the governor's staff, and the governor briefly stuck his head in the door and said hi, and that was about it. It was NOT a meeting with the governor, he said.
Mr. Washington also mentions on the video, and repeated to me Friday, that there was a later incident in which the commissioners were meeting with Chief of Staff Henry White, and the governor — who had apparently changed clothes for a press conference or something, "cracked the door" open long enough to "reach in and grab his denim" so he could change back. And that was it.
So I asked how come ESC executive director Halley sent that note to the governor thanking him for his time back in 2003? "That was just a courtesy statement, but he did not meet with us," said Mr. Washington. "You try to be nice."
Finally, the commissioners said that they tried to meet with the governor at the beginning of the current crisis, but were told he was unavailable, so they met with Scott English (of the governor's staff) and Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor instead (the Sawyer notes above allude to that).
Here's something that will jar a few of your preconceived notions (at least, among those who were so dismissive of Bill Moyers a while back as a liberal shill): It's a Bill Moyers report on PBS that calls Democratic leaders to task for double-crossing Jim DeMint and deep-sixing earmark reform.
Remember when everyone was so impressed that Nancy Pelosi was working with Sen. DeMint on this issue? Well, this report tells the rest of the story, of how the promise was undone.
An excerpt from the transcript:
SYLVIA CHASE: But what Senator Reid wasn't saying was that the reform measure contained a caveat. Senators wouldn't have to disclose any earmarks that went to federal entities. But in the Defense Bill, almost all the earmarks first go to federal entities before being passed along to private contractors. In effect, senators would be able to hide almost every earmark. And that prompted a challenge from Senator Jim DeMint — a champion of earmark transparency. The South Carolina Republican made a startling admission. JIM DEMINT: Many in this Chamber know I don't often agree with Speaker Pelosi, but Speaker Pelosi has the right idea. SYLVIA CHASE: And a stunning proposal.As an amendment to the Ethics Bill, the staunchly conservative Republican DeMint proposed that the Senate adopt word-for-word the House version of earmark reform marshaled through by the liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi JIM DEMINT: We proposed the DeMint-Pelosi Amendment. And I presented it on the floor. And the place was quiet. JIM DEMINT: This is the language which the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has put in this lobbying reform bill in order to make it more honest and transparent. SYLVIA CHASE: It was a brilliant tactical move. If the Democratic majority was to reject DeMint's amendment it would mean rejecting the much stronger earmark disclosure rules crafted under their own party's high profile Speaker of the House. JIM DEMINT: Harry Reid did not want this to come for a vote. He made a motion to table it, which gives the members some cover because you're not really voting against the amendment. You're just voting to table it. SYLVIA CHASE: "Tabling" the so-called DeMint-Pelosi Amendment would mean removing it from consideration — effectively, killing it. HARRY REID: I would appeal to my friend from South Carolina. I repeat: I know you are doing this because you think it is the right thing to do. But take the opportunity to look at what is here. It is better than the House version – so much better. JIM DEMINT: And Senator Reid assumed as most people did including me that he would get fifty-one votes to table it. And we had a few heroes on the Democrat side that joined us, Barack Obama, relatively new senator, bucked his party and voted with us. SENATE PRESIDING OFFICER: On this vote the ayes are 46, the nays are 51. The motion to table is not agreed to. JIM DEMINT: And we defeated the tabling motion. Well once the tabling motion failed by a vote or two, everyone knew they were going to have to vote on the real thing and it was like 98 to nothing. I mean this is the kind of thing that if, if senators know America can see what they're voting on, they were afraid not to vote for it. SYLVIA CHASE: Indeed, with all eyes watching — 98 senators voted in favor of the artfully crafted DeMint-Pelosi Amendment; not one opposed it. The junior senator from South Carolina had taken on the powerful Senate Majority Leader and won. Or so it appeared. Remember: this was an amendment to a wide-ranging ethics bill. And before a bill becomes a law, its final language must be worked out between both houses of Congress. Steve Ellis, a leading earmark reform advocate in Washington, explains how the game works. STEVE ELLIS: So rather than doing what the House did which was simply change their rules. You're done the next day. Everything is changed and you have to abide by earmark reform, people could still modify it before it actually ended up becoming the rules of the Senate. SYLVIA CHASE: Which is precisely what happened.
By the way, Barack Obama — whom DeMint had occasion to praise back at the start of this tale ("And we had a few heroes on the Democrat side that joined us, Barack Obama, relatively new senator, bucked his party and voted with us.") — does not escape Moyers' skepticism. Near the top, he notes:
BILL MOYERS: No earmarks will be allowed and if you thought you hadn't heard him correctly, he repeated it in his big speech on Thursday. None of those hidden pet projects with multi-million dollar price tags that individual members of Congress sneak into bills for special interests or campaign contributors. Can it be true? Have we really crossed the bridge to nowhere for the last time? Don't hold your breath. As a senator, Barack Obama himself was no slouch when it came to passing out earmarks. And many of the people in his incoming administration are accomplished practitioners…
Have you noticed that it’s been awhile since I posted video? Like, since the election? Well, there’s a simple explanation: As I told you at the time, my laptop was stolen from my truck on election night. That meant I lost both all of my raw video from those last weeks before the election, AND the platform on which I produced the clips for posting.
I got a new laptop (well, it’s new to ME) over the holidays, but was too busy either to shoot or to edit anything, what with folks being on end-of-year time off and such around here.
If all you want is the stuff about Nikki and Nathan, it starts about 3 minutes and 18 seconds into the video (it starts with a question from me; you can probably hear the effects of my cold on my voice). Were I a TV “journalist,” that’s all I would have given you — the controversy, the sexy stuff. And admittedly, it IS the more interesting part.
But I decided to be all wonky and include Bobby’s extensive explanation before that of HIS position on transparency in voting, and what he’s tried to do about it. You’ll note, if you watch all of it, that at one point he handed us a document in support of what he was saying. Below you will find a photograph of that document. I hope you can read it OK.
The kind words some of y’all offered about my video on this last post — which featured Lindsey Graham talking about Sarah Palin — reminded me of something I noticed just the other day.
Remember how I used to bore y’all with my Top Five Lists of which of my video clips were getting the most play on YouTube? Well, I sort of got out of the habit there for awhile (partly because I was tired of being depressed by the fact that three of my Top Five were clips of neoNazis at the State House), but the other day I looked, and lo and behold, the above clip from more than a year ago had come out of nowhere to top my list.
The last time I’d taken any notice of my stats, my top videos were at around 20,000 views. All of a sudden, the clip I shot in the Vista on the night of the first GOP presidential debate in South Carolina — way back in May 2007 (is it possible it was that long ago) — had shot up from nowhere to the top spot, at 45,000 views! It’s the one in which John McCain, standing on a podium with Henry McMaster and Bobby Harrell, looks out into the crowd and says,
… and I know that little jerk Lindsey Graham is around here somewhere.
Of course, being all about giving y’all the full story, I also posted the full, unedited context of that joke, in which McCain went on to say nice things about his buddy. But that context — which is sort of worth watching for the way my shaky handheld style captures the confusion and crowd excitement, although inadvertently — isn’t nearly as popular. It’s been viewed less than 1,000 times.
Obviously, on YouTube, brevity sells. So does irony.
One last note: I’m happy to say that my critically acclaimed "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?," probably my finest job of video editing ever (considering the low-res images I work with), stays in the number three spot at 28,000 views — right behind the not-so-acclaimed "Sieg Heil at the State House" and "Hillary’s Heckler."
Richland 2 Supt. Steve Hefner visited us today to talk about the $300 million dollar bond referendum that will be in front of voters on Nov. 4. More about that later. While he was here, I asked him about Jim Rex’s idea of letting districts go to four-day school weeks to save money.
He had some strong objections, which you can hear by viewing the video clip above, taken in our boardroom.
Sorry to be late posting this. I had a busy weekend, and actually didn’t go back to watch this until this morning. Saturday the wife and I and several of our descendants participated in the Walk for Life, Saturday night I was at a belated 70th birthday party for my former boss Tom McLean out in Blythewood, and Sunday we celebrated both my 55th birthday, and my younger son’s 28th. Busy, busy. How was your weekend?
Anyway, as for the Biden-Palin skit from Saturday night — very funny, very much above the show’s standard for the last couple of decades, but ya know, nothing is going to hit me with the freshness of that first Palin-Hillary skit. After that, they’ve so far just been good sequels. The true genius was in the first one.
But just so you’ll appreciate the latest such sequel, the below clip from Saturday night’s show is more typical of what we get these days. Don’t bother watching past the first few seconds. It doesn’t get any better…
Still catching up on e-mail, I ran across this from this afternoon:
Miller Begins TV Advertisement Blitz
Democratic Congressional Candidate and Iraq War Veteran Rob Miller began his TV advertisement blitz today. The campaign is running two introductory commercials that feature Miller’s service in the US Marine Corps and outline his platform of reducing wasteful spending, balancing the budget and protecting American jobs.
Miller Campaign Manager Lachlan McIntosh said the ads are designed to introduce Miller to voters and emphasize the change he represents. "Voters understand that to get out of the mess we are in, we’ve got to change Washington. Rob represents the new ideas and new leadership we need," McIntosh said.
Kelly Davis with thestate.com noticed my post about the Nancy Pelosi speech Monday — the one that was an outrageous example of partisan ranting at the worst possible moment, but certainly no excuse for those whiny Republicans to vote against a bill of great importance to the country — and felt like something was missing: video. So he sent me the imbed code.
I actually haven’t seen it myself yet — I just read the transcript that I shared with you earlier — and don’t have time to watch it now. But I don’t see any reason for y’all to wait any longer. Kelly sent me this early yesterday afternoon and I’m just seeing his e-mail, so we’re already behind the curve enough…
We’ve all been so distracted with serious bidness the last few days that I’ve hardly had a moment to think about Sarah Palin. But I pause now to pass on two things:
I met with Marvin Chernoff over breakfast this morning, and he asked me whether I’d seen the Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin skit on SNL, and I said I had, but after a moment it hit me that we weren’t talking about the same skit. Turns out she reprised the role Saturday night and I missed it, while Marvin was unaware of the earlier one. Now that I’ve seen the latest (clip above), I’ve got to say it sort of fell flat by comparison, but it would have been hard to match the hilarity of the first effort. It was the funniest thing on that show in decades.
Be sure to check out tomorrow’s op-ed page. Kathleen Parker writes about the tidal wave of vehement reaction she got to her Palin-should-drop-out column the other day.
First, I apologize for the length of this video clip, but I think it gives a pretty fair glimpse of what our interviews were like with the two candidates in S.C. House District 87.
You have newcomer Democrat Edgar Gomez challenging Rep. Nikki Haley. Four years ago, Nikki was the longshot going up against a very Old School incumbent in Larry Koon. If anything, Mr. Gomez is probably a longer shot, if only because Rep. Haley is hardly the symbol of entrenched seniority that Mr. Koon was; hers is still a very fresh face on the S.C. political scene.
On the video, you will see the candidates’ respective remarks about or answers to questions about several issues, starting with an open question about what they consider the top issues to be, then moving on to taxation, school "choice" and payday lending.
And yes, I will still be doing separate posts on these two interviews, just not today. In the meantime, you have the video.
Not very often these days am I able to say this, but the skit that started SNL last night, with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton, was easily up to the standards of the show back when it was funny.
Sept. 10, 2 p.m. — Chip Huggins has represented this Irmo-Chapin district since 1999. And folks there must like him pretty well, because in all that time he hasn’t had opposition for re-election. And in that area (think District 5 school board, the battles over development in northwest Richland County), not many officeholders can say that.
Since he’s the Republican in this race, given the district, I suspect he’s about to get elected again.
But perhaps because he hasn’t had occasion to explain or defend his positions on issues in past election years, he doesn’t communicate very well where he stands, or where he is likely to stand in the future. It’s difficult to tell at times for certain whether he’s just not all that good at communication, was having a bad day (nervousness, which is common enough in a first interview, could account for some of the mangled syntax that kept posing a barrier for me) or he just did not want to be pinned down on anything. Unfortunately, by the end of the interview, I felt quite sure that that last explanation was most valid — he seemed to have a tremendous aversion to taking definite stands.
The most definite thing he said to us — the most specific, helpful fact that he provided with regard to his record — had to do with how he voted on Mark Sanford’s video of the cigarette tax increase. He indicated that he favored the tax increase (which contrasted with his general belief, also clearly stated, that he believes South Carolinians are overtaxed), and indeed voted for it. In light of that, I asked him, what were we to make of the charge by his challenger, Jim Nelson, who told us Mr. Huggins had supported the governor’s veto of that legislation? He said quite clearly that what Mr. Nelson said was incorrect — that in fact he had voted to override. He offered to get the clerk’s office to back him up on that, but I said no need. Of course, Cindi will check that out to confirm, but it seems highly unlikely that he would assert that so definitely were it not the case — especially since he was so loathe to be pinned down on much else. (Cindi speculated that this could have been an honest mistake all around, because she had noted that the VoteSmart organization, which she normally swears by, had reported that vote in a confusing way. She noted that she has informed VoteSmart, and they’re supposed to be doing something about it.)
As for the rest of the interview — well, I deeply regret that I was having multiple technical difficulties today. I had lent the camera with which I usually shoot video to one of my daughters; I didn’t realize the memory in my digital sound recorder was full until after the interview started, and after shooting three still photos and three short, low-quality clips with my Treo, it refused to record any more, claiming that it, too, was full. (And my dog ate my homework.) But let me try to give you a sense of what it was like.
Early in the interview, he indicated that he favored Gov. Sanford’s campaign to restructure state government, which was fine by us, of course: The governor’s positions on that subject are almost word-for-word straight out of our "Power Failure" agenda. But later I asked him to be a little more specific, and ran into a wall of reluctance: He had no specific ideas about how the government’s structure could be improved, beyond a vague desire to avoid "duplication." So I asked him to tell me, specifically, which of the constitutional officers did he think should be appointed rather than elected? When none seemed to be forthcoming, I started listing them: The commissioner of agriculture — should that be appointed (that seemed like the easiest on to start with)? How about the adjutant general? The attorney general?
He wasn’t saying. "There’s just a lot of duplication," he said. "Going to continue to look at that. I’m not going to be specific about that." When I looked for this quote in my notes, at first I started to copy from the wrong page, because on the page before that, talking about education, he had said, "I don’t have any direct answer on that… continue to look at that."
Mr. Huggins is hardly alone in his fondness for the phrase "look at that" — it’s a favorite among candidates (especially incumbents) who don’t want to take a position, as in "We’ll continue to look at that." It may be a defensible way to talk about a complex issue that’s just come up and you haven’t had time to study in adequately. But there’s no excuse to answer that way about issues that you yourself cite as important, and which have lain more or less unchanged on the table before you for years on end. And Mr. Huggins did that repeatedly. When candidates do that, I tend to think What do they think this is, a weather report? I don’t want their predictions of what the Legislature will continue to look at, I want to know what they think the Legislature should do.
The more frustrating exchanges, for me, were later in the interview, after my Treo was full. But I think you can get the idea if you watch the phone video clip below (again, I apologize for the quality). About halfway in, we get to the subject of the state’s automobile sales tax cap. Mr. Huggins seems to want the cap changed in some way, a way that would be "fair," but when we try to find out what he believes would be fair (simply tax the full value of cars at the rate at which we currently tax the first $6,000? exempt the first $6,000, but charge the full rate on the value over that? some other approach?), but he avoids answering.
And, as I say, that was the pattern of most of the interview. I came away knowing that he disagrees with his opponent’s politically suicidal assertion that we don’t pay enough taxes, but not much else.
Usually I find these interviews quite helpful in forming an impression of a candidate. This time, not so much. If anyone has any further information to offer regarding Mr. Huggins or his opponent, now would be a good time to bring it to my attention. Because we’re continuing, as one might say, to "look at that…"
Have you had occasion to check out the way The New York Times has been posting the major speeches from the conventions? It’s about the coolest — and to me, most useful — software I’ve ever seen. Certainly the coolest since Google Maps came up with the "street level" view, and without the Big Brother overtones.
Here’s what it does: First, there’s a high-quality video window. Then, there’s a transcript of the speech posted next to the video, but that’s not the cool part. The cool part is that if you click on the paragraph you want, the video jumps to the beginning of that paragraph. Then, on top of that, there’s a topical outline to the right of the transcript. Click on the subject you want, and it jumps to that part of the transcript and video. It’s amazing.
Not only that, but the paper’s site search engine — which unfortunately often frustrates me; it doesn’t read my mind as well as, say, Google does — will take you straight to these miraculous pages with the simplest, most intuitive input, such as "Barack Obama’s speech."
Since I subscribe to the NYT, I don’t know whether these are accessible just to subscribers, or to everyone. But in the hope that you can go check them out and groove on them, here are a few of the top speeches from the two conventions:
Another thing my Dad mentioned to me yesterday from his watching of 24/7 TV "news" was that the Democratic Party chair had said something insensitive about the expected Gulf Coast hurricane, and then apologized. Dad couldn’t remember the chairman’s name, so I assumed it was Howard Dean. I said something about Howard’s an OK guy; he just gets carried away.
It wasn’t until a few minutes ago that I picked up on the fact that it was Don Fowler. You SEE how outside the spin cycle I live my life?
Anyway, Don and I have been known to exchange unpleasant words, but I feel for him on this one — and I think I can say, with some confidence of being supported by others who know him, that he’s a way better person than one might gather from the video clip. If someone had been following me with a hidden camera back in my newsroom days, you’d think I really was, as Don once suggested, a devil of some sort. Gallows humor goes with the territory. A defense mechanism, or whatever. I probably wouldn’t be aware of it, except I have been guilty of saying similar things in my wife’s presence, and SHE has made sure I know that she is appalled. And when I see it through her eyes, I am chastened, even ashamed.
There’s no explaining things like this afterwards; you just look bad, period. But I’ll say it again — I feel for Don on this. Yes, he’s a partisan, and that causes us to disagree sometimes, but he’s not a bad guy at all.
You know that column I did about the Capital City Club, and how it was started to allow blacks and Jews and women into the halls of power? Don was one of the people who started that club. And it is my impression that things like that are much more representative of who he is than an ironic wisecrack made to a friend in what he evidently supposed was a private moment.
