Category Archives: Words

Read Cindi’s latest column about Nikki’s “whoppers”

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Since I griped about the lede headline in The State today (and I wasn’t picking on John there, it was just the headline that got me), I want to direct you, with my warm approval, to Cindi Scoppe’s latest today.

The subject: Nikki Haley’s habit of misleading, and just generally saying stuff that isn’t true. After taking Vincent Sheheen to task for HIS misleading question, “When will she release her tax returns?,” when she sorta kinda had, Cindi went on to demonstrate how such misstatements are a regular thing with his opponent.

I’ll excerpt here the last few grafs of the column:

The day after her WLTX interview, Ms. Haley appeared on Greta Van Sustern’s cable talk show and stepped up her usual attack on Mr. Sheheen for “making $400,000 as a trial lawyer” by calling him “a trial lawyer that makes $400,000 a year off the state.”

It’s pretty audacious, in a state with a median household income of $42,000, for someone who made $196,282 last year to castigate someone else for making $372,509. But the more serious sin here is the total fabrication about where Mr. Sheheen’s money came from.

Contrary to what you’d think if you listened to the Republicans’ drumbeat for Mr. Sheheen to reveal the sources of his income, legislators already have to report all the money they receive from state and local governments. In addition, attorneys must report the money they receive representing clients before the Workers Compensation Commission and other state boards.

As our news department noted on Sunday, last year Mr. Sheheen reported receiving $29,000 in salary and expenses as a senator, and his law firm received $13,000 from the Kershaw County Medical Center, $4,700 from the Cassatt Water Co. and $2,400 from the S.C. Guardian Ad Litem Program. That’s a total of $49,100 “off the state.” I suppose it’s possible that he made money that he didn’t report on his economic disclosure statement — you know, like that $40,000 in consulting fees that Ms. Haley didn’t report from a state government contractor who hired her for her “good contacts.” But since there’s no gray area in state law about reporting government income, I seriously doubt it.

Mr. Sheheen also reported that his law firm made about $170,000 in workers comp fees last year. Now, I would like more details about where the rest of his income came from, and I think he probably could provide them without violating legal ethics, say by telling us how much he received in contingency-fee awards, in retainers, in hourly fees. But it’s more than a little misleading for Ms. Haley to demand more transparency from the candidate who has been far, far more transparent than she has about his income as well as his communications on the taxpayers’ computers and e-mail accounts. Unfortunately, that sort of thing is becoming commonplace.

Cindi, by the way, is about the last person in the MSM you’ll ever see mistake feeling for thought. Always has been. Here, she has demonstrated that laudable trait once again.

By the way, you may want to read her previous column, which she links from this one, on the disturbing Jekyll and Hyde quality Mrs. Haley has demonstrated over time.

Mistaking feeling for thinking in American politics

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I enjoyed reading an op-ed piece in the WSJ this morning headlined “A Muslim Reformer on the Mosque,” with the subhed, “The warriors for tolerance and the antimosque crusaders are both wrong.”

Some bits I particularly liked… this:

Election-year politics, ratings-hungry media and deep personal fear foment raw emotion. In such an environment, “I’m offended” takes on the stature of a substantive argument. Too many Americans are mistaking feeling for thinking.

And this:

As a proud New Yorker as well as a reformist Muslim, I think, and not just feel, that this would be a fitting salute to the victims of 9/11. It would turn the tables on the freedom-hating culture of al Qaeda. And it would subvert the liberty-lashing culture of offense.

Perhaps you’re noting there’s a certain theme in what I like. Of course, I kind of helped you out by boldfacing the important points.

That first one should be made into a bumper sticker:

Too many Americans are mistaking feeling for thinking.

Maybe we should streamline it:

Don’t just feel. THINK.

It can be truly said of so very many things. Sure, I can speak from the gut when I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I did it back here. But I was aware that I was doing it. I told you I was doing it. Am I always that self-aware and candid about it? No. We are infallible. I mean, fallible.

But I try to lobby for thinking whenever it occurs to me to do so. That’s what I was doing back here. A few threads back, I was accused by Kathryn of making like a Vulcan. To which I could only respond, “Captain, Kathryn is being illogical.”

Yeah, we need some passion in public life. But we could use a LOT more Spock.

We got a fever in American politics, and the only prescription is more Spock.

Jack Kerouac about being ‘beat’

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Just happened to run across this while looking for something else, employing the Dirk Gently method of living, whereby if you’re lost, you follow someone who looks like he knows where he’s going. You may not end up where you wanted to go, but you generally end up someplace you were supposed to be…

I like to include stuff that keeps this blog from being pigeonholed…

So are you running for re-election, or not?

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Speaking of Twitter — which seems to be my theme today — I really like this new feature that, each time you open or refresh your home page, suggests two users you might want to follow. It’s obviously based on whom you’re following already, and it seems to work pretty well. The last 20 or so people or organizations I’ve elected to follow have been based on those suggestions. Which is good, because I’m trying to build up my followers, and the way to do that is to follow more people yourself — I’ve found that I usually have a little more than twice as many followers as I follow myself (and I’ll consider my “brand” to be dying when the number I follow starts to catch up). But it’s hard, on my own, to increase the number I follow dramatically. I don’t like having my feed clogged up with stuff that doesn’t interest me. This new feature helps me build the numbers with relevant stuff.

But occasionally, I get a suggestion that sort of puzzles me. Like the suggestions to follow people who haven’t tweeted in 6 months — why not amend the algorithm to cull those out? And then there are those like this one (screen capture image above), which seem designed to push me away. (And I’m setting aside the turnoff from Twitter’s blatant number disagreement in that message.)

I mean, seriously — are you or are you not running for re-election? And if you are, why are you turning people who want to know more about you away?

Shannon Erikson is by no means alone in this. I’ve run across it before. Hers just happened to be the most recent example when it occurred to me to comment on this.

I just don’t get the thinking behind this phenomenon. If you are such a private person, don’t run for office. If you aren’t, throw open the doors and windows. Come on.

Gee, I just can’t WAIT to buy me some of THAT

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As a newly minted Mad Man, I’ve really gotta hand it to the ad wizards who managed to sell Camel on THIS campaign. Mind you, it’s the sales side that’s impressing me here, not the creative.

I mean, you only come away from this item wondering two things:

  1. Does “Snus” rhyme with “news” or with “fuss?” And whichever it is, what the heck does it mean? Where’d it come from (I get the “snu-” part, just not the “s”)? Does it describe or suggest something camels do?
  2. Come on, can’t you GUARANTEE that I’ll suffer gum disease and tooth loss? That “can” seems a bit weak.

I mean, really — if the warning’s gotta be that bold and so much more readable than anything else on the document, why go to the trouble of crafting this item? Are you TRYING to lose market share? Or is it that you assume that anyone who uses your product is so amazingly stupid that they can be relied upon to ignore the warning, and be dazzled by the garish colors? Or, is it that you’re assuming that they know ALL such products will give them horrible diseases, but you think this will still inspire them to choose your product over the others? And if so, what precisely in this particular communication do you think is going to reel them in?

The coupon, perhaps. Yeah, that’s the ticket. It’s gotta be the coupon…

If only Karen Floyd cared about what I really think

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I got an invitation this morning, via e-mail, to participate in an opinion survey, from state GOP Chairwoman Karen Floyd. It was just another of those bogus surveys that the political parties send out — you know, the ones that are more about making partisan assertions and whipping up the faithful (so that they’ll give money), rather than actually trying to learn from what other people think.

To be fair, this one is better than most such. I get the impression that this one is more about testing messages with the faithful (which is a FORM of information seeking at least) than about merely whipping them up. So it could be worse.

But I can’t help wishing that a party would actually try to determine what other people think, and learn from that, rather than just spinning the plate. Of course, if it did that, I suppose it would no longer be a political party.

Here was the come-on to get folks to take the survey:

THE QUESTIONS: As we move through the 2010 election cycle, endure an economic decline and watch liberal leadership fail our nation, there are a lot of big questions that we must answer together.

YOUR ANSWERS: Please take the time to answer these short questions. We will be sending the results to every South Carolina Republican member of Congress and the General Assembly next week.

JUST 3 MINUTES: Will you take 3 minutes today to give us your opinion on the biggest issues facing South Carolina?

And here was the survey itself:

Please fill our out Summer Survey and give us your opinion on the biggest issues facing SC.
1. Do you think a mosque should be allowed to be built at ground zero?
Yes
No
2. Do you agree with our gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley that we can create jobs by cutting the income tax?
Yes
No
3. Should the Bush tax cuts be extended?
Yes
No
4. Do you agree with a judge’s decision to stop parts of Arizona’s immigration law from being implemented?
Yes
No
5. Should South Carolina should pass an Arizona style immigration plan?
Yes
No
6. Should South Carolina’s coastline be opened up for natural gas exploration?
Yes
No
7. Do you support or oppose the federal takeover of our health care system?
Yes
No
8. Should the state of South Carolina fight the nationalization of our health care system on the grounds that it is a violation of states’ rights?
Yes
No
9. Our Lt Governor candidate Ken Ard wants to resturcture the way we elect our Governor and Lt Governor so that they run together on a ticket and work more hand-in-hand to create jobs for our state. Do you agree with Ken Ard?
Yes
No
Do you think that Democratic 2nd Congressional district candidate Rob Miller should return the $370,000 he received from liberal activist group MoveOn.org?
Yes
No
10. Should South Carolina voters replace Nancy Pelosi’s chief budget writer John Spratt with a strong conservative like State Senator Mick Mulvaney?
Yes
No
11. What else would you like us to know today?

What gets me about these kinds of questions is that, aside from the last one they don’t allow you to answer truthfully. For so many of these questions, a “yes” or “no” answer is entirely inappropriate. But parties are about forcing people to choose “yes” or “no,” and unfortunately the MSM cooperate in rewriting our political language so that we can’t think in any other terms — which of course was the same idea behind Newspeak in 1984 — if you lack the words to think new thoughts, you can’t think them.

Here are the answers I gave, but please don’t do like the party and take them at face value. After each I am providing an answer, in italics, that tells what I REALLY think. But Karen didn’t ask for that, or provide me any way to give her that. Hence this post:

Please fill our out Summer Survey and give us your opinion on the biggest issues facing SC.

1. Do you think a mosque should be allowed to be built at ground zero? Yes. I say that only because the mosque indeed has the RIGHT to build there. And of course, that right is an important part of who we are in this country, and what we’re fighting for in the War on Terror. If the question, therefore, is should it be ALLOWED, then the answer has to be “yes.” But if you asked whether it should be built there, I’d say no. If you asked whether I think the choice of this site is a deliberate provocation of American sensibilities, I’d say I’m afraid that is likely the case, on some level — although I lack enough information to know. I find it very disturbing that the leader of this group wants America to share blame for 9/11 and refuses to say whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. And it doesn’t help a bit that Hamas endorses the plan to build there. Finally, if you ask whether I think building there represents a sincere attempt to bridge differences and heal wounds, I would say that if that’s what they truly wanted to do, they’d do it elsewhere. But in the end, do they have the right? In America, they do.

2. Do you agree with our gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley that we can create jobs by cutting the income tax? No. Can cutting a tax be part of a rational plan to stimulate the economy and thereby create jobs. Absolutely. But do I believe cutting a tax CONSTITUTES a rational plan to stimulate South Carolina’s economy, absent any plans to build physical or human infrastructure? To that, I say you’ve gotta be kidding. Bottom line, Nikki Haley doesn’t have a plan for creating jobs. She has a series of cookie-cutter GOP talking points: Cutting taxes, decreasing regulation, and privatization. That’s not a plan.

2. Should the Bush tax cuts be extended? No. Actually, I have no idea. Frankly, I’m loath to end them right now because of the condition of the economy. Any increase in the tax burden at any level, before we’ve got the economy growing again, is problematic. I never saw any need for these particular tax cuts to begin with, and had I been in Congress would likely have voted against them, as they were presented. But I’m not certain this is the time to end them. But I answered “no” because I don’t side with your party’s belief in the magical goodness of tax cuts in all circumstances, absent other measures, and I wanted you to know that.

3. Do you agree with a judge’s decision to stop parts of Arizona’s immigration law from being implemented? Yes. For the simple fact that immigration is a federal function. Yeah, I get it — your base believes it’s time for states to step in because the federal government isn’t getting the job done. I’m unpersuaded by that. I also know that the people across the political spectrum most adamant about this issue have been the main obstacle to the federal government adopting a comprehensive solution to the problem that does exist. Work on that if you want to have a constructive effect. Don’t advocate states usurping a federal function.

4. Should South Carolina should pass an Arizona style immigration plan? No. Of course not, for the reasons cited above.

5. Should South Carolina’s coastline be opened up for natural gas exploration? Yes. I said yes because that’s the Energy Party answer. We should do anything and everything, within reason, to make this country energy-independent. The objections on the left to such exploration are rigidly faith-based, like your party’s belief in the magical powers of tax cuts. It’s an article of faith that is immune to argument or circumstances. That said, my “yes” comes with a caveat — seems to me I’ve heard that the SC coast isn’t that likely a place to explore (tell me if I’m wrong on that; I can’t recall where I heard it). So let me amend my answer to say that by all means, we should explore in likely locations. If SC is a likely location, explore away.

6. Do you support or oppose the federal takeover of our health care system? Yes. Absolutely. If such a thing were proposed, I’d be all for it. That is, I’d be all for a substitution of a single payer for the insane way that we pay for health care now. Which is not the same thing as a “takeover of our health care system,” but it would come a heckuva lot closer to being that than anything that has been seriously proposed in this country, but less actually enacted. As for your implication that something that could be characterized a “federal takeover of our health care system,” that is an absurd fantasy on your part, a lie that you are trying to propagate in order to have a straw man to knock over. And there’s no way you should be allowed to get away with that. In the meantime, we need to let this feeble “reform” that Congress passed have a chance to be implemented so that we can see if it helps at all — which I doubt, but let’s give it a chance before condemning it. Your attempts to repeal it before it’s been implemented is unconscionable, because the need for some kind of change to our system is unquestionably dire.

7. Should the state of South Carolina fight the nationalization of our health care system on the grounds that it is a violation of states’ rights? No. Oh, get a life, people! How can we fight something for being something that it is NOT?

8. Our Lt Governor candidate Ken Ard wants to resturcture the way we elect our Governor and Lt Governor so that they run together on a ticket and work more hand-in-hand to create jobs for our state. Do you agree with Ken Ard? Yes. Although a better way to put it would be that Ken Ard, someone I hadn’t heard of before three or four months ago, agrees with me on something I’ve publicly advocated for almost 20 years. Not to toot my horn, but to suggest this Ard guy (who I strongly suspect to be an MSM plant because headline writers love a guy with a name that short) should get credit for the idea is patently ridiculous. If he does what the rest of us reformers have failed to do and actually gets the idea implemented, I’ll applaud. But not until then.

9. Do you think that Democratic 2nd Congressional district candidate Rob Miller should return the $370,000 he received from liberal activist group MoveOn.org? Yes. But only because I think he and Joe Wilson have both raised far too much money already to waste on their campaign, which presents voters with a no-win proposition. That’s why I say yes, not because I despise. MoveOn.org. I mean, I DO despise MoveOn.org, but that’s not my reasoning here. I just think this race is a total waste, and wish I had a better candidate than either of these guys to vote for.

10. Should South Carolina voters replace Nancy Pelosi’s chief budget writer John Spratt with a strong conservative like State Senator Mick Mulvaney? No. Give me a frickin’ break. What you meant to say, of course, was “Should 5th District voters replace the smartest and most capable guy in our House delegation, the very moderate and sensible John Spratt, with some ideologue more to our suiting?

11. What else would you like us to know today? I’d love, absolutely LOVE, a survey that sought thoughtful answers, rather than mere fodder for keeping the partisan spin machine turning.

Oh, and thank you for the opportunity, Karen. My answers were rather hasty, and not as in-depth as such complex questions demand — but they’re far more thoughtful than what you were looking for. Which is my point.

Is that the best Haley can do? Bring up Obama? Wow, that is truly lame…

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There wasn’t much new in The State‘s recap Sunday of how Vincent Sheheen is pretty much thrashing Nikki Haley on her signature issues (transparency and business savvy) — nothing much you couldn’t have read here the middle of last week.

But I was struck by the unbelievably lame response recorded from the Haley campaign:

For its part, Haley’s campaign has argued Sheheen, a state senator from Camden, is ducking questions about whether the Democrat supports recently approved national health insurance law and the Obama administration’s lawsuit challenging Arizona’s immigration law, two issues Sheheen could have to deal with if elected governor.

Really? That’s the best you can do? He’s totally crushing you on transparency, and making a mockery of your desire to run government the way you run your business, and that’s your response? You retreat to the current GOP playbook? That book only has one play these days, you know. It goes something like this:

When cornered, talk about Obama. Don’t worry that it has nothing to do with the office you’re running for. Just cry, “Obama! Obama! Obama! We hate Obama! Do you hate Obama? If you don’t, you’re not one of us, because we really, really hate him…” Yadda-yadda. Just keep going; don’t worry about repeating yourself or not making the slightest bit of logical sense, because your base will eat this up…

As for the last phrase in that excerpt from The State — “two issues Sheheen could have to deal with if elected governor” — it’s hard to imagine a more transparent case of news people bending over backwards to act like a source is saying something rational when he or she is not. Yeah, you stretch a point and sure, health care reform affects every state (just as it does business and many other aspects of life) and a governor will govern in an environment in which a lot of people insist that immigration is a huge state issue. But you could say that about almost any hot-button national issue, from Afghanistan to the BP oil spill — it still wouldn’t be central. Everyone, but everyone, knows that the Haley campaign putting out that response has absolutely ZERO to do with what faces the next governor, and everything to do with the fact that if it isn’t in the Sarah Palin songbook, they can’t sing it.

Anyway, we are left waiting for a substantive response actually bearing on the two things that are allegedly Nikki’s strong suits, and why we should believe anything she says about them. And Vincent didn’t pick these issues — Nikki did.

So which was it — 99 days or 100?

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Meant to raise this question yesterday, which would have been less confusing, but when it occurred to me last night I didn’t feel like breaking the laptop back out, so here goes.

On Monday, I received a release from the Rob Miller campaign headlined “99 Reasons,” and beginning this way: “It seems far away now, but we are just 99 days from ending Joe Wilson’s congressional career.”

OK. Aside from that sounding excessively optimistic, it wasn’t particularly interesting. So I set it aside.

Then I got a release from the Nikki Haley campaign headlined “100 days,” and saying essentially that that was how many days were left. How she arrived at the number is further confused by this boldfaced passage:

Yesterday marked a significant milestone in our campaign — there are only 100 days left until Election Day.

So does that mean they were counting from “yesterday,” which would have been Sunday? If so, why does the sentence go on to use the present tense, saying “there ARE only 100 days left”? One is left to conclude that the Haley campaign was saying there were still 100 days left.

Was she counting Monday itself, as a way of asserting her wish not to waste a day? Perhaps. But I’m left with the impression, once again, that these Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on anything. But I set that aside, too.

Then last night, just before 10 p.m., I got a release from Karen Floyd headlined “99 Days of Bad Ideas” and just chock full of the sort of ranting nonsense you expect from parties:

We’re going to hear from liberals like Joe Biden, who just stopped in to raise money for John Spratt, saying that we should have spent even more “stimulus” money.  We’re going to hear fromCongressman Spratt himself that the budget he wrote is actually fiscally responsible, although we all know it increases our debts and puts our nation at risk. We’re going to hear from Rob Millerthat it’s okay for candidates to accept millions of dollars from liberal Washington special interest groups. We’re going to hear from Vincent Sheheen that English doesn’t have to be our state’s official language and that tax cuts won’t create jobs and grow our economy. We’ll hear from Matt Richardson (he’s the liberal running for Attorney General, in case you’ve never heard of him) that we don’t need to stand up to the federal government when they step on our rights every other day. We’ll even hear from their US Senate candidate who believes action figures of himself will fix our high unemployment rate.

Why don’t they just save themselves trouble by typing “liberal” once and then just pasting it into the text over and over? “Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal…” It would make as much sense, and be just as relevant. They could italicize some of them and boldface others, for variety. “Liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal, liberal…” If they don’t think variety is ideological heresy, of course.

And where on Earth did they get the thing about English as an official language? What does that have to do with anything? And is that really the best they can come up with as an indictment of Vincent?

Anyway, the thing that interested me was that Karen Floyd was siding with Rob Miller on the number of days left. Just goes to show that there is room for finding common ground across the partisan divide. And it demonstrates how out of touch Nikki is, even with her own party.

Yes, that last sentence would have had a smiley face after it if I did smiley faces.

Soldier? You mean “sailor,” right?

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Don’t suppose we should expect Slate to know anything this basic, but when it said:

Manhunt Is Underway for Captured U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan

Western forces have launched a massive search for two U.S. Navy personnel who went missing Friday….

… it really meant, “U.S. sailor.”

Yeah, OK, technically, the SEALs are kinda like soldiers — supersoldiers, but soldiers. And nowadays even sailors and airmen are being trained in basic infantry tactics so they can do convoy guard duty because of the lack of regular dogfaces in our all-volunteer Army. And obviously, these guys were not on the water at the time of the incident.

But still, there is a difference. It’s pretty bad when a marine is called a soldier, but a sailor? Come on. That’s a distinction that’s existed forever.

Next thing you know, Slate will call its rifle a gun…

Entire network (CBS) jumps the shark

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First things first: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE ALERT!

To move on… OK, so I’m the last guy to hear this, but I was startled to read this morning that CBS has a show coming up that is based on the inimitable Twitter feed, “Shit My Dad Says.”

My first thought was that the Smothers Brothers have got to be rolling over in their … well, whatever they’re in, since theoretically they’re still alive. This is the network that found them too controversial while NBC was doing “Laugh-In.”

And “Shit My Dad Says”… well, here are some samples (another OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE ALERT!):

“Don’t focus on the one guy who hates you. You don’t go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog shit.”
12:41 PM Jun 28th
“Look, we’re basically on earth to shit and fuck. So unless your job’s to help people shit or fuck, it’s not that important, so relax.”
9:08 PM Jun 4th
“They’re offended? Fuck, shit, asshole, shitfuck; they’re just words…Fine. Shitfuck isn’t a word, but you get my point.”
7:58 PM May 21st
“Waking up when you got a baby, you feel like you drank a bottle of whiskey the night before, except the shit’s in someone else’s pants.”
2:30 PM Apr 12th
“I found some shit in your room…No, I found actual shit. Feces…Well I should hope it’s from your shoes, otherwise what the fuck?”
3:34 PM Apr 8th

Get the idea? Yes, the title is highly and literally descriptive of the content, because this Dad does indeed say it — and one other word — a lot. I mean, these posts occasionally make me laugh, but the vocabulary is really limited. Occasionally there’s one that doesn’t depend on those two operative words, such as:

“Engagement rings are pointless. Indians gave cows…Oh sorry, congrats on proposing. We good now? Can I finish my indian story?”

11:35 AM Jun 17th

“No. Humans will die out. We’re weak. Dinosaurs survived on rotten flesh. You got diarrhea last week from a Wendy’s.”

3:10 PM May 26th

“War hero? No. I was a doc in Vietnam. My job was to say “This is what happens when you screw a hooker, kid. Put this cream on your pecker.”

2:00 PM Mar 16th via web

But on the whole, there’s a theme here. And it’s not ready for prime time.

But fear not. Turns out that this CBS offering is sufficiently tame that it would not even bother the Smothers Brothers censors. Start with the fact that they wimped out on the name, then view the unbelievably insipid preview above. Generic, unremarkable TV sitcom. No originality. No crackle. No pop.

Not that I’m saying they should use the real name or content on a TV show. They shouldn’t. But I’m not the programming genius who pitched this idea. And the fact that someone did, and sold it to this point, says something about the utter desperation of Old Media when it tries to engage New Media.

Basically nothing about the original Twitter version that gives me an occasional laugh survives to the small screen. William Shatner’s supposed zingers sound as though they were written by one of those writers who pen dialogue for smart-alecky kids on generic sitcoms that I would only watch if they tied me down and pinned my eyelids open like they did Alex in “A Clockwork Orange.”

The essence is totally lost. As lost as… well, it reminds me of that early SNL skit in which a singing group called “The Young Caucasians” emasculates Ray Charles’ “Wha’d I Say.”

This, folks, is an old medium dying, and reaching out to something new for salvation in a way that is pathetic.

Of course, one may argue that it happened long ago, but at this point we can definitely say that CBS has jumped the shark.

“How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”

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Within the past week, I read two headlines in the same day that made me laugh out loud. For the life of me I can’t remember now what the other one was, but I remember this one. I read it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece (headlined “Al Qaeda Goes Viral“) about al Qaeda’s new English language Internet magazine, Inspire.

Of course, as I laughed, I also worried. It’s one thing is this is just another instance of unintentional comedy on the part of the terrorist organization (like the guy who set his underpants on fire). But if al Qaeda has now advanced to the point that they’ve developed a sense of irony — if they were intentionally engaging in self-mocking wordplay — then we’re really in trouble. One of bin Laden’s great weaknesses is that his people seem either culturally or pathologically incapable of thinking like us. This would indicate a great leap forward in propaganda capabilities.

If they HAVE learned more about us, it could be for the same reason that I happened to remember this headline several days later. It seems that the editor of Inspire is from Charlotte. Or sorta kinda from Charlotte:

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) – A Charlotte man who used to run a pro-Jihad blog from his parent’s home is now reportedly in Yemen, authoring the first al-Qaeda online magazine in English.

Samir Khan, 25, shut down his website in 2007 under local media scrutiny. According to national news reports, Khan is now running a website called “Inspire.”

The magazine has a flashy and slick appearance. One of the articles shows readers how to construct a bomb using kitchen items.

There are also articles included in the publication reportedly written by Osama Bin Laden. Anti-American sentiments are a constant theme throughout 60-page publication.

Yes, the guy who wrote “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” once ran a terrorist blog from the home of his mom, right up the road in the U.S. of A.

Yet another reason for South Carolinians to eye Charlotte warily.

“We Coloreds,” or, How do you get kicked out of the Tea Party?

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By now, you’ve probably heard that Mark Williams, the Tea Party guy I quoted back here, has been kicked out of the National Tea Party Federation for the satirical letter he wrote, which I will provide here in its entirety when I can find a link. Until then, here’s what several news organizations have reported of it:

In the voice of slaves, Williams wrote: “Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house.
“We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!”
He went on to say blacks don’t want taxes cut because “how will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?”

This, of course, raises a number of questions, beginning with “What? You can get kicked out of the Tea Party? How does that work?” I didn’t know there was anybody in Tea Party who had authority over anybody else in the Tea Party. And indeed, this seems to be a battle between different factions in the movement, which seems to have as many iterations as the competing bands of communists in the Russian revolution.

Interesting how, in the four days since a letter writer in The State said that the “millions” of Tea Partiers “never have been documented to have said or done anything racist,” one Tea Partier alone has provided us with two instances that might seem to call that assertion into just a tad of doubt.

‘Finish Him Off’: Things getting rough in the 2nd District

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Whoa! Not to be outdone by the “You Lie!” guy, his opponent in the 2nd Congressional District is getting a bit overwrought in his rhetoric. I just got a fund-raising release from the Rob Miller campaign urging supporters to help “finish him off” — referring to Joe Wilson. In fact, that was the headline on the e-mail: “Finish Him Off.”

Totally aside from the implied violence of the phrase, there’s the additional problem of inaccuracy. It invokes a picture of Joe lying on the ground at death’s door awaiting the coup de grace. But near as I can tell, Mr. Wilson is poised to do what he usually does — get re-elected.

Gee, uh, thanks, Mr. Greenwich…

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Since word had been flying around that Newt Gingrich, in SC for a GOP fund-raiser, had not actually endorsed Nikki Haley, he put out this hasty Tweet:

“Had a geeat meeting with nikki haleyShe is going to be a great reform governor of south carolinaI am delighted to endorse her”

The way I figure, any staffer he hired to do social media for him would be a better speller and typist than that. So I’m guessing that’s pure Newt.

Whoa! On his last day, Mayor Bob bites back

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There has been little love lost between Mayor Bob Coble (who today becomes former Mayor Bob Coble) and Kevin Fisher since Kevin ran against him several years ago.

So it is that there is some sharp criticism of Bob in Kevin’s column about his departure from office. Sharp, but not out of bounds. In fact, much of it is written with the same crusty, edgy sort of good will that went into his column about me when I left the paper. I enjoyed his column about me, but then, I’m in the political criticism business. (Also, I was a couple of sheets to the wind from free beer when I read it, at Goatfeathers on the night that I left the paper.) I can enjoy a column for being well-done, even if it isn’t exactly hagiographic. In fact, I’d probably object if ol’ Kevin started to put a halo on me.

Bob responds in a way that makes me smile because of the irony of it. Part of Kevin’s criticism of him is that Mayor Bob was TOO nice. Oh yeah, says Bob?, and responds by giving him some sharp elbows in this letter to the editor:

Dear Editor,

Kevin Fisher writes in his latest op ed piece that, “everybody likes Mayor Bob. I know I do. And he knows I do. Moreover, I dare say he likes me.” – Kevin Fisher City Watch (Sept. 5, 2007). I do like Kevin. Moreover, I admire Kevin for his political courage. If I had gotten the number of votes he received in the last two City elections after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money, I would have been too embarrassed to keep writing those columns in The Free Times. But Kevin, despite the humiliation and complete rejection by the voters, soldiers on with “Joe Azar” like determination. He is one tough hombre.

I’m gonna miss this repartee between these two wacky kids…

But I’m sure Andre appreciates the mention

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Nikki Haley has a party going on tonight. Where? Here:

Please join us tonight at 6:30 at the Wild Wings off Bauer Parkway in Irmoabout 1 hour ago via Twitter for Android

Shortly thereafter, she sent out this update:

Correction: Wilds Wings off BOWER Parkway at 6:30 this eveningabout 1 hour ago via Twitter for Android

Not that he made any kind of impression on her during the campaign or anything.

I’m not even going to mention the mistake on the name of the place…

‘I am not a moderate.’ That just says it all…

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First, an apology: I realize it’s unfair to single out this one thing that Gresham Barrett said in his interview with The State. There was a lot of other information in the piece, and I learned things about him I hadn’t known — or had forgotten. I recommend that anyone who plans to vote in next Tuesday’s runoff and is undecided read it.

But I tend to zero in on telling details, and this one really struck me — not for what it says about Gresham Barrett, but for what it tells us about what’s going on in the Tea Party-besieged GOP:

Barrett said he’s been on the receiving end of more attacks, including a Haley TV ad, than any other Republican gubernatorial candidates “My record over the last several months has been distorted. I am not a liberal. I am not a moderate. … Unfortunately, a lot of people have disagreed with my TARP vote and can’t get over it. There’s nothing I can do about that. It is what it is.”

Let’s hear that again:

“I am not a moderate.”

God forbid he should be seen as anything but an extremist. Obviously, he (like pretty much all the Republicans this year) believes that would be political death. Which reminds us why I simply could not see endorsing, or voting for, any of the GOP gubernatorial hopefuls this year — which is a real departure for me.

Now, to highlight some of the good stuff I learned about him from the piece: He remains unafraid to differentiate himself from Mark Sanford, at least in small ways. I knew that he did not hesitate to criticize him in the past. But this year, Republicans all seem to be doing a calculation that goes like this: What’s going on? The voters — at least MY voters, who are usually sensible conservatives — all seem to have lost their minds this year! How can I stay on their good side? What’s my guide? Oh, yeah — Mark Sanford! HIS ideas are totally nuts… since the voters have gone nuts, maybe they’d like it if I act like HIM… and so forth. But Gresham Barrett is saying no to that, at least to some extent.

And that means voters (or at least, those who did not vote in the Democratic primary) have an actual choice next Tuesday. Not that he has a chance, but at least they do have a choice, between an actual conservative Republican, and a Sanfordista who talks about being a conservative (and not so much a Republican).

Let the voters decide the fate of Jake Knotts

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The Lexington County Republican Party has called on Jake Knotts to resign, and has done so, at least on the surface, for noble reasons. Good people everywhere are nodding their heads and thinking, “About time. South Carolina no longer has room for that sort.”

I applaud many (although not all) of the motivations that cause people to say that. And I think it might do our state’s reputation some good in the larger world if he were hounded from office.

But in the end, I think it’s none of the Lexington County Republican Party’s business whether Jake stays in office or not. As he says, he doesn’t serve the Republican Party. He serves the voters of his district. He should answer to them. That’s the way the system is supposed to work. Many of the same people calling for his head within the party are also supporting the candidate who has announced she will run against him in two years. Fine. Let the battle be joined. And let the voters decide whether they prefer Jake, or Katrina Shealy. All of this mess over that inexcusable thing that Jake said should be thoroughly hashed out in that election. And it certainly promises to be an interesting one. (And maybe, if we’re lucky, someone else will step in and run, someone who is NOT tainted by the blood feud between Sanford and Knotts, so that we can have a more straight-up election about values that have nothing to do with power politics between rival factions.)

There are many things that should NOT be settled by public vote. Matters of public policy, for instance. Ours is a representative democracy, and government by plebiscite is in no way to settle complex issues.

But a vote of the people is precisely how we are supposed to settle the important issue of who will be those elected representatives. And we must have the greatest respect for that prerogative of the people, or else, whatever our high-minded standards (and I do find it ironic to hear some of the high-minded pronouncements of principle I’m hearing from some of these Lexington County Republicans, although I welcome it), our system is not grounded in the ultimate source of legitimacy, the people.

That’s what I think about the Jake Knotts affair. Leave it to the voters.

Now, I expect to get hit with all kinds of howls of protest from those who think Jake’s my big buddy, just because, after opposing him strenuously for election after election, we very reluctantly supported him over Ms. Shealy (actually, over Mark Sanford, because that’s what the election was about) in the last election. Such people fail to understand what I think about Jake. I explained it pretty well in a column I wrote at the time, and I urge you to go back and read it. If you’re still not satisfied, well, I’m working on a post that elaborates. I’ll try to get it posted by tomorrow sometime. (I wanted to get it done today before posting this, but it got so long and involved — it involves trying to explain some thoughts I have about the world that I’ve never tried to set in writing before, partly because they take so long to explain — that I just set it aside, and decided to go ahead and post this.)

But in the meantime, consider this: Sen. Knotts is not accused of stealing from the state treasury, or high treason, or physical violence or anything else that would justify short-circuiting the voting relationship between him and his constituents. What he did was say a word — a word that reveals a particularly nasty, grossly unacceptable set of attitudes toward other people based upon the accidents of birth. It was inexcusable, and indicative of much deeper problems, of a great flaw of character.

There are people who believe that merely having such attitudes should be criminalized. I am not among them. For this reason I oppose “hate crime” laws. It’s one of the few things I agree with libertarians (like Jake’s enemy Mark Sanford) about. I believe it is unAmerican to punish a person for his attitudes, however grotesquely objectionable those attitudes are. What we should do is punish the act. And in this case, Jake Knotts didn’t ACT upon his attitude, he just said the word.

Then, let the attitude fend for itself in the public marketplace. This is particularly true of an attitude expressed by a politician. Let the voters decide whether they can live with what it reveals of the candidate’s character. Yes, I know that many people disapprove of the decisions that other voters make. But that’s none of their business. If the poor, black electorate of Washington, D.C., wants to re-elect Marion Barry, that’s up to them — unless he commits a felony or otherwise disqualifies himself. If the redneck white electorate of Georgia wants to elect a Lester Maddox, that is likewise up to them. One of the things these Lexington County Republicans are struggling with is whether they want to be associated with attitudes reminiscent of Gov. Maddox. Good for them. But the final arbiters must be the voters, not a party.

That’s the American way. With all its warts.

More on the subject — probably more than you want — later.

But only in a real emergency, mind you…

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Thanks to Jack Kuenzie for bringing our attention to this via Twitter:

Andre Bauer, describing himself on his FB page: “The only candidate who will tell the truth when need be.” Perhaps not the best wording. 1:21 PM Jun 9th via web

And sure enough, there it is, right where Jack said. The entire blurb:

From the honks to the road side chats our people are determined to vote for the real conservative in race for governor.The only candidate to give back his paycheck.The only candidate who runs his own business.The only candidate who has experience marketing South Carolina to business leaders across the world.The only candidate who will tell the truth when need be.

He means it, too. When the chips are down and all other options have been exhausted, ol’ Andre will flat tell you some truth, and take a polygraph to prove the amazing feat.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Huck Finn, which I long ago used in a column about Bill Clinton:

So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain’t had no experience, and can’t say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and yet here’s a case where I’m blest if it don’t look to me like the truth is better and actuly SAFER than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and think it over some time or other, it’s so kind of strange and unregular. I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I’m a-going to chance it; I’ll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see where you’ll go to.
Ol’ Huck had a finely developed moral sense, and could tell when it was time to do something as outrageous and “unregular” as tell the truth. And ol’ Andre’s making sure that we know that if and when the need arises, he can do the same.

I’ll TRY to be more colorful, if that’s what it takes

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Well, I think I know why Wesley and Phil haven’t had me back on “Pub Politics” for several weeks: I’m just not outrageous enough.

In this new environment, a blogger who wants attention is expected to claim to have done the nasty with a front-runner, and a state senator has to dredge through the darker recesses of nativist terminology to trash the ethnicity of a fellow legislator (who, coincidentally, happens to be that same front-runner).

I’m just a little too whitebread boring, I guess. I’ll try to work on that, if I can figure out the criteria for being the cynosure of all eyes in 2010: I mean, is it OK to claim to have done the horizontal mambo with ANY lawmaker, or do the standards require that it actually be Nikki Haley (because, you know, she just hasn’t been made to look like enough of a victim yet)? And are all ethnicities fair game? Can I say “wetback” or “mick;” is the “N” word going too far? Or does it have to be about Indians specifically? If so, it’s not fair, because Jake’s taken the best one. “Dot-head” seems thin stuff by comparison. And I hate to fall on the inaccurate, feeble slurs that Larry Koon supporters used against her in 2004, talking about worshipping cows and the like.

Or should I just go with my strength, and hope y’all will have me back because you think that after Jake Knotts’ performance, the show needs a little class to redeem it? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

What to say about Jake’s venture into what he terms “Saturday Night Live” humor? A number of things, I suppose:

  • First, thanks for holding yourself back there, Jake — seems I usually hear the full construction as “raghead sumbitches.” So you exercised some restraint. Either that, or you realized halfway through that she’s a chick, and can’t technically be a “sumbitch.”
  • That was really creative. Usually, the term is applied to A-rabs and the like. To expand its scope to include half-Kenyans and Sikhs displays a linguistic originality that is noteworthy.
  • Is that Andre Bauer camp a bunch of strategic geniuses or what? I hadn’t thought there was anything else that could make Nikki Haley look more like a martyr than what we had seen thus far, but these fellas just never say die; they can always go another mile.
  • Cindi Scoppe has got to be feeling really self-righteous today (if you can imagine that), being certain about how right she was to kick and scream and complain every inch of the way when I insisted that we break with precedent and endorse Jake last time around.
  • I might as well take down my video of Jake telling his life story (“How Jake became Jake…“), because it’s just going to seem way too dull after Wesley and them put up his latest performance on the Web.
  • Must I lower the standards of “The Brad Show,” if I ever have a second installment of it, in order to get viewers?

There’s plenty more that could be said, yet on another level, I sort of feel like enough has been said already.

Jake Knotts, 2008 file photo/Brad Warthen