Tim Scott replacing Jim DeMint in Senate

At left: The man of the hour.









I am off to WOLT-FM to plug our new venture on (yow) live radio. While I'm busy, Vogue model and sometime SC governor Nikki Haley will be appointing our next Senator, filling the empty (but still annoying) shoes of nightmarish Teabagger Jim DeMint.

The Associated Press has confirmed that Congressman Tim Scott is the man, which I already figured. Haley blathered at length about bringing minorities into the GOP at the Republican National Convention this past summer, and if she appointed another white man, she would look like the hypocritical opportunist she really is... and we can't have that. Scott will be the first black Senator in South Carolina's history and Haley will get lots of favorable press as a result, which is crucial for her modeling career.

From USA Today:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will tap Rep. Tim Scott to replace outgoing GOP Sen. Jim DeMint, making Scott the first African-American senator from the South since Reconstruction.

The Associated Press has confirmed the Scott appointment, which will be formally announced by Haley at a news conference Monday at the statehouse in South Carolina.

DeMint, an influential conservative and Tea Party favorite, will resign in January to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. His replacement will serve until a special election is held in 2014.

"This is historic for all of the South," said David Woodard, a political scientist at Clemson University. Tim Scott is "conservative and he's Republican. ... What African Americans need are capitalism and conservative values, and Tim Scott is a great vehicle for that. He represents a generation that is interested in entrepreneurship, conservative principles and volunteerism."

Scott, 47, was elected in 2010 to represent a U.S. House district in the Charleston area. A former member of the South Carolina state Legislature, Scott quickly became a favorite of House Speaker John Boehner and GOP officials in Washington and served in a leadership position for the 2010 freshman class.

He has a compelling life story, according to his biography in the Almanac of American Politics. Scott and his siblings were raised by a single mother who worked as a nurse's assistant. By his own account, Scott was on the brink of flunking out of high school when the owner of a Chick-fil-A franchise took him under his wing. He later earned a partial football scholarship to college, and ran an insurance company and owned part of a real-estate agency before entering politics.

State law gives Haley sole authority to appoint a replacement for DeMint, who was first elected in 2004 and is leaving before his second term ends in 2016. The appointment holds major political weight for Haley, who has low approval ratings and is up for re-election in 2014.

Haley reportedly had been considering five candidates: Congressmen Scott and Trey Gowdy, both elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010; former state first lady Jenny Sanford; former attorney general Henry McMaster; and Catherine Templeton, head of the state Department of Health Environmental Control.

The appointment sets in motion a series of events, which will make 2014 a busy year for Palmetto State politics. Both Haley and Graham, the state's senior U.S. senator, are on the ballot in 2014.

Woodard noted that Scott is popular and well-liked and has the support of his fellow members of Congress from South Carolina, which would give him an edge if he runs statewide for the Senate seat, as expected. The five GOP House members from South Carolina are very close, and they stuck together during a high-profile vote last year against Boehner's bill to reduce the deficit.

There have only been six blacks who have served in the U.S. Senate, according to the Senate website. They are Hiram Revels of Mississippi, who served in 1870, Blanche Bruce of Mississippi from 1875 to 1881, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois from 1993 to 1999, Barack Obama of Illinois from 2005 until he resigned in 2008 after his presidential election, and Roland Burris, who was appointed to replace Obama and served until November 2010.

At least it wasn't Trey Gowdy! (I try to think positively about these things, you know?)

Stay tuned, sports fans.

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Haley Watch: Governor Nikki's "book"

Her book has the properly Republican title: "Can't is not an option"--supposedly something her mother said. The subtitle is "My American Story" (just in case you thought it was from somewhere else).

George Will once referred to such omnipresent politician-accounts as "one of those word-salads you write 'with' someone"--and that seems to be an accurate description of Haley's little Horatio Alger tale. Unfortunately, the ghostwriter is not named, which might be a good thing for the ghostwriter; we do not want to hold an innocent party accountable for the soon-to-be-published bullshit.

What amazes me is, she hasn't even been in office two whole years... and a book already?!?

Will Folks (the governor's ex-boyfriend) is now making jokes that her first appearance in the upstate will be at the amusingly-named (under the circumstances) local bookstore Fiction Addiction. (tickets required!) Of course, Folks will NOT be left out of the biography; Nikki's busy PR team successfully spun his accusations as a vicious attempt to keep this fabulously wonderful, plucky nonwhite lady OUT of office, that white male meanie! (As I have stated before, I believe Folks' account.)

My question is, does it not matter that she is totally incompetent and gave away the Port of Charleston? Apparently not. Obviously, her fresh, attractive appearance and high-profile status as South Carolina's first nonwhite woman governor, easily eclipses whether she actually does a decent job or not. (Or whether she is corrupt, as even several Republicans have concluded she is.)

And by the way, Haley recently lied (again) about her daughter winning a pageant. Truth-telling is most assuredly not her long suit.

I warned yall not to vote for her. (sigh)

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Al Jazeera: The challenges of Occupying South Carolina

Al Jazeera ran an article about South Carolina Occupy!!! Woot!

How interesting that it's up to foreign journalists to understand what's going on around here. You sure can't find this kind of insightful analysis in the New York Times, or even the Greenville News.

Excerpt:

With about ten per cent of South Carolinians unemployed, economic woes might make South Carolina seem like a receptive setting for the Occupy movement - which reserves some of its harshest rhetoric for banks and corporations they deem largely responsible for income inequality.

But compared with other states, there aren't many Occupiers in South Carolina: in Charleston, the state's second-largest city, there are some 20 to 40 active participants, says Anjana Joshi, a research analyst at a Charleston law firm.

South Carolina tends to be a conservative state: its governor and all but one congressman are affiliated with the right-wing Tea Party movement. Deb Morrow of Occupy Spartanburg says dislike of President Obama is so strong in parts of the state that it's "difficult to get people to engage" with issues such as unemployment and income inequality.

Although about 75 Occupiers held a demonstration at the capitol last Saturday in Columbia - near a statue of segregationist senator Strom Thurmond - about ten times as many people had gathered on the other side of the state house earlier that day as part of an anti-abortion rally.

Laura Olson, a political science professor at Clemson University, doesn't think the Occupiers' small numbers are necessarily problematic for the movement. "The political context here makes it tough for any kind of progressive movement to get much traction. But that can be an advantage in a way too," she explained. "Even though you're not going to attract huge numbers of people, you might get folks who are more deeply committed than you otherwise might" in a more liberal state.

The many faces of Occupy

The stereotypical Occupier is often portrayed as a young, unemployed, college student. That may be one demographic - but far from the only one.

South Carolina, with its many military bases and academies, has a lot of veterans - and a disproportionate number of Occupiers seem to be veterans. Of the 11 people arrested when Occupy Charleston set up a short-lived encampment in the city's Marion Square, five were veterans, including Ramon Caraballo of Charleston.

Caraballo, who served in Iraq for 15 months during the surge, links his participation in Occupy with his military service. He says he became involved with Occupy after seeing police in Oakland fire beanbag guns and tear gas canisters at demonstrators close-range - which he says the US Army isn't allowed to do to Iraqi protesters. "We ourselves are dead wrong for what we impose in other countries - and we can't even follow those rules here," says Caraballo.

And in the seaside city of Myrtle Beach - which has a large number of senior citizens - many people active in the Occupy group there are retirees, says Brian Noyes Pulling, himself a retired social worker.

Although Occupiers in South Carolina say the reception they've gotten hasn't been overwhelmingly negative, it hasn't been altogether welcoming, either. Cliff Berardo, a driver from Columbia who's involved with Occupy, says people in the state often see participants as "dirty, filthy hippies" who "want a free ride". For example, Ronald Moulder, who's active with the Tea Party, described Occupy participants demonstrating at a Tea Party convention in Myrtle Beach as looking "like they just got out from under the bridge".

Olson believes that many South Carolinians "see the movement as sort of distant from here, as something that is going on in big cities in the North ... It feels too '60s-ish, I think, for a lot of folks".

Increasing activism

"There are whole communities of people that our local government just doesn't care about."

- Anjana Joshi of Occupy Charleston

Some Occupy groups in the state are trying to overcome the perception that they are, in the words of Occupy Spartanburg's Deb Morrow, "just standing out there and doing nothing". Every Sunday, for instance, Occupy Charleston holds a free potluck dinner in the city's low-income East Side neighbourhood. "We try to get into our actual communities and help people and fill the void that the government has left," says Joshi. "There are whole communities of people that our local government just doesn't care about."

A handful of Occupiers are becoming active in electoral politics as well. Although Occupy groups do not endorse political candidates, at least two Occupy participants are running for congress in South Carolina, both against Tea Party incumbents elected in 2010. Deb Morrow is running in the Democratic primary in the state's 4th District for the chance to take on Trey Gowdy. And Jeanne van den Hurk of Greenville will challenge 3rd District congressman Jeff Duncan if she becomes the Democratic nominee.

Both say one of the main reasons they're running is the role money plays in politics. "There's becoming an awareness that corporations are holding us hostage," van den Hurk told me at an Occupy event in Columbia.

Occupy participants largely reject comparisons with the conservative Tea Party movement - and vice versa. "They want government," said Charleston Tea Party chairman Mike Murphree. "I don't want nothing to do with government."

Comparing movements on the US Left and Right

But although their politics are quite different, there are nevertheless some similarities. "Both movements are coming from the same place," argues Olson, "and that is anger, dissatisfaction, alienation, lack of trust in government."

Both movements say they've changed the national political dialogue: Tea Partiers claim that more Republican politicians are talking about federal spending and taxes; Occupiers point out that income inequality and corporate misdeeds are becoming part of the public discourse - even in the Republican primary.

There's no way to prove causality, but some Occupiers here note that Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry's attacks on Mitt Romney for his tenure at private equity firm Bain Capital sound very similar to what Occupy Wall Street has been saying all along (Perry went so far as to call Romney a "vulture capitalist" - not a charge often made by Republicans today). Archconservative pundit Rush Limbaugh took notice, averring that Gingrich is "singing from the same hymnal" as the Occupy movement.

Candidates' talking points come and go. Perhaps a longer-lasting political effect of the state's Occupy movement is the forging of a network of left-leaning activists "who didn't know each other a year ago", in the words of South Carolina Green Party co-chair Scott West. "We all know one another now."

We sure do! I now count both Deb Morrow and Jeanne van den Hurk among my friends.

Nice article, and thanks to the ever-intrepid Joni LeCompte for putting me onto it.

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Wordless Wednesday: Charleston is purty

Here are some random photos of my quickie Saturday trip to Charleston; I couldn't readily remember the last time I was there. We endured ungodly temperatures by 11am, and I just wilted slowly, the rest of the day... but I still remembered to tell everybody about the radio show!



Accordingly, starting off with Spanish moss, which mostly disappears by the time you get to Columbia, so we don't have any in the upstate. Boo. :( I love it!



And we were also lucky enough to have a historian in our midst, who educated us about MARYVILLE (see historic landmark), which I am shocked to discover does not even rate its own Wikipedia page. I did find one reference to Mary Mathews Just (for whom the village was named) in her famous son's obituary. Maryville was a black township founded in 1885, which had its charter revoked, poof. No town for you! (You didn't think they were going to let freed slaves do that during Jim Crow, did you?) I would like to read a historic account of the events leading up to this amazing, radically white-supermacist act (I smell kkk), but it is difficult (impossible) to find one not peppered with racist excuses. What really happened? Will we ever know?



Maryville is not even mentioned in Charleston's Wikipedia entry.



Emanuel A.M.E. church in the Maryville neighborhood, stands where the historic marker is now, and was founded in 1885.



The last photo is the interior of The Mellow Mushroom, pizza to die for throughout the southeast! (commercial) I've been to them all over, from Athens to Asheville, and no two restaurants look the same.



You can click to enlarge. Have a great Wednesday!



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Nikki Haley: "States rights trump everything"

Photo from Charleston City Paper.





I went to Charleston Saturday with Green Party members, right after Hurricane Irene decided to spare the place. We just had time to picket the US Customs House, loudly demand they bring the troops home, chow down on pizza at the Mellow Mushroom, gossip in earnest, howl in indignation, and leave. (Phabulous photos HERE)



Sitting at the Mellow Mushroom with my sweat-soaked comrades (dear God, it is HOT in Charleston!), I perused the wonderful Charleston City Paper, where I found an entertaining and thorough account of the recent Redstate Gathering, by the intrepid Paul Bowers.



The scary title?: This beautiful uprising.



But that isn't even the scariest part. The scariest excerpt concerns the political philosophy of our governor:

After [South Carolina Governor Nikki] Haley's speech, someone asked the governor what she thought about nullification, the doctrine that says a state can declare a federal law null and void within its own borders (which was one of the issues that ultimately led to the Civil War). Haley responded, "I think nullification is something we talk about when we're frustrated." When the same audience member said he really wanted to know Haley's stance on states' rights, she said, "States' rights trump everything. The 10th Amendment trumps everything."

Now, why didn't this fascinating quote make it into any of the other news accounts of the RedState Gathering? Especially since adoring teenybopper-journalists appear to be hanging on Haley's every word? How did they miss that?



Well, I find it damned alarming, so let me underscore and underline the quote here.

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South Carolina as viewed from Charleston

Thanks to Cedar Posts for the map!

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Chronicles of the redneck underground

After I saw this poster at Horizon, I seriously considered changing the name of my blog. And then I realized, I am just not up for that. I don't know what the entirety of the redneck underground is up to, just my little corner of it.

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My senator, Lindsay Graham, claims to be against earmarks, and yet is currently agitating for the particular earmark that guarantees deepening of The Port of Charleston. Earmarks for me, but not for thee! Funny how that works.

Two South Carolina politicians are screwing the pooch on this one, notably Senator Jim DeMint (well duh) and Congressman Joe Wilson, rude screamer of epithets. If there are significant layoffs at the coast, let's hope the journalists get it right this time, and properly blame these two:

The S.C. congressional delegation, made up of U.S. House and Senate members from South Carolina, decided to make a push for the money in Obama’s budget by writing a unified letter, he said.

“We all got together, the delegation, we said we were all going to do a letter, the whole delegation was going to do a letter to the president, asking the president to put it in his budget,” [Congressman Jim] Clyburn said. “Now, there are eight members in the delegation. Two members in the delegation, I understand, refused to sign the letter.”

Clyburn said those two members were Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

Wilson, a Charleston Republican, did not specifically address the delegation’s letter when asked for a comment. He said that being from the Lowcountry, he fully understands the economic role of the Port of Charleston.

He understands, he just doesn't give a shit about any of the people actually WORKING there.

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Things that make you go WTF: Republicans will provide state-sponsored birth control for horses, but not for women!

Gals, the trick is to figure out how to turn yourselves into horses.

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If the situation in the Middle East is too volatile for you to easily keep up with, here is a great clickable map from the BBC. I've bookmarked it for easy access.

"Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts."--Mother Jones.

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Greatest blog-name ever! And I totally flipped when I saw the banner, and knew I had to reproduce it here: FANBOY WIFE! :D

I love her comic-book tears and yes, I totally relate.

Question: Is there something odd about endless print-outs of back-issues of extinct comics? I seem to remember that once, I thought there was. But now? I have comics reproducing themselves in my guest room. The unexpected upside is that various young men I have worked with think I am cool for knowing the names of obscure superheroes.

Their future girlfriends/wives will cry comic book tears too!

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Somebody made my day by posting the studio version of BOX OF RAIN. (happy, happy)

Box of Rain - Grateful Dead

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