Last night I was cleaning out email, and ran across this item from last week.
Actually, technically, it’s from 2002. In the clip, Mitt Romney assures Massachusetts voters, “My views are progressive.” And you know, at the moment, it may have been true.
In any case, you may have noticed he doesn’t say that much any more, for some reason.
This just came out a few minutes ago:
VIDEO: Gov. Haley lies about inviting Occupy Columbia to make a public statement
The video above shows Governor Nikki Haley falsely claiming that Occupy Columbia had been invited to make a public statement at a Budget and Control Board meeting, in which they proposed new regulations aimed at evicting Occupy Columbia. We are still waiting on the invitation.
In reality, Melissa Harmon called the Budget and Control Board yesterday and requested to make a public statement. I know this because I was sitting next to her when it happened and tweeted about it. When they did reply to her, she was told explicitly that we could not make public statements and instead would have to submit written ones. We did not choose to submit written statements, as the Governor stated.
Maybe the Governor should check with her staff about these things before speaking to the media. If she did intend for us to have that opportunity then she should consider slowing this down and allowing adequate time to hold public hearings.
OK, we just left, and already they’re up to these kinds of shenanigans in Iraq?
Washington— U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John McCain (R-Arizona) released the following statement on recent developments in Iraq:
“We are alarmed by recent developments in Iraq, most recently the warrant issued today by the Maliki government for the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tariq al Hashimi. This is a clear sign that the fragile political accommodation made possible by the surge of 2007, which ended large-scale sectarian violence in Iraq, is now unraveling. This crisis has been precipitated in large measure by the failure and unwillingness of the Obama Administration to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government for a residual presence of U.S. forces in Iraq, thereby depriving Iraq of the stabilizing influence of the U.S. military and diminishing the ability of the United States to support Iraq.
“If Iraq slides back into sectarian violence, the consequences will be catastrophic for the Iraqi people and U.S. interests in the Middle East, and a clear victory for al Qaeda and Iran. A deterioration of the kind we are now witnessing in Iraq was not unforeseen, and now the U.S. government must do whatever it can to help Iraqis stabilize the situation. We call upon the Obama Administration and the Iraqi government to reopen negotiations with the goal of maintaining an effective residual U.S. military presence in Iraq before the situation deteriorates further.”
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Let’s hope it’s not as bad as Sens. Graham and McCain worry that it is. I mean, hope’s all we have left, right?
USC just put out this release:
Up in smoke: Research shows graphic images can deter smokers
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but its worth might just be measurable in terms of lives, according to research by a University of South Carolina public health professor.
That’s because visual imagery on cigarette packages deters smoking, and the more graphic they are, the better the results, said Jim Thrasher, assistant professor in the Arnold School of Public Health Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior.
“Tobacco use continues to be the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and graphic health warnings are among the most cost-effective interventions that exist,” Thrasher said….
Personally, I don’t need graphic images to deter me. One whiff of the stuff is enough to persuade me to stay away from it forever.
If you must show me a “graphic” image, the one above is fine. It was the winner of a contest in California:
The challenge was to create a anti smoking ad powerful enough to turn people off cigarettes without resorting to the gruesome imagery so prevalent in anti-smoking campaigns. With the help of a couple of dancers, an up-for-anything ad agency and hundreds of yards of Lycra, Los Angeles photographer Ricardo Marenco did just that.
“I wanted to evoke a sea of people trapped inside their addiction,” says Marenco, who created the shot for the California Department of Public Health’s billboard and print campaign. To achieve his desired effect, he photographed the dancers individually inside 7-foot-tall Lycra cigarettes. Then he digitally overlaid embers and smoke from real cigarettes on the figures. The ads ran without any words, only a helpline number — the image said it all.
But apparently, you have to be really gross for some people. Below is one of the images that came with the USC release. Why is it in Spanish (“garganta” means “throat”)? I guess because of this part of the release:
As a result of his work with colleagues from Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, Mexico’s Minister of Health adopted their recommendations for which pictorial warnings to put on cigarette packages, which began circulating in September.
Thrasher, who has a joint research and faculty appointment with Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, is also assessing what labels are the most convincing for low socioeconomic status groups…
Just in case you, like our governor, are sitting up nights wondering whether how the Occupy Columbia protesters are getting nutritious, sanitary meals, here’s an explanation from Maris Burton, a member of the Occupy Columbia Food Committee:
Dear Budget and Control Board members,
It has come to my attention that the storage and cooking of food is being used in an attempt to demonstrate the need for emergency regulations to protect the public health.
I have been involved with supplying and arranging delivery of food to the Occupiers. I have taken part in several discussions regarding how to safely handle food and how to provide nutritious cooked meals. People are not living on the State House grounds; they are Occupying the grounds as a form of protest.
Since the eviction from the State House grounds on Nov 16, 2011 and the subsequent temporary restraining order that allowed the use of tents and a 24 hour occupation as part of our right to free speech, we agreed to lessen our footprint and to focus on having non-perishable items such as individually wrapped snack packets of crackers and nutrition bars, and water available to the Occupiers.
Dry goods are kept in a sealable plastic tub, not accessible to wildlife. We have a rotating food schedule of volunteers who prepare hot meals off site and bring them to the State house. We have one cooler on site that is kept supplied with ice and sometimes contains yogurts, cheese or packaged sandwich meats or creamer for coffee. Food is brought at set times and cleared away promptly.
Any used dishes are collected each evening and washed at a volunteer’s home and then returned to the State House.
There have been no incidents of food related illnesses, and there has not been a problem with any wildlife coming near the food.
I welcome any questions you may have.
Such things are mildly interesting to me, because of my own strong aversion to living in the open. I’ve always thought, for instance, that the hardest part about serving in combat infantry would be the bivouac thing. Storm Omaha Beach, with the Germans having presighted every square inch and ready to rain lead and high explosives on me? Yeah, OK, just as long as I get a warm dinner and comfortable, dry bed that night, preferably back in England. To me, the real horror stories of war are those about the defenders of Bastogne getting frozen, literally, into their foxholes every night for a month during the coldest winter in Europe in a century, or the extremely gross conditions on Okinawa, living in a muddy soup of human waste and decomposing bodies. The fighting, by comparison, seems far less objectionable.
But I see even optimal outdoor living conditions to be less than desirable. I am not what you’d ever call a Happy Camper. By definition: If I’m camping, I’m not happy. Comparatively, anyway.
So it’s interesting to know how they’re managing over at the State House.
I just thought that, in light of yesterday’s post about the profanity ban in Columbia’s city parks, you’d enjoy these clips from “Demolition Man,” which I watched again recently on Netflix.
We could do this. Just need to add some gadgetry to the CCTV cameras around town…
I had missed this local news clip, but alert correspondent Burl Burlingame, way out in our Honolulu bureau, brought it to my attention.
Nothing like openness in an elected official, huh? Here’s the WACH story about what you see above…
So supposedly the Dear Leader died Saturday morning, and it took state television until Sunday night to announce it. Why the delay? I suspect it may be that it took the newsreader that long to rehearse making the announcement while sounding grief-stricken.
Why would I suggest that she, and the hundreds of other North Koreans we’ve seen exhibiting ridiculous, over-the-top grief behavior could be faking it?
Because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about: The idea that a whole country, and one with nuclear weapons, could be this emotionally messed up.
I mean, look at the guy. And review anything you know about him, starting with the way he has kept in country in a perpetual dark age (literally dark in the sense that it is so primitive, it stands out from space at night because of the lack of electric lights). For years, the Chinese have been pressing him to follow their model — continued political oppression, but increased wealth for citizens — but he and his regime said “no dice.” He preferred for his people to suffer in every way.
And again, as I said look at the guy. What a loser. Sure, we westerners may be superficial, with our penchant for electing people who are taller and have good hair, but this is ridiculous. No self-respecting free country would ever elect a guy who looks like this. Far as I’m concerned, The Economist famously said it all several years ago, with its best cover ever.
Basically, this was a guy with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. Or if he had any, he kept them carefully hidden.
If the grief is sincere, then this is the most extreme mass case of Stockholm Syndrome ever. And that’s troubling.
Bryan Cox, former news director at WACH-Fox, brings this to my attention. That’s Bryan in the picture, holding the “COCKS” photograph.
Here’s Bryan’s commentary on the matter:
Hey Brad,
These pics were taken Sunday at Sims Park in Shandon. The Columbia police department announced anti-profanity signs were going up via a Facebook post on Wednesday.
See that post here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=288864641151114&set=a.182579751779604.32971.182562865114626&type=1&theater
This announcement sparked some local media coverage; none of which I saw took a hard look at whether this is legal. The city ordinances cited on the sign are 14-91 (disorderly conduct) and 15-1 (rules of a park).
The SC Supreme Court has ruled at least twice that profanity alone is not grounds for arrest. See: State v Pittman (2000) and State v Perkins (1991). The court has since ruled for profanity to be illegal it must have been accompanied with “fighting words” that could reasonably incite violence. For example, (my understanding of the case law, not an actual example given by the court) cursing at a man’s wife in public likely would not be protected speech as it could reasonably incite a fight with the man. However; simply cursing in front of the man and his wife in public is protected speech.
Aside from contradicting South Carolina law, the city claim runs contrary to other states’ recent action on the issue.
North Carolina Superior Court struck down that state’s anti-profanity law in January on free speech grounds. Here’s a link: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/state-s-anti-profanity-law-unconstitutional-rules-superior-court-judge
Chicago suburb Park Ridge repealed its anti-profanity law in October. In this article the city police chief is quoted as saying the law likely was unconstitutional: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/05/park-ridge-repeals-anti-s_n_995899.html
Obviously I’m not an attorney. However; it seems clear the city knows, or should know, this isn’t enforceable and is spending taxpayer money on signs threatening to arrest citizens for actions that are legal.
It’s also worth noting I posted my photo as a comment on the city’s Facebook page Sunday afternoon, and it was quickly deleted by the department. Apparently, in addition to arresting citizens for crimes that don’t exist the department wants to censor those who dispel this misinformation.
Thanks for taking interest in this. Bryan
Well, of course I’m going to take an interest. You hold up a picture of a pretty young woman holding a sign saying, “COCKS,” it gets my attention.
But I think Bryan’s missing something here: I think that in the Midlands, anything having to do with the Gamecocks or anything that takes place at the Grid Temple takes on religious overtones. Just as we are enjoined against coveting our “neighbor’s ass” in Exodus 20:17, there are words that are OK in a certain context (as long as they refer, in this case, to a donkey). I think in the Grid Temple Bible, there’s probably something about, “Thou shalt have no gods before thy Gamecocks,” or some such.
Anyway, to be serious, I have to say that while Bryan may be on firm legal ground here, my sympathy lies with anyone trying to make our public spaces less coarse. I don’t think we, or our children, or our wives, or our innocent asses, for that matter, should have to be subjected to the kind of filthy that is routine poured forth in loud voices in our parks and elsewhere.
So I’d give our local cops an A for effort, even if they do get slapped down. And don’t quote the First Amendment at me. No rational person believes that the Founders meant that Congress shall make no law abridging F-bombs in public.
I’m sad to see that Christopher Hitchens is no longer among us. On a trivial level, I’m sorry because reading him was such a guilty pleasure, as he sliced and diced viewpoints — and people — with whom he disagreed.
On a deeper level, I have the traditional regret, as a Catholic, for the loss of an unshriven soul. Not that I wanted to see Hitchens make a deathbed conversion. That would have seemed cheap theatrics, and it would have sent the wrong message — that our relationship with God should be based on existential terror. I just wish he’d changed his mind at some point, before now.
It was always impressive to see the way his mind worked, fairly crackling through any subject you may like, and totally unapologetic for opinions that were unpopular. And I don’t just say that because he agreed with me on Iraq, which probably distressed a lot of his free-thinking friends.
But I mourn the fact that his incisive, energetic mind always came up with the wrong answer when it ran the God equation. He would have been a good one to have on the other side. You know, the side of the angels, as they say.
As a believer, then, it falls to me to say, May God have mercy upon his soul. And I mean it. I wish him the best in the life he did not expect.
Not brother David, the ex-speaker and ambassador, but Billy Wilkins, the former head of the 4th Circuit:
After Gov. Nikki Haley endorsed Mitt Romney for president this morning, S.C. frontrunner Newt Gingrich responded by announcing the endorsements of Billy and Debra Wilkins.
Billy Wilkins is a partner at the Nexsen Pruet law firm and a former chief justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. His wife Debra is a former member of the board of visitors at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Gingrich’s campaign noted that Billy Wilkins is “most recently known for playing a pivotal role in Boeing’s decision to locate in South Carolina.”…
Billy Wilkins
Maybe it doesn’t cut much ice with the rank and file voters who still like Nikki Haley, but they are, ahem, in the minority now. As for this minority of one, I certainly find the endorsement of Judge Wilkins to be more impressive than the one Romney bagged. For what little that’s worth. Newt’s all like, Yo, maybe you’ve got Nikki, but I’ve got somebody serious. So much for me being the wild man, huh?
Interesting that Romney, the closest thing the GOP field has to an establishment candidate, gets the Tea Party governor’s backing, but Gingrich the Perpetual Insurgent comes up with an endorsement as Establishment as Billy Wilkins.
You just can’t make any assumptions in this contest…
I suppose you’ve seen this news:
Haley endorses Romney
By ADAM BEAM and GINA SMITH – abeam@thestate.com, gnsmith@thestate.comGov. Nikki Haley has endorsed Mitt Romney for president and will campaign with him in Greenville today and Myrtle Beach and Charleston tomorrow.
“He is a conservative businessman who has spent his life working in the economy, and he understands exactly how jobs are created,” Haley said in a news release from Romney’s campaign.
In a none-too-veiled slap at Romney’s chief GOP rival, former House Speaker Next Gingrich, Haley added, “He is not a creature of Washington, and he knows what it means to make decisions – real decisions – not simply cast a vote.”…
The first thought this prompts is, Does this mean Newt Gingrich is a shoo-in in South Carolina? Maybe I’d better call back the folks from the British consulate and say, Hey, I now know what’s going to happen.
Or not. This year is so unpredictable that even an endorsement by a Republican who is less popular in South Carolina than Barack Obama is not a sure thing.
Now, confession time: I feel a little bad that that was my first thought. Because it means I’m thinking like those people who used to say that “The State‘s endorsement is the kiss of death.” Of course, they were so demonstrably wrong — I ran the numbers, and over the course of the years I was on the editorial board, 75 percent of our endorsees in general elections won — but I still hate to be so dismissive.
But what am I gonna do? That was the first thing it occurred to me to say. Of course, you might say that I could wait a minute, and have other thoughts. To which I would say, Hey, this is a blog, not print.
I suppose, if I do think a bit more, I would say:
By the way, the national media still don’t get Nikki Haley and South Carolina. They think it’s a biggie, or at least some of them do. Samuel Tenenbaum said he was taken aback when he saw this reported on MSNBC at 5 this morning. (Routine for him; Samuel is an early riser.) But probably not everyone in SC reacted the way he did. Or the way I did. It takes all kinds to make up a South Carolina.
Which is my way of saying, maybe this is a bigger deal than I think it is. But it seems unlikely.
On a previous post, Bud made the observation that Hillary Clinton “seemed much more presentable 4-5 years ago.” (In Bud’s defense, it was one of our distaff contributors who brought up the subject of the secretary of state’s appearance.)
I responded, “All of us were more presentable 4-5 years ago.”
In support of that proposition, I share these photos of myself that I ran across recently, and which made me smile in remembrance.
They are a tad older than four or five years. They were taken in June 1985. I’m not sure why they are Polaroids. Maybe one of our photographers was experimenting with that as a way of checking the image before capturing it on 35mm film. Remember, in the days before digital, you didn’t know know exactly how the image would turn out until you developed it later.
In any case, the occasion for these images being taken was that it had just been announced that I would be leaving The Jackson Sun to become news editor of the much-larger Wichita Eagle-Beacon.
Something about my manic grin caused Judith, one of my best friends at the paper, to assert that I looked like I was telling my new publisher at The Sun what he could do with my old job. (Alas, my relationship with him was not nearly as positive as the one with his predecessor, Reid Ashe, whom I mentioned in my last post.)
I don’t know what I said to that. I think I just smiled — a particularly cocky, self-assured smile.
Yesterday, I heard heard a discussion on the radio about the apparently shocking news that, according to LinkedIn, 19 percent of women (nearly one out of every five!) have never had a workplace mentor.
Which, of course, means that more than 80 percent have had a mentor.
I found myself groping for a place to grab ahold of that and decide whether it meant anything at all. I mean, that sounded to me like a lot of women having mentors. How, for instance, does it compare to guys? I didn’t hear any number relating to that, but Nicole Williams of LinkedIn said this:
we found two different surveys that confirmed that, in fact, men are more likely to get workplace guidance than women. They’re more likely to have a mentor. They’re more likely to be asked to be a mentor. They’re more likely to have asked someone to be a mentor.
Yeah, OK, but I’d sort of like to see those surveys.
Because… and I may be way off-base here… I always thought that mentoring was kind of a, well, a chick thing. In my worklife, I’ve mostly only heard women even talking about it. And I’ve heard them talk about it a lot, and to place great importance on it. And I’ve seen female executives go out of their way to act as a mentor to women below them, and to encourage those women to turn about and do the same for another person of the female persuasion. And I chalked that up to women being more into doing things collaboratively, and helping each other out, while guys tend to be antisocial jerks who wouldn’t go out of their way to help another guy (a competitor!) if their lives depended on it. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but those are the trends I have noticed, anecdotally speaking.
There’s a feminist assumption underlying all the “mentor” talk I hear from women that goes like this: Guys have their Old Boy Network, so we have to come up with these constructs to counteract that. And so they do. And it’s very overt: Will you be my mentor? Yes, I will. Then there are meetings, and lectures, and goals set, etc.
But maybe guys are “mentoring” (another one of those maddening cases of turning a noun into a verb) each other like crazy without even knowing it, or at least without calling it that.
So I thought back, have I ever had a mentor? Not overtly, to the best of my knowledge. I was regularly encouraged by my boss at The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, right out of college. I can think of two things in particular Reid Ashe said to me. Once he said, “You’re a superstar around here — you know that, don’t you?” Which was kind of a boost. And when I applied to replace John Parish as our state political writer in 1979, and didn’t get it, he created a new position for me (so I wouldn’t quit) in which I worked on special reporting assignments that I pretty much chose myself. Which was cool. The next year, he promoted me to be the editor over all the paper’s news reporters. And one time after that, when I wanted to try some experimental program or other, he told me I didn’t have to ask: “You have the authority to do anything you want to do — as long as you do the right thing.” Some would have found that intimidating, because of the implication that you’d better not foul up (in the sense of being given enough rope to hang yourself), but I was a pretty cocky kid, and I didn’t think anything I wanted to do could possibly be wrong, so I found it empowering. To use another one of those touchy-feely H.R. words.
So there’s no doubt he did a lot go encourage me early in my career. But was that being a mentor — or just having a boss who encouraged me and promoted me (which I don’t think is quite the same thing)? I don’t know. We didn’t call it that. We didn’t have regular meetings. He didn’t give me lectures, or goals. He was more like, “Keep up the good work!” Which I certainly found encouraging. But there was no formal relationship.
Anyway, I just got to wondering: How many of y’all, male and female, have had people you would call “mentors”?
I saw this correction to reports that nearly half of Americans are below the poverty line or “low-income:”
UPDATE: Hold on just one second. The widely-cited “1-in-2” figure that a number of media outlets reported Thursday — including the Associated Press (and, of course, us by extension) — may not be accurate.
At least according to an NBC News affiliate in Los Angeles, which says it double checked the number with a trio of Census analysts who say that the actual figure for how many Americans are officially classified as either low income or impoverished is closer to 1 in 3.
NBC-LA explains that despite reports to the contrary, the Census officials tell them the the true figures are as follows: about 49.9 million Americans, roughly 13.8 percent of the U.S. population, are living below the poverty line and another 53.8 million, or about 18 percent, are considered low income.
49.9 million + 53.8 million = 103.7 million, or roughly 31 percent of the U.S. population. That’s still a pretty substantial chunk of the U.S. population, but not quite the “nearly half” that made its way into headlines around the Web and onto TV broadcasts.
Maybe it’s just because I missed the original report, but I hope you’ll excuse me for not breaking out the champagne. “Only” 31 percent of Americans are poor? This is not good, people.
I was pleased when I heard, on the radio yesterday, President Obama saying this at Fort Bragg:
As your Commander-in-Chief, I can tell you that it will indeed be a part of history. Those last American troops will move south on desert sands, and then they will cross the border out of Iraq with their heads held high. One of the most extraordinary chapters in the history of the American military will come to an end. Iraq’s future will be in the hands of its people. America’s war in Iraq will be over.
I appreciated it because he said “America’s war in Iraq will be over.” At another point in the speech, he referred to the “end of our combat mission,” which was even better, and emphasized that what was happening was that responsibility was being handed over to Iraqi forces.
I was grateful that he had not said this was “the end of the war.” (I was also gratified that he, only slightly grudgingly, spoke of the troops accomplishment: “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” Something that, of course, we would not have done had Mr. Obama had his way.)
This was, unfortunately, about the only place where I would be so gratified. Elsewhere in the speech, he said “end of the war” over and over and over again. But I don’t blame the president. The news media were worse:
And on and on. Among those I saw in a quick survey, only NPR got it right, in a headline that said “Iraq Mission Ends.”
Maybe I’m the only one who cares. But I became hypersensitized to the matter over all these years of antiwar folks saying “end the war,” when what they meant was that they wanted the U.S. forces to withdraw. Which is an entirely different thing.
The “end of the war in Iraq” is either something that happened several years in the past (the interpretation I prefer), or, more ominously, has yet to occur. There are a number of ways that you can speak, legitimately, of “the end of the Iraq war:”
But in that last case — if you believe the “war” has continued up to this point — then withdrawing U.S. forces most assuredly does not “end” that war. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anything more likely to make fighting flare back up dramatically.
I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope that President Obama (and Bush before him) are right in their projection that things are sufficiently stable for Iraq to deal with the security vacuum created by a U.S. departure. I don’t know whether they are or not.
But I know this: Speaking of what is happening this month as “the end of the war” is highly inaccurate.
Jon Huntsman, back when he was spending more time in SC.
What does “bumped” mean to you? When I saw this Tweet this morning:
Huntsman bumped to third place with 13 percent in New Hampshire poll http://bit.ly/tChRZR
… I thought they were saying he had been higher than 3rd, and had been “bumped” down — like getting bumped from a flight or something. Which would have been news to me that he had been doing that well.
But what they meant was that he was “bumped up,” and is now behind only Romney and Gingrich. Which, actually, was also news to me:
A new poll found Jon Huntsman with 13 percent support from likely Republican and independent voters surveyed in New Hampshire.
The 7News/Suffolk University poll released late Wednesday found Huntsman in third place among likely Republican and New Hampshire voters, trailing Mitt Romney (with 38 percent) and Newt Gingrich (with 20). The survey’s findings are the best yet for Huntsman in the Granite State. Previously, his best poll in New Hampshire showed him in fourth place at 11 percent, behind Romney, Gingrich and Ron Paul….
The modest gains in the 7News/Suffolk University poll reflect Huntsman’s near-exclusive focus on performing well in the early primary state. Huntsman had previously polled at 9 percent when 7News/Suffolk University surveyed the GOP primary field with the same questions last month.
Huntsman is staking his presidential campaign’s future on New Hampshire. He hopes that if he can perform well there, he can use the momentum to help him win successive victories in later states….
So now you know what Huntsman’s been up to. I was wondering, since I hadn’t seen him around here lately.
It seems to be paying off for him. Although it seems late for him to make such a move.
Wouldn’t it be something if, at the last minute, Republican voters said, “Hey, why don’t we nominate somebody who has a chance to win?” That would be one for the books, given the way they’ve been acting lately.
It’s particularly interesting given how well Ron Paul is doing in Iowa. Paul, of course, represents a trend whereby Republicans are running even farther away from electability. Huntsman represents the opposite.
Yesterday, two representatives from Her Majesty’s Government came to see me to talk politics, as they periodically do.
It can be fun to play the local expert, whether for national or foreign media, or in service of the Special Relationship — especially if you’re an Anglophile like me. Maybe I can’t see “Tinker, Tailor” where I live (yet), but I can contribute to a report that might, just might, cross a latter-day George Smiley’s desk. OK, so it’s not very likely, but hey, I can dream…
The temptation is to sound like you really know what’s going on, even if you don’t — like The Tailor of Panama, or Our Man in Havana. But I’m not the type to mislead HMG. Perish the thought.
So yesterday, I had to tell my visitors that I just can’t explain what’s happening in the South Carolina primary, and therefore can’t predict anything. And that’s the unfortunate truth.
I don’t know why Newt Gingrich is suddenly leading by double digits in polls in South Carolina, other than it’s his turn. I don’t know whether that trend will continue, because I don’t understand the dynamics that led her to this point.
And one of the problems is this: I’m not hearing from people who are Gingrich fans. I have to acknowledge that maybe there are things I don’t hear, or am not exposed to, because I’m no longer the editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. Maybe that’s why I feel like I understand what’s happening now less than I understood the situation four years ago.
But you know what? So much of what I was hearing and seeing then was through my blog. I wrote relatively little about national politics in the paper, so most of my interactions in that area were online. And to the extent that I was seen as someone engaged in writing about the presidential race, it was online. For instance, a number of the national and international media types who were interviewing me initially didn’t even know I worked at the newspaper; they had come to me as a widely-read blogger.
And I’m more widely read online now than I was then. My monthly page views are at least four times what they were then. And yet…
Yes, I know that the buzz in SC should only be half of what it was four years ago, since only one party is having a primary. But it’s really much less than half. Things just feel dead by comparison.
I think one reason for that is expressed in that same Winthrop poll I referenced above. It also shows that 59 percent of those polled — and that includes Republicans — believe that Obama’s going to be elected. That, combined with a lower energy level (compared to last year) among Tea Partiers, has led to a really subdued campaign.
In a normal campaign, the fact that Newt is so far ahead, this late, would mean that he had it more or less locked up. This year, I don’t know. The polls give so easily this year, and can so easily take away. And this is Newt Gingrich — a guy with a well-known talent for self-destruction.
Normally, at this point, South Carolinians would be coalescing around the Republican most likely to with the nomination — usually, the establishment. A Bush. Bob Dole. John McCain. Now, the very definition of what it is to be a Republican — much less a South Carolina Republican — is more up in the air than at any time I remember.
So it seems to me there’s a better-than-even chance that SC won’t pick the eventual winner this time. The whole process is too wobbly, and less susceptible to steadying factors than in the past. And if that happens, there will be even less energy, and much less national attention, focused on the SC GOP primary four years from now.
But I just don’t know. When it’s hard to explain why what is already happening is happening, it’s very hard to predict what will happen next.
When I was leaving the Marionette Theatre the other day, I decided to swing by Columbia’s Hydrogen Fueling Station, since I was close by and had never seen it before.
The good news was that, had I been driving a hydrogen car, there would have been no waiting.
The bad news was the really scary series of warnings posted at eye level.
But then I got to thinking — such warnings would have been a good idea at the very first gasoline fueling station in a community, back in the days when folks weren’t accustomed to working with that extremely volatile substance.
Come to think of it, we DO have such warnings at gasoline stations — along with those that tell us not to operate our cellphones, and to place a container on the ground before pumping into it. We just tend not to notice them any more.
There’s a tradeoff with so many things that pack a lot of energy — gasoline, hydrogen, coal, nuclear. Once you get the economics to work — which tends to be tougher with the lower-risk sources such as wind and solar — it becomes a matter a matter of engineering things to minimize risk. Or so it seems to my nonexpert mind.
An alert source whom I shall keep anonymous shared this with me via email over the weekend. I wrote back to ask, “Is this a real Santa, or a mannequin?” and I was assured it was a real guy. My source was NOT going into the club in the picture, but was attending to important business across the street at the Central Midlands Council of Governments. Or so my source says, and I believe my source.
There’s a really tacky Christmas song in this somewhere. Something like “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” or “Santa, Baby.” Something really, really not in the spirit. Something like the thing I heard this morning for the first, and I hope, the last, time, which I think is called “Gonna Get Drunk, Drunk, Drunk on Christmas.”
