You’ve probably already seen this, because everybody I’ve mentioned it to the last couple of days had already seen it.
But in case you were late to the gag, as I was, I thought I’d share with you this site that imagines what your dog would say if he could text you.
Some of them are funny.
Sunday was the little guy’s second birthday. If any adult at the party asked how old he is now, he flashed a seemingly (but not really*) random number of fingers. It seemed to satisfy the adults, and then he could go back to playing…
* CORRECTION: You know what? I realized that, in the interests of emphasizing cuteness, I described what the little guy is doing inaccurately, and even in a way that made him seem less smart than he is — which I would never want to do. Actually, he is conscientiously doing his best to answer the question. My wife tried to teach him, in the days running up to his birthday, how to hold up two fingers. Seeing that that was kind of tricky for him, she showed him that, as an alternative, he could hold up one finger of each hand. So, you see, what he’s doing in the picture is giving you as complete an answer as he can, covering all possible ways of answering: He’s doing his best to show two fingers with his right hand, while holding up one finger with his left. He just doesn’t understand that it’s an either-or thing.
This item came in over the transom, in PDF form, late this afternoon:
I pass it on in case it is actually legit, since it’s tomorrow morning. I failed to check it out in the most direct manner — calling the number provided, and sending an email. No one answered at the phone number, and honestly I just this minute sent the email — but then, I had only received this notice minutes before that.
So, if you want to check it out — and I find the Nuns on the Bus to be an intriguing outfit — you might want to show up at the library. I may, but only if I can rejuggle some other stuff I had planned for in the morning.
Does “quality” really have to be so dark, so morally arid?
This is by way of following up on a brief exchange Kathryn and I had yesterday about the dearth of appealing characters in the TV shows that currently compel our attention.
Bryan sent me a link to this piece, headlined “The Moral Relativism Of Serial Television.” It’s actually several years behind the curve, with this observation:
The sweet spot for serial television drama right now exists on non-premium cable channels. After decades of dominance by the broadcast networks, followed by a period in which the premium cable channels broke the mold with hits that reached mainstream culture like Oz, The Sopranos, and Dexter, non-premium channels like the Fox property FX, BBC America and AMC have rushed in to, at least temporarily, hold a lock on the highest volume of compelling drama on the small screen today.
That’s something I might have said two or three years ago (think “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Walking Dead”). What I sense happening now, or about to happen now, is a shift beyond non-premium cable TV, and on to series made for streaming and bingeing, such as “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.”
But the general observation of the piece is that there is a seemingly deliberate lack of characters to root for, or even care about, in the most compelling recent dramatic series.
It ends, as do so many episodes of these popular series, on a dark note:
It is at least marginally troublesome that as a society, our most compelling entertainment increasingly eschews the concept or even the ideal that good exists in the world and ultimately should prevail. An artistic criticism of this view can legitimately point out that life is rarely so neat as to allow for the inevitable victory of the white knight. However, the rejoinder to this point is that we are not considering real life but rather television, which exists because we would rather watch it than real life. The entire raison d’etre of the medium is to idealize real life interactions into conclusions that are satisfying on at least some visceral level. If our television tastes are any guide, America increasingly takes satisfaction from a muddled mess of emotional responses which are provoked by disorderly and sometimes directly contradictory stimuli. Perhaps, if a society can be judged by its entertainment, what we are witnessing is the leading edge of the end of America’s desire to collectively be the good guy, or even to support the good guy in his efforts to be good. Or perhaps we don’t need television to tell us this; perhaps we need look no further than the ballot box.
Do we really not want to find good in characters and root for it? I don’t think that’s the case, although there’s no doubt we are living in a more cynical world than the one I grew up in.
I think we are still human, and there is still good in us, and within us lives a desire to perceive good, and embrace it — however many times we’ve been disappointed. I think the dark, moral emptiness of these recent entertainments is a function of writers and directors who are trying to produce high-quality material, and who buy into the insidious notion that moral clarity is lowbrow and insufficiently “artistic.” So they steer clear of it.
But does “quality” really have to be so dark, so morally arid?
I think if someone would come along and produce similar series, but with the humanity-affirming characteristics that marked “The West Wing,” the world would joyfully cheer, and reward the effort with their loyal patronage.
Think of that — a new series with the cinematic quality of “Breaking Bad,” but with characters like Jed Bartlet and Leo McGarry and Josh Lyman — characters you want to see succeed. As I watch the series for the first time, each night as I work out, I simply don’t see any characters who are utterly lacking in appealing characteristics. Even the adversarial figures who try to thwart our heroes have understandable, sympathetic reasons for taking the positions they do. While there are occasional digressions from this approach (one of the weakest scenes I’ve encountered was the one in which Jed Bartlet humiliates a character based on Dr. Laura with what he seems to imagine is a clever manner, but which is painfully trite — by asking her whether she literally supports all of the strictures in the Old Testament), by and large there is an appealing understanding of everyone’s motives.
Which is the way we should all live our lives. We should take strong stands based on what our discernment has taught us to believe is right, but strive to appreciate the convictions of those with whom we disagree. It could serve as an antidote to the default mode of today’s partisans, which is to demonize opponents, and scoff at their motives.
Imagine that — television that not only gives us heroes to root for, but which shows us ways to be a better society.
Now that would be television worth watching.
While I believe Kenny Bingham is saying what he truly believes when he says he would not be swayed by past contributions from a PAC associated with Speaker Bobby Harrell, I’m gonna have to come down on the side of those who would say that this means the House Ethics Committee should in no way be passing judgment on their boss:
The five Republican members of the 10-member House Ethics Committee — which House Speaker Bobby Harrell wants to decide allegations against him — have received some $13,000 in campaign contributions from a political action committee associated with the Charleston Republican.
Those committee members, who have received contributions from the Palmetto Leadership Council PAC, include Ethics Committee chairman Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington. In 2008, 2010 and 2012, Bingham received $1,000 contributions each election cycle from the Palmetto Leadership Council….
Actually… I would question the impartiality of the panel even if no one on it had received a dime from the PAC. But the money raises sufficient additional questions that the House ethics cops should leap to recuse themselves and let other competent authorities deal with this matter. Such as, you know, the attorney general…
Oh, and on a related matter…
It looks like whoever did the coding on John Monk’s story had a bit of a Freudian slip. The story appears on the website under “Crime” instead of under “SC Politics.” Very interesting…
This came in a little while ago from Wesley Donehue over at Push Digital:
ICYMI: Craft Beer Law Change on Fast Track
Columbia, SC-May 16, 2014: “South Carolina is on the verge of passing the most progressive craft beer production laws in the country”, from the Greenville News (5/15/14).
It’s hard to believe that just three weeks ago the possibility of passing the Stone Bill was nearly impossible, but thanks to grassroots efforts and a lot of emails to the SC General Assembly we made magic happen.
Why is the Stone Bill so important?
1. It will loosen antiquated beer laws in efforts to attract California-based company, Stone Brewing , who is planning a $31 million eastward expansion, to South Carolina.
2. It will create more than 250 jobs.
3. South Carolina breweries will finally have the chance to be competitive with the booming craft beer industry taking off around the country.
To pass a bill this fast in South Carolina is practically unheard of and with the potential of a $31 million investment and hundreds of new jobs it would be a mistake for the General Assembly not to pass the Stone Bill.
For more information visit scbeerjobs.com, or contact Wesley Donehue at 843.460.7990
###
But — and here’s what I’m unclear on — are we still in the running for Stone, or is this aimed at other, similar opportunities?
OK, this sort of blew my mind…
I knew that back in the days when I didn’t moderate comments, we used to hit some pretty big numbers, with some threads drawing 200 or even 300 comments.
But I had no idea about this one…
This morning, I had to delete and report a spam comment — actually one linking to a pornographic site, which I think would usually get filtered out automatically — and saw that it was on a post headlined “The Monitor Group.” Having no memory of such a post, I went back to look it up. And it was a rather dull, short and dry one from 2006, sort of peripherally about the tuition tax credit issue. I could see why I had forgotten it. We had a lot of hot discussions on that issue, but this one didn’t stand out.
There was only one remarkable thing about it — it had drawn 481 comments. Whoa…
Most of them seemed to be actual comments, too. I figured the later ones would all be spam, but actually they were largely a back-and-forth between Lee Muller and Randy Ewart. Remember them, long-time bloggers?
Anyway, that inspired me to add a widget to the sidebar at right, showing this blog’s most-commented posts of all time. Some of them I remember as being hot topics. Some, not so much:
The burning question for me is, what would it take to get 481 comments today? I realize I’m asking y’all on a Friday, when you tend to check out, but I’m asking it anyway, because this is when the subject came up.
Not that I want to pander or anything, but I do like a nice, lively — and civil — discussion.
I almost never read Cal Thomas’ columns. I find they tend to have a certain sourness about them, whatever the point. Or maybe the expression on his mugshot just inclines me to perceive a sourness.
Whatever the case, I was drawn in to his column in The State this morning by the image of Tim Tebow kneeling.
The main point of the column didn’t interest me much — it was of a certain type, which we see written from the perspective of an ideologue complaining that ideologues of the opposite camp have a double standard, and criticize people of the writer’s camp for doing a certain thing, but don’t criticize people of their camp when they do the same thing. You know what I mean. You’ve read this one a million times.
In this case, he was angry that people who vehemently defend a guy named Michael Sam — apparently someone who people who follow football know all about — did not equally defend Tim Tebow when he was playing the game and taking a lot of flak.
The part of that that interested me was the Tim Tebow part.
And here, I’m going to have to ask you to bear with me as I propose an anachronistic topic. I realize that everybody who follows football, or is really into Culture War stuff, thoroughly hashed and rehashed everything there is to say about Tebow years ago. Well, I didn’t. I get interested in stuff when I get interested in it. Like “The West Wing,” which I will continue trying to interest y’all in discussing until I run out of episodes to watch on Netflix… and probably far beyond.
The advantage to you of a topic like this is that y’all have already thought it out and have wonderfully well-honed, nuanced positions on it. So you’re ahead of me. Assuming you can still remember your positions after all this time.
While everyone who followed football was really, really into taking strong stances on Tebow, I was peripherally aware of him. And what I was aware of was the kneeling thing. The “Tebowing.” Because it was kind of hard to miss, permeating visual media the way it did.
And each time I saw the image, as this morning, I wondered what to think of it. And I was always of two minds, at least.
On the one hand, it’s great that a guy isn’t embarrassed about his faith, and willing to witness to it in public — and in his case, in a considerable spotlight. On the other hand, it was awfully showy and “look at me,” seemingly a textbook example of what Jesus spoke against in Matthew 6:5.
And I find myself wondering whether Jesus’ judgment on this topic was culture-specific. He was speaking in a time and place when public prayer was a way of raising yourself in public esteem. Whereas, as Tebow himself can attest, doing so now subjects you to considerable abuse and ridicule. Especially when you play for a New York team.
Finally, on the third hand (yes, I know this metaphor is no longer working), I like the Tebowing gesture totally apart from theological questions. I’m a big fan of Arthurian legend — I may have mentioned that before — and Tebow’s gesture evokes the kneeling knight, his sword held before him like a cross. Which, to a geek like me who thinks pre-Raphaelite paintings are cool and not at all trite or corny, is appealing.
Thoughts? Or is this just too anachronistic for y’all? If so, I won’t try yet again to get a thread going on the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars…
Some possible topics:
Or, bring up your own topic…
The “shocker” headline is, of course, ironic.
SC Democrats seem to thing they have a big “gotcha” in state GOP Chairman Matt Moore’s that “At times, things pass the legislature without much debate and scrutiny.”
Personally, that doesn’t seem like much of a news flash. But the Dems are making of it what they can:
BREAKING VIDEO: SCGOP Chairman Says GOP Majority Ineptly Passes Bills Without Scrutiny
Columbia, SC – Today, SCGOP Chairman Matt Moore stated that GOP leaders and elected officials in the state legislature regularly pass bills without looking at what’s in them.
In a press conference trying to distract from the mismanagement at Governor Haley’s DSS, the SCGOP chairman was asked about the massive Republican support for a bill the SCGOP was trying to use to criticize Sen. Vincent Sheheen. Moore said: “At times, things pass the legislature without much debate and scrutiny.”
SCDP Executive Director Conor Hurley released this statement:
“The comments by the SCGOP Chairman today are stunning and highly concerning. Exactly which bills has the SCGOP’s majority pushed through the House and Senate without knowing what’s in them? How long has this abdication of duty been happening? And, is it all GOP members as Chairman Moore implies, or just a select few?
“For the Chairman of a party to first call a press conference to attack his own members for being soft on crime, and then to claim that they are essentially incompetent at their jobs – the SCGOP and Haley campaign must be pretty desperate to distract from Governor Haley’s refusal to fix the mismanagement at her Department of Social Services that has allowed children to tragically die. The people of South Carolina deserve answers.”
###
This was sent out to faculty by USC Arts and Sciences Dean Mary Anne Fitzpatrick this morning:
PLEASE DISTRIBUTE TO ALL YOUR FACULTY
TO: Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences
Dear Colleagues:
In the past few months, academic freedom has become a hotly debated issue in our state. I need not rehearse all of the controversies that have erupted over certain reading assignments and performance events, as you are no doubt aware of them.
These controversies provide us with a valuable opportunity to affirm our most fundamental and profound principles. First, as university faculty, we can and we must be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth in our disciplines, and second, it is our right and our responsibility as faculty to determine the curriculum of our academic programs.
It is not often that academic freedom is the subject of numerous media reports and broad discussion among citizens. We should therefore welcome this chance to explain who we are as an intellectual community, our purpose and aspirations, and our vision “to transform the lives of our students and improve the world they will inhabit by creating and sharing knowledge at the frontiers of inquiry.”
I proudly invite you to read one such explanation written by Professor Ed Madden, a faculty member in the Department of English and the director of our Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Published in The State as a guest column on May 1, 2014, his explanation is both eloquent and moving.
http://www.thestate.com/2014/05/01/3419090/madden-is-this-a-pornographic.html
As your dean, I am deeply grateful for your commitment to our vision and for all that you do for our students.
Cordially,
Mary Anne
At first glance, I thought the memo was going to be about the national debate going on now about intellectual freedom on campus — the one sparked by all the student protests of invited graduation speakers. The WSJ had yet another op-ed piece about it this morning, this one headlined “Bonfire of the Humanities.”
And having made that mistake, now I have an appetite to read what academic leaders in this state might have to say about that national trend. Has anyone seen anything like that?
In the meantime, I suppose y’all could discuss this memo…
The Peachoid in better days.
Dire news from Gaffney:
Gaffney’s Peachoid — a one-million-gallon water tank and the city’s most recognizable landmark — will be temporarily repaired after chunks of paint peeled from the crevice with this winter’s fluctuating temperatures.
Gaffney Board of Public Works owns the Peachoid, which was erected in 1981 and has been repainted twice.
BPW General Manager Donnie Hardin said areas of paint — about six to 10 feet in diameter — started peeling from the Peachoid recently, mostly due to freezing and warmer temperatures through the winter.
“With extreme cold, fluctuating temperatures, it caused more damage than normal,” Hardin said. “Two areas flaked off the tank, and we’ll have those repaired in two to three weeks.”…
I just hope they’re not planning on spending local tax money for the repair. Frank Underwood should be able to score some federal funds for the purpose without breaking a sweat.
In fact, Frank wouldn’t settle for repairing a patch. He could get the whole thing redone, with real fuzz this time…
Frank and local leaders contemplating the monument.
This release came last night from Ann Timberlake with Conservation Voters of South Carolina:
Folks,
As session nears a close, there is an increased amount of activity in the lobby of the State House. Today, the House LCI Subcommittee unanimously voted out S.1189, the compromise solar bill that will unleash the sun for South Carolinians. It will go in front of the full House LCI committee Thursday morning. We expect a floor vote as early as next week. Please encourage your Representative to support the solar bill.
This morning, we joined with Coastal Conservation League and the South Carolina Environmental Law Project to denounce the Senate’s compromise shoreline bill that “has been kidnapped by the House and force fed with special amendments that are for special interests,” as so aptly stated by Nancy Cave in the article below.We urge you to ask your Representative (CLICK HERE) to oppose the House version of S.890 unless it is restored to the Senate language that limits the Debordieu exemption to 3 years and stops seaward movement of the baseline beginning in July, 2014. This bill is currently awaiting a vote in the House.
Stay tuned and thank you for caring about the South Carolina we love.
http://www.thestate.com/2014/0
5/14/3446155/conservationists- proposed-bill.html?sp=/99/132/ #storylink=cpy Sincerely,
Ann Timberlake
I pass it on in case you were following those bills…
I’m pretty busy today, so I thought I’d encourage you to talk amongst yourselves.
Some possible topics:
Or… whatever interest you most…
Seeing as how she and Warren have gotten into blogging lately, and grown more sophisticated in their use of social media and such, I was disappointed when I didn’t find an embedded video with the online version of Cindi’s column today.
After all, it started this way:
IN ONE OF MY favorite Saturday Night Live skits, a just-exonerated Bill Clinton walks to the podium in the Rose Garden for a news conference, gives a thumbs-up to his supporters, declares “I … am … bulletproof,” and walks away. After a moment, he turns, walks back to the podium and adds: “Next time, you best bring Kryptonite.”
Our legislators must feel the same way after Circuit Judge Casey Manning discovered that they have bulletproof armor that protects them from criminal prosecution….
You have to realize what a special thing it is for Cindi Scoppe to make a pop culture reference that way. She doesn’t do pop culture. She is the most all-work-and-no-play person I know, and her readers are the beneficiaries of that affliction. So I particularly appreciated this reference, and immediately went hunting for a video clip…
… which I could not find. At least, not right away. (I’d be happy for some of y’all to show me what I missed.)
Oh, I found one that may have been the right one. NBC had taken it down. And then added insult to injury by saying, “Don’t worry, though. We have plenty of other stuff to watch.” Like I’m here to be entertained. Like any other “stuff to watch” will compensate for the lack of the one clip I need, the one being quoted.
Join the 21st century, folks. Rather than hiding your content, leverage it by allowing other media — including blogs and even newspapers — to praise your creativity and urge other people (perhaps people who have the time and inclination to watch that “other stuff” you’re offering) to seek it out. You’ll be a winner in the long run.
Sheesh…
You knew Cindi would have a good column reacting to the ruling by Judge Manning that she had foreshadowed with dread, and today she did. Read it here.
It’s all good, but on the chance that some of our lawmakers are reading today, I want to call attention to the part in which she explained what they could do to fix the situation. Noting that there’s no guarantee that the Supreme Court will reverse the circuit judge, she urged lawmakers to act today:
The best chance this year for making that fix could come Wednesday. That’s when the House could make final changes to an anemic ethics-reform bill, before it goes to a House-Senate conference committee. This stage is crucial, because it’s the last time legislators can insert new language into the bill by a simple majority; after this, any new language will require two-thirds approval in the House and the Senate.
So, what we need is for someone to propose an amendment to make it clear that ethics violations are crimes and that the attorney general is free to prosecute them. It needs to be a clean amendment — one that doesn’t also grant other forms of immunity, or raise the standard for prosecution, or make any other nefarious changes that reduce the chance that legislators who violate the law will be punished.
There are lots of other shortcomings of that bill, but frankly, no loophole in our ethics law even approaches the significance of the one that Judge Manning just discovered. If the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn his order or the Legislature doesn’t pass the fix, then I’m not sure anything else in the ethics law will really matter very much.
The only people who would vote against such an amendment are those who believe that legislators should remain above the law. No, not even that: It would be those legislators who are so arrogant in their power that they are willing to admit that they believe they are above the law.
Here’s hoping her words have a positive effect.
Good for Alan Wilson! He’s not going to let the judge’s ruling shut down his investigation:
COLUMBIA, SC — The investigation into S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell will continue despite a circuit judge’s order that an ongoing SLED and State Grand Jury probe be shut down immediately, state Attorney General Alan Wilson says.
Continued work is allowed during an appeal of a judge’s order, Wilson said. As expected, he said he is appealing Circuit Judge Casey Manning’s order immediately to the state Supreme Court.
“The law allows us to do that,” Wilson told a State reporter in an interview. “The grand jury can continue to do its work unless the S.C. Supreme Court orders it to cease and desist.”…
This is encouraging. I was afraid the whole investigation was dead in the water, pending an appellate ruling.
Judge Manning’s ruling yesterday increases the urgency to get to the bottom of these allegations against the speaker, and it’s a good thing for South Carolina that Wilson is carrying on.
Well, the video finally uploaded after I went to bed last night. So here it is, the missing piece from my report from the Galivants Ferry Stump Speaking.
This is almost the entire speech. I missed a line at the very beginning. It was something like, “Are y’all ready to win this?” — one of those lines designed to get the crowd to cheer, and they did cheer. I didn’t write it down because I was busy trying to get some still shots of him standing at the stump before switching to video.
As you can see, Vincent Sheheen made every effort to come across as a guy with a fire in his belly. But as I look back at it, he doesn’t seem all that comfortable with the effort.
His campaign is going to need something, something it doesn’t have yet, if he is to be even as competitive as he was four years ago, much less have a chance of beating Nikki Haley.
Well, it happened. After having reached for an absurd justification that even the speaker’s own attorneys hadn’t dared to propose, Circuit Judge Casey Manning ordered Attorney General Alan Wilson and SLED to stop investigating Bobby Harrell, and declared any action taken by the grand jury in the case “null and void.”
To remind you, here is what former attorneys general Travis Medlock, Charlie Condon and Henry McMaster had to say about the notion underlying the judge’s ruling:
“Over the past thirty years, not one of us ever imagined the Attorney General needed authorization from a legislative committee or political body in order to investigate or prosecute alleged criminal behavior by an elected official. Such a restriction would undercut the core Constitutional authority of the Attorney General. And even more importantly, it would violate the fundamental basis of our system of government that all people should be treated equally under the law.”
I wrote previously that the three ex-AGs standing next to Wilson to defend the rule of law made me proud to be from South Carolina. Judge Manning’s ruling makes me want to hang my head.
Wilson was undaunted, fortunately:
We believe today’s order of Judge Manning is without any foundation or support in the law. This office will vigorously pursue all appellate remedies and will seek to continue this investigation.
Judge Manning himself indicated that he expected the matter to be decided by a higher court. Of course, that’s no excuse for an irresponsible ruling.
Until a higher court acts, this investigation is in limbo. And that’s outrageous.
It was very warm — a good day to be a speaker, and have a seat in the shade. That’s John Land in the hat.
Well, to begin with, Fritz Hollings didn’t make it to the 2014 Galivants Ferry Stump Speaking, which he has been attending as long as I’ve been alive. He called Russell Holliday, who puts on the event started by her ancestors 138 years ago, late this morning to describe rather frankly an unpleasant side effect he was having from a new medication, and to explain he’d have to miss it.
Which was a disappointment. But there was still the keynote speaker, SC native and MSNBC commentator Jimmy Williams. And there were the candidates, with gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen at the top of the ticket.
But there was a serious lack of attendees. And on a less notable level, a lack of energy, and a lack of ideas. I hate to say this because I know Russell works very hard to bring this event off, and I’m here to say that she and her family did as good a job as ever. All the pieces were there — people just had to show up and inspire. The fault lay with the candidates. I just didn’t feel the same spirit that I’ve felt at earlier stumps. Sure, there was Fritz on those occasions, and there was usually another draw such as Joe Biden (see Fritz introducing him at this event in 2006), making SC Democrats feel that while they might be beleaguered here in South Carolina, they were part of something vital nationally.
To his credit, Vincent Sheheen showed more fire and energy than I’ve seen from him yet (if the video ever finishes uploading to YouTube, I’ll show you). But the substance was lacking. He ran through the usual litany of complaints about Nikki Haley (the Department of Revenue breach, her refusal to expand Medicaid) and then said he hadn’t come to talk about the last four years, but the next four — which raised my hopes.
“Without a vision, the people perish,” he said, citing Proverbs. But the vision was… skimpy. Four-year-old kindergarten, Medicaid expansion, fixing up infrastructure — each with about one sentence devoted to it.
And then, suddenly, the five-minute address was over.
OK, the Stump is a party, not an occasion for extended oration. Still, I was disappointed.
And the disappointment extended across the spectrum. When Sen. Brad Hutto strung together a series of populist bromides about how that Lindsey Graham needed to stop worrying about the rest of the world and fix some potholes in good ol’ SC — as though he were running for county council rather than the United States Senate — we had reached the nadir. One hopes. I didn’t stay for the last of the down-the-ballot speakers.
Rhetorically, I think the high point came at the beginning, when young Johnson Holliday of Russell’s clan quoted Texan Jim Hightower saying “Everybody does better when everybody does better.”
Now that I could go for. That was a concept that would have been worth enlarging upon.
Sure, I like the communitarian overtones, but think about it: The saying not only states what Democrats believe in, but in a way that it’s hard for Republicans to argue with, and that could appeal to independents (like yours truly). After all, it’s not all that far conceptually from the Republicans’ “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
The thing that will lift this country out of the doldrums, and SC out of the back-of-the-line status that has plagued it in one way or another since 1865, is growth — growth in jobs and wages as well as in profits, productivity and innovation.
Surely there’s someone in the Democratic Party — or some party — who could take a concept like that and run with it. If that happened, we’d have some Stump meetings that everybody would want to attend, like in the old days, when everybody was a Democrat, and this was the place to be every two years.
Editor’s note: As I finish this, YouTube is telling me there are another 85 minutes to go before the Sheheen video finishes loading. If it loads — and a long upload like this often ends in tears of frustration — I’ll share it with you in the morning. In the meantime, enjoy the stills.
