Open Thread for Thursday, August 24, 2017

Lonnie Carter at that event in Bamberg back in March.

Lonnie Carter at that event in Bamberg back in March.

A few quick topics:

  1. Source: Santee Cooper chief Lonnie Carter to leave job Friday — You know, it was Lonnie who first told me how bad the situation was with the project. I ran into him at an event in Bamberg back in March and asked how things were going. He shared his worries about the situation. (I’d have written about it at the time, but I didn’t feel like I had a good-enough grasp of the details — and the fact that the project was in trouble wasn’t news in itself.) Perhaps even then, he foresaw this result.
  2. Trump’s Identity Politics — The blurb with this Tom Edsall piece says, “The more white voters care about being white, the more they like President Trump.” Reminds me of something I said at a Community Relations Council event just the other day. I noted that unlike a lot of women and minorities, most white guys couldn’t care less about being white guys. But a few do, and those are the guys you need to watch out for…
  3. Giant Gamecock statue won’t be ready for football season — Oh, no! How will the team and the fans go on! Should we cancel the season? Should we cancel the semester at USC? Since we’re talking about monuments, I want to go ahead and be the first to say we should take this one down as soon as it goes up. Because, you know, cockfighting is illegal, so we shouldn’t glorify it. Just kidding (sort of), football fans!
  4. Escalating feud, Trump blames McConnell, Ryan for upcoming ‘mess’ on debt ceiling — That’s the WashPost version of the story. For other approaches, the NYT has “Trump Warns of Shutdown if Border Wall Isn’t Funded” and NPR reports, “Trump’s Fractured Relationship With Congress Causes GOP Dread.” Yeah, the poor, pitiful GOP, which inflicted this guy on us. I’m just sitting up nights worrying about them and their endangered agenda — especially since, you know, the first thing on it was taking health coverage away from millions…
  5. Navy names 10 sailors missing since McCain collision, begins recovery operation — How did this happen again? Is this part of some deep strategy to convince China they don’t need to build up their Navy because we’re so incompetent?

8 thoughts on “Open Thread for Thursday, August 24, 2017

  1. Claus2

    Nancy Pelosi: “The constitution does not say that a person can yell wolf in a crowded theater”

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      That’s funny. You get the impression she sort of KNEW she was saying it wrong, but couldn’t stop herself.

      She’s like the boy who cried “Fire!”

    1. Mark Stewart

      All the news happens on Fridays now.

      That’s when our “law and order” President dumps his trash on America’s front lawn when he thinks everyone will be otherwise distracted and unnoticing.

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        Historically, I’ve always considered Fridays to be pretty newsy. Less so in Columbia than other places I worked, largely because of the Tuesday-Thursday rhythm of the Legislature, which seems to affect everything. Friday is when legislators go home and try to get some work done at their jobs, and other South Carolinians get a head start on their weekend. When I came here as governmental affairs editor, I was immediately struck by how hard it was to reach newsmakers after noon on Fridays — it would be, “He’s at the beach,” or “She’s headed to the lake…”

        But when I worked in Tennessee and Kansas, Fridays were pretty newsy.

        For that reason, I’ve always thought it odd that the big readership day was Sunday. Sunday’s paper was always mostly canned copy — the “news” tended to be several days old, at least. But Saturday was a day that still had live news in it, and people had time to read it.

        But that wasn’t the big day…

        1. Brad Warthen Post author

          Of course, I was always a hard news guy, and relatively few readers are, to the extent I was. They were more interested than I was in sports and other stuff I completely ignored…

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