Posts Tagged ‘south carolina’

Bless their hearts…

Friday, March 26th, 2010

So I’m browsing Fark and run across this headline:

[ARTICLE] [FAIL] In a move that will upset nobody, repressed white southerners want to declare themselves “Confederate Southern Americans” on the census. Try “hillbillies,” guys, it’s got a nicer ring

And I immediately start thinking:  “Please don’t be South Carolina… Please don’t be South Carolina…”

The South Carolina-based Southern Legal Resource Center believes that people with ancestors who were citizens of the Confederate States of America should be entitled to ethnic identity and protection [under the Civil Rights Act] since the country no longer exists.

Since I can’t really think of anything else to say, I’m just going to leave this here:

Competition

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Here’s an interesting set headlines that popped up in The State – one right after the other – in my RSS reader:

Headlines

Headlines

The message?  It’s not, apparently, that gambling is wrong.  It’s that the powers that control gambling in the state do not want competition.

The real problem with the health care debate

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

This article is making the rounds today.  While it’s no surprise that Democrats find South Carolina senator Jim DeMint’s right-wing posturing useful, it was interesting to see this little nugget at the bottom:

At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

“I had to politely explain that, ‘Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,’ ” Inglis recalled. “But he wasn’t having any of it.”

Here we have the real problem with the current health care debate – distilled down into just seven words:  “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”  The reason we’re having much of a debate at all over these issues is that many people simply don’t know whe’s providing their health care or what they’re paying for it.

Words spinning into the void

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

In South Carolina, you can reliably assume that newspaper “Letters to the Editor” pages will contain a fair amount of right-wing political craziness.  That’s normal for South Carolina.  But sometimes, things lurk deep in the Letters.  Terrifying things – like this letter – which must be seen in its entirety to be fully appreciated**:

Published: July 15, 2009

Just the other day I had an officer call to my house. I responded, “So you called the police?” “Yes,” the person said said. “I was to get even.” The person told me “do what you have to.” Well, I had already knew what I was going to do: call the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control on her to make my point.

But you know God has a way of changing things. Where is the good in that?

The Bible does not tell me to do evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good. The battle is not mine; it belongs to the Lord.

But I remember a time; this lets me be reminded of whose I am. Then I heard a voice, just stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. And before you know it God will make everything turn out all right. He’ll make your enemy become your footstool. Be very careful of the stone you throw; that has a way of coming right back to you. We are all at different levels, so we should never compare ourselves to others.

Remember to sweep around your own door before you try to sweep around mine. All I am doing is trying to make things better; with it comes change. We must remember a generation comes behind us; we must make it better.

Thank you Chairwoman Bertha Scott and Lake City Housing; the change is good. Now others can sit on the porch and enjoy the view. Keep up the good work.

L**** B****
Lake City

What’s more frightening?  The letter itself, or the fact that the paper deemed it worthy of publication?

I think, as a response, the paper should publish the picture below (grabbed from a Fark thread long ago):

SENSE

SENSE


**Letter reproduced here due to scnow’s annoying tendency to break its own links.

Hiking the Argentina Trail

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

it’s hard to say anything really coherant about South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s disappearance on the Appalachian Trail to Argentina, largely because the story is such an incoherant mess.

TPMmuckraker has a chronology of the events in this bizarre scandal, but this image from The Daily Show probably makes events just as clear as the chronology does.

Where in the world is Mark Sanford?

Where in the world is Mark Sanford?

The thing that is obvious in all of this, though, is that Sanford was trying to hide something.

What was he hiding?  Jjust your typical garden variety party-of-family-values unfaithfulness.  He was cheating on his wife.

Gov. Mark Sanford admitted today that his secret trip to Argentina over Father’s Day weekend was to visit a woman he is having an affair with.

[…]

“I have developed a relationship with what started as a dear dear friend from Argentina. It began very innocently as I expect many of these things do, just casual email back and forth,” Sanford said. “But here recently this last year developed into something much more.”

Did he, perhaps, get a hot tip from our attorney general on how to use Craigslist to meet exotic people?  Was Sanford trying to upstage John Ensign’s media coverage?  Or was he merely ensuring that the only political party who will get anywhere near him as a presidential nominee in 2012 will be the Libertarians?

Sanford’s going to need another press conference to answer these burning questions. 🙂

At any rate, we now know that the governor of South Carolina handles affairs of state about as well as he handles his other … affairs.

New unemployment data is out

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

April unemployment data has been released, and South Carolina again ranks third in the nation in unemployment at 11.5%.  Only Michigan (12.9%) and Oregon (12.0%) fared more poorly than we.

The State notes that our seasonally adjusted unemployment is a new record for South Carolina – highest since recording started in 1976.

When does this become a “depression” rather than a “recession”?

The comments on that The State link above are interesting.

Comments from The State's article

Comments from The State's article

Right away we have a couple of folks blaming Obama for South Carolina’s economic woes, while at the same time our Governor is adamant about refusing any help from the Obama administration.  He’s so adamant about this that he’s filed a lawsuit about it.

Perhaps someone can educate me.  How is our state government’s refusal to accept help from the Obama administration Obama’s fault?

(Crossposted to Indigo Journal diary…)

Nice way of putting it

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

The Morning News has an interesting way of describing what we need to do to get our rates of teen pregnancy under control:

South Carolina spends $3.8 million on teen pregnancy prevention. Much of it has gone to programs focused only on abstinence. Though abstinence is part of the solution, it must be combined with reality-based sex education.

Emphasis mine.  Abstinence-only sex ed versus “reality-based” sex ed is a nice way of putting it.  It at least admits what our real problem is … abstinence-only sex ed isn’t actually sex ed at all.  It wastes resources without getting us much in return.

Quote of the day

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Here’s the quote of the day, from South Carolina’s governor Mark Sanford.  He’s talking about the stimulus money and his battle with the legislature over taking it and using it:

“The logical question would be then ‘Why have a governor?’” Sanford asked. “I think it’s a big deal and has far-reaching implications. Let’s see how the House and Senate votes and what the people of South Carolina say on this.”

Good question.  Many South Carolinians are probably asking themselves this question right now – as our Governor continues to polish his “fiscal conservative” credentials for a Presidential bid while South Carolina’s unemployment creeps up .

Of course, we didn’t learn our lesson in 2006, when we had this guy as governor:

But a growing chorus of critics, including leaders of his own G.O.P., fear that his thrift has brought the state’s economy to a standstill. This summer, Standard & Poor’s lowered South Carolina’s coveted AAA-bond rating to AA+, citing unemployment of 6.3% and a per capita income ($27,172) stuck in the nation’s bottom fifth. The state had just lost its bid for a $500 million Airbus plant; [he] was widely accused of making a miserly effort to lure the aerospace giant. Business leaders are losing patience with [his] vetoes of budget items like trade centers and tourism marketing. Even G.O.P. bosses charge that he is worse at economic development than at grandstanding

… and put him right back in the Governor’s mansion.

(The quoted paragraph from Time cites data from 2005.  Remember when 6 or so percent unemployment was bad, and an unemployment rate of 11% meant that your state had been wiped out by a natural disaster?  My, how times change…)

Crossposted to Indigo Journal

Be proud you’re a rebel ’cause the South’s gonna do it again

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Fort Sumter (public domain image from Wikipedia)

Fort Sumter (public domain image from Wikipedia)

Not willing to let Rick Perry steal all the secessionist glory, some folks in South Carolina are getting in on the act.

Conservative groups are calling on South Carolina legislators to pass a measure asserting state sovereignty.

The resolution declares South Carolina has the right to ignore any federal law or policies it deems unconstitutional. It notes the 10th Amendment gives all powers not delegated to the federal government to states.

That sounds a little like this:

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

How well did that work out for us lsat time, hmm?

(Or perhaps this is more like the Ordinance of Nullification in 1832

We, therefore, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, […] are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens; and all promises, contracts, and obligations, made or entered into, or to be made or entered into, with purpose to secure the duties imposed by said acts, and all judicial proceedings which shall be hereafter had in affirmance thereof, are and shall be held utterly null and void.

… which didn’t work out so well for South Carolina, either.)

It would be really nice, though, if conservatives would stop talking treason just because they’re upset that their last president tanked the economy and their last presidential candidate (unsurprisingly) didn’t win the next election.

Thought of the week

Friday, May 15th, 2009

We took Cate to Myrtle Beach for the day last Saturday.

Welcome to the ocean

Welcome to the ocean

It was the opening weekend for the new Star Trek film.  It was also the oipening weekend for the Harley-Davidson bike rally.  A thought occurred to me:

Is there any significant difference between grown men who dress up like Klingons to go to a Star Trek convention and grown men who drees up in leather to go to a Harley Davidson bike rally?