VOTE FOR LEE TURNER IN JUNE 12TH PRIMARY!

Toss Them Tuesdays

Here I am explaining to people how much Trump cares about them and how much they'll get from their tax cut! Yes, important economic street action!

We are out there every Tuesday at noon on Main Street in Greenville, SC. We plant ourselves in front of the offices of our senators, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, as well as our especially-embarrassing congressman, Trey Gowdy. In photos above, there are two candidates running against Gowdy, who is pointedly and surprisingly not running for re-election.

My choice is LEE TURNER, so give generously!

Yall come on out and join us if you are local.

And if you aren't--how about you plan on flying in and joining us anyway? :) We need everybody!!

There be no shelter here

Photo of Ferguson on fire, from PBS.




We played "Killing in the name" at the end of our radio show last night, which was right before 9pm, the time of Prosecutor Robert McCulloch's press conference in Ferguson, Missouri. In this incendiary (but rather bizarre) press conference, he announced the grand jury had not returned an indictment, and there would be no trial for the murder of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson on August 9th.

All three of us are seasoned activists, and we knew what was coming. Even though 99% of grand juries return indictments... we knew THIS CASE would be an exception.

And so, driving home, I thought of the song we had played ... and then I thought of Rage Against the Machine's "No Shelter"--which I heard in my head, over and over... there be no shelter here/the front lines are everywhere. I wondered, is that really true?

Apparently so.

By the time I got home, America was burning.

I was going to write a post-election synopsis, but I think this post is going to stand in for it. My feelings about Ferguson and the 2014 election are forever entwined. One has in fact brought about the other. You are seeing the results of the election in action: the arrogance of power.

Rarely has an election had such a catastrophic effect on my morale. I have been plagued with self-doubt and disgust at the Left (or what passes for the Left in the USA), particularly the young folks who didn't vote and thus turned over the election to the Republicans. The election of Ronald Reagan left me deeply depressed, and this has been almost as bad. I just have to keep remembering: most people didn't vote, midterms belong to the base, it wasn't an actual mandate, blah blah blah. But right after the election, I was most upset at all the pseudo-radical tumblrites, the kids who talk a good game and do nothing, those people who claim there is no difference between the parties, when the lack of Medicaid expansion here in most southern states means that thousands will die with no health care.

They don't seem to care about that, or at least, not enough to vote.

Now see, when you put it that way, they howl in disagreement and indignation. But that is exactly what they did. They chose to sit out the election, and as David Brooks smugly reminded us on PBS, not voting is a vote, and the Democrats "failed to mobilize the base." Both true.

But see, the youth are all fired up over Ferguson. They tweeted furiously, almost more than I did. What's up with that? Drama attracts attention, but boring elections don't? (Do they understand the election was also a matter of life and death?) I was amazed at all the young people I saw in the Ferguson footage, all races, raising fists in the air and blocking the interstate. I once helped block an interstate highway (at the 1980 Republican convention in Detroit that nominated Ronald Reagan) and it is a powerful feeling. (We delayed Reagan's acceptance speech by almost an hour.) GODDAMMIT, PAY ATTENTION is what these actions scream out loud. It is as if they have decided elections are old school, and yet, the only way to get more minority cops and minority representation, IS ELECTIONS. However, considering all the votes habitually dropped down the toilet, along with gerrymandering and right-wing hijinks, we ALSO see that elections are stolen regularly, and that has created an epidemic of electoral cynicism.

I feel like the country is going down the road described so frighteningly in the (very entertaining, highly recommended) novel California, by Edan Lepucki. She describes a time when "the internet goes dark"--scary but totally believable, since it is obviously a threat to hegemony. People pay to live in "communities" that are safe and protected. If you can't afford to live in one of these, too bad. In Margaret Atwood's trilogy, Oryx and Crake, Year of the Flood and MaddAddam, there are likewise "compounds" populated by the employees of the international corporations, and if you can't make it into one of these, you are consigned to the "pleeblands"--which are pillaged, torched and trashed with regularity.

Watching the news reports last night, I momentarily felt like I was in a compound, while Ferguson is a pleebland.

~*~

At left, Curtis McLaughlin on our radio show right before the election. He was the Libertarian Party candidate for congress in South Carolina's 4th district, against Trey Gowdy.

There was NO Democratic challenger.

Gowdy won 85% of the vote. Welcome to the South.

~*~





There is also some good news, as the first gay marriages in South Carolina have now become legal. I went to the demonstration last week at Greenville County Square, to cheer on those couples going in to get their licenses and thereby make history.

A little light in the darkness. A little bit. Some light, but no shelter.


There be no shelter here.


No Shelter - Rage Against the Machine



Comments welcome, but pro-Wilson/pro-cop comments will be dealt with harshly, and possibly deleted. Be advised.

Haley Watch: Why won't Democrats attack the governor?

South Carolina's progressives continue to twist slowly, slowly, in the wind. The official state Democratic Party seems to be ... well, where are they?

There are plenty of actual rank-and-file Democratic voters, but the state party leadership seems to be too timid to actually present these voters with any real options. (It might, you know, appear RUDE or something.)

It is therefore up to conservative libertarians like Will Folks, to attack Governor Nikki Haley for being corrupt. The conservatives are left to do the work of criticizing Republicans?!?

Yesterday, FITSNews reported:

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley says she will openly defy a two-decade-old state law which prohibits elected officials from using taxpayer resources to conduct political campaigning.

Haley has been busted violating this law on numerous occasions in the past – most notably during the aftermath of a previously undisclosed car crash that followed a campaign event in North Carolina (news of this crash was reported exclusively by FITS).

Prior to that Haley has come under fire for racking up exorbitant security costs on political trips – including fundraising trips. The governor reimbursed some (but not all) of those costs.

Now she won’t have to pay any of them.

Check out the whole thing. Read it and weep.

And while you're at it, weep over the fact that Will is 100% correct. His CONSERVATIVE blog, FITSNews, exclusively reported Haley's North Carolina car crash that occurred on our dime. No Democrats have used this incident to go after Haley hammer and tongs, as they should. Instead, we get the usual tepid, perfunctory and meek "response" quotes; the sort of half-baked, apologetic political bullshit always offered for standard publication.

In the above post, for example, we read the following boring-ass quote from SC Democratic Party spokeswoman Kristin Sosanie:

Rather than following South Carolina’s laws and behaving ethically, Nikki Haley just writes herself a new set of rules so she can continue to campaign on the taxpayer dime.

Wow, ya think?!?

Will's post has more chutzpah in one sentence, than THE REAL DEMOCRATS can muster in all of their silly, inconsequential canned-media mewling.

How about something like this: "This irresponsible, lazy, narcissistic and inexperienced LIAR is thieving from the people of South Carolina to fund her pricey, designer-clothes wardrobe; her trips to France and Germany; crashes of unauthorized cars in North Carolina; and now... she is going to use our money to keep her job for another four years. Meanwhile, the Department of Revenue is hacked, while she takes another vacation. She needs to GO. She is destroying the state."

THAT is how it's done, people.

Hey Dems, if you need me to help you out, contact my radio show. I'll be glad to write you some applause lines. Or maybe you can call Will?

Apparently, the Republicans and Green Party people are more effective at being Democrats than the Democrats are.

~*~

The Democrats have launched no genuine, full-throttle, hard-hitting ATTACKS on this ethically-challenged, opportunistic political-nightmare, who is spending our money like it is going out of style, all while advertising herself as a fiscal conservative. Voters on both sides of the political spectrum are thoroughly FED UP with her.

Where are the Democrats and why are they not taking full advantage of this sordid situation? Same place they've always been: asleep at the switch. As always. As usual.

In this state, Democrats are too defeatist to even BEGIN. They are too cowed to realize when they actually have the upper hand, as they do with corrupt Governor Haley. They are so accustomed to losing, they practically announce their losses before election season. They expect the worst, and therefore try to behave and blend in, basically apologizing for existing.

Democratic slogan in South Carolina: "We're sorry for being the opposition! It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!"

But see, they DON'T do it, is the problem. They are a collection of empty suits.

This is the party that nominated an unelectable man with a prison record to run for the 3rd District congressional seat, rather than dynamic Jeanne van den Hurk, who would have run a vital, energetic and very capable campaign against awful Tea Partier Jeff Duncan. This is the party repeatedly presenting us with the well-behaved snoozefest known as Vincent Sheheen (no offense, Vince, but facts are facts) to run against Governor Haley, an up-and-coming, razzle-dazzle neocon star (and Vogue model) with oodles of Tea Party money at her disposal. This is the party that gave us the disaster known as Alvin Greene to run against the formidable Jim DeMint. This is the party that did VERY LITTLE to help my friend Deb Morrow, in her congressional run against the 4th District's terrible Trey Gowdy.

Why are they so incompetent? WHAT ARE THEY DOING?

Why are they so comatose and complacent in the face of total disaster?

(((Daisy goes off to gnash teeth, pull out hair, and howl at the moon.)))

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.

DEMINT LEAVES SENATE!

We are finally rid of our nuisance teabagger Senator! YEE HA! (happy dance) As a consequence, I have been singing "Ding Dong, the witch is dead" all day long...

DeMint has 4 years remaining in his Senate term. From the Greenville News:

U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint said today he will replace Ed Feulner as president of the Heritage Foundation, and leave the Senate in January.

DeMint, a Republican, will leave his post as South Carolina’s junior senator in early January to take control of the Washington think tank, which has an annual budget of about $80 million.

“It’s been an honor to serve the people of South Carolina in United States Senate for the past eight years, but now it’s time for me to pass the torch to someone else and take on a new role in the fight for America’s future,” DeMint said in a statement.

“I’m leaving the Senate now, but I’m not leaving the fight. I’ve decided to join The Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas,” he said. “No organization is better equipped to lead this fight and I believe my experience in public office as well as in the private sector as a business owner will help Heritage become even more effective in the years to come.

“I’m humbled to follow in the footsteps of Ed Feulner, who built the most important conservative institution in the nation. He has been a friend and mentor for years and I am honored to carry on his legacy of fighting for freedom.”

Feulner had total compensation of $1,098,612 in 2010, according to Heritage Foundation’s Form 990. DeMint’s pay as U.S. Senator has been $174,000 since 2009, with Senate pay set at $174,000 for 2013.

DeMint’s departure means that Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, will name a successor, who will have to run in a special election in 2014. Both DeMint’s replacement and Sen. Lindsey Graham will be running for reelection in South Carolina that year.

Republican insiders were speculating that Haley may look at a handful of names as DeMint’s replacement, including U.S. Rep. Tim Scott, the North Charleston Republican and a favorite of conservatives. Scott is the only black Republican in the U.S. House.

Scott, in a statement this morning, said: “I first want to thank Senator DeMint for the tremendous work he has done on behalf of South Carolina and the nation. His commitment to conservative principles leaves a true legacy, and I have greatly enjoyed getting to know and work with him over the past two years.

“Looking forward, Governor Haley will now appoint a new Senator, and I know she will make the right choice both for South Carolina and the nation.”

Other possible replacements include Rep. Trey Gowdy, Congressman for the 4th District that includes much of Greenville County and Rep. Mick Mulvaney, the Republican Congressman from Indian Land.

All three were elected to Congress in the 2010 election.

Haley could also resign as governor, which would elevate Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell to her post as a deal that would have him appoint her to the Senate. But Haley has consistently said the only job she is interested in is the one she has and has started preparing for re-election in 2014.

Haley said this morning that DeMint “has served South Carolina and the national conservative movement exceptionally well. His voice for freedom and limited government has been a true inspiration. On a personal level, I value Jim’s leadership and friendship. Our state’s loss is the Heritage Foundation’s gain. I wish Jim and Heritage all the best in continuing our shared commitment to America’s greatness.”

DeMint was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998 after owning a successful advertising and market research company for 20 years. DeMint left the House after limiting himself to three terms. He then was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and re-elected in 2010.

DeMint has authored legislation to balance the budget, ban earmarks, replace the tax code, and reform the nation’s entitlement programs.

DeMint was also the congressman from this district, so he has been annoying me nonstop since 1998.

Good riddance. I doubt any possible replacement could be as bad.

EDIT 12/7/12: As mentioned above, Rep. Tim Scott, up-and-coming black Republican congressman from Charleston, is being touted as DeMint's replacement in the Senate. If appointed, he would be South Carolina's first black Senator. A website-petition has sprung up to push him as the replacement.

As Matt Drudge would say, developing....

Deb Morrow not elected; annoying Tea Partier is re-elected

At left: Daisy and Deb Morrow at Occupy Spartanburg last year.







My friend Deb Morrow has lost to Tea Party-puppet Trey Gowdy in the South Carolina 4th District congressional race. He won by refusing to debate her. (Green Party candidate Jeff Sumerel was also in the race, and also offered to debate Gowdy.)

So sorry, Deb--you ran a good race. But as you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars will always beat someone who doesn't take money from special-interest groups.

It shouldn't be that way, but it is.





Gowdy wins second term in SC's 4th District

COLUMBIA — (Associated Press) The GOP's Trey Gowdy has easily won a second term in South Carolina's strongly Republican 4th District in Greenville and Spartanburg counties.

With about a third of precincts reporting, Gowdy had about 65 percent of votes cast in the three-way contest that included Democrat Deb Morrow and Green Party candidate Jeff Sumerel.

Gowdy says he wants to continue working to get the nation's economic house in order. He says the nation isn't going to succeed fiscally without real conversations in Congress about spending priorities and entitlement reform.

Morrow was making her first bid for political office. She's retired from a computer services business and said she decided to run for Congress after getting involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement and organizing an Occupy demonstration in Spartanburg.

You fought the good fight. (bows)

Friday update

Our own Spartanburg Occupier, Deb Morrow, won the SC Democratic primary! She will go up against awful Trey Gowdy for the 4th District Congressional Seat in November.

I made a special trip to vote for Deb; she was the only candidate on my ballot. I am proud of her efforts (and have attended two of her organizing meetings) and hope she will give us a call at the radio station tomorrow. She tried last week, but was apparently in a moving vehicle, and consequently, we lost her. Give us another shot, Deb!



~*~

Apologies for my late news. I had internet connection issues all week. Unplugged against my will! Argh!

During this time, the shameless scandalmonger in me has stayed tuned to the sordid Jerry Sandusky trial. (Penn State coach accused of sexually abusing numerous children.) No cameras in the courtroom, but reporters have provided a steady stream of horrors. I am amazed at how hands-off the authorities were, over decades... these kids were not from families who would have raised a ruckus. And Sandusky chose them deliberately for this reason.

He repeatedly told them how much he loved them, and they have testified that they loved him in return. They loved the gifts, the attention, the football games.

People on Facebook are howling for Dottie Sandusky's head, believing that she must know more than she is letting on. One victim claims he stayed overnight at Sandusky's house in excess of 50 times. Besides that, Jerry Sandusky stayed in the basement for hours with these kids. Didn't his wife suspect anything?

We will be discussing the Sandusky trial tomorrow on my show, so tune in.

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.

US Blues, update

What does one make of people who are poor and aging, yet apparently don't believe they will ever need health care that is currently priced way beyond their means? Is this garden-variety old-age denial or Tea Party-Republicanism run amok? Why would people be against their own interests? Is a party principle really more important than your life, or the lives of your loved ones?

As I see it, this is the crucial difference in the political debate right now. We are now arguing over our own lives, not some hypothetical situation that may or may not arise. And yet, here in the conservative south, poor people who consistently vote Republican continue making all manner of theoretical right-wing noise instead of fully comprehending that the wolf is at the door.

Example: I used to get out there and protest other people being unemployed, and now I am the one who is unemployed.

And maybe tomorrow, you will be.

This isn't academic. Not for me. It was, once, and now it is an immediate reality. What to do with people who refuse to see it that way? Who smugly believe they will stay employed, and receive the Social Security that they don't want other undeserving people to receive?

For instance, two people who made money off the GOVERNMENT, now say nobody else should: Michele Bachmann, ex-IRS stooge fattened off of farm subsidies (i.e. welfare) and our congressman, Trey Gowdy, who made his living as a prosecutor (with starring roles on FORENSIC FILES and DATELINE, for catching bad guys). How can Trey have a career in government while railing against the government that has fed and clothed him very well? Why does Michele want to cut off welfare for actual poor people, but she is allowed to rake in $251,973 of OUR hard-earned money? (screams)

I think this is called, talking out of both sides of your mouth. As Rand Paul treated patients funded through Medicaid, and made MONEY off of Medicaid, but now wants to limit/abolish it for others. (He's made his money, so now he's through with it. Nice work if you can get it!)

And Michele Bachmann wins the Iowa straw poll. (screams again for emphasis)

I'd love to hear some opinions about this rather twisted southern phenomenon, if you got any. For one thing, I'd like to know, is this sorry situation a purely southern one? Do any poor people besides southern whites consistently vote against themselves?

It's enough to make you tear your hair out.

~*~

Great introductory animation on this one! Enjoy!

US Blues - Grateful Dead



~*~

And just listen to this! I have no idea where or when it was recorded, but I would say from the looks of their hair (touch of gray, ha) that it was late 80s/early 90s.

Star Spangled Banner - Grateful Dead



Jokey comments about how they couldn't let Phil sing for this one, LOL.

Anti-Republican picket in Spartanburg

... this evening in front of the Spartanburg Municipal Building. Singled out for considerable ire is our congressman, Trey Gowdy, who has all kindsa wacko Tea Party ideas (warning: link is odious)... such as keeping most of South Carolina uneducated. (Hey, voter-ignorance has worked very well for the SC GOP so far, hasn't it?)

We had a pretty good turnout, over 30 people. For upstate South Carolina, that's excellent. (I don't think Greenville County could do as well.)

~*~