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....

I'm not gonna let it bother me tonight

Atlanta Rhythm Section - I'm not gonna let it bother me tonight



Congratulate me on not letting myself get all stirred up by online insanity (and getting called the b-word). Getting a jump on my New Year's resolution, which is not to let anger control me or rule me, as it has in the past. NO MORE. I won the first round and I am proud of myself.

As the 12 steps counsel us: One day at a time. I can refrain from anger for one night, can't I?

I'm not gonna let it bother me tonight. :)

Occupy the Microphone!

As of today, the Daisy Deadhead show (archives here) is no longer on WFIS-AM in Fountain Inn, South Carolina. (Our final show on that radio station was last Saturday.) I am proud to report that our show has now evolved into Occupy the Microphone.

At present, we are an online podcast, but after the first of the year, our plucky broadcast crew will move to WOLT-FM here in Greenville, South Carolina. Onward and Upward! Hopefully, the podcasts AND the radio shows will simultaneously continue.

Double A and Gregg Jocoy have been doing Occupy the Microphone podcasts Monday thru Wednesday at 8:30-9:30pm EST, with Scotty Reid of the indispensable Black Talk Radio Network doing Political Prisoner Radio on Thursdays (also at 8:30pm). Yesterday, I tried my hand at the podcast for the first time at 3pm, and it seemed to go well. I reviewed Damien Echols' fabulous book about being unfairly sentenced to Death Row in Arkansas (as one of the West Memphis Three), titled Life After Death. We talked about prisons and prisoners, the death penalty, the factors of race, class and mental disability in sentencing, and much more. Check it out.

We are getting our act together to take it on the road.

Although I enjoyed having a radio show named after me for well over a year, many folks expected something called "the Daisy Deadhead show" to feature Deadhead-type music instead of political yammering, which is our collective specialty. I figured it was a good idea to change the name. The amazing input (and hard work) of Double A and Gregg make it much more than a show named after ME, and it is important to acknowledge them... as well as the crucial role of the Occupy Wall Street movement in changing the leftist political landscape.

We have much more to say, do, attempt and express... and we very much hope you will join us.

Stay tuned!

Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.







NOTE: I first wrote this in 2009 and have re-posted it every November since then.

Please limit comments to current post. Thanks.


~*~


It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have a big announcement coming on the radio show Saturday, so stay tuned! I have been FAR too excited to blog about it, and also don't wanna spoil the surprise. I will be announcing it here on Saturday, after the show.

By the way, it is also our 25th wedding anniversary! We went to Atlanta and back, and have been taking it easy this week. It's been a very nice holiday for us both.

I made him a Deadhead and he made me a fangirl. Good trade!

~*~

I also transformed my spouse into a confirmed cat-person... or maybe he always was one, just waiting to emerge? I just introduced the cats, and the rest happened naturally.

Time for Simon's Cat! In attempting to find boxes to ship Christmas presents, I experienced the following, as most cat-owners have:



~*~

And I really love this one. My younger cat has perfectly imitated all the habits of my older cat:



~*~

Hope your holiday is good too!