September 1 -- Vote!

If special elections have a low turnout, it just makes sense that this is the time we can be heard.

September 1 -- next Tuesday -- is primary day for the special election for SC State Senator for District 45.  This is the seat that was vacated with the murder of Senator Clementa Pinckney.  There are eleven Democratic candidates and two republican candidates.  We need to 1) learn about who is running, 2) spread the word and 3) get out and vote.

But even before we do that, we need to find out if we live in Senate #45 and if we are registered to vote.  Not as hard as you might think.  Go to scvotes.org, plug in your name, county and date of birth, and voila! you will get all the info you need.  This site will tell you not only whether you are registered, but what legislative districts you are in, and your polling location.

That out of the way, good luck learning about all eleven Democratic candidates.  To that end, a couple of weeks ago I did some research and wrote a blog.  Not to blow my own horn, let me just say that this is the most minimal information you would want to use to make a decision.  But it is a start.

Go to Facebook and look up candidates, do a google search.  When you get a campaign call from an actual human, ask about the issues most important to you.  I have had a couple of callers talk to me about my most important issue, women's reproductive rights, and actually had a caller hang up on me when I asked my question.  This is THE time to let a candidate know what they need to do to represent you by telling THEM what they can do for you instead of listening to them roll out their talking points.

By the way, women's reproductive rights is my litmus test.  If in South Carolina a candidate can say outright that they support a woman's right to contraception and ABORTION (yes, say the word), I expect they will pretty much support voting rights, LGBT rights and workers rights.

After you have done a little research, I'm going to ask you all to spread the word.  Make people aware that this important election is going on.  Email, Facebook, text, telephone and bring it up when you see your friends, neighbors, co-workers.  It's our chance to talk about the issues.

This is why this election is so important:

In the upcoming legislative year, there will be bills promoting the freedom to carry guns everywhere.  On the program are bills allowing guns in colleges and universities, as well as public schools.  There are bills that would welcome those who carry guns in other states to come on in and bring your ammo.  There is an actual bill that would require schools to have a "2nd Amendment Week" celebrating our right to wave our guns around and ending in an essay competition on how carrying guns has guaranteed us our rights.

There will be about a zillion bills prohibiting women from exercising their right to contraceptive care and to decide to have an abortion, free of government interference.  The first effort will be to pass the ridiculous twenty week abortion ban.  That's the one that claims that at twenty weeks a fetus can feel pain, despite all medical and scientific evidence.  When that one gets through (and we do have some strong women's rights legislators that are fighting it, but only a few, and they need all the help and support they can get), it opens the door to bills that would ban abortions earlier, all the way to conception.  I guarantee there will be bills to defund Planned Parenthood, denying those of low income the gynecological care that they would otherwise be unable to afford.

On the other side are bills that would ensure voting rights, equality in employment and marriage rights, raise the gasoline tax to pay for improved roads and bridges, and improve our schools throughout the state.  We need voices to get expanded federal Medicaid dollars, and we need to make sure that no one in need is denied food and housing.

I will be writing again about a few of the candidates before I vote, but please mark your calendars, and spread the word about this critical special election primary.  With so few voting and so many candidates, we need to make the right choice.

I will end with the words that strike fear into the hearts of South Carolina Democrats:

Remember Alvin Greene

  

DON'T Let Them Eat Cake!

I can't help it, whenever I think of Nikki Haley (and I try not to, really) the word "brat" comes to mind.  I imagine her stuck in adolescence, flirting with the guys, saying "no" when she means "yes" just to prove she can.

I wish this was just my imagination run amok, but she has certainly carried that attitude into the Governor's office.  For example, in 2012 Haley vetoed a bill that would have provided HPV immunization to girls, with an opt out provision for parents not wanting the immunization.  This even baffled republicans, since in 2007 she had co-sponsored a bill MANDATING the immunization.  This doesn't confuse me at all.  I think it's just Nikki being Nikki, in other words, letting us know that if she can't force us to follow her rules, she's going to take her vaccine and go home.

And then we have Medicaid.  In a career where she is competing with Mark Sanford for the stupid award, she has determined that under no circumstances will she support a no-cost Medicaid expansion.  In a totally humiliating segment on The Daily Show, SC Policy Council President Ashley Landess got to play patsy for Nikki Haley.  She first attempts to explain how we can't afford "0 dollars," and then follows it up by saying government has never had a good idea.  It kind of reminded me of Miss Teen South Carolina back in 2007 trying to field a tough question about why so many American students can't find the US on a map:

  

...and also leaves me wondering where the former Miss Teen was when the Policy Council President job opened up.

When it comes to food stamps, Nikki wants to make sure poor people aren't having too much fun.  In 2013, she wanted to limit food stamp purchases to "healthy foods," in other words, no cake for you.  However, when she was informed that families on food stamps couldn't afford healthy foods, she shifted gears and now supports an initiative to make poor people prove that they are looking for jobs.

The food stamp program is fraught with conflicting messages, but Nikki brings her own stern mama attitude to the mix.  No precooked roast chickens and no birthday cake for the kids.  We're not going to support the unemployed, and we're not going to help the working poor.

The bottom line is Nikki and her pack don't like people getting something for nothing, and they are going to make sure what they've got isn't easy.  So if you were planning on pinching your food stamps so you can afford a birthday cake for your nine-year-old, expect to get dirty looks from your elected officials.  At least Marie Antoinette was willing to let the poor eat cake.

Consistently Lindsey

While Jon Stewart and I were away (he's still gone, but I'm back), John Oliver had a bit to say about privacy.  Of course, our own Senator Lindsey Graham, hot to beat out any Tea Party challengers in 2014 (you know who I'm talking about, Lee Bright), is the go-to guy on just about every issue that plagues our lawmakers.  The biggest plague being our president.

What has been difficult for Graham, however, is when President Obama takes a sharp turn to the right.  Being a man of rigid, if not good, Southern values, Graham is fearless in supporting any sacrifice of personal privacy in the name of national security.

Except one.

Here is our own Lindsey Graham, right around minute seven, summing up his position on privacy:







Let's hope that his 2014 Democratic challenger takes note of this little inconsistency.  You know what they say about politics and strange bedfellows.  The Tea Party just might not be as enthused about electronic surveillance of US citizens as Senator Graham.

Too Much Moderation

Over the past weeks since the killing of twenty children in Newtown, I have heard crazy people demand and threaten over their right to bear arms.  Talk show host Alex Jones yelled, "1776 will commence again."  While he was raging against attempts to legislate his right to bear arms, he was also organizing a petition to have Piers Morgan deported because he spoke in favor of strict gun control laws.  So apparently freedom to carry weapons trumps freedom of speech.  Unless it's the guy with the guns who's speaking.

Wayne LaPierre, NRA crazy man with the inoffensive name, will brook absolutely no compromise, under any circumstance.  Rather, he proposes armed guards and watch lists of the mentally ill, whose freedom also appears not to matter.  If you drive a car you need a driver's license, but it is an act against freedom to require a gun owner to be licensed and on record.

According to a blistering Daily Show report, in 2007 Kansas Congressman Todd Tiahrt declared that we don't need any more protection from guns because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was on it 24/7.  That's the Todd Tiahrt who rammed through measures preventing ATF from monitoring or enforcing gun laws.  Oh, and the bill had the stamp of approval from the NRA.

While the anti-gun-control nuts are writhing and screeching, the parents of the murdered children are "urging" discussions about gun safety.

This may seem to be deja vu all over again, what with the right-wing-nuts driving the health care debate, making truly sensible, affordable health care impossible in this country.

And it would be hard not to point out that the side that is screaming about losing the freedom to carry a gun any-damn-where it wants is pretty often the side that feels the need to protect a women's fertilized egg from the women carrying it.

My point is that it is disheartening that the two most powerful components of the gun debate are the monied and the crazy.  With the NRA -- the lobby of the arms industry -- fueling the paranoid, it becomes ever harder for the reasoned and moderate voices to weigh in.  Leaving us with inadequate legislation and enforcement, and more deaths ready to be toted up. 

How Many Deaths Will It Take?

It's after three o'clock, exactly two weeks before Christmas.  You are no doubt at work, which may or may not be at the Mall.  You may be doing some Christmas shopping.  And your older kids may well have headed to the Mall after school as well.

Yesterday in an Oregon mall a 22-year-old opened fire with the semi-automatic rifle he had apparently taken from a friend.  Fortunately, the gun jammed; "fortunately" only two were killed, one seriously injured, before the shooter turned the weapon on himself.

I really need not say that if semi-automatic and automatic guns were illegal, he would have had no one to take the gun from.  Someone's spouse, parent, or grandparent would still be alive.

You may recall the shooting not so many months ago in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, which resulted in the loss of 12 lives.  It would have been more if that shooter's semi-automatic had not jammed -- it had a 100-shot magazine.

Back in July, I watched in shock as our leaders, and the idiots at Fox News, commented that it was too soon to talk about gun control.

They must have been right, because our President, in his comments after that shooting, failed to mention the need for gun control.

In fact, being that irony knows no bounds, Jon Stewart just one day before the shooting, had provided a pretty concise play-by-play of the "when it's not appropriate to talk about gun control" game:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

What amazed me most, then, about reaction to this deadly shooting, is that when I turned on MSNBC at noon today assuming the lead would be details about the tragedy, the talk was the same-old same-old bullshit about the damned "fiscal cliff."

What does this mean?  Has the media just decided we've become bored with the details of who's just shot whom?  Is there a minimum-dead rule that has had to go into effect so that viewers are not subjected to 24-7 reports of gun deaths?

I believe it is obvious that the NRA is mad with wealth and power, and that our media and legislators are controlled by the NRA.  This is a terrifying thought.

When a theater shooting ends in debate not of gun control but whether theaters should hold midnight viewings, when purses are searched and pat-downs at "The Sound of Music" are the order of the day, when South Carolina dimwits decide that the solution to crazed shooters in schools is to allow more shooters into schools to fight them off, when Christmas shopping is no longer safe...

...THIS IS THE TIME TO TALK ABOUT GUN CONTROL. 

Opposite Day at the GOP

We're all pretty accustomed to the flip-flops and distortions over at the GOP, but I think that of late they have surpassed Orwellian flights of fancy.

It was the anti-Obama ad where the Romney crew cut his words so that it sounded like, in 2008, he did not want to talk about the economy:

"...if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose..."

What is notable about this ad is that, instead of trying to dance around the fact, Romney himself basically said, "Yeah, we lied, so what?"

And that, folks, has been the modus operandi for the GOP ever since.

Every day is Opposite Day at the GOP.

Paul Ryan went on the road after the VP announcement condemning President Obama for trying to cut his mom's Medicare.  You know, those cuts he made to private insurers who had been gouging the government through subsidies for the Medicare Advantage supplemental health plan.  He assured us that it is the republican party that is going to save Medicare for his poor old mom.  You know, the snowbird that plays golf in Florida during the winter, just like our moms.  By the way, he also reassured us that, while grandma will be safe, the younger folk will be screwed.

While heads were spinning over that nonsense, the GOP was just warming up.  The GOP Convention, in fact, was a panoply of nuts and lies.

In the backrooms of the asylum is Ralph Reed, pockets full of gold and heart full of hate, preaching to his choir a plan for spending buckets of Supreme Court-approved anonymous cash to wipe out the evil Democrats in every election in every state.

Our own Nikki Haley bragged that it was because she stood up to Boeing that they offered to add jobs to their Union shop in Washington.

Of course, the big lie was the entire theme:  We Built It.  Each heart-warming story involved those hardscrabble Americans, from Chris Christie to Mitt, who all worked their way up from hardship.  With no help from the government???  Celebrating their hard-won success in a convention center that was built with government funding.  And that theme "We Built It" was, by the way, a misquote of Obama's, a clumsily stated tribute to those who built roads and bridges, the American system that fueled the success.

Mitt Romney nearly shed tears over how disappointed he is that Obama's plans to save the economy had failed, followed by Clint Eastwood blaming an empty chair that he mistook for Obama for things like the war in Afghanistan.  The combination of which finally caused Jon Stewart to go ballistic.  Good to know just how much bull it takes to put him over the edge.

For your sanity's sake, watch the whole segment.  Be sure to take away from it Jon's deduction that the republican view of reality exists because "...there is a President Obama that only Republicans can see...."

And if they really want to make the election about "invisible President Obama", he invites them to,

"Go ahead...Make my day."

At last, something about this election season I'll be looking forward to.

DeMint Does Daily

You have to see Jon Stewart interview our own Jim DeMint on The Daily Show.  I was so excited at the thought that Jon Stewart was going to make DeMint eat every one of his convoluted thoughts.


Things started well.  DeMint showed up in his rumpled, too-large, Sunday go-to-meeting suit, and I noted that he was the one with the blue tie, Stewart with the red.  Also, Mr. Stewart's chair appeared to be slightly highly than Senator DeMint, so that he appeared to tower over him physically as well as intellectually.


But the part that aired on television was a disappointment.  To see the real interview you need to get past part 1, where Stewart is being attentive and way too agreeable.  I actually worried that Stewart had met his match in DeMint, that even this brilliant interviewer couldn't figure out how to cut through the nonsense.


But parts 2 and 3, on the internets, is where Stewart gets his stride.   By the time he has confronted the senator with DeMint's enflamed rhetoric, the accusations that anyone who is liberal does not love his country, or is not patriotic, and before he gets to the damage being done by the right's unwillingness to compromise, he actually has DeMint stammering.  It is a beautiful thing to see.


Even better though, is that Stewart restates for us what it is that makes America great.  He channels Elizabeth Warren when he says "...no one makes it here by themselves".  Because we are all in this together, and when the powerful corporations are not held in check with regulation, and are not made to contribute an adequate amount of their profits to allow the rest of the country to grow, we all fail.  Eventually.


On the other hand, looking again at the video, Jim ends the interview as smug as ever, and I don't believe he ever had an idea that he had been bested.  It will surely take more than reason to bring down.


But I'm glad Jon Stewart was able to shine a little light on the idiocy that is Jim DeMint

There Goes Another Government Service

Who loses when the right wing finally gets its way and kills the United States Postal Service?


They do manage to make it sound petty that we expect to get Saturday delivery.  And just plain out-of-touch when most of us send letters by email these days.


Let Jon Stewart add a little perspective here:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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This would be the time, if we were a nation seeking to do better rather than cheaper, when neighborhood post offices would be allowed to provide a drop-off/pick-up point for private delivery services for a fee, rather than private companies lobbying to kill public mail service in order to lose the competition.


Because government does do it better, and cheaper.  Government provides decent jobs that provide a service that will never, ever be offered by private industry.


USPS provides the same service to the poor and those living in rural areas that it gives to those in the cities and suburbs.  Despite its regular, and it pains me to say it, not unreasonable cost increases, it continues to provide more for less than private companies.


And I have to say that both Jon Stewart and Claire McCaskill miss the point:  this government service still provides a lifeline to those of us without internet, and there are far too many of us out here.  It is not a matter of making the postal service profitable, any more than a public option for health care should be profitable.  It is a service that is necessary and affordable because there is no profit motive.  And we need to be very aware of how out-of-touch most of us are regarding the many, many people who continue to live for, and even because of, their mail delivery. 


And what will happen when our republican Congress does kill the postal service?  Private service will become even more expensive, and will provide less.


This is the same logic, in reverse, that applies to health care. If ObamaCare included a public option, private companies would have been forced to compete with more options and lower costs. Which is why the insurance industry fought like rabid dogs against even the mildest form of a public option.  And why they continue to fight with dollars and bought politicians to kill ObamaCare, and for that matter, Medicare.


I wonder if we will fight back hard enough as the right wing politicians, in the pocket of the corporations, continue to dismantle our government.