Living with Tim Scott's Bad Choices

Up till now, the secret to Tim Scott's success has been knowing what side his bread is buttered on.  And that side is not the side he grew up on, but that of the well-heeled capitalists who have found the perfect African-American republican.  Little white haired southern ladies love him, and all those rich old white guys know he will fight for them, from the right to bear arms to the right to run roughshod over the environment.

Scott isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but unlike the republican candidate for president, he takes instruction well.  He believes in the republican dream, because it has worked for him.  So he can't see why it can't work for any black man in America.  All you have to do is work hard and suck up to the right... well, the right.  He jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon and it took him right to Washington, and then he sidled up to Nikki Haley, and sure enough, it took him out of the House of Representatives and into the Senate.

He was fortunate in that he did not have big intellectual shoes to fill in the Senate.  Jim duh-Mint may not have had anything going on as far as critical thinking skills, but like Tim, he knew where the power lay, and he learned the words to their song.  DeMint and Scott can recite the lines to the Tea Party Manifesto and they believe every word of it.  Because fortune has, as the Reagan bunch promised in 1980, trickled down to them.

Like, DeMint, Scott talks a good story about his hardscrabble childhood, and for Tim it really was;  no Andy Griffith's Mayberry for Tim Scott.  And as with so many who have worked hard and succeeded, they believe that those who don't succeed have no one to blame but themselves and the government.  In their minds, the government that gave DeMint and Scott an awfully good wage and benefits package is preventing the poor from finding success by helping them survive.

Scott doesn't come out too often and say that the poor should be dropped on their heads and left to fend for themselves.  Instead, he has succeeded by using the right-wing trick of attacking those who are trying to help.  Make Obama the bad guy and nobody will see those members of Congress who have been blocking any attempt to move the country forward.  Blame the president for Guantanamo Bay while Scott helped prevent any reasonable solution from finding its way into the debate.  And of course, make his constituents afraid and angry.

Remember ebola?  Tim Scott was front and center demanding that the government ban travel from affected countries.  No so much in the lead when it came to research and aid.  And, as with every other message from Scott regarding any problem anywhere in the country, he blamed the Obama administration for the government's response, whatever it would be.

Now, with the Zika virus, Scott and his hare-brained right-wing colleagues offer up a bill to provide funds for research.  Really???  Check it out.  Carefully.  Because when right-wing politicians tell you the government is going to help, it is really is time to lock up your valuables.  Because first of all, that bill would waive the Clean Water Act to allow for spraying -- when your kids get sick from the chemicals Scott will blame the president, by the time cancer rates have risen he will be on some private corporate payroll.  And here is the capper:  sandwiched in the middle of his description of the bill are the words:  "Offset this spending."  What he fails to mention is that Zika spending will be offset by ebola funds.

Pretty slick, and certainly not dreamed up in Tim Scott's small brain.  He is merely barfing up republican talking points.  The way our current republican presidential nominee has been forced from time to time to regurgitate words dictated by his republican colleagues.

And while politicians like Senate colleague Lindsey Graham who are more secure in their own shoes are speaking out against the diseased mind of Donald Trump, Tim Scott is all in.  He will support Trump in spite of racist attacks and unconstitutional proposals, because Tim Scott can't say no to the republican party.  That is where his bread has been buttered, and he hasn't noticed that when buttered bread lands on the floor, it always lands face down.

This is a really good time for South Carolinians to take a look at Scott's Democratic opponent, Thomas Dixon.

  

Video thanks to Elaine Cooper

Dixon understands what we need from our government because, as he says,

"I was part of the problem for a long time.  I was the person who was so wrapped around me and caught up in me that whatever hurt anybody else didn't matter to me. 

But one day I woke up."

 Dixon woke up.  And that is why today he fights for human rights.  The right to be safe from gun violence.  The right to earn a living wage.  The right to love whom you choose.  A woman's right to make her own reproductive choices, privately.  The right of veterans and seniors to live in security.  The right to healthcare for all.

Tim Scott may have had it rough when he was young.  But he was bought out with promises of success, and every time he votes against those who need his help he realizes that success.  So he is not going to wake up.

And that is why we need to support Thomas Dixon for Senate.  His supporters don't have deep pockets like those of Tim Scott, but that is exactly why we need him to represent us.  And we may not have a fortune, but we can send him our small donations, and we can vote just as well as the well-heeled.

So please spread the word about Thomas Dixon, and help elect him to the Senate in November.  Tim Scott, like Jim DeMint, will do just fine in the private sector.  And we will do just fine with him gone, and Thomas Dixon taking that seat.

Thomas Dixon

for

U.S. Senate

Get Out Your Pitchforks

I have been trying to be quiet through this latest episode of mass hysteria.  I really have.  But at the risk of raising the wrath of every single one of my friends, I am going to have to speak my mind.  Because that is what I do.

I usually enjoy Chris Hayes' liberal rants.  His young face gets all puffed up and he starts to stutter.  He is outraged, but he tends to wrap his outrage up in reason.  Except when it comes to vaccinations.  Then he becomes the 21st century yuppie parent, screeching about how my kid is going to infect his kid.  And since the latest "measles outbreak" it has been all-measles-all-the-time on All In with Chris Hayes.

It's not just Hayes, though.  For weeks we have been bombarded with the terror inspiring word of "100 cases" of measles, brought about by those bad parents who irresponsibly and selfishly chose not to have their kids vaccinated for measles AND THEN WENT TO DISNEYWORLD.  I have been listening, hard, to these news reports, waiting to hear of the 100 cases spreading into the thousands, or to hear how many of those hundred have died from the disease.  The answer, as far as I can tell, is none.

Then, two days ago, I heard that the worst fears had been realized:  five infants had been confirmed to have measles.  Before I began to write, I gave it one more try.  When I googled "measles," I learned that a "Baby Had Been Confirmed as First Victim in New Jersey."  Oh my god.  It finally happened.

But no.  The report goes on to say that the one-year-old has since recovered.  Everybody in the building, the town, the state and the country, however, has been alerted.  I can be fairly certain that if there had been a death it would be front page everywhere.  Not that it couldn't happen.  But in developed countries, where overall health and hygiene are good, measles is rarely fatal.

For those of you youngsters, like Mr. Hayes, even your parents are not likely to remember when measles was just a childhood disease.  A kid broke out, itched, ran a temperature, and stayed home from school for a week.  And then they got better.

Back in the 80's, when my daughter was born, there was a healthy debate about the value of vaccinations versus allowing natural immunities to develop.  That debate seems to have been hijacked by the debate over vaccines causing autism.  And over the past couple of weeks, even when anti-vaccine proponents have been interviewed, I have not heard a single word spoken about natural immunity.  So here it is.

An infant has a weak and developing immune system.  Nursing contributes to adding mother's immunities to the baby.  And just as a childhood disease like measles is likely to be worse in an adult, healthy babies tend to experience milder symptoms.  When my pre-school daughter got chickenpox at four years old, her six-month-old brother also contracted the disease.  While she itched and had a fever, her brother didn't even notice he was sick.  And they both now have lifetime immunity to chickenpox.

Which brings me to the point that I keep waiting to hear.  If you are vaccinated, you need to be re-vaccinated.  The immunity is temporary.  If you allow this childhood disease to run its course, however, you have immunity for life.  So that pregnant women who have had the measles as children need not fear contracting measles, which is truly dangerous to the development of a fetus.

Now, it also appears that drug companies are griping, and vaccine supporters are touting, the "fact" that drug companies are not making a fortune on vaccine.  A cursory search did not come up with any numbers, and it's true that we don't have to pay much for vaccines.  But drug companies have done an amazing job of hiding the cost -- and the profit -- of the most commonly used drugs.  Government subsidizes a lot of the cost of vaccines, which means drug companies still get paid.  It may be that they don't make the mint that they make on far too many much needed drugs.  But vaccines are the steady, guaranteed profit-maker.  Drug companies are more likely to balk at having to waste money researching more desperately needed vaccines for third world countries than to complain about reaping that steady US vaccine market.

Now, if MSNBC wanted to rant about what is endangering lives in America, they might want to take a look at overmedication.  There was a peep in the media a few years ago about the over prescription of antibiotics, and then it went away.  But in fact, prescribing antibiotics when an illness could just run its course, has led to the development of, oh, let's call it a master race of infections.  And you don't need to be the one taking the antibiotics to reap the rewards of being infected by these master bugs.  And the drug companies continue to make stronger antibiotics and the bugs that survive the drugs continue to get stronger and harder to eradicate.  Much like using Round-Up to kill weeds until you have master weeds that need ever stronger poisons to be killed.

It amazes me when smart people who tend to be rational go nuts.  I am thinking about the hysterics in the 80's over "catching AIDS" (and I hate to admit, I was one of those, although eventually I did succumb to reason).  Or how about last year's ebola scare, when healthy people where coming back from Africa, even parts that were nowhere near the reported outbreaks, and faced anger and outrage and even -- thank you Chris Christie -- quarantine.

The most idiotic argument, the one that is expressed every single time vaccination is "discussed" is that your unvaccinated kid is going to endanger my vaccinated kid.  Well, no.  If your kid is vaccinated, and the thing works the way you claim it works, your kid will be spared the scourge of the dreaded measles.  Or, if the kid comes down with the measles, it should be a mild version, and (if you're really lucky) it will be enough to immunize the child for life.  Wouldn't that be grand.

Anyway, I would like to conclude by saying:

JUST CALM DOWN.  If we were poor people who lived with poor health and poor hygiene, our children would be more vulnerable to extreme symptoms.  In that case, I would say, by all means get the vaccine.  And if you really believe that drugs trumps the body's ability to fight any disease, go for it.  But please stop trying to make it sound like children are dying in the streets from this disease.  Be smug in your superior parenting if you like, but stop trying to make it sound like people who disagree with you are arming themselves with deadly germs and coming after your kids.