Reel Me In

So yesterday I talked about how cheapskate Mark Sanford got "friends" to paint signs on their old plywood.  I based this on a quick Google search where there were a number of articles interviewing Sanford on how he came up with this "frugal" scheme, and how he claims it proves he will save you tax dollars.

Well imagine my surprise when I read Andy Brack's commentary in the April 5  issue of Statehouse Reports:

Following Sanford’s much-publicized fall from grace while governor, he has been talking squarely to the camera this year with a message of conservatism mixed with old-fashioned religious redemption. His campaign erects big plywood signs that say “Sanford saves tax $,” making it look like his professional campaign is so tapped out that it has to make its own signs. Hogwash. The wooden signs are more expensive (and heavier) than the slick cardboard ones, but Sanford knows the homemade signs look better for his image.

Which had been my first impression, but that slick SOB managed to get journalists to give him some great free publicity, as in the Island Packet:

"Leftover plywood out of a dumpster combined with a three dollar can of spray paint works just fine," Sanford wrote in an email blast this week, encouraging supporters to find their own scraps and fashion signs. "I even saw an old door being thrown into a dumpster yesterday that would work perfectly as a sign."

Meanwhile, his campaign is also shelling out money to make more of the plywood signs at $7 a pop. They're using leftover materials from previous campaigns.

The campaign calls it a great way to save money.

S.C. polticos are calling it smart messaging that reinforces Sanford's spendthrift reputation.

Think of Mark Sanford's plywood as Scott Brown's pickup.  It's a really clever marketing gimmick.

Not only does Mark Sanford have contributors with very deep pockets (and no old plywood doors lying around), but, like Brown, he happily throws his votes in with those wealthy supporters.  And, like Mitt Romney's comments about the 47 percent who mooch off people like him, Sanford has absolutely no clue, and certainly no empathy, for those of us who have had to struggle to make ends meet, for the working poor, for seniors who have held jobs through their lives and are now in fear of losing their safety net.

But I do have a solution and, to misquote Stephen Colbert, I would like to thank Mark Sanford for his inspiration.

I can't afford plywood and a can of paint, but I do have a pad of paper and a magic marker.  So I created a little hometown message of my own:

You can do it too, folks.  This can be a real grass roots campaign, and not a marketing gimmick.  Put that handmade sign in your windows at home and in your car.

Let's literally take this campaign on the road.

And don't forget:

Vote May 7

Elizabeth Colbert Busch

US House of Representatives

Read more here: http://www.islandpacket.com/2013/03/06/2407356/rudimentary-signs-make-for-sophisticated.html#storylink=cpy

Dear Lindsey,

Apparently, in the midst of your identity crisis, you have decided to advertise on Daily Kos to get support for your Benghazi rant.  It must have been quite the thrill when you learned of Susan Rice's investment portfolio, which includes the company building the Keystone XL pipeline, and even better, that it was a "liberal" group (RootsAction) that is demanding her immediate divestment of those funds.

Wow.  Just step back and watch the Dems shoot themselves in the foot.  Hasn't happened for awhile.  You must have forgotten how good that feels.

Well, back to Benghazi.  You should step back a bit from those late night bitch sessions with John McCain, and realize just how crazy your paranoia really is.  You know there was nothing for Obama to gain by denying that terrorism was at the root of the attack weeks before the election.  If anything, terrorism would have gained him votes.  Let us not forget just how many free miles W. redeemed by playing the terrorism card.

Pardon me for mixing metaphors.  I am giddy with the insanity of the post-election right-wingnuts.

I have already gone on about how silly it is for you and grumpy old John to attack Rice's statements on the Sunday talk shows.  And then the old coot actually insulted her intelligence!

When I first heard the comment I was sure it had to have come from a Saturday Night Live skit.  But no, that was John McCain at his most irascible.  Don't you just want to grab him by the shoulders sometimes and say, "Look in the mirror, John!"

It is also obvious that the Republican strategy is to move Kerry out of the Senate and make way for Scott Brown, who, if I may remind you, lost the election.  I'm not going to say it's not going to happen because, well, we are Democrats, and we don't like easy goals.  But you can't deny it:  either you are plotting with the republicans so you can get that Massachusetts seat back (and maybe be able to ride around with Scott Brown in his pickup), or you are attacking a qualified African-American woman because you cannot admit that she is a qualified African-American woman.

Either case, Lindsey, I hope that you are smart enough to look to the future, like, two years into the future.  Those guys you've been hanging out with at home in South Carolina don't like you anymore.  You're left with the unpopular out of town kids, like John McCain.  You are very likely to be challenged by the Tea Party, because you will never be crazy enough to be accepted by them.  And while John McCain gives a good rendition of the Mad Hatter, he's going to make it harder for you to be friends with anyone on either side.  

So that leaves, well, just trying to do the right thing.  You have had bouts of that in the past, so I know you can do it. Just ask yourself what would Lindsey Graham do if Mitt was in the White House.  Because I know you wouldn't agree with him all the time either, but chances would be good that the arguments would be a bit more grounded in reality.

Respectfully,
Agnes

The Depths of Inanity -- and Back

If I am going to be truly honest and open-minded, when I listen to Scott Brown's January, 2010, acceptance speech, I really have to say, "What a charming rogue."  This has absolutely nothing to do with his positions on issues, or how good he will be for Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate.  He is not good for us, not Massachusetts, and not the U.S.  He is heavily funded by Wall Street, and his method in the Senate appears to be to pick apart meaningful bills, so that they are gutted and impotent, when he does not vote to kill proposed regulatory measures outright.


He is  shrewd.  He knows when the tide is turning and a simple flirtatious wisecrack is no longer going to appease the voters.  This is when he acts like he really, really wants to vote for, say, the jobs bill, so why don't they just take the important parts (the parts that are going to look good to the voters) and leave out the bad parts (the parts that are going to actually affect Wall Street and the corporations).


So thank you very much to the person at the October 4 Massachusetts Senate Democratic Primary Debate who asked Elizabeth Warren how she paid for college.  I guess she could have given the long-winded answer about a hard-knock life and working her way through school, but I believe she was so taken aback by the question that her sense of humor kicked in and she replied that "I kept my clothes on".


Of course that became the quote du jour, and of course of all that happened at that debate, that was the comment that Senator Scott Brown was asked to respond to.  Mr. Brown, of the "take my daughters, please" school of humor, lowered the bar further by responding, "Thank god!"


Which everybody in the media then had to comment on.  Ad nauseum.


Elizabeth Warren, who has been fighting -- hard -- for our financial survival against the big banks and corporations that pay for Scott Brown's campaign, now has to learn how to deal with idiot America.  I expect that she will do it with her usual aplomb.  I just wish that, for this important race, it was not necessary.


So allow me to end with Warren's closing debate comments:

Elizabeth Warren

I learned yesterday that Elizabeth Warren has announced her candidacy for the Massachusetts US Senate seat.  That would be a proud moment for the state, after the guy in the truck convinced the voters that he was like them because he drove a truck.

Unlike Martha Coakley, Warren is not planning on taking much vacation time -- not that we won't hear about any occasional days off she does take.  She seems to understand how low her opponents will go, and she certainly knows how high the stakes are for them.

A risk for her is that she has seen the ugly in government; she has seen Obama hedge his bets rather than come out tough and determined to do what's right.  She knows Scott Brown has the full support of Wall Street because if she wins this race, Wall Street will look a lot less like Easy Street.

Here in South Carolina, we have a lot at stake in whether Warren gets elected.  Our sleazy right-to-work cheap, freedom for the wealthy, amoralistic moralists will be front and center of this battle, because Elizabeth Warren will fight against those pols who believe states' rights means the right to gut their state.

So they will attack her with all the irrelevant, highly-charged attack words they know, and I've already heard (ho-hum) "elitist"; I'm sure "socialist" has been thrown out there.

And she's been there already, and she's a fighter.

I plan on getting involved in this one, and I hope we all help fight the disinformation war that is going to be going on against Elizabeth Warren.