Today, he dropped by my office to share an anecdote that he told up in Clemson, one which seems particularly apropos to share today, the day the news came out that his career at The State is coming to an end.
It's about the only other cartoonist The State ever actually employed full-time, back in the days of the Gonzales brothers, and why it took 74 years for the paper to hire one
after its first experience...
My wife and I were walking on the beach this afternoon, and we saw this flock of seagulls -- the birds, not the guys with the weird hair -- snoozing on the dry sand, up above the tide line. It was cool walking into the wind, warm walking with it.
Anyway, the gulls seemed to be in such a torpor there in the sun that I thought they might let me get really close with the camera. Which they did, although their patience had a limit.
No, I didn't hurt them, so get outta my face. I just thought they were beautiful, and wanted to photograph them. Is that so wrong?
By the way -- a few feet away from the gulls was this concentrated pile of shells. They could not have collected this way on their own. My wife's theory is that someone, probably a child, had accumulated this collection in a pail, but had brought them back to the beach and deposited them here.
The Hill reports that John McCain is going to be raising funds for Attorney General Henry McMaster's (yet undeclared) bid for governor in 2010:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is hitting the fundraising circuit to return the favor to a local Republican who proved a key supporter in the 2008 primaries.
McCain and many of his top advisers will throw a fundraising reception on behalf of Henry McMaster, the South Carolina attorney general who backed McCain during his run for president in 2008.
The event's host committee includes McCain loyalists like one-time senior advisors Charlie Black, former campaign manager Rick Davis and former Republican National Committee deputy chairman Frank Donatelli. McCain will make an appearance, a spokeswoman confirmed.
And well he should, because Henry was right with him through thick and thin in his most recent presidential bid. He and Bobby Harrell, all the way, even when people were counting McCain as out of the GOP race. Note the video from above (this is the slightly more extended version of my most-viewed video of all time, at 59,850 views), in which Henry warmed up the crowd for McCain one night in the Vista in 2007 (the night of the first S.C. presidential candidate debate, as I recall).
As promised earlier, here is Andy Haworth's video of Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott at Rotary today. As you can see from this, it was quite a performance, and the sheriff fought his corner well.
You may have noticed that yesterday I mentioned having met with the S.C. Employment Security Commission. Well, I wrote a column for Sunday based in part upon that, and I thought I'd go ahead and post the video that goes with the column.
We talked about plenty of other stuff, but I had terrible luck with catching the good bits on video. Seems like every time they said something interesting, I'd have switched my camera to still photos, and when I went back to video, it was Dullsville. This clip was about the only entire, coherent bit of any interest that I captured in its entirety.
In the wide-ranging discussion, there were high points and low points, for instance:
High point -- The ESC members, after having been defiant as recently as the day before, promised they'd get the information the governor had been asking for to him -- or 90-95 percent of it -- by Feb. 9. They said the rest of it is just stuff they don't have because they don't collect that kind of data. Anyway, John O'Connor of our newsroom, who sat in on our meeting, wrote about that in today's paper.
Low point -- We asked why in the world they have their own TV studio, and the answer wasn't satisfactory -- to me, anyway. But then, how could it be? No, it doesn't add up to a lot of money, and it's a bit of a red herring compared to the actual reason why the unemployment benefits trust fund is out of money: Several years ago the Legislature cut the tax that businesses pay into the fund, and we've been paying our more than we take in since at least 2001. That said, the TV studio does sound ridiculous.
But the subject in the video was the thing that grabbed my attention, because it spoke to the problem of the gross failure to communicate between the Commission and the governor. After all this silly back and forth the last couple of months -- and it IS silly (of COURSE the Commission needs the money the governor is trying to hold back, as anyone who has seen what's happening in our state can attest, and of COURSE the Commission was being absurdly petulant by trying to hold info back from the gov), not to mention just plain wrong -- I had to ask them if they ever sat down to talk to the governor face to face.
I asked that for a couple of reasons. First, people who are sitting down talking to each other don't act the way the governor and the commissioner had been acting. Once you're dealing with someone as an actual person, rather than some faceless opponent out there, you show them more respect than this. Second, I asked because our governor is Mark Sanford. Most governors are interested enough in actually governing that they try to maintain contact and communications with the various parts of government on a regular basis. Not this guy -- for him, it's about the press release, the statement, the op-ed piece, the piglets in the lobby; NOT about sitting down with people and reasoning with them.
The commissioners went on at some length about how the governor had never sat down for a meeting with them in his six years in office, and how he had never accepted an invitation to speak to their big annual luncheon -- unlike every previous governor they had known. (And that latter bit REALLY rang true, as one thing I've noticed about this governor is that he has little affinity for the rubber-chicken circuit -- not that I do myself, but most governors hit all those events they can.)
Anyway, what is NOT on the video is what Joel Sawyer in the governor's office said to Cindi Scoppe the next morning (and I'm copying and pasting some notes Cindi sent me):
We actually found where the gov did indeed meet with them in 2003, and had a letter from ted halley thanking him for meeting with them. he’s also had conversations with all of the commissioners over time. we looked for more recent requests for meetings, and the only one was I guess a week before they ran out of money. at that point it was just on such short notice that the gov couldn’t attend, but scott english and joe taylor did...
So I called Commissioner McKinley Washington to ask about that, and he said the 2003 "meeting" was one of the incidents they talked about on the video: The commissioners were meeting with Eddie Gunn of the governor's staff, and the governor briefly stuck his head in the door and said hi, and that was about it. It was NOT a meeting with the governor, he said.
Mr. Washington also mentions on the video, and repeated to me Friday, that there was a later incident in which the commissioners were meeting with Chief of Staff Henry White, and the governor -- who had apparently changed clothes for a press conference or something, "cracked the door" open long enough to "reach in and grab his denim" so he could change back. And that was it.
So I asked how come ESC executive director Halley sent that note to the governor thanking him for his time back in 2003? "That was just a courtesy statement, but he did not meet with us," said Mr. Washington. "You try to be nice."
Finally, the commissioners said that they tried to meet with the governor at the beginning of the current crisis, but were told he was unavailable, so they met with Scott English (of the governor's staff) and Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor instead (the Sawyer notes above allude to that).
Anyway, more on the subject in my Sunday column...
Here's something that will jar a few of your preconceived notions (at least, among those who were so dismissive of Bill Moyers a while back as a liberal shill): It's a Bill Moyers report on PBS that calls Democratic leaders to task for double-crossing Jim DeMint and deep-sixing earmark reform.
Remember when everyone was so impressed that Nancy Pelosi was working with Sen. DeMint on this issue? Well, this report tells the rest of the story, of how the promise was undone.
An excerpt from the transcript:
SYLVIA CHASE: But what Senator Reid wasn't saying was that the reform measure contained a caveat. Senators wouldn't have to disclose any earmarks that went to federal entities. But in the Defense Bill, almost all the earmarks first go to federal entities before being passed along to private contractors. In effect, senators would be able to hide almost every earmark. And that prompted a challenge from Senator Jim DeMint — a champion of earmark transparency. The South Carolina Republican made a startling admission. JIM DEMINT: Many in this Chamber know I don't often agree with Speaker Pelosi, but Speaker Pelosi has the right idea. SYLVIA CHASE: And a stunning proposal.As an amendment to the Ethics Bill, the staunchly conservative Republican DeMint proposed that the Senate adopt word-for-word the House version of earmark reform marshaled through by the liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi JIM DEMINT: We proposed the DeMint-Pelosi Amendment. And I presented it on the floor. And the place was quiet. JIM DEMINT: This is the language which the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has put in this lobbying reform bill in order to make it more honest and transparent. SYLVIA CHASE: It was a brilliant tactical move. If the Democratic majority was to reject DeMint's amendment it would mean rejecting the much stronger earmark disclosure rules crafted under their own party's high profile Speaker of the House. JIM DEMINT: Harry Reid did not want this to come for a vote. He made a motion to table it, which gives the members some cover because you're not really voting against the amendment. You're just voting to table it. SYLVIA CHASE: "Tabling" the so-called DeMint-Pelosi Amendment would mean removing it from consideration — effectively, killing it. HARRY REID: I would appeal to my friend from South Carolina. I repeat: I know you are doing this because you think it is the right thing to do. But take the opportunity to look at what is here. It is better than the House version - so much better. JIM DEMINT: And Senator Reid assumed as most people did including me that he would get fifty-one votes to table it. And we had a few heroes on the Democrat side that joined us, Barack Obama, relatively new senator, bucked his party and voted with us. SENATE PRESIDING OFFICER: On this vote the ayes are 46, the nays are 51. The motion to table is not agreed to. JIM DEMINT: And we defeated the tabling motion. Well once the tabling motion failed by a vote or two, everyone knew they were going to have to vote on the real thing and it was like 98 to nothing. I mean this is the kind of thing that if, if senators know America can see what they're voting on, they were afraid not to vote for it. SYLVIA CHASE: Indeed, with all eyes watching — 98 senators voted in favor of the artfully crafted DeMint-Pelosi Amendment; not one opposed it. The junior senator from South Carolina had taken on the powerful Senate Majority Leader and won. Or so it appeared. Remember: this was an amendment to a wide-ranging ethics bill. And before a bill becomes a law, its final language must be worked out between both houses of Congress. Steve Ellis, a leading earmark reform advocate in Washington, explains how the game works. STEVE ELLIS: So rather than doing what the House did which was simply change their rules. You're done the next day. Everything is changed and you have to abide by earmark reform, people could still modify it before it actually ended up becoming the rules of the Senate. SYLVIA CHASE: Which is precisely what happened.
By the way, Barack Obama -- whom DeMint had occasion to praise back at the start of this tale ("And we had a few heroes on the Democrat side that joined us, Barack Obama, relatively new senator, bucked his party and voted with us.") -- does not escape Moyers' skepticism. Near the top, he notes:
BILL MOYERS: No earmarks will be allowed and if you thought you hadn't heard him correctly, he repeated it in his big speech on Thursday. None of those hidden pet projects with multi-million dollar price tags that individual members of Congress sneak into bills for special interests or campaign contributors. Can it be true? Have we really crossed the bridge to nowhere for the last time? Don't hold your breath. As a senator, Barack Obama himself was no slouch when it came to passing out earmarks. And many of the people in his incoming administration are accomplished practitioners...
Have you noticed that it's been awhile since I posted video? Like, since the election? Well, there's a simple explanation: As I told you at the time, my laptop was stolen from my truck on election night. That meant I lost both all of my raw video from those last weeks before the election, AND the platform on which I produced the clips for posting.
I got a new laptop (well, it's new to ME) over the holidays, but was too busy either to shoot or to edit anything, what with folks being on end-of-year time off and such around here.
If all you want is the stuff about Nikki and Nathan, it starts about 3 minutes and 18 seconds into the video (it starts with a question from me; you can probably hear the effects of my cold on my voice). Were I a TV "journalist," that's all I would have given you -- the controversy, the sexy stuff. And admittedly, it IS the more interesting part.
But I decided to be all wonky and include Bobby's extensive explanation before that of HIS position on transparency in voting, and what he's tried to do about it. You'll note, if you watch all of it, that at one point he handed us a document in support of what he was saying. Below you will find a photograph of that document. I hope you can read it OK.
The kind words some of y'all offered about my video on this last post -- which featured Lindsey Graham talking about Sarah Palin -- reminded me of something I noticed just the other day.
Remember how I used to bore y'all with my Top Five Lists of which of my video clips were getting the most play on YouTube? Well, I sort of got out of the habit there for awhile (partly because I was tired of being depressed by the fact that three of my Top Five were clips of neoNazis at the State House), but the other day I looked, and lo and behold, the above clip from more than a year ago had come out of nowhere to top my list.
The last time I'd taken any notice of my stats, my top videos were at around 20,000 views. All of a sudden, the clip I shot in the Vista on the night of the first GOP presidential debate in South Carolina -- way back in May 2007 (is it possible it was that long ago) -- had shot up from nowhere to the top spot, at 45,000 views! It's the one in which John McCain, standing on a podium with Henry McMaster and Bobby Harrell, looks out into the crowd and says,
... and I know that little jerk Lindsey Graham is around here somewhere.
Of course, being all about giving y'all the full story, I also posted the full, unedited context of that joke, in which McCain went on to say nice things about his buddy. But that context -- which is sort of worth watching for the way my shaky handheld style captures the confusion and crowd excitement, although inadvertently -- isn't nearly as popular. It's been viewed less than 1,000 times.
Obviously, on YouTube, brevity sells. So does irony.
One last note: I'm happy to say that my critically acclaimed "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?," probably my finest job of video editing ever (considering the low-res images I work with), stays in the number three spot at 28,000 views -- right behind the not-so-acclaimed "Sieg Heil at the State House" and "Hillary's Heckler."
I'm the Catholic, communitarian-leaning, 53-year-old editor of the editorial page of The State, South Carolina's largest newspaper; I am a husband, and the father of five.
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