Will Nikki Kill the SC Primary?

the highly-anticipated, first in the south South Carolina primary may not happen next year.  Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to veto the portion of the state budget that allocates $680,000 for the state election commission to help pay for it.  At one point, the state was looking at an $800,000 million budget shortfall (pocket change compared to what Austin is dealing with) and Gov. Hailey has said that the state could not afford to help fund the primary.  Current budget projections are not so dire, but Hailey is expected to hold firm on this as well as funding for education and the arts.  The South Carolina Democratic Party (yes, there is one) has no plans for a primary because President Obama is unopposed, so the veto would only effect the Republicans.  The Palmetto State has chosen the GOP nominee every time since Reagan in 1980.  Past state GOP chairman Katon Dawson (Katie for short?) has said that the state party should "man up," raise the money and pay for the primary itself.  Republicans just love to say "man up."      

150 Years Ago Today

As Edward Ball said in his editorial in yesterday's New York Times:

"The authors of these papers flattered themselves that they’d conjured up a second American Revolution. Instead, the Secession Convention was the beginning of the Civil War, which killed some 620,000 Americans; an equivalent war today would send home more than six million body bags."

Think about that the next time you hear politicians casually throw around words like "secession" and "states' rights."

Nikki Haley Wins in Landslide

State Rep. Nikki Haley easily won her run-off for the GOP nomination for South Carolina governor yesterday, beating Congressman Gresham Barrett.  She has become the first woman to win a major party's nomination for Governor.  She sloughed off dubious allegations of marital infidelity and a particularly ugly campaign accusing her of not being Christian enough.  She's a Methodist, but apparently that's not enough for some Republicans, including State Rep. Boss Hogg Jake Knotts who actually said 

"Have you ever asked her if she believes in Jesus Christ as her lord and savior, and that he died on the cross for her sins? Have you ever asked her that?"

Apparently that's a requirement for office now.  Haley was criticized by at least one county GOP chair and prominent preachers for (horrors) attending annual Sikh religious services with her Indian immigrant parents and for participating in both Methodist and Sikh ceremonies when she married her husband, Michael.  How dare she honor her parents and her heritage!  Knotts is a particularly loathsome creature who called Haley and President Obama "ragheads" in a radio interview.  He's also a close ally of French Lieutenant's woman Governor Andre' Bauer, which is telling.  You are known by the company you keep.

Nikki is a conservative, Sarah Palin endorsed Republican, make no mistake.   She will run against Democratic State Senator Vincent Sheheen in November.  Her website make no mention of gay issues, but I would not look to her to be our friend.  Don't interpret anything I've said as indicating I support her, but I do think it's interesting that she's making a few Christianist heads explode.      

Breaking: DeMint Leading Greene

The first polling is out in the hotly contested South Carolina Senate race and incumbant gay bashing religious fanatic Republican Jim DeMint has a narrow lead over regular guy Alvin Greene.  If you call 37 points narrow.  But that still means 21% of voters plan to vote for Greene over DeMint, and that's from a Rasmussen poll and everybody knows they skew Republican, right?  I'll bet Alvin's really only 33 or 34 points behind.  You can totally do it Alvin!  That is, unless that July 12 court date for a felony obscenity charge doesn't go well.  That could be a real game changer. 

The whole Alvin Greene saga is beyond bizarre, even by Palmetto State standards.  He is an unemployed veteran who lives with his dad outside Manning.  He's represented by the public defender after being charged with disseminating obscene materials, which implies that he is indigent.  Yet, he waltzed into the SC Democratic Party headquarters, handed them a check for $10,400.00 and got himself on the ballot for the United States Senate primary.  And he won.  He won big.  His opponent, Victor Rawl, is a former judge, State Representative, and Charleston County Council member with incredible academic credentials (OK, my academic credentials) and Greene beat him with 60% of the vote.  That means that 60% of SC Democrats had no idea who either candidate was and just voted for the first guy.  Or maybe they thought he was Al Green.  Hey, do you have a better theory? 

If you've seen any of the Alvin Greene interviews, he doesn't seem like the sharpest guy.  In fact, I'd go out on a limb and call him slow.  I'm not the only one who thinks so.  Gawker's Adrian Chen found an old Army colleague of Greene's who described him as "not all there mentally." 

"During the first couple of weeks of working with him, myself and most everyone else noticed that he wasn't all there mentally. Whenever he was given a simple task such as filling a temporary hand receipt it would never get done, mainly because he didn't know how to fill one out. And this is the most fundamental part of the job."

He goes on to opine that it's quite possible that the $10,400.00 filing fee was Greene's own money.  He lived simply while in the military and could have saved that much cash.  Maybe.  That still leaves unanswered the question why would he spend all that money to run for the Senate? 

Marchant Takes a Polygraph!

Just when you thought he couldn't humiliate himself further, former Andre' Bauer for Gov. employee Larry Marchant has taken a polygraph to prove he really, really, really is a heterosexual had man-woman sex with Gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley.  The results?  Inconclusive.  The crack journalists at the Columbia Fox News channel (naturally) paid for the whole thing.  Click here to watch the WACH Fox (awkwardly pronounced "Wok Fox") report.  Not embeddable.  My favorite part of this story is WACH Fox reporter Emily Pace who breathlessly reported that the polygraph exam "literally took all day.  It began at 2:30 and ended at 5:00."  Katie Couric has got her eye on you, Emily.

I found an embeddable clip of the studly Mr. Marchant.  Decide for yourself if Nikki could have resisted his savage Hetero lust:



The only thing that makes me think he's straight is the hair. 

But wait, there's more!  Not to be outdone by Marchant's publicity, Andre' Bauer himself submitted for a polygraph!  At least, he released polygraph results that he said prove that he had nothing to do with the "unfortunate revelations" about Haley and the menz.  Andre had previously promised to submit to a polygraph exam about his own sexual rumors regarding the menz, but shockingly, none of those questions were covered.

My Life in the Bible Belt: Strippers to Guns

From The DiSCust.com by way of Floatingsheap.com comes the USA Guns, Strippers and Pizza Map!

It enlarges nicely.  The red dots indicate more references to pizza in Google Maps placemarks.  The yellow dots are for more references to strip clubs and the green to guns.  In my life's journey through the Bible belt, I spent my young formative years in North Augusta, South Carolina, shown here:

I have conveniently pointed out the yellow stripper dots indicating the greater North Augusta/Aiken/Central Savannah River Area.  This most conservative area of the nation is apparently awash in strippers. 

As an adult, I live in North Texas, shown here:

Again, I have conveniently pointed it out.  It is awash in green for guns. 

Thus in my life, I have progressed from bare boobs to armed boobs.  God Bless America.   

SC Lt. Gov: Lazy People Cause of Immigration Problem

You know folks, I grew up in South Carolina and live in Texas, so when the clearly unconstitutional anti-immigration bill in Arizona was signed into law, a little part of me was relieved that at least it happened somewhere else.  Maybe Arizona can be the wingnuttiest for a while.  Then along came the Palmetto State's totally not gay Lieutenant Governor Andre' Bauer (avec un accent aigu!) to bring the crazy back home.  In a Republican gubernatorial debate Friday in Spartanburg, Andre' solved the complex problem of immigration by revealing the real culprit:  lazy people on welfare.

"The real problem is the work force," Bauer said, speaking of a state with 12.2 percent unemployment, the sixth-highest jobless rate in the country. "The problem is we have a give-away system that is so strong that people would rather sit home and do nothing than do these jobs. Laziness is not a disability. There are a lot of people that are flat-out lazy and they are using up the goods and services in this state."

There you go, ladies and gentlemen.  12.2% unemployment, but if you're out of work it's your own fault for being flat-out lazy!  Yessir, that $326.00 maximum South Carolina unemployment check is encouraging people to sit back in their barcoloungers and let them ferriners come in and take our jobs away.  I'm so glad Andre's on top of it. 

This is the same mental giant who compared people on welfare to stray animals, saying that if you feed stray animals (i.e., people on welfare), they "will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior." 

That's Andre' in the picture, not being lazy. 

Hey, there's nothing gay about a 40-something never-married man pumping iron so just stop thinking that. 

Teabaggers Call Out Graham for Being Gay

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has never been popular with the Teabaggers because he has occasionally made efforts to work with Democrats to actually (gasp) pass legislation.  For example, he voted for the Wise Latina's nomination to move out of committee which I suppose was some sort of Teabagger treason.  Now his rumored homosexuality has been openly discussed at a Teabagger rally in Greenville.   "Barney Frank is more honest and brave than you. Because at least we know about Barney Frank and nobody's gonna hold it over his head."  I'm with him on this point and completely agree.  But he didn't shut up when he was ahead. 

The blowhard went on to question why Graham is trying to "sell out his country" and said "I need to know if your being gay is why."  Because gay = traitor?  Gayness alone makes someone want to sell out his country?  Is this Teabagger logic?  This reminds me of the game show contestant who said Ellen doesn't like her country.  I don't know who this "uncredited speaker" is, but I am one gay American and South Carolinian who would like to compare my 12 years of honorable service in the United States Army to whatever this fucker has done for his country. 

Clueless in America

Timothy Egan has a good article in today's New York Times about East Coast Americans' geographical illiteracy about the American West. He cites national broadcasters who can't pronounce Oregon and New Mexicans who are told to go through their own embassy when trying to order Olympic tickets from the US Olympic Committee. Good stuff, but as someone from the Southeast who moved west, I can tell you that geographical illiteracy works both ways.

Texans are Texas-centric and if you doubt it, just ask one about your distant home state. When I have told people I grew up in South Carolina, I have gotten "Hey, I was in South Carolina once, I went on a business trip to Raleigh;" or "You must be really proud of that Charlotte airport;" or "It must be really cold there." Cold? Really? Our state tree is a type of palm.

Then there's "I bet you're glad the Jesse Helms era is over." Yes I am, and the Strom Thurmond era too. My favorite Geographically illiterate response (and I've gotten this more than once) is "Do you consider South Carolina part of the South?" Um, yeah. You might want to read your history books about a little something called the Civil War. It started there. Check it out.

Jenny Sanford: Gays Wrecked My Marriage!

South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford has discovered the real reason for the destruction of her solid, Christian marriage - teh gays:

“Of course I’m not saying that Mark is gay,” Sanford said, “but he may as well be. The moral decay in this country has claimed another victim and this time it was my family. Our marriage was perfect until these laws started passing around the country. Clearly the slow dissolution of the sanctity of marriage in America seeped into Mark’s psyche until he no longer felt compelled to abide by our vows.”

Of course, Rush Limbaugh was quick to jump on this new "proof" that marriage equality for gays destroys heterosexual marriage:

“America, I’ve been warning you for years that gay marriage would destroy the American family and look… there they are, a husband, wife, and four children — destroyed. When is this going to stop America? When will the liberals be satisfied? When all the marriages break up? This wasn’t Mark Sanford’s fault, this was Ted Kennedy’s fault. Sanford didn’t cheapen the value of marriage, he was victimized by the cheapening of marriage.”

In case you haven't figured it out yet, this entire thing is a joke from a terrific site that Lazy Circles NY Bureau Chief Doug turned me on to. It's called The diSCust. Think The Onion but focused on the Palmetto State. Talk about a fertile field for satire. Check it out.