The dignity that Folks brings to journalism is encapsulated in his latest blog post: "I have purposely refrained from discussing the physical details of my relationship with Rep. Haley. Believe it or not, I am a Southern gentleman."
As a side note, it's interesting to see the final campaign finance reporting as it shows Tim Scott for congress having paid $5450 to The Mace Group LLC for website and "messaging." The Mace Group also operates and maintains Will Folks outfit -- FITSNews who has been very supportive of Scott's Campaign and published many reports on Scott. But just to show you how incestuous and byzantine SC politics are -- Scott also hired Starboard Communications owned by Walter Whetsell, a direct competitor of the proprietor of FITSNews.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was spotted at the NBA finals game Sunday sporting a Gamecocks baseball hat -- the elegant stylized South Carolina logo has been quite popular with local fans, and apparently has spread to the West Coast and Hollywood.
Conservatives, especially, welcomed the news, heralding more than 30 black Republicans running for Congress as proof that the right isn't racist. ''[This] shows that conservatives have no barriers to entry except on policy and philosophy,'' wrote Ed Morrissey on Hot Air.
But then came the primaries. In Alabama, Les Phillip, who made waves with ads saying President Obama ''played with terrorists,'' got crushed by both his white opponents. Even white incumbent Parker Griffith, a former Democrat who switched parties last year, beat Phillip by 17 points. Baptist minister Jerry Grimes lost in North Carolina's 1st district, and Lou Huddleston, who won a Cumberland County North Carolina Republican Party straw poll in February, got walloped in the 8th district. Despite his years of service as an aide to Colin Powell, Huddleston proved no match for Tim D'Annunzio, a businessman who raised money with ''machine gun socials.'' (For $25, supporters got a plate of barbecue and the opportunity to shoot an Uzi.) In Mississippi, Fox News analyst Angela McGlowan, endorsed by none other than the Sarah Palin, lost to both her competitors, catching only 15 percent of the vote.
There are still dozens more primary elections to come, but, so far, it seems voters in the South are less excited than the news media about 2010's crop of black conservative candidates.
''It's not surprising that voters didn't support them,'' says Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, a professor at the Center for the Study of African American Politics at the University of Rochester. ''Historically, for white and black Southerners, they've been groomed to see a racial difference, particularly in party politics. Perhaps those lines have been so starkly drawn because of the Southern strategy that came out of the 1960s and was really put into full swing in the 1980s.''
On Monday, Bauer announced that he had taken and passed his own lie detector test, saying afterward that it vindicates his claim that he was not involved in propagating allegations of Haley’s marital infidelity.
This mural is painted on the side of an elementary school in Prescott, Arizona. Recently completed, it features the faces of children who attend the school, but not everyone is pleased with the outcome.
Prescott City Councilman Steve Blair, who also has a daily radio show on Fox News-owned radio station KYCA-1490-AM wants the mural taken down completely. He claims it depicts an agenda, an indoctrination of public school children. Somehow I do not think this has much to do with indoctrination nor do I think he really cares much about public schools. Especially public schools with brown children in them.
Instead of removing it, the school principal asked the artists to lighten the faces of the children in the picture. This request follows harassment of those same artists by drive-by wingers flinging racial epithets at them while they were painting it. Welcome to Arizona.
Lighten the skin tone on the faces of the children in the picture, because we cannot have brown children representing the children of Prescott.
Hear that, Arizona? That's the sound of the term racist being slapped all over your state whether it's deserved or not. That's the sound of Rupert Murdoch bringing his peculiar brand of thought-cleansing to your backyards. Do not, under any circumstances, make brown children look beautiful without changing their skin color.
Via Wonkette:
And these children, for the past several months as this happy mural encouraging “green transportation” was being painted by local artists, have been treated to the city of Prescott’s finest citizens driving by and yelling “Nigger” and “Spic” at this school wall painted with pictures of the children who attend the school. And this has been encouraged by a city councilman, Steve Blair, who uses his local radio talk show to rile up these people and demand the mural be destroyed.
A few more gems from City Councilman Limbaugh wannabe Blair:
"I'm not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it's a word I can't stand." Daily Courier
"I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who's President of the United States today ..." Daily Courier
"To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?" AZCentral.com
Of course, when Blair is directly accused of stirring up racial controversy, he cries innocence in the time-honored tradition of Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing loudmouths who immediately decry the accusation of racism while living it straight up for all to see.
"Personally, I think it's pathetic," he says. "You have changed the ambience of that building to excite some kind of diversity power struggle that doesn't exist in Prescott, Arizona. And I'm ashamed of that." - AZCentral.com
Blair isn't just a radio personality who leads off the talkfest there at KYCA-AM. He's a city councilman. He actually has a say in what can and cannot be done in the city of Prescott. His show leads straight into Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh's radio show.
And so the mural artists will probably lighten the skin of the actual children who are depicted in that mural. Children who actually attend the actual school with the wall where that mural is painted. Children who are making a positive statement about ecology, the environment, and living 'green'. Children who are being taught a lifestyle that might actually free us from the bondage of oil.
It makes that "family values" part of the right-wing mantra seem so trite, doesn't it?
Announced in October of last year, the arrival of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner facility to North Charleston happened for several reasons. One was laying the groundwork – years of South Carolina conservatives creating a pro-business environment. Another was the coordinated work of state Republican leadership to bring in the plant. According to a recent study, it will mean $6.1 billion dollars annually for the state economy, and thousands of jobs created by vendors who will service the facility.They rely on one of the biggest news frauds in ages: a "study" run out by a former economic advisor to SC Gov. Carroll Campbell- a Republican- and shilled by a longtime Republican huckster, Bob McAlister, sponsored by a board made up of people who, if you do enough legwork, you can discover are all GOP/state insiders clamped to the public trough for the sort of 1950s, cheap land, low wages, supine worker, bolt things together strategy SC insists on pursuing even as the world demonstrably passes it by.
If a millionaire used his or her freedom to earn their wealth, they should have the freedom to spend it however they see fit — even if it’s giving millions to their own campaign. Why on earth would Republicans, who champion the free market and liberty, disparage anyone who used capitalism and liberty to earn their money?
The campaign hasn't released the spot, but McMaster spokesman Rob Godfrey told me in an email: "This is simply a response to Congressman Barrett's ad where he tries to explain away his flip-flip vote in support of the bank bailout. It's a legitimate criticism, the flip-flop on the bailout calls into question Congressman Barrett's judgment, and it's an issue that's defined Congressman Barrett's candidacy."
Indeed, in a race now defined by sexual and racial slurs, it's a pretty straightforward political shot, and a mark of a dynamic that, for now, has offered the frontrunner, Nikki Haley, a moment of respite as her rivals battle for second place.
Time for Pat Buchanan to retire, too
June 07, 2010 2:10 pm ET by Jamison Foser
Just days after making grossly inappropriate comments about Jews in Israel, Hearst columnist Helen Thomas has retired.
It’s time for Pat Buchanan to retire, too.
Despite a decades-long track record of offensive comments about … well, nearly everybody, Buchanan continues to write columns and appear as a commentator on MSNBC.
During his time in public life, Buchanan has defended Adolf Hitler -- repeatedly. He has peddledHolocaust denial claims and compared suspected Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk to Jesus Christ.
Buchanan has reminisced fondly about his childhood in segregated Washington, DC, and complainedthat “Old heroes like ... Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King." He wrote that “integration of blacks and whites” was likely to result in “perpetual friction, as the incapable are placed … side by side with the capable.” Buchanan's anti-integration views were so hard-core, even Richard Nixon characterizedBuchanan’s them as “segregation forever.” When 67 blacks were shot to death by South African police, Buchanan dismissed the massacre as “a few South African whites mistreating a couple of blacks.” In 1989, Buchanan defended Bob Jones University’s ban on interracial dating. 1989!
In 1983, Buchanan wrote that "homosexuals ... have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." (During his 1992 presidential campaign, he stood by that view, insisting "AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature.") He has compared gays to alcoholics.
He has accused David Duke of stealing his ideas, and he has appeared -- just two years ago -- as a guest on a “pro-White” radio show that was streamed live on a self-described “White Nationalist” web site.
Buchanan’s comments have been denounced even by conservative leaders like William F. Buckley (who found it “"impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination, the military build-up for the Gulf War, amounted to anti-Semitism,”) Charles Krauthammer ("There's no doubt he makes subliminal appeals to prejudice”) and then-RNC chairman Rich Bond (who said Buchanan was “heading toward a low-road message of anger, hate and race-baiting.”).
It is important to remember that, although Pat Buchanan’s nasty comments about a wide variety of minorities are very much of the past, they are not in the past. He has defended Hitler within the past year. His complaint that “Old heros like … Robert W. Lee are replaced by Dr. King” came within the past year. Just last month he was busy counting the Jews on the Supreme Court -- and concluding that there are too many. The month before that, he insisted that “both sides were right" during the Civil War.
The simple fact is that for decades Pat Buchanan has been losing the “culture war” he declared in his infamous 1992 GOP convention speech. During Buchanan’s time in public life, America has become much more tolerant, even if he has not. His retirement is long overdue. He could take up a hobby, or maybe move to Florida: I hear he’s surprisingly popular in Palm Beach.
Haley’s an adult and a politician. The same rules apply to her as to everyone else.
Teabaggers- basically the rightwingiest of rightwingers in the GOP, want to repeal the 17th Amendment. It was adopted to address the propensity of plutocrat Republicans to buy legislatures wholesale in order to get appointed to the Senate in the last century.
When you look at this story of how the GOP recruits candidates nowadays, and add in the Supreme Court's decision that corporations can spend all the money in the universe on elections, you have to wonder why the Baggers bother:
As awesome as Facebook and other social networking websites are, you sure can make a mess by saying stupid stuff on them. Consider the story of Lance Cpl. Lionel Garcia, an equipment operator on deployment to Afghanistan. He became the subject of a command investigation after discovery of some offensive comments attributed to him on a Facebook page he appears to have created.
The postings that caught the attention of several bloggers and eventually circulated around the Web and up Garcia’s chain of command include this May 24 “status update”: “Well I feel my work here is done. I officially made an afghani [sic] holdup a sign that says ‘I’m a faggot’ while I took a picture of him.”
One took place in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, another in an apartment on the West Side of Manhattan owned by Joanne Highley, who runs L.I.F.E. Ministry. During the latter exorcism, Highley had him lie down on her bed, then she sat beside him and began to press on his body, commanding the demons to exit through his mouth and rectum. Before the rite was complete, Toscano, who says he felt increasingly violated by Highley’s actions, stopped the ritual and left her apartment. Highley did not respond to requests to be interviewed, but she has previously stated that her process is to “cleanse and bind demonic powers . . . out of genitals, of course out of anal canals, out of intestines, out of throats and mouths if there’s been ungodly deposit of semen in those areas—we cleanse with the blood of Jesus, and we cast out the demonic powers.”
By Scott Higham and Peter Finn
Monday, June 7, 2010; A01
GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA -- At the U.S. naval station here, a handsome electronic sign hangs between two concrete pillars. In yellow enamel against a blue metal backdrop is a map of Cuba, the "Pearl of the Antilles," above flashing time and temperature readings.
"Welcome Aboard," the sign says.
The cost of the marquee, along with a smaller sign positioned near the airfield: $188,000. Among other odd legacies from war-on-terror spending since 2001 for the troops at Guantanamo Bay: an abandoned volleyball court for $249,000, an unused go-kart track for $296,000 and $3.5 million for 27 playgrounds that are often vacant.
The Pentagon also spent $683,000 to renovate a cafe that sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee, and $773,000 to remodel a cinder-block building to house a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant.
The spending is part of at least $500 million that has transformed what was once a sun-beaten and forgotten Caribbean base into one of the most secure military and prison installations in the world. That does not include construction bonuses, which typically run into the millions.
Also not included are annual operating costs of $150 million -- double the amount for a comparable U.S. prison, according to the White House. Add in clandestine black-budget items, such as the top-secret Camp 7 prison for high-value detainees, aptly nicknamed Camp Platinum, and the post-Sept. 11, 2001, bill for the 45-square-mile base easily soars toward $2 billion.
The Obama administration wants to close the detention operation and relocate it to a prison in Illinois, but the prospect of seeing the final detainees depart seems increasingly like a long-term project. If the president does succeed, the Pentagon will leave behind a newly remodeled military encampment, along with numerous questions about whether the cost of creating what then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once called the "least worst place" for suspected terrorists was worth the price.
In the first public accounting of how much has been spent on the base since the first detainees arrived in January 2002, The Washington Post obtained from the military a line-by-line breakdown of capital expenditures, ranging from the mundane to the exotic.
Overall, the prison camp operation that hugs the Caribbean coastline cost about $220 million to build over several years, a price that does not include Camp 7, which holds 16 of the most notorious detainees, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. And $13 million was spent to construct a courthouse complex that appears custom-designed for Mohammed and his four co-defendants.
But as spending accelerated over the years, and more and more construction and renovation contracts were awarded, the number of detainees steadily declined, from a peak of 680 in May 2003 to 181 now.
Many of the projects itemized in the breakdown are reminders of suburban America -- familiar settings re-created in a Caribbean hothouse to comfort the military personnel and contractors who run detainee operations.
Millions went to build artificial-turf football and baseball fields that professional players would envy, surrounded by a cluster of facilities, including a running track, a skate park, an outdoor roller hockey rink and batting cages.
The Pentagon referred inquiries about the base to its commander, Capt. Steven H. Blaisdell, who defended the spending.
"Because GTMO is an isolated and remote duty location with no access to an off-base community, all services must be provided on station," he said in a statement. "The installation benefits from expenditure of funds through retention and readiness improvements, as well as long-term facility sustainment, restoration and modernization."
Although spending on new projects has slowed, it has not stopped. Next up is an expansion of one of the most popular spots on the base: O'Kelly's, an Irish pub.
'It's up to Washington'
Before Sept. 11, Guantanamo Bay was known for being the nation's oldest overseas military base and not much else. "Gitmo" served as a Navy port, a facility for Haitian and Cuban refugees, a base for drug interdiction operations, and the inspiration for the 1992 movie "A Few Good Men." But the attacks gave the base new purpose as the global holding cell in the George W. Bush administration's "war on terror." It also gave military commanders justification to ask Washington for more money.
The spending began in earnest in February 2002, after the Pentagon awarded a construction contract to KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. KBR renovated the chain-link-fence compound known as Camp X-Ray, the first prison facility for detainees, which produced the iconic images of men on their knees in orange jumpsuits and blacked-out goggles. Camp X-Ray is now abandoned, overrun with weeds and "banana rats," groundhog-size rodents that roam the base.
KBR was paid $169 million to build the prison camps and related facilities. The company said that did not include bonuses paid by the government. The military did not provide information about bonuses paid to KBR or other contractors.
Nearly all materials were floated in on barges from Florida, which along with labor added more than 50 percent in costs compared with construction in the United States, according to a military analysis.
To support the detention operation, the Pentagon began to construct and renovate facilities around the prison camps. It spent $690,000 to build a headquarters for the Joint Detention Group. The building was completed in April 2009, three months after Obama ordered Guantanamo Bay closed. The move to the new building is on hold.
The Pentagon spent $18.2 million on a prison hospital and $2.9 million on a psychiatric ward next door. The ward has 12 beds housed inside an elongated metal trailer-like building with reflective-glass windows and a small sign that reads "Behavioral Health Unit." The military would not permit Post reporters to look inside the facility, citing patient confidentiality.
Recently finished was the $26 million construction of an eight-mile stretch of road along the naval station's fenced and mined border with Cuba. A dilapidated hand-painted sign at the Cuban border post states, "Republica de Cuba. Territorio Libre de America." From the American side, a Marine bulldog painted on a hillside growls back.
The old, rutted road was considered an embarrassment.
"When I got here, the road was un-drivable," Marine Maj. Jerry Willingham said.
He said a Cuban colonel, who crosses into Guantanamo Bay every other month for a meeting with his U.S. counterpart, regularly mocked the state of American roads. "He used to complain about nearly breaking his ankle every time he walked in here," Willingham said.
Down the road from the prison camps is Club Survivor, a relic. The wooden shack that once served as a cafe stands empty, like a ghost town saloon. Military planners envisioned Club Survivor as a place for prison guards to drink a few beers, maybe play a game of volleyball on a field that overlooks the Caribbean.
A contractor set up bleachers and built a retaining wall, but the field is fallow, overgrown with weeds. The project was canceled because of the uncertainty over the future of the prison. The cost: $249,000.
"It didn't make sense to complete it," said a Navy captain and public works engineer who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears about his family's safety because he worked in detention operations.
He pointed out another pre-Obama project across the bay. Building AV624 is a holdover from the 1950s, a two-story military-style barracks long past its prime. The Pentagon decided to renovate it for the hundreds of lawyers, dignitaries, journalists and others who would travel here to attend military commissions.
Work was completed in May 2009. It now resembles a Days Inn, with 56 renovated rooms, new bathrooms, and lounges outfitted with television sets and comfortable couches. The cost: $2.2 million.
But the hallways of AV624 are eerily silent, the rooms empty.
"We did all this work and there's nobody here," the Navy captain said. "It's up to Washington to decide what to do with it."
Located on the western side of the base, AV624 is an inconvenient ferry ride from where the military commissions take place on the eastern side. There, some lawyers and journalists sleep in tents during the commissions.
In 2006, the Pentagon began soliciting bids for a permanent courthouse complex expected to cost as much $125 million. But with the future of detainee operations uncertain, it scaled back the size and scope of the project to a $13.4 million prefabricated structure.
The building is known as the expeditionary judicial facility. In theory, the whole thing is portable and could be shipped back to the United States. It is cavernous, with sheets of glass separating spectators from defendants and prosecutors, judges and military juries. On one side of the courtroom are five defense tables, one for each of the Sept. 11 suspects. Outside the courtroom are five holding cells, trailer-like structures with heavy steel doors and small meeting rooms for attorney-client conferences.
Military charges against Mohammed and the others have been withdrawn, but the Obama administration has faced fierce local resistance to the federal trial it had planned to hold in New York. And some in the administration now think there is little choice but to send the case back to a military commission.
"If they give us the thumbs-up, then we go," said Army Col. Greg Fewer, the deputy director of operations at the courthouse complex. "We just need to be ready."
'Improving the quality of life'
The troops at Guantanamo Bay are stranded on this patch of parched land for anywhere from four months to two years. Commanders have tried to make the base seem like home.
Nowhere is that more evident than at the Cooper Field complex along Sherman Avenue. With a pair of top-of-the-line baseball diamonds and a football field as its centerpiece, the complex looks like a high-end park in a U.S. resort town.
The Navy Morale, Welfare and Recreation Department has spent $7.3 million on the baseball and football fields, $164,000 for a skate park, $97,000 on a roller-hockey rink and $60,000 for a batting cage. Soon to come: a soccer cage for $20,000.
Near the skate park is the go-kart track, completed in 2006. The Pentagon said it spent $296,000 to build the track; the official base newspaper, the Guantanamo Bay Gazette, reported that it cost $400,000.
"This will be a great step in improving the quality of life for the entire community," Craig Basel, the then-recreation director, said during the ribbon-cutting.
But the go-karts rarely worked. The six cars are battery-powered and can barely hold a charge, faltering after one or two laps around the course. After numerous failures, the track was shut down last month. The cars are now covered with tarps.
"They've been incredibly difficult to maintain," said Tara Culbertson, the current recreation director.
Burns and Roe and the Dick Corp., now called Dck Worldwide, joined forces to form BRDC, which built the welcome signs, the volleyball court, the go-kart track, the KFC/Taco Bell restaurant, the Starbucks cafe, many of the playgrounds and other projects. Together, the three contractors were paid $125 million.
"We are very proud of the work that we are doing in Guantanamo Bay supporting our military," spokeswoman Laurie Bowers said. "The projects that BRDC have been awarded were either competitively bid or negotiated using an industry standard pricing database as stipulated by our contract."
Surrounding the Cooper Field complex are housing developments and military barracks and neighborhoods filled with suburban tract homes. During the past nine years, the Pentagon has spent more than $114 million renovating and remodeling the housing projects.
Julie Hall, a civilian project manager, has been at the base for 18 years, on and off. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, she said, Guantanamo Bay was "completely asleep."
But afterward, the population, which had hovered around 2,000 for decades, quickly quadrupled. Many residents were housed in rundown buildings and trailers that reeked of mildew.
Today, some of those buildings look like modern-day hotels with mirrored walls, brass handrails and handsome foyers.
In the surrounding neighborhoods are most of the 27 top-dollar but modest-looking playgrounds built for a population of 5,500. In areas such as Fairfax County, planners allot one playground for every 2,800 people.
"The playgrounds are built around the number of neighborhoods the installations has, not by the number of children," said Blaisdell, the base commander, noting that the base has 15 neighborhoods.
The average cost of a playground at the base is $130,000, two to three times the cost of similar facilities in Fairfax and Montgomery counties.
There are 398 children younger than 18 at Guantanamo Bay. During a recent visit to the base, few of them seemed interested in the playgrounds. Still, $1.6 million has been awarded for more playgrounds, bringing total spending to $5.1 million.
Hall said she was shocked by the figure.
"It would amaze me if we paid that much," she said.
Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
Nikki Haley hasn't suffered any damage whatsoever after accusations of multiple extramarital affairs and is headed for an easy first place finish in Tuesday's Republican primary for Governor of South Carolina.
Haley has a 20 point lead, getting 43% of the vote. Gresham Barrett looks like the favorite for the second runoff spot. He's at 23%, followed by Henry McMaster at 16%, and Andre Bauer at 12%.
Two weeks ago Haley held a 21 point lead in the race. Since then she's gained 4 points, Barrett's standing has improved by 7, McMaster's has dropped by a couple points, and Bauer's gone down a single point.
Only 13% of voters believe the allegations about Haley's marital infidelity. 54% flat out do not believe them and 33% are unsure.Strikingly, Henry McMaster and Andre Bauer have dropped in their approval ratings among GOP voters.
Helen Thomas's front-row presence in the White House press room is an honor bestowed by her colleagues, in recognition of her long-time service. She retired as a reporter about a decade ago--and now, at the age of 89, she writes a column for Hearst Newspapers. She is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants and her general views on the Middle East have long been known. Her specific views about Jews became a bit better known last week, when she told them to leave Israel and go back to Europe. This is odious, obviously.
Thomas is a vestigial member of the White House Correspondents Association, an organization that mostly consists of those who cover the White House on a daily basis; most columnists--people like me, for example--are not members, although a smattering of opinion-mongers, even from obscure publications, have somehow managed to get themselves credentialed over the years. So it's not unprecedented for journalists with odious views to have access to the press room. What is unprecedented is for such a journalist to have a front-row center seat. Thomas should no longer have that privilege. The front row should be occupied by working reporters, not columnists. The WHCA should sanction Thomas by sending her back to the cheap seats. This would accurately reflect her current status as a journalist while preserving her First Amendment right to be as obnoxious as she wants.
Finally, I don't see any reason why the President, Robert Gibbs or any other representative of the government should feel any obligation to take her questions.
