Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Short Hiatus

The Blue South is going to be busy for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, enjoy these remixes courtesy of Ross over at the Indigo Journal:





Saturday, November 22, 2008

Quote of the Day


Stephen Jones, president of Bob Jones University, has issued an apology for the school's past racist policies. Let's see what he had to say:
We conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear Christian counterpoint to it. In so doing, we failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry.

Source.
BJU's "culture conformity" included a policy against interracial dating that was in effect until 2000. According to The State:
The school had used the Bible to justify discrimination in the past, such as in a 1998 letter to a writer who questioned the school’s ban on interracial dating. Then, school officials noted that God had created oceans to keep men apart, as well as ethnic, cultural and language barriers.

I'm not sure which culture they were conforming to, since our culture was pretty clear about a need for racial equality beginning with the Civil War and culminating in the Civil Rights Movement, some 40 years before BJU ended it's anti-interracial dating policy. I guess Stephen Jones knew the time was right to issue the apology when his WWJD bracelet began glowing.

Monday, November 17, 2008

S.C.: the "Pay Toilet of the Nation"


At least according to Sen. John Courson, our lovely state has become a pay toilet. Source. Apparently it turns out that a loophole in the way that DHEC construes the landfill "needs" of counties allows our landfills to accept millions of tons of garbage from other states.

The State began a week long series on DHEC's ineptitude today, and we here at the Blue South have to say, it has started out with a bang. We're biting our nails, wondering what's around the corner as the State's hard-hitting investigative team has set it's sights on DHEC.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Five Headlines

(1) Catholic Priest, Father Jay Scott Newman has distributed a letter to his parishioners urging them not to take communion until they have done penance for voting for Obama. Source. See, this was a tough call for me because, on the one hand, if I voted for Obama my eternal soul was in peril, whereas on the other hand, if I didn't vote for Obama, Tinkerbell would die. It was a tough call, but I think I made the right one. And Tink, you're welcome.

(2) Wallace Scarborough is protesting the results of his election loss. Source. Scarborough, who lost by a scant 211 votes, has challenged about 700 votes on the grounds that some of the people voted at the wrong precinct and did not cast fail-safe ballots, others voted in the district even though they no longer lived there, one polling place reported 27 more votes than the total number of signatures on the poll list, and because, c'mon, he's Wallace freakin' Scarborough, a REPUBLICAN, running for office in SOUTH CAROLINA, obviously there's something fishy about that.

(3) Gov. Sanford was named chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Source. That's right, Marky Mark is going to Washington, pigs in hand, to retool the Republican party. Meanwhile, while Sanford's veto pen is distracted by his new job of promoting a Republican return to it's bed-rock principles of limited government and low taxes, the General Assembly will be holding clandestine meetings to pass much-needed legislation while they have the chance.

(4) The South Financial Group, S.C.'s largest bank, is on the dole. Source. Even though they claim they're in good financial condition, a bank spokesperson stated that it was too hard to resist $347 million in free money. Word on the street is that they plan to add a little bling to the teller lines, ATMs will get a fresh coat of paint, and departing executive Mack Whittle will get a roll of diamond encrusted toilet paper, a bejeweled scepter, and a custom velvet portrait of himself standing atop the hopes and dreams of his customers, doing a mean fist pump, that plays a constant digital loop of Jay-Z's "Diamonds are Forever."

(5) Prison Fashion: Inmates in S.C.'s prisons who "commit overt sexual acts in common areas" will have to continue to wear pink jumpsuits. Source. Inmate Sherone Nealous lost a court fight to ban the use of the pink jumpsuits, sighting the fact that the pink really clashed with his eyes and that he would "rather have a nice paisley or argyle pattern." S.C. Prisons Director John Ozmint has reportedly been looking into the viability of adding some ruffles and lace to the jumpsuits and maybe switching the jumpsuit out entirely to bring in some more up-to-date fashions. "It all depends on what I see on the runways at Fashion Week," Ozmint said, "Who knows, maybe we'll introduce some patent leather, anyway you look at it, these inmates will be looking fierce."

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Exclusive: The Blue South Lands an Interview with Embattled Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia


We here at the Blue South are proud as heck to publish our exclusive interview with Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia's 10th District. Some of you may know Rep. Broun for his recent comments comparing our president elect to Hitler and Stalin, saying that Pres.-elect Obama is a Marxist who wants to establish an American Gestapo. Turns out, Rep. Broun is sorry for making those comments and he didn't mean what he said at all. Here's our exclusive:
TBS: Rep. Broun it's a pleasure to talk with you today.
Broun: Thanks, I'm glad to be able to fully explain my recent comments.
TBS: Well, then let's cut to the chase. What did you mean when you called our next president a Marxist?
Broun: Well, not to bore you with a history lesson, but if you look at Obama's record and his speeches, then take the third word from every sentence that contains the words "hope" or "change", then those words begin to spell out the first words of the Communist Manifest, by Karl Marx.
TBS: But we thought you were going to apologize...
Broun: Now, let me finish. See, if you take the letters from the name "Barack Obama" and take their numeric equivalent, you get 2-1-18-1-3-11-15-2-1-13-1, and if you add that up it comes out to 68. You want to guess what year Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto? That's right, 1968.
TBS: But the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848...
Broun: Ohhhh, you just got served.
TBS: Ok, so didn't you want to...
Broun: Thanks for your time, it's been a pleasure.

We here at the Blue South have been proud to bring you our exclusive coverage of this incredibly important issue. We would like to extend our thanks to Rep. Broun for graciously agreeing to say really stupid things in public and then have to come up with some logical reason for saying them. Keep up the good work congressman, and people of Georgia, look at the name next to the (R) on your ballot next time.

Sadly Ironic Quote of the Day

This gem comes to us from David Ignatius column in today's WaPo. The topic: the upcoming G-20 financial summit. Here's the quote:
Bush administration officials support some items in this package, but they are wary of the unintended consequences of new regulations -- particularly ones that are rushed through during a crisis.

Source.
See, I thought the Bush administration, the same one that declared war on a tactic and then used the "I'm a wartime President" excuse to curtail civil liberties, justify torturing and holding detainees indefinitely without a hearing, passing the USAPATRIOT Act, passing a $700 billion dollar bailout that gives god-like power to the Secretary of the Treasury, etc., etc., etc., thrives on crisis-mode.

Guess I was wrong.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Future of the Republican Party

I had an interesting conversation today with an author/scholar who thinks the Republican party is no longer, nor has it been for quite some time, on the side of federalism. He said that he has not voted for a major party candidate for president since (and it took him a minute to remember) George H. W. Bush. He then related how he stood in line at his polling place for two hours this time around only to achieve some sort of individual catharsis, knowing his vote would not make a difference.

This got me thinking about the state of the Republican party in the aftermath of the Democratic tide that washed in on November 4. Jim DeMint was also thinking about this. Funny, I didn't know he had the capacity and it turns out, I'm right. DeMint wants the Republican party to turn back to its "Reagan-ite" roots of limited government and low taxes. Source. Was Jim DeMint conscious during the Reagan years? Does he not realize that we underwent an unprecedented expansion of our military that cost taxpayers money that we've only just begun to pay back? Last I checked, the military is part of our government and spending money means you can only delay increasing taxes for a short while.

The truth is that Reagan was merely a pawn in the neoconservative hijacking of the Republican party. The Republican party of limited government and low taxes has not existed for a very, very long time. Sure, they may cut taxes here and there, but every president tinkers with the tax system. In fact, capital gains taxes were higher during the Reagan administration than they were under the Bush (2nd) administration. Does that mean that DeMint will be belly-aching for a return to the Bush-ite roots of low taxes and limited government as well?

My advice to Jim DeMint is to pull your head out of that place where all your thoughts seem to come from and look at the world around you. Limited government is a thing of the past. Federalism is dead. States are only as sovereign as the federal government tells them they can be. And lowering taxes at this point in our history is one of the most short-sighted panders I've seen in a long, long time. If people like Jim DeMint would quit pandering and misquoting history, take the reigns of Congress, and wield the power that was meant by our Constitution to be the most important power, then maybe, just maybe, our country could start climbing out of this mess we're in.

But hey, the Jim DeMint's of the world have to get reelected, right? Makes me sick. Where's the term limits lobby when you need them?

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The Case for Raising Taxes (In a Nutshell)


There was a lot of campaign rhetoric about Barack Obama's tax policy being socialist, in that it seeks to redistribute wealth among the population. The problems with that characterization are legion, but the most glaring are: (1) true socialists seek to nationalize the means of production to harness the power of industry to redistribute wealth; (2) we have a progressive tax system, meaning that the marginal tax rate increases as income increases (e.g. tax brackets); and (3) (and I'll admit this is more editorial than factual) over the past two decades we have seen an enormous concentration of wealth in the upper echelons of our socio-economic structure that has lead to a real need to "redistribute" some of that wealth to a struggling middle class. Ok, so we are agreed, Obama is not a socialist. That's not really my point here, though.

We are going to end up spending trillions of dollars trying to grease the wheels of our credit markets over the next couple of years. We are fighting two wars. Our Congress sees fit to expand spending programs every time they get the opportunity. In short, we are spending a lot of money. So where's that money coming from?

In the macro-sense, that money can come from three sources: (1) we can borrow it; (2) we can print it; and (3) we can take it from our citizens. So far we have been borrowing vast amounts of money from China, Japan, and a few oil-producing countries to finance our wars and our deficits. I don't have time to verify this, but I'd be interested to see how much of our budget is spent each year just paying interest on those loans. My prediction is that when we hit the tipping point where the interest we pay on loans from other countries begins to outgrow our budget, those other countries will stop lending us money. So what do we do then?

Well, we can print the money...and watch the value of an already shaky dollar plummet. There are pros and cons to a weak dollar, but my point of view is that the cons vastly outweigh any perceived benefits. So if we need money to finance our entitlement programs and wars and economic recovery, I would say that printing more money to fill that need is a terrible idea.

So that leaves us with the problem of taxes. No politician that raises taxes can expect to keep his job. That's why we're in this mess. The problem is that the responsible thing for us to do as a society is to pay more taxes. But nobody wants to hear that. People like to drive on our roads, attend our schools, turn on their electrical appliances, talk on their cell phones, etc., but nobody wants to bear the burden of paying for all that. However, if we just raise taxes across the board, then we can all minimize the individual pain and begin building a road to a fiscally responsible government (provided they don't just spend all the new money on new toys, which is possible).

My point here is this: Obama's tax plan, to increase taxes on those making $250k or more is not some socialist, redistribute the wealth to those who didn't work for plan. It's really only a first step in a much needed journey toward fiscal responsibility. So when you see your taxes going up, don't just give the knee jerk reaction and vote in another George Bush who will refuse to raise taxes even when he and everyone around him recognizes that it is necessary. It will hurt us in the long run much worse if we don't start paying for our government services now and just keep running up interest on overseas bonds.