Texan showdown

After Labor Day's extended nonsense, I wasn't too eager to watch any more Republican debates. Bah. So I skipped last night's; I figured there would be plenty more where that came from.

It turns out the big news is what happened during the commercials.

According to RonPaul.com:

During a commercial break at Wednesday’s Republican debate, Rick Perry and Ron Paul continued their spirited exchange on stage. Suddenly, Perry grabbed Ron Paul’s forearm while aggressively pointing his index finger towards the Congressman’s face. Alerted by Perry’s menacing gestures, Ron Paul’s bodyguard [front left in photo below] was standing by, ready to protect the Congressman.

But don't expect to find out what all the hoopla is about, since Ron has forgotten it already:

On Thursday, a Rick Perry spokesman stated that the two contenders were having a “cordial conversation” about border security, while Ron Paul diplomatically downplayed the incident, saying he did not even remember the exchange.

I don't believe that for a minute, but I like how he disses Perry as not memorable. AND not worth getting upset over.

And quite honestly, who looks ruffled in these photos? It isn't the good doctor.

From the Washington Times account titled Perry vs. Paul: A Texas-sized war:

At one point when the video cameras weren’t rolling — though the incident was caught by still photographers — Mr. Perry walked over Mr. Paul’s lectern, took hold of the congressman’s wrist and wagged his finger at him.

A spokesman for Mr. Perry said Thursday it was a policy conversation, not a heated exchange.

“The governor and the congressman talked about border security. It was a cordial conversation,” said Mark Miner.

The two Texans, though, lost few opportunities to focus on one another in the debate.

The first shot was invited by the debate moderators, who asked Mr. Paul to expand on his accusations, made in recent days, that Mr. Perry, who has spent more than a decade as governor of Texas, is less conservative than voters think.

“Just take the HPV,” Mr. Paul said, referring to Mr. Perry’s scrapped plan to require schoolgirls in the state to be given a vaccine against the sexually transmitted virus. “Forcing 12-year-old girls to take an inoculation to prevent this sexually transmitted disease, this is not good medicine, I do not believe. I think it’s social misfit.”

Mr. Perry acknowledged he’d gone about the plan the wrong way when he tried to bypass the legislature, but said he’d been trying to combat cervical cancer, which can result from HPV, and said his plan would have allowed parents to opt out of the inoculation program.

Later, after Mr. Perry criticized the health care law Mr. Romney signed in Massachusetts, Mr. Paul jumped in and said Mr. Perry should worry about his own record, since he had written “a really fancy letter supporting Hillarycare” — the health program former first lady Hillary Clinton tried to enact in the 1990s.

Mr. Perry fired back, pointing to a letter Mr. Paul wrote in 1987 announcing he was dropping out of the the party he now seeks to lead because he was disappointed in then-President Reagan.

“Speaking of letters, I was more interested in the one that you wrote to Ronald Reagan back and said I’m going to quit the party because of the things you believe in,” Mr. Perry said.

He didn’t any further before Mr. Paul insisted on responding.

“I support the message of Ronald Reagan. The message was great. But the consequence — we have to be honest with ourselves — it was not all that great,” Mr. Paul said.

The attacks kept up even during the commercial breaks — and not just on stage. Mr. Paul had paid to run an ad during the MSNBC broadcast attacking Mr. Perry, pointing to his support for Al Gore’s presidential bid in the 1980s, including twice calling the governor a “cheerleader.”

“Al Gore found a cheerleader in Texas named Rick Perry,” the ad announcer intones.

I'd love to read the Ron Paul letter. It will probably be guarded as closely as the Fatima Letter though, and we'll never get the chance.

It's getting interesting.

As I've said, I have already called South Carolina for Perry (barring any unforeseen scandals, and he looks like he eats scandals for breakfast, so that's a big caveat), and I haven't changed my mind since his visit here in the upstate on August 19th. But the Ron Paul people have also figured this out, and they know who to go after. They are INTENT on winning South Carolina and are very single-minded and hard-working.

Could they do it?

Well, maybe if they start talking about the fact that the reason Texas is burning up right now is that Rick Perry slashed fire departments around the state, to the tune of $23 million... from $30 million to $7 million. And now they have uncontrollable wildfires they can't stop. What about that?

Oh wait, Ron wants to cut MORE than that (including cops, according to what I heard him say in the Labor Day debate), so of course, he can't criticize Perry on THAT score. Ron would let the state burn too, wouldn't he? Or would he? Let's talk about THAT, and the 1400 people burned out of their homes by Republican greed. OR we could talk about where Rick Perry's gets his money, conservative Texas tycoon James Leininger:

Leininger also helped bankroll the transformation of the Texas GOP from a merely conservative party to one dominated by religious fundamentalists. Partly because of his influence, the Texas political culture that Rick Perry emerges from is significantly more right-wing than the one that shaped George W. Bush. And now that Perry is running for president, Leininger is working to make sure that national conservative Christian leaders coalesce behind him

Leininger is in tight with the fundies, as owner of Promised Land Dairy, which sells milk in bottles printed with Bible verses.

And now he is going to sell Rick Perry, former buddy of Al Gore, to the Religious Right.

Stay tuned, sports fans.

Jim DeMint's Tea Party Presidential Forum

At Left: On CNN a few minutes ago, Rep. Michele Bachmann supports a Human Life Amendment.







Yes, I am LIVE BLOGGING Jim DeMint's teabagger forum in Columbia AS IT HAPPENS!



I was unable to hitch a ride down to Columbia in the thunderstorm, so can't be there to yell and scream in person. (sigh) So I am listening online to South Carolina Senator (and major Tea-Party busybody) Jim DeMint and his thoroughly offensive, reactionary love-in. DeMint is tossing lovey-dovey softball questions, along with his trusty minions Congressman Steve King (R–Iowa) and Dr Robert George, founder of the American Principles Project. Dr George just employed the phrase "respect the dignity of all members of the human family, including those in the womb." See, I think they really mean WHITE HETEROSEXUALS in the womb, but then "the human family" has always meant very specific things to Republicans.



Bachmann just said she believed in "equal protection under the law"--wait, what? And she also believes in limiting marriage to heterosexuals. So, she just contradicted herself within three-and-a-half minutes.



Waiting for the Ron Paul fireworks. The rest of these people are wind-up dolls.



Herman Cain, pizza man, is up now.



The questioners are playing immigration-gotcha with Cain. I wonder why? Was he "soft on immigration" at some point in his career? (Did Godfather Pizza neglect to check those Green Cards? Uh-oh!)



These DeMinted minions are pretty obsessed with abortion. In particular, Dr George keeps repeating his line above, ALL MEMBERS OF HUMAN FAMILY... etc. Is he going to use this exact cult-phrase with each and every candidate? (If so, DAISY'S DEAD AIR will hereby reward him with his own post, as I try to do with all the Tea Party whack jobs.) He seems equally obsessed with Catholics being discriminated against by adoption agencies. (NOTE: I didn't understand the importance of this point until his conversation with Governor Romney, later in the debate.)



Cain supports DOMA and traditional marriage. No surprise there. He most especially wanted to talk about his "999" taxation program; Cain's "999" plan replaces the current tax code with a nine percent tax on corporate profits, nine percent on personal income, and nine percent on national retail sales. That magic NINE again! As we discussed here, NINE is the number of completion. Clearly, Herman's been reading his numerology and tarot texts.



Even so, he is a pest, and gets a big fat ZERO from DEAD AIR.



Newt Gingrich!!!! It's the intellectual! Batten down the hatches! Newt is suddenly onstage and makes football jokes out of the box... he appreciates teams like USC that "fumble early in the game, and then come from behind to win." Applause. Cute.



Newt drones on, like a college lecturer (which he has been), talking about the meaning of existence and how the founders were telling us what LIFE MEANT in the Constitution. (Really? Wow, who knew?) And then he goes back to 1802, when Thomas Jefferson eliminated some federal judges. If Jefferson can do it, Newt certainly can. (I just realized that Ohio wasn't even a state then, so I am thinking most of the rest of the country did not exist either... this little fact doesn't derail Newt in the least.)



Gay-baiting time, Newt has a lesbian sister! But the four-times-married heterosexual snubs his sister and the rest of the GLBT population, and says, in so many words, fuck you. He makes it clear that conservatives should not be intimidated by saying marriage is man-woman only.



In this instance, the message for progressives is obvious: INTIMIDATE THEM and call them bigoted haters at every opportunity ... obviously, cautioning his comrades that they should not be intimidated, means they already are.



He calls President Barack Obama "the most effective food stamp president in history"--engaging in some oblique race-baiting. (Newt was always really good at that, while running for congress in Georgia.) Then he accelerates the race-baiting ever-so-slightly, by talking about Detroit. (Why Detroit, of all places? Hm?) Why hasn't Obama fixed Detroit? And repeal Dodd Frank while you're at it! (no explanation of WHY is given) And he likes offshore drilling, the Webb Warner bill, drill baby drill! He reminds everyone in the audience what this would mean for Charleston Harbor. ($$$) Talk about pandering.



Yes, the minion repeated his "respect the dignity of all members of the human family, including those in the womb" cult phrase, for the third time.



Ron Paul gets a squeal from the back of the convention hall, the biggest applause of the afternoon so far.



Congressman Paul starts off sounding like a zealot; a little too wonky. He knows his Constitution and quotes Article 1, section whatever, as impressively as Newt does. Did you know only gold and silver were intended to be legal tender? (I expect a spate of CASH FOR GOLD ads on my blog now.)



He basically wants to dismantle the state, including (did I hear him right?) the police force. He says thousands of bureaucrats were not supposed to be armed, the PEOPLE are supposed to be armed. Hm. Jefferson got rid of the Central Bank, Jackson demolished the Central Bank and we must have the courage to take on the fed. Stop printing money. Keynesian economics will bankrupt the country. Etc.



And then, they asked about our global role. Representative Paul was unequivocal: bring all the US troops home. Now. No nation-building! A woman in the back screamed in approval; there was applause. Ron Paul pointed out that the USA is basically subsidizing South Korea, Germany and Japan's defense. Make them pay for it themselves, he said.



But, but, but... Rep. Steve King says, no troops ANYWHERE? ANYWHERE? He is clearly in shock.



Nope, Ron stands firm. Nowhere. (Audience applause, and I found myself grinning at this.) The man has balls!



About the welfare state, he said a generation had grown up believing in "entitlements" and that is a bad thing. And then, he segued into corporations garnering staggering entitlements, and he almost made me swoon. Nice touch, dude.



Dr George delivers the anti-abortion cult statement once more. (He is going for the gold.) Ron Paul says he would let the states settle the issue. Dr George seems happy with Ron Paul's anti-abortion voting record, but he doesn't like his states rights position. (See, conservatives love "states rights" when it suits them, but not when it doesn't.) Dr Paul compares this to the capital punishment situation, which is different in all states. He seems pleased with that. Dr George, obviously, is not pleased with that AT ALL.



Aside: What about the old Libertarian position, which Ron Paul used to tout when he was running for president as a Libertarian in the 70s? Am I the only person who remembers that? He said THEN, that abortion was not a political issue. When did he change his mind and WHY WON'T SOMEBODY ASK HIM THAT????



Too wonky and disjointed. DEAD AIR gives him a 25% for effort, and for being original.



And now, the android from the catalog, Governor MITT ROMNEY! (Does anyone remember Barbie's boyfriend, KEN, by MATTEL?)



He starts off quoting Justice Brandeis: "The STATES should be the laboratories of democracy." It sounds nice, so he gets all pumped up and pleased with himself.



During Romney's rap, thought I heard some chanting from outside... did somebody bust in? (Or is it just somebody yelling at their kids in the lobby?) I hope it was a hell-raiser! Yeah!



Romney dutifully regurgitates what the others have said, throws in criticisms of Dodd-Frank and all the rest of it. The thing is, he LOOKS so much better than all the rest. He is totally TV-ready, no umming and ahhing like Herman and Ron, no bad hair like Newt, no gollee-gee flat Midwestern accent like Michele. In fact, he sounds like a radio personality with NO regionalisms at all; as George Carlin once said, the DJ voice says, "HELLO! I'm from NOWHERE!"--and Romney sounds like he is most assuredly from Nowhere. He does remind us that he prays. (Better not linger on that TOO long, dude.)



For the fifth time, Dr George repeats his cult phrase about the members of the human family. I am starting to find this really super-creepy. Why these special words, this particular incantation? Why does he say it the same exact way every time? He appears to be a reasonably intelligent and informed person, able to speak extemporaneously... why does he keep up the mantra? Does he think this phrase will especially prick the consciences of pro-choice people or something? I dunno. However, it does finally become clear why he keeps mentioning adoption and Catholics: Catholic adoption agencies won't place children with gay parents, and of course, conservatives don't think they should.



And on this Labor Day, asshole Jim DeMint trashes UNIONS and grills Romney about Right-to-Work laws. The fact that the whole audience is allowed to sit there and have a LABOR DAY holiday, obtained for the American people by UNIONS, makes me damn livid... and I nearly STOPPED THIS WHOLE POST. Hypocrisy SUCKS, Senator.



Ending on a note of definite dyspepsia.



Rick Santorum is right here in Greenville, a few miles away, at Chiefs Wings and Firewater... they didn't invite him to the show. Tee hee.

Sing Out Louise! Smile, Baby!

Graphic from Yellowdog Granny.



















I am hoping to make it down to Columbia for the Republican CNN dog-and-pony-show (debate, I mean), but so far, no vehicular luck. Still panhandling for a ride, if any of you brave souls plan to go down there tomorrow to check out the Democratic Process In Action (grunts for emphasis). The Ron Paul people are having their rally directly afterwards, and that sounds like a good place to start witnessing the Third Party Gospel. I'm on it! Well okay, I would ordinarily be on it, if I had a car that could safely sustain a hundred-mile round trip without a thorough examination, which I don't.



Yes, yes, I know, if I had been a conscientious DoBee [1] I would have gotten my oil changed and tires rotated and what-all, but as an unemployed person I have not seen THE POINT. (See, she pauses to point out, HOW UNEMPLOYMENT NEGATIVELY INFLUENCES THE ECONOMY?!?) At any rate, here I am, send notes and emails and Twitters and Facebook IMs and what-have-you, if you are going down to our illustrious state capital to protest or hang out with the Ron Paul people tomorrow.



My first radio excursion on Saturday morning went well. Gregg roused himself from his cardiologist's floor and aided me wonderfully! I was scared to death, and had the proverbial death-grip on my old wooden antique rosary from Notre Dame (Indiana, not France), which was left to me by a deceased female neighbor named Butch, so its very lucky. In addition, I inexplicably required a huge Double Mocha Frappucino to get it done, but I did it! (Next week, will probably be able to make do with a regular single Vanilla.)



PLEASE DROP IN AND LISTEN! WFISradio.com, 1600 AM or 94.9 FM on your radio dial... or online. 9:00 AM on Saturday mornings, which is an ungodly weekend hour, and I apologize for that.



~*~



Be-bopping around the internet today, whilst watching Doris Day (yall know how much I love Doris) in With Six You Get Eggroll. A bad movie that nonetheless fascinated me as a wide-eyed, gullible youngster... as Single Mom-with-kids marries Single Dad-with-kids, and they wholesomely "blend" their families. As many of you know, I desperately wanted my mother to get married and behave in this wonderfully-domestic fashion, particularly if it meant she would stop wearing the bubble hairdos, popping amphetamines, singing in the country and western bands every night, drinking and smoking like a rat-pack member, marrying people she had just met and dammit, ACT LIKE SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO. [2] Ha.



Of course, now I realize, neither did Doris. If I had only known!



Will somebody tell me: Did wholesome TV-dad Brian Keith die of AIDS or is that just a rumor? Am I mixing him up with Robert Reed, since the plot of this movie is where they obviously came up with THE BRADY BUNCH? (It seemed that after Robert Reed died, it was suddenly open season on the nice TV-dads and magically, they all became gay overnight.)



Okay, checked Wikipedia: No, not true. Suicide. I knew it was something uncommon.



A shame. I always liked him.



The sweet, precocious little child-star, Anissa Jones, whom I liked so much on Brian Keith's old show, Family Affair, was an accidental drug death at age 18. We were only 6 months apart in age. The other child on the show, Johnny Whitaker, has spoken at length about his addiction problems, also, and is now a drug counselor.



I guess these Hollywood-fantasy families really were fake, weren't they?



~*~



[1] To the non-baby boomers, this is from the children's TV show Romper Room and has no relationship to the word DOOBIE as a joint or the Doobie Brothers. There were Do Bees and Don't Bees, and of course, we all tried to be good DO BEES! (We marginally succeeded.)



[2] Mama! Get out your white dress/you've done it before/without much success (Stephen Sondheim to the rescue). When I first heard this song as a kid, at maybe 8 years old, I sobbed my little heart out. (And it's where we get today's blog post title.)



See, I thought, the stipper's children understand!

"Why the mainstream media are clueless about the religious right"

At left: Street preacher sign from Bele Chere. (Any questions?)











Suzan links AlterNet's interesting Why the Mainstream Media Are Clueless About the Religious Right by Adele M. Stan, which not surprisingly, offers some cluelessness of its own.



As I have said (so many times) before, as long as the language of religion is generally dissed by the mainstream media and the elite Left, you have allowed it to remain the language of the religious right, by default. And this highly-moral language is then used to talk to the masses, right over your heads.



If an exotic dialect is used only by one group, even if others understand it, it eventually becomes theirs.



And yes, religion is regarded by the media as some weird, exotic dialect from flyover country, which means the copious dog-whistles and covert winks offered by the Religious Right sail right past the well-paid hotshot media analysts and pundits, as in the famous "Obama is the antichrist" TV ad. They just MISSED it. (Antichrist? Who?)



In comments in this thread, I gave an example, and rather than type it all again, I am hereby quoting myself:

[Years ago], I watched Mother Theresa's funeral on late-night TV (India time), and several of the "official" commentators seemed totally ignorant of the derivation of the banner over her casket, which read "You did it to me"...and they all just seemed to go blank. They didn't seem to be able to look it up, either, since the KJV says something like "Ye have done it to me" if I'm not mistaken. (The quote would be from the RSV, which was favored by the Missionaries of Charity.)



They mumbled, they ummmed and they ahhhed, but you know, they just didn't seem to know. All of these hotshot commentators and none seemed to know. Finally, someone triumphantly announced it was from the New Testament (well duh) but they didn't seem to understand the reference or why it was the phrase hanging over her casket, and not some other phrase.



I listened to the entire commentary, as they didn't seem to have any idea why people STAND for the Gospel reading (really? Is it that hard to figure out?) or anything else about the Mass. That day, I realized how ignorant the media elites are of religion and religious traditions... even something as simple as standing for the Gospel reading. (I suddenly realized they didn't know the difference between that part of the Bible called "Gospel" and the rest of it.)

Then they trotted out that huge fan of Mother Theresa, Christopher Hitchens, author of a famous hit-piece on her. For her funeral. (I ask you, when was the last time the author of a hit-piece was invited to comment at their subject's funeral? A bit rude, maybe?)



This is what passes for knowledge of religion among the elites. Then they try to psychoanalyze people for whom religion is EVERYTHING. And they, um, invariably get it wrong, of course. How could they not? They don't know the dialect.



And Stan knows some of the dialect, but like an anthropologist studying the oddly-dressed natives (she compares some of the reporters to Margaret Mead, which IS funny), she isn't actually going to get down in the dirt with em either. Instead, she translates the dialect for the elites, or tries to.



For example, she attempts to analyze Ron Paul's fan base:

While mainstream media dismiss Paul as a quirky, secular libertarian, progressive reporters sometimes express a certain affection for Paul because of his anti-war stance. But Paul's anti-war position stems from his far-right isolationist views...

First of all, isolationism per se is not strictly left or right, and that explains the far-reaching appeal. In the Midwest, where I grew up, isolationism is its OWN thang, and often transcends traditional left/right definitions and categories. This is frequently my stance on this blog, likely because (as I have said many times), I was greatly influenced by my grandfather, a Christian Scientist and Taft Republican ("isolationism" barely describes it). To these folks, isolationism WAS the progressive position, since it kept the rest of the world from hating us so much. Isolationism insured peace, was the idea. Now, of course, the opposite view (which can be totally summed up in Orwell's phrase, 'War is Peace') is politically dominant.



In short, just as military-interventionism is now an equal-opportunity left/right ideology, so is isolationism.



Does Adele Stan know that Ron Paul ran for President as a Libertarian in the 70s, before he was ever in Congress? His views have changed little since Vietnam, and THIS is why progressives have respect for him: Ron Paul does not stick his finger in the air to test the political winds, and never has.



At left: Fundamentalists invade Bele Chere festival in Asheville, NC. Most people considered them just another part of the show, but a number of intrepid festival-goers engaged them in some intense debates and heated conversations.







Adele Stan's commentary in AlterNet advances the opinion that the overall media-dilemma is denial, rather than elitist ignorance, even though she mentions the elitism a few times:

The mainstream media -- and to an extent, the progressive media, as well -- are made up of elites, people who went to good schools, most of them raised on either the east or west coasts. To these elites, the thought of someone espousing the sort of frightening beliefs that Paul embodies having a serious impact on American politics is just too much to bear, so denial becomes the default position. It's not conscious -- not a deliberate attempt to cover something up, just something too weird and awful to be true, so the notion is simply dismissed. Yet if you look at Paul's positions and look at how successive GOP fields have moved closer to them (with the exception of the anti-war stance) over the last three election cycles, his impact is clear.

"With the exception of the anti-war stance"? Earth to Adele! Somebody does not keep up with the drug war, which is BANKRUPTING THE COUNTRY and decimating poor and minority communities. Maybe Adele doesn't know any teenagers whose lives have been ruined over a tiny and inconsequential puff on a joint, but poor people have plenty of examples to share with her. Ron Paul proposes to legalize and tax marijuana and end the super-expensive drug war altogether... and that is a damned radical position that no other Republican AND no other Democrat has dared take.



The unbridled destruction of poor communities and the mass-imprisonment of young minority men is a fucking SCANDAL; the drug charges that the privileged kids from good schools can safely giggle about years later ("Oh man, my dad was sure pissed!") are the very same drug charges that will get you locked up for life if you are too poor to afford a lawyer or your daddy doesn't know the right people.



Ending this VICIOUS ATTACK on the poor is a PROGRESSIVE POSITION and only Ron Paul will take it.



You know this, right Adele? That one out of four black men is in prison for some BULLSHIT? Aaaarghhh, don't even get me started.



The fact that you have ignored this point in your piece, Adele Stan, is rather clueless as well. The fact that you don't seem to know what is happening in minority communities? Marks you as one of the elite media that doesn't know what's going on out here in the fabled Heartland.



It's going to get ugly, as the traditional left/right categories topple to the ground. I made a prediction that Obama was a one-termer, but that was before I knew he had stashed away a billion dollars for his second coronation. I now believe he will win, but it will infuriate a lot of people and might lead to insurrection; the British riots light the way. Democracy has been supplanted by the wholesale purchase of political office. (This huge money-stash now marks Barack Obama as a member of the elite that he successfully challenged upon first entering politics; Ron Paul's plucky little "money bombs" are very small potatoes by comparison.)



Adele winds up:

As a nation, we've been headed down this path for more than 40 years. As the economic fortunes of the U.S. turn downward, we should expect the attraction of right-wing religion, especially its more charismatic and viscerally-felt forms, to expand. Anyone who doesn't just hasn't been paying attention.

Ya think? And how about you talk to some of US, the progressives who can speak the weird Biblical Ron Paul language? How about you even consider FUNDING SOME OF US out here, who might be able to help, since we are already wearing the clothes and speaking the dialect?



Ha, am I funny or what? As we already know, that ain't never gonna happen. After all, they know everything, don't they?

Fox News Republican debate in Greenville

... last night at the Peace Center, was rowdier than I expected.

I refer to the action outside the venue, where us scruffy anarchists and sign-carriers were assembled under the watchful eye of Greenville's Finest. In addition, it was Cinco de Mayo and downtown Greenville was packed with inebriated revellers.

I was verbally assaulted upon arrival, as a drunken right-winger asked me if I knew what L stood for????? He was leering/grimacing at me, and if there had been no cops around, I think there is an even chance he would have hit me.

I answered, "Love!"

He sneered. (I know he was thinking some variation of: Damned hippies!) He shouted in my face, stinking of beer, that it stood for LIBERAL and LIAR.

"I think it stands for love," I repeated. He wasn't having any.

"One reason! Just ONE! That you hate Fox News!"

I thought a second, "Glenn Beck," I answered.

"What about him?" he demanded, red-faced.

"He's insane," I answered.

"You just said A LOT about yourself just now!" he half-grimaced at me, yelling, "You just said A LOT!!!"

"I hope so!" I smiled, and backed away from him. In doing so, I nearly backed into Mark Sanford, about 3 feet away, babbling into a microphone. (((scream))) I turned in the other direction, as a low-country accented woman with hair piled high, accosted me. "You have NEVAH seen Fox News, if you believe that! NEVAH!" Republican onlookers offered some scattered applause, and I shouted, "I've seen far TOO much of it!"--the Ron Paul boys guffawed, as various other Republicans filing into the Peace Center offered some boos.

The overt hostility reminded me of the old days of you-know-who back in 1980, the last time a Republican screamed at me over a sign.

The Greenville News accounts of the Fox News debate are here and here, but the links may not work... as stated before, they usually nab me by the end of the day. A Republican account (warning, not safe for liberals, click at your own risk!) is here, in which Herman Cain (!), the black conservative former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, is regarded as the winner. The other participants were Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Gary Johnson and the redoubtable Ron Paul.

The Ron Paul people are just so likeable and INVOLVED, you can't help but get enmeshed in conversation with them. Most are respectful of all views, unlike the nutjobs who verbally assaulted me upon arrival. All stopped and complimented our anti-war signs. And I think it DOES matter that they seem like nice people.

When I heard that during the debate, Ron Paul had actually proposed legalizing prostitution, marijuana and even heroin and bringing all the troops home from God-knows-where, well, I was practically ready to sign on... even as I worry he would destroy the social-service safety net and Medicare. The sheer BALLS of talking this way on Fox News; you just want to reward him. Damn, why don't the other candidates (including the president and everyone on the left) TALK LIKE THIS??? They talk about money, money, save money, but where are they gonna GET that money? Dr Paul has figured it out; he doesn't talk about saving money without, you know, talking about where that money will actually come from, as Lindsey Graham and other pro-war neocon hacks do.

Suddenly, the hypocrisy of the Republican Party is shown in stark relief, and as I said, you just want to give the dude a medal.

Keep holding their feet to the fire, Dr Paul. It's fun to watch them squirm.

In fairness, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson also offered an anti-war line, so good for him.

~*~

Photos below:

1) Ron Paul supporter I talked to for about 15 minutes, very nice person.

2) Fox News people wait for their close-ups. (Those TV-lights are incredible; I need to take them with me from now on, particularly whenever I shoot photos at night!)

They deliberately backed their chairs up to a turn lane on the corner, so we couldn't get right in back of them with our signs. Cagey!

3) Herman Cain supporter. A Fox News poll at the end of the evening, declared Cain the winner of the debate.

4) Police.

5) Demonstrators.

6) Gregg Jocoy, my co-organizer and co-chair of South Carolina Green Party. Yeah! The anti-war sign got mentioned on TV, woot!

7) and 8) Rev. David Kennedy and his group Chimuranga, added some fire to the sidewalk action.

And more photos HERE.

~*~

Anthony Dellaventura 1948-2010

I don't remember our first conversation, but it was probably about Catholicism. Later, we moved on to every other subject in the universe. But in the beginning, I can remember that we were discussing health supplements and alternative medicine (he was an almost-daily customer in the store where I work), when the rather intimidating ex-NYPD cop suddenly reached out and touched the St Jude medal I was wearing.

"Patron saint of lost causes," he mused, in his heavy New York accent. Luhwust Cuhwuzzes, is how it sounded to me.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Are you a lost cause?" his voice turned suddenly gentle, and I was caught off guard.

"Probably," I admitted.

He narrowed his eyes. "You are not. You are a very intelligent and beautiful person." He seemed to be speaking very honestly, and I was struck silent, which never happens. I was embarrassed to be complimented.

"You don't believe me," he was inspecting my face. All at once, I was aware that he had been a professional interrogator. "You believe what all these assholes say," he waved his hand around, as if to encompass the whole world (and particularly the Catholic Church) in "all these assholes" and I laughed.

He narrowed his eyes again, "Really. It isn't funny. You do. Well, don't. They dunno shit." And then he smiled. An amazing, award-winning smile.

And for a few years, Tony Dellaventura brightened my life. I saw him nearly every day. He drove an enormous custom Harley-Davidson and dressed in leather; tattooed from head to toe, able to bench-press 200 lbs at age 60, he was a striking figure. His name was Snake; the name tattooed on his throat, right above a snake. It was a long time before I knew his real name.

"Are you tattooed everywhere?" I once asked, curious.

"Every inch," he assured me. And he said he had a dragon down below, the dragon's tail becoming, well, you know.

I'm sure my eyes popped, "Didn't that hurt?!?"

"Oh hell yes," he said, matter-of-factly.

We argued about politics mostly, after it was discovered that we were in near-total opposition, yet agreed on certain libertarian basics: Let people have their guns, their dirty movies, their weed. (The mention of weed being illegal made him roll his eyes.) He particularly liked Ron Paul (as I wrote here once before), and was suitably impressed that I had gone to the Peace Center Amphitheater to hear Congressman Paul speak, even as a lefty. We would argue until we were interrupted, or until he would get thoroughly pissed off and walk away from me. But he was never rude.

Sometimes he would return later in the day, "And another thing..." and reply to what I had said earlier. He always heard me out and let me make my point, sometimes granting that I was right. It was during these conversations that I would hear references to his experiences as a cop; things he had seen that influenced his views in often surprising ways. Even as a fairly right-wing guy, he would freely admit (for instance), that gay people were unfairly targeted, since he had seen it himself so many times. And his New Yorker-honesty and bluntness always impressed me a great deal, since it was steeped in the harsh reality of what he had actually witnessed.

He ate a very healthy diet, almost fanatically so. When he told me he had pancreatic cancer, I was shocked; he seemed like Iron Man. (I knew the odds and I was upset.) And after that, Tony lost weight rapidly. He went back to New York City for treatment, then returned to South Carolina. I wanted to take his photo at one point, but he wouldn't let me, "I don't look so good right now, wait until I look a little better."

I didn't see him after that.

From Tony's obituary in the Staten Island Advance:

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Anthony (The Snake) Dellaventura, 62, of Huguenot, a lifelong Staten Islander and a retired NYPD detective and private investigator whose rough-and-tumble workdays were dramatized in the television show “Dellaventura,” died Thursday in Calvary Hospital’s hospice in Brooklyn, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

I have never seen the TV show named after him, but I loved knowing someone who was the subject of a TV series.

He was exactly the sort of larger-than-life personality that great TV-characters are made of.

Mr. Dellaventura joined the NYPD in 1969. After two years in uniform, he spent five and a half years as a plainclothes anti-crime officer, charged with posing as a drug dealer. Described as a “cop’s cop,” he later was assigned to the Organized Crime Control Bureau, and was promoted to detective in 1981.

A fourth-degree black belt in martial arts and a weapons expert, he had been in a shootout with a robber in the parking lot of the Staten Island Mall.

Upon his retirement in 1984, he opened his own private investigation company and was hired by attorneys trying to uncover hidden funds during divorce cases, property owners looking to rout crack-dealing squatters, and film studios who wanted to destroy bootleg copies of new releases being sold by vendors on city streets.

The secret to his success in business, he once told the Advance, is being both a good sleuth and establishing confidence and good faith with clients.

Known as “The Snake,” he told New York Magazine in a 1992 profile that his friends gave him the nickname “because of the way I strike, like a cobra. But you couldn’t pay me a million dollars to beat someone up or kill somebody.”

He also said he was willing to do anything necessary for a case, as long as it didn’t include breaking any laws. Instead, Mr. Dellaventura’s hulking physical presence and intense face — he rarely cracked a smile — were often enough to intimidate even the most hardened criminal.

Actor Danny Aiello portrayed him in the drama “Dellaventura,” which recreated some of Mr. Dellaventura’s real-life cases during its run on CBS from late 1997 until early 1998. The episodes were based on events straight out of the detective’s caselog, with details changed for confidentiality.

Mr. Dellaventura told the Advance in an interview when the show debuted that he was pleased with Mr. Aiello’s performance, noting the actor resembled him physically — minus Mr. Dellaventura’s collection of more than 240 tattoos, which would have taken a makeup artist hours to recreate.

Mr. Dellaventura also served as a bodyguard for notables including Jack Dempsey, Sid Caesar and Harry Connick, Jr.

A deeply committed, born-again Christian, he was an active member of Faith Fellowship Ministries in Sayreville N.J., and Grace Fellowship Ministries in Greer, S.C., where he had a second home.

“He was just a tremendous friend to people,” said his wife, Susan. “You could call him at 3 in the morning and he would get up and drive to California to come to your aid.”

Mr. Dellaventura’s passions were rooting for the New York Yankees, riding his Harley-Davidson through the mountains of South Carolina, boxing, and watching old movies.

Most of all, he loved spending time with his family.

Surviving, along with his wife of 20 years, the former Susan Villani, are his sons, Anthony, Philip, Nicholas and Salvatore, and his daughter, Lucianne Dellaventura.

I met Susan and Salvatore, but not the rest of his family. My thoughts and prayers are with them.

I will miss you, my friend, as well as our spirited arguments and your solemn promise that you would settle the hash of anyone who messed with me. Your wild tattoos and multicolored, humongous Harley, making all kinds of rumbly noises in the parking lot. Must be Snake, I would think.

Reflexively, I sometimes still think it's you.

There are only a few in the world like you. So few. If you have indeed found that Afterlife we so often argued about, put in a good word for your favorite Lost Cause. I love you, and we sure do miss our favorite ex-NYPD cop here in Carolina.

Rest in peace.