Crack the Bell

Ketner Added to DNCC's Red to Blue

Jennifer Read, my partner at Indigo Journal, has breaking news that SC-01 candidate Linda Ketner has been added to the DNCC's "Red to Blue" program.

State Election Commissioner Illegally Campaigns for McCain

A source contacted me today with evidence that Cynthia Bensch, Second Congressional District representative on the S.C. State Election Commission, has violated state law by campaigning on behalf of Sen. John McCain.  Read all about it at Indigo Journal.

All The Good Stuff...

...is at our new site, Indigo Journal.

Bailout Fails; SC Delegation Votes 5-1 For Bill

See how they voted.

District 5 Encourages Parents to Move to Northeast Columbia

School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties is developing an innovative strategy for addressing overcrowding in district schools: encouraging Chapin-Ballentine parents to move to Northeast Columbia.

Read the rest at Indigo Journal.

Introducing Indigo Journal

Crack the Bell has been my blogging home for over four years, a place where I've vented, raged and, I hope, occassionally entertained and enlightened readers.  I've sometimes tried to write about different subjects with different blogs, but at heart I'm a political hack, and I've always returned to writing about politics right here.

But today I'm happy to introduce you to a new venture - Indigo Journal, a progressive blogging community where I'm joined by the inestimable NVB from Not Very Bright and Jennifer from Elonkey.

Indigo Journal will be focused primarily, but not exclusively, on state and local politics in South Carolina.  And while NVB, Jen and I are the main editors, we don't want to be the only writers.  Indigo Journal is a "diary" site, in the vein of Daily Kos and myDD, where we want to give progressives like you a place to share your own thoughts and ideas about South Carolina politics.

Over the next few days, I'll be moving all my blogging to Indigo Journal, so add us to your blog roll, your feed reader and your bookmarks.  You can also follow us on Twitter, and we'll be setting up a Friendfeed and Facebook pages as well.

So welcome to Indigo Journal - and join in.

Capital Gains Cuts? Really?

I don't know much about Rep. Gresham Barrett.  I think I met him once up in Oconee County in 1994.  As I recall, he had a pretty unremarkable career in the S.C. legislature before heading on to a so far unremarkable career in the U.S. House.  I hear he's going to be governor in a couple of years, and if so, I expect he'd be pretty unremarkable in that position, too.

I do understand he's real pretty, and he learned about shoes and money from his daddy.  But he is apparently part of this House Republican faction that has its own solution to the current financial situation:

“There will be a plan, both sides have committed to it,” Barrett says. “They’ve said we won’t leave D.C. until we come up with one. The question is, will the plan be palatable? Will it have free market precepts like cutting cap gains taxes?”

Capital gains tax cuts? That's your solution? Have you run this by Sarah Palin?

Secret Transcript of Palin Debate Prep

Questioner: Governor Palin, you've mentioned Alaska's proximity to Russia as evidence of your foreign policy credentials. In all fairness to you, we want to give you yet another opportunity to explain what you meant.

Palin: See, John McCain puts country first, and if planes leave Russia headed east, the first part of the country they reach is Alaska, and if you list all the states in the United States alphabetically, Alaska comes first, and that's what we're about.

Questioner: Excuse me, Governor, but Alabama would come first.

Palin: What?

Questioner: Alabama. You said Alaska comes first alphabetically, but actually it's Alabama.

Palin: Are you sure?

Questioner: Yes, m'am.

Palin: Well, sure, that's part of the problem, we've gotten so used to the way things have always been, that Washington is afraid to look at things differently, and John McCain knows that, so he picked me to be his, um, running part-, candid-, um, you know, running mate to be his vice president to shake things up.

Questioner: Shake things up? You're saying you want to change the alphabet?

Palin: Well, sure, we need to reform all kinds of things, and we're, John McCain, my running mate, and me, we're going to shake things up. Reform things. Different things. The alphabet is part of that Washington crowd. An alphabet soup of regulatory agencies asleep. At the switch. Asleep at the switch, like a sleeping bear. A Russian bear. A greedy Russian bear on Wall Street got us into this mess, and we understand that in Alaska, because we have bears, and Russia has bears, and we're right next to each other. Some of our bears even swim back and forth between the state I'm executive of and where Putin rears his head. But we're gonna reform that.

Dumber Than Two Jars of Dirt

My wife gets mad at me because I can't discuss politics without getting angry and calling people names.  But, seriously, can you watch this and not be pissed off that John McCain picked this idiot to be his running mate?


Watch CBS Videos Online

FITS To Be Tied: Correcting Will Folks' Propanganda

FITSNews - or as we like to call it, the house organ for Howie Rich and company (and we do mean "organ") - spares no effort in it's quest to make sure wealthy white people get paid to send their children to public schools. So it's no surprise that Will's latest broadside at Senate candidate Mandy Powers Norrell is filled with distortions and factual errors.

We're all familiar with Will's adolescent fantasies, so it's easy to imagine what went through his head when he says that John Edwards referred to Powers Norrell as his "Daisy Duke." Unfortunately for Will's fevered mind, the comment came not from Edwards but from someone you might expect to make such a remark, in a much more innocent context: former Congressman Ben "Cooter" Jones.

Folks also takes a fellow named Stanley Smith to task for a letter published in the Carolina Gateway, which read in part: "...both Sarah Palin and Mandy Powers Norrell are attractive candidates … they are both smart and good public speakers … the biggest difference is that Palin is a Republican and Norrell is a Democrat. But that shouldn’t matter to thinking people who want to elect folks who are strong well-grounded conservative leaders."

Mr. Smith probably knows a thing or two about conservatives - he's a former Republican member of country council.

These trivial matters aside, Folks makes some completely ludicrous charges as well, accussing Powers of using push polling and of campaigning on school grounds.

Both accusations are completely false.  The "push poll" in question was a completely legitimate benchmark poll commissioned by the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Folks says Powers Norrell sent children from Heath Springs Elementary in Lancaster County home with her campaign leaflets in their book bags and instructions to tell their parents to vote for her. In fact, Powers Norrell was invited to speak to the class and was asked to provide materials about herself.  Oh, and by the way, Heath Springs Elementary isn't even in Powers-Norrell's Senate district, so I don't think she'd bother asking children to tell their parents to vote for her.

But by far the most ridiculous charges Folks throws out are that he is "...investigating reports that Powers Norrell and her husband petitioned the Lancaster County School District to have their children transferred from an 85% minority school (Clinton Elementary) to another public school in the district, North Elementary, despite the fact that they were not zoned for this school. Which would be just like ultra-liberals … opposing parental choice for everybody but them."

Powers Norrell has often stated her support for public school choice - but like most people, she's opposed to using public funds for private school vouchers.

As far as the "transfer" is concerned, it came after a change to year-round school. Because Powers Norrell wanted to spend the summer with her son, she did what was available to every other parent in the district and requested a change.

I won't hold my breath waiting on a retraction from Will.  If he's not on the payroll of the Mulvaney campaign, I'm sure he's too busy hyperventilating over Internet porn to get his facts straight.

Switching the Debates

Here's a thought.  If John McCain wants to hold the debate previously scheduled for tomorrow on the date of the sole VP debate, let's really switch the dates.  Let's let Joe Biden and Sarah Palin fly on down to Mississippi tonight and do their debate tomorrow.  I mean, both these candidates are supposedly capable of assuming the duties of the presidency on a moment's notice right? So why would they need more time to prepare for a debate?

Let's get ready to rumble.

Letterman Pummels McCain

The money quote:

"You know who John McCain is - he's the running mate of Sarah Palin."

Jim Demint Is...Right

For the first time in the history of this blog, I am going to agree with and reprint something Jim Demint said:

“After reviewing the Administration’s proposed bailout plan, I believe it is completely unacceptable. This plan does nothing to address the misguided government policies that created this mess and it could make matters much worse by socializing an entire sector of the U.S. economy. This plan fails to oversee or regulate the government failures that led to this crisis. Instead it greatly increases the role for Secretary Paulson whose market predictions have been consistently wrong in the last year, and provides corporate welfare for investment firms on Wall Street that don’t want to disclose their assets and sell them to private investors for market rates. Most Americans are paying their bills on time and investing responsibly and should not be forced to pay for the reckless actions of some on Wall Street, especially when no one can guarantee this will solve our current problems.”

H/T: FITSnew

McCain leads 51-45 in South Carolina

Sorry about the link, but I'm driving. Obama is within striking distance of McCain in SC, according to Rasmussen:

http://rasmussenreports.getmobile.com/site?t=1IKy66L6nllaI.HxbkLE9w&tsid=QWS69FBA1A050B700BBD36133A504D6C742136c116&tcid=QWCb86418ef88924781b5765043ee48a76e www.crackthebell.com Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

163,000 New Voters in South Carolina Since January 29

This morning at the grand opening of the statewide headquarters for the S.C. Campaign for Change, Congressman Jim Clyburn announced that more than 193,000 new voters have registered in South Carolina since January 1.

A more significant number, though, may be that 163,000 of those have registered since Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary in a landslide.

Wish List for the S.C. Campaign for Change

The Campaign for Change is the coordinated campaign effort in South Carolina, not just to turn out voters for Obama-Biden, but also to ensure Democratic victories in down ballot races.

Volunteers are need to canvass neighborhoods, register voters and work phone banks - but you can also help turn South Carolina blue by making a financial contribution or donating some of the items on the Wish List:

• Printer paper
• Printers
• Paper towels
• Dry erase boards
• Clipboards
• Canvas bags
• Bulk pens and pencils
• Phone headsets
• Prepaid cell phones
• Prepaid phone cards

Visit the S.C. Democratic Party website for more information.

Quote of the Day

"Of course, it's a fungible commodity and they don't flag, you know, the molecules, where it's going and where it's not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it's Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It's got to flow into our domestic markets first."

Sarah Palin

Yeah, I don't know what the hell she was talking about either.  I think maybe oil, since she knows more about energy that anyone in the whole world.  Let's go to the video, Steve.

H/T Political Animal

It's not the economy, stupid

Jump over to MSNBC real quick to watch the rest of "Morning Joe." The whole gang is suddenly cognizant of the fact that the disastrous economic news this week could turn the election into the Obama blowout they can't believe hasn't materialized already - i.e., why can't Obama close the deal.  So they are spending most of their time this morning discussing...

Michelle Obama saying don't base your vote on, "I like this guy. She's cute."