YOUR BEST OPTION THIS YEAR? WRITING IN A DEAD MAN …
By FITSNEWS || This website had planned on endorsing Lowcountry businessman Thomas Ravenel for the United States Senate this fall – and we still believe he would, if elected, vote in a manner consistent with the freedom and free markets we work daily to advance. Well, during the hours of the day he’s aware of his surroundings, anyway …
But Thomas Ravenel is not going to be elected to the U.S. Senate … in fact it’s looking increasingly like he won’t even earn sufficient support to play the role of spoiler against uber-liberal “Republican” incumbent Lindsey Graham.
Ravenel’s once-promising candidacy has descended into reality television hell … a plunge powered by inner demons the 52-year-old businessman appears incapable of controlling.
That’s a shame …
If Ravenel were compos mentis, he would have made a wonderful United States Senator. The kind Washington, D.C. desperately needs right now. But he’s just not compos mentis … not even a little bit. And while scandals can be overcome and political errors can be corrected, you can’t fix crazy.
We know … we tried.
So who to vote for? Liberal Democrat Brad Hutto? Libertarian Victor Kocher?
Eh …
The grim reality here is unavoidable: Ravenel’s implosion has guaranteed the reelection of Graham, the single most dangerous member of the U.S. Senate.
As this website has noted on numerous previous occasions, Graham is everything that’s wrong with this country. He’s a shameless warmonger. And a special interest whore. And fiscal liberal. And Obama abettor. And a neo-fascist. And a friend of terrorists. And a thief of your liberty. Not to mention a fraud. And a hypocrite.
Whew …
And now he wants to run for president? Yeah … he’ll never win, obviously, but that’s not the point.
The thought of six more years of Graham in the U.S. Senate (appearing incessantly on all those insipid insider D.C. talk shows) is simply unbearable to contemplate … which is why we were so aggressive in supporting Ravenel’s bid at the outset.
But now that Ravenel’s candidacy is kaput, what’s a state to do?
Choose the lesser of four evils?
We’ve got an idea …
In 1954, Strom Thurmond was elected to the United States Senate as a write-in candidate after leaders in the state’s Democratic party blocked him from appearing on the ballot. Thurmond got 143,444 votes – trouncing Democrat Edgar A. Brown.
Thurmond – who spent nearly half a century in the Senate – obviously cannot run for election this year. He died in June 2003 and was laid to rest at Willowbrook Cemetery in his hometown of Edgefield, S.C. That’s the bad news. The good news? Thurmond’s segregationist views – which he never completely repudiated – can’t hurt our state anymore.
Although, you know, the more things change …
Anyway, in lieu of picking a particular poison in this race, we are endorsing (sixty years later) the write-in candidacy of the late United States Senator Strom Thurmond. Because six years of being represented by a dead guy is better than any of the options currently on the table.
***
59 comments
Thurmond may have been a segregationist, but deep down he loved black people…so much so that he had a baby with one.
Looks like he’s ready to make another baby in that photo.
REMEMBER – Strom has a son who is named “Strom Thurmond”. Since his father has died, “Jr.” is “Strom Thurmond”. Be careful what you ask for.
BTW: I have no problem with Lindsay Graham and Tim Scott. I think they have served us “mahhhhhvellllously” for the past couple of years. {It would, however, suit me fine if Lindsay could divorce himself from the Senator from Arizona}.
I just got back from a vacation trip that included Monticello. Still more controversy over the “Sally Hemings connection” there in VA than there is here in SC about Strom [the elder’s] miscegnation with his servant girl. After all, the Thurmond family acknowledged the “half-sister” on the monument. It was no secret among us that keep track of what is going on in SC.
Twice today, now, you’ve made me want to post one-word posts.
Here you go.
Moron.
Well FITS if you can go out and find enough dead guys to vote, you might get your wish.
Thanks for the fucking nightmares,dude.
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/236x/ee/8d/ee/ee8dee954869aeae1b4c0b600f8a6828.jpg
Been laughing about this post all day…
Are you back on drugs?
Back in the day, I had the pleasure of working with Ol’Strom’s staff on some Medicare issues. Strom Thurmond had the best constituent services of any senator serving at that time. He may have appeared to be a doddering old fool but in the early nineties he was still very much on top of the game.
Though I only met with him a couple of times for very short periods, several years later, as I was walking across the concourse at Reagan National, I heard my name called by a readily identifiable voice. It was Ol’Strom -though the ravages of time had caught up with his body, the razor sharp mind was still there. He not only remembered who I was, but who I worked for and the fact that I was a captain in the Reserves.
He thanked me for my service (remember, he was a retired Major General who had landed in a glider on D-Day) and for my assurance to his staff on the Medicare issue. Did he have issues? You bet. Was he the vehement racist some would like to accuse him of being? Emphatically, no.
We could do a lot worse than having Ol’Strom looking out for the state he loved and served so well for the better part of 80 years.
Being a member of the elected elite has its benefits.
Sure it does but the measure of the man is what he does with those benefits.
mmm…so how does your girl Haley measure up?
Remains to be seen. Remember, I see Haley as the least bad of the bad choices.
“Remains to be seen.”
lulz
Neat story, Colonel! Thank you for sharing it.
Not a vehement racist by the time you met him? Of course not, but you can’t dismiss the vehement racist that he was back in the 50’s… despite having an affinity for Brown Sugar poon-tang and the southern genteelness to pay for the care of the daughter that he birthed… yeah right…
I met Ol’ Strom probably a few years after your initial meeting of him, and he asked me if i could recommend the best shoe shine method to his staff while referring to me as “boy”… As a mid-twenties young man, i didn’t appreciate the “joke” so i told him that the green mucus from an upper respiratory infection worked best and to go inhale asbestos to get that infection going as soon as possible…
We all have perspectives of people and events, but RARELY are those perspectives 100% consistent for all people and circumstances… In this case, i met a Strom that you didn’t, and you met a Strom that i didn’t…
The Strom you met just might be the best for this seat, however, the Strom that i met, not at all…
Yeah, if we were categorizing our recollections, one of us would go into autobiographical and the other into fiction, I’ll let you figure out which is which. If anything like what you claim had happened there wouldn’t have been a paper in the country who would have missed out on running that story.
” i told him that the green mucus from an upper respiratory infection worked best and to go inhale asbestos to get that infection going as soon as possible…”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Odd how a comment like that will bring back a memory. In Navy boot camp at Great Lakes, we had some guys with the same names. From Brooklyn were two Bernard O. Schwartz (who were not related and had never met before). Then we had two black guys named Willie T. Harper, one of which was from Chicago (don’t remember where the other guy was from).
Anyway, to get to the point, Willie T. had the upper bunk from me, and got extra money for spit-shining shoes for some of the other guys. I asked him why they wanted him to do the shine. Willie told me that they thought “nigger spit” had something special in it. I told him that I had lived in the South my entire life and never knew that. Willie told me that it doesn’t really but those Yankee boys think it does – and he was paid 50 cents per pair. I kept his secret for him.
that’s another of those myths that got passed down from who knows where… but that story is funny as hell!!!
As a mid-twenties young man, i didn’t appreciate the “joke” so i told
him that the green mucus from an upper respiratory infection worked best
and to go inhale asbestos to get that infection going as soon as
possible…
Wow, dude, that was pretty uncalled for. Hope you’ve matured since then.
…maturity should have grown the old man, who i was actually excited to meet, to a point that he should have known better than anyone that no young black man will accept being called “boy” more than once in a less than 5 minute meet and greet along with the assumption that i know or want to help him get the best shine for his shoes…
and if you don’t see the insult of it all, f^@& you too!!
is that mature enough for you?
And to think that in 1944, Strom was too old to parachute into Normandy, he had to take the glider. Which was not that much more safer but still. It was the age limit of jumpers that put him in the Glider.
He was a sitting circuit Judge, an office that exempted him from the service yet he gave it up and served, not only served, but served with Airborne!
Could you see a punk like this TR doing something like that? HA
He was doubly exempt at age 42 and a sitting judge. Some have tried to make out that he was a “desk jockey” but his bronze star for ballot and purple heart below that effort.
Strom Thurmond…Because six years of being represented by a dead guy is better than any of the options currently on the table.
John C. Calhoun.
*Go big or go home.*
Wow, that’s definitely “going big”. Calhoun would be the ultimate “anti-Graham”
What on earth are y’all talking about, Strom WAS dead his last two terms!!
Strom was very much alert and alive until the very end of his tenure. By ’99 when he stepped down from most of his committees, he was already 96 years old and had begun to slow physically but the keen political mind was still there. He looked the part of the doddering old fool but that was far from the truth, he never missed a floor vote and worked the back rows cutting deals for South Carolina right up until the end. In his closing comments too the Senate upon his retirement he said “…I love you all, but I love your wives more…”. It’ll be a long time before you’ll see another man like Strom.
You ain’t kiddin’…
Theme of Article = CLICK WHORE…please click THIS hyperlink…and then THIS hyperlink…and THIS hyperlink….
Oh, and don’t wait before you click THIS hyperlink.
Psst. I’m trying to up my website traffic. Thus, I wrote this crappy article that is completely impossible and irrelevant. But I emphatically did make sure to insert hyperlinks ad nauseam.
Have fun.
Love,
Will
Click Whore (picture says it all)
Strom’s face in the pic is Willie’s face as he watches the clicks roll in.
“Jus’ one mo’ time!”
My parents were born as Democrats and voted that way their entire lives — until that day:
After my Dad retired from the Army her eventually ended up with a civil service job at Ft. Jackson. A time came when his supervisor was really dumping some shit on him (which I was never told about). My Mom could not take my Dad’s misery around the house, so one day she penciled a letter and took it to Strom’s office.
Three days later my Dad’s supervisor called him in and said, “You’ve got some friends in high places.” There was no more crap or harassment after that.
My parents voted for Strom every election – a constituent service, a small service, but it was a big deal for my parents.
Read about a newly wed couple, she was from SC, he from UK. INS and the Feds figure to mess with him and had threatened to deport him because some paperwork issues and they could not get it corrected. A Friend of their’s called Strom. That was all it took. Two days later they were called to Columbia office where INS folks had all his paperworked laid out for him to sign, he walked out a US Citizen. Strom just said, “Make sure that boy votes Republican!”
Hell of a man…
nope. a long serving senator could have made some contribution to reforming bureaucracy. thurmond preferred to use his power to act as a gatekeeper, doling out personal favors and collecting chits. its the most common behavior among politicos and 3rd world tinpots, but its certainly not admirable.
Thank you!
Did he charge for those services? No. That’s what made him different from 3rd world tinpots and Democrats. He helped his people navigate the bureaucracy that was not of his making. Sorry you missed out on it.
“Did he charge for those services?”
Apparently he did.
“collecting chits”
All that aside, didn’t he also get rich based on his insider knowledge of where the roads were gonna be put down? I’m pretty sure that no one even disputes that fact.
Are you referring to the interchange on I-20 that cut through his farmland? Wasn’t there a 2-page aerial photo in Life magazine and titled “Strom’s Little Acre” – or is my memory wrong?
Can’t speak for that, never heard that. Didn’t know he was really “rich”.
All those chits were paid out in benefits for South Carolinians.
At his death, Strom’s heirs divided about $200,000. Throughout his life, Strom gave significant amounts of his wealth to charities, schools and other civic organizations. Every major college and university in South Carolina has a scholarship that he funded – significant money went to Clemson.
I guess Ol’ Strom is really the perfect example of a South Carolina politician — a man who made his career as a rabid segregationist while hiding (and paying off) his child born of a black mother. He was a racist hypocrite. I wonder how he felt when he thought about his daughter? Did he think about her while he was filibustering the Civil Rights Act in 1957?
He wasn’t really hiding her. It was well known around here. He was into race relations long before any Civil Rights Acts.
“…it’s looking increasingly like he won’t even earn sufficient support to play the role of spoiler against uber-liberal “Republican” incumbent Lindsey Graham.”
Increasingly? Wake up, bro. TR NEVER had a chance- not to win, not as a spoiler. he is damaged goods, and in some of the worst ways possible for any candidate. Never…had…a…shot. Period. If a pollster really told you that at some point months ago, here’s some cheap advice for anyone listening- never hire that idiot to run any part of a campaign for someone you would like to see elected.
Never understood how Will could back someone that was as damaged as TR, and what’s so ironic,TR did the damage all by himself.
“Never understood how Will could back someone that was as damaged as TR”
Really? He backed/worked for Sanford, backed/worked on Haley, and then backed/worked for T-Rav….you really don’t see a pattern there?
For the record thurmond has ALWAYS had a better chance of being the spoiler in this race than Ravanel.
Ha! True indeed…
I am at the point where I would vote for Mickey Mouse before I would vote for Lindsey Graham. Yeah TR is damaged goods and would probably end up spinning out of control. So then he would be either voted out or forced out and Haley or the next Gov could appoint another Senator. Whatever you think about Haley she did appoint Tim Scott who has been a very good Senator.
But at least we would be rid of Graham.
Looks like Strom stories are the order of the day. Mine isn’t about Strom, but about his wife. I was in a history class with Nancy at USC when she was still a student and engaged to the much older Senator. I was a good bit on the radical side, and didn’t care much for her geriatric groom-to-be. The professor, Dolan, was ultra-liberal himself and obviously hated the ground Thurmond walked on. He was also a pompous, overbearing, ragingly nasty asshole. Out of over a hundred students in that room, he would often zero in on Nancy, glaring at her while pontificating over some issue or another where he took exception to Thurmond’s position. His voice would drip with disdain as he pronounced the senior Senator’s name.
I hear a lot of negative stuff about her these days, but at that time she was an amazingly poised and centered young woman. She never batted an eye at Dolen’s obnoxious behavior. Never betrayed even a hint of irritation. She merely paused in her note-taking until the son of a bitch got it out of his system, then started taking them again when he was back on course with the day’s lesson.
No big point to be made here. Strom Thurmond’s sweet young thing was a far better human being, in my estimation than the tenured tyrant who took such delight in tormenting her. I wanted to carry her books, but figured there was secret service lurking around that would jump my hippie ass if I got that close to her.
Will, why are you not endorsing the Libertarian?
One day he says he hopes the GOP dies, and quickly, the next moment he’s endorsing a dead Republican for Senate.
What I admired about Strom is he did not give the Democrats the Majority in the Senate 2000-02. The US Senate was 50-50 after the 2000 Presidential election. Ole Strom stayed true to his party and held off the grim reaper till after the 2002 Midterms. Outstanding!
Great, so now not only can dead people vote, they can get elected too.
Great timing by the way, just in time for Halloween.
actually one less republican vote in the senate might do a small amount of good. write in thurmond.
Strom brought home the bacon.
Old Strom, fucked everything that walked and the press didn’t really print the “personal lives” of great ruling class so he probably did all kinds of fun shit that could have put his ass in the clink if he would have gotten caught. Sounds like someone else. They are ALL crooked and fucking us all on a regular basis. Republican, Democrat, Independent Republicans, Libertarians to a lesser degree because they are just unelectable. America, our best years are behind us. However for Guv I am voting for hemp man, at least that sumbitch makes me laugh.
For the record, I went to high school with both those girls in the pic. They’re from Mississippi. I’m sure Strom was thinking he had a shot at both of em.
“Well, during the hours of the day he’s aware of his surroundings, anyway …” LOL :)