Haire of the Dog

As anyone heading to the North Charleston Coliseum knows, the incident on the Ravenel Bridge not only turned Highway 17 into a zombie-apocalypse highway-to-hell of parked cars, it effectively shutdown the roadways leading north out of the Holy City, including alternative routes like Spruill Avenue. (It brought traffic to a halt on both North Rhett Avenue and the Park Circle traffic circle in North Charleston.)

And while many of those drivers were trying to get back to their homes in North Charleston, Summerville, and beyond, you can bet that a good number of them were just trying to get to the Jimmy Buffett show on the NPAC.

However, according to Alan Coker, marketing managing for NPAC, as crippling as yesterday's traffic woes were, their impact on the entertainment complexes' two events, the Buffett concert and the Broadway production Mary Poppins, were minor.

Coker says that the Buffett show was only delayed by 15 to 20 minutes while the Poppins performances was only 10 to 15 off schedule. He notes that traffic was pretty hairy getting to the NPAC area, but once vehicles made it there, it was business as usual, with no more traffic problems than usual. Coker adds that by 8 p.m. the streets around the complex were relatively clear of traffic.

To see a slideshow from the yesterday's Buffett show, click here.

I've been saying for months now that Barack Obama is all but destined to win a second term.

Yes, the economy is gloomy, but it's getting better, slowly but surely.

Yes, he's unpopular, but no single GOP contendor will inspire the masses — in particular independents — to swarm the polls on Election Day.

Yes, neither the Right nor the Left is satisfied with Obamacare — the GOPers think it'll bring death panels and European-style socialism to the U.S., while the Dems are pissed the plan doesn't create a single-payer system — but the fact remains that he killed Osama bin Laden and indirectly took out Muammar Gaddafi and that is pretty fucking badass.

So the case is pretty clear: the dude is just unbeatable.

Or at least that's what I thought.

Now, I'm beginning to think otherwise. If Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are on the Republican ticket together, Obama's re-election hopes will collapse quicker than Demi Moore after huffing a few whip-its.

What's particularly funny about this scenario is that it's just so fucking clear. It just makes sense.

But now, thanks to a report in today's Washington Post, that plan just might be in the works. Amy Gardner of WaPo reports:

Romney’s aides are “quietly in touch with Ron Paul,” according to a Republican adviser who is in contact with the Romney campaign and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its internal thinking. The two campaigns have coordinated on minor things, the adviser said — even small details, such as staggering the timing of each candidate’s appearance on television the night of the New Hampshire primary for maximum effect.

One advantage for Romney is that Paul’s presence in the race helps keep the GOP electorate fractured. But there is also a growing recognition that the congressman plans to stay in the contest over the long term — and that accommodating him and his supporters could help unify Republican voters in the general election against President Obama.

Now Gardner isn't saying that Mitt and Ron are a lock to partner in November, but you would have to be naive to think the two — or at least their people — have not discussed it and perhaps are even working out a deal right now. And if they haven't, well, then they should.

Why? We all know that few Republicans are enthusiastic about Romney, but plenty of GOPers will vote for him on Election Day anyway. And because of that lack of enthusiasm, the Republicans will turn out fewer voters than the Democrats. But if you throw Paul into the mix, you will immediately win the support of the most passionate fan base politics today; more importantly, it's a fan base that includes what could easily be a nearly equal number of right-wingers and left-wingers. The end result: Paul is the only Republican in this race who can siphon off some of the left-leaning voters that Obama needs to win.

Some may argue that Paul's revolutionaries view Romney as the quintessential establishment stooge. And that may be true. But the partnership will not stop them from voting for Paul. Nothing short of a zombie apocalypse will prevent that from happening. The same goes if Ron's son Rand ends up being Mitt's running mate. Paul fans know that father and son are virtually one and the same.

Of course, if a Romney-Paul ticket ends up a reality, then there is only one move left for Obama, and that's to ditch Joe Biden and pick up Hillary Clinton. And right now, Hillary is not only the most admired woman in America — a honor she's held for 10 years — she's probably the sole member of the Obama administration who has earned the respect of the average Republican voter thanks to her nearly spotless tenure as the Secretary of State. With Clinton on the ticket, Obama just might win again.

According to a tweet from the S.C. Senate GOP caucus, the state Senate has voted unanimously to overturn DHEC's decision approving a water quality permit for the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project. Previously, the state House voted for a similar bill, which passed 111-0.

As you know, without the water quality permit the proposed Savannah River dredging project would not be able to proceed. (Or at least that's one interpretation of the law. Another suggests that the project never needed DHEC's approval in the first place. It was a mere formality.)

I don't know about you, but all of a sudden I feel like shouting "hoorah" or "huzzah" or some other equally enthusiastic shit. The Port of Charleston has been saved. Yay! Nikki Haley and her evil goons over at the Department of Health and Environmental Control have been defeated. Yay! I'm sitting at work typing away at a blog post when I could be at drinking bourbon at a bar and scribbling dirty doodles of Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain getting bested by the men of the Salami Fighting Association on a beer coaster. Boo!

Whatever.

See, I seriously doubt this victory will last. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the men and women of the S.C. General Assembly know this as well. It's all just for show. We all know that ultimately the courts will get involved and the harbor expansion project will proceed as planned while the Port of Charleston faces a future of obsolescence.

As I said in a previous post on this matter, the reports about the DHEC vote have been wrong about one crucial point, a point so crucial that it nearly destroys the conspiracy theory that Gov. Haley was paid off by friends of the Port of Savannah to advance the project: It was not the DHEC board of directors that overturned the permit denial as has been widely reported; it was the DHEC staff that reversed course.

The distinction is important for the simple fact that DHEC board members, as Haley appointees, are beholden to the governor for their paychecks while the DHEC staff is not. Haley can replace the board at will, but she'd likely have one helluva time firing all of the DHEC staffers involved in the permit denial. Just saying.

Also, it's important to keep in mind that the Army Corps of Engineers not only approved the Savannah Harbor expansion, they were the party that appealed the earlier DHEC denial, so if there's any conspiracy it must include them as well. Oh and you'd also have to add the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the gang of rogues who plotted against South Carolina. After all, but the EPA and Fish and Wildlife have no objections to the harbor expansion project.

See, in order for this conspiracy to work, it has to be solely between Nikki Haley, the Georgia Ports Authority, and the DHEC board. Once you throw in the DHEC staff, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the EPA, the whole thing starts to get too fucking complicate — that is unless you want to believe that this thing goes all the way to the top of the U.S. government. Ugh. (That said, none of this means that Haley didn't pocket some cash in a little game of you-scratch-my-back, I-scratch-yours.)

When it comes down to it, all of this bitching and moaning by the General Assembly is about keeping the Port of Savannah from getting a competitive edge over the Port of Charleston. The trouble is, there's a good reason that the Port of Charleston is behind, and it's because our state elected officials and their comrades in D.C. have been sitting on their asses instead of making sure that the Port of Charleston gets the money it needs to expand. It's their laziness — not the acts of some sinister cabal — that has put the Port of Charleston way behind the Port of Savannah.

P.S.: To all of you who came to this page via Huffington Post and made it this far, you deserve like two gold stars and an A++. To those of you HuffPo readers who didn't make it to here, you owe me a bourbon and Coke for being lame lemming linkers. I will find you.

I hate defending Nikki Haley. I really do.

In a perfect world, Gov. Haley would stumble from one muck-up to the next, like the Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull in a china shop. And most of the time she does. And nowhere is that more evident than with this whole Savannah Port-DHEC brouhaha.

See, according to the story we've all been told, DHEC staff rejected a water quality permit that would have allowed the dredging stage of the Savannah Port upgrade to move forward. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal didn't much like this, so he met with Haley and asked her to urge the DHEC board to approve an appeal hearing. Haley did and DHEC granted the port project a hearing. Then that hearing took place and the DHEC board overturned the staff decision denying the permit. Sometime in or around all that, Haley held a fundraiser in Georgia at a lawfirm with ties to the port, ties which she later lied about. And if you believe the whispers, the whole thing was really about Haley getting a primetime speaking spot at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Whew.

Well, a key part of that story is just wrong. In fact, I'm not sure why anybody keeps reporting it. The truth of the matter is, the DHEC board of directors did not overturn the staff decision denying the permit. That simply didn't happen.

I've talked to DHEC spokesperson Adam Myrick on several occasions about this matter and I've gone over what's supposed to be every single piece of e-mail between DHEC staff and the Georgia Ports Authority staff from Sept. 1, 2011, to Nov. 30, 2011, and the one thing that all of that wasted time and energy indicated was that the DHEC staff met with the Army Corps of Engineers and the GPA and came to an agreement. And only after that decision was made did the DHEC board approve the staff's decision to aprove the port project.

Considering that simple fact alone, there was absolutely no reason for the Senate Medical Affairs committee to hold a hearing in November to find out why the DHEC board reversed the DHEC staff's earlier decision. Why? There was no reversal on the board of directors' part. They didn't change their minds about jack shit. In fact, as much as it pains me to say it, that particular committee hearing is looking more and more like the bit of political theater that Haley said it was.

Given all of that, it's simply not clear why the Medical Affairs committee staged the hearing in the first place — or what they hoped to find? Was it to simply embarrass Haley and to give her a public in-out, in-outing? Or was it a move on the part of her defenders to protect the governor from a possible future investigation since the committee's ruling ultimately declared that the Savannah Port-DHEC decision was all on the up and up? Who knows? Certainly not me. I mean, if the Senate Medical Affairs committee really wanted to get to the bottom of it, why didn't they talk to DHEC staff? They're the ones who reversed their decision, not the board. Ugh.

But one thing is clear, this matter is not settled. In fact, yesterday, the entire state House of Representatives — that's 111 people, folks — voted to nix the deal. Evidently, this theatrical production is just getting underway. I hear that's if all goes well, it'll headline Spoleto this year. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.

I never thought this day would come. Hell, I never even thought it was possible. But I agree with Ann Coulter, and it scares the living shit out of me.

I mean, if I was a unicorn, I would have dropped a baker's dozen of sprinkle-covered sugar cookies in my britches the second I heard that Coulter was bashing Newt Gingrich for more or less being a boastful little bigot who was putting the needs of his own morbidly obese ego over the needs of his party — and his country.

Here's what the high propagandess of the Republican Party had to say on Fox and Friends about the serial adulterer from Georgia:

"Having a candidate who calls Obama a Kenyan colonialist or socialist, that is not what you need, and at the same time, with Newt Gingrich you get the name calling for the president, very popular with the tea party crowd, not so popular with independents, and, he won’t put a fence on the border but wants amnesty for illegals and took 1.6 million from Freddie Mac and he attacked Paul Ryan’s plan on Social Security and with Newt Gingrich you throw out the baby and keep the bath water!”

And Newt wasn't alone in drawing Ann's ire. So too were the good GOPers in South Carolina:

“Apparently, South Carolinians would rather have the emotional satisfaction of a snotty remark toward the president than to beat Obama in the fall.”

Wow. Just wow. I mean, ... ooh a sugar cookie. Wait a second that's just a Girl Scout cookie.

Anyhow, I'm as shocked as Coulter that South Carolinians went for Newt. With the election of Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, I thought we had put the days when a race-baiting tub of fryer fat like Gingrich could rally the Southern Strategy wing of the Republican. But I was wrong.

Evidently, all you have to do is proudly call the nation's first African-American commander in chief a "food stamp president" and accuse Fox News contributor Juan Williams of being the type of person to whom work is an alien concept. Now you can either read bigotry into that last bit there or not. It's your call. But it's clear to me exactly what Newt was saying: Juan Williams is a lazy black man just like all the other members of his shifty race.

However, when it comes down to it, Newt's not-so-subtle racist jabs may have won him South Carolina, but they probably won't win him the GOP nomination, no matter how much Gingrich's Palmetto State fans want to see him put that uppity Obama in his place on national TV.

And if that happens, South Carolina's importance in future GOP primary races will be in jeopardy. We'll be just another a small state that picks also-rans and fringers on the way to the first true-blue Republican primary contest, Florida, the place where voters pick presidents.