Yep. By the time I knew of Strom Thurmond and interacted with his office (never met the man himself) he was in elder-statesman mode and known most back home for taking care of his constituents. It took some time for me to really become aware of his noxious past, but the older I got and the more I learned about my…

I remember in the '90s getting fundraising letters from some national Republican committee that were sent out under McConnell's signature. Those letters symbolized everything that was, and is, royally fucked-up about our public discourse. Since those letters in the '90s I have had little but contempt for McConnell…

And IIRC Graham inherited a lot of Thurmond's staff, which was legendarily great at constituent service (as I know from experience), which helps with the goodwill. As for Fritz, he's a good role model for somebody who's genuinely interested in governing. His retirement was a serious loss for both this state and the…

I miss that man.

Went to bed last night feeling glum, imagining this would pass and that the House would pull a switcheroo over the weekend and the thing would end up on Trump's desk. Had visions of immense premium increases, people losing insurance, mortality rates going up.

As I told somebody last night who was talking about the Mooch, this Lord of the Flies remake CNN's been showing really sucks.

Oh, yeah. It's always interesting to see what types crawl out every six years and attempt to primary-challenge Graham, most notably when the bathroom-obsessed Lee Bright challenged him last time around. (As an aside, it was so delicious when Bright's bathroom-bill gambit blew up in his face last year and he lost his…

As a SC native, "this ignorant, stupid, beautiful state" is so much how I feel about it too. I get so angry about what can happen here but I wouldn't get this upset if I didn't love my home state so much.

I met up with a friend in Seattle several years ago. We were both staying at the big Doubletree across from the airport. There's a restaurant on the ground floor called Seaports. We met up there for dinner. I had an amazing piece of grilled salmon with wild rice as my entree and an Alaskan Amber, followed by an…

Just the line "I flew in the smoking section of a TWA 747 from JFK to Cairo" takes my mind back in so many ways….

Humor is the one thing that's kept me afloat since the election. If I don't laugh, I will give in to the despair. Humor keeps me in the fight.

"And neither of us liked what we saw."

This morning I took time to send each of them a simple little note of thanks via their web forms.

Yes, but it's an effective weight-loss plan.

Unless I keep my mind on the progress that has been made and that is worth fighting for, the despair will swallow me whole. I have (literally) survived too much in my life to give in.

My handwriting has always been bad. I remember getting horrid grades in elementary school on handwriting exercises, and "messy" was a common comment on my papers. Funny thing was, though, I could draw really well. To this day I struggle to write by hand in a uniform way - it usually starts out decent, but lets go in a…

When I was nine or ten and deathly afraid of nuclear war, Parade magazine ran an article about U.S.-Soviet tensions and provided the addresses of both President Reagan and Chairman Andropov. I forget if I wrote to Andropov, but I did write a letter to Reagan. A few weeks later a letter arrived from the White House,…

Yep. I know at our local airport (nine gates, seldom really that busy) a contract company handles bags and other ground services for two or three airlines, and they'll move from gate to gate as needed.

Politico has an interesting analysis of the potential legal issues:
http://www.politico.com/mag…

I have known and worked with active-duty and retired trans military people. To a one they were loyal Americans who took their oaths seriously. I spent all of yesterday trying to deal with the fact that a commander-in-chief just threw them, and several thousands more, under the bus with a series of Tweets.