Friends Who I think will vote for Biden

Update October 5

 From Upstate SC, Clark Price Atty off Wade Hampton, Gaffney Native, Catholic

Mike Chibbaro, Author the grand memoir of integration of Wade Hampton HS, The Mighty Generals, I think also Catholic as friend of Norm Macdonald, but could be Baptist as also friend of Clyde Mayes. Smile

Ross Glidewell, raised a neighbor of SC Gov Riley and doubles tennis partner of Paul Scarpa's son in the 90s Juniors in SC. Ross Wife is a colleague of Price above and Scarpa's Mother, Paul's wife a great friend of Kenny Stabler.

    a NE Bama friend who works for UPS though anonymous for the times being

   I think it safe to say David Shi, the former President of Furman, I can't imagine otherwise.

   And Ron Rash cause he has stated publicly his last collection of Short Stories mused by Bonhoeffer. Nobody I know who knows Bonhoeffer and the human heart as deeply as Rash, plumbs the depths like Marilynne Robinson in very recent exhaustive profile in the New Yorker; they ain't voting for Trump or have anything to do with the Mitch mcConnell/Lindsey Graham shenanigans on the Supreme Court cause the Bible Rightly understood speaks against it!!!

 This list will be composed of public facebook statements, impressions, conversations, text and sometimes general assessment and observation. Most of these folks Ive known along life's way in South Carolina in Gaffney or at Furman, a few in Tennessee and Rome Georgia, immediate and extended Family, Baptist circles and the last 30 years in Alabama

  Diane Broome Masters. Gaffney Facebook mid 60s grad, ardent progressive

    Barty Sides, Presbyterian minister's son, Beta Club now in NE

Mike Hammett. Lived down the street in SC, classmate, met Joe Biden at Limestone College

 Claire Brown Byars. Through Facebook, Miss Everything that Beppy Rankin and Margaret Callison didn't get Class of 71 GHS. And there were plenty of honors to go around, All three outstanding Gaffney products, known mostly by reputation

   Andie Macdowell, the actress. She thrived in the good side of the Billy Graham family during her stay in Asheville NC about ten years

    Libby Mitchell, Gaffney product, former LT gov of Maine, first name basis with Hillary Clinton and and Elizabeth Warren and her nephew Tim Childers who was on Danny Ford's Natty in 81

   Cathy Littlejohn, Binky in HS. Outspoken.

   Patti Scruggs. Strong leaner in the anti Trump direction, though she could surprise me. Distant relative of the banjo great Earl Scruggs, who was in DC in at least one anti war March Vietnam era.

   Robert McCraw, Tennis team, 1969 Gaffney Beta Club President.

   Clark Price. I hope he doesnt disappoint me

   Roger Milliken Jr. Good friend summer of 1970. Donated quarter million to Obama in 2012 so I doubt he's switched to Trump in the interim.

   Randall Balmer. Religious political author. Dartmouth

    Family

    My sister one of the best Sunday School teachers in Upstate SC. And her son and likely her husband though he doesnt talk about it as much as the rest of us.

    First Cousin Tim Wood, history with the CBF and married to the niece of former SC State Treasurer, Grady Patterson

    Cousin Dixie on Momma's side and her husband Scott. Ordained UMC minister

    Penny Cooper, Meta, Lynn Arve friends of my sister in Upstate SC and likely Karen Baker Carter though she is in a bind newly minted with Pickens Co SC State House Rep. Almost for certain her Youngest Daughter who majored in all things Dolly Parton at U Tenn is with us

    Todd Heifner, wife , at least three of five sons, and the rest of extended family unless you deep in the Louisiana Branch of the extended cousins.

    Almost two thousand or more of my friends in CBF and Alliance of Baptists and the other 30 thousand I don't know by first name

    I expect at least sixty percent of the Limestone College Trustees in Gaffney will vote for Biden, maybe 65 percent for Jaime Harrison against Lindsey Graham; 90 percent or more of the Furman, Wofford and Converse Trustees and 88 percent of Presbyterian College. Let's hope at least 55 percent of Clemson trustees. I think itis a given Trevor Lawrence and and Darrien Rencher are Biden voters with their friend Deshaun Watson and Drew Brees, though Dabo may slide into the Trump column for reasons that make sense only to himself and the senior staff and Praise Team of New Springs Gloryland Mega campus congregation Seneca SC and elsewhere across the Upstate in concert with Church of the Highlands from Gadsden through Bham to Tuscaloosa Alabma.

     Dann Brown a friend of Bishop Tutu and Carlyle Marney from Furman are voting Biden as is his predecessor in Clarkesville Ga Episcopal pulpit Barbara Brown Taylor.

     Brett Morgen, my friend and great friend of Mick Jagger I have to imagine is in the Biden camp in honor of his fellow Jew Ruth Bader Ginsburg and all indications are Eric Motley whose love of RBG testified in the Wash Post is moving from Bush 43 White House over to Biden in this election. How could he explain himself if otherwise at the Aspen Institute.

   Former Miss Alabama contestant and good friend of Clemson and Jax St chaplain Tad Tadlock and Clemson Natty lineman Marler under Danny Ford, they all Biden all the Way.

     John Linley Baker of Charleston, Al Newell and wife Elsie, Judy Clark, Steve Miller,  Vic Greene, all Furman friends will vote Biden as well as current influencers Minor Mickel Shaw and you have to expect President Davis given the impassioned proclamations on Breonna Taylor recently at Good Faith Media. Mary Alice Birdwhistle now in Louisville formerly of Davis congregation in Waco Texas, Calvary Baptist church.

    I could go on and on, David Currie great Baptist in Texas and Mark Baggett great Baptist from Bham both of whom at my invitation tried to convince Donnie Myers and others Feb 2002 what was at stake in the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. Donnie Says why bring it here, and today Casey Mattox of Collinsville is on the front page of the NY Times. Whether Donnie coulda directed him somewhere else, who is to day. But Donnie's extended family now includes Eric Mackey the state school supe for Alabama.

    Charles Marsh, friend of myself and Susan Weaver and her husband John of Collinsville, Marsh the definitive biographer of Bonhoeffer is in the Biden Camp. So does all this change many votes in Gaffney or Collinsville? I doubt it, maybe Avery Payton but maybe not. But History will show a little of this moment for posterity and my world as recorded on this "illustrious" blog

   Oh Screenwriter Russ Beene, clearly Biden, Biden all the way.

  

Fundamentalist Catholic Amy Coney lacks Church State virtues to be on Supreme Court

        Let's get one thing out of the way at the outset. I was most Intellectual of my High School class in Gaffney SC in 1971 but I am satisfied Amy Coney the Catholic intellectual brings more wits to the academic table and SAT Score than I could imagine. But I have friends, I do have friends that can match wits with her and that includes at Dartmouth, Harvard, Sewanee, Radcliffe, and even an mutual acquaintance at Notre Dame who wrote America's God or some such title. I once shook hands with Andrew Cuomo who folks at Notre Dame know, Mario the Scenario.

     And collectively they have a better vision for the country than Amy, Trump and McConnell.

    One disaster that will forever taint her nomination is Franklin Graham's noon prayers today and then this afternoon Trump meeting with his fundamentalist lackeys who seek a preference for their brand of the religion in the public square.

      I'm certain my friends at Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in DC, one staffer from Ft Payne Alabama and another from Jackson, Mississippi whose mother was a good baptist legend of the Home Ec Department in Eudora Welty's neighborhood. Not exactly AOC or Rashida Tlaib radical wackos as Trump and Tuberville would call them but folks who understand the best of their tradition which would not seek a preference over Tlaib, AOC , Pelosi OR even the legacy of RBG as Eric Motley the Bama Republic in the mold of Frank Johnson and Abraham Lincoln testified in the NY Times on Wednesday.

     These fundamentalist goons Amy is flirting with are poster childed in the demagogue WA Criswell, pastor of the FBC Dallas the last half of the 20th Century. It was Criswell whose anti Catholicism and race baiting and to use the language of Donald Trump, whose Bullshit JFK made history with in his response to Baptist preachers in Houston in 1960, now immortalized as one of the great Church state addresses of American History.

    Now the righteous Amy is prostituting herself, is being played by the forces of the White Citizens Council, the Birchers, the dark money politics of the NRA , the mendacity of the anti abortion movement for the preferences of Bobby Jeffress, Liberty University, the sophomoric Truth for a New Generation conferences of Trey Gowdy's FBC Spartanburg SC and the worst elements of Billy Graham's legacy his grand daughter Jerushah Duford has gone national to resist.

     So this attractive Catholic some say brilliant Mother of 7 is in the wrong place at the wrong time in American History, an occasion for the premature ejaculation of Trump, Mitch and Lindsey.

    Pardon some of my unattractive analogies but I wanted to do my best to put it in language Trump and Paul Pressler, Al Mohler and Paige Patterson and the leaders of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention would understand.

      For reference material I suggest Wuthnow's Rough Country, Robert Jones, White too Long, Atwater's NWord memo as framed in Stuart Stevens it Was All a Lie and the essays of Bill Leonard and others at Good Faith Media and Baptist News and Auburn Historian Wayne Flynt, Baptist Sunday School teacher and Atticus Finch and Harper Lee's Best friend in Alabama.

     Also given this Trump moment of racial unrest, Amy should ask herself What would Calpurnia Do? I think I know, Calpurnia would run to Jesus to get away from these Devils who are promoting her.

     God Bless The United States of America, the America of Fannie Lou Hamer, Frank Johnson, Azar Nafisi and Jill Lepore, My Momma and the best of her family who go back to 1840 in Alabama and My Daddy who as a C Student in the Baptist Seminary in the 50s with Randall Lolley and Bill Self came down on the Side of Stewart A Newman who Said: "WA Criswell doesn't speak for me."

    Next time Chic Fil A and what it meant to me to be baptized in the church memorializing George W. Truett who was Fundy criswell the demagogues, predecessor. Also See Dallas 1963

Trump, Tuberville, Patriotic education, Science Deniers and Critical Race Theory

  On Friday Sept 18 I left a message for Eric Mackey the School Supe for the state of Alabama where my Mother's family goes back to the 1840s. In fact for about 30 years I lived about seven miles from Mackey's Sand Rock HS and know several members of his extended family, many of them in education.

      Galileo and the Science Deniers by Livio recently crossed my radar and raises a conundrum for Mackey and any educator of conscience in Bama as you have declare a political party and the likes of Jason Barnett and Collinsville Principal Bradley Crawford have thrown in with the Republicans. In fact Jordan Doufexis worked with Crawford to help Barnett become School supe for Dekalb County, all three grads of Plainview HS home of Tennessee Vols Coach Jeremy Pruitt.

    Doufexis is in tight with the Tuberville for senate campaign. Tubby a Super Trumper, and also tight with Nathan Ledbetter Bama's House Majority Chair and co chair of Tubby's campaign.

     So what does all this mean for education in Alabama for people of conscience. Gonna be a tightrope for sure. I am hoping Bradley for the sake of the Hispanic population in his school where Barnett previously was, will break ranks with Doufexis and Ledbetter and join the 120 Republicans of conscience nationally and growing and declaring Trump unfit for a second term.

    You don't have to get a degree in rocket science in Huntsville to see that Nick Saban has already declared Tommy Tuberville unfit for a term in the US Senate in Trump Land where Trump called two of his Heisman Trophy winners sonsabitches a few years ago.

    Nick didnt like that and said as much at the time in Saturdays Down South and has a lot more to say in last few weeks. Even Doufexis is aware Sports Illustrated is on it and the Tuberville camp is expecting an October suprise in those pages. I guess Paul Finebaum is aware of that as he was talking to Rick Karle on Wednesday; and of course many of you know Joe Scarborough is a graduate of U Bama so he probably knows too.

      The integrity of public education is at stake with butt licking Tuberville. The 30 year archivist for Alabama , Ed Bridges, wrote the Bicentennial history of Alabama. In the Reconstruction chapter, in a section on White Power, he talks about the Daughters of the Confederacy and other groups distorting Civil War History into the Lost Cause Gone with the Wind mode that taught Bama white kids and others throughout the state an Aunt Jemima history. He said that while incidental anecdotes could be raised on the whole the DOCon texts perverted Civil War history in fundamental ways.

    Like Myself Bridges, a native of Bainbridge, Georgia is a graduate of Furman University. Also a grad though much more recent is Clayte Hubbard, son of former Bama House Speaker Mike Hubbard who made a small fortune on the privatization of Auburn Sports network; and then gained greater fame going on Morning Joe among other Alabama connected media to talk about his Republican handshake.

    I hope Opelika Auburn news explores this soon and asks Clayte how much he knows of Marshall Frady, a journalist whose work Bridges and I know well, including the LT Dan biography of George Wallace and his beautiful short bio of Martin Luther King.

     So what kind of American history is Eric Mackey gonna promote for Alabama. Daughters of the Confederacy and Trump History, or a history that is honest and more likely to be embraced by the mostly people of color on the Auburn and Bama football teams and their extended families. And what are Jason Barnett and Bradley Crawford gonna promote in Dekalb County to our Hispanic friends about Trump and recent DACA politics.

   Here is a great piece posted four days ago on Trump's "patritotic" history of Noatalgia

       https://religiondispatches.org/nostalgia-voters-not-really-trump-and-his-supporters-value-this-more-than-the-past/

        Or Google the piece above, easy peasey.

    And beautiful piece by Joey Kennedy at al dot com published Sept 24 What does Tuberville know. Spot on and ridiculously laughable if Tommy wasnt such a clear and present danger to Bama's faltering mind.

     A footnote, Two days ago a great friends of friends, Eric Motley, had a piece in NY Times about his "transcendental" friendship as a Black Republican from Montgomery Alabama with a Brooklyn Jew, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He now is administrator with Walt Isaacson of the Aspen Institute. He is one Republican of promise who says in approaching Biblical Language the thing Lincoln and Judge Frank Johnson would do to honor RBG is wait to the installment of the next President before going forward with a Replacement nominee for SCOTUS.

    FTR I blog reviewed his memoir Madison Park. He read my Review and said he liked it.

   

Dabo, David Wilkins, Lindsey Graham and RBG

  Dabo Swinney joined Trevor Lawrence and Darrien Rencher June 13 in the BLM march at Clemson. Dabo's church New Springs may not be adequate to guide him through the implications of all that now in the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg so I am trying to help.

       I left a message this morning on the machine of David Wilkins, former chair of Trustees of Clemson where Dabo coaches. Wilkins is Bush 43 ambassador to Canada, former Speaker of the SC house and married to Susan Clary of Gaffney, my hometown. He also is tight with Lindsey Graham who chairs the Senate Judiciary committee.

     So Dabo is in a bind. Is he with Trevor and Darrien and the legacy of nearby Anderson SC's hero Chadwick Boseman, or will he find a way with the sophomoric and inadequate theology and politics of his church to wiggle out of this moment.

     Nick Saban has taken the high road at Bama. He is unmistakably opposing the Senate candidacy of Tommy Tuberville of Auburn who like Dabo finds himself under the sway of Church of the Highlands and its 18 campuses of Central Alabama from Gadsden to Tuscaloosa. Nick has wiser more discerning counsel at his St Francis Catholic Church.

     And God Help public education in Pelham, Alabama, Dabo's hometown if Tubby gets in the Senate because that is another vote for Trump so called "patriotic" history which is not much more than warmed over version of the Daughters of the Confederacy that Furman grad and Bama archivist and Historian Ed Bridges tried to lay to rest in his two year old Bicentennial history of Alabama.

      I also left a message with the President's office of Furman. Elizabeth Davis is on the Reem committee which I have blogged about. Also on that committee is Minor Mickel Shaw the great niece of Charles Daniel who was great friend of Nixon and Eisenhower. Minor voted for Obama twice and 2016 for Hillary. So safe to say she is near outrage Mitch McConnell, the gravedigger of modern American democracy may rush through with the complicity and enabling of Lindsey Graham the successor to RBG.

    I talked to Paul Finebaum late in the second hour of his SEC Cable Show Wednesday. We chatted about the young black reporter from the Anderson Independent Mail who he has on the show routinely. Maybe that fellow can talk this blog over with Dabo and David Wilkins.

   Eric Motley is the golden boy of Samford University in Bham and native of Montgomery.  Great friend of the late president Tom Corts, 

    I reviewed  Motley's autobiography here on this blog not long ago. He read it and liked it. Madison Park.

   Eric is now with the Aspen Institute and on first name basis with Condi Rice and General Powell. Eric was in the Bush  43 white house and I imagine like W is disturbed how Trump and Mitchell are playing this moment.

     We shall see.

    Before the passing of RBG I had a blog in the hopper but jumped the shark with this. Look for the prequel sequel early next week where I center on Plainview HS of Jeremy Pruitt in Rainsville, Alabama.

Furman and Greenville's REEM committee; Wake Forest Sermon

 Front Page story in Sunday Sept 13 Greenville News was a story of a roughly 20 member new committee to address racial inequities in the community and the 4th District where Trey Gowdy was a recent congressman and the current congressman, a product of Christ Church Episcopal school runs on Guns and the fetus and a complicit Trumper whose values seem to have more in common with Bob Jones and FBC Spartanburg, than his own congregation, Furman and Wofford.

    The committee includes Furman President Davis, Trustee Baxter Wynn the nephew of Lester Maddox (yeah that one from Georgia), Minor Shaw whose Mother Big Minor stood in the gap as chair of Furman trustees against the fundamentalist assault in the early 90s, and Mayor Knox White who is an interesting character throughout Marty Cohen's exploration of the 4th district in his book Moral Congress. Minor Shaw has an interesting relationship with the legacy of Roger Milliken as she succeeded him as head of the Greenville Spartanburg airport. Milliken was the biggest donor to Nixon in 72, but his son Roger Jr, my good friend the summer of 1970, donated a quarter million dollars to Obama re election campaign in 2012.

    I have lot more to say so check back in later in the week. Meantime here is a sermon from Wake Forest by John Pavlovitz brought to my attention this morning for the REEM committee to consider:

     Dear White Evangelicals,

I need to tell you something: People have had it with you.

They’re done.

They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why:

They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.

For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.

They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.

And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was,
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family,
you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities,
you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance,
you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,
your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,
your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,
you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.

You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.

And yet you give carte blanche to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.

And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.

With him, you suddenly find religion.
With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.
With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.
With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart.
With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement.
With him, you see only Providence.

And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly.

They recognize the toxic source of your inconsistency.

They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities.
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.
They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.
They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.

And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.

Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.

You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.
You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation.
You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness.
You’ve lost the plot.
And most of all you’ve lost your soul.

I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.

But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.

• John Pavlovitz

 

Laying Down a Firebrake Line: Trump, Nick, Dabo, Trevor, Deshaun, Shelby and Bob Inglis

   In case you haven't been paying attention the world is on Fire from California to Oregon and Wash State and yesterday in Hendersonville one of the Trump boys, I think Kim Gillyfoils boyfriend from Fox News, said Obama created America's racial tensions.

    I think he is lying and he knows it or he is ignorant as Hades. Did you see the game last night between the Chiefs and the Texans, the one with Two National Anthems and a show of Unity. I bet Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney heard about it , and Paul Finebaum too. I'm just wondering what David Wilkins and William timmons thought about it. I talked to Bama Senator Richard Shelby office this morning to make sure he was aware and to help bring the octagenarian "Legend" of the University up to speed.

     Cause Dick was there when Trump called two of Nick Saban's Heismann Trophy winners Sonsabitches in Huntsville in 2017.

   Don't take my word for it, read Mississippi Republican Operative Stuart Stevens book It Was all a Lie. Shout out to boy Trump Stevens opens first chapter with the N igg er quote from Lee Atwater's 81 memo about Gop race strategies morphing into Tommy Tuberville's politics of guns and mendacious resistance to abortion.

    Tommy and his backers in the Baptist church of the Highlands and their 18 campuses across Central Alabama where Bama fans in the stands go to pray should check the great piece at Religiondispatches.org on the racism and anti science ideoglogy of Liberty U and Falwell Sr that carried over saturating the campus before super Trumper Falwell Jr fall from p grabbing or whatever he did in the bedroom that has your average Southern Baptist deacon all dizzy these days when he is trying to figure out who Jesus wants him to vote for.

    I got a picture text from a loved one this morning which gives the finger to the NBA and NFL. I guess this loved one wasn't happy with Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes and the commercials and commentary last night. And Lebron James had him upset already.

   Well Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban and Trevor Lawrence aren't for rioting and looting neither is Darrien Rencher nor his buddy from Anderson SC Chadwick Boseman. But this is a moment where what passes for good Republicans like Bob Inglis, Ben Sasse, Mitt Romney and some of us are hoping George W. Bush and Cindy McCain and George Wallace's daughter Peggy Wallace Kennedy to say this is enough of these lies and distortions from Team Trump.

    Check Tom Friedman piece in NY Times on the Politics of Humiliation. That is part of the conversation for White folk , working white folks, laborers and truckers and police union members who think America has betrayed them. But Deshaun and Trevor have the High Ground with Nick Saban at this moment. Lets have the legitimate conversation Friedman raises.

    But Whatever the question is, Donald John Trump is not the answer. And if your Bible tells you different then I must not be able to understand your Bible.

   As for Thanksgiving I plan to sit at the table with my Loved one. Because My Daddy was a Baptist preacher and my Momma his wife. And they love Me and They Love the loved one with the meme cause Jesus Loves us All.

    God Bless America, though let us pray Trump's Chickens come Home to Roost before Nov 3 in Hendersonville, and Franklin Graham's heart, and the soul of First Baptist Church Spartanburg and their Truth for a New Generation Conferences.

  Amen

  Steve Earle sings Laying down a Firebrake Line