Consequence: The Tyranny of Low Expectations

I’m sure what I’m about to say will be trumpeted as the height of racial hatred and intolerance.
Get over it, because to be honest, I am getting very intolerant over the various wars against “minorities.”
According to the MSM and the Progressives, this year has seen an unprecedented “War on Women” because taxpayers are a bit leery of the government demanding that there be a $1 surcharge for abortion under the new health care law (after such a provision was gainsaid at every turn). Questioning a Democrat activist woman as to whether it is reasonable to view asking women to pay $1,000 a year for their own birth control has been portrayed as an all-out assault on that gender that makes a good Sunday afternoon stoning in downtown Teheran look like a mild rebuke.
Meanwhile, as our fearless Xenas of contraception fight for a college woman’s right to sterilization , their plucky stridency storming the cliffs of cold conservatism, the evil white power structure at one of their Saturday night bowling sessions in the strip mall next to the Family Dollar have come up with what Jesse Jackson has termed, “A wholesale war on African Americans.”
I don’t want to be seen as unfeeling, but I think few people no matter their race or ethnicity give a lot of thought to the real war on black people, especially black teenagers.
I would be angry if I were a poor black kid. I’d be angry that my opportunities had been destroyed by the state. I’d be angry that do-gooders decided that I wasn’t intelligent enough to do the work. I’d be angry that because of that , the state had to step in and assume all responsibility so that there would be few opportunities to better myself.
As I was coming up, I would have been taught that because my ancestors were enslaved by the Africans and Portuguese… Oh wait, I wouldn’t have been taught that! Not at all.
I would have been taught that all my ills were somebody else’s fault. That the white man was stealing my future just as he stole my past. That white people alive today are responsible for my plight.
I would have a fourth grade reading level because I was never challenged. I’d be subsumed and consumed by a culture that embraced sex and violence as alternate realities with no real concept of the consequences of either.
The product of a baby daddy, I would quickly and proudly become a baby daddy, myself . I would have no real concept of critical thinking, The deliberate culture of nihilism has eradicated that. It would never occur to me that as I was a baby daddy to three different kids with three different girls by the time I was 22, my contemporaries were doing the same thing all over the country, breeding exponentially thereby condemning another generation to a dark fate. It doesn’t matter. The state will feed them or take them away after I was dead or incarcerated.
I be would furious if I fell victim to the tyranny of low expectations.
That’s what I would be cranky about. Then again, odds are I will never be a black teenager.
What disturbs me most is that we are broke. The folks at home don’t want to talk on the phone. At some point the checks are going to bounce.
What then?

We Now Return To Your Regularly Scheduled Broadcast

We Now Return You To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming…
For the past three months, I have been raising hell about the left over on Facebook. About a month ago, I spotted a story on Social media and elsewhere about a shooting in Sanford. Florida.
Monday, April 2, I was in Washington National Airport and there on every widescreen was Al Sharpton beaking off, “No justice, no peace.”
I came home to Charleston to find that the Treyvon Martin cause celebe has infected Marion Square. When I first saw the mobs early on, I thought OWS. A hot summer ahead , I predicted a May wedding between the New Black Panthers and the Occupy Movement. The Occupy movement and the “No Justice, No Peace” thugs have much in common. They rely on emotion not facts. I found that they were courting Monday night on Marion Square.
I said early on that if George Zimmerman were found guilty in a court of law after due process, fry him. Let’s wait for the facts.
All kinds of people have expressed outrage on some things I have posted about the war on women and Jesse Jackson’s War on Blacks. What I find interesting is that no one has refuted me on the facts. They have attacked my bad taste in pointing stuff out while hurling epithets at me. Apparently, I am disgusting, not wrong.
I have argued from the beginning that there is no war on women, there is no war on blacks. There is a full blown attack from the left to “fundamentally transform America.” I have warned that the communist left has taken over the Democrat Party and the mainstream media from Brian Williams to local cub reporters.
[
Here’s how we got here: [
We have been infected by Fabian Socialism and the Frankfurt School all of our lives. America has been dumbed down for 30 years. In the stead of cold hard logic we have drugged our children into submission and taught them sexual obsession and emotional tripe promoting diversity at the cost of morals and rational thought, all for my generation’s self-indulgent convenience and self-important pleasures. We fell for it. I include myself.
We have allowed the left to define the debate and to use not violence but ridicule in their never ending quest for power. Through the years, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned, we have defined deviancy down to the point that we no longer recognize the absurdity of the arguments the left has been making.
The reason? We no longer recognize natural law. I personally believe in a Creator which I choose to call God. I am a Christian of sorts although I doubt if any organized Christian religion would have me. That’s my right as an American citizen.
That said, you don’t have to believe in God to believe in natural law . Just because you don’t believe in gravity doesn’t mean gravity doesn’t believe in you. Morals are ruled by natural law. We have allowed an entire group antithetical to everything in this country redefine our moral core under the unrealistic utopian ideal of Rousseau rather the cold hard facts of John Locke, and we have suffered mightily.
What terrifies me is that most people don’t seem to know or care. We have been busy raising kids and doing our jobs, supporting families. It’s happening to someone else, turn on The Biggest Loser. Indeed, they will acknowledge that this or that is alarming, but when it’s pointed out that it’s all interconnected deliberate kabuki theater to provoke the mob, it’s crazy talk.
I’ve thought about this at length. I tend to speak up when I think things are wrong. That’s why I ran for Mayor of Charleston. I knew I wouldn’t win, but I realized that in order to define the debate, you have to use precise language. I also knew that by doing so, I didn’t stand a chance at winning, but I did define the debate.
My first impulse was to retire to Maine and write. I have a couple of books in line ready for my editor who is cranky. In January, I realized how much total bullshit (sic) we have been fed over the last 40 years. I began to read history and political philosophy, Van Jones to Agenda 21, Edward Bellamy to Thomas Sowell. I have read over 10,000 pages and seen over 100 hours of video, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. I do not believe in the Illuminati or for that matter the Glitterati.
I don’t believe in the Freemasons or Aliens or even Area 51. I believe Oswald shot Kennedy and that we landed on the moon.
. I do believe in Communism because its proponents are right there in the open proclaiming victory.

That’s why I fear OWS and No Peace, No Justice.
Communism can be traced in a straight line from Rosseau to the French Revolution to Marx to the Bolshevik Revolution. From there Lenin formed a group to spread socialism throughout the world. When he died, Stalin was suspicious of the group of academics , so they fled to Germany and formed the Frankfurt School where they actually formed a blueprint as to how to implement world socialism.
In 1933, the same core group from Russia and their new adherents fled from Germany what with them being both Jews and Communists, neither big resume enhancers under Hitler, they fled to America. The Frankfurt Movement quickly spread from Columbia University to Stanford, Berkley, the University of Chicago, and other Ivy league schools. One must remember that these guys were Leninists, they understood well the concepts of useful idiots.
They were not hidden, I studied them in college including Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals. My professors and my colleagues in academe, politics and media have totally bought into the meme.
You see, the whole point was that the US would never put up with violent revolution, so we soften them up. We completely break down all trust and collapse the system through manufactured crises, obfuscation, prevarication and misdirection until cowed, the populace now accustomed to living on the public teat begs for the government to solve all its problems.
They have told us this, and we didn’t believe them. Just like Iran says it will wipe Israel off the map or radical Islam vowing to form a very dark world caliphate ruled by strict sharia law, we refuse to believe them. Leave us alone. Let us bathe in the vapidity of popular culture.
Well, here we are. The adherents of the Frankfurt School have done everything to collapse the system. The trap is about to swing. Their belief in the Dictatorship of the proletariat is as strong as your belief in Moses or Peter, as the Shia believe in the Mahdi.
All rely on the inevitability of history, a concept I refuse to accept.
We have a very small window to figure this out, and if we win the November election, we must recognize that this is but the first step. We must educate ourselves to how this platform has been built to enslave us in order to dismantle it. I will not live long enough to see it come to fruition, but I have reached the conclusion that I cannot stand idly by and watch this happen to the greatest country in the history of mankind. Not without a fight.
In the coming weeks, we will unveil a website called the Farrow Files which will feature links discussions and by the end of this month , God willing and the Creek don’t rise, a daily call in video show from five to six, Monday through Friday featuring interviews and live remotes.
I am doing this because I realize in order to educate, I must amuse. I also realize it can’t be some dude sitting in his basement on Skype railing against EMPs. As the show and the site progress, there will be increased production value. Our goal is to broadcast reports live from all over the world. We also are arranging press credentials and hope to broadcast live from the Democrat convention in Charlotte,
The site’s mission statement is to preserve freedom and to speak out in favor of our way of life, to point out (I’m sorry, I can’t say it any other way) the absolute bullshit we are being fed wholesale. I recognize there are different approaches to how to get this, but I will not allow people to call each other names, no ad hominum attacks. I want to allow dissent in the comment section, but no rudeness, wryness and irony, bring ‘em on, but no personal attacks. Discuss and disagree for hours but no name calling. It cheapens the discourse.
I believe that our founders through their recognition of man’s venality bequeathed us an opportunity to engage our never –ending greed, call it original sin or stronger energy feeding on weaker, in a positive way by perusing our own constructive ends without interference , a system that guarantees nothing but the opportunity to help the whole by being the best we can be while having the chance to reap the benefit of our labor. Some say it is as unreachable as Utopia, but I don’t think so. At one point you are going to run out of other people’s money. There is no more money. We either figure this out quickly or taste the lash of statism.
What happens when the government checks can no longer be cashed?
The Farrow Files will focus on the issues of the day. Right now, that is the marriage of OWS and No Justice No Peace. Both subscribe to collapsing the system to get their way, little realizing that they are the Brownshirts and the Mensheviks of the 21st Century — that when dreams are realized. they will be dealt with.
Both are the definition of mobs, scads of people screaming about issues of which they know nothing threatening to turn violent. Agitated by Van Joes, Bill Ayers and Al Sharpton , I don’t see how it can turn otherwise.
In 2009, I wrote a blog that I saw a Reichstag fire and Kristalnacht looming before this election. I pray to all that’s holy I’m wrong. Since the passage of the NDAA and the executive orders of the past month, Obama (and any president) has the right to declare martial law and void the Constitution with the stroke of a pen, all perfectly legally.
Didn’t know that did you? Right now as these words are written, the government has the legal right to detain or kill any US citizen declared an enemy of the state by the president with no habeas corpus or due process. The military may now be used as national police on American soil thanks to the NDAA obliterating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1864 which forbade such an act. The TSA has been given far-overreaching powers over the highway with ability to stop you , search you and detain you without a warrant.
This will not end well.
If the mobs get out of control, Obama has the power to control everything from what you eat to your heating bill, to what you drive to what salary you make. No one should have this much power, absolutely no one.
He has the power to shut everything down tight as a drum.
This is a statist’s dream come true.
Stop and think what happens if George Zimmerman is found not guilty. Riots in the streets (BTW, a headline I read a couple of weeks ago read “New York Group Holds Riot In Support of Tayvon Martin’s Parents.” That was reassuring.”) live remotes of scenes like Detroit, South Central, Oakland engulfed in flames; national riots quelled only by martial law.
I can’t stand by and just let this happen. I believe we can stop this by educating our neighbors, through humor and persuasion. Use Alinsky’s rules against them. Understand, I had a one night stand with the Radical left that lasted for four years because of Richard Nixon and Vietnam. I know these people. I have been good friends with them my whole life. Before, they were ridiculous. Now they are dangerous.
The protests of the 60s fed into my inherent distrust of authority (my draft number was 10, I was 4-F) — a trait I embrace to this day. My innate ability to challenge authority has cost me jobs, opportunities and a marriage.
It has also allowed me to be comfortable in my own skin. I am a conservative libertarian and a writer without apology. I have been forged by the fires of life and emerged on the other side strengthened in my beliefs and my view that I have something to contribute.
I hope we have time to grab it back. The Farrow Files will be constantly posting source material from scores of different websites, all screened for credibility as well as what you’d like to share.
We have to win this.
If not, we have the options of a new Dark Ages under the guise of a Utopia realizing the basest and most dystopian view of mankind ruled by the smartest people in the room or a wretched civil war that will accomplish the same thing.
My purpose is to persuade one person every day to persuade one person why it is so important that we stop this at the ballot box now , to educate and elucidate the fundamental decency of the Constitution and the American Dream through my efforts.
Help me do that. Join the Farrow Files and follow the truth wherever it may lead. Oh, and maybe laugh a bit along the way.
If not, I understand Kim Kardashian and George Clooney have something relevant they’d like to share with you right after these important PSAs about Muslim gay empowerment (The More You Know) and female hygiene commercials sponsored by Katheryn Sebelius.

The Super-Highway To Serfdom

“We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with.” Richard M. Cohen, Senior Producer of CBS political news.

Am I the only one who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Biggest Loser or the Kardashians? Am I the only one who sees the irony of obesity being a sign of poverty in this country?
Have a good Christmas for I suspect it could well be the last we have as an “American” family. I fear the concept of America in a year will be unrecognizable. It will be our fault.
Why?
Because we sat on the couch and ignored all the warning signs. We somehow thought that when George HW Bush declared the New World Order at the UN in 1989, it was all just sloganeering.
It wasn’t.
Sweet Jesus, he meant it. It’s not coming soon to a theater near you, it’s here under the guise of “sustainability.”

I recall the last Christmas dinner my mother and I had as a family (dysfunctional as hell, but a family such as it was). We were sitting at the dining room table, when as in so many times, my mother leaned over to my ex-wife and all but whispered, “It’s the International Zionists who are behind this.”
For a reason inexplicable to anyone there (I was sober as a judge. Now round these parts, that does not mean much, but you get the point), I said, “Mommy, given that everything you said is actually true, what in the hell do you want me to do about it? “
The chill that enveloped the room brought to mind the iconic picture of the North wind, a puffy icy cloud blowing the gelid wind. The thaw began in April and lasted for the rest of her life. We never spoke of it, again.
The more I delved into Agenda 21, separating the wheat from the chaff, I had the feeling I did that Christmas afternoon… WTF! as some are wont to say.
In the past three weeks, I have slogged through thousands of pages — hundreds of websites and several books about something called Agenda 21. There is a lot of crazy talk going on out in cyberspace.
I grew up in a household where everything was the result of the machinations of the International Zionist Conspiracy. Huh. Who knew?
I have held a jaundiced about conspiracies and the “new world order.” I believe Oswald shot Kennedy. Period. We landed on the moon. A virulent form of Islamo-fascism crashed and burned the towers, the Pentagon and our national psyche.
I studied political philosophy at George Washington University. Thus it was in 1974 that I came across a mission statement from the Council on Foreign Relations Journal that read, “The new world order will be built… an end run around national sovereignty eroding it piece by piece will accomplish it much more than the old fashioned frontal assault.”
\ I read that, remarked, “good luck with that,” and went out, got A’s, got drunk, lucky and went on my merry way.
On September 11, 1990, I watched George Herbert Walker Bush tell the UN General Assembly, “Out of these troubled times, our objective—a new world order—can emerge. Today, that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we have known.”
Huh. I gave three more tours, then went to 82 Queen and got drunk.

So how did I get to the place I am now? Why are you just now hearing about it?
Because I’m still learning about it.
It all started at a 9/12 meeting in early June of this year. As a fledgling mayoral candidate, my team (made up of progressives for the most part) thought it best I speak to small groups with whom I might have sympathy. This was my first speech.

People don’t realize the precision and practice it takes – my every word, my every nuance was played and replayed by famed South Carolina and Hollywood (CA) director Franklin Ashley and a very bright young woman I brought up from Triple A to pitch named Monica Biddix. I promise, I will get to the whole mayor thing by New Years, God willing. Sorry, it takes a sec to step back and figure out what hit me because I was blind-sided on a couple of levels.
Not that night, though. No, we were down with knocking it over the Green Monster in that small meeting room on the road to Patriot’s Point. As I drove over my cousin’s bridge, the early summer sun flitting over the harbor, my heart was in my throat. I was listening to the Critic and singing along to eclectic rock and roll.
I pulled into the restaurant on Patriot’s Point Road. I gotta tell you, I probably gave 20 speeches during the campaign, and it never got easier. I met the chairman, Kathy Hughes. At one point before the meeting started, she asked me if I had ever heard of Agenda 21.
No.
The meeting started and I gave the speech of my career. The hat was passed and was full by the time I finished.
The good thing about being a candidate means you get to leave before the real meeting starts. I had to go to a Piccolo affair downtown. Kathy stopped me one more time. Agenda 21.
I went to the affair in North Central, and as I mixed around three different people told me that Joe Riley was a member of Agenda 21. They began to say, UN, new world order, etc. Crazy talk.
The next morning, I was swimming laps and felt fantastic. For the first time in the campaign, I thought, “I can do this.”
It was one of the top 10 days in my life until it wasn’t. Five hours later, I had my first of 60 radiation treatments scheduled for invasive skin cancer.
Long summer.
Between the treatments and my wretched fundraising ability, the last thing on my mind was a UN-funded project to dominate our entire world. In late summer, I met with a member of Citizens For a Better Charleston. I was pat on the head and sent on my own merry way.
I know the whole story and will tell it later. The thing is if these morons couldn’t keep a secret, how could a global organization stay hidden?
They haven’t. They have invaded every aspect of our lives, and we have embraced it.

Earlier in the campaign, before every statement was crafted, someone alerted me about Mayors Against Illegal Guns of which Joe is a member. It is gun control with teeth and I wrote about it.

<ahref="” target=”_blank”>

As the campaign wore on, the Eliza Doolittle transformation was effected, the chimera of political candidacy that Franklin intended materialized (David Farrow: Candidate) I stayed with three major issues, and I believe they were good ones. Nowhere did Agenda 21 arise.
Until it did.
My campaign had a Facebook forum every Thursday night for three months. In late October, people began to message me. What about Agenda 21? Thinking that it might be a Hail Mary, I mentioned it to my staff — not a chance. If you pay people for advice, take it.
Election night sucked. I knew I’d lose. I had no idea I’d get taken behind the building and have living crap beat out of me. Many friends told me I defined the debate. So be it.
(I’ll probably note this again, but if as many people voted for me as they said they did, I would have beat Gregorie. It’s either voter fraud or bullshit. I’m leaning toward the latter.)
My girlfriend left Saturday, and I was off to Maine in a week and a half, so there was a little mopping up to do. The weekend before I left, for lack of anything better to do, I began to research Agenda 21.
There’s a lot of whacky stuff out there: FEMA concentration camps, etc. One might imagine, I viewed it all with a jaundiced eye.
Then I read a book called Agenda 21: An Expose of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Initiative and the Forfeiture of American Sovereignty by Ron Taylor, a former UN cheerleader for the project. Taylor explains that his ardor was dampened as he realized that while sustainability sounded good, it involved the dumbing down of our children and a kind of Fabian Socialism that has crept into general acceptance. Agenda 21 calls for the “smartest people in the room” making global decisions about what we eat, where we live and on and on.
It’s real.
Here’s a UN Chart that shows how far they’ve gone.

I am confronted by the International Zionist Conspiracy conundrum, although this time I have proof.
Take a look at this map from the UN.

Now look where the Keystone pipleline is supposed to be.
”
Hell of a coincidence.
This is real.
What am I going to do about it?
I’m not sure. Everything they purported is coming true. Do I really want to take on the most powerful people in the world.?
Just by saying what I am here, I can be declared a terrorist by Homeland Security. Extreme? Nuts?
Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which passed 97-3 on the Senate floor Tuesday, December 6, the legislation basically says in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield,, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who voted for the bill.
Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash, and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, this provision will wide open to abuse.
This is world socialism run amok.
This is not what we signed up for – Republican, Democrat, Tea Party, OWS. This is Fabian Socialism – politically correct speech, the “green” agenda, the omission of civics, the lack of understanding of natural law – like a frog on a slow boil, we watched it happen. We don’t care. Give us enough to eat. Let us have E and Style and HSN. Let’s really spend a lot of time on obesity. Jesus, we cancelled gym, you morons.
Instead, common sense got driven into the dirt. The tyranny of diversity destroyed the fabric of the country.
We turn to MTV and the Kardasheans (I still have no idea who these people are or why I should give a rat’s ass.) for advice and soul mentoring.
Christianity is under full assault. Of course Christians have done little to further their case, but we were founded as a Christian nation. I’m good with that. I think a system that recognizes the venality of mankind and channels it into a positive beacon of hope with unimagined prosperity is something to strive for. Just saying.
Our system is so corrupt. I got a fine lesson in that. We are under the illusion we can change things. Not without a shitload of money and influence.
I have neither. I just happen to be an obscure writer from Charleston who has stumbled onto what he believes is the truth. I have just gone through 10 arduous years. The last was a struggle.
So my work here is done. I’m off to romance my keyboard and my girlfriend for the rest of my life.
Agenda 21. The International Zionist Conspiracy . What the hell can I do about it?
I’ve done it.
Check it out for yourself.
Or not.
Say, did you catch Christine Aguilera on the Voice?

`
I know. Crazy talk:

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” George Washington.

“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.” Richard Salent, former president, CBS News

1. Under the new and improved Patriot Act: According to the ACLU, the NSA has reinstituted its “Total Information Awareness” domestic-spying program that was banned by Congress in 2003. Congress has done nothing to prevent this recent activity. They must first prove that the NSA is doing the activity, and the NSA is really not into divulging its activities to Congress. Even though oversight committees exist, the NSA holds 22 levels of security clearances above the president or anyone in Congress. If Congress wants to know what the NSA is doing, they have to find out by other means than asking the NSA.

2. HR 1955 targets U.S. citizens, defines thought crimes as “homegrown terrorism” and cites the Internet as aiding “in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process.
3. HR 1528 requires you to spy on your neighbors. Refusal would be punishable by a mandatory prison sentence of at least two years.

4. My blog could be declared a “subversive activity”.

A Short Timeline For the New World Order

“Under Socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not the character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner. . . .” Fabian Socialist Bernard Shaw in his Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 1928.

“We shall have world government whether or not we like it. The only question is whether worldwide government shall be achieved by conquest or consent,” Paul Wharburg. Council on Foreign Relations, and architect of the Federal Reserve System, address to the US Senate 2/17/1950

“To defend the New World Order, US soldiers will have to kill and die.” Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

“The case for government by elites is irrefutable.” Senator William Fulbright, Former chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated at a 1963 symposium entitled: The Elite and the Electorate – Is Government by the People Possible?

“The United Nations, he told an audience at Harvard University, ‘has not been able–nor can it be able–to shape a new world order which events so compellingly demand.’ … The new world order that will answer economic, military, and political problems, he said, ‘urgently requires, I believe, that the United States take the leadership among all free peoples to make the underlying concepts and aspirations of national sovereignty truly meaningful through the federal approach.”
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, in an article entitled “Rockefeller Bids Free Lands Unite: Calls at Harvard for Drive to Build New World Order” — The New York Times (February 1962)

“Who controls money, controls the world. Henry Kissinger, Council on foreign relations, 1973

“Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of national emergency. A majority of the people of the United States have their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years (now 79 years) freedoms and governmental procedures, guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought forth by states of national emergency.” Senate Report 93-549 (1973).

“If instant world government, Charter review, and a greatly strengthened International Court do not provide the answers, what hope for progress is there? The answer will not satisfy those who seek simple solutions to complex problems, but it comes down essentially to this: The hope for the foreseeable lies, not in building up a few ambitious central institutions of universal membership and general jurisdiction as was envisaged at the end of the last war, but rather in the much more decentralized, disorderly and pragmatic process of inventing or adapting institutions of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with specific problems on a case-by-case basis … In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”
Richard N. Gardner, in Foreign Affairs (April 1974)

In 1979, then Senator Barry Goldwater wrote the following warning about the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) in his book, With No Apologies:
“The CFR is composed of … most elite names in the world of government, labor, business, finance communication, the foundations, and academies. It has staffed almost every key position of every administration since that of FDR.
“A number of writers disturbed by the influential role that this organization has played in determining foreign policy have concluded that the Council of Foreign Relations and its members are an active part of the communist conspiracy for world domination…. Many of the policies advocated by the CFR have been damaging to the cause of freedom and particularly to the United States, but this is not because the members are communist or communist sympathizers. This explanation of our foreign policy reversals is too pat, too simplistic.
“I believe the Council on Foreign Relations and its ancillary elitist groups are indifferent to communism. They have no ideological anchors. In their pursuit of a New World Order [World Government] they are prepared to deal without prejudice with a communist state, a socialist state, a democratic state, monarchy, oligarchy — it’s all the same to them.
“Our government in Washington now is a horrible bureaucratic mess. It is disorganized, wasteful, has no purpose, and its policies — when they exist — are incomprehensible or devised by special interest groups with little or no regard for the welfare of the average American citizen…”

1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev quoted in Washington Post Feb 25 1990 “…A new world order is taking shape so fast that governments are well as private citizens find it difficult just to absorb the gallop of events…..”

“I think what’s at stake here is the new world order….a reinvigorated United Nations.” -Jan 7 1991 George HW Bush

1992 – July 20 Time magazine published “The Birth of the Global Nation” by Strobe Talbott (Rhodes scholar roommate of Bill Clinton at Oxford University, CFR director, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace board of directors member from a wealthy Ohio investment banking family), in which he writes: All countries are basically social arrangements….No matter how permanent or even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary….Perhaps national sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all….But it has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible century to clinch the case for world government.”

1992 – August 26: The New York Times publishes “The World Needs an Army on Call” by U.S. Senator David Boren (Rhodes Scholar 1963, CFR member, and member of “Skull and Bones”) in which he states: “In the aftermath of World War II, President Truman wanted to empower the United Nations to create a new world order….Richard Gardner proposes that forty to fifty member nations contribute to a rapid-deployment force of one hundred thousand volunteers that could train under common leadership….It is time for us to create such a force….The existence of such a force would go a long way toward making the “new world order” more than just a slogan.”

1993 – July 18: CFR member and Henry Kissinger writes in The Los Angeles Times concerning NAFTA: “What Congress will have before it is not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system….a first step toward a new world order.”

1994 – World Federalist Association (UN Organization) published The Genius of Federation: Why World Federation Is the Answer to Global Problems, which will stated, “Let the U.N. establish new agencies such as an International Criminal Court….National sovereignty would be gradually eroded until it is no longer an issue. Eventually a world federation can be formally adopted with little resistance.”

1994 – April 14: Americans are killed as a result of a “friendly fire” attack while patrolling over Iraq, and Vice-President Al Gore refers to them as “those who died in the service of the United Nations.”

1994 – May 3: President Clinton signs Presidential Decision Directive 25, which strengthens the U.N. and describes how American soldiers will serve under foreign commanders. PDD25 will only be released to top administration officials and a few member of Congress, the general public is refused access.

1995 – The report, “Our Global Neighborhood,” by The Commission on Global Governance (partly funded by the U.N. Development Program and endorsed by the U.N. Secretary-General) is released, and states: “A new world order must be organized….Global governance is the way we manage global affairs….nations have to accept that in certain fields, sovereignty has to be exercised collectively….We need to accept that there may be circumstances within countries when the security of people is so severely violated that external intervention becomes justified. We propose that the U.N. Charter be amended to permit intervention in such circumstances….We believe that there is a need for a highly trained U.N. Volunteer (military) Force….Accelerated progress must be made toward demilitarizing the international society…We strongly endorse community initiatives to …encourage the disarming of civilians….”

1996 – A Reporter’s Life by Walter Cronkite is published, in which he proclaims: ” if we are to avoid catastrophe, a system of world order–preferably a system of world government –is mandatory. The proud nations someday will ….yield up their precious sovereignty.”

1996 – May 11 Journalist Joan Veon interviews David C. Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World (1995) and former Ford Foundation project specialist in Manila. In this interview, Korten claims that: “the World Trade Organization is creating a world government in which one organization which is totally unelected, wholly secretive….with the power to virtually override and local or national laws if those in any way inconvenience global corporations….It was a terrible shock (to those of us who supported Bill Clinton) when Clinton came in and GATT and NAFTA became the centerpieces of his policy….And in a sense, there was almost a seamless transition from President Bush to President Clinton in that regard….Our democracy has been rendered meaningless by big money. The truth is there are politicians (who) are owned lock, stock and barrel by the big money interests….Our elections create, to some extent, a facade of choice.”

1996 – October 23: On “The Charlie Rose Show” on the Public Broadcasting System, Mikhail Gorbachev states: “We are part of the Cosmos. Cosmos is my God. Nature is my God….The future society will be a totally new civilization which will synthesize the experience of Socialism and Capitalism….”

2001 – “There is a chance for the President of the United States to use this (9-11) disaster to carry out … a new world order.” (Gary Hart, at a televised meeting organized by the CFR in Washington, D.C. Sept 14.)

“You are a slow learner, Winston,” said O’Brien gently.

“How can I help it?” he blubbered. “How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

George Orwell, Nineteen-Eighty Four (1948)

“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

George Orwell, Ninteen-Eighty Four (1948)

The ball’s in your court, kids. Believe what I have told you or not. Do your own research.

If not, don’t come bitching to me.

Crazy Talk

I am scared for the first time in my life. I am watching the country I love so much slide into anarchy and tyranny, and I feel helpless to stop it.
I think that’s how it’s supposed to work.
For the past few weeks, I have been reading up on something called Agenda 21. This project was brought to my attention during my recent mayoral campaign because Joe Riley is a signatory. It involves a template for the life under UN sovereignty. I know, it sounds like crazy talk. It does. I am totally aware of this.
I’ve read two books and numerous websites, enough to realize that this isn’t the sole province of conspiracy theorists. Google it.
It’s real.
I will get into Agenda 21 anon, but for the last few days I have puzzled as to how the globalists would enforce their decrees. American soldiers would have to be active on American soil detaining American citizens. It would mean that the Posse Comitas Act of 1867 was revoked. Again, that’s crazy talk.
Or is it?
Paul Joseph Watson writing for Infowars.com on Monday, November 28, 2011 wrote, “The Senate is set to vote on a bill today that would define the whole of the United States as a “battlefield” and allow the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial.
“’The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,’ writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
“Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor this week, the legislation will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.
“The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. This means Americans could be declared domestic terrorists and thrown in a military brig with no recourse whatsoever. Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash, and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, such a provision would be wide open to abuse.
“’American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?’ asks Anders.”
Because the average American will not countenance what’s ahead.
One thing I found in much of in the literature about Agenda 21 is that the police are no longer composed of Officer Friendly making sure that your porches are safe and your kids are tucked in at night. They are veterans of the interminable wars we have fought the last ten years. They did not grow up in the communities in which they now live. For them, it’s still the Green Zone.
That way, there is no hesitancy in spraying Good Ole Uncle Bob in the face with pepper spray. There’s no shilly-shallying in rounding up the Jones family for owning bullion and a couple of shotguns.
Those in the military and in Congress are foresworn to preserve and protect the Constitution. Odds are, they have never read it. They are to protect us against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Under this law, what is to stop the average American from being declared a domestic terrorist for bird watching?
Why now?
Because I suspect there will be “an event” in the next six months to a year. I can’t tell you what it will be, although I can speculate:
The Occupy Wall Street bunch will simmer through the winter, but will be in force next spring and grow during the summer. The police will overreact and there will be a Kent State moment. Instead of shaking their fists and fading back into the woodwork emerging as lawyers a generation later, this group will be enraged. Cities will burn. It will culminate when a WMD is found in Charlotte during the Democratic convention.
Israel launches a preemptive strike against Iran. All of Northern Africa explodes. Hezbollah launches terrorist attacks in the US.
Total financial collapse.
All of this and much, much more could happen. I pray none of this occurs but there doesn’t seem to be any political will to stop any of this from happening.
Is this crazy talk? Please persuade me that it is. Do your own research and tell me where I am wrong. Convince me that OWS is just a bunch of mixed up kids who will fade with the snow. Convince me Iran will cease its relentless pursuit of thermonuclear weapons. Convince me that Congress will see the light. Tell me that you think slipping an onerous amendment that contravenes the Constitution is somehow okay because of national security. Have we learned nothing?
We are a reactive society, a reactive species. We will accept anything until something happens. The stop sign gets put up after the little girl is killed.
This time we can’t wait for the child to die. We must block the road.
The country is in 1860 mode. The ruling class is about to play its hand. It’s time to call for cards. We can no longer sit on the sidelines. This is not a matter of Democrat or Republican or even liberal or conservative. This is a matter of just being American. It’s a matter of slipping into a new dark age and the total eradication of Western Civilization.
I know… crazy talk.
I’d give anything to have you prove me wrong. Tell me that a financial collapse the size of that in 2008 can’t happen.
I am scared, not powerless. Lindsey, your time is up, bubba. I will actively work to defeat you. You thought you had trouble with the tea party before?
Go research this yourself. Source it. Don’t take what these people are saying as fact. As for being scared, join me. Help me spread the word on this bill. This cannot stand. If it does, the America we knew won’t even be a memory.
You see, if this isn’t crazy talk, then we stand to lose everything.

The Whole World Is Watching?

I have not been able to comment on much in national politics. I had excellent handlers.
They’re gone, like Bedouins, onto next year’s battle with whatever Republican nominee offends them. For some reason, we were at the Democrat to-do on the Cooper River back in October. (We will discuss this in detail in another piece).
I kinda enjoyed the double-takes. I enjoyed being sashayed around by Vic Rawl who surrounded me like a cloak of invulnerability as I spoke to the two undecided voters left in the city o’. I reveled in enraging Jack Hamilton by my very presence. I watched the shadows grow long across and was about to leave when a pretty young blonde woman representing OWS-Charleston handed me a leaflet.
She had me. She was in business. She was beautiful and she knew it. She knew who I was and handed me a leaflet with a hidden smirk.
“I guess you’re against this movement?” she asked.
“Not right now. That could change.”
I was, after all, a politician.
It did change. A month later when Occupy Charleston shouted Michelle Bachmann down, the nastiest part of the progressive movement bared its teeth. I am not a Bachmann fan, myself, but don’t promote free speech by suppressing it. I didn’t see the Tea Party become unruly during Debbie Wasserman-Smith’s rah-rah remarks.
Now with the reports of murder, rape, child molestation, disease and just plain old excrement from sea to shining sea, I have the freedom to say what I think.
These people are what Lenin called “useful idiots.” As archaic as this may sound, International Communism and the unions are backing these misbegotten miscreants. The only stated impacts involve chaos and destruction (“Wait’ll we throw a Molotov Cocktail through a Macy’s window.”).
The reason I recognize them is I was one of them 40 years ago. By 1971, it was obvious that going to ‘Nam was an insane form of Russian roulette. I went to some protests at Carolina, but that was to meet chicks. When it came down to it, it was a one-night stand with progressivism that lasted longer than it should have. I was 4-F, anyway, so I was the moron with the i-phone
I should note to those who are calling for another Kent State — Remember how that turned out.
We had a real cause. I lost friends in Nam, not a trust fund. Because of that, I was lured into the vortex of radical socialism. I bought into the iconography. I read the literature. After it was over, I worked for Common Cause in D.C. and became aware of the obfuscation and hypocrisy progressivism represented.
Keep in mind that progressivism has never won when presented clearly and honestly to the American public. Unfortunately, the dumbing down of America coincided with a sense of entitlement not earned, self-esteem bestowed upon low mediocrity to the point that many under 35 smell like teen spirit. There is no longer a line to cross because no one knows where that line is.
This could turn ugly, quickly. This is Cloward-Piven at its absolute best. Groups are now blocking traffic in New York and Detroit.
These demonstrations are modeled after the “Arab Spring (huh, that worked out well, another article).” The goal is nothing short of bringing down the system – no mind what it might be replaced by… Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.
Listen, my heart was with the cause. I was against TARP. So were a lot of people. We proved it in November last year. It all goes back to John Lennon: “When you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao…”
Lest you think I’m stark raving mad, let’s take a quick peek at who’s supporting OWS, shall we?: The Communist Party of the USA, The Communist Party of China, The Republic of North Korea. The Revolutionary Guard of Iran, the Black Panthers, the American Nazi Party and a host of others. Here’s the whole list: http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2011/10/31/the-99-official-list-of-ows/
This is what they want: occupywallst.org
These people are now marching in anger in the streets of New York, Detroit and Oakland. They are a mob, and a mob becomes deranged. It’s true. The Revolution is being televised. No good can come of this.
Back to Occupy Charleston, way back to the halcyon days in October during the kumbaya phase, the young woman chided me for the effrontery of running against Joe (strong Kool-Aid, that). Joe understood the city’s problems, OC’s problems, indeed her problems.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that if Occupy Charleston got in the way of a photo-op, accepting an award or a tour bus, Uncle Joe will swat them faster than a Florida tourist with a Red Stripe.
This will not end well.

To My Supporters: Time to Step up. FARROW FOR MAYOR

For those of you who are supporting me, now is the time to stand up. Tell two people to tell two people. Pay no attention to the Mason-Dixon poll or the endorsements. This was all decided in the past.
All hell’s breaking loose between Riley and Gregorie. We can slide right in the gap. This arguement proves everything I said about special interests. Nothing is straightfoward. No one is telling the truth. That’s why I have the backing of those on high in both the Democrat and Republican circles.
I am owned by no one.
I am talking to you who have stayed home for the past four elections. You didn’t have a choice. You do now.
I am a native, As a historian and writer, I have been able to parlay my knowledge with a frame of reference unmatched by no one, including Joe Riley, to my understanding the needs of my beloved city. As a journalist, I have grown increasingly mortified at the picture of a municipal car wreck. I could have sat on the sidelines.
I didn’t.
This has been a brutal year personally. I lost my aunt Patty Farrow whom I adored in March. Six weeks later, I lost my mother who was my best friend, who stuck by me through all my mistakes. Her death is more complicated than you will ever know. In June I was diagnosed with invasive skin cancer — the kind that if left untreated would have killed me by the 2012 election. I underwent radiation all summer.
This race has kept me away from my best friend and the closest I have to family.
I could have bowed out with grace four times. I had an excuse.
I could have played the victim.
I didn’t for two reasons.
The first is that I was the victim of nothing. Life is something that gets in the way of your plans.
The second is like unto it.
I have lived Joe Riley’s facade for 30 years. As a journalist, I know the dark side. I tried to unveil it and lost a perfectly good health plan and retirement for my troubles.
I have sniped from the sidelines like a Chihuahua for a generation.
I was about to fade away. In one instant 5:30 am one cold December morning all that changed.
I saw Joe was running for a last term. I could no longer let it stand. I had to run with the big dogs. I became a pit bull.
Say what you will, but I have stayed in this race because of my ideals. I do have an alternate theory of the crime as it were.
Don’t you find it interesting that Joe’s campaign will spend at least a half a million dollars for a $150,000 a year job? People say we don’t need term limits? Joe is the poster boy for term limits.
Those of you who have lived here before Hugo know. You gave up 16 years ago. It is you to whom I speak when I claim to speak to the displaced, the dispossed, and the disenfranchised. You watched in horror and disgust as your dreams were sloughed away, distilled by the Orwellean ministrations of man so enlaced with special interests and a love for power that he can outright lie to the media and they buy it.
I hear all these people on the tv warn us that if Joe is not reelected, that without his wise ministrations, things in the city will go terribly awry, the earth will go crashing into the sun. Has no one given any thought to the fact that this is allegedly his last term? I guess we now know that the world won’t end this New Year, but end in January of 2016.
You deserve better.
That sounds like a cliche or a talking point. It is. It’s also true. We deserve better than a mayor who ignores the will of the people and passes arcane liberty-constraining ordinances with the skill and duplicity of Harry Reid.
I have been accussed of being strident. Not so. You mistake stridentcy for urgency. This is the first and last time in a generation that we, you and I — the people struggling just to get by — have a chance to to take our city back, to reclaim our mantle of proud citizens who deserve a voice instead of paying all your taxes, fees and fines to build grand monuments to self-importance that make the rich and beautiful look caring and cultured.
You deserve better.
There are defining moments in people’s lives. They are moments like being kind to a clerk only to find that person is an off-duty cop. They are moments when you didn’t take the time to lock the back door and come home to a house cleaned out down to the brass tacks.
This Tuesday is such a day. It is a day you will look back on and say, “That’s it. That’s when I could have changed everything.”
You’ll be swamped in traffic for the fourth time in a week, already late to a very important meeting you think, “What could I have done? Surely, there had to be something.”
Your business plans are put on hold because city regulators delay your plans for an ice cream store despite your following their instructions to a “T.” Rumor has it that some alert reader just happened to be browsing through the SC ethics website (and who doesn’t?) and saw that you gave to my campaign. You also gave to Joe’s, but there is disloyalty that will not go unnoticed. You think, “What more could we have done?”
It’s a month from now. Your car is filled with Thanksgiving groceries, the kids are getting cranky. You are sitting at the light on President and the Crosstown. In the downpour, you watch in horror as a “wonnerful” palmetto tree is uplodged by the rising water. Your car stalls and, as a truck splashes brackish waves over your car and the kids are in full bore, You think to yourself, “What could I have done?”
Elect me.
I share your vision. I have done my part. I have stepped up.
Your turn.

Happy Halloween: Nothing Like A Good Night’s Sleep

From the upcoming book.

This my first short story wriiten in 1985.

Nothing Like A Good Night’ s Sleep
11 p.m.

Elizabeth Morgan sat down on her bed and stretched a long satisfied stretch. What a wonderful night it had been! She had gone to that nice new restaurant on Miller Street with Benjamin, and now sated, she looked forward to reading that new romance novel and sleeping late. It was too bad Ben was such a prude. She had asked him to stay with her tonight (wasn’t she being the brazen hussy!), but he demurred, saying he had some things to take care of before he turned in. Oh well, she was just stuck with Barbara Cartland again. At least Barbara Cartland didn’t whisper endearing love words in your ear all night and not call you afterwards. Still, she didn’t think Ben was like that. No, he was so quiet, so gentlemanly. Somehow though, she could also tell that she made him nervous; that he wanted to take to her bed but was too shy to do so. Ah well, it was probably better this way, for tonight anyway.
She took a sip of the small glass of sherry resting on her bedside table and stood up. My, she certainly was being the wicked one tonight! She took off her sweater, then her blouse, then her skirt. She undid her bra and slipped off her panties. She looked great for thirty-two; she knew that. She looked in the full-length mirror on her closet door and admired her flat tummy and the way her breasts fell heavily, yet firmly.
She looked down at the indentation of her hips and let her hands roam slowly but briefly around her supple body. A moan of pleasure and surprise escaped her parted lips and she thought about taking a bath. She giggled at the euphemism. No there was no need of that, tonight. Poor Ben, if he only knew what he was missing.
She slipped on her flannel nightgown. (How sexy!). She chuckled. She took another sip of the wine, crawled into bed, picked up the book and began reading. She’d gotten to the second page when she slipped into a deep dreamless sleep.

Midnight

Benjamin Cole left his house on Alter Street and looked both ways before he crossed the street. His mother had taught him to do that when he was very little, and he had remembered it to this day. He remembered everything she had ever taught him, he thought with a sense of triumph. Things like ‘birds fly South for the winter,’ how to put his underwear on properly (she’d spent a long time on that one) not to pick your nose or touch parts of your body in public or in private, not to eat with your mouth full, and so on. Oh yes, she’d taught him well, no need for anybody to worry about that. No siree. Well and many things. That sex was dirty.
Filthy!
Any woman who would want to do such a thing was evil. Once he had asked her why. She had taken a kitchen knife from the drawer and screamed, “Do you want me to cut you all over with this, you little scumbag? DO YOU!” whimpering, he let out a, “No,” in a small terrified voice.
She held him close to her breast very tightly in her scanty nightgown. He smelled her cheap perfume mingled with her sweat. “Come on now, let’s kneel down and pray before Mommy has to go back to work.”
They would do just that. They would kneel down before the plastic statuettes of Jesus that glowed malevolently in the dark, filling the squalid boardinghouse room with an ethereal luminescence. She intoned supplications to the Almighty as her fingernails gouged profoundly into his seven year-old arms. After ten minutes, she would get up and switch on the single naked overhead bulb and make him lie down on the gray sheets. She would walk over to the chipped dresser, take a small, oddly shaped bottle out of the drawer, take a very long pull on it and stand there weaving, a red stain blushing her cheeks. After a moment, she regained what she mistook for composure and warned sternly, “Now, don’t you turn that TV on. You go right to sleep. I come back here and find that thing on, you’re in heap of trouble!”
She would let herself out the door, switching off the light as she went. All of this passed nebulously through Benjamin’s mind before he reached the opposite curb. Mommy said that those women had to pay for their sins.
It was up to him to make sure they did.

One a.m.

Elizabeth awoke with a start. She had heard a loud thump, and in the swirling ether that accompanies first consciousness, she thought someone was in the house. She felt her skin constrict with goose bumps, and she started to turn on the bedside table lamp, then hesitated. If someone were in the house, turning on the light might alert whoever was out there, and she would forfeit any element of surprise, Instead, she softly opened the drawer next to her and slipped out the small three-shot, 22 caliber her father had given her as a house-warming gift. As she sat in the darkness, cradling the gun between her legs, her mind’s eye was replete with visions of burglars, rapists and murderers. She watched as the bedroom door, which she never closed completely, soundlessly swung open. She stifled a scream, raised the gun to the level of a man’s stomach, and her finger tightened on the trigger when she heard a distinct “Meow!” She suppressed another scream as she jumped then relaxed and plaintively said in shrill exasperation, “Calico! God, you scared the hell out of me!”
Still shaking and laughing nervously, she got out of bed and placed the gun on the bedside table. She stooped and picked up the enormous tom¬cat who had wandered so innocently into the room.
“You silly cat! Good Lord,” she said stroking him, “I nearly shot you.” Calico, who was initially glad for the attention, decided that while it was fun to be held by his human for a moment, all this attention was beginning to smother the hell out of him, so he clamored to get down. Feeling his claws starting to pierce her nightgown and into her left breast, she lowered him to the floor. In her bare feet, she padded into the kitchen where she mixed herself a strong bourbon and water with lots of ice. As she took the first sip, standing in the cool fluorescent light of the kitchen, she winced and had to admit to herself that she really was quite shaken. She calmed a bit as she felt the second sip slip, burn and spread its warmth through her stomach and her outer extremities. She carried the drink back to her room switching out the kitchen light as she left. She sat on the side of the bed finishing the drink quickly, then lay down and stared at the stucco-like ceiling, imagining the bumps to be the mountains of the moon.
She fell into a troubled sleep.

1:30 a.m.

He saw her kitchen light switch off as he stood in her back yard. She told him during dinner that she had taken her German Shepherd to the vet that afternoon for some shots and upon examination, the animal doctor had implored her to let him give the dog a thorough going over. Perfect!
Now he knew she had no protection; nothing to save that sluttish body of hers from his righteous and deadly indignation.
The prostitute he had been with didn’t slake his thirst for vengeance as he had hoped. He had walked down Alter Street for a while until he had seen the brazen one leaning against a wall.
Her breasts had sagged and her behind was pockmarked he noted when they reached her dingy little room, and she slipped out her scanty clothing They got at it right away, and they made animal love until he could feel her body racked with spasms of pleasure, her mouth open wide in a silent scream. When he was sure she wasn’t faking it, he took her hands from her side and curled his fingers around her neck and squeezed as her silent scream metamorphosed into a very real one. He exploded when he saw the life extinguished from her eyes.
Now squatting in Elizabeth’s back yard, he smiled grimly. He’d sent that whore to a better world where she would sin no more. In the bargain, he had absorbed her essence, her life force and it coursed through him making him stronger.
He really had affection for Elizabeth. He was almost stricken that she had to sully their relationship with the offer of sex. It showed him that she was truly no better than the rest of the harlots. He’d never had a relationship with a nice girl before, and Elizabeth had seemed like such a nice girl.
They had met two months before. He was a junior accountant in a large firm of CPA’s and had been sent by his office to go over the books of her small company. As he explained what he was doing as they perused her records, he noticed the clean way she smelled, the way her thick blond hair fell across one shoulder, the way her eyes sparkled when she smiled. She had asked him to lunch, and for the next eight weeks they had met for lunch and dinner with increasing regularity. In all that time, she had not soiled what they had together with even a kiss – not until tonight. Well, his mother had told him about women like that. The fact that his mother was exponentially worse never seemed once to penetrate his mind. He thought about the task at hand and knew that he would have to wait until she had fallen into a deep sleep. He went around to the side of the house and noted that a light was still on. Well, that was okay. He had patience.
He had plenty of time.

3:30 a.m.

Nothing.
Satisfied, Ben opened the door noiselessly, and ever so slowly let himself into the house and just as slowly closed the back door. He crossed the kitchen floor, each step taking an eternity. He finally made his way towards the lit bedroom with its door ajar, being especially careful not to make the slightest sound.
He allowed himself a peek in the room.
Elizabeth was lying there on top of the covers, her long hair masking her face in strands. He noticed the fullness of her breasts as they rose and fell in a relaxed easy motion.
She was dead to the world. He almost giggled with delight at the joke he’d made; DEAD to the world!
He slipped into her room through the crack in the door and started towards her bed when she uttered a low moan in her sleep and turned over restlessly. He retreated and startled himself when he saw his reflection in the full-length mirror embedded in the closet door. Seeing the door gave him an idea. She moved again as though she could sense his presence, and began to mumble in her sleep.
If she awoke, she would scream. He moved over to the door, opened it and practically leapt into the closet and closed it.
It made a large click.
It was the “click” that awoke Elizabeth, although she couldn’t have explained that to anyone. She felt a chill down her spine though the house was comfortably heated. She looked down and saw the cat at the foot of the bed and felt an unknown dread. She absolutely knew that someone was in the house. Her feet hit the floor with a thump, and she looked around inconspicuously. There was a draft from somewhere, and she rose uneasily shaking her head to free it from the fuzz that ensconced it.
With a false bravado, she called out sharply, “Who’s there?” She picked up the .22.
Inside the closet, Ben jumped involuntarily.
She walked across the room and opened the bedroom door wider and he had to stifle a scream as he heard the door creak towards him. Ben heard her footsteps fade as she walked down the hall switching on lights. She was shaking as she made her way down the hall. She turned on the hall light and held the gun in front of her tightly. She called out again, and went into the living room and switched on the lights, flashing the gun about as she did.
No one.
Nothing had been disturbed. Her nerves were jangling as she switched on the dining room light.
Again the room was deserted.
She pushed the swinging door to the kitchen open quickly and felt her essence stretch taut as she turned on that light, her eyes straining as it flickered on. Again, everything seemed right, as it should be, as she scanned the room for anything wrong, anything out of place. Ben sat in the closet all this time, his mind racing. He knew he would have to remain here for a very long time until she had calmed down, and he knew that could be a very long time indeed. Her intended lover wanted to sit down on the closet floor amongst all her shoes. If he sat down he might be too cramped to move when the time came. If he didn’t, he might be too tired. He mulled it over.
In the kitchen, her eyes darted around wildly. She still saw nothing out of place. There certainly didn’t seem to be anyone here. She started to relax, and decided that this time the situation called for brandy. God, she was going to be an alcoholic if she didn’t stop this. She sloshed a large dollop into a large glass and took a long pull. Through the bottom rim of the glass, she looked at the back door and froze, the glass still at her lips.
The chain!
The chain was unlatched. She was sure that she had latched it before. She would have staked her life on it. Hell, maybe she was. She was shaking in a palsied fury and raced through the house again, this time in a random frenzy. The cat alarmed by her fear, rushed in and around her legs. She bolted through the living room, then the dining room, back into the kitchen while trying to scream, “Get Out, GET OUT!” but her throat was so constricted with fear that it came out as a hoarse whisper. She ran back down the hall and into the bedroom and saw a quick movement out of the corner of her eye. She whirled around and fired all three shots into the full length closet door mirror. She stood dumbly as the shards of glass fell to the floor and shattered as though in slow motion, leaving only the wooden backdrop with three holes in it. She collapsed on her bed, her body wracked with sobs that flushed out of her unchecked.
She lay like that for the longest time. Finally, gingerly, she raised her head and looked around. There was nobody there after all. Thank God.
She must have just forgotten to put the latch on.
As her hysteria lifted, she smelled the pungent odor of cordite in the room. Oh no! What if the neighbors had heard the shots and called the police? She knew she could not bear dealing with them right now. As her rational mind began to assert itself, she realized that when she had shot the gun at the target range, it had made no more of a sound than that of a small firecracker. Sure, it made a large noise in her bedroom because it was an enclosed space, but she doubted seriously whether anyone could have heard the popping sounds in the street.
She lay on top of her bed for a long while, the empty gun still in her hand. As dawn began to spread through the eastern sky scattering faint beams through her lace curtains, she fell into an exhausted sleep.

Noon

She awoke with the sun shining directly in her eyes. She lay there for a moment, feeling the sensuous warmth of the sun as it bathed her. She felt an object in her hand and jumped.
The gun!
Oh God!
She guiltily lifted her head and stared at the closet door. What the hell had gotten into her? Why had she been so jumpy? She gazed over at the bedside clock as she placed the gun back in the drawer. Damn, she was late. Why had nobody at the shop called her? It was Sunday. “You silly goose,” she said aloud.
She stared at the door mirror, shattered to pieces, shards scattered all over her bedroom floor. What a silly woman! She got up, glided into her slippers, went into the kitchen, grabbed a broom and dustpan, went back into the bedroom and swept up all the glass taking extra care to get all the small slivers. She emptied it from the dustpan into the garbage can in the kitchen.
She thought fleetingly about the tremendous damage the shots had inflicted upon her clothes. She pushed the thought aside—too depressing. Wait until later after a well-deserved breakfast. She went to the front door, retrieved the huge Sunday paper, sipped several cups of strong coffee as she perused its bulk, then went back to her bedroom to get dressed. As she slipped off her nightgown and opened the dresser drawer to get her jeans and turtleneck sweater, she decided to take a walk—a long walk to clear her head from the nightmare of the night before. She might even walk over to Alter Street to see Ben. They could have a good laugh over her silliness. He might even want to offer succor and comfort. The thought brought an impish smile to her face.
What was wrong with her? She had never been like this before. Oh well, it was, over now! She slipped the sweater over her head and walked to the front door. She opened it and stood admiring the idyllic scene of a crisp fall afternoon. You know, it felt good now, but if she spent the afternoon with Ben, it might get a bit chilly later on.
As she walked back into the house, she thought about what coat she would take with her. The thought struck her that there would probably be more than some moth holes in her clothes.
Oh please, not the herringbone. She loved that coat! Well, she was just going to reach in, grab it and go, the devil take the hindsight! What else could go wrong?
She strode purposefully into the bedroom and pulled open the closet door…

Answers to the Chamber Questionaire

Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce

Candidate Questionnaire
2011 City of Charleston Elections

1. Why do you want to be Mayor of the City of Charleston?

I wish to be mayor because I think we need to change the paradigm in our thinking from a reliance on government funding to seeking cost-effective and lasting solutions to problems ignored for decades at a time when they were affordable. I want to be mayor because I think in the past 36 years, two Charlestons have developed… The peninsula south of Calhoun and then countless neighborhoods from the East Side and Cannonborough to North Central to Wagener Terrace, West Ashley and the islands. The latter pays the freight. I am running because this administration no longer understands that something isn’t wrong because a law is passed – a law is passed because something is wrong. I want to represent my Charleston, the second Charleston.

2. What do you see as the top three issues facing the City of Charleston?

Since I am only running for one term, it should surprise no one that my number one issue is executive term limits, a position two others in the race are advocating. Right after I am inaugurated next January, I will propose a referendum that executive term limits (two six year terms) be adopted after my term. Many argue that term limits are governed by the electorate but they far underrate the power of three and a half decades of incumbency. I do not use the word, “power” loosely. This city was founded on John Locke’s philosophy, which led to the freest country in history. Power is a mean seductress, no matter one’s good intentions. . I believe that the alliances and entanglements of the last 36 years have led to a philosophy of entitlement that has removed itself from the day to day life of the majority of Charlestonians.

Equal to that is fixing the Crosstown. This is something all the candidates for mayor are advocating. Two have vague solutions, one has grandiose plans and I have proposed a practical solution. I have befriended some engineers as part of my campaign who will release a detailed plan in the next few days.. The short answer is that I would raise the roadway a foot. Problem solved. The Crosstown doesn’t flood any more. We would place two pumps (one on Fishburne and the other on President Street) at strategic locations. This would take care of the flooding in those neighborhoods. Two weeks ago, we announced that our plan would cost roughly $60 million. Last week according to the administration, the city had $66 million in the tank (so to speak) already.

Last, I would not overwhelm Asnonborough with Union Pier and the Gaillard, because I think this is a quality of life issue. It all goes back to my campaign slogan: Charleston is a community not a commodity. All of our accolades, all of our achievements belong to the property owners who pay for them. Why should any neighborhood accept the mayor’s assurances when not long ago, this administration razed an entire section of the city under a false premise with an eye on development? Again, I want to shift the focus on taking care of what we already have rather than spending princely government sums for projects that do nothing for the general welfare of the community.

3. What experiences have you had which qualify you serve as Mayor?
I believe I understand and have a better idea of the pulse of the city than anyone else in the race. I began giving tours of Charleston during Joe Riley’s first term (1978). I gave my last almost three years ago. I grew up in Charleston in a family that goes back centuries. I understand the need to balance tourism (commodity) and not only the neighborhoods that are directly affected, but those asked to pay for it (community). In my almost 60 years, I have lived in places all over the peninsula. I grew up downtown and in St. Andrew’s Parish. I lived five years in Oakland off Savannah Highway where I was neighborhood president.
I ran a successful tour company for 15 years.
Two years after I got my tour guide’s license, I began as a cub reporter for the News and Courier. In subsequent years, I published three newspapers, authored three books (new one in February), produced three films, wrote a weekly column for the Post and Courier for six years and was instrumental in bringing the Charleston Mercury into print.
I managed the writers, the news budget and wrote extensive articles about city government.
These are my successes. Obviously one is loathe to trumpet one’s flops. The point is I had them, and I learned from them.
I think the most important thing anyone in an executive position should know is that he or she is not the “smartest person in the room.” The trick is to quietly surround yourself with the people with who are.

4. What is your position on the completion of I-526?

I don’t see we have a choice. The question is whether it is a way to get from point A to point B or access farmland to develop. I favor the first approach. Make it a raised highway with only two exits on John’s Island – one at River Road and the other Bohicket, Maybank and Main.
Make that section a toll road with a modest $1 fee each way. Once the state is paid off, the toll comes off by statute. Make a deal with the infrastructure bank that those funds are dedicated to this project. This way, we can free up funds for an extensive drainage project for every part of Charleston.

5. Do you support the redevelopment of Union Pier and the construction of the cruise terminal? Why or why not?
Those are two questions (well, really four). I support the building of a cruise terminal. I do not support the redevelopment of Union Pier as it is currently proposed.
I agree we have an agreement with Carnival. I want it codified, but this business is already established and should be allowed to operate along expectations. I side with the Preservation Society that there should be an ordinance that spells it all out in detail.
I am against overwhelming Ansonborough with additional traffic, noise and pollution. My proposal is to move the terminal to Columbus Street. The loss of jobs stated is simply misdirection.
In fact, after he was elected in 2007, the mayor stated that developing that area would be his first priority. Absolutely! Put the focus on where development is needed. Don’t destroy a neighborhood through overdevelopment when another is crying for any economic development. .

6. Our region’s unemployment rate remains high. How would you work as Mayor to help lower unemployment and create jobs?

Recently, a study found that the area was replete with folks with Master’s Degrees and PhD’s. I question how many are waiting tables on King and Market Streets.
I will deal with fees and taxes (see question 7) and looking at capital projects, cutting anywhere I could. That will require a forensic audit.
I will take the focus off tourism and put it on courting existing successful engineering and IT companies as well as the entertainment industry. Much is made of the Flagship projects. I heartily applaud those entrepreneurs. Having been on both sides of it though, I argue there is no guarantee that an oak tree will grow from an acorn.
I wholly disagree with the current philosophy that “if you build it, they will come.” I think the mayor and council should aggressively attract business by traveling to the company headquarters (stay at motel six) to explain what we could do for each other. That means that hostility towards business in the form of fees and taxes will have to be lowered. One has to wonder why so many small businesses choose to locate in Mount Pleasant and North Charleston. It’s time to climb out of a beautiful bathtub that doesn’t drain, it’s time we rolled up our sleeves It’s time we got dirty with everyone else. It’s time we got to work.

7. We often hear businesses express concern over the taxes and fees imposed on businesses operating in the City of Charleston. As Mayor, how would you work to ensure the City has the revenues it needs to operate while not placing additional burden on business?

Here’s where the paradigm shift I discussed earlier comes into play. We need to define how much government we need, not only in terms of laws, taxes, and fees, but grand projects. Just as the families on Stinson to Seven Oaks Farm, Mary Ellen Drive to Mary Street and all over town are sitting down tonight deciding to get rid of cable and pizza because it’s a luxury, my beloved city has to make a fundamental decision as to what is dinner and what is dessert, whether government should engage in expensive projects that do nothing to promote the public welfare or tighten their belts just like every other entity.
I was in the tourist industry for over half my adult life. I watched how the mismanagement of resources and the displaced undue burdens of taxation, regulations and fees strangled or downsized a lot of businesses. From what I can see, it’s the same for a lot of other city endeavors.
Being a conservative I argue that we aren’t facing a double-dip recession, we never really got out of the first one. Government needs to focus on what helps everyone; not a select few – especially when hard times are barreling down on us like a freight train

8. As Mayor, how would you work with other municipalities and counties to solve regional issues?

Upon my election, I will meet with every mayor in the area on his or her turf to establish a personal relationship. I will meet with every county and state elected official at their business or home as well. In past years the government of the city of Charleston has been regarded as the belle of the ball. Well, she now has grown kids (North Charleston, Mount Pleasant). It’s time she understand that she is now only part of the family.

Personal information

Name: David Ashby Farrow

Address: 334 East Bay #222
Charleston, S.C. 29401
Email: farrowformayor@gmail.com Phone 843.

Employer Self

Highest educational degree earned and name of institution:
BA Political philosophy, College of Charleston

Other elected offices you have held or sought:
President, Oakland Neighborhood Association

Current community involvement and professional affiliations:
S.C. Historical Society, Preservation Society.

Campaign Kick off — Kinda

I want to stress that I have gone off the reservation on this. This is not an official video below.

This a rough draft of the first of many internet ads we will produce in the next month. Love the song. Would love to use it. Money better spent elsewhere, so we can’t officially release it, ergo this is a sketch, not the real thing.

Still, I think this song personifies everything in this race. I hope you enjoy this, but please don’t post the actual video anywhere. By the way, the most awesome photography was done by our Volunteer coordinator, Jack Handegan. Keep your eyes on this kid.

That said, I am writing this with five weeks before the election. I have been taking notes, and if nothing else, I learned a great deal.

One thing I have garnered is that I have a real shot at winning the mayor’s race. Huh.

I have also picked up that money is truly the mother’s milk of politics. We really can win, but those of you have pledged need to step up. Those of you who support us, there will be a meet and greet fundraiser at S&S Cafeteria on Sam Rittenberg next Sunday at 3. They have great pie. I have great ideas. Good comnination.

Thanks to all of you who have helped. We can do this. Please help me make Joe Riley a NINE TERM MAYOR!!!!

Hope you enjoy this non-official video:

Click the arrow on the lower right hand of the screen to enlage it.

The Life and Death of “Gootch.”

I want to tell you the story of “Gootch.” That was my nickname from 1967 until 1982. I will say up front if anyone not related to me since that time calls me that, I will not respond. I hate the name. I hated the name in 1967 and I hate it now, although, I tolerate it from old friends. You can’t get mad at them, they don’t know any better.
I was 13 in September 1967. I was in 8th grade at Christ School. I was walking down the lower hall of the main school building. Down this long corridor was a set of double doors with window panes.
The Coke machine was on one side and Dick Link and Bob Giles were on a red bench on the other. They were fourth formers, two years older and wizened veterans, large with sharp tongues.
Let me describe myself at the time. At age 13, I had grown from 5’8 to 6 feet. Right before I went to Christ School, my father took me to the barber and got me a crew cut; it was growing every which way (which is why I keep it long, today), I had black nerd bi-focal glasses, and to top it off, I had braces on both sets of teeth. My co-ordination, which was never good at the best of times, was shot. I was big, so I got put in the JV league. Bad plan.
Self-esteem was not a big priority at Christ School.
The motes of dust floating in the shafts of sunlight that illuminated Bob Giles and Dick Link gave them almost surreal look. I could taste the bile of fear as I neared them. Upper classmen could give you a couple of body slams at will, and the sadistic ones did.
I had yet to learn what to expect. The sun was shining down on the two like an Italian sunset. Bob, a lanky jug-eared boy from Gastonia, N.C. and Dick Link, the original Jake the Handyman, butt-crack included, watched me walk down the hall.
When I reached them, Giles, said in a withering voice, “Hey, Gootch!”
Well to be honest, I was the only other person within 50 feet of the two boys.
I think I mumbled, “Who me? in false bravado.
Because I was big, people expected me to be aggressive, to play the alpha male. I preferred to be left to my own devices. Giles stood, close to a thrown punch which is just the way things were back in those days.
His eyes and mine locked like lasers and although it was probably but seconds, in that moment galaxies were born and died. Finally, he stared at me down and said with the contempt reserved for the untouchables, “That’s your name Gootch. From here on out, it will be.”
Right as rain, that was on Wednesday afternoon after football practice, and as we were greeted by the rancid smell of fish fried in the morning bacon grease Friday night after chapel, every student, every teacher in that procession called me by new my sobriquet. There’s no way to describe the contempt with which it was said.
By Christmas, the nickname reached Charleston, and it followed me around the world for the next 15 years, six states, eight countries, three colleges, numerous work places and an Alp for God’s sake.
There was no malice after the first semester, it was just a nickname. A lot of people get nicknames they don’t like, and lead perfectly ordinary lives. Me? It was irritating and probably had some great effect on my bad behavior, but I walked past it.
I really didn’t like it, but it did come in handy once.
Years ago, long before we even considered being Charlotte much less Atlanta-by-the-Sea, there was a bar called the Blue Marlin on Cumberland across from what is now the Little Cricket where the Lodge Alley Inn is now. It was a hole in the wall in a warehouse where Cap’n Harry sold cans of Budweiser for 50 cents.
Back then, Charleston wasn’t hip, but it was one of the coolest places on earth. Kiawah hadn’t been developed. We hadn’t been discovered by the ‘beautiful people,’ yet. People like Buffett and Mick Jagger would go to Harry’s because no one cared who they were. (Having spent a lot of time in Maine as of late, I would observe, we were them once – no longer.)
My first job after seven years of college having earned the ever-elusive, ever useful degree in political philosophy was shucking oysters at A.W. Shucks which was a postage stamp at the time. I would get off at three, ride my bike home, clean up and be at Harry’s at happy hour.
Harry’s may have been the last real touchstone of the Charleston that had a cohesive vision of itself. Black painters sat on the sides of cars talking to Broad Street lawyers, hip young mothers, babies on their hips would chat with Ashley Hall seniors (the drinking age was 18).. Eccentricity wasn’t tolerated, it was encouraged.
Luckily, that left a lot of room for my crap because I had confederates that made me pale in comparison. It was like the Simpsons at its testosterone best, except as Gootch I was Homer.
Not to get too existential about all this, but I never acknowledged the nickname. I’m adopted. There are already enough nights missing. I went from being who my parents named me to “Gootch.”
Thus I never introduced myself as such. By that fateful afternoon in May of 1978, I found myself speaking to a young lady, a rather comely young lady from off with a reputation for round heels.
I have been told that I can have a certain charm. I’ve never seen it, but some women have, despite my misogamy. I was on my way. I was crossing second headed to third, when suddenly a short stop stepped in to block the play.
“Do you know that guy, Gootch?”
I paused, then said, “Yeah, I know him. I think he’s a pretty good guy.”
“I think he’s a real asshole.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I saw him get naked and run down Wentworth Street…”
I can’t drink any more. One reason is the whole, “Oh my god,” moment thing. Still, I never did that, nor did I do a lot of things I was accused of. It’s too late to point fingers.
I will say that my late friend, Stuart Barnwell, used to make up stories about me, and I spotted this immediately as a Stuart story.
Well, this was too good to be true.
For the next five minutes, she excoriated “Gootch,” each story more salacious, more outrageous. When she hesitated, I would pump her for more. I suspect we went far afield from anything Stuart could think up.
She was a typical social climber, willing to step on people and sleep her way to the top.
I could barely contain myself.
Finally, Cantey Smith came from behind me, slapped me on the back and said, ‘Heeeeyy, Goootch! Howwa doin?’
Remember the scene with Bob Giles? Our eyes locked for an eternity as she realized what she had done.
I have never seen as many shades of red on a woman’s face before a death mask, a kabuki pall cast over her face. She swished her full breasts and her pastels away from me. We have never spoken since that evening.
She ended up marrying somebody I knew and has trashed me for the last some 30-some odd years. Good luck with that. I later learned that I lied to her by not telling her I was Gootch. I wasn’t then, nor am I now. I will acknowledge the name for people whom I have known before 1982 which eliminates the majority of people I know.
I won’t answer to it. My thought was that she took someone whom she didn’t know and trashed their name – good or not. I should add she has done very well here. Go with God.
I don’t know. I can think of a thousand things I would trade in my life just for one more look at her face in that instant of recognition and mortification.
From then on it became more schizo because I was whoever I was for that five months, then David Ashby Farrow (lucky call, that) and Gootch. I was on my way to 30, a whole different turn. I chose the Farrow guy, good or ill. Whether I have served the name well, that remains to be seen, the game’s not over, yet.
To go back to the venerable Homer Simpson, once responding to Bart’s assertion that it was the worst day of his entire life, he exclaimed “So far, son. So far.’
Later when he responded to his wife’s claim that he gave her the best kiss she ever had, he responded, “So far, Marge. So far.”
C’est la vie.
Still, looking back, it is an affirmation of what I’ve always believed. The circle will come back around. You simply must get out of the way.
Bob Giles and Dick Link tossed an adolescent epithet that exploded — that eventually reverberated through two continents, eight countries, broke relationships and brought new; defined my self-image for good or ill.
God love them, man. I hope their dreams have come true, and their grandchildren are fat and happy.
You see the circle did come back around. It was almost worth it all to lock eyes with this girl, now grandmother. As I said, I wish her no ill. Just stay out of my life. Things have worked out just fine on that front, thanks.
So far.