We are in the process of making some changes to this website. We wanted to make it real easy for you to find the latest podcast, and to access our blog posts. My resolution for the New Year is to post here several times a week, in addition to fresh podcasts. Soon, we are launching a new podcast series, Livin’ Large which will cover food, wine, travel, the arts, and my new car reviews. We will also be posting video from my new local TV show in the Bay Area, Marin Voices and Views, co-hosted with Larry Strick. As always, your comments and support are appreciated!

Richard Rapaport

Throughout its history, South Carolina has been America’s agent provocateur, a political troublemaker out of scale with its ranking as the nation’s 26th most-populous state. In 1861 lawyer James L. Petegru, possibly the last sane freeman in antebellum Charleston, commented about his state’s secession from the Union. “South Carolina,” he sighed, “too small to be a republic, too big to be an asylum.”

Petegru’s judgment is as relevant today as it was at Civil War’s start. It accounts for the hubris, arrogance and sheer stupidity that are such key motifs for such modern-day South Carolina politicians as the romance-besotted Governor Mark Sanford, the extremist Senator Jim DeMint, and most recently, the boorish Representative Joe Wilson.

Never let it be said that South Carolina’s politicians are under-reachers. Despite the state’s rank of 47th in both ACT and SAT scores, its leaders hang stubbornly to the belief that they have something important to teach the rest of us. Perhaps they do, but in quite a different way than intended. South Carolina’s mistaken sense of manifest destiny began in colonial times. It resided in such proud achievements as being the British/American penal colony with the highest percentage of slaves, over 40% of the population. Throughout the 1700’s, Charleston was America’s wealthiest city, buoyed by the plantation economy and slave trade. So important was slavery that in 1740 the colonial legislature passed the “Negro Act,” actually forbidding owners from freeing their slaves without official concurrence.

At the start of the Revolution, South Carolina informed the Continental Congress that it would refuse to sign the Declaration of Independence unless slavery was recognized. South Carolina even demanded the right to disregard an embargo on trade with Great Britain agreed to by the other colonies. It was an exemption that allowed South Carolina to maintain its lucrative rice trade and remain among the richest colonies throughout the Revolution.

Particularly chilling about Congressman Wilson’s recent outburst on the House floor was its recollection of a May 1856 incident that foreshadowed the death of civility on the road to Civil War. Several days after Massachusetts’ abolitionist Charles Sumner gave a speech denouncing slavery, he was beaten unconscious on the Senate floor by Congressman Preston Brooks of – where else? – South Carolina.

South Carolina proudly refers to itself as “the birthplace of secession,” the first state to depart the Union following the 1860 Presidential election. Throughout those dark days as one after another Southern State left the Union, a bell christened “Secessia” tolled the news in South Carolina’s capital, Columbia. It was in Charleston that Civil War hostilities actually began when hotheaded South Carolina secessionists shelled Fort Sumter in April 1861.

In many respects, the Civil War has never ended for South Carolina; the State at the same time celebrating its role as the heart of rebellion, and insisting it is the innocent victim of William Tecumseh Sherman’s Army of the West. To this day many South Carolinians blame “Uncle Billy” Sherman for the thoroughness of his army’s arson. Sherman’s response was as tart as it was righteous: “Though I never ordered it, I have never shed many tears over the event because I believe it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the War.”

Reconstruction followed War’s end, and then came the darkest times during which South Carolina enacted the “Jim Crow” laws making life hell for former slaves and their descendants. The sheer inventiveness of segregation in South Carolina was fiendish; in 1915, for example, the legislature passed a law barring white and black textile workers from occupying the same factory spaces. The Klan operated in South Carolina, which practiced American apartheid under the tutelage of arch-racists like Senator Strom Thurman. As late as 2000, the Confederate flag flew over the state capitol in Columbia, its status protected by whom? Then State Senator, Joe Wilson.

With such a malign history, it is downright weird that South Carolinians like Representative Wilson seems convinced that they have some special messianic truth to publicly share with America’s first African-American President. If they do, the message must be a variant on James Petegru’s epithet, something like; “South Carolina, too small to be a Republic, just about the right size for an asylum!”

Richard Rapaport is a Bay Area writer. He can be reached at rjrap@aol.com

The Battle over Healthcare:  Progressive Democrat Tim Carpenter, media critic Jeff Cohen, and mad-as-hell-Dr. Gene Upham.  Carpenter is the National Director for Progressive Democrats of America, and his current priorities are the Wiener amendment to substitute single payer language in the House bill, and support for the Kucinich (House) and Sanders (Senate) measures to enable single payer at the state level.  Cohen, media critic, co-founder of FAIR and author of Cable News Confidential, offers smart criticism of Democrats and allied netroots groups that compromised too much too fast, and the way the corporate media has amplified the lies of demagogues.  And MD Gene Uphoff of Portland tells why he favors single payer, and invites you to join him and the Mad As Hell Doctors for their care-avan from Portland to Washington DC that starts Sept. 8. They can use your financial support, if you are in a position to assist.

Thom Hartmann, Rep. Joe Sestak, and Gary Chew’s review of the new documentary, The Cove.  Thom is my favorite progressive radio host, and we talk about his departure from Air America as well as the ideas in his newest book, Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture. Thom argues that we are facing economic challenges, global warming, and population growth, and we have some disagreement about imigration policy.  Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak, the retired 3-star Navy admiral, announced that he will challenge nouveau-Demo Arlen Specter in the Senate primary next year.  Sestak is very smart, he listens, and responds with thoughtful comments, not just rehearsed sound bites.  He earns high marks for pledging to restore the constitution and end illegal domestic surveillance, and for critical thinking about Afghanistan and other foreign policy issues.  Gary Chew, our official film reviewer, says “The Cove” is a moving documentary about dolphin slaughter in Japan, and I get to tell my story of an amazing encounter with a group of dolphins while sailing in the Caribbean.

NSA whistleblower Russell D. Tice, who was the first to report that journalists were targeted by illegal domestic wiretapping and surveillance, joins us for the second installment of the Boiling Frogs interview series, co-hosted by Sibel Edmonds.  Tice tells us he was briefed on more than 200 “black” programs over his 20+ years in US intelligence, and expresses deep concern that Bush-era surveillance may have compromised many of our political leaders.  For more information, go to 123realchange.blogspot.com   We plan to post a new Boiling Frogs interview on Tuesdays.

Obama’s disappointing health insurance reform; a new group called Progressives for Immigration Reform; Tommy Panik on Larry Craig’s new consulting firm; and an obit on Rev. Ike.  In our first segment, Dr. Len Saputo and Byron Belitsos talk about their book, “A Return to Healing: Radical Health Care Reform and the Future of Medicine” and about their frustrating efforts to educate lawmakers about the major reforms we need, but are unlikely to get.  www.areturntohealing.com PBC challenges Leah Durant, executive director of “Progressives For Immigration Reform” who uses progressive language to support right wing reform proposals.  www.progressivesforimmigrationreform.com   PBC gets a rare in-studio report from his in-depth undercover low-budget investigative reporter, Tommy Panik, fresh from Palin’s Quitfest in Alaska.  Tommy has the scoop on disgraced ex-Sen. Larry Craig’s new consulting gig.  And PBC notes the passing of the founder of God’s Greed Squad, Rev. Ike

PBC f-bombs California’s “balanced budget”; MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe on Obama, and ACORN founder Wade Rathke on the economy.  WARNING: Strong Language. Your humble host is pretty angry at Schwarzenegger and the GOP for another phony budget deal based on false choices, brutal cuts, and more gimmicks that cut California off at the knees and ensure more red ink in the very near future.  Wolffe’s book is “Renegade”, with fascinating tidbits from last year’s campaign: Obama’s secret meeting with Rev. Wright, and his decision to name Hillary Secretary of State even before the primaries ended. We also talked about the ways Obama has disappointed the progressives who got him the nomination.  Postscript: two days after talking to Wolffe, I learned from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com that Wolfe has left Newsweek and joined a corporate PR firm, Public Strategies, which represents Lockheed Martin and the US Chamber of Commerice, among others.  My listeners deserve to know this, and Mr. Wolffe should disclose it to MSNBC viewers. Rathke describes his ideas for organizing workers and restructuring the economy, and responds to right wing critics, and Fox News in particular, who demonize ACORN.  He talks honestly about his brother’s embezzlement from ACORN, which has produced a wave of attacks, and phony “voter fraud” charges levelled against ACORN.  Rathke’s blog is www.chieforganizer.org  His new book is “Citizen Wealth”.

Mark Klein, the fearless retired A T & T tech who exposed the NSA’s secret splitter room in San Francisco, details the illegal interception of domestic communications, the coverup by most media outlets, and the senators who wouldn’t meet with him or allow him to testify and who worked so hard to legalize the Bush administration’s clear violations of the Fourth Amendment while protecting the NSA and the phone companies.  Please share this with everyone you know, and demand that our Fourth Amendment rights are honored. Mark tells his story in the new book “Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine…and Fighting It”.  The book is self-published and only available at www.amazon.com  This one-on-one interview runs 90 minutes.

NSA expert James Bamford talks about illegal domestic wiretapping, the sordid coverup by BushCo and Democrats, the NSA’s huge failures around 9/11, and the Israeli firms with Mossad connections that supply critical equipment for domestic spying.  This is the first installment of “The Boiling Frogs”, a podcast series PBC is co-hosting with Sibel Edmonds, the courageous FBI whistleblower.  Full info at www.123realchange.blogspot.com

One on one with filmmaker Andy Abrahams Wilson.  Under Our Skin is a powerful documentary about Lyme disease.  The film documents the cases of people who develop chronic Lyme disease, which leads to serious cognitive and motor losses, and even death.  It shows that the medical establishment denies that chronic Lyme even exists, and that many doctors who treat Lyme patients are punished by medical boards and insurance companies.  Be sure to visit www.underourskin.com to learn more and see some video clips like this one.

PBC sez, “This documentary opened my eyes to the layers of problems Lyme patients encounter, and a medical system corrupted by profit and power.  Please listen and look for the movie.”  More info at www.underourskin.com