Mother Jones: Cochran's Tea Party challenger pals around with neo-Confederates

All of y'all flipping out over me pointing out that Mr. Chris "Restore the Constitution" McDaniel has the Three-Fifths Compromise emblazoned on the side of his RV as he drives it through Mississippi should have a field day with this.  (Paul Gallo, I'm looking at you.)

Mother Jones has a story up about McDaniel spending the last few months hanging out with neo-Confederates.  From the article:

In August, McDaniel addressed a neo-Confederate conference in Laurel, Miss., near his hometown of Ellisville. A local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), the Jones County Rosin Heels, hosted the two-day event, which the group described in invitations as a "Southern Heritage Conference" for "politically incorrect folks." Attendees were advised to dress in "Confederate uniforms and antebellum ball gowns or wee kilties." McDaniel's appearance at the Rosin Heels heritage conference was not a one-off occurrence; weeks earlier he was the keynote speaker at a separate event in Jackson. 

The Rosin Heels does more than regret the outcome of the Civil War. Its monthly newsletter routinely features articles and essays advocating for present-day secession. Its August newsletter highlighted the seven-year-old "Burlington Declaration" from the First North American Secession Convention, which stated that the right of secession was a "[truth] of natural law and the human experience." (While it did not advcoate for specific secession movement, the proclamation affirmed the right of the conference's various attendees to do so.) In September, the newsletter included an essay on secession from the League of the South, lamenting the loss of southern independence at the hands of the "plutocracy and proletariat of the world." A note from the editor stated that "we are living in the times that Jefferson Davis predicted would one day come," in which the conflicts that presaged the Civil War would flare up again. The June issue compared Obama's policies to the ravages of Reconstruction: "Our people have had to put up with for the last FIFTEEN DECADES!!!" 

... 

The group also purchases billboards, with messages such as "Happy birthday, President Jefferson Davis," and "Fort Sumter was fired on when Lincoln tried to reinforce his customs house for tax collection."

So, how do y'all feel about poor ol' Chris "Three-Fifths" McDaniel now? Was I too harsh?

Gallo Show this morning

I went on the Paul Gallo Show this morning, and it was a pleasant experience for the most part.  Hope those of y'all who listened in enjoyed it.  I promised Paul that I would post a picture of the mug he gave to me as a parting gift.  Here it is on my desk:

SuperTalk Mississippi, brought to you by...you

SeeTheSpending.org, a project of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, is an excellent tool for Mississippi's voters. The website makes it easy to search state agency spending, and to see how your tax dollars are being used.

Thanks to SeeTheSpending.org, we've been able to uncover that SuperTalk Mississippi, a statewide radio network with a decidedly conservative Republican bent, has been showered with state money since 2003. In fact, the radio network who's hosts spend all day bashing "wasteful" government spending raked in over $6,000,000.00 in the last 8 years.

SuperTalk Mississippi is owned by Telesouth Communications, Inc. Here's a year-by-year breakdown of Telesouth Communications, Inc.'s state funding from FY2004 to present:

FY2004: $589,942.00
FY2005: $695,053.85
FY2006: $1,102,824.16
FY2007: $748,686.07
FY2008: $1,202,807.00
FY2009: $890,982.00
FY2010: $486,290.00
FY2011: $295,823.00 (so far)

TOTAL: $6,012,408.08


You read that right: $6,012,408.08 since FY2004 on radio ads to a company built in large part on anger about government spending.