Carrier is a “shining city upon the sea”

FEB. 3, 2012 — You can feel America’s promise and power aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. It’s where foreign policy meets reality.

A carrier is “100,000 tons of diplomacy that doesn’t need a permission slip,” one officer explained over a weekend tour in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast. “We’ll go where we want and stay as long as we need.”

Weekend visit to aircraft carrier is just awesome

JAN. 30, 2012 — Imagine you are sitting facing the back of a plane and someone is pressing an eight-pack of toilet paper onto your chest. Then BAM — for about two seconds, they punch it really, really hard and keep up the pressure.]

That’s what it feels like to land on an aircraft carrier. It takes your breath away. From the moment the tailhook on the C-2 Greyhound cargo plane latched onto the arresting wire on Saturday aboard the USS Enterprise, passengers decelerated from 105 m.p.h. to zero in just two seconds.

Recovery is on the way, but it’s slow

JAN. 27, 2012 — By the end of the year, a few of South Carolina’s metropolitan areas — Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Anderson and Columbia — are projected to be about halfway home or better in terms of making up jobs lost during the Great Recession.

And by the end of 2015, those four metro areas — plus Greenville, Charlotte and the Augusta/Aiken area — should have the same number of jobs as they did before the recession, according to a new report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Gingrich did what he does best — framing his ego

CHARLESTON, S.C., Jan. 22, 2012 – Before a discussion of what happened in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary yesterday, you should know this: The Palmetto State isn’t filled with right-wing, tea party nutcases. Sure, we have a fair share of them, but there are progressives here too.

Is South Carolina better off blue?

JAN. 20, 2012 — When the email came this week from a person saying she was an editor with the opinion section of The New York Times, I first wondered whether it was spam.

The editor said the paper was looking for a short commentary for its “Room for Debate” section of its online opinion forum: “Here’s what we’re asking: The Republican primary aside, given the state’s economy and the challenges it faces, wouldn’t South Carolina be better off with a Democrat as president? In fact, in this case, isn’t South Carolina better off with President Obama in the White House?”