Demographics and Especially Population Movements Spell Doom for the Republican Party

Present demographics in the US means that demographics is not on the side of the Republicans. Whites, the base of the Republican Party, continue to decline every year while the Hispanic population grows.

Even more important than that is a general movement of blue staters to red states and almost no movement in the other direction. Show me one red state that is losing population because it’s people are moving to blue states. There’s no such thing.

There’s more going on than that. Blue states have a far larger population than red states.

Virginia turned blue because Northerners kept moving down there for high paying jobs.

Georgia and North Carolina are on the same track for the same reason, and both may well in fact have gone over. Northeasterners have flooded to the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and Atlanta has been attracting floods of Northeasterners for a long time. The Republicans just stole a Senate seat in North Carolina due to mass election fraud, otherwise the Democrat would have won.

Florida is the only state resisting the trend towards blue due to continuous injections of rightwing Latin American immigrants and their offspring into the state.

New Hampshire has gone blue, probably due to invasion from more liberal NE states.

Pennsylvania is already history for the Republicans the same reason, mostly liberals moving out of the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area into the Philadelphia area.

Ohio and Iowa are on tied, but they have been tied for a long time, or at least Ohio has been.

Ohio swung hard to the right in 2016 or Trump in line with working class Whites voting Republican. But it swung back pretty hard in the other direction in 2020. In the last election, the electorate voted 5

Iowa was a Democratic state that recently went red as part of a trend of working class White states going red, similar to Ohio, which it resembles. As in Ohio though, it swung back hard blue in the 2020 election. I’m convinced Democrats won the Senate seat there in 2020.

Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are all long gone over to the Democrats despite massive election fraud on the part of Republicans. The legislatures of Michigan and especially Wisconsin remain in Republican hands due to massive gerrymandering by Republicans. In order to Democrats to win 5

Missouri and South Carolina are both trending blue, slowly but surely. Republicans only won by three points in South Carolina last election. I’m not sure why either state is going over unless it’s part of a general trend. Missouri used to be the bellweather state, but it went hard Right with the movement of the White working class in that direction in recent years, so it’s no longer a weathervane state. However, it swung somewhat back towards blue in 2020.

Colorado and New Mexico are solid blue now. In Colorado, this is due to mass influx of Californians to the state. New Mexico’s been fairly blue for some time and has only gotten more so.

Nevada’s pretty much gone for the Republicans for the same reason – Californians moving in. It’s been a traditionally conservative Republican state, but with so many Californians moving into the Reno and especially Las Vegas areas, it seems gone to the Republicans, although it’s still a bit close there.

Arizona appears barely blue now for the same reason – Californians flooding in to Tuscon and especially Phoenix – but it’s very much on the verge, and the legislature is still red, probably due to gerrymandering.

Blue states are getting bluer. I can’t think of one blue state that is becoming less blue.

Beyond that and even more ominous for Republicans is that almost all red states are getting less red with time. The average heavily-red state went a full ten percentage points blue in the last election, from Wyoming to West Virginia to Alabama. That’s terrifying from a Republican point of view.

The future looks ominous indeed for the Republican Party. The only way they can stay in power will be by stealing elections, which they are already good at, or moving to the left, which they almost cannot do because if the Republican Party moves left, it won’t be the Republican Party anymore.

It’s not so much racial demographics as mass movement from blue states to red states and almost zero movement in the other direction.

Repost: Englishes, Portugueses, and Chineses

In the comments to a previous post, Goyta made several comments. First of all he noted that the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are considerable, especially when a Brazilian hears a less educated, working class or rural Portuguese.

He also said that when European Portuguese are interviewed on Brazilian TV, Brazilians wish they had subtitles. Wanting to have subtitles when you see a video of someone speaking is actually a symptom that you are dealing with another language. He said the differences are particularly severe when it comes to IT. He said he cannot understand 9

It does appear that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are pretty significant, more significant than the differences between US and British English.

On other hand, I find Hibernian English spoken in Ireland to be nearly incomprehensible, though it is said to be just a dialect of English. It’s clearly been influenced extensively by the Irish language. Scots, the regional English spoken in Scotland and exemplified by the movie Trainspotting , is actually a completely separate language from English. That movie actually needed subtitles. On the other hand, there is a Scottish English dialect that is not Scots that is pretty intelligible.

We can always understand British English no matter who is writing it. Same with understanding spoken Australian and New Zealand (Kiwi) English. British English is often written a bit differently in slang expressions, but we pick them up. The formal writing is totally understandable.

There have been huge fights on Wikipedia between British English and US English speakers with complaints from the Brits of bullying by the Americans. There was an attempt to fork the English Wiki into Br and US versions but it failed. Wikipedia demands that you have an ISO code in order to get a Wikipedia and ISO codes only come from SIL, who publishes Ethnologue. I petitioned for a few new languages a couple of years ago and they all got shot down.

There is an ongoing war between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese on the Portuguese Wikipedia with complaints from the European Portuguese of bullying on the part of the Brazilians. Gotya noted that he, a Brazilian, could not read Portuguese IT materials. This is unfortunate. All written British is intelligible to us. We can read anything written in the UK, though most of our reading material here is from the US. I can read The Economist and The New Standard and The Spectator with no problems at all.

As a Californian, I speak completely normally, of course, and have no accent whatsoever! Haha. We can understand the Midwest accent perfectly, though it can be different. It sounds “flat”. They also insert rhotic consonants before some consonants at the end of a word and the raising of the preceding vowel – “wash” becomes “worsh”.

The Oklahoma accent is different and sometimes it can be hard to understand. I heard some people speaking Oklahoman in the doctor’s office the other day for a minute or so I thought they were speaking a foreign language! Of course they were mumbling too. Then I asked them where they were from and they said Oklahoma. At that point, I had caught onto their accent and could understand them perfectly.

I do not know why the Texan accent is said to be hard to understand. We understand it perfectly, but it sounds funny. We make a lot of jokes about it. George Bush has a strong Texan accent. There is also an Arkansas accent (Arkies) that is different but understandable. This is also the source of jokes. In this part of California there are many Whites who still speak Arkie and Okie. They are the descendants of those who came out here from the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. Steinbeck wrote a book about this called The Grapes of Wrath.

Other than that, there are no accents in the West.

There is some sort of a Kentucky-Tennessee accent, but I am not sure if they differ. This is also a source of jokes. It’s sort of a general Appalachian accent, and it’s the source of jokes about inbred hillbillies and whatnot.

The Southern accent is well-known but usually understandable. My brother went to live in Alabama though and he said that the workers in the factory he worked at were often completely unintelligible. The Blacks were worse than the Whites, and they had separate accents. He has imitated their incomprehensible accent to me and it’s pretty hilarious.

I have heard poor Blacks from Memphis on the Cops show who were completely unintelligible to me. People with more money and status tended to be more comprehensible. I sometimes have a hard time understanding a Mississippi or Alabama accent, but it’s no problem. Our Southern politicians all have thick Southern accents.

Cajun English from Louisiana is often unintelligible to us, but the people with more money and status are quite intelligible.

There is also a Black accent from the coast of South Carolina called Gullah that is hard to understand. The Blacks from around there speak something like it and you can pick it out if you are sharp. It has a pretty, lilting sound to it. It’s different from the standard Southern accent and is sort of charming. Moving up the coast, there is a Virginia accent that is softer, pleasant and charming.

There is the famous New York accent, which to us laid back Californians sounds horribly rude, obnoxious, loud and belligerent. Some forms of it also sound ignorant – these tend to be associated with working class Whites in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

One thing they do is to glide and lengthen rhotic consonants – “New York” becomes New Yawwk” “Brooklyn” becomes “Bwwoklyn”.

A similar accent seems to be spoken in New Jersey, but it may be different. One again, it involves lenition of rhotic consonants, in this case turning them into dipthongs with long vowels. “New Jersey” becomes “New Joiisey”. This is also a source of jokes. There is a Boston accent which is completely understandable. Ted Kennedy speaks that. It involves the lenition of hard consonants into glides and the end of a word – “car” becomes “caw”.

I believe there is a sort of a slow drawl from Vermont and New Hampshire too. Those people, especially the older men, are known for not talking much. Men of few words.

Some Blacks around here still talk with thick Black accents that sound Southern even though they were born in the Central Valley. There is also an “Ebonics” English (for lack of a better word) that is spoken here by sort of ghettoish or semi-ghettoish Blacks. It is frankly, almost completely unintelligible. They seem like they are talking with their mouths full, mumbling and speaking extremely fast, running all of the sounds together.

Everyone who talks like this can also speak Standard English thank God, and they can quickly move in and out of that Ebonics talk when you talk to them. It’s sort of a language for them to talk so that we can’t understand them, I think. To us, it sounds sloppy, low class and ghetto, but it reportedly a full-fledged language. The Blacks in the Caribbean do not speak English! That makes me feel good because I can hardly understand a word they say. Each island has its own form of Creole English which is a completely separate language.

I think that Indian English (Chichi derogatorily) and West African English need to be split into separate languages because they are often incomprehensible to us. This is a case of regional Englishes evolving on their own. Further, West African English often differs a lot in its written form.

Indian English is often so mangled in its written form that it is incomprehensible, but more educated writers are comprehensible. The tendency to drop articles is very annoying and makes written Indian English sound ignorant to us. Don’t mess with our damned useless articles!

Reading about the Chinese languages, there are efforts underway to get speakers to speak proper Putonghua, whatever that means. Speakers from different parts of China still speak Putonghua with an accent that can be heavy at times.

Here in the US, we do not have this problem. Even our politicians still speak in heavy regional accents, and no one cares. We can always understand them. There is no national effort to get everyone to speak proper English that involves wiping out regional accents, though I understand that in the corporate world, they are offering classes to help people get rid of Southern accents, which are stereotyped as sounding backwards, ignorant and racist. I think this is sad. Our regional accents are what makes this country great.

Goyta also notes that Brazilians are starting to speak Spanish and the neighboring Spanish speaking countries are starting to speak Portuguese. When I was dealing with them 5-10 years ago, most Brazilians did not speak much Spanish (They acted like it was extremely low on their list of priorities) and Spanish speakers had zero interest in learning Portuguese (In fact, they regarded the suggestion as offensive and preposterous!)

Goyta notes that with regional integration, more Portuguese are speaking Spanish and more Spanish speakers from nearby countries are learning Portuguese. Spanish is becoming a prerequisite to getting a good job in Brazil. This is good as it’s good to see Latin Americans getting together.

It is also true that in China there has been a big fight over Chinese language classification. The unificationist – fascist types, associated with the Communist government (and actually with the Nationalist government before also – this is really a Chinese elite project) insist that there is only one Chinese language. This goes along with racism of Northern Chinese against Southern Chinese and to some extent vice versa. This racism is most evident in the Cantonese vs Mandarin war in China.

Cantonese speakers say that they speak the real Chinese and that Northern Chinese speak a bastardized tongue derived from the old Manchu language. Cantonese speakers also resent that a Northern Chinese was turned into the national tongue and imposed on them against their will. They also say that Northern Chinese are really from the South and that the real NE Asians are the Mongolians, Koreans, Manchu, Japanese, etc. Genetic studies show that this is not the case.

Northern Chinese say that Southern Chinese are not real Chinese and their blood is “contaminated” with Tai types like the Tai, Zhuang, Vietnamese, etc. There is probably something to this. Although Putonghua is the only official language in China and there is a war going on against the regional Chineses, enforcement has been held off against Cantonese. And Cantonese  areas are still where you will hear the least Putonghua and the most regional Chinese in all spheres of life. Cantonese is also allowed on the radio and TV, whereas regional Chineses had previously banned from the media.

The Putonghua-only campaign has been too successful and regional Chineses are being wiped out. There is now a regionalism movement arising in China to promote and retain regional Chineses.

I think that the Putonghua campaign has been good, but that China should promote bilingualism. The Putonghua campaign has not yet been successful. As of 2001, only 5

China clearly needs a language that they can all speak. For its entire history, many Chinese have not been able to speak to each other, including folks from one village to the next if you go to the southeast and the central coast. Provinces like Fujian, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Henan and Hunan are notoriously multilingual.

Most of these places have a lot of very high mountains, and transportation was typically very poor. Even today, you can scarcely get around by vehicle and you sometimes have to walk from one place to the next, sometimes for dozens of miles! Bottom line is they were very isolated from each other.

These places also retained a tradition of being hideouts for “hillbilly” types where there was a lot of unemployment and many folks turned to crime. Also criminals fled to the mountains where they could hide. Upshot was that due to all of this, and people seen as backwards, lazy, stupid and thieving, people from the rest of China had no interest in going to these places anyway. When people left these parts of China to go to big cities, they were stereotyped in a way similar to how ghetto Blacks and Browns are in the US. This made them want to stay in their mountains.

English as a Genocidal Language Attacking Other Tongues Spoken in the Anglosphere – USA

English has had a genocidal affect on the other languages spoken here, but many non-English languages still survive and some are quite thriving.

Pennsylvania Dutch is still quite alive with 300,000 native speakers. I think is is just a dialect of Rhenish German. It’s actually two separate languages and they can’t understand each other.

There are many other languages in the US that have been taken out by English. Most of the Indian languages spoken here have been driven extinct or moribund by English. A few like Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo, Mohawk, Pueblo, some Alaskan languages, a couple of Indian languages of the US South, are still doing well.

Most of the others are in bad to very bad shape, often moribund with only 10 or fewer speakers, often elderly. Many others are extinct. However, quite a few of these languages have had a small number of middle aged to elderly speakers for the last 25 years, so the situation is somewhat stable at least at the moment.

Almost all Indian languages are not being  learned by children. But there are still children being raised speaking Cherokee, Navajo, Pueblo, Mohawk, and some Alaskan and Southern US Indian languages. Navajo is so difficult that when Navajo children show up at school, they still have  problems with Navajo. They often don’t get the  language in full until they are twelve.

However, there are revitalization efforts going on with many to most Indian languages, with varying amounts of success. Some are developing quite competent native speakers, often young people who learn the language starting at 18-20. I know that Wikchamni Yokuts has a new native speaker, a 23 year old man who learned from an old who is a native speaker. In California, there is a master apprentice program going on along these lines.

There are a number of preschool programs where elders try to teach the  languages to young children. I am not sure how well they are working. There are problems with funding, orthographies and mostly apathy that are getting in the way of a lot of these programs.

There are many semi-speakers. For instance in the tribe I worked with, many of the Indians knew at least a few words, and some of the leadership knew quite a few words. But they could hardly make a sentence.

Eskimo-Aleut languages are still widely spoken in Alaska. I know that Inuktitut is still spoken, and  there are children being raised in the language. Aleut is in poor shape.

Hawaiian was almost driven extinct but it was revived with a revitalization program. I understand that the language still has problems. I believe that there are Hawaiian medium schools that you can send your child to. There may be only ~10,000 fluent speakers but there are many more second language speakers with varying fluency.

There are actually some European based languages and creoles spoken in the US.  A noncontroversial one is Gullah, spoken on the islands of South Carolina. There may be less than 5,000 speakers, but the situation has been stable for 30-35 years. Speakers are all Black. It is an English creole and it is not intelligible with English at all.

There is at least one form of French creole spoken in Louisiana.  There is also an archaic form of French Proper called Continental French that resembles French from 1800. It has 2,000 speakers. Louisiana French Creole still has ~50,000 speakers. People worry about it but it has been stable for a long time. Many of the speakers are Black.

Texas German is really just a dialect of German spoken in Texas. There are only a few elderly speakers left.

There are a few Croatian languages spoken in the US that have diverged dramatically from the languages back home that they are now different languages. The status of these languages vary. Some are in good shape and others are almost dead. One of these is called Strawberry Hill Gorski Kotar Kaikavian spoken in Missouri. It is absolutely a full separate language and is no longer intelligible with the Gorski Kotar Kaikavian spoken back home.

There are other European languages spoken in the US, but they are not separate from those back home. Most are going out.

There are many Mandarin and especially Cantonese speakers in the US.

There are many Korean speakers in the US, especially in California.

There are a fair number of Japanese speakers in the US, mostly in California.

There are many speakers of Khmer, Lao, Hmong, and Vietnamese in the US. Most are in California but there are Hmong speakers in Minnesota also.

There are quite a few speakers of Arabic languages in the US. Yemeni, Syrian, and Palestinian Arabic are widely spoken. There are many in New York City, Michigan and California.

There are also some Assyrian speakers in  the US and there are still children being raised in Assyrian. Most are in California.

There are quite a few Punjabi and Gujarati speakers in the US now. We have many Punjabi speakers in my city.

There are quite a few Urdu speakers here. Most of all of these speakers are in California.

Obviously there are many Spanish speakers in the US. English is definitely not taking out Spanish. They are mostly in the Southwest, Florida, and New York City, but they are spreading out all across the country now.

There are a few Portuguese speakers in the US. All also speak English. They are mostly in California but some are back east around Massachusetts.

The Sicilian Italian spoken in the US by Italian immigrants is still spoken fairly widely to this day. It has diverged so much from the Sicilian back home that when they go back to Sicily, they are not understood. This is mostly spoken in large cities back east.

There are quite a few Armenian speakers in the US and children are still being raised in Armenian. Most are in California.

There are some Persian speakers in the US, but not a lot. Most of these are in California too.

All of these languages are the same languages as spoken back home.

True Crime: Todd Kohlhepp

Here.

Anyone heard of this guy? A serial out of South Carolina. Article from November of last year. They think he killed seven people. I had never even heard of this case. Wow these serials are getting so common that I am starting to miss even the big ones, and I am a serial watcher. I think this is nothing new, as it’s been going on for a while. The FBI says how many serials are running around the country at any one time? 35? More?

Paybacks Are a Bitch

Serves him right. Karma, paybacks, etc. are just basic physics, Newton’s Third Law in action. Let’s face it. This punk got it because of a universal law about the universe. Not a crackpot notion, not even a theory, but a damned law. Try avoiding some of the laws of the universe. You can’t. Mother Nature always bats last. One thing that I often tell my counseling clients is that you cannot run from your fears because that is exactly what most all of them are doing. And in a similar way, I have a feeling that it is often pretty useless to try to hide, avoid or run away from your karma. Your fears, like your karma, always catch up to in the end no matter how fast you run. We have to face our karma whether we want to or not. It’s like the Day of Reckoning that’s always looming outside your door, rain or shine, day in and day out until the end. And you can’t stay inside forever. Instant karma’s going get you, Dylan. It’s going to knock you right in the face!

"Who Wants to Work in the Logging Business?" by Alpha Unit

The logging business in Arkansas has been down so long, says Jan Cottingham, that people are skeptical of any predictions of an upturn. And yet some observers are that confident. What they wonder is whether or not the workers will be there to meet the demand. Labor concerns in Arkansas reflect what’s going on nationwide: the lumber industry workforce is reaching retirement age and employers don’t know if they’ll see new recruitment coming in. Even with some modest increases in the labor force, challenges remain in drawing young people to the industry. Much like farming, the logging industry is often multi-generational and family-run, says Matt Jensen. He is the vice president of the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and a third-generation logger. He says:

This is a business that is really hard to learn and it’s really a lifestyle. If you don’t teach your children the work ethic, they’re not going to continue.

One of the biggest challenges facing the forestry industry is the negative perception about wood usage, according to Scott Bowe of the University of Wisconsin. He thinks it’s hypocritical, because people use wood everyday. “We need fresh, young people to carry the business forward,” he says. “We consume more wood every year. The wood’s got to come from somewhere.” The question is, who will replace the current generation of loggers? Logging is capital-intensive, requiring an initial investment of roughly $1 million for heavy equipment like fellers, which cut the trees; skidders, which move the felled trees; processors, which de-limb the trees; and loaders, which lift the logs from piles to trucks. Lenders are reluctant to provide money for new logging businesses. Whether the businesses are new or established, the amount of work you do depends on the weather. In Arkansas, logging time can be about 40 weeks out of the year. So you’re not going to make a lot of money working in this business. The appeal just isn’t there for a lot of young people. Steve Richardson owns a logging business in Arkansas and says that every logger has either gotten more productive with fewer people or has gone out of business. Some timber companies are considering forming their own logging crews, a practice that largely disappeared when workers’ compensation insurance rates soared. Vertical integration, in which a company owns the supply chain for its products, used to be typical in the industry, but Richardson is skeptical of its reinstation, saying that those companies don’t know how to work this labor.

These folks that work for me are fiercely independent. They’re not college graduates. They want to make a living, they want to go hunting and fishing on the weekend, and some of them want to start getting drunk on Friday afternoon.

And that mindset doesn’t fit with most business plans, Cottingham says. Marvin Larrabee of Elk Mound, Wisconsin, says that logging almost has to be passed down in the family. He has four sons assisting him in the business but knows how hard it would be for them to strike out on their own. The expensive equipment is just the start of it. Loggers also have high fuel costs and extremely high insurance premiums. The occupation is consistently ranked one of the most hazardous in the country. Larry Altman of Vermont was a logger for 20 years. He has pins in his ankle from the time a tree fell on him. On another occasion, his arm was crushed between two logs, but luckily he was working that day with a friend who freed him 45 minutes later. “You’ll get hurt bad at least one time logging,” he says. Altman says he’d still do it if you could make money at it, but you can’t.

In this whole picture, there’s a ceiling, and that ceiling is the price paid at the mill. There’s very little wiggle room for the individual logger.

The roots of logging run deep in Vermont. Its first sawmill opened in 1739, and by the middle of the 19th century logging had become Vermont’s largest and most lucrative industry. But today, says Larry Altman, many people, especially in Burlington, have no idea that logging still goes on in Vermont. Those that become aware of it lump the local timber industry in with large-scale, ecologically devastating logging operations in the Pacific Northwest, Canada, South America, and Asia. The fact is, the vast majority of local loggers are sole proprietors, working alone in the woods, usually equipped with little more than a chainsaw, skidder, bulldozer, and truck. Some young people are drawn, nevertheless, to the logging business. Will Coleman, 26, and his brother Wesley, 24, started Coleman Brothers Logging LLC, in December 2012. They operate out of Richburg, South Carolina, harvesting pulpwood and saw timber. The Coleman brothers were able to buy a used Tigercat skidder and feller/buncher with a loan from Natural Capital Investment Fund’s Logging Initiative. NCIF is a business loan fund that provides debt financing to small businesses in West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, south Georgia, and the Appalachian regions of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. The Coleman brothers say they doubled their loads in the first week after running the equipment they purchased with their loan. Out on the West Coast, Billy Zimmerman, 25, has launched his own company, Zimmerman Logging LLC, in Rainier, Oregon. Zimmerman was raised on a tree farm his great-grandfather bought in the 1920s, and discovered his love of tree farming at age 10, when his father let him set chokers – setting cables around logs so they can be hauled away – for the first time. He helped his father with farming before and after school and after football practice. In December of last year he decided to go into business for himself. His father gave him a bulldozer, saving him the $160,000 he might have needed for a new one, and his parents gave him $3,000 in seed money. He was in business by March, with a company consisting of Zimmerman, his best friend, and his father Ron. Zimmerman works 11-hour days and is willing to underbid others so he can build a client base and his reputation. And his specialty are small jobs. As he puts it:

There are a ton of little 5- and 10-acre jobs that the guys with big machines cannot justify bringing out there to work that job. But we can. We found our niche in smaller jobs, at least for now, and for what we have it’s been working well.

"It's the Year of the Peach," by Alpha Unit

It’s been 40 years since the Allman Brothers Band released their album Eat a Peach. In celebration the band has named 2012 “The Year of the Peach.” This is also the year they’re going to be given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, which, according to the Recording Academy, “honors performers who have made contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.” (I know some people are cynical about the Grammys, but I can’t be cynical about the Allman Brothers Band – and there are too many people who are the same.) Eat a Peach is a double album that was recorded after what critics call the group’s “breakthrough” album, At Fillmore East, and contains live tracks that didn’t make it onto that album, including “One Way Out,” a blues song that the Allman Brothers made popular with rock audiences. The Allmans knew blues music, and had been playing it from the time they began forming bands in the early 1960s. After making it to Southern California where they opened for acts like The Doors and Buffalo Springfield, the Allmans moved back South, to Macon, Georgia. That’s where they began to put together the group of players who would join them in forming the Allman Brothers Band: guitarist Dickey Betts, bassist Berry Oakley, and drummers Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson – a Black drummer who had started out in R&B and had toured with such acts as Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. According to one chronicler:

At the same time, Duane Allman began doing session work at the Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, where this skinny White hippie quickly earned a reputation as a stinging, soulful accompanist. Duane and Gregg both exhibited a natural feel for Black music that the much-hyped British “blues masters” of the period couldn’t begin to match. Growing up in the South, they absorbed gutbucket R&B and sanctified gospel along with the more common influences of soul and freedom jazz and came up with an unprecedented sound…

It was a sound that combined “deeply Southern” strains of music – blues, country, and gospel – with rock and roll. Some called it New South. Critics and fans love Eat a Peach, but the album cover art is famous, too. The album cover includes a gatefold mural featuring a “fantasy landscape of mushrooms and fairies and folklore,” as described by one writer. It is the work of brothers James Flournoy Holmes and David Powell, from Spartanburg, South Carolina. The brothers were in their early twenties when they went into the graphic design business. James had a fine arts degree from the University of Georgia; David was a photographer and businessman who had a degree in sociology from Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina. Their association with the Allman Brothers began, according to a Billboard piece written back in May of 1974, after the band played in Spartanburg, noted the brothers’ talents, and asked them to do an album cover for their Capricorn release. Eat a Peach was among the album covers displayed in an exhibit of J. F. Holmes’ cover art that ran a couple of years ago at Spruill Gallery in Atlanta. Bo Emerson wrote about Holmes and some of the bands he did work for (like the very first cover he did, for Wet Willie), groups on the Capricorn label and elsewhere – like Charlie Daniels and the Marshall Tucker Band.

“He would maybe take the feeling that the band gave you musically and develop it into something that you could get by looking at the album cover,” says Dick Wooley, who was vice president of promotion at Capricorn during the 1970s. “A lot of the bands didn’t have an identity, and he’d come up with something.”

Holmes was talented in watercolor, airbrush, and ink and pen, said Emerson, and his style depended on the music inside.

The clear, spare rendering of the postcard joke on the front of Eat a Peach ( a flatbed hauling a house-sized piece of fruit) contrasts with the crowded, trippy landscape on the gatefold interior, with its mushrooms, dragons, and grotesque figures that he says, “I stole, sorry, ‘borrowed,’ from [Hieronymus] Bosch.”

All of Eat a Peach – the music and the cover art – came from the imagination, skill, and artistry of Southerners. David Quantick calls this album the work of “Southern rock” pioneers at their creative peak. But Gregg Allman has often been quoted as saying:

Well, to say “Southern rock” is kind of redundant, isn’t it? It’s like saying “Rock Rock.”

This is because, as Swampland puts it, rock and roll and all of its precedents – blues, gospel, jazz, country, bluegrass – are products of the American South.

The Charleston Five

Here.

It’s hard to believe that this happened in the US in the year 2000, but this is the sort of thing that goes on in the rightwing capitalist “democracies” of the 3rd World that so many of you commenters love so much. Unions are attacked by police. The police are used as agents of the state to attack workers and their organizations and any and all other progressive organizations. In other words, the cops are used as an army of the ruling class and the capitalists to attack anyone who opposes their interests.

What’s interesting is that this is what happens just about everywhere you have capitalism, although in the more evolved varieties as in Europe and much of the Anglosphere, it doesn’t happen that much anymore. As such, it seems to be a feature, not a bug, of the capitalist system. If capitalism is so great, then why is using cops (and in many cases, the national army itself) against popular organizations seemingly an essential part of this system? Commenters please respond.

A friend of mine spent a couple years in Alabama 20 years ago. The US South has a nearly caste-like class structure, and the one thing they hate more than anything else down there are union organizers. The whole system is based on cheap labor and always has been. My friend said that the White capitalist class are “assholes,” who behave similar to a Latin American ruling class, exploit all workers savagely and do not socialize with the White working class.

They have used racism as a tool for dividing White and Black workers (as capitalists often do), and it’s worked great. My friend said that the White and Black workers at his plant hated each other and had nothing to do with each other. They worked in separate parts of the plant.

There was a Black side of  town and a White side of town, and each group pretty much kept to their own side of town. The only Blacks on the White side of town were very well-dressed and on very good behavior. If any more scruffly Blacks showed up on the White side of town, Whites would quickly confront them and they would be gone back to their own side.

Similarly though, the Whites would not go to the Black side of town either. It was regarded as dangerous to go there if you were White. My friend went there to eat at a soul food joint, but they were the only Whites in the area.

The line pitched to the poor and downtrodden racist Whites of the South has always been, “At least you’re not a nigger.” These Whites, who as victims deserve sympathy more than anything else, have always found solace in the fact that as low as they were, “At least I ain’t a nigger.” That is, they could always look down on and feel superior to the Blacks who were even lower on the pole than they were.

And via racism, the White workers have always voted for the parties of White racism (formerly Democrats, now Republicans) instead of supporting parties that worked for their class interests. So White workers voted for the parties that were viciously exploiting them in the workplace.

This sort of crap used to happen a lot in the US a while back, with the last major outbreak in the 1930’s when cops were called out to violently break up strikes, opening fire on and killing some workers.

The etiology of the riot is hard to put together, but it looks a police army was set up outside the union hall to prevent the workers from picketing the scabs being used to break a dockworkers strike at the port of Charleston. The dockworkers union is targeted in South Carolina because it is one of the only powerful unions in the state. This particular union represented Black dockworkers.

The city jail had been emptied the night before to prepare for the riot that the cops knew was going to happen, since the cops were going to create that very riot. Workers walked up to the police line and told police that they wanted to go picket the scabs at the dock. Each time they were driven back with batons. So you see the police army was preventing the workers from having their peaceful labor picket.

After this went on for a while, workers started fighting back, grabbing police batons. There was yelling and screaming and racist cries from the cops, “We’re going to beat the Hell out of these niggers!”

Workers picked up rocks and started throwing them at cops. Union leaders went to the line to separate the two groups and got savagely clubbed. Workers went nuts, overturned light poles and hit photographers. Cops charged the group with a police armored car and a Highway Patrol car drove straight at the crowd. The crowd rushed up and smashed out the windows on the cop car.

In other words, a police riot.

The prosecutor later charged 5 workers to make an example out of them, break the union, and as a blow against union activity in the state. . The governor himself said that it was the state’s “right to work” (terribly anti-union law) law that was at stake.

Charges were eventually dropped

We think we are so progressive here in the US, then something like this happens and it seems like we are back in 1934.

Patrick Tracy Burris is the Gaffney Serial Killer

Update 3:06 AM EST: My sources tell me that Patrick Burris had a woman with him right before he committed the Tyler Home Center killings. No one yet knows who the woman is. I have found the rap sheet for Sharon Stamey. You can see it here (Sharon Stamey rap sheet). She is just a doper and a petty thief. The name of the Gaffney Serial Killer was released in a press conference that occurred from 8-9 PM EST June 6. His name was Patrick Tracy Burris, age 42. The press conference said they had no address and he seems to have been something of a drifter. However, my sources found his most recent address at age 42 living at Reidsville, North Carolina. That is north of Greensboro near the border with Virginia. However, in recent days, he was said to be living in Lincoln County, just north of Gaston County where he was shot dead. For details on his shooting by Gaston County police, see here. His Reidsville address was about 120 miles northwest of Gaston County, where he was shot, and 150 miles north of Gaffney, South Carolina, where he committed his murder spree. He had committed many crimes in many different states, in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Maryland and Virginia. He was wanted on a warrant for being a habitual felon at the time he was killed. He had a 25 page rap sheet for multiple robberies, breaking and entering, burglary, possession of stolen property, forgery and traffic offenses. Quite a bit of his rap sheet is available on the Net (link to Patrick Burris’ rap sheet). Here is a link to a 2001 news item about Burris being arrested in Wentworth, North Carolina and charged with five counts each of felony breaking and entering, felony larceny and felony possession of stolen goods. Burris was accused of breaking into three residences and five outbuildings on Price Road, Price Grange Road, Snead Room and Settlement Loop Road. It was probably for this set of crimes that he served eight years and was just released. Wentworth is near Reidsville. He was living on Thornton Road in Eden, NC at the time of the 2001 arrest (map here). That’s about 1 mile south of the Virginia state line. Burris was released from prison on April 29, 2009 after serving eight years in prison. That is only two months before he went on his murder spree. There is apparently evidence, presently unreleased, that puts Burris in the Gaffney area during each of the three shooting incidents. The caliber of the gun is not being revealed in the press conference, but my sources tell me it was a .25 caliber pistol that was used in all three killings. My sources also tell me that Burris was found with a rifle that was stolen during the killing of Kline Cash. In addition, witnesses, possibly including Mrs. Cash, noted that the driver’s side door could only be opened from the inside and could only be opened from the outside. The driver had to roll down the window and reach outside to open the door. This is one of the details that the police were not releasing. Apparently the vehicle in Gaston County also could not be opened from the inside.

Photo of Patrick Tracy Burris, the Gaffney Serial Killer.
Photo of Patrick Tracy Burris, the Gaffney Serial Killer. Compare to the sketch of the killer below.
Here is a photo of the sketch of the suspect for comparison.
This is the second photo released of the Gaffney, SC serial killer. I assume he is still a White guy.
This is the second photo released of the Gaffney, SC serial killer. Compare to the photo of the killer above.
Here is another photo for comparison.
Another photo of Patrick Burris. Compare to the artist sketch.
Another photo of Patrick Burris. Compare to the artist sketch.
Here is the sketch and the photo together so you can compare them.
A photo of Patrick Burris placed alongside the composite sketch of the Gaffney Serial Killer. Compare the two.
A photo of Patrick Burris placed alongside the composite sketch of the Gaffney Serial Killer. Compare the two.

Photo of Vehicle Used by Gaffney Serial Killer

The SUV used by the Gaffney Serial Killer, up on blocks to be towed away. It differed in significant ways from the witness descriptions, but the witnesses got the general picture right.
The SUV used by the Gaffney Serial Killer, up on blocks to be towed away. It differed in significant ways from the witness descriptions, but the witnesses got the general picture right.
Here is a photo of the vehicle that was used by the Gaffney Serial Killer. It is a Ford Explorer, but other than that, the description was off. The witness reports described it as silver or champagne, and the color is gold. The reports also said it was a 1991-1994 model and a 2 door, but instead it’s a 4-door and it looks like around a 2000 or so model to me. Witness reports are often off in these type of cases, but they got the general picture anyway.

Gaffney Serial Killer Shot By Police in Gaston County, NC

Update 6:58 PM: The man killed Dallas, North Carolina is indeed the Gaffney Serial Killer. His name is Patrick Tracy Burris. More in an updated post here. They reported it on CNN, but we broke the story here 30 minutes earlier. There was a press conference at 8-9 PM EST June 6. Identification was reportedly made by ballistics tests. The killer was still in possession of the .25 pistol that was used in the killings. At 2:30 AM in Dallas, North Carolina, a man saw a vehicle matching the description of the Gaffney Serial Killer’s car back into a shabby garage at an abandoned home across the street. A man got out, wearing a ballcap and resembling the sketch of the killer. He was stumbling, appeared to be drunk, and had two people with him. He called 9-11. Dallas is 28 miles northeast of Gaffney, South Carolina, where a serial killer killed 5 people over a week recently. Police arrived and found that the home is vacant. However, three people were in the home. Two were related. Their names are Mark Stamey, 35 and his sister, Sharon Stamey, 31. They were with a big older man. Mark Stamey said he only knew that the man’s name was Patrick. Police arrived at 2:40 AM after a report about a possible burglary in process, because the home is vacant. When officers arrived, they started questioning the three people. Patrick Burris gave them false identification. When they found out his real name, they ran it and found that Burris had a warrant out for his arrest from Lincoln County. Lincoln County is just north of Gaston County. An altercation took place inside the house, and Burris drew a gun and shot the officer in the foot. The officer, J.K. Shaw, drew his weapon and shot and killed Burris. Police arriving at the scene found a rifle like the one stolen and murder victim Cash Kline’s home in addition to a .25 pistol. At that point, they called in South Carolina LE to see if the dead man was the Gaffney Serial Killer. The vehicle parked in front of the house is gold-colored Ford Explorer, a close match for the vehicle that the Gaffney Serial Killer was driving. Police are now saying that the dead man is the Gaffney Serial Killer. Mark and Sharon Stamey have been arrested on unknown charges. Both have prior criminal records. Sharon Rose Stamey is due to appear in Gaston County Court on July 7 on charges on cocaine distribution. Sharon Stamey’s rap sheet is here. Doper and a petty thief. Shaw has been treated and released for his gunshot wounds.

Possible Sixth Homicide Victim in Gaffney, SC Died of Natural Causes

1:12 AM, July 6: Update: It turns out that 53 year old James Thomas McGaha of North Limestone Street died of natural causes, and was not shot or beat up. He was found in an alley near the Little Theatre on the corner of North Petty Street and East Robinson Street in Gaffney, scene of five murders over the past week. Homicides are not common in Gaffney. The Gaffney, SC metropolitan area has a population of 50,000. The town of Gaffney, SC itself has a population of around 12,000. All of Cherokee County (where Gaffney is located) saw only six homicides in all of 2008.

Gaffney Serial Killer Claims Fifth Victim, Abby Tyler

The number of victims of the Gaffney Serial Killer has risen to five with the heartbreaking death of a young girl. The media is now reporting it, but we were the first to break the story. Tragically, Abby Tyler, age 15, who was shot and critically wounded by the Gaffney Serial Killer late Thursday, July 2, died. She died at 11:15 AM in Spartanburg Regional Medical Center. She lived for about 40 hours after being shot in the head by the South Carolina serial killer at her father’s store, Tyler Home Center, in Gaffney, South Carolina. All victims have been killed in this small city of 50,000. She and her father were shot just as they were closing the store. The store was only 1/2 mile from the sheriff’s department. One investigator speculated that the killer killed the Tylers to taunt the police. Abby Tyler was a very pretty young girl. It is sad that a promising young life was cut short so cruelly. RIP Abby Tyler. You died way too young.

Photo of Abby Tyler, age 15, who was shot in the head by the Gaffney Serial Killer. She died 1 1/2 days later on the Fourth of July. She was a very pretty girl.
Photo of Abby Tyler, age 15, who was shot in the head by the Gaffney Serial Killer. She died 1 1/2 days later on the Fourth of July. She was a very pretty girl. Poor thing.

Serial Killer on the Loose in Gaffney, SC

Update November 16: Tyler Home Center is now closed due to the death of its owner, Steven Tyler. There is no connection between any of three sets of victims other than evidence. Victims did not know each other, or at least did not know each other well. There is no known motive or connection for the killings. A ballcap was worn at all three murders. This implies that he was seen at the Linder killings. The killer was wearing a checkered shirt and blue jeans. Police are confident it is the same man who did all three sets of killings. There is a lot of evidence linking the three crime scenes. Two people spoke to the killer shortly before the killings at two of the crime scenes. They said he was “polite” and “seemed like an average person.” In addition, several more people saw the killer at the crime scenes but did not speak to him. He waited until the victims left the area before he killed. The man found dead in an alley near the Little Theatre on the corner of North Petty Street and East Robinson Street in Gaffney was determined to have died of natural causes. Reports indicating that he had been shot in the chest and had been beaten up were false. The dead man is 53 year old James Thomas McGaha of North Limestone Street, Gaffney. All of the victims are said to have been from upper middle class families. Gena Parker attended the funeral of Cline Parker shortly before she was murdered. All victims were members of older, generationally established Gaffney families that have lived in Gaffney for a long time. Steven Tyler and Gena Parker were from the same graduating class. They did not graduate together as Steve went to the old Gaffney Day School and graduated in 11th Grade. However, they were from the same class era. The killer of Kline Cash had a 4-5 day growth of beard. Many are saying that the killer is either unemployed or works nights or staggered shifts. A day shift worker could not have committed the Linder killings and a swing shift worker could not have committed the Tyler killings. A weekend day shift worker could not have committed Cash killing. We have discovered the reason why there are two different artist renderings of the suspect. See the photos of the renderings below for more. There is an unconfirmed rumor that two guns were taken from Kline Cash before he was killed. One of those guns was a rifle. This may be the robbery that the police refer to. The rumor states that one of the stolen guns was left behind at the Linder crime scene. Stephen Tyler may have been called back to his business just before it closed. When he arrived, he was shot dead along with his daughter. The Tyler killings occurred at the precise time when the funeral for Kline Cash was going on. You can listen to the Spartanburg County police scanner here. A serial killer is on the loose in South Carolina.

This is the first photo released by the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office of the South Carolina serial killer.
This is the first photo released by the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office of the South Carolina serial killer. This first sketch is based on Mrs. Cash's recollection of the man who came asking about buying hay at the Cash home shortly before Mr. Cash was killed.
Residents of Gaffney, South Carolina are staying indoors instead of partying on the Fourth of July. There have been five homicides in the past six days, all shootings. Police say they are all connected. Police have released a sketch of the suspect, a White male with salt and pepper hair. He may be driving a light-gray or champagne tan 1991-1994 two-door Ford Explorer. The Whites of the area are  locking doors in the daytime, hoping to save their lives. The spree began on Saturday, June 27. The suspect came to the home of Kline Cash and asked about buying hay. His wife said when she left at 3 PM the man was talking to her husband about buying hay. A few hours later, at 6:45 PM, she came back and found peach farmer Kline Cash, 63, shot dead in the living room of the home. The motive may have been robbery.
Kline Cash, a local peach farmer, bound and shot in his living room. He was also robbed. Cash was the first victim of the Gaffney Serial Killer.
Kline Cash, a local peach farmer, bound and shot in his living room. He was also robbed. Cash was the first victim of the Gaffney Serial Killer.
Four days later, at 3 PM on Wednesday, July 1, family members found the bodies of Hazel Linder, 83 and her daughter Gina Linder Parker, 50, bound and shot to death in their home. A sign, “Hay For Sale” was visible outside the residence. In the Kline Cash case, the Gaffney Serial Killer had stopped by asking to buy hay.
Photo of Gena Parker Linder, bound and murdered in her mother's home by the Gaffney Serial Killer. She was a beloved 3rd grade teacher at a local elementary school.
Photo of Gena Parker Linder, bound and murdered in her mother's home by the Gaffney Serial Killer. She was a beloved 3rd grade teacher at a local elementary school.
Photo of Hazel Linder, bound and shot to death in her home by the Gaffney Serial Killer. She looked in great shape for 83.
Photo of Hazel Linder, bound and shot to death in her home by the Gaffney Serial Killer. She looked in great shape for 83.
Yesterday, Thursday, June 2, Steven Tyler, 48, was shot to death and his 15 year old daughter, Abby Tyler, was shot in the head and seriously wounded around closing time, 7:30 PM, in Tyler Home Center, the furniture and appliance store that the family ran. They were found by Tyler’s wife, an older daughter and an employee. It is not known if the Tylers were bound. Abby Tyler died in the hospital at noon on the Fourth of July.
Photo of Abby Tyler, age 15, who was shot in the head by the Gaffney Serial Killer. Very pretty girl.
Photo of Abby Tyler, age 15, who was shot in the head by the Gaffney Serial Killer. She died 1 1/2 days later on the Fourth of July. She was a very pretty girl.
Photo of Stephen Tyler, owner of Tyler Center, shot and killed by the Gaffney Serial Killer.
Photo of Stephen Tyler, owner of Tyler Center, shot and killed by the Gaffney Serial Killer.
Incredibly, the Tyler shootings occurred only 1/2 mile away from the sheriff’s office, where 30 officers are working full-time on the case. The Tylers may have been shot to taunt investigators by pulling off a crime so close to the cops’ headquarters. It was a pretty ballsy thing to do. Although authorities are describing this as a serial killer, a better description might be spree killer. Spree killers are really easy to catch, but the problem is that since there is little to no downtime between killings, they can kill quite a few before they get caught. Even though he has killed two men, authorities say he is targeting females. Authorities have now retracted that statement. Right now, 100 officers from North and South Carolina are working on the case. It’s not known if anything was taken in the Tyler and Linder killings. The suspect is a White man. He is said to be 6’2-6’3, heavyset at 230-250 pounds, with intense blue eyes and salt and pepper hair. He is in his late 40’s. He had a 4-5 day growth of beard at the time of the Kline killing. He was wearing a checkered shirt and blue jeans. He had a ballcap on during all three killings.
This is the second photo released of the Gaffney, SC serial killer. I assume he is still a White guy.
This is the second photo released of the Gaffney, SC serial killer. The second sketch is based on a woman who saw the killer enter Tyler Home Center shortly before the two Tyler victims were killed. The woman got a good look at him.

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