New Hampshire weighs in ...

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. (AP) — Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, N.H., where tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.
Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in Tuesday's first minutes. The town of Hart's Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns' ballots but got no votes.

Why aren't all our cars made this way?

I got 47.5 miles per gallon yesterday driving from Greenville to Columbia in my new Honda Civic Hybrid car. In my old car, I was getting half that.

Question: If we can make a stylish, comfortable car with good driving characteristics and performance that gets that kind of fuel efficiency, why aren't all our cars made that way?

Imagine what it would do to the oil markets if over the next five years the majority of our car production shifted to gas-electric hybrids. It would be a magnificent transition to cars that run solely on electric power (plug and drive), or on hydrogen fuel. Huge amounts of money that goes today to oil-producing nations would stay in the U.S. economy and boost our economy.

Urge your member of Congress to support federal government policies that encourage a shift toward these fuel efficient cars.

Too much fun at the Football Game

My friend Robert Scott drove 12 hours Saturday from Baton Rouge to Columbia to bring tickets to the USC-LSU football game. Elizabeth and I joined him, sitting in the middle of the LSU student section at Williams-Brice Stadium Saturday night. It was too much fun. We hadn't seen Robert in several years. All three of us wished for a different outcome. Robert is a USC alum, and our two children are South Carolina graduates. There was a real chill in the air, perfect football weather. Thanks, Robert, and I hope the rest of your weekend in the mountains is just as great.

What's Football Got To Do With Getting A College Degree, Anyway?

So, Clemson University head football coach Tommy Bowden has lost his job. He'll get to cry all the way to the bank with his $3.5 million golden parachute.

We really need to take a look at our priorities in this country, when coaches who can't win a conference championship in 10 years walk away rich by any South Carolina standard, yet many South Carolina students can't afford a college education, or go deeply into debt to get one.

Tuition for a bachelor's degree at Clemson is currently about $10,000 a year, or $40,000 for the four-year program. Bowden's bonus for missing his MBO would pay for Clemson undergraduate degrees for 87 young people.

Strange priorities for a state with one of the lowest rates of college education, and one of the lowest per-capita incomes in the country.

Will the grown-ups please step forward

Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's speech-writer, just said on Meet the Press that it's time for the grown-ups to step forward, and for the candidates to stop using patriotism as a weapon against each other.

Amen, Peggy.

My family's share of the Wall Street bail-out

Would someone please tell me the address to send the check for my family's share of the Wall Street bail-out?

$12,000. That's the estimated cost for me, my wife, and our two children.

Truth is, if it works, it will be a bargain. We stood to lose a lot more than that if the country falls into a full-blown depression. We (and don't be deceived, we are the government) had to do something!

Government is not the enemy. Government is the way we address our common needs and challenges. After some hesitation last week, we came together to heal a festering wound in our body politic. I hope the patient survives.

Paul Newman, RIP, I love your pasta sauce

Our country and the world need more people like Paul Newman.

He created a brand that any actor would envy, one worth millions for a movie role, or an endorsement. Then he put that brand on a line of foods -- pasta sauce and salad dressing, for example. The food is good. His face and name sell a lot of it. And he gives away the profits to charity.

$250,000,000. Gave it away. To charity. Created camps for sick children. What a guy.

I like his movies. I love his pasta sauce. The world will be a poorer place without him.

Paul Newman died today. Rest in peace, Paul Newman.

On the banks of the Rubicon ... uh ... the Hudson

I'm reading a book about the end of the Roman Republic. Julius Caesar's legions rest on the banks of a small river in southern Gaul as their leader deliberates whether to lead them into Italy and toward Rome. To do so would break the law. In the end, he plunged into a contest to rule an empire, and Rome became a dictatorship for centuries to follow.

There are no legions poised on the Hudson to invade, but the pillars of a financial empire are tottering on the brink of collapse. After bailouts of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, federal regulators and the princes of Wall Street searched over the weekend for ways to avert a meltdown of New York financial giants Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and American International Group.

Their success or failure to prop up the financial pillars of the American financial empire could be no less consequential than Caesar wading through the waters of the Rubicon.

Wouldn't it be ironic if this nation, which built the most powerful and sophisticated military the world has ever known to ward off invasion from abroad, simply drowned in a sea of debt and bad investments?

My new job

In July 2008, I accepted a buyout offered to staff at The State newspaper, and toyed with the idea of retirement. But there was a new player in the state capital, the Columbia Regional Business Report, and I decided instead to accept an offer to work on this start-up business newspaper.

Our first edition was published August 25, to a very favorable reaction from the local business community. We will have a print edition twice a month and a daily presence on the internet:

http://www.columbiabusinessreport.com/

I will be interviewed about the new publication on Walter Edgar's Journal, on SCETV radio, at noon on September 26.

Hanna, at Sunrise

Hurricane Hanna's leading edge, at sunrise on the beach at the Isle of Palms.

Belgian detective makes 1945 crash of B-17 from 95th Bomb Group a lifelong passion

Jacques De Ceuninck, a retired police officer living in Tournai, Belgium, was just a boy in January 1945 when an American flyer parachuted into the street in front of his home. All but two of that crew survived, and were landing in neighborhoods across the city. That started a lifelong passion to know all about the airman’s stricken B-17, which crashed in the village of Kain, killing the pilot, Lt. Robert V. Mercer. Jacques has collected a vast amount of knowledge about the incident, and has published his findings in a French-language book, “Bob, Chuck et les autres”.

Jacques and the witnesses he interviewed say Mercer’s last act before dying in the flaming wreckage was to maneuver his doomed plane to avoid hitting the village church and a row of homes. Jacques is working with the town council to have a memorial installed at the church to this brave pilot. Jacques can be reached at this e-mail address: j_de_ceuninck@hotmail.com

Brother of flyer learns about 95th BG

Joe Beam lived a half-mile from my father for three decades. They worked on lawn mowers together, and they were friends. But the most compelling link between them was never discussed. Only after Tom died in 2004, and my book was published in 2007, did Joe learn Tom had served in the same Army Air Forces unit, the 95th Bomb Group (H), as did Joe’s brother, James Beam. Joe was just seven years old in 1944; James was 15 years older, and he was Joe’s hero.

Second Lieutenant James Francis Beam was navigator on Alva Powell’s crew. On April 11, 1944, Powell’s crew was on a mission to bomb Poznan, Poland, where Focke-Wolf 190 fighter planes were built. They were diverted to a secondary target at Rostock, Germany. A German Me-410 firing 37mm cannon knocked off the B-17's right wing tip, and disabled the two outboard engines. The plane was doomed. Ten crewmen donned parachutes and jumped. But they were 35 miles from land, over the frigid Baltic Sea. None survived the cold water. Adelia Beam, James’ and Joe’s mother, was so informed by letter from the Adjutant General of the Army.

James Beam was on his second combat mission when he died. Because it never came up, Joe never had the opportunity to question Tom about the 95th. But through "Tom's War," Joe learned more about the unit in which his brother served for a few short weeks.