South Carolina's action figure hero/Senatorial candidate Alvin Greene made his first speech over the weekend, on his home turf and in front of a relatively friendly crowd.
To his credit, he didn't screw the pooch in his not-quite-seven-minute speech to the NAACP in Manning, but let's just say he doesn't have a firm grasp of issues.
Surprised?
COLUMBIA -- In his first campaign speech over the weekend, U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene pledged to get South Carolina back to work and decried the state's bottom-of-the-barrel employment and public education rankings.
Let's just say he's fuzzy about a lot of things, OK? A lot of the stuff he's saying is so garbled that you can't even run it through the Bravo Sierra translator without it breaking.
A couple of samples:
GREENE: There are more people unemployed in South Carolina than ever before.
Wrong. Now it's at 11 percent, or 238,000 people. Which sucks, but it doesn't suck as bad as it did in January -- 273,000 unemployed, at 12 percent. The rates have steadily improved since then.
GREENE: South Carolina spends twice as much per inmate as it does per public school student.
Right idea, wrong figure. The state does spend more per inmate ($16,300) than per student ($11,372). That's not double. But then, Greene himself is a fine product of our South Carolina edjumication system, and has the degree (from the University of South Carolina) to prove it.
So where was he getting the data for his speech?
GREENE: "Research, multiple sources, everything, news. All of the above."
And this guy swears he is a serious candidate. He actually has the nomination from a major party.
But he didn't say anything about how a line of Alvin Greene action figures would benefit the state. And he didn't say anything about Denzel Washington portraying him in a movie. Not this time anyway.
I guess South Carolina is safe.
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