Archive for February, 2010
UPDATED: Schools + Student Issued Laptops + Webcams = Spying At School and At Home
UPDATE 02/20/10:
This isn’t looking good for the school district.
District spokesman Doug Young acknowledged yesterday that officials had remotely activated computer webcams 42 times, but only in an attempt to recover missing or stolen laptops, and never to spy on students. He said families had not been notified about the possibility that the cameras on the [...]
Liar Liar Pants On Fire
Mike Castle has been on the defensive lately. He’s become the posterboy for Republican hypocrisy, especially the “trash and grab” strategy of trashing the stimulus while showing up to take credit for projects created by the stimulus. He comes off as quite defensive in this WHYY interview:
Castle also defended himself against accusations that, [...]
Psst! Your Shallow Bench is Showing
Potential Republican Congressional candidate, Anthony Wedo dropped out of the race Friday. I believe that this leaves only Fred Cullis, the guy who had a half dozen people (mostly family and volunteers) at his announcement. They really have no one.
I asked Charlie Copeland if he was running and he was pretty clear that he wasn’t, [...]
Friday Afternoon Bacon Blogging — Wishing for a DL Road Trip Edition
There was a great article in the Philly News this week telling the world how the amazing DiBruno Bros is stepping up to add artisan bacon to its truely wondrous food offerings:
19Feb2010 | cassandra_m | 4 comments | Continued
Friday Open Thread
Woohoo, it’s Friday! Does anyone have any exciting plans for the weekend? Let’s get this open thread started.
On the lighter side, “20 Unholy Recipes: Dishes So Awful We Had to Make Them.” Interestingly, a lot of the recipes are from the 70s. They all look so awful, it’s hard to pick [...]
Metaphor Fail
Brand new Massachusetts Senator and conservative darling Scott Brown was interviewed on Fox (of course) and asked about the incident in Austin, Texas. His answer was interesting, to say the least.
Seriously. The new Republican Senator from Massachusetts went on FOX News this evening and was asked about the nut who crashed his plane into [...]
19Feb2010 | Unstable Isotope | 8 comments | Continued
Falling In Love Again
George Bush left office with approval ratings in the 20s. He was responsible for getting us into a disastrous war based on lies and for the worst recession since the Great Depression. For a year, Republicans had been quiet about Bush and it looked like Bush was about to be disappeared down the [...]
19Feb2010 | Unstable Isotope | 4 comments | Continued
CNN Features Mike Castle as a GOP Stimulus Hypocrite
This is from Rick Sanchez’s show Wednesday, I think — Mike Castle and the ARRA stunt check is featured early in the segment:
19Feb2010 | cassandra_m | 8 comments | Continued
GOP Recovery Act Hypocrites
You can see Mike Castle with a Special Guest Hypocrite role in his picture accepting a stunt check for an ARRA project in the first few seconds of this video:
Want more a more detailed list of the GOP Hypocrisy? See the Hall of Fame.
Thursday Open Thread
It snowed last night! Why do you hate us Weather Goddess? In other news, it’s actually Thursday and the week is more than halfway over! Are you ready for your open thread?
But he seemed like such a nice, moderate guy:
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell wasted little time overturning an order by his predecessor, [...]
Delawareans Hate Their Jobs
That is according to a recently released survey called the State of Well-Being (pdf) that has surveyed Americans and presented state-by-state reports on how people in that state view their lives. This is part of a long-term eefort being produced by Gallup to provide some measure of American’s health and well-being. And according to this study, Delaware ranks dead last among states for Work Environment, going down from last year’s ranking of 38th among the states. Here’s a summary of the data:
18Feb2010 | cassandra_m | 1 comment | Continued
I Would Like To Thank Health Insurance Companies For Making My Point
I’m certain everyone has heard of Anthem’s 39% rate increase in health insurance, but did you realize raising rates is all the rage? Actually, if you’re one of the individually insured these rate hikes aren’t new at all. They’re simply part of individual health insurance.
At 11:30 a.m. today, Sebelius will release the report, obtained by [...]
Warm Up Your Dialing Fingers
Next week President Obama will convene his bipartisan health care summit. It’s expected that sometime in next few days, the Senate bill + reconciliation sidecar will be introduced. The reconciliation bill is to correct some of the issues that the House had with the Senate bill. We don’t know exactly what’s in [...]
18Feb2010 | Unstable Isotope | 23 comments | Continued
Mt. Vernon Statement
Conservatives had an event for the launch of the CPAC conference where they unveiled a new document called the “Mt. Vernon Statement.” This is a statement of conservative principles that they expect all Republicans to sign.
The Mount Vernon Statement
Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century
We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American [...]
A Big Picture Look At the Stimulus One Year On
And it is — on the terms it was passed — a definite success.
David Leonhart wrote this must read article at the NYT on Tuesday, that starts like this:
Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.
Let’s say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and [...]
Late Night Video — Paul Krugman
This is a lecture that Paul Krugman gave at MIT recently — The Economic Meltdown: What Have We Learned, if Anything? Krugman tried to explain how we got here AND why it seems so hard to wrap our minds around strong policy to fix it. In many ways, he thinks that we never really learned the lessons of the Great Depression, including that for all of the risk that bankers put us in, the greatest risk may just be a government policy apparatus that will be happier with a political fix rather than a systemic one.
17Feb2010 | cassandra_m | 5 comments | Continued
Regular Folks
The Tea Partiers are just regular folks.
A tea party gathering in Asotin County, Washington turned more than a bit ugly on Saturday when a featured speaker actually called for the hanging of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), the fourth ranking Democrat in the Senate and a vulnerable re-election candidate.
“How many of you have watched the movie [...]
Rally for Health Care Reform
This is an announcement from Darlene Battle — and I hope that lots of you will be able to go to one of these, it’s a worthy cause:
Delaware Residents TO RALLY FOR HEALTH CARE REFORM: WE VOTED FOR CHANGE. GET IT DONE
Unions and Community Organizations To Tell Congress: Listen to Us, Not the Insurance Companies
On [...]
Lions and Tigers and… Witches? Oh My.
So much for those Libertarian values. Bob Barr, Libertarian extraordinaire, is worried about things that go bump in the night.
The US Air Force, at no less a prestigious location than the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, has taken the notion of religious tolerance to a new level, in creating an outdoor worship area for pagans. [...]
CPAC Childish Behavior Separates the Boys from the Girls
Aren’t they adorable!
The Washington Scene reports that this year’s CPAC will prominently feature a Nancy Pelosi piñata and a Harry Reid punching bag for guests to take turns beating
Boringly predictable, but I simply adored this next line – because it says so much!
“We’re hoping to have the females whack the piñata and males try their [...]
Wednesday Open Thread
Did you ever have the feeling that half the week has gone with you even noticing? That’s the feeling I’m having this week. It’s already Wednesday! So, are you ready for an open thread?
The short, pain-filled life of King Tutankhamun:
King Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh, was frail, crippled and suffered “multiple disorders” when [...]
Castling
[Ed. note - cassandra_m contributed considerably to this post.]
2009 presented quite a dilemma for Mike Castle. The Republican party required obedience from all its members for their policy of no to succeed, but Mike Castle needed to keep his moderate credentials for his voters in Delaware, a blue state. Mike Castle knew what [...]
Climate Change = Weird Weather
Funny how last weeks snow storms were all the rage on Right blogs while not a word was uttered concerning the unseasonably warm weather in Vancouver. Typically Republican. And while I think Thomas Friedman’s NYT Op-Ed is a step in the right direction I doubt it will change any minds on the Right – mainly [...]
17Feb2010 | pandora | 103 comments | Continued
Sabotage Fail
When Evan Bayh announced his retirement, it suddenly put a fringe Democratic candidate Tamyra d’Ippolito into the spotlight. In Indiana to qualify to be on the ballot, you need to gather 500 signatures from each of Indiana’s 9 Congressional districts. On the Democratic side, only Evan Bayh had qualified. On the Republican [...]
17Feb2010 | Unstable Isotope | 2 comments | Continued
Evan Bayh is Full of It
After Evan Bayh announced his retirement yesterday, this is the soundbite (or at least portions of it) that I heard for the rest of the day (and this morning too):
“Two weeks ago, the Senate voted down a bipartisan commission to deal with one of the greatest threats facing our nation: our exploding deficits and debt. [...]
Social Media
