This is a huge defeat for our coward of a Speaker, John Boehner:

House Republicans tried a fresh strategy Wednesday night: Go it alone on a spending bill.

The result was an embarrassing setback.

Wednesday night’s rank-and-file rebuke of GOP leadership — with 48 Republicans bolting on a temporary spending bill — underscored the fact that the House Republican majority is still struggling to find unity on major spending bills. It also showed they still need Democratic votes to help them govern.

The pressure from an angry Speaker John Boehner didn’t work — he even threatened to strip committee assignments. Four dozen Republicans —mostly conservatives — wanted more cuts, and they just said no, creating an uncomfortable scene on the House floor as the funding bill failed on a 195-230 vote. Democrats showed a rare moment of unity in overwhelmingly opposing the continuing resolution, which would keep the government funded through Nov. 18.

Speaker Boehner can’t control his own party. He has to rely on Democrats to vote on spending bills or debt ceiling rises, because the teahadist wing of his party is in open revolt against him. First some background. Last week, the Senate passed emergency disaster funding that the Republicans tried to filibuster because they hate Americans who are disaster victims and they hate rebuilding America, because they hate America. But I digress. Harry Reid urged the House to follow suit. Boehner and Cantor decided to respond by thumbing their noses at the Senate, and instead of crafting their own emergency disaster bill, they including the disaster funding in a larger spending bill, offsetting the costs by slashing a clean-energy program and a successful and popular auto loan program. And then they would tell the Senate to pass the bill or die, or something akin to their evil and criminal hostage taking strategy they have used time and again. What Boehner and Cantor did not count on was 48 of their own caucus voting with the Democrats against the bill. The teahadists vote against all spending, or anything that even has a chance to help non-rich people.

So, because of the petulant and childish games of all Republicans in Congress, we are now days away from a government shutdown. Seriously folks, this is how the GOP governs. And you want to put these evil incompetent clowns in power?

What next?

Boehner should be embarrassed enough by now to resign as speaker. He can’t control his majority caucus.

He really has only three choices: 1) resign, or 2) govern the chamber with non-teahadist Repubicans and Democrats, or 3) go full teatard.

To avert a government shutdown, assuming that he wants to avert a government shutdown, and that’s an open question, he can simply pass the Senate bill with non-teahadist Republicans and Democrats. But that will show he is pursuing optional 2. Or he could renege on the deal last month that allowed the debt ceiling bill to pass (which would be evil and dishonest but hey, he is a Republican), embrace the tea party and seek to cut more spending in Medicare and Social Security, which will be defeated by the Senate, and lead to a shutdown.

And this all has to happen this weekend, because, even though Congress was out the entire month of August, they need another vacation for the full last week of September.

The next time one of our teabagger friends say that Federal employees are only out for themselves, tell them to read this.

Faced with a 2 year pay freeze and continued attacks from the right, Federal employees pitched in and donated almost 5.8 million pounds of food during the annual Feds Feed Families food drive. The goal was 2 million pounds.

My agency alone, with only 5000 employees, donated over 60,000 pounds!

If you can’t see the video, Warren is speaking to a crowd in someone’s porch or living room, it looks like. Warren explains, and defends, what she calls the “underlying social contract.” This social contract is what all progressives and liberals believe. It has been described before, but not by someone so smart and funny and not so passionately and simply. This is the kind of video that can convince those who vote against their own interests time and again just because “the Republicans want to keep my taxes low.”

If Warren keeps this up, she will win. And perhaps…. 2016. Cuomo v. Warren would be a nice primary. But let’s not get ahead… too much.

Here’s a transcript

I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Here is the calendar of events for the rest of the month. If you have an event for a Progressive or Democratic organization in the state of Delaware taking place, email me the details at delawaredem@delawareliberal.net. The Progressive Planner will be posted every Monday and every Thursday.

Thursday, September 22nd

24th Representative District Committee Meeting at 7:00 p.m.
UAW 1183
698 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, DE

29th Representative District Committee Meeting at 7:00 p.m.
Kenton Ruritan Club
Main Street, Kenton, DE

Saturday, September 24th
Kent County Breakfast Social at 9:00 am
Kirby and Holloway’s
656 N. Dupont Highway, Dover, DE

Crab Marinara with Linguini Fundraiser for State Representative Bryon Short at 6:00 p.m.
Arden Gild Lower Hall
2126 The Highway, Arden, DE

Monday, September 26th
Western Sussex Democratic Club Meeting, at 6:00 pm
Dale Duke’s Club House
28504 Dukes Lumber Road, Laurel, DE

31st Representative District Committee Meeting, at 7:00 pm
State Street Assisted Living Facility
Delaware Ave at North State Street, Dover, DE

Blackbird Democratic Club Meeting, at 7:00 pm
Blackbird Community Center
Blackbird Forest Road, Townsend, DE

Tuesday, September 27th
A Visit with Senator Chris Coons at 6:30 p.m.
Progressive Democats for Delaware
DelDems HQ, 19 E Commons Blvd, 2nd Floor, New Castle, DE.

Saturday, October 1
Stonewall Democrats Annual Fundraiser, at 4:00 p.m.
Mariachi Restaurant
14 Wilmington Avenue, Rehoboth Beach, DE

Monday, October 3rd
Belle Everett Dinner, at 5:30 pm
Felton Fire Hall
E. Main Street, Felton, DE

What and where?

Hurricane Irene’s flooding rains damaged a significant portion of the Delaware’s pumpkin crop and blew down a lot of the corn crop.

The latest Gallup/USA Today poll shows Rick Perry continuing to lead the Republican presidential field at the national level with 31% support, followed by Mitt Romney with 24%. In a one-on-one scenario, Perry would lead Romney, 49% to 39%.

In South Carolina, Perry is considered the favorite to win the state’s GOP presidential primary, but a new Winthrop poll shows the Texas governor with a narrow lead over Romney in the state, 31% to 27%.

Allahpundit thinks with the collapse of Bachmann and with Perry not running away with it, Sarah Palin has an opening.

Perry’s window to steamroll the rest of the field is now closed. If he had had two monster debate performances and widened his lead over Romney, you might see more big donors starting to shake loose and fall into his camp as the inevitable nominee. As it is, Palin must be watching his backsliding and Bachmann’s collapse and feeling more encouraged to run than ever. Still plenty of tea-party votes in play, and who knows how much of Perry’s support is owed not to his jobs record or any personal attribute but simply to him being a “true conservative” alternative to Romney.

And there is a new National Journal poll out:

Inevitably, whenever contributors and commenters talk about about a candidate for one of our local offices in positive terms, or when contributors and/or commenters make negative comments about another candidate; supporters for that other candidate say that those contributors or commenters are part of the first candidate’s campaign, and that we are smearing their candidate.

It happens every election. It happened in the Flowers v. Jones-Potter primary. It happened in the Carney v. Markell primary. And it is already happening in the Crane v. Stewart v. White primary.

To be clear, nothing we write here on Delaware Liberal is on behalf or at the direction of any campaign. When we offer our opinions on a candidate or a particular campaign or race, we do so on our own behalf. If we are criticial of Karen Weldin Stewart, it doesn’t mean that we are acting on behalf of Mitch Crane or at his direction.

Indeed, as Mitch Crane himself made clear early this week in a comment here, candidates would probably prefer that we not offer our opinions or criticisms of their opponents, for precisely the reason that their opponents will act like the criticism is coming from them, rather than us.

We speak for ourselves here. No one else.

Steve Newton over at Outside the Machine asked all Delaware bloggers for help, and I am happy to oblige. A general lack of empathy exists in our society (generally more so on side of the aisle, but I digress), and there are times when those with empathy have to slap unsympathetic assholes back.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published another article on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (cached, ungated version here; hit “Join the Discussion” not “Comments” to read the comments). Many of you know that my son Michael suffers from this disease. I have worked with the author of this article at the WSJ before, and I am sad to say that no good deed goes unpunished.

Why? Because the author asked me to help her contact another family with a child suffering from CFS, and I did. Tina Gustavsson is a fifteen-year-old who lives about two miles across the DE/PA border. She has a much worse case of CFS than Michael, and has had unending struggles with the Kennett Square School District to get fair treatment. The Gustavssons belong to a small, informal group of CFS suffering children/families that has been organized for mutual support in PA/DE/NY/MD.

Unfortunately, not only did Amy Marcus write the article so that Tina could be viewed as a lazy teenager whose family was trying to bilk an entirely reasonable school district, but the whacko commenters came out in force. I won’t quote them because I am not willing to give them the space.

I’m OK with the people who realize CFS is a disease, and want to discuss the extent to which our society should pay out of the public purse to educate/treat the victims.

I can even deal with the ideologues (including, sadly, some physicians) who think the disease is fictitious despite literally thousands of articles now extant dealing with the physiological symptoms.

What I cannot abide (and I am going to use a technical term here) is the ASSHOLES who chose instead to comment at the WSJ attacking Tina as a lazy teenager who just needs a kick in the butt, or her family as societal leeches who are trying to game the system. If you go through and read the comments, some of them even got down to being snide about the fact that she didn’t look sick in the photo that the WSJ published, and that’s how they knew it was all a scam.

I was very proud of Tina’s big sister Natalie for heading right into the comment section and defending her sister tooth and claw, although all of us in blogdom could have told her that it was pretty pointless by the time a feeding frenzy of idiots gets started.

The Gutavssons have, simply, been raped as a family by the WSJ and its commenters, and I’d like to let them know that there are people in the area who just don’t think that’s right.

So here’s what I’m asking of all of you–jason, Hube, von cracker, anonone, everyone who stops by…

1. Publish a post on your blog that essentially says, “We stand with Tina”–that 15 year-old girls with disabilities shouldn’t be fair game for the crazies (or just link to this post if you’d like).

2. Take the time to visit the WSJ and read through the comments (they get really REALLY vile around page 7) and leave a reaction.

Maybe I’m not the best person to be asking this of everyone, but there has to be a line somewhere, and attacking sick children who live in our own backyard has to be over that line.

PS–Michael is doing well this year, for those of you who have followed his progress. We’re trying some new palliative therapies. Oh, and for those idiots who think this is a large-scale scam, there are only four diagnosed cases of Adolescent Chronic Fatigue in Delaware, and less than 100 in PA.

It is not often that David Anderson and I agree. Today we do. And I think it is important to acknowledge both when we agree and also when, in my opinion, he bucks his party and sticks with his faith.

Here is what he said today:

I am joining a million people across America in praying for a miracle. Troy Davis needs a real trial. He is scheduled to be executed based upon evidence that turned out to be fabricated and witnesses who admitted to lying. Read the story here from conservative stalwart Congressman Bob Barr, a former U. S. Attorney.

There will be no miracle. Today, we will kill an innocent man. Yes, we. Governments represent the people. When it takes action, it does so in our name. Today the State of Georgia will murder Troy Davis on our behalf.

Now, if Troy Davis were guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, that would one thing. Supporters of the death penalty would say it is justice, while critics would still say it is murder. Regarding the death penalty itself, I am a skeptic. Sometimes, I can see the need for the ultimate penalty. Serial killers, mass murderers, terrorists, Hitler. They all deserve death, and the state killing them in case is more a matter of self defense of society. However, when I see the death penalty applied in uneven and discriminatory ways, and to minors and the mentally ill, I find the penalty both ineffective and immoral. But I digress.

Today we know the execution of Troy Davis is immoral. That is the only thing we know beyond a reasonable doubt. And if two people of such divergent ideological opinions such as myself and David Anderson can agree that Troy Davis must not be executed because the evidence against is plainly fabricated or false, then why can’t the Governor of Georgia?

So pray for a miracle if you must, but I am going to pray for forgiveness, because I have no faith in the heart or mind of Governor Nathan Deal.