Archive for February, 2016
Friday Open Thread [2.26.16]
![Friday Open Thread [2.26.16]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12573182_10153381061797883_5932557486068334042_n-240x180.png "Friday Open Thread [2.26.16]")
Taegan Goddard on last night’s disaster of a GOP debate: “The runaway winner of this debate was the Democratic party. If there are many more nights like this one, the Democratic nominee will have a much easier time in November. It was a truly pathetic mess.”
Carney Stampeded by Elephants on CSPAN
Bipartisanship awesomeness is the bipartisanship of bipartisan bipartisanshipness. (Also, austerity rocks and will fix everything eventually.) What a goof. Renacci is a Partisan hack playing Carney for a fool.
Coons’ Africa Convoy Charged By Elephants
No comment, except to say I will be on the edge of my seat waiting for Celia to work her magic with this. Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE)convoy to Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia was charged by elephants last week when they got too close to the baby elephants. Coons was on a fact-finding mention with […]
Thursday Open Thread [2.25.16]
![Thursday Open Thread [2.25.16]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Black.White_.Open_.Thread-240x180.png "Thursday Open Thread [2.25.16]")
Chez Pazienza says the political press needs to grow a pair when it comes to Trump.
Nobody is willing to openly admit what most of us have been able to see for months: that if Donald Trump is the best the Republican party can do, and if he winds up becoming the nominee for president, we’re fucking doomed. The political press just keeps right on plugging along, pretending that while this is an unusual and surprising election season there’s nothing completely offensive and undeniably dangerous about it. Donald Trump is calling immigrants rapists and killers, he’s for banning all Muslims from entering the country, and he’s regularly encouraging his rabid followers to rough up protesters, and yet as a whole our nation’s political media is covering Trump’s rise as if it’s something to marvel at — or to hardly notice at all — rather than something to be utterly ashamed of. The job of the political press is to hold candidates accountable — but our political press for the most part isn’t doing a damn thing when it comes to Trump.
On Sunday, MSNBC correspondent Katy Tur tweeted out a depressing but not all that surprising incident that happened on the trail. She claims that at a campaign rally, Trump worked the audience by going after the media — not at all the first time he’s done it — and that led to the angry crowd hurling insults and threats at the press covering the event. According to Tur, at least one guy in the audience turned toward her and shouted, “You’re a bitch!” while another flipped the press gaggle off. In response to this, Chuck Todd fired off a tweet accusing Trump and his nutjob acolytes of engaging in “outrageous and dangerous behavior,” and saying that the “campaign rhetoric” needs to be “ratcheted back.” Trump singles out Katy Tur, accusing her of saying something negative about him, then whips the crowd into a frenzy against her until people are basically ready to tear her head off, and that’s just “campaign rhetoric?” No, it absolutely isn’t. It’s the frightening ravings of a would-be fascist dictator, one who refuses to behave decently or responsibly and who all the admonition in the world won’t stop. Remember, this is the same guy who responded to a protester being punched at a rally in November by agreeing that “maybe he should’ve been roughed up.” […]
Eventually, some member of the media is going to get hurt when Trump singles them out for a scathing rebuke. Back in January, he tore the head off a poor camera operator in the middle of a Trump rally for the unforgivable sin of not moving the camera to show the size of the crowd. (As if the people covering the rally work for Trump and are therefore required to take orders from him.) When Trump went after him, the crowd followed suit and launched into the same kind of mass tirade Katy Tur was on the receiving end of. And yet, again, not only does the media not take steps to protect its own people, it otherwise behaves as if Trump isn’t a threat to the public and America as a whole. Granted, the easiest way to correct itself on both counts would be to simply stop covering Trump, but given his status as ratings and page-view catnip that’s just never going to happen. Barring that then, the political media should be willing to take a stand and at every turn portray Trump as he is: a dangerous, megalomaniacal demagogue.
I have been thinking something for a while, but have been unwilling to put it into digital print, or say it out loud, but I think I will now. American politics has faced dark and dangerous and chaotic elections before. 1968 brings to mind a very good example. Then you had two political leaders, RFK and MLK, assassinated, and protesters and supporters of candidates beaten. It could happen again. This is not a prediction, or a “Round them up” hyperbolic call to arms that I am infamous for. It’s just a gut feeling I have that something violent is going to happen to change this presidential race Either a protester is killed at a Trump rally by a mob of Trump supporters, maybe even upon Trump’s orders, or maybe Trump himself will be shot at or assassinated.
Make America What…Again?
20% of Trump Supporters reject the Emancipation Proclamation. Another 17% “aren’t sure” if freeing the slaves was a good idea. That is how big the stakes are in this election. If Democrats are unmoved by our eventual candidate, we will be empowering the worst Americans, and validating everything that is base and disgusting about this […]
White House considers Nevada Gov. Sandoval for Supreme Court | PBS NewsHour
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/white-house-considers-nevada-gov-sandoval-for-supreme-court/ Trollbama? Trying hard not to lose it my @$$ of at McConnell and the GOP if this is legit.
Red States Dominate Shooting Death Stats
The correlation is pretty obvious. While murders are fairly evenly distributed (per 100k of population), suicides put red states way over the top. Ergo: Conservatism + Guns = Fear = Despair = Time to Meet Jesus. (click for a larger picture)
Obama comes out swinging on SCOTUS appointment fight
Read this. You will agree that, even with the most advanced diamond tipped drilling equipment, Obama’s carapace of cool can not be penetrated.
It’s Time I Got Off The Fence – My Presidential Endorsement
Here’s where I began. Before Bernie Sanders entered the primary I was fine with Hillary Clinton. Basically, I knew what I would be voting for (warts and all). Nothing anyone says about her is new to me. That doesn’t mean I agree with her on everything. It just means that I was open to supporting a Sanders’ nomination. I even wrote a post about it and commented on it extensively.
I’m going to be really honest here. Many of the comments from Bernie supporters on this site concerned me. I heard a lot about why social issues weren’t important and would have to wait – suddenly incrementalism was A-okay. That surprised me, and concerned me, since Dems are going to desperately (and I mean desperately) need the votes of black and brown people, women, non-Christians, the LGTB community, and other minority groups in November. Not to mention that every time I asked for reasons to support Bernie I received a host of reasons to not support Hillary. Basically, I wasn’t comfortable with the strategy of “My candidate doesn’t suck as much as your candidate” comments. And boy, there were a ton of those. To me, that shows a weakness of your candidate.
Guess you’ve already figured out who I’m going with. I’d already admitted weeks ago I was leaning towards Hillary. The time since has merely strengthened my stance.
Wednesday Open Thread [2.24.16]
![Wednesday Open Thread [2.24.16]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Gray.Open_.Thread-240x180.png "Wednesday Open Thread [2.24.16]")
The Republican Party as we have known it is now officially dead. Flatline. The new party created by Trump in its stead must be called the Nationalist Party from now on.
Politico: “Suddenly, […] it is Trump’s new alliance of angry populists that is ascendant — and on the precipice of dominance.”
Washington Post: “The rise of Donald Trump has baffled the so-called establishment of the Republican Party. It’s become just as confounding to the libertarians, conservatives, and ‘constitutionalists’ who used to be called the “Tea Party.” While Cruz had spent the days before these caucuses pre-spinning a loss, the size of the Trump victory challenged notions about who, exactly, was a conservative.”
Amanda Carpenter on CNN was realistic about the end of her party:
“I’m really struck in thinking about what a Donald Trump nomination would actually mean,” she said. “I really think it’s the end of the Republican Party. It’s a natural effect. We’ve watched what’s happened by a lot of people who have wanted to save power so badly they didn’t listen, didn’t listen, didn’t listen to the grassroots. They didn’t listen in 2010, they didn’t listen in 2014 even though we won those midterm elections. Nothing changed.”
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