Archive for August, 2016

It’s 14 Days Until the Primary — Can You Help Support Progressive Candidates in Delaware?

Filed in Delaware, Featured by on August 31, 2016 0 Comments

Long time readers of this blog know that I ask folks here pretty often what have they done to try to make progressive change. Lots of readers of this blog *are* committed to progressive change and have rolled up their sleeves for candidates and issues. If you are looking at the sprint towards this primary and are looking for a way to get involved in a cycle that has plenty of excellent progressive choices, here are some options for you:

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‘Bulo To Appear On WHYY-TV

Filed in Arts and Entertainment, Delaware by on August 31, 2016 4 Comments
‘Bulo To Appear On WHYY-TV

Yes, I’m trying a new medium.  Or, to be accurate, they’re trying me. I sure know how to secure non-monetized gigs.  Even went out and bought two shirts and two ties and, for the first time ever, had my shirts TAILORED. In order, of course, to highlight my 42-inch biceps.  Sorry, ladies, I’m taken.

We taped a segment on the Lieutenant Governor’s race. About seven minutes long, although who knows how much usable tape they’ll be able to  salvage.  It will first appear this Friday at 5:30 p.m. on WHYY TV, and will then also be shown over the weekend.  In addition, you will be able to find it at whyy.org. once it airs.  And who knows, maybe we’ll even post it here.

Gotta say it was a fun segment.  They took away my cheat sheet so I had to do it all from memory,  but I generally survived and actually enjoyed it. Even threw in a few laugh lines.  They can take me off the radio, but they can’t take the radio out of me.

BTW, no makeup. You can’t improve on perfection.

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Wednesday Open Thread [8.31.2016]

Filed in National by on August 31, 2016 10 Comments
Wednesday Open Thread [8.31.2016]

Josh Marshall didn’t think Trump could be this stupid, regarding making the trip to Mexico:

This is such an outlandish idea it is not easy to make sense of it or predict its outcome. But a few key points are worth bearing in mind.

It’s a general rule of politics not to enter into unpredictable situations or cede control of an event or happening to someone who wants to hurt you. President Nieto definitely does not want Donald Trump to become President. He probably assumes he won’t become president, simply by reading the polls. President Nieto is himself quite unpopular at the moment. But no one is more unpopular than Donald Trump. Trump is reviled. Toadying to Trump would be extremely bad politics; standing up to him, good politics.

Put those factors together and Peña Nieto has massive and overlapping reasons to want to embarrass Trump. At a minimum since he’s probably not eager to create a true international incident, he has zero interest in appearing in any way accommodating or helpful. The calculus might be different if Trump seemed likely to be the next US President. Mexico is a minor power with the world colossus on its doorstep. But a Trump presidency seems unlikely. Far likelier, Peña Nieto will need to build a relationship with Hillary Clinton. These factors combined make for an inherently dangerous political situation for Donald Trump, especially since the atmospherics of this meeting will be the backdrop for Trump’s evening speech which is itself an incredibly important moment and one in which he has set for himself what is likely an impossible challenge.

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Wednesday Daily Delawhere [8.31.2016]

Filed in National by on August 31, 2016 0 Comments

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Grassley open to lameduck SCOTUS appointment

Filed in National by on August 30, 2016 10 Comments
Grassley open to lameduck SCOTUS appointment

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said the Senate could lift the blockade on confirming Garland for SCOTUS during the time after the Nov. 8 election if Clinton wins, and before the new Congress takes office in January.

To that I say, fuck you Chuck. And I would hope Merrick Garland would have the grace to say “Thanks, but no thanks” and allow President Clinton to appoint the next justice. I feel almost certain that he would. Not only that, he should announce today that he’d no longer be a nominee after November 8th.

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Tuesday Open Thread [8.30.2016]

Filed in National by on August 30, 2016 10 Comments
Tuesday Open Thread [8.30.2016]

Olivia Nuzzi: “If you were a presidential candidate who polled low among women, who was on your third wife, who had a reputation for womanizing and a professional relationship with a man who’d recently been axed from his job for sexual harassment, would you respond to the latest Anthony Weiner scandal by A. Staying out of it; B. Changing the subject; or C. Attacking your opponent by making a dubious connection between Weiner’s behavior and her own?”

“If you chose C, congratulations: This election has officially warped your sense of good judgment.”

Yes, even though Weiner himself has no role in the Clinton campaign, Donald Trump attacked Hillary for allowing Weiner to have access to confidential national security information (what?!?), and the media spent all day yesterday equating Trump Campaign CEO Steve Bannon’s domestic abuse charges and Weiner’s sexting in an example of the media’s devotion to BothSidism.

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Tuesday Daily Delawhere [8.30.2016]

Filed in National by on August 30, 2016 0 Comments

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Delaware Department of Education Pulls a Fast One

Filed in Education by on August 29, 2016 21 Comments
Delaware Department of Education Pulls a Fast One

A rising tide lifts all boats. With Christina slashing $9 million last year, this new formula applied retroactively would have increased Christina’s cost per student by roughly 3% resulting in a net increase payout this year for Charters that receive Christina resident students…despite the District having to decimate its budget last year.

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DL Endorsements for the General Assembly

Filed in Delaware by on August 29, 2016 119 Comments
DL Endorsements for the General Assembly

We have a few primaries in races for the General Assembly that we, as liberals and progressives, would like to weigh in on. We have an open seat in the 9th Senatorial District, a challenger to Speaker Schwartzkopf in the 14th Representative District, and a rematch between current Representative Sean Matthews and former Representative Dennis Williams in the 10th Representative District.

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Monday Open Thread [8.29.16]

Filed in National by on August 29, 2016 19 Comments
Monday Open Thread [8.29.16]

There was news that the Republicans are already plotting their schemes to obstruct President Hillary Clinton’s plans for her first 100 days, and they plan to deny she has any mandate to govern. Jonathan Chait goes LOL, and says mandates are meaningless.

A mandate is an archaic holdover from the bygone age of weak, ideologically heterogeneous parties. Crossing the aisle was common, so if Washington believed that a president had run on a clear agenda, Congress might feel some added moral pressure to pass it. (This happened in 1981, when the Democratic-controlled House enacted Ronald Reagan’s economic program.) In other words, the mandate is a political norm, a broadly if not perfectly shared sense of how politics ought to be conducted. Like most 20th-century American political norms — “filibusters should only be used rarely,” “the president has a right to fill Supreme Court vacancies with somebody qualified and not too extreme” — it is disappearing.

The negative mandate of George W. Bush’s 2000 popular-vote defeat did not discourage him or his party from passing the largest tax cut they could; neither of Barack Obama’s clear victories gave Republicans any pause in opposing the policies he ran on.

The obsession with a mandate, in which the style and scope of a Clinton victory has crucial ramifications, complicates what is actually a simple series of binary questions. If Democrats control only the presidency next year, Clinton will direct foreign policy and implement federal regulations. If her party adds the Senate, she will also have the ability to nominate judges to open seats. If Democrats win the above plus the House of Representatives, they will be able to pass major legislation for two years (after which Republicans would almost certainly regain their House majority during the midterms). Clinton’s “mandate” is irrelevant. All that matters is the levers of power she commands.

Take over Congress. Go nuclear on the filibuster rule, eliminating all holds and requiring the Senator to stand there until they die in order to filibuster a bill. And then pass your agenda with your majority. That is how you govern in this new order. Fuck mandates. Hillary could win all 50 states and the GOP will declare her an illegitimate President because 1) she is a woman and 2) she only beat Trump.

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Monday Daily Delawhere [8.29.16]

Filed in National by on August 29, 2016 0 Comments

Clouds were magnificent earlier…Wilmington Delaware

A photo posted by Elaine Kucharski (@downthestretch53) on

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Sunday Open Thread [8.28.16]

Filed in National by on August 28, 2016 14 Comments
Sunday Open Thread [8.28.16]

Republicans who think their problems will go away once Donald Trump has left the national stage haven’t been paying attention this week. Trump’s shifting position on immigration this week perfectly illustrates why the issue is nearly impossible for Republicans. Greg Sargent explains:

Trump’s rhetoric right now reflects a search for a magic formula. He wants to reassure suburban white swing voters — who essentially favor mass assimilation because they see most undocumented immigrants as largely making a positive contribution — that he isn’t proposing to cruelly ship out millions, which would be costly and disruptive to families and communities. So he says, don’t worry, we’re only starting with the bad ones, and the status of the good ones may be subject to negotiation later. In other words, he compassionately recognizes that many of them are good people — they’re not all merely criminals. But he also wants to reassure the hardliners, so he indicates that they all are still subject to removal, which is code for indicating that he is not making mass assimilation the goal.

In the end, though, Trump’s actual position, for now at least, is defined by the latter. The prospective goal is not mass assimilation. It’s shrinkage and removal — beyond just the “bad ones.” There is no straddle that works. There is no magic formula here.

As Democratic pollster Geoff Garin notes, wherever Trump lands on immigration, he’ll be out of step with Americans. Over 60% favor a path to citizenship and oppose his border wall. But Trump’s success in the GOP primary proves that the GOP base are opposed to that. They want mass deportation of all the brown Latinos, no matter if they are good or bad. That garners 30-40% of the GOP vote, enough for Trump to win in a massively crowded field. But that position, expressed with all the hate and vitriol found on Brietbart and Stormfront, is a guaranteed loser in a general election. Hence, the Catch-22 for the GOP, a problem that existed before Trump and will exist after Trump. The only way the GOP will get out of this trap is for them to tell their base to go fuck their racist selves, no matter the electoral consequences in the short term.

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Sunday Daily Delawhere [8.28.16]

Filed in National by on August 28, 2016 0 Comments

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