Open Thread For August 9, 2017

Filed in Delaware, Featured, National by on August 9, 2017

Judge Wharton: “No E-Mails For YOU”:  Markell found a way around FOIA, judge who Markell appointed rules that shielding correspondence from the public is legal.  A lot of the Delaware Way in that decision. And then there’s Chip Flowers…

North Carolina To Sue DuPont And Chemours.  Turns out that Wilmington DE is not the only Wilmington to be despoiled by DuPont’s toxins.  Same fate awaits Wilmington, N. C.  More great reporting that you haven’t readIn case you haven’t read the entire series, here it is.  Yes, we’re still throwing state dollars at these serial poison purveyors.

Trump Threatens North Korea With Fire, Fury And Power. Cheeto channeling Kim Jong-Un with nuclear war as the threat.  Battle of the small hands? Could we really go to war over that?  BTW, this threat is endorsed by God.

Trump Gets A REAL News Briefing Twice A Day.  Only fulsome praise of Trump permitted.  Staffers fight to show who can grovel the most.  I can’t make this stuff up.

Trump Disses Report Of Opioid Council, Vows To Win Through Law And Order.  In addition to displaying his wilful ignorance, he runs the risk of alienating his base.  This epidemic is particularly prevalent in areas where Trump is strongest.

“How America Lost Its Mind”.  A provocative think-piece from the Atlantic.  So, read it and think.

What do you want to talk about?

 

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  1. RE Vanella says:

    Just to keep the Carper discussion going (see yesterday’s Open Thread), the News Journal ran a USA Today article on its front page today regarding Carper’s efforts to have Governors pressure Senators from their states to oppose the Obamacare repeal.

    Big push from Carper’s office to look like he’s doing something. Somebody’s old and afraid. Very good.

  2. puck says:

    “That just sets the FOIA statute back by decades,” Flowers said.

    Flowers is on the right side of this fight. Markell got away with murder on FOIA on multiple occasions.

  3. Arthur says:

    I think we are about 50-60 years away from living in a similar society as in “Idiocracy” and about 100 years from extinction

  4. 50-60 years away? I think we’re living in it right now.

  5. RE: I think you’re correct. Gotta love the uncritical nature of the USA Today ‘reporting’.

    Here are some questions for Carper: You say you want to make Obamacare better. Are you willing to support the reimportation of drugs that you opposed when Obamacare was first being debated? Do you support enabling Medicare to use its purchasing power to reduce the cost of prescriptions?

    If he answers yes to both, then I’d almost believe him. But he would have to turn his back on his Big Pharma contributors in order to do that.

  6. Jason330 says:

    The USA Today puff piece was by Nicole Guadiano. Was she at the NJ for a while honing her Carper suck up skills?

  7. Yes she was. At least up until March of this year. She also wrote some serious puffery on behalf of LBR as well.

    Only question is, which campaign will she join? If she hasn’t joined one already.

  8. RE Vanella says:

    Per the Washington Post:

    FBI conducted an unannounced predawn raid of Paul Manafort’s Alexandria, VA home on 26 July.

  9. Man, you’re quick. Was just about to post that. Looks like Manafort’s ‘voluntary’ release of documents was not viewed by law enforcement as being comprehensive.

  10. RE Vanella says:

    Without speculating on what we can’t know or drawing any conclusions…

    Drip, drip, drip…

  11. fightingbluehen says:

    “I think we are about 50-60 years away from living in a similar society as in “Idiocracy” and about 100 years from extinction.”

    If you create a timeline of Earth that is laid out between LA and NYC, all of recorded human existence is represented in the last fifteen feet of that line.

    If we go extinct in 100 years or 100,000 years we are always going to be just a blip in time, a microscopic shit smear, along with any influence we had….Mass extinction is how this place roles.

  12. fightingbluehen says:

    rolls

  13. RE Vanella says:

    This is also true for a single human life. However, I suppose you’d like to live the longest possible healthy life even understanding that an additional 20 years means nothing in cosmological time.

    I dig both contrariaism and nihilism generally, but here it’s silly.

  14. RE Vanella says:

    Kubrick fan. Nice. Ever seen Paths of Glory?

  15. fightingbluehen says:

    If you were to believe in heaven and hell, would you reason that it relates, and is consequential, to the whole of humanity, and not individuals?

    If the planet , as far as humanity is concerned, is righteous, then it will live and benefit from all it has and will ever have to offer (technology/paradise)… and if it screws up, it will burn.

  16. alby says:

    Most of what we call religion — certainly including the parts that posit supernatural beings — is an attempt to conjure order out of an unimaginably vast and complicated chaos. There is no more reason to believe in heaven and hell than there is to believe in Asgard, and considerably less reason to believe in either than to believe in no “afterlife” or supernatural beings at all.

    On the other hand, if all Earth were to be judged, why would humans be singled out for significance? By biomass, we’re less significant than ants, which have been “civilized” (living in complex societies) for eons longer than humans.

  17. Rufus Y. Kneedog says:

    Ve’ll meet again, don’t know vhere don’t know vhen, but ve’ll meet again some sunny day.

  18. fightingbluehen says:

    On the other hand, if all Earth were to be judged, why would humans be singled out for significance?

    The Judgement part is irrelevant . Someday humans may live in a virtual paradise, or on the other hand, we could all burn, so to speak.