Recent Articles
Tuesday Open Thread [6.18.13]
![Tuesday Open Thread [6.18.13]](http://www.delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Open-Thread1-240x180.png "Tuesday Open Thread [6.18.13]")
The GOP Civil War continues apace. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) told World Net Daily radio that Speaker John Boehner should be ousted if he rams through an immigration bill without majority Republican support. LOL, well, that is the only way an immigration of any kind can get passed through the House of Representatives, and that is if Boehner allows another violation of the Hastert Rule, which provides that the only bills that will be voted on on the floor of the House of Representatives while under Republican control are bills that are supported by a majority of the Republican caucus. But Boehner has allowed several bills to be passed this year and last with minimal support from Republicans and majority support from the Democrats, including the Fiscal Cliff deal and Hurricane Sandy relief. I guess the GOP is so racist that they will not allow Boehner and the Dems to save their asses again, and instead want to go down in a hail of bigoted flames.
Said Rohrabacher: “If Speaker Boehner moves forward and permits this to come to a vote even though the majority of the Republicans in the House-and that’s if they do-oppose whatever it is that’s coming to a vote, he should be removed as Speaker.”
Conflict of Interest by 3 Wilmington City Council Members
Or at least the appearance of a conflict of interest by 3 Councilmembers who work for or have recently worked for Connections CSP in Wilmington. Sunday’s NJ has a great article by Andrew Staub and Beth Miller detailing the concerns that quite a few people have had over what appeared to be conflicts of interests between the roles of City Council members and Connections employees or consultants for Hanifa Shabazz, Mike Brown and Darius Brown.
John Carney Joins the SNAP Challenge Protest — UPDATED
The House of Representatives is getting to vote on its version of the Farm Bill — this GOP led version cuts 2.5% of SNAP funds. It is estimated that this might throw about 2.5M Americans who need food help off of the program. As a protest — 26 Democrats in the House have started a week-long SNAP Challenge (some reports have some of their staff joining them), where they pledge to live on the $4.50/day subsidy SNAP provides. Our representative, John Carney, is on the list of Democrats doing this challenge.
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Tues., June 18, 2013
Conspiracy Theory of the Week: DSEA Sells Out Public Schools, Secures Raises for Teachers.
If you were wondering why DSEA agreed to support charter schools’ grubby grab of public cash earmarked for public schools, we may now have the answer. Included in the Governor’s budget is “$8.5 million for ‘step increases’ for school employees, gradual pay raises teachers get as they gain experience and education”, according to Monday’s News-Journal article by Matthew Albright. Considering that the first $2 mill of the charter schools cash grab is also in the same budget bill, we can see how Markell bought off public education officials. Another $2.6 million is for ‘state testing computers’, yet more money down the rabbit hole of standardized testing. Need I remind anyone that we’ve got $8.5 mill for teachers’ increases, $0.00 for state employee increases. While I’m fine with raises for teachers, Strongly supportive in fact, I’m not fine with the Deal with the Devil that enabled them. Ladies and gentlemen, your Democratic governor. And the purported protectors of public education.
BTW, time for, IMHO, an important digression. Is it possible, just possible, that Jack Markell is campaigning…for CIA Chief? I’m (sorta) serious about this. The man who ran on the issue of government transparency has made secrecy the defining touchstone of his second term. First, the Port machinations. Then, the Charter Schools debacle, where his administration literally dared doubters to file a FOIA lawsuit. And, just this Sunday, an incredible piece by Jeff Montgomery in the News-Journal, which effectively lays out a strong case that Gov. Markell deliberately suppressed environmental data casting serious doubt on the environmental safety of the Delaware City oil refinery. Deliberately suppressed. Anybody getting angry yet?
Meanwhile, SB 97(Henry) “adds the term “gender identity” to the already-existing list of prohibited practices of discrimination and hate crimes. As such, this Act would forbid discrimination against a person on the basis of gender identity in housing, employment, public works contracting, public accommodations, and insurance, and it would provide for increased punishment of a person who intentionally selects the victim of a crime because of the victim’s gender identity.” SB 97 received the bare minimum 11 votes required to pass the Senate. I think it will likely have a more comfortable margin in the House.
![Tuesday Daily Delawhere [6.18.13]](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3708/9059470994_1b709ac3d7_z.jpg "Tuesday Daily Delawhere [6.18.13]")
Monday Open Thread [6.17.13]
Tales of Security Theater — the NFL has posted new security rules for attending their games starting next season. These new rules include size limits on purses, a list of prohibited items and a requirement for carrying what you do bring into the stadium in a clear bag. You get a bigger bag if you buy the special ones (with or without branding!) from the NFL or you an use a gallon-size ziplock bag. You can still have anything you want in the parking lot. The one that slays me is the prohibition against bringing in seat cushions. I don’t think that this is about security — I think that it is about making it quicker to get people in the gates. But I’m definitely rolling my eyes at this BS.
![Monday Daily Delawhere [6.17.13]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7359/9057246423_4467b0c9be_z.jpg "Monday Daily Delawhere [6.17.13]")
Late Night Video — Labor Pains for Dads
This is a great Father’s Day Video (even though it was made for Mother’s Day) — where two Dads take the challenge of experiencing simulated labor pains. A doctor rigged up electrodes that she strapped to the abdomens of these guys and then started the simulation. Love that their wives stroll into this thing, drinking coffee and being utterly nonchalant. Then the wives drop right into birth coaching mode. Hilarious! (Approx. 3 and a half minutes long.) More boys need to try this out.
Hiding Behind Lawyers to Hide Coastal Zone Impacts Isn’t A Good Management Strategy
It just makes people think that you are trying to hide something, which, apparently, the Markell Administration is doing. Today’s NJ brings us another story of the ongoing issues surrounding the PBF refinery at Delaware City. In the main, it looks like the refinery is expanding its operations outside of its permitted area (staging and unloading rail cars outside of the boundary of the plant; a planned barge shipment of oil over to a NJ plant), and taxpayers aren’t being allowed to see whether or not there are violations of the state’s Coastal Zonal Act here.
Sunday Open Thread [6.16.13]
So I guess Jeb Bush is running for President, and he is positioning himself as a conservative…
Said Bush: “[My campaign] will be based on my record. And that record was one of solving problems from completely from a conservative perspective. I cut taxes every year, I shrunk the size of government.”
“I will be able to, I think, manage my way through all the chirpers out there.”
First step in trying to win support of conservative fire breathing fire talking tea bagging idiots who are the base of the Republican Party is to not call them chirpers. These idiots have a very high opinion of themselves, are overly sensitive and do not take any minor or perceived insult well.
Father’s Day Daily Delawhere [6.16.13]
![Father’s Day Daily Delawhere [6.16.13]](http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5461/9007599225_a2ff3e8342_z.jpg "Father’s Day Daily Delawhere [6.16.13]")
A spectacular photo from No Rust on Flickr. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!
On opting out of the news
When my Mom describes the late 1960′s and early 70′s she doesn’t talk about freedom riders, Kent State, the heart breaking assassinations, the wars, the protest, the deaths, trials or tribulations. In short, the news didn’t make it into her bubble. “I kept that all out,” she told me one day. “I had three babies [...]
Australia teaches us a little lesson
and this lesson applies equally to every bigot, racist, bully, and chauvinist out there.
![Saturday Daily Delawhere [6.15.13]](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3790/9008780902_60b206d8a9_z.jpg "Saturday Daily Delawhere [6.15.13]")
Friday Open Thread [6.14.13]
The Fix’s Chris Cillizza cites Libertarian-friendly attitudes of young voters towards same sex marriage and marijuana as reason for the hope that Republicans will get a bigger bite of the youth vote.
However, E. J. Dionne, Jr. also has a column on the libertarian philosophy and its implementation in the real world…
![Friday Daily Delawhere [6.14.13]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7347/9008781434_78e3c90dd0_z.jpg "Friday Daily Delawhere [6.14.13]")
Thursday Open Thread [6.13.13]
![Thursday Open Thread [6.13.13]](http://www.delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Hillary-240x180.png "Thursday Open Thread [6.13.13]")
Joan Walsh posts that Hillary must be active in 2014:
“…She needs to be part of a Democratic team making the 2014 midterms a referendum on the uncompleted business of the Obama presidency – and on the GOP’s outrageous abuse of its minority status to block everything from popular legislation to agency nominations…Clinton has enormous political capital with the Democratic base, and beyond it. She needs to spend some of it turning out voters in 2014, or the presidency might not be a prize worth winning, except as another title in your Twitter bio.”
Joe Biden has already started, and I am sure O’Malley and Cuomo are sure to be traveling the country.
General Assembly Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show: Thurs., June 13, 2013
Let me get this straight. Jack Markell cuts taxes for his wealthy friends early this session. The only tax among the so-called temporary emergency taxes enacted in 2009 that he cut. Now he says he needs $80 million in new taxes and fees, or bridges will fall down, highways will crumble. Oh, and if they do, it will be somebody else’s fault because Markell gave the legislators a full 2 1/2 week’s warning before the end of session. Maybe, just maybe, if he stopped appearing on TV, writing half-baked op-eds, or accepting ginned-up awards created solely to increase his national stature (I recommend lifts as an alternative), he might find time to, you know, actually govern. I mean in public, not in secret.
![Thursday Daily Delawhere [6.13.13]](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3692/9008781182_af5a08c3ef_z.jpg "Thursday Daily Delawhere [6.13.13]")
Joe “No Bullsh*t” Biden All But Declares Bush An Illegitimate President
It is all true, so I’m just going to post this whole Dartagnan diary.
The Biden, unleashed:
In remarks made on Tuesday night at a fundraiser for Massachusetts Senate candidate Ed Markey in front of an audience of donating (doting?) Democrats, Biden went for the jugular.In a reference to Al Gore, who introduced Biden at the Washington, D.C., event, Biden said, “This man was elected president of the United States of America,”according to the pool report.
“But for the good of the nation, when the bad decision, in my view, was made, he did the right thing for the nation,” Biden continued.
Biden was just getting warmed up….
As the Sussex GOP Turns… or These are the Days of our Tin Foil…
So Delaware Politics has a story up by the very wonderful Don Ayotte, currently a member of the Independent Party of Delaware (iPod), formerly a Republican candidate for Sussex County Council, about the current Sussex County GOP Spokesman, Duke Brooks. I am preserving the story in its entirety as it appears Delaware Politics is suffering some site outages at the moment, most likely due to David Anderson or some other admin over there trying to delete the story. Here it is…
Wednesday Open Thread [6.12.13]
Here is some schadenfreude:
“Ignore the fucking scandals for a few days and save the country from Chuck Schumer.”
That is Mickey Kaus, alarmed about immigration reform sailing through the first hurdle in the Senate with over 80 votes. Some other witless conservative dubbed immigration reform the “Schumercare Democrat Voting Fraud Act of 2013.” LOL. First, these conservatives always personalize their opposition to a bill by attacking the person or persons behind it. Nancy Pelosi. Barack Obama. Ted Kennedy. Chris Dodd. Barney Frank. Harry Reid. And now Chuck Schumer. And hence “Schumercare,” which is supposed to allude to Obamacare for some reason, I suppose to awaken fear and loathing in the conservative lizard brain, as if enough did not exist there already. Second, “Democrat voting fraud?” Let’s ignore for the moment the fact that every single documented instance of “voting fraud” over the past several years has had a Republican as the culprit, and instead let’s focus on the fact that conservatives view minorities voting as a fraud. That cannot be denied given all the Jim Crow laws Republicans are passing or have passed in the South. Further, the earliest that an undocumented immigrant can be become a citizen under this reform bill and vote would be 2028. 15 years from now. They will be voting on whether to keep President Julian Castro on for a second term. And if the GOP decides to go all racist in opposition to this immigration reform bill, then yes, those new citizens will all be voting Democratic. But their votes will be as legal as the conservative’s vote. And that is because they would have paid their fines and their dues and fulfilled their other onerous requirements in this reform to bill to become citizens.
Recent Comments