Archive for Unstable Isotope
Opinionated chemist, troublemaker, blogger on national and Delaware politics.
Castle On The Attack
Mike Castle’s attack machine appears to be stirring. Yesterday I saw this message on Twitter:
Dozens of NCC employees to be laid off in July as a result of Coons’ budget. Read more: http://tinyurl.com/yazxuxg http://fb.me/sUhrYIPW
I couldn’t get the first link to work, but the second link leads to the same message on his Facebook page.
It’s [...]
Christine O’Donnell’s Legal Woes
Poster anon brings our attention to this article in the News Journal about Christine O’Donnell. The article details O’Donnell’s various legal and money issues.
But while she was courting voters, she amassed thousands of dollars in campaign debt, was confronted by the IRS about unpaid income taxes and sold her Wilmington home to a campaign [...]
Friday Open Thread
w00t for Friday! How are your NCAA picks doing? I’ll bet none of you picked Murray State. You should know that teams connected to me do well. Pick Murray State (my parents’ alma mater), Kentucky (my home state), Wisconsin (my alma mater) and you’ll do well. I’ve won exactly 0 of [...]
19Mar2010 | Unstable Isotope | 24 comments | Continued
Teabaggers Fail Tax Quiz
Jot down your own answers before clicking the link.
1. How much does the federal government collect in taxes as a % of GDP?
2. How much does the typical family making $50,000 per year pay in federal taxes?
3. Are taxes higher, lower or the same since Barack Obama was inaugurated?
Joe Biden, Comedian
Joe Biden spoke at the Radio and Television Correspondents dinner on Wednesday and got in some pretty good lines.
Here are my personal favorites, courtesy of Unofficial Roast Master and VP Joe Biden
On Liz Cheney: Liz Cheney is questioning whether Tom Brady is a real patriot! What the hell, it was worth a [...]
Deep Gubernatorial Thought
Last night at a townhall meeting, Governor Markell offered the following thought when defending some of his more unpopular stands (slavery apology, NRA-written gun law):
You don’t elect someone for their proposals, you elect them for their judgment.
How do you feel about this statement?
Thursday Open Thread
I hope everyone’s not too hung over from last night’s St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Today we go back to not celebrating Irish heritage. Are you ready for an open thread? Let’s thread.
Heckuva job CNN! CNN has hired Red State’s Erick Erickson to be their newest contributor to their politics coverage. Erick [...]
Health Care Reform: A Wrench In The Works?
The CBO score for the health care reconciliation bill was expected yesterday, but it was not released. The issue appears to be related to the hazards of reconciliation. To survive challenges during the reconciliation process, the items in the bill must be directly related to budgetary items and they must reduce the deficit. [...]
18Mar2010 | Unstable Isotope | 7 comments | Continued
St. Patrick’s Day Open Thread
Today is St. Patrick’s Day, a celebration of all things Irish. I hope you’re all wearing green and drinking green beer in celebration. I thought I’d share some St. Patrick’s Day facts (from History.com):
The Celebration
Corned beef and cabbage is a traditional St. Patrick’s Day dish. In 2007, roughly 41.5 billion pounds of U.S. [...]
17Mar2010 | Unstable Isotope | 6 comments | Continued
Kucinich To Vote Yes
Rep. Dennis Kucinich held a press conference to announce that he will vote yes on the the health care reform bill, despite previously announcing he would vote no.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced this morning that he will in fact vote for the Senate health care bill. Kucinich’s switch was a major pickup for Democrats who [...]
Hissy Fit
As the passage of health care reform becomes more and more likely, the Republican hissy fits have become more and more vehement and more dishonest. First the Republicans were throwing public tantrums about the use of reconciliation, despite the fact that reconciliation had been used multiple times by Republicans (ones currently servng in the [...]
17Mar2010 | Unstable Isotope | 10 comments | Continued
Tuesday Open Thread
Welcome to Tuesday. I think we must have survived the Breitbartocalypse. I don’t feel any different. It’s definitely feeling like spring around here. My crocuses have bloomed and my daffodils will bloom any day now. I find it kind of amazing how spring this year was almost like a light [...]
16Mar2010 | Unstable Isotope | 33 comments | Continued
Senator Kaufman Takes On Wall Street
Senator Kaufman is delivering a speech today in favor or financial reform. All I can say is wow, you go Ted!
Mr. President, last Thursday, the bankruptcy examiner for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. released a 2,200 page report about the demise of the firm which included riveting detail on the firm’s accounting practices. That [...]
The Senate Releases Its Financial Reform Plan
The Senate’s financial reform plan was released yesterday by Sen. Chris Dodd:
The plan would create a nine-member council, led by the Treasury secretary, to watch for systemic risks, and direct the Federal Reserve to supervise the nation’s largest and most interconnected financial institutions, not just banks.
But the bill, which would amount to the most sweeping [...]
Glenn Beck vs. Fox
I’ve always thought that Glenn Beck would flame out sooner rather than later. You can’t make your living as a prophet of doom & gloom if the doom & gloom doesn’t come to pass. However, the end for Glenn Beck may be more related to money than from burn-out, according to Howard Kurtz:
With [...]
Monday Open Thread
Beware the Ides of March! Today is the Ides of March and also the Breitbartocalypse. At this time tomorrow the “institutional left” will have ceased to exist. I suppose you’ll only see a blank page here tomorrow. We will all have been raptured or something. It’s pretty unclear what Breitbart meant. [...]
15Mar2010 | Unstable Isotope | 12 comments | Continued
Health Care Reform: The Endgame
Robert Gibbs was on the Sunday shows yesterday and said that by next week health care reform will be the law of the land:
“We’ll have the votes when the House votes, I think, within the next week,” Gibbs said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Gibbs added that those on next week’s Sunday talk shows “will be talking [...]
Impeach Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas was in the court majority in the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which overturned a century’s worth of regulations barring unlimited spending by corporations in political campaigns. Virginia Thomas, Clarence Thomas’s wife, is preparing to take advantage of this SCOTUS ruling to start her own Tea Party group, which will take corporate [...]
14Mar2010 | Unstable Isotope | 22 comments | Continued
Weekend Open Thread
Welcome to a rain-soaked, windy open thread. I don’t know about you but I think I’m actually living in a marsh. Are you ready for an open thread?
Texas decided to cut Thomas Jefferson out of its history standards. He so inconvenient after all, with his insistence that there is a separation between [...]
Warren Redlich Speaks
Warren Redlich, who owns the campaign domain for the Christine O’Donnell’s 2008 Senate campaign website gives us the scoop on his interactions with the O’Donnell team.
Comment by Warren Redlich on 13 March 2010 at 8:04 am:
Hi – I’m Warren Redlich. There isn’t much of a connection. Here’s the short story:
One of my hobbies is acquiring [...]
I Have The World’s Smallest Violin
My violin weeps for Bart Stupak. He went from the U.S.’s most important Congressman to irrelevant. He went to a publication that has only the Democratic party’s best interest in mind, the National Review Online to have a pity party complain:
Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, [...]
Friday Open Thread
TGIF! It looks like the wonderful spring-like sunny weather is not going to hold through the weekend, unfortunately. Let’s roll with the open thread.
Democrats overwhelmingly want to pass the health care reform bill. I understand how they’re feeling, I’m sick of the delays.
Roughly five out of six members of MoveOn favor passing [...]
Harry Reid Eats His Wheaties
I’d like to start this post with a sincere wish for the rapid recovery of Harry Reid’s wife and daughter, who were in a serious car accident yesterday. Health care reform looks more certain to pass any day now. One hold-up has been the distrust between the House and the Senate. The Senate is now an almost completely dysfunctional body and the House is worried that the fixes to the health care bill will not see action. There are now at least 54 Senators on board with reconciliation for the sidecar bill containing fixes to the Senate bill and Harry Reid has sent a letter of notice to Mitch McConnell that Democrats are going to pursue reconciliation:
12Mar2010 | Unstable Isotope | 2 comments | Continued
Thursday Open Thread
Welcome to Thursday and welcome to your open thread. As usual, I’ll provide a couple of links for you to talk about if you wish but there is nothing that is off-topic in an open thread.
A story spread all over the rightwing news media about a ban on fishing by the Obama administration. [...]
A Bill We Should All Support – Medicare Buy-In
Progressive hero Alan Grayson has introduced a short 4-page bill to allow Americans to buy into Medicare coverage (without subsidies). Think Progress’s Wonk Room describes the bill, called the “Public Option Act” or “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act”:
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has provided the White House with a real opportunity to win back [...]
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