Pandora!!!!
Tomorrow we will have more substantive posts about tonight’s festivities, mostly because we are too drunk right now.
But suffice to say that we raised $570 tonight for Tommywonk to fly out to Denver, and Ms. Pandora won the Delaware’s Hottest Blogger Competition running away….
Pandora $170.00
Liberal Geek $130.00
Donviti $65.00
Poor Donviti. Hubris was his undoing.
Anyone who felt strongly that John Carney would be a good governor could use the comments section to make their case.
The PDD Endorsement Committee announces its endorsements for the Primary election.
Michael Katz – State Senate – 4th District
John Mackenzie – State Senate – 6th District
John Cartier – County Council – 8th District
Tom Scherer – County Council – 12th District
Previously announced endorsements for the Primary are:
Jack Markell – Governor
Jerry Northington – U.S. Congress
The great news here are the Senate pick-up prospects. The committee stated…
The Endorsement Committee is very excited about the two candidates for the state Senate. This is the first time they’ve run for public office; they have viable campaigns set up and –most important–they are very progressive. We feel that if they win, Karen Peterson will have two strong allies in her fight to pass FOIA legislation and move forward on other progressive issues.
I know that it is hard to forget, but I’ll remind you again. Tonight at 7:30 is a special Drinking Liberally at Catherine Rooney’s. We will be making fools out of ourselves for a good cause.
$5 per vote will help elect Delaware’s Hottest Blogger and help send Tom Noyes to Denver for the DNCC. I will arrive before 8 with the official ballot box and some sharpies. I plan to have the polls open until 10:00. We will then count the votes and the money and announce the winner of the title of Delaware’s Hottest Blogger. And of course, the big winner will be Tom Noyes for his trip to Denver and all of us for the fine reportage that we will get from Tom.
I speak for all of us here at Delaware Liberal when I say that we are looking forward to seeing all of you there.
I haven’t read doonesbury in a while, but this one caught my eye and made me giggle.
(click to enlarge if you can’t read the text)
Pretty sweet, when you stop to think he was working to make sure that a bribery scandal didn’t see the light of day. His children must be so proud of little Ol Louie.
Bandar, a longtime close personal friend of the Bush family who is now national-security adviser to Saudi King Abdullah, was so worried about investigations into the BAE payments that last year he hired the international legal and security firm Freeh Group International, headed by former FBI director Louis Freeh, to defend him from the charges. Among the Freeh Group’s partners is Sir Stephen Mitchell, a prominent British barrister and former High Court judge. In addition, Bandar has hired William Bradford Reynolds, a former top official in the Reagan Justice Department, to represent him in a private shareholder lawsuit relating to the alleged improper payments.
“Daddy?”
“Yes dear?”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I work for the Oil Cartels in Saudi Arabia and keep them from being thrown in Jail for bribing Government officials with Billions of dollars and also by telling them they won’t help fight the war on terror.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes dear?”
“Weren’t the 9/11 High Jackers from Saudi Arabia”
“Awww shhhhhh honey, lay your head down on this pillow sewn together with extracted cotton from $100 bills and hand washed with the tears of the few thousand MBNA people that got laid off when we sold our souls to Bank of America.”
“mmmkay, I love you”
“I know”
**note: the above was merely a hypothetical, I have no way of knowing if little louie’s daughter loves him**
I criticized the News Journal this morning for what I thought was a deceptive story and a deceptive presentation on the front page and on the website concerning Lee’s presence at the debate last night. And Jason has criticized their reporting of Adgate as compared to Delaware State News’ coverage.
If we are going to criticize when they deserve it, we must also give credit where they deserve it.
Their editorial on Adgate this morning nails John Daniello for his hypocrisy.
Mr. Markell is correct. State party chairman John Daniello ought to knock it off.
There’s irony in this. Mr. Daniello himself was a candidate in the first statewide Democratic primary in 1970 — for U.S. House — after the party stopped choosing candidates by convention. No state party money was given to Mr. Daniello or his opponent, Samuel Shipley, but there was still plenty of bitterness after the race.
To be sure, if Markell is elected, I expect John Daniello and all of his proteges in the party establishment to be fired. The spending of $25,000 to prop up Carney can be considered nothing less than political malpractice, especially when the money is needed on downticket races we need to win if we are to take back the House.
Drew Volturo of the Delaware State News, whose reporting on Adgate has been spectactular, has a story up today indicating that the Delaware Democratic Party is about to spend $11,000 more of our money to further divide the party.
Already facing criticism for spending thousands on a radio ad touting Lt. Gov. John C. Carney’s role in bringing an offshore wind farm to the state, the Delaware Democratic Party has spent about $11,000 more to purchase additional airtime for the commercial.
The decision to air the ads has drawn the ire of Democratic lawmakes, officials, and rank-and-file Democrats for spending party m oney on a candidate who is involved in a gubernatorial primary against state Treasurer Jack A. Markell.
…
More than $25,000 has been spent to air the ads, and using those funds in a Democratic primary takes it away from its intended purpose, defeating Republicans in November, said Progressive Democrats for Delaware director Rebecca Young.
Ms. Young delivered a letter from the party subgroup Monday to party officials asking them to “reverse this decision” and stay out of the primary monetarily.
“I talked to (party chair) John Daniello when I delivered the letter and he said he woudl respond,” Ms. Young said Wednesday. “It looks like he has.”
Indeed. My guess is Daniello, and the whole party establishment, knows they will be outsed from their jobs at the Party if Markell wins. Damn right they will. So they are doubling down on their party hack, John Carney.
I checked my calendar and is says it is 2008, I rubbed my eyes and looked again and it still says 2008.
A Bush administration proposal aimed at protecting health-care workers who object to abortion, and to birth-control methods they consider tantamount to abortion, has escalated a bitter debate over the balance between religious freedom and patients’ rights.
a draft regulation that would deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan or other entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions, including providing birth-control pills, IUDs and the Plan B emergency contraceptive.
Tell me how the Taliban is any different please..
Will you be attending Drinking Liberally tonight at Catherine Rooney’s @7:30? Who will you cast your vote for Delaware’s Hottest Blogger?
Delaware is a funny state. We don’t get live coverage of our gubernatorial debates like Pennsylvania and New Jersey do, so we have to trust what we read in the newspaper, unless we actually attend the event ourselves. And our only major (if you can call it major) is the Wilmington News Journal.
Last night, three of the four candidates for Governor, Jack Markell, John Carney and Mike Protack, attended a debate in Dover. Naturally, this morning’s lead story in the News Journal concerns that debate and the news about prison healthcare that emerged from the debate. This post is not about that news. It is about how the News Journal covers this story.
Read this follwing blurb below the fold and tell me how many candidates you think attended the debate last night.
Tom Noyes won Delaware’s Best Blogger Award in 2007 by acclamation. He followed that up in 2008 by leveraging his blog TommyWonk to help get the Bluewater Wind deal done AND he has been chosen by the DNC to represent Delaware bloggers at the Democratic National Convention.
I had the chance to sit down (via email) with him and ask him a few questions about blogging and his upcoming trip to the Democratic National Convention in Denver
Jason: Okay…you know Delaware Liberal was competing with you to be picked as the state blogger from Delaware so I’m dying to know…Who did you have to sleep with to get this coveted State Blogger Corps spot?
Tom: I honestly didn’t know that was a requirement. Maybe I’m just saving myself for my second marriage.
Jason: Are you going to be in the hotel with the Delaware delegation?
Tom: I’ll be in a different hotel nearby. But I’ve already met most of the folks from Delaware.
The A-list folks will get the downtown hotels; I’ll be in one down by the Interstate, though there seems to be a good light rail link directly to the convention site.
Jason: You know most of these people pretty well – who do you think you’ll be partying with?
Tom: Five nights with the country’s leading Democrats? I’m sure I’ll find someone to hang with.
Jason: I meant Delaware People. Are you and Celia Cohen going to let your hairs down? Are there any Delaware politicos do you want to get to know better?
Tom: I’ve had mine cut short for the summer. As for the Delaware delegation, there are some younger folks—up and comers—I’d like to get to know.
Jason: When you found out you were going, did part of you hope for a brokered convention?
Tom: There is no part of me that hoped for a messy convention. I’m interested in seeing a well-ordered juggernaut that combines message discipline with genuine enthusiasm, and sets up an overwhelming ground game.
By the way, if you want to know what an old-fashioned brokered convention is like, try reading up on the Democrats in 1932 or the Republicans in 1860. Accounts from the time sound like dispatches from the circles of Hell. Even worse, they didn’t have air conditioning, which may be why the candidates themselves stayed away, at least until FDR flew in to give his acceptance speech in 1932.
Jason: How do you think your coverage is going to be different that whoever is being sent by the News Journal?
Tom: There will be plenty of places to read or see what Obama and others say. I want to try to give folks a sense of what it would be like to be there. And I will continue to offer the mind-numbing policy analysis my readers have come to expect.
Jason: Your first post was about the famous Christo “Gates” exhibit in New York City’s Central Park –- at the time did you think you were going to be doing a political blog or did you think it was just going to be a sort of online journal?
Tom: Actually, my first post was about a terrific parody of The Gates called The Crackers. I went back and checked my first full month of blogging; I wrote about Social Security, corporate governance and the Terry Schiavo fiasco. I’d like to write more about science and culture, but I’ve been busy.
Jason: If you were offered a spot as an opinion columnist at the New Journal would you take it?
Tom: Actually, I think that Delaware bloggers could easily replace the NJ editorial board, and have enough talent for a deep bench.
Jason: You flatter me, but I don’t know…What does it pay? How much vacation do they get?
Tom: More to the point, I’m as interested in doing as I am in writing. Writing on a newspaper’s editorial page seems somehow limited. Blogging allows me to write about and be involved in an issue like wind power, and not just sit on the sidelines offering my opinion.
Jason: Where do you see political blogging in ten years?
Tom: How should I know?
But if you’re looking for clues as to how long blogging can last, The Daily Howler was started in April, 1998. I don’t think they even called it blogging then. Talking Points Memo was started in November, 2000.
I do think that there will be a place for good, entertaining, informative writing. I try to write in a way that will hold up for more than a news cycle. Some of my posts from two or three years ago still rank high in Google searches. Try “economic value of recycling” or “economics of wind power” or “map of Aztlan” or “Mr. Bill and Sluggo.”
Jason: You got a lot of credit in the press for helping the Bluewater Wind deal; did you pick up strategy tips for blogger issue advocacy going forward? In other words, even though we won, are there things you would have done differently?
Tom: I think I was able to fill the gap between the scholarly filings of professors Kempton and Firestone and the need for a focused message that ordinary folks can understand and articulate.
If there’s one conclusion I would offer, it’s that blogging alone isn’t enough. I spoke to hearings, seminars, political gatherings, rallies, and in the traditional media. I wrote and produced radio spots, one of which included my father as a narrator. I discussed the issues with other activists, legislators, candidates for public office and anyone else who was interested. Not everything I did or discussed made its way onto TommyWonk.
Jason: I think of you and Mike Mahaffie as Delaware’s gentleman bloggers….do you ever censor yourself? I mean do you ever type something and then say, “No. That wouldn’t fit with the kind of ‘brand’ I’m trying to build.”
Tom: Many times. I have written entire posts and left them on my hard drive; good stuff, too. It’s called editing. You might try it yourself.
Jason: No time. Gotta keep sticking it to the man. Speaking of which…Be honest. Isn’t Tom Carper a crumb bum? He is, isn’t he?
Tom: There you go again, trying to get me to call powerful politicians names, even if “crumb bum” sounds like an epithet my grandmother might have used.
Jason: I’ll take that as a yes. One more question, who is Delaware’s hottest blogger?
Tom: Hottest is as hottest does. Show me the money.