Wednesday Open Thread
It’s Wednesday and a snow day for some of us (not me). I hope you enjoyed your commute this morning. It’s time to play in our open thread.
What’s happening tonight? I’m going to Kildare’s Pub in Newark for the 3rd Delaware Tweetup. It’s an opportunity to meet all those people you send your 140-character thoughts to in 3-D! I hope to see you there tonight.
Yesterday Illinois held its primary election.
It’s official: Alexi Giannoulias will face off against Mark Kirk this November to fill Barack Obama’s former senate seat. It only took four plus hours after the polls closed to call it, but Giannoulias held off a challenge from David Hoffman, 39% – 34%.
The Republican side was never in doubt, with Kirk crushing his teabagger opponent 57% – 19%.
I wonder what the Republican establishment will say about this one. Kirk is definitely the most competitive Republican candidate in Illinois but he earns the wrath of the Republican base. He’s considered a RINO and he was one of the 8 Republicans who voted for the cap & trade climate bill. For an extra bonus bit of schadenfreude, Dennis Hastert’s son lost in a primary to reclaim his father’s House seat from Democratic Rep. Bill Foster.
The governor’s primary race is still not called from either the Democratic or Republican side:
The races for governor went down to the wire Tuesday night with razor-thin margins separating Gov. Pat Quinn from Comptroller Dan Hynes on the Democratic side and state Sens. Kirk Dillard and Bill Brady among Republicans.
The closeness of the contests, accentuated by a low voter turnout, left trailing candidates pondering recounts.
With 99 percent of state precincts reporting, Quinn and Hynes each had 50 percent, separated by less than 5,500 votes in a bitter contest.
…
On the GOP side, Brady had 21 percent to 20 percent for Dillard, less than 1,500 votes apart. Ex-state Republican Chairman Andy McKenna had 19 percent, with 99 percent counted.
Tags: Open Thread
On another subject, could someone expain to me why crimes like this always seem to happen in the African-American community, and usually by religious leaders – http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100203/NEWS01/2030340
White churches usually rip off their congregation with vacation home schemes (see Bakker, Jim).
Gee, I can’t think of any large number of African-American pastoral scam artists, because my news feed is always full of the updates from white mega-church evangelists predicting the end of the world and buying undocumented workers to build their TV stations and colleges.
Senior Democrats floating bill to block EPA on plans for greenhouse gas rules
The Hill ^ | 2/3/10 | Ben Genam
House committee chairmen from Minnesota and Missouri are floating legislation to block planned EPA greenhouse gas rules. The effort underscores unease among senior Democrats from conservative-leaning states about Obama administration emissions policy. Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) — who head the Agriculture and Armed Services committees, respectively — introduced a plan Tuesday that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from placing limits on heat-trapping emissions from power plants, factories and other sources. “I have no confidence that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without doing serious damage to our economy,”
Brooke – you should read the Washington Post from the past few years. A lot of African-Americans in the metro-area were scammed by their “pastors” and other religious people. No better than Bernie Madoff, that goniff.
My point being, MJ, that media coverage of crime is racially biased. People who steal tend to steal from people they know. So, in a socially segregated society, such as we still largely have, it might look like a racial issue.
But the problem of theft isn’t racial. White people, particularly those with access to more privilege, may enact their fraud in a different way, and, often, on a larger scale. Enron would be a good example.
Governor Markell and DNREC Secretary O’Mara are speaking tonite in the kick off to the Green Matters series being held at the Unitarian church in Newark.
Perhaps the Governor will use his Very First Tweet tonite to holla at his peeps to get their butts to the church tonite!
Church fraud does not really have a race these days — there was a massive fraud case in 2000 or so where a Baptist Foundation in AZ was conducting its own ponzi scheme and lost about 500M dollars. And there is plenty more where that comes from.
But this church — see their Vision Statement:
Apparently their Bible did not come with the 10 Commandments. And this wealth-building business –Prosperity Gospel — often seems to invite the moneychangers into the temple. And into temples where the parishioners can least afford to be stolen from. Some of these churches (not all) are run something like a MLM scheme. There’s lots of stuff to buy, you have to contribute alot to the church, you need to recruit people to have them bring their money. Congress was going to have hearings on some of the worst offenders, but don’t know what came of it.
There’s been plenty of scams of evangelicals scamming each other. I seem to vaguely recall a recent scandal with Thomas Kincaid (Painter of Light) and his housing project and art galleries. There was also a recent scandal of a bank run by evangelicals using “Christian principles” that was a scam, IIRC.
And now for something completely different – big assholes in Congress rise up against same-sex marriage – http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-breaking-news/sen-introduces-bill-to-block-d.html?hpid=moreheadlines.
Having lived in DC, it amazed me that we still had to do what the plantation owners told us to do, even though we had home rule.
WDEL:
Best JD Salinger tribute so far.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d
Nixon and Cambodia, 1968 = Obomba and Pakistan, 2010