A bad thunderstorm and a possible tornado hit Hockessin, Talleyville, and Arden early this afternoon. Post your storm stories.

The storm knocked out power to nearly 15,000 customers throughout New Castle County, according to Delmarva Power’s web site. The outages appear concentrated in Pike Creek, with more than 6,000 outages, and the Iron Hill area south of Newark, where another 2,500 are without power as of about 1 p.m., Delmarva said. [..]

Reports included toppled trees on Barley Mill Road at Del. 141, and on Del. 41 near the Westminster neighborhood. Authorities also are are on the scene of several electrical poles being down in the 3300 and 3400 block of Lancaster Pike. Tree debris is reported down on northbound Interstate 95 after the Delaware Avenue exit, and drivers are able to use only one lane.

I am in the process of reviewing and updating our blogroll on the right side of the blog. Since the last time I did a roll call of the Delaware Blogosphere, a number of sites have come and gone. Some newcomers include Town Square Delaware and Outside the Machine. Some mainstays are still around, but have only gotten crazier, like Delaware Politics. And some blogs are long since departed, or have stopped updating for over a couple of months, like Delaware Republican.

So if you have a local Delaware political blog that you run or read, let me know about it here in the comments. Tomorrow, I have have a review of each and an updated blogroll on the front page, and each week, I will be resuming my “Delaware Dem’s Round Up” of local blog posts about local news and politics.

CNN finds that voters’ favorable opinion of the Republican Party has swung 12 points, from 41% approving and 55% disapproving on July 20th, to 33% approving and 59% disapproving now. Meanwhile, voters’ opinions of the Democratic Party have become more favorable over that same time period, albeit only slightly. On July 20, 45% approved and 49% disappoved of the Democratic Party, and now voters are split evenly at 47% on whether they approve of the Democratic Party or not.

Meanwhile, according to Public Policy Polling, Speaker Boehner’s approving rating took a similar hit during the same time period, falling from 29% approve / 43% disapprove to 28% approve / 52% disapprove. The Republican Party also took at hit, falling from 30% approve / 60% disapprove to 25% approval / 65% disapproval.

Ah football….. it’s back. And this year, K.C. Keeler will not bring in a transfer QB to lead the Hens, and is going to trust his own recruiting for once. Shocking.

Now, to the riots in London. They were sparked in Tottenham, a more downtrodden and poor section of London with underlying racial tensions, when police shot a kid. But the riots now, in their fourth day, really have nothing to do with that. You get the feeling that it is just a primal rage scream against the establishment, an establishment that kicked off the Austerity Era last year with the social services and education cutting budget of Prime Minister David Cameron, all the while the nation spent millions for a Royal Wedding.

Can riots happen here? Sure, they have before in 1992 and 1968. But those riots were more racially than economically based.

For the second time in a month, New Castle County Executive Paul Clark has replaced a longtime member of the Planning Board who has a history of objecting to Paul Clark’s development projects.

This time it was Victor Singer, the board chairman for the last 13 years. Last time it was 16 year veteran Mark Weinberg, who believes the fact that he opposed many developers represented by Paul Clark’s wife, Pam Scott, led to his outser.

Clark says he is not getting revenge, rather he is being civic minded because Planning Board members should have term limits.

“It is my belief that these appointments should not be life terms and that other qualified people should be given the opportunity to serve,” Clark said. “When you’ve been on these boards for several years, you wind up becoming the professional and not the citizen, and these are citizen boards.”

How nice of Mr. Clark. He is so civic minded. The problem is, with planning boards, you want long time community experience represented on the board rather than lap dogs for the developers who are ready to approve every project.

That is good spin. But it is all it is.

The heat is on Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart this morning after an audit of her department finds that her office awarded $16.1 million in contracts without following procedures under state procurement law, including maintenance of signed contracts and complete vendor files. To be clear, it is not like there is $16.1 million missing, but since procedures were not followed in assigning and maintaining these contracts, we have to wonder if the awarding of the contracts themselves are on the up and up.

KWS is spinning the audit as one she requested and that the findings are what she wanted.

Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart requested the audit last year to identify “holes” in financial procedures she says predate her 2008 election. “I wanted to find the holes. We found them,” Stewart said. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was.”

So she wants us all to believe that the problems that have been found occurred during the watch of her predecessors, Democrat Matt Denn and Republican Donna Lee Williams, and that she was proactive in requesting the audit last year so that she find where the department was deficient. It may be true that some of the contracts were made before her tenure. But the problem is Karen Weldin Stewart did not request an audit to discover where her department was deficient. She requested an audit to test the ability of the Insurance department to prepare financial statements that following generally accepted accounting principles. So the auditing firm hired to do the audit, the Santora CPA Group, reviewed 7 random contracts, and found that the department violated Delaware law in each contract, whether by having unsigned contracts to a complete lack of vendor paperwork.

So the department has horrible bookkeeping, and we have to assume that the department is not compliant with Delaware law with respect to every contract the department has issued. Further, the audit found that the Commissioner has engaged in some no-bid contracting herself.

Contracts highlighted by the Santora audit include those awarded to Steve Kinion and Ed Ianni, who lead the insurance department’s captive insurance bureau, which regulates large self-insurance companies. Stewart hired Kinion and Ianni, supporters of her 2008 campaign, in 2009 at rates above $16,000 a month without seeking competitive proposals.

Here is my main problem with KWS’ spin that she asked for this audit and the audit found what she was expecting: she was elected in 2008 and took office in 2009. More than a year passes until 2010, when she requests this audit. If she was such the cleaner upper she is portraying herself to be, wouldn’t this be one of the first things you do once you take office. Further, the spin that the problems are with contracts that predate her tenure as IC is bogus, since the audit did not find any contract that was compliant. Not one.

KWS says she and her department will correct all the discrepancies. That’s nice. But I have a little question? What has she been doing until now?

“It is far too early for me to tell you who the statewide candidates are. We are looking at these things. We’re all focused on one thing — ending one-party rule in Delaware.” So said new Republican state chair John Sigler to Celia Cohen last month. Is it me, or is it kind of embarrassing for a major party state chair to refer to his state as a one party state, and his party is not the one party to which he refers. With absolutely no respect to John Sigler, it is not too early. It is getting too late for the state GOP. To beat Jack Markell and Tom Carper they will need millions of dollars, for each race. And the conundrum for the Delaware Republican Party is that the only candidates who can win their primaries and rake in national money are unelectable Teabaggers like Christine O’Donnell.

Who are the possibilities? Below I rate the possible opposition from most probable to less.

GOVERNOR–Jack Markell. Governor Markell will run for reelection.
Republican Opposition?
1. Former Speaker Terry Spence
2. Former Senator and failed 2008 Republican Lt. Gov. Nominee Charlie Copeland
3. Failed 2010 Republican congressional candidate Michele Rollins

LT. GOVERNOR–Matt Denn.. Lt. Governor Denn will run for reelection.
Republican Opposition?
1. Sussex County Council President Vance Phillips

U.S. SENATE–Tom Carper. Sen. Carper will run for reelection. Last year, there were rumors that he might retire and the Dems would run Beau Biden. But it looks like there was nothing to that.
Republican Opposition?
1. Teabagger Queen Christine O’Donnell again
2. Kevin Wade
3. Glenn Urquhart (only if Christine doesn’t run)

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE–John Carney. Congressman Carney will run for reelection.
Republican Opposition?
1. New Castle County Council President Tom Kovach
2. Glenn Urquhart

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER–Karen Weldin Stewart. Commissioner Stewart will run for reelection, but if she is smart, she will retire.
Democratic Primary Opposition? Mitch Crane! Thank God for Mitch Crane. Republican Opposition? Any one? Bueller? Bueller?

Once I get my head wrapped around the new districts in redistricting, I will put up a post regarding the candidates for the General Assembly. Remember, in the election after the census and redistricting, all 62 legislators from the House and Senate run. So everyone is on the ballot this year, well, not the Auditor, Treasurer and the Attorney General, but everyone else.