Wednesday Open Thread [1.23.13]
Our most recent DL inaugural front page poll has the President’s approval rating at 57%, while 36% of you are either conservative haters or progressive purists, and 7% don’t know or don’t care. We now have our poll up for Governor Markell, and it will be up for a couple of days. Like we have done before, we are going to run through our entire statewide leadership, including Lt. Governor Denn, Auditor Wagner, Treasurer Flowers, Insurance Commissioner Stewart, Congressman Carney, Senators Carper and Coons, Attorney General Biden and Vice President Biden.
You want to know how much integrity and honor John McCain has pissed away not only over the last four years, but also over the last 12? All you have to do is read his latest quote:
“We will look forward to interrogating him at his hearing next week, mercilessly. We will bring him back for only time waterboarding to get the truth out of him.”
He was speaking of his friend and colleague, John Kerry, concerning his upcoming Senate confrimation hearings to be Secretary of State, and he was obviously joking. But as a torture victim himself, who has correctly called waterboarding torture, there was a time in his life when he would never joke about torture. Those days are long past.
More fun with maps: A census map showing population density via dots. Indeed, there is a dot for every single person counted in the recent U.S. and Canadian censuses. You will notice that there a not a lot of dots in the states that Republicans always win.
Meanwhile, it looks that radical Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu, who foolishly decided to interfere in our Presidential election by backing the Republican candidate, Mitt Whatshisname, only to see him lose horribly, has himself been humiliated in yesterday’s parliamentary election, and proving to all that while Israel’s government leaders are sometimes insane, its people are not. In terms of ideological splits, here is how the vote broke down:
In bloc terms, it appears to be Center-Left (48), Right (Netanyahu’s party) (42), Orthodox (18), Arab (12).
In terms of who can form a coaltion to get to a 60 seat majority, well, both blocs can. The Center-Left parties can form a coalition with the Arab parties to get to 60, and the Right can continue in its coalition with the Orthodox parties to get to 60.
Ezra Klein needs a Pulitzer Prize. This piece of reporting on Paul Ryan’s upcoming strategy on taxes and the budget might be the best thing you’ll read all year on the state of play. No fake balance, lots of context, seriously specific questioning, real numbers from someone who cares about information. Nice. Time to make the argument that closing tax loopholes/subsidies = spending cuts.
Republicans Praise Obama for Offering Bold Vision to Thwart
(Borowitz again, DD 😆 )
Bibi is a reactionary, not a radical.
Bibi is a reactionary. It was very satisfying this AM to hear that he and his party lost pretty serious ground in this election — an election where the wingnuts were meant to run away with it. I hope that the centrist parties that won big will be able to bring Bibi and his sward rattlers back to some sense.