Hillary Makes a Speech On the Unfinished Business of the 21st Century

It's Hillary Clinton Day here at DL! Last Friday, Hillary Clinton took the stage at the Women in the World Summit in New York to make the case for women's rights. Global women's rights. (Am I the only one who really would have liked to have gone to this event?) Calling women's rights the unfinished business of the century, she reminds us of how much women contribute to their places and how much even first world places like the US still have to go to achieve real equality. The Daily Beast was apparently a sponsor of this event, and there is plenty of coverage there. This speech (and another upcoming this Tuesday, I believe) are why there is such a big slug of Hillary news and speculation over the last few days. She didn't really touch on her future plans, except to say,“I look forward to being your partner in all the days and years ahead.” You can see the entire speech (approx 33 minutes, including Tina Brown intro) below.

Sunday Open Thread [4.7.13]

Robert Shrum in the wonderfully titled "Be Afraid, GOP: Hillary Clinton Is Back and She Will Beat You in 2016:"
And all of [the Hillary in 2016 talk] does something else: it sends the chill wind of a potential 16 years of Democrats in the White House, along with a Supreme Court where the justices actually do justice, through the fevered right-wing swamps of the Clinton-haters and the Obama-abominators who see the white-male dominated America of their imagining fading away. My colleague, friend, and podcast sparring partner David Frum is certainly not among them—instead he's offered the GOP perceptive counsel, fortunately spurned so far and perhaps indefinitely, about how to remake the party in substance as well as style. Now, however, on CNN and in The Daily Beast, he has weighed in with advice for Democrats and Clinton herself: She would be "a mistake for 2016." It is a provocative, fresh, and seemingly well-argued piece—but it's just plain wrong.

Saturday Open Thread [4.6.13]

Nemski bait: A new political action committee launched this week to support bearded candidates from across the political spectrum, according to The Hill.
Said spokesman Andy Shapero: "It's been 125 years since our last bearded President, Benjamin Harrison, was elected. We're hoping that with our support, bearded individuals will shrug off over a century of political irrelevance and start running for office again."

The Weekly Addresses

President Obama: Delaware Secretary of Education Mark Murphy, filing in for Governor Markell. Well, I guess filing in is not the correct term anymore. Governor Markell is obviously delegating this task to his cabinet more often: Come inside for West Wing Week and Governor Markell's recent appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

The PDD-DL Vote Tracker for April 6, 2013

The General Assembly is in recess until April 16. But since our last Vote Tracker update on March 22, there has been some action on our bills of interest. Namely, the Hazel Plant Felon Vote Restoration Act has made it out of the Senate Executive Committee and will likely be voted on by the Senate after the recess. The three Revenue bills (HB 50, 51, and 52) that made permanent the tax raises from 2009 passed along party lines in the House and Senate and were signed by Governor Markell on March 28. SB 19, the Death Penalty Repeal, passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 11-10. Check out who voted yes and no on the chart below, it is quite surprising. On April 3, HB 58, the Large Magazine Ban component of the Gun Control package, was tabled in the House Administration Committee for further review. Meanwhile, Senator Marshall didn't do his homework and had a first draft of SB 37 filed without proofing it. It seems it had a provision in there that could be read to establish a gun registration by requiring owners of assault weapons purchased before the effective date of the legislation to provide proof of ownership to the Delaware State Police within 120 days of the effective date of the act. The bill was immediately stricken before the NRA outrage machine could be brought to bear. Here is the thing about banning assault weapons. When you ban them, you ban them. You don't let people keep them through a grandfather clause. So if you want to ban these assault weapons because no one should own them, then no one should own them. Make it a crime to possess them. If you do that, you don't get in trouble with clauses that might or might not establish a gun registration.

Unknown History

I never knew this, but with the anniversary of the right wing assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. this past week, Historian Michael Beschloss released this photograph: "RFK chartered the plane bringing MLK's remains back to Atlanta--here he & Ethel console Mrs. King in her bedroom."

Ah, the smell of conservative civil war napalm in the morning…

... or evening, as the case may be. I agree with Nancy, I can't tell what the actual policy difference is between Frank Knotts and his new Delaware Right blog and David Anderson and Don Ayotte and their Delaware Politics blog, except that the latter calls the former a RINO just because the former found his inner libertarian and decided that maybe the Republican Party in Delaware should not follow the path of insane Sheriff Jeff Christopher. Here is the latest on the battle from Don Ayotte.....

I cleaned up the Blog Roll…

Over on the right side of our blog, and down below the Recent Comments section, we have our Local Blogroll, divided into various categories: The Left (for liberal / progressive blogs) The Middle (for Delaware blogs that are either centrist / moderate or that are nonpartisan or even nonpolitical) The Right (for conservative blogs) Contributors (for links to the various and wonderful Delaware Liberal Contributors) The News I have removed old dead links to some of the news sites and blogs and updated them with the correct links. And I have also removed some old dead blogs and sites, and I also removed links to Daily Kos and the Onion, because they are not really local Delaware blogs or news sites, and that is what our blog roll is for. But, with the shocking and yet unwitting help of the reich wing king of Delaware, the one and only Hube, I have also added some long overlooked blogs and some new ones, so take a look. And if you know of a blog that we have missed, let me know. I also wanted to give a shout out to Steve Newton and The Delaware Libertarian for reaching the 300,000 visitor milestone recently. It is indeed an accomplishment you should proud of. Congrats! But to correct your guess at our traffic, we are at 5,224,112 views since late December 2007, when we moved over to Wordpress and started keeping track. I am sure the Jason and Dr. Nick show that was Delaware Liberal before garnered untold millions of more views, or at least that is what Jason tells me.

Has Facebook’s Time Passed?

Okay, I've never been a big Facebook user so I might be jumping the gun.  Here's what I have noticed in the past six months - almost all of my new friend requests are coming from family and friends over 60.   What's funny is the comments that accompany these friend requests.  Most say the same thing:  "Look who finally joined Facebook!" Basically, I'm not the one to judge whether Facebook's time has passed.  I have an account I glance at about once a month and while I find some of the comments/posts interesting, most are not. Two years ago, my then 13 year old daughter deleted her Facebook account, citing its useless drama as the reason.  She did rejoin, because it was where her school posted its information on Cross Country and Track meets and practice changes.  The last time she posted anything on Facebook was on March 20, 2013.   Her previous post was on February 23, 2013.   Seems to me if Facebook is counting on her to keep them going strong they might be in trouble.

Friday Open Thread [4.5.13]

I said on Wednesday at the PDD Meeting that Gun Control on the Federal level so long as the Republicans are in control of the House, and hell, so long as Democrats are cowardly preserving the filibuster privileges of the Senate Republicans. Indeed, it is a mystery to me why some Democrats and everyone in the media thought somehow that Republicans would abandon the NRA and pass even the most innocuous gun control measure. On state level, things look better, in Connecticut and Colorado and Maryland, and also here in Delaware, where at least one bill, the Universal Background Check bill, has a good chance of passing if we lobby our legislators so that the hear sane reasonable voices in addition to the insane pro-gun arguments. But whether legislation is successful on the state or national level, the issue is back as a cultural wedge issue, and this time the case can be made, based on the poll numbers I showed you in the Polling Report today, that it benefits Democrats.