Archive for September, 2013
Late Night Video — Unjustly Fired Walmart Workers Return With A Flash Mob
This is pretty awesome — organizers try to deliver a petition to reinstate Walmart workers who were fired for trying to unionize. It turns into a step team Flash Mob. This is about 6 minutes long:
UFCW Local 1208 is on Facebook, so you can follow their efforts to get justice.
Cohen Reports Beau Biden to run for 3rd AG term & then (probably) Gov in 2016
Biden also re-committed to running for a third term next year as the Democratic attorney general, so far without opposition, and rekindled the expectation the campaign could be a dress rehearsal for the governor’s race in 2016.
Carper undecided on “humanitarian” war – sounds surprisingly like an actual human
WDDE Reports that Tom Carper, unlike Chris Coons, is still undecided on bombing Syrian weddings and funerals. The surprising thing in the story is that Carper calls out Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld directly and sounds kinda like a human being doing so.
We got hoodwinked once about ten years ago by an earlier administration on bad intelligence that alleged that the Iraqis — Saddam Hussein — had used chemical weapons. It turned out not to be true,” said Carper. “In this case, we want to make sure that the assertions, the allegations are indeed true.”
Then he tips his hand and allows that he is probably going to vote “yes” anyway.
Tom Kovach launches a new social entrepreneurship project: Assist & Inspire Delaware
If you have a heart, it must be murder being a Republican politician. The casual meanness required to be a modern Republican has got to wear you down over time. You need to be a callous money grubbing stooge like “Doctor” John E. Stapleford, a cavalier jackass like Charles Lammot du Pont Copeland, or a hardened misanthrope like John Sigler to really make a go of it. Tom Kovach never struck me as the kind of soulless bastard that you would need to be in order to be a successful Republican.
That’s why I was gratified to see Kovach’s new venture on Facebook, Assist & Inspire Delaware (AIDE). It appears to be a very worthy venture dedicated to… well I’ll let them speak for themselves.
Friday Open Thread 9.6.13
The Obama Administration has finally gone on record to say while the President believes he has the authority to attack Syria with or without Congressional approval, he does not intend to launch such an attack without the backing of lawmakers:
President Barack Obama isn’t likely to launch a military strike on Syria if Congress votes against doing so, a top national security official said Friday.
During an interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Tony Blinken, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said “the president of course has the authority” to take limited military action in Syria with or without the approval of lawmakers, but “it’s neither his desire nor intention to use that authority absent Congress backing him.”
I would prefer a Shermanesque “He won’t,” but this is better than nothing. So Congress, vote this thing down and let’s all get on with our lives. And if the vote were held today in the House, it would fail.
Stand Your Ground Meets The Bush Doctrine
Should have seen this coming. Attorneys for a man who police said shot three people at the culmination of a neighborhood feud have filed a motion demanding a jury determine whether William T. Woodward’s murder charges should be dismissed under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. The motion says Woodward had been the target of a […]
Thursday Open Thread 9.5.13
“In a world in which threats are more diffuse and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace.”
— President Obama, in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 2009.
In all this Syria discussion, we kinda forgot that the end of the world is imminent in mid-October. Yeah, remember about the budget deadline (October 1) and debt ceiling deadline (October 15). Republicans all summer were saying that they would shut down the government and default on the debt if President Obama did not repeal Obamacare. For the last two weeks, they have kinda shut up about that, maybe because of a point First Read makes:
“Would a Congress that authorizes military action in Syria shut down the U.S. government and default just a few weeks later?”
The Progressive Divide on Syria
Last night at the PDD meeting in New Castle, there was a lively discussion about a proposed resolution opposing the military authorization before Congress. The resolution is inside.
The vote at the meeting was nearly evenly split, with one more vote approving the resolution than not. The vote continues today online at the PDD Facebook page and through email (pddemail@gmail.com). This progressive divide should not have been surprising but it was. For it was already playing out in the editorial pages of the News Journal.
Comment Rescue – Flying Frontier out of ILG (New Castle)
While they made news for cancelling the Houston route, Frontier’s commercial service out of New Castle is (appearently) a real thing. Friend of DL, and someone who knows a thing or two about moving a large group through an airport, JC gives us the 411.
Coons votes for unwinable “humanitarian” war for dubious reasons
As a menber of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chris Coons voted with a narrow majority to give President Barack Obama the authority to strike Syria. While the vote speaks for itself, the questions Coons posed to John Kerry and to General Dempsey reveal that fact that Coons believes that America is the world’s police force. Coons believes that the question facing Congress is not, should we police the world? But, since we are the world’s police, can we do that job well? This comes through very clearly in his first question to General Dempsey.
Wednesday Open Thread 9.4.13
Jonathan Chait takes a look at the Syria Congressional Authorization situation from an aspect that I had not considered:
Imagine that Congress votes not to authorize Obama’s plan. Then further imagine that Bashar al-Assad, emboldened, carries out another chemical attack. The media coverage would be far more intense. And members of Congress who voted no will have to answer for the carnage that will appear on television screens across the world. If the first vote lost by a relatively narrow margin, Obama would probably then call for a second vote and stand a good chance of winning.
The prospect of that happening may itself deter Assad. And when Republicans complain that Obama’s gambit of asking for a congressional vote is a way of shifting responsibility onto Congress, they are, in a sense, correct. Obama will own the consequences of action with or without Congress’s approval. But if it disapproves, Congress will own the consequences of inaction. And those might ultimately prove higher than it is willing to bear.
Interesting. If you think Assad cannot be stupid enough to use them again, you ignore the fact that he was stupid enough to use them the first time.
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