Archive for May, 2014
Teabaggers, Keep Your Shitty Hands Off My VA
The current uproar over wait times and probable malfeasance and maybe criminal cover ups at some VA facilities being investigated has caused a call for privatization of the VA health system. This demand is mostly heard from teabagger Republicans in Congress.
Breaking News: Delaware House Leadership Team A Team No More
According to literally dozens of sources, Speaker of the House Pete Schwartzkopf and House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst are no longer allies, to put it mildly. In fact, they’ve had a major falling-out.
Their ‘breakup’ is the talk of Legislative Hall, and it could impact legislative deliberations during the final month of session.
You will recall that, when running for Speaker, Schwartzkopf insisted that he and Longhurst were running as a team, and that it was either both of them or neither of them. It’s the only way that Longhurst could have been elected Majority Leader. By a narrow margin, it turned out to be both of them.
I’ll be right upfront and once again tell you that I dislike Val Longhurst intensely. She has proven that she takes delight in intimidating people and in exercising power over anyone who gets in her way. I will also tell you that she is perhaps the most universally reviled legislative leader with whom I’ve come in contact. Joe Petrilli, also a former House Majority Leader, albeit on the R side, was the previous champion, IMHO. She is despised by many staff people and by many of her colleagues in both the House and the Senate.
While I don’t know why they’ve finally stopped working together, I have to think that Speaker Schwartzkopf, if he wanted to remain Speaker Schwartzkopf next session, recognized the need to jettison the toxic Longhurst.
I, of course, would welcome any and all inside skinny from Leg Hall.
Bulo’s Fave New Tunes: April, 2014
Quality over quantity this month, admittedly a little late:
Ought: ‘Habit’
The Boston Boys: ‘Become Like One’
Rosanne Cash: ‘Modern Blue’
Eels: ‘Mistakes of My Youth’
Stone Cold Fox: ‘Darling, Darling’
Come inside for the music….
Thursday Open Thread [5.22.14]
“With Tuesday’s primaries reinforcing the strength of the Republican establishment, House Democrats are reassessing their electoral strategy based on a major internal research project that shows their candidates stand a better chance when they portray Republicans as uncaring toward working-class Americans while they continue to back policies favoring the wealthy and corporate America,” the New York Times reports.
“Democrats could build on this distrust, the research showed, by emphasizing support for policies such as equal pay for men and women, ensuring that corporations pay a fair share of taxes, and increased job opportunities in the United States.”
For a decade now, we have shouted and screamed that the Democrats must embrace the income inequality issue. For a decade now, polling and other research has shown it is a winning message. And for a decade now, Democrats are still undecided on whether it will play right. A campaign with a focus on income inequality should be a given, and bedrock foundation of every single Democratic campaign. It should not be the subject of a reassessment.
The GOP civil war is over; The Tea Party won & America Lost
The Republican Party cannot win a national election, but it is unified and dedicated to red-fanged political nihilism. The Democratic Party is too infested with collaborators (Yes I’m talking about you John Carney) and corporate sell outs (Hello Senators Carper & Coons !) to be an effective counterweight to the idiocy. That is the new normal. America had a nice run. It is all over now.
![Thursday Daily Elsewhere [5.22.14]](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2396/2130234770_05f32c2a7e_o.jpg "Thursday Daily Elsewhere [5.22.14]")
Republicans Cut Urban Kids Out Of Food Program
I keep thinking this can’t be true. And in a surprising twist, the bill language specifies that only rural areas are to benefit in the future from funding requested by the administration this year to continue a modest summer demonstration program to help children from low-income households — both urban and rural — during those […]
Things Americans don’t know or care about – The Hunter Biden Files
1) Joe Biden has a son named Hunter.
2) Hunter just got a big payday from a Ukrainian gas company on account of his famous last name. (Not that he needs the dough.)
3) Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe.
4) People in other countries, like France and Germany, think it looks bad that Hunter took that job because President Obama is currently contending with some bullshit currently going down between Ukraine and Russia.
5) People in other countries, like France and Germany and every other country in the world except North Korea, pay more attention to world events than we do.
6) Some people in this country who are paid to care about what people in Europe think say that Hunter Biden’s new job clashes with the U.S. “narrative” that we are all about international law and human rights – and not about taking everybody’s oil and natural gas.
7)There is no number seven.
![Wednesday Daily Elsewhere [5.21.14]](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2091/2129458061_4cc9163b60_o.jpg "Wednesday Daily Elsewhere [5.21.14]")
Late Night Video — Common Core and Standardized Tests Make Kids Gay
So this is the end of the argument right? I mean, somehow this has to be the equivalent of Godwin’s law — As the discussion of Common Core and standardized testing grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving homosexuals approaches 1. How does that work for you? Because we have Rep. Charles Van Zant saying that the testing company providing FL standardized tests (and Common Core!) promotes homosexuality (approx 3 mins long):
Same Sex Marriage is Legal is PA!
This just doesn’t get old. It is completely glorious that all of these barriers to same sex marriage are falling like dominoes. Today, Pennsylvania’s ban on same sex marriage was struck down by a Federal judge :
Tuesday Open Thread [5.20.14]
![Tuesday Open Thread [5.20.14]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/teapartysmall-240x180.jpg "Tuesday Open Thread [5.20.14]")
Michael Tomasky says the Tea Party is not quite dead yet:
Tonight, the tea party is going to lose some elections. Its Senate candidates in Kentucky and Georgia are going to lose—and lose really, really badly in at least in Kentucky. The theme of the night on cable (and for the balance of the week really) will be the death of the tea party. Everybody’s waiting with a safety net, as Elvis Costello (nearly) sang, but I say don’t bury them ’cuz they’re not dead yet.
While it’s true that the majority of tea-party candidates are losing, something else has been going on more under the radar, smartly picked up on recently by Jamie Fuller of The Washington Post. A lot of Republican candidates are trying to finesse the establishment-tea party Maginot Line and be both things to all people. She writes, I believe accurately, that the clear goal of many candidates is “staying comfortable with the tea party while networking with the establishment on the side.” This certainly describes North Carolina’s Thom Tillis. He beat an explicitly tea party backed challenger, but Tillis is still deeply reactionary (eliminate the minimum wage entirely, he once suggested!), he backed the Cruz-led government shutdown, and he is distinguishable ideologically from tea party candidates only in that he’s not quite as wacko as the tea party guy was.
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