Friday Open Thread [12.26.14]

Friday Open Thread [12.26.14]

Politico: “Mitt Romney promised to bring unemployment down to 6 percent in his first term; it’s already down to 5.8 percent, half the struggling eurozone’s rate. Newt Gingrich promised $2.50…

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of our readers and commenters out there, from the dirty liberal hippies at Delaware Liberal. We hope that you all find time this year to be with your family and friends and enjoy being together.

Christmas Eve Open Thread [12.24.14]

“The U.S. economy posted its strongest growth in more than a decade during the third quarter, supported by robust consumer spending and business investment,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.0% in the third quarter… That was up from the second quarter’s growth rate of 4.6% and the strongest pace since the third quarter of 2003.”
No single Republican anywhere in this country has uttered a single word about the mountain of good economic news recently. That silence speaks volumes.
The Greatest Hits of 2014.

The Greatest Hits of 2014.

So it is the time of year when we all look back on the year that has past, and compile top ten lists, or something. So I started to compile a list of the top DL posts of 2014. But what's the criteria we are judging by? Page views? Number of comments? Best Subject Matter? Most controversial? The last two criteria area are subjective, and usually if a post is controversial or a highly "viral" subject matter, like this year with charter and priority schools and Chip Flowers, they tend to already generate the most comments and page views. El Somnambulo has already posted his Good, Bad and the Ridiculous column this morning, and that focused substantively on the crazy Delaware political stories this year. So I am going to strictly follow the page view criteria. So, excluding the main and index pages, and this post by Jason330 in 2012 about Bacon numbers, which, for some reason, gets tons of views yearly (probably because of a good Google search term), here are the most viewed stories by Delaware Liberal contributors this year....
Tuesday Open Thread [12.23.14]

Tuesday Open Thread [12.23.14]

Nancy LaTourneau pushes back on the notion that Obama has rebounded and seized the narrative with several bold moves recently. She argues that each action has been in the works for over a year....
Every one of the things these pundits name as an example of the President's newfound persona - executive actions on immigration, new EPA rules, climate change agreement with China, Russian sanctions, normalization of our relationship with Cuba - has been in the works for at least the last 1-2 years (during the time he was supposedly a listless, passive spectator). Back in January of this year, he announced his intention to implement the "pen and phone strategy" we're all witnessing unfold. President Barack Obama offered a brief preview Tuesday of his State of the Union address, telling his Cabinet that he won’t wait for Congress to act on key agenda items in 2014. “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” he said at his first Cabinet meeting of the year. Outlining the strategy, Obama said he plans to use his pen to sign executive actions and his phone to convene outside groups in support of his agenda if Congress proves unable or unwilling to act on his priorities. It's true that President Obama might have a new lightness in his step. But that could just as well be because he's finally off for a much-needed vacation in Hawaii with his family. Anyone who has really watched this President operate knows that he plays the long game.