Archive for January, 2015
![Monday Daily Delawhere [1.26.15]](http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5498/9725923281_0794647d2d_c.jpg "Monday Daily Delawhere [1.26.15]")
![Sunday Daily Delawhere [1.25.15]](http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5334/10137745124_726ed8acb9_c.jpg "Sunday Daily Delawhere [1.25.15]")
Saturday Open Thread [1.24.15]
![Saturday Open Thread [1.24.15]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7484/15457615324_183ef8d1f7_o.png "Saturday Open Thread [1.24.15]")
Douthat imagines how the left and right will respond to the president:
[Obama’s] influence over Clinton’s campaign will depend on economic trends and foreign policy developments as well as her own choices: If he’s climbed to a 47-48 percent approval rating by early 2016, I wouldn’t expect there to be any daylight between his agenda and her platform; if he falls back toward 40 percent (or drops below) amid some unlooked-for crisis, then no presidential speech is likely to constrain Hillary from trying to charting a more post-Obama course.
Meanwhile, the future relevance of his stab at a middle class agenda will be determined in part by whatever the G.O.P. comes up with for its post-Obama blueprint. If you contrast what was on offer last night with some of the ideas that, say, Utah Senator Mike Lee has proposed, there’s a very interesting right-left debate to be had around higher education reform, tax reform (family-friendly and otherwise), and other issues as well. But maybe the eventual Republican nominee will have a very different game plan, and the big clashes will end up happening elsewhere. Or maybe the mere fact that Obama has touched these issues will prompt the right to retreat to “safer” (that is, staler) ground.
Saturday Daily Delawhere [1.24.15]
![Saturday Daily Delawhere [1.24.15]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7485/16132747247_84d2ae6bc2_o.jpg "Saturday Daily Delawhere [1.24.15]")
The Sussex County Courthouse, at The Circle and Market Street in Georgetown. The courthouse was built in 1839, and the portico and tower were added in 1914. Photo by xzmattzx.
Friday Open Thread [1.23.15]
![Friday Open Thread [1.23.15]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DL.Open_.Thread.Black_-240x180.png "Friday Open Thread [1.23.15]")
In conservative-land, you see, Obama’s first election was a fluke and his second a calamitous accident, both canceled by the ensuring midterms and both destined to be remembered as incidental interruptions of the Long March of Movement Conservatism towards total power. The idea that 2008 and 2012 are just as significant as 2010 and 2014 (maybe a bit more significant insofar as far more Americans participated) is outrageous to the Right, and so Obama mentioning them was the defiant act of a political nonentity.
Beyond that, the basic framing of Obama’s remarks on the economy left Republicans even deeper in the trap they’ve been in ever since conditions began improving. The main criticism available to them for the performance of the economy is the one Democrats (and Obama himself) have been articulated: sluggish wage growth and growing inequality. But Republicans have little or no agenda to deal with that beyond the usual engorge-the-job-creators stuff dressed up with attacks on the few corporate welfare accounts they’ve agreed to oppose, and then the Keystone XL Pipeline. On this last point, Obama was very clever in dismissing Keystone as one controversial infrastructure project we’re spending too much time fighting over as hundreds of others languish. It made Joni Ernst’s plodding Official Response sound all the more foolish for spending so much time on that one project.
Ezra Klein says that if Mitt Romney was President right now, and we had all of this good economic news, the applause would never have ended on Tuesday night, and Brian Beutler says Republicans would have “draped him in Reagan’s cloak, and the public would have warmed once again to the kinds of policies that George W. Bush’s presidency briefly discredited.”
Delaware General Assembly Post-Game Show: Week of Jan. 20-22, 2015
OK, I’ve been putting it off long enough. I suppose I should briefly discuss Governor Markell’s State of the State Address. Markell states in the address that he is open to all sorts of proposals for bridging the infrastructure funding shortfall, but he’s not gonna lead on this, he’s gonna wait until the General Assembly comes up with something, um, concrete. He also embraced Matt Denn’s proposals for addressing crime and its causes, particularly in Wilmington. And he supported a (wait for it) fact-based task force (as opposed to other task forces). Well, a ‘commission’, not a task force. So commissions are fact-based. Task forces are not. Got it.
Alleged Plot to Kill Matt Denn Disclosed
Wild stuff via Celia Cohen’s blog:
Matt Denn and Ted Kittila, opponents in the race for attorney general, had another bizarre connection that had nothing to do with the election.
Kittila was the lawyer for a jailed insurance executive accused of plotting to kill Denn.
h/t Nancy Willing for linking
The Vote Tracker, January 23, 2015
The Vote Tracker is a joint project between Delaware Liberal and the Progressive Democrats for Delaware (PDD). Each week we will be keeping track of how our General Assembly votes on bills of progressive or liberal interest. Now, this chart does not follow all the legislation that has been filed. We don’t report on perfunctory […]
Friday Daily Delawhere [1.23.15]
![Friday Daily Delawhere [1.23.15]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7531/16132722647_1691929dbe_o.jpg "Friday Daily Delawhere [1.23.15]")
The Delaware Health and Social Services’ Herman Holloway Sr. Campus, on US Route 13 in Minquadale. The campus was originally the Delaware State Hospital, and the Main Building in the campus, as seen here, was built in 1895. Photo by xzmattzx.
Are voters in the 20th represented by a certified whackjob?
The evidence points to – yes. The Cape Gazette Reports that at his latest January constituent coffee meeting,Rep. Smyk expressed concerns that the State Police and Delaware National Guard are not up to the task of ensuring order in the event of some “major occurrence.” And that these agencies are in need of reinforcement from a whackjob militia composed of local whackjobs.
Proof: Republicans Incapable Of Leading
Barely starting their majority rule in this new Congress, the Republicans, not satisfied with a visionless, utterly barren domestic policy are now usurping the Constitutional powers of the Executive branch in foreign affairs/policy.
Listen here to the Governor’s State of the State Address
You can listen live at WDDE or WDEL. You can also watch the live stream of the address inside….
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