Archive for January, 2016
The General Assembly Needs To Override The Governor’s Veto Of Opt-Out Bill
It’s interesting how the biggest proponents of Choice! are the ones now against it. Then again, anyone who understands how Choice came to be and the reasons behind it knows it never had anything to do with giving parents options. Choice was simply the stepping stone to privatizing our public schools. Choice is what has hurt our public schools; it’s what opened the door to charters and privatization (as well as magnet schools). What we’re dealing with now in education wouldn’t be possible if we hadn’t implemented a system designed to create high poverty schools – schools no one has seriously tried to help.
But the point has never been to help high poverty, struggling schools. The point, and one I’ve been making for over a decade, is to privatize/charterize our public schools. It’s no coincidence that the privateers started with the poorest among us – the ones with the least influence and voice. It’s how they got their foot in the door. Take a good long look at the city of Wilmington. That’s the plan for everyone. Yep, all this will spread outward (and is spreading) to suburbia. No one actually thinks that Ed Reformers are going to let all that education money slip through their hands, do they? Of course not. What they’ve done/are doing to our struggling schools sets the precedent. And once that precedent is set it will spread like wildfire.
Which brings me to the point of this post and Mike Matthews’ Delaware Voice column. The Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) is the tool to implement this agenda. This test isn’t about helping children learn; it’s about labeling schools and teachers as failing so the next step in the Ed reformer’s agenda can be implemented. Remember Priority Schools? Remember how ALL roads in that plan led to privatization and charterizatiion? Out of everything in that plan only private/charter conversion was carved in stone. The reason it was carved in stone was because it was the end game.
Ted Cruz’ Canadian Birth SHOCKER!!! An appeal to “facts”
The irony is so delicious, isn’t it? There is, of course, the surface level irony of the party that brayed nonsensically about Obama’s legitimacy for 8 years turning the fire hose on itself. That alone is awesome. But there is also another layer of irony that I’m enjoying.
There is the irony that Cruz himself is a huge proponent and avid practitioner of anti-factualism. For Cruz, facts simply don’t matter. Facts, to candidates for the GOP nomination, are more worthless than a bicycle to a fish.
Knowing this, Cruz after initially tried to laugh off Trump’s birther questions with a Happy Days clip. But as the story builds and more GOPers hop on the birther bandwagon, Cruz is now looking to FACTS to bail him out of this. Hilarious. Listen to Cruz on the topic of his Canadian eligibility to be President.
Thursday Daily Delawhere [1.7.2016]
One of the strangest places to be welcomed into Delaware is on the Tri-State Marker Trail in The Wedge, a narrow sliver of land in the state that falls between Delaware’s semi-circle boundary with Pennsylvania, and it’s linear boundary with Maryland. A trailhead is located at a long-abandoned portion of Arc Corner Road in London Britain Township, and enters Delaware about 0.15 miles west of the arc corner, before re-entering Pennsylvania another quarter-mile farther west.
Photo by xzmattzx
Sarah Palin’s Christmas Gift to the World
Turns out we all got a gift this Christmas. Bloggers that care way more about this shit than I do found out that the Grifter from Wasila is flat broke and trying some outlandish shit in a last ditch attempt to keep her long con going. The beginning of the end started in mid-February of […]
Wednesday Open Thread [1.6.2016]
![Wednesday Open Thread [1.6.2016]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Open.Thread.Purple-240x180.png "Wednesday Open Thread [1.6.2016]")
Wall Street Journal: “With less than a month before the first ballots are cast, Mrs. Clinton is hoping to rewrite her history in Iowa as the caucuses are again taking on an outsize importance to her presidential aspirations.”
“It was Mrs. Clinton’s third-place finish and decisive loss to then-Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 caucuses that made clear her campaign, initially seen as inevitable, was in real trouble. This time, she faces a tough opponent in Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is challenging her from the left for the Democratic nomination. She is ahead of him in recent Iowa polls, though some surveys put her lead in single digits.”
John Carney’s Year in Review
How did Governor Elect, John Carney, use 484 words to say: “I didn’t accomplish anything, but seeing the Pope was nice” ?
Read on to find out.
Cruz’ gamified Iowa ground game could be formidable
This is interesting. Ted Cruz has literally gamified his Iowa ground game. It almost makes me want go to Tedcruz.org and sign up to see who in Delaware is the points king.
The Cruz mobile app, which game-ifies the campaign process — users win points for sharing their contact lists or for posting messages of support to Facebook and Twitter — has close to 30,000 downloads, according to Chris Wilson, head of analytics for the campaign.
2015: The Good. The Bad. The Ridiculous.
Because this list is generally a critical review of the year’s events, I’ve decided not to place Beau Biden’s death or Joe’s flirtation with running for President on the lists. Who is to say how one should react under such circumstances? And how does one rank a death? Answer to both questions: I don’t know. So, I won’t do it.
We start as always, with the list with the fewest nominees: The Good. Because, let’s face it, on balance, this was not a good year for Delaware. Much closer to an annus horribilis, or whatever Queen Elizabeth calls it.
Wherever possible, I’ve linked to an article that provides context.
Tuesday Open Thread [1.5.2016]
![Tuesday Open Thread [1.5.2016]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Bill.Hillary-240x180.jpg "Tuesday Open Thread [1.5.2016]")
The Republicans are stuck in the 90’s:
According to CNN, the heckler stood up just a few feet from Clinton and shouted at her. Clinton rebuked her once, and then when the heckler tried again to get Hillary’s attention during a lull in the action, she started shouting again. That’s when Clinton shut her down. “You are very rude and I’m not never ever going to call on you. Thank you.” That shut down New Hampshire state Rep. Katherine Prudhomme O’Brien, who later admitted she was there to try and bring up Bill Clinton’s sexual pecadilloes in the town hall.
How is Hillary responsible for Bill’s indiscretions? It is the height of sexism to suggest that she is. This has been Sen. Rand Paul’s hobbyhorse, saying that Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be president because Bill Clinton is bad.
[J]effrey T. Kuhner, a WRKO radio host in Boston asked Paul if sexual harassment and assault claims against former president Bill Clinton “and her role in trying to cover it up and protect him” were a legitimate campaign issue. Paul initially replied that it is not “necessarily her fault,” that “her husband has committed serial infidelities,” but then slammed the former Secretary of State for having spoken out against sexual assaults in a recent campaign speech.
First off, this is the first time I have ever heard any Republican allege that Hillary herself was involved in covering up Bill’s affair with Monica. All accounts, including such partisan accounts as the Starr Report, state unequivocally that Hillary was in the dark about it until Bill told her in August 1998, before his national address admitting the affair.
Second, I don’t get the Republican logic here: If one’s husband has a consensual adulterous affair, that means the wife cannot ever speak out against or even oppose sexual assault?
Third, if this is all they’ve got, Republicans better start planning for a 40 state wipeout and the loss of the House.
Trump’s 50 State Strategy Should Worry Democrats
I get a lot of good-natured guff around here about being a nervous Nellie. But when you’ve seen the Democratic Party, and Democratic candidates fuck up sure things as many times as I have, I think you’ve earned your jitters. When Democrats strive for “50% plus 1” and Republicans go all out in every state […]
Take Them Out.
White Conservative Terrorists have attacked a federal building in Oregon and are illegally occupying it. Why?
They’re apparently upset at the conviction and upcoming jail sentences of a couple of fellow domestic terrorists for arson. They believe that the federal government has no constitutional authority to own land, that national parks are essentially illegal, and that men like them have a God-given right to mine, log and otherwise destroy whatever forest land they want.
The undisputed facts are that the terrorists have now illegally trespassed onto property that they do not own and have no claim to. I want these white conservative terrorists to be treated as with they were African Americans. I want these white conservative terrorists to be treated as if they were ISIS. They are to surrender to federal and/or local authorities immediately and evacuate the refuge forthwith. Any provocation shall be met with deadly force, and to be sure, a provocation is pointing a gun at anyone. Failure to comply shall eventually lead to the recapture of the refuge by federal and/or local authorities, during which time all terrorists shall be either killed or incapacitated.
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