John Carney’s Bio Annotated

In the absence of any policy statements or positions on his campaign website, today I'm looking at Carney's campaign bio to see if there is a legit case for voting for him.
The son of two teachers and a lifelong Delawarean, John Carney is a strong, independent voice for our state. Serving in his third term as Delaware’s lone Congressman, John has established a reputation as a pragmatic leader who puts results over rhetoric.
By virtue of his parents being teachers, I do happen to think Carney has a little more working class in him than most modern Democrats. Of course he went to private school, one of the lesser Ivies for college, and followed that up with his entire adult career in politics, so whatever working class was there is no doubt long gone. The part about "putting results over rhetoric"..? What results? Hopefully we'll soon find some in the rest of bio.
Thursday Open Thread [6.2.16]

Thursday Open Thread [6.2.16]

Jon Favreau, the former Obama speechwriter and not the actor/director, says the coming fall campaign will be Obama's last stand:
Clinton’s primary victory will allow her to assemble a Democratic Dream Team of political talent to rally the party and take on Trump. She’ll have Bill Clinton, a popular ex-president who can testify to her character and defend her record better than anyone (his speech defending President Obama’s at the 2012 convention is the stuff of legend); Elizabeth Warren, a liberal icon in the Senate who has already begun to prosecute the party’s sharpest case against Trump; [and] Joe Biden, a beloved vice president with a working-class, tell-it-like-it-is, God-knows-what-he’ll-say kind of appeal[.] Clinton will also have by her side the best political player in the game: Barack Obama. In a few months, my old boss will hit the trail for the last time as president. He’ll do so with an approval rating that has been north of 50 percent nearly every week since March, a high he’d previously reached only in the months after his first and second elections. Political scientists point to a strong historical correlation between an outgoing president’s popularity and the final vote share of his party’s candidate. Obama’s recent surge in popularity has been driven largely by independents, young people, women, and Latinos — four groups most likely to tip the election toward Clinton. He has an 82 percent approval rating among Sanders supporters, whom he’ll work to persuade as America’s most famous Clinton convert — someone who also waged a brutal primary against her, but eventually became a friend, partner, and champion. I don’t want to overestimate the Obama effect. No one can win this for Clinton but Clinton. [...] But I suspect that the president will give this campaign all that he has and more — for Clinton, for his own legacy, and for the vision of America that he’s asked us to believe in since the night he stepped onto the national stage in Boston and delivered his 2004 convention speech, a hopeful, bighearted vision that is the antithesis of everything that Trump represents. The truth is, Obama has understood better than most the forces that gave rise to a candidacy like Trump’s.

John Carney: Vote for me because we can’t vote for Beau Biden because he, sadly, died

I keep not posting this because I keep expecting John Carney to post some actual campaign material on his website. But the headline above continues to summarize the case John Carney is making to voters at johncarney.org It is now after memorial day and his radio silence continues. I guess anyone in John Carney's enviable situation might think, "Why bother having policies and positions?" His elevation to Governor is as guaranteed a stone cold lock as I've ever seen. There is simply no need for him to have any positions on anything. The strategic thinker in me gets it. The Delaware voter in me wishes he'd come up with some other case.

Let’s blow up the moon!

Wars are popular because they are big fun projects that we can all work on together by growing victory gardens, collecting scrap metal, and donating blood. Wars also pit us (good) against them (evil). That's a bonus.
Wednesday Open Thread [6.1.16]

Wednesday Open Thread [6.1.16]

Yesterday was yet another example of the fascism that awaits us and the press/media should Trump be elected President. So when Trump decided to be a coward and avoid Megyn Kelly's questions in a January debate on Fox News, he held an alleged fundraiser on the same night for veterans. He said at the time that they raised around $6 million. Several months later, some reporters began looking into whether Trump actually had raised that amount, whether he donated any himself during the fundraiser as he boasted he had, and whether any money had actually been donated to any veteran group at all. The Washington Post published a story questioning the donations last week. The Associated Press reported that about half of the 41 organizations to which Trump’s campaign donated received checks in the past week, typically dated May 24, the day the Post’s story was published. So Donald Trump got caught defrauding Veterans and lying about it, and he lashed out at the press for daring to question him. He is a fascist dictator in the making. Frack that, he's already been made.