DL Open Thread: Thursday, October 3, 2024
Unsure of your Presidential pick? Might I suggest–Vermin Supreme? He is somehow on Delaware’s ballot as a candidate for the ‘Conservative Party Of DE’, which doesn’t strike me as particularly conservative:
Vermin Love Supreme (1960 or 1961) is an American performance artist and activist who has run as a novelty candidate in various local, state, and national elections in the United States. He served as a member of the Libertarian Party’s judicial committee. Supreme is known for wearing a boot as a hat and carrying a comically large toothbrush, and has said that if elected President of the United States, he will pass a law requiring people to brush their teeth. He has campaigned on a platform of zombie apocalypse awareness and time travel research, and promised a free pony for every American.
Gotta love someone who lives their gimmick 24/7. Wearing a boot on his head just might sway me in his direction.
Yep, Rethugs Made NC Flooding Worse. Whenever you hear about ‘cutting through bureaucratic red tape’, keep stuff like this in mind:
Over the past 15 years, North Carolina lawmakers have rejected limits on construction on steep slopes, which might have reduced the number of homes lost to landslides; blocked a rule requiring homes to be elevated above the height of an expected flood; weakened protections for wetlands, increasing the risk of dangerous storm water runoff; and slowed the adoption of updated building codes, making it harder for the state to qualify for federal climate-resilience grants.
“The home builders association has fought every bill that has come before the General Assembly to try to improve life safety,” said Ms. Wooten, who works for Facilities Strategies Group, a company that specializes in building engineering. She said that state lawmakers, many of whom are themselves home builders or have received campaign contributions from the industry, “vote for bills that line their pocketbooks and make home building cheaper.”
(Not) Breaking: Trump Tried To Steal Presidency. More Trump treason shit. May not hurt Trump, but won’t help him either:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors that offers new evidence from the landmark criminal case against the former president.
The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Though a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who while losing his grip on the White House “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”
An Insight Into GOTV. You’ll see a reference to MiniVAN. As someone who loves going door-to-door, MiniVAN has been a godsend:
It’s first and foremost a data challenge – you have to get your volunteers to the right doors with the right messages, and you have to take what they learn and use it to adjust the next knock or call. It’s equal part art and science and is not something anyone can just pick up and learn in no time. A key step is “cutting turf” – setting up a list of names and addresses for a volunteer to knock (or call) – you don’t just knock every house on a street, because you have to prioritize. Choosing which turfs to prioritize (you never get to them all, at least not enough times), choosing which names in a neighborhood or town or county to contact, using the data you get from the previous knocks to adjust your strategy for the next knock… that’s important.
Dems mostly use the VAN – Voter Activation Network – which is a rich data source with information going back decades. I sometimes knock voters where there are assessments from the Dukakis/Bush race. VAN has an app for your phone now, called MiniVAN, where you enter your canvass data as you go and it updates automatically, saving a TON of time on the data entry side.
Meanwhile, Rethugs are outsourcing GOTV. In close elections, this could well be the deciding factor.
Chaos Is The Point. Rethugs flood Federal government with information requests to…:
Three investigators for the Heritage Foundation have deluged federal agencies with thousands of Freedom of Information Act requests over the past year, requesting a wide range of information on government employees, including communications that could be seen as a political liability by conservatives. Among the documents they’ve sought are lists of agency personnel and messages sent by individual government workers that mention, among other things, “climate equity,” “voting” or “SOGIE,” an acronym for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.
The Heritage team filed these requests even as the think tank’s Project 2025 was promoting a controversial plan to remove job protections for tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be identified and fired if Donald Trump wins the presidential election.
Chaos Is The Point–Delaware Edition:
A lawsuit filed in Delaware’s Superior Court on Monday aims to stop electric cables from being buried under Delaware-controlled waters and coastline for a controversial offshore wind project.
US Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project off the Delmarva coast has proposed running power transmission cables from its wind farm three miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean to 3Rs Beach at Delaware Seashore State Park. The cables would run beneath Delaware-regulated wetlands, state waters and the Indian River Bay and connect to a substation near a former power plant.
Former judge and GOP party chair Jane Brady filed the case on behalf of the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware think tank that has connections to the fossil fuel industry and has promoted misinformation about the connection between offshore wind and whale deaths. The suit also names two commercial fishermen as plaintiffs — Wes Townsend and George Merrick.
The lawsuit contends the permit applications for the project are incomplete because of a missing report from the Division of Watershed Stewardship and the lack of a zoning permit for the substation. The suit asks the court to forbid the state from allowing the project to proceed.
What do you want to talk about?
Remember the guy who drove his Ford Bronco on the Delaware golf course? He was never named.
Just assumed it was OJ Simpson looking to sneak in an early round…
Can I ask about Working Families Party’s organization in Delaware, and how involved they are in supporting candidates they endorse and initiatives like ranked-choice voting? I’m wondering if it’s worth becoming a dues- paying member. Thanks!
Thanks to John Daniello and Charles Copeland, the WFP in Delaware doesn’t have rights to a ballot line, where they would almost invariably support progressive D’s.
More than any other organization, they have successfully supported progressive candidates through training and through boots on the ground.
I shudder to think where we’d be without them.
Some of their success stories: Senator Marie Pinkney and Reps Larry Lambert, Rae Moore, DeShanna Neal, Sophie Phillips, Cyndie Romer, Eric Morrison, and Madinah Wilson-Anton. We’ve already added Kam Smith to that roster, since she doesn’t have a general election opponent, and are almost certain to add Frank Burns in November. Monica Beard has a great chance to defeat incumbent R Mike Smith, and Terrell Williams is competitive with incumbent R Kevin Hensley as well.
I’ve been a member for awhile and happily give a small automatic donation every month to both the Delaware and national WFP accounts.
I suspect that the national party supports ranked choice voting, but I’m not sure.
Damn. I guess we can’t even have nice things *run under Delaware* with Caesar Rodney Institute on the job.