DL Open Thread: Sunday, August 25, 2024

Of Runzas And Hot Pockets.  Pretty sure you can put that single Nebraska electoral vote in the D win column…:

A Runza, for the uninitiated, is a German-style meat and cabbage sandwich sold by a Nebraska-based hamburger chain of the same name. Walz’s caravan stopped at a Runza restaurant, at 77th and L Streets on his way out of town, someone in the caravan shared with the (Nebraska) Examiner.

If you haven’t already, you simply have to click on the vids of Vance’s epic fails to appear human while ordering food.   Oh, and Walz ridiculing Vance at a campaign stop in Nebraska.

Vance makes Robo-Carper seem almost like a genuine human with deep feelings.

I like this:

DeSantis’ War On ‘Woke’ Colleges Goes, Um, Awry.  Who could have predicted it?:

It has been a rough month for Ron DeSantis’s rightwing rebranding of higher education in Florida. Embarrassments at two high-profile universities where the Republican governor has been waging his culture war against “woke” have forced his administration into something of a cleanup.

Sarasota’s New College, the once liberal arts school subjected to a “hostile takeover” by well-rewarded, ultra-conservative DeSantis allies, was exposed by the city’s Herald-Tribune for dumping thousands of library books, including a clear-out of its gender and diversity center.

Democratic politicians likened it to Nazi-era book burning, and a preview of the extremist Project 2025 agenda linked to the Republican former president Donald Trump’s campaign to win back the White House in November.

Richard Corcoran, the university’s president and a vocal DeSantis supporter, conceded “the optics of seeing thousands of books in a dumpster are far from ideal”.

Ya think?

Across the state in Gainesville, an equally intriguing scandal is playing out at the University of Florida (UF), where journalists on the student newspaper the Independent Florida Alligator exposed the free-spending habits of Ben Sasse, the Republican hard-right former Nebraska senator who resigned in July as UF president following a turbulent 17-month tenure.

They found that Sasse blew through $17.3m in his first year of office, three times more than his predecessor, and channeled millions into secret consulting contracts and lucrative jobs for his former congressional staff and Republican cronies, some of the positions remote.

“It’s important for people to know how their tax dollars are being spent, not just the president’s office but across the entire university,” said Garrett Shanley, a fourth-year journalism major at UF who wrote the original Sasse story.

He told the Guardian that the Alligator team produced its articles despite university officials shutting down communication and stalling public records requests, and with the assistance of knowledgeable inside sources keen to shine a light on Sasse’s secretive spending.

Kids, we need journalists.  Journalists like these student journalists.

Not Having Fun?  It Could Be Because You Live In Delaware.  Yet another News-Journal fluff piece derived from some useless national poll.  Still, there could be a kernel of truth to it:

A recent poll ranked every U.S. state from most to least fun, and Delaware ranked 48th.

WalletHub used data available on the number of entertainment destinations like restaurants, amusement parks, golf courses, movie theaters and more along with metrics related to every state’s nightlife scene to determine which states were the most fun for residents and tourists.

The final ranking listed Florida, California and Nevada as the top three “most fun” states, while Delaware, Mississippi and West Virginia took the bottom three slots. (See a map of the rankings at the bottom of this page.)

The writer then proceeds to take issue with the survey by showing us places where we can have fun in Delaware.  You already know them.  What passes for journalism, Delaware-style.

What do you want to talk about?