I wish I was a GOP candidate for literally any office. I could clean up.
Eschaton reminded me of this truth – You can’t convict rich white people of crimes. That’s a pretty big privilege. Even when they are stone cold guilty, wealthy white people can use the “I didn’t know it was a crime” defense. You have to be simultaneously rich and white to have that defense available to you.
Only once in my lifetime has that defense failed, and that was the rich white guy preyed on underage girls. I guess it is hard to claim that you didn’t know preying on underage girls is a crime with a straight face.
Maria Butina, who became friends with Senator Chris Coons and other conservative oligarchs at the NRA sponsored National Prayer Breakfast was once part of Russia’s wide-ranging Russian effort to influence U.S. politics.
Arrest by the FBI in July 2018, Butina spent 15 months in a federal prison and was deported in October 2019.
After returning to Russia, she worked for RT, that nation’s propaganda network, and was elected to the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.
They’ve perfected a system for making stuff they don’t like both toxic for low info voters and frequently illegal. They take anything that seems like it contains “liberalism” (from abortion, to action on climate change, to teaching the truth that slavery was bad) and make it an “ideology” that children need to be protected from. Next up for this spy-ops treatment…being gay.
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals? As a mom, I think it’s appalling, it’s frightening, it’s disgusting, it’s despicable. Florida just passed a bill to keep this type of sexual brainwashing out of schools. Democrats, though, claim the bill is bigoted, branding it as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” Well, nice try. The real controversy, though, isn’t this bill. It’s that schools are peddling gender ideology when our international rankings in math, science, and reading are down across the board.
Nichols was one of those cases where Coons joined with Republicans and voted “Yea” to move the nomination out of Committee then “Nay” in the full vote when it didn’t fucking matter.
A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump has, for now, just effectively destroyed the main case against a January 6 defendant by ignoring the rulings of seven other judges – a move that “clouds the legal path of as many as 270 cases,” according to The Washington Post.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols “said late Monday that the Justice Department cannot charge Jan. 6 defendants with obstructing Congress’s certification of President Biden’s 2020 election victory unless the defendants tampered with official documents or records in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
By doing so Judge Nichols “broke with at least seven other U.S. trial judges in Washington who have ruled that prosecutors can use the obstruction charge in Capitol riot cases.”
Judge Nichols clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He has ruled against Trump allies in defamation cases brought by Dominion Voting Systems, but also temporarily blocked the State of New York from handing Trump’s tax returns to a top House committee.
Nichols’ ruling Monday is in the case of Garret Miller, of Texas, but defense attorneys in hundreds of other cases could point to it to slow down prosecutions of their clients or even force the DOJ to retry cases. DOJ can appeal Nichols’ ruling.
Some of you may remember when I was asking the hive mind about buying an EV vs and internal combustion automobile. Well I bought the EV and it has been great. Yesterday a co-worker told me he spent over $90 to fill his GMC pickup. He gets 16 miles per gallon and is very mad at Brandon for raising gas prices. I’m not putting this here to say that I am much smarter than my co-worker, but I am much smarter than my co-worker.
The Senate actually did something…..good? Shocking.
The Senate on Tuesday passed sweeping bipartisan legislation to overhaul the US Postal Service’s finances and allow the agency to modernize its operations. The final vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan 79-19. The bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.The Postal Service Reform Act — which cleared the House last month by 342-92 — would require retired postal employees to enroll in Medicare when eligible, while dropping a previous mandate that forced the agency to cover its health care costs years in advance. Those two measures would save the USPS nearly $50 billion over the next decade, according to the House Oversight Committee. The legislation would also require the USPS to create an online dashboard with local and national delivery time data.
Ahead of the vote on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer touted that once the legislation passes, postal reform will finally be “signed, sealed and delivered for the American people.”
The proud boys leader has been charged with conspiracy.
The superseding indictment unveiled Tuesday includes several other members of the Proud Boys who are already facing charges for actions relating to January 6. It also reveals that Tarrio allegedly met with Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes in a Washington, DC, parking garage leading up to the riot.
Tarrio and Rhodes met for approximately 30 minutes, according to the indictment, and at least one participant “referenced the Capitol.” Tarrio then traveled to Baltimore, according to the indictment, and he was not in the District during the Capitol riot.
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonalds and Starbucks are “suspending” operations in Russia.
I guess Covid is officially over.
Delaware County PA is holding a vigil to remember and honor the over 1,600 county residents who died of Covid.
University of Delaware Men’s Basketball in their conference tournament and will be playing in (perhaps) the best sporting event of the year.
I mean other than waiting until after Family Leave crosses the finish line, can anybody give me a good reason why McBride shouldn’t run for Governor?
It is International Women’s Day – a day set aside to celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women, after all.
Just take a look at this graph. We’ve got the most expensive third-world health outcomes money can buy!
In Delaware we have a congressional delegation fully in the pocket of the for profit multi-billion-dollar health care industry. Our local legislators, to be honest, are no better. They’ve all been bought off and bribed in exchange for favorable legislation. As a result, we have the world’s shittiest, most expensive health care. Huzzah!
Former Attorney General Bill Barr has been called “lazy” and “cowardly” by former President Donald Trump, while Barr has described Trump as “off the rails” and called his push to discredit the 2020 election “a farce.”
Yet despite the ugly back and forth between the two, Barr said on TODAY Monday that he would still vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election if Trump becomes the Republican nominee.
“Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party, it’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee,” Barr told Savannah Guthrie. “It’s hard to project what the facts are going to turn out to be three years hence, but as of now, it’s hard for me to conceive that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee.”
I can’t imagine what Barr and his fellow “good” Republicans imagine the “progressive agenda” to be. [Also, Note to Senator Coons – They are openly laughing at you, Bro. There are no “good” Republicans.]
Biden’s messaging shop makes the “ye olde cooperage” in Williamsburg Va look like a highly efficient clean room operation. The “Y0u mU3t dRive t0o w0rk!” messaging is exhibit #1.
Supply and Demand
I don’t think it can be overstated just how troubling it is that in the middle of a massive international crisis, which is in part a fossil fuel cost crisis, the administration kept going with its “EVERYONE GO BACK TO WORK” nonsense.It was nonsense before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but much like “people deciding on their own to wear masks during Covid,” people working from home is a freebie. Without any effort whatsoever the pressure on fuel demand is reduced.
[Econ 101 Lecture Hat] when supply is very inelastic, tiny increases in demand can hugely increase prices. Tiny reductions can hugely decrease them!
Price of fuel is both a real concern and a political one, but wherever your chair is in White House meetings, I suspect keeping gas prices from doubling is a more pressing concern than futilely trying to re-establish some imagined idea of 2015 normality or propping up commercial real estate prices (whatever the hell the “go back to work” nonsense is about).
Let me ask you, the smartest political observers in Delaware, other than Paul Baumbach’s “Death with Dignity” legislation, Sarah McBride’s “Paid Family Leave” and Senator Pinkney’s SB149 to amend LEOBOR – are any elected Dems trying to actually get anything done?
I only ask because it doesn’t seem like anybody has a burning desire to do anything productive. Rather it seems like you get elected in Delaware to fuck around, carry water for the chamber of commerce and play grab-ass all day. I mean, am I missing something? Whatever happened to signature accomplishments ? Whatever happened to even trying to have a signature accomplishment?
Meet the Delaware Dems seeking the sober middle ground between police free to commit murder whenever being around a black person makes them nervous, and police not being free to commit murder whenever being around a black person makes them nervous.
As for me, I’ll take the “radical” position that police should not be allowed to get away with murder.
Senate Democrats are feeling exasperated with Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) latest proposal on a scaled-down version of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda that would leave out big social spending initiatives like expanded child care, universal pre-kindergarten, national paid family leave and long-term home health care.
Manchin is proposing that his colleagues choose one 10-year program to focus on and devote the other half of revenues raised from tax reform and prescription drug reform to deficit reduction and fighting inflation.
He is suggesting limiting new spending to climate programs instead of an array of social spending initiatives that he says would likely get baked into the federal budget baseline for years to come.
Manchin says the country has to “get its fiscal house in order” before embarking on new grand spending plans.
Is it because the Democratic Party sucks ass?
The centrist agenda, which is based on the primacy of the private sector and private markets and the importance of the military and law-enforcement, has left us with a public-health system utterly unable to handle the COVID pandemic. It’s left us with a legacy of racist policing and incarceration. It’s why Black families have only a tiny fraction of the wealth of white families. It’s created the most economically unjust and unequal society in the developed world. It’s come so close to destroying the planet that it’s almost too late to save our species. It’s why we have so many homeless people in the streets of our cities, why college is so expensive that it’s out of reach for many families, why we are engaged in expensive and pointless wars all over the world.
This has happened with Democratic presidents and Democratic Congresses, with Democratic presidents and Republican Congresses, with Republican presidents and Democratic Congresses.
If there is no difference in Ideology, then what the fuck is your platform? You can create a more humane crack epidemic? Funnel money to female Contras at a rate equal to males? Dukakis, like Mondale before him, was running a race not for the future but the present. The thought process being if a high enough margin of voters switch teams, the presidency is theirs. And how better to appeal to voters than by mimicking what they already like?
And with that you’re admitting to the base of your party, and to the country as a whole. That your entire electoral strategy is predicated upon a few percentage points of “moderates” feeling good about the minute differences in policy that separate you from the opposing candidate.
Moderates are defined by the time they exist in. A moderate from 1960 would be considered progressive by 1990. Up until recently the entire American electorate had shifted so far to the right, half of the Overton Window was covered by a black-out shade.
How many “moderate” Republicans made good on their Never Trump promises? How many “moderate” Democrats gleefully clap like seals when more means testing is forced onto welfare programs? Why, in this era of American Neo-Fascism do we give a shit about what a moderate thinks? Moderates are comfortable, moderates are safe, and moderates will side with whatever political party allows them to maintain their exact level of comfort with the least amount of headache.
Moderates don’t just play by the rules, they’re addicted to them. And look at where the rules have lead us.
The Highlands Bunker. Your local RD. This little blog. The Delaware Call. Network Delaware. Delaware United. WFP, and many more larger and smaller streams of progressive action in Delaware. As they join together and flow in the same direction toward Election Day they can build into a river of change. We saw that happen last time. It works but it depends on you getting your boots wet.
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Hello Friend,
There has been a viral meme on social media for many years that sarcastically demands, “MORE FEMALE DRONE PILOTS!” The ubiquitous joke gets at an important issue, and one that is explored this week in the Delaware Call.
Will the Wilmington Police Department’s drive to hire more female, Black and other candidates from under-represented communities do anything to assuage the violence and oppression the cops wreak on these same communities? No, it will not.
Co-opting Black and Brown people into the ranks of the police department simply puts familiar faces on the armed agents who menace and sequester so many of our neighbors. It does nothing to build community trust or address systemic problems.
Read Rae Krantz this week and tell us what you think.
Solidarity,
THE DELAWARE CALL TEAM
Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union last night. I didn’t watch it. As political bloggers go, I guess I am pretty awful. I suppose some other stuff happened too. Be a flower song would you, and let me know in the comments if I missed anything interesting. Thanks!
If you listen to Coons and members of his Toxic Centrist Caucus you will come to believe that all of Joe Biden’s problems are rooted in “liberals” and “progressives” asking for too much and not being convincingly sad enough when they got no part of what they asked for.
Also this-> Bye Bye Roe V. Wade!
Huzzah for the party of sober moderation!