Tuesday Daily Delawhere [8.18.15]
The Brandywine River off Brandywine Creek Road in Chateau Country.
The Brandywine River off Brandywine Creek Road in Chateau Country.
I found out today that Governor Markell is vetoing a bill that I sponsored, House Bill 130, Unlawful Sexual Contact. It passed the House and Senate unanimously. The Criminal Justice Council voted in support of this bill and whose members are Delaware judges, AG Denn, and other respected folks. I never heard a word from the Governor's office until the day he decides to veto the bill that his office had an issue with it. I filed this bill early May. The only group that I heard a peep from was the Medical Society and that was after it was released from the House Judiciary Committee. I spoke to them briefly and never heard another word from them. Currently, if a healthcare worker (person of trust) has sex with a patient it is a misdemeanor, this bill would make it a felony. If a prison guard has consensual sex with an imate it is a felony but a healthcare worker who is treating a patient who has been sexually abused and the healthcare worker gains the individual's trust and has sexual relations it is not a felony. This is unbelievable to me.I look forward to Governor Markell's explanation, and I do not envy his spin doctors. For the General Assembly, override.
“[O]ne thing that I keep hearing about Biden is that if he were to declare and say, because age is such a problem for him if he does, I want to be a one-term president. I want to serve for four years, unite Washington. I’ve dealt with the Republicans in Congress all my public life,” Bernstein told CNN’s “New Day.” “I think there’s a conversation going on to that effect among his aides and friends,” he said. “It could light fire to the current political environment.Fuck. No.
"The candidates, at this stage, are as clueless as the pundits, and the pundits have no idea. They certainly never foresaw Donald Trump, this election season’s flesh-colored gap in the space-time continuum. Trump has inspired horrified bouts of introspection within the GOP, as shocked party stalwarts try to figure out where the tycoon’s momentum is coming from—and how it can be stopped.”I think they just want to scream.
The Governor Ross Mansion, on the Pine Street Extension in Seaford. Governor William Henry Harrison Ross served as governor from 1851-1955, and began construction of this house in 1856. Ross was a slaveowner and Confederate sympathizer, and smuggled arms to the Confederacy before fleeing for Europe and coming back to grow fruit after the war. So, he was a traitor and deserved to die.
Nonantum Mills in Newark.
Jeb Bush very unwisely went after Hillary Clinton last night on the grounds that her Iraq policies gave us Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). Bush may think he is cleverly pulling a Karl Rove, attacking his opponent on her strong point (foreign policy), as Rove swiftboated John Kerry in 2004. But this isn’t 2004, and virtually no one is excited about having more Bushes in the White House (apparently a third of Republicans want Trump and like 12 percent want Bush, despite his advantage in name recognition). The fact is, every time Jeb Bush says “Iraq,” he loses more votes. One of the arguments Mr. Bush made was that while his brother, George W. Bush, didn’t get everything right, he did have a brilliant moment with the 2007 troop escalation or “surge,” which put the world right. Then that horrible Obama crew, including Mrs. Cinton, came along and screwed things up by withdrawing from Iraq in 2011. First of all, saying that W. didn’t get everything right in Iraq is like saying that Custer didn’t get everything right at the Little Bighorn. Bush’s Iraq misadventure was the biggest foreign policy screw-up in American history. Didn’t get everything right, indeed. Second, Jeb Bush’s narrative about the “surge” is mythical history unconnected to reality. See my Engaging the Muslim World for the real story. In brief, here is what happened.I tell them, Juan. It was both the Iraqi government and the Bush Administration that set the 2011 withdrawal deadline. The Iraqis wanted us gone. We had fucked up their country enough.
The Devon on Delaware Avenue in Wilmington. Photo from markmillerinsta on Instagram.
Over the years, many black leaders have asked the populists to include specific remedies for our specific ills. We have done this politely and behind closed doors. Often we would hear that their "progressive economic policies" would disproportionately help black folks, so we should be fine with our community's needs never being addressed by name. It was infuriating. Sometimes, it seemed some Democratic politicians were happy to publicly name and embrace every part of the Democratic coalition -- immigrants rights defenders, womens' rights advocates, environmentalists and champions of LBGT equality. But not black people. At least, not explicitly -- and certainly not comfortably. We were just supposed to sit there and hope that race-neutral rhetoric and race-neutral proposals might somehow fix our race-specific problems. I starting calling this dubious strategy "trickle-down justice." Today's young activists simply are not having any of it. In case anyone missed the memo after Ferguson, Baltimore and Charleston, here it is: the Obama era of black silence on issues that matter to us is over. And the entire Democratic Party needs to sit up and take notice.It's the holdover of the Democratic Party's fear of being the Democratic Party that took hold in the 70's after southern racists, who were once Democrats, became Republicans after we passed the Civil Rights Act. We couldn't publicly acknowledge that African Americans are a constituent of our party and their concerns are our concerns, and thus we have specific policies to address African American problems, because that might piss off Southern or Midwestern whites who once were Democrats. And then when Obama became our party leader and later President, the CW was that it would be unseemly if an African American explicitly used his power and bully pulpit to help his own people. Demographics are such now that the Democratic Party can win national elections easily without even being on the ballot in the South now. So Fuck the South. Fuck racist whites. As for ending the Obama Era of Silence, I think that is over. In fact, I am not precisely Obama ever himself adhered to the Obama Era of Silence. Hell, remember the beer summit early in his Presidency? That was the result of Obama speaking up on racial injustice where he saw it.