Category Archives: National

DL Open Thread Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024

When Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, many pundits pointed out that what seemed like a truncated campaign, a three-month “sprint” to Election Day, was the full length of campaigns in most Western nations. Skip ahead two months, and with six weeks still to go it already feels like it’s been going on forever. I blame the media, which I tend to do anyway, but they deserve it. They’re the ones who’ve continued to report every chunk of logorrhea that spills from Trump’s face sphincter for the past four years, which is why Kamala Harris has been able to treat Trump as if he’s the incumbent.

You don’t have to look hard to find articles that will reinforce, or challenge, any future you care to envision, and you’re going to get six more weeks of them. The only thing you’ll get more of is appeals for money from candidates who have your phone number and email address. No wonder people watch football games.

I’m so old I remember when God directed his wrath, expressed as hurricanes, on one state at a time, but Trump voters are such raging assholes that he sent Helene to inundate the entire Southeastern U.S. in a probably futile bid to show them the error of their ways. That bit in Genesis about never destroying Earth in another flood? You shouldn’t bet your house on it. Oh, wait…

Democrats are slow learners. Two decades after Howard Dean, the Patron Saint of Delaware Liberal, showed the wisdom of the 50-state strategy, the Democratic National Committee will, for the first time ever, send money to all 50 states to support down-ballot races. I don’t know whether to applaud on bang my head on my desk.

An Israeli airstrike on the Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut killed the militia’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The IDF used one-ton bunker buster bombs to destroy the subterranean complex, located beneath an apartment complex that was destroyed in the attack. No matter how many militia leaders they kill, I recall the adage attributed to various French generals: The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

The floor’s yours.

DL Open Thread Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024

It was so quaint of Hillary Clinton to think that our nation’s deplorables would fit in one basket. We got more than a basketful just in yesterday’s news.

New York is learning what Wilmington did: Cops don’t make good mayors. Eric Adams has become the first mayor of New York City to be indicted in office. The documents are sealed, so we don’t know precisely what’s being alleged, but I guarantee his defense will be the same old bipartisan one their lawyers love to trot out – “they’re criminalizing politics” – which strikes me as an admission that politics is a criminal enterprise.

A U.S. Senate committee learned that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s “private equity firm” has taken $157 million in fees without generating any profits, raising fears that it’s there mainly so foreigners can funnel money to Trump. No! That couldn’t be! We better have a look at his laptop to be sure.

Make room in that basket for Alex Jones. A judge cleared the way to to auction off his Inforwars empire to help pay his staggering debts to Sandy Hook families he defamed. I’m sure it’ll be worth, oh, many thousands of dollars, but the schadenfreude? Priceless.

Ultimately, the basket has to hold more than 70 million people who’ve bought into this madness. Thomas Edsall of the New York Times investigates the mystery of our era: How is it possible that Donald Trump has a reasonable chance of winning the presidency despite all that voters now know about him? He gathers a lot of data for his answers. Long but interesting.

The floor’s yours.

DL Open Thread Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024

There’s unquestionably something wrong with these people. Once again a right-wing loonjob is in the news for killing a dog. This time it’s an excrescence on the body politic named Kevin Roberts. He’s now the head of the Heritage Foundation, but 20 years ago he was just an undistinguished assistant professor of history at highly prestigious (checks notes) New Mexico State University. He told several people at a dinner party, including his boss at the time, that a neighbor’s dog wouldn’t stop barking, so he killed it with a shovel. I’m starting to think the MAGA project’s true aim is to make Nazis look not so bad by comparison.

Florida is America’s fastest-growing state, and I’ll never understand the appeal. Sure, sunshine and no snow, I get it, but its Gulf Coast is about to get slammed by yet another hurricane. Yet Floridians complain endlessly when their property insurance rates soar, as if they couldn’t have foreseen that. The sunshine is just a come-on, folks. Buy now, pay later.

Donald Trump’s Bile and Brimstone tour visited Pennsyltucky again, where The Dotard ragged on today’s late-night talk show hosts and wondered,
“Where’s Johnny Carson?” and called for his return. A WaPo columnist pointed out that polls show Carson remains the most popular host in the field, and I have to wonder, why the fuck are they wasting people’s time asking them nonsense like that? No wonder nobody wants to talk to pollsters.

Trump campaign spokesman Oddjob Steven Cheung said the FBI told them the Iranians are trying to assassinate Trump, to which I say, hey, you buttinskis, get in line. It doesn’t say much for the Iranian black ops people if they can’t even get as close as a couple of random American gun nuts.

The floor’s yours.

Song of the Day 9/20: Homer Banks, “Coming Together”

Another nugget from “Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos,” the 2023 box set that includes three discs of songs that, like this one, were demoed for the label’s stable of artists but never got a proper recording.

Homer Banks, a Memphis native, had cut some minor singles that went nowhere in the US, but later became Northern Soul standards in Britain. He got his start at Stax working in the record shop attached to their studio. They wouldn’t sign him as a singer, but he did land a songwriting contract and went on to co-write several hits, including Luther Ingram’s “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right” and Johnnie Taylor’s “Who’s Making Love.” Elvis Costello recorded another Banks tune, “I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down.”

I’m not sure when this was written and recorded, but if I had to guess from the sound and subject I’d guess the early ’70s. As you can hear, Banks doesn’t have a bad voice, but he was writing for a label full of powerhouse vocalists, so outside of the dozen examples on the 7-disc set we never got to hear him use it.

DL Open Thread: Friday, September 20, 2024

‘black NAZI!’ Still Running For Governor In North Carolina.  I’m calling it now–Harris wins NC:

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina, the Republican nominee for governor with a long history of inflammatory and offensive remarks in the battleground state, on Thursday vowed to stay in the race as CNN reported that he had once called himself a “black NAZI!” and defended slavery on a pornographic forum.

In an 82-second video released before the CNN article had published, Mr. Robinson sought to undercut the report, which unearthed old comments that he had reportedly made on “Nude Africa,” a pornographic site with a message board.

Mr. Robinson, a social conservative who has been a strident opponent of transgender rights, also posted about how he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, according to CNN, describing himself as a “perv” who liked “tranny on girl porn.”

CNN said it had chosen to publish only some of Mr. Robinson’s messages, many of which were sexually explicit and graphic in nature. He made the comments between 2008 and 2012, according to the report.

To verify that Mr. Robinson was the poster behind the comments, CNN identified the username “minisoldr” as one Mr. Robinson used frequently online. In addition to matching biographical details, the report said, Mr. Robinson had listed his full name on the Nude Africa site along with an email address that he had used on various websites “for decades.”

Yesterday at midnight was the deadline for Robinson to pull out of the race.  He didn’t.  Q: Where do they find these people?  A: Donald Trump:

For years, Donald Trump has directly and indirectly foisted damaging candidates on the GOP, in ways that have obviously cost his party dearly — up to and probably including control of the Senate.

It’s not just his endorsements of several flawed statewide candidates who went on to badly underperform and lose key races; it’s also the ethos he’s created in the party. He’s placed a premium on owning the libs and devotion to Trump, and he’s devalued political bona fides. He has effectively encouraged his party to overlook a Trump-loyal candidate’s very obvious baggage, by dismissing it as lies from the liberal media or even viewing it as an asset.

This whole thing was also utterly predictable and potentially avoidable, but for Trump. Robinson has been saying highly controversial things for years, but he wound up getting only token opposition in the GOP primary. Trump helped grease the skids by signaling as far back as June 2023 that he would be supporting Robinson.

As much as that actual endorsement, though, it’s about Trump making Republicans believe they can win with candidates such as Robinson, despite all the evidence to the contrary in swing states in recent years. Robinson, a candidate who probably wouldn’t have stood a chance in a GOP primary a decade ago, wound up winning the primary by 46 points.

The irony here is that Trump this year has actually endorsed fewer obviously flawed candidates in key states, allowing some establishment-oriented Republicans to emerge from primaries.

But not everywhere. And now it’s throwing a wrench into his own race.

Sad.

From Texas–May Mean Nothing, But…:

In the race for the Senate, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio is the only Democrat to see his margin against his Republican opponent shrink since the debate, while Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas now trails his Democratic challenger well within the survey’s margin of error.

If you’re so inclined, check out his website and maybe contribute.  I know that campaign hours are precious, but as Daily Kos suggested, a Harris (County) For Harris rally just might help yield that 50th Senate vote.

Hillbilly Sheriff Kills Hillbilly Judge.  I’m all in favor of letting everybody in this neck of the woods have their own weapons.  Call it ‘culling the herd’.

Israel Wreaks Havoc On Lebanon:  Indiscriminate Destruction:

A large proportion of the injuries were facial and resulted in partial or total loss of vision. Dr Elias Warrak, an ophthalmologist at Mount Lebanon University hospital, stated that in 25 years of practice, he had “never removed as many eyes” as he had been obliged to do on Tuesday. Hospitals around the country, but especially in the southern suburbs of Beirut and the south of Lebanon, were overwhelmed as they struggled to keep up with the sheer volume of victims who required urgent attention. Still, by Thursday blood donors were being turned away from hospitals. Enough blood had been taken for the time being.

If the aim of the attack was to spread fear and panic in the streets of Lebanon, then it succeeded. I saw the terror in the eyes of ordinary people who had recognised it in the eyes of others, who feared for their own lives and those of their loved ones. The indiscriminate detonation of explosive devices in public spaces resulted in the killing and maiming of innocent bystanders and children. The method may have been hi-tech, “audacious” and “unprecedented”, but the outcome is all too familiar, old-fashioned and on-brand for a state that is being investigated by the international court of justice (ICJ) for a “plausible” genocide in Gaza.

Stop sending them weapons.

Trump Turns ‘Anti-Semitism’ Rally On Its Head.  Argues that certain Jews (you can guess which ones) deserve approbation.

Former President Donald J. Trump, speaking on Thursday at a campaign event in Washington centered on denouncing antisemitism in America, said that “if I don’t win this election,” then “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.”

Mr. Trump repeated that assertion at a second event, this one focused on Israeli Americans, where he blamed Jews whom he described as “voting for the enemy,” for the hypothetical destruction of Israel that he insisted would happen if he lost in November.

Mr. Trump on Thursday offered an extended airing of grievances against Jewish Americans who have not voted for him. He repeated his denunciation of Jews who vote for Democrats before suggesting that the Democratic Party had a “hold, or curse,” on Jewish Americans and that he should be getting “100 percent” of Jewish votes because of his policies on Israel.

Does he want to lose?

What do you want to talk about?

 

Song of the Day 9/12: Linda Ronstadt, “La Cigarra”

Big shout-out to Linda Ronstadt, who took to Instagram on the occasion of a Trump rally in her hometown today to blister the immigrant-hating/immigrant-marrying ex-president.

Donald Trump is holding a rally on Thursday in a rented hall in my hometown, Tucson. I would prefer to ignore that sad fact. But since the building has my name on it, I need to say something.

I don’t just deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance — although there’s that.

For me it comes down to this: In Nogales and across the southern border, the Trump Administration systematically ripped apart migrant families seeking asylum. Family separation made orphans of thousands of little children and babies, and brutalized their desperate mothers and fathers. It remains a humanitarian catastrophe that Physicians for Human Rights said met the criteria for torture.

There is no forgiving or forgetting the heartbreak he caused.

Trump first ran for President warning about rapists coming in from Mexico. I’m worried about keeping the rapist out of the White House.

Ronstadt’s roots in Tucson go as deep as anyone’s. Her German great-grandfather immigrated to Mexico in the 1840s and settled in Tucson, then a part of Sonora. Tucson didn’t become part of the United States until the Gadsden Purchase in 1854, so there’s a bitter and ugly irony in holding an anti-immigrant rally there.

Ronstadt was the rock diva of the ’70s, but she was too versatile to be confined to rock and country. She sang Gilbert and Sullivan on Broadway in the early ’80s, then released an album of traditional Sonoran folk songs in 1987. “La Cigarra” is Spanish for “the cicada,” which the singer wishes wouldn’t sing anymore. Sort of how most people feel about Trump.

DL Open Thread Monday, Sept. 9, 2024

John Carney wasn’t alone in trying to force people into Medicare Advantage. Among the horrors of Project 2025 is a scheme to make Medicare Advantage rather than traditional Medicare the default plan for enrollees. That’s not just bad for enrollees, who have worse outcomes on Medicare Advantage, it’s bad for Medicare’s solvency.

In theory, the Medicare Advantage program was supposed to help the government benefit from the private sector’s efficiencies. In practice, many insurers overcharge the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars in inflated estimates, often by adding diagnosis codes that make individuals appear sicker on paper than they are in reality. MedPac, a nonpartisan Congressional advisory committee, estimates that in 2024, inflated estimates will translate to $50 billion in overpayments. An analysis from PNHP, published in 2023, estimates that Medicare overpays insurers by as much as $140 billion per year.

More evidence that Republicans are as bad at math as they are at everything else. Somebody did the math on all of the wild tax cuts proposed by Trump and Project 2025. The revenue loss to government comes to $10.5 trillion over 10 years, about four times the amount his proposed tariffs would raise. Now you understand how he could go bankrupt owning a casino.

The Russians, far from acting embarrassed about getting busted for their propaganda payments, are cackling about it on state media. They also made a suggestion I like: that the flushed-out influencers can seek asylum in Russia. Better yet, let’s force them to by prosecuting them for treason.

In the latest weird weather news, the monsoon rains that usually fall around the equator in Africa have moved north and inundated the Sahara with years’ worth of rainfall in a few days. The shift has also curtailed tropical storm formation, which helps explain our so-far quiet hurricane season.

In an interesting example of how everything is interconnected, a study that examined the effects of the fungus that wiped out a large number of bat colonies found a link to higher infant mortality. Because the bats weren’t there to eat the vast numbers of insects they consume, farmers had to increase their use of pesticides, and sure enough, infant mortality was higher in areas where bat populations were wiped out.

The floor’s yours.

DL Open Thread Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024

“Trump has yet to find an attack on Harris that will stick.” This is, no joke, how the media is treating his campaign’s All Insults, All The Time strategy, along with dutifully repeating every insult every time. That they consider this part of their mission is good evidence that they are part of the problem.

Speaking of parts of the problem, Politico’s Jonathan Martin interviewed a bunch of Republicans off the record and got them to revealtheir fever dreams about a post-Trump GOP and how best to achieve it. The headline, “The GOP Is Actually Better Off if Kamala Harris Wins,” gives away the real story: They’re losing and they know it.

That doesn’t mean the special treatment of Trump has ended. He’s trying to bluster his way through the Arlington Desecration the way he usually does, by lying about it, so it’s time to get to the bottom of what really happened. The media would rather do something that takes less work, for example, repeating every Trump insult.

Something that’s apparently even harder, in fact so hard your major media outlets won’t do it, is reporting on the fact that Biden’s policies are rebuilding American manufacturing. Apparently it won’t be news until diner patrons in Ohio notice it.

The floor’s yours.

DL Open Thread: Saturday, August 31, 2024

Gotta make this quick–Arden Fair beckons (Catch me at the book sale from 10-12!)

Brazil Shows Us The Way.  This is how you get rid of that Musk-y Odor Of Misinformation:

X began to go dark across Brazil on Saturday after the nation’s Supreme Court blocked the social network because its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with court orders to suspend certain accounts.

The moment posed one of the biggest tests yet of the billionaire’s efforts to transform the site into a digital town square where just about anything goes.

In a highly unusual move, Justice Moraes also said that any person in Brazil who tried to still use X via common privacy software called a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined nearly $9,000 a day.

Justice Moraes also froze the finances of a second Musk business in Brazil, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet service, to try to collect $3 million in fines he has levied against X. Starlink — which has recently exploded in popularity in Brazil, with more than 250,000 customers — said that it planned to fight the order and would make its service free in Brazil if necessary.

Georgia Elections Workers Go After Rudy’s Bling.  Yesyesyes:

The Georgia election workers who successfully sued former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for defamation asked a federal court on Friday to enforce the $146 million judgment in their favor, listing a wide variety of personal items that could be used to pay off the money they’re owed.

Lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are seeking a court order requiring that Giuliani turn over within the next seven days his properties in New York and Florida, his Mercedes-Benz, more than two-dozen luxury watches, various sports memorabilia, including three New York Yankees World Series rings, and other personal items.

Speaking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins from the Republican National Convention, Giuliani said he had “no regrets at all” about his false accusations, while comparing his legal plight to “the Japanese internment during the second war.”

Ay-yup.

Our PAL Val’s PAL Site Just Might Serve A Useful Purpose After All.  Because, you know, it was built on County land.

In a part of Delaware notorious for dropped phone calls, New Castle County and Verizon are teaming up to fill the void.

New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, county workers, lawmakers, and a Verizon executive, broke ground on Thursday, August 29, 2024, for a new cell tower on the grounds of the Police Athletic League (PAL) on Lancaster Pike.

“The infrastructure has to be there in order for you to get the service,” said Kilpatrick. “Which is the reason this is a great place to have it because we are on county land.”

“I just think every Delawarean should wake up in the morning and if they need to call 9-1-1 or need to call a loved one with some emergency need, they should be able to do that. It’s 20-24,” said Meyer.

Hockessin, and an area in southern New Castle County, were previously identified as having poor cell coverage.

Yo, Val, this means you have a job to do–Make sure those prospective Hockessin juvenile delinquents to whom you are mentoring so diligently don’t trash the cell tower.  Oh, and whatever you do, don’t try to instill in them your sense of what is ethical.  We have to hold out some hope for the next generation.

See you at the Fair!

What do you want to talk about?

DL Open Thread Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024

Count on Donald Trump to screw the unscrewable pooch. Seeking to dispel the accurate charge that he has contempt for the U.S military and those who join it, Trump’s team took him to Arlington National Cemetery for a photo op proving that he does too like the troops, even if he calls them “suckers.” Just one problem: The cemetery bans political activity. Did that stop the MAGAts? Of course not. They even attacked the guards who tried to stop them. Your mileage may vary, but I won’t be satisfied until we unleash the equivalent of Sherman’s March on the American fascist movement.

Trying to hold them accountable in court has run afoul of the right’s decades of court-packing, but special prosecutor Jack Smith keeps plugging away. He filed a new indictment against Trump over his Jan. 6 coup plotting, this time without some of the evidence that ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s egregious “the president is a king” ruling.

Mark Zuckerberg, the gormless twit who stole one good idea and thinks it makes him anything other than a gormless twit, groveled before Jim Jordan and his pack of congressional hyenas, lamenting that he listened when the Biden administration pressured him to take some responsibility for harming the public. He also promised that next time he won’t listen. Nice try, sport, but you’re still the only tech bigshot without his own space penis.

If you want to deflect the accusation that you’re weird, what better way to do it than fawn over batshit lunatic RFK Jr.. There are those who think Trump might even bump JD Vance off the ticket in favor of Brain Worm Boy. No, nothing weird there.

I have an early dentist appointment, so you’re guaranteed to be having a better day than I am. The floor’s yours.

Flag of the Month: The 51-Star Flag of Puerto Rican Statehood

Guest post by Jason 330

“USA! USA! USA!”

I’m not a big “USA!” chant guy, but when this chant was raised at the DNC, I loved it. I loved how Harris ripped the flag away from the party of insurrection and poked them in the eye with the golden eagle. No. If fascism comes to America, the brown shirts will not be waving Old Glory. That’s ours, mutherfuckers!

So it was an easy choice to celebrate the return of real patriotism (not the shallow, fake GOP stuff) by making the flag of the United States of America our flag of the month. Huzzah! Just like unironic “USA!” and “freedom,” the Flag of the Month post is back.

The thing that makes the “stars and stripes” a great flag, and unique among world flags, is that it isn’t fixed, but dynamic. The strips and blue canton give it a firm base, but the stars have been changing since 1776. No other national flag reserves a space for updating the flag over time. Our flag is a living, breathing historical document.

So I wanted to make the American the flag of the month, but which America flag? Again, the answer came to me when watching the role call at the DNC convention. When Puerto Rico was called, the delegate roared “…and the next state of the United States casts its 60 vote … for Kamala Harris! Viva Kamala!”

I thought “Wow…making Puerto Rico a state would be great.” Most Puerto Ricans want it and regularly vote for it, and it would make all the right heads explode by adding two new senators. And, by the way, I looked it up and statehood for Puerto Rico would be easier than you’d expect.

Article IV section 3 simply states “New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.”

“New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union …” Hey Democrats, just win simple majorities in both houses and do it. No fucking around. No Chris Coons crying about it being “partisan.” Fuck that shit. While the Fox News panels are melting down over this move, let’s go for universal health care and write Roe v. Wade into law. We need to attack on multiple fronts, Project 2025-style, only without the establishment of Gilead and the beheadings. OK, beheadings if someone is really asking for it.

I guess I’m far afield from my original topic. Here is what comes up when you search for “51 Star Flag & Puerto Rico”.

Basically, there are a lot of ways to arrange 51 stars on a flag and I happen to like this one. The circular pattern recalls the original Betsy Ross flag. If Harris wins and Dems take both houses, the Republic will have experienced a new birth of freedom, so a new flag would be entirely fitting.

Also, again, all the right heads would explode. Finally, it’s very demure.