National

Because his prior pretext (that this show of bipartisanship will usher in a golden age of bipartisan peace and prosperity) was patently ludicrous and <a href="http://delawareliberal.net//2014/11/13/i-cant-let-it-go-somebody-talk-me-down/">every bit of it was a cynical lie,</a> Carper has updated his reason for voting in favor of the environment catastrophe known as the Keystone pipeline. Now he says he is voting for this flaming peice of toxic shit because Mary Landreiu begged him to. <blockquote> "Senator Landrieu has been cajoling, pleading with her colleagues—mostly Democrats—to provide an up or down vote on this," Carper said in a recent interview with Bloomberg Politics. "I think the time has come." </blockquote> That's some fucking bullshit. As late as yesterday, we was still trying to slide by on the cynical lie that Republicans would "reciprocate" and a golden age of bipartisan work on climate change would commence.

David Roberts, a writer for Grist, has succinctly encapsulates what has been and is wrong with our politics over the last thirty years. And to be clear, it is something that is wrong with our current brand of post-modern conservatives, and not something that is wrong with anyone else. You must read them all....

Contrary to gun-nut dogma, "right-to-carry" laws don't reduce crime. They increase it.

"The totality of the evidence based on educated judgments about the best statistical models suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates" of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder, Donohue said in an interview with the Stanford Report. The evidence suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with an 8 percent increase in the incidence of aggravated assault, according to Donohue. He says this number is likely a floor, and that some statistical methods show an increase of 33 percent in aggravated assaults involving a firearm after the passage of right-to-carry laws.

Makes sense. Guns make the weak feel strong.

Program Note: There is no serious "debate" about that facts of man made climate change. If you want to discuss that "question" you are either getting paid to do so,…

Carper's perplexing support for the Keystone Pipeline (because it will "clear the decks" and usher in an era of bipartisan peace and prosperity) is helping people understand what a D-bag Tom Carper is. Bill McKibben writing for Salon is the latest to call our Carper for his self-satisfied and vacuous praise of the climate agreement with China, and his outright assholery for saying that the climate deal with China is so awesome that it will "outweigh" the ecological catastrophe that is the Keystone pipeline. I don't have any great hope that the Democrats will be able to replace Carper, but his astonishingly tone-deaf and horrible representation of Delaware in the Senate is leading me to the belief that a non-Teabag Republican would be an upgrade. A non-Teabag Republican siding with the GOP on this would only be hurting the country. Tom Carper hurts the country by supporting the equivalent of 400 new coal burning power stations. But he is also doing long term and permanent damage to the Democratic Party.

It is the second Saturday after the country voted for baby Jesus, and lower taxes and so Republicans are already planning to flex their mandate and shut down the government. They say the shut down will be over the President's claim that he is going to stop deporting so many browns. That's the plan. If the President trips them up by continuing to deport browns at the current rate, they'll figure something out. Of course shutting down the government isn't the first choice for the few remaining Republicans who still have a loose grip on reality. They'd prefer a lawsuit because threatening a lawsuit is pretty manly business that always gets results. Tom Carper said that he'd vote with those same Republicans to overturn a Presidential veto because overriding a Presidential veto will usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity. It will also show the GOP once and for all that when Tom Carper says bipartisanship - BY GOD he means BIPARTI-FUCKING-SHIP.

Poor Chris Flood trying to make sense out of Schwartzkopf post election analysis.

"He said because of the race for county sheriff, the turnout in Sussex County was somewhat different than in Kent and New Castle counties. Republicans pushed hard to get out the vote because they didn't want to see Jeff Christopher re-elected, said Schwartzkopf, and as a result some people who wouldn't have voted otherwise ended up voting straight down party lines. Schwartzkopf said he doesn't necessarily think the outcome of the races would have been any different, but the percentages would have been closer. Republicans had a good day, he said. It's like a sports competition, he added, and the GOP had a better outcome."

Yep. Just like a sports competition. The kind of competitions where one team has motivated players, strategies, coaching and leadership and the other doesn't. It was just like that.