The Open Thread for Friday, July 19, 2013

The Open Thread for Friday, July 19, 2013

2 Comments
GQ's profile of Delaware's own Vice President Joe Biden is a must read. The interview in the profile took place as Biden is taking the columnist through all his childhood haunts in Brandywine Hundred and Wilmington. Here are a couple of the most touching parts:
"Keep going straight here," Joe Biden says. We've been at this for hours, climbing in and out of the SUV to look at stuff, a water tower, a stone wall, the house where the most beautiful girl in the world lived, hoagies, Herman the German's gas station, Meyers-eats-tires tire shop, the house where another most beautiful girl in the world lived, and he's holding up better than the rest of us. He never winces, has no achy knees, no lower-back anything, neck, joints; for the guy rockin' the Ray-Ban aviators, 70 is the new 60. "Wait, there's Little Italy down there," he says, peering out the window. "A lot of great Italian restaurants. If there's anybody down there who doesn't vote for me, I haven't found them yet. But I will. I will. "Okay, in the interest of time, we'll stop here. Let's get out here." It's his old street. His house. Small white brick. Black shutters. Cement path. A perfectly average 1950s American neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware, now with a motorcade parked along Wilson Road and Secret Service guys swarming and the vice president of the United States wandering, leading fast. "Hi there," he says to a guy with a leaf blower. "I lived here for twenty years. Mack? Hey, Mack. I'm Joe. You're living in a house a guy named Kenny Horn used to live in. Kenny Horn. "Okay, the driveway, watch yourself. So this is the house. That was my bedroom. I lived there with my brothers Jimmy, Frankie, and my Uncle Ed. One bureau, four drawers, everybody got a drawer. My sister, the princess Valerie, had her own room. Which was ten by twelve. But she deserved it. And my dad took great pride in having that barbecue pit." He circles the house, heads to the back door. "I wish I knew who lived here, because I would show you my room."
Can you imagine coming home and seeing the Vice President peering through your windows? Or how about if you are a neighbor? I love it. You might lampoon him for stuff like this, but I think it is stuff like this that makes him so real, so genuine. Come in for more...
Wednesday Open Thread [7.17.13]

Wednesday Open Thread [7.17.13]

4 Comments
"Nobody in Wyoming likes a long campaign, and anybody from Wyoming would know that." -- Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), quoted by the Washington Examiner, taking a dig at primary rival Liz Cheney (R) who announced her bid yesterday. I am not going to attack Liz Cheney for being a carpetbagger, because Hillary Clinton was a carpetbagger and thus I would be a hypocrite. In my opinion, if a state's residency laws allow someone not currently living in the state to run, then that is the state's law. But New York is a different place than Wyoming. Many New Yorkers wanted Hillary to run, and she won in a landslide, twice. It doesn't sound like the Republican establishment in the state wants Cheney to run, and are quite offended about it, actually. It remains to be seen if the Republican primary voter will warm to someone like Liz Cheney. A reader at TPM makes a great point ....
ABC Is Wrong To Hire Jenny McCarthy For The View

ABC Is Wrong To Hire Jenny McCarthy For The View

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I would really like to know ABC's thinking on this.  First, the only subject that Jenny McCarthy seems to have had an opinion on is vaccines cause autism.  I've actually spent the last half hour googling her to discover if her activism crosses into areas other than autism and came up empty handed.  So why would ABC select one issue McCarthy to co-host a show that covers a multitude of issues? And there's concern over giving Jenny McCarthy such a large platform.

Tuesday Open Thread [7.16.13]

5 Comments
LOLz. This is from Gallup. The only group that supports Republicans on the immigration issue is the old white people. Even young white people, like myself, support the Dems. Texas Governor Rick Perry is running for President again in 2016. Dan Balz asked him if his "lousy introduction to the national stage" during the 2012 presidential campagin would affect his chances if he were to run again.
Said Perry: "You mean in the way Bill Clinton's introduction was bad?," referring to Clinton's infamous nomination speech for Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
So Rick Perry has just favorable compared himself to Bill Clinton. Governor, I worked with Bill Clinton. I knew Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton is a friend of mine. Governor, you're no Bill Clinton.

Limited Filibuster Reform Showdown Today

I say limited because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposed rule change is extremely limited to only eliminating the silent non speaking obstructive hold that is today incorrectly called the filibuster on only presidential appointees, meaning nominanees to executive agencies like the National Labor Relations Board or the Consumer Protection Board or the Secretary of State or Defense, and on and on. It does not include "filibusters" on judicial nominees or legislation. Well, the Senators all met in the Old Senate Chamber last night, and that must have been crowded, if you have ever been to the old Senate Chamber, you know what I mean. They met for three hours to discuss some insipid and downright insane "bipartisan" solutions to this crisis that is entirely of the Republicans' own making. One solution from John McCain was so outrageous that I could not write about it last night as I might have called for bodily harm to befall him. John McCain's solution to Republican obstruction was for the twice popularly elected (by overwhelmingly margins each time, once over John McCain himself) President of the United States to delegate his appointment powers to, get this, John McCain and the Republican Party.