Open Thread
Sunday Open Thread [6.29.14]
I had a great time last night and it was great to see everyone! Hope we’ll do another DL get-together soon.
Here are two long reads for this great Sunday Morning — this piece (in Politico, but may be the best thing they’ve ever published) is from Nick Hanauer — firmly ensconced in the 1% — talking about the trainwreck to come if income inequality isn’t dealt with. This is a brilliant — and scathing — piece. He reminds us that this kind of income inbalance is at the fulcrum of alot of painful upheaval, that supply-side economics isn’t working, and that those business interests who continue to agitate for supply-side policy are arguing for long-term failure.
But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution. […]
Sunday Open Thread [6.22.2014]
![Sunday Open Thread [6.22.2014]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/TeaPartyRally-240x180.jpg "Sunday Open Thread [6.22.2014]")
Here’s another great read: Tea Party’s embarrassing irony: How its ideal nation rejects basic American beliefs. This has been pretty plain to most of us who have been watching these folks have their temper tantrum, but:
What I’d argue, rather, is that the Tea Party’s philosophy of government (again, as understood by Salam) has embedded within it an aversion to basic democratic principles that goes far beyond a typical contempt for Washington, politicians and pundits. When Salam writes that Teatopia is founded on a commitment to a “robust federalism” intended to let “different states … offer different visions of the good life” and allow citizens to “vote with their feet” by moving to whichever state best reflects their values, he’s not describing a common aversion to corruption or a distaste for political theater. He’s describing a childish and essentially anti-political belief that a return to an Articles of Confederation-style U.S. order — in which each state is more of a sovereign unto itself than a member of a larger American whole — will produce 50 mini-nations where everyone basically agrees.
Friday Open Thread [6.20.14]
![Friday Open Thread [6.20.14]](http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_lat_hed_ask_first.jpg "Friday Open Thread [6.20.14]")
Yes! It’s Friday! And tonight and tomorrow night are your last chances to attend the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival. Tonite’s headliner is Ariel Larrieux and tomorrow’s headliner is Brian Culbertson. Grab your chair and head down to Rodney Square — this is one of the truly fantastic events in Wilmington and an awesome way to spend an evening. Or Saturday afternoon AND evening!
Sunday Open Thread [6.15.14]
![Sunday Open Thread [6.15.14]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Fathers.Day_-240x180.png "Sunday Open Thread [6.15.14]")
This Sunday’s NJ has a great series on the heroin problem in Delaware which is the perfect study in how the community most affected by an addiction changes the terms of the discussion of that drug. I read that series (and I don’t have a critique of it) and wondered all the way through how this would be addressed if they were talking about crack cocaine. The thing that is important to know is that our drug problem — all of them — is primarily a public health problem and we should be working at this level of sympathy and concern for community for all drug problems, not just heroin.
Saturday Open Thread [6.14.14]
![Saturday Open Thread [6.14.14]](http://scontent-b-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/t31.0-8/10365557_10153208917926393_7704278554543671037_o.jpg "Saturday Open Thread [6.14.14]")
Two more days to go to the St. Anthony’s festival! They haven’t had the best weather this week, but today seems to be perfect — who’s going?
Sunday Open Thread [6.8.14]
I LOVE this story — a British WWII vet busts out of his retirement home to go to Normandy for the D-Day celebrations.
An 89-year-old British World War II veteran who went missing from his retirement home was found in France enjoying a D-Day anniversary get-together with former comrades, police said Friday.
Bernard Jordan slipped out of The Pines care home in the seaside town of Hove in southern England on Thursday wearing his medals under his raincoat.
The former Royal Navy officer then joined a coach party heading for events marking the 70th anniversary of the landings at Ouistreham in Normandy, northern France.
Saturday Open Thread [6.7.14]
![Saturday Open Thread [6.7.14]](http://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/t1.0-9/10450654_279068685608347_5855597724074631971_n.jpg "Saturday Open Thread [6.7.14]")
Another gorgeous Saturday! Here is a cartoon just for FBH, which pretty much summarizes his approach to anything Obama:
Saturday Open Thread [5.31.14]
![Saturday Open Thread [5.31.14]](http://images.dailykos.com/images/86367/large/image.jpg?1401379000 "Saturday Open Thread [5.31.14]")
It is a gorgeous Saturday! What are you doing on this near perfect day? There’s lots of house projects going on here.
Over at the Daily Kos, we discover an interesting recent poll done by the Robert Sage Foundation. This poll purports to have surveyed the 1% as well as the 99% to compare attitudes to various government and political programs. (NOTE: I can’t find the actual poll results, so no idea what the internals look like. Meaning I have no idea how they define the 1%, or how the screened for this, or even the sample size. FYI) But take a look:
Memorial Day Open Thread [5.26.14]
![Memorial Day Open Thread [5.26.14]](http://obamadiary.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/ad8124a092824714550f6a7067003f22.jpg?w=860&h=483 "Memorial Day Open Thread [5.26.14]")
Hope all of you are enjoying this Memorial Day and are giving some thought to the purpose of the day.
Sunday Open Thread [5.25.14]
![Sunday Open Thread [5.25.14]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Mental-Health-Guns600-240x180.jpg "Sunday Open Thread [5.25.14]")
On Friday, there was another shooting spree — this time at UC Santa Barbara — 4 dead from gunshots, 3 from knife wounds and some of the 13 in the hospital were also shot. The shooter apprently shot himself, and had more mayhem on his mind:
Mother’s Day Open Thread [5.11.14]
Happy Mother’s Day!
I’ve been following this lastest round of Benghazi bullshit from the wingnuts (apparently their All Obamacare, All of the Time strategy is bombing), and was intrigued by this story from Major Garrett (former Fox Noise WH reporter) on CBS. Apparently the Republicans changed the quotes from the email that they point to as a smoking gun — meaning that they lied to re-ignite this thing and get the attention of the media. Of course, the media will bypass the fact that they were lied to in order to get their front seats to all of the falsified spectacle (It doesn’t appear to me that CBS even tweeted out their own story on this.) Take a look:
Sunday Open Thread [5.4.14]
The is is the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner edition.
First up, the President’s highlight reel via NBC:
Wednesday Open Thread [3.26.14] – The DL Common Core Edition
![Wednesday Open Thread [3.26.14] – The DL Common Core Edition](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Common-Core-240x180.png "Wednesday Open Thread [3.26.14] – The DL Common Core Edition")
I have mostly been ignoring the debate over Common Core education standards, pretty much because the opponents and proponents are all speaking in a language that is foreign to me. I don’t have kids so I have not been confronted by these issues. So I have left education blogging to DL’s expert, Pandora, and to Delaware’s best education bloggers, Kavips and Kilroy, as well as Mike Matthews anbd John Young and others focusing on specific school districts like Christina and Red Clay. It is fair to say that I myself have ignored the debate because it did not concern me. That thinking is wrong but it is what has happened.
And because of that, DL has gotten a reputation of being pro-Common Core or pro-Markell in this education debate, because we were less outspoken on the issue than Kavips or Kilroy or Nancy Willing. I don’t that is a fair characterization. A more fair one is that we have been ignorant.
So, I have a few questions….
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