Open Thread
Monday Open Thread [11.4.13]
![Monday Open Thread [11.4.13]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Rand.Paul_-182x180.png "Monday Open Thread [11.4.13]")
Rand Paul has a Joe Biden problem. Last week, he was busted by Rachel Maddow for plagiarizing a Wikipedia entry for the movie Gattaca, then busted by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski both for plagiarizing a Wikipedia entry for the movie Stand and Deliver and for plagiarizing a Heritage Foundation study in his book Government Bullies. The man is a serial plagiarizer.
Instead of being concrite and apologetic, Paul on Sunday threatened to murder any one who dared question or criticize him.
Seriously.
“I take it as an insult, and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting,” he said, dismissing his critics as “hacks and haters.” Presumably in jest, Mr. Paul added: “If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, it’d be a duel challenge.”
I do not give Mr. Paul the benefit of the doubt, so I am not going to presume he was kidding. I am going to presume that Mr. Paul would challenge Mr. Kaczynski and Ms. Maddow to a duel, if such were legal, where he would attempt to shoot both of them before they shot him.
That is his response to being caught in the act.
He wants to murder them.
Sunday Open Thread [11.3.13]
![Sunday Open Thread [11.3.13]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/DL.Thumbnail.3.png "Sunday Open Thread [11.3.13]")
Jonathan Cohn finds the Republian criticism this week about the 3% of health insurance policies being cancelled (so that the insured could be enrolled in better policies that comply with the law) very disingenuous, and hypocritical.
With Obamacare, a small number of people lose their current insurance but they end up with alternative, typically stronger coverage. Under the plans Republicans have endorsed, a larger number of people would lose their current insurance, as people migrated to a more volatile and less secure marketplace. Under Obamacare, the number of Americans without health insurance at all will come down, eventually by 30 or 40 million. Under most of the Republican plans, the number of Americans without insurance would rise.
Honest Republicans would justify their policies by arguing that Medicaid is a wasteful, inefficient program not worth keeping—and their changes, overall, would reduce health care spending while maximizing liberty. In other words, forcing people to give up their coverage is worth it. I don’t agree with those arguments, but they are honest. But they should stop pretending that it’s possible to address the problems of American health care without disrupting at least some people’s insurance arrangements—because, after all, they want to do the very same thing.
Jonathan Chait agrees, and thinks this is why there never was any “Replace” bill in the Republicans’ “Repeal and Replace” strategy over the last three years.
![Saturday Open Thread [11.2.13]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/55687/large/nbcwsjlateoct2013negativeviews.png "Saturday Open Thread [11.2.13]")
Friday Open Thread [11.1.13]
![Friday Open Thread [11.1.13]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/fox-news-wallpaper-240x180.jpg "Friday Open Thread [11.1.13]")
Connor Simpson has some bad news for Fox News and Rupert Murdoch:
Fox News has fallen out of favor with Republicans after two years of untouched supremacy as the party’s brand of choice across any and every medium, according to a recent YouGov survey. YouGov measures which brands are preferred by each party (Republicans, Democrats, Independents) by adding and subtracting negative feedback on a 100 to -100 scale. In 2011, Fox News led all brands [among Republicans] with 68 support points, a full 5 points ahead of the rest. In 2012, Fox News led with 64.5 support points, 1.7 points above the rest. This year? In 2013, Fox News didn’t even make the top 10. […]
A Public Policy Poll released in January showed a serious decline in trust during the months after the election. Only 52 percent of those who identify as “somewhat conservative,” said they trust Fox News, down from 65 percent last year. Hardline conservatives trust Fox News less, too: 13 percent said they don’t trust Fox News anymore, compared to 6 percent last year.
LOL. You know what happened, right? Fox News dared to inform its viewers that President Obama won the election. THAT FACT IS CLEARLY UNTRUE!!!!! By reporting the President was reelected, Fox News revealed its horrible evil liberal bias, and no true conservative can watch it anymore.
Wednesday Open Thread [10.29.13]
The News Journal has a haunted house expose up. Here is an interesting tidbit from the story:
Former Delaware GOP Chairman Terry Strine, for example, feels exactly the opposite of Milliken about his home near Centreville where a Delaware socialite was beaten to death in her first-floor bedroom in 1967. He finds it “totally illogical, irrational and psychologically crazy” that anyone would be spooked from buying the house where Katharine “Kaa” Thompson Wood died.
In fact, he enjoys conversing with the undead spirits every night as he refines the latest Republican talking points.
Tuesday Open Thread [10.29.13]
![Tuesday Open Thread [10.29.13]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Carper.Coons_-240x180.jpg "Tuesday Open Thread [10.29.13]")
So last night I attended the Delaware Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. My thoughts:
1) Dem Party Chair John Daniello really hates the 21st Century. He hates the blogs. He hates social media. The venom that dripped off the word “blogs” as he said it was amazing. I looked across my table to a particular State Representative as he said and said “Boy does he hate me.” The Representative laughed. The point Daniello was making was that the people in that room are what is important, not blogs and Facebook or Twitter. I wonder if Daniello realized just how many bloggers and former bloggers and users of Twitter and Social Media were in that room.
2) Senator Carper needs to stop drinking caffeine around noon or so. The man spoke at warp speed and wandered around the stage with a microphone in his hand making jokes like he was Robin Williams. Too bad he wasn’t as funny as Robin Williams. Also, Tom, for the love of God, it is the DemocratIC Party. I know you just love love love your Republican friends (or should I say Republic friends), but you have been talking like them for far too long.
Come inside for more…
Monday Open Thread [10.28.13]
![Monday Open Thread [10.28.13]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/DL.Thumbnail.png "Monday Open Thread [10.28.13]")
We have a lot inside here today. A nice little chart that shows us when most people in Massachusetts signed up for the Exchanges in RomneyCare back in 2007. Some new polling showing that the Republican Governors in Kansas and Wisconsin may be in a little trouble. A picture of a classless and racist Halloween costume regarding Trayvon Martin. And it seems that Pot is the new culture war wedge issue, which of course means, we won the culture war.
Thursday Open Thread [10.24.13]
![Thursday Open Thread [10.24.13]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/DL.Thumbnail.2.png "Thursday Open Thread [10.24.13]")
A conservative is sounding the alarm: Ross Douthat:
[W]hile conservatives think the Obamacare exchanges are overregulated and oversubsidized, they are actually closer to the right-of-center vision for health care reform than the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, which is happening no matter what transpires with Healthcare.gov. So if the exchanges fail and the Medicaid expansion takes effect (and, inevitably, becomes difficult to roll back), we’ll be left with an individual market that’s completely dysfunctional and a more socialized system over all.
In that scenario, the Democratic Party would probably end up pushing, not for the pipe dream of true single payer, but for a further bottom-up/top-down socialization, in which Medicare is offered to 55- to 65-year-olds and Medicaid is eventually expanded even more.
Meanwhile, the task for serious conservative reformers — already not the most politically effective bunch — might actually become harder, because they would have to explain how their plan to build an effective, exchange-based marketplace differed from the Obama White House’s exchange fiasco.
Well, when you call a former Heritage Foundation idea of establishing a private market place for health insurance “socialism,” what are you going to call actual socialism? LOL. Poor Republicans. They are just the petulant temper tantrum throwing boys who cried wolf.
Wednesday Open Thread [10.23.13]
It’s hard to say which should trouble Republican Party leaders the most right now: the sour mood among GOP donors, or the money suddenly swelling Democratic campaign and super PAC coffers.
Not only have the Democratic campaign committees that back House and Senate candidates outraised their GOP counterparts, but unrestricted super PACs that support Democrats have pulled in close to three times what GOP super PACs have so far, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Tuesday Open Thread [10.22.13]
![Tuesday Open Thread [10.22.13]](http://delawareliberal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GA-240x180.png "Tuesday Open Thread [10.22.13]")
John Judis at the New Republic says the Tea Party has been with us a long time:
Since the late 1960s, America has seen the growth of what the late Donald Warren in a 1976 book The Radical Center called “middle American radicalism.” It’s anti-establishment, anti-Washington, anti-big business and anti-labor; it’s pro-free market. It’s also prone to scapegoating immigrants and minorities. It’s a species of right-wing populism. It ebbed during the Reagan years, but began to emerge again under the patrician George H.W. Bush and found expression in support for Ross Perot and for Pat Buchanan with his “peasants with pitchforks.” And it undergirded the Republican takeovers of Congress in 1994. It ebbed during George W. Bush’s war on terror, but has re-emerged with a vengeance in the wake of the Great Recession, Obama’s election and expansion of government, and continuing economic stagnation.
This monster, like a zombie virus, is eating the Republican Party alive and tearing the diverse, and often conflicting coalitions therein apart.
Monday Open Thread [10.21.13]
The Tea Party is not unique to America. It exists in Europe and elsewhere too. The only problem is, due to our nearly unique Presidential system, it can cause more problems and damage here than elsewhere.
Sunday Open Thread [10.20.13]
It’s a glorious day outside! In case you are indoors today and looking for some interesting reading here are these possibilities:
The Republican Civil War — the Business Interests vs. the Teajhadis
“We are going to get engaged,” said Scott Reed, senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.” The chamber spent $35.7 million on federal elections in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks campaign spending.
Meanwhile, two Washington-based groups that finance Tea Party-backed candidates said yesterday they’re supporting efforts to defeat Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, who voted this week for the measure ending the 16-day shutdown and avoiding a government debt default. Cochran, a Republican seeking a seventh term next year, faces a challenge in his party’s primary from Chris McDaniel, a state senator.
That’s right — fight amongst yourselves.
Hey, a regular Thursday Open Thread [10.17.13]
![Hey, a regular Thursday Open Thread [10.17.13]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/53473/large/10-16-2013_4.png "Hey, a regular Thursday Open Thread [10.17.13]")
No more titles with Republican Shutdown and Default Apocalypse references. Ah, it is so nice to get back to polling and random political stories and tidbits, at least for a while.
Last night, as you know, Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) was elected to the U.S. Senate over teabagger Steve Lonegan in New Jersey. This is a pickup for the Democrats, who increase their Senate majority to 55.
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