Open Thread

This is a good weekend, I'm putting off the house work activity (or I'm going to save this for some office timewasting on Monday) -- The Delaware Test was created by some Delaware denizens of Reddit. It's a bunch of questions, including a fair number of political ones. Take it and tell us: 1) your score; 2) what you think of these questions and 3) what question is missing.

New York Magazine presents a piece noting that the longstanding alliance between Teacher's unions and Democrats may be close to over. That might make some sense, really -- Democrats have been at the forefront of initiatives that specifically work at dismantling the public school system and also scapegoating teachers for a multitude of longstanding problems in schools. I'm a fan of unions exercising their political power -- especially since it looks like even that is under threat. I'm not sure about the best way to go about that, but it is time to stop accommodating AND providing contributions and boots on the ground while getting nothing in return:

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. [...]

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!

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?

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.

Another gorgeous Saturday! Here is a cartoon just for FBH, which pretty much summarizes his approach to anything Obama:

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:

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: