Thursday Open Thread [2.7.13]

Senator Carper reacts to the U.S. Post Office ending Saturday service. The Senator's Postal Reform Bill would have ended the ridiculous pension saving requirement the Service is saddled with by statute, which is mostly responsible for the USPS's continued financial woes. Senator Coons gets the chairmanship of the Senate Bankruptcy Committee. Senator from Delaware, but of course. Kavips asks an important question: is the Wilmington port deal the next Fisker?

Wednesday Open Thread [2.6.13]

Markell is leading the ten-day trade mission which includes Transportation Secretary Shailen Bhatt, Deputy Director for International Trade Felicia Pullam, and University of Delaware President Patrick Harker. “Delaware’s got a great story to tell and I want to tell the story. I want Delaware to be top of mind when companies around the globe are thinking about where to expand in this country and so as these companies decide to expand, I want them to engage with us here in Delaware,” said Markell.
I am always suspicious of these goodwill and business-rousting trips aboard by any Governor of any state, especially in this day and age of the Internet where anyone can find out about any place through a Google search. I much more understand trips to conferences. But I am sure the Governor can tell me that his trips have brought business to the state and thus my wariness is unwarranted.

Wednesday Open Thread [1.30.13]

"Yesterday we had to get rid of our guns. Today we gotta grant amnesty... They're running the no-huddle offense on us. We don't even have time to catch our breath. They're running play after play after play."
That is Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show yesterday. Good. That is how I like my football teams, and my political parties and Presidents, to play.

Tuesday Open Thread [1.29.2013]

Yesterday, the wingnutoverse was on fire about Sunday's interview by 60 Minutes with President Obama and Hilary Clinton. They thought it was awful, too soft, too cute and in the main tried to use it to frame Hillary as the Worst Secretary of State ever. (Your agenda is showing, Roger Ailes. Besides, I think that history has already written in Condi Rice as the worst Secretary of State in contemporary memory.) In a few liberal circles, this interview is being seen as Obama's endorsement of Hillary in 2016. What did you think of this interview? (I confess I haven't seen it yet.) You can watch it here:

Thursday Open Thread [1.24.13]

For once, the weeping willow gets one right:
Speaker John Boehner said he believes the primary goal of President Obama’s second term is to “annihilate the Republican Party.” “Given what we heard yesterday about the president’s vision for his second term, it’s pretty clear to me that he knows he can’t do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans,” Boehner said in a speech Tuesday to The Ripon Society. “So we’re expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party. “And let me just tell you, I do believe that is their goal — to just shove us into the dustbin of history.”
My only quibble is that it is really the Republicans' own actions and policy preferences that are leaving them in the dustbin of history. But the President will do all he can to pursue just, popular and right policies this year and during the entirety of the second term, and the GOP's radical, feverish and irrational opposition to those policies, as well as their delusional conspiracy theories and hateful and bigoted social policy proposals will most assuredly leaving the Republican Party annihilated. It is long past time that the the Republican Party in its current form be destroyed, and in its place a rational center right party dedicated to a social libertarian principles and fiscal responsibility. That is a opposition party that even I could vote for if the circumstances were right. So yes, Boehner, we want your party destroyed. The secret is out.