Delaware Liberal

My very own State Representative, Deborah Hudson (R) (yes, both my state Rep and my state Senator are Republicans), will be introducing a bill to end Delaware's 72-year-old ban on direct home wine shipment.

Arnold Schwarzenegger posted a note on Facebook on Monday that made a very good point about climate change and renewable energy: It really doesn’t matter what you believe. The former California governor addressed people who think climate change is a conspiracy or a hoax, and asked them whether the deaths from pollution are acceptable, whether fossil fuels will last forever, and — to paraphrase greatly — what kind of world they want to live in.

Republicans say we have to bomb ISIS more, and they say it as if we aren't bombing ISIS at all, or very little. Indeed, the Fox News-watching public also has that perception. Would it surprise you to learn that we have bombed ISIS so much that we have run out of bombs?

The U.S. Air Force has fired off more than 20,000 missiles and bombs since the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS began 15 months ago, according to the Air Force, leading to depleted munitions stockpiles and calls to ramp up funding and weapons production. As the U.S. ramps up its campaign against the Islamist terror group in Iraq and Syria, the Air Force is now "expending munitions faster than we can replenish them," Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh said in a statement. "B-1s have dropped bombs in record numbers. F-15Es are in the fight because they are able to employ a wide range of weapons and do so with great flexibility. We need the funding in place to ensure we're prepared for the long fight," Welsh said in the statement. "This is a critical need."The bombing campaign has left the U.S. Air Force with what an Air Force official described as munitions depot stocks "below our desired objective."

A racist, fascist organization. Wednesday afternoon, Bloomberg Politics released the first poll about Donald Trump's horrific proposal for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." The topline finding is pretty shocking: 65 percent of likely Republican primary voters agreed with Trump. The poll was strikingly partisan. Only a small minority among likely Democratic primary voters supported it, resulting in only 37 percent of Americans supporting Trump's plan in total. Where are the statements of condemnation from Delaware's Republicans? Charles Copeland. Greg Lavelle. Colin Bonini. Mike Castle. All silent. There is an old Latin proverb: Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit (He who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree) To escape that, Delaware's Republicans must all not only denounce Donald Trump, they must pledge publicly that they will refuse to support and vote for Donald Trump should he be the Presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Otherwise, we must assume that all of Delaware's Republicans agree with Donald Trump.

Ed Kilgore on Mein Fuhrer Trump's next policy step:

On the outside chance that Trump is elected president, we should all pray this is his last stop on the road to a very different America where religious tests are suddenly constitutional and huge categories of people are treated as presumptive terrorists. He's already called for a database of all Muslims and for monitoring and perhaps shutting down mosques. More generally, he's already promising to do everything within his power to alienate allied countries with significant Muslim populations, while ignoring the suffering of the Muslims who are the primary victims of ISIS and their ilk. But one can theoretically imagine the next Trump step: maybe expulsions of Muslims already here; maybe the compulsory wearing of yellow crescents; and maybe something worse we have yet to imagine.

I have heard some objections to the comparison of Trump to Hitler. The objection holds that Trump has not killed 8 million Muslims and thus he has committed no Holocaust, and therefore to to compare him to Hitler cheapens the Holocaust. My rejoinder to that is "yet." He is most definitely following down the path of Hitler. So we must stop him now lest he commit a second Holocaust.