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Courtesy of Department of Defense
Since the election was over, the Delawarean blogosphere has been searching for its identity. So much of our time was focused on a certain result up to November 4th, that after it was over, no one really knew what to do with themselves…
Since then, there has been some focus on the economy. Likewise, there has been some chatter on the selection of the cabinets. But on the other hand, more importantly, there has been a lot of self absorption. I guess that is to be expected. As readership dips everyone who takes blogging seriously scrambles around to calls of “look at me… look at me…”
But while we were doing so…. there were issues that got ignored. Events that have great importance in how things will progress over the next two, if not four years probably got less discussion here in the Delaware blogosphere, than actually occurred at the bottom of a Delaware-on-Line article…
And that is what this edition will seek to uncover… All that which was not said on the Delaware blogosphere since election day…
I will start with Delaware Liberal. Having at least 5 of 10 of Delaware’s most active bloggers (subjective of course), they of course would be the canary in the coal mine. I might as well share with you the trigger, that caused me to take this problem up a step, exposing it to see whether or not it had implications across three counties of readers…..
With a name like Delaware Liberal, one would expect that entity to be aware of liberal happenings in the state of Delaware. Naturally that would be the assumption one would get based on that blog’s official name……. So imagine my surprise when I saw these words…….
Bottom line, the seat did go to Republicans by 73 votes…. which since the state Constitution requires a super-majority to raise taxes, just one Republican vote can now shut down “the change we need”.
Not only was the issue not vetted nor discussed prior to the election, but they appeared surprised that it was even taking place. Only one blogger out of the eight on that staff seemed even slightly concerned. (Liberal Geek (so that he feels honored)).
The analysis (courtesy of John Tobin) showed…”the numbers are clear that in the five districts where Kovach won, turnout was 25.5% and the seven districts where Migliore won, turnout was 13.5%. Districtwide turnout was 18.1 %, but turnout was not evenly distributed which benefited Kovach.”
Obviously the other side was ready. “We will be at the total mercy of the Democrats who will have very little when it is a choice between their pet projects and your wallet. No excuses, just take 15 minutes out of your day and vote. Turnout appears low. Your vote is vital.”
But Delaware Liberal was preoccupied that day as well as the week leading up to Saturday’s vote with a video clip from “The Office“, a chimpanzee banging on a manual typewriter, and Mike Castle’s apology to Chrysler workers…. as well as an eloquent rating of DV’s posts that day of December…..
Point is not to take anything away from their humor and levity, but instead, to refocus all of our attention again back to “what is really important…”
So since November, what other issues have slipped past the watchdogs of the media? While we’ve been sleeping, you know the enemy has not… ( The enemy being corruption, misuse of power, and insubordination to public authority.)
Workforce Housing was stayed for a couple of weeks (Check out the upcoming January 13th meeting). Continuance of that proposal will turn lower New Castle County, into a Wilmington suburb, with overcrowded roads, over crowded schools, over extended police services, and tons of shit dumped into the water supply because sewers are not developed in those areas… It was sneaked through once. The same players will sneak it through again… Only Nancy at Delaware Way has published anything on the topic.
Which makes these words somewhat ironic, when they were uttered on Delaware Liberal recently, considering that the largest issue impacting our state locally over the next 15 years… has been met largely with silence except by her…..
Other issues not mentioned across Delaware’s blogosphere… The upcoming SEU finagle that Harris McDowell set up last session so that it could slip by unnoticed, just as soon as the new legislature takes effect, which is I believe…. just nineteen days from now…
Equally quiet was the election of the leadership of the Democratic Assembly… There were three weeks between the election and the Senate leadership. Due to the vacuum of silence, the same group is running the Senate. Perhaps if enough noise had been made beforehand…….
Wind farming is now on the back burner… Only Tommywonk has written anything regarding Delaware’s economic lifeboat.
Healthcare for Delaware. Not much has been written. Where do we go from here… We have a new governor, we have a Democratic majority in both houses, and we have a depression slamming into us with gale force winds and the health insurance industry just raised their rates in January by another 19%.
Sussex County overdevelopment. You know developers are not sleeping. That was a hot topic down South this past election season. But since the election… silence? Again it is only Nancy who has been the conduit of that information northward….
So when one looks at all that which important to us locally, our General Assembly, our utility bills, our health care, our quality of life, our neighborhoods, we see nothing but a black hole… Something that sucks in everything relevant and lets nothing out to be aired or discussed… As we discovered with wind, the airing and discussion is really the driving force that gets conversations going where people discuss the outcomes… As we have discovered since…. when there is lack of discussion, weird things can get passed, simply because only far too few individuals are allowed the clue to what is really going on… If we persist dancing around these black holes we encounter, we are no better than the New Journal was this entire millennium!
There is a telling parallel between the dying MSM and today’s Delaware blogosphere…. Commercialism… Mike Matthews is different from when he first began his blog… Some may say better, but it is hard to say which is better or worse, but I think even he will agree, he is different now… Some things are taboo if one is interested in promoting oneself.. The internal struggles of Delaware Liberal have sort of shown that same propensity… Keep it safe..
I am calling it as I see it, for I remember well having discussions prior with Jason330, regarding the News Journal’s failure stemming from its inability to print what people really wanted to hear… the news… Like… what is going on around here today…. That local interest is what carried papers through most of the 20th Century. Today, it’s all about advertising.
So I raise a question. Can one be an dirt digging blogger and still create a commercially viable blog? Or does one have to sell out so others are comfortable placing bets on their blog, expecting that that those ads will reach others? Once attributed to selling out, your audience leaves to go elsewhere.
I believe one builds ratings doing what they are there to do. If an advertiser signs on, it is because he is guaranteed readership… not because he wants to control the programing.
Finally our conversation brings us around to the biggest black hole imaginable… the one that occurred to fellow bloggers Mat Marshall and Dominique…. Each time I think… I sigh, and just can’t imagine… But reading through the comments was like reading a who’s who of Delaware bloggers.. We do have a community after all, between the commentators, and bloggers themselves and as each of us realized the scope of the loss, our differences became quite small. We are, after all, 99.9% alike… And something on this scope…really drives it home that we all do need to work together; sharing the tremendous amount we have in common, working for something we can all agree on, instead of squabbling over the tiniest of differences we have among us…
It’s getting hard to write through tears. I must end it now.
Photo Courtesy of Dept. of Defense
There is something bloggers love about the word Blagojevich.. I think, we like saying blago, because of the assonance associated with us: bloggers… The ending also rhymes with bitch… another deeply loved word within the blogosphere… We just can’t get enough of saying that name because we, to ourselves, are thinking we are getting away with saying “Blogger Bitch..” How often have we all wanted to say that?
It helps to have a story to back it up… Here is who ran it down and what their take upon it was..
Delaware Curmudgeon chooses to cover this news event as a second piece to Obama’s wife’s raise after he became State Senator of Illinois. She notes that Obama’s staff did talk to Blogger Bitch, even though originally the story was that he did not…
Cato of Delmarva Dealings appears to have broken the story at 9:38 am yesterday morning. Delaware Liberal played around with a quote of the day (9:55 am) and a treatise naming Delaware’s readers versus Delaware’s Blabbers (10:08 am), before entering the “Blogger Bitchfest” with X-Striker’s Post simply titled Illinois Governor Blagojevitch Arrested (10:09 am). The next Delaware entry is Deldem’s post (12:03 pm) titled Wow, Blago was Truly Corrupt, which marks the first time the term “Blago” (pronounced blogger in Boston) hits Delaware cyberspace. It won’t be the last time.
Delaware TalkBlog posts about Healthy Delawareans Today and Tomorrow (12:18pm) ignoring the controversy until it begins to involve Obama.. Hoping to get a jump on Tomorrow’s headline (their quote) Maria Evans goes live with Obama: “This Is Not the Rod Blagojevich That I Know” at 2:07pm.
Deldem breaks the Rahm Emanuel connection at 2:52 pm, with the announcement by the head of the Illinois State Judiciary Committee, that impeachment proceedings would begin immediately. Like a hound on a new scent, Deldem gleefully announces the progressive tendencies of Illinois Lt. Governor. (3:15 pm).
At 3:27 pm Tommywonk in “I Want To Make Money comes forth with the seventy two page document(PDF) filed in court, as well as an expletive usually associated with “Da Bears“.
Shirley’s piece mentioned above…. hit at 6:09 pm.
The Colossus of Rhodey picks up where Maria left off and pillories the Obama team for doubling speaking in their denial of knowing Blogger Bitch. In “Name That Party” he links to an assortment of jabs made at Democrats expense. (6:33 pm)
Deldem, who just can’t get enough pleasure saying “Blogger Bitch”, again joins with another post where he names today’s event in his “Epic Fail” file…(7:29 pm).
At 8:20 one Nemski pokes fun at former Rhode Island, and now Delaware’s own John Feroce, who questions the timing on why this took place right now… with his statement that “something is not right…”, apparently in anticipation of another Vince Foster repeat……
At 9:58 pm nemski expands on a comment made by Dave Burris: The only thing that bothers me about this is Obama’s statement that he hadn’t talked to Blago. There’s no freakin’ way he gives up his Senate seat and doesn’t weigh in. I’m not accusing him of wrongdoing, but that statement just doesn’t sit with me.
That was the extent of where Blago came in on Delaware’s “blago”sphere today. As of now, we are all blogger bitched out, at least until we’ve had a good nights sleep….ZZZZZ. But in that sleep, what dreams may come….. especially to these guys…. Only in Delaware could a scandalous political event be finished by a nightcap of conversations..concerning Scrapple.… …..
Courtesy of Department of Defense
So here is what is going on across Delaware’s blogosphere….
The Colossus of Rhodey is bemoaning some publication’s or journalistic attempt to describe the left side of the Supreme Court as being moderate… Like Jane Fonda’s hell he says…. He also revisits John Edwards (remember him) sending a campaign staffer to by a Wal*Mart Playstation 3, while slamming Wal*Mart in his campaign speeches… The seventeenth of November was a light day for him, …but then Battlestar Galactica came on that evening… as his review on the eighteenth brings that episode back to life….
Duffy has a post covering open ended gaming... it’s worth it visiting to see his reminiscence of his reaction to playing on a 2600…. I didn’t know that Americans spend more on games than movies? He also finished an extensive piece on religion and science.. Instead of debating between science and religion…we should include science in the classification of religion… I was intrigued by this statement….and after turning it over, I would have to say it is true… “There are many points of contention and conflict between Arab Islam and the West, but the chief religious contention between Islamists and the West is not really between Islam and Christianity but between Islam and Western scientific-materialism.” And to show you that Republicans never learn... Trent Lott is again appointed to the Number 2 spot….. Wow.
Delmar’s Dustpan covers a cover girl, a beauty of Delmar fame… Another Delmar, beauty, this architectural wonder, was once owned by the William Freihofer Baking company. But with new news of a priestly scandal, Delmar’s Dustpan makes a surprising find about the difference between two Delmarva newspapers… The News Journal and the Daily (Salisbury) Times….. If one’s blood has not boiled once yet today, they should view his catch (same link) of the FBI knowingly sending 4 men to jail to protect the identities of their informants… Two died.
Merit Bound Alley tells us of Joe’s plan to hook up with Tyler Nixon for a seminar of alternative energy, featuring a symposium of solar, wind, and bio fuels.. Someone named William Kempton is speaking on wind. Joe M is still in the process of trying to find out how many Karen Peterson votes were written in during the election just passed… but the Department of Elections does not plan on releasing them until the next year… He also gives a head shout to another blogger who made his predictions for the next race… two years away…. titled appropriately… “True Addiction“… Equally fascinating was Joe M’s personal vignette covering the problems being hidden within the Wilmington Catholic Diocese.
Delaware Watch recommends visiting Merit Bound Alley as well. (I didn’t check out the audio…) Dana Garrett takes on the Republican Party’s blame game among themselves and their propensity NOT to blame those who made the decisions …but underlings of those who made the decisions…. no matter what the economic status is within their families…. He also notes that Liberals have outed the Conservatives among our neighbor to the North… Apparently across the board, the term Conservative is equatable to Creationism, which was another once firmly held belief, despite the total absence of fact to back it up…. Dana also pokes holes in capitalist theory… Guess who’s gross domestic product — a measure of all the goods and services in the economy — rose 10.2 percent from July to September compared to the same three-month period during the previous year? Did anyone say Chavez? “It’s ironic, this revolution. The rich are even richer now.” Dana also uncovers a little know legislative attorney who defends Rep Wagner’s little past double dipping episode: charging in front of a judge, that anyone who wanted to sue against collecting from the state twice…. “had no standing to do so.” Aye! Protecting the little guy, huh?
Nancy’s The Delaware Way has a piece attributing the Democrat’s win to Dean and moderate conservatives who left the Republican Party… Even she admits she is reeling from the events of this past week with her pictorial representation she posts here…. She appears to be going through a light phase… going back a week is her celebration that Andy Reid accepts that his play calling sucks….
From Down State, Mikes Musings, starring a blogger still remarkably self absorbed since 1962, shares with us one of his life changing moments….. But more important for us, is the changing of Delaware’s status away from being the first state… nay, even being a state at all! But solutions are the real reason Mahaffie is happy. Using technology to bring back the best of olden times, is what technology is all about….
Tommywonk has his thing on Purple America…. He also celebrates another blogger’s bump to the home page of Daily Kos… He takes time to eulogize an economist responsible for uttering these profound words of wisdom: What George W. Bush has done has been to shift taxes from the present to the future–and also made future taxes uncertain, random, and thus extra-costly from a standard public finance view. So no matter how high our taxes go… Democrats cannot be blamed….
This person is wondering what the difference is between a Republican and a Democrat… Do we see seeds of a future post? Perhaps… But nevertheless, he has picked a new chairperson for the Republican Party.. One who has combed through all evidence and knows their weaknesses inside and out… The name of their new chair, may surprise you….. And this, will make you want to hug your kids forever.
Dave Burris, quotes an article from TIME, outcrying that Republicans were only 77,611 votes shy of taking control of the House of Representatives, and that just a shift of 2847 votes in Montana, could have kept them in control of the Senate…. In fact, instead of drowning his sorrows for the Republicans faulty showing, he is crowing that in a bad year, where they should have been squelched, they weathered the storm rather well… “In a year that was supposed to be a big, blue wave where Democrats dominated from sea to shining sea, it almost wasn’t that at all. I can’t imagine conditions that would favor the Dems more, so this will probably be the best they can do.” he boasts.
Delaware Liberal, along with Tommywonk, and FSP, praise Joe M. for his work in pursuing the missing write in vote… a vote whose total was to be suppressed until after the choices were made for Senate leadership…. Also Jason goes out on the early line in his predictions for two years hence… I wonder how prognosticatable he will be? One of the interesting aspects of our blogosphere is the interaction between right and left… This interesting exchange covers Bush’s handling of the Iraqi war…I hope no one eats their words…. He comments on FSP’s head scratching over what was going on with the National Republican Leadership.. Dave Burris with this quote: “I spoke to the Sussex County Republican Women’s Club on Wednesday, and one portion of my message to them was that I was certain that our leaders in Washington had gotten the message that voters sent on Election Day.
Now, I’m not so sure.” And we have breaking News that Mike Castle has filed again…One must check out the link provided… We also have the traditional rant over the “liberal media” which is not so liberal after all.…. then proves it with this worthy piece about the News Journal burying an environmentally sensitive piece that might offend the entrenched powerful….even though not publishing it could kill someone over time….. That Delaware blogger had better slow down… He just might burn himself out….. lol
At least I’m glad to see he his taking a break… on this post election weekend….
Oh! And as if we needed another one……….From the ranks of our regular commentators, a new Delaware blog is now on the boards as of 11/17……Welcome. Here is its opening post…..We shall see if it makes any difference… Most likely, due to “the fix” that’s in ….. this blog too will matter very little…….
kavips 