The Last Ephor

Joe Biden, Delaware Destroyer: The three best and the three worst things about Obama's VP pick Dave Weigel is a Delawarean, who knew? Even his bio omits that little nugget . He lays out the up and down sides to picking Joe. I doubt we'll see much about his support for the drug war, the surveillance stuff or the propensity towards military interventionalism.

The Curmudgeon points to this story: Police ID motorcyclist killed in Glasgow crash and sends regards to the family. The report indicates "speed was a factor". I have no doubt. I live very close to 896. In fact, when I'm trying to sleep on Sunday nights I hear them. There are a group of riders that wait until late on Sunday night and from 11:00 on they start at the Summit bridge and head north acclerating at maximum speed through the gears. I count the gears as they go. 1..2..3....4.....5...6. I seldom hear them slow down. Sometimes there's only one, sometimes as many as four. This has been going on for at least 4 years. Frankly, I'm surprised this isn't happening more often. I went so far as to call the State police to complain about the problem. It's really ##$#@$#@ing dangerous. Every time I heard them I would wait for the inevitable sickening crash or reading about some poor working stiff on his way home from a third shift job that was ki...

In my last post I was lamenting the fact that I cannot get into anything approximating a substantive discussion with people who do not share the same opinions and views that I do. Over at DelawareLiberal, I waded into the fray about corporations and profits with a question: "Please explain how you will tax corporations and not have them pass that cost on to consumers." Makes sense, no? My point is that any tax on corporations turns them into tax collecting agents not taxpayers. To a business, taxes are simply overhead like the cost of raw materials that have to be recouped from customers. Given that the DL crowd has a visceral hatred for corporations (despite the fact that they all seem to work for them) I should have known that there would be no explanations forthcoming. Jason responded with: Duffy asks… Please explain how you will tax corporations and not have them pass that cost on to consumers. Easy. They might not make $11 billion dollars in profit one quarter. ...

Demographic Inversion In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact more complicated and more profound than the process that term suggests. A better description would be "demographic inversion." Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center--some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white--are those who can afford to do so. NB: Most white populations in large cities are liberals so blame the liberals for pushing the brown people out of range of their jobs and making their life more difficult for their own convenience. A large proportion of the city's 600,000 residents, especially those with money, want to live downtown... No American city looks like Vancouver at the moment. But quite a few are moving in...

I got a call from a recuiter about a position at a bank. It's a BI job (since nearly all of my readers have seen my resume you know that's what I generally do). It was sold to me as a PM job by the recuiter but when I spoke o the client they billed it as more of a tactical role. When I expressed confusion they were confused and asked which role I'd like to be doing I told them that tactical was losing its luster and PM is where I want to be. "Interesting" they said. No indication of "good interesting" or "bad interesting". From there I had two more technical interviews with Infrastructure and BI Champion which makes me assume it was more toward the "good interesting" side of things. Things went well and then went quiet. That's usually not a good sign. I called the recruiter a few days later and he said they were interested and would meet my quote (huzzah!). But...(you knew that was coming didn't you?) they had to rew...

*Ring Ring* I look at the phone and see an 888 number. A familiar number as they have been calling daily for my opinion on various things political. I made the mistake of answering their questions the first time. It was a lark and I gave some serious and some absurd responses. Stupid me. That put me on the "This Idiot Will Actually Answer Our Questions" list. *Ring Ring* Mrs. Duffy: Don't answer that! Duffy: I'm putting and end to this. (answers phone) Duffy: Hello? Annoying Pollster: Hello sir, I'm doing a survey of voters in Delaware... Duffy (interrupting): Oh, I can't vote, I'm a convicted felon AP: Oh....uh...is there anyone else there who's a registered voter? Duffy: Nope. We're all felons here. (SamnEric blast through the room at a full run and at full volume) And some pre-felons. This is a halfway house for predicate felon single fathers and their and their pre-felon children. (at this Mrs. Duffy's eyes are as large as ...

Guys, I love your site and what you write but please, in the name of all that is good, slow the fsck down! Your fans (read: me) can't read it all and any comments I make on a post are pushed to the deeper pages within minutes due to the firehose like volume of posts. Examples: Sunday March 9th: Pages: 15 Paragraphs: 218 Lines: 857 Words: 8535 Monday, March 10th: Pages: 8 Paragraphs: 119 Lines: 449 Words: 4463 So...when I read your blog after two days of not reading it I have 13,000 words to read and 23 pages. I fear you're going to lose your audience by sheer volume. Maybe it's just me but that's just my $.02.

Delaware Curmudgeon is hosting Around The Horn Friday this week . Go read it now. And yes, I feel like a dork for having a post about my broken dishwasher on the list.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Gerry Fulcher declares: A BLOG IS EQUIVALENT TO A WRITER’S FART and then goes on to prove the point. I don't know anything about this guy other than he apparently used to be on WDEL. (I do not listen to terrestrial radio so I didn't know that). Based on his first post and his comments at DWA , I can see he's study in contradictions. Brays about being a "real writer" and pounds and pounds on the fact that he's been published in such vaunted publications as TV Guide. Yes TV Guide, the bastion of crusading truth and breaking news. This is a big deal because according to Mr. Fulcher it was the most popular magazine in the world. Rest assured they were subscribing for the cutting edge investigative journalism not for, you know, TV listings. Almost immediately after talking about it's popularity, he says he "doesn't give a rat's ass about popularity". An odd thing for a "real" writer....

Pike Creek gets in as Delaware's only entry. #79 is all we could manage. Pike Creek? Seriously?

Hube is angry that DelawareLiberal is downplaying the terrorism stories of the day. Frankly, he's missed the point. Jason is arguing straw man. It is not that we should be afraid but that we need to take these attacks seriously. This one may have been a dud, but that doesn't mean anything. Imagine that 19 young Saudis were thwarted in their efforts when their bags were lost or they were denied boarding. We would have read posts on Kos and DelawareLiberal about how those bumbling idiots thought they were going to hijack a plane with a blade embedded in a toothbrush! Complete fools! Nothing to see here, move along. Look! Bush said something non-inclusive! Atheists/gays/liberals were disrespected! What a buffoon. Hube correctly points out the neat trap they've constructed for anyone who takes terrorism seriously. Doing something makes you a jackbooted civil liberties squasher. Doing nothing makes you either an incompetant rube or worse, a opportunistic soul-less ...

This one at Miriam's Ideas is flat out home run . Go read it.

I get a: Delaware Liberal gets a Paul Smith Jr. garners a Colossus of Rhodey gets a Interesting. Shame on you Paul! Clean up your act!

Teenage drowning victims identified . I feel sick. Remember that soccer game I've been playing on Wednesday nights? Leonard was one of the players. I can't say I knew him, but I knew who he was. It's jarring to know that I played soccer with him on Wednesday and he was dead on Saturday. I played with him for his last game and he was 16. 16 years old and he's gone. My heart breaks for the parents. I have no idea how you go on after something like that.

I rarely cover local topics but this one piqued my interest. Christina to lay off 97 employees. Combine that with: Christina's Wise abused credit card use, auditor finds Well, Mr. Wise's abuse could have paid for two annual salaries. If I were The Decider here. Mr. Wise would have his wages garnished and any discretionary spending of his over $100 would require auditor approval. It's stories like this that lead me to believe that the staff layoffs wouldn't be necessary if the amount of waste, fraud and abuse were reduced. Certainly there are some staffers that may not be required but that's a careful line to walk. Here's the other problem and one which is personal for me. Those staffers who are experienced get first shot at any open jobs in the district. Sounds good, right? The problem is that a number of them are taking jobs at Delaware Autism Program. They have neither the ability or the desire to work with autistic kids. That is a very, very narrow s...

The plan, announced Wednesday, also calls for closing the company's Newark, Del., assembly plant, and reducing shifts at plants in Warren, Mich., and St. Louis. A parts distribution center near Cleveland also will be closed. I must confess, I'm surprised. I thought they were bluffing to extort tax incentives to stay. (Perhaps they were and Governor Doubtfire didn't bite.) Leave predictions in the comments for what is expected to take the place of the current assembly plant.