Thank You, Barbara Vaughn

Lewes City Councilwoman Barbara Vaughn has announced that she will not seek reelection this spring, ending her council career after four terms. I want to take a moment to say "thank you."

I've worked with Barbara on a variety of issues over the years. She's lately been the ex-officio member of the Lewes Planning Commission for the Council, providing us with regular updates and the council's perspective on issues that we discuss.

Barbara Vaughn is a very bright, kind, and dedicated woman. I've always been impressed by her willingness to give her time and energy to my City. This woman is in her 80s, and still going strong.

I will also note that Barbara Vaughn bears an uncanny resemblance to my Mom, Judy Mahaffie, another strong, kind, dedicated and bright 80-something. So working with Barbara has always felt somewhat... home-y.

You Have a Right to Free Speech, But Have Responsibility Too

Shirley Sherrod is suing Andrew Breitbart for libel. I think she has a case. Breitbart was served papers during the Conservative Political Action Conference the other day, according to a story on the  conference in the New York Times.

Andrew Breitbart, the owner of several conservative Web sites, was served at the conference on Saturday with a lawsuit filed by Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department employee who lost her job last year over a video that Mr. Brietbart posted at his site biggovernment.com. 

The video was selectively edited so that it appeared Ms. Sherrod was confessing she had discriminated against a farmer because he was white. In the suit, which was filed in Washington on Friday, Ms. Sherrod says the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work. 

Mr. Breitbart said in a statement that he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”

Everyone has a right to free speech, but we also have a responsibility to speak truth. Libel is libel. It may certainly be spoken and you may certainly be sued for it.

This is Cool: Political Edition

Delaware's present and future Congressional Representatives sat down together on Capitol Hill today. We're a small state, we only get the one.
 

The gent on the left is Mike Castle, the republican who leaves after many years of service to the state. The guy on the right is John Carney, the democrat just elected to replace Mr. Castle. It's worth noting that they weren't running against each other in the recent election. Mr. Castle was a victim of the tea party uprising in the republican party.

According to the News Journal's Dialogue Delaware blog, Mr. Carney wanted to meet with Mr. Castle "first to thank him for his many years of dedicated service to the people of Delaware, and second to gain insight from him on how to effectively represent our state’s best interests in Congress."

On one level, that's the normal sort of platitude you expect from politicians after the elections. But I know both of these men, in a small way, having worked for them in state government over the years. I look at this photo and I see two men who respect each other, in spite of politics, and take their responsibilities seriously.

I think that's cool.

"It Gets Worse, Senator McCain..."

Monday night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart and his staff took Senator John McCain to task for his cynical tactics in opposition to repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," the dreadfullly stupid law that keeps gays and lesbians from serving in our armed forces. It's a masterful job of reporting and strategic derision.

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McCain deserves to be mocked on this one. Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a travesty and he's being a jackass about it.

Rachel Maddow is Correct

I think this commentary from MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is worth sharing.She's speaking here about the kerfuffle over Keith Olberman's campaign contributions and the open campaigning that goes on at FOX news.

Yes, Delaware, There Is A Tea Party Twitter Bot Network

Researchers at Indiana University Bloomington's School of Informatics and Computing, who had developed tools to root-out Twitter-based political astroturfing campaigns, have uncovered a determined, bot-based smear campaign against Delaware Senate-candidate Chris Coons.

Delaware twitter users had started to suspect something fishy as the #netde hashtag, originally declared to help build an on-line community for the state, became polluted by out-of-state political tweets. It was bad during the republican primary -- bad enough that I tried a bit of back of the envelop analysis myself -- but has become really awful in the general election.

There are repeated tweets of a collection of allegations against Mr. Coons, continuing long after those allegations have been independently refuted. They are tweets with the same wording, or virtually the same wording, re-surfacing every day or so. They are always auto-retweeted from twitter accounts mostly outside of the state. When challenged, a few of those accounts respond as real people; most stay silent.

The Indiana University work -- and the "Truthy" web site the researchers have built -- came up in discussion about this phenomenon. Twitter user ôl ə twit′ər did some initial detective work to point the researchers in the right direction.

Following a tip from a user who flagged a handful of suspicious tweets smearing Chris Coons, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Delaware, the researchers uncovered a network of about 10 bot accounts. These bots have names like @krossnews, @BethlehemTweets, and @kingdomcast. They inject thousands of memes, all of which link to posts from the Freedomist.com website.

Interestingly, it was this freedomist web site that Christine O'Donnell quoted as her source for some of the "facts" she tried to establish in the celebrated "CNN debate" earlier this month.

This is what they call "astroturfing." It is a sign of a morally bankrupt campaign. It is a sign of a campaign that has no real ideas. It is a sign of desperation.

This is the Christine O'Donnell campaign.

Word Clouds From the Coons/O'Donnell Debate

I found a transcript of Wednesday night's debate between Chris Coons and Christine O'Donnell at the University of Delaware and decided (of course) to make a series of word clouds.

I made a word cloud of the whole thing (at right), and one of each participant's comments alone. That is, one of Wolf Blitzer, one of Nancy Karibjanian, one of Christine O'Donnell and one of Chris Coons' comments.

For the two candidates, I left in their names, which appear at the start of each section of their comments in the transcript. I did so for artistic purposes.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I am voting for Chris Coons. I was leaning that way anyway; we've seen enough of Christine O'Donnell over the last two election cycles to know that she is not qualified.

The debate did nothing at all to change my mind.

Farewell Ted Kaufman, We Knew You Too Little

elaware's newest Senator made his farewell speech on the floor of the US Senate today. Ted Kaufman was selected to take over for Joe Biden when he was elected Vice-President and has turned out to be what a Senator maybe should be, smart, experienced, and not worried about reelection. That last may be because he is a special case, but the results should tell us something.

It seemed a good excuse for a word cloud.

That, and I've been looking for a way to get that creepy looking guy's picture off the top of the page.

Thank You, Mike Castle

I am a little bit shocked tonight to see that Christine O'Donnell has defeated Mike Castle in the republican primary. Pundits will talk about what this means. I don't really care.

I do know that Mike Castle has been a leader in Delaware since I arrived in the First State. He was governor when I was a reporter and when I started working for the state. He's been our Congressman for a good long while. And, while I am a Democrat and might (might) have voted against him for Senate, I like Mike Castle and I am proud to have worked for him and to have known him in a minor way.

Mike Castle is a statesman. In a time of partisan divide, Mike Castle governed. In a time of anger and nastiness, Mike Castle led.

Christine O'Donnell is a joke and there is no way in hell I would ever vote for her for anything.

Now she faces Chris Coons in the general election.  Chris Coons has my vote. He has my support. He will have my energy and he will have large shoes to fill when he takes office after the general election.

More importantly, I want to thank Mike Castle for his outstanding service to the people of Delaware.

Mr. Castle, you have been an inspiration. Thank you.

Who is Using #NetDE on Twitter?

The #NetDE hashtag has become all-O'Donnell all the time lately, or so it feels. And I find I recognize few of the people using it.

The hashtag #netDE was originally declared as a way to flag tweets of interest to Delawareans among the Delaware twitter-users. But now it seems to be spammed-up without-of-state partisans interested in the Delaware Senate primary; especially since the national (?) tea party people decided to get involved in Delaware politics.

So I decided to do a brief, unscientific study and see just who is it that is using the #NetDE hashtag of late.

My survey covers the 12 hours between 8:53 a.m. and 8:53 p.m., Sunday, September 5. That's only because I had cleared my #NetDE column on TweetDeck a bit before heading out into the sunshine around 9 this morning.

Over 40 percent of the people using the #NetDE tag during that period were from out of state.  They were tweeting from Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and "The U.S.A." A few others had no location listed, but didn't appear to be Delawareans.

The non-Delaware folks accounted for more than a third of the #NetDE tweets.

And all of the non-Delaware people were tweeting about politics, from the right-hand side. In fact, two-thirds of all #NetDE tweets during the period were political; only a few of them from the left.

And what can we conclude from this not-very rigorous, not particularly scientific survey?

Politics can be annoying.

Local Politics: The Gloves? They Are Off

My neighbors here in the Lewes area will probably already have seen this, but for the rest of you, who maybe don't habitually follow Sussex County politics, here's an interesting moment and reaction from our County Council this week.

As Cape Gazette reporter Ron MacArthur wrote in his On the Circle blog, a Lewes woman had a bit of a run-in with some of the council members at their weekly meeting on Tuesday. Dixie Boucher, an active citizen, had come before Council to try to find out the status of proposed changes to the manufactured housing codes that she helped to write.

[She] blasted county council in one of the most tersely worded criticisms I’ve heard recently. She used words and phrases like “total lack of concern,” “abhorrent” and “detrimental” in her dissertation on the ills of county government.

Mr. MacArthur's post title -- "Just answer her question" -- tells the story. They didn't answer, apparently. Instead, Council member Sam Wilson (pictured above), never afraid to say what he's thinking, blasted her back.

Ron MacArthur doesn't give many details, but you get a pretty good sense of what must have been said from a letter to the editor from Ms Boucher that appeared in today's edition of the Gazette.

Her letter is titled "Everybody came here from somewhere." I include it below because the letters to the Cape Gazette don't get their own pages, or persistent URLs, on the paper's web site.

I often hear grumbling when, as “locals” call us,” transplants “ speak up with regards to issues affecting the county as well as the state. It is as if we do not exist.  We, appear to have no rights, and according to a statement by Councilman Sam Wilson at a recent council meeting, “People come here and they want more services and more government. I tell them to go home and then they come back and be glad to live in Sussex County.”

No surprise, but once again Mr. Wilson, you could not be more wrong. We “transplants” in most cases aren’t looking for more government; we just want the government, like your Sussex County Council, to be responsible in its conduct of county business. We want the council to hear what all the citizens say and want for Sussex County. And we want you and the other council members, Vance Phillips and Michael Vincent, to understand that an awful lot of the voters in this county, “locals and transplants alike,” are fed up with your “good old boy” attitude. It is not cute and it is not quaint and it is not good for Sussex County.

And by the way, I dislike the term “transplant.” We are citizens of this county and we pay taxes and spend our money and should have the same rights as “locals” do. Everybody, transplants and locals alike, came from somewhere. You didn’t just grow out of the dirt, did you?  And the reason you hear more from the eastern side of the county is because that is where most of the development is occurring, thanks to those who continue to approve it regardless of concerns about the effects.

Frankly, if the three primarily western council members are removed, it would be a blessing to the entire county and that is in reference to Sam Wilson, Vance Phillips and Michael Vincent. You all need to go.

I guess Sam Wilson isn't the only one around here willing to speak their mind.

Lessons in Civics and Satire from Jon and John

Jon Stewart and John Oliver performed a perfect satire of the current Congressional Health Care debate on The Daily Show last night.

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Fans? In January?

left behind
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Walking to the post office in Dover today, I went past Legislative Hall in Dover. Lying on the grass across from the Capitol Building were a pair of "lobbying fans" from a protest out there yesterday.

A group of workers -- union members in a variety of trades -- had turned out to urge the General Assembly to act to support job creation in Delaware. They were supported in part by the folks proposing a new horse-racing track and casino complex: DelPointe.

That project would require General Assembly action, and it would lead to jobs -- at least in the short and medium terms.

So the DelPointe folks brought hats and lobby fan signs to hand out. These fans are a long-standing tradition. They are cheap and easy to hand out and they function both as signs and, in warmer weather than we've had lately, as fans. They are handy when things get sticky in the heat of political debate.

It seemed odd to see them out there in January.

This demonstration also gave our Governor a leg-up to a great headline, by the way: Markell calms angry crowd of jobless.

The newspaper reports that the protest had gotten a bit heated when the Governor stepped-in and stepped-up:

The rally ended after Gov. Jack Markell, scheduled for an appearance a few feet away, climbed onto the front of a state police SUV to address the crowd through a megaphone, promising to work to bring jobs to Delaware.

Nice press if you can get it.

Oh, For The Love Of...

The following came in via e-mail today from the head of a local right-wing, anti-government, property-rights group:

Glenn Beck has announced he will be doing a series of documentaries on the history of the progressive movement. The first is this Friday.

The Glenn Beck program is on at 5 PM and 2 AM on the Fox News Channel. I have set my DVR.

I truly believe this series of documentaries will explain much of how we've gotten to where we are today.

Okay... I know this is ridiculous, but I also know that there are people who will take this seriously. And that makes me sad.

Roots of the Tea Party Party?

The "tea party" movement seemed to just appear last year. The link to the Boston Tea Party of colonial America seemed a little forced to me; why that connection? Why now?

Reason.com has an interesting post up today that provides, if not a full background, at least an interesting connection and a hint. The post -- The First Anti-Ted Kennedy Tea Party: Boston's Anti-Busing Brigades --includes news footage from 1974 of an anti-busing protest in Boston.


These protests were in response to the legal rulings that schools shouldn't be segregated. These are white people angry that they will now have to interact with black people.

They use the tea bag metaphor too.

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Dr. M.L. King

Unstable isotope has posted the full text of the speech at Delaware Liberal. So, naturally, I plugged that into wordle to create a word cloud of the speech.

A (Typically) Busy Weekend

We started our weekend Friday night at the Sussex Tech vs Smyrna High football game. It was the final home game of the season, and therefore Colleen's last game as a fan at Tech. Tech has a very strong team this season, so we wanted to see a game. They won.

We also wanted to see Tech's marching band. Matt Wilshire, long a classmate of Colleen's, is one of the drum majors. He is good at it and the band sounded good.

We were distracted, though, by the band teacher's running commentary over the PA system during the halftime show. He tried to hype it up, but just sounded silly and drowned out parts of the performance.

Saturday morning, I took a nice walk around town. It was a blustery, overcast sort of morning that turned into a stormy afternoon and evening.

The girls, meanwhile, were in a long rehearsal for the Nutcracker (performances the first week-end in December). Karen ran some errands and then did some shopping with Christina, who had a birthday party (costumed for Halloween) that evening.

Karen and I had a fine dinner date at the new Lewes-area Bethany Blues restaurant.

This morning, the girls performed with the Sussex Dance Academy at the Rehoboth Beach bandstand as part of the annual Sea Witch Festival. They did a great job.

After, as is our tradition for Sea Witch, we had a late lunch at Nicola Pizza with Andy and Lynn and their girls and with another of the dancers, her dad, and his folks.

The extra dancer and Dad were Hannah and Joe Powers. Joe teaches physics at Tech and is an interesting guy. I always forget, though, that he is also the brother of new Castle County Councilman Bill Powers. And their Mom is a retired educator who is also politically active. We had an interesting conversation -- lots of fun.

It was a busy sort of weekend.

Sussex County Politics Vignette #25

Former State Elections Commissioner and newspaper columnist Frank Calio has a new blog. Frank is from western Sussex County and is a long-time spectator of Sussex County's unique politics.

In a post from earlier in the week, he offers a classic moment from this week's Sussex County Council meeting. The Council was discussing a proposal, by Council President Vance Phillips (R), to cut funding to the three libraries that make up the county's Library system. The libraries would still get some state funds and most have local support as well.

During the debate Councilman Sam Wilson, (R) said he had never been inside a library which prompted a reply from Republican Councilman George Cole who said, “I kinda thought that Sam, but I never thought you would admit it.”

This will give you some idea of why I like George Cole so much. He is a straight-shooter sort. I don't agree with him much politically, but I like him and I enjoy talking with him about issues.

About Sam Wilson... all I can say is that I am not surprised.

I Think There's Still Hope For Bipartisanship

Karen and I walked into town this morning to vote in the special election to fill a state representative seat vacated when Joe Booth won an earlier special election to replace a state senator who passed away. Maybe I need to make a diagram?

At the polls, we found our local state senator, Republican Gary Simpson (Booth's new seat is west of us), and Tim Willard, who I think is a leader in the Democratic Party, chatting together. That's Gary on the left and Tim on the right.

It was nice to chat with them and it was a good opportunity to register a complaint.

We've had plenty of attention from the political parties leading up to this. It was a short, but intense campaign. I took in one of the two candidate debates that were held. And we've been getting multiple robo calls for a while now. From both sides and from a few outside groups as well. We are, frankly, tired of getting calls.

Both gentlemen accepted the complaint with good grace. In fact, they said we were not the only ones to complain.

But chatting with them also reminded me of one of the things I like about where we live. There are still, among the leadership of the Democrats and Republicans, kind and friendly people who work well together, even as rivals.

To be sure, there are also jerks and blowhards, but they tend to be on the fringes. When you get one on one with folks, it's still generally nice.

This is why Gary still gets my vote, most of the time. And it is one of the reasons why I voted (and I think Karen did as well), for Rob Robinson in this special election. Rob's mom is a Republican. In fact she was a former candidate for Congress for the Republicans But they are of what I think of as the Neither-Right-Wing-Nor-Left-Wing branch of Delaware politics. They are interested in public service.

I think that's a good thing and I hope we can keep it alive through the dark times we're seeing lately.

It's About "School" (Updated)

Pandora, over at DelawareLiberal has posted the text, as prepared for delivery, of the President's planned speech to students on Tuesday. I took the liberty of running it through wordle to see what the top 75 words would be.

Apparently, it's all about "School."

So much for "indoctrination."

There is an argument developing in the comments on Pandora's post that seeks to change the story about why there was an uproar. But one thing seems clear to me: It (the uproar) is pretty much just a load of crap and should be ignored. The problem I see is that uproar appears to be the preferred mode of public discourse these days.

It's a shame, really.

UPDATE: DelawareDem was kind enough to add a link to this post in another post on the subject on DelawareLiberal (turn-about=fair play?). The argument that ensued led me to try to do exactly the same wordle word cloud of a Ronald Reagan speech to students when he was president, back in 1988:


Please forgive the line on the left. I did a less accurate job with teh screen capture. It looks, from this, like Mr. Reagan's topic was a bit more political than Mr. Obama's.