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.

Painting a Railing: A Weekend Odyssey

Paint failure
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

I finally got around to painting the front door and the new railing we had added to the front stoop. It hasn't gone well.

Painting the door was not the problem. It needed a second coat, but will be fine. The railing, which is clad in white PVC, has been something of an adventure.

This photo is what we found this morning after painting the railing on Saturday afternoon. It wasn't all like this, but a lot was. I think the problem was that I painted too late in the afternoon on Saturday and the temperature fell too much for proper drying.

So. What to do? I toyed with washing the paint off, but that was painful and slow. And, as the day warmed up, I found that the paint was starting to dry.

So I doubled-down and added another coat during the heat of the day today. I imagine it will need more touch-up later, but I hope to get away with it.

This is, by the way, further evidence of why I am really not qualified to own a home.

Late Fall Golf

late fall golf
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

My golf-buddy Andy and I traveled north about an hour today to play a round of golf at Odessa National Golf Club in New Castle County. It's a course we've been hearing about and wanted to try. We took advantage of the (slightly) warmer weather today to give it a shot.

Odessa National is a tough course, and unforgiving. Neither of us played particularly well. But, we had fun.

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.

A Visit to Savannah

a long branch
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Karen and I are in Savannah, Georgia, for a long weekend. We're here partly in celebration of her birthday and partly just as a get-away. We both have election day off, and we both took Monday as well.

We're very much in low-key, chill mode. This is a great place for that. Savannah is, quiet simply, a lovely city. It is historic and southern and quiet yet hip and hopping with a strong college-town feel. The buildings are fascinating and the city layout is graceful, comfortable and a delight to walk about.

We've eaten at the Paula Deen restaurant (The Lady and Sons). That was somewhat by accident; we were looking for lunch after arriving about noon from the airport and that's the first place we came to. We've also eaten at a wonderful place called The Olde Pink House.

At one place, we looked over to the next table and saw a polo shirt with "Sussex County" written on it. I recognized Russ Archut, a retiree from the Sussex government in Delaware. We chatted over old times. The next morning, we found our carriage diver/tour guide had lived for a short time near Lewes, as a child. And our Olde Pink House waiter turned out to be a recent transplant from Annapolis whose vacation spot as a child was always Bethany Beach.

It's that sort of a place. like southern Delaware, in fact; a great place to visit that many people decide to stay in.

We've another day of wandering around with a camera ahead. We'll be back in time to vote on Tuesday.

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.

And So, We Enter... The Loop

This IS Getting Recursive!

This Could Get Recursive