Merit-bound Alley

Hey folks, check out this weeks ATHF even though M-BA got the finger this week around!

Brian with Delaware Libertarian will be tackling Around the Horn Friday this week. Send you submissions to pallikaros_at_yahoo_dot_com.

Assuming nothing horrible happens this week (I’m about due for that), I may even send in a submission!

Nancy takes on the link circus this week. Check it out!

Check out the Delaware Curmudgeon for this week’s ATHF!

Well well, welcome to version 2.0 of Around the Horn Friday! As you know, lots of DE Bloggers are now sharing the responsibility of sharing the love around. Let’s get into it. Enjoy!

Mike Mahaffie shares a walk down memory lane with an old photo of Glen Echo Park, where he worked as a lad and was the first place h ever saw the Muppets. Mike also shares some history of Glen Echo and how the park was important to him as a youngster.

Steve Newton, the Delaware Libertarian calls our attention to yet another windmill at which Huckabee tilts, under the title Wanted: 76,000 idiots in Colorado (and Mike Huckabee). Seems ol’ Gomer wants to make fertilized eggs people in the eyes of the law. Read, and see how this could affect in-vetro fertilization.

Tommywonk continues the worthy cause of educating us about wind power in Delaware. First, he gives us a reasoned discussion of the most current rise in our power costs and how wind power will protect us from this instability. He alo cal our attention to Fayette County, PA where wind power was killed. I’m sure we can all see the parallel between this and Bluewater’s current crisis at the hands of local Delmarva gimp, Harris McDowell. Tommywonk has also turned three, and a reader commented that she found Tommy by googling “eat your vegetables“. The message here is that veggies make you healthy and smart, just like Tommywonk. Tommy also has an op-ed about wind power in the NJ. Good work, Tom!

Dave Burris had some trouble lately with WGMD after he called it like it is on the topic of John Atkins. Dave offers an honest and brutal apology which basically translates to “John Atkins is still a despicable piece of human garbage, and by the way, kindly blow it out your ass”. If I wasn’t pasty white, I may have exclaimed, “Oh, snap!” Dave also calls our attention to four charts that meteorologist (not climatologist) Anthony Watts has used to debunk global warming in a few short paragraphs. Amazing! If only the global warming theory advocates had thought to look at charts! Oh, by the way, this has been pre-debunked by no less than NASA climatologists. Think I’ll have to go with FUCKING NASA on this one.

Counterpointing that, Jason Scott gives us a comparison of Dave’s situation to “the GOP game plan that Dave’s been a willing player in for as long as I’ve been blogging“. It’s Jason’s accurate point that Dave’s GOP is perfectly willing to use talk radio to run a smear for what is basically a small infraction. Interestingly, I’ve sen this on the entire spectrum of political radio. Also, Donviti calls our attention to the bait-and-switch regarding the GOPs love-baby, the virtual fence. I guess that since they already got the votes, they don’t need to make good.

Continuing with Atkins, out most surprising submission comes from Maria Evans of WGMD. Check out her radio coverage of: Atkins’ candidacy announcement and the swings at Dave Burris from Bunting and Hocker. I hope there was a toilet in front of these men to catch the amazing amount of bullshit coming out of their mouths. Also, check out her DNREC update for info on the situation with Indian River dumping toxic waste into our waters. Soon, Blinky will be a reality.

kavips also chimes in on the Atkins developments, not to decry the party-switching jackass, but to brutally call out his supporters. Support a drunken wife-beater for State Rep, will you? kavips, some good reasoning, and a broken beer bottle would like to talk to you outside, please. kavips also gives us some straight facts on the Senate hearing on the PBGC fund. This post is too in-depth and well-written to summarize and do it justice. Just read and learn.

Ch-ch-ch-changes! Shirley Vandever, our own Delaware Curmudgeon has joined the illustrious list of Delaware Independants, of which I am one. Welcome to disaffection with the two-party system, Shirley! Take a gander at her well-reasoned points, and please ignore that she voted for Bush in 2004. “Be to her virtues very kind. Be to her faults a little blind.”

On the music front, nemski has some music up from The Mother Truckers. Nemski has a great blog for music that is freely available on the net, and a lot of it is worth a listen. A lot od it is country, which my wife will love, but makes me wish my slowly fading sense of hearing would just hurry the fuck up. He also posts the odd bit of electronica, which I eagerly await. HINT HINT

Ryan S mourns the passing of William F. Buckley, the man who brought intelectualism to conservatism, then watched his hard work slowly suffer and die with George W. Bush. Ryan also warns us of the inevitable War of the Machines. Grab your tinfoil hats and take a read!

Duffy’s appliance woes continue with some fairly standard support from the repairman. Just get a new dishwasher, man! It’s not worth the pain!

Delaware Watch tackles McCain’s bafflement regarding the war in Iraq. Will it be a century, a few short weeks, or the beautifully vague soon? Dana (or Steve; I wish they’d use separate logins) also discusses whether or not the Honorable Susan DelPesco will be running for Governor. The verdict: dunno, but probably not.

At DWA!, Mat Marshall would like us to looks some Stuff White People Like, while Discourse provides a bit of proof that humanity is a learning animal. Mike Matthews also looks into Susan DelPasco’s possible gubernatorial run, with an extra tidbit of interesting info.

Liberal delight has a post about the beginning of the swiftboating of Obama, and another about environmental consequences of the elections.

Nancy at Delaware Way informs us of the judges denial of Rep. Nancy Wagners motion to dismiss the charges against her. Justice may prevail, after all. We are also treated to McCain’s ratings in regard to childrens’ issues and coverage of DelDOT funding, with a note about how Paul Clark profits from his wife’s contract deals with transportation and sewer companies.

And finally, at Colossus of Rhodey, Hube brings our attention to an issue that Barack Obama had in 2003 with voting “present” on a bill that would “define as ‘a person’ a baby that was born and had survived an abortion. Hube alleges prevarication from Obama when he voted against a bill that held wording that he said he would vote in favor of. Interestingly, no text of the bills is presented. Someone may want to look a bit deeper into that.

And this brings to a close the first edition of the new and improved Around the Horn Friday. If anyone was late in submitting, I would be more than happy to make some addendums, but just this once! This was a lot of fun to do, and I’m glad to have seen and read so many excellent articles. I also have a newfound respect for Jason, LG, and kavips for doing this regularly, because Holy Shit, what a lot of work! Thanks for participating folks, this was great!

The next Around the Horn Friday will be hosted by…. *blindfolded pointing*…. Shirley Vandever, the Delaware Curmudgeon! Send next week’s submissions to svandever_at_gmail_dot_com. To help Shirley out, send your submissions with the subject line “ATHF submission”. It was a pain to find them all in my gigs of email

Get your submissions in for Around the Horn Friday! We have some great stuff for our cardinal run, and the post is being written as we speak. Inclusion does not require submission, but if you have something you particularly like, get it to me: jmadjeski_at_gmail_dot_com.

Also, join me tonight on my first time with Drinking Liberally. Starts tonight at 7PM at Timothy’s on the waterfront. I’ll be the ugly fatass wearing a workshirt with a patch that reads “Geek”.

As liberalgeek said, yesterday was the last day of the old ATHF format. You may be wondering, “What’s the new format?” Well, it’s pretty much the same thing with one two important differences:

1. ATHF will be hosted in a round-robin format by volunteer bloggers. Any Delaware blogger can volunteer to host.
2. Along with going out and finding stories that the host likes, the host will now be accepting submissions of stories that the DE bloggers are particularly proud of. Therefore if you write something damned good, you send it to the host for that week, and it will be featured on ATHF.

Submissions will be accepted from any DE blogger through Thursday, but please try to have them in as soon as you can to make it easier on the host. There will be a note in the current ATHF as to who the next host will be. Submissions must have written content, and for the sake of community-building cannot be ad hominem attacks on another blogger, though feel free to post counters to seomthing another blogger has written.

Currently, our volunteers for hosting are:

1. Delawareliberal.net
2. Pencader Days
3. Down With Absolutes!
4. Delaware Curmudgeon
5. kavips
6. Jokers to the Right
7. Mike’s Musings
8. Tommywonk
9. Merit-Bound Alley

If I missed anyone or others would like to host (it would be great to see more representation from the conservative bloggers out there), let one of us know!
Next week’s Around the Horn Friday will be hosted by me, so send your submissions to jmadjeski_at_gmail_dot_com.