Archives for November 2006

Sage advice from Atrios:

Well, 48 hours or so from now I’ll probably be contemplating my exit from our little CNN sponsored election night party, either so I can go celebrate in style away from the camera eye or to run away from the taunts of krempasky or boxturtle ben or assrocket or Captain Ed or who knows what kind of weirdass people will be there.

And, then, the next day we get to work. The big mistake in 2004 was that the netroots or whatever the hell we are at some point started deferring to the powers that be, and then post-election disillusionment combined with a leadership vacuum from those powers meant that things stagnated.

Either way, not this time. Time to keep marching. Worry about, and try to affect, the things you have some control over right now. Wednesday morning you can figure out how to do it better.

Last night after the show, us drunken bloggers stood in the rain while Mollie had a smoke, and we chatted a bit about our post-election narrative. I still think the Dems are going to pick up 30 to 40 seats in the House, and have a good shot at controlling the Senate. I also think that between Peter Goldmark and Darcy Burner we’ll pick up at least one seat here in Washington state. Statewide, I expect both evil initiatives (920 and 933) to go down in flames, while Democrats make modest gains in the state Legislature.

But there are many possible scenarios ranging from total victory to crushing defeat, to mixed results that given my high expectations will leave me feeling much less happy than I’ll have a right to be. Whatever the national results, if both Darcy and Peter lose I expect the (u)SP type folk to tease me mercilessly, but then, they’ve always missed the point: personally, as a liberal blogger and netroots activist I already won. The local netroots played a huge role in helping both Darcy and Peter make their races competitive beyond all the expectations, and while it is true that macro forces were largely responsible for creating the political climate that threatens to sweep the Democrats into power, if not for the netroots, half of the 50 most competitive House races would not have had Democratic challengers in a position to take advantage of the opportunity. This time last year, nobody in the political and media establishment could have anticipated the impact the liberal netroots would have on this election. Hell… I didn’t anticipate the impact we’d have.

I may slow down for a couple weeks after the election, just to take a breather and collect my thoughts. And maybe clean up my house. (Metaphorically and literally.)

But I promise you, this is only the beginning. Whatever Tuesday’s results, we will come back stronger and smarter and most definitely, better financed.

Ten years from now pundits will look back at the 2006 election as a turning point. From the class of Democratic freshmen elected this year will rise a new generation of political superstars and congressional leaders. And from the class of bloggers and net activists who helped elect them will rise a new generation of pundits, media personalities and party power brokers.

I honestly don’t know what my role will be in all this. A few years ago I was just some guy angry at the direction our country was going; I had no idea that a joke initiative, born of frustration, could launch me on a path where I could help shape headlines and influence elections. It’s been an enormously gratifying journey, though it’s left me flat broke with little income, at a time when I should be enjoying my peak earning years. If I can’t find a way to monetize my efforts, I’ll have no choice but to step back from full-time blogging and take some paying work, however trivial it might be.

But at this point I am absolutely confident that nothing can stop the netroots revolution from reshaping the Democratic Party and the way the media covers politics.

Enjoy tomorrow’s election, whatever the results. You are watching history.

I know this video is making the rounds, and Slog got it up first, but well, it’s worth the repetition.

It’s been a bird-free day — no Seahawks, no Eagles — so tune in for some political football tonight on “The David Goldstein Show” on Newsradio 710-KIRO, from 7PM to 10PM.

7PM: Do Republicans have a prayer? Seattle P-I political columnist Joel Connelly spent the day checking out the spirit at some of our local mega-churches, and he joins me in the studio to talk about Tuesday’s midterm election, and how the latest sex scandal might impact its outcome. We’ll also be getting a field report from fellow blogger TJ of Loaded Orygun, whose been following some very interesting ballot return trends that could have the red team feeling awfully blue down in the Beaver State.

8PM: Is flipping off the President a fireable offense? An Issaquah school bus driver gave President Bush the finger, and his fellow Republicans cheered when Rep. Dave Reichert took credit for getting the woman fired… credit which Reichert now says he doesn’t deserve. Taking Reichert at his word (that is, his latest word) what does this say about the first-term congressman’s character that he would actually brag about getting the single, working mom fired, when he says he had nothing to do with it? Chris Dugovich from the Washington State Council of County and City Employees will call in to give the driver’s side of the story, and we’ll be playing audio and taking your calls.

9PM: What do you get when you pack four drunken bloggers into the KIRO studio? Will, Mollie and Carl join me almost every week on Podcasting Liberally, recorded live at Seattle’s Montlake Alehouse, and they’ll be joining me in the studio for a Drinking Liberally roundtable discussion of electoral push. Is this the year a big blue wave sweeps the Democrats into power? Or will Karl Rove prove that American democracy is dead, and that nothing short of a violent revolution can dislodge the GOP from the reigns of power? Give us a call and let us know what you think, before all of us liberal bloggers are shipped off to Gitmo.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Democratic challenger Darcy Burner spoke at a rally this afternoon:

“A long time ago, the Republicans announced that Reichert had raised enough money to put this seat out of reach of any challengers,” Burner told the crowd. “They thought they could buy this seat. But I’m happy to tell you that about ten minutes ago, thanks to the thousands of supporters who have invested in this race, we passed the $3 million mark!”

Wow.

Reichert likes to belittle his opponent for her lack of experience, but Burner has outraised him in every filing period this year, and her $3 million-plus total ranks her amongst the five top Democratic challengers nationwide. Not bad for a political novice, huh?

That’s what hard work and smarts does for you.

I love Cliff Schecter.

Remember all those years when you’d watch some GOP SOB viciously shouting down some stiff, jaw-clenched Democrat who would just politely bend over and take it? Well no more. This is how the game is played, and unless everybody gets together and agrees to change the rules, this is how we’re going to play it.

A reader from Washington’s 2nd Congressional district forwarded me audio of this rather amusing botched robocall from Republican challenger Doug Roulstone. Or maybe it’s a botched robocall from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger. It’s hard to tell.

Ah well. So much for the Republican Party’s much-vaunted GOTV machine.

(Oh, and Doug… there’s no shame in losing. But there is shame in cynically questioning John Kerry’s patriotism as a desperate campaign ploy. This is how voters will remember you. If at all.)

Colorado Springs’ New Life Church just announced that it has fired Pastor Ted Haggard for his “sexually immoral conduct.” The much publicized meth and gay hooker scandal has elicited a little bit of soul searching and a lot hemming and hawing from Haggard’s fellow Evangelical leaders, but perhaps the most ridiculous response came yesterday from Pastor Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hills mega-church-wannabe. Writing in his personal blog, Driscoll offers his fellow pastors “some practical suggestions” on how to avoid the type of temptation that consumed Pastor Haggard. And near the top of his list?

“Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.”

Uh-huh. Leave it to a fundamentalist Evangelical preacher to have such a profound understanding of human sexuality. Or as the inimitable Dan Savage so aptly put it:

“I’m sure Ted Haggard is saying something along these lines to his wife right now: ‘Oh, honey… I wouldn’t have been having those meth-fueled ass-banging sessions with that gay hooker if you hadn’t have let yourself go like that!’ “

Of course, using Pastor Driscoll’s line of reasoning one would suppose about two-thirds of married, middle-aged Americans — men and women alike — to be meth-addicted homosexuals. Hmm. I haven’t looked at the statistics recently, but that figure strikes me as just a tad high… at least, outside of Colorado Springs.

But scroll further down Pastor Driscoll’s list and you’ll find some more useful suggestions on how to avoid temptation. Like a pastor should never travel alone, or freely give out his cell phone number, or hang out at places where he might come in contact with “lonely people”… you know… like at his own church. Pastor Driscoll also advises against keeping “a secondary email account from which to build a secret identity.” Personally, it never occurred to me to create a secret identity, but I suppose the prospect must have some appeal to joyless, rigidly moral, puritanical hypocrites like Pastor Driscoll and his colleagues.

But mostly what I’ve learned from Pastor Driscoll’s sage advice is that becoming a pastor is a great way to meet women. (And men, I guess.) Apparently, the ladies think pastors are hot:

“I have, however, seen some very overt opportunities for sin. On one occasion I actually had a young woman put a note into my shirt pocket while I was serving communion with my wife, asking me to have dinner, a massage, and sex with her. On another occasion a young woman emailed me a photo of herself topless and wanted to know if I liked her body. Thankfully, that email was intercepted by an assistant and never got to me.”

Pastor Driscoll has been “blessed with a trustworthy heterosexual male assistant,” and I’m sure he was equally thankful to intercept that scandalous email. Praise the Lord.

Wow. Mega-church preachers are like rock stars — there’s sexual temptation lying behind every pew. With office perks like that, even a secular Jew like myself might consider becoming an Evangelical preacher, except, unlike Pastor Driscoll, I’m not into all that kinky stuff:

“How can we proclaim that we are new creations in Christ if we continually return to lap up the vomit of our old way of life?”

Blyech!

If I ever find myself alone in a room with Pastor Driscoll, remind me to stay off the meth.

Oops. Republicans are getting testy:

Gov. Jeb Bush, traveling with the attorney general and fellow Republican during a stop in Orlando, bristled when television reporter Steven Cooper interrupted another reporter to ask about Crist’s sexuality.

“Put a smile on your face and don’t be such a horse’s ass,” Bush said.

I’m shocked. Absolutely shocked that a respected elected official like Jeb Bush would get the phrase “horse’s ass” into dozens of family newspapers. What is this world coming to?

I was on the phone with Darryl from Hominid Views and we were looking over state Sen. Luke Esser’s PDC filings, when a curious anomaly jumped out at us: Esser’s campaign seemed to have incurred an inordinately large expense in “bank charges.”

So we looked at Esser’s expenditure reports in greater detail, and this is what we found for “bank charges” over the life of his current campaign:

VENDOR	DATE	AMOUNT	DESCRIPTION
BANK OF AMERICA	06/06/2005	$16.00	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	11/07/2005	$1,471.17	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	11/07/2005	$5.00	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	05/24/2006	$100.00	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	05/24/2006	$5.00	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	05/30/2006	$16.75	BANK CHARGE
AMERICAN EXPRESS	06/19/2006	$32.50	BANK CHARGE
AMERICAN EXPRESS	06/26/2006	$17.55	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	07/03/2006	$446.04	BANK CHARGE
AMERICAN EXPRESS	07/11/2006	$9.75	BANK CHARGE
AMERICAN EXPRESS	07/26/2006	$1.63	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	08/01/2006	$43.34	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	09/01/2006	$48.40	BANK CHARGE
COMPLETE CAMPAIGNS	09/22/2006	$52.50	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	10/02/2006	$38.54	BANK CHARGE
COMPLETE CAMPAIGNS	10/03/2006	$7.50	BANK CHARGE
COMPLETE CAMPAIGNS	10/11/2006	$15.00	BANK CHARGE
COMPLETE CAMPAIGNS	10/20/2006	$39.38	BANK CHARGE
COMPLETE CAMPAIGNS	10/27/2006	$30.00	BANK CHARGE
BANK OF AMERICA	10/30/2006	$4.25	BANK CHARGE
Total Expenditures for this report: $2,400.30

Hmm. Notice something unusual? We sure did.

Over the past two years Esser reports bank charges of between $4.25 and $52.50, except in November of 2005 and July of 2006 when he reports astonishingly high charges of $1,471.17 and $446.04 respectively.

For the most part the report makes sense. It seems quite clear that the charges you see are either monthly service fees or transaction costs incurred taking contributions via credit card. But the $1,471.17 charge in particular is almost entirely inexplicable as a normal cost of doing business.

In fact, assuming this expense was properly reported as a “bank charge,” the only thing I can imagine that could possibly account for such high costs would be interest and penalties on an outstanding credit card or line of credit debt. And yet during this same period Esser’s campaign reports no liabilities whatsoever.

Now, I don’t actually like to engage in speculation, but I’m more than willing to do so when given no other choice, and since Esser’s campaign has not returned my emails or phone calls, here’s my guess at one plausible explanation: the $1,471.17 charge represents interest and penalties incurred on a campaign credit card that Esser used to cover his personal obligations. Esser eventually paid off the principal, but billed the finance charges and penalties to the campaign.

And keep in mind that this hypothesis was not developed in a vacuum. As was widely reported, Esser recently avoided an October court date with credit-card giant MBNA (a division of Bank of America) by paying off an outstanding $6,556.15 debt.

Darryl did manage to reach Esser’s campaign manager, and while he refused to comment on these specific charges, he suggested that perhaps these were credit card transaction fees.

Uh-huh. But that’s not possible. Even at a usurious 4 percent transaction fee rate, $1,471.17 would represent over $36,000 worth of contributions, whereas Esser only raised a few thousand dollars during this period, mostly in the form of big checks from PACs. And besides, Bank of America charges a monthly fee for “merchant services” regardless of the number of credit card transactions — the lack of other bank charges prior to May of 2006 strongly suggests that Esser’s campaign was not equipped to accept contributions via credit card at that time.

Of course there are other possible explanations — perhaps the $1,471.17 represents wire-transfer fees on illegal drug-money Esser was laundering through his campaign? Or perhaps Esser merely ordered some really expensive checks. But again, assuming this expenditure was correctly reported as a “bank charge” (and Esser actually amended the return on June 8, so you know they’ve reviewed it,) I still think that my hypothesis is the most plausible.

Darryl is scheduled to meet with Esser’s campaign manager Monday morning, and he will be given every opportunity explain these unusual bank charges. I suppose I could have waited to post until then, but that would just reward the campaign for delaying their response until the day before the election, when it would be too late for other members of the media to follow up.

So there you have it. If the Esser campaign can explain these bank charges, they know how to get ahold of me, and I suggest they do so now. Otherwise, I’ll just continue to speculate until they provide evidence to the contrary.

UPDATE:
Turns out, the expenditure wasn’t correctly reported as a “bank charge.” It was a check he had deposited in his account that didn’t clear. Darryl has the details.

I think that pretty much says it all.

Pastor Ted Haggard confesses:

Pastor Ted Haggard came out of his house Friday morning and admitted to 9NEWS that he bought meth from a gay escort in Denver. Haggard says he bought the meth from a gay escort, 49-year-old Michael Jones, after contacting him for a massage.

A “massage.” Um, yeah… massaging his penis.

Until yesterday’s scandal broke, Haggard was the pastor of a 14,000 member Colorado Springs mega-church, and the president of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals. He is also a close advisor to President Bush and the primary backer of Colorado’s anti-gay marriage amendment.

What with so many of our most prominent gay-bashers turning out to be closeted homosexuals, it’s almost getting to the point where straight men will start strutting their support for gay rights, as a sign of their own machismo. Fearful of being perceived as gay by bashing gays, men will start picking up women with slick lines like: “Hey babe, I support marriage equality for same-sex couples, how about you?”

(Actually, considering how my gay friends in college always had the most beautiful women hanging on them, I’ve often wondered if the most effective pick-up technique might be to actually pretend to be gay myself.)

Perhaps the most shocking part of these allegations is how unschocked most Americans seem to be about the news. A right-wing, gay-bashing evangelical preacher/politician outed as a meth-snorting closeted homosexual? Tell me something I don’t know. Jim West, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, the mule-fucking Rev. Neal Horsley… right-wing hypocrisy is now so commonplace it barely warrants a headline.

Still, you can’t help but believe that there will be political fallout from Haggard’s high-profile fall from grace as the Republican’s usually reliable evangelical base struggles to energize itself on behalf of a party that simply doesn’t practice what it preaches. I guess we’ll find out Tuesday.

Of course, the headline is a trick question, for it turns out Rep. Dave Reichert is both a liar and an asshole.

A few days back when I first posted on the Issaquah school bus driver who got fired for flipping off President Bush, I focused on the assholish side to Reichert’s personality… the fact that he’s so proud of his role in getting the driver fired that he made the incident a part of his stump speech. I wrote:

Flip off the President, lose your livelihood. That’s justice in Dave Reichert’s America, and shows you what a mean, sanctimonious, vengeful S.O.B. he can really be.

What could be more assholic than bragging about getting some poor bus driver canned for dissing the President? Hmm. How about fabricating your role in the entire incident?

In a bungled attempt at damage control, Reichert has recently attempted to minimize his role in the firing, telling KIRO-TV that he called the Issaquah superintendent a week after the incident happened because it was “bothering him.” But as David Postman reveals this morning, that’s not what Reichert told a crowd in August. Speaking at the King County Republican picnic, Reichert boasted about getting the driver fired:

And as the motorcade went by, the President and I drove by on I-5, the President was having a great time. He was waving at everybody, he waved at the kids. He got the biggest kick out of the kids leaning out the window to say hello to the President of the United States.

The sad part of it is though, we got to the last bus — and I won’t tell you which school district this was — the bus driver flipped the President off.

So the very next day, you know what I did? I called the superintendent of that school district and that bus driver no longer works for that school.

After raucous applause, Reichert told the crowd:

That’s the old sheriff part of me still around.

Really… cheering over somebody losing their job. What a bunch of assholes. (And if that really was “the old sheriff” part of Reichert, you’d think it would’ve taken 18 years for the driver to be fired.)

So Reichert tells a cheering crowd in August that he called the superintendent the “very next day”, but when the story blows up in his face he tells KIRO-TV that he waited a week to call. One way or the other, he’s lying.

And according to Michael in Postman’s comment thread, Reichert actually heard about the incident from a “school district insider,” prompting him to cook up his version as a stump speech crowd asshole pleaser.

So there you have it. If Dave Reichert really is such an asshole that his phone call led to the driver’s firing, then he lied to KIRO-TV in denying it. But if instead he lied on the stump, boasting about a role in a firing he didn’t really have… well, that just raises his assholosity to a whole new level.

Either way it doesn’t paint Reichert in a positive light. Unless of course, being a lying asshole is exactly the type of job experience you’re looking for in a congressman.

From Friday’s New York Times:

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.

Well, I don’t know about Iran, but I can certainly tell you that this is where I learned how to build my atom bomb. I’d already picked up some fissionable material at the local halal market and some aluminum tubes and other equipment at the Boeing Surplus Store, but I just couldn’t figure out the proper sequence for those damn nuclear firing circuits. Then the Bush administration put this handy-dandy how-to guide online, and I was well on my way towards making South Seattle a nuclear power.

Sure, it’s not much — ten, maybe fifteen kilotons tops — but I promise you, that’s the last time the District tries to close my daughter’s elementary school. (And if anybody from Sound Transit is reading this… you might want to consider putting the Graham Street station back on the Link Light Rail plans.)

All sarcasm aside, there’s a very serious point here, which can basically be boiled down to… what a bunch of clueless, blithering assholes:

The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents

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