Archives for October 2007

(h/t Chevy Chase)

Speaking of fake news, didja hear the one about FEMA’s fake news conference this week, featuring friendly questions from “reporters” who turned out to be FEMA staffers?

Weekends are the slowest time for actual news, and the time when the fewest people pay attention to the news, which is why so many interesting things happen Friday afternoon. The Bush administration in particular has perfected the art of the Friday Afternoon News Dump ™, in which embarrassing or unflattering news items are released at the very close of business Friday so as to show up, largely unnoticed, in Friday’s late-night news and the lightly read Saturday morning papers. It’s a cute (and often effective) way to bury a story.

No apparent FANDs today, though. The New York Times does have a nice piece on the real significance of George Bush’s tough new sanctions against Iran: the fact that they’re being carried out unilaterally, walking away from both the support of European allies and the diplomatic process the Europeans have championed. Pointedly, the sanctions came without any parallel diplomatic overtures. Another sign pointing toward the Bush cabal’s intent for war with Iran.

Back in the old war (well, the most recent of the old wars), the Iraqi government announced yesterday that it is revoking the law guaranteeing immunity for U.S. contractors. Of course, it still has to catch them, which, without cooperation from the U.S., will be virtually impossible, so it is in many ways a meaningless gesture. As is the Iraqi government itself.

The top local story: Puget Sound Energy’s sale, to an investment company comprised of Canadian and Australian firms — though you have to read to near the end of the P-I’s story to pick up on that nugget, or that the sale will take PSE private so that the utility’s finances will not be open to public inspection except during rate hikes.

The Bothell Times, on the other hand, has nothing at all on the PSE sale, but does have a lead story using a confirmed grand jury involvement to recycle the week-old news of rape allegations against illusionist David Copperfield

The P-I pulled the same stretching-for-a-story trick with a piece on the SEC investigating insider trading at Jones Soda. Well, maybe they are. Turns out the whole story is based on the paper’s reading of an SEC refusal of a FOIA request from the newspaper. That’s the basis for more digging, but not for a story in itself. Unless it’s Saturday and you’ve got space to fill.

And why is the P-I also flogging next Monday’s (sold-out) Hannah Montana Key Arena show on its front page, with not one but two stories? (The word “pandering” springs to mind — specifically, to kids who think their parents’ newspaper is boring.) Telling us above the fold that a Disney Channel teen sensation has fans who are teenagers is many things. “News” is not one of them.

Oh: while I’m here (and since Goldy does this so shamelessly, why shouldn’t I?), I’m on the radio this and every Saturday morning (and have been since 1996) from 8:30-9 AM, commenting on the news of the week on Mind Over Matters on KEXP-90.3 FM. The show is also archived, for those of you who don’t get up that early in the morning on a weekend; check it out at www.kexp.org.

Well, at UW and at campuses across the country, Islamofascism Awareness Week has come and gone, with no increasing awareness that anyone has noticed regarding the shibboleth of “Islamofascism.” But there’s been plenty of “awareness” (or at least air time) given to its sponsor, David Horowitz. Now, via Talking Points Memo, we know why. In an interview with the George Washington University student paper The Hatchet, Horowitz says:

“I’m a prominent conservative but no one is inviting me to speak at their campuses, [so] I had to create an event.”

There you have it. Horowitz acts not out of concern for the safety of the republic, but to enrich himself, in this case through speaking gigs. All that’s missing is a cozy Bush administration regulatory appointment to feather the nest for himself and his friends. Oh – wait – the whole point is that Horowitz doesn’t seem to have friends. Hence the public spectacle to create invitations.

And funny how if you substitute the word “events” for “campuses,” and “organization” for “event,” Horowitz’s words could have come right out of Dino Rossi’s mouth circa Forward Washington days. Hmm.

I’m filling in for Frank Shiers tonight from 9PM to 1AM on News/Talk 710-KIRO, and in tribute to my mentor and friend, I won’t believe in global warming for the entire first hour.

Bill Monto from Simply Better Schools joins me for the first hour to talk about 4204, the constitutional amendment to pass school levies by a simple majority vote. Then Dave Neiwert of Orcinus stops by to talk about the Southern California wildfire’s, and the wingnut response.

After that, I’ll rant about stuff. Or something. Tune in.

Republican Dan Satterberg is back up on the airwaves again just a week and a half before the November election, touting his “non-partisanship” in the very partisan race for King County Prosecuting Attorney. Media observers tell me that Satterberg has booked $180,000 of TV and radio time, an extraordinary amount for a campaign that just ten days ago reported just $126,000 cash on hand.

How can he afford it? Well it looks like Satterberg is plowing everything into broadcast while the Washington State Republican Party picks up the rest of the tab via in-kind expenditures… and man is it shaping up to be some tab. The WSRP “Non-Exempt” Committee has hauled in nearly $170,000 over the past couple weeks, including $25,000 a pop from Martin Selig and Bruce McCaw, and $50,000 from diminutive Eastside developer Skip Rowley. Oh, they’ll say the money wasn’t earmarked but we all know that’s not how this game works, and reliable sources tell me that Rowley has said his primary motivation is to get a Republican on the King County Elections Canvassing Board.

That “Republican” would be Dan Satterberg.

I always expected Democrat Bill Sherman to be outspent two-to-one, but even against those odds I honestly always expected him to win. But four-to-one? It doesn’t look so good. You just don’t win a relatively low-profile race like this when you’re opponent is steadily up on TV, and you’re limited to direct mail. I find it incredibly disheartening to see Democrats allow Republicans and their developer patrons to buy this election with cold hard cash.

Daily Kos:

The candidate, Cheryl Haskins, is the Executive Director of an anti-gay marriage group, and her husband is a pastor of a conservative megachurch north of the city. She is African-American, a fact which makes her candidacy attractive to many voters in the racially diverse community, which currently has no people of color on its city council. Until recently, however, her anti-gay political activism and ties to the Religious Right were not part of the political discourse, and with her campaign signs and huge billboards plastering the city, she was destined to win the election without controversy.

Only five percent of Haskins’ contributions have come from within the city of Renton. This isn’t so great for a self proclaimed ten-year resident.

Haskins’ is also on the board of Alliance for Marriage and Children along with her husband Aaron Haskins, who is employed by City Church in Kirkland. A huge amount of Haskins’ contributions have come from donors with ties to City Church. (Ties to working-class Renton? Not so much.) We should all remember that Alliance for Marriage, with all their feel-good, up-with-people rhetoric, worked hard to protect an employers ability to fire a person simply for being gay or lesbian.

For more info, check out rentonfacts.

The Morning After: Engadget does an MRI and issues a clean bill of health. Seattle Times Mac heads Glenn Fleishman and Jeff Carlson weigh in and promise more to come, which is good. My chief complaint with tech reviews is that they’re superficial and way too early to be meaningful. Yet reviewers hardly ever revisit a system because there’s always something new and fresh to promote.

My early take: Leopard is a great upgrade, but Apple shouldn’t be charging $129 for these incremental pops. A $60 or so price tag would be more reasonable. Apple likes to talk about the fact it issues 5 upgrades to every 1 for Windows, but neglects to mention that means (using Apple’s own math) Mac users are paying $600 or more while Windows users pay $200 to $300. Of course, when the Windows upgrade is a turkey like Vista, you can certainly argue Mac users get the better value per buck.

Meanwhile, earlier on the same page:

UPDATE: Lines have been reported outside Apple stores in the Bay Area. But U Village’s store is closed for renovation, which a steady stream of disappointed customers today apparently did not know. Alderwood Mall had long enough lines so that folks were still waiting an hour and half after opening. Same story at Bellevue Square.

A friend reports his brother-in-law on Capitol Hill didn’t get Leopard, then called, and they re-delivered (FedEx claimed they’d been out but he wasn’t home, although the guy had been home all day). FedEx was delivering something like 135,000 in the region today, they told him…

Dave Winer will get his copy of Leopard today after all. But just in case, and as a great-idea, truth-squadding, follow-on to tonight’s rollout, Winer came up with a plan to “flash conference” Leopard on Monday. We’ll follow this with interest.

Chuck Shotton has discovered a bug! “Leopard’s “migrate user” function has failed 3 times on 3 separate clean installs. This is a seriously broken, critical piece of the OS.”

Meanwhile, Sylvia Paull has fallen victim to the Apple gateway drug.

And just be glad you’re not a Windows user: “Something seems to have gone horribly wrong in an untold number of IT departments on Wednesday after Microsoft installed a resource-hogging search application on machines company-wide, even though administrators had configured systems not to use the program.”

And FYI… I’ll be filling in for Frank Shiers tonight on 710-KIRO from 9PM to 1AM. As always, in tribute to my mentor and friend, I will not believe in global warming during the first hour.

Puget Sound Energy has agreed to be acquired by a consortium of Australian and Canadian investment funds for $30 a share, a 25-percent premium over Thursday’s closing stock price of $23.95. PSE is Washington state’s largest private utility, serving over 1 million electric and 718,000 natural gas customers throughout the region.

After years of record trade deficits, isn’t it comforting to know that at least one segment of US exports is still going strong?

What will this mean for customers? Well, the deal still needs to be approved by shareholders as well as regulators at both WUTC and FERC. And of course, rate hikes will remain subject to regulation. But by taking the company private and delisting its stock, the new owners won’t need to provide the same sort of detailed financial reporting the SEC requires of public corporations.

Filling in late nights at 710-KIRO during last year’s extended, post-windstorm blackouts, I fielded dozens of angry calls from PSE customers complaining that the infrastructure had not been adequately maintained, and that the company was slow to bring in outside crews to get ex-urban neighborhoods back on the grid quickly. Will the new, privately held PSE really invest in improving service? Or will they just suck profits out of their captive customers? While I had my own complaints about Seattle City Light’s performance, I’m personally much more comfortable relying on a public utility for such a vital service, than a foreign-owned, private monopoly… especially in our increasingly volatile and expensive energy market.

Oh, man… it’s not so easy doing this morning news headline thing, when some of the most tempting news stories aren’t really news after all.

Take for example, Dino Rossi’s “long-expected” campaign kickoff. The Seattle P-I headline trumpets “Rossi back on the campaign trail.” But was he ever off it? Um… no. As the Seattle Times points out, “the overarching theme of Rossi’s hourlong speech was retreaded from his 2004 campaign”… you know the same retreaded speech he’s been giving throughout the state for the past year or so.

So not exactly news, unless, of course, you’re Postman: “I have to admit to thinking the chances were 50-50.” Uh-huh.

Know what else isn’t news? Rossi’s campaign theme, which includes (SURPRISE!) cutting taxes!

“[Gov. Gregoire] has since raised taxes on gas, many families who have lost loved ones, and in other sectors.”

Sure, you betcha… voters are gonna be awfully damn pissed off about those gas and estate taxes that they, um, you know… overwhelmingly approved at the polls.

Yeah, it’s not gonna be so easy for Rossi in 2008 because this time around I’m guessing reporters are actually going to ask him actual questions about where he actually stands on actual issues. Like SCHIP. The US House just passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program a second time, though not by a large enough margin to override a second promised presidential veto. In an email to supporters today, Gov. Chris Gregoire makes no bones about where she stands on extending health care to over 4 million children, and defending WA’s gains against President Bush’s “draconian measures.”

Let me be crystal clear about one thing regarding these threats from George W. Bush and the Republicans: I won’t back down.

Earlier this month, I joined with a group of fellow governors to fight back against this irresponsible Bush policy in the federal courts. And I will continue to work closely with the members of our delegation in Washington, DC to make sure we deliver for the children of our state.

As your governor, I have fought for and expanded health care access to an additional 84,000 children – and here in Washington we are on track to provide access to health care for every single child in Washington by 2010.

This fight over children’s health care represents a fundamental difference in values that will define the choice in the upcoming election. George W. Bush and the Republicans’ priorities put them squarely outside the mainstream in our state.

We’re doing right by Washington’s children, and as governor I won’t back down.

I guess this is what Rossi means when he talks about Gregoire being “the governor for the government, not the governor for the people,” because you know… children aren’t people. (Unless they’re fetuses.)

When a governor speaks this boldly and this bluntly, that’s news, whereas the fact that the moon is big and fishing is catching on as a college sport, is not. Also not in the news today is NBA commissioner David Stern criticizing Seattle as heartless for not throwing half a billion dollars at the Sonics’ Oklahoma City owners, nor Bush leading us inexorably toward war with Iran. Whereas very, very rich people spending enormous sums of money on luxury travel, well, that always deserves a front page story. Who knew?

If the cream rises to the top, then the Seattle City Council is the political equivalent of a nonfat, decaf cappuccino: there ain’t nothin’ on top but foam. In fact, the choices this cycle are so unsatisfying that if some of the candidates were running unopposed I’d still have a tough time making a decision. Still, there’s one race where the choice seems clear.

On the one hand we have council wallflower/campaign warmonger David Della, who City Hall observers assure me, really is the incumbent. My handful of brief conversations with Della don’t quite give me a fair basis for concluding, as the The Stranger has, that he “simply isn’t intellectually fit to be on the council”… but then, they don’t give me much to refute the assertion either. I’m no fan of the Sierra Club right now, but accusing the environmental community of being a bunch of racists…? I’ve known mildly autistic people with better political instincts. Really.

Then on the other hand, we have Tim Burgess, a man who has spent the better part of a decade writing fundraising letters for anti-gay, anti-woman, right-wing hate groups… letters that equated homosexuality with pedophilia and emergency contraception with abortion, and that accused the National Education Association of seeking to turn our public schools into gay propaganda and recruitment camps. Really. Sure, he says his positions have evolved… since 2005… but I can’t help but think he thinks we’re all stupid. No doubt he’d bring a great deal more competency to the council than Della — a great, great, great, great deal more competency, I imagine — but competency in the service of an agenda I do not trust, I can do without.

That’s why I’m unreservedly casting my ballot for Heidi Wills.

Wills was a promising young councilmember on the fast track to bigger and better things, when our mind-fuckingly puritanical media crucified her on a demi-scandal of no great significance, before Della and his political hatchet-man swooped in with their mean-spirited and misleading “Rate-Hike Heidi” campaign. It’s amazing what one can accomplish with a little alliteration.

So for all you assholes complaining about your choices this cycle, but who bought into that crap four years ago (or, who like the Seattle Times, just seem to hate the notion of young women in politics,) I’ve got a simple seven-word, bumper sticker response: “Don’t blame me, I voted for Heidi.”

Generally, I don’t recommend throwing away a vote under any circumstances, but perhaps if enough people write-in Heidi or the person of their choice, it might send a message that Seattle voters have a hunger for candidates who are both qualified and clearly represent their values. Perhaps then, four years from now, we might get a field of challengers we can vote for without sticking our fingers down our throats afterwards.

(Or, if you can’t do that, vote for Della. He’ll be the easier one to beat in four years.)

I’m sure more will be written later about Dino Rossi’s announcement, but at Effin Unsound, I thought this was a good opportunity to put together a compilation of his idea man’s greatest hits.

COMPLETELY UNRELATED UPDATE: The Birds Eye View Contests are back…

Apple releases Leopard, or OS X 10.5, tomorrow, and already there are reviews galore. David Pogue in The New York Times does a good rundown of features (and undoubtedly will soon issue a weighty tome on the operating system) and Steven Levy has a chaotic video review (not embeddable, sorry) on the Newsweek site which proves he should probably stick with print.

These early reviews are mostly promotional, of course. Reviewers aren’t supplied the software (which is usually pre-release, remember) far enough ahead to provide time for a thorough treatment, a practice aimed partly at preventing them from finding a real bug or gotcha. For a real hoot, go back and look at the early reviews of Windows Vista, compared with the universal disdain today.

Whereas you’ll be able to buy the system tomorrow, I’m told at various outlets that you will not be able to purchase Macs with pre-installed Leopard tomorrow. Instead, there will be a three-week (or so) waiting period while Apple sells off remaining computers with the old system. Of course, this is pre-sale information. Apple has a knack, courtesy of the Barnumesque genius of Steve Jobs, for popping the unexpected on a product rollout.

What may happen is this: A new line of re-upped notebooks, Leopard-optimized, at prices slightly higher than their existing, non-Leopard counterparts. You decide on price. That accelerates both ends. Gotta-have types who want the new system will pay the premium, but people who figure hey, I can install it myself, will go for the suddenly “bargain-priced” units.

I’d go further and say this might be the time to bring out the long-rumored Apple “flash” Mac (in whatever configuration) — the diskless (that’s right, no CD or DVD) cross of the iPod with a full-keyboard Mac. But it may be too early for that, and in any case such an announcement would be a blow-off-the-doors coup that deserves showcase treatment rather than a Leopard-rollout afterthought.

It ain’t much fun being a Republican these days, which explains Republican KCPAO candidate Dan Satterberg’s attempt to shroud himself in non-partisanship. But in an electoral system where political money seems to gain more First Amendment protections than political speech, the money speaks loud and clear.

A quick peek at the latest PDC filings shows Satterberg the happy recipient of $10,742 of in-kind contributions from the Washington State Republican Party, and $23,400 from the King County Republican Central Committee — most of it in the last two weeks. If Satterberg isn’t a loyal Republican, he’s certainly fooled the GOP.

Satterberg also received (and then gave back) contributions totaling $770 from KCRCC vice-chair Lori Sotelo (she of bogus voter registration challenge fame,) whose short list of contributions this cycle consists entirely of fellow elephants: the WSRP, the KCRCC, Jane Hague, and nominally non-partisan but obviously-Republican Mercer Island city council candidates Steve Litzow and Mike Cero.

In fleeing his party identification, Satterberg has repeatedly said that he would push to make the Prosecutor’s office officially non-partisan, but that would be as big a lie as his current campaign. There are plenty of “non-partisan” races in the region, and in almost every case, we know exactly who the Democratic and Republican candidates are… indeed, the only races Republicans seem to be able to win these days are the “non-partisan” ones. That’s why in addition to giving to Satterberg, the WSRP has also given identical $10,742 contributions to Republicans Bill Bryant and Bob Edwards in their supposedly non-partisan Seattle Port Commission races, while Sotelo recently gave Bryant a $1000 last minute contribution.

State and local party organizations are not in the habit of giving money to non-partisans or independents or whatever it is Satterberg fancies himself these days. The Republican Party is investing tens of thousands of dollars in Dan Satterberg because they expect his election to pay off dividends down the road. And if elected, it will.

Looking around at photos and video from the SoCal wildfires, I don’t see too many black faces. In fact, I don’t recall having seen a single black face. Which makes me wonder if all the comparisons of the fires with Katrina, from the headcounts to the Bush Administration’s (supposed) response, are missing a singular point.

Not to minimize the plight of the wildfire evacuees, it needs to be pointed out that they are (appear to be, till statistical analysis is done) mostly white (undoubtedly Latino will tally as well), mostly politically conservative (with at least a tinge of religiosity), and mostly well to do (especially contrasted with Katrina victims) if not rich by general American standards. There’s some grim irony, too, in the “we take care of our own” pledges emerging from wildfire coverage. The caretakers and the caretakees look a lot alike.

Where are the stories of widespread looting? Where are the paramilitary and outside police forces called in to maintain law and order? How many bands of wildfire refugees have been blocked from crossing bridges into neighboring jurisdictions, or turned away by bayonetted soldiers from returning to the site of their homes? Where are the bulldozers, scraping down houses that might be rebuilt?

And the pets. Any pet owner (I’m one) was sickened by the wrenching site of animals wandering around lost after being forcibly abandoned by their owners. Remember the video of the little white dog jumping up to the closed doors of the evacuation bus? Cut to San Diego, where entire “pet evacuation centers” have sprung up.

You had people dying in the Superdome, while Qualcomm Stadium abounds with stories of Starbucks’ lattes and human kindness. You had repeated suggestions that Katrina victims would simply have to relocate elsewhere, that New Orleans could — even should — never be rebuilt in its former image.

In a way, it’s too bad that the SoCal inferno didn’t happen a couple of years before Katrina. Then the “lessons learned” mantra (which, of course, has yet to be proven sincere) would have a truer test, and more meaningful execution. As it stands, the still unwhole citizens of New Orleans must be viewing the collective response to their supposed brethren halfway across the continent with a mixture of envy and disgust.

With less wind & cooler temps, things are settling down: The wildfires in Los Angeles & San Bernardino Counties have come under control. Farther south in San Diego, things look better, but it’s still a battle. Preliminary damage estimate: over $1 billion.

But in Northern Iraq, things are heating up: the Turkish military yesterday attacked Iraq border regions. The British newspaper The Independent profiles both anti-Kurdish nationalism sweeping Turkey in anticipation of war and the Kurdish fighters the Turks are after.
And the P-I today is carrying an AP story on Iraqi Kurds getting ready to fight Turkey when it invades. Meanwhile, the U.S. is telling its puppet Iraqi government (over which it has little remaining influence) to tell the Kurdish provincial government (over which the Iraqis have zero influence) to curb the Turkish Kurdish rebels in mountainous rural areas (over which the provincial Iraqi Kurds have no influence). That’ll fix it.

The big local story is a business story: Microsoft had plowed plowed $240 million into buying 1.6 percent of the social networking site Facebook, beating out Google & Yahoo in negotiations. Most stories on the transaction spent a few quality seconds with a calculator and announced that this prices Facebook’s overall value at a preposterous $15 billion; scroll down for Paul’s perceptive HA comments on why it just ain’t so.

Elsewhere in the dailies, in the same year that 70% of Seattle voters rejected a waterfront tunnel as too expensive, the P-I’s front page today is floating (so to speak) the idea of an SR 520 tunnel (of indeterminate cost) under Montlake Cut, and/or Portage Bay, and/or even all of Lake Washington. Their upshot: heck, a little studying never hurt anyone, right? Especially when it mollifies wealthy Montlake and Laurelhurst residents and enviros concerned about the Arboretum. Then why are voters already being asked to approve money for SR 520 construction in the current Prop One “Roads & Transit” vote? Who’s paying for these probably-to-be-ignored studies, why weren’t these options considered earlier in the process, and how much are these nods to community process belatedly costing taxpayers now?

A moose bit my sister once.

Meanwhile, a day after profiling Richard Pope on its front page, the Seattle Times returns the favor for troubled incumbent Jane Hague.

And Boston crushed Colorado in the first game of the World Series, 13-1. And the Red Sox Nation rejoices.