Archives for July 2009

Yesterday the headlines blared “Train Kills Man,” in what the media widely reported as Link Light Rail’s first fatal “accident,” even though it was clear from the circumstances and eyewitness accounts that the man threw himself in front of the train. Well today, the King County Medical Examiner’s Office rules the death a suicide… but does that mollify the knee-jerk, anti-rail zealots? According to the Seattle Times’ comment threads, um… no.

This story still sounds fishy.

They were calling it a “suicide” before much was known.

Let’s see… a man climbs over a Jersey barrier along a non-pedestrian, transit-only corridor, and in cover of darkness, leaps in front of a moving train. Sounds like murder to me!

More amusing is the fact that the Times apparently felt the need to prematurely close the comment thread after only ten comments, seven of which they had to remove, I assume due to offensive or inappropriate content. Geez… and folks think my comment threads are a sewer.

Note to future candidates: Cindi Laws, the campaign manager for mayoral wannabe James Donaldson and City Attorney Tom Carr… I think she may be crazy.

But then, all us Jews do stick together, so don’t listen to me.

My recent post on Rick Steves interest in running for Rep. Jay Inslee’s seat should it come open received an enthusiastic response for bloggers and commenters nationwide. But it also drew a denial from Ashley Sytsma, the publicist at at Rick Steve’s Europe Through the Backdoor:

I think you were right when you wrote that Rick has one of the best jobs in the world. Right now he’s in Europe researching his guidebooks and writing scripts for upcoming Rick Steves’ Europe episodes. If you’re interested, you can read more about it in Blog Gone Europe.

As for any political aspirations, you can be assured that he has no intention of running for office. As a supporter of the Democratic Party, he occasionally contributes his time by speaking at local fundraisers and events.

Okay. I guess I’ve got no particular reason not to take Steve’s publicist at her word. But then, 2012 is still a long ways off, so Steve’s got plenty of time to change his mind.

UPDATE:
Turns out, speculation about a Steves run first hit print way back in December.

Bill O’Reilly is the dumbest man alive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyj1DSEQuy0[/youtube]

Does the heat have you feeling disorderly or acting stupidly? Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence, where the lion will have a refreshing beer with the lamb.

This little taste of beer diplomacy takes place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. tonight beginning at 8:00 pm. Or stop by earlier for dinner.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRs28aO-mYs[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 335 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

The thermostat in my livingroom only goes up to 90, so I don’t really know how hot it is, but to put my personal discomfort in perspective, it’s at least 32 degrees warmer than I keep it during the winter.

I know it would be just as silly to blame this particular heat wave on global warming as it is when the science deniers at, say, (u)SP cite an unusually cold day as evidence to refute it, but the climate change models do project warmer, dryer summers for the Pacific Northwest. So at the very least, I guess we better get used to it.

I miss the rain.

The Seattle Times editorial board argues today that bipartisanship is needed on healthcare reform, and I don’t necessarily disagree that bipartisanship would be the preferable course of action… that is, depending on what one means by bipartisanship.

If by bipartisanship one means representatives and senators from both parties working together with the genuine interest of the American people at heart, well then, I suppose that would be a good thing. So too would world peace. But if we mean bipartisanship in the way it was understood during the eight years of the Bush administration—essentially, the D’s caving and voting with the R’s—well then, fuck that.

Now, I don’t expect the opposite, but the truth is, elections matter. Just this past November voters gave the Democrats control of the House and the Senate and the White House, and by comfortable margins. So while serious Republicans deserve a seat at the table, they have to understand that the broad outlines of this healthcare reform plan will be shaped by the D’s, not the R’s. And any such plan without a robust public option is simply unacceptable.

If reasonable R’s and blue dog D’s want to use what leverage they have to help shape the details so that the public option really is just an option, and that it doesn’t duplicate some of the same problems that already exist in Medicare and Medicaid, then have at it. But if Republicans draw the line and say they will not support any plan that includes a public option, then bipartisanship is simply out of the question. They lost the last election, and they simply don’t have the right to expect such demands to be met.

After all, the whole purpose of healthcare reform is to actually reform healthcare, not just to claim you have.

President Obama has already proven himself more than willing to bend over backwards in the service of bipartisanship, more so than he should be, and the Republicans have yet to reciprocate in kind. Instead, they seem to be counting on their obstructionism as a winning political strategy for 2010 and beyond.

So while I don’t blame the Times’ editors for demanding bipartisanship—it’s totally consistent with their rhetorical ethos—I find it silly to demand it in such a bipartisan fashion. For if we’re to have true bipartisanship in shaping healthcare reform, it is in the end, up to the Republicans to unilaterally embrace what would be for them, a complete reversal in their approach to the issue thus far.

“Uh-oh,” I thought as I saw the headline in the Seattle Times: “Sound Transit light-rail train kills man on tracks in Seattle.” All those anti-rail zealots will crawl out of the woodwork disingenuously arguing that at-grade light rail (traveling at the same speed as the surrounding cars and buses) is an inherently unsafe technology. And then I read the article…

The victim, identified only as an adult male, was struck along a transit corridor between Fourth Avenue South and Sixth Avenue South a few blocks south of Safeco Field. Police spokeswoman Renee Witt said early information from traffic-collision investigators indicates that as the southbound train approached, the man — for unknown reasons — climbed over a concrete Jersey barrier south of South Holgate Street and “jumped into the path of the train.”

That’s right… the man was struck along the non-pedestrian transit corridor after climbing over a barrier and jumping in front the train. The headline implies “train kills man,” when in reality it should have read “man kills self.”

And for this, John Niles and his so-called Coalition for Effective Transportation Alternatives argues Sound Transit should be legally and financially liable?

UPDATE:
Clearly, rendering trucks are an inherently unsafe technology:

Washington State Patrol troopers say a rendering truck that lost its load scattered dead animal parts across the northbound lanes of Interstate 5 in Tacoma.

Of course, I suppose that’s preferable to scattering the freeway with live animal parts—that would have been eerie—but icky nonetheless.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Souped up 1974 Chevy Novas are an inherently unsafe technology.

UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
Merce Cunningham dead at 90. Clearly, modern dance is an inherently unsafe technology.

The Politics Blog at The Olympian reports that the RNC is targeting Rep. Brian Baird (WA-03) with negative ads over health care reform. And surprise, surprise, the Republican ad has false information in it.

The ad includes an obvious false claim about the extent to which Democrats have recently added to the national debt. That outstanding public debt is $11.6 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury’s Bureau of the Public Debt — more than $10 trillion of it run up before President Obama took office. (Perhaps the RNC meant deficit, not debt.)

Yeah, right, just another innocent error from the Republicans.

Anyhow, folks should probably be calling their members of Congress to tell them we need health care reform with the public option NOW. The righties are good at working their wingnuts into a lather, so if nothing else folks in the Congressional offices could stand to hear from a wider range of citizens about how we really, really have to fix the health care system, and that inaction is not acceptable.

But I suppose if you want to have some fun while calling you can say “Hi, I’m calling about Obama’s birth certificate” and then go “just kidding!”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RADPnKE2Uak[/youtube]

If you want to know why this state’s Republican Congressmen (and Congresswoman) can’t just laugh off the conspiracy theories surrounding Obama’s citizenship status, take a look at the comment threads of Sound Politics.

UPDATE: More insanity from our trolls:

Its so neat you tards have a cute little name to cover up for a guy born in Kenya. Even the Ambassador himself said his birthplace in “KENYA” was an national attraction for their citizens.

I love this conspiracy theory. There’s simply no lie too outrageous for these clowns to believe. It’s a remarkable study in willful ignorance.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1o1p_ly7Yw[/youtube]

Mike Stark is at it again, this time ambushing Republican congresspersons to ask them whether or not they believe Barack Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, and thus constitutionally eligible to be president.

Some of them, like our own Dave Reichert (WA-08), simply obfuscate (his inarticulate and poorly illustrated response is particularly amusing), while others, like Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) actually run away from the camera… though not before admitting “We’re all going to find out… I’d like to see the documents.”

Huh. She sure does sound like a birther to me. Even while Ann Coulter, of all people, is calling the birthers “cranks.”

When Coulter has become the GOP’s voice of reason, you know the party is in trouble.

One story I never got around to covering over the weekend was Saturday’s signature gathering deadline for R-71, the church-backed referendum to repeal Washington’s recently expanded domestic partners statute. R-71 backers claimed they turned in about 138,000 signatures, almost 18,000 more than the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot, but as Sec. of State spokesman Dave Ammons says, that slight cushion still only puts this measure in the “iffy range.”

On average, about 18% of signatures are disqualified due to duplicates, mismatched signatures, incorrect address information, or simply because they didn’t come from registered voters; historically, invalidation rates in Washington have ranged from as low as 8% to as high as 25%. (In some states, blatant acts of signature fraud have driven invalidation rates well over 50%.)

Assuming the 138,000 signature estimate is accurate, that means R-71 would fail to qualify for the ballot if a mere 12.7% of signatures are ruled invalid.

So what are R-71’s chances? Tim Eyman recently qualified I-1033 with a 12% invalidation rate, but that’s unusually low for him, and he does have more than a decade of experience running professional petition drives. Perhaps the R-71 petition drive was more centralized and organized than I thought, but I’d be slightly surprised to see them pull this one off with such a small cushion.

Regardless, there should be some fun coming out of Olympia later this week as the Sec. of State’s office goes through the tedium of matching every signature to the voter registration rolls. First they’ll count (and recount) the signatures to give them a starting point, and then they’ll go through the petitions line by line, reporting the number of valid signatures versus the number of invalid ones, giving us a running total of the invalidation rate up to that point, and thus the ever shifting odds on R-71’s ballot prospects. Once enough signatures have been qualified or disqualified to determine the outcome, the counting stops.

Stay tuned.

Think Progress notes that thousands of formerly classified images that show the impact of global warming on the Arctic and elsewhere, including Washington’s South Cascade Glacier, have been released after a group of scientists filed a declassification request. This is truly unnerving stuff, click through if you wish. The photos of the Beaufort Sea speak for themselves.

And since it’s very hot today, I get to point out to certain unsound pinheads that climate change is real, since they always claim it’s not whenever they see a snowflake.

I suppose now they’ll just start saying that the South Cascade Glacier is actually in Kenya or something.