Archives for August 2009

So Democrat Rep. Brian Baird, WA-03, is going to do telephone town halls instead of play along with the infantile tactics of the tea birthers. From The Columbian:

“What we’re seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics,” Baird, D-Vancouver, said in a phone interview. “I mean that very seriously.”

As a friend of mine says, right on with your right on. It’s about time someone called this crap what it is. The right has been throwing Nazi analogies around like it’s going out of style, and now they’ll get their panties all in a bunch about Baird’s comment, no doubt. Too bad.

Oh, they just want to dissent? Then why has a certain right-wing radio host and her Vancouver based Republican blogger been dogging Baird about having town halls since last month?

Too bad for them, Baird is smart enough not to play their stupid game. And to the inevitable cries that Baird is afraid to have a town hall, I think we all know that’s complete baloney. He’s had a ton of them, including the beating he took when he decided to back the surge in Iraq, so so he’s no shrinking violet.

Naturally, what the righties backing the insurance companies want is that everyone lose sight of the true goal, which is decent health care reform. Regular people who don’t believe the birfers need to weigh in, and you don’t need a town hall to do it, telephones and email still work.

Look, the Republicans are enjoying all this because when the only power you have is destructive, that’s what you use, like a misbehaving child. And like a spoiled child, the GOP hasn’t really gamed this out all the way. Health care reform is coming, and if the right’s only reaction is to be destructive, then they have abdicated any moral right to have a say in what happens. They can tell it all to their hired professional liars on AM radio and television, the rest of the country has reality to deal with.

Another half a notch in my belt today as the Seattle Times endorsed Jordan Royer and Robert Rosencrantz for Seattle City Council Position 8. I had predicted Royer, and if they went for a dual endorsement “here’s the reach… Forch.”

So far I’ve been dead on for all my flat out predictions, but missed the mark on the two on which I issued caveats, the admitted reach on Forch, and an ill-advised second-guessing in the City Attorney race. They always like to throw in one predictable surprise, and these two races seemed like the most likely suspects, but alas, I picked the wrong one.

Coming up soon, my last remaining prediction, the Times’ presumed “No” endorsement on the Bag Fee measure.

The SOS counted an additional 6,140 R-71 signatures yesterday, accepting 5,268, for a raw invalidation rate of about 14.2 percent for this batch, and 13.31 percent over the 23,457 total signatures processed thus far. They haven’t provided a breakout of the number of duplicates in this fourth batch yet, but if previous trends hold up it should be about 31, and the total, duplicate-adjusted invalidation rate should now be running about 14.9 percent.

Once he gets his hands on the break out numbers Darryl will pound the final statistical nail in R-71’s coffin, while regaling you with more than you ever wanted to know about the methodology thereof. And sometime thereafter, I’ll attempt to explain why this kind of obsessive coverage matters.

Imagine ten years ago as Bill Clinton was approaching the end of his second term as President. Whodathunk that ten years hence, Hollywood superhero Arnold Schwarzenegger would become an emasculated politician, and Bill Clinton would become a real-life superhero:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv7pIBMYGfw[/youtube]

So the conservative lumpenproletariat had lots of fun during the 2008 campaign claiming liberals are all robots, ie “Obamatrons,” and such. They got a hard on over some idiot bimbo on their ticket, celebrated a mindless liar who claimed to be a plumber, and basically acted like douchebags on a daily basis. But we’re the mindless robots who act on orders.

Yeah, um, okay.

These are the stupid fucks willing to show up at meetings and act like assholes on behalf of giant insurance corporations. These are the stupid birther fucks who insist on spreading absolute bullshit about Barack Obama, as if everyone else in the country is some kind of two year old that will believe any old thing.

Nobody will ever catch on that the whole show is orchestrated through the noise machine.

These are the stupid fucks who bought high while listening to right wing AM radio. You know the type. They never could resist the multi-level greed pitch and the arousing lure of screwing someone over. Now that their greed bubble has been burst, they lash out at anyone and anything they can.

What I want to know is: when are we going to act in kind? This bullshit right wing temper tantrum needs to be answered in Republican Congressional district offices all over the state. We’ll march, shout, make signs, act like douchebags, hang people in effigy and generally be stupid. You know, like them.

Now quick, someone find out where the fuck there are any Republican district offices.

Just sat down in Fado to kick off pre-game festivities for the big game tonight. May post updates in this space if the mood strikes.

UPDATE: Fado is now packed. If the Sounders play as poorly as they did on Sunday, this could be an ugly game. This is like a Spanish pro hoops team playing the Lakers. At least Ljungberg should be back tonight.

UPDATE: The Mariners found some offense tonight. 8-4 in the 4th inning in KC.

UPDATE: Stone Roses on the speakers in Fado. It reminds me that one of the reasons that soccer has been so popular in Seattle is because a lot of people here are familiar with the European leagues. A lot of people wearing both Sounders and Barcelona attire this evening.

UPDATE: Barcelona has pink jerseys. Ok.

UPDATE: Messi is the footballer of the year for a reason. Damn.

UPDATE: 4-0. Disappointing but not too surprising. If anyone can locate Knute Berger’s column in Crosscut about how soccer won’t survive here in Seattle, please post in the comments. Hyperlinks are tough from the Blackberry. Thanks.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtTBkxvBq88&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Good staff don’t let candidates look this stupid:

There may be a reason why Seattle mayoral candidate James Donaldson, is one of the seven dwarves in the race against Mayor Greg Nickels.

This, a tweet from White Center’s Full Tilt Ice Cream:

James Donaldson came to WC yesterday, askin folks to vote for him. I asked him if he knew that we were not in Seattle. He looked confused.

Political advice from the Blathering One: the city limits, man, the city limits!

You know, some of the most important decisions an executive makes involve hiring the folks who work under him. So honestly, who would you rather have running the show as Deputy Mayor… Tim Ceis or Cindi Laws?

From an article at The Hill about former GOP administration staffers running for Congress comes this little tidbit from David Castillo, a Republican candidate intending to take on Democratic Rep. Brian Baird, WA-03.

“I’m going to try to cajole [Bush and Cheney] to come out and do an event for me,” said David Castillo, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Veterans Affairs who also worked in the Homeland Security and Labor departments. “As we progress, I’m hoping to utilize my Bush-Cheney relationships to the fullest extent I can.”

That would be bad news, at least in terms of fundraising, for the other announced Republican candidate. But I really don’t know the landscape on the GOP side, maybe Bush and Cheney would help both of them, that would be cool. Lots of photos.

Last week I stuck my neck out and predicted the Times endorsements in the Seattle City Council races:

Conlin, Bagshaw, Licata and Royer in the City Council races… If they do dual endorsements in Council Districts 4, 6 and 8, throw in Bloom, Israel, and here’s the reach… Forch.

Well, today the Seattle Times endorsed Bagshaw for Position 4, and Licata and Israel for Position 6, proving me right on the money. I’m a psychic.

Updated twice.

The SOS processed another 5,815 R-71 signatures yesterday, and as expected, the percentage of duplicate signatures increased again. 7 dupes in the first batch, 16 in the second, 22 in third; it’s almost exactly what my spreadsheet predicted.

The raw invalidation rate in yesterday’s batch was also the highest thus far, coming in at 14.4 percent, nearly two full points above the 12.43 percent threshold. That brings the raw invalidation rate on the 17,317 signatures processed to date to 12.99 percent. Adjusting for duplicates, and removing from the count the 49 signatures not on file, the invalidation rate on the total sample is now running at approximately 14.55 percent, up only slightly from the total for the first two batches.

While it should be noted that these numbers do not technically represent a random sample, at 12.5 percent of the total signatures submitted, it is already sufficiently large enough to predict R-71’s failure with a high degree of certainty.

Update [Darryl]

This figure shows the required signatures and, for each data dump, a statistical estimate of the expected signatures required.

The estimate of total signatures adjusts for both duplicates and invalid signatures, and to be conservative, I have assumed that all of the “missing signature card” signatures will be found and counted as valid.

There are error bars showing standard sampling error for each day—they are tiny for yesterday’s dump. Clearly, if sampling error is the only error involved, there is no way R-71 will pass. Even after the first data dump day, there was slightly under an 8% chance the final count would put R-71 on the ballet.

The graph does suggest substantial error other than sampling error (i.e. the big swing from day 2 to day 3 that is way outside sampling error), but there is now a huge amount of ground to make up. Still, with only 12.6% of the sample counted as of yesterday, there could be some surprises.

Update 2 [Darryl]

Oops…When I looked back at the program I used to estimate the number of valid signatures I had entered 150 instead of 45 as the number of duplicates (150 is actually the total number of no-matches found so far). So here is the corrected figure:

Correcting the number of duplicates makes a huge difference in a qualitative interpretation. Now, it looks like there is very little non-sampling error (and very little sampling error). If so, this pretty much spells doom for R-71.

Despite some recent court victories and the more progressive stance taken by the Obama Administration with regard to medical marijuana, registered patients in Washington are still ending up in courts across the state. The Cannabis Defense Coalition is following these cases and bringing citizens along both to observe and to let judges and prosecutors know that their willingness to ignore the intent of the state’s voter approved medical marijuana law will not go unnoticed. Not surprisingly, most of these cases occur in rural Washington, where support for the medical marijuana law is not as strong.

There are two important court dates next week. The first is on Monday, August 10 in Shelton. It involves a married couple, John Reed and Karen Mower, both of whom are authorized patients. Mower is terminally ill. During this hearing, the judge will decide if the defendants can use a medical marijuana defense. In previous cases, judges have ruled that even authorized patients cannot use that defense.

The second case is one I’m just becoming familiar with. Some information comes from Ben Livingston at the CDC:

David Hagar was growing medical marijuana as designated provider for his mother Rosa, an authorized patient. Grant County Sheriff’s raided him earlier this year, taking 27 plants (10 of which had no roots, 3 of which were dead) and all his growing equipment.

Mr. Hagar started again growing medical marijuana for his mother, and a few months ago, was raided and arrested by the Grant County Sheriff for the second time this year. This time, his mother was present, and detectives took four marijuana plants, all the growing equipment, and her medical marijuana recommendation.

Hagar will be in court next Tuesday, August 11 in Ephrata at 9am. If you’re interested in being an observer for either hearing, please contact the CDC at info@cdc.coop.

But I do know when I’ll be back again. A week down the Jersey shore, a few days in Pittsburgh for Netroots Nation, and then a few days with my family in Philadelphia, flying back on the night of Aug. 19th.

Not that I won’t be blogging during the next two weeks… just not quite so much.

Join us tonight at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

We may have a little entertainment with discussions about the history of Kenya this evening. Or, perhaps, we should be looking at Australia?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqodzZ4Ssg[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 335 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to get lost at.

There’s a new Washington Poll on Seattle races out today, and it has the pundits punditing. Over on Slog, Bryan remarks on the four-way statistical tie for second place in the mayor’s race, and the Bag Fee measure’s unsurprising 41-55 deficit. Meanwhile, mayoral challenger James Donaldson is touting his (outside the margin of error) advantage in a head to head matchup with incumbent Greg Nickels, while over at Publicola, Josh seems transfixed by Mike McGinn’s relative advantage with Republican voters.

But the data that jumps out at me are the job approval ratings for Mayor Nickels, and the right track/wrong track numbers for the city of Seattle as a whole.

Now normally, anytime an incumbent’s job approval falls below 50 percent, that’s pretty bad news for one’s reelection prospects, but with Mayor Nickels consistently mired in the mid-thirties throughout much of his two terms, you kinda hafta grade him on a curve. So 46 percent…? I’m betting Nickels people are giddily pinching themselves at such an unexpected outpouring of mild nonsupport.

Combine that with a 55-32 percent advantage on the right track/wrong track question, and Seattle voters don’t come across nearly as negative and pessimistic as Nickels challengers were counting on.

I know this was supposed to be the Summer of our discontent, but if you still believe that the runner-up, whoever he or she may be, will waltz into the mayor’s office come November, get ready to be disappointed.