Archives for August 2010

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conservation today at about 12:40 PM to discuss the installation of pointless, stupid, dangerous full-body scanners at Sea-Tac… and I’ll do my best not swear on air.

You know in the end why Newscorp felt so comfortable giving $1 million to the Republican Governors Association… why it felt such an unprecedented political contribution would have absolutely no impact on the credibility of FOX News? Because it’s never really cared about the credibility of FOX News, and it knows that neither do most of its viewers. And that, above all, is what has freed FOX News to become so successful.

While traditionalists fret about the decline of objective journalism, Rupert Murdoch long ago had the insight that objective journalism never really existed — that it could not exist — and that fairness and balance is not the responsibility of the individual news outlet, but of the entire news media as a whole. So while most of his competitors squeezed their eyes closed real tight and wished and wished for the news industry to be what they hoped it be, Murdoch went out and kicked their ass by producing products designed to exploit the way the industry really is.

I mean, honestly… do you really believe that FOX News executives really believe that their network is “Fair and Balanced,” or did they specifically choose that motto as a playground taunt to their stodgier, holier-than-thou competition?

So laugh or cry or scream or whatever at the blatant hypocrisy of Newscorp’s million dollar contribution to the Republican Party, but as long as we continue to pretend that we can do something about it, Murdoch and his minions will continue to kick our collective ass. For while there is still a place for traditional journalism, it is time to admit that FOX News is not the exception, but the rule. This is the way the game is played, and FOX deserves credit for playing it better than the rest of us.

Bravo, Rupert. And game on.

Jesus Fucking Christ…

Sea-Tac International Airport passengers will soon begin undergoing full-body scans as the federal government installs equipment that will help identify terrorist threats but poses concerns about privacy, health risks and longer waits in security lines.

[…] The scans, which effectively allow agents to see through clothes by scattering low-dose X-rays at a passenger’s front and back, produce a blurry nude image that can be screened for nonmetallic items such as weapons and explosives hidden under clothes.

[…] To quell privacy concerns, TSA is making the screening optional, has agreed not to store the images, and has set up a system so the pictures are viewed by a screener in another location where passengers can’t be seen in person.

“Every passenger has the option to refuse to go through these,” and walk through a metal detector instead, Baird said. Those who do will be subject to a pat-down, a procedure that takes extra time, but one that privacy experts recommend for those who feel uncomfortable.

Well… fuck that!

I, for one, will refuse to allow my daughter through one of those scanners, and will refuse to walk through one myself. I’ll see how intrusive the pat downs turn out to be, but if they are, I guess I’ll just no longer fly out of Sea-Tac. Flying will just have to be a once every several year experience for me, if at all.

I mean, honestly… would you trust TSA to bombard you or a loved one with ionizing radiation? And when some enterprising terrorist responds by boarding a plane with a stick of dynamite up his ass, what’s next? Cavity searches?

This stupid, fucking, pointless security theater has gone too far; we should’ve drawn the line years ago at the no-liquids bullshit, but I’m certainly drawing it at TSA rent-a-cops irradiating my flesh. Not gonna happen. No way. Never.

I’m almost tempted to bring down an airplane myself, just to prove a point.

King County Elections reports that it received 95,000 ballots this morning at its Tukwila headquarters, the largest single day of ballot returns so far this primary election.

“It was exciting to see so many ballots arrive today,” said Sherril Huff, Elections Director. “Typically Election Day is associated with the highest number of ballot arrivals. We’re processing the ballots as quickly as possible, and expect to include an additional 40,000 in the results report today.”

One of the data points I’m most interested in from this primary is the relative turnout from various regions of the state. Because the two parties have become so dramatically regionalized, I’m curious to see whether the so-called “enthusiasm gap” would result in significantly lower turnout in overwhelmingly blue King County than in its overwhelmingly red counterparts. And last night’s results would initially suggest this to be the case.

But due to obvious logistical reasons, the big, Democratic leaning counties tend to report their results slower than the rest of the state, explaining the oft seen phenomenon in which Democrats tend to pick up support as the vote drags on and Democratic precincts make up a larger and larger percentage of the daily ballot dumps.

For example, last night King County reported 243,755 ballots counted out of 1,074,731 registered voters, for a voter turnout of only 22.68%, compared to about 29% for the rest of the state. But add today’s 95,000 new ballots to the estimated 55,000 ballots left uncounted last night, and King County’s turnout rises to a respectable 37% with likely tens of thousands more ballots still in the mail. Indeed, just last Friday Huff projected a rather optimistic final turnout of 495,000 ballots, or roughly 45 percent. We’ll see.

Apart from simply gaging voter enthusiasm, or rather, its impact on voter turnout, the large number of ballots outstanding in King, Snohomish, Kitsap, Thurston and other counties where Patty Murray outperformed her current statewide average suggests that her percentage of the total vote will likely rise a bit over the coming days, painting a somewhat rosier picture for November… that is, if you believe these primary results to be the least bit predictive. Again, we’ll see.

UPDATE:
King County Elections just updated its results, adding 42,375 ballots to the count, with another estimate 107,000 ballots remaining. Interestingly both Patty Murray and Clint Didier did slightly better in today’s batch of ballots than in last night’s reported results, while Dino Rossi performed slightly worse. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues.

And FYI, Murray has climbed from 44% of last nights early results to about 46.7% this afternoon, while Rossi has fallen from 38% to 33.5%. Interesting, though not necessarily meaningful.

It often seems the surest path to winning a seat on the Washington State Supreme Court is to have the last name “Johnson.” So I wonder if instead of Stan Rumbaugh we had run, say, John Thomas, we might’ve had a better chance of removing that dick Jim Johnson from the bench?

As Joel Connelly reported yesterday, Dino Rossi is a big proponent of extending the budget-busting Bush tax cuts:

Rossi argued that 2 1/2 million people in Washington benefit from the 2001 Bush tax cuts, the extension of which will be a major issue in Congress this fall.

Rossi described as “this class warfare program” the Obama administration’s plan to extend the cuts enjoyed by middle-income taxpayers, while repealing tax cuts for high-income households.

Huh. I’m not sure what’s more distorted, Rossi’s view of the lifestyle of your average Washingtonian or Rossi’s definition of “class warfare”…?  As Think Progress explains:

There are about 6.7 million people in Washington state, so for Rossi’s number to be accurate, he’s either claiming that Obama and Murray want to raise taxes on people that they don’t, or he is claiming that more than one-third of the state’s population is making more than $200,000 per year. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are 105,209 households in the state that would be affected by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts (or about 1.6 percent of the total population). So Rossi inflated his state’s wealthy population by 24 times. Also, as The Wonk Room explains, Rossi’s push to extend the tax cuts for the rich would definitely help one Washingtonian: Dino Rossi.

I guess when you pretty much only hang out with folks making over $200,000 a year, $200,000 doesn’t seem like all that much.

I’d like to propose a compromise in what FOX News tells us is the most important issue facing America today: Muslims can build a mosque just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, if we can build a Burlington Coat Factory Outlet in Mecca. Agreed?

What with our lack of both party ID and a statistically useful track record with the top-two format, the only thing we really learned from yesterday’s primary election was who made it through to the November general. But since I’m one of those bullshit pundits of sorts, who folks come to the morning after for bullshit punditry, I’ll do my best to oblige.

U.S. Senate race surprises analysts by producing no surprises
Had either Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray or her Republican real estate speculator challenger Dino Rossi scored five or more points higher or lower than either one did, it might really tell us something about what to expect in November. But at roughly 46-34 in a 15 person race… not so much.

Would Murray have liked to have topped 50 percent? Sure. Would Rossi have liked to have garnered at least half the number of raw votes he tallied in his 2008 gubernatorial primary? You betcha. Both numbers will rise as the ballots are tallied and the big counties catch up with the rest of the state, but neither really tells us anything we didn’t already know heading into Tuesday.

Coffee-swilling Washingtonians brew weak tea
For all the huff and puff of our state’s teabaggers, they sure as hell didn’t blow my house down with their candidates’ performance in Tuesday’s primary. Clint Didier looks like he’ll break double digits in the final tally, but with all the Palin winks and free press he got, that’s not saying much. And while he did well in Benton and Franklin counties, there just aren’t that many people there, while he couldn’t even carry his home county of Kittitas.

Meanwhile down in WA-03, teabagger favorite David Castillo, who many had predicted to shock establishment GOPers by sneaking into the top-two, looks to finish a disappointing fourth behind two other Republicans. I mean, what’s up with that?

Let’s just say, except for the comparable size of our respectively immense, illicit pot-growing industries, Washington is no Kentucky.

Our regions voters are out of touch with the Seattle Times editorial board
In a bold and surprising move, the Seattle Times endorsed Democrats Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon in the WA-08 primary, abandoning former ed board heart throb, Republican Rep. Dave Reichert. And while absolutely nobody is surprised to see Reichert and DelBene face off in November — they were the only serious candidates in the race from an organizational and fundraising perspective — it was kinda amusing to see Dillon come in fifth, behind some guy named Tom Cramer and the very, very, crazy teabagger, Ernest Huber.

What were voters thinking to diss a candidate the Times lauded as… um… not as unstudied or unacceptable as Reichert?

Or, I guess the real question is, if they believe Reichert is so undeserving of reelection, why didn’t the Times just give their sole endorsement to DelBene, who they surely knew would be his November opponent? Huh.

Roaches check in but they don’t check out?
A collective groan arose from the state’s political press corps last night, as early results suggested that gun-toting, flower-speechifying, blog-foddering Republican State Sen. Pam Roach may actually find herself in serious trouble this November. It’s not just that she only scored 40% of the vote, but that it looks like her top-two opponent is going to be a fellow Republican. Ouch.

Olympia without Pam Roach would be like the Asylum of Charenton without the Marquis de Sade. (Or some other, less literary analogy.) Say it ain’t so!

Meanwhile, a bit of irony elsewhere in the 31st LD, where Roach’s son, State Rep. Dan Roach, and Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney had a gentleman’s agreement to swap offices. (Word is that, underpaid at his wife’s gym, Roach needed the money that comes with the more lucrative council seat, while Bunney, apparently having never visited the place, longed for the glamor and excitement of the State House.) Well, the best laid plans and all that, because Bunney currently finds himself in third place, behind fellow Republican Cathy Dahlquist and fellow Democrat Peggy Levesque.

However, should Bunney manage to hop Levesque in the final tally, 31st LD voters won’t see any Democrats in any of their three legislative races in November. (And no, I haven’t forgotten about Rep. Chris Hurst.)

Checking the latest election results from the Secretary of State’s website, I find that it’s not only down, but apparently has been since August 19, 2008. Huh. Maybe that’s why they call it the SOS?

Anyway, last time I saw, Patty Murray was winning with about 48% of the vote or something, which is about where I expected her to be. Meanwhile, Tea Party wunderkind Clint Didier is having trouble breaking into double digits. Ooh… I’m scared. And Dino Rossi? Whatever.

UPDATE… Color me Didier:
Apparently, not only is the SOS running their website off an old TRS-80, but due to budget cuts, they can only afford two colors on their county maps. So while you wouldn’t know it by looking at the top of the page, Didier has actually won at least two counties, Benton and Franklin. Yeah for him!

UPDATE… Gruber Wins!
Huge upset brewing in Snohomish County:

It is a primary election night in Washington State. So please drop off your ballot and then join us for an evening of electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Some folks will be there early for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 276 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Mark Kleiman once again lays out his “grow-your-own” idea for legalizing marijuana use while keeping the sale of the drug illegal. This is an argument he’s made before, and one in which I’ve written about my disagreements.

This time around, E.D. Kain at Balloon Juice does a superb job of addressing the shortcomings of Kleiman’s proposal. I don’t really have anything to add to what Kain wrote (or to Pete Guither’s long post here). Yet I noticed today that Adam Serwer, an excellent blogger on civil liberties, attempts to defend Kleiman’s idea:

E.D. Kain doesn’t like the idea, and prefers outright legalization and commercialization:

Furthermore, I’m much more afraid of violent drug dealers, over-eager SWAT teams, and the whole awful black market cycle of violence than I am about the lobbying arms of a few big corporations which apparently fill Kleiman with fear. I’ll take lobbyists over drug cartels any day.

I think Kain is missing at least part of Kleiman’s point. The whole idea behind decriminalizing marijuana possession is to eliminate the “black market cycle of violence”; since people wouldn’t necessarily be dependent on dealers, dealers would have a hard time plying a lucrative trade, and paramilitary SWAT teams wouldn’t be shooting dogs and old ladies trying to get at the hidden cannabis stash of a 72 year-old with cataracts.

And I think Serwer isn’t quite grasping Kain’s point. To clarify, I’m assuming that Serwer is talking about more than just decriminalizing possession here (which was already done back in the 1970s in a number of states and won at the ballot box in Massachusetts in 2008 with nearly 2/3 of the vote); he’s talking about fully legalizing the ability for someone to grow marijuana on their own – or as part of a co-op. Serwer thinks that this would put the drug dealers out of business. Kain is arguing (correctly, in my opinion) that it won’t.

As Kain points out, you will still have large numbers of marijuana consumers who have little interest in growing their own or being part of a co-op. They simply want to buy their marijuana like any other product and they’ll prefer to buy it from a grower who knows how to produce a quality product. On the flip side of that, there will always be people who see growing marijuana as their preferred avenue for making money and will become very good at it. These two forces simply won’t be outweighed by armies of marijuana consumers being proactive in order to comply with the law. This should be obvious. In the end, sales of the drug will still occur, and law enforcement will still be tasked with stopping it. And as long as that combination exists, we’ll still see paramilitary SWAT teams shooting dogs and old ladies because the police thought that they were going after an illegal seller.

Second, while I’m not quite sure where I stand on the choice between legalization and criminalization, I do think that marijuana abuse is a relatively minor problem. I’d like to preserve that status quo while eliminating the draconian penalties and absurd amount of law-enforcement resources devoted to preventing people from toking. But I think Kain is being a bit to dismissive in arguing that there would be no adverse consequences from the mass marketing of marijuana. It seems entirely possible to me that commercializing the drug could create a problem where none really exists — businesses have to make a profit; someone growing their own doesn’t. A world where a smaller, less profitable illicit market that continues to exist looks a lot like our own without the outsize penalties and adverse consequences of over-enforcement. I’m not sure what a world with a fully commercialized marijuana industry that profits from turning people into potheads looks like, but it makes me nervous.

We currently have a commercialized alcohol industry that profits from turning people into alcoholics, and we’ve grown quite accustomed to it. Hell, it’s impossible for me to go through a single day where I’m not exposed to some form of marketing for booze. Despite this barrage, and despite the relatively non-minor problems caused by alcohol (car accidents, domestic violence, liver disease, alcoholism), people in this country remain far more concerned about Muslims building swimming pools in Lower Manhattan than they do about alcohol.

I completely agree that a legalized marijuana market could lead to companies engaging in bad behavior. I’m rather certain it would happen. But there are ways to deal with that other than by resorting to an unrealistic prohibition-lite. You could make laws against advertising. You could even have the state control the distribution. Either of those proposals are far superior to continuing to enforce a ban on the sale of the drug.

That’s the Ballot Drop Box outside King County Elections Tukwila offices, and somewhere in the background of that image you can see a glimpse of Air Force One.

Anyway, still time to vote.

It felt and sounded like something hit the roof, the whole house shuttering in its wake, followed a few moments later by another, equally loud bang and rattle. A sonic boom? Maybe… but I’ve never heard one here before.

I’m in South Seattle, on the western edge of the Seward Park neighborhood. Anybody else hear/feel it, and if so, any idea what it was?

UPDATE:
Unconfirmed report that it was a couple F-15’s going supersonic. Um… but why? I mean, we always have a bunch of military aircraft in the area, but we only rarely have U.S. President. Any connection?

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Latest report, two F-16’s scrambled when somebody violated the airspace over President Obama in Seattle. So there was a connection.

UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
It was F-15‘s after all. And float plane pilot Lee Daily now has an amusing anecdote to tell over dinner.

As Washington voters cast ballots today to elect one, and possibly two State Supreme Court justices, it’s time for all of us to seriously consider the concerns of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor:

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has taken up the cause of reforming state judicial campaign and election systems, writing that the “crisis of confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary is real and growing.” If left unaddressed, said O’Connor, “the perception that justice is for sale will undermine the rule of law that courts are supposed to uphold.”

[…] “We all expect judges to be accountable to the law rather than political supporters or special interests,” writes O’Connor. “But elected judges in many states are compelled to solicit money for their election campaigns, sometimes from lawyers and parties appearing before them. Whether or not those contributions actually tilt the scales of justice, three out of four Americans believe that campaign contributions affect courtroom decisions.”

Or to put it less judiciously… electing judges is just plain stupid.

Yes, I know it would take a constitutional amendment to end judicial elections, and yes, I know such a proposal contradicts my axiom that nobody votes for less democracy, but our current system is gradually being co-opted by wealthy special interests. From District and Superior Court elections, where the winning candidate in a contest for an open seat is most often the one who puts the most of their own money into the race, to the millions of dollars now spent on attack ads in Supreme Court races, the current system is simply no longer serving the purpose for which it was designed.

Better would be a nonpartisan nomination and appointment process along with public retention votes, the details of which could be worked out by folks more expert than me, but which would surely be better than what we have now, in which the average voter is asked to elect judges given very little if any information about the candidates other than the gender and ethnicity of their names, and whatever propaganda the candidates (and third parties) can afford to provide. Hell… I’m not qualified to vote in most judicial races, and I’m about as informed a voter as you’ll find.

I mean, what good can you say about a system that virtually assures the election of any judge named “Johnson”…?

Some folks advocate for public financing of judicial elections, but the best way to take politics out of the judiciary is to simply stop electing them. And it’s past time to start seriously having this conversation.