Archives for September 2010

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

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was West Hill, OH, along the PA-OH border.

This is the fourth Sunday of the month, so this location is related to something from the news in September. Good luck!

Genesis 4:13-18

Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,  east of Eden.

Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

Discuss.

I’m pretty sure that I have the exact same right to sign off on things on behalf of the city as Richard Conlin does. Neither of us are members of the city’s executive branch of government. Unlike Conlin, I don’t want a tunnel. Although nobody has asked for my signature on anything, I’m certainly willing to provide it:

So, on behalf of the city, I’ll sign onto any bike path anybody is proposing. Finally complete the Burke Gillman? Don’t mind if I do! A road diet on all roads over 4 lanes? Provide bike lanes and you’ve got me — on behalf of the city — on board.

Hell anybody can do it! Got a project you’d like completed, just sign off on behalf of the city. Feel your neighborhood is being deprived of sidewalks, parks, or other amenities? Just sign off on behalf of the city, and presto!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtNxpn6NltU[/youtube]

I’m kinda busy today on a side project, but over on Slog I’ve posted a rather massive piece I’ve been working over the last few days, in which I ask, is Rep. Dave Reichert brain-damaged?

And I’m not asking it in a snarky, mean-spirited, metaphorical sense. I’m asking it literally, based on medical literature and recent events that suggest that Reichert’s brain may actually be damaged.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Reichert’s hand-sized cerebral blood clot is necessarily an indication of prior brain atrophy or wasting, or that such a severe head injury, untreated as it was for two months, would have certainly caused permanent impairment.

[…] But extended or even permanent impairment is far from out of the question … thus it is not unreasonable to expect that a brain trauma as severe as that described by Reichert, in a man of his age, and untreated for so long, could very well have resulted in some degree of permanent neurological impairment.

You’ll need to read the whole thing for the background, but I ask you, if President Obama had suffered a similar injury, and then gave an interview like the one in the clip above, don’t you think this would be the number one story on talk radio and cable news?

I’m just sayin’.

As we approach the vote on California’s Proposition 19, I’ve been seeing variations of this assertion in a number of places. Here’s David Sirota:

Here’s a fact that even drug policy reform advocates can acknowledge: California’s 2010 ballot initiative to legalize marijuana does, indeed, pose a real threat, as conservative culture warriors insist. But not to public health, as those conservatives claim.

According to most physicians, pot is less toxic — and has more medicinal applications — than a legal and more pervasive drug like alcohol. Whereas alcohol causes hundreds of annual overdose deaths, contributes to untold numbers of illnesses and is a major factor in violent crime, marijuana has never resulted in a fatal overdose and has not been systemically linked to major illness or violent crime.

So this ballot measure is no public health threat. If anything, it would give the millions of citizens who want to use inebriating substances a safer alternative to alcohol. Which, of course, gets to what this ballot initiative really endangers: alcohol industry profits.

Beer distributors believe this to be the case as well. The California Beer and Beverage Distributors, has given $10,000 to defeat the measure. But is it true? Gus Lubin at the Business Insider writes:

Would marijuana legalization really cut into alcohol consumption?

Probably so. The interest group also includes Heineken, which knows from Amsterdam how legalization affects the market.

But the numbers don’t back this up. The WHO statistics on alcohol consumption across European countries don’t show any difference between the Netherlands and other European countries when it comes to alcohol consumption. Nor does it show any marked decrease in alcohol consumption since the Dutch started tolerating marijuana sales in the 1970s. In fact, while alcohol consumption across the entire EU dropped from 1980 to 2003 by 27%, it only dropped by 18% for the same time period in the Netherlands.

Marijuana and alcohol are often compared to each other in order to drive home the parallels between our historical attempts to prohibit each drug. And those comparisons are valid and illuminating. But the drugs themselves aren’t so similar in their effects on users. Marijuana is far more psychoactive than alcohol, but also more safe to consume. Alcohol tends to make people more aggressive and more social, while marijuana tends to make people more passive and less social. As a result, each drug caters to different personalities and different situations. And since marijuana is already widely available to whoever wants it, that segregation of use occurs already. As with the Netherlands, I’d expect that the eventual end of marijuana prohibition won’t have any noticeable effect on the current rates of alcohol consumption.

What it would have an effect on, however, is our prison overcrowding problems.

Dino Rossi has released four TV ads (as opposed to those anti-Murray ads from IE campaigns that flooded the airwaves prior to Labor Day), but his latest is the first not to feature him narrating on camera.

Why? Perhaps because it’s relentlessly negative, and those aren’t the kinda words you want to put in the mouth of the candidate. But perhaps also, focus groups found Rossi a little, I dunno… creepy?

In any case, I never really thought those ads worked. And apparently Rossi’s media strategists agree.

I know it’s the age-old home gardener’s dilemma this time of year, but does anybody have any good ideas as to what to do with my abundance of zucchini… you know, other than this?

Another poll has been released in the race between real-estate salesman and two-time gubernatorial race loser Dino Rossi (R) and Sen. Patty Murray (D). The Survey USA poll has Murray leading Rossi 50% to 48%. The survey included 609 likely voters.

As has been noted for their previous polls, something is “off” with Survey USA for this race. N in Seattle (among others) noted their “Metro Seattle” crosstabs were abnormal in the previous poll. Goldy thinks they’re still not quite realistic.

As usual, I’m interested in what the poll has to say about who would win in an election held now. Following a million simulated elections of 609 individuals voting at the proportions observed, Murray wins 635,301 elections and Rossi wins 353,991 times. In other words, this poll provides evidence that Murray would have a 64.2% probability of beating Rossi right now. Here is the distribution of outcomes:

With this new poll today, we have had a total of four polls taken in September:

	Start	End	Samp		%	%	%
Poll	date	date	size	MOE	Dem	Rep	Diff
SurveyUSA	19-Sep	21-Sep	609	4.1	50.0	48.0	D+2.0
Rasmussen	14-Sep	14-Sep	750	4.0	51.0	46.0	D+5.0
CNN/Time/OR	10-Sep	14-Sep	906	3.0	53.0	44.0	D+9.0
Elway	09-Sep	12-Sep	500	4.5	50.0	41.0	D+9.0

Murray has led in all four of these polls. In fact, she has earned at least 50% in each of the last four polls.

If we pool the respondents from all four September polls, we get a sample of 2,765 voters of which 2,658 went for either Murray or Rossi. Murray leads in the pooled sample 51.2% to 44.9%. Another Monte Carlo analysis gives Murray 991,344 wins to Rossi’s 8,375 wins. The evidence of these four polls indicate that Murray would have a 99.2% chance of beating Rossi in an election held this month.

Finally, here is the complete polling history for this race:

At this point, we can no longer debate whether or not Murray is vulnerable—there just isn’t much evidence for that. Perhaps the debate should turn to whether or not she will defeat Rossi by a single-digit or double-digit margin. Discuss.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOHdN8sdnwc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Now that’s a shit-kicker of a political ad.

Oh yeah, I did another post on Slog today: “Dino Rossi: Careless or Carefree?”

There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about some of Dino Rossi’s more boneheaded flubs. … Some have chalked off Rossi’s curious statements to strategy, others to a doctrinaire conservative ideology. But I have an alternate theory that I find at least as plausible: perhaps Dino Rossi just doesn’t care?

As always, read the whole thing.

The KING-5/SurveyUSA poll continues to be the most Dino Rossi-friendly poll in Washington state, but even the latest one reports a nine point swing in Sen. Patty Murray’s favor, giving her a 50-48% lead.

That said, I’m still not so sure about those cross-tabs. This new poll still only shows Murray with 52% of the “Metro Seattle” vote, up from a totally unbelievable 48% one month ago. By comparison, the final SurveyUSA poll of the 2004 season showed Murray with 58% of the Metro Seattle vote, while she ultimately went on to win over 65% of the King County vote on election day.

I’m not sure exactly how SurveyUSA defines “Metro Seattle,” but it’s sure as hell hard to imagine Murray winning only 52% of it.

Just got back from doing an interview with FOX News on I-1098. Yeah, I know, that makes me a media whore. But I heard they were interviewing 710-KIRO sports talker Dori Monson too, and I just wanted to bring him down to my level.

Anyway, I don’t have cable, and wouldn’t watch FOX News if I did, so on the odd chance any of my readers are watching Monday when the segment airs, I’d appreciate hearing back as to which clip they used.

According to our critics, bloggers like me aren’t really very good journalists. We’re partisan, we’re selective, and we don’t do our own reporting. Get your news from real journalists, like those at the Seattle Times, and you’ll come away much better informed.

Or will you?

Take this morning’s article on a plumbing screwup at Washington State Ferries headquarters, a story that’s making the top of the hour news on radio stations across the region: “Water fountains fed by heating, cooling systems found in ferries headquarters.”

Oh man… figures, doesn’t it? And you can see that instant, angry, government/union-bashing reaction in the comment thread on the Times website:

“This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, were talking Washington State Ferry System they have trouble keeping their ferries running.”

“Probably hooked up by the state Ferry engineers.”

“Wonderful that the State requires union workers paid union wages on contracts and this is what we get. But I’m sure the union will step right in and protect the lazy plumber who did this by saying they need ‘more training’.”

Only problem is, while none of the facts in the article appear to be obviously wrong (because apart from the addition of an administrator’s quote, all of the facts seem to have been pulled from a WSDOT press release), the Times article gave its government-hating readers exactly the wrong impression.

This wasn’t a screwup on the part of lazy/incompetent public employees, but rather the private sector.

For what the Times leaves out is that the building is owned and operated by Seattle uber-landlord Martin Selig, and that the water fountains were installed two-years before the Ferries moved into the building, not by union plumbers, but by a small, mom & pop, Kirkland-based contractor.

The Ferries and their workers were victims here, not the perpetrators. But you wouldn’t guess that from the Times’ factual reporting.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayCmNlo80a4[/youtube]