Deuteronomy 28:49-51
Foreigners who speak a strange language will be sent to attack you without warning, just like an eagle swooping down. They won’t show any mercy, and they will have no respect for old people or pity for children. They will take your cattle, sheep, goats, grain, wine, and olive oil, then leave you to starve.
Discuss.
Thom with the Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.
Young Turks: Right-wing elementary school cuisine bizarre freak-out.
The War on Christmas:
Alyona: Mind blowing inequality figures.
Jon on the new go-to-jail-with-no-trial bill.
Corporate Personhood, Corporate Speech:
Young Turks: Blackwater asks for Sharia law?!?
White House: West Wing Week.
Greenman: It isn’t about the “hockey stick”:
Thom with some more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.
Obama speaks on the economy.
Rockbottomcookie: The gay homophobes.
The Republican Primary Asylum:
Sam Seder: Republicans to the unemployed, “Go pee in a cup”.
Thom with The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very ugly.
“Behind the scenes” at Moveon.org.
Sam Seder: George W. Bush cancels trip to Switzerland over fears of being arrested for torture charges.
Sharpton: Rep. Dennis Baxley, sponsor of strict FL voting law, admits no widespread fraud (via HuffPo).
Bill-O’s umbrella attack (via Slog).
Obama speaks on the economy.
America Occupied:
Hanukkah at the White House.
Thom with some Good, Bad, and some Very, Very Ugly.
Stephen on corporate personhood and the S.C. referendum.
Rick Santorum oozes his way to West Wing Week.
ref=’http://youtu.be/Vy5GTQNZeew’>Worst Person in the World.
Young Turks: No abortions for raped military women.
Roy Zimmerman’s buy war toys for Christmas:
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
While I don’t know if the Seattle Waterfront museum is a good idea or not, I’m quite certain Pioneer Square could use the money. The state spending money in Pioneer Square to mitigate the problems with the tunnel is perfectly reasonable. In fact, even if there was no tunnel, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the state to take up some real estate and spend money on people down there.
After all, Pioneer Square was hit particularly hard by the recession and by Elliott Bay Books moving. Throw in the loss of 619 Western and possibly other buildings in the future as well as what construction is doing and the neighborhood is having tough times. The bars are still packed before and after a game, but for the rest of the time, it’s pretty sparce. Art walk isn’t the same. There’s nothing like Elliott Bay to draw people.
And now, hopefully the people who staff the museum and the people who use it will fill some of the void left in the wake of Elliott Bay and studio closings. They’ll go out to lunch and dinner. They’ll go to Art Walk and pick up a painting, or just make the place a little less lonely. They’ll go to concerts and have a drink after work.
Now maybe there’s a better way to achieve that than this museum. Maybe incentives for businesses and residents to move there will work better. Maybe some other thing there will spur the local economy, draw more people, or just make more sense for the community (I’d personally love to see an expansion of the Gold Rush Museum, but that’s a different pot of money). But just letting Pioneer Square languish until the economy rights itself, until Elliott Bay’s old location finds a tenant that can draw what it did, or until tunnel construction is over won’t help the area.
– Bus Chick tells the best stories.
– I’m still digesting Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?
– Ron Swanson is a great character, but nobody should base their presidential campaign on him. Also, all of the men in the race should grow a mustache.
With the Iowa Caucus coming up it may be too late for Washington to jockey for poll position in this contest. But with our legislature in special session and not really doing anything about the budget, I say let the legislators loose. While a few legislators from a few committees from both houses and the Governor’s budget people figure out what’s going to happen, the rest of the legislators can do useless crap.
I say hold a primary early next month, but call it the first in the nation contest for 2016. Sure, it’s a little strange, to have the 2016 contest before the 2012 one, but we’re having them earlier and earlier, so they were going to catch up eventually. And it’s no stranger than giving Iowa and New Hampshire the first in the nation status.
Throughout the Republican debate season, former front-runner Mitt Romney has been long on platitudes, but less specific on his positions within the Republican weltanschauung. Romney has tended to verbalize adopted positions with near universal acceptance within the G.O.P. and then contrast himself with President Obama.
Now with Newt Gingrich surging in multiple G.O.P. primary polls, the Mitt Romney campaign is being forced to take concrete stances—offer some ideological nuance—in order to differentiate himself from Newt. Will Mitt tack to the left? Will he cut back to the right?
Apparently, it is that latter. Today, during the daily Romney for President press conference call, Mitt went right-wing extreme. Sen. Jim Talent and Gov. John Sununu took up the case for Mitt, spinning his previously wishy-washy stance on the Ryan plan for Medicare into something concrete.
The Ryan plan would eliminate Medicare as it exists now and replace it with a voucher system. The plan would, more or less, privatize Medicare.
Gov. Sununu starts out criticizing Newt:
For Newt Gingrich, in an effort of self-aggrandizement, to come out and throw a clever phrase that has no other purpose than to make him sound a little smarter than the conservative Republican leadership, to undercut Paul Ryan, is the most self-serving, anti-conservative thing one can imagine happening. He gave the liberals and the Democrats the ammunition they needed to moot, if you will, at least for the time being, Paul Ryan’s presentation.
He then asserts Mitt’s support for the plan:
Mitt Romney supports what Paul Ryan did. He endorsed what Paul Ryan did. Mitt Romney had his own package of entitlement reform, which Paul Ryan has praised. They both meshed together. They are both based on really understanding entitlement reform.
and later on:
Paul Ryan’s plan which Mitt Romney supported is the solid basis for moving forward on entitlement reform. And Newt Gingrich not only rejected it then, but he rejected repeatedly by saying I was right what I said that it was wrong and the fact is that Newt Gingrich to this day still continues to undermine Paul Ryan.
Okay…Mitt Romney, 8 Dec 2011, is pro-Ryan plan. That is, Mitt supports eliminating Medicare and replacing it with a voucher system.
Remember this, folks, because if Mitt wins the nomination, he’s got some major Mitt-flopping to do. The public overwhelmingly rejects this radical plan. Mitt owns it now.
I believe you can envision the simple modifications needed for this ad:
HA was down for a little over an hour this morning.
I called Goldy and caught him in front of the U.S. Capitol, on his way to John Boehner’s office. He was pretty sure he’d been paying the ISP bills.
There was no evidence of a denial-of-service attack. A few minutes after submitting a trouble ticket to the ISP, the site returned.
In absence of any other obvious cause, I blame Carl Ballard.
Update: Oops. I was going to post something this morning before the server issue distracted me. As SJ points out in the comment thread, there is an extraordinary opportunity tomorrow evening when Sen. Maria Cantwell and Elizabeth Warren headline a reception titled, Fighting for Main Street. Admission is $40 at the Paramount Theater.
Goldy engages in some gonzo-journalism in D.C., but finds…
…the police just stood by and watched. No riot gear. No pepper spray. No tear gas.
At least Goldy was able to stir up people’s anxieties by obsessively asking protesters about their prior arrest histories:
Fucking troublemaker!
I hate to write about this non-local thing, but if men don’t, it becomes women’s work to point out that this is a terrible policy.
I’m talking, of course, about today’s news that Obama’s health and human services secretary Kathleen Sebelius has overruled the recommendation of her own experts at the Food and Drug Administration, killing a rule change that would have made Plan B emergency contraception available to teenagers and adults over the counter. Emergency contraception works by preventing the ovaries from releasing eggs, and is 89 percent effective at preventing pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
We quite rightly criticized Bush for being anti-sex and anti-science, so it seems fair to say that this is disappointing. Sebelius should have let the rule go into effect.
I don’t know if this was a policy or a political decision, but either way it stinks. The forced pregnancy movement in this country isn’t going to support Obama, no mater what. And the need for emergency contraception isn’t going to go away.
– You mean there was drug use on Capitol Hill before Occupy Seattle got there?
– Good job, Rob McKenna.
– This is not just the case for my family. I know I speak for many other hard working black, brown, and even poor white families who have the same experiences in the poor neighborhoods to look down upon from your elitist 1% out of touch pedestal. To say that an entire community “literally has no habit of showing up on Monday” or “they have no habit of staying all day” I say that is a load of shit. (h/t to Howie on Facebook)
– The worst thing Iran could do would be to get nuclear weapons and then not use them.
– Be bold.
– August has figured out the Republican primary.
There are only 19 days left in this year’s War on Christmas. So please join the fray by wielding a pint this evening at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.
We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks will show up earlier for dinner.
Bye, bye, Herb Herm…we are soooo going to miss you:
Can’t make it to Seattle? The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night at 7:00pm, and Thursday night, Drinking Liberally Bremerton meets at 5:00pm.
With 231 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and five more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s one near you.
…and says things like:
“The guy’s got stamina.”
and
“Say what you like about Reichert (and I do), but at least he’s not a coward like Ryan.”
and
“And no, Reichert did not appear to be particularly brain-damaged…”
Obviously, Goldy is just there to parrot points from the other side.
Why did Dino Rossi lose his second gubernatorial bid and his only U.S. Senate bid? The way I see it, Rossi lost because voters recognized something unlikable in him. The public’s first big taste of the unlikable side of Rossi came in his 2005 “concession speech,” following the loss of a bitterly-fought legal contest at the end of his first gubernatorial fight:
With today’s decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington state Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest.
It wasn’t a moment of statesmanship for Rossi. In his subsequent 2008 and 2010 statewide elections, Rossi frequently exhibited a similar peevishness that left a bad impression with voters. Maybe he was deeply bitter (2008), or maybe he was annoyed at being forced to run a hopeless campaign (2010). Either way, he was unlikable.
Fast forward to late 2011. We have one Rob McKenna running for Governor. This is a man who has been elected twice to Attorney General, the second time with 59% of the vote.
This time McKenna has a serious liability in his run for Governor: He comes off as a petulant asshole.
We can all look back with bemusement that McKenna kicked off his campaign by excluding Goldy in his role as a reporter for The Stranger. Confronted by uber-legitimate Stranger reporter Eli Sanders, McKenna impishly replied:
“I don’t think David Goldstein qualifies as a journalist,” a miffed McKenna told Eli. “He’s a hack. He’s a partisan hack. He’s just there to parrot points from the other side.”
More recently, McKenna has decided that all Stranger reporters are personae non gratae:
Gubernatorial wannabe and anti-health-care crusader Rob McKenna is holding a campaign kick-off breakfast tomorrow morning, but The Stranger, if you can believe it, is not allowed inside. After I emailed the campaign to RSVP, I got a call back from McKenna-protector Adam Faber explaining, “Tomorrow’s event is for invited press only, and we didn’t invite The Stranger.” […]
“This is very simple and it is all I intend to say,” Fabar intentionally said. “The Stranger’s editorial director has made a $500 donation to our opponent and political blogger, Mr. Goldstein, is listed on the PDC reports as the head of a political action committee called the No Rob PAC. I think that speaks for itself.”
Well, Adam, it’s actually called the No Reversing Our Benefits PAC.
Dan Savage donated $500 to Inslee. Ooooohhh. Goldy, before he was employed by The Stranger created a PAC called “No Reversing Our Benefits PAC,” with the amusing acronym “NoROB PAC”. It was a fucking joke…unless you are a peevish and, perhaps, paranoid gubernatorial wannabe.
McKenna made a peevish spectacle of himself again when a Democratic videographer showed up to video tape his talk in a openly-advertised public venue. After his attempts to intimidate the videographer failed, McKenna terminated the presentation and beat a retreat to the “cupcake table.”
And then there’s the episode where McKenna had fucked up its own campaign cash rollover and bitterly complained about Jay Inslee’s query to the PDC about rolling over his federal dollars into his state campaign.
Recently a special session of the state legislature was convened that, by law, prohibits state elected officials, like McKenna but not Inslee, from fundraising. The McKenna campaign wailed like a spoiled child:
“At what point does Congressman Inslee start acting like someone following Washington state rules, instead of someone following Washington D.C. rules?” [McKenna’s campaign manager Randy] Pepple said.
(If McKenna wants a level playing field, perhaps he would agree to commute to D.C. for the work week….)
McKenna’s most recent display of petulance was last Friday when, at the last minute, he cancelled an interview with the Washington Education Association:
WEA members were disappointed McKenna decided not to share his opinions on education with the group, Lindquist said.
“The teachers here wondered why he wasn’t here. They were speculating that he was afraid to meet with us,” or that education was not one of his priorities, Lindquist said.
McKenna’s campaign manager, Randy Pepple, said the attorney general decided not to attend the WEA endorsement interview because he didn’t expect to have a fair hearing with people who were interested in hearing his point of view.
“It became very apparent yesterday that the WEA was turning today into `celebrating the endorsement of Congressman Inslee Day,'” Pepple said Saturday.
Lindquist said the WEA changed the date of its candidate interviews after McKenna said he had a conflict with the original Nov. 12 date. His campaign called the union on Friday afternoon to cancel his interview with the WEA-PAC Board. The union said he also refused to answer written questions about public education.
McKenna thinks he cannot win, so takes his ball and goes home. Maybe he got a cupcake.
Dissing the teachers was a stupid—and revealing—unforced error on McKenna’s part. For one thing, McKenna fancies himself as big on education. Apparently, he’s not so “into” it that he can communicate with teachers.
And dissing a teachers’ union raises a big red flag for folks who aren’t quite convinced that a Governor McKenna would do for Washington state what Governor Scott Walker has done to Public Sector employees in Wisconsin. Over the past year, we have seen a systematic Republican War on Workers. Would a Gov. McKenna bring the war to Washington? You know…the same way he forced us to join the multistate lawsuit against the healthcare reform law?
A better McKenna would have engaged the teachers, recognize common ground, acknowledge differences and made his best case. Instead, McKenna ran from the fight and then whined about it. And what we know from recent elections…the voters just don’t go for petulant whiners.
– That News Tribune piece on Roy Alloway and the WestNET drug task force is absolutely incredible. Their outrageous behavior was one of the major reasons the Cannabis Defense Coalition exists today. There was always somewhat of an understanding that Alloway and his associates weren’t playing by the rules, but Sean Robinson does an outstanding job going back through their history and providing more detail on exactly how often and how blatantly they either cut corners or simply broke the law. Most damning is the fact that they even fabricated their statistics in order to continue qualifying for federal funds.
– Sorry, but if you want to be a police officer, you’re not allowed to have independent thoughts or opinions.
– Also from the New York Times, the DEA has participated in money laundering and other normally-illegal behavior involving drug proceeds as way to build cases against drug lords. None of this is news to people who’ve been following the drug war, but it’s now being lumped into the greater witch hunt over Fast and Furious. Folks on the right are trying to paint this as something unique to the Obama Administration, but that’s quite a stretch. In fact, nothing in Fast and Furious is even close to as bad as the Juarez House of Death case, where ICE and the DOJ were aware that a paid government informant was killing people in Mexico, but did nothing about it. That, of course, happened during the Bush Administration. And not surprisingly, no one in Congress demanded that anyone resign over it.
– Maia Szalavitz writes about the new study showing that states with medical marijuana laws have seen larger decreases in drunk driving fatalities than states that don’t have them. My first reaction to the study was skepticism, primarily because I’ve never been a big believer in the substitution theory, that when marijuana is sold through legal channels people will replace their alcohol consumption with marijuana use. But if that’s what’s happening, it should be pretty obvious that it will lower the number of traffic fatalities.
In baseball, teams that spend excessive amounts on payroll (you can say they all pay excessive amounts in payroll, but that’s a discussion for another day) pay a percentage over a set limit back to the league. It seems to me the state could, in these dire budget times, demand a certain percentage back. I’m not saying a lot. Maybe 5% of the money over 120% of the money they get back from the state. Enough so that counties feel it but not so much that it cripples them.
I should note, even though the trolls will ignore it, that I don’t like this proposal of mine. I simply dislike it less than the idea of further cuts to education and social services. I’d prefer tax increases, and preferably progressive ones. I’d prefer that the Roadkill Caucus and the Republicans act seriously instead of demonizing state workers. But since they won’t, we’ll have to think creatively.
And, yes, I’m aware that many of the deepest cuts to education and social services are happening in counties that would have to pay this luxury tax. That’s just the price you pay for your anti-tax rhetoric.
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