Archives for April 2012

If you know you’ll be getting into an argument with your conservative relatives for this weekend, you might want to bookmark this graph Shaun and others around the web have been posting.

– Good for Bruce Harrell for his proposal to allow women to file a complaint with the city’s Office of Civil Rights if they are asked to leave a public place or cover up while breastfeeding.

– I’m not sure weirdness is really something you can measure legislative session to legislative session.

– Eliminating Disability Lifeline, on top of being horrible policy on its own, doesn’t even save money. (h/t)

– War Crimes

– Finally, we need to stop shrugging off the concerns and cries of people in states that feel like lost causes or bastions of GOP influence because those people matter too. We need to stop telling people to move (most can’t), to secede (we don’t want to), or to start fighting (we already are, you just aren’t looking).

– Possibly the dumbest use of I was just asking for people’s opinion ever.

– Where’s my Higgs?

Remember last year after the legislature passed a biannual budget — that we’re still operating under — and the Seattle Times Editorial Board praised them to high heaven?

The session in the spring was bloody — but also successful. It was an honest budget, with fewer gimmicks than in earlier years. And in the Senate it was done with the cooperation of both parties. If legislators come back, they should do it that way because it is the way that works.

Like it or not (and I didn’t like it) that budget was bipartisan, especially from the Senate. But the Seattle Times thought it was a success. It works. So now, we’re operating under the same budget, and we need urgent reforms.

THE deadlock in Olympia is not about the budget. Really the deadlock is about whether to accept three reforms demanded by Republicans and moderate Democrats or to pass watered-down versions. We urge legislators to go for the full reforms, because they make the state budget more sustainable in the long run.

My God! The budget is unsustainable. And how do we reform our unsustainable budget? With bipartisan (3 Democrats in one house of the legislature and zero in the other so far is bipartisan, FYI) reforms. Reforms like making retirement worse for state workers. Reforms like having a shittier health care package for teachers than the one they negotiate now with their districts. Reforms like 4 year budgets. You know, because we can’t do 2 years, why not 4?

No reforming our taxes to make them more fair or to raise more revenue. No making sure revenue keeps up with the size of the economy. Of course if the legislature passes those types of reform and it doesn’t pan out, expect the Seattle Times to freak out and demand another round of “reforms” of the same type.

For the most part, I’ve been happy with the coverage of the 1st Congressional District primary. While there’s some bullshit coverage of Darcy Burner, that’s sort of what you expect from the mainstream sources. There are plenty of good candidates, and for the most part they’re covered about as well as you can expect.

But one thing in particular just drives me off the wall. And that’s whenever I read that they’re competing for “Jay Inslee’s old seat.” The fuck they are. They’re competing to fill a seat with the same number as Jay Inslee’s old seat, but since the redistricting looks nothing like that seat. Hopefully this will die down a bit since there will be an election to fill the old seat until redistricting kicks in.

Why the hell not? I mean, soon we won’t have Newt or Santorum to kick the shit out of anymore.

Newt is already out of the picture. But Lil’ Ricky Santorum keeps on Mitt like a bad case of Giardia. Cesspool ensues.

The polls close in Wisconsin, D.C. and Maryland at 5:00 PM PDT. That’s now!

5:04: It’s all tied up in all three states, with 0% reporting…

5:06: I got a call this afternoon from my favorite neice, Maria Elaine Valdez Holman. “Guess what, uncle Darryl, I voted today,” she said with some excitement. My guess is that most 18 year-olds don’t get quite so excited about voting, but Maria has become quite passionate about politics. She is really looking forward to voting Gov. Scott Walker’s ass out of office. Needless to say, she got her voting issues resolved, but not without some considerable effort, thanks to Walker.

5:32: With less than 1% reporting, we have some results for Maryland:

• Romney, 53.2%
• Santorum, 26.6%
• Gingrich, 10.4%
• Paul, 8.3%

5:41: With 1% reporting in Maryland, CNN boldly calls it for the Mittster.

5:42: We just got a teevee turned to CNN at the Ale House (that can be hard to do during Basketball season, and there is a Women’s final on tonight). Anyway, it seems I was misunderinformed…polls in Wisconsin haven’t closed yet. I believe they close at 6:00 PM PDT.

6:00: Polls are closing in Wisconsin. Wolf Blitzer puts his “intensity” face on.

CNN projection based on exit polls:

• Romney, 43%
• Santorum, 35%
• Gingrich, 11%
• Paul, 6%

6:02: NPR points out that turn-out may be much lower than expected in Wisconsin. That’s bad news for Scott Walker. The G.O.P. voters are simply not all that engaged.

6:06: CNN projects that Mitt Romney wins in D.C. What took them so long…I mean, Santorum didn’t even make the ballot. But I’m grateful we have that settled.

6:07: Dear CNN…When you have a text insert saying, “Santorum to speak soon” up for 45 minutes, you ought to be asking yourself…”Are we being played by the Santorum campaign?”

6:09: CNN has Ari Fleischer on the teevee. Without sound, I have no idea what he is saying. But I’m guessing he is lying–after all, his lips are moving.

6:14: Finally…after almost an hour of pushing it…Santorum is speaking. All smiles and waiving signs. This looser is on fucking Mars! Oh…wait. He’s giving the speech from Mars, PA.

6:17: CNN banner: “Breaking News: Awaiting Wisconsin Results”. That’s not fucking breaking news. We have been awaiting these results for our entire fucking life!
[Read more…]

Please join us tonight for another evening of electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. Tonight’s primaries are in Wisconsin, Maryland, and DC.

Seattle DL meets every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Our regular starting time is 8:00pm, but feel free to show up before then to catch the earliest election returns.

Naturally, we’ll be doing a bit of live blogging of the results.

Can’t make it to Seattle? There is also a meeting tonight of the Tri-Cities chapter, and the Tacoma chapter meets this Thursday.

With 233 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and six more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s one near you.

US Supreme Court Affirms Warrantless Ass Searches

Who else…but Goldy.

Goldy goes on to explain that Washington has laws that require a warrant for incarceratory cavity probes.

The gist of the Supreme Court ruling is that jailers have the right to invasive searches without warrants because of the heightened security environment of a jail or prison.

Yet…somehow, lacking warrantless ass searches, Washington state jails and prisons manage to not spiral into utter chaos.

Maybe it’s the climate.

– Seattle’s Road Map to a Climate-Friendly Future

– It’s worth noting that the quickest way to enact restrictions on walking around while carrying a gun is probably for the “wrong” kinds of people to start carrying firearms, causing a freakout among the people who wrote the laws in the first place.

– Call me a skeptic, but I think corporate compassion is mostly PR.

– Pictures of the U-Link breakthrough.

– You, gentle Times reader, should your accept your trite generalizations about female sexuality from noone less than a Latin-spouting Harvardian.

– Our awesome banking system.

– Health care glossary.

Another act (h/t) that again has nothing to do with any other incident like it or the noxious political environment the GOP is pushing. Just another nut. No connective tissue. It’s all completely senseless and unpredictable.

Grand Chute police are investigating an explosive device that blew up at Planned Parenthood.

It happened about 7:40 p.m. Sunday at the Planned Parenthood office at 3800 North Gillett Street.

Authorities say a plastic water bottle filled with an accelerant caused the blast and fire, which quickly extinguished itself by the time firefighters arrived.

Fortunately nobody was hurt, and it doesn’t seem to have done much damage. Still, it could have been much worse. And I feel like a broken record here, but while of course the person who did this is responsible for their actions, the anti-choice people should recognize their contribution to this, especially the ones using violent, eliminationist rhetoric.

– Trayvon-like Dudes

What the hell is up with white hipster Jesus, Newsweek?

– I don’t buy the idea that a large group of black bodies = crime, but I know a lot of people who trumpet on & on about the joys of gentrification do.

– I think no one really was identifying him with white conservatives until white conservatives adopted Zimmerman as their Mumia Abu-Jamal.

– Urban agriculture discussion in Olympia.

– Waspzilla

– Too far

For as long as the Trayvon Martin story has been in the news, the mindset of those feverishly trying to defend George Zimmerman has been fascinating to me. And for a while, I had trouble coming up with a parallel. But earlier this week, I think I managed to come up with what it reminds me of. It reminds me of how so many folks clung to a belief that OJ Simpson was totally innocent of the murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend, no matter how much evidence began piling up against it.

Most readers of this blog aren’t under any illusions as to what happened that night in Sanford. George Zimmerman, a ridiculously overzealous “block watchman” who’d called 9-1-1 dozens of times, sees Martin walking back from the local 7-11 and finds him suspicious. What happens next is abundantly clear from both Zimmerman’s 9-1-1 call to police and Martin’s brief conversation with a friend back home. Zimmerman, who’s armed with a firearm, confronts Martin. Martin, likely already in fear for his life, tries to defend himself. But he’s armed with nothing but candy and iced tea – and as a result, Zimmerman is able to shoot him dead.

The common thread between both the OJ dead-enders and the crackpots bending over backwards to absolve Zimmerman of any blame is a strong desire to believe the counter-narrative. With the OJ case, so many people wanted to believe that this was about crooked law enforcement and not the murder of two innocent people. And with the Trayvon Martin case, many people want to believe that this is about criminality in the black community and not the senseless murder of an innocent teen. But the reality with both cases is that neither narrative is relevant. The only thing that really matters is that innocent people were killed and the families involved have the right to demand justice.

It’s an unspeakable outrage that George Zimmerman hasn’t been arrested yet. And sadly, I worry that even if he does get arrested, not enough was done by the police to collect enough evidence to convict him. When OJ was acquitted, I was in the student union building in Ann Arbor watching it on TV. Dozens of African-American students celebrated in what I found to be a somewhat disturbing display. And yet, I’m almost bracing myself for the same thing should George Zimmerman stand trial and beat that murder charge. Those who believe that killing the innocent is acceptable within the shadow of some other perceived injustice will celebrate. And America will die a little bit again.

Last week’s contest was won by Budget Wonk. It was the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, France where a gunman killed three children and a teacher last month.

Here’s this week’s contest, which is a random location somewhere in the world, good luck!

Proverbs 31:6-7
Let beer be for those who are perishing,
wine for those who are in anguish!
Let them drink and forget their poverty
and remember their misery no more.

Discuss.