Archives for September 2012

At least until it’s up and running on Saturday. Or until I think of something else. But I was looking at the map of C route on West Seattle Blog that I linked to in the Open Thread, and I had a few more thoughts.

First off, every time before now that I saw the maps, I’d completely missed that they were connected. Up at the top it says, “Continues as Rapid Ride D.” For some reason I had thought they were separate routes. So, it’ll be sort of like now from West Seattle downtown, the 54 changing into the 5, sometimes. You won’t have to get off. This alleviates some of my worries about the D route deadending in North Downtown. So if you’re in Pioneer Square and you’re heading to Ballard you catch the C North and it quickly turns into the D. Hopefully always? Like it’s one route.

I don’t know if that was a branding issue, or what, but it seems like it would make more sense to call it one line now that there’s no free ride area to confuse when you board. Maybe it’s a lesson from the failure of the Monorail where everybody criticized it for going from West Seattle to Ballard, when obviously the point was it went from Ballard or West Seattle to Downtown and then continuing to the other.

The other thing I noticed is that it goes on the Viaduct. This makes sense for now: it’s going from West Seattle to Downtown. But the Viaduct won’t be around much longer, and the tunnel won’t have an exit on Seneca or an entrance on Columbia. Presumably it’ll either go through SoDo or I-5, but either way will make it less rapid. If it’s through SoDo, hopefully, they’ll have figured out signal prioritization.

– Rapid Ride C and pay as you enter both ways are coming to West Seattle.

– A plurality of Shoreline residents would support a plastic bag ban. So it’s not just the dirty hippies in Seattle.

– We are free to be assholes. But we can never be free to do so without thereby making ourselves assholes.

– Bullshit.

– Now, some health officials and communications experts are saying the symbol for climate impacts should be a child, not a polar bear.

– Only one of these things is a gaff.

– Obama needs to work on being a better antichrist.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was in Port Orchard.

This week’s is related to something in the news from September, good luck!

[HA Bible Study is on hiatus through the November election as we honor Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by studying the scriptures of his Mormon religion.]

Book of Mormon, Mosiah 11:6
Yea, and thus they were supported in their laziness, and in their idolatry, and in their whoredoms, by the taxes which king Noah had put upon his people; thus did the people labor exceedingly to support iniquity.

Discuss.

Guide to voter ID laws.

Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Roy Zimmerman with Sandy Riccardi: The Wedding of Church and State:

Thom: The Good, the Bad and The Very, Very Ugly.

Ed: Democrats Rebound in Senate Races For 2012

Mark Fiore: Why do they hate us?

President Obama on Letterman.

Young Turks: Rush Limbaugh blames “Feminazis” for his small penis.

Thom and Pap: GOP says “lazy people shouldn’t vote.

Obama v. Romney in Patriot Games:

Ann Telnaes: Testing your free speech limits.

White House: West Wing Week.

WILLARD!!!

• Homer votes for Mitt:
• Sam Seder: “Poor me…I inherited nothing!”
• Ann Telnaes: Romney offers his opinion on the 47%.
• Young Turks: GOP Abandoning Mitt Romney.
• Mitt taken out of context.
• SlateTV: Romney on the ropes
• Sam Seder: “Poor me, I’m not Latino.”
• Obama ad features Mitt Romney!
• SNL on 47%
• Jon: The 47% meltdown.
• SlateTV: Ann Romney damage control.
• Maddow: Paul Ryan has trouble at the AARP.
• Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: The 47%
• Sam Seder: Paul Ryan at the AARP.
• Thom: Does Mitt think he’s Jesus?
• Liberal Viewer: SNL predicts Romney 47 Percent Scandal
• Sam Seder: Mitt’s tax return.
• Jon: Romney Magic:
• Young Turks: Mitt Romney flip-flop videos
• Maddow: Mitt plays tax games with 2011 return.
• Sam Seder: Ann Romney to GOP, “STFU!”
• Umm…Booooo!
• SlateTV: Tim Pawlenty quits Mitt.
• Obama (and his anger translator) on the 47%
• Thom: Romneyhood!
• Tweety: Romney Wobbles
• Lawrence O’Donnell: ‘equestrian’ Ann Romney to critics, ‘Stop it. This is hard!’
• Young Turks: Ann lashes out
• Mitt Romeny: Outside the circle.
• Maddow: Big name Republicans thinking past Mitt.
• Leaked! Missing footage from Mitt’s explanatory remarks.
• Conan’s new Romney attack ad: Barack Obama doesn’t exist.
• Paul Ryan repeatedly gets booed at AARP speech

Ann Telnaes: Justice Scalia vents.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Jon: Jesus’ wife.

Sarah Silverman does a Voter ID PSA:

Sam Seder: Florida makes it almost impossible to register to vote.

Young Turks: ON that Sarah Silverman video.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

While I’m generally a McGinn partisan, I haven’t been impressed with his handling of police reform. After the Williams killing, he was quick to do symbolic things right: he declared a John T. Williams day, and did his part to make sure the totem poll got a place in Seattle Center, something I think most mayors would have fought. And there are other times where individually or symbolically he’s been good. But after the DOJ report, he dragged his feet, when he should have lead.

So, I’m heartened to read, at least initially, that Connie Rice seems to be saying the right things.

“I need to understand the factions,” Rice told me after her first day of interviews with community groups, the mayor, and cops. She says a court order approved by US District Court judge James Robart last month to remedy patterns of excessive force and racial bias in policing is “just a document.” Before the city can make cultural changes, everyone involved—the mayor, council, city attorney, beat cops, community groups, etc.—must decide that “you all want to jump off the cliff together.”

Dominic Holden is still pretty skeptical. And perhaps rightly so. For now, I have some hope that things might work out.

It’s that time of year again. When Saint Park(ing) magically tuns a few parking spaces throughout the city into tiny parks.

PARK(ing) Day happens every third Friday in September and is an opportunity for artists, activists, and community members to temporarily make parking spaces into parks. The event raises awareness about important issues like creating a walkable, livable, healthy city.

If any of those spaces are near you, and you have time at lunch, or whatever, check them out.

Patty Murray’s press release about the GOP killing the Veterans Jobs Corps Act.

“It’s both shocking and shameful that Republicans today chose to kill a bill to put America’s veterans back to work. At a time when one in four young veterans are unemployed, Republicans should have been able, for just this once, to put aside the politics of obstruction and to help these men and women provide for their families.

“But this vote is stark reminder that Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans are willing to do absolutely anything to fulfill the pledge he made nearly two years ago to defeat President Obama. It doesn’t matter who gets in their way or which Americans they have to sacrifice in that pursuit, even if it’s our nation’s veterans.

“It’s unbelievable that even after more than a decade of war many Republicans still will not acknowledge that the treatment of our veterans is a cost of war. Today they voted down a fully paid for bill that included bipartisan ideas to put veterans in jobs that will allow them to serve their communities. Jobs that would have helped provide veterans with the self-esteem that is so critical to their successful transition home.

“Today Senate Republicans told the less than 1% of Americans who have spent the last decade serving and sacrificing for the other 99% of Americans that they are not willing to honor that sacrifice with new investments in their well-being when they return home.”

I hate that we went to war in Iraq. I hate that the war in Afghanistan is still going on (and I wasn’t happy with it from the beginning, although unlike Iraq, I understood the case for it). But as long as we decide to go to war, we’d damn well better make sure we do right by the people who fight it.

– Increases in human services in Seattle.

– Romney’s Responsibility Map

– Who could have predicted tolling 99 would be a problem?

– How dead is the Romney campaign?

– GIF Parade!

– I’m voting for whichever candidate like pudding pops!

I’ve been walking from downtown to Drinking Liberally in these nice summer evenings. Last Tuesday, I was running late. I suppose I could have taken my bike or the bus. But, this may have been the last time it’s nice enough for a stroll up there, so I decided I’d make up some of the time on the Streetcar (SLUT if you insist). I’ve got a Puget Pass on my ORCA Card (ORCA if you insist) and I know what you’re supposed to do:

The Seattle Streetcar will eventually be retrofitted with ORCA card readers; until the card readers are in place, ORCA cardholders can show their card as proof of payment on the Seattle Streetcar.

I feel a bit strange just getting on, having the card in my wallet. It sort of feels like stealing the ride, even though it’s following the rules.

Mitt Romney has a blunder problem.

It started years ago, but it really seem to take off with Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom’s, “It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch” comment. Since then, we’ve had “7-11 cookie gate,” Mitt dissing the Olympics host country’s preparedness for the games, mentioning the head of MI-6, and so on.

Until recently, most of the blunders haven’t been substantively rich. (A couple of exceptions: “Corporations are people too, my friend!” and an old Op-Ed with the title, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt!”.)

But the two most recent blunders are really different—they are likely to leave a lasting and meaningfully negative impression of Romney in the minds of many Americans.

The botched statement following the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Libya was factually wrong, repulsively insensitive, and wholly unpresidential. It was a sign of a campaign in desperation, trying anything to the exclusion of taste, good judgement, dignity, and statesmanship.

Mitt’s Blunder of the Week this week reveals Mitt Romney to be a duplicitous asshole. He was caught dissing 47% of Americans—saying things he would never say out in the open—to an elite group of wealthy donors at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser.

Romney’s statement removed all doubt that he has contempt for less fortunate Americans and views their circumstance not even with indifference, but as some sort of blight on the rest of America.

We now have a couple of polls to assess the negative effect of Romney’s statement on people:

Reuters/Ipsos: The statement makes 43% of voters viewed Mitt Romney less favorably.
Reuters/Ipsos: 59% felt Romney was unfairly dismissing a big chunk of Americans as victims.
Gallup poll: The statement makes 36% less likely to vote for him.
Gallup poll: The statement makes 20% more likely to vote for him.

The effect on the race? Although the latest blunders will not be fully captured in aggregate state head-to-head polling for a couple of weeks, we can look at other more immediate indicators.

The average of national polls has moved in Obama’s favor over the past week. The Real Clear Politics average has moved up from a tie two weeks ago to about a +3% advantage for Obama. Likewise, Intrade Prediction Market has seen Obama’s share price surge to its highest median price ever.

Mitt Romney just pulled a reverse Etch-A-Sketch. He has been tacking back to the center from his “severely conservative” (a.k.a. Teabaggy) position he needed to get him through the G.O.P. primary. He has now “reset” himself to a position that is far to the right of most Americans.

He’s no longer viable.

What remains to be seen, is how much down-ballot damage he can cause….

Joel Connelly reports on Archbishop of Seattle, J. Peter Sartain’s opposition to marriage equality.

God is the “author of marriage,” the archbishop argues in the video, posted on the Archdiocese of Seattle website.

The state’s three Catholic dioceses are intensifying their campaign against same-sex marriage in the form of bishop’s statements, “teaching” documents and videos — none of which show up in report’s to the state’s Public Disclosure Commission.

Yet, the instruction of how to vote is unmistakable in Sartain’s video, which can be viewed at http://www.seattlearchdiocese.org/Conscience/Statements.aspx He says:

“We urge our Catholic people to uphold our consistent Catholic teaching on marriage for the good of the Church, society, husbands and wives and their children. Therefore, we bishops reject the redefinition of marriage as a ‘civil contract between two persons’.”

Well, the marriage in a church isn’t a civil contract. So when you marry a lady and a gent, they’ll be married in the eyes of God. If that’s meaningful to them, well, great. But those people have always had the opportunity for their marriage to just be a contract. If R-74 passes, it’ll just expand that to gay couples too, but the Catholic Church can keep not marrying gay people.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I hope the Church will reconsider who they marry, if R-74 passes or not. They’re simply wrong about this one. Every time they say a gay relationship is less than a straight one, it’s harmful to the least among us*, and it’s awful when a Christian organization does that. But that’s their right, if R-74 passes or not.

* There was some discussion in the comments, so just to be clear: gay and lesbian couples are as legitimately couples as any other. I was referring to how society generally treats them, and the Church’s obligations to its members who are considered less than by society. The wording made it sound like I might think gay couples are less than or that they ought to be considered less than, and that’s not the case.

Hey, remember when I thought I’d write about Mitt Romney’s book? I’m still doing that, I swear! But, Romney’s recently released jackass comments, and this post on it in particular, have me thinking about this chapter I made fun of a while ago. Specifically, he tries to lay claim to the idea that the GOP are now the party of the institutions that Truman set up in the wake of the Second World War. No it doesn’t make sense. But it’s hard to lay claim to that when, as Melissa McEwan points out:

MITT ROMNEY THINKS PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO FOOD. MITT ROMNEY THINKS PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO FOOD!!! OMFG MITT ROMNEY, CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THINKS HUMAN BEINGS!!! WHO LIVE!!! IN THIS COUNTRY!!! AREN’T ENTITLED TO FOOD!!!

You see, one of the most important documents that the UN ever passed was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s as powerful a statement of our common humanity as when it was ratified in 1948. From article 25 (emphasis mine):

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

The idea that there’s some good in letting people starve to death seems at odds with what Truman left us.