Archives for September 2012

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Tonight, bring along you own Secret Tape to share!

(As Mitt requested, the full video is now available, here.)

Can’t make it to Seattle’s DL tonight? There are lots of other Washington state chapters of DL meeting over the next week. Tonight the Tri-Cities chapter meets. The Longview and South Seattle chapters meet on Wednesday. The Spokane chapter and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meet this Thursday. And on Monday, the Yakima, South Bellevue and Olympia chapters meet.

With 228 chapters of Living Liberally, including thirteen in Washington state four in Oregon and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.

– Romney said some awful things to his wealthy supporters.

– But of course, both sides do it.

– 4755 Fauntleroy development: 1st look at street-level ‘concepts’

– Today in No Shit, Sherlock.

– Don’t throw tomatoes at the Vancouver Education Association.

– Candy corn is a flavor that doesn’t work in candy corn. Maybe don’t add it to Oreos.

Over at Publicola, they have Elway Poll’s recent numbers for the initiatives. It looks bad for all of the initiatives.

The Elway poll, in contrast, shows three of the four statewide ballot measures (gay marriage, pot*, and the two-thirds rule) “teetering on the edge of victory,” with just 50 to 51 percent support. The fourth, charter schools, is leading but has the support of just 47 percent of likely voters.

It’ll be pretty awful if gay people can’t get married or if Washington State is still arresting people for possession of marijuana. Still, as an anti-initiative person, I’m always glad that it’s tough to pass an initiative. Of course R-74 isn’t an initiative, so that’s a little different.

But in general, if people in Washington are skeptical of the process, that’s probably good overall.

[Read more…]

– McGinn’s budget has more money for rail and for cops and a gunshot locator.

– Obama has totally failed Czechoslovakia.

– Bill Clinton came to town.

– This BikePAC fundraiser looks like fun.

– Who Paul Ryan spoke with at the values voters summit (h/t).

– I feel your pain. It brings me joy.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the north Oahu beach where scenes from the show “Lost” were filmed.

This week’s location is somewhere in Washington state, 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.]

Pearl of Great Price, Abraham 3:23
And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.

And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;

Discuss.

Thom: Why the G.O.P. doesn’t want the Fed to help.

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News bias in editing Warren video.

Ed and Pap: Cheney’s incompetence killed 3,000 Americans.

Ellen makes ‘nice’ political ads for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

Sam Seder: Rand Paul is SCHOOLED on government jobs under Obama.

Bill Maher: It’s a Significantly Less Wonderful Life.

Let’s talk about values.

Daily Show: How to spin doctor a story.

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

Buzz60: Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Pat Boone indicate that the Birfer movement is over.

Young Turks: Snoop Dog, “Bush Fucked up for 8 years, vote Obama.

Jonathan Mann: Bearhug the President.

Sam Seder and Glenn Greenwald: Getting away with torture.

Greenman: An interview with Mauri Pelto about retreating glaciers in the Pacific Northwest:

Lawrence O’Donnell: NBC battleground poll shows big leads for President Obama.

Chris Mathews plays FDR clip that perfectly describes Republicans.

Willard!

• Ann Telnaes: Romney tries another strategy to get a bounce in the polls
• Slate TV: Democrats turn Tables and question Romney’s national security competence.
• Top five reasons why Mitt won’t release his tax returns.
• Tagg and Craig with Romney Rock!
• Buzz60: Swing states are swinging to Obama.
• Slate TV: Romney spoiler—Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson on ballot in 47 states.
• Thom and Pap: Media ignores Romney lies in favor of politicization
• Maddow: War on Women in VA could cost Romney the race.
• Young Turks: Conservatives defending Romney’s erroneous statement on Libya.
• Zina Saunders: The Romney Identi-Kit.
• Young Turks: Romney’s “embassy” comments backfire.
• The Cheeters.
• The three branches of Mitt Romney’s ‘Neo-CON’ foreign policy
• Slate TV: Romney’s attack backfires.
• Sharpton: Romney campaign hands out ‘Talking Points’ on Libya
• Maddow: Ryan shares billing with “former Terrorist” at fringe conference.
• Buzz60: Kanye West new song takes on Mitt Romney’s taxes.
• Thom: Romney finds a new way to lie.
• Slate TV: Kanye West, “Mitt Romney Don’t Pay No Tax”
• Ann Telnaes: Mittstep.

Maddow: Judge says Walker’s union-stripping law is unconstitution.

Young Turks: Bachmann or Palin…who’s CRAZIER???

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

“Obama Style”: a hit video that simply destroys Obama.

Sam Seder: Bush’s 9/11 fail is far worse than you thought!

G.O.P. Voter Suppression Efforts

• Pap and Thom: G.O.P. steps up voter suppression efforts.
• Sam Seder: G.O.P. makes it difficult to register in Florida.
• Thom: Voter ID goes to PA Supreme Court.
• Maddow: Exposing the G.O.P. voter suppression effort.

White House: West Wing Week.

Kimmel: This week in unnecessary censorship.

Young Turks: Poll shows some Republicans think Mitt Romney killed bin Laden.

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News suggests Obama hates God.

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

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

I love that a UW student won gold at the Paralympic games:

Meg Fisher won gold in the women’s road race time trial at the London Paralympic Games earlier this month.

A Physical Therapy doctorate student at UW, Fisher hails from Missoula, Montana. She documents her athletic endeavors on her blog and on Twitter at @GoMegFisher.

Today, she is at the White House getting hugs from our nation’s leaders:

Yesterday Jim McDermott introduced a bill aimed at making sure America has enough primary care doctors in the future. From his press release:

Modeled after the successful ROTC program, RDOCS offers full scholarships to medical students in exchange for a 5-year service commitment in a medically underserved area. RDOCS will be administered by the states, which will send RDOCS scholars to their state-operated medical schools. RDOCS officers (as they are known after graduation) will then become licensed and serve as primary-care doctors in their state of residence. The program is authorized to start immediately and begin graduating its first additional 4,000 new primary-care doctors in 2020, and 20,000 new doctors by 2024.

McDermott added, “Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we are going to get close to universal health coverage in the United States. But universal coverage will not be meaningful if we don’t have enough doctors to serve our population. I am optimistic that Congress can demonstrate leadership in restoring our doctor workforce for the next generation.”

Fantastic. This is yet another way we’re going to have to make sure the Affordable Care Act works. We’re going to have to make sure there are enough doctors in the country. But, of course, the Republicans control the House of Representatives, so Joel Connelly isn’t sure about its ability to pass.

McDermott is a senior member of the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee. When Democrats held a majority, he co-authored (with Republican Rep. Jerry Weller of Illinois) legislation that enacted a sweeping overhaul of foster care in America.

The fate of RDOCs, in a polarized House, is less certain. The House is spending less than one-third of 2012 in session.

Sure, that too. I don’t have anything like a whip count, but it seems like a worthy thing.

I’ve been pretty critical of I-502, the initiative that legalizes possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for those 21 and over and regulates its production and sale. I’m not happy about the unscientific DUI provisions (which I think will be abused in order to continue the typical drug war harassment of minority youths and others), and I worry that the high taxes imposed within the supply chain – along with the continued ban on non-medical private growing – will continue to encourage a rogue “medical” marijuana industry, where sketchy doctors get paid to put recreational smokers on the path towards cheaper tax-free homegrown marijuana. If we’re going to be pioneers and establish a regulatory model that can serve as an example for other states, that makes me nervous.

Those problems aside, passing I-502 this November has the potential to be a massive game-changer in the history of drug prohibition in this country. The conventional wisdom is that any statewide vote to legalize marijuana will go as far as statewide efforts to legalize hemp farming (which is legal in several U.S. states, but still successfully pre-empted by federal law). On the other hand, we’ve seen statewide efforts to legalize medical marijuana successfully push back against the federal ban to the point where dispensaries have become public and even prominent.

Passing I-502 brings that conflict out in the open, and there’s good reason to believe that the dynamics would be similar to what’s happened with medical marijuana. As legalized medical marijuana became a reality in a number of states, it became clear to public officials that this legal market should be regulated, rather than continually driven underground. This led to greater and greater pushback from state and local governments. And even though both idiots running for governor this year oppose I-502, this reality will be clear to them if it passes and there are hundreds of thousands of law-abiding recreational marijuana users who constitute a very above-ground marketplace.

I’ve been disgusted at times by both sides in the I-502 debate. Pro I-502 voices have often been far too dismissive of the potential problems with the DUI provisions and have been far too prone to make things up about the folks in the medical marijuana community who oppose it. Opposition to I-502 in the medical marijuana community has very little to do with greed. It has far more to do with paranoia.

Folks who’ve been staring into the gun barrel of the drug war apparatus for years see the numerous aspects of I-502 that are meant to appeal to moderate voters and instead see loopholes that will allow the persecution of marijuana users to continue. As a result, the anti I-502 crowd has devolved into some grand delusions and have completely lost touch with the more nuanced reality of this initiative.

This initiative arguably isn’t crafted as well as it should have been, but it still has the potential to make important history this fall. In some ways it already has, by picking up the kinds of endorsements that these types of initiatives normally don’t receive. But a big win in November is the kind of endorsement that elected officials here and in D.C. won’t be able to ignore.

I was not aware of the Washington Safe Routes to School program before today.

Washington’s Safe Routes to School program provides technical assistance and resources to cities, counties, schools, school districts and state agencies for improvements that get more children walking and bicycling to school safely, reduce congestion around schools, and improve air quality.

But as these things go far too often, I’m only hearing about this worthwhile program as it faces going away. Transportation for Washington are trying to save it, and they have a letter you can send to Governor Gregoire.

Right now, Governor Gregoire has a choice. She can slash funding that gives tens of thousands of children the opportunity to walk and bike to school. Or she can keep funding the state’s Safe Routes to School program that improves our children’s safety and health. The Governor must make her decision by October 1.

Yes, I know: there are so many great, so many worthy programs out there. And they’re all in trouble in the current economic climate, and bullshit way we raise revenue in this state slower than economic growth. But, this is a worthy program, and I think it deserves the fight too.

My advice, as always, when an activist group has a form letter is to make it your own. Especially the first line or two, because the intern or staffer who is getting a bunch of these has already read the letter as a form letter, and the more you just copy and paste, the less they’re inclined to read it again.

– Mitt Romney is a despicable person.

– And some of his supporters are even more out of touch than he is.

– I, for one, welcome our new rodent overloads.

– You take an anti-choice vote, you get opposition from NARAL. Not sure why anyone would be surprised by that.

– Drug Dealers (Not Just Users) Are Testing Their Cocaine for Levamisole

– I know Bible Study is the way HA generally deals with taking a verse out of context. But Fred Clark does a great job addressing the anti-gay clobber verses in these two posts.

It seems like for as long as I can remember, People For Puget Sound have been a part of the environmental community. Putting pressure and getting things done for the good. So it’ll be sad to see them go.

Despite these achievements, People For Puget Sound is at a crucial juncture. Recent and current economic realities have constrained our ability to raise necessary funds to keep the organization moving forward independently. In light of these difficult economic circumstances and the urgent need to continue our work, the board of directors has determined that the best course of action in service to our mission is to transition our programs to other organizations that embrace our commitment to Puget Sound. We are pleased to share that we are in the process of negotiating with two well-respected organizations that will enable our work to continue into the future.

We are planning to add our policy expertise, grassroots strength, advocacy, and education know-how to expand Washington Environmental Council’s work to protect Puget Sound. We are also in discussions about transitioning our restoration projects to EarthCorps, a long-term People For Puget Sound partner, which would enable them to expand their portfolio of projects in Puget Sound. Both of these venerable organizations are passionate about stopping the flow of polluted runoff into the Sound, restoring critical habitat, protecting shorelines, and preserving Puget Sound for generations to come. We are confident that they will be able to efficiently and effectively carry our mission forward.