Archives for May 2013

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was in Tupelo, MS (and I believe it’s the Taekwondo business that is now the center of the weird ricin case).

This week’s location is a random spot somewhere on earth, good luck!

Isaiah 34:7
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.

Discuss.

Note: I was travelling today. Time and bandwidth limitations kept this week’s collection of media clips a little thinner. Enjoy, and feel free to link to your favorite video (or audio) of the week in the comment thread.

Young Turks: FAUX News says “no” to reason and science.

Sam Seder: How to own your Congresscritter.

Ann Telnaes: The morning after the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

Maddow Show: The lies about Hurricane Katrina in the Bush Library.

Liberal Viewer: Right wing “austerity economics” based on spreadsheet error?.

Young Turks: Why May Day should outrage the bottom 90%.

Memphis Soul at the White House:

Kimmel: Unnecessary censorship.

Thom: “Mission Accomplished”, ten years later.

Pap: Why deficits don’t matter.

Sharpton: From prisoner to President.

Stephen: Bomber roommates.

SlateTV: Happy Birthday Open Web.

Ann Telnaes: More than one way to support a free press.

White House: West Wing Week.

Mark Fiore: Sequesterless Airlines.

Young Turks: Woman prosecuted for filming slaughter house from public street.

Stephen with some background check truthiness.

Pap: The G.O.P.’s New America.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Elizabeth Colbert Busch headed to Congress.

Sam Seder: PA Gov, “There’s no jobs because you’re all on drugs”.

Maddow show: Truth decay and the NRA.

John Fugelsang asks God to explain John Boehner.

Gitmo:

• Jon: Gitmo failure.
• Adam Serwer: Transferring prisoners out of Guantanamo.
• Ann Telnaes: “We have to close Gitmo”.
• Thom: Gitmo by the numbers.

The caterpillar that becomes the pussy moth looks like Donald Trump.

Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: gay and Bush.

Matt Binder: No guns left behind in AZ.

Young Turks: Stephen Colbert’s sister puts a beatdown on Mark Sanford:

Jon on freedom magic.

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

Not much happened in the last legislative session. There isn’t a budget yet. The state DREAM Act and Reproductive Parity Act didn’t even get a vote, for God’s sake. But at least it’s now always a crime to rape a married partner.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill Wednesday to change state law, calling it a “very important advance.” The measure removes the spousal exemption from both rape in the third degree – in which no physical force is used – and from taking indecent liberties.

Congrats to us for doing something most other states did decades ago.

Also, those comments are probably not the worst I’ve ever read (hello, I write for HA) but the incongruity between the good news in the article and the paranoid awfulness of the comments is pretty incredible.

It’s tough to hold out much hope for the special session when the Republicans put out press releases like this.

It is the last day of the 105-day legislative session and we have just adjourned. Unfortunately, a special session is on the horizon — an outcome that is disappointing for everyone.

We are headed to overtime primarily because of one issue: the operating budget. The governor and House Democrats want to spend roughly $1 billion more than the state plans to take in for regular tax collections in the next budget cycle that begins July 1. To do so, they would increase taxes on Main Street sectors of our fragile economy.

…

Some things are worth fighting for — no matter how long it takes. We don’t want a special session, but the alternative is accepting an approach that has led to many of the problems our state faces today.

Honestly, if you don’t want any loophole closing no matter how ridiculous they’ve become over the years, it’s tough to imagine any amount of cooling off time being enough. But maybe being a few weeks closer to a deadline will help? Sure.

That may be the strangest headline I’ve ever written. Makes me feel like Lex Luthor or something. Still, reading this Paul Constant piece I’m nodding in agreement.

I’m ordinarily the first person to come to Seattle’s defense when a journalist pokes fun at Seattle’s provincialism. But the answer to your question, Tim, is that there is no defense for this shit. Our city deserves every ounce of ridicule that it gets for tolerating—and even, on the media’s behalf, encouraging—these sad little children LARPing their little-kid fantasies all over the city. This is one case where a little street harassment could do some good; I’d love to see an entire block of Seattleites shouting “GROW UP” at these preening fuckwits as they mosey around feeling good about themselves.

I mean if you want to pretend, go pretend. That’s what your back yard is for, I guess. Or a park, maybe. But when it’s the public, when it’s people who have rights, maybe superheroing around is not helpful.

– I had been wondering where the buses (and cars, but that’s another post) that wanted to get from Downtown to West Seattle would go when the Viaduct closed. Columbia.

– Renew and include Belltown in the MID.

– My job at the abortion hot line

– Right now our state has the deepest concentration of aerospace intelligence anywhere in the world. We have the facilities, the runways, the production capacity to build airplanes. So rather than the state being a promoter for Boeing, we have to be a promoter for aircraft manufacturing.

– Bike season is starting as the Fremont Bridge recorded it’s most bike crossings yet.

– About a quarter of the people in your country think an armed revolution might be necessary in the next few years.

– Rick Perry knows who to be upset at after the West disaster. A cartoonist.

Sorry people in Clark County, you just got a new Director of Environmental Services (Columbian link).

State Sen. Don Benton was tapped to become Clark County’s director of environmental services Wednesday in a surprise and controversial move by commissioners David Madore and Tom Mielke.

Yeah, he’s pretty terrible as a senator, he’ll probably be just as bad as an anything. At least he’s out of the state’s hair. Wait, really? You’re joking? No.

The sudden move to hire followed an email Madore received from Benton. Madore said Benton told him he will remain a state senator and split his time between the jobs.

Fuck the fuck? In case you’re wondering, I hate that our legislature is part time.

It’s understandable, if somewhat missing the point, that the possibility for a repeat of May Day something something anarchists and Occupy Seattle is getting most of the media attention for protests today. I mean last year there was minor property damage. But I think there’s a more important thing the same day:

The theme of the 2013 march will center on justice for all workers and a community-based framework for dialogue on Immigration Reform. The action on May 1st is calling for an immediate end to the E-verify and S-Comm programs, as well as a moratorium on all deportations. Nationally, immigration has returned to the fore as politicians debate several proposals for addressing a matter that has been neglected since 2009. Congress, through inaction, has been complicit in the use of enforcement-heavy tactics such as dragnet raids, racial profiling of immigrants, and the use of discriminatory employee verification programs.Under the current administration, up to 390,000 undocumented immigrants are deported each year, with 2011 bringing the most deportations to date, according to recent statistics. This is not the progress we envisioned when we sought to defeat xenophobic congressional legislation seven years ago. As such, we continue to organize at the grassroots level to ensure that families are not forcibly separated and to ensure that our communities are able to live, work, and are granted the opportunity to normalize their documented status, without fear and deprivation of basic human rights.

Right on. I hadn’t heard about this year’s march until I got an email about possible traffic concerns. Maybe last year’s minor property damage took the wind out of reporting this, or maybe it’s just me missing it. You can find updates at #M1SEA