Archives for July 2013

I don’t own a TV box, and although I could find it, I rarely watch breaking news on television. But judging from my twitter feed, the coverage of the reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict was infused with the assumption that riots would happen, and surprised that they didn’t.

I've heard the word "peaceful" at least four times in the last 20 minutes.

— Grace (@graceishuman) July 14, 2013

Obviously, first and foremost the problem with this is the dehumanizing nature of it. It treats the black (and other, to the extent they’re acknowledged) folks who would protest this verdict as simply violence just waiting to happen. It certainly doesn’t give voice to the actual reason people were out to describe the level of violence.

Now sure, it’s more complex than just that. This has something to do with media sensationalism in general. Here on May Day even before some smashed windows, the story of some anarchists overshadowed much larger peaceful protests for immigration reform.

And it all adds up to a disincentive to participate. Don’t go to that march, it might be violent.

– I think I will go on twitter and start another trend: #AmericaisGeorgeZimmerman

– Seriously, gents, get a different sign.

– Washington is taking steps to keep Boeing here (Seattle Times Link). The thing they could best offer is that they aren’t South Carolina.

– So white people who kill black teenagers shouldn’t even go to court. Because blacks are violent … even if conservatives have use video of rioting (white) hockey fans in Vancouver to prove it.

– Harrell’s attitude about speeding is disappointing; it reveals how ingrained speeding is in American culture, and reminds us that traffic crashes are thought of as “accidents” – things that just happen, and we have little control over. Little could be further from the truth.

– Trayvon Martin was stalked by George Zimmerman because he was black. Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the boy Zimmerman killed was black.

– The GOP press release failing Rep. Mark Takano’s grading is hilarious.

Last week’s contest was a tough one, still unsolved as of Wednesday night. It was Brockton, MA.

This week’s contest is back to Google Maps. Next Sunday, something a little different…

Good luck!

Psalm 94:4-7
God, the wicked get away with murder—
how long will you let this go on?
They brag and boast
and crow about their crimes!
They walk all over your people, God,
exploit and abuse your precious people.
They take out anyone who gets in their way;
if they can’t use them, they kill them.
They think, “God isn’t looking,
Jacob’s God is out to lunch.”

Discuss.

Ann Telnaes: Call force feeding what it is.

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

Young Turks: Is Michelle Malkin a Jihadist for Fascism?

ONN: Week in Review.

This Week in the GOP War on the Poor™:

• Thom: The Koch Brothers’ war on the poor.
• Young Turks: Koch Brothers say all of us are rich
• David Brooks slams House Republicans on farm bill
• Alex Wagner: House GOP nut-bags hijack & defecate on immigration reform debate.
• John Fugelsang: FAUX News explains why crushing student loan debt is a good thing:
• Sam Seder: GOP Continue War Against Food Stamp Families
• Pap: The extinction of the American middle class
• Chris Hayes: Republicans jettison 47 million hungry Americans!

Thom: Wisconsin has discovered something very creepy in their woods.

Red State Update: Podcast episode 34.

Young Turks: Do-nothing GOP Congress admits to being American Taliban.

Thom: Why 30,000 prisoners strike.

Rand Paul’s Friends:

• Sam Seder: Rand Paul’s neo-Confederate, pro-seccesionist, “Southern avenger” aide.
• Young Turks: The astoundingly racist ‘Southern avenger’ and friend of Rand Paul
• Maddow: Rand Paul & top Republicans cozy up to ‘Birtfers’ in Las Vegas.
• Alex Wagner: Sen. Rand Paul employs sick, neo-Confederate activist Jack Hunter.
• Maddow: Rand, Ron and Racism in the G.O.P. Part I
• Maddow: Rand, Ron and Racism in the G.O.P. Part I

White House White Board: Why Immigration Reform Is Good For Our Economy:

PitTV: School of Social Media Arts.

Young Turks: Sarah Palin threatens to run for Senate.

Mark Fiore: Coup, or not a coup.

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

This Week in the Republican War on Women™:

• Thom and friends: The Republican’s vagina problem
• Sam Seder: TX Abortion debate is about shaming sinners, not about the law.
• Ann Telnaes: Govs. Walker and Perry aim to restrict abortion rights.
• Abortion is easy in Ohio (via Slog).
• Sam Seder: TX GOP lawmaker, sex education makes teens “hot and bothered”.
• Young Turks: “If my vigina was a gun”.
• Young Turks: Sarah Slamen hands it to Republican lawmakers.
• Sam Seder: Sarah Slamen pwns Texas lawmakers
• Sam Seder interviews Sarah Slamen
• Maddow: N.C. GOP customizes ‘motorcycle bill’ with abortion restrictions

White House: West Wing Week.

Mental Floss: 50 Science Misconceptions.

Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Republicans are political arsonists.

Liberal Viewer: Impeach Obama for NSA spying?

Zina Saunders: The Republican Party gets its wish:

Virginia Gov. Bob “Ultrasound” McDonnell gets probed:

• Maddow: Gov. McDonald hires himself a lawyer.
• Sam Seder: Governor “Ultrasound” McDonnell now on the wrong side of probe.
• Maddow: Virginia Gov. McDonald pocketed a $120,000 Bribe From Troubled Company, Part I.
• Maddow: Virginia Gov. McDonald pocketed a $120,000 Bribe From Troubled Company, Part II.
• Maddow: Virginia Gov. McDonald pocketed a $120,000 Bribe From Troubled Company, Part III.
• Sharpton: Gov. Ultrasound is now Gov. “Free Stuff”

Kimmel: This Week In Unnecessary Censorship.

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

Ann Telnaes: An American Sickness.

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

Hmm. It turns out that at the debate on HB2 in Texas today, they forbade bringing tampons into the building. I can’t think of a more ham handed way they could try to exclude women from meaningful participation in this debate.

I mean literally, I can’t. This is where my schtick would be to do a list of outrageous over the top things. Usually when I want to make a list like that a few ideas spring to mind quickly, but not this time. The only thing I thought of that is in the league of that is “just outright ban vaginas.”

I’m sure when tunnel proponents talked about our once in a lifetime opportunity for a revitalized waterfront what they meant was this.

The new Alaskan Way, located mostly within the current footprint of the viaduct, will be four or five lanes for most of its length until it reaches Columbia Street. South of Columbia, it completely explodes with travel lanes and starts to look a whole lot more like a freeway than a waterfront boulevard. Near the Ferry Terminal, there are even sections with eight travel lanes and a parking lane (though some are transit-only).

You know, 8 lanes and more coal trains are just what the waterfront needs. Maybe we can transport nuclear waste in open top containers next.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m reading Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore. In the section on William T. Sherman, it has a long section on his son. Sherman wasn’t religious, but his wife was a rather devout Catholic. And one of his sons, Thomas, became a Jesuit priest. Thomas eventually went mad. To quote the second to last paragraph of the chapter:

The story of his last twenty years is most painful. He was able to travel and to live alone, and he engaged in a whole forlorn series of self-invented ministries and projects. Father Sherman first set out to organize a Catholic Colonization Society designed to resettle, in the state of Washington, recent immigrants of Catholic faith from the big American cities

On reading that, I wondered, why Washington? I mean on the one hand, there’s only so much you can question the schemes of someone who was in and out of mental institutions. On the other hand there were 40 some states when this happened, why should he pick Washington for his Catholic homeland in the US? Is it just our remoteness to the rest of the country or is it something else? I don’t know, but it put me in mind of a somewhat more creditable idea for resettlement in Washington. It starts off kind of in a strange place, so bear with me.

Before the Civil War, the United States would occasionally chide foreign governments for being bad on something or another related to human rights, and those governments would essentially respond, “fuck off, you still have slavery, so you can’t lecture us” except in more diplomatic speak. So it wasn’t until after the Civil War that US foreign policy had any sort of systematic human rights component.

All this is to get to Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, who was a consul in Romania. His official diplomatic posting was the same as any other consul, but unofficially, he was President Grant’s Jewish representative in a country that was persecuting its Jewish population. After failing to get anywhere in defense of that population, he according to this book:

In response, Peixotto advocated large-scale Jewish emigration to the United States, an objective that Romania’s antisemitic government, eager to be rid of its Jews, enthusiastically encouraged. He even contacted his old friend Governor Edward S. Salomon…about the possibility of settling Romanian Jews in Washington Territory.

I’d always assumed that in that case it was probably Governor Salomon more than Washington qua Washington that would have made us a homeland for those Romanian Jews. But in light of Father Sherman, maybe there’s something about us in the imagination of the late 1800’s?

– “I can tell you this: No matter who introduces it, it is not going anywhere in the Senate,” Murray said. “We are not going to let it come up in the Senate. There is no reason for it. This is settled law. We are not going to be sidetracked by a debate on women’s health yet again.”

– I don’t know why I keep mentioning these and then not going, but there’s a Seattle Balloon Juice Meetup.

– So how long is it respectable to pretend that David Boardman was anything other than a right wing hack who survived at The Seattle Times for 30 years by being a right wing hack?

– You wouldn’t think this would be necessary to say, but in the last two days, I’ve seen 2 different cars that looked to me anyway to not be county vehicles on bike paths. Don’t do that.

– I haven’t had fruit flies yet this year (something something eat more fruit, Carl), but this is a neat idea for when they come.

Jonathan Martin has a really good column in the Seattle Times about the pitfalls in the new regulatory world for marijuana growers. In early August, the WSLCB will be holding more public hearings on the rules.

Goldy has the latest Rodney Tom is full of shit news. First quoting the Seattle Times:

Tom created a buzz after broaching the idea of a $250-a-day fine for each day lawmakers go past the time allotted in the regular session.

Then Goldy notes:

For wealthy lawmakers like Senator Rodney Tom (R-Medina), $250 isn’t all that much money. Hell, that’s less than Tom spends a day just murdering kittens. (Actual Rodney Tom 2012 campaign slogan: “Because Those Kittens Aren’t Going to Murder Themselves.”) But for legislators who mostly rely on their $42,000 a year salary, the $15,000 in fines they would have accumulated this year could’ve been the difference between keeping and losing their homes. The end result would be those lawmakers who can’t afford to pay the fine caving to lawmakers who can.

Aah. Nothing like fake populism from a dirtbag millionaire in an effort to advance their dirtbag millionaire goals. Look, if Rodney Tom had wanted to end either special session early, he could have done it at any point simply by resigning. Since a Democrat would replace him, a Democrat would caucus with the Democrats like Democrats are supposed to do, and then they could have passed a budget. Done and done. Or barring that, he could have gone back to caucusing with the Democrats. Either event would involve Rodney Tom eating a lot of shit, but if he’d wanted the special session to end earlier, that would be the thing to do.

Also, as the person who is most responsible for the legislature adjourning with a lot of work yet to do, Rodney Tom should really not be discouraging the legislators actually doing the people’s business. I mean honestly, the legislature should have passed the Reproductive Parity Act. It should have passed the DREAM Act. It should have passed a transportation budget, or at least let municipalities pass their own. But Rodney Tom was a roadblock that kept that important work from being done. To say the legislature should have got even less done is highly insulting. Honestly, the goal should have been to pass legislation that makes Washington a better place, not to simply avoid a special session.

They sound like a bunch of eight-year-olds who think they’ve come up with an oh-so-clever way to trap dad into raising their allowance or something.

Kevin Drum on House Republican’s amateurish plan to hold America hostage to get stuff in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

I have been reading with interest about the so called zero option in Afghanistan. That is, after the end of the war to have 0 American troops in the country. I don’t know if it’s serious or an attempt to wring concessions out of Karzai or if there’s some other plan at work. But I hope you’ll use whatever space you have in the Senate to make the zero option more viable.

America’s longest war has gone on long enough. It’s time, frankly it’s well past time, to bring all of the troops home. They have done their jobs admirably, but the mission was never clear and has only managed to get more muddled with time. So I hope we leave that country a clean break.

Thank You
Carl Ballard
HorsesAss.org

You can write them about this or whatever you want here.

Please join us this evening for some politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

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

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out the plethora of other DL meetings over the next week. Tonight there are also meetings of the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, WA chapters. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. On Thursday Drinking Liberally Bremerton meets. On Friday, the Centralia chapter meets. Finally, next Monday, the Yakima and Olympia chapters meet.

With 203 chapters of Living Liberally, including sixteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.

– A swap of development rights from rural King County to South Lake Union.

– Rick Perry won’t run for another term as Texas governor. People are saying it frees him up for a presidential run, but I’m not sure it’s actually helpful.

– Unfortunately, he’s still the governor now.

– I want you to start asking why every salon doesn’t have at least one person who knows how to handle textured hair. Because the world is getting more and more diverse and your niece, your grandson, your daughter – they might have hair like mine.

– Jim McDermott’s article about what America’s relation to Iran should look like in the wake of Hassan Rouhani’s election.

– Anyone going to Bastille Day?