Goldy (Founder/Blogger-in-Chief) — email: goldy at horsesass.org
David “Goldy” Goldstein is an accidental activist who stumbled into politics in 2003 with a satirical statewide initiative to officially proclaim WA’s serial anti-tax initiative sponsor, Tim Eyman, “a horse’s ass.” A conscientious political press corp, weary of Eyman’s outrageous antics, turned its coverage to Goldy’s outrageous antics, sparking a spontaneous grassroots movement to gather nearly 50,000 signatures before a humorless Attorney General managed to get an equally humorless judge to issue an injunction shutting down the campaign.
A year later Goldy transformed his campaign website into this local, political blog. A mix of snark, satire, muckraking, and surprisingly thoughtful analysis, HorsesAss.org quickly became the most influential blog in WA state, and one of the most widely read local political blogs in the nation.
Goldy has recently returned part-time to HA after three-plus years as a staff writer at The Stranger. Goldy has also been published in The Nation and Yes! Magazine, and has blogged at Huffington Post and Daily Kos. He hosted “The David Goldstein Show” on Seattle’s news/talk 710-KIRO from 2006 through 2008. Goldy currently pays his mortgage as a senior fellow at Civic Ventures, a Seattle-based public policy incubator, while taking on the occasional freelance writing, speechwriting, and ghostwriting gig.
Goldy was born and educated in Philadelphia, and now lives in Seattle with his daughter, dog, cat, and everybody else who lives in Seattle. In addition to blogging, he is the creator of the world’s most widely pirated rhyming dictionary software, and is the co-author of an Off-Broadway musical flop.
Darryl —
Darryl Holman brings to Horse’s Ass the sensibility of a good Midwestern upbringing (albeit in a single-parent household), an East Coast education (albeit at a State university), and West Coast angst. More importantly, everything he does is deeply rooted in the blues. In real life, he is an anthropologist and a demographer at the University of Washington specializing in biological anthropology, human reproductive ecology, and scientific and statistical modeling. Besides contributing to Horse’s Ass, he writes for Hominid Views and, occasionally contributes to Jesus’ General.
Other than blogging, Darryl likes to play chess, fly airplanes, fix automobiles, tinker in his small machine shop, do things with computers, tinker with radios (he is an active amateur radio operator licensed as WW7D) and play guitar & bass. Like almost everyone else in the greater Seattle metropolitan area, he is building an airplane in his garage.
Darryl was born in Santa Maria, California, but was raised in Madison, Wisconsin where, at a young age, he was exposed to dangerous liberal ideas, Vietnam war protests, the radical environmental movement, and severe winter weather.
He has a BS and an MS in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin (with diplomas signed by Chancellor Donna Shalala), and a PhD in Anthropology and Demography from Penn State University. Bill Clinton spoke at his PhD graduation ceremony in 1996, but he was too busy in New Orleans that day to attend. He spent a few more years at Penn State as a Postdoctoral fellow before moving to Redmond, Washington in the fall of 1999.
He became immersed in state and local politics when he observed that the quality of life was perfect in every way in Western Washington except for the dysfunctional transportation infrastructure, and simultaneously learned about Initiative 695 (the initiative that gutted funding for transportation infrastructure). There are unsubstantiated rumors that Darryl was the mysterious “Statistician X” (a.k.a. dj) during the gubernatorial election contest.
Carl —
Carl Ballard is the pen name for Carl Balard, itself a pen name. Since unlike Goldy he tries to keep his personal life and blogging life separate, the rest of this entry will be entirely false:
Carl Ballard was born in a small Midwestern town. He doesn’t remember what town or even what state, but in fairness he was a baby at the time so remembering anything about it is pretty impressive. After earning a degree in Kickass from the University of Transylvania (minor in Rad!) Carl decided to travel the galaxy and will tell you that Neptune is nice. After returning to Earth, Carl earned a Masters in Making Fun of Righties where his thesis, “Fuck the Heck: Wingnuttia from Cesar to Sharkansky” was universally praised, and may be made into a movie. Carl puts his Making Fun of Righties degree to work on a regular basis at EFFin’ Unsound where he tracks local righties. He is getting sick of writing about himself in the third person.
Lee —
Lee Rosenberg is a software developer who became motivated by the War in Iraq to start speaking out about politics and the direction the country is going in. Originally from the Philadelphia suburbs, he went to school at the University of Michigan before coming out to Seattle in 1997 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering and a job at Boeing. After leaving Boeing in 2000, he spent 5 years at Microsoft, and now works for a local dot-com.
Lee considers himself both a liberal and a libertarian who believes that we need to return to the values of personal liberty and free will that shaped the founding of this country, while also recognizing that technology is creating a world where certain complex problems can only be addressed by government and only through multinational cooperation. He believes very strongly that the war on terror is simply an extension of the war on drugs, where fear has been exploited to strip away our rights, and that we need to reject the war mindset when dealing with irrational behaviors like terrorism and drug addiction, as they only make those problems worse. He still believes that the Eagles will win the Super Bowl one day, even though he has no rational basis for that belief.
After starting Blog Reload in 2004 with some friends, Lee now blogs at HorsesAss and EFFin’ Unsound.
Bloggers Emeritus:
Geov —
Geov Parrish began writing regular political commentary when, in 1996, he founded the community newspaper and web site Eat the State!, which he continues to co-edit. The same week, he began a long-running stint as a commentator on KEXP-90.3 Seattle’s “Mind Over Matters,” airing each Saturday at 8:30 AM.
ETS! led almost immediately to an unlikely new career as professional columnist, with a decade put in at The Stranger and Seattle Weekly. Beginning in 1998 Geov also wrote regularly at various times for Mother Jones, In These Times, WorkingforChange.com, and for several years in national syndication in both print and radio. But now he’s given all that up to write for HorsesAss.org. He also posts nationally from time to time at Booman Tribune.
Prior to writing for a living, Geov also spent time as a: radio DJ and programmer, punk rock singer, community activist, East Asia scholar, convenience store clerk, zine publisher, strawberry picker, factory worker, bicycle messenger, public health and medical school instructor, and successful small business owner. None of which even remotely qualified him to have paid political opinions. Deal with it.
Will —
Will Kelley-Kamp is a Seattle area native who has written for The Stranger’s blog, Slog, and horsesass.org. He has written about local, statewide, national and international politics on and off since 2006. He lives in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District.
