Goldy

I hope everybody understands the fraud the Seattle Times perpetrated on voters this morning.  Yesterday, the NRCC shopped around this bullshit gotcha story, fishing for media validators to back up attack ads they already planned to run, and despite serious reservations about the reporter’s ignorance of degree requirements at Harvard, the Times’ editors chose to comply.  Now, regardless of any forthcoming retraction or apology or continued backtracking (and there’s been a ton of backtracking since the story first hit the website,) you can expect the airwaves to be plastered with ads until election day, citing the Times accusing Darcy of lying to voters.

The Times delivered Reichert a steaming pile of shit, neatly tied up in a ribbon.

So now, the only way for Darcy to counter these baseless lies is with more advertising of her own, ads for which she’ll need to raise a lot money if she hopes to keep up with the barrage of attack ads Reichert is airing, courtesy of an unprecedented and illegal loan from his media buyer.  That of course, is where you come in.

Over on Daily Kos, Markos is just as outraged as I am, and he’s asking his readers to do something about it:

Look, here’s the deal: The local media and the local political establishment see themselves as kingmakers. They get to decide who sinks or swims in their areas of influence. Then along comes Darcy Burner, thinking she can crash the gates and get elected for office in the district, and the local elites are pissed. So they conspire with Reichert, a supposed local hero, to dish all sorts of crap about Darcy and bury Reichert’s dirt.

We’re winning this race, but they’re throwing EVERYTHING plus the kitchen sink at Darcy. If we want to win this thing, we’ve got to get her back and push back. We’ve got to leave everything on the road.

Right now Darcy is about $350,000 behind Reichert. I’m not going to pretend that we can raise that kind of money quickly, but can we cover $50,000 of that? Can we help Burner fight against the smears from the state and national GOP?

Darcy has far more in-district and in-state contributors and money than Reichert, and you all deserve tremendous kudos for your strong support, but with election day less than two weeks away it is our responsibility to do our part in this latest national netroots fund drive.

Markos himself has personally donated an addtional $2200, and while I can’t afford to max out given my meager earnings, I just contributed another $200.  That’s an awful lot of money for me, but with victory within our grasp, I hope you all join me in reaching as deep into our collective pockets as we can to put Darcy Burner into office.

Please give to Darcy today.

Rasmussen just released its latest poll in Washington’s gubernatorial race, showing Gov. Chris Gregoire leading Republican challenger Dino Rossi by a 50 to 48 percent margin.

These numbers are nowhere near the recent Elway Poll that showed Gregoire with 51-39 lead, but suggests a steady trend in Gov. Gregoire’s favor from Rasmussen’s previous two surveys, that showed the race tied 48-48 on October 2, and a 52-46 Rossi lead on September 10… this despite the unprecedented millions of dollars in relentless attack ads from Rossi’s allies over the past few weeks.

So all in all, I’d rather be in the governor’s shoes right now than Rossi’s.

Darcy Burner does indeed have a B.A. from Harvard in computer science and economics; that is an established fact.

So, when Reichert, the NRCC and their enablers at the Seattle Times argue that claiming a degree in “economics” is misleading because it fails to mention the “computer science,” wouldn’t the opposite be equally true?  Wouldn’t it be just as misleading to claim a degree in “computer science” while failing to mention the emphasis on economics?  Are they really implying that anything less than spelling out “a degree in computer science and economics” is a deliberate misrepresentation?

Hmm…

Let’s see if this, Rep. Dave Reichert’s official Congressional biography, makes the front page of the Seattle Times:

REICHERT, David G., .a Representative from Washington; born in Detroit Lakes, Becker County, Minn., August 29, 1950; graduated, Kent Meridian High School, Renton, Wash., 1968; B.A., Concordia Lutheran College, Portland, Oreg., 1970; U.S. Air Force Reserve, 1971-1976; U.S. Air Force, 1976; police officer, King County, Wash., 1972-1977; sheriff, King County, Wash., 1997- 2004; elected as a Republican to the One Hundred Ninth Congress and to the succeeding Congress (January 3, 2005-present).

Problem is, Reichert never earned a B.A. from Concordia in 1970, because they didn’t even grant their first bachelors degree until 1980.  In fact, the year Reichert started was Concordia’s first year as a Junior College; before then, it was merely a Lutheran high school.

What Reichert has is a two-year Associates degree from a small, Christian, Junior College.  (And possibly, not even that; has Heffter bothered to ask Concordia’s registrar for Reichert’s records?)  Thus Reichert’s official bio, which he has allowed to go uncorrected for four years, and which has been picked up by numerous news organizations and other web sites, is an undisputed lie.  Gonna print that on your front page Mr. Blethen?  I didn’t think so.

But more important than the parsing of the word “and” in Darcy Burner’s degree, or the substitution of the letter “B” for “A” in Reichert’s, should be their actual education, and how well that prepares the two candidates to deal with our nation’s unprecedented economic crisis.  Reichert has a two-year degree from a small, ultra-conservative Christian school.  (And by “ultra-conservative” I mean Missouri Synod Lutheran, whose positions on reproductive rights and the societal role of women leaves them far to the right of most fundamentalist Evangelicals.)  Meanwhile, Darcy earned a B.A. in computer science and economics, in the process completing five courses in economics plus two related math courses at Harvard, one of the most prestigious and rigorous universities in the world.

Isn’t that what should really be important to voters instead of these stupid gotchas?

UPDATE:
Looks like somebody is covering their tracks.  After four years of allowing an erroneous biographical entry on congress.gov tout a four-year B.A. degree when he only earned a two-year A.A., Reichert’s entry is miraculously updated, but only after being publicly scolded for his resume padding.  Of course, the lie still lives on in the Google cache.

After interviewing former Harvard Dean Harry Lewis, here is what reporter Emily Heffter chose to print in the Seattle Times:

Harry Lewis, a Harvard computer science professor and former dean of the school, confirmed that Burner did study economics at Harvard.

“She doesn’t have a degree in economics,” he said. “It’s a specialty within the computer science degree that she has.”

And here is Dean Lewis in his own unexpurgated words (the emphasis is mine):

I’m the professor and ex-dean who was quoted in the story, and as it happens, also the guy who wrote the CS degree requirements. At the time Darcy was at Harvard, she would have needed, as part of her CS degree requirements, several courses in a technical specialization area related to CS. She fulfilled that CS degree requirement by specializing in Economics (which meant, by the way, that she couldn’t have taken just the easy, non-mathematical Ec courses). So it’s not exactly a minor (which we didn’t have then, though we do now), and it’s also not anything that the registrar would be able to certify (because it’s an internal requirement of the computer science faculty). But it’s something everyone getting a degree in CS had to do (though other students would have other specialties). The way Darcy is describing herself is accurate.

And here is Dean Lewis’ account of his interview with Heffter:

Talked to her and told her you had a degree in CS with a specialization in Ec. She said you were claiming to have a degree in Ec and I just repeated myself. She asked me what that consisted of and I said a block of Ec courses. She started to ask me if that would make you qualified … and I cut her off, saying I couldn’t judge economics qualifications. She thanked me and said that was helpful.

Darcy Burner does indeed have a degree from Harvard in computer science and economics, and it is utterly outrageous that the Times would choose to turn the NRCC’s parsing of the word “and” into a front page gotcha story defaming Darcy’s character.

They owe her an apology.

From BrianK in the comment threads:

I am an accountant. As part of my licensing and for other reasons, I am occasionally asked if I have an accounting degree. I always reply that I do have the appropriate accounting degree necessary to do my job.

I attended Portland State University when I earned this degree. PSU does not offer a degree in Accounting. Looking at my printed hunk of parchment, I see that I really have a degree in Business Administration, with a concentration in Accounting. Because that’s what they call it at that institution.

I don’t believe that I am misrepresenting myself to anyone.

Really, how hard is that for Emily Heffter and her editors at the Seattle Times to understand?  Darcy Burner has a degree in computer science and economics, and Harvard’s failure to use the terminology they prefer, doesn’t make it any less so.

I myself have been called a partisan hack, and maybe it’s true, but the difference is, I’m not the largest newspaper in the state.  I’m not Washington’s self-proclaimed paper of record.  And I’ve never pretended to be impartial, balanced or objective.  No, I’m just a partisan, foul-mouthed, dirty fucking blogger, but with its latest NRCC press release cum front page story, the Times has proven itself to be less credible than even me.

Dave Reichert, Dino Rossi, the BIAW and the WSRP are all busy violating state and federal campaign finance law, and the Times chooses to splash this kind of bullshit semantic hair splitting on their front page?  Really?

Partisan hacks.  That’s what they are, partisan hacks.  And they should be ashamed of themselves.

So I guess all those folks who pooh-poohed last week’s polls as partisan propaganda are eating a little crow now.

Meanwhile, I’ll have more on this later, but Matt Stoller pretty much puts knife through the scandal that isn’t.

I’ve heard a number of political observers wonder how the RGA and the BIAW can possibly spend the enormous sum of money they’ve dumped into the final two weeks of Dino Rossi’s campaign when the airwaves are already saturated with political ads?  One answer:

The Building Industry Association of Washington is making Dino Rossi’s “citizens movement” a little more attractive to strapped-for-cash citizens. It might surprise “Reduce the Minimum Wage” Rossi that the BIAW is luring paid canvassers with a wage of $12 an hour, almost $4 an hour more than Washington’s minimum wage.

So… if Dino Rossi really has all the grassroots support he claims, why is he spending $12/hour hiring canvassers, while Gov. Gregoire and the Democrats are mostly relying on thousands of unpaid volunteers?

Hmm….

From TPM:

National House Committees Shell Out Big Money, NRCC Finally In The Game
Both parties’ national House committees shelled out big bucks in the newest federal filings. The DCCC spent nearly $4 million in yesterday’s FEC filings, with the biggest expenditure going for $450,000 against Rep. Robin “Liberals Hate Real Americans” Hayes (R-NC). The NRCC, which has held on to its much smaller war chest until the home stretch of the campaign, spent $4.1 million, with the biggest payment going for over $450,000 to defend Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA).

That’s right, the DCCC is focusing its largest buy against a hate-talking, McCarthyite wing-nut, while the NRCC is focusing its resources in defense of… Dave Reichert.

He says he’s an outsider.  He says he’s independent.  He says he’s moderate.  And yet the party of Michele Bachmann, who says members of Congress should be investigated to find out who is “pro-America” and who is “anti-America,” is focusing its resources reelecting Reichert.  Telling.

The $150,000 the RNC spent on clothing for Sarah Palin is far from the most important issue in this campaign, but I agree with those who suggest that it may be a defining moment.  A self-defined “hockey mom” should be shopping at Walmart or Target or Sears, with maybe a pricier outfit or three befitting her suddenly elevated position.  But $150,000?  Which part of America spends money like that on clothes?

This is a bad story for the McCain/Palin ticket as it highlights the hypocrisy of their faux-populist attacks.  But then, with so many bad stories these days, maybe it won’t make a difference.

The Secretary of State’s office sent out a memo yesterday trumpeting a record high voter registration mark of 3.6 million, up almost 100,000 above the previous record set in 2004.  But if you look closely at the numbers, it’s likely the number of new, active voters is actually considerably higher.

Since the state launched a computerized database in January of 2006, about 482,000 registrations have been cancelled or made inactive, including about 160,000 duplicate, deceased or felon voters. As of mid-October, about 713,000 new or re-activated registrations were posted during the same time period.

It remains unclear how many valid registered voters were thrown off the rolls in this massive purge—no doubt there were some—and the issue of whether Washington’s harshest in the nation felon disenfranchisement laws comprise good public policy continues to be aggressively denied the public debate it deserves.  On these and other issues we’ve seen zero leadership and less than optimal transparency from Secretary of State Sam Reed.  But there is also no doubt that before the implementation of the federally mandated statewide voter registration database, the various county rolls were littered with erroneous, dead and duplicate registrations.

To be clear, actual polling place or mail-in voter fraud has remained virtually non-existent, with only a handful of cases prosecuted even after 2004’s intensely scrutinized and litigated gubernatorial election contest.  But our voter registration numbers have long been overinflated with non-voters and bad data, so the number of new, likely voters on the rolls is most certainly several times higher than the Secretary of State’s 100,000 figure would imply.

Everybody expects voter turnout to be higher this year, but with the credit largely given to increased interest in the presidential race, there’s been a lot of speculation about whether this would translate to higher participation in down-ballot races.  But I’m guessing that with the turnout calculations based on these cleaner rolls, turnout rates will be higher across the board.

We’ll see.

Sure, the market is down, but compared to the rest of the nation…

The report calls Seattle “a sturdy market,” saying it has become a “magnet for brainpower industries” and a global gateway.

Huh.  I guess this lousy economic stewardship is why the building industry is betting the bank to defeat Gov. Gregoire?

Via the AP:

Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.

The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, “impetuous” Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier,” the message said. “Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush.”

So… if there is a terrorist attack in the days before the election, are Americans stupid enough to do exactly what al-Qaida wants, and elect the “impetuous” John McCain?

The October Elway Poll of 405 registered voters, conducted October 16-19 shows Gov. Chris Gregoire leading Republican challenger Dino Rossi by a 51 to 39 percent margin, up slightly from Elway’s 50-42 September results.  The Elway Poll has been unique throughout the year in showing Gregoire with a substantial advantage; most other recent polls have shown the race well within the margin of error.

It is interesting to note that the much anticipated “Obama/Rossi” voter is not materializing in the Elway Poll.  Elway found 8% of Obama voters planning to vote for Rossi.  But they also found 8% of McCain voters planning to vote for Gregoire.  Obama, by the way, was found to be preferred by 55 to 36 percent margin.

And perhaps a very significant observation by Elway in his comments:

“Gregoire has an edge on values among those who care most about those issues.  Gregoire is seen as Moderate Liberal.  Rossi is seen as conservative.  He wasn’t in 2004.”

If that is true, and Rossi goes on to lose, that shift in perception will explain this election in a nutshell.  Conservative Republicans simply can’t win statewide if voters understand them to be conservative.