Goldy

I’m filling in for Dave Ross this morning (and for the next 9 days) on News/Talk 710-KIRO. Here’s the show as it’s shaping up:

9AM: Does God hate “soft” men?
If so, I’m in trouble. Valerie Tarico, a Seattle psychologist and former fundamentalist Christian will join us by phone to tell what kind of preaching she’s heard in her survey of local churches. We’ve got a call out to Rev. Ken Hutcherson, hoping he can come on the show and explain to us his controversial take on gender roles: “If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.” Because… um… Jesus loves you.

10AM: Is a “virtual” fence a real solution?
A $20 million, 28-mile, Boeing built “virtual fence” is ready for service along the US/Mexico border near Nogales, Arizona, and the Minutemen outraged, saying “virtual fencing is virtually useless. Minuteman National Executive Director Al Garza joins me by phone to make his argument for a double-layered physical barrier along our entire Southern border.

11AM: Ralph Nader is running! (Who cares?)
Ralph Nader announced yesterday that he is running for president, surprising absolutely nobody. The man credit by some with playing spoiler and throwing the election George W. Bush, claims that he is to “shift the power from the few to the many,” but netroots activists like me remain dubious. 100,000 Washington voters cast their ballot for Ralph Nader back in 2000, and one of them was former Seattle City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck; he joins us to give us his current opinion of Nader and his candidacy.

Tune in this morning (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

I guess even Republicans deserve a bit of good news once in a while, however small:

Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will “shift the power from the few to the many.”

“Shift the power from the few to the many,” huh? Gee… I thought that’s what I’d been doing this past half decade or so, along with a few million of my neighbors in the netroots community? Way to give us the finger, Ralph.

No, I guess instead of dedicating our lives to blogging for little or no money, creating new media infrastructure from scratch with zero resources, and struggling to build a new progressive movement that has empowered millions, actually won a few elections, and has started to change the way politics is conducted nationwide… the real way to shift the power from the few to the many is for a single, cranky, dried up, arrogant, old white guy to go on national television and declare that he is running for president. You know… for us. Because apparently, we’re too stupid to do it for ourselves.

There was a time, decades ago, when I dreamed of a viable third party that might duplicate the success of the Greens in Europe, but then, there was a time when I once looked up to Ralph Nader, consumer protection crusader, as a genuine American hero. I was young. What the fuck did I know?

Over the years, my understanding of electoral politics matured into a deep appreciation for the nuances of our two party system, long before Nader’s tragic 2000 campaign destroyed what little credibility the American Green Party had left. There is a genius to our system, that for the first time in history not only legitimized dissent, but institutionalized it. Yes our system is profoundly conservative at its core in that truly big, abrupt changes are exceedingly difficult to achieve, but this institutional sluggishness is not insurmountable and it has served to maintain the political and economic stability on which past generations have built our nation into the most prosperous and powerful on earth. And when cranks like Nader critique the Democrats and the Republicans as providing little or no choice to voters, they focus solely on the competition between the two parties while ignoring the competition within them.

It took thirty or more years for the forces of the far right to firmly seize the reins of the Republican Party and the institutions that support it, and it will take at least another decade or two for our “people powered” progressive movement to do the same with our party. That Nader can’t see the slow motion political revolution unfolding before his eyes reveals him to be as much a part of the ossified political establishment as the politicians he reviles… his third, futile campaign a last gasp of the status quo fighting to retain its own relevance. The old crusader appearing before the old media, challenging the declining power of the old guard; it is a scene that would be comic if it weren’t so tragic: Nader cast as Lear, railing against a storm of political change that threatens to sweep both him and his foes into the dustbin of history.

From a recent sermon by the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church, preaching on gender roles:

“God hates soft men … God hates effeminate men … If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.”

Well, that explains the alarming number of one-armed doormen at some our city’s upscale drugstores.

I don’t claim to be a Bible scholar, having only read the New Testament cover to cover once (and let me tell you, the sequel isn’t nearly as entertaining as the original)… but could somebody please point out the scripture where Jesus advocated tearing the limbs off polite people?

At some point, one of Hutcherson’s congregants is going to commit a hate crime, and when they do, I hope the victim or his family sues the hell out of Hutcherson and his “church.”

Courtesy of TheRealMcCain.com.

Over on Slog, Josh writes about outgoing state Sen. Brian Weinstein and his quest to pass his Home Buyer’s Bill of Rights before he retires at the end on this session. Some had suggested Sen. Weinstein was using his Senate committee to hold hostage a condo conversion bill recently passed by the House; Sen. Weinstein, a consumer protection champion, denies the two are related, telling Josh “I expect to pass it.”

He also said he had a good meeting with House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-43, Capitol Hill) about the homeowners’ rights bill. Last year, Weinstein accused Chopp of caving to the BIAW by snuffing Weinstein’s homeowner bill.

He didn’t say Chopp promised to move the bill forward, but he did say: “It was a good discussion. He asked good questions and it was a good meeting. Last year at this time, the bill was dead.”

Oh to be a fly on the wall at that meeting. Sen. Weinstein has a well deserved reputation as a tough negotiator, but what kind of leverage can a retiring senator hold over our famously risk-averse House Speaker?

Well, the buzz amongst the consumer protection community is that Sen. Weinstein has been quietly talking about possibly unretiring should his bill fail to get through the Legislature this session… potentially creating a very messy Democratic primary battle between an incumbent senator and newly minted Democrat, Rep. Fred Jarrett.

Did Sen. Weinstein make this threat to Speaker Chopp? I’ve got no idea, but it certainly would be a doozy. Sen. Weinstein, for all his merits, can be a bit abrasive, and I’ve heard that our amiable Speaker doesn’t like him all that much — so buying Weinstein a one-way ticket out of Olympia might be well worth the price of the bill to both Chopp and the BIAW. And the last thing Speaker Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown want at this late stage in the game is to have their neatly arranged 41st LD races thrown into disarray. The Democrat seeking to replace Jarrett in the House, Renton’s Marcie Maxwell, is no sure thing, and a Godzilla versus Mothra battle for the Senate seat would surely draw money and resources out of the House race.

The easiest way to avoid this mess is to pass Sen. Weinstein’s bill, which merely gives buyers of new construction a minimum legal warranty on the biggest purchase they’ll ever make in their lives. (Two years on materials and workmanship, ten years on structural defects.) And what’s so wrong about that?

For those of you who, like me, miss my weekend radio gig (and especially for those few of you who have made it clear that you definitely do not), I am pleased to announce that I will be back on 710-KIRO, if only temporarily, filling in for Dave Ross for most of the next two weeks. So tune in 9AM to Noon, February 25th through the 29th, and again March 3rd through the 6th, as I bring my drive time propaganda to the masses while wiping my liberal stink all over Dori’s microphone.

Sure, I’d prefer my own show, but if they’re still letting me sit in for Dave, I suppose I must not suck all that much after all.

Sen. John McCain says he’s “going to go to war” with the New York Times, because frankly, that’s all McCain knows how to do. War, metaphorical or otherwise, is his response to everything. I swear, the guy is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder… his “fight or flight” response is stuck permanently on the former.

And there are folks who want this guy to be the one with his finger on the button?

In related news, The New Republic brings us the story behind the story of the McCain/Iseman affair, while Josh suddenly claims to have standards.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Joel Connelly seemed almost prescient in his column yesterday, accusing his colleagues in the legacy media of holding Sen. John McCain to a “different standard.”

[T]he national press corps’ “big feet” owe it to the country to put aside their pack mentality and subject McCain to the same critical scrutiny as other presidential hopefuls.

A year ago, on “Hardball,” Matthews asked about Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations: “What have you done to deserve this job?”

The program’s guest allowed that this was a “tough question” facing the full field of candidates.

“Not so much for McCain,” Matthews interrupted. “He has deserved the presidency. Whether he should be president or not, it’s up to the voters.”

It’s a different standard.

I don’t know if Joel was tipped that the New York Times bombshell was about to drop, but his column couldn’t have been more timely. Last night after reading the headlines of McCain’s alleged affair with a lobbyist 30 years his junior, and his inappropriate ties to firms with business before his committee, I flipped through the cable news channels expecting to see the media in a fevered feeding frenzy. Virtually nada. You’d think CNN and FOX News hadn’t discovered the Internet yet, while what little coverage I saw on MSNBC was almost apologetic: it’s a “ten year old story”, we were told… “anonymous sources” and “firm denials” from the campaign… there’s no there there. This despite the fact that as they spoke the Washington Post had already named names:

John Weaver, who was McCain’s closest confidant until leaving his current campaign last year, said he met with Vicki Iseman at the Center Cafe at Union Station and urged her to stay away from McCain. Association with a lobbyist would undermine his image as an opponent of special interests, aides had concluded.

By this morning, the right wing propaganda machine was in top gear, attempting to make this a story about the NY Times credibility, not Sen. McCain’s… and how this unfolds over the next few days and weeks will tell Joel everything he needs to know about the objectivity, impartiality and courage of his colleagues in the legacy press. Anybody who knows anything about the workings of the corporate media knows that the NY Times only ran this story after extensive research and internal debate, and only after an excruciating vetting by their attorneys. And, at it’s heart, this is not merely a story about an inappropriate relationship (sexually consummated or not) between a then 63-year-old US senator and a 32-year-old lobbyist; this is a story about an inappropriate relationship between a US senator and lobbyists and their clients who had business before his committee. This is the story about a presidential candidate who runs on his reputation as a champion of campaign finance reform and breaking the power of special interests, while at the same time using his influence on behalf of companies giving him tens of thousands of dollars in contributions and flying him around on their private jet.

This is a story about hypocrisy.

If this were a story about Barack Obama it would likely cost him the nomination. If Hillary Clinton, a married woman, was exposed as having had a romantic affair, it would likely end her political career. But “Straight Talk” McCain, a man who has admitted to past infidelity (he began his affair with his current wife before divorcing his first)… he, we are told, should receive the benefit of the doubt. If he denies having sex with Ms. Iseman, then that should be the end of that. And if the sexual allegation is dismissed, then that means all the other very serious allegations in the NY Times article should be dismissed as well. At least, that is the GOP spin we’re hearing today coming from their official and unofficial mouthpieces.

But this is not an unsourced smear as the McCain camp has framed it, and it is not a he said/she said about sex. The NY Times published a well sourced article about official corruption, and it is time for the DC media to abandon their myth about the straight talking McCain, and as Joel says, subject him to “the same critical scrutiny as other presidential hopefuls.”

The right will attempt to do to the NY Times what they did to Dan Rather. Shame on the traditional media if they succeed. And shame on us in the blogosphere if we allow that to happen without putting up one helluva fight.

Finally… a Republican sex scandal involving a man and a woman.

It’s been obvious for some time that November is going to see an historic election, with either a woman or a black man heading the Democratic ticket, so while Barack Obama’s streak of ten straight landslide victories since Super Tuesday certainly adds more than a bit of drama to the campaign season, it hasn’t exactly been a surprise. February promised to be a good month for Obama, but it had to be a very good month to give him the momentum necessary to smash through Hillary Clinton’s presumed firewall in delegate rich Ohio and Texas on March 4. It has been, and with a small but widening delegate lead, and a narrowing gap in the firewall states, the smart money is now on Obama.

For an idea of how impressive Obama’s streak has been, yesterday’s 17.4% margin in Wisconsin was the closest this month, with Obama only winning 58.1% to 40.7%. More significantly, Obama racked up majorities throughout most of the state, capturing 40 delegates to Clinton’s 28, where he had only been projected to manage an 8 delegate pickup. Meanwhile in the Hawaii caucus, Obama thumped Clinton 76% to 24% for 12 delegates to Clinton’s 4.

Exciting for Obama fans, but again, not surprising; this has pretty much been the story all month long. Obama now leads Clinton 1140 to 1005 in pledged delegates. Sure there are some loyal superdelegates who will go for Clinton no matter what, but in general I really don’t see Democratic electeds being that stupid or that self-destructive to throw the nomination to Clinton if Obama manages to win a clear majority of the pledged delegates, the states and the popular vote… and unless Clinton stages a dramatic comeback in Ohio and Texas, that’s exactly what Obama looks like he is set up to do. In their speeches last night both Obama and McCain each turned their sights on the other, so with the focus beginning to shift toward November I think the big news coming out yesterday’s primary is another trend that’s been building since Iowa: the enormous turnout differential between the two parties nationwide.

In Wisconsin, a swing state with an open primary, Obama alone drew more votes than the entire Republican field combined. But more impressively, so did Clinton despite her distant, second place finish. And even here in Washington, where the Republican primary determined more than half the delegates while the Democrats held nothing more than a beauty contest, the Dems already enjoy a 35% turnout advantage with most of overwhelmingly blue King County yet to report. Nationwide the Democrats have produced a 45% turnout advantage thus far, and while such numbers won’t correspond to turnout in November, it surely signals a huge disparity in voter enthusiasm. Yes, rank and file Republicans will largely get behind McCain, but even a small turnout disadvantage or a couple point swing to the Dems amongst independents could spell disaster for GOP candidates up and down the ticket.

While our local Republicans like to blame all their losses on electoral fraud, it was the KCGOP’s lax Get Out The Vote effort that proved the decisive factor in our infamously close gubernatorial election in 2004. And with little more than half of KCGOP primary voters (and only a quarter of caucus goers) willing to cast their ballot for McCain, weeks after securing the nomination, that doesn’t say much for his potential presidential coattails. If I were a local Republican, I’d be feeling more than just “dirty” or “unenthusiastic” — I’d be awfully damn worried right about now.

Polls don’t close in Wisconsin for another 15 minutes, but early exit polls already suggest a good night for Obama. That said, I wouldn’t trust the early exit polls as far as I could spit.

I don’t think there were any early exit polls in WA’s Republican primary, because frankly, nobody cares.

UPDATE [6:01 PM]:
That was fast. Within seconds of the polls closing, the networks called Wisconsin for McCain. No surpise there. They haven’t called the Democratic primary yet, but acknowledge exit polls suggesting an Obama lead.

UPDATE [6:14 PM]:
I’m listening to McCain’s speech now. Man he lives in a scary world. Did you know there are monsters living underneath your bed? Monsters! And McCain promises to win the War on Scary Monsters. Good for him.

UPDATE [6:19 PM]:
Thank God McCain kept tonight’s speech to under 15 minutes. McCain came out against deceiving Americans with eloquence. No chance that happened tonight.

UPDATE [6:24 PM]:
The networks just called Wisconsin for Obama. Again, no surprise, but I am curious why it took them 22 minutes to call Wisconsin for Obama, based on exit polls, whereas it only took them a few seconds to call it for McCain. Makes Obama’s victory seem less decisive than McCain’s, even though it is likely they’ll both get around the same percentage of the vote. I’m just sayin’.

UPDATE [6:30 PM]:
Hillary Clinton is speaking now from Youngstown Ohio. She’s putting on a pretty good face despite having lost her 9th primary/caucus in a row. She wants to get America back to work, and apparently “the best words in the world aren’t enough.”

UPDATE [6:37 PM]:
Clinton’s audience is putting on a good face too, but they just don’t sound genuinely enthusiastic. MSNBC is about to interrupt her speech to air Obama’s. I think that tells you everything you need to know about the state of this race.

UPDATE [6:47 PM]:
That was a power play, Obama knocking Clinton off both CNN and MSNBC. And he made a point of mentioning the “twenty thousand” people in the audience in Houston TX. And he’s just spent most of the first five minutes delivering a call to action. Honestly, if I knew absolutely nothing about this race, and just happened to flip the TV on at 6PM tonight, I’d just assume that Obama was by far the front runner.

UPDATE [7:05 PM]:
This is not only Obama’s 9th victory in a row, it is his 9th victory in a row by double digit margins. Currently, he leads Clinton in Wisconsin from 56% to 43% with 22% of precincts reporting, a 13-point margin. By historical standards, that’s generally considered a landslide.

UPDATE [7:12 PM]:
Obama “wants to end a politics based on fear.” Was he referring to McCain’s speech tonight? If so, I just don’t trust him to fight the War on Scary Monsters.

UPDATE [7:19 PM]:
“Hope is the thing with feathers.” I keep hoping Obama will say that, but he never does. And just curious, but the networks do realize that Obama is delivering his standard stump speech to the crowd in Houston, rather than a relatively brief victory speech, and that this thing is likely to go for a good 50 to 60 minutes?

UPDATE [7:26 PM]:
Obama closed a little early; only 45 minutes. The one new thing that I take away from this speech is that he’s now running against McCain not Clinton. The folks on CNN are complaining that Obama’s speech was too long, but when you have 20,000 people packed into an arena, waiting for hours, you don’t cut the show short.

UPDATE [7:44 PM]:
60% of the vote in and Obama still leads Clinton 56% to 43%. Meanwhile, over at (u)SP, Eric “feels dirty“, Stefan is “unenthusiastic” and Jim was reduced to quoting Sylvester Stallone in support of McCain. You can just feel the excitement.

UPDATE [8:18 PM]:
18 minutes after the poll closed, none of the networks have bothered calling the Washington state primary for McCain. Or even mention it. That’s because, I’m guessing, they didn’t even bother to pay for exit polls. Turnout, by the way, is projected to be very low.

UPDATE [8:34 PM]:
When the night is done, Obama will record more votes in Wisconsin than McCain, Huckabee and Paul combined. And, um… so will Clinton. Wisconsin, FYI, is usually considered a swing state.

UPDATE [9:36 PM]:
After their drubbing in the Washington state Democratic caucus, the Clinton folks had been hoping our beauty contest of a primary might at least provide some sort of moral victory. I’m not so sure it’s gonna work out that way. With 53% of the vote in, Obama now leads Clinton 50% to 47%… but that’s with only a few percent of King County precincts reporting. Obama should do better in King County than much of the rest of the state, and I’m guessing his margin of victory will spread as more votes come in. For whatever that’s worth.

Meanwhile on the Republican side, where the primary results will actually be used to apportion delegates, McCain is winning by a comfortable margin, but is still garnering less than 50% of the vote. Hell, Mitt Romney, who dropped out weeks ago, is still getting 20% of the vote. I think that says something about the disaffection amongst rank and file Republicans for their putative nominee.

UPDATE [10:00 PM]:
In the most significant race of the night, Obama now leads Clinton 59% to 41% with 96% of precincts reporting… an 18 point margin. Still no word out of the Hawaii caucus, and I’m not sure I’m gonna stay up late enough to follow it.

UPDATE [7:26 AM] (from Geov):
According to the Honolulu Advertiser (it’s a newspaper) Obama wins Hawai’i 76% to 24%, all precincts reporting.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Stop on by for some hoppy beer and hopped up conversation.

I won’t be there tonight, but Open Left’s Matt Stoller apparently will, so there will be more than enough blogger mojo to make up for my absence.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

We hear a lot from editorialists and columnists about the supposed virtues of bipartisanship, and so you’d think our local media elite would have echoed Darryl’s call to cross the aisle and join our friends in the GOP in helping to select the next Republican nominee for President. And yet nary a peep. Huh. Hypocrites.

As for me, I long ago decided to embrace Republican values — at least for one day — and vote for Mitt Romney in Washington’s primary. They way I figure it, he’s the perfect Republican for a visiting Democrat like me: I’m Pro-Choice, he’s sometimes Pro-Choice… I’m soft on immigration, he’s sometimes soft on immigration… he’s a Mormon, KIRO is owned by Mormons (a little brown-nosing might not get me back on the air, but it couldn’t hurt.) So who better to symbolize a Democrat’s one-day embrace of Republicanism than a “conservative” Republican who said and did all the right things to get himself elected governor of a liberal, Democratic state like Massachusetts?

And that’s why I’m swearing my loyalty to the GOP — for one day only — and casting a vote in today’s Republican primary for Mike Huckabee. It is, after all, a Romney Republican’s prerogative to change one’s mind.

Or at least I would be voting for Huckabee, if I were registered vote-by-mail, or I hadn’t gone out of of town at the last minute and missed the election. Ah well, I guess this wannabe oath breaker will just have to watch the results from afar.

As for those of you who insist that there is something untoward about caucusing for the Democrats and primarying for the Republicans, I can only respond that if you really cared about the purity of the nomination process you wouldn’t cling to your childish, bullshit objections to party registration. Yeah, I voted for Ellen Craswell in our blanket gubernatorial primary… and four years later I voted for John Carlson. That’s not manipulating the system, that is the system, and if you don’t like it, change it! A week and a half ago 250,000 passionate Democrats gave up a couple hours of their time on a sunny Saturday afternoon to engage in politics at its most grassroots… so why the fuck should a bunch of dithering, holier than thou, self-proclaimed “Independents” get equal say in choosing our nominee? (Hint: they shouldn’t.)

There are a lot of things wrong about our nominating process in Washington state and nationwide, but party registration is not one of them. And if it takes violating a bullshit oath to cast a vote for Mike Huckabee to help prove that, well so be it.

No, it’s got nothing to do with politics, but who doesn’t enjoy a really elaborate prank?

Breaking news from Postman: apparently, Dave Reichert is running for Congress!

In other Congressional news, Reichert will get some big-name help to start his re-election fundraising. First Lady Laura Bush will headline an event Feb. 27th for Reichert in Medina.

So, the million bucks Reichert has raised thus far, and last August’s high-donor event with the First Lady’s husband… none of that counts as fundraising? Is Reichert challenging Mike McGavick for the WA state record for most campaign kickoffs?