Goldy

Markos of Daily Kos fame, the guy who allegedly tells all us other liberal bloggers exactly what to write and think, will be at Seattle’s Town Hall Sunday night, 7:30 PM, reading from and signing his new book “American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right.” Tickets are $5.

Join me in slavishly following Markos’ every word.

(No, really… it’s a great book. Keep meaning to write a review.)

Some of you might have noticed that my posting has been a bit sparse on HA this past week, and no, it’s not due to the handful of posts I’ve funneled over to Slog. No, my time has mostly been consumed by a short term contract I took because I really believe in the project, and, well, I just plain needed the money. Which is kinda a longish way of getting the  obligatory disclaimer out of the way at the top of the post.

The project I’m working on is Progressive Kick’s $125,000 Win Big by Thinking Small matching contribution program, in which, through Oct. 10, we will match dollar-for-dollar all contributions made through our ActBlue page to select legislative candidates in six states: NC, MI, OH, OR, PA and WI. That’s a $125,000 to raise an additional $125,000… a quarter of a million dollars total to spend in local races.

From the candidates’ perspective, this is a great opportunity to incentivize supporters to give (or give again) by doubling their money. Kind of a no brainer. And some candidates have made good use of this opportunity, like Nick Kahl in Oregon’s HD-49 race, who has already raised $4,684 (plus another $4,684 in matching contributions) in a little over a week. But from the national perspective, there’s a lot more at stake.

The criteria for being included in the Win Big by Thinking Small program were simple: you must be a truly progressive candidate in a close but winnable race, in a state where congressional redistricting is at stake… and it’s that latter prerequisite that, despite my pleading, excluded Washington legislative candidates from consideration. For even if control of the state House and/or Senate were to change hands, our nonpartisan redistricting system makes the process almost entirely immune to partisan gerrymandering. Yet another thing Washington does better than most other states.

But that’s not the case most everyplace else. And that’s why a relatively small investment in electing progressive legislators now, could produce exponential returns over the coming decade:

“The average winner of a competitive House race in 2008 spent $2 million, while a noncompetitive seat can be defended for far less than half that amount. Moving, say, 20 districts from competitive to out-of-reach could save a party $100 million or more over the course of a decade.”
— GOP strategist, Karl Rove

Don’t trust Karl Rove? Read the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s dissertation on “The Economic$ of Redi$tricting,” and The New York Times on “How to Tilt an Election Through Redistricting.”

Of course, electing true progressives at the local level is also the key to building a progressive bench — these are the ranks from which future Democratic stars will rise — so this alone makes Progressive Kick’s matching contribution program worthy of your support. But with redistricting upon us, and our nation as divided as ever along partisan lines, nothing less than control of the U.S. House of Representatives is at stake.

So if you’re looking to double your money and double your impact, please give today.

From The Hill:

The GOP committee has pledged $2 million in coordinated spending to Republican candidate Carly Fiorina in California and reserved $3 million in television airtime in Washington for the month of October.

But a Republican political strategist with Senate ties is skeptical of knocking off Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) or Patty Murray (D-Wash.) or winning Connecticut, given the dominance Democrats have shown in those states in recent years.

There’s a difference between reserving television airtime, and actually spending the money. It will be interesting to see how much of that $3 million the NRSC actually spends in Washington, or whether they ultimately spend more, for $3 million isn’t really all that much considering Murray’s fundraising advantage.

You know, I do my best to make things interesting, but compared to, say, Delaware, California and New York, our Republicans are just so fucking boring. I mean, most of them suck, they really do, but they do so in such a totally unentertaining fashion.

From: David Goldstein

Subject: Rep. Reichert’s medical records

Date: September 30, 2010 9:27:31 PM PDT

To: Darren LIttell, Dave Reichert for Congress

Darren,

While my recent Slog post, “What’s Wrong With Reichert’s Brain?” was generally well received, some readers wondered if it was fair to Rep. Reichert to speculate about his health, based on such limited information. And so in an effort to maintain the highest level of journalistic integrity, I am writing to formally request that Rep. Reichert release the medical records regarding his recent brain trauma.

Please rest assured that I fully understand the confidential nature of these documents, and as an advocate for the disabled, will treat their content with the utmost respect.

Sincerely,

David Goldstein

http://www.horsesass.org/
“Politics as unusual.”

I remember once in elementary school being absolutely mortified to quickly lose a game of chess to an opponent who… well… let’s just say he wasn’t one of the brightest kids in the school. And that’s how I imagine the League of Conservation Voters should feel after endorsing Rep. Dave Reichert:

The League was aware of the comments Reichert made this summer — revealed on political blog Horsesass.org, in which Reichert can be heard referring to environmental votes as “chess pieces” for re-election — but Palamuso said those comments didn’t stop the group from endorsing him.

And neither apparently did Reichert’s own voting record, forcing the LCV to establish a new low for endorsements, at least in regards to its own widely promoted National Environmental Scorecard. For example, in 2009, Reichert earned a 64% score from the the LCV for his environmental votes (two points up from his lifetime average), the lowest of any of the 42 House and Senate candidates they’ve endorsed this cycle thus far.

To put that in perspective, at 64%, there are actually 351 members of Congress with a higher LCV score than Reichert… 310 of whom did not earn an LCV endorsement.

That’s some curve they’re grading on, at least when it comes to Reichert. And that’s some awfully bad chess those duffers at the LCV must be playing, to get outsmarted by a guy with a fist-sized blood clot in his head.

I get a ton of press releases, and I tend to ignore most of ’em, but one subject header that’s been catching my eye lately is “Death of inmate in custody.” In fact, William Hayes at the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention has sent me five such press releases since August 16, including another one today.

That kinda strikes me as a lot.

Checking my email archive, I usually receive only two to four such emails from King County a year. So five dead inmates in a six week span, that’s weird. And more than a little disturbing.

Dave Reichert says he won’t debate Suzan DelBene because his schedule has “already filled up,” but, he adds, “We’re not ruling out debates.”

Nope… doesn’t sound brain-damaged to me.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86NjlHoABPc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Yet another reason to pass Initiative 1098. If the billionaires and multimillionaires funding the No campaign have enough money to waste on stupid ads like this, they definitely have too much money.

I’d originally intended for this post to go to HA, but I’ve written on this subject so many times before, I decided wonkify the readers at Slog:

Indeed, by nearly any meaningful measure, Washington’s state and local governments have been steadily shrinking over most of the past two decades, through both boom times and bust. You wouldn’t know it from reading the papers, but state tax revenue as a percentage of the total economy has fallen from 6.6% in 1995 to about 5.5% today, while per capita state spending in IPD-adjusted dollars fell by 10% over the same period.

And those aren’t numbers you can easily dismiss as mere liberal claptrap. Eventhe conservative Tax Foundation — the same think tank frequently cited by Tim Eyman — reports that our state and local tax burden plunged from 10.4% in 1994 to 8.9% in 2008, dropping Washington from 17th to 35th place nationally in only fifteen short years.

You know… Dems gone wild.

But just so you don’t feel cheated, I saved the recycled graphic above for HA. As always, read the whole thing.

Given the circumstances it’s hard to imagine they could have done otherwise, but the Tacoma News Tribune endorsed incumbent Democratic state Rep. Dawn Morrell today in her 25th Legislative District race, citing her influence and independence. But they also spent a couple paragraphs taking a whack at Republican nominee Hans Zeiger and his “wacko commentary.”

Zeiger, 25 and working on a graduate degree, doesn’t have enough seasoning or life experience for the Legislature. He also hasn’t put enough years and mileage between him and some wacko Internet commentary he authored all too recently as a college student.

Zeiger’s comments – which included attacks on the Girl Scouts and a suggestion that Baptists worship a dubious deity – should be a cautionary tale for young people accustomed to spouting off on the Web. Diamonds are forever; so are embarrassing rants cached on Google.

Exactly. Old men like me have the right to dismiss far past embarrassments as “youthful indiscretions,” 25-year-old kids like Zeiger, do not.

Try again in a decade, Hans. In the meanwhile, you need to get about to proving you really have moved into the mainstream, instead of just saying it.

Kinda a crappy, generic ad that could pretty much run in any state, with little modification, but does anybody else find it ironic that Dino Rossi is running as political outsider intent on fixing the other Washington, while being almost totally dependent on “independent” expenditures from consummate insiders like Karl Rove?

When the NRSC first started talking up Rossi last spring, I thought part of his appeal was supposed to be his reputation for raising huge gobs of cash. And yet he’s becoming as much of a welfare case as Dave Reichert. Go figure.

The Hillsdale College Collegian, the school newspaper of Hans Zeiger’s alma mater, calls their “favorite son” to task for his long record of bigoted commentary:

If Hans Zeiger’s recent skirmish with liberal blogs can teach us anything, it’s basic common sense: Don’t call the Girl Scouts a feminist training corps and expect to get away with it.

Learning common sense from the liberal blogs. That’s not a bad start.

But too bad the editorial doesn’t stop there, for in attempting to elaborate on the lesson, the author provides an unflattering window into Hillsdale College culture that probably explains an awful lot about Zeiger and his abhorrent views:

Your friends at the table in Saga might think it is okay to make jokes about women needing to know their place. Your professor might jokingly refer to Catholics with a derogatory phrase. And your frat buddies might even crack the occasional racially-charged joke.

At Hillsdale, most students overlook offensive comments like these. But in the future, your coworkers, neighbors and pew-mates may not.

That’s because Hillsdale College –– despite the school’s history of gender equality and racial inclusion –– consists primarily of white Christian conservatives.

Um… so let me get this straight: your professor might “jokingly refer to Catholics with a derogatory phrase,” because Hillsdale College “consists primarily of white Christian conservatives.” So that means… uh… Catholics aren’t Christian?

Coming from an alma mater that was home to the infamous “water buffalo” incident, I can’t imagine students just shrugging off a professor’s anti-Catholic remark, but I guess white Christian conservatives say the darnedest things. Which I also guess is why Zeiger chose Hillsdale College, and why he felt so comfortable routinely disparaging woman, gays, Muslims, Catholics, Unitarians, mainstream Baptists and whoever, during his four years there. He felt right at home.

Of course, a lot of us regret some of the things we did (or didn’t do) in college. For example, I regret not having taken more philosophy courses, while Christine O’Donnell regrets having dabbled in Satanism. But both Christine and I have had a couple decades to maturely muse over our regrets, and reshape ourselves into more philosophical, less Satanic people.

Zeiger on the other hand is only 25, just a few years out of college — and sexist, racist, anti-Papist Hillsdale College at that — and only weeks removed from regretfully pulling down from the Internet huge swaths of his hate speech. So forgive me for not taking his sudden mea culpa at face value.

The piece I taped last week for FOX News is being broadcast today, first at 8:45 AM Pacific on The Strategy Room, airing live at FOXNews.com, and then at 9:20 AM Pacific on the real TV. Best of all, I’m told the clips they used are from me and my good friend, 710-KIRO sports talker Dori Monson. Just like the old days.

UPDATE:
Just saw the clip on The Strategy Room, and out of a 20 minute interview, they showed maybe five or six seconds. But at least that’s better than Dori, who got a second or two, max. But, you know, that’s TV.

Not sure what they’ll show on the TV, but I’m not sure I ever will, as I don’t have cable.