– Happy 4th tomorrow. I won’t be posting anything. Maybe Goldy or someone else will.

– That is to say, in Alito’s apparent way of thinking, the religious scruples against blood transfusions do not involve a legitimate religion. Concern about abortion, however — even when that concern has no factual basis — is a legitimate religious scruple because, well, it’s Catholic. Just like Sam Alito. And just like John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas — the only justices who agreed with Alito’s inexplicable assertion that this alleged concern about alleged “abortifacients” is self-evidently different from other such claims.

– There will always be a few House seats available for unreconstructed bigots. The presidency not so much.

– The creative commute contest seems like a hoot.

– More maps should be adjusted for sobriety.

– More advisers in Iraq? Sure, sounds solid. Definitely not repeating the mistakes of both Iraq and Viet Nam.

– This bit of repentance, I guess, from a former Mars Hill “Minister of Propaganda” has been going around today.

– This decision is devastating not just to the millions of American women who have used some form of medical contraception (an estimated 99 percent, regardless of religious beliefs). It creates a dangerous precedent for corporations to declare that their “religious beliefs” absolve them of the responsbility to provide health care for their employees for virtually any reason, whether it’s opposition to women having sex or simple cheapness.

– Oh look, here are some bike jobs

– I’ve always said Tacoma is snobbish, what with their, um arbitrary stuff.

– Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Rep. Dan Kristiansen is concerned enough about how much our environmental laws are doing to small businesses. How concerned? Well, concerned enough to pull all context from a stat before putting it into a press release!

Our state has some of the strongest environmental laws on the books. As a result, Washington only produces 3/10ths of 1 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally and ranks second lowest in per capita emissions among seven Western states.

Wait what?

Well, in fairness the second half of that had something approaching context. Still, I’m not sure why we’re only including Western states. If it’s per capita, just do all states. It doesn’t say what those states are. I’d guess it’s the states that touch the Pacific and Idaho and Nevada, but I really don’t know. It also doesn’t cite the source.

But assuming that there are sources, I’m still confused about the first half: 3/10ths of 1 percent. I have some questions. First, is that really the best way to write that? 3 of every 1000 tons of carbon come from Washington might be better. Or 0.3% of world carbon. But beyond semantics, where does that actually place us in the world?

Let’s see. There are 6,971,406 Washingtonians as of 2013 according to the Census. There are about 7,176,032,000 people on Earth right now. So the math is fairly easy,* and we’re a bit under 0.1% of the planet’s population. So if we are producing 0.3% of the world’s carbon pollution, just to get to a place where the average Washingtonian was producing the worldwide average of carbon pollution, we’d have to cut our output by 2/3.

I realize that the comparisons to the rest of the world can be problematic. Our economy is so different from subsistence farming. But, Rep. Kristiansen brought it up to imply that we’ve done enough.

At some point I was going to make fun of the whole press release, but if I got this worked up over a paragraph, I should probably stop now.

[Read more…]

– This has been going around, but here’s the list of places opposing the minimum wage increase.

– It would be very nice indeed to have an Eyman initiative free year at the polls.

– Happy first day of the South Park Bridge reopening.

– Putin’s quite the grand master chess player. It takes a rare talent to push potential allies away, while tarnishing your country’s reputation on the global stage and pushing your economy into a recession.

– It was a bit of a surprise how quick Podlodowski’s tenure was.

– Every time gas prices go up, Republicans pass imaginary legislation.

– Surgically precise

This week the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision ruled that there is a free speech right guaranteed in the Constitution to shove pregnant women. What after all are the buffer zones for except against harassment of doctors and patients. After all, the law was enacted in “response to a history of harassment and violence at abortion clinics in Massachusetts, including a shooting rampage at two facilities in 1994.”

We know the ruling will lead to more pushing and shoving of pregnant women who want health care. We know it will lead to doctors being less safe. We know that it will mean more violence, because violent groups with a history of violence attempting to do violence to women (and there’s no other way to call forcing them to remain pregnant against their will).

Freedom!

As Voltaire would have said about this ruling, “I may not agree with your shoving a pregnant woman, but I will defend to death your right to do it.”

– Murray’s anti-crime and police accountability proposals seem mostly to the good.

– No matter how many states enact marriage equality, those pictures of the newlyweds always get to me. Congrats Hoosiers.

– Walmart awesome, says Walmart.

– I’m glad that the Catholic Church in Western Washington seems to be taking the child abuse seriously. But this still feels like not enough.

– Sometimes papers (or whatever the P-I is) looking for a local angle on something just crack me up.

– I don’t necessarily want to oversell this, but it’s probably the best invention in pooping history (I’m honestly not sure if that’s overselling it or not).

– Designing Streets for Safety [h/t]

– I’m not sure if Sawant would have voted against Kathleen O’Toole if she was the deciding vote (maybe, but it wasn’t the vote she needed to take). But it’s nice to know there will still be some pull to the left on police issues.

– The problem Burk faces however is that the Genesis texts don’t mention genitals or chromosomes as markers of gender, nor do the Genesis texts have a notion of what is essentially mid-nineteenth century biological essentialism. Burk has taken an ancient Israelite mythopoem and has attempted to force onto it a rather vague construct of “biology,” thus obfuscating what would otherwise be a theologically rich text. Like creationists, Burk has attempted to treat the biblical narratives as a science textbook, having assumed that the biblical authors are able to speak biological truths across different times and different cultures. I would recommend Burk actually research gender, biology, and sociology, and how various societies construct their notions of gender, before he writes definitively about it.

– Why does anyone still listen to Donald Trump?

– World Bicycle Relief Red-Bell 100

– If a puppet government falls in the desert and the whole world is around to witness it, does it make a sound?

– I think the HA comment threads are worth at least two or three leaf boats.

– Will the Supreme Court Ignore the Evidence? Facts vs. Beliefs in the Hobby Lobby Case

– The Spokesman-Review should probably do a better job of getting pictures.

– Let’s Build The Ballard Spur!

– I honestly couldn’t have told you who was the Seattle School District Superintendent, but now he might be leaving.

– My Real Change vendor keeps asking me to go to his church, but this is neat too.

Oh hey, Clint Didier is still running for office. This time it’s for Congress from Eastern Washington. And his campaign is giving away guns (Tri-City Herald link). Because sure.

Supporters must submit their names, ZIP codes and email addresses at Didier’s website to get updates from his campaign.

The winners of the guns — two pistols and a military-style rifle — will be randomly chosen. The contest allows people to civilly show support for the Second Amendment at a time when it is being threatened, Didier told the Herald.

“All these shootings are occurring at gun-free zones by individuals on some type of drugs with mental issues,” Didier said. “The guns are not pulling the trigger, the people are pulling the trigger. These gun-free zones are enticing people to go to these areas to do these terrible deeds.”

[…]

The prizes are two Ruger 2300 LC9 pistols and a DB-15 S rifle, including a 30-round clip with ammunition, Didier’s website said. He will give away the guns when he reaches 10,000 “likes” on his Facebook page or followers on Twitter, or July 4, whichever comes sooner.

The winners will have to follow all laws — including being of legal age and going through a background check — to claim their prizes, Didier said.

I had originally read Joel Connelley’s piece that doesn’t include reference to background checks, but when I asked the campaign about it, their spokesperson Larry Stickney* directed me to the longer piece on the Herald.

When I asked how a background check would weed out people on drugs or “with mental issues” he didn’t respond. It seems like the maybe not the greatest plan to give a potential murder weapon to some random stranger because they were nice enough to give you their name, email address, and zip code, even if they are able to pass a background check.

[Read more…]

– On Monday my computer was acting up, so we had a later in the day Open Thread, today I’m just acting up (ie, I didn’t prep enough earlier) and we have an afternoon Open Thread. Any preference if it’s morning or evening on Mondays and Thursdays?

– I don’t know if it’s sad or saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad that his polling firm is still trying to unskew the polls on Eric Cantor’s race.

– Women in the Workplace: Bryant Corner Café and Bakery

– One of my favorite things about the Internet is when people who don’t share my obsessions do something. This piece about how Fox News would cover The Marvel Universe is great even as a non-comics guy.

– Report: Obama Can Act to Reduce Inequality for Women, Minorities

– A lot of sports try to sell the economic benefits to a place rather than the cultural ones. And most of the time that’s bunk. If you care about the fact that the US Open is coming to the area next year, I’d think what it says about us is more interesting than the potential dollars. But Emmett tries to sort it out.

– We break it Obama owns it

In a press release about the budget forecast there’s, a paragraph about McCleary where Representative Terry Nealey says:

“The demands by the state Supreme Court for the Legislature to meet educational funding requirements under the McCleary decision will likely lead for new calls during the 2015 session to raise taxes. That would be devastating to our state’s economy. The correct course of action is to fund education first within the budget and let the economy heal by resisting job-killing tax increases. If we stay the course, Washington’s citizens will have more job opportunities, our state will reap the benefits of higher revenue, and we will be able to meet our constitutional requirements as it relates to education.”

This is a broader press release about how the revenue forecast increased $157 million for the biennium. But we’re billions behind. As long as 2 billion or so is more than 157 million, we’re not just going to be able to grow out of our problems.

But I will meet Rep Nealy part of the way: Yes raising taxes can have a deleterious effect on the economy. That’s true. But what the GOP never acknowledges is that so does cutting government services. So I would like to hear how the state could cut the difference between what grew or what the state can expect to grow and what’s needed to fulfill the McCleary obligations. Because suddenly making massive cuts to social services will also affect the economy in a negative way.

Hell, even the largely mythical wringing efficiencies from the government or cuts to wages and pensions would hurt the economy as it would mean less money being pumped into the economy. Government spending drives the economy in its way. Obviously, when we have a balanced budget, those efficiencies are generally balanced out by the taxes that have to be paid to fund them. But that’s the point: we’re going to have to look at spending and at taxes if we want to fix McCleary without doing too much damage to the economy. And since we’ve been mostly cutting in the past years, it may be time for more taxes.

– Where the Growth is Happening

– For a town that is really proud of being progressive and pro-lady and pro-gay and pro-brown-people and pro-equality, we have still got some truly rotten, stinking, embarrassing, hateful slop festering just barely under the surface. And it’s down to all of us to talk about it and act on it.

– I’m just going to say it: Boo Canada.

– This WaPo piece on a Heritage Foundation panel hating Muslims has been going around, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point to it.

– Summer Meltdown

– It almost sounds crazy to write this, but 45 years ago today, the Seattle City Council tried to destroy the Pike Place Market.

– Enough is enough. Tell our legislators to commit to action on gun safety.

– I’m not usually one to heap much praise on car companies, but well done Tesla.

– I am not a fan of the 3 strikes law. At least there’s some possibility of clemency.

– Maybe trying to make sense of the Klan ideology is a fool’s errand, but trying to recruit military people because you think the government is overreaching and about to collapse, seems like one or the other.

– I’m sure the American authorities would be very understanding of a Mexican national coming over the border with a bunch of guns claiming that he got “lost.” But that’s because we’re good and they’re evil.

The laws that the legislature passed in the last session are now officially on the books. Seattleish has some highlights. Included are the ban on tanning for teens and the WA DREAM Act (that, yes I know the final bill was called something else). It seems pretty small bore compared to the problems we face. And give the makeup of the last legislature, it is. But it is mostly to the good.

– With how often I talk about how gross coal trains are, we can also remember that oil trains are also gross, and maybe we should have better disclosure.

– What the everloving fuck, Pat Robertson?

– I’m not as big on calling out a history of not voting by candidates. Policy ought to trump that. If the candidates are similar, it’s maybe a tiebreaker. But a campaign making excuses in a way that makes it seem they don’t understand they’re in a vote by mail state is maybe worse.

– Eric Cantor got what he deserved: A political fraud’s stunning demise

– Oh hey, the Backbone Campaign are having a fundraiser. It looks like fun.