– What the Seattle City Council members are doing with their surplus money from previous campaigns.

– There’s a lot going on at NPI.

– Everybody hates John Boehner.

– Right to Work isn’t a one way fight. It seems like if the GOP want to open that up, there are plenty of states where there are right to work laws that could be repealed.

– Wait. Nick Kristoff wants people who are on disability to join the military? I mean I’m sure there are some people who are on disability who would thrive there, but in general that seems problematic.

– Third Avenue is totally awesome and the Memorandum of Agreement looks like it will keep being awesome.

– If people just worked harder they wouldn’t need entitlements.

I hate that the Catholic Church in Western Washington is emphasizing that it won’t participate in marriage equality. I hate that they aren’t for it and I hate that they feel the need to reemphasize it.

Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain has laid down Roman Catholic church law on same-sex marriages now allowed under Washington civil law: The church will have nothing to do with such “marriages” — apostrophes courtesy of the Archbishop.

I’m glad the law gives them that right. I wouldn’t want the state dictating to churches how to perform their sacraments. But that doesn’t put the churches that aren’t marrying gay folks on the right side of history.

I’m so sick of this shit.

An unidentified gunman, acting alone, fired up to 60 shots before killing himself. The original reports of two dead were confirmed as the only fatalities. One 15-year-old Portland girl was taken by ambulance to OHSU Hospital, where she was in serious condition Tuesday night.

Officials declined to identify the victims.

The gunman died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, Lt. James Rhodes, a Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, said at a news conference. The gunman, reportedly 22, has been tentatively identified, but police did not release his name.

I don’t know what the answer is to these things, or if there is one.

Digby points to a horrible thing Ann Coulter said to show that the GOP’s problem with their hatred of the other.

The Republicans have a problem all right, but it isn’t racial demographics. It’s Ann Coulter and all the people who think like her. And I don’t know what they’re going to do about that.

Right. But it isn’t just the cultural elite of the Republican party. It’s the fact that the Coulters, and the Limbaughs and on and on have an audience of people who want to hear the sort of things they’re saying. If they were just shouting into the wind, they wouldn’t have careers.

The Republicans can’t keep their base unless they regularly spout ugly crap.

Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon have decided to caucus with the Republicans even though they’re still claiming to be Democrats. I don’t know what it means to be a Democrat when you caucus with the Republicans and vote for their shitty budgets.

It isn’t a surprise, still with Tom, it’s a little bit of a sting. One of the best pieces on this blog was written in defense of him . And while he was never embraced fully by the party (because a lot of his policies were still shit) he was never primaried in that Democratic leaning district. Obviously, that’s probably going to happen now.

In the piece linked to in the first paragraph, Goldy wonders if there’s any way to salvage a Democratic majority. I guess the only way I can see would be to get one of them a job outside the legislature so they’ll have to resign. There would be a tie until their replacement was picked, and since they ran as Democrats, the Democrats would pick that replacement.

Of course something like that would be rewarding them for being assholes. Still, it’s less awful than the budgets and the hateful legislation we’re likely to see out of the state senate if the GOP is in charge. Inslee has a lot of positions to fill, and maybe there are some lobbying groups that they’ve been good on their issues, but would like to see a Democratic majority.

– Congrats to all of the couples who got married yesterday.

– Bikes galore on the Fremont Bridge.

– War on Catholics.

– Perhaps Michael Dunn would have told those kids to turn down their music, no matter what. But perhaps knowing that he had the ultimate power in his hands to annihilate all of them, gave him a little edge. Very few people, no matter how “responsible,” would be immune to such a feeling.

– I was just goofing on this Christmas card from the Obamas, and apparently it’s part of the war on Christmas.

– Modesty is bullshit

– You’ve clearly done something right as a team when you force the other team to apologize to their fans.

Joel Connelly has the details on the public comment period for the coal train hearing next Thursday.

Previous “scoping sessions” in Whatcom, Skagit and Spokane Counties — held by the Washington Dept. of Ecology, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Whatcom County — have drawn overflow crowds.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, and other Northwest Washington mayors, have warned about the disruption of having a succession of mile-long coal trains, bound for Cherry Point, move along the waterfronts of their cities each day. McGinn worries that after waiting for one long train to go by, waterfront traffic lineups won’t be able to clear in time for the next train.

“Transportation impacts evolve into economic impacts,” McGinn said this week.

I’m opposed to the coal trains, but if they run them, I hope the city and the state have a plan to mitigate the traffic and coal dust. So come on out and make your voice heard.

The Dec. 13 meeting in Seattle will be held at the Washington State Convention Center, Ballroom 6f. The ballroom has a capacity of 3,500 people. Doors will open at 3:30 for people to find seats, and to put down their names for the upcoming drawings.

I hate to make promises about these things, especially because I haven’t done the proper inquiries about media, but I think I’m going to live blog it.

– Frequently asked questions about Medical Marijuana (Cannabis) in Washington State

– Way Past Wonderful

– What, you want me to actually name the spending cuts I support?

– To schedule a wedding with a district court judge you, please follow these instructions.

– Hip hop, like nearly every other genre has some people who support gay civil rights.

Rob McKenna’s wife is right about marriage equality (h/t).

In an email to The Seattle Times, Marilyn McKenna added that while she and her husband disagree on the subject, they respect each other’s opinions. “I believe that being pro-gay marriage is completely consistent with being a Republican too. It’s a matter of personal choice that the government has no right to interfere in,” she wrote.

She added in a second email: “Both the government and the Republican Party need to get the hell out of people’s bedrooms and get a life!”

Great. I mean sure. I’m glad to have Republicans on board the human decency train. Of course that’s easy enough to say after marriage equality passed, and when it’s a done deal. I hope this is part of a genuine reassessment on the part of the GOP, but I fear they’ll be just as backwards on whatever is the next issue of basic dignity in the state as they mostly were on this one.

Of course we’ve known since election day, or thereabouts, that today would be the day marijuana and gay marriage would be legal in Washington. Still, going to bed reading about the people waiting to start the process finally at midnight and waking up knowing that they live in a state that lets them get married is great. Before I went to bed, I wondered if I should go down to a repeal day event even though I don’t smoke marijuana and then I woke up knowing that people around the state weren’t going to jail for that.

It’s a rare thing to wake up in a state that’s so much better than when you went to bed. Today was one of those days, so savor it.

I’d have guessed that Ed Murray wouldn’t run for Seattle mayor. He just became the Democratic leader in the Senate and with the long session next year, he won’t be able to fundraise as well as the rest of the candidates. But if blogging has given me any insight it’s that I shouldn’t make predictions. He has formed an exploratory committee.

I had expected to be a McGinn partisan, and still may go down that road. But instead of it being a definite thing, I’ll have to look at both of them. I just don’t have enough of an idea of Murray’s vision for Seattle to know one way or the other. I certainly like what he’s done in the legislature.

Also, it’ll be interesting to see — to the extent that it isn’t all behind the scenes — how as Majority Leader who is running for mayor, he’s able to shade legislation that he might want to run on. He’s already pretty good on transit funding, and God knows he’ll be running on having passed marriage equality. But the next session will be a chance to burnish those credentials.

– ACORN are still scary.

– Back to marrying couples for the first time since 2004.

– We’ve seen remarkable reductions in pedestrian collisions since the start of the Center City Holiday Pedestrian Safety Campaign four years ago – down on average 34 percent – but even one collision is too many.

– As a Hillary Clinton partisan in 2008, and probably one again if she runs, Joan Walsh’s note of skepticism is pretty much correct.

– It will surprise nobody that Patty Murray’s priorities for the debt negotiations are better than many of her colleagues.

– Lynwood missing link.

– Fuck you Boston and San Francisco.

The Tacoma News Tribune looked having any relevance at all in the future in the face, and decided fuck that noise.

When your subscription does renew, print subscribers will receive digital access on all platforms for an additional $2.50 a month (just over eight cents a day). Nonsubscribers who want to subscribe to The News Tribune only on a digital platform will pay $9.95 a month (about 33 cents a day).

Our digital offerings include our website (thenewstribune.com), our mobile apps available for both the iPhone and Android phones, and our digital replica edition of the printed News Tribune (available on the desktop, laptops and tablets). Digital subscribers will also get access to our archives and to databases not otherwise available to print subscribers. And we are working on other products that will become available to subscribers with digital access in coming months.

Now they’re going to go with the New York Times model and offer limited amounts of free views before it’s shut down.

Nonsubscribers will be able to access only a limited amount of digital content after Dec. 16. Access to the home page, the obituaries and classified advertising will not be restricted, but most other content will be limited to 15 page views a month.

Of course, The New York Times can get away with that because there is a group of people who will pay for access to The New York Times. I don’t know other than some government employees who would pay for The Tribune online.

So if I make less fun of their odd pre-defensiveness, or Lee only makes fun of 15 fucked up drug war editorials a month now you know why.

And look, I’d very much like the Tribune to survive. Their coverage of the Tacoma Teacher’s strike was great (the editorials about it, not so much). And they cover an important piece of the state that I don’t know how it’ll get replaced if they go away. So even with this I’m still pulling for them. But I think it’s a mistake.

I don’t know how much the tip jar and the value of health care offset the low wages at Starbucks. But surely they can do better.

The National Employment Law Project analyzed large companies whose employees are making minimum wage, or barely above. Overall, their 2012 report found minimum wage today is worth 30 percent less than it was in 1968.

Most of the 12 largest employers studied are national restaurant chains, such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks. The others are national retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Sears.

Starbucks ranks seventh on their list. With a workforce of 176,533 and 12,903 stores in the U.S., Starbucks had revenue of $13.3 billion and net income of $1.4 billion. CEO Howard Schultz earned $16.1 million in compensation.

Sigh.

– Democratic support is creeping East.

– The next four years are going to be awesome.

– There is nothing I don’t love about Kenny G’s manager yelling at The Stranger.

– Stay classy, rightwing media.

– I don’t want to sit around with my beer and wings on Sunday and wonder whether my pastime contributed to the murder of a young mother and the orphaning of a little girl. I’m just not up for it.

– Dooooooomed!