I’m a pretty harsh critic of The Seattle Times. I think their coverage is more biased for a corporate status quo than they’ll care to admit and their editorials are sloppy and often off the mark. And with the ad for McKenna, they’ve put their partisanship on display.

But I don’t get any joy from their declining circulation numbers. For the best corrective to the Seattle Times’ sloppy efforts is better competition. When I read that they’d fallen off of the top 25 papers in the country, I thought of George Orwell’s lament at the end of World War Two that London only had 12 daily papers.

It is only when there are large numbers of newspapers, expressing all tendencies, that there is some chance of getting at the truth. Counting evenings, London has only twelve daily papers, and they cover the whole of the south of England and penetrate as far north as Glasgow. When they all decide to tell the same lie, there is no minority press to act as a check. In pre-war France the press was largely venal and scurrilous, but you could dig more news out of it than out of the British press, because every political faction had its paper and every viewpoint got a hearing.

Of course people get their news from the Internet now and from TV more than they did back then. But the biggest problem with TV news, with the Seattle Times, and most other daily papers in the region, is that they’re reporting from a similar perspective.

I thought I might be all out of what the fucks this campaign season. Especially after the shitty hurricane coverage. But there’s still at least one more. What the fuck, John Koster?

Koster: “When a mother’s life in in danger. I’m not going to make that decision. You know, I know they go out and… incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare. But the rape thing…you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept her child, gave it up for adoption, she doesn’t regret it. In fact, she’s a big pro-life proponent. But on the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s a consequence of this crime, how does that make it better? You know what I mean?”

First off, if that story is true it doesn’t really change the facts for the women who get an abortion after being raped. If a woman decides to have a kid after being raped, I want to live in a society that respects that. But society should have just as much respect for a woman who doesn’t want to bring her rapist’s child into the world.

Now I think all women should be able to make that decision for themselves under any circumstances. But it’s tough to imagine that a person wouldn’t feel a little compassion sneak in when we’re talking about rape victims.

– Aside from the anti-bus one, I like these reasons to bike to work.

– I’m not an evangelical, and we live in a secular society is a better response on policy than to tell them what they should believe about religion. But the relatively recent change to opposition to abortion in the evangelical community is pretty fascinating.

– Good for Italy.

– Bogus photos, however, are a strange new form of popular expression attached to unfolding crises, hovering somewhere on the boundary between art and commentary.

– Obviously, it’s limited in geography and scope, but I think the MTA Flickr had the best pictures.

– When I was in England and people would ask me why people call it football, I would tell them it was because the ball was shaped like a foot. I like this answer better.

I don’t care how desperate you are for a local angle on the biggest story right now. If the story you’ve decided to write is What does Michael Brown think of Sandy (h/t) you’re writing the wrong goddamn story. I mean maybe if you preface it with, and do the opposite of what this fucker says.

Seriously, after his monumental fuckup in the wake of Katrina why the hell would you ask his opinion if you had a hangnail? Honestly.

Also, even if you didn’t know it was this fucker, that’s really terrible advice. Obama is being too prepared for a disaster and Something something Benghazi.

Seriously. It’s cheap enough to be like “storm good for candidate arrrgh” or “Storm Bad for candidate!” But to be both for no real reason other than to just have something to say? Boo.

And yes, I realize that if you’re a pundit, you have to keep doing punditry. But maybe take a breath or some shit. I don’t know.

Just to be clear, I’m not inherently opposed to tying Sandy to the presidential election. It’s a week away, and Sandy may have an impact. But when there is a disaster, maybe step up your game.

– If you’ve got any money left over after campaign giving season, this kickstarter for Bezango, WA looks pretty good (h/t).

– Larry Stickney, as you can see, is super concerned with privacy.

– I’m still put off by Powell’s endorsement because of the war. But John McCain doesn’t really have a right to complain.

– And Barbara Guzzo, organizer of Catholics for Marriage, argued that the bishops have brought “anguish, division and sadness” to the faithful, “particularly those with a gay person in their families, the hurt that this has caused.”

– Still have to take some time to digest this XKCD on the partisan makeup of Congress

In our secular, democratic country, it probably shouldn’t matter that a large group of Catholics is taking out an ad saying they support marriage equality. You can be any religion and support any law based on the merits. But since the hierarchy is making a push, it seems fair for a large group of laity to push back.

The names of more than 1,000 Catholics will appear in a full-page newspaper ad Sunday endorsing Washington’s marriage equality law.

[…]

The advertisements of Catholics in support of same-sex marriage will appear in the Herald of Everett, The Seattle Times, and the Yakima Herald-Republic.

– Obama endorses R-74.

– Either these pro-life advocates are complacent monsters every bit as callously unconcerned with saving unborn babies as those they oppose. Or else, just like those they oppose, these folks do not really believe that “every embryo is morally equivalent to a fully developed child.”

– What the property tax swap would mean.

– What strangers does the McKenna campaign imagine are going to teach about alternative lifestyles? If your kid’s teachers are strangers, you’re doing something wrong.

– The My Lai is no big deal, wave fake anthrax to start a war guy endorses Obama. Yay? And the GOP reaction to it is pretty awful.

– A neocon word for chutzpah

I don’t have much to add to this Seattle Transit Blog piece. But right on.

The few million in this proposed budget seems like so little compared to the huge Sound Transit projects many of us are used to – but in this case, at this time, it goes a long way.

In the next couple of years, Sound Transit is likely going to put together their ST3 package; sources in Sound Transit say it’s looking more likely that we could see a regional vote in 2016. The primary goals for the next package are to connect Everett, Tacoma and Redmond (and maybe Issaquah) with extensions of Link. This means there will be money in Seattle for projects too, but it might not be exactly the right amount for the big projects we need in the city – it could be too much for one surface or elevated rail line, or too little for underground rail. We don’t know.

The projects on the table right now – major improvements to the streetcar line on Westlake (likely making it more like Link than streetcar), connecting it through downtown to the First Hill line, to Ballard via Fremont, and to the U-district via Eastlake, building real BRT on Madison, and extending the First Hill streetcar to Aloha – are all projects that might fill in those gaps.

Seriously, Donald Trump is like the worst person in the world. It’s tough to imagine someone you don’t like offering to give money to charity, and you liking them less as a result, but kudos to Trump for paving the road to that particular place.

To be fair, we did enjoy your impression of Dr. Evil as you sat behind your very big desk and shouted into the camera, vowing to contribute “five mill-ion dol-lars!” to the charity of the president’s choice if he releases “to my satisfaction!” all of his college records and passport applications by, appropriately enough, Halloween at 5 p.m.

Seriously, Donald Trump, if you’ve got $5 Million to spend on charity, don’t play this game. Just give it to charity. Don’t waste the finite amount of time the President of the United States has on your paranoid nonsense. Just give the money to charity.

Also, passport applications? I’m pretty disorganized, but I’m not sure if I was better organized that I could just pull up all of the passport applications I’ve made in a week. And I’m not in the middle of, you know, running for president. Do you keep them? Would the government keep the passport applications of a 7 year old (or whatever) kid from Hawaii from when he went to visit his dad, like years after it had expired? That’s such a strange request. And really, can you imagine Obama using the last week of the campaign to argue with Trump about if that was really all, and the correct, passport applications to his satisfaction? That’s just bizarre.

– There ain’t enough fuck you in the world for this guy.

– Nepotism on full view on TV.

– At what point do the R-71 people give up their court case to keep their signatures hidden?

– It is ridiculous — RIDICULOUS — that we live in a society where it’s a good guess that a shooting in a place often frequented by women is going to be an extension of a “domestic dispute.”

– Family values.

– Bikers and walkers spend more money than drivers over time.

– Anyone interested in seeing a MST3King of BIRDEMIC tomorrow?

Goldy points to this piece by the Sky Valley Chronicle taking the Seattle Times to task for their Rob McKenna ad.

And now the Times asks for forgiveness. Asks for another chance.

But as the Times reader comment noted in the headline of this piece – produced in response to a column written by Times Executive Editor David Boardman called “A vow to continue impartial reporting,”- it may be far too little and way too late.

I get why people are upset with the ad. I’m upset with the ad. The real problem is that Frank Blethen runs the paper. The problem isn’t the perception, it’s the reality. The paper is owned by a bully who has a toy that he pretends is a public service, but that he uses to tilt toward corporate power and the status quo.

The ad is just a symptom of that. And the symptom was far worse a few years ago, for example, when The Seattle Times decided to run a phoney story about Darcy Burner’s diploma. But they circled the wagons when people like Goldy pointed it out.

And it wasn’t just The Seattle Times staff. I couldn’t find anything in the Sky Valley Chronicle criticizing that. Plenty of main stream people ran with it. After all, if it’s in The Seattle Times, it must be true. But that was far worse than the ad people in The Seattle Times giving away the space in their paper. That was a news decision clearly directed by Blethen’s desire to swing the race. So, color me unimpressed that the people who are fine that sort of content are upset about the ads around it.

– Right now Thurston County voters have a real opportunity to vote for change, for what stands to be a better way for all rate-payers.

– UW people, here’s a chance to ride in the rain.

– RIP George McGovern and praise the lord if you’re paying high taxes.

– The most important endorsement ever.

– News Corp’s shareholders are not particularly happy with the way the company is being run.

– I’m not as big a sriracha person as the author of this piece (how could anyone be?), but by coincidence I was having some soup when I started reading it, and immediately decided to add some. It was exactly what it needed.

I’m not a fan of our nonpartisan election system here in Washington where we don’t have to register by party to vote in the primary. But I had thought when the national scandal about GOP operatives dumping voter registrations.

A campaign worker linked to a controversial Republican consulting firm has been arrested in Virginia and charged with throwing voter registration forms into a dumpster.

The suspect, Colin Small, 31, was described by a local law enforcement official as a “supervisor” in a Republican Party financed operation to register voters in Rockingham County in rural Virginia, a key swing state in the Nov. 6 election. He was arrested after a local business owner in the same Harrisonburg, Va., shopping center where the local GOP campaign headquarters is located spotted Small tossing a bag into the trash, according to a statement Thursday by the Rockingham County Sheriff’s office. The bag was later found to contain eight voter registration forms, it said. The arrest was reported Thursday night by WWBT-TV in Richmond.

But maybe not as tough as I’d thought.

In Virginia, where the Pennsylvania man working for the state GOP was arrested Thursday, Chesterfield County’s General Registrar Larry Haake was seen explaining to Richmond’s CBS 6 in late September that he had received complaints of Strategic employees discovered doing the same thing in a library last month.

“They were responsible for people that appeared in some libraries in Chesterfield County, supposedly to conduct voter registration drives,” Haake said, “but they were asking voters for whom they are going to vote.”

Haake says he informed the GOP of the incident at the time, but, apparently, no action was taken.

If, in fact, Small, or the workers he is said to have supervised, were using the same technique of misrepresenting themselves to voters about being a pollster, rather than being a registration worker, it’s likely he would have been able to glean whether those registrations he was allegedly seen tossing into a dumpster were for Democratic or Republican-leaning voters.

I think this is what you get when people keep screaming ACORN, ACORN, ACORN. They think they’re just leveling the playing field.

That Seattle Times staffers are upset about The Seattle Times giving Rob McKenna free advertising. But honestly, this would be a lot more meaningful if the newsroom felt like it had stood up to Frank Blethen on newsroom issues.

It threatens the two things we value the most, the traits that make The Seattle Times a strong brand: Our independence and credibility.

Ultimately, The Seattle Times’ independence and credibility are harmed more by, for example, Truth Needle segments that say things that are true are false if Democrats say them and ignoring things GOP candidates says that aren’t right. The newsroom has an obligation to independence and credibility. They’d be better able to withstand any fallout from their publisher being in the bag for McKenna if their paper hadn’t been in the bag for him and much of the GOP.

When the paper reads like a free ad for a certain type of GOP elected official, it’s tough to complain that there’s a free ad for a certain type of GOP elected official.