While last week, I made fun of the Seattle Times’ online content, they do have some original content, and I think the newsroom to make more of a go of it online. In short, it could be worse. It could be The Tacoma News Tribune whose Inside Opinion blog consists of a list of their editorials. In a time of shrinking newsrooms and less news in general, it may be too much to ask the smaller papers to put out content that doesn’t even make it to print.

And of course I’m not being entirely fair here, there are other blogs on The Trib that provide original content. Still, it feels like the focus is on the paper. What you see on Political Buzz will eventually find its way to the paper. Of course, that focus has value. The Tribune puts out a product that especially on the news end is worth a read for people in the South Sound.

Roughly, it seems that the dailies tend to ignore online, or they use it in service of the printing and the weeklies (and now the P-I) have more freedom. While yes, you’ll see content on Slog that will eventually make it into The Stranger, it doesn’t feel like with the Trib or Fairview Fanny. Maybe that’s illusory, and if The Stranger had to put out content every day, we’d see more of what’s on Slog in the paper.

– When I read that headline in Crosscut I thought to myself “That doesn’t seem to jibe with many of the people I know in the city” and then made a note to come back to read it. But it looks like it was wrong, and there are plenty of families in Seattle.

– Seems like the Yakima law enforcement authorities should have shown up for the forum on the Secure Communities program.

– I’ve written before that my mind what should determine if Anthony Weiner has to go or not is if he had consent to send those pictures, and sadly it’s looking more like he didn’t.

– And speaking of disappointing Democrats: Jon Tester.

– In fairness to Newt Gingrich his is just a nonsense vanity campaign for him to keep his name in the news, so it doesn’t really matter to his presidential hopes, and hey his name is in the news.

I mostly agree with Goldy that we shouldn’t judge the Martin Luther King Elementary sale solely on the money.

Perhaps the higher bid from the exclusive Bush School, along with its promise to keep the play fields open to the public on weekends would have been the best option for the community. Perhaps the investigation will ultimately uncover something improper about the First AME deal. I don’t know. But there’s nothing scandalous in itself about taking less money for the property in the interest of best serving the needs of the surrounding neighborhood.

And that’s why the Seattle Times’ editorial that followed was so dispiriting.

In a time of teacher layoffs, postponed schoolbook purchases and curtailed library usage, the district ignored the highest bidder — using private capital — to go for the lowest bidder using a state grant — taxpayer money.

The Seattle Times finds no need to mention WHY we’re in that “time of teacher layoffs, postponed schoolbook purchases and curtailed library usage.” Subtlety implying that the sale is the reason teachers have to be laid off. No need to mention how much their preferred budgets hit schools versus this sale. No need to even see if they had another reason for the sale. I mean, to take an extreme example, if a nuclear waste dump was the highest bidder, I doubt the Seattle Times editorial would demand we go with it.

And given that, I find their attitude a bit much.

This transaction needs to be sliced and diced in bright sunshine for all to see. Much more is at risk than the lost revenue and opportunity costs of a tawdry deal.

OK, I agree (except, perhaps, for the tawdry part) that more examination of what happened is a good idea. Still going out with the assumption that it must be tawdry, it must be the wrong deal isn’t going to help.

The school district is developing a grim reputation for sloppy stewardship of tax dollars. A legacy with consequences.

The Seattle Times is developing a grim reputation for sloppy stewardship of our tax cut dollars. While the news side still does good work (including the story that prompted the editorial), it’s hard to believe that the B&O and sales tax money that the Seattle Times saved over the years wouldn’t be worth a few more teachers at schools around the state.

A few years ago when Frank Blethen lobbied for the B&O tax break, he argued that newspapers were vital to the state. They force politicians out into the light and expand the dialogue in meaningful ways, that they are in some sense a good for the public. Then when an important job at the editorial page opened up, he gave it to his son who can’t write worth a damn. It seems to me if their goal was to perform a public good, they would have hired someone else rather than that tawdry nonsense.

– Here’s the Families and Education Levy website.

– Dori Monson is an awful person.

– Paying for a college education is going to be harder and harder (PS, while this article itself is worth reading, I’m not sure when Publicola decides to label things “other blogs.”

– I don’t know what’s more surprising about the Arizona Diamondbacks: the how many former Mariners they have or how well they’re doing (PS on the Podcast, I love how many different ways they pronounce “JJ Putz”).

– While I’m generally opposed to using nouns as verbs, I totally use MacGyver to mean make something on the fly.

OK, one more quick Anthony Weiner post and we can all get back to local issues or The Amazing World of Tomorrow, or whatever. This hyperbole in Joni Balter’s Ed cetera piece that’s otherwise a bit moralistic but fine is really bad.

Rep. Anthony Weiner embarrassed the House, the Democrats, himself, his wife and everyone by taking a picture of himself in his now famous gray undies, then tweeting it to a college student, and then standing up and facing the cameras and blaming a cyber-hoax.

Weiner, obviously. He’s embarrassed. His wife probably. The House, you could make a case, but it’s pretty weak. Democrats called for an investigation. Everyone? I’m not embarrassed by it. I liked him because for the most part I agreed with his policy agenda. But now there’s a serious black mark.

I commented in Darryl’s piece that the consent issues are the most important. If he’s just cheating, or whatever you call it with just pictures, then it’s between him and his family. If he sent the pictures to women who hadn’t given consent, then no doy, he’s got to go. So far he claims it was consensual and if that’s the case, his family and his constituents can decide if this is serious enough. And for the record, I thought Larry Craig shouldn’t step down even though he had committed a crime, because really it was none of my business.

But back to Joni Balter. Is everyone really embarrassed? Balter can’t think of a single person in the entire world who wasn’t embarrassed by this? In order I’d say he embarrassed:

Himself
His wife
His supporters who went on a limb for him
Possibly the women who he sent pictures to
NOBODY ELSE

Also, we need a better name for this scandal than “Weinergate.” Yes, I realize it’s a pun because his name sounds like a thing we call penises, but really it’s just the guy’s name and then “gate.” It might be easier if all scandals were scandalized person’s name gate, but otherwise, couldn’t half of all scandals in DC be called weinergate? Here’s a list off the top of my head of better names to call it. The list ignores that “gate” is a dumb suffix for scandal:

Undiegate
Boxerbriefsgate
Trousersgate
Twittergate
Textingladiesinappropriatepicturesgate
Gaitgate
Cockgate
Sextinggate
Anexcuseforthemediatouse”sexting”asifit’sarealwordgate
CreepyInternetdudewhoisalsoaCongressmangate

OK, maybe Weinergate isn’t as bad as I’d thought before I made this list, but I’m still unhappy with it.

I couldn’t find a statewide list, but the Sec of State’s office has links to the individual counties auditors/election departments. Here are the King County people who’ve filed for election so far. Good luck to the ones I support, bad luck to those I oppose, and if I don’t have an opinion on the race, I hope everyone is healthy, and enjoys at least part of the process.

– The anti choice movement can really made your skin crawl (h/t).

– Go see how the Republican plan to screw Medicare hurts your Congressional District. There may be a follow up post, but probably not (h/t).

– I loved learning about how they collect bugs in the soil & leaf litter.

– They’re already beating us.

– If Anthony Weiner sent a picture of his penis to random women, then there should be a price to pay, but oh my have the right wingers lost their fucking minds (has an unsafe for work picture, but not one as bad as what was on the front page here).

– Last weekend was great for a bike ride.

Between Memorial Day weekend and my general laziness, we went a long time sans an open thread from the end of last week (From Friday morning to the DL Thread put up early on Tuesday). By the end of that time conversation generally dried up in the previous open thread, and people started writing off topic in other threads.

Those off topic comments got deleted, and it naturally caused some anger. It’s one thing to say “post that in an open thread” when there’s an open thread from today or yesterday. It’s another thing to say, “post that in an open thread, um from a week ago.” Darryl and I discussed it at Drinking Liberally, and I’m not sure we came up with an answer, but we had some thoughts. I’d like to explain what I usually do and what I did the rest of this week, and then I’ll discuss some possible things going forward.

Normally, I try to do 2 or 3 open threads a week, spaced out, but it’s more when I have enough things that I find interesting to link to than a specific amount of time. I try to have at least one local link and one thing that doesn’t involve politics (sports, science, music, etc.) in every open thread. I’ve been making an effort to link to some Eastern WA content with not that much success, and to link to women and people of color with more success, but neither of those has been a hard and fast rule. Also, if someone else does an open thread, I’ll wait until the next day to do one, even if mine is ready.

This week, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I changed that up a bit. I posted open threads all three of those days (and tried to post all in the morning, but didn’t have the time on Thursday). I don’t think the quality of the links was as good in general, and there was a pretty major fuck up in one of those links on Thursday (from me scanning the headlines instead of reading the post). I think that looking for stuff for more open threads took away time for writing other posts.

So, going forward, I don’t really want to manually do an open thread with links every day. But here’s some thoughts that Darryl and I discussed:

• Just keep doing what we’re doing. We usually have them every few days, and so what if nothing comes up because of long weekend or one of us is on vacation, well that’s not the end of the world.
• Creating an open thread user that the rest of us can edit. Everyone add links as we find them. There’s some possibility that we can step on each other’s toes, and it might be annoying to do it from the back end. We’d have some problems deciding when it’s ready to go.
• There’s no inherent need to have links. I think they add a place to start the discussion and in general I like most of the blogs I link to. I think there’s some responsibility for higher traffic blogs to link to other blogs, especially in my case where my place at a high traffic blog isn’t really from my own hard work, but from being given the spot. But I imagine people will find something to talk about even without a link.
• We could do some sort of hybrid where, for example, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we just have an open thread and on Tuesday and Thursday we have an open thread with links.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten something since I discussed with Darryl on Tuesday, but those are my thoughts. I’d like to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

This may come as a surprise to those of you who are new to politics or the Northwest: for a while, The Seattle Times was by far the local newspaper that did online content the best. Sure, it was mostly that they had a guy (Postman) who was willing to do a regularly updated, well written blog. It wasn’t like they had a brilliant strategy, they just sort of lucked into it, as evidenced by the fact that (a) it was just one guy and not the whole newsroom (b) they let him go and (c) since he left they haven’t come close to recreating it.

Still, when The Stranger and The P-I’s online content was just their articles, there was a lot of breaking news on the Times’ website mostly from Postman. The Seattle Times could have built on their lead. Instead, I go to what should be (and sadly, maybe is) their premier blog, Ed Cetera and it’s awful. It hasn’t been updated since May 28, so almost a week. Their supposedly weekly feature (that, yes, I was only on their blog looking for something to make fun of) was last written in April.

And look, it’s a rather different skill set, writing for a newspaper and writing online. While I think the general quality of the columns leaves something lacking, I fully admit that what they do isn’t in my wheelhouse. And nobody is asking them to do what we bloggers do, really. They still write for a family newspaper, so they don’t need to say “fuck” as much as me, and can deploy snark less frequently. Still, I don’t know how newspapers are going to survive if they neglect online content as much as The Seattle Times has.

And ultimately, I want The Seattle Times to survive. There’s no other outlet for investigative journalism of the same magnitude in the region. There’s nowhere else that can spark the same conversation across the region like the front page of The Seattle Times (not even TV, and certainly not blogs). But for that to survive in an increasingly online world, I think they have to adapt, and they haven’t yet.

– Norm Dicks is calling for a quicker end to the war in Afghanistan (h/t, although “lost” may be too strong a word (yes, I caught the reference to Walter Cronkite)).

– While, obviously, you want lower unemployment, 7.2% seems like a cherry pick as something a president needs to get reelected. But people smarter than me seem to think it’s meaningful.

– I’m not one much for signing online petitions, but yes, the Space Needle should fly the rainbow flag during pride week.

– Maybe David Brooks just wants to have Syria torture Canadians.

– I’ve never had a problem riding this section of the Burke-Gilman Trail, but I suppose Stefanie Frease hadn’t either until the crash that prompted the editorial.

– As I’ll explain tomorrow, I did an open thread Wednesday, Thursday, and now Friday, but there’s less other front page content. Any thoughts on if this is positive or negative?

Oh look, I’m still doing this nonsense.

Bad, old science fiction is the best. There was a time when I went to used bookstores frequently, and would always look for science fiction anthologies from like the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. The thing about them is that they tell you more about the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s than they do about whatever future the author invented. Women were secretaries, aliens were savages, etc. So, I’m not sure what the next chapter tells us about Guzzo. It starts with Quixby returning a phone call from General Alexander Bennett:

“Hello, George. Glad to hear from you so soon. Say, I need you to go to Madison, Wisconsin, to straighten things out at out Department of Science and Education. Since you left there last year, the laboratory experiments seem to have encountered a few bugs that need ironing out. I don’t have to detail the problem for you now. Can you leave right away?”

First, either they iron bugs in the future, or that’s a pretty serious mixed metaphor. Second “I don’t have to detail the problem for you now” is sure suspenseful. Third, what? Quixby agrees, so it’s not like we learned anything from the call.

Quixby, a pilot and flying device designer had apparently done brain experiments in Madison. And the whole place can’t function with him gone, even though an actual brain surgeon, Dr. Oliver Maxwell, was in charge. There are “brain cartridges” that give people knowledge, but nobody knows what to put on the cartridges. So don’t rely on doctors, medial ethicists, the patients themselves, or whatever: let “the Mr. Fixit of the American scientific community” figure that out.

Everyone agrees, we need to throw book learnin’ onto people. But some disagree on if we should also add artistic, musical and other such “creative elements.” Quixby, who I can’t stress enough the book doesn’t mention any medical training, decides let’s do the book learnin’ for now and we can come back to the other stuff. So, compromise? Nothing?

Then, we hear about the things that Quixby worked on in the years when he was in Madison. I think this is Doctor Maxwell speaking, but it’s not entirely clear from the text:

“First of all, Colonel, let me bring up another topic. I think you already know about our success in promoting sign language as the world’s second language. It has take quite a while, as you know well, but we now have agreements by every nation in the world to teach a single form of sign language in all their schools. We have also made considerable headway in getting English adopted as the universal first language, with the added policy of each nation continuing to pursue its own historic language.

“Another program you set in motion when you were here is coming along at a surprisingly fast rate. That’s the program to translate all the world’s books into many languages, to revolutionize the world’s libraries by committing all books to electronic form, and to reflect these changes in schools at all levels.”

There is no explanation why sign language is the universal second language. I’m guessing to help deaf people. But it’s science fiction, and pretty loose on the actual science, so why not just make up a cure for deafness? And thank goodness in 2220, we’ll finally have electronic books.

Then Quixby agrees to stay in Madison until he’s ordered somewhere else. End of chapter 3, and no real explanation of what order is restored.

– Official or not, The Great Renaming is a hell of a title (h/t to Robby on Facebook).

– Bumbershoot Lineup.

– Another Washington State newspaper gone.

– Chart of the day.

– David Pauley has turned out to be pretty good.

– Mitt Romney is running on his business experience. For some reason.

I don’t mean to pick on Joni Balter here. Most people writing about a possible Dennis Kucinich Congressional run in Washington use the same dumbass term.

Republicans would love to run against Kucinich in a suburban congressional district because he is a fringe liberal sporting a carpetbagger label.

Look, if I still lived up North, I’d probably prefer Rodger Goodman or Marko Liias. I supported Ruderman before Inslee got in the race in 1998 and would certainly be willing to look at someone else. There’s a rich field of candidates to draw from, so it’s not like we need Kucinich. Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to run from somewhere else.

And in fact the original carpetbaggers were pretty fucking awesome. After the Civil War, of course, many people from the North went South to seek out the new political climate of freedom and racial integration imposed by the Federal government. The people who went into elected office were smeared as carpetbaggers by their opponents. People like Adelbert Ames, a hero at Bull Run and Gettysburg who was appointed to the governorship of Mississippi during reconstruction before winning election to the US Senate and the governor’s office outright. While I probably wouldn’t agree with all of his policies, where it mattered the most, he was right: “he took several steps to advance the rights of freed slaves, appointing the first black office-holders in state history.”

But in the history of the Reconstruction South, the Carpetbaggers lost. After Ames won election as governor, political violence overtook the state. Appeals to the Federal government fell on deaf ears, and eventually he resigned under threat of impeachment and possible violence. And political violence won out throughout the South. The worst case was Colfax.

On April 13, 1873, violence erupted in Colfax, Louisiana. The White League, a paramilitary group intent on securing white rule in Louisiana, clashed with Louisiana’s almost all-black state militia. The resulting death toll was staggering. Only three members of the White League died. But some 100 black men were killed in the encounter. Of those, nearly half were murdered in cold blood after they had already surrendered. The incident once again showed President Ulysses S. Grant how hard it would be to guarantee the rights and the safety of blacks in the South.

…

Louisiana whites formed their own “shadow” government and their own army, the White League. The White League, similar to the Ku Klux Klan, intimidated and attacked Republicans and blacks all over the state. While the worst violence occurred in Colfax, other incidents were sparked in Coushatta, when the White League murdered six Republicans, and in New Orleans, when 30 were killed and 100 more wounded.

In response to these incidents and others throughout the South, President Grant ordered federal troops to restore order. But most of the relief was temporary. After Colfax, the federal government convicted only three whites for the murders. In the end, they were freed when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that they had been convicted unconstitutionally.

The plaque commemorating the incident, put up by the state of Louisiana, still says “On this site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three white men and 150 negroes were slain. This event on April 13, 1873 marked the end of carpetbag misrule in the South.”

So that’s in a nutshell my problem with using carpetbagger as an attack. While obviously Balter and other political commentators aren’t trying to evoke the political violence and racial hatred that ended reconstruction, it’s there in the word. It means something more than just an outsider.

– As a feminist man, I’m still sometimes amazed at things that pass me by. I was caught off guard that there would be harassment on trains bad enough to make someone switch cars.

– While there is always more to do, Obama has certainly earned HRC’s endorsement.

– Seattle has been driving less even before McGinn.

– Fox News sounds like a terrible place to work.

– RIP Gil Scott-Heron.

This piece on Jim Tressel is pretty amazing. I’m not a big college football person: If I wanted to watch a violent corrupt game whose best years are in the rear view, I’d follow boxing because at least they pay their athletes something. But when a game is on on Saturday, I don’t care about any of that.

And now, we’ll hear about how everybody does it. And we’ll hear how it’s just what you have to do to keep competitive. But like those sorts of excuses in politics, I don’t buy it. If we hold corrupt people accountable, and we take away some of the incentives for corruption, this doesn’t have to happen.

Also like in politics, people substitute other people’s piety for judgement. Oh, he’s a Christian, he can’t be stalking men’s rooms for sex. Oh he’s a Christian, he can’t be a corrupt coach. But the truth is that the most and the least religious people are perfectly capable of disgusting things. If I had to bet, I’d say he probably believes the Christian stuff he preaches. I obviously don’t know, but people have a way of compartmentalizing.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this rambling piece. It was just supposed to be a one sentence link in an open thread, but I’m still writing. I guess to sort of make it local, we’ve all seen the decline of the Huskies since Rick Neuheisel’s recruiting violations, and I can’t imagine that Ohio State won’t suffer as well. Doesn’t really seem worth it, but I don’t suppose they thought they’d get caught.