Check out the cover that will adorn Monday’s The New Yorker:

The Politico reports:

[Obama] Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

Not to be outdone…

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”

For crying out-fucking-loud! This is political correctness gone amuck on the part of both campaigns. The caricature is clearly satire, and done in the best tradition of editorial cartooning. It mocks those who are truly tasteless offensive and, frankly, un-American: those right-wing retards who actually spread the “Obama is a radical Muslim who hates our freedoms and his wife is an angry psychopath who hates America” bullshit.

You know, Wingnut retards like the Clark County Republican Party and the Island County Republican Party.

If you want to express outrage (or even take mild offense), go after the assholes who disseminate such lies…not a magazine using satire to belittle them.

Update: The artist who drew the cover (Barry Blitt) responds.

Rasmussen has just released their July poll for the Washington state gubernatorial race. The poll of 500 people shows Governor Christine Gregoire (D) leading Dino Rossi (GOP-Party) 49% to 43%.

(Oddly enough, I was one of the 500 randomly selected Washington state voters who was called and chose to participate in this poll.)

The +6% spread in this poll shows the race tightening slightly from the +9% found in the late June Elway poll, but better than the +3.5% found in an early June SurveyUSA poll, and on par with the +7% found in last month’s (early June) Rasmussen poll.

As usual, I use a Monte Carlo analysis to estimate the probability that Gregoire would win if the election were held now. I simulated a million gubernatorial elections of 500 voters each, where each person had a 49% chance of voting for Gregoire, a 43% chance of voting for Rossi and a 8% chance of voting for neither.

Gregoire won 900,804 of the simulated elections and Rossi won 90,599 times. This suggests that Gregoire has something like a 90.9% chance of beating Rossi (if the election were held now) and Rossi has a 9.1% probability of winning. A statistician would point out that Gregoire’s lead in this poll is within the margin of error (i.e. her probability of winning is less than 95%).

Here is a plot showing the distribution of votes in the million elections:

Blue bars are wins for Gregoire and red bars are Rossi wins.

This current poll makes this the ninth consecutive poll in which Gregoire has led Rossi. It is highly unlikely that Gregoire’s lead is due to chance (sampling error).

Rasmussen also polled a head-to-head match-up between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. Obama lead McCain 48% to 39%. Tomorrow I’ll provide my usual Monte Carlo analysis of the presidential election that incorporates the new Rasmussen poll.

I began this week serving on Jury duty at the King County Superior court in downtown Seattle. At lunch time, I made a beeline to Ivars on the waterfront for some fast, delicious, and artery clogging seafood as only Ivars can make it.

To get there from the courthouse, I have to pass under the monstrosity known as the Alaska Way Viaduct—a noisy, ugly mass of concrete and steel that sits just east of the waterfront. On this beautiful Monday I ate my fish and chips in a little park a couple of blocks due south of Ivars, while enjoying the spectacular view and, of course, bathed in the deafening sound of traffic on the Viaduct.

I don’t spend a lot of time in downtown Seattle, so maybe I just don’t “get it.” But to me, the Viaduct completely and utterly destroyed any sense of beauty and serenity that might otherwise be found on the spectacular Seattle waterfront. Really…it stinks.

Apparently not everyone shares my opinion:

The 2.2-mile viaduct is viewed by many as an aging waterfront misfit but was considered unique and “very clever” as a structure and a highway bypass when it was opened in 1953. That makes it ‘historically significant,’ ” said Art Skolnik, a land use consultant.

Skolnik, a longtime advocate of repairing and preserving the viaduct, said he’ll ask the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation to on Friday nominate the viaduct for placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

Historically significant my ass! It’s an ugly, dirty, noisy blemish on the landscape. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anything more disturbingly invasive, or more destructive of the potential for the Seattle waterfront, aside from, say, using the space to store dead bodies or nuclear waste (maybe…I mean, nuclear waste is much quieter).

At the time it was opened “it was a big solution to a difficult problem,” Skolnik said. “Back then it was cheered.”

…until people actually thought about being pedestrians on the waterfront!

We can learn from our mistakes. Tear the fucking thing down! And vow to never, EVER make that mistake again!

The Freeway Blogger has a new blog site—gasoline stations:

The episode begins with an air of disappointment and disgust as the panel anticipates today’s Senate FISA/Telco-immunity bill vote. The topic changes mid-stream to Plum Creek and the raping of the Montana environment. From there, they take up rural land use issues in Washington. The panel revisits the assisted suicide death with dignity initiative, and then switches tracks to a discussion of light rail. Next they reveal the secrets behind the not secret ballot currently in use in some Washington state counties.

This week Goldy was joined by HorsesAss’ and EFFin’ Unsound’s Carl Ballard and HorsesAss’ (and now Slog’s) blogger Will, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, DailyKos uber-blogger Joan McCarter (mcjoan), and Mr. Tim White.

The show is 61:31, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_july_8_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We begin at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, but some of us will be there early for Dinner.

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally. Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

(h/t Crooks and Liars)

Consider this an open thread.

In this episode, Goldy and friends offer condolences to congressional candidate Darcy Burner over the loss of her house (and cat) earlier in the day. Next they dive into a multi-threaded discussion of the Washington state gubernatorial rematch, surrogate attack dogs, fake scandals and all. The podcast ends with a brief (roughly…seven word) tribute to the late George Carlin.

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Seattle’s blogging pioneer N in Seattle, HorsesAss and EFFin’ Unsound’s Carl Ballard and HorsesAss’ former blogger emeritus Will.

The show is 51:19, and is available here as an MP3.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_july_1_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

In 2004, Washington state witnessed the closest gubernatorial election in history, as then Attorney General Christine Gregoire defeated then real estate broker salesman Dino Rossi by 129 votes (later changed to 133 by a court).

A year and some later (April, 2006), the now defunct East Side King County Journal asked about Rossi What’s his shelf life?:

The charismatic and smooth conservative came within a whisker of winning the governor’s mansion in 2004 and is widely expected to seek a rematch with Democrat Chris Gregoire in 2008. Will it be “Dino Who?” by then?

In politics, it is said that a year is an eternity. So what does that make Rossi’s four-year hiatus with no political office or bully pulpit while Gregoire relentlessly dominates news cycles week after week?

It was an interesting time to ask the question. At the time, Rossi was leading Gregoire by 51% to 38% in a Strategic Vision poll asking about the 2008 election. In fact, Rossi had led Gregoire by more than 50% to Gregoire’s less than 40% in the five other polls taken after the election contest and before April 2006.

The Republicans resoundingly lost the legal battle in the election contest of 2005, but they won the PR battle. Governor Gregoire began her first term polling as less popular than the loser of the election. After a highly contentious, close election, followed by a multi-million dollar Republican dis-information campaign (a.k.a. the election contest), Gregoire’s approval–disapproval spread started out strongly negative, and remained in negative territory for her first year in office. Then, after a 6 months period of nearly even approval (Jan 2006 until June 2006), Gregoire emerged from negative approval-disapproval territory.

Starting from a very bad position, Gov. Gregoire genuinely won over the electorate.

But what about Rossi? When he launched his 2008 gubernatorial campaign (umm…for the second time), Rossi routinely quipped:

“Last time I started with a 12 percent name identity statewide. Most everybody thought Dino Rossi was some kind of wine at that point. A cheap wine at that,” Rossi said….

But name recognition isn’t enough. On the public’s perceptional palette, had Rossi matured into a vintage wine? Or had Rossi’s cheap wine turned to vinegar?

In 2005, Pollster Stuart Elway pointed out:

“’We wuz robbed’ won’t be a strong campaign theme, and Dino will have to present a credible challenge to an incumbent this time. It won’t be like he’s a challenger coming from out of nowhere, but my question is how he stays on the radar screen when he doesn’t hold any office.”

Elway’s concerns were prophetic. Rossi was never able to remain an important player in Washington politics. (Hell…he wasn’t much of a player in Washington state Republican politics, either.) For example, Rossi refused to take a stance in Initiative 912 that would have repealed a state gas tax increase. Neither has Rossi grown in the interim. His campaign stump speech has evolved minimally since 2004. And, at least early in the campaign, Rossi was still running on the “We Wuz Robbed” platform.

The inevitable result is that Rossi has squandered his position of great strength from 2005 and 2006. Just look at the polling. Here is a compilation of every publicly-released head-to-head Gregoire–Rossi poll for the 2008 election:

(Note: different pollsters probe undecided voters to very different degrees. To make the numbers comparable, I have normalized the results so that the Gregoire% + Rossi% sum to 100%.)

After leading in the first 15 polls in a row (through November 2006), Rossi has lost all but one of the most recent 15 polls. A running average puts Rossi about 7% below Gregoire. At this time during the 2006 election cycle, senatorial candidate Mike McGavick, running against an incumbent Sen. Maria Cantwell, had just peaked at 9% below Cantwell. In other words, beginning with a huge advantage in 2005, it looks like Rossi’s residual advantage of the 2004 election (and contest) has shrunk to, roughly, a 2% advantage over McGavick’s unimpressive performance.

The electorate just isn’t taking a liking to the Rossi-brand whine. (Perhaps Rossi shouldn’t be building a campaign on sour grapes.)

(Cross-posted at Hominid Views.)

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. Officially, we start at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Some folks show up early for Dinner.

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally. Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Elway has just released their June poll for the Washington state gubernatorial race. The poll of 405 people shows Governor Christine Gregoire leading Dino Rossi 47% to 39%.

The 8% spread found by Elway is the largest of the three June polls in this race. An early June SurveyUSA poll found Gregoire leading by +3.5%, and an early June Rasmussen poll found Gregoire up by +7%.

As usual, I use a Monte Carlo analysis to estimate the probability that Gregoire would win if the election were held now. I simulated a million gubernatorial elections of 405 voters each, where each person had a 47% chance of voting for Gregoire, a 39% chance of voting for Rossi and a 14% chance of voting for neither.

Gregoire won 965,619 of the simulated elections and Rossi won 3,852 times. This suggests that Gregoire has something approaching a 96.9% chance of beating Rossi (if the election were held now). A statistician would simply point out that Gregoire’s lead in this poll is outside the margin of error.

Here is a plot showing the distribution of votes in the million elections:

The area to the right of the red line are wins for Gregoire; those to the left are wins for Rossi.

This current poll makes the eighth consecutive poll in a row in which Gregoire has led Rossi. At this point in the election season, Gregoire holds a commanding lead over Rossi.

Some month ago, when asked what kind of computer he used John McCain responded:

“Neither. I am an illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get.”

Now the McCain campaign has suggested that Grandpa McCain doesn’t use the computer at all:

…this morning at the Personal Democracy Forum conference, Mark Soohoo, speaking on behalf of the the Arizona senator’s Internet team, was asked whether McCain even uses a computer.

His response: “You don’t need to use a computer to know how it shapes the country.”

Really? The Republicans expect Americans to seriously consider a candidate that doesn’t use a computer?

Soohoo may be right that you don’t need to use a computer to understand its cultural and economic impact.

What bothers me is what this says about McCain’s intellectual curiosity—specifically, his lack thereof. Are we really going to elect into the most powerful office in the world, a man who shows no interest whatsoever in the most powerful product of human collective culture?

And haven’t we just experienced a painful lesson from electing a President who lacks any vestige of intellectual curiosity?

SurveyUSA released the first poll of the season in the 8th CD race between Darcy Burner and Rep. Dave Reichert.

The poll surveyed 679 likely voters on June 16th and 17th, and showed Reichert leading Burner 51% to 45%.

As usual, I try to assess these poll results by a simple Monte Carlo analysis. I simulated a million fictitious elections between Burner and Reichert, using the observed percentages and the number of people polled.

Reichert won 948,339 of the elections and Burner won 48,199 times. In other words, the poll results suggest that, for an election held right now, Burner would have a 4.8% probability of winning the election and Reichert would win with a 95.2% probability.

Here is the distribution of outcomes (percentage of votes) from the million simulated elections (Reichert victories are those to the left of the red “tie” line, Burner victories are those to the right):

At risk of coming off as just another amen blogger, the poll results don’t strike me as particularly bad for Burner. Yeah…she is -6% down, but Reichert, as the incumbent, starts out with the advantage. The poll’s cross-tabs look reasonably positive for Burner. Among other things, of those who said they could change their mind, 50% were Reichert supporters and 39% were Burner supporters. Also, Reichert holds 35% of the pro-choice vote. It’s hard to imagine that the Burner campaign won’t make in-roads into that group.

This poll comes on the heels of massive mailings of campaign flyers franked informational pieces from the Reichert campaign congressional office. The Burner campaign, to my knowledge, has not made any media purchases.

Furthermore, Reichert has recently gotten a lot of well-deserved publicity for eco-friendly votes. I say “well deserved” because, clearly, Reichert’s handlers have developed a brilliant strategy that has rendered the local media stupifyingly blind to Reichert’s strategy of full participation in Republican obstructionism in Congress during procedural votes, only to switch his vote when the results are certain passage. Daniel Kirkdorffer has meticulously documented this rather cynical strategy. It is hard to say whether Reichert’s people will be able to maintain their spell over the media through November.

(Cross-posted at Hominid Views.)

The Governor’s big night out: