Very good news for state Sen. Craig Pridemore, running in WA-03 for the seat currently held by retiring Rep. Brian Baird, D-WA. (Props to Publicola.)

You kind of wonder if this will end the “Denny Heck is the frontrunner” stuff once and for all. What do I know, I’m just a sometimes-blogger, but you’d think Pridemore will be able to compete on the airwaves and also do the kind of grass-roots campaigning that wins elections.

The invisible libertardian hand has its finger up your ass again. And you thought you could send your kids to college on that money. Sucker.

It’ll be that bankster’s kid going to the Ivy League school, not your kid, who will be lucky to pay $10,000 per to attend a de-funded land grant school.

So who’s waging class warfare in this country anyhow? And why are we supporting a party that is in on it?

He proposes more drilling offshore and then the Gulf of Mexico is hit by an oil disaster. Maybe tri-strangulation has limits.

Try that shit in the Pacific Northwest, motherfucker. God this party sucks.

The thing about fascists is they try to wear down the normal people. Good people with shit to do (jobs, kids, doing things that make being alive fun) grow tired of stuff like the Arizona abomination, and can start to weaken, figuring maybe if the fascists get this, they’ll calm down.

They won’t calm down, at least not until white people with R’s behind their names are completely in charge of everything, everywhere on the planet. And since that’s not going to happen, normal people have to be encouraged to beat these fascist bastards at the polls, and beat them badly.

Fuck Godwin’s Law, I’m done with that, it’s null and void. The Arizona law is fascist, and I hope to hell the DOJ is all over that miserable state government down there. Show me your papers, I’ll show you my papers. Here it is 2010 and someone is probably going to have to organize freedom rides. They’ve even got that fascist sheriff who would easily fall for the bait.

Funny thing about trying to uncork resentments as a political strategy: it can lead to unpredictable outcomes. In the right wing lizard brain, we’re all hippies who won’t stand up for anything, because the right wing lizard brain defines us as incapable of having true American values.

That’s why their heads exploded, and continue to explode, because we pointed out the debased assault on American values perpetrated by the Cheney-Bush administration. To them it was nothing more than an insult, no matter how many facts were presented, and they use it as a justification for whatever insults they care to issue to us, or more importantly, the Constitution. Then they parade around in costumes proclaiming their love of a document they don’t even understand.

They’ve always made that mistake, of course. And they’ve always lost, from Appomattox to Selma, but not without causing a whole lot of needless suffering. It’s their cultural heritage. USA! USA! USA!

After nearly whiffing on health care, Denny Heck now gets a second chance to take a stand on a vital issue in the race for WA-03, this time consumer protections from financial industry abuses. It seems Craig Pridemore isn’t afraid to take a stand for regular people on this issue either. From a Pridemore campaign news release today:

In the second of a series of reform statements, Craig Pridemore, candidate for Washington’s 3rd Congressional seat, endorsed the creation of a Consumer Protection Agency and called on Denny Heck to tell voters where he stands on critical legislation to hold Wall Street accountable.

“Everyday we find out more and more about the predatory lending and outright greed of Wall Street that drove our economy into a ditch,” Pridemore said. “We must enact strict oversight of financial institutions by establishing a Consumer Protection Agency to ensure this crisis never happens again.”

Pridemore’s statement comes on the heels of another he delivered earlier this month about health insurance reform. Just like before, Pridemore is the first candidate in the race for the 3rd district’s open seat to make clear his position on the debate surrounding financial reform in Congress.

“Several weeks ago I asked, “Where is Denny?” Pridemore continued. “We were in the midst of health care reform and it took my opponent hours until the final vote to state his position. Voters deserve to know where their next representative stands on the issues that matter.”

It’s a reasonable guess that the Republicans in the race will babble about the invisible hand of libertardian Randian goodness and such, so the question is whether Heck is with them or not on consumer protections. Behind all the political howling in this country lie real differences on how best to nurture capitalism while ensuring that its destructive tendencies don’t cause mass havoc too often. It will be interesting to see how Heck stands on this reform idea, and if he wiggles around and sticks his finger in the air until the last minute like he did on health care.

There’s a forum tonight in Longview, presenting an excellent opportunity for all the candidates to state their positions on how we curb the financial sector excesses and corruption that screwed up the economy. Yes, the Republicans would like everyone to forget about all that, but as we’re still suffering the lingering effects of Randian idiocy, one could argue this issue is even more fundamentally important than health care.

Former state GOP chair Chris Vance, writing at Crosscut about the race in WA-03 to replace retiring Rep. Brian Baird:

In the end it probably won’t matter which Democrat prevails. The 3rd is a Republican-leaning district and this looks like a Republican year. Herrera is most likely going to Congress.

I have to hand it to the Republicans, when they send out a bit of spin/conventional wisdom, most of them stick to it like glue. Herrera is thoroughly untested as a major candidate for Congress, having won a single election for the state House of Representatives after she was appointed in the ultra-conservative 18th Legislative district after the Richard Curtis sex scandal. We have yet to see how she will perform on a larger stage once things heat up.

Untested candidates can win, of course. It’s one reason politics is so fascinating. Herrera is obviously smart and dedicated, and it would be foolish to underestimate her, especially with the Slade Gorton crowd so thoroughly behind her.

But WA-03 is a swing district, not a Republican-leaning district, and anyone who follows politics here knows that. People with names like Baird, Cantwell and Obama have all won here. Craig Pridemore, the state senator from Vancouver who is one of the two major Democratic contenders, won his senate seat in 2004 from long-time incumbent Don Carlson, and 2004 was hardly a banner year for Democrats.

Sure, the national zeitgeist is a huge factor, but that’s true no matter the nominees. Vance sees a GOP tidal wave building, and it’s his right to see what he wishes I suppose. The Republicans have been pushing this “repeat of 1994” stuff since last year, and frankly it’s more than a little wishful thinking on their part. The sad thing is that their noise machine will do everything it can to make it come true, of course, but it’s a long ways to the election and the GOP is not without its own woes, including a lack of money at the national level.

The Tea People have jumped about ten sharks by this point, and Republicans are still the party of nothingness, nihilism and no. Inchoate rage is not a political program, it’s just a tactic, and a pretty low-brow one at that. They still have no real solutions, only tactics and their noise machine. A lot of normal people are on to their game, at long last. That’s why “The Daily Show” is so popular.

And here’s another “riddle me this” for you: if Herrera is such a lock, why does her candidacy require so much lifting by the Slade Gorton crowd?

Over at Publicola, Morning Fizz includes the fundraising totals in the third district race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash. You can also peruse them yourself at the FEC, which is far more user friendly than it used to be some years ago.

For convenience sake, I’m going to list the major candidates from each party, their cash on hand (and their debt) in thousands. Easier to get a clearer picture of what is truly going on that way. I’ll round up or down from $500.

Jaime Herrera (R) 56k (3k)
David Castillo (R) 73k (3k)

Denny Heck (D) 532k (253k)
Craig Pridemore (D) 51k (5k)

Obviously, even subtracting Heck’s debt, which I believe to be $250k in loans to himself (the FEC link only shows $100k of loans,) he still looks good on paper. If the other $150k is not a loan to his own campaign, he’s not qualified to be in Congress because nobody could have spent that much on a campaign yet. I suppose he could have given the money to his campaign, which would be impressive, if rather rash.

But here’s the thing. Nobody is showing much of anything yet in terms of PACs. Heck’s money is all from wealthy political insiders and consultants. If you start clicking around at the FEC link you can find well-known names like Paul and Beth Berendt and Booth Gardner. For those outside the state, Paul Berendt was a long-time state party chair, and Heck worked for Gardner when he was governor. The individual names are really beside the point, because what’s happened is that a lot of these folks are going to reach the legal limit on contributions, and as far as I know nobody has yet asked Heck if he intends to kick his loans back to himself at some point.

The only conclusion one can reach is that Heck is trying to run Pridemore off by flashing his wallet. Here’s a hint for the Heck campaign: not gonna happen.

Contrast that with Pridemore’s totals. Whereas Heck lists several pages of wealthy donors, Pridemore has about six. Not six pages, six wealthy donors.

With little PAC money yet reported, that means Pridemore is getting the grassroots support. Right now at his Act Blue page, Pridemore shows 644 supporters have donated $26,539, or an average of about $41. (You know what’s easy, btw? Clicking through to Act Blue! But you knew that.)

Once endorsements really start rolling, and the money starts flowing, Pridemore looks to be in fine shape. The Pridemore campaign has more than enough money to keep the lights on and staff paid, so with the candidate released from the Legislature at long last, look for Craig to show why he’s not only better on the issues, he’s going to be better at political campaigning than a guy who last ran (and lost) a race for public office in 1988.

As often happens, some of our state’s incestuous little clique of Democratic insiders have bet on the wrong guy. The faint at heart started trembling like scared children in December because some Tea People were on the tee-vee, and naturally they sought comfort in the arms of their favorite thing in the entire world, money.

As anyone who has ever worked on a campaign knows, money is vital but there’s more to it than that. You need a guy who can campaign, and I’m telling you, Craig can really campaign. It would be foolish to make an absolute prediction, as obviously Heck can give Pridemore a race, but I like Craig’s chances in the final analysis, mostly because people like Craig. He’s principled and authentic, and people respond to that.

The political landscape has already changed since December, and it will likely change again before November, so I figure one might as well support the guy who would do the best job, both in the campaign and in Congress. I’m sticking with Pridemore.

Sitting state Senator Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, has secured the endorsement of the Sierra Club in the race to replace retiring Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash.

The SW Washington Sierra Club political chair, Holly Forrest, passed this information along in an email late yesterday afternoon. The group plans a rally for Pridemore this morning, Apr. 16, in Vancouver at 8:30 am on the Columbia River waterfront. The address is 115 Columbia Way, just east of Who Song and Larry’s, if you are in Vancouver. The group says it has over 25,000 members in Washington state.

Pridemore has a strong record on environmental issues, so it’s not a surprise. But it’s a major milestone for the campaign, as Pridemore himself has been locked down in the interminable special Legislative session until two days ago. I’d expect Pridemore will garner other important endorsements in the coming weeks, as the campaign heats up. Seeing as he has a 98% lifetime record with labor, I’m hopeful on that front as well.

The other major candidates in this race are former TVW head and Democrat Denny Heck, who last ran for office in 1988 and lost a race for state schools chief, and Republicans Jaime Herrera and David Castillo. Herrera is a state House member from Clark County who seems to have the backing of the GOP establishment/Slade Gorton crowd, and Castillo is a financial planner and former Bush administration official who seems to be garnering plenty of Tea Person support.

Don’t forget, national sports fans, Washington state has a top two primary now.

The only “will of the people” that counts in this state is if you’re Tim Eyman or a Republican. If you voted for smaller class sizes some years back, tough cookies.

The budget cuts millions from K-12, higher education and other state services. It directs state agencies to save around $50 million through furloughs or other pay reductions for some state employees.

For K-12, the budget cuts mean $120 million less for the state’s public schools. Education advocates say those cuts, on top of the ones made last year, are going to hurt.

Lawmakers, for example, eliminated $79 million in funding for the class-size reduction initiative, I-728.

“That was one of the last pots of discretionary money that districts had,” said Dan Steele of the Washington State School Directors Association.

OTOH, if you’re a coal fired power plant “the people” are with you. The Republicans keep carping on the meme that state government is broken and doesn’t respond to the will of the people. Yeah, no shit. People voted by a large margin to tax themselves to get smaller class sizes, yet here we are again. But we have to call special sessions to deal with certain initiatives, lest the editorial board fainting couches collapse.

As usual the GOP-editorial board complex has it bass ackwards–the biggest problem is a viciously regressive tax system that relies far too heavily on revenue that crashes and burns during economic downturns. Then we cut education, rinse, repeat, seemingly at least once a decade. Way to compete in a global economy!

I’m sure all those candidates out there wandering around claiming they are about “job, jobs, job,” will acknowledge all this. Or not. Easier to start screaming about sex offenders I suppose.

I don’t even really bother following the session that much any more, it’s all so predictable. Fuck you, Washington students and teachers, you eat it again. Maybe the coal mine will reopen.

State Senator Don Benton, R-Vancouver, has been talking to Drudgico:

Benton warned that Rossi might find the 2010 campaign a less hospitable environment than he expects.

“Democrats have already attacked Dino. He doesn’t have any money in the bank, he doesn’t have any money raised. He doesn’t have the foundation. The talent pool is pretty much committed for this election cycle. It’s too late for him to become a viable candidate in this race,” Benton said, adding: “I think he would make an excellent governor and hope he decides to run for governor again.”

Okay then, Benton has spoken, Dino. Your move!

Maybe another Moore poll, followed by a Rasmussen poll, followed by a Chris Grygiel post at Strange Bedfellows? You guys seem to have that all worked out, you might as well try it once again. It got Rossi to the brink of not running and having no money.

I don’t know what’s normal and regular, but it’s a little disturbing this guy could get out on $20,000 bond, according to the AP. The judge ordered that he would have to be under curfew, and Wilson can’t have his precious guns. It’s something, anyhow.

The government that Wilson seems to hate so much is treating him with a remarkable amount of leeway, given that he apparently wished to assassinate a U.S. Senator. I’m going to put my full faith in the professionals who have made it their careers to protect the public, and figure they know what they’re doing.

Ordinarily, I would ignore these yahoos, but in the climate of violence that has emerged in this country you can bet that somewhere, someone on a message board or newspaper thread is trying to make a false equivalence between the “anarchists” that so plague many demonstrations and the insanity of the right. It’s an old rightie trick: take any stupid thing that someone not associated with liberals, progressives or the Democratic Party, and try to make us own it. You know it’s coming.

So for the record, violence is wrong, and your mother probably told you that. And the Beatles sang about carrying pictures of Chairman Mao. And so on. Putting a bandana over your face and hurling rocks at cops and newspaper photographers, or whatever actually happened, is just stupid, pointless mayhem. More seriously, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a highly sophisticated and deeply moral reason for his theories of non-violent change, which anyone can explore using the Tubes of the Internet. It’s not a game, but once you throw a rock or a punch, you’re out. I don’t know how he did it, and every time I go back and re-read some of his works I’m still in awe.

To be fair, there have been some voices from the right denouncing the death threats against politicians and such. I happened to catch talk show host Kirby Wilbur doing so on KIRO-TV the other day, so good on him. I hope he keeps speaking out.

Unfortunately, conservatives in this country have always owned violence, it’s their cultural tradition, not ours. That’s what a lot of people don’t seem to understand about the 1960’s: much of the violence that happened was either state-sponsored violence against its citizens, or was reactionary right-wing violence against social change. Somehow the right has twisted history so that many folks only seem to remember the relatively few loons who tried to build bombs in a brownstone and blew themselves up. If we’re being honest, we do need to remember that the Weather Underground did mount dozens of terrorist attacks, and that while they issued telephoned warnings in an attempt to avoid loss of life, it was still patently insane. My point is that was the end, not the beginning. Americans hated it and hated them.

In any case it’s ironic that the right is now falling victim to the same base tendencies that undid the tattered remnants of the New Left in the early 1970’s. I think it’s a form of political nihilism, as I’ve stated previously. It’s self-indulgent nearly beyond comprehension and offers nothing but destruction, which is one thing it has in common with rock-throwing “anarchists.”

One thing objective observers may note: the Democratic Party doesn’t have a massive communications infrastructure geared at whipping up “anarchists,” nor is the Democratic Party making “anarchists” a centerpiece of the election this year. We don’t have a cable tee-vee network and countless AM radio stations telling everyone how we understand that something made the “anarchists” mad. We aren’t feeding them ridiculous conspiracy theories and telling them that the government is going to kill them and take their most valued possessions.

So honest observers will not accept any false equivalences involving a few “anarchists.”

From The Spokesman-Review:

Federal authorities are investigating the discovery 10 days ago of an improvised explosive device found next to the Thomas S. Foley U.S. Courthouse in downtown Spokane but had not alerted the public until today based upon a direct inquiry by The Spokesman-Review.

The device was located in the late evening of Sunday, March 28, said Tom Rice, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Washington.

The Feds won’t say much more than that at this point, because the investigation is apparently ongoing. Not much point in speculating, but coming the day after the arrest of the would-be Murray assassin, I think we owe a “thank you” to the federal agents who devote their professional careers to defending the Constitution and our democracy.

MORE–In comments at the S-R, a reporter seems to confirm that the newspaper started asking about this “IED” because of an article in the current issue of Newsweek about the Hutaree militia.

Less well publicized has been a string of other incidents. In recent weeks an improvised explosive device was discovered outside the federal courthouse in Spokane, Wash.; a man wielding four knives was arrested at the Daley Center in Chicago; and members of a militant white-supremacist group called the White Wolves were arrested for allegedly assembling explosive devices in southern Connecticut. “We’re seeing a continued escalation in threats,” says Michael Prout, assistant director of the U.S. Marshals Service. The FBI is especially concerned about “lone offenders,” who are hard to catch because they do not join known groups but are nonetheless moved to commit violent acts by the incendiary messages on extremist Web sites. The bureau has quietly set up a program aimed at identifying such characters by keeping a watch on Internet chat rooms and purchases of weapons and explosive devices.

Sorry to step on Goldy’s post, but this kind of crap is getting old. A Selah man named Charles Alan Wilson has been charged with making death threats against Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., according to the P-I:

The criminal complain says Wilson called Murray’s office multiple times between March 22 and April 4 and left threatening messages. He said Murray “had a target on her back” and that he would help others in trying to kill Murray, a Washington Democrat.

Health-care reform was the reason for his anger.

Trying to get people access to freaking health care is not a reason to go around issuing threats of deadly violence. Responsible people know that. Responsible people will decry this and will speak out against violence and threats of violence in our political system. And it better not be any half-assed, “nudge nudge, wink wink, we want you to keep doing it” bullshit.

UPDATE 1:30 PM PDT–From Talking Points Memo:

In the conversation with the FBI agent, Wilson allegedly bragged about regularly carrying a .38 — which the FBI says it later confirmed, along with the fact that Wilson has a valid concealed weapons permit.

Wilson allegedly told the agent that Murray and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) “need to be strung up, and I mean put [in] the gallows.” He called the two senators “Pike Street whores” and referred to Murray as “sneaker shoes Murray.”

Yuck. Just yuck.

After this individual is granted all his Constitutional and legal rights, including a trial by a jury of his peers if he wants it, should he be convicted I hope he gets the maximum sentence, which appears to be 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. We’ll see who he thinks is the “whore” at that point.

Don’t miss this excellent diary at DKos by writer davidkc concerning the crackup of the Florida Republican Party. Gov. Charlie Crist has now called for a federal investigation concerning allegations of financial improprieties by the Florida GOP during the tenure of former chair Jim Greer, who resigned in February.

It’s the usual GOP stuff: lavish spending, hush money, dirty tricks, those kinds of allegations. Several very handy and informative links in that DKos diary to Florida newspaper articles about all this, nice with coffee.

Why should we care about possible corruption among high ranking members of the Florida GOP, besides the sheer spectacle of even more Republicans being brought low by arrogance and greed? Don’t forget that our own Republican Attorney General, Rob McKenna, has signed on to the lawsuit to block health care reform brought by Florida AG Bill McCollum. Now McCollum has to investigate his party’s own scandal while he’s running for governor, with the Feds presumably watching over his shoulder. He was in a precarious political position anyhow, and now he’s walking on a razor on a tight rope.

Looks to me like McCollum has more important things to do than file frivolous lawsuits, and that Florida filing suit against reform was itself an orchestrated political hiss. Just sayin’.