Cold days=no global warming. Ergo….

Today’s forecast from The Oregonian:

It’s already near 70 at 5 a.m. and the thermometer is headed for 104. Today’s forecast also calls for north northeast winds 5 to 9 mph. The low tonight is a balmy 65.

There’s no relief on Saturday, with the high expected to hit 104 again. Winds kick up a bit 10 to 13 mph. The low dips to 59. Sunday remains sunny with a high of 91. Temperatures cool next week, with highs in the mid 70s and hey, a chance of rain on Wednesday.

I got an iced mocha and global warming went away! But then I had a toasted sandwich and it came back.

This climate change stuff sure is confusing, which is why I try to ignore it and drive around a lot to think about it while listening to talk radio. Paris Hilton!

Hey Goldy and all, be careful later this month when you go to Denver. (Props to this Daily Kos diarist.)

CBS4 News has learned if mass arrests happen at the Democratic Convention, those taken into custody will be jailed in a warehouse owned by the City of Denver. Investigator Rick Sallinger discovered the location and managed to get inside for a look.

The newly created lockup is on the northeast side of Denver. Protesters have already given this place a name: “Gitmo on the Platte.”

Inside are dozens are metal cages. They are made out of chain link fence material and topped by rolls of barbed wire.

—snip—

Each of the fenced areas is about 5 yards by 5 yards and there is a lock on the door. A sign on the wall reads “Warning! Electric stun devices used in this facility.”

I love those “free speech zones” like they had under a bridge in Boston in 2004, those were awesome.

But four days after he evaded security officials in his hometown, slipped into Beijing at dawn and submitted his application, Gao, a farmer from Heilongjiang Province, has yet receive permission to display his hand-scrawled poster, which accuses local Communist Party officials and the police of conspiring to steal public money.

If the silence at the protest zones is any indication, Gao’s prospects are not very good.

Five days since the Olympics began, not a single demonstration had taken place at the three city parks approved for protests. In fact, at least four people have been detained for seeking to demonstrate, according to human rights groups and relatives of those who have been seized.

Oops, that appears to be an article about the Olympics in China, my bad. But since it’s basically the same thing, you get the idea.

I’m sure the good delegates of the Washington State Democrats will not stand for this.

The story of a Vancouver couple, Frank and Karen Wastradowski, who had racist graffiti keyed into their car after placing a Barack Obama yard sign in their yard, has drawn a full article from The Columbian.

The graffiti has generated an outcry among several community leaders, who set up a fund this week to defray Wastradowski’s cleanup expenses. Several officials, including Tim Probst, a candidate for representative for the 17th District, have pledged monetary support.

“If someone scratches ‘white power’ on a car, it’s important that we send a message as a whole that our community doesn’t accept racism,” Probst said.

Chris Bassett, the former vice chairman of the Clark County Democratic Party, started the fund after reading media reports on the incident. Outraged, he decided to do something. So he sent e-mails to other political activists, including Probst, seeking contributions.

Bassett said the fund isn’t intended to be a partisan statement (although all those involved are Democrats), but a stance against those who threaten freedom of speech and perpetuate racism.

“Obviously, there is an element in Clark County that feels it’s OK to do these things,” Bassett said. “(The Wastradowskis) were just expressing themselves,” and the vandals were trying to intimidate them into silence. “And that’s very troubling.”

It’s easy to be cynical in this day and age, and I’m probably as cynical as one can get, but the response that has been formulated to this cowardly little bit of vandalism is motivated by a sincere desire to show that normal people don’t find this sort of stuff acceptable. Plus there’s no good reason this couple should bear the financial cost of removing hate graffiti from their sedan for supporting the nominee of a major party, or any candidate for that matter.

I don’t want to invade the Wastradowski’s privacy any more than it has been already, but I’ve heard from several people, including a couple of elected officials, that they are well-respected members of the community. (And let’s remember, before anyone starts claiming that the response to this is motivated only by partisanship, that Frank Wastradowski used to be the campaign treasurer for former state Sen. Don Carlson, R-Vancouver.)

Normal people consider it their Constitutional right to pick and choose whom to support, and they really shouldn’t have to worry about costly repairs to their property for simply putting a placard in their yard.

An account called the “Victims of Racial Vandalism Fund” has been set up at IQ Credit Union in Clark County. You can find their locations here. At this writing we are waiting for the Pay Pal account to go live, and I will update as soon as I receive word it’s working.

UPDATE– Click on the Pay Pal button below if you wish to donate to the “Victims of Racial Vandalism Fund.” Be sure to hit “update total” at Pay Pal if you are paying by credit card (rather than logging in) so that you don’t have to keep re-doing it, like I did. The Pay Pal account’s email address is called “ccagainstvandalism” as I guess it had to be a shorter name.

And I know a lot of folks might be kind of tapped out because it’s an election year (not to mention the tough economy) so rest assured small donations very much matter in this case. It will show how many folks want to register their disgust with this kind of petty and hateful action. Wouldn’t it be great if 50 or 100 people threw in five or ten bucks?

Our plan at this point is any funds that might be raised in excess of that needed to help get the Wastradowski’s on the road without a racism-mobile will be kept in the fund until after the election and then donated to a charity agreed to by the Wastradowski’s. This is an ad-hoc group, so it’s not like we’re having board meetings or anything.

Here’s the Pay Pal button:

Over the weekend we’ve been following a story here in Clark County about a local couple who appear to be the target of racist vandalism simply because they dared to put a Barack Obama yard sign in front of their home. The Columbian ran a small item on Friday night:

Someone scratched the words “White Power” on a car belonging to a Vancouver family who recently posted an “Elect Obama” sign in their front yard.

On Sunday, Frank Wastradowski, who lives northeast of Southwest Washington Medical Center, noticed the vandalism on the side of his wife’s 1993 Plymouth. The letters, likely scratched with a key, were about 8 inches tall.

“It’s a hate crime and it’s time we get past racism,” he said.

Wastradowski said he won’t take the sign down, adding, “That’s my freedom of speech.”

Now KPTV-12 in Portland has a story up about the incident, and we learn that the words “I’m gay” were also scratched into the car. Since the KPTV story features Karen Wastradowski, Frank’s wife, one can only conclude that the vandals were quite intent on displaying their vast stupidity for the world to see.

There are a couple of things worth noting here. Yes, Clark County has its share of unrepentant bigots. Earlier this year the son of a Battle Ground city council member was charged with cyberstalking over virulently racist emails sent to a black council member and other community members. So while vandalism is not exactly an unusual thing during the summer months, it’s also not acceptable to just shrug off racist defacement of private property as “just kids being kids.” They learned it somewhere.

A small ad-hoc group of us here is working on setting up a donation fund for the Wastradowski’s so they don’t have to drive around in a car that says “White Power” on it. My fellow blogger Aneurin at Politics is a Blood Sport has been following the story here and here. Aneurin has talked to Frank Wastradowski, and unsurprisingly the couple did not have full coverage on the car (nothing against 1993 sedans, of course.) We’re working on some details about how to set the fund up and to do it in a way that will aid the Wastradowskis rather than just make a partisan statement.

In a larger sense, if someone can’t place a yard sign for a major party candidate in front of their home without this sort of thing happening, we don’t really have much of a democracy. At this point we are hoping some local Republicans will also come forward and denounce this attack and perhaps throw in a small donation as well.

As things progress I’ll keep HA readers up to date. It might be easy to ignore a relatively small and stupid act of vandalism, but the Wastradowski’s need to know that the community won’t tolerate this sort of thing and will take positive actions to counteract it.

And one other thing, which is in the “gee, that’s kind of curious” file, is that Frank Wastradowski used to be the campaign treasurer for former state Senator Don Carlson, R-Vancouver. There’s no way to know if the vandals knew that, unless someone is caught, but it’s still pretty ironic.

Concerned that I didn’t give the buttoned-up Christian business man’s group that hosted Dino Rossi in Tacoma today a fair shake after they denied the News-Tribune’s Niki Sullivan access to a Rossi appearance and thus the ability to do part of her job, I decided to check out their national website. Nothing too unusual. Biblical inerrancy combined with a multi-level marketing approach to religion, plus plans to proselytize the known universe (or at least the top 100 cities in the country, anyhow.)

You know, the usual type of far right Republican-Christian symbiosis they’ve perfected. But nothing political going on, no-sireee. They’re charging $210 per table to meet the GOP candidate for governor just because he’s a swell guy.

But I can see now I was being unfair. Their slogan is “A movement of men,” and I think these screen shots pretty much show just how unfair I was being.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being well-dressed.

Hamas is Stalin. No wait, that was Saddam. Iran is Stalin. No, they’re Hitler, except when they’re Idi Amin. Or maybe Henny Youngman, it kind of depends what day. Take my prime minister, please.

France used to be Neville Chamberlain, but now that they have a conservative in charge France is the Pope, and it turns out the Pope is NOT Hitler at all but is actually a good guy, unlike that one chick from Big Brother, who is Cuba. (The country, not the Gooding, Jr., who is like totally cool.)

Canada, watch your back, when I say “bacon” I don’t mean from the back, I mean from the belly, which is where Fat Bastard keeps his babies, just like Hugo Chavez. China used to be Hugo Chavez until Wal-Mart figured out they make excellent cheap stuff if it doesn’t kill you first. They’re kind of like the Ottoman Empire also because they sell cheap furniture.

Japan. Um, Japan.

And let’s talk, Iceland. So icy and landy, they totally cheese me off. We should invade them because if Björk isn’t an existential threat, I don’t know what is. But back to Hamas, if I catch any more libruls talking about even fraking talking to them I am going to totally go nukular on their sorry librul butts.

I mean, look at this dude:

Two years ago, in an interview with James Rubin for Sky News, Sen. John McCain expressed a willingness to negotiate with the terrorist group Hamas — the very group that McCain has been relentlessly using to smear Sen. Barack Obama over the last several weeks.

Rubin has written an op-ed in Friday’s Washington Post about his exchange with McCain, and The Huffington Post has obtained exclusive video. Here’s the key excerpt:

RUBIN: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCAIN: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

Typical Demon-rat. Our super secret blogger plan, code-named Operation Confuse-a-Cat, has worked to perfection. By voting for that guy in the primaries, we are going to clean his clock in November!

The Columbian is reporting that officials now don’t know what caused the deaths of six sea lions near Bonneville dam earlier this week.

The mystery is thickening in the deaths of six sea lions over the weekend near Bonneville Dam, with federal authorities reporting this morning that a preliminary examination of the bodies “found no evidence of recent gunshot wounds.”

Although authorities initially suspected the animals died due to gunshot wounds, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported today that the cause of death remains unknown.

“We are assuming nothing at this point,” said Brian Gorman, a NMFS spokesman in Seattle. “We don’t have a working hypothesis, but we’ll come up with one and we’ll pursue it and try to find a cause of these deaths. It’s a mystery right now.”

Okay then. We’ll just call it a mystery and leave it at that. Odd how this story was presented as some kind of mass carnage, and now it’s like “oops.”

Sick cowards:

Officials are investigating the deaths of six sea lions who appear to have been shot Sunday after climbing onto traps in the Columbia River.

Wildlife officials said that the bodies of the sea lions were discovered at noon Sunday on two floating traps just below Bonneville Dam.

“In each of the two traps were three dead sea lions,” Brian Gorman, regional spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said. “There was one Stellar sea lion and two California sea lions in each trap.”

The sea lions appear to have been shot during the night by someone on the Washington side of the river, Gorman said.

I’m far from a PETA type, but I did think it was sensible that the sea lions being trapped were going to Sea World rather than just being killed.

Now some sick individual has probably put the entire thing on hold. I can empathize that law enforcement officers always have a lot on their plate, especially dealing with crimes against humans rather than animals, but it would be great if someone is brought to justice in this case. That’s just wrong.

(Cross-posted at my personal blog.)

Michael Ennis at the right-wing millionaire funded Washington Policy Center takes exception to my post about his group’s attempts in Clark County to scuttle light rail.

No one can escape the fact that light rail across a new Columbia River Bridge would add over $1 billion dollars to the project costs. This means adding light rail would increase costs by 40%, but only serve between 2.4% to 9.8% of all bridge crossings by 2030. That presents a significant gap between public costs and public benefits.

There is a better way: maintaining the current transit configuration (rubber-tire buses) across a new bridge would carry just as many transit riders as light rail or BRT, yet cost a billion dollars less.

But of course, DeVore doesn’t address these facts and only engages in an Ad Hominem attack. The people of Clark County deserve to know both sides of an issue when public dollars are used.

Facts are funny things, actually. I mean, Ennis was at this forum on Apr. 10, agitating in our community, when a director of the Columbia River Crossing project put forth a different figure than one billion dollars:

Crossing officials likely will seek up to $750 million in Federal Transit Administration’s grants to pay for construction costs of bringing light rail over the Columbia River and into downtown Vancouver.

Doug Ficco, co-director of the Columbia River Crossing project, said the $750 million figure comes from federal officials and roughly matches how much crossing officials estimate light rail would cost.

But what’s a quarter billion dollar difference when it helps you make your right-wing millionaire funded point? All that Coors (or whatever) money has to be used for something I suppose. Follow me past the jump and we’ll talk about the issues.

[Read more…]

The Seattle-based Washington Policy Center planted an anti-light rail article in The Columbian this morning under the headline “Local Views.”

So um, welcome to Clark County, Seattle. It was awesome when the Discovery Institute (of Seattle ) went around spreading its right wing baloney in my home state of Kansas, although the good and just people of that state have come to their senses and rejected their nonsense. Still, I kind of feel like I’m being stalked by right wing Seattle think tanks, which is kind of weird given how progressive Seattle is supposed to be.

You figure the Washington Policy Center is coming into Clark County not just to mess with us, but to mess with you? If I were them I would screw with the relatively modest Columbia River Crossing transit portion in hopes of derailing (pun intended) further light rail hopes in the Puget Sound region. Because what you may not hear up there is that the probable CRC proposal for light rail involves extending the line only about three miles, from the Portland Expo Center to Clark College.

I’m sure studies by right-wing think tanks conceived by talk radio hosts and funded by Republican millionaires are quite objective.

What’s interesting is that there will likely be a vote at some point regarding whether the Clark County transit agency, C-TRAN, will be funded to provide operating expenses for the light rail line. So while it’s entirely predictable that the conservative noise machine has sprung into action, what I’m wondering is whether our side has the capability to respond?

Because we’re all in this together now.