I’m still annoyed at Obama’s “diversity” justification re: giving Rick Warren such a prominent role in the inauguration. 

Warren leads the fourth largest church in America. It’s not like Warren and his supporters don’t already have a seat at the table in America. 

If Obama was in earnest about celebrating different view points, and he truly wanted to send a message about “the magic of this country” being “diverse and noisy and opinionated,” I bet Jeremiah Wright is available.

It’d be more poignant and symbolic to give the microphone to someone who actually represents a minority view like Wright than to someone like Warren whose church is hugely popular.

In less sarcastic terms: Obama was forced to dump Wright. Why is a hater like Warren any better?

Here’s this morning’s Washington Post obituary (co-written by Bob Woodward) on W. Mark Felt, aka, “Deep Throat,” the Post’s famous anonymous source on the Watergate story, who didn’t so much mind what Nixon did, as much as he minded how he did it.

And here’s the conclusion from my review of Bob Woodward’s The Secret Man, Woodward’s account of the Deep Throat saga published in 2005, which explains what I mean about Felt:

The going criticism of Woodward’s book, though, is that he doesn’t really shed any conclusive light onto Felt’s motivations—he simply ponders the whys and hows. And despite a later section of the book where, indeed, Woodward does burden the reader with his own existential (and boring) discussions with his wife about the ethics of it all, I actually got a perfect sense of what Felt was up to. Woodward sums it up in his conclusion: “The crimes and abuses were background music. Nixon was trying to subvert not only the law but also the Bureau. So Watergate became Felt’s instrument to reassert the Bureau’s… supremacy.” It wasn’t what Nixon did that bugged Felt. It was how Nixon did it.

Woodward is right on two counts. Not only did the White House derail the FBI’s investigation into Watergate and, more importantly, cut off the investigation into related White House espionage, but it created—through the ratfucking squad of Nixon’s Plumbers—a B-movie, surrogate version of the FBI. Nixon’s paranoia about the Democrats compelled him to create his own “intelligence” agency.

Felt, who Woodward shows to be a consummate counterintelligence agent dating back to his work outing Nazi spies in WWII, was obviously offended at both Nixon’s clampdown on the FBI (shredding files of the FBI’s investigation into Howard Hunt, for example) and at the slimy decision to pay thugs like G. Gordon Liddy to do secret agent work against the Democrats that it couldn’t ask the FBI to do.

I think, ultimately, super-spy Felt was offended at what has long been the bottom line analysis of Watergate: It was just a “third-rate burglary.”

This morning, President-Elect Barack Obama defended his decision to have Rick Warren deliver the invocation at the inauguration (video here): 

 It is important for America to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues.

And I would note that a couple of years ago I was invited to Rick Warren’s church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion.

Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak, and that dialogue, I think, is a part of what my campaign’s been all about, that we’re not going to agree on every single issue. What we have to do is create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans. So Rick Warren has been invited to speak, Dr. Joseph Lowery—who has deeply contrasting views to Rick Warren about a whole host of issues—is also speaking.

During  the course of the entire inaugural festivities there are gonna be a wide range of view points that are presented and that’s how  it should be because that’s what America is about. Part of the magic of this country is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated and so that’s the spirit in which we have put together what I think will be a terrific inauguration.

Here’s what bugs me about O’s “logic”: He cites an admirable political goal—diversity—as the reason to prioritize someone who totally rejects that goal.

Including Warren isn’t tantamount to holding a world peace conference that includes adversaries like America and Iran (that’d be cool), it’s the equivalent of inviting the aliens from Independence Day , who are committed to destroying earth, to the same conference. They don’t believe in the overarching goal at hand, just like Warren doesn’t believe in the overarching goal of diversity.

Obama’s allowed to tap Warren to kowtow politically, but saying he’s doing it to support diversity doesn’t make much sense.  

Meanwhile, Obama’s comparison between Warren inviting Obama to speak at Warren’s private Saddleback Church in California to Obama inviting Warren to speak at the inauguration of the next American President is insane.

Although tech blogs from both the civil liberties left and the free market right  have supposedly debunked Monday’s hot Wall Street Journal article about Google reversing its long standing pro-Net Neutrality position, other irksome (and locally relevant) revelations in the article remain standing: Two major Seattle tech-culture companies, Microsoft and Amazon, also longtime advocates of Net Neutrality, are getting squishy on the issue. 

Net Neutrality is the James Madison-y idea that all content is created equal. Practically speaking, it means this: Internet companies like AT&T cannot give preferential treatment to content companies, or any website for that matter. Walmart.com cannot get better treatment than Hel-Mart.com, for example.

The concept has been contested by transmission companies like AT&T who want the option of offering better delivery for companies willing to pay more. They argue that big content companies should get better service (and pay more) because they use more bandwidth. But that’d be like Seattle Public Utilities giving a wealthy family living in North Seattle faster and hotter water than someone living in South Seattle just because the fancy family used more water and paid more. 

While the tech blogs went after the Journal article, defending Google’s honor by pointing out that Google was only promoting a long standing concept called edge-caching— which apparently doesn’t jeopardize net neutrality  — the accusations that Seattle’s own Microsoft and Amazon are reversing themselves on Net Neutrality remains in question.   

In the two years since Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other Internet companies lined up in favor of network neutrality, the landscape has changed. The Internet companies have formed partnerships with phone and cable companies, making them more dependent on one another.

Microsoft, which appealed to Congress to save network neutrality just two years ago, has changed its position completely. “Network neutrality is a policy avenue the company is no longer pursuing,” Microsoft said in a statement. The Redmond, Wash., software giant now favors legislation to allow network operators to offer different tiers of service to content companies.

Microsoft has a deal to provide software for AT&T’s Internet television service. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment whether this arrangement affected the company’s position on network neutrality.

Amazon’s popular digital-reading device, called the Kindle, offers a dedicated, faster download service, an arrangement Amazon has with Sprint. That has prompted questions in the blogosphere about whether the service violates network neutrality.

“Amazon continues to support adoption of net neutrality rules to protect the longstanding, fundamental openness of the Internet,” Amazon said in a statement. It declined to elaborate on its Kindle arrangement.

Amazon had withdrawn from the coalition of companies supporting net neutrality, but it recently was listed once again on the group’s Web site. It declined to comment on whether carriers should be allowed to prioritize traffic.

Microsoft kinda sorta denied that they’re backing away from Net Neutrality in this follow-up article, but they don’t address the specifics of the WSJ’s accusations. 

Sidenote: The WSJ article also indicates that Obama—who was a loud advocate of Net Neutrality during the campaign—may also be reversing course.

I spotted this at the Washington State Democrats annual Holiday Party last night: 

The BIAW (Building Industry Association of Washington) was one of GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi’s biggest supporters (over $6 million) this election season.

So, wearing an anti-BIAW pin at the Democrats’ Holiday shindig oughta be no big deal, right? Ha. 

This was a shoe thrown over the lectern aimed directly at Democratic State House Speaker, Frank Chopp (D-43, Wallingford).

Democratic Rep. Brendan Williams (D-22, Olympia) was wearing the defiant pin and said he’s not running again because Chopp has neutered the Democratic agenda in Olympia by cozying up with the BIAW.

Rep. Williams has been the main victim of  Chopp’s alliance with the BIAW: Two years running, Williams’s homeowner bill of rights has been killed at the last minute by Chopp. The BIAW was upset that homeowners would have the basic right to sue for faulty construction.

Chopp also killed my favorite progressive bill last session: A Senate bill that added climate change impacts into growth management standards so that development projects had to be environmentally responsible. The BIAW didn’t like that one either.

Rep. Williams wasn’t the only Democrat dissing Chopp. I was talking to a Democratic state Senator about the 2012 governor’s race. We were handicapping state Senator Lisa Brown’s (D-3, Spokane) chances vs. U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee’s chances, in what’s likely to be a bruising primary between the two anticipated candidates. And could either one beat GOP media darling, AG Rob McKenna?

“McKenna will be the Republican nominee, right?” I asked.

The Democratic Senator quipped: “Who knows? The GOP could run Chopp.”

I’m glad this is finally being broached. 

Fox Chicago News reports that Emanuel, the Chicago congressman who was appointed shortly after the election to be Obama’s White House chief of staff, had “multiple conversations” about the issue with the governor himself and with Blagojevich’s chief of staff, John Harris — who this week was charged along with his boss.

I’m disappointed, though, that it has to be FOX. While the NYT was busy playing up Blago’s Obama quote —“They’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation, fuck ’em”—as evidence that O’s team was clean (heck, they even ran an article with a headline that cut across 8 lanes of traffic to imply that Obama was partially responsible for bringing Blago down), my take on Blago’s Obama rant was this: If Blagojevich was pissed at Obama, it’s possible Obama’s people knew Blagojevich was wheeling and dealing for quid pro quos. So, the question I had was: Why didn’t they blow the whistle? 

I’m not saying this news about Emanuel proves anything (as TPM pointed out, it does make sense that Obama’s people were talking to Blagojevich), but it does nudge this story in a direction that seemed obvious, but for some reason, was being downplayed by the likes of the NYT.

If the NYT learned anything from the Bush years, I’d hope it’s that they need to be more skeptical of what the President (or President-elect in this case) says.

Come on People. If this was Bush, you’d be asking the same questions.

Earlier this week, over at Slog, Erica dismantled Jim Vesely’s proposal that bikers pay a $25 bike license fee for bike lanes and trails. Vesely’s idea might make some sense if accommodating biking didn’t also benefit car owners, and more important, if bikers didn’t have to simultaneously pay taxes and levies to fund roads that are largely dedicated to cars.

As Erica correctly points out, car owners do benefit from bikes and bikers are helping subsidize car owners:

Every year, the US government spends more than $100 billion to subsidize driving above and beyond driver expenditures on gas taxes, vehicle purchases, and license plates. 

Add on other shared costs related to cars—pollution, land use costs—and it’s hard to ignore that everyone, including those who don’t own cars, are subsidizing cars.

In turn, bikers shouldn’t be the only taxpayers to fund bike lanes. 

I’m revisiting Vesely’s ignorant editorial a few days late because it’s hard to ignore another example that’s come up this week where the public—bikers included—are going to be paying for car owners: The Feds are about to commit $15 billion to bail out GM, Chrysler, and Ford. 

I’m not saying bikers should be exempt from saving the auto industry, but as the kids say, I’m just sayin.

Two things struck me about Obama’s big infrastructure investment speech.

1. His “use it or lose it” line—”if a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money”—was nothing less than a threat that states better vote Democratic.  

Indeed, as lefties are starting to bash O, it’s worth noting that his program is a sly organizing move for Democrats. When voters hear this “use it or lose it” riff, they’re going to be reluctant to elect obstructionist Republicans. 

Face it, even though Republican icon Dwight Eisenhower got the shout out in Obama’s remarks (the federal highway system), the Democrats and not the GOP are the party that supports investing public money and building things these days: Mass transit, schools, green collar projects; this is D Party platform stuff.

The GOP, obstructionists on public works (locally, they tried to repeal the gas tax), has hitched its fate to anti-tax rhetoric that scoffs at the notion of public investment. For years now, Republicans have framed investment as dirty liberal code for “tax and spend.” Obama’s warning took the GOP at its word, and so, was a serious F.U. and an endorsement of Democrats.  

2. I like that Obama ended his speech (broadcast nationally on the radio) by saying, “Thanks for listening” instead of being all “God bless America.” It was another F.U.

A dear friend of mine lost his job yesterday. 

He was a research analyst for an investment bank on Wall Street. His job was to research an industry, become an expert on it, and write reports on the industry for his firm’s investors. His research and analysis helped his firm’s investors make decisions about where to invest their money.

My friend covered the newspaper industry.

Marco Lowe, Dave Ross’s campaign manager in 2004—when the radio host ran against Sheriff Dave Reichert for the then-open seat in the 8th Congressional District, has an essay  up at the Stranger with a game plan for winning the district. 

His main point, start working on it now. Other suggestions: Talk about nitty-gritty local issues rather than the sweeping ideological headline issues and go after Reichert’s shoddy record at the Sheriff’s office (Dan Ring case and, yes, the Green River Killer case). 

Lowe’s piece doesn’t look back at the Burner campaign, but rather urges Democrats to look forward. It’s worth reading.

Speaker of the House Rep. Frank Chopp (D-43, Capitol Hill, U-Disrtict, Wallingford) is getting away with murder. Other members of the House aren’t willing to go on record against Chopp’s loopy great wall on the waterfront plan because, well, Chopp’s the Speaker of the House. Erica interviewed a bunch of legislators last week for her column in the Stranger and Chopp’s House colleague’s were predictably vague.    

This is frustrating because of course, we know that off-the-record, lots of legislators think Chopp’s plan is a cockamamie idea. But without any of these elected officials coming out against Chopp’s $2.2 billion elevated freeway plan—knock knock are you there Rep. Jamie Pedersen (D-43, where 73% of voters came out against an elevated in March 2007)— we’re stuck with the political illusion that Chopp’s plan has political support. 

Well, let’s flip this around on Chopp and put that assumption to the test.

Let’s start asking a different question.

Sure no one is coming out against the Speaker’s plan. But are there any House members (or any elected officials at all, for that matter) who publicly support Chopp’s plan?

The title of this post may seem like a no-brainer. But consider this: No one has noted, objectively speaking, how peculiar the Mumbai hit list actually was:  Two Five-Star Hotels, a movie theater, a popular restaurant, … a religious center run by Hasidic Jews?

It really sucks that reporters aren’t noting the attack on the Nariman House without a pause or a question.  

I know I know, Jews, just like Americans, are the bogeymen for the terrorists. And Nariman catered to Israelis, so like, what did they expect?

Oy. The way we’ve come to “understand”  the terrorists’ frame—as if it has some traceable political logic —is disappointing. It should not be a ho-hum statement when a religious outreach center for Jews is on a terrorist hit list.

Where are the editorials and public statements specifically pointing out and condemning the racist aspect of these attacks?

The Seattle Times has a new(ish) blog. It replaced Postman on Politics. It’s called  NW Politics or Politics NW.  

There hasn’t been a post up there since November 10. 

The first rule of blogging: Blog.

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Kanye West, Sept. 2005