The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Come join me for a hoppy Manny’s and some hopped up conversation.
I’m told that Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis will be stopping by tonight. We’ll see if we can get a few drinks in him and then ask him what he really thinks about the state declaring the tunnel dead (and totally pretending that a surface alternative doesn’t even exist.)
Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.
I’VE BEEN BUSY LATELY BUT I WOULD NEVER FORGET TO REMIND YOU WINGNUTS TO DRIVE YOUR GAS-GUZZLING, POLLUTING 3 TON SUV’S (FOR WHICH YOU GET A TAX WRITEOFF) TO YOUR FAVORITE RIGHT WING GATHERING SPOT FOR YOUR REGULAR SESSIONS OF WINGNUT CANNIBALISM. YOU ALL PUFF YOUR CHESTS, BRAG ABOUT HOW RIGHT WING YOU ARE AND POINT THE FINGER. “YOU’RE TOO LIBERAL. THAT’S WHY WE GOT OUR BUTTS KICKED LAST NOV 7! WE NEED TO BE MORE RIGHT WING!”
PLEASE, PLEASE WINGNUTS BY ALL MEANS GO FURTHER TO THE RIGHT!!! TELL YOUR DEAR LEADER TO INVADE MORE COUNTRIES. TELL YOUR DEAR LEADER TO PUT JOHN BOLTON IN CHARGE OF NEGOTIATIONS WITH NORTH KOREA AND IRAN. GO FURTHER AND FURTHER TO RIGHT PLEASE. THAT WAY WHOEVER YOU PUT UP FOR 2008 LIKE BROWNBACK OR GINGRICH WILL BE A SHOO-IN.
PLEASE!!!!
Hmm, the Governor, WSDOT and the Leg have all said the tunnel is dead, dead, dead.
I guess it’s rebuild or teardown now. I predict neither tunnel nor rebuild will get approved by voters, and the viaduct money will go to 520 while Seattle dithers for another couple of years.
If you’re a teardown/boulevard/transit fan, this is good news for you.
It looks like Johnny Edwards tucked his tail between his legs and dumped the Catholic hating bitches he hired to blog for him.
Too little too late Johnny boy.
You\’re going the way of your former running mate with your tail under your yellow streak, you feet firmly planted in your mouth and your supremely gratifying humiliation. You learned it well.
Oh well, as another \”man of the people\” you can run home to your 28,000 square foot, 6 million dollar mansion on 100 acres and live to whine another day.
Which surface alternative are you referring about? The elevated structure, or just using regular surface streets?
Roger Rabbit’s fragile health precludes attendance tonight, so all you wingfuck snipers hiding in the alley behind the dumpster can pack up and go home.
@1 Oh yes, please do! My oil stock is UP another $2.44 today! Thanks for your business, suckers!
“Trade Deficit Sets Fifth Consecutive Record
“By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
“AP
“WASHINGTON (Feb. 13) – The U.S. trade deficit set a fifth consecutive annual record in 2006, reflecting a huge jump in America’s foreign oil bill and an all-time high for the trade gap with China. The year ended with the December deficit increasing more than had been expected.
“The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that the gap between what America sells abroad and what it imports rose to a record $763.6 billion last year …. ”
Quoed under Fair Use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://money.aol.com/news/arti.....0109990024
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Way to go, Bushits! First you sent all our high paying manufacturing jobs overseas, now you’re selling our seed corn! America will soon be a wholly owned subsidiary of Beijing, Inc.
And you assholes call yourselves “patriots”? Ha!
Meanwhile, Washington’s biggest moocher was in Olympia today panhandling for $300 million. Clay Bennett says he wants taxpayers to pay their “fair share” for HIS shiny new $500 million arena. Here’s Roger Rabbit’s fair share:
ZERO!!!
I mean, why the fuck should I pay for a Sonics arena? I’ve never gone to a Sonics game, and never will. I don’t give a rap about basketball. But I couldn’t afford the tickets even if I did. Why should I, a retired senior citizen living on a fixed income, subsidize an Oklahoma billionaire’s hobby/business/investment? Fuck him!
Keep your eye on those Renton civic leaders, folks — they want YOU (meaning the 99% of Washington residents who DON’T live in Renton) to pay for THEIR civic improvement.
Here’s how it works: 80% of Seattle voters vote AGAINST paying taxes for a Sonics arena, so the Sonics move to Renton, and Seattle taxpayers pay for Renton’s shiny new civic improvement. Fuck that!
If we have to pay for it, we should get to vote on it! No taxation without reprsentation! If these taxes will be collected statewide, then the entire state should get to vote “yes” or “no” on these taxes.
Count me as a “no” vote … wait, no, count me as a “FUCK NO!!!” vote.
Bush Cuts Bad Deal With N. Korea
Bush came out of today’s negotiations with North Korea today looking like a county fair sucker. North Korea gets 1 million tons of oil, and all the U.S. gets is unenforceable promises. Within hours, the North Koreans began backpedaling:
“BEIJING (Feb. 13) — A hard-won disarmament pact that the U.S. and four other nations struck with North Korea on Tuesday requires the communist nation to halt its nuclear programs in exchange for oil while leaving the ultimate abandonment of those weapons projects to a potentially trouble-filled future.
“In a sign of potential problems to come, North Korea’s state news agency said the country was receiving 1 million tons of oil for a ‘temporary suspension’ of its nuclear facilities – and failed to mention the full disarmament for which the agreement calls.
“It wasn’t clear if the report represented an attempt by the government to backtrack on the deal, or was simply a statement of bluster ….
“If Pyongyang follows through with its promises, they would be the first moves the communist state has made to scale back its atomic development since it kicked out international inspectors and restarted its sole operating nuclear reactor in 2003.
“Robert J. Einhorn, a former State Department official who visited North Korea with then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, said … the agreement … would come under heavy questioning from both the right and the left. …
The accord… sets a firm 60-day timetable for North Korea to seal its main nuclear reactor and begin accounting for other nuclear programs … the aid package was worth about $250 million at current prices. …
Disarmament …is likely to remain the thorniest problem. ‘What if North Korea doesn’t show them to inspectors, if they say we’ve stopped this and shut down that, what if they say you have to trust us?’ said Liu Gongliang, a physicist at China’s Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics who has followed North Korea’s nuclear program for the Chinese government. …
“North Korea has sidestepped previous agreements. It allegedly operated its uranium-based weapons program even as it froze a plutonium-based one, sparking the latest nuclear crisis in late 2002. The country is believed to have countless mountainside tunnels in which to hide projects. The uranium program was not explicitly addressed in the agreement.”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete story and/or copyright info see http://news.aol.com/topnews/ar.....2409990001
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Bush just spent $250 million of your money for what? Empty promises? You could buy a suspension bridge, half a basketball arena, or a dozen Sonics season tickets for that kind of money.
Cathy McMorris is a bad mother! She should resign from Congress to stay home with her baby.
Iraq’s Al Sadr Flees to Iran | STORY
http://abcnews.go.com/
HEARING ON ‘WARMING OF PLANET’ CANCELED BECAUSE OF SNOWSTORM
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash8.htm
SAVE IT FOR A SUNNY DAY: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area cancelling screening of Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ because of a snowstorm…
http://www.drudgereport.com/
I personally will be staying home tonight to read my new copy of BO (Borak Obama) Magazine
dumped the Catholic hating bitches he hired
SHADES OF AUNTIE LOONY. MAYBE IT IS AUNTIE LOONY.
Rog @ 9:
The fundamental thing to understand about North Korea is that it is like a philandering, drunken stepson that nobody wants around the house. Successive administrations in the US, Japan, S. Korea, and now China have paid them to go away.
South Korea has a stated policy that they want to reunify with the North. The South’s reunification office studied reunification between East and West Germany as a model for a hypothetical reunification between North and South Korea.
Their inputs were as follows:
1) West Germany was roughly 3 times the population of the East.
2) South Korea has approximately twice the population of the North.
3) West Germany was one of the world’s wealthiest countries with a GDP per capita of $27,252 (in 2004 dollars, this would be about $31,052 using back-of-the-napkin calculations)
4) South Korea is a new member of the OECD with a 2004 GDP per capita of $20,452. Approximately 2/3 of the W. German level.
5) East Germany was regarded as being the most sucessful of the Eastern Bloc countries, and their productivity per capita was estimated (incorrectly I should add) at approximately 75% of the West German level. It turned out to be more like 25%.
6) North Korea is an absolute basket case. Wildly optomistic estimates put productivity at 10% of South Korea. I will note that countries with per capita incomes of ~$2000 are usually developing a middle class and have people buying TVs, motorcycles, and air conditioners. They are not starving to death and eating tree bark.
7) German reunification was cripplingly expensive. The Germans pulled it off, but just barely, and not without a lot of pain.
8) With these premises, the great and good of South Korea have concluded that reunification between the North and South would break the bank. They are categorically not interested at this time. These premises are the foundation of the Nordpolitik policy adopted by then President Roh Tae-Woo in 1983. This policy was changed to former president Kim Dae-Jung’s Sunshine Policy in the late 1990s. The premise of both is to string the North along and hope that the country will engage and reform internally. Neither could be called a rousing success.
A rational observer would look at Taiwan, South Korea, and China for a model. All of these countries have reformed from command economies to more market-oriented models. At the same time, their most noxious kleptocrats were quietly retired and allowed to live out their days in relative peace and quiet.
Kim Jong-Il and his cronies should be looking at their Swiss Bank accounts and contemplating quiet retirements while letting some less ideological people take charge. Unfortunately, Kim & co. are decidedly less than rational.
(Don’t bother googling for this. I write my own material. Economic numbers were drawn from http://www.bls.gov/fls/flsgdp.pdf. All other material is drawn from various sources.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....41126.html
“The “free market” is actually just colonialism by another name. What is the mantra of the “free market”? It is “buy low, sell high”. It aims at all times to externalize costs and keep the profits. In the “free market’, there is always a sucker. Taxpayer, go look in the mirror! We can thank Bush and Cheney for demonstrating in a kind of absolute way the selfish inhumanity of that model of human existence. We know for a fact, no matter what the PR of the Bush administration says, that Cheney wanted to secure the Iraqi oil fields for the use of western corporations, with the possible byproduct of enabling American car buyers to keep buying SUVs and pickup trucks with impunity. He would externalize the costs of securing the oil fields by charging it to the American taxpayer in a multitude of different ways–“
From Harry Poon: We know for a fact, no matter what the PR of the Bush administration says, that Cheney wanted to secure the Iraqi oil fields for the use of western corporations, with the possible byproduct of enabling American car buyers to keep buying SUVs and pickup trucks
And where can we find those facts Harry Poon, other than Smiley Jane’s alternative universe?
“Robert J. Einhorn, a former State Department official who visited North Korea with then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, said … the agreement … would come under heavy questioning from both the right and the left. …”
Yeah, Bolton was already whining about it today. Not sure whether he’s mouthing the administration’s disappointment about one less place to try to start World War Three, or if he’s just jealous that he didn’t personally get to play in this game.
Since we’re talking about North Korea, here’s my take on it. We’ve been on the Korean Peninsula for over 50 years, and it has been a drain on the US. North Korea, despite all its anti-American rhetoric, is a problem for China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. Those countries are the closest to any potential nuclear event.
It’s time for the US to leave the Korean Peninsula and let the neighbors in the region solve the problem of North Korea. If Japan and South Korea can export auto and electronic goods of the highest quality to the US and the rest of the worl, if China can have such a huge trade surplus with us, and if Russia has so much mineral wealth and oil, then all of these countries should be able to handle a pipsqueak like Kim Jung Il with out too much trouble.
If we do the correct thing and leave this mess to the real participants, North Korea will have no reason to even think about the US, much less engage in foolish, inflamatory rhetoric. It’s time to fold the tent in Korea and come home.
On the subject of N. Korea:
I figure anything which reduces the possiblity of Kim Il Jung from having his fingers on the trigger of too many nuclear bombs is a good thing. If it puts off a nuclear war for another decade or two, I’m all for it.
And we all know Kim Jung Ill will try to cheat. I hate to quote Ronald Reagan, but I will: “Trust, but verify”.
But what I find hillarioius is how the right wing Republicans absolutely SCORCHED Clinton for his food aid program to N. Korea in exchange for them locking down their weapons program. They accused him of “propping up” the N. Korea regime, which they argued would have collapsed by now under its own weight. But after Bush renigs, the N. Koreans renew their program, the U.S. under Bush agrees to provide not food, but OIL!
So the benefacters of Bush’s policies toward N. Korea over the past six years have been – the N. Korean military (which now has oil to use in any invasion of S. Korea), and the oil companies (surprised?) Instead of American farmers getting more money for aid the government gives to N. Korea, now the Saudi’s and the IRANIANS will benefit from the price spike.
And now, what are we going to offer Iran for cancelling its program – OIL?
rhp6033,
One of the benefits of leaving Iraq would be to get out of the way of the Israelis. The Israelis will no doubt prevent Iran from obtaining nukes, and they’ll do it by launching air attacks. The most direct route for these attacks, of course, is through Iraqi airspace. If we get out of the picture, we’re out of the mess.
There’s a lot to be said about minding one’s own business.
@18
“But what I find hillarioius is how the right wing Republicans absolutely SCORCHED Clinton for his food aid program to N. Korea in exchange for them locking down their weapons program. They accused him of “propping up” the N. Korea regime, which they argued would have collapsed by now under its own weight. ”
I think it was the fact that Jimmy Carter negotiated 2 light water reactors not the food that was the problem.
Roger et al
I know it is impossible for you to see truth thru hate filled glasses but try.
This agreement is essntially the same as the Clinton Framework. However there is a big difference. Instead of N Korea negotiating solely with the US, 6 neighboring nations with vital interest are involved. It is much harder to cheat on the deal with so much support from the 6 parties and the international community as a whole. Inspectors back in……Dismantling of their N weapons programs… The world wins.
Sometimes there is good news for the USA that is good news and isn’t partisan or a political shouting match.
Libertarian @ 19:
Two things:
Israel very neatly knocked out Saddam’s research program in 1980. While I have one or two small issues with Iran’s government, I can’t believe they would be so stupid as to overlook the absolute certainty of an airstrike being called to knock out their program. This time is not going to be as easy as last time. Life sucks that way.
More importantly, if Israel did call in air strikes, and if the White House was quizzed on it, Tony Snow would just say “Iraq is a sovereign country. We were not consulted as to whether or not to grant permission for Israeli jets to overfly Iraqi airspace.”
jsa,
I still say it’s time to close down the show in Iraq. We are meddling in a fight that began centuries ago, and we are not going to change the combatants’ minds.
The people of the Middle East are not worth the death of a single American, unless that American is Charles Manson or some other mass murderer. We’ve got Saddam having tea with Allah now, so it’s time to come home.
The Israelis will do whatever they’ll do about Iran. I could care less.