The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Stop on by for some hoppy beer and hopped up conversation.
As for me, I’m headed out to Drinking Liberally Philadelphia tonight, so I won’t see you at the Ale House.
Not in Seattle (or Philadelphia)? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.
Have fun out there. One of these days, I need to head back home and check out the Philly DL…
Goldy, you’re in Philadelphia again?
I bet you went there in a jet. You really don’t care about global warming, do you?
Silly me. I saw the headline “Bush Pardons Turkeys”, and I assumed it was everyone in his administration. Turns out it has something to do with Thanksgiving. An understandable error, I believe.
Turkey = Libby, Rove, Cheney and Gonzalez
Roger Rabbit rarely attends DL due to traffic problems caused by crowds of admiring fans, papparazzi, process servers, and GOP assassins.
@3 Bush only pardons the plastic turkey. The real one gets killed and eaten.
5
Mostly the process servers.
Happy Thanksgiving, Roger.
MLF
Pity the Philadelphians. Nothing will be the same evermore.
On the subject of drinking….
Why do we have state liquor stores?
9 – Because the people here like it. If you don’t, move to California where there’s a butt ugly one on every street corner with a stick up going on in them every other night.
I’m a beer and wine man myself and I can get that anywhere.
Pretty good piece on “The O’Reilly Factor” tonight. Laura Ingraham is filling-in for Bill, who’s checking things out in Afganistan. Laura’s Talking Points segment blasted the Pentagon for sending wounded guys from the Iraq messages demands for repayment of a portion of the guys’ signing bonuses. It seems the guys, who got the bonuses, didn’t complete the “full” tour of duty due to their injuries. Kind of hard to complete the tour with a limb or two blown off, but the Pentagon is being sticklars on this one.
This one’s beneath contempt. These Bush guys have stooped to a new low. Is it January 2009 yet?
Is this an open thread?
12 – Yes
In that case, does anyone know what happened to Evan Dando and the Lemonheads?
@11…PI…
Saw the segment…twice…It is shameful what’s being done to soldiers like Pfc. Fox, yet he said he’d enlist all over again. I predict that this will be rectified in short order. Smacks of bureaucratic bungling…of the worst sort in the world!
But what about that whiney little girl in the orange t-shirt? Who supports shouting down speakers and storming stages to run off those with whom she disagrees?
Former Clinton aide, Lanny Davis, who was also on the show in a different segment, likened that behavior to facism, and roundly condemned it as un-American, which it is. Certainly, Lanny made no bones about his opposition to the war and Bush policies, but he drew a clear line when it comes to respecting the rights of all to speak and listen and the responsibility of those who disagree to do so respectfully and in a civil manner.
To think…all this on O’Reilly!
The Piper
Piper, something on O’Reilly you’ll never see here on ASSWipes (TM).
The toilet paper crowd loves to stifle free speech!
@10
9 – Because the people here like it.
You have a poll to support that?
If you don’t, move to California where there’s a butt ugly one on every street corner with a stick up going on in them every other night.
Oh, very mature. No one should ever question anything. If you don’t like it, go back to where you came from. (I actually DID come from California, but I’d only lived there four years…the last one being 1960).
The fact of the matter is, the liquor stores and the liquor control board are a remnant of the Prohibition movement.
http://www.secstate.wa.gov/ora.....rterly.pdf
Fascism is a system whereby big business and government combine as one to suppress the will of the people and engage in illegal wars for profit. That would well describe Minister of Propaganda, O’Reilly and Faux News.
But, I fail to see how a girl in an orange t-shirt approaching a stage fits into a realistic definition of fascism.
‘Piperition’ of fascism = People doing stuff I don’t approve of.
Oh, and call me petty if you will, but I would think someone with your education could spell fascism correctly — but, ‘sadly and alack-and-alas’, you can’t.
Fascism = (un)fairness doctrine. nuff said.
Fascism is a system whereby big business and government combine as one to suppress the will of the people
You have the right to call almost 64 million votes fascism. I call it an American victory over evil. roof roof.
15;
Piper,
Shouting down a speaker is, in and of itself, free speech. Particularly if we are talking about public property where the public has access.
Funny how that works.
Constitutional law 101.
@7 Oh, I’m all right with Xgiving traditions — thank God the Pilgrims caught a turkey before they found a rabbit.
@9 “Why do we have state liquor stores?”
To make money, so you can pay lower taxes. You’re pretty new to this state, aren’t you George?
@16 – Yeah, you and crackpiper have both been stifled here, pudding-fer-brains. It’s called “censorship.” We have a lot of it here, in case you haven’t noticed. Good old liberal censorship keeps wingfucks like you two from posting.
@17 “You have a poll to support that?”
We do. This has been on the ballot (although not recently) and the voters decided to retain the state liquor monopoly.
@21 I don’t see what the row is about shouting down some wingnut. Wingnuts do it to liberals every day. On virtually every wingnut talk-radio show, as soon as a liberal caller starts to score points against the host, he gets cut off. Wingnut talking heads can’t stand an honest debate. They don’t let us talk, so why should we let their side talk? When they let us talk, we’ll let them talk. They started all this incivility. If they want to restore civility, let them make the first move.
GH @ 17: I’m with YLB (see # 9) on this one. I grew up in a state with private liquor stores. It was an eyesore and crime magnet, with owners having an incentive to sell to anyone, regardless of whether they stumbled into the store from their car, dead drunk, bought a fifth, and then stumbled back out to their car, already drinking from the fifth along the way.
Every morning we would read the list of the holdups and shootings at the liquor stores. The crooks used to call them the “poor man’s ATM”, where they would walk in with a gun and make withdrawals. Soon just about every store had a big guy sitting on a stool right in the doorway with a shotgun on his lap, in an attempt to discourage holdups. But after a while the crooks got meaner, and they would just walk up to the doorway, blast the guy with the shotgun before he could lift it off his lap, and rob the store, killing the clerk on the way out (they already had killed the bouncer, so they didn’t want to leave any witnesses behind).
I really don’t see any reason to attract that kind of business to this state, just to save a buck or two on a fifth of whiskey. Some things (but not all) really do work better when the government handles them, and this is one of them.
@27…RHP6033…
Yours isn’t an argument for keeping liquor stores out of private hands, it’s one for a return to prohibition! Since it’s either stumblebum drunks who lust for a quart of Ol’ Yakima Rock & Rye, or sociopaths attracted to tills filled with the lucre of stumblebum drunks, the obvious answer would be to…outlaw the source of the stumblebummery thus eviscerating its commensurate cash/sociopath magnet nature.
Until then, state monopolies on stuff like booze only enhance the hypocrisy of the state. We bitch that not enough public money is spent on recovery services all the while we make money selling that which fuels the need for recovery services. About as stupid as funding healthcare services with cigarette taxes. Only a liberal mind would come up with something so oxymoronic.
Here’s a plan: outlaw booze and tobacco instead of condemning them on the one hand while financing treatment for the reasonable and foreseeable consequences of their use and abuse on the other. If both are so bad – such public health menaces – then it’s in the public interest to ban them outright and forever.
If we’re unwilling to do that, then maybe it’s time for adult behavior, assumption of the risk. If you either wish to smoke or drink or engage in the sale of smokes or drinks, then be warned: the reasonable, foreseeable, logical, probable and inevitable consequences thereof are your problem, not mine.
Time to stop the enabling and hypocrisy. Besides…state liquor stores are a gouge! When every Safeway and Albertson’s in California has Johnny Walker Black for $2 to $3 bucks a bottle cheaper than up here, you know you’re getting ripped off!
Think of it: Washington State promotes gambling and it promotes drinking. Why not make it the perfect trifecta and have it go into the bordello business? After all, right now the state’s doing a pretty good job of screwing us, so isn’t it about time it returned the favor?
I’m sure the HA Happy Hooligans, social pariahs they seem to be, would appreciate an alternative to their usual pursuits.
The Piper
@21…Carl…
Sorry…doesn’t wash…
Just as there’s no right to should “Fire!” in a crowded auditorium, there isn’t a right to disrupt an assembly just because you object to what’s being said. And this is especially the case in a college or university setting where the open pursuit of truth and knowledge is supposed to be tolerant and welcoming of all points of view.
But I’ll just put it to you this way: two lefty favs, the Bill Boys – Clinton and Maher – have recently been victims of this crap from members of the 9/11 so-called “truth” movement. If memory serves, HRC has been so honored within the past week or so, too.
Both Bill’s roundly condemned the behavior, both in substence and as a tactic. People have both the right to speak and the right to hear, and you, nor anyone else, has the right to shout them down and shut them up. Disagree? OK, do so appropriately, but don’t Brown Shirt an opinion you do not share.
And remember…it was Democrat and liberal Lanny Davis who called it FASCIST behavior.
And @18…TK…
Thank you for your flaming grammar Nazi critique of my spelling. How clever of you to show your erudition and bon mot mentality…heavy on form, short on substance, devoid of thinking. How sad your parents must be.
Not all turkeys will be roasted and on tables tomorrow; many continue to post lefty lib lunacy even today!
The Piper
@28
Yours isn’t an argument for keeping liquor stores out of private hands, it’s one for a return to prohibition!
No it’s not.
Here’s a plan: outlaw booze and tobacco instead of condemning them on the one hand while financing treatment for the reasonable and foreseeable consequences of their use and abuse on the other. If both are so bad – such public health menaces – then it’s in the public interest to ban them outright and forever.
So you would rather ban alcohol than have government control its sale? Really?
@28
Wow, I just re-read this comment, and Crackpiper, I want to thank you. It’s utter retardation like this that keeps blogs like Effin Unsound going. The Crackpiper Chronicles Part 3 is off and running…
Recipe for Liberal Maggot Stew
– First, steal several dozen lesser liberal maggots plus the Big One, Roger, the liberal mega-maggot
– Puree
– Season. Liberally.
– Discard in the dump. Serve liberal and copious quantities of alcohol to Drinking Liberally drunks and to the KOS-tards, pouf-tards, and snark-tards you rode in on.
PS at 28: We tried prohibition, didn’t work. The next best thing is to reduce the amount of profit motivation which encourages skirting the rules and over-consumption. The state system does that. If it costs a buck or two more to have it done right, then I think that’s a reasonable price.
What you hate to admit is that this is one instance where the government has proven that it is best suited to perform the service. Lower prices aren’t the only measure, if they only result in the business passing the collateral damage on to the victims, taxpayers, or society in general.
As for tobacco, I would gladly vote for prohibition of it if I thought it would work. But enough people are already hooked, to the point that quitting is extraordinarily difficult, it would be unfair to turn them into criminals in the process. Barring that, then perhaps having the state sell cigarettes, just as the do alchohol, might not be a bad idea. Or at least make the tobacco companies pay the full cost of the damage their product causes, even when it is used properly in the manner in which is intended. Maybe they should offer free medical and life insurance to their victims?
Continuation of 33: Hey, I’m beginning to like that idea. Have cigarettes only sold through the state-owned liquor stores. Require a person to register in order to purchase cigarettes, and show their ID each time. Each registered person will have a life and health insurance policy issued in their name, pre-paid by the tobacco companies. If the tobacco companies can’t meet those terms and still sell at a profit, it just shows that they are passing the costs of their product along to the victims (the smokers, their families, their employers, and the health-care system generally).
We do. This has been on the ballot (although not recently) and the voters decided to retain the state liquor monopoly.
So what year, and how did the vote end up.
For extra credit:
Was it perhaps decided by absentee ballots from King County?
U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman all but dismantled the state’s three-tier system that governs the sale and distribution of wine and beer, ruling that its interests to promote temperance do not trump federal law.
She ordered the state’s Liquor Control Board to stop enforcing key parts of its regulatory system, but stayed her ruling for 30 days to give defendants time for appeal. An attorney for the state said they will study the decision this weekend and meet on Monday to decide its next course of action.
The ruling was delivered just before 5 p.m.
Costco Wholesale sued the Liquor Control Board in February 2004, charging that its regulatory system was anticompetitive and violated federal Sherman Antitrust Act.
Pechman agreed with Costco in December. The aim of the trial — held from March 22-30 — was to determine whether the state was shielded by the 21st Amendment, despite these violations.
The court’s answer on Friday was no.
“If the state desires to promote temperance by artificially increasing beer and wine prices, the state could readily achieve that goal in a manner that does not run afoul of the Sherman Act,” Pechman wrote.