I sure do enjoy teasing the Seattle Times editorial board, but apart from their pandering to publisher Frank Blethen’s obsession with repealing the estate tax, I really do respect their right to use their op/ed pages to promote candidates and causes I generally find wrongheaded, selfish or downright silly. I mean… it’s not like they’re out shooting dogs or something.
And occasionally I even learn something useful. For example, take today’s column by editorial board member James Vesely on a recent Elway poll exploring community attitudes on the Eastside.
In “Resident Opinions About Life on the Eastside,” Elway discovered the top four reasons people gave for high satisfaction with where they live: parks and recreation
Civil rights? I doubt if you asked Eastsiders in total open ended, un-rigged you’d get that…
How about
Crime/personal Safety
Jobs
Kids
Health
All you have to understand why Democrats live in Bellevue is drive through downtown Bellevue. What used to be a bedroom suburb is now a busy commercial city. It takes lots of workers to staff those office towers and retail shops, and the drones usually want to live near where they work because they can’t afford long commutes and expensive parking. The more business activity grows in Bellevue, the more Democrat the city becomes. What a delicious irony!
It may be getting “bluer” every day Goldy because of you assholes sitting in gridlock all day long inhaling carbon monoxide!
I-912 will show you where people are really at Goldy….they have had enough tax-and-squander in Seattle, KingCo and Washington State with leaderless transportation planning.
And although Sims may win by 6-7 points, it won’t be without some serious angst. Sims record re: Critical Areas Ordinance, Elections Dept. and overall County fiscal management will be put under a microscope.
Is Bellevue bluer??? Just wait until AFTER I-912 vote and then judge.
Cynical @3,
Are you missing the point entirely, or just dismissing it? You’re talking about individual politicians or initiatives, and I’m talking about longterm demographic trends.
And I-912… it will fail in King County. The question is whether it will fail by a large enough margin to make it fail statewide.
“Democrat Values”: welfare, food stamps, rioting, looting, and communism. Did I miss any?
“Parks, schools, the environment, affordable housing, civil rights, good jobs, health and human services…”
Other than the extremes of the parties, most people believe in those things. The real issue is how to achieve those things for the most people — and that is where the parties differ.
So Goldy, you are saying that the upwardly mobile minorities are moving to Bellevue and making it donkocratic? If that is so, then the economy is doing these people well, providing a living wage to allow them to migrate across Lake Washington to a better place, where lower crime, better schools, possilbe use of school vouchers for private schools, and an improved quality of life is. Where the nasty Repubithugs (Rujax speak) live. So I suppose the Bush Tax Cuts are trickle down economics after all? Blows another donkocratic screech against Karl Rove doesn’t it? Wow, Goldy thanks again for proving our points. Tax Cuts for the little man do improve their lot!!! Damn, now if only those welfare checks… NOT! Can you say tenements appearing in Bellevue next?
I guess this is begining to shatter my stereotypes of Bellevue.
Since it became a city, Bellevue has never been a stereotypic rightwing community. Over the past 50 years, it’s been home to many democrats and progressive republicans who actually cared about things like parks, civic improvements, and the environment. Bellevue had its own sewage treament plant long before Metro began cleaning up Lake Washington in the 1960s. And in the 1970s, the city was one of the first in the nation to implement a storm and surface water utility.
Go to Google Maps and compare satellite imagery of both Bellevue and Seattle. Bellevue is a much greener city, even though its growth rate has way outpaced much of Seattle in the last 50 years.
Someone voted over the years to increase taxes to pay for these kind of improvements. And they also elected city officials to oversee city development. Most of these voters were republicans. The progressive kind. The kind who valued their neighborhood/city/county/state, and weren’t just looking out for themselves.
Y’know, the ones the state GOP and their minions tend to shit upon these days.
My only hope is that the party marginalizes them further. Sooner, rather than later, that voter base is going to defect. In fact, they’ve already started. And to those who have, welcome aboard.
Lazy, would you take your new buzzword “progressive” and stuff it please.
Cynical @ 3
Haven’t seen that much of you. Have you been to Montana again?
People on the real east side, (east WA), do not see any distinctions between Seattle and any of the outlying suburbs. To the easterners you guys all look alike.
“Democrat Values”: “Lord Of The Flies” in New Orleans, Detroit, and South Central
“Democrat Values”: Bonfire Of The Vanities, Black Velvet, and crack
Getting a little testy, Righton @8? Why’s that? Like, maybe Lazy is accurately interpreting facts? Like, you realize that right-wing extremism won’t fly in either the Seattle metropolitan area or the state as a whole?
Let’s be honest: A candidate who OPENLY advocated your positions hasn’t been able to poll any more than the low 40s in recent gubernatorial elections.
You can’t win fair and square, so you wingers have adopted the following four-point strategy:
1) Do your darndest to protect stealth candidates like Dino Rossi. Wingers get so upset over Goldy’s Rossi vigil precisely he is attempting to pull the curtain away from the “wizard.”
2) Undercut political moderation and bipartisanship at every turn. Frame all issues in stark, left-right polarizations where lefties are caricaturized as wild-eyed anti-capitalist revolutionaries. This, despite the fact that the Democratic political establishment in this state is rather moderate . . . and, in fact, is little different from this state’s most powerful Republican moderates (e.g., Munro, Reed, Morrison).
3) Create faux scandals that neutralize your greatest weakness. Instead of admitting that a Carlson or Craswell can’t get elected, you relentlessly demagogue the lie that King County elections is fundamentally corrupt.
4) Get really nasty. The underlying goal is to get the electorate so turned off by a given political campaign that turnout plummets. This gives wingers a better chance of winning, because you turn out your core constituences better than the Democrats can. This is what happened in 1994.
One happy consequence of this strategy is that it gives sociopaths like Mr. Cynical a place where his first-grade behavior can be considered “normal” . . . and to regulate it would be an act of left-wing “censorship.”
I gotta hand it to you wingers – this is a truly inspired propaganda campaign!
The Johnnie-One-Note righties are at it again!
jerry springer
a) progressive as euphemism for liberal is just spin. You got tired of dislike of liberalism and grabbed for a historic and well like concept of progressives. You all today don’t really resemble them (or maybe you’d respect referenda from the people, instead of suing, overturning, etc)
rebuttal
1) a vigil over a non-candidate is stupid, but builds traffic. You think papers or Today show runs stories only on their merits?
2)Yeah, blunt about it cuz Seattle is so left wing that even the middle is lefty; so a stark right wing position is clarifying. That said, most of us righties in other towns would be moderates.
3) faux scandals…a) elections dept is hardly faux, and b) i don’t think any of us thought Cranswell or whatever her name was had a chance. As for Rossi, blew me away that he tied/won/lost. Must mean you guys don’t have the lock you thought you had. Too bad zombies still vote automatically for Sims, Nickels, etc.
4) Nasty? do an F word count on this blog; that’s nasty
I don’t know if cynical is a sociopath; certainly from the posts his invective is no worse than roger, headless, jch, windie, dj and others. I think he’s just trying to shout as loud as they are. And ps, without him and MTR, you’d have nobody to really argue with and this blog would be as boring as a coffeeshop in Fremont.
righton @ 8 “would you take your new buzzword “progressive†and stuff it please.”
Bend over, righton (it should be eqasy you have been bending over for the Neo-Cons for years).
Parks? Ron Sims turned half my property into one.
So what are those Democrat values that Eastsider want:
Taxation without end
Confiscation of private property
Increased government dependency (SS, welfare, Medicaid, etc.)
Removal of religion from the public square
Live where the Democrats tell you not where you want
If it feels good do it without consideration of the social cost
Election fraud
Party machine politics
Subsidize IV drug use
Subsidize alcoholism
Promote sexual assault thru rampant promiscuity, pornography, etc
Kill babies for the convienence of those who do not plan
Spam filtered again!
Subject: “Democrat Values”….OK…….This is good!! Remember the plane that crash landed in the Andes Mountains. It took 40 days before they started to eat the dead. Now, black “leadership” reports that in New Orleans, cannabalism started in less than 40 hours!! Perhaps the black meat was tastier? Perhaps the KFCs were closed? Regardless, a 400 pound black welfare queen would feed quite a few hungry looters for weeks!! Hey, I don’t question the black leaders who reported this!! That would be racist!!
Maybe Goldy’s on to something;
Eastside should hope the bridges sink; would keep the commies from riding their bikes and priuses over and messing up the good life.
stay away gun grabbing anti civil liberties no free speech neo-progressive nazis!
Jerry Springer Jr@15 accuses Mr. Cynical of being a sociopath???
Interested coming from a dude who claims to be the son of a smut TV clown.
Jerry—do me a favor and look up the word sociopath in the dictionary. What is Webster’s definition???
Report back Jerry.
Righton @ 23 ”
Maybe Goldy’s on to something;
Eastside should hope the bridges sink; would keep the commies from riding their bikes and priuses over and messing up the good life.
stay away gun grabbing anti civil liberties no free speech neo-progressive nazis!”
Uh… righton… you realize that you made absolutely no sense in that post… uh… I would explain it to you, but I am sure it would be a waste of my valuable time, and your right-wing-talking-points-memorizing time.
You know I am glad the minorities are having their George Jefferson moment and moving to the East Side, finally getting a piece of the pie! At least they get to move from their Archie Bunker neighbors in Seattle.
If you look at the demographics of Bellevue’s elementary schools you will understand that its not the place I grew up in. Bellevue is blue and getting bluer. Ditto the entire Eastside.
Civil rights matters. And the GOP state senators from the Eastside had better pay attention.
Mighty god of thunnnnnder, be more specific on the school situation. Are you saying upwardly bound minorities are in those elementary schools? Then that means their economic status is getting better under GWB. No more welfare checks for these Bellevue livers. What? This can’t be.
Are they law abiding? Do they respect their teachers? If yes to both of them, then they will turn out well. Just keep Lucite away from them.
I am in the far-far-far eastside.
I look around, I listen:
Blue and getting Bluer.
Bush: A hated Man by one and all.
Stuckonstupiddon: You mean fudgepackers live that far out there?