I’m still at the Ale House, but can’t hear the debate, and Trivia Night starts in half an hour, so I’m not sure how much live blogging I can do. But that doesn’t stop you from spewing your hearts out in the comment threads.
UPDATE (8:05):
Minimum wage, right of the bat, an issue by the way, that was first brought to attention via Josh’s coverage of the AWB debate. Your contributions at work.
UPDATE (8:08):
You know, I’m not so sure that Rossi wants to make this about who shares whose values.
UPDATE (8:13):
I guess, the bright side about Postman leaving, at least for Andrew Garber, is that Garber gets to do a little TV for a change.
UPDATE (8:19):
Rossi keeps talking about how he balanced the budget in 2003. Um… he wasn’t governor in 2003. (Or ever.) He started with Gov. Locke’s budget, and then made it a bit more draconian. In fact, at the press conference in which he announced “his” budget, the PowerPoint presentation started with the headline: “Following the Governor’s Lead.” So why the fuck does everybody let him get away with this bullshit about how he supposedly “balanced” a budget?
UPDATE (8:21):
So far, neither candidate has mentioned “Joe the Plumber.” Refreshing.
UPDATE (8:26):
So Rossi shrugs off an accusing Gregorie of “laundering money” by saying it was produced by a “third party”… you know, the BIAW “fund for Rossi” for which he solicited contributions. You’d think maybe, our editorial boards would comment on the irony.
UPDATE (8:42):
I don’t think transportation is a winning issue for Rossi. Voters here are about to pass Prop 1 to expand light rail, and voters in the rest of the state couldn’t give a shit about traffic congestion or our infrastructure deficit. But what do I know?
UPDATE (8:47):
The problem with Gregoire arguing that Rossi cut a billion dollars from education, is that it validates the notion that Rossi actually balanced budgets. Which he didn’t. He chaired the budget committee in the state Senate, which was only marginally in Republican hands, and the final budget was large based on Gov. Locke’s initial proposal. So if I were Gregoire, I’d be talking about what Rossi wants to cut, or wanted to cut, rather than what he did cut.
UPDATE (8:51):
The camera isn’t loving Gov. Gregoire, particularly in the split screens. But here’s a question… is Rossi coming off as more likeable? I think voters thought he did in 2004, and it was largely on that basis (plus the lack of understanding about where he actually stood on issues) that he made the election so close. But even if four years later, voters don’t particularly like Gregoire (I’m not saying they actively dislike her, but it’s the whole who would you like to have a beer with thing), they’ve grown comfortable with her. She’s not scary. So does Rossi come off as genuinely likable, or just less wonky and officious than Gregoire?
WRAP UP (SORTA):
From where I was sitting, it was hard to hear the debate above the background noise, so I’ll have to watch it again to get a fair impression, but anecdotally, those in the bar who did watch the debate, both inside the bubble bloggers like myself, and ordinary citizens, thought that Gregoire just plain kicked Rossi’s ass. I hope so. And I hope there were enough viewers to make a difference.
Dino the liar says the ad against him is false and he survives in Oly on honesty and integrity. What element of the ad is false? Every single piece is true.
The Willie horton like ads by Dino’s coordinating and lying pals are a disgrace. And he is in league with them.
BTW, Dino did not write a budget, and did not write “budgets.” He worked on one budget. And all he did was make Gary Locke’s budget worse.
Doesn’t Christine Gregorie look like the Grinch? She (and her campaign) cheated to become Governor. Hopefully this time around, people take a stand in that this type of illegal election activity is not OK by the great people of Washington State. It is time to say “Goodbye Grinch!”
You tards must be proud of your bruthas.www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PgV3_1_qlc
Wow!
eeeewwwwww,………she does look like the Grinch
And I went to Dinorossi.com. And everything there on transporation and just about everything else is a fantasy and fluff- and mean and hateful.
And if I hear him respond on education with his powdered milk story and his reverence for teachers, I will puke. And I did grow up on powdered milk.
Gregoire (or her aides) must read HA because she just said what I’ve been posting here — and used my exact wording:
How can Rossi build an 8-lane 520 bridge for $1 billion less than what a 6-lane bridge costs?
What this means is HA isn’t a blog anymore, it’s a think tank.
Seriously. That last question was all about transit alternatives to enable people to get out of their cars. I don’t think either candidate actually mentioned transit. Roads. Highways. Cars. UGH. Why, why did Gregoire not go after that in her rebuttal?
#6 A think tank. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Gregoire could have done a better job explaining the estate tax, because that tax was cut, not raised.
Here’s what happened. A private law firm brought a class action lawsuit against the state to stop it from collecting the estate tax already on the books. Their argument was based on a technicality: The state estate tax was adopted by making what lawyers call an “incorporation by reference” of language from the IRS Code — and that federal language had been repealed and replaced by other provisions. So, the argument went, the state estate tax didn’t exist anymore. The State Supreme Court agreed with that argument.
Faced with that court ruling and the loss of all the revenue produced by the state’s estate tax, the Democratic-controlled legislature re-enacted the tax, and Gov. Gregoire signed the bill re-enacting it. But in re-enacting it, the legislature and governor increased exemptions and cut the total amount of revenue raised by the tax in half.
Thus, the Democrats gave heirs a tax cut — even though under the previous tax only millionaires were subject to the tax.
Overall, I thought Gregoire won the debate hands-down. She answered the questions, was factual, called out Rossi on his bullshit, and was tough and hard-hitting yet still managed to be engaging.
@8 I didn’t mean you, mark. You’re merely a screen saver.
@9 Hey, its a hare splitting heirs.
Gregoire has the same problem she had in the last election. She, or her campaign, can’t bring themselves to humbly and sincerely ask for the help, support, and votes of their base and other voters sympathetic to her objectives as governor.
I can’t shake the impression of arrogance, and I’m a supporter who has in the past and will in the future hit the streets for Gregoire. I keep having conversations with other people feeling the same way. They have no question about who they are going to vote for, but don’t feel appreciated for it.
To allow large swaths of King County voters to be so ambivalent is an amazing failure. I can’t believe she did it a second time. What crappy campaign top people!
Yet another overabundance of wishful and deluded thinking by HA minions.
Gregoire could have gone full grinch with face paint mumbling drunk bitchy as ever unable to cogently answer any question except to carp at Rossi (just like tonight) and you would still call it a win for the Wicked Witch of Hoquiam.
What a surprise.
Gregoire is a lousy candidate. She may win despite her abilities, not because of them.
@2 “She (and her campaign) cheated to become Governor.”
How? Be specific. This issue was addressed by a Republican judge in a Republican county. He found over 1,000 ineligible felons voted, but that was due to confusing state laws, not fraud — and no one knows who those felons voted for, although anecdotal evidence suggests 90% of them voted for Rossi. Rossi’s GOP Party were represented by Washington’s best lawyers and spent $2 million on legal fees, and all the trial proved was that Rossi got 4 fraudulent votes, Gregoire none. In addition, a Republican U.S. attorney assigned this region’s top FBI agents and federal prosecutors to investigate this election, and they reported that they found no evidence of election fraud. So how did Gregoire and the Democrats “cheat”? This is nothing but a fantasy and baseless charge by sore-loser Rossi fans.
@2 (continued) Waaaa! Waaaa! Waaaa! (insert photo of crying baby) Throwing temper tantrums is the only thing Rossi and his supporters are good at.
@14- That last full paragraph reads or sounds like Palin trying to put together a sentence. And people in Hoquiam are pissed they don’t see her enough, and btw, she’s from Auburn.
Rossi is, as the Olympian said, a “slick carnival huckster.” And a crooked one at that.
He is vapid and empty in all his answers. She may be too earnest, too sincere, and too knowledgable. But given the times, I take that toughness and competence over the empty suit. Lets live in a reality based society for awhile. The repub idea that reality is what you say it is just crashed and burned.
@15 Gregoire is a capable and accomplished administrator. She is not very good at campaigning and she’s certainly not as slick a politician as, say, Sarah Palin. However, she has given us 4 years of good government, and when I vote, that’s what I want not a slick politician.
@12 How is that splitting hairs, mark? The fact is, heirs got a 50% cut in the estate tax under the Democratic legislature and Gov. Gregoire. That’s a fact. And I’m sure it means something to them.
However, my personal preference would be to eliminate both federal and state estate taxes. I would also like to eliminate the state sales and B & O taxes. I would do that by replacing those state taxes with a state income tax, and by replacing federal and state estate taxes by not taxing states at all and letting heirs pay the same taxes on their inheritances that workers pay on their wages.
@13 She’s a better governor than politician or campaigner. I don’t think she can fix that. She has the personality of a tough trial lawyer — because she was one — and that’s not something you can easily turn off or change. But as a tough trial lawyer, she served the taxpayers of our state extremely well by bringing in over $4 billion of tobacco settlement money, which is $4 billion of taxes we don’t have to pay.
” … those in the bar who did watch the debate… thought that Gregoire just plain kicked Rossi’s ass.”
I was able to hear it, and let me assure you that she did.
“And I hope there were enough viewers to make a difference.”
I doubt it. The brainiacs who watch gubernatorial debates on TV wouldn’t vote for Rossi in the first place. The pus-gut beer swillers who do vote for Rossi probably were watching “America’s Next Top Model.”
spewage @18 and all the other hobgoblin minions of Goldenstein –
King Kounty puts the K in Kwality when it comes to vote Kounting for Krissy.
Any action at HA on the over and under for how many votes will be manufactured for Kris in King Kounty this year? Man, it’s got to look more convincing this year than just 133 votes.
To Zapped at 23-
The greatest hoax in politics today is the great lie by the repubs on the so-called “vote fraud.” In 2006, over 178 million votes were cast in our country and a grand total of 1-2-3-4-5-6 errr, 6, yes, 6, were prosecuted as found to be illegal. In the whole country.
But several hundreds of thousands of people of color, of lower income, and totally rehabilitated felons who were legal voters were denied the vote by Repub troglodytes, because they wanted to purge suspected Democrats.
This is a grave offense to democracy, and the lying thieves are trying to do it again.
Those are the facts, so get out of your alternative reality. You might want to see the earlier comment on 2004 hoax perpetrated by R’s. Four illegal voters found in WA after millions spent by the cheating builders to look at every voter, and all four voted for Dino the fraud. If you dispute that, lets see some real facts, not total repub BS.
I am not holding my breath.
Rossi came across as being rude. He did not thank Jean Enerson as Gregoire did. And I didn’t see Rossi crack a smile once. Maybe his looming court date has hin in a bad mood?
24 – It’s useless. That winger is totally brainwashed. Same loser he was during the election contest flap.
Gregoire looked like she knows she is going to lose. No matter how you spin it…she increased spending by $8 BILLION in the face of a recession.
Struggling voters expect State Government to mirror what taxpayers are facing & doing.
Taxpayers are belt-tightening.
Employers are laying people off.
Gregoire was hiring and spending like a drunken sailor.
This upcoming deficit did not just happen by some devine intervention. It was predictable…and avoidable!!
Rossi has made that case well.
Blaming Bush won’t work for Gregoire….although it may rally the Bush-haters (who were already going to vote for her).
Everyone KNOWS Gregoire will raise taxes to avoid layoffs as she panders to the Unions.
Rossi will lay-off 8,000-10,000 State Employees saying Salaries + Benefits (nearly 35% of Salaries) + OVERHEAD in supporting these employees.
Gregoire should have mandated layoffs 6 months ago or more. She didn’t.
As a 39 year Government Bureaucrat beholding to the State Employees Union, Gregoire is the PROBLEM, not the SOLUTION>
Rossi MUST drive this point home NOW!
ACORN Nutsacks @24,26 –
What are you schmucks mumbling about?
You have King County that could not even match the number of votes counted to the number of votes cast.
Rossi won the initial vote count.
Rossi won the first recount.
The election ultimately hinged on votes that were not “discovered” until months after the election was over.
It was a King County judge that allowed ballots from voters whose signatures did not match those on file to put Gregoire over the top without validation.
And what has happened since then? More stringent voter registration requirements?
Nutsacks, Wingers and Flying Monkeys oy veh.
@ 29
You got a few of your facts wrong there squirt. Want to try again?
‘Course not. It’s a wingnut’s prerogative to ignore facts not commensurate with his foregone conclusions.
If anyone made any sense out of the budget in 2003, it was Helen Sommers, in spite of the fact that Rossi treated her worse than he probably does whoever scrubs his toilets.
JoeBlows @30 – Bwahahahahaha.
Those words were pulled from 2004 news articles.
You’ve got a beef with I wrote?
Spell it out. Make your case cogently, concisely and convincingly. Just keep the lies almost believable ok?
Back to you JB.