– There was a mayoral candidate’s debate last night (Seattle Times link).
– Really the only thing I learned from following it on Twitter is that Jim Brunner doesn’t know who the Blue Scholars are, but still feels like he can make fun of other people’s taste in music.
– Hey, Seattle, no more shootings, OK?
– Chris Hansen’s statement after the Relocation Committee’s decision.
– The Columbia City Farmer’s Market is starting up again.
– Is that a homemade lightsaber in your pocket, or are you just glad to shut down the bus tunnel?
Pigs at the Trough
Meanwhile, the thoroughly bough-and-paid-for Hensarling…
Positions of authority in our society are filled via a competition to see who is the greediest and most corruptible.
@ 1
Positions of authority in our society are filled via a competition to see who is the greediest and most corruptible.
– Frank Herbert Chapterhouse Dune
Ol’ Frank was quite the prophet.
Sarah Palin, dismissed from Fox News and lacking a sponser to the recent White House Correspondent’s Dinner, threw a pitty party on twitter yesterday, calling it a “nerdprom”.
Time to go home, Sarah. Your pitiful attempts to retain a “mini-celebrity” status have far exceeded your fifteen minutes of fame.
Meanwhile in New Jersey.
Frankly, I’m surprise anyone noticed.
Since the subject has been brought up, if you’re ever down here in Olympia on a weekend, check out our farmer’s market.
Somehow this got by me when it happened but having seen the Press Conference with NOT-Ricin mailer Kevin Curtiss, his singing the only way this story would be any more fascinating is if James Everett Dutschke was a Jerry Lee Lewis impersonator and the frame job was somehow related to a love triangle between a teenage cousin.
‘Course since Dutschke is a ‘patriot’ who ran for office as a Republican and is an accused child molester, Piddles will be along any time now to prove he’s a leftist. Or a Satanist.
In Illinois, train manufacturer Nippon Sharyo has broken ground on expansion of it’s Rochelle, Illinois plant,adding 80 jobs. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Walker is proposing delaying highway projects, and cutting money for the existing Amtrak local service,although he says that it will not affect service. Yeah, right, unless ticket revenue is up, but the Hiawatha is too short for that efficiency. Once again, not all Republicans are anti-rail, Pennsylvania has stepped up it’s share of the cost of the Pennsylvanian, which is a service between NYC and Pittsburgh, and the only service west of Harrisburg. I think it had something with Governor Corbett’s poll numbers, they are not where an incumbent wants to be in a state that has a reputation of re-electing incumbent governors.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com...../130439985
@6 Somehow I expected the (real) ricin suspect would be a rightwing nut job, and the victim of the frameup an Elvis impersonator. Why is that? Now all we need is a black helicopter whoop-whooping in the distance. “It was a dark and stormy night …”
@4 Well, with our old pal Piper Scott living there and shilling for James O’Keefe and the NRA, the water isn’t the only thing in the Garden State that has a foul aura about it.
@7 “Walker is…cutting money for the existing Amtrak local service,although he says that it will not affect service.”
Yeah, we’ve heard that one before.
re 9: Ah, yes: ‘The Piper’…
His veneer of self-importance was so impermeable, you could coat a spaceship with it.
10) especially with a route as short as the Hiawatha, not even a hundred miles. Ticket revenue has a distance factor. Amtrak charges more for those who ride longer. Seat turnover helps, but not much on such a short route.
One more 747 sitting mothballed in the desert is about to be put into service:
http://www.businessinsider.com.....ces-2013-4
Good for the economy! What the F was that pilot drugging?
While Syria has problems and the ruling junta is evil, it’s still none of our business as far as military intervention goes. All the terrorist grief we have has its roots in our meddling in the Islamic world. McCain is the biggest saber-rattler out there, and, frankly, the guy should know better.
Let’s assume this guy in Boston gets convicted of the deaths caused in the bombing. I think the death penalty is not appropriate for him because a life sentence is a much sterner punishment for one who is just 19 years old. Imagine being that young and facing 60 or 70 years in a maximum security prison! Wow!
Also, with a life sentence, we might be able to find out some really useful info from the kid.
Meanwhile, IN Washington, Lamar Smith. aspiring to be the next William Proxmire, has decided that science funding should be done with political and economic considerations put first. And eliminate peer review by fellow scientists unless the particular research can show immediate economic benefit.
Next he’ll be proposing that Pat Robertson or Ken Hamm or the fuckin Pope be put in charge of what should be researched.
@16
If we torture him long enough we’ll find out that he knows where Jimmy Hoffa is and that Amanda Knox killed Jonbenet Ramsey.
Virginia’s top Republicans are scrambling to report personal gifts from the CEO of a nutritional supplements company on their disclosure forms after getting caught not reporting them.
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_.....-race?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Looks like former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe will be the next gov of Virginia and GOP gov Bob McDonnell won’t be going to the White House and GOP attorney general Ken Cuccinelli won’t be gov.
Why do guys who got rich hawking nutritional supplements and then get caught up in political scandals always have a smirky look?
http://tinyurl.com/d2ozmjt
An Armed Society Is A Polite Society Dep’t
“Sheri Williams, 24, was standing in the doorway of her Gate City, Ala., apartment just before 1 p.m. Monday when a bullet intended for a nearby man fatally struck her in the face, according to Birmingham Police Department spokesman Sgt. Johnny Williams.
“Officials say two unidentified men were involved in a verbal altercation at a grocery store roughly 100 yards away from Williams’ apartment complex. After the conflict escalated, one of the men chased the other down the street and fired a gun, Sgt. Williams said.
Williams was hit by a stray bullet from that altercation, authorities said. She stumbled back into the first floor of her apartment and fell on a couch – with her infant son still in her arms, according to Sgt. Williams.
Police pronounced Williams dead at the scene. Her baby was not hurt.”
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....-arms?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Contrary to the NRA’s assertions, I don’t believe packing heat makes people more polite, I think it makes them more aggressive. Everyone going around with guns doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. But then, I’m just a rabbit, so what do I know?
Scientific evidence, published in PNAS (Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences), that quantifies the dickishness of conservatives:
I wonder if cheapshot will drop by to enlighten us on all the flaws with this study.
Lifetime Insurance Caps
This is a correction from an NBC news story: “Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that [Boston bombing] victims could risk hitting their health insurer’s lifetime benefits cap. Lifetime dollar limits were eliminated under the Affordable Care Act.”
http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/3.....?hpt=hp_t2
Democrats voted FOR eliminating lifetime insurance caps. Republicans voted AGAINST eliminating lifetime insurance caps. Remember this next time YOU vote.
Oops…linky for study of asshole conservatives, from @22.
Once upon a time a moronic right wing troll ordered us:
Orders ignored!
Wall Street and a Republican go skiing!
For those of you who possess a reasonable mind, and the comment thread today is thankfully free of an excessive amount of stoopid, I encourage you to watch the President’s presser.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why such a reasonable thoughtful man as Obama demonstrates he is sticks around.
Look, not only are his political opponents in the Congress ready, willing and able to run this country into the ground 6 ways to Sunday, but the “4th Estate” (a.k.a. the MSM) doesn’t seem to understand jack sht either.
The US of A is in deep trouble.
I found it depressingly sad that our President “broke” the story today about the abysmal state of our US airports. As a global traveler, it is obvious. As a host of global clients, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard about the poor shape of our very own SEATAC vis-a-vis any number of airports in “lesser” countries.
[sigh]
Edit: The World’s Top 100 Airports
http://www.worldairportawards......top100.htm
The top US airport come in at #30 – Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Intl Airport
Just when I thought the South Carolina 1st could not get any more interesting. Larry Flynt has endorsed, former Gov. Mark Sanford!
http://www.live5news.com/story.....r-congress
@27 EvergreenRailfan,
How can you beat up on South Carolina, the state where the Civil War started?
Surely, you understand that the great Boeing company which was founded in Seattle and moved to Chicago, is betting its future upon the residents and politicians of South Carolina.
South Carolina shall be the home of the famous 787!
And the Boeing facility is in the South Carolina 1st!
Nobody.Could.Have.Predicted
Would it be the end of the world if Boeing, Microsoft or any of the other big boys left Washington?
@29 Ten Years After,
Naturally. If any of the “big boys” left WA it would be the precursor of the Apocalypse foretold in the Book of Revelations.
Or maybe you wanted to ask a question which someone could address?
And another success story for the NRA.
They must be so proud of themselves.
28)I just thought it would be an endorsement nobody wanted, even for a Republican. I am hoping that Stephen Colbert’s sister pulls it out, but it is a tough pull. Also, didn’t Flynt run as a Democrat in the California Recall in 2003?
From 30,
{It”s actually Book of Revelation (singular, not plural). I’ve gotten that one wrong myself.}
No, I was just being rhetorical.
# 29: The region took a big hit in the early 1970’s when Boeing significantly down-sized after the cancellation of the SST program and the loss or deferrment of orders for the brand-new 747’s. Arsons skyrocketed as desperate people used expreme measures to try to get out from under their mortgages, there was a big sucking sound as workers left to find work elsewhere, and lots of aerospace engineers with PhD’s were flipping burgers to try to make a living. There were even TV shows where part of the plot involved desperate but qualified people struggled to find jobs. Those were the days of the the infamous billboard near SeaTac which said “Will the last person in Seattle please turn off the lights”.
Of course, now we are told that the region’s economy is more diversified, and Microsoft, Amazon, etc. will take up the slack and cushion the blow. But back then the logging and fishing industry were larger and had a more significant share of the economy also.
What would really hurt is if we were hit with the loss of two major employers at roughly the same time – say, Boeing and Microsoft. We’ve already seen with Boeing how an entire industry can move elsewhere, despite needing asignificant infrastructure (supplier base, experienced workers, etc.) to support it. Moving Microsoft or Amazon would be much easier – their commitment to the region is due to the preference of the owners, which could change at any time.
“Those were the days of the the infamous billboard near SeaTac which said “Will the last person in Seattle please turn off the lights”.”
The billboard I recall was down by the Spokane Street viaduct.
# 26: Yep, after flying in Asia, returning home to SeaTac is definately a step down. First you stand in long lines at the immigration checkpoints. Then you move onward to pick up your luggage at a special baggage claims area, and take it to Customs. You stand in line at Customs with all your baggage, and then afterwards check your baggage again, which takes it downstairs where you have to re-claim it again. The whole process is ridiculous.
@34
So one way to look at that, is be very nice to the wage lords or they will take their prosperity away and bestow their largess upon a different and more grateful region.
# 35: It may have been, I never saw it, I just heard the stories. And it was put up by some Greater Seattle promoters making fun of the gloom and dispair, if I recall the stories they told.
“Wage lords?”
I am trying not post too much about BC and the upcoming provincial election, but find a few things interesting. One, is that the political labels,at least at the Provincial level, are very different once you pass the Peace Arch. Case in point, with BC Ferries. The BC Liberals privatized it, sort of, the BC Conservatives want to return it to Government control. There have been a few problems over 12 years, but the sinking of the MV Queen of the North was crew error. The New Democrats have mismanaged the vital link between Vancouver Island(where the Provincial Capital is), and the Mainland. They were behind the Fast Ferry Scandal.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/.....rries.html
The Pacificats were a noble experiment, the crossing from the lower mainland to the Victoria area is 90 minutes.
What’s a Pacificat? I asked Google, but all that came up was pacification and Pacific rat.
That is certainly the working model of the neofeudal plutocracy we’re morphing into in this society.
41) The PacifiCats were the class name of the three high speed ferries built for BC Ferries in the late 1990s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PacifiCat_Series
Some background on the project as a whole. It had some similarities and some differences with the problems of our failed Chinook class high-speed passenger only ferries. Well, we did not build a new shipyard, like BC did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Ferry_Scandal
Looks like more cases of people trying to avenge the recent attack. This time, a cab driver in Northern Virginia, and he(the alleged victim) is an Army Reservist and Iraq War veteran.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/lo.....story.html
Love this. Republican asshole, on his party’s relationship with the non-pale citizenry…
HEEHEEHEEHEE….
@45
If cheapshotBob were still around, I’m sure he’d accuse me of hating on elderly people, and dancing on their graves.
Puddybigot will no doubt accuse me of trying to force Latinos onto the plantation where Democrats exploit people of color.
“It may have been, I never saw it, I just heard the stories.”
It appears that you’re right after all, RHP. According to a couple of stories I’ve read it was out by the airport at 167th. I might be recalling one of the “opposition” billboards, perhaps the one put up by Sunny Jim that’s mentioned in the story as Sunny Jim was located not very far from Spokane Street.
http://seattletimes.com/html/l.....ut02m.html
It turns out that one of the two realtors who put up the billboard, Jim Youngren, is the older brother of an old friend of mine and former client. I recall Jim starting a small housing development on Cypress Island in the 1980s that I kind of resented. I wanted Cypress to remain wild and undeveloped.
@45 Old ideas die when their proponents do. It’s been a long wait, but eventually all the conservatives will be gone, and then we can join the 19th century. Catching up with the 21st may take slightly longer.
@42 “a different and more grateful region”
aka South Carolina
Don’t know about you, but I don’t want to fly on an airplane put together by $10-an-hour hillbillies.
The Boeing plant in SC is located near Charleston – the Low Country part of the state. Hillbillies don’t come from the Low Country. They come from the Northwest part of SC and are usually descendants to Scoth-Irish.
@51 Doesn’t change my point.
Conservatives tell us we have to cut funding for education and programs that help the needy because states don’t have the money. One reason states don’t have the money is because giveaways to businesses continue to balloon exponentially, for example, Louisiana’s incentives to fracking drillers that increased from $285,000 in 2007 to $239 million in 2010.
http://www.economist.com/news/.....viding-tax
There are many problems with state “incentives” fo businesses. One of them is if your competitor gets a tax exemption or free land or worker training funds you don’t get, your business can’t compete because his costs are lower than yours, and you’ll be driven out of business. I’m sure it warms the hearts of small business owners to know they’re being taxed to put themselves out of businesses.
From 52,
Yes, but it proves you’re not all-knowing and wonderful as your pretend to be, day after day. It’s fun to show others you’re as unkowldgeable as anyone else about some things.
The Low Country of South Carolina and the tidal regions of neighboring Norh Carolina and Viginia were largely settled by the Anglicans (of Anglo-Saxon and Norman stock) and some French Protestants. The Piedmont Region of SC and NC saw a huge Influx of Scoth-Irish settlers, who were forced to move inland to find available farmland. The Celtic immigrants were descendants of Scots who migrated to Ireland to help the British oppress the Catholics of Ireland around 1607. It turns out the English eventually started treating the Scotch who came to the Ulster Plantation nearly as bad as they treated the Irish Catholics. So these “Scotch Irish” made their way to the American frontier to escape English oppression in Ulster.
Andrew Jackson’s family initially came to South Carolina from the Ulster Plantation. Also, later on, German immigrants joined the Scotch Irish in that part of South Carolina, eventually founding the town of Walhalla (the Anglicised version of the Germanic Valhalla).
Isn’t history fun?
Other things that happened on May 1, Amtrak got started. I am sure it was just a quirk of the timeline set when the legislation passed, although the same people who would have criticized it for that, have opposed it anyway.
Looks like May Day protests have gotten out of hand, and the stations are breaking into programming. The police had shown some restraint at first.
Looks like it has calmed down for now. Probably not as bad as last year.
On a side note, from watching the news, didn’t know the First Hill Streetcar construction was as far along as it was.
@55 Right, and South Carolina still has the same demographic makeup it had in 1607, because mobility hasn’t been invented yet.
KIRO 7 has the most balanced coverage of the downtown protests. KING 5 and KOMO 4 are just focusing on the violence,
while KIRO 7 is reporting the protesters’ message.
May Day Economics Lesson
Newsweek nails what’s wrong with the economy and why it can’t recover: “The big challenge facing companies … is that demand is weak — in the U.S., in Europe, and even in China.
“Companies have been ingenious about making money amid lethargic growth, and even more shrewd about doing so without sharing their bounty with workers. Corporate profits have soared from $1.1 trillion in 2008 to $1.95 trillion in 2012. As a percentage of gross domestic product, they’ve never been higher. The amount of cash on companies’ books has risen from $1.39 trillion in 2008 to $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2012—also a record.
“Meanwhile, U.S. median family income has actually fallen since 2009. … The divergence of wages and profits has been great news for stockholders.” [No kidding — I’m making 20% a year — RR] “But it’s hard for … firms to keep earnings growing if … sales growth wanes. “That’s happening now, in large measure because the workers of the world simply don’t have enough money in their pockets. …
“[R]eturning capital to shareholders is like giving water to people who already have an unlimited supply of champagne, Perrier, and freshly pressed pomegranate juice. It’s stimulus for the 1 percent—hedge funds, mutual funds, individual stock owners,” [and rabbits who never spend a dime of their stock market winnings but simply keep recycling it back into the market to make even more].
“Wall Street’s obsession with near-term profit is causing great companies like Apple and Walmart to skimp on long-term investment and underpay their employees,” notes Henry Blodget, the former technology stock analyst and current editor of Business Insider (and an Apple shareholder). “This might make some shareholders happy, but, perversely, it hurts the companies and the economy.”…
“If American companies were to deploy just 10 percent of their cash pile into higher wages, it would amount to a stimulus of nearly $200 billion — and that would more than counteract the negative impact of the payroll tax increase. … “Paying higher wages when you can afford to do so is excellent business karma. What goes around tends to come back around in time. … [Companies] should be able to grasp that.” [But don’t hold your breath — RR]
http://www.thedailybeast.com/n.....unity.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: OK, so I’m part of the problem, not part of the solution. But I’m small potatoes and what I do won’t change the economy. I’ve never been a big spender, and the pre-Bush economy did fine despite my penny-pinching ways. For years I’ve been asking on this blog: If businesses keep offshoring jobs and slashing wages, who will be left to buy the stuff they sell? And all I heard from the C suites was crickets chirping. When there are no workers, there are no customers. It’s amazing our corporate leaders don’t understand that.
When they are no workers, there are no customers.
Memorize that. It should be on every B-school final exam.
61) I saw Q13 mention that their had been a peaceful march earlier in the day.
@64 CNN reports 17 protesters were arrested and 8 police officers suffered minor injuries.
# 55: Mostly correct, except that it’s “Scots-Irish”, not “Scotch-Irish”. Scotch is a whiskey, Scots are people who drink a lot of whiskey.
Once in the U.S., the Scots-Irish performed much the same role they did in Ireland. They were tolerated by the English settlers and their descendents, mostly Anglicans, who had settled the Tidewater regions, as long as they kept moving west, where they served as a barrier between the native tribes and the more “sophisticated” colonists. They were Presbyterian rather than Anglican, but more importantly they had been hard fighters for generations.
As the English colonists expanded westward, the Scots-Irish were pushed into the Appalachian foothills, from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. The crest of the Appalachians was a border agreed to by England to preserve peace with the Native Americans, but the Scots-Irish soon moved over the mountain crests and into the fertile hunting grounds of Kentucky and Tennessee – causing a lot of animosity between the English and the Scots-Irish. During the Revolution many flocked to the Colonial armies, bringing with them their uncultured ways, hard-fighting traditions, and Kentucky (a/k/a Pennsylvania) rifles.
After the war, the Scots-Irish proved to be a fertile lot, and quickly spread west to the Mississipi, and South into what is now Georgia, Alabama, and Mississipi. To the north, they spread through western Pennsylvania and into the Ohio valley.
“except that it’s “Scots-Irish”, not “Scotch-Irish””
Scotch-Irish is correct. Do a search.