– I don’t know why I keep mentioning these and then not going, but there’s a Seattle Balloon Juice Meetup.
– So how long is it respectable to pretend that David Boardman was anything other than a right wing hack who survived at The Seattle Times for 30 years by being a right wing hack?
– You wouldn’t think this would be necessary to say, but in the last two days, I’ve seen 2 different cars that looked to me anyway to not be county vehicles on bike paths. Don’t do that.
– I haven’t had fruit flies yet this year (something something eat more fruit, Carl), but this is a neat idea for when they come.
In all the years I’ve worked in and around Seattle media – most of which have featured plenty of complaints about the Times and its personnel, and lots of chatter about David – I have never heard him described as a “right wing hack” or anything similar. By anyone. Until now.
Mind you, I’m not particularly a fan of his, and he’s unquestionably made some terrible decisions over the years (though leaving the Times isn’t one). And plenty of the Times’ bad institutional decisions tend to be the product of right wing hackery. But RWH has never been perceived as a Boardman thing by anyons I know. That sort of stuff comes more from the Blethens and from people brought in to satisfy the Blethens.
This is a paper that once had Michelle Malkin on its editorial board. That’s the sort of thing I think of with “Times” and “right wing hackery.” If you’re going to professionally impugn someone like that, don’t just throw it away as a one-liner. Back it up.
I just hope that Mr. Boardman in his new position finds he actually has any students to teach–both for his sake and ours.
Great article about the horror of police militarization and abuse:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-.....paging=off
This moronic drug war can’t end soon enough.
Deficit? What Deficit?
CNBC reports the U.S. Treasury ran a $117 billion surplus last quarter.
4 – The U.S. government posted an unexpectedly large budget surplus in June, a further sign of the rapid improvement in public finances that has taken the heat off Congress to find savings and raise the nation’s borrowing limit.
How sweet it is.. This will have klownservatives screaming “liberal plot” and tearing out clumps of hair from here to Miami.
Alpha klownservative krackpot Issa will try to save the day with another bullshit scandal to distract from this. He’ll fail.. That last one all but died with whimper.
@5 There’s a silver lining even for them. Their Kruggerands are worth $35 more today.
I probably shouldn’t say anything about how my stock collection is doing today, because that might piss somebody off.
Wow…
http://www.thenation.com/blog/.....udent-debt
A model for the entire country.. Greedhead student debt profiteers and klownservatives will attack this with everything they’ve got!
@8 It’s intriguing, but I have a couple of questions.
How would it work for students with athletic scholarships or veteran’s educational benefits?
And would it be mandatory for all students, or just a tuition-payment option? If the latter, it seems likely students going into low-paying occupations — teaching, social work, the arts, etc. — would be more likely to opt for it, while students aiming for business and finance degrees would opt out. How would that affect the program’s finances?
Considering student loan debt exceeds credit card debt, and Uncle Sam guarantees lenders will be repaid, banks won’t like losing the student loan business.
@4
The pubtards will no doubt now claim that there is a surplus because of the sequester and that it was their idea and was all along.
Sen. Rand Paul today defended a staffer who once praised John Wilkes Booth for assassinating President Lincoln, opposed allowing people who speak Spanish to immigrate to the U.S., and called himself “the Southern Avenger.” Paul denied the staffer, whom he employs as his social media director, is a racist and said he wouldn’t employ him if he was.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po.....rate-past/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Should a hospital employ Dr. Mengele if he pledged he isn’t performing medical experiments on children anymore?* At what point do you overlook a person’s past; and how much past can a person have before you don’t overlook it?
* I know for a fact he isn’t, because he’s dead. He drowned in 1979.
So some guy made a living as a radio shock jock in a southern state by waving the Confederate flag and praising the murder of President Lincoln, in a fit of youthful exuberance or out of economic necessity or whatever. Should that guy be working in a U.S. Senator’s office years later, even if he disavows his previous rantings and says he feels “embarrassed” by his youthful behavior? Considering that he said that stuff to public audiences on radio airwaves and in public appearances, probably making an impression on listeners that may endure to this day in the form of antisocial and racist attitudes and behavior, should disavowing it give him a clean slate? What do you think?
So some guy made a living as a radio shock jock in a southern state by waving the Confederate flag and praising the murder of President Lincoln, in a fit of youthful exuberance or out of economic necessity or whatever. Should that guy be working in a U.S. Senator’s office years later, even if he disavows his previous rantings and says he feels “embarrassed” by his youthful behavior? Considering that he said that stuff to public audiences on radio airwaves and in public appearances, probably making an impression on listeners that may endure to this day in the form of antisocial and racist attitudes and behavior, should disavowing it give him a clean slate? What do you think?
My guess is Sen. Paul may have a hard time keeping that guy on his payroll after this revelation.
House Republicans passed a farm bill today that’s DOA in the Senate. Unable to slash food stamp spending in a broad farm bill, they split off food stamps and passed farmer subsidies separately, figuring to axe food stamps later. This will hit a brick wall in the Senate and the president has pledged a veto.
In my opinion, House Republicans shouldn’t be paid their taxpayer-funded salaries. They’re wasting everyone’s time on legislation that has no chance of becoming law while Democrats control the Senate and White House. It’s nothing more than partisan grandstanding while the nation’s work is left undone. Like any other bunch of loafing employees, they shouldn’t be paid.
You know who might like to get a Farm Bill passed… into law? I think the farmers in Eastern Washington might like to get the Farm Bill done.
Good thing they’ve got legislative powerhouses like Eastern Washington’s 5th congressional district Representative and Chair of the House Republican Conference, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who is there to ensure ….
Get that?
This “leader” was “confident” a year ago that the caucus she leads would get it done.
And where are we a year later?
Nowhere!
Good for you, WA-05!
Adding to @16 above…
The link to McMorris Rodgers, Chair of the House Republican Conference, gives us this
Good for you WA-05!
4.
Ah yes Roger, but what you failed to mention is we are seeing rising interest rates, and now within a spitting distance of 17 trillion in debt which these rising interest rates will hit. When this happens sequestration and its effects will look like child’s play.
Also it does not take a Rocket Roger to see why Owebammacare’s employer mandate got shoved off past the 2014 election. Wait till you see the layoffs the year that toad lands. They have already started…see Wegmans grocers cuts part time employees health benefits.
PS your gas prices are about to take a wild jump. I counted 30 brand new Nissan Leafs being unloaded at the dealer today.
The costs of ignorance are a bliss.
Huh?
@ 19
The costs of ignorance are a bliss.
Bus-boy @18 must be having an orgasm every minute.
@1,
Geov, I generally trust your media criticism instincts I trust more than my own. So I’m going to expand on it, but wary of the first rule of holes I’ll start out more irenic.
The paper has done fine job keeping content. Sometimes I buy another local paper and the news section is so thin that it makes you wonder why they even bothered. That doesn’t happen with the Seattle Times, and it’s to his credit. As is much of the investigative reporting that goes on in the paper. Yay for all of that; it certainly wasn’t inevitable in any 21st century newsroom.
Still, if he’s responsible for that good, he surely has a responsibility for his paper making up lies about Darcy Burner’s education or at the very least not correcting them. For the paper making up quotes to oppose the head tax, and then not disciplining the reporter who did that (as far as I can tell from the outside). For their newsroom, not just editorial, petty nonsense against McGinn (I’m not saying McGinn should’t be criticized, Lord knows. I’m saying the way they do it isn’t about the legit criticism, it’s petty and pathetic).
Now, maybe that sort of thing is inevitable in a newsroom where Frank Blethen is a publisher, and it would make more sense to attack the tide for coming in and going out. But a lot of right wing hackyness happened on his watch, and if he couldn’t, wouldn’t, or just didn’t stand up to the publishers, the result is the same.
@18 “your gas prices”
You mean YOUR gas prices. I’m a rabbit, I hop everywhere, I don’t buy gas, I own stock in companies that sell it, who gladly take your money (the more, the better) and send me dividend checks (ditto). Thanks for your business, I appreciate it. Come see us again.
@18 “we are seeing rising interest rates”
No problemo. That didn’t stop my stocks from going up another $4,461.29 today, after Bernanke promised to keep the printing press running indefinitely. And if Uncle Sam needs more, the guy who paid $48.8 million for this chunk of graffiti-sprayed concrete can afford to pay more taxes.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news.....68791.html
@21 It used to be you needed a $150 million printing plant to publish your opinions. Now anyone can do it for the cost of an internet connection. And there’s only one guy in this town who’s stuck with a $150 million printing plant he can’t sell. Be happy you’re not him. I’d rather be almost anyone but Frank Blethen.
Something else I noticed noticed about the Quebec train accident. Last year, TRAINS Magazine did an issue on how railroads work, and one of the articles was on dispatching. The sidebar was how a small, regional does it. The example, Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic, and the more I read, it was not territory for a crude oil train. It’s mostly unsignaled, Dark Territory, operating under track warrants from the dispatcher, which they only have one on duty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_territory
London Heathrow Suspends Flights After Fire Involving Boeing 787
The rich are doing fine, thank you very much, and can afford to pay a little more in taxes, judging by what they spend on toys and collectibles.
http://www.nbcnews.com/busines.....6C10617955
Maybe the Great Recession should be called the Billionaires’ Recession, not only because they caused it, but also because they’re prospering mightily as a result of it.
@26 Should’ve built it with union labor. That’s what moving your factory to a right-to-work state gets you.
The Charles Koch Foundation is running an ad that claims if you make $34,000 a year, you’re one of the world’s richest people.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....81017.html
Of course, they’re comparing you with people in Haiti, Sierra Leone, and Somalia …
Meanwhile, Republicans keep fighting to block American citizens from voting in their own country.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....86546.html
Here’s the GOP program for America: Only Republicans are allowed to vote, only wage earners have to pay taxes, and your kids fight their wars.
Why would anyone in their right mind vote for that? Unless, of course, they’re a Republican …
1) Low wage outsourcing
2) ???
3) Profit!
Boeing Dreamliner 787 ‘forced to return’ to Manchester
Amazing how the Republican party is and continues to be such a kook magnet.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....seriously/
34)Wasn’t it Steve Schmidt’s idea to put Palin on the ticket because they needed a game changer? At least he admits the party is too far with kooks worse than Palin.
35 – you’re probably right, but I don’t think he realized what a kook Palin was until it was too late.
36)I remember when the movie came out, Nicole Wallace admitted she did not vote for her own party(but not for Obama either), after being the campaign aide that had to work with her.
“Court records show an Oregon man told police he was using his assault rifle as a crutch to help him get up from a couch at a friend’s apartment when it fired a burst through the ceiling and killed a little girl upstairs.”
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/.....-it-fired/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Morons shouldn’t have guns. If the Second Amendment says otherwise, it should be amended.
@38 Oh yeah, one more thing, he had an illegal machine gun.
I don’t believe his crutch story. I don’t believe he didn’t know it was a fully automatic weapon. I believe he pointed the rifle at the ceiling and pulled the trigger to show off, then made up an accident story when informed he had killed a child in the apartment above.
Who would dream their child would be killed by some jackass in the apartment below firing a machinegun at the ceiling?
There are too damn many kinds in this country, the wrong kind of guns, and the wrong people have them. If the Second Amendment prevents us from doing anything about it, then this country needs to amend or repeal the Second Amendment.
Who would ever dream their child would be killed by some jackass in the apartment below firing a machinegun into the ceiling?
There are too damn many guns in this country, the wrong kind of guns, and the wrong people have them. If the Second Amendment prevents us from doing anything about it, then this country needs to amend or repeal the Second Amendment.
This isn’t 1776 anymore. Few of us are subsistence hunters anymore. The Second Amendment has outlived its usefulness.
duplicate comment deleted by author
Goldy needs a new web host. This one doesn’t work right.
Turns out that the Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic was not doing that well before the accident. The oil train deal was a financial lifesaver, well, before last weekend at least. The previous owner, the Bangor and Aroostock, went bankrupt, and the paper mills that provided the traffic, were going under. Mr. Burkhardt had, at Wisconsin Central not only purchased ex-Soo line trackage in Wisconsin, he also purchased the Algoma Central in Ontario, and took advantage of privatization in New Zealand and the UK.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07.....1&
When he was forced out(or left, I am not sure), WC was acquired by Canadian National, which kept Algoma Central(and it’s Sault Saint Marie-Hearst, Ontario remote lifeline passenger train), but the overseas assets were sold off. The UK freight carrier English, Welsh, and Scottish railway was eventually acquired by DB Schenker, a division of Deutsche Bahn, and the New Zealand was sold to another owner, and then bought back by the government, and operates now as KIWIRAIL.
RR @ 42
The following is an exchange involving some libertarian friends of mine on Facebook:
Person 1:
Person 2:
Person 1:
Clearly no one ever thought to ask why there is such an “insane level of militarization of every damn local police force.”
A follow-up to@45, a little info on Mr. Burkhardt’s tenure as owner of the railroad in New Zealand. One rumor for his abrupt leaving WC, was that the stockholders wanted dividends, he wanted to invest in upgrades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranz_Rail