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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Red State Update meets Ann Coulter, James Carville, Paul Begala, “Edward Snowden” at Politicon.

Gulahallat Eatnamiin: We Speak Earth.

A Congress in Chaos:

Adam Ruins Everything: The real reason jaywalking is illegal.

Stephen Colbert and Jack Black: My Kind Of America:

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about hiccups.

The 2016 Clown Show:

Young Turks: FAUX News “terrorism expert” arrested for pretending to be CIA.

Tina Fey for President.

Alabama Disenfranchisement:

Larry Wilmore’s big gay ice cream sitdown with Nancy Pelosi.

Young Turks: Republican politician wants guns taken away from Black people.

Dems Debating:

Thom: The Good, the Bad & the Very, Very Demersally Ugly!

Mental Floss: 22 Brian Facts.

David Pakman: Presidential predictions you can bet on.

Political Planned Parenthood:

Young Turks: One toddler shooting each week in 2015.

Chris Hayes: Seth Meyers and political comedy.

White House: West Wing Week.

Benghaaaaazzzzzzzzzziiiiiiii!!!!11!1!!

Seth Meyers: Jokes of the week

Congressional Hits and Misses: Best of Paul Ryan.

Back To The Future in actual 2015.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Open Thread 10.16

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– You may have heard of the Mother Jones – Frank VanderSloot lawsuit. Well, even though Mother Jones won, they could use your money.

– The gender-swapped Twilight sounds like it doesn’t do what it set out to do.

– I know Banks wants to win this election, but “you’re not from here” is so not OK.

– The GOP staffers on the Benghazi committee buying guns on taxpayer’s time is the most GOP story imaginable.

– I think there ware some 13th amendment issues.

– Lamar Odom is not a punchline. He’s someone who has lived in a state of self-medication as a means of self-preservation. Now he’s fighting just to live. Unless you are sending out prayers for his survival, please just shut the hell up. That goes for everyone from the bottom-feeding Piers Morgan to the random Twitter egg. Too many people are too destroyed by this to have to sense your bile. Be better than that for them. Be better than that for Lamar Odom. Be better than that for everyone who carries the weight of tragedy yet still makes others happy to be alive.

Did the $200,000 Anti-Jon Grant PAC Ever Intend to Spend $200,000?

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Civic Square rendering

Architectural rendering of Triad Development’s ironically named “Civic” Square.

When two independent expenditure campaigns were announced last week, one explicitly pro Seattle City Council president Tim Burgess (“United for Tim”) and one explicitly against Burgess’s challenger, former Tenant’s Union leader Jon Grant (“Seattle Needs Ethical Leaders”), I wasn’t the only one to read this as a sign that Seattle’s business establishment was very nervous about Burgess’s reelection prospects. Seattle Needs Ethical Leaders was on the record promising to spend about $200,000, while the insider buzz had United for Tim budgeting at least the same. That’s an awful lot of money to spend on an incumbent who is already outspending his challenger by six to one.

But now in the wake of the Triad shakedown scandal it appears we all may have been half-fooled: that “Seattle Needs Ethical Leaders” was never more than an unethical ruse.

Of course, the PAC’s threatened $200,000 war chest never appeared—and it never will appear—and while some might attribute this collapse to fallout from the shakedown scandal, it is reasonable to suspect if the committee’s sole purpose was to facilitate a shakedown in the first place. Think about it. The committee has its spokesperson go public with a $200,000 budget, while whispering that it would be accusing Grant of some sort of personal ethical lapse. Was the money ever real? Or was it just an elaborate political bluff created by those hoping to profit from a potentially lucrative real estate deal?

(Or even more conspiratorially, perhaps it was an effort to entrap Grant in an ethical lapse? Hmm. That might explain the otherwise inexplicable creation of a text message trail.)

To be clear, Burgess’s backers are clearly nervous. United for Tim has already raised $218,000, most of it from a Chamber of Commerce funded PAC. But that other $200,000? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was always a fiction. Which means this shakedown scandal could be a lot more scandalous than it first appears.

Open Thread 10-14

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– But there was not a single mention of the Duwamish people — by Mr. Williams or by the host — in the entire seven-minute interview. There was no talk of violence, greed, or racism, despite the fact that the rivers the Duwamish had used for sustenance and travel for thousands of years were either filled with dirt from the razed hills or poisoned by all of the rapid “progress.”

– I don’t know enough about the Export-Import bank to have much of an opinion. But this discharge petition story makes me think maybe we don’t need a Speaker of the House. Maybe we just do discharge petitions to get all legislation to the floor.

– What the crap is going on this City Council election cycle?

– I haven’t read them yet, but here are The Stranger’s endorsements.

First Democratic Debate Open Thread

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Have at it!

5:54: I’ll throw in some random stuff like…


You know…Vincent Foster.

6:00: Anderson is to Hillary as Megyn was to Donald?

6:06: Republican Debate: “Raise your hand if you believe in Evolution.
Democratic Debate: “Raise your hand if you believe in Capitalism.

6:25: Goldy: “She is better than anyone else in the room.”

Cyberwarfare? Really?

6:46 Back from intermission. Time for some emails.

6:48: “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about the damn emails!” An that was not Clinton…

6:49: Bernie just earned himself an Ambassadorship.

6:50: “Secretary Clinton, do you want to respond?” “No.” We have ourselves a WINNER!

6:52: ‘Black lives matter” question interrupted by a “Child Abduction Emergency”.

6:54: Where do the get the Atari computers to run those Amber Alert notices?!?

7:08: Chafee just had a slow motion “oops” moment trying to explain his vote.

New York Alki

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So, first there was this. And now, this:

Seattle City Council candidate Jon Grant claims the developer of a project across from City Hall tried to shake him down, and a text message sent to former Mayor Mike McGinn reveals some of what went on.

Grant says Brett Allen, a senior vice president at Triad Capital Partners, approached him at a Saturday campaign event and asked for help settling a lawsuit brought by Grant’s former employer.

Grant says he was told the payoff could be that a new political committee gearing up to spend heavily against him would go away.

On the one hand, I appreciate the way Seattle’s political establishment is attempting to make me—an expatriate of Philadelphia and New York’s corrupt political machines—feel right at home. But on the other hand, what the fuck?

It’s one thing to use the threat of a big independent expenditure campaign to intimidate a council candidate, but it’s another thing to preserve the details of that threat in a goddamn text message. That’s just incompetent. I mean, if Seattle’s cabal of downtown developers can’t even shake down a politician correctly, how can we trust them to properly develop downtown Seattle?

A Debate Edition of Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottle

This evening there will be a special Debate Edition of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. Please join us at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle, for a Democratic debate-watching party.

You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Our normal starting time is 8:00 pm, but the debate “pre-game show” starts at 5:30 PDT, and the debate itself starts at 6:00 PDT. So join us early for this one.




Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities and Redmond chapters also meet. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. On Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets. And next Monday, the Aberdeen and Yakima chapters meet.

There are 183 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are good there’s a chapter meeting near you.

Open Thread 10-12

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– Had a more interesting conversation about Mara Willaford and Marissa Johnson with my Real Change vendor than with like 90% of Bernie Sanders supporters.

– At a certain time, the GOP are going to have to find a new fake Clinton scandal. Maybe they can go back to crack pipe Christmastreegate.

– Yet, because the party has leaped so far to the right, they have been unable to perform basic functions of government, and have to end up relying on Democrats to keep them propped up, requiring that the fantasies they’ve promised base voters have to stay off the table to keep those votes.

– It’s too bad that Disability Rights Washington is suing Seattle, but sometimes those sorts of suits are necessary.

– Seattle radio gets a mention in Obama’s press pool report. Oh, also the President was in town.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Matthew Filipowicz: Wall Street reacts to TPP agreement.

Both sides of the Clinton email scandal make their case.

David Pakman: Alabama passes voter ID, then closes ID offices in black Counties

The 2016 Clown Festival:

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about the ocean.

Farron Cousins: Racist right wingers are the biggest threat to America today.

Vladimir Putin can do anything he wants to do.

Congressional hits and misses of the week.

Tom Hartman: California to vote on Citizens United.

The New (Anti-)McCarthyism:

Roy Zimmerman: Roy’s birthday AND the end of the world.

Young Turks: Brisol Palin needs to STFU about free birth control.

David Pakman: Legal group representing Kim Davis is declared a hate group.

Thom: ALEC’s 2016 agenda.

Matthew Filipowicz with Julianna Forlano: The problem with gerrymandering.

Honest Political Ads: Health Care costs.

Gunz:

Ann Telnaes: Which way will the Supreme Court swing this term?

Mental Floss: 24 ridiculous lawsuits.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

openthread 10-9

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– So I got an abortion. Just that once. I’ve never regretted it. And I never will. NEVER. And I refuse to apologize for it. It was 110 percent the best thing to do at that time. Not that it was “easy.” Mom offered to go with me to the clinic, but that meant she’d have to make a 10-hour road trip. “No need,” I told her. I would be okay.

– If a mass shooting causes you to smile, you’re doing life wrong.

– I, for one, am looking forward do Lindsey Graham apologizing for his vote against Sandy relief any day now. Or at least providing an explanation.

– Thanks in large part to the effort of Belltown residents and pinball players, the Landmark Preservation Board voted last night to designate the Wayne Apartment Buildings on numerous criteria.

– In an open thread a while ago, I mentioned that a group was putting on several Brecht plays but I wasn’t interested because none of them were Mother Courage. Well, the 0 people who remember that, Seattle Shakespeare are putting on Mother Courage.

What’s Next, Bruce? Walking-Around Money?

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Seattle City Council member Bruce Harrell was look awfully pleased with himself at last week's 37th LD Dems endorsement meeting.

Seattle City Council member Bruce Harrell was look awfully pleased with himself at last week’s 37th LD Dems endorsement meeting.

Seattlish has the scoop on some very shady goings on in my own political backyard:

Bruce Harrell’s campaign may be in some hot water following allegations that they essentially bought the 37th District Dems endorsements for both him and Pamela Banks.

An SEEC complaint alleges that, before the deadline to become a voting member of the organization in time for endorsements, 15 new memberships were paid for in one batch, with sequential money orders purchased at the same location.

It gets sketchier: These new memberships came on the heels of the Harrell campaign calling and asking if it would be OK for them to pay for new memberships (they were told it was not). … Just after the vote, it was determined that at least five of the new members shouldn’t have been permitted to vote at all, because, per the 37th Dems themselves, they didn’t even live in the 37th LD.

This is the sort of sneaky, manipulative Democratic machine politics that might earn Harrell fear and/or respect in Chicago or New Jersey or my native Philadelphia, but here in squeaky-clean Seattle, not so much. In fact, it pretty much confirms the worst suspicions of the disaffected, young, left-leaning voters Democrats so desperately need to bring to the polls.

It is to say the least ironic for establishment Democrats who take such offense at Kshama Sawant’s insinuations of corruption to respond to her campaign with, you know, actual corruption. (And yes, legal issues aside, I consider this sort of flagrant violation of both the spirit and letter of the LD’s rules to be a form of political corruption.)

To be clear, I’m taking this personally, and not just because I’m a passionate Sawant supporter. This is my LD. And I hate the way this is tearing my LD apart—especially the mean-spirited behind-the-scenes attacks on LD members who dare to question the obviously compromised integrity of the endorsement process.

I’ve always tried not to cover internal Democratic Party politics, and I don’t want to start now. But man, the stories I could tell. Just sayin’.

Open Thread 10/7

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I’m feeling much better than Monday, but I’ve been mostly off the Internet, so no links. I’ll probably have a real Open Thread on Friday and hopefully a regular post or two in the rest of the week.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottlePlease join us this evening for a feast of politics…and a beer at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks stop by even earlier for dinner.




Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. The Long Beach, Tri-Cities and West Seattle chapters also meet tonight. The Lakewood chapter meets on Wednesday. And the Bremerton, Spokane, and Kent chapters meet on Thursday.

There are 183 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are good there’s a chapter meeting near you.

Stuff

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I know everyone has covered Jeb Bush saying “stuff happens” about shootings. Also, it’s a national story, and HA is primarily a Washington State blog. But this post has been rattling around in my mind for a few days. So maybe it’s the cough syrup talking, but I think the most offensive thing about it is that he used the minced oath.

He could have said “shit happens” because that’s the phrase that it’s meant to evoke, but he didn’t. He said stuff. He thought you and I and everyone who could hear him or listen to what he had to say would be offended if he had said “shit.” That him swearing would hurt him, so — as a politician — he had to treat everyone like a 10 year old.

Compare that to the context. He didn’t feel that he had to come up with a way to comfort the dead, let alone come up with a plan to prevent more deaths when he’s president. He didn’t think it would be offensive to just assume a future of regular mass shootings.

You’d hate to be a parent and have to explain that a presidential candidate thought saying “shit” was OK, but letting them know that they or their friends could die of a gunshot wound at any time while at school is easy? The contrast between a taboo on saying the word “shit” and being perfectly fine with flippancy about mass death and trauma is really striking.

And not for nothing, but mass shootings are shit. They’re shit no matter where they happen but they’re even more shit when they happen in schools.

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