– Pro-Choice and Pregnant? Yeah, It’s Really Real
– Being a GOP presidential candidate gets you the opportunity to scam the elderly out of their homes, eventually.
– Wow, Councilmember O’Brien.
– The legislature should pass a resolution saying they don’t know if longer fire seasons caused by global warming are real.
Genesis 1:24-28
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 2:7-22
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.[…] And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Discuss.
SlateTV: Spiders falling from the sky.
Ann Telnaes: The elusive G.O.P. ObamaCare replacement.
Obama: Health Care in America:
Thom: The Good, The Bad and the Very Very Anisosthenically Ugly.
The 2016 Clown Procession:
Jon: Awkward moments between CNN’s Chris Cuomo and NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Farron Cousins: Sarah Palin—The candidate the GOP deserves.
Richard Fowler: Ben and Jerry’s delicious environmental mission.
Here is what you need to know about MERS.
Pelosi announces opposition to trade bill.
Forgotten Assholes of History: Money hungry witch hunter.
David Pakman: Glenn Beck quits America.
Pap: Mitch McConnell’s anti-American journey to spite Obama.
Thom: Kansas’s reagonomic disaster and Minnesota’s economic miracle.
Obama sometimes responds to letters that call him an idiot.
VSauce: The Moon Terminator Illusion:
SlateTV: What are the chances of getting hit by asteroid?
Officer Friendly:
Young Turks: Why Dems (w/ GOP help) torpedoed Obama’s big evil trade deal.
Reid: GOP governing ‘crisis by crisis’.
Kimmel: This week in unnecessary censorship.
Thom: Listen when Greenpeace says “Shell NO”.
Mental Floss: Does hitting the snooze button help?
Pap and Sam Seder: Red states are screwed if Obamacare is repealed.
PsychoSuperMom: Voter fraud is (still) a fraud.
Farron Cousins: The Republican War on the Poor™ continues.
Thom: The Good, The bad, and the very very bathetically ugly.
Maddow: NH Republicans reject FAUX News as debate moderator.
Songify the News: Of murder and catfish.
WaPo: Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, phase I.
Is this Cig-ghazi?
Rummy Raises His Ugly Head:
Mental Floss: Misconceptions about the weather.
White House: West Wing Week.
Young Turks: Hastert’s pedophile obsession proves gross hypocrisy.
Thom: The Good, The Bad and The Very Very Tenebrificly Ugly.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
I don’t even understand what Dori Monson is trying to say here.
I have good news for the wildlife of our state. They’re getting their own overpass on I-90.
I don’t know enough about the overpass but roads are pretty bad for the environment so something like that to mitigate some of the problems is probably a good thing. There are reasonable discussions about cost and about what else we could do with that money, I suppose. But that isn’t really the issue here. The issue is superlatives:
The world’s most wildlife-friendly highways.
I don’t want to be obsessive here, but it comes up later: Most wildlife-friendly according to who?
How come everything we do has to be a world record? The [Seattle] tunnel was going to be two feet smaller in diameter, which would have made it the second largest tunnel in the world. They said no, no, no – let’s add two feet so that it can be the biggest drill ever. They were so obsessed with a world record sized drill that they cared more about that then building a drill that would actually drill.
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I was pretty critical of the tunnel machine for a long time, but I’m pretty sure Dori just made that story up.
Everything has to be a world record because they’re spending our money. I could set all kinds of world records if I could just spend other people’s money to achieve my goals.
Something something wasting Bonneville International’s money on the dipshittiest radio show.
Maybe we don’t need to have the world’s most wildlife-friendly highway ever.
Well, there are places that have more fragile ecosystems. Islands and like rainforests and shit. But I think it makes more sense to see the value of the project on its own merits rather than pointing out that you could do something similar in the Brazilian Amazon. Also, we didn’t answer who deemed it that. So if you want, you can just call it the antepenultimate and nobody will care.
This overpass is going to cost $6.2 million. Watch and see how much it ends up costing. It’s supposed to open in 2019 and cost $6.2 million. I’m going to guess 2023 and $20 million. I’ll go triple the cost that they’re estimating right now.
Calendared. I’m sure he’ll let us know if WSDOT’s prediction turns out to be correct. Also, is this a standard we can apply to all road projects or just the ones that don’t have to have safety improvements or to account for the weight of moving cars and trucks, so are probably less likely to come in over budget?
Last week, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, a very modest reform of the NSA’s surveillance capabilities, still leaving much of what they can do intact.
The main reform is the end of the bulk collection of metadata under Section 215, which has been ruled illegal in multiple courts since Edward Snowden fully disclosed its existence two years ago. In its place will be a system where telecoms archive their data and NSA can only pull metadata after going through the FISA Court that will have a privacy advocate overseeing the proceedings. Although there’s a provision that could allow for a six month “transition period” to this new protocol.
In looking at these changes, Bill Scher argues that civil libertarians lost:
In an interview with Democracy Now just before passage, Edward Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald triumphantly declared “the only reason why the Patriot Act is going to be reformed is because one person was courageous enough, in an act of conscience, to come forward.” But minutes later, Greenwald conceded that “it leaves overwhelmingly undisturbed the vast bulk of what the NSA does, and it’s very unlikely that there will be another reform bill, which means that the NSA’s core mission and core activities will remain unreformed and unchanged.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who opposed the USA Freedom Act as too tough on the NSA, thundered on the floor before the vote that the bill amounted to a “resounding victory for Edward Snowden.” But the civil libertarian two-stepping exposes the truth: Snowden lost.
As one former intelligence official told the Daily Beast, “What no one wants to say out loud is that this is a big win for the NSA, and a huge nothing-burger for the privacy community.” Turns out one of the main reform planks – having telecommunications companies instead of the NSA collect personal metadata in bulk – is a logistical efficiency, not a restraint on surveillance. “It’s very expensive and very cumbersome,” said the official. “Good! Let them take them. I’m tired of holding on to this,” said another.
What this reminds me of is the debate in the wake of Obamacare’s passage. In many ways, Obamacare fell way short of the ideal health care legislation. Obama conceded significant reforms in order to get something passed, making deals that left significant inefficiencies and profiteering in the health care industry intact.
But the passage of Obamacare was a victory in some real ways. It was a baby step in the right direction and it put to rest the idea that health care reform of any kind was impossible. The passage of the USA Freedom Act is a victory in the same way. It changes the longstanding dynamic towards giving government agencies greater leeway in national security matters and it put the defenders of an unrestrained national security apparatus on the defensive for the first time in many years.
The “former intelligence official” quoted above seems not to understand the significance of the reform as well. The main problem with the Section 215 collection of metadata wasn’t simply the existence of the metadata itself. It was the potential for that information to be abused. The changes implemented make it harder for NSA to cross that line. That’s a victory, even if it’s a small one in a giant box of other needed reforms.
News items from the last two weeks…
[Read more…]
– Getting names is making East Link really feel concrete
– There is literally no problem on earth that lowering taxes on business people will not solve.
– Ping pong tables in parks is kind of fun, but I don’t know why we have to ruin it with pretending it’s going to stop crimes.
One of the most infuriating arguments against Roe v Wade is from people who claim that they’re for abortion rights, but wish it had come from the states, legislature by legislature. The idea being, I guess, that women, trans men and other people who can get pregnant controlling their own body should be subject to the whims of legislatures and not a fundamental right. It always seemed like such a dodge to me.
But now that state legislatures and Congress are proposing and enacting more and more anti-choice legislation, and at least some courts are upholding them, it’s surely time for the people who have been making that argument to step up and oppose these things legislatively.
Because now Texas is pushing TRAP laws and the court isn’t intervening. Now 20 week bans, pre-viability, are sprouting up across the country. Now states are banning medication abortions with consequences. Now, if you care about abortion, but for some ungodly reason think it has to be legislative victories, you can act. Abortion rights are coming under attack, and it’s time, it’s past time, for pro-choice people to fight back.
So sure, in Washington we’re fighting to increase access. But it isn’t like the Reproductive Rights Parity act has passed. Or for that matter that the budget will be anything like friendly to reproductive rights. Of course the main reason to oppose these anti-choice measures is that they’re harmful to the people who live in those states who can get pregnant. But now the people who have been waiting for abortion to be a legislative thing, can finally get in the game. Unless it was just an excuse not to participate in the first place.
It’s maybe not the most shockingly dishonest thing the Seattle Times editorial board has ever printed—that would be this. But in terms of sheer disrespect for the intelligence of their readers, it’s hard to sink any lower than this unapologetic libel of Mayor Ed Murray’s proposed Move Seattle levy:
The size of Move Seattle is breathtaking. The property-tax bill for a $450,000 house would nearly double, to about $275 a year. That won’t help rapidly escalating rents or middle-class homeowners dealing with rising home values.
And you know what else won’t help rapidly escalating housing costs? Lying.
To be clear, Move Seattle would not double your property-tax bill. It wouldn’t even come close. It would double the amount you’re paying on the expiring Bridging the Gap levy, but that amounts to only a $145 increase on a $450,000 home—just 3.3 percent of the total property-tax bill (and a mere .03 percent of the value of your home)—not the 100 percent increase that the editors imply. Big difference.
To understand how breathtaking this lie is, imagine if “Property-Tax” Bill was an actual living, breathing human being. The editors’ assertion is so clearly erroneous, misleading, and defamatory that Bill could easily sue the paper for libel, and win big!
No doubt the proposed levy deserves careful scrutiny; all levies do. But so does the editors’ larger implication that Seattle homeowners are overtaxed: “Seattle is the city that doesn’t say no to taxes,” the editors emphasize in a pull-quote.
And yet according to the tax records on my own median-value home, my property-tax rate has actually gone down over the past decade, from 1.06 percent of assessed value in 2004 to only 0.96 percent in 2014! Compared to a lot of other cities, that’s a bargain, especially considering that we don’t even have an income tax. Despite rising property values, in raw dollars, my property-tax bill has barely outpaced inflation.
Yes, we pass a lot of levies here in Seattle, and we tend to pass them with ease. But these levies are constantly expiring. So while it may feel like we’re always being asked to raise our own taxes, our effective property-tax rate is actually quite low, and has remained low over time. In fact, tack on this allegedly “breathtaking” Move Seattle levy, and my property-tax rate would still be less than it was back in 2004.
Not that you’d ever know this from reading the blatantly misleading op-ed pages of the Seattle Times.
– Everybody, just stop defending the Duggars, or trying to deflect blame onto liberals or whatever. Thanks.
– The weekend rollout of bus announcements makes me think Metro knew there might be some backlash. But still, good on them for correcting their course.
– Winning Hearts and Minds by Pointing Guns at them
– This book looks great. Anyone else going to Mamrie Hart’s book signing tomorrow?
For over ten year, the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally has served as a gathering place for people to talk politics, brainstorm, introduce new candidates, watch debates and SOTU addresses. All over a beer. So please join us this evening as we do it, once again.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks stop by earlier for dinner.
Can’t make it to Seattle on Tuesday night? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. The Tri-Cities and Redmond chapters also meet tonight. On Wednesday the Bellingham chapter meets. The Bremerton, Spokane, and Kent chapters meet on Thursday. And next Monday, the Aberdeen and Yakima chapters meet.
There are 190 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.
– I know, I said no more puns. What can you do?
– Jesus is Not a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card
– But, I thought Ed Murray was just concerned with ethics.
– I just can’t with the McKinney story.
– Wells Fargo’s corporate practices don’t make up for an ad, but that ad is pretty sweet, and if that’s your idea of moral decay, you’re the worst.
– New Hampshire’s legislature is pretty ridiculous, but at least Obama managed to salvage some sort of civics lesson.
– With the Women’s World Cup, the whole country can have the same uncomfortable feeling Reign fans (myself included) have about cheering Hope Solo.
Ephesians 6:5
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
Discuss.
The Texas crazyfest.
Thom: America…No longer home of the brave but the scared shitless.
Jon celebrates the expiration of certain provisions of the Patriot Act.
Hillary slams GOP for war on voting, calls for universal registration:
David Pakman: The progressivization of America?
Sam Seder: Republicans are still scared of the Lego movie.
Slate: The world’s first murder case.
A Jon Stewart tribute.
Ann Telnaes: George W. Bush’s popularity recovers.
Mental Floss: Misconceptions about sharks.
White House: West Wing Week.
Maher: GOP…stop it with the phony cries of Christian persecution already.
Thom: The state of surveillance in America.
Shaheen to Obama: Put a Woman on the $20 Bill.
David Pakman: Nebraska overrides Governor’s veto, ends death penalty.
Mark Fiore: Who created ISIS?
Sam Seder: Gov. Scott Walker’s bullshit reason for forcing women to get ultrasounds.
The 2016 Clown Convention:
Young Turks: Hate rally goes badly for the haters.
Congressional hits and misses of the week:
Thom: The media’s “wave of silence” on Sen. Bernie Sanders (and why).
Scientists grow mini brains in the lab.
Jon: How Muslims can be less scary and more American.
Farron Cousins: The GOP is losing voters in droves…to death
Thom: The Good, The Bad and the very very Uxorovalently Ugly.
Mental Floss: 24 Food Origins.
Minute Physics: Upside down mountains in real life.
Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship.
Chris Cillizza: A look inside the Hastert indictment.
Thom: The Good, The Bad, and the Very Very Mollescently Ugly.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
I’ve been meaning to tear into Danny Westneat for his credulous puff piece on the state senate Republican majority, but haven’t had the time. Fortunately, Bill Lyne at the United Faculty of Washington State blog has done it for me:
On [higher education], he’s convinced that “the Republicans blew the Democrats out of the water. The GOP,” he tells us, “is proposing to slash tuition but at the same time send tens of millions of dollars to the universities to make up the difference.” Representative Hunter said the same thing about this that we here at the blog tried to say to Westneat the last time he slobbered over the Republican tuition proposal: It’s not true. The Republicans say they provide enough money to cover the tuition cut, but the cold, hard numbers in their budget say they do not. Go read it, Danny. Better yet, call the university budget offices and see what they say. The Republican rhetoric on tuition sounds great, but the gap between that rhetoric and the reality of their budget would leave lots of students actually paying more in tuition because it would take them longer to get their degrees.
Read the whole thing. It’s worth it.
As for Westneat, well, sigh. I know he likes to think of himself as an independent voice adrift in a sea of partisan bickering—an equal opportunity eye-roller, or something. But more often than not, he’s just part of the problem, cynically working to erode the public’s faith in government rather than working to offer and advance creative solutions.
Which is a shame, because Westneat has both the talent and the platform to make a difference.
– Oil, gas, coal industries want Washington, British Columbia as permanent home ports
– I get what Goldy’s point is here, but Goldman Sachs would be a lot more creditable if they hadn’t recently helped crash the world economy.
– Chart of the Day: Novels about men are more likely to win major literary awards
– There was a Comcast outage recently, and if you’re upset, here are some things you can do about it.
– Here’s hoping there’s some Safe Routes to School money in the final budget.
– Everyone keeps saying how good Daredevil is. I’ll have to check it out.
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!