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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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The gun lobby lap dogs of Congress.

Young Turks: Obamacare’s worst nightmare hilariously coming true for Republicans.

Chris Hayes: Mr. President, “Don’t touch my girlfriend!”:

Thom: Fukushima radiation on the West Coast.

A Nation Is (Still)Born

There’s help: creepy British child syndrome.

Mental Floss: 29 dumb facts about deserts.

Young Turks: Young hot women should date, not vote, says FAUX News.

Sam Seder: George Carlin finally gets his “way”.

John Oliver: Translators.

White House: West Wing Week.

Political Ebola:

Chris Hayes and Howard Dean: Vermont’s funniest gubernatorial debate moments.

Debate crowd laughs at carpetbagger Scott Brown (via Crooks and Liars).

ONN exclusive: A one-on-one interview with GOD.

Alex Wagner: Four Blackwater guards who murdered 17 civilians are convicted.

David Pakman: Louie Gohmert discusses gay massages to argue against gays in the military.

Young Turks: His-Panic.

The Republican War on Low Wage Workers:

Mark Halperin critiques Joni Ernst’s “closing” ad (with hogs) (via Crooks and Liars).

Thom: America’s lost generation.

Ed and Pap: Republicans blocking the vote at all costs.

Maddow: Alabama top Republican indicted on corruption.

Harry Shearer’s: “Nixon’s The One”.

Young Turks: Bill-O-the-Clown explains votes for Democrats.

The Asshats of Alaska:

Maddow: Late ‘churn’ in voting rules sows confusion.

Sam Seder: How bad is GOP Governor Paul LePage.

Alex Wagner: Ted CRUZ goes totally wacko over marriage equality.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about food.

James Rustad: #StopTheGOP theme song:

Ed, Pap, and Joy: A voter’s guide to telling when Rick Scott is lying.

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

Now Is Exactly the Right Time to Politicize Gun Violence

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Dare to connect today’s tragic shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School to the availability of, you know, guns, and gun rights advocates will excoriate you for politicizing a tragedy. But of course, the immediate wake of yet another tragic shooting is always exactly the right time to debate the wisdom of our gun culture, and the public policies that sustain it.

After all, if someone were to somehow die in a background check gone horribly wrong, you can be sure the NRA crowd would be screaming about it. So there is no shame in pointing out the role of the gun in this tragic shooting.

Our goal should be to make future gun tragedies less likely. If that requires a painful conversation, so be it.

GOP Endorsements

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In case you were wondering how to vote on the initiatives, vote the opposite of this:

VOTE YES ON INITIATIVE I-591– The WSRP joins the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs (WACOPS), the Washington State Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors Association (WSLEFIA), and 7 county sheriffs to support I-591. I-591 protects our national guidelines which prohibit the state from confiscating firearms from law abiding citizens without due process. Initiative I-591 would also prevent government interference in temporary gun loans to friends or relatives, and blocks the state from creating a universal gun registry that would set the stage for future confiscation.

Look, if you’re going to loan a murder weapon to someone, the state shouldn’t be involved. It’s especially true if you’re deluded enough to believe that the state is somehow in the process of setting “the stage for future confiscation.” Honestly, saying out loud that you think the state might “set the stage for future confiscation” is proof beyond proof that you don’t deserve a gun, and the state should take it away. They won’t, of course, but they should at that point.

VOTE NO ON INITIATIVE I-594 – The WSRP joins the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs (WACOPS), Washington State Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors Association (WSLEFIA), and 17 county sheriffs in opposing I-594. While supporters of I-594 claim it is about “background checks,” actually it is an 18-page document of complex regulations and restrictions that pose a severe danger to our Second Amendment rights, and criminalizes the actions of law-abiding gun owners. None of the modern mass shootings would have been prevented by the regulations in this initiative. I-594 would expand the state government database of lawful hand gun owners, and in sweeping language it would severely restrict private loans and transfers of guns between friends or relatives.

Um, isn’t “criminalizes the actions of law-abiding gun owners” an oxymoron? I mean if what they’re doing becomes criminal, and they keep doing it, then they’re no longer law-abiding. Unless you think any regulation on guns “criminalizes the actions of law-abiding gun owners” and if that’s the case, then maybe you aren’t in a position to talk intelligently about potential gun regulations. Also, it wouldn’t restrict the transfer of guns between anyone, it would mean that you’ll have to fill out some paperwork some times.

VOTE NO ON INITIATIVE I-1351 – The WSRP supports our school teachers. However, this initiative in the guise of “reducing class size,” actually requires four billion dollars of extra spending in the next biennium with two-thirds going to administration and overhead. This budget busting initiative provides no funding mechanism for this additional spending, so it would lead to tax increases and pressure to impose a state income tax.

We support school teachers, but not at the cost of doing anything to support school teachers. We support the idea of school teachers in the abstract. We support the political good will that comes with saying you support school teachers. We support looking like we care about education.

Also, but not for nothing this paragraph pretty casually admits that you can’t have lower class sizes without an income tax. The state GOP basically can’t come up with non-income tax related ways we might pay for this initiative. I thought there was all that waste fraud and abuse just lying around to save us. Turns out, no.

Open Thread 10/23

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– A suspension of sweeps of Tent City 3 is great news indeed. Now maybe the city can work on more permanent solutions to homelessness.

– With no further ado, I give you the ten best reasons to ban me from the Bay Area Science Festival after I retweeted a tweet that linked to a blog post revealing a horrible thing someone else did:

– A more walkable Olympia would be nice.

– Artist stitches catcalls into beautiful needlework

– Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ Q&A about innovative policies won’t answer questions about innovative polices.

– Since I mentioned unnecessarily quoting the founders last week, I don’t even understand why you’d go out of your way to misquote them.

Weird Clint Didier

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This falls more under the category of bizarre amusement than actual controversy, but in the Republican–on–Republican battle in Washington’s 4th Congressional District, something weird happened. And I don’t simply mean the existence of Clint Didier as a possible future Congressman from Washington state. No…this weirdly amusing thing comes from a “PAC backed by former Republican U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton” that produced this ad against Didier:

Didier: “Get your ham radio. Get it in a metal box and get it buried in the ground!”

Narrator: “The more you listen, the weirder Clint Didier sounds.”

Yep. Can’t argue with that.

So…I’m a ham radio operator. And a pretty active one, at that. Some of my ham acquaintances on a list server I belong to were outraged by their perception that the ad implied that ham radio was weird.

But what is weird is Clint Didier. I don’t know the full context of the quote, but putting a ham radio in a metal box and burring it in the ground doesn’t make for a very good radio or for bountiful farming.

It sounds to me like Clint is some kind of wackjob prepper with a dose of paranoia, and he probably doesn’t know squat about ham radio, emergency communications, or disaster readiness.

Sure enough…a search of the FCC database reveals that Clint Didier is not a licensed amateur radio operator.

At least not under his REAL name….

Open Thread 10/20

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– It turns out SPD officer’s nonsense lawsuit was nonsense.

– Guns are a health issue because when people get shot it does all sorts of bad things to their health, like kills them or paralyzes them or, at best, seriously wounds them. Anyway, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy would not be out there confiscating everyone’s guns. Too bad. He tweeted something.

– Here’s hoping the red bus lane on Battery actually works.

– GIF-splanation is my favorite new word.

– Everything Old Is Nuts Again

– Well, I’m officially looking forward to No Cities to Love.

RIP u(SP)?

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I almost wrote this post a couple weeks ago, after it had been pointed out that once-dominant righty blog (un)Sound Politics hadn’t seen a new post since mid-September, and only a handful of posts over the months prior. Now it appears to be totally offline:

RIP u(SP)

Guess that makes me the last man standing.

Ironically, I owe a fair amount of my own blogging success to u(SP) frontman Stefan Sharkansky, who stupidly got into a pissing match with me immediately following the 2004 election and during the bitter, months-long contest over the gubernatorial results. It was u(SP) that dominated the local political blogosphere early on, but by casting me as the enemy Stefan helped elevate HA into the role of the state’s premier liberal blog. And as Stefan gradually revealed himself to be a little bit crazy and a lot bit wrong, it was HA that ultimately rose to a position of influence as u(SP)’s relevance steadily withered away.

Stefan stopped blogging long ago, but not before destroying u(SP)’s last shred of credibility. I’ll miss his online voter registration database. That was useful. But u(SP) hasn’t been much more than a nasty afterthought for years. So good riddance.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottleThe ballots have dropped and the mid-term elections are nigh. There are races to discuss, candidates to evaluate, and endorsements to ponder. So please join us tonight for an evening of political ponderance over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday evening at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. The starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks show up before that for dinner.



Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities and Shelton chapters meet. On Wednesday, the Bellingham and Burien chapters meet. And on Thursday, the Woodinville chapter meets.

With 201 chapters of Living Liberally, including seventeen in Washington state, three in Oregon and three in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

IBM Would Rather Spend Its Capital on Stock Buybacks and Dividends than Invest in, You Know, Making Stuff

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IBM is paying Abu Dhabi owned GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion to entice it to acquire IBM’s chip manufacturing division. Yes, that’s right—paying $1.5 billion. So how does IBM make money on deals like this? Volume!

IBM has agreed to pay $1.5bn as part of a deal to shed its lossmaking chip manufacturing arm and avoid the billions of dollars in capital spending it was facing to upgrade its manufacturing technology.

To be clear, it’s not like IBM can’t afford the billions of dollars in capital spending necessary to make its chip manufacturing competitive. The company made $18 billion in profits last year. And it would have reported a $4.7 billion profit this quarter (up from $4 billion in the year ago quarter) had it not been for the $4.7 billion pre-tax charge it took to write off its chip foundry business.

So what is IBM doing with all its money? IBM shareholders will receive roughly $4.5 billion in dividends this year. Meanwhile, the company continues to prop up its share price with stock buybacks—$3.7 billion worth this year, and over $50 billion since 2010.

Yet investing in, you know, making stuff, that’s something that IBM executives can’t be bothered to do.

Next time a righty tells you that we need to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy so that they can accumulate the capital necessary to invest in creating jobs, send them a link to this.

Sawant Leads Council with 61 Percent In-District Favorable Rating

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Kshama Sawant’s District 3 seat was supposed to be easy pickings in November, 2015. I wouldn’t exactly call it conventional wisdom, but a lot of Democratic establishment types sure seemed to have convinced themselves that the socialist city council member was a wacky, one-hit wonder who voters would quickly tire of. The chamber was preparing to spend big to take her down, and serious candidates like the ACLU’s Alison Holcomb were being recruited. This was going to be easy.

Well, not so fast. As PubliCola reported last week, a new poll by respected firm EMC shows Sawant with some of the highest approval ratings on the council. Citywide, Sawant enjoys a 50 percent “favorable” rating, second only to Nick Licata’s 51 percent. And within her district, Sawant’s favorable stands at a remarkable 61 percent, well above Licata’s 46 percent second place showing.

Critics will point out that at 30 percent citywide and 21 percent within District 3, Sawant also has the highest unfavorable rating. But at 80/82 percent city/district, she also has the highest name ID as well. Voters know Sawant. And despite all the Democratic eye-rolling, they’ve overwhelmingly made up their mind in her favor.

Personally, I was never all that concerned. District 3 was Sawant’s best district in her 2013 at-large victory, and while she might not match the chamber’s war chest, she’d certainly be able to raise the $250,000-plus necessary to get her message out. From everything I’ve heard, Democratic efforts to peel labor support away from Sawant have so far proven fruitless. And of course, everybody continues to underestimate the impressive (and increasingly sophisticated) ground game that Socialist Alternative is putting together. Really.

A lot can change in a year. But there’s an argument to make that at this point in time, Sawant looks like the least vulnerable incumbent of them all.

Open Thread 10/20

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– “It’s a joke to think they could ramp up the amount of tankers through our territory and convince us world class systems are in place. We’re scared. We’re scared about what this could mean.”

– (a) Well done Twitter. (b) I really like Keene, NH.

– Measure 89 provides equality for the majority of Oregonians (50.5%) who are women and girls.

– I know this post was meant to reassure me that spiders can’t burrow under my skin, but since I hadn’t thought of it as a problem before, I’m still worse for having read it.

– WSDOT is looking for people to write haiku for the ramps to nowhere. I’m more of a fan of Double Dactyl, so here’s my contribution:

Higgledy piggledy,
Interstate 520
Had an idea to make
Another ramp for your car

But if you drive on it,
Uncharacteristically,
For this mode of transit
You won’t go far

You’re welcome?

HA Bible Study: Genesis 4:13-18

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Genesis 4:13-18

Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,  east of Eden.

Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

Discuss.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Mark Fiore: Voter fraud vigilantes.

White House: West Wing Week.

David Pakman: Huckabee threatens to leave Republicans over gay marriage.

Bizarre Rick Scott’s Fan Fobia:

Ann Telnaes: The thrill of feeding the war machine.

David Pakman: Jobless claims drop to lowest level in 14 years. THANKS OBAMA!

Stephen: Party like it’s Iraq in 2003.

Young Turks: The 2014 Miss Hitler contest.

Pap: Obama goes after corporate hyenas.

Thom: A red state privatization horror story.

350.org: Global power shift.

Ebola Bully:

Sam Seder: Nikki Hailey bizarre defense of Confederate flag.

SCTV: White People with Opinions:

Jonathan Mann: What’s going on in San Francisco.

Puppet Nation: News of the week.

David Pakman: $5.7 BILLION drop in hospital uncompensated care costs due to ObamaCare.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Mental Floss: 30 Unusual Wills.

Sam Seder: The most amazing and underreported lie of 2014, brought to you by Mitch McConnell.

Columbus Day…or Not:

Honest Gil goes to Brushy Fork.

Chris Hayes: Pentagon declares climate change a risk.

Stephen schools Sean Hannity on how REAL MEN work out.

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

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