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Today was “Green Wednesday” in Colorado, the first day of legal marijuana sales to all adults. Another great milestone in the dismantling of one of America’s most tragic and destructive policies. There’s not an exact date for when Washington’s stores will open, but it should be around May or June.

Here are my blogging resolutions for 2014:

• I’ll post more content than just “Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza” and “Drinking Liberally” this year.
• I’ll make every effort to avoid posts about Fibonacci sequences or Taylor series expansions.
• I’ll only blog professions of love to genuine offspring.
• I will not use the term “cephalonomancy” in a blog post this year. Period.
• I’ll scrap the draft about wetbacks with body parts the size of cantaloupes.
• I won’t blog about degrees of legitimacy regarding rape or about fecundability following rape.
• I’ll ALMOST shut down HorsesAss until Goldy agrees to getting lower internet connectivity, more limited resources, and crappier response time. Because FREEDOM!
• I’ll avoid uncomfortable sexual posts referring to unlubricated ass-fucking or the extra-plentiful quantity of pussy I have to eat at home.
• Oh…and I’ll avoid smoking anything while in a drunken stupor. Not even for the free munchies.
• I won’t write about a certain co-blogger’s pteronophobia
• I’ll refrain from commentary about dynasties, Dynasty, ducks, ducts of any sort, or even about about how to “die nasty.” Nuh-uh. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent!
• I’ll eschew hackneyed clichés like “hackneyed clichés” and “Happy New Year!”

(Yup…it’s another open thread.)

1) Top 1 Top Lists of 2013 of 2013

(Feel free to use this as an open thread; no more of these unless I think of something even stupider.)

The last year end list wasn’t WA/Seattle oriented, like this blog ought to be. So here’s one for that.

In no particular order:

– General

– Primary

(seriously, feel free to use this as an open thread, and yes there’s more of this nonsense to come)

1-E
2-A
3-I, O (Tie)
5-U

(Feel free to use this as an open thread)

This is the Open Thread for the Bird’s Eye View Contest below. Please don’t leave any non-contest comments in that post. They WILL be deleted.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the store in San Jose where one of the winning Mega Millions tickets was sold.

This week is the 5th week in December and last weekend of the year. As followers of this contest know, when I do the monthly news events, I try not to select news events that are particularly depressing. Sometimes I can’t avoid it because that’s what a lot of the news is, but for the most part, I’ve avoided selecting one of the many deadly shootings that occur in this country every damn day. So last year at this time, in order to highlight just how common these occur, I did a roundup of views that were related to mass shootings.

This year, I’m highlighting another horrible aspect of our nation’s ridiculous obsession with guns. All six locations below are related to a shooting where a child under the age of 5 was accidentally killed by a gun in 2013. As someone who has two kids under the age of 5, I can’t even fathom how stupid you have to be to allow something like this to happen to your own child, but it happens almost weekly. So again, forgive the morbidity of this week’s contest, but this is something that shouldn’t be so damn common.

Notes:
1 – All views are default orientation (up is north)
2 – The “no political comments” rule will be strictly enforced in this thread, there will be an Open Thread posted at 12:01pm that you may weigh in on the larger subject of gun control (or whatever else you want)

A

B

C

D

E

F

2 Kings 2:23-24

Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”

So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the LORD. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Discuss.

Young Turks: Edward Snowden declares, “Mission Accomplished”.

White House: Favorite GIFs of 2013.

Top ten things FAUX decided will lead to the “Wussification of America” in 2013 (via Media Matters).

Newsy: Poll finds 113th is the worst Congress ever.

Maddow: The Koch brothers now funding & “polluting” Florida State University:

Michael Brooks and Michelle Goldberg: The Right’s war on “White trash” the the poor.

Holiday Residual:

• Mark Fiore: Saint Ayn Rand visits the day after Christmas.
• Ann Telnaes: The real war on Christmas.
• Red State Update: Episode 58, A Duck Dynasty Butthole Christmas.

David Pakman: Obamacare signups soar.

The GOP’s most terrible Christmas gift.

Sam Seder: Why don’t we have universal health care?

Young Turks: Alan Turing is pardoned.

How the conservative media treated women in 2013 (via Media Matters).

Newsy: NSA phone metadata collection ruled unconstitutional and then ruled constitutional.

Women to watch for 2014.

Sharpton: Cartoon combatant Sarah Palin defends racist ‘Duck Dynasty’ star.

The Jibjab 2013 Year in Review.

Pontificating on the Pope:

• Young Turks: The Pope’s approval ratings, and why it matters.
• Sam Seder and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Republicans fear progressive Pope.
• Sam Seder: Why Pope Francis’ rhetoric is encouraging.

Sam Seder: The Tea Party is just the Republican base.

Why a “do nothing” congress? Republican nutjobbers blame Obama.

Photos found from photographer killed in Mt. St. Helens blast.

Lawrence O’Donnell: The “teaching moment” in Duck-Dynasty racism and homophobia.

Matt Binder: After children die in tornado, GOP still blocks tornado shelters by cutting taxes.

David Pakman: Congress ends least productive year in recent history.

Sharpton: The “bully bridge politics” of N.J. Gov. Chris Christie.

Climate Change Chump Change:

• Young Turks: Who funds climate change deniers?
• David Pakman: $1 Billion against climate change?

Lawrence O’Donnell: Debate about opting out of health insurance:

Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: A trip to the Creation Museum.

Young Turks: Tea Party happily uses poster mocking them in popular video game.

Newsy: Obama looks ahead for 2014.

David Pakman: 13 states raising minimum wage in 2014.

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

I haven’t done an Open Thread in like a week. Rather than collecting links, I’ve been not doing that, but here goes:

– Too big to jail sounds like a facile little slogan but it appears to be completely accurate

– Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) Signups/Applications (h/t to my friend R)

– Cascadian politics and how we vote in a primary around here

– In a few years when gay marriage is just “marriage”, there’s going to be a reckoning.

– The White Center food bank needs volunteers.

– The Life’s Not Fair doctrine

Give Senator Don Benton this: He is an asshole. No, give him this: He was able to get a non-story into the news. Anyway start with his Christmas Eve press release

Senator Don Benton of Vancouver said he wants an audit of Planned Parenthood following accusations of fraudulent Medicaid billing.

Oh gosh. That sounds serious. “Accusations” must be a government office. What it couldn’t be — because it would be embarrassing even to the credibility challenged GOP — is a random group with the fake grassrootsiest name in the history of organizations.

He called for the investigation after a group called The Alliance Defending Freedom accused Planned Parenthood of over-billing Medicaid and the state of Washington at least 50,000 times, costing the state $337 million.

Oh. I’m not including Benton’s link to it here, but he links to the group, who are doing some year end fundraising. He doesn’t link to the “accusation” just to their front page fundraising page.* I just looked around the page, but this ostensible millions of dollars in fraud, this supposed bombshell, this major revelation of fraud, wasn’t easy to find. I’m sure it’s on their website, somewhere, but it wasn’t obvious to me. There is a lot of complaining about the war on Christmas, so there’s that.

So a group nobody has ever heard of makes inflammatory accusations, and they’re repeated by Senator Benton who demands an audit. This is a Senator who is so concerned with the public money that he took a make work job for his off time (Columbian link), so you know he’s serious.

Anyway, the press release ends with a link to what looks like a real news org picking it up. Jesus, your liberal media.

[Read more…]

Here’s wishing everyone a joyous Christmas.^*

^*And/or year-end holiday of your choice.

Judge lets Utah don it’s gay wedding apparel. Weddings ensue.

Seattle area holiday transit info.

The 9 worst states for reproductive rights in 2013.

Dave Ross reads his poem about Teh War on Christmas.

UK pardons Alan Turing.

Ten last minute political gifts.

And some last minute Christmas gifts that the NSA will hate.

Happy holidays: More Americans are lining up in food banks.

In recent Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganzas, I’ve posted a couple of videos discussing the growing scandal for G.O.P. “pretty boy”, Gov. Chris Christie. The scandal is about alleged political retribution that resulted in delays for, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of drivers by jamming up the George Washington Bridge.

The scandal that started out looking like “meh” (to me) seems to be getting worse by the day, and recently took another serious turn.

The question is whether this is Gov. Christie’s Katrina or merely Christie’s Benghazi. Either way, popcorn stocks should be trending upward for the foreseeable future.