HorsesAss.Org

Hempfest starts today. I’ll be down at the “protestival” all day tomorrow (Saturday). Seattle PD’s tongue-in-cheek efforts to do public education with tasty snacks has gotten a lot of attention. But as Slate points out, 1000 bags of Doritos doesn’t go very far in a festival that generally sees over 200,000 attendees. Somehow this feels like foreshadowing of what the first weekend that pot stores open in the state will feel like.

I get that a student dying is terrible. And I understand the desire at WSU to keep underage kids from drinking, especially from binge drinking. But I’m not sure telling their parents is necessarily helpful.

With the first day of classes less than a week away, Washington State University has a new plan to reduce binge drinking that includes scheduling more Friday morning classes and calling the parents of drunk students.

WSU has been looking for ways to curb underage drinking since last October when a student died of alcohol poisoning.

Freshman Kenneth Hummel, 18, had a blood alcohol level that was five times the legal limit. His death last fall came after three students were injured in alcohol-related falls from buildings in recent months, two at WSU and one at the University of Idaho.

Among the changes, WSU will call parents the first time an underage student violates alcohol and drug policies.

I didn’t have a drop of alcohol my entire 4 years of college,* but for a lot of people, college is a chance to get away from their parents. I think you can have consequences that treat people as adults instead of going to mom and dad.

[Read more…]

Tom at Seattle Bike Blog is getting reports of trouble on the trail.

I’ve already received one email from a reader who said he had to swerve into the grass to avoid a truck driving on the trail. Last year there were many close calls and several crashes due to Hempfest operations. But organizers say they are working to make this year go more smoothly and better mark cables and hoses.

The Elliott Bay Trail is a vital regional transportation corridor for people biking and walking from downtown to Magnolia, Queen Anne and northwest Seattle. There is no other option available for people biking through the area. With workers blocking the route for a week and a half and people on bikes with no other way through, it’s a recipe for frustration and conflict.

That was a couple days ago, and with more setup, I’m sure there is more difficulty. I was there yesterday evening for a jog, and it was fine for me. It was drizzly and past rush hour so the traffic wasn’t bad, but there were tents and trucks and a partially built stage up. I can see how it could be annoying, but it didn’t seem like too bad.

There may also be traffic problems for cars according to a press release I got from SDOT.

The 22nd annual Seattle Hempfest expects 50,000 – 70,000 attendees everyday this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Centennial and Myrtle Edwards parks. Saturday evening the Seattle Seahawks anticipate a crowd of 55,000 at CenturyLink Field when they take on the Denver Broncos for the team’s second pre-season game. There will likely be heavy traffic associated with these and many other events taking place throughout Seattle over the weekend, so please see the attached schedule and plan ahead to avoid delays.

The Seattle Department of Transportation suggests motorists join in the effort to reduce air pollution by parking their cars and opting for one of the many alternate modes of transportation available – Metro Transit, the West Seattle Water Taxi, the Seattle Streetcar, the Sounder commuter train, Link light rail, car pool, bicycle or walk, if feasible.

A lot of those suggestions are more football related than Hempfest, given SoDo’s nearness to rail and the Water Taxi. But the warning and some of the suggestions apply to both.

And seeing the press release mentioning the football game in the same paragraph as Hempfest puts the traffic complaints people always seem to have into some perspective. Yes, it can be annoying (although the worst that’s ever happened for me personally is I had to take a different route from Downtown to Ballard one year). But sometimes those sort of things happen in a big city with big events.

– The police distributing Doritos at Hempfest is a bit on the nose.

– RE this, I think Carla Saulter says all the words that need to be said:

Wait, I'm confused. #russellsimmons #wtf

— Carla Saulter (@seattlebuschick) August 15, 2013

– “Sonic Bloom” is a solar-powered work of art created by Dan Corson on behalf of City Light’s Green Up program, which supports the development of new renewable energy sources.

– Could you just move some of the Olympic events if there’s the treat of some athletes being arrested, or simply as a protest?

– We must always be vigilant of capitalism’s inclination for this sort of business, and while we encourage capitalism, be aware of its potentially abusive power.

– When you’re digging yourself into a hole, the saying goes, the first rule is to stop digging. Fortunately, regarding the downtown tunnel, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has taken this aphorism to heart. Unfortunately, it’s only partial, and temporary.

– Wendy Davis is going to be in town. It’s an event sponsored by Washington NARAL, and I’m not 100% sure if your ticket goes to her or to them.

– If you’re interested in Helsing Junction Sleep Over, you probably don’t need me saying it’s coming up, but it’s coming up.

The deadline for applications for PARK(ing) Day in Seattle is coming up.

Create your own park on September 20, 2013 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.! PARK(ing) Day happens once a year, on the third Friday in September, and is an opportunity for any Seattleite to temporarily make parking spaces into parks. The event raises awareness about important issues like creating a walkable, livable, healthy city.

I didn’t go last year, but in the past it’s been pretty cool what people have come up with. Seattle has some creative people who really make some incredible things with the limited space available. You can see at the link pictures from past years. Here’s hoping it’ll be dry and warm come September.

Someday, hopefully soon, Republicans will, once again, show a genuine interest in good governance. Until then, we get this shit:

Heritage Action for America – one of the conservative groups leading the charge to pressure Republican lawmakers against voting to continue government spending unless they can defund President Barack Obama’s health care law – said its new poll of likely voters in 10 relatively competitive congressional districts showed that forcing such a shutdown would not be fatal for the GOP in 2014.

The right question isn’t whether shutting down the government will hurt a political party. The right question is whether shutting down the government will hurt the United States of America!

Of course, some old-guard Republicans have come out against a government shutdown. Not because it is terrible for Americans and America, but because they remember the hit they took the last time they tried that little trick.

Instead, some of these asswipes have decided that, if not a shutdown of the Federal government, they will, instead, refuse to raise the debt ceiling—that is, they will refuse to pay for the stuff they’ve already bought. The last time they tried that, the U.S. took a bond rating hit. And notice the “big picture” reason for that downgrade by S&P (emphasis added):

More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned….

Again, these shitheads fail to seriously consider this question: “Is defaulting on our debt good for America, or does it harm America?”

Jonathan Chait enlightens us:

This is actually even more dangerous than shutting down the government. A government shutdown is disruptive, but can be endured. Nobody knows just what would happen if Congress were to default on payments to holders of Treasury bills, but it could be catastrophic, and at the very least would probably spur bondholders to demand a premium from Washington for years or decades to come. Republicans here are talking themselves out of using a conventional bomb and instead using a nuclear bomb.

These douche bags would gladly suffocate America to within inches of death if they could manage to squeeze even a tiny political advantage out of it….

Jim Camden at the Spokesman-Review pokes a bit of (deserved) fun at Seattle for how white and male our mayors have been compared to Spokane.

But during the period in which Spokane elected a major, strong or otherwise, it had three women in the job: Vicki McNeill, Sheri Barnard and Mary Verner. (It also elected an African-American mayor, Jim Chase, eight years before Rice, but that’s kind of rubbing it in.)

All three were very different politically. None campaigned primarily on being a woman or won because of, or in spite of, gender. In McNeill’s case, she ran against another woman, Margaret Leonard. Seattle has never had a general election mayoral race between two women.

Spin Control would never use the gender diversity of a city’s chief executive as proof of much of anything. But the next time a Seattle resident gets too over the top about how forward thinking his or her city is, remind them that Spokane has had three times as many female mayors, who held the office six times as long as Seattle. It might keep them quiet for a minute or two.

For my Seattle readers, if someone from Spokane gives you shit, you can mention that even if Ed Murray wins, Spokane will have nearly a decade’s head start in electing a gay mayor. That will hopefully move the conversation to one where we figure out how to get more diversity in our elected officials. Because I think we can all agree that 3 women in several decades, or one woman in 1926, it isn’t a good track record.

Please join us for another splendid summer evening of politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday evening at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm, although some people show up earlier than that for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out the plethora of other DL meetings over the next week. Tonight there are also meetings of the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, WA chapters. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. And for Thursday, the Spokane and Tacoma chapters meet. Finally, next Monday, the Yakima and Olympia chapters meet.

With 208 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.

– Since the GOP is so concerned about demeaning women and misogyny, surely they will take swift action against these motherfuckers right here

– You don’t own women.

– This bike lanes are good for business piece is interesting. I had family in the area of the post for a while, and it was impossible to get anywhere over there by car.

– Plastic bags are the worst.

– I don’t know what to do about a winter games where gay athletes might be arrested. For what it’s worth (and at the risk of going Godwin), Jewish athletes in the Berlin Olympics were certainly treated poorly, but they weren’t threatened with arrest as far as I know.

– McGinn needs to do a better job hiring women at top levels instead of his staff making excuses.

– Book length to movie length is an interesting comparison (part I and part II). I do wish the graphs in part one were on the same scale.

I know this is stale at this point, but this morning a bus driver was shot downtown.

Just after 8:45 this morning, Seattle police began receiving a flood of reports that a man had shot a Metro bus driver on the Route # 27 bus near 3rd Avenue and Seneca Street.

The male suspect reportedly stayed on the bus for a short time after the shooting, before he fled on foot through downtown.

Officers then spotted the suspect near 2nd Avenue and Seneca, where he opened fire on officers and ran to a second bus.

When the suspect tried to get on a second bus, the driver and some of the passengers began evacuating the bus and the suspect got on board.

Officers confronted the suspect on the second bus and shot the suspect.

[…]

The 67-year-old Metro driver’s injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.

The suspect—who is in his 30′s or 40′s—is in critical condition and is being transported to Harborview. [he died since the linked post was written — Carl]

A 32-year-old officer also sustained minor injuries in the incident, possibly from broken glass, and was taken to Harborview.

A second officer, who is in his 50s, was also taken to Harborview for treatment for a medical condition.

Finally, a female passenger sustained minor bruising while evacuating the second bus.

Christallmighty. I’m sitting here on my commute back home trying to figure out words. I don’t know if I’d passed that driver. Certainly the downtown corridor is one I take almost every day. I wish him the best of luck in a recovery.

If you know anything or have any video of the event, SPD is asking you to call their homicide reporting line at (206) 233-5000.

– I loved seeing my extended family, but it’s good to be back in Washington.

– When Washington’s GOP pick a new head, they should definitely look to Oregon as an inspiration.

– Who could have predicted that crisis pregnancy centers aren’t honest?

– Because of the way my brain works (poorly) I’ve had this poem stuck in my head since I heard about these terrorist attacks. But I could only remember the first two verses, and not all that well. Looking it up didn’t help.

– I know this is old news for people who weren’t on vacation, but I’m looking forward to a general election mayoral race between two of my favorite local elected officials.

– And speaking of, congrats to Ed Murray on his marriage.

– The rules

Last week’s contest was won by waguy. It was Austin, TX.

This week’s contest is back to Google Maps, good luck!

1 Timothy 5:11-15
As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to. So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan.

Discuss.

Sam Seder: RNC Chair threatens NBC and CNN.

Alex Wagner: Sen. Ted Cruz’s anti-Everything.

Maddow: Cuccinelli’s gift scandal.

The G.O.P. Presidential Field:

• Young Turks: Rick Perry doesn’t know what state he is in. (Denial?)
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Nutburger Rand Paul versus Chris Christie for 2016 nomination?
• Sam Seder: Rick Santorum’s showering “issue”.
• Young Turks: Newt Gingrich conveniently changes is position on war.
• John Oliver begs Donald Trump to run again (via Crooks and Liars).
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Mitt Romney weighs in on the Teabagger government shutdown.
• Young Turks: Mike Huckabee’s full-on Islamophobia.

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

John Oliver: Still no accountability for the Big Banks (via Crooks and Liars).

Pap: The G.O.P. is eating itself alive.

John Oliver grills Sen. Gillibrand about Wall Street donations.

Sharpton: FAUX News and Republican food stamp racism.

Liz Cheney Commits Fraud:

• Lawrence O’Donnell: Liz Cheney’s fraudulent Wyoming ‘fishing license’.
• Alex Wagner: Senate candidate Liz Cheney obtains Wyoming fishing license illegally.

Bill Maher: N.C. W.T.F.:

Thom: Liberal State Rep. infiltrates ALEC.

Pap: Racism still motivates the Tea Party.

Young Turks: Sanjay Gupta on weed.

Daily Show tries to have a “frank and open” discussion on race (via Crooks and Liars).

Sam Seder: Moral Mondays keep growing.

Maddow: Shrinking U.S. budget is spoiling G.O.P. talking points.

Sheriff Hairspray (R-WA-08) thinks about higher office.

Bashir: Reince, blather, repeat.

NSA Spying Intelligence Gathering:

• Obama’s presser.
• Mark Fiore: Fear Fresh.
• Ann Telnaes: Obama’s Leno whopper?
• Maddow: Obama proposes changes to surveillance program.

Young Turks: Sean Hannity’s propaganda machine is demoted.

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

Maddow: Florida G.O.P. makes another attempt at voter purge .

Sharpton: Obama debunks G.O.P. healthcare lies.

Some Ag-related communications company interviews Rep. Susan DelBene (D-WA-01)

White House: West Wing Week.

Young Turks: GOP continues to try and defund Obamacare.

Maddow: Ohio’s G.O.P. TRAPs Toledo’s last Abortion clinic.

John Fugelsang: Keep it up Tea Party:

Nutjob Rep. Gohmert: ‘Radical Islamists’ taking Spanish lessons ‘because we don’t fear Hispanics’ (via Crooks and Liars).

Red State Update: News of the Week Podcast episode 38.

Sharpton: Racist G.O.P. birfers call for ‘Muslim’ Obama’s impeachment.

Living Wage:

• Thom: If a business doesn’t pay a living wage, it shouldn’t exist.
• Ed: What is a minimum living wage?
• Pap and David Sirota: The conservative media’s minimum wage lie.
• Ann Telnaes: Walmart–Always Low Wages.
• Young Turks: Fast food restaurant proves a living wage is possible.

White House: Highlights from Obama’s Zillow interview.

Sharpton: Dead Voters? How about dead donors?

Alex Wagner: The Tea-bagger town hall “mating season” has began.

Maddow: Obamacare supporters trip up GOP’s town hall hate-meeting agendas.

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

1. Thanks to everyone who followed along with my live-tweeting of Tuesday night’s WSLCB meeting for establishing rules in the upcoming legal marijuana market. It’s fascinating to watch this process unfold and it gives me greater appreciation for the job that the WSLCB is doing.

Today, my dim-witted Congressman, Dave Reichert, made the following comments about our state’s new law:

“I think it was a bad decision,” Reichert said. “I think it’s going to crumble here in the state of Washington.

“I’ll be very clear: I am not going to assist the federal government in any way in finding a solution to the conflict between the state and federal law — I can’t do it.”

This is about as profoundly irresponsible as you can imagine. The state that Dave Reichert represents voted by a comfortable margin to set up a legal market for marijuana. But instead of working with his fellow Washington representatives to stand up for his voters, he’s just going to sit with his thumb up his ass and watch it “crumble”.

Personally, I don’t think it will crumble. There will be problems, in particular with how new businesses do their banking, but the fact that people would much rather buy marijuana in regulated stores will eventually bring us to a stable system. But the important point here is that these are problems that Congress has the ability to fix. So Dave Reichert’s position is: I could do something about it, but I’d rather watch it crumble and let criminal gangs continue to run the market. He really does fit in with his fellow House GOP buffoons.

2. I’m delighted to witness Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s evolution on understanding medical marijuana. Despite all the noise about people abusing medical marijuana programs to get recreational weed, people who’ve followed this issue have always known about the remarkable stories like this one, where the staunchly anti-pot parents of a 5-year-old in Colorado eventually discovered that medical marijuana was able to stop her seizures after no other medicines worked. And that appears to be one of the centerpieces of Gupta’s special on CNN Sunday night. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

3. I haven’t written much about the NSA spying scandal. There are a lot of parts and angles to it, and many professional journalists are doing a wonderful job covering it.

But if there’s one particular aspect of this story that I find fascinating, it’s the reactions that people have had to NSA’s spying overseas in friendly countries. For many who are old enough to remember the Cold War, the reaction is mostly a shrug. But for younger folks (particularly those close in age to Snowden), there’s far more outrage and concern.

Two things have really made a big difference in this shift. The end of the Cold War is one. We no longer face a military threat on the scale of the Soviet Union. America’s supremacy in the world isn’t challenged by anyone. And global terrorist networks kill fewer Americans than toddlers with guns. The fact that we’re spying on Germans, Brits, and Australians in response to this threat looks absurd, especially if you’re too young to even remember the Berlin Wall coming down.

Second, the internet age has greatly changed the perceptions that we have about borders, and about how different we are from those across the globe. This is one of the most monumental cultural shifts the world has gone through. A generation ago, few people in this country had any social contact with people across the globe. Today, we regularly converse and interact in real time with people all over the world.

Much of the existing law that currently governs what NSA is allowed to do makes distinctions between domestic and foreign surveillance targets. But in a world where America can wield power in largely unchallenged ways, it makes little sense to most young people why the privacy of their friends in foreign lands is worth less than theirs. And these revelations are a big part of why the rationale for the NSA’s activities is starting to crumble.