HorsesAss.Org

That Seattle Times staffers are upset about The Seattle Times giving Rob McKenna free advertising. But honestly, this would be a lot more meaningful if the newsroom felt like it had stood up to Frank Blethen on newsroom issues.

It threatens the two things we value the most, the traits that make The Seattle Times a strong brand: Our independence and credibility.

Ultimately, The Seattle Times’ independence and credibility are harmed more by, for example, Truth Needle segments that say things that are true are false if Democrats say them and ignoring things GOP candidates says that aren’t right. The newsroom has an obligation to independence and credibility. They’d be better able to withstand any fallout from their publisher being in the bag for McKenna if their paper hadn’t been in the bag for him and much of the GOP.

When the paper reads like a free ad for a certain type of GOP elected official, it’s tough to complain that there’s a free ad for a certain type of GOP elected official.

– This story about puppy mills in Lewis County will break your heart.

– The Burden of a Black President

– Before spending millions on Initiative 1240′s unproven charter schools that admit only a tiny fraction of students, with no guarantee of improved performance, let’s do what the state Supreme Court has told us to do

– Charming people watching the previous debate.

– I love this XKCD piece on presidential election conventional wisdom.

Over at The Stranger, Dan Savage and Goldy have teamed up to lay out the Big Case against gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna:

Rob McKenna has been running for governor his entire adult life. And his whole electoral strategy has always relied on tricking enough King County voters—voters like you—into believing he’s not another one of those Republicans. McKenna doesn’t want you to think he’s one of those Romney/Ryan class-warfare-waging, Koch-sucking GOPers who wants to bust unions, repeal Obamacare, ban gay marriage, outlaw abortion, and unravel what remains of the social safety net, all in the service of cutting taxes on corporations and millionaires.

It is an electoral strategy that almost worked for Dino Rossi in 2004, and one that McKenna has been expertly executing for years. You may have seen those posters asking you to vote for President Obama, R-74, and Rob McKenna—McKenna opposes both President Obama and R-74—and it’s clever messaging. It is also a complete and total fucking lie. And McKenna is praying that you’re stupid enough to fall for it.

But you’re not that stupid, are you?

The piece is epic…it systematically, issue by issue, lays out the case that McKenna is NOT the politician that he has been selling to King County voters. It’s a damn fine read, too.

My guess is that, if you’ve read this far, you need no further convincing. You’ve seen the arguments before—probably right here—on each point. But you’re not like every other King County voter, because most King County voters don’t read either HorsesAss or The Stranger.

Instead, they’re reading the Seattle Times Political Action Committee. They probably haven’t a clue about the Real McKenna.

Instead, these arugula-eating, Prius-driving, war-hatin’ liberals may only be listening to KUOW and KPLU. Rob may come off as, meh, but inoffensive; they don’t see the Big Picture.

Instead they’re young, politically disengaged, voters struggling with a minimum wage jobs. They’re likely unaware of the huge stake they have in this race.

What Goldy and Dan have done is given YOU a tool: A detailed, well-written, logical, and organized portfolio of The Real McKenna.

You now have the framework to educate your family, friends and neighbors that Rob Mckenna is no Dan Evans Republican. He is much closer to a Scott Walker—just a lot smarter and more cautious.

Friends don’t let friends get fooled!

This is a terrible decision from The Seattle Times.

The Seattle Times Co. jumped directly into two of the state’s hottest political contests Wednesday, launching an $80,000 independent-expenditure campaign promoting Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna and announcing a similar effort in support of the referendum to legalize gay marriage.

I don’t like either of these, but the R-74 ad makes a tiny bit of sense on its own. They look like they might win a squeaker, so the Seattle Times can say, “oh look our ads made the difference.” I don’t think that’s good for the brand of independent minded fair people, but at least I could see a path to it working. But since McKenna is losing, and will probably lose, the pitch will be buy an add, it won’t help you? Or do they think it will turn it around?

In case HA readers have forgotten, I’d like to remind you that Washingtonians will elect 10 people to represent them in the House of Representatives in the upcoming 113th Congress. That, of course, is an increase of one over the nine Representatives we’ve sent to DC for the last 20 years.

Incumbents are running for reelection in seven of the redrawn Congressional Districts, and every one of them is all but certain to win. Therefore, I offer congratulations-in-advance to Rick Larsen, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Doc Hastings, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Jim McDermott, Dave Reichert, and Adam Smith … the Representatives in, respectively, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, and 9th Districts. That’s three Democrats (Larsen, McDermott, Smith) and four Republicans (Herrera Bueutler, Hastings, McMorris Rodgers, Reichert).

But what of the two open, and one brand-new, seats?

It was widely acknowledged that the principal goal of the Democratic members of the Redistricting Commission was to center the new 10th CD on Olympia, and to anoint Denny Heck, who lost in 2010 to Herrera Beutler in the then-open WA-03, as their candidate. He faces underfunded Republican Dick Muri, who unsuccessful challenged Adam Smith in the old WA-09 two years ago. Well, it looks like Tim Ceis and Dwight Pelz got their wish, as the Cook Political Report rates WA-10 Solid D and DailyKos Elections calls it Likely D. The two organization agree that WA-01, where Suzan DelBene faces teahadist John Koster, and where most of Washington’s Congressional-race attention has been concentrated, Leans D. Boy, I hope they’re right.

The third open seat came as something of a shocker. Norm Dicks surprised many Washingtonians when he announced his retirement after 18 terms representing the 6th District. Conventional wisdom suggested that WA-06 had remained in Democratic hands largely because of Dicks’s seniority (ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee) and close ties to the strong Navy presence on Hood Canal and Puget Sound. The sprawling, largely rural WA-06 doesn’t fit the usual mold of Democratic CDs.

Well, conventional wisdom appears to have been wrong. Even though a Republican self-funding Weyerhaeuser relative is on the ballot, both Cook (Likely D) and dKos put the District strongly in the Democratic column. In fact, on Monday DailyKos Elections upgraded WA-06 from Likely D to Safe D.

The principal reason behind this happy outcome is the superb Democrat running in the 6th District, Derek Kilmer. I’ve known Derek ever since I arrived in Washington in 2001; at that time he and his wife Jen were colleagues of my sister in the 36th District Democrats. We in Seattle were disappointed when they relocated to Gig Harbor (he’s Vice President of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County), but it was clearly the right thing for them. I’m thrilled that the people of WA-06 see the same positive qualities in Derek that I recognized.

When Derek won his first political race (State Rep from the 26th LD in 2004), I began thinking that he could be a great candidate to replace Norm Dicks when the old warhorse decided to hang ’em up. I didn’t expect it to come quite so soon, but it seems like I was onto something.

So Derek will, in all likelihood, slide into Norm’s position as a Democratic Congressman. That leaves the overall status of Washington’s delegation in DC in the same place it was when the Redistricting Commission finished its work — five Democratic CDs, four Republican CDs, and one up for grabs. If, as most pundits predict, DelBene keeps the odious Koster away from DC, we’ll be 6-4 Democratic. Not nearly what I’d like it to be, but I believe that would be an accurate description of our state.

[Cross-posted from Peace Tree Farm]

– Great endorsement, Seattle Times.

– I think Oliver is somewhat selective, but yes, there are many areas where liberal ideas clearly are the default, for now.

– This post on Obama’s popularity in Ireland contains some of the worst puns in human history.

– Yet another Biblical family.

– Good luck to the SeaTac Fuelers who have their day in court today.

– I’m not so sure about you.

Our next debate in tonight’s double header is AG Rob McKenna (R) versus former WA-01 Congressman Jay Inslee. I think it is supposed to be carried by KUOW, but fucking Wiretapped is on.

So, I’ll look for the debate on my portable AM/FM/Shortwave radio, and you folks can talk about the debate. In case none of us get the debate….this is just an open thread.

8:02: There is a new poll in the gubernatorial contest. Inslee leads Romney McKenna. I’ll post an analysis right after the debate.

8:06: Okay…Goldy just walked in the door and tells me I can stream the debate on KING 5. Awaiting audio…

8:09: Got the video on big screen Tee Vee and the audio streaming. Has anyone ever noticed that Rob McKenna looks like a transgendered individual?

8:11: Carl Ballard was wondering what kind of pin Inslee is wearing. A hammer and sickle pin, obviously.

8:13: [Carl] For Halloween, McKenna is going to be a skeleton with a toupee.

8:14: McKenna has some round pin with shit on the inside. If I’m not mistaken, that is the official pin of the ALEC bootcamp. Am I right?

8:18: McKenna would sink the head of the ferry system! Yikes!

8:19: Rob McKenna looks like he wants to puke. Get that man a bucket!

8:21: Rob McKenna goes to REI and that somehow is related to closing tax loopholes.

8:22: Can we get to the physical confrontation part of this debate, please?

8:27: We have enter the uberwonkery part of the debate. Jay Inslee wins just because he doesn’t whine like McKenna.

8:29: The departs from the format and they ask each other questions. Oh, please. This is bullshit.

8:30: Rob McKenna gets testy…which is as close to masculine as he gets all night…just because of the word.

8:34: McKenna is totally pro-women. But Inslee points out that there are three things missing from his answer. For example, McKenna is opposed to the reproductive parity act.

8:36: A question comes, via video tape, from a sister station in Spokane. If Washington wasn’t such a backward state, that would have been a hologram!

8:41: McKenna repeats his TOTALLY retarded pseudoissue about why we shouldn’t give drivers licenses to non-citizens. Ugggh!

8:44: “Lean management” comes up again. I think Rob wins, hands down. After all, he is much leaner than Inslee. But is pronounced moobs suggests he has a recreational drug habbit. Just sayin’.

8:47: On the other hand…Inslee would pummel McKenna, if only the physical confrontation phase of this debate would start.

8:48: Mr. Brunner looks like he could use some lean management….

8:51: McKenna “only” has “technical questions” about light rail across a floating bridge. Of course, he was previously recorded, before a group of right wing reactionaries, promising to stop the project. What an asshole!

8:55: I don’t know how much longer I can listen to this. Aaaarrrrrggggghhh! Whew…closing statements!

8:57: McKenna asks if you will better off putting the same people back in office. FUCK YES. Putting an asshole phoney like Rob McKenna in office will be an utter disaster for Washington state. No question about it!

It seems universally accepted that Mitt Romney scored a knock-out during the last presidential debate. And Mr. and Mrs. J. Q. Public seemed totally indifferent to the fact that Romney spent the debate telling blatant lies and “refudiating” the positions he had held—sometimes just weeks before—as Conservative Mitt.

Go figure!

But I guess this means anything goes!

Tonight, with a town-hall format, and with some remedial debate training, Obama is out for revenge. The fun begins at 6:00.

I’m liveblogging the mayhem from the Montlake Ale House. I suspect Carl and N in Seattle will be there, as well. If you can, please join us—in the comment thread or at the Ale House.

There will be blood!

6:00: I’m getting the audio from KUOW, but CNN is on the Tee Vee.

6:02: Romney goes all socialist on student loans.

6:06: OMG Obama is pointing down! Noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

6:07: Obama gives “Number one”, “Number two” and “Number three” in his first answer. What a snob!

6:09: Mitt Romney has a five point plan! Doh! (Although…he may have lost some of his base going that high.)

6:09: Mitt indirectly takes credit for saving Detroit. Ignores that there was no private sector money available.

6:11: Obama is more aggressive this time. I’m sure FAUX News will say he seemed like an “angry militant” or something.

6:12: Mitt’s attempts to dominate the moderator don’t go over so well with Ms. Crowley….

6:14: Mitt is TOTALLY bullish on renewables! Uh-huh. A few minutes later: “More drilling. More pipelines.”

6:17: Obama mentions that, Mr. “Clean Coal” Romney, while governor, stood in front of a coal plant and said, “This Plant Kills.”

6:19: I think Obama wins the “production on government lands” debate. Romney was simply unaware of the “stagnant lease” issue.

6:23: Mitt goes into la-la land on his tax plan. He completely ignores the fact that THE FUCKING MATH DOESN’T FUCKING WORK. You cannot cut taxes on the wealthy as he proposes and make it up by eliminating deductions for ONLY the wealthy.

6:29: Obama: During the primary, he said “I’m going to give tax cuts to everyone, including the 1%.” He said just the opposite tonight. Mitt is the world’s fastest flip-flopper.

6:32: Obama lays out, in some detail, Romney’s 8 trillion dollars of tax cuts, but offers no details on paying for it, and then points out how Romney himself, as an investor, would never accept such a sketchy deal. Point: Obama.

6:35: “Of course my numbers add up.” Ummm…no they FUCKING DON’T.

6:35: [N in Seattle]: Gov. Romney, if it all adds up, PLEASE SHOW YOUR WORK!

6:36: Romney’s bullying isn’t working so well this time.

6:40: Romney keeps mentioning how there are more women in poverty now than when Obama took office. This completely ignores that that was Shrub’s doing. Unemployment was tanking when Obama came into office, and Obama turned it around. But like any ship, it took time. (See “Bikini Graph”)

6:45: Questioner asks Mitt about the difference between him and George Bush. Mitt is different from Shrub because he will adopt Jimmy Carter’s energy independence polity. Huh.

6:47: Mitt points out the differences…Obama points out the similarities between Mitt and Shrub. Well…some of them. He could-a gone further.

6:52: Mitt’s flaggy-flag pin is bigger than Obama’s. He wins.

6:54: Mitt: “We can’t afford four more years like the last four years.” Not really. What we CERTAINLY cannot afford is four more years like either of the Shrub four years. Those years were catastrophes that left the economy in shambles.

6:56: Mitt points out that the economy is growing more slowly this year than last. Ummm…the economy is GROWING. Under the last Republican President, the economy collapsed. That means NEGATIVE GROWTH. Any questions?

7:00: MITT Flip-Flops to become a Dream Act supporter. Holy shit…didn’t Mitt give Rick Perry SHIT in the primary for being weak on immigration for the same reason. What a fucking disingenuous asshole!

7:04: Mitt, transmorgrifies into Newt Gingrich: “I don’t want to round up 12 million people….”

7:08: Terry asks about security at an embassy in Benghazi. Obama doesn’t point out that there is no embassy in that city. (It is a Consulate.)

7:14: Obama rightly points out that the VERY DAY after the attack, he called it a terrorist attack. Mitt challenges that, and gets absolutely spanked by the moderator AND the crowd. (Bad, crowd…bad, bad, crowd.)

7:17: Questioner asks how Obama is keeping AK47s out of the hands of criminals. Obama starts out by profession loyalty to the 2nd amendment. And then says stuff…hard to follow.

7:19: There is a HUGE crowd here at the Ale House. I’m guessing 30 people here for the debate, on top of other customers.

7:23: Mitt gets cut short for not actually addressing the question about AK47s. Starts talking about hunters. FAYLE!

7:24: Obama points out that Mitt has flipped flopped on the assault weapons ban. Ouch!

7:26: Carol asks how to bring jobs home. Mitt welcomes the question…pretending that he isn’t the king of innovation in outsourcing!!!

7:28: Mitt seems to believe that business chose a “country” to be in based on tax rates. If so, you’d think that Somalia would be the business haven of the world.

7:32: Mitt, “China has been cheating.” Huh…you never did anything to encourage that behavior, did you, Willard?

7:34: Mitt’s answer on misperceptions about his disdain of the common man would be MUCH more convincing if he hadn’t been video taped telling wealthy donors that he doesn’t give a shit about 47% of Americans. Just sayin’

7:39: ITS OVER. The bloodied and battered robot Romney grabs his cheat sheet and limps off the stage….

Tonight will be another Debate Edition of Seattle’s Drinking Liberally. Please join us for an evening of political debate and conversation over a pint.

There are two debates tonight. At 6:00 pm, President Barack Obama (D) squares off against Gov. Mitt Romney (R) in a townhall format. That will be followed at 8:00 pm by a gubernatorial debate between former WA-1 Congressman Jay Inslee (D) and Washington AG Rob McKenna (R).

Note: We will have sound and audio for the presidential debate. But for the gubernatorial debate, we may have the picture, but probably no sound. Also…the bar has other customers, so the sound may not be as loud as you want, especially with the background of a busy bar and peripheral conversations. If you are serious about listening to the debate, I recommend you bring an FM radio and headsets or earbuds. Additionally, the Montlake Alehouse has free WiFi. Ask your server for the password.

We will meet at our usual place, the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

The Montlake Ale House opens at 5:00 pm, and the presidential debate begins at 6:00 pm. Drinking liberally normally begins at 8:00 pm, but don’t hesitate to stop by earlier for the presidential debate.

There’s be some live blogging action right here.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings over the next week. Tonight the Tri-Cities chapter meets. The Longview and South Seattle chapters meet on Wednesday. The Spokane chapter and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meet this Thursday.

With 233 chapters of Living Liberally, including fourteen in Washington state four in Oregon and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.

My goal for the polling analyses is to include all polls that legitimately provide insight into the race. For this reason, I want to comment on some polls that I have excluded from analysis.

As you know, I have predefined criteria on what polls can be included in my analyses. For example I exclude all on-line polls…period. And I exclude partisan polls that are selectively released. Typically this happens when a campaign releases a poll it commissioned. Even though the poll may be above reproach, including selectively released polls introduces bias to the meta-analysis of polls.

To see why, imagine a neck-in-neck race between Republican Bob and Democrat Steve. Both campaigns do polling and, quite sensibly, release those that favor their candidate. Furthermore, suppose Crossroads GPS is very interested in Bob race, so they do a bunch of polling. Steve’s campaign does a dozen polls across the campaign, and they release the six polls that show Steve with a slight lead. Bob’s campaign is a little more poll-obsessed, and they do two-dozen polls and release the 12 polls that favor their candidate. On top of that, Crossroads GPS does and additional dozen polls and releases six that show Bob in the lead.

We can assume that individual polls are above reproach. Even so, the selective release means that at a typical point in the campaign, there will be about three polls showing Bob in the lead for every poll that shows Steve in the lead. The meta-analysis will show Bob leading in a race that is, in fact, a tie.

I bring this up because I’ve had to exclude a couple of polls from my analyses.

Yesterday, Wenzel Strategies released a poll for Missouri that showed Romney leading Obama, 54.9 to 41.1. The poll appears to be legitimate and I have no reason to believe the poll is biased or improperly done. In fact, Wenzel does something I really appreciate: they publish the counts of responses in addition to the percentages. I use the counts directly whenever possible, but aside from Survey USA, most pollsters just provide rounded percentages.

The Wenzel poll was conducted on behalf of Citizens United that:

…exists to support true conservative candidates running for federal office through direct candidate advocacy and contributions, based on our in-depth candidate research and surveys.

So, it is obviously a right-leaning organization. But that is not enough to exclude an organization’s polls. For example, the Civitas Institute is a right leaning think tank in North Carolina. I include their polls, because they pre-announce the polls, and release the results regardless of the outcome.

I though the Wenzel polls were okay, because they were released on the firm’s web site. But, I wanted to be sure. I made a call to Fritz Wenzel to ask him about it. What I learned was the following:

1. The decision to publicly release the poll was made by his client, not him.
2. He only published the results on his web site after the results had been released by his client.
3. When I asked if he had done other polls for this client that had not been released, he deferred the question to his client.

From our discussion, I got the impression is that Mr. Wenzel is a serious pollster who takes pride in producing high quality polls for his clients. Even so, I’ll exclude this poll, since it appears to be a selective release by a highly partisan group.

Another poll I am excluding was brought to my attention by Sam Minter, for American Crossroads:

According to a new poll shared exclusively with POLITICO, Mitt Romney is leading President Obama in a congressional district in Maine — raising the possibility of the GOP nominee winning an electoral vote in a deep blue state.

The live-call poll, conducted by Glen Bolger of NMB Research and provided to POLITICO by American Crossroads communications director Jonathan Collegio, shows Obama winning statewide 48 percent to 44 percent.

That result already puts Romney in a surprisingly competitive position in a nominally blue state.

But in Maine’s second congressional district, Romney actually tops Obama 49 percent to 44 percent.

The ME-2 result is surprising but not a valid reason for exclusion. It is the selective nature of the poll’s release that results in exclusion. American Crossroads is engaging in good PR by releasing this information, but it isn’t likely to be representative of the polling overall. Granted, I did not call up the pollster, but the case for selective release seem pretty clear.

I point out these exclusions because I want to be as transparent about some decisions that may not, a first glance, be obvious.

Additionally, I’ll use this opportunity to ask for your help. If you see a poll I am including but shouldn’t, or a poll I’ve left out but should include, let me know. The best way is to make your case for inclusion or exclusion in a poll analysis comment thread.

Seriously, what is this?

The food had been served, the patrons were long gone, and the cutlery cleaned when Rep. Paul Ryan, his wife, three kids and photographers pulled up Saturday at a St. Vincent de Paul food kitchen in Youngstown Ohio.

Ryan and his wife put on aprons and washed several pans that already appeared to be clean, and then were off to the airport

I’d guess something on the order of 80% of photo ops are more waste of time than actual help. But at least the politician usually does something, even if more could be done without them. Oh, and by the way:

“We’re a faith-based organization: We are apolotical because the majority of our food is from private donations,” Brian Antol told The Washington Post. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.

…

“I can’t afford to lose funding from these private individuals,” he said. “If this was the Democrats, I’d have exactly the same problem.”