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Following Todd Akin is a Jackass Gate, Josh Feit did an interview with US Senate candidate Michael Baumgartner. Then Baumgartner decided he wanted to talk about Afghanistan, but Feit still asked him questions about his positions on abortion and wrote about those extremist positions. Then, I guess because Feit’s focus, Baumgartner emailed him to “go fuck yourself” and has been digging himself deeper since. Now look, as someone who has been protesting the war in Afghanistan for over a decade, I’m sympathetic to complaints that the media do a bad job covering it. And I agree that Cantwell hasn’t been particularly good on war issues. And Christ knows there are times when Josh Feit has written stupid things and completely missed the mark.

But you know what, you don’t get to chose what the media write about. The best way to get better coverage of war issues is to be more compelling on those issues. And you really don’t have a leg to stand on when the media are responding to your press release.

Further, you don’t get to call a truce on social issues if you’re still planning to vote to force a woman to carry her rapist’s baby to term, or to force women — and other people who can become pregnant — to have to have all the medical problems that can go along with pregnancy and child birth. When you’re still planning to vote with the extreme elements of the forced pregnancy wing of the party, you haven’t actually declared a truce, and people are still going to talk about that.

Over at Publicola, Erica C. Barnett takes the piss out of this King 5 report.

But first, KING offers viewers a lesson in transportation taxonomy. Specifically: Cars are “traffic”; transit is not.

“Here on Alaska, two traffic lanes have been taken away and turned into bus-only lanes,” reporter Natasha Ryan intones, gesturing—with no apparent irony—at the completely empty street behind her. (Screen shot above). “Residents say there already aren’t enough parking spots. … Now residents fear that once the RapidRide stops that are already in place here on Alaska actually start service it’s going to mean even less parking.”

Got that? Bus-only lanes “take away” lanes from the streets’ rightful users—single-occupant cars.

This is fine as far as it goes, but it got me thinking: it’s yet another TV report that assumes its viewers are drivers. I assume a majority of its viewers are drivers as a majority of the people in the region are drivers. But plenty of their viewers must take the bus, as the bus is regularly quite crowed.

A while ago, I wrote that I was always surprised when newspapers aren’t the biggest advocates of public transit. Since we’re getting to an era when TV news can be watched on the bus (but still not in the car, hopefully), I wonder if maybe the knee jerk anti-transit stuff will come to an end. But I won’t think it’ll come any time soon.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Special Event: On Sunday, Sept 9th, Comedian Dean Obeidallah will bring his progressive political stand up show to Seattle. Here’s the information:

Dean Obeidallah for Vice President Comedy Tour in Seattle on Sunday, September 9

A night of stand up comedy featuring award winning comedian Dean Obeidallah. 

The San Francisco Weekly wrote: “Dean Obeidallah is a gruff-voiced, shoot-from-the-hip New Yorker…fresh and clever.”

The Washington Post called Dean: “an angsty Arab Chris Rock.”  

Dean Obeidallah has appeared on numerous US and international TV shows including Comedy Central’s “Axis of Evil” special, ABC’s “The View,” “Comics Unleashed,” NBC’s “Rock Center,” MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes,” Current TV’s “The Young Turks,” and can be seen weekly on CNN offering comedic commentary on political and topical issues. He also writes weekly opinion articles for CNN.com.

He is co-director/co-star of the soon to be released documentary “The Muslims Are Coming!” which also features The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, comedians Lewis Black, David Cross, Maz Jobrani, Janeane Garofalo, Colin Quinn and more. Official Trailer is here.

Special guests for the show:

Khaled the Comic – Based in Chicago, Khaled has performed at comedy clubs all over the US and Canada. He was featured in the Best of the festival show in the 2011 NY Arab-American Comedy Festival.

Melissa Shoshahi – One of the top Iranian-American comedians in the country. Melissa has performed in venues across the US bringing her witty personality to the stage and knows no limits when it comes to comedy-discussing thoughts on her perspective on life to her unique upbringing into society. Her edgy comedy can be best described as ‘beautiful, so beautiful’ by her mother. 

Sunday, September 9, 2012 at 8:00PM

SCCC Broadway Performance Hall
1625 Broadway
Seattle, WA 98122
United States

Tickets: $25
Student tickets $15 at the door with valid student ID

For tickets please visit: Brown Paper Tickets or call 800-838-3006

Here is Dean in his Comedy Central “Axis of Evil” Comedy special:

Can’t make it to Seattle’s DL tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter meets tonight, the Burien chapter meets on Wednesday, and the Woodinville chapter meets on Thursday.

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

– I love the fact that The Stranger are trying to bring down Frank Chopp with a Socialist candidate.

– Last year I paid 22.6 percent in federal taxes after all the special deductions afforded me. That’s a pretty darn low effective rate by historical standards, and it’s low for all I receive from this country. My business depends on a country that continues to make savvy investments in its infrastructure, in its oversight of industry and in its people. Those public investments are instrumental to private market growth.

– He just said in public what these conservative fiends say behind closed doors after refusing to allow a vote on legislation that would establish a consistent standard of care in emergency rooms that includes information about emergency contraception.

– But one thing to keep in mind is there is no real penalty for respectable lying in our world of intellectual discourse.

– Want [h/t]

– This is the best headline I’ve seen in a while.

Money Magazine came out with its list of America’s [100] best small cities.

Number five on the list: My home town of Redmond, WA. Well deserved, if I do say so. Here’s a KOMO-TV report on it.

The next best Washington small city on the list is Bellevue at #40.

The snapshot for Bellevue mentions, “Traffic into Seattle is a perpetual snarl,” but that “a light-rail line that will connect Bellevue and Seattle is in the works.”

Huh…imagine that. The light rail from Seattle to Bellevue isn’t even built yet. Just having it planned is adding value to Bellevue.

Suck on that, Rob McKenna!

The ordinance that passed last year will officially be the city law on September 1. But the law is only as good as the people working and employing people in Seattle know about it. In that vein, Council Member Bagshaw has a post on her blog with details. Who is and isn’t covered, and what the law actually does. There are also 3 workshops open to the public.

• Tuesday, August 21, 12 noon: North Seattle (Ballard Campus Swedish Medical Center, 5300 Tallman Ave. NW)
• Tuesday, August 28, 5:30 pm: West Seattle (Neighborhood House, 6400 Sylvan Way SW)
• Wednesday, August 29, 3 pm: Capitol Hill (Century Ballroom, 915 E. Pine Street)

– The real solution to streets like this involve engineering: road diets, curb bulbs, striped crosswalks, and/or crossing signals. But for now, I recommend crossing with a camera.

– This is a horrible story, but it did get respectable news organizations to say “Pussy Riot.”

– On the one hand, I don’t care about the Republicans on a junket in the Sea of Galilee boozing it up and skinny dipping. On the other hand, if it were a bunch of Democrats.

– Pro life

– Taylor Bridge fire is 47% contained.

– The ghost of Ayn Rand

There is a lore about Rep. Paul Ryan that goes like this: whether you agree with him or not, he is a principled, thoughtful, fiscal wonk. So if you do disagree with him, you have to at least respect him for his deeply held convictions. He is a True Believer.

It must follow, then, that when Ryan criticizes Obama over the stimulus spending that was used to turn around the catastrophic economic collapse that occurred during the end of the George W. Bush administration, it’s because he studied Keynesian economics in college—and rejected it. It must follow that the young economics major was exposed to many economic theories and philosophies, including those of Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and (*snicker*) Ayn Rand. After much contemplation and fiscal navel gazing, our young hero internalized a passionate distaste for deficit spending, Keynesian stimulus, and “big government” solutions to unemployment.

Oh, sure…we saw a few cracks in the Ryan edifice this past week with the revelations that he actively sought millions in stimulus funding on behalf of his constituents. But that was a constituent services mistake that “should have been handled differently.” Because he’s a busy guy, and that’s just so not Paul Ryan.

The lore is entirely bullshit. Chris Hayes uncovers some video of Rep. Paul Ryan in 2002…when George W. Bush was asking Congress for a stimulus package:

Paul Ryan’s philosophy on stimulus spending is entirely this: If a Democratic President asks, I am vehemently against it. If a Republican President asks, I am passionately for it.

This is pretty much the same with all of the Congressional Republicans who voted in favor of unfunded wars, Bush’s deficit stimulus spending during a mild recession, not to mention record-breaking deficit spending during times of economic stability. These hypocrits, under Obama, turned around and squealed like stuck pigs and writhed in fiscal agony at the thought of deficit spending to avert economic calamity.

Paul Ryan is a fraud. He’s a hypocrite. He is an ordinary, lying Republican politician. He is a political opportunist.

His “principles” amount to gaining power for his political party—even if it means harming America.

This year I will be starting college in France and I am going to France for two reasons. One being that I love France, its language and culture; the other being that I will be paying roughly $400 for my annual tuition without scholarships, grants, loans taken out or federal aid. (And additionally, I am still able to apply for federal aid for my housing). I am not able to go to a respected university in my own country without going into debt for the next few decades. It wasn’t always this way. And it doesn’t have to be.

Since the 1980’s the percentage of the federal budget that has been spent on education has decreased significantly, while the cost of education has skyrocketed and increased more than 5x the rates of inflation.

Some argue that we can’t afford to put more money into public universities. I say that’s a lie. We waste plenty of money into defense spending on weapons we will never use. Some defense spending is of course important, but to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into things we have no need for, or will never use is fiscally irresponsible.

What we can’t afford is committing an entire generation of educated people to the debt sentence. People starting their lives with tens of thousands of dollars in debt will not only severely damage our economy but it will also alienate entire groups of people who are brilliant and have potential that will either never be able to develop it or be struggling too hard to pay back into loans to be able to invest in their dreams.

The tuition costs we have now specifically hinder growth and that is not what education is about and it is not what our country says we’re about either. We say that we are the country of possibilities that anyone who works hard can make their way in the world. So then why am I someone who has worked hard for years needing to leave my country just to have access to a decent education without starting my adulthood in debt? I have stayed in the top 5% rankings in my class in one of the best schools in the country, a National Honor Society Member, took 10 AP classes, 5 honors classes and 5 classes that were considered college in high school classes for which I received college credit. I was a JV athlete in cross-country, a captain and varsity athlete in gymnastics and a varsity athlete in track and field in my high school. Additionally, I have babysat since I was 12 and babysat with an additional job from the time I was 16. And this year, on top of those two jobs, I had an internship with Darcy Burner.

So the fact that I didn’t receive enough scholarships to make school reasonably priced is not based on the fact that I didn’t work hard or didn’t do well in school. For every dollar in scholarships available there are 2 dollars of tuition. In the past, this number was reversed.

This week at a student activism conference, I met some students who have been in the ongoing protests in Quebec. They have had hundreds of thousands of students in the streets protesting and on strike because of the plan to have tuition raised from $2,168 to $3,793 between 2012 and 2017. When an American student at the conference asked, “why are you striking? You have the lowest tuition in Canada.” The Quebecois student responded, “we have the lowest tuition in Canada BECAUSE WE STRIKE.”

So, why are we not all in the streets? We’ve normalized the way in which we deal with tuition and higher education but that doesn’t make it right. We need to fight for our right to an education. As a country we seem to agree with that from elementary school until high school so what makes higher education any different?

We can do better than this. We can fight for our right to education. If not an education that is as cheap as it is in France, at least something that is more manageable for the average citizen.The students of this country need to step up and stand together to fight for access to education without going into debt before it’s too late.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was the Paris location of Jason Bourne’s apartment in the Bourne Identity.

This week’s contest is a location somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

2 Samuel 17:29
Cheese.

Discuss.

Stop fighting and Get Cash for Rights.

Roy Zimmerman: Vote Republican, Nebraska edition:

Kimmel’s week in unnecessary censorship.

Ryan—Romney 2012:

• Ann Telnaes: Romney dances around Ryan budget.
• Young Turks: Tom Morello rips Paul Ryan
• Maddow: The Ryan pick…and the first week.
• The same.
• Kimmel: Mitt Romney’s new positive ad:
• Stephen on Ryan/Romney.
• Jenn: Ryan catches a bad case of the flip-flops.
• Stephanie Miller: Tom Morello raging against the machine that is Rep. Paul Ryan.
• Maddow: Ryan Medicare unpopularity trickles down…to Congressional races.
• Sam Seder: Romney rejects Obama’s “tax amnesty” offer.
• SlateTV: No truce in the Romney Tax wars.
• Young Turks: Paul Ryan’s pathetic FAUX debut
• Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: A VP for America?
• Lawrence O’Donnell: The hypocrisy of Paul Ryan.
• Ed: Obama wise-crack about Seamus
• Axelrod on Mitt non-disclosure.
• Maddow: Iraq war excluded from campaign as Romney hires Bush Iraq spokesman.
• Kimmel: Romney outsources Sesame Street.
• Ed: The great Romney-Ryan $700 billion lie
• Mark Fiore: Mitt Romney finds his hero in “Deficit Hawk Man”.
• Sam Seder: Why Paul Ryan is a gift to progressives.
• Jon: On Paul Ryan.
• Ann Telnaes: Paul Ryan displays his archery skills.
• Maddow: Still talking about tax returns.
• Maddow: Even STILL talking about tax returns.
• Ed: Who is the bigger liar, Romney or Ryan (via Crooks and Liars)?

Sam Seder: Sen. Rand Paul thinks, “Obama Arming Weathermen!”

Lawrence O’Donnell: Limbaugh attacks debate moderators as ‘far left-wing’ liberals (via Crooks and Liars).

Hooligans!

• Young Turks: Pussy Riot sentenced.
• Guilty of “Hooliganism”: Pussy Riot.

Sam Seder: Next on the Republican agenda? Taking school lunches from poor kids.

White House: West Wing Week.

G.O.P. Voter Suppression:

• Jon: The 2012 exciting new voter suppression efforts.
• Pap and Ed: Right wing courts are sending America back to the dark ages
• Maher: New Rules on Republican voter suppression (via Crooks and Liars).
• Sam Seder: PA voter suppression scheme goes forward.
• Pap: Republican judicial hacks help suppress voters

Stephanie Cutter: Medicare Whiteboard:

Roy Zimmerman: Vote Republican, New Mexico edition.

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

[I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]

I don’t know if Mitt Romney still thinks global warming is a thing. But whenever his ghost writer ghost wrote this chapter, they acknowledged at least that public opinion moved in that direction. This is good, and hopefully he still believes it. But since half of my notes in the margins in these sections are about how maybe he could look into global warming, I wish he’d have stated it earlier instead of almost at the end. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Now we’re at the section “Common Causes?” and the question mark is because even Romney isn’t sure he can get anything useful out of the bare sketches he wrote about nations and empires collapsing. He starts off saying that both cultural and economic isolation lead to the collapse of empires. “China, Spain, Britain, and the Ottomans expressly or effectively retreated behind barriers to foreign trade, each convinced that competition had made them weaker. Their retreat from the marketplace of ideas and their retreat from the marketplace of goods inevitably led to their retreat from the pinnacle of leadership.”

(a) I think we can all agree that Britain was best known for its economic isolation. Who doesn’t remember that stirring line, “Rule Britannia, Britannia, stay home because the waves might be choppy”? (b) There’s no evidence in this book to suggest that empires that isolated themselves did it because they were losing ground or if they had already lost ground and their isolationism was a way to stave off/slow down the process.

“This is a lesson that shouldn’t be lost on us. When we face challenge, there will always be cries for protection”. I know: those cries of we shouldn’t have to compete with prepubescent girls paid almost nothing for factory work. Don’t they know that they’re the ones destroying the country?

“They will be heartfelt and not entirely illogical. Foreign competition will seem unfair — after all, if foreign products and services are more desirable to consumers, it must be due to some form of advantage. And if one’s competitor has an advantage, that doesn’t feel fair.” So what if it actually isn’t fair? It’s tough to quantify how much of China’s advantage is due to unfair things like child labor, shit environmental laws, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, and trade barriers, and how much is due to fair competition. But calls to not have to compete with those unfair things aren’t in and of themselves shutting down legit trade or calls to close off all ties.

“The only successful way to overcome foreign advantage, however, is to create an advantage of one’s own — to innovate.” There’s no evidence that you can’t innovate and have certain trade restrictions. The US had plenty of trade barriers for most of our history, and we did a fine job innovating. In large measure it helped build our manufacturing base. China is doing the same thing now and out competing us at the moment.

It goes on like this, but you get the point. Moving on to the next reason for failure:

Some of these failed powers were weakened as well by wealth and spending that exceeded their own production–in other words, by easy money. The spoils of Ottoman pillage, the gold the Spanish stole from the Americas, the tribute the Portuguese exacted from trade–all allowed each of those nations to live well in excess of their productivity. In the same way that inherited wealth can lead descendents to profligate spending and economic ruin, easy money weakened these nations’ willingness to work and invest.

Totally. People who inherited their wealth don’t know what hard work is. Excellent point, Mitt Romney. Then I’m not sure if it’s the same point or bad transitions, but culture in general makes a difference in collapse of empires. Finally we can learn from this outline of failure to avoid “the same path that has led to the great decline in the past.” His prescription is don’t save industries that were once successful and avoid protectionism.

And we’re on to “Why Nations Fiddle as they Burn” the story of Nero Mitt Romney explaining with hindsight how he would have saved various places. He has a paragraph about Spain that doesn’t really say anything new. Then because he hadn’t mentioned the Dutch up to this point, he talks about them. “The Dutch also suffered from unearned wealth. Their trade monopolies, underinvestment in productive industry, and cultural decay led this condition to be called ‘Dutch disease.’ Lack of vision, lack of awareness, is an integral part of the malady.” I think Dutch disease is generally shifting from industrialization to a resource based economy. The parts about culture and trade monopoly seem out of place to me.

This leads to a discussion of other countries that have the problems generally actually associated with “Dutch disease.” The countries who have oil wealth in particular. He tries to shoehorn the Ottoman empire into that, but it doesn’t really work. Then to us:

Our own lack of vision led to the collapse of our financial markets and our economy. It precipitated a global recession, triggered the loss of $12 trillion of our citizen’s net worth and dealt a sharp blow to freedom. We simply did not see the so-called subprime home mortgages, liar loans, and nonliquified loans had the potential to cause such destruction. I know some believe that “the powers that be” saw it all along–that the greed of Wall Street tycoons, for example, was the root cause. But I believe a lack of vision played every bit as big a role.

I agree that it wasn’t a conspiracy. Too many people lost too much money. But, we were sold for decades before the crash that these sorts of investments were American innovation. That they were part of a new ownership society. It wasn’t a lack of vision, it was a lack of oversight, and common sense with a too far reaching vision. Also, if you think nobody saw the collapse, I’d recommend The Big Short. There’s no mention of who specifically Romney would blame for lacking vision, maybe because he wants largely to go back to the policies that he says lack vision.

However, lack of vision is the exception when it comes to the decline of great powers. In most cases, there were warnings. Farsighted Ottomans warned that adherence to religious dogma and reliance on oversized bureaucracy would doom the empire.

If only Mitt Romney were in charge of the Ottoman Empire, things would have turned out differently. There are several other examples of empires not having far reaching visions of the future. Here’s where my notes say “global warming” a bunch when he says things like “we seize on the opinion of someone who tells us what we want to hear” rather than face hard truths or look to large scale change.

It goes on for several pages, but I want to mention his calling out the media’s problem reporting on the Iraq war. Now you might think getting into pointless wars would be part of why empires decline. Finding enemies to rally against instead of using that energy to solve our actual problems. Perhaps things like Friedman Units where were promised everything would turn around in 6 months every 6 months? Point is: media criticism leading up to and during the Iraq war is a target rich case study for the decline of nations. Guess what Romney’s example was?

The media elite similarly took the early view that Iraq was a hopeless quagmire. There was often thereafter a perceptible snickering in the coverage, especially when the surge was unveiled. Then, when the surge actually worked, the media coverage of Iraq noticeably fell off.

Yeah, that’s the problem. The media didn’t cheer lead enough. Christ on the Cross. Anyway, now were to an unlabeled section about countries that turn things around. He mentions the emperors after Nero without saying why they were “Five Good Emperors.” The Ottoman apparently staved off their decline for a while. He says “after an eleven-year civil war” but doesn’t put it in the context of his previous Ottoman musings. And Churchill.

Then he talks about the Clinton era as a time of decline for America. Because peace and prosperity: ick. Then 9/11 and “America changed course” without mentioning why a decade stuck in Afghanistan is good for America. He has four reasons some countries can turn things around and why some can’t:

“The first is the occurrence of a catastrophic event that is alarming enough to spur action but not so large that it dooms the nation.” He mentions Sputnik and Pearl Harbor. I guess America was in decline before Sputnik? I don’t know.

“The second catalyst is the presence of a great leader.” He says they should be persuasive and a great statesman. Then without expanding on those qualities, he just lists a bunch of leaders.

“A third condition is national consensus.” He says usually national consensus comes from the top, but sometimes it’s from the bottom. “Lech Walesa galvanized a movement that brought down the Iron Curtain first in Poland and then across Eastern Europe.” Great, but not exactly how nations stay strong. And then he fucks with me: “Scientists, concerned citizens and* the world media succeeded in convincing the public that global warming is a real and present danger.” I haven’t finished the book, or the presidential campaign, but I look forward to his addressing global warming head on.

“The final conducive condition for turnaround is when a nation enjoys deep, broad-based national strength.” This seems like question begging to me. Why are nations able to stay strong? Because of their national strength!

There’s another small section, but it’s just recapping and setting up the next chapter, so we’ll end this here.

[Read more…]

Via Rolling Stone:

Don’t mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta “rage” in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he’s not raging against is the privileged elite he’s groveling in front of for campaign contributions.

— Tom Morello, songwriter, activist, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine

(h/t Joel Connelly.)