HorsesAss.Org

Please join us tonight for our first 2012 evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Tonight is also the first of the Republican nomination contests. I’ll be there way early, for some liveblogging. I should be there shortly after 5:00 pm. So stop by early if you wish, or just swing by at our normal starting time of 8:00 pm.

We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Can’t make it to Seattle? The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking Liberally meets every Tuesday night, and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meets this Thursday.

With 231 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and six more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s one near you.

– It’s caucus day in Iowa, so here’s my uninformed picks:

Win: Willard
Place: Paul
Show: Perry

Also, that Willard and Perry are relatively close to each other.

– Although kids don’t like them some Perry.

– Is tolling on 520 changing your commute?

– Awwwwwwwwww.

– Washington had 2 of these views.

– Chris Polk will enter the draft.

Were you reading this blog during the 2008 election season? If so, you may remember my election prediction posts that took you over to Hominid Views. This year, I’ll post the election predictions here.

I’ve spend the past week collecting polls, updating the software, creating a clickable cartogram for the 2012 electoral college, updating the FAQ, and figuring out how to make it all work on Horsesass. The first analysis for the presidential election will be posted later today.

At this point, I am only doing analyses of an Obama versus Romney general election. As much as I would like to see one of the weaker candidates take the G.O.P. nomination, I’m pretty certain Republicans will, as they did in 2008, act rationally, and chose the candidate that performs best against Obama in head-to-head polling. That is currently Mitt Romney. As the Republican primary circus continues, I’ll reassess. If, say, Santorum trickles on up to the front (eww!) or there is a crazy surge for Ron Paul, or the Mittster takes a tumble after unintentionally tweeting a photo of his underwear, or Rick Perry challenges the rest of ’em to a duel (and wins), I’ll switch do doing analyses for the new front-runner(s).

Later in the election season, I add senatorial and gubernatorial analyses as well.

When I post these analyses, there are occasionally naysayers. They complain that polls are meaningless, the analysis is flawed, or the results are not predictive, or “can’t we just wait for the ‘real poll'”, blah, blah, blah. I’ll repeat my counterargument.

It works the same way as the score at a sporting event. The first quarter score in, say, a basketball game doesn’t typically allow you to determine the eventual winner. The score, the spread, the amount of playing time remaining, and the recent changes in scoring momentum gives a good feel for how the game has progressed, who might win if things continue in the same vein, and what each team needs to do to attain victory. Somehow I think fans would not appreciate basketball scores being hidden until the the game has concluded.

Same with the election analyses. They aren’t predictions of the outcome on election day. Instead, they show the score so far. And the currency is a probability of winning, if the “game” ended now.

Another point from the naysayers in 2008 is that Nate Silver, now at the NY Times, does similar analyses, and everyone knows he is the best. Mr. Silver is an entertaining writer, and does a very nice job with graphics and site design. And since he does this stuff full time, he is quite prolific. Here is the problem I had with his 2008 analyses. He used a complicated (nearly proprietary) analysis that involved using information beyond simple polling data. This ancillary information was included as a pseudo-poll in his analyses. My preference is for a straightforward, data driven analysis that makes the fewest assumptions necessary.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating…so how did we each do in 2008? Here is his last pre-election post and here is mine. We both missed a single state—Indiana. The late polling in Indiana gave McCain a sliver of a lead, and the “big poll” came down in favor of Obama by a 1% margin.

For the electoral college, Mr. Silver projected a 349 to 189 victory for Obama and I projected a 364 to 174 victory for Obama. The actual result was 365 to 173. I was off by one vote.

This one vote discrepancy, in fact, reflected a weakness of my analysis. I ignored the possibility that either Nebraska or Maine might split their electoral votes. Nebraska’s 1st district did split in 2008, giving one of the state’s electors to Obama. If I had included this little detail, my projection would have been spot on. For the 2012 elections, I have already added separate analyses of Nebraska districts, and will do so for Maine when some district-level polling data becomes available.

For more information on the methods used, please visit the draft of the new simulation FAQ. Also if you have recommended changes or have additional questions for the FAQ, please mention them in the comment thread.

Update: The Obama-Romney analyses can be found here. There is now a side-bar blurb, too.

Just under the wire the Redistricting Commission have submitted their final Congressional and legislative maps. Now it goes to the legislature to basically rubber stamp it. So, I’d like to take this moment to add a few thoughts to N in Seattle’s post from the other day.

Congress:
• Even if Adam Smith is safe electorally, a majority minority district may force him to hire a more diverse staff (I have no idea what his staff looks like now) and recommend more non-white people to military academies. Members of Congress take their duty to represent their district very seriously, and do a lot of behind the scenes constituent service things that might have more of an immediate impact.
• While you still have to give the advantage to McMorris Rodgers in any race, her district has probably got a bit more liberal. Since she won every county against Don Barbieri and against Peter Goldmark, she’s probably safe, but the right candidate, a bit of luck, and maybe the right timing, I wouldn’t put it past a Democrat in that seat (but hope springs eternal with me).

Legislature:

• The 32nd and 46th seem to look quite bit different from how they’re currently drawn with the 32nd going pretty far North and the 46th going over Lake Washington and pretty far down. The rest of the Seattle area districts look pretty much the same to me on first glance, although I’m sure having typed that, someone in the comments will point out some glaring change.
• The 15th LD becomes the first majority Hispanic district in the state. At 54.52% of the population (as opposed to the % of voters), I don’t know if that’s enough to organize a majority of voters, but I suspect the Democrats will be aggressive in organizing there.

It’s almost 12:30, so I’m going to bed.

Last week’s contest was another tough one. Milwhcky eventually got the correct location, but no one figured out which news item it was related to. The location was a strip mall in Glendale, Arizona, and I chose it because it was the location of a gun shop at the center of the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal.

This week’s is just a random location again, good luck!

1 Samuel 18:25-27
“Say to David, ‘The king wants no other price for the bride than a hundred Philistine foreskins, to take revenge on his enemies.’” Saul’s plan was to have David fall by the hands of the Philistines.

When the attendants told David these things, he was pleased to become the king’s son-in-law. So before the allotted time elapsed, David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.

Discuss.

As Carl mentioned below, the New Approach Washington campaign turned in its signatures this week for Initiative 502. This initiative would legalize personal possession of up to one ounce of marijuana and regulate the distribution and sale of the drug to anyone over 21. It also introduces a per se DUI limit for “active” THC – in layman’s terms, the amount of “unprocessed” THC in your body.

Over at Slog, Dominic Holden continues to lash out at the folks in the medical marijuana community who oppose it – primarily due to the DUI provisions. I’ve been trying to stay out of this fight for my own sanity, but Holden’s anger is so misdirected (and misinformed), I have to speak up.

The heart of the issue is rather simple. For years, medical marijuana patients in this state have fought to keep from getting arrested for using a medicine that they and their doctors have found is very effective for them. Our medical marijuana law does not fully protect medical marijuana patients from arrest, it only provides for a defense in court. Over the years – despite the fact that the rules the police must follow haven’t changed (hint, hint) – the amount of arrests for medical marijuana have been going down as more and more law enforcement folks realize that patients will simply win in court.

With I-502, however, medical marijuana patients would end up with a new threat. Because they often use very high quantities of marijuana compared to recreational users, the effects of the drug from an impairment standpoint are minimal (people build up a tolerance to the psychoactive effects), yet they always have an overabundance of “active” THC in their bodies to trigger that DUI charge. As a result, medical marijuana patients and their advocates are organizing to fight I-502. Holden continues to blast these folks for their opposition, but their position is entirely rational. This initiative clearly puts them at greater risk of having to deal with the criminal justice system than the status quo.

And this situation was entirely by design. When New Approach Washington started their campaign, they pointed to poll numbers showing that including the DUI provision would cause 62% of voters to be more likely to vote for it, but only 11% less likely. The folks behind New Approach Washington came to a conscious decision to throw medical marijuana patients under the bus in order to have a better chance of passing something. To be upset that medical marijuana patients are now trying to fight it is absurd. Of course they’re fighting it.

But even more obnoxious is how Holden is now trying to impugn the integrity of folks who are acting exactly the way you’d expect them to. He writes:

The folks trying to lock up pot smokers aren’t the prestigious public health professionals, professors, prosecutors, and defense attorneys who have banded together to submit what appears to be enough signatures to put the country’s most sweeping marijuana initiative on the Washington State ballot. No, the people holding a rally today in Olympia to oppose Initiative 502—which would legalize and regulate pot for all adults—are medical marijuana patients, attorneys who specialize in marijuana defense, and activists who want legalization with fewer regulatory controls. They complain that too many people would get busted for DUIs while driving with active (not inactive) THC in their system. Of course, maintaining the status quo isn’t a big deal for them if I-502 fails. A lot of them make money running pot dispensaries, and many lawyers make their living defending marijuana cases. The folks braying loudest against I-502 are also the same people (Douglas Hiatt, Jeffrey Steinborn, and Vivian McPeak) who ran previous initiative campaigns to legalize marijuana and failed to make the ballot. Maybe they’re feeling butthurt that someone else is doing a better job.

This is so absurd, I can’t believe he actually wrote this. Hiatt and Steinborn are the two main folks behind Sensible Washington, who’ve been trying to get their own legalization initiative on the ballot for the past two years (I did a lot of work with them earlier this year). That initiative was written to completely remove all state criminal penalties for marijuana. To say that those two are happy to maintain the status quo because they make a living defending marijuana cases is one of the craziest things ever written in The Stranger.

They’ve all done commendable work in the past, but now they are at the vanguard of a misguided campaign to lock up pot smokers. If they succeed in stopping I-502, perhaps there will be a handful more DUI arrests for pot under the imperfect initiative, because the science is admittedly unclear. But here’s one thing that is absolutely clear: Law enforcement in Washington will continue to arrest about 13,000 people for pot every year unless we pass I-502.

But that’s actually far from clear. Holden is leaving out a very important aspect of the argument that some I-502 foes have been making, in particular Jeffrey Steinborn. As he wrote on Slog last month, Steinborn believes that I-502 will do nothing to stop people from being arrested:

Initiative 502 is a law enforcement sting in plain sight. Read it before you support it. Although the mandatory DUI conviction at 5ng of active THC per milliliter of blood is troubling and possibly unconstitutional, the inevitable federal preemption of this initiative, along with its provisions requiring mandatory self-incrimination make it a dangerous illusion.

Steinborn isn’t arguing that some smaller number of DUI’s is worse than the number of people who get arrested every year. What he’s arguing is that – if I-502 passes – the federal government is going to step in, shut down all the parts of the initiative that establish a legal, regulated market and potentially leave us with both 13,000 arrests per year and bogus DUIs.

I have no idea if Steinborn is right. I’ve listened to a number of legal experts and there’s a wide range of opinions on what happens once a state fully legalizes marijuana and allows for it to be sold openly to adults. My own hunch is that private entities like drug testing firms and possibly the pharmaceutical industry may compel the Obama Administration to go after any state that tries. And the history of the Obama Administration has been one of corporate influence outweighing what the liberal base wants.

Yet Holden doesn’t explore whether or not Steinborn’s right, he just falsely claims he’s making a foolish tradeoff. This is lazy, hack journalism at its worst. But beyond that, he’s completely missing the point about the impact of DUIs. The problem isn’t just that the number of arrests will go up significantly (although I think that might happen too). The problem is that the people who get arrested and charged with DUI for marijuana will now find it far more difficult to prove their innocence in court. And as I alluded to earlier (hint, hint), law enforcement and prosecutors most certainly change the way they do things based upon whether or not they know they can get convictions.

At the beginning of their campaign, New Approach Washington looked at their polling on the DUI question and felt that this was the right approach. With 62% of voters saying a DUI provision would make them more likely to vote for legalization and 11% of voters saying the opposite, only 20% of that 62% would need to actually flip their vote to make the other 11% irrelevant. If that’s the case, and the supporters of I-502 think that’s realistic, they shouldn’t give a crap what medical marijuana patients are doing and saying. They’ll be outweighed by all those soccer moms who finally have an initiative that they can vote for.

It’s that point that makes me wonder why Holden is losing his shit. If he thinks that New Approach Washington miscalculated – and that the 11% can really swing this – he should be blasting the I-502 campaign for making that poor calculation. The opposition from medical marijuana patients and their longtime advocates was easily predictable and fully expected. What hasn’t been expected is the piss-poor level of journalism coming from a publication that has long been superb at pointing out the drug war hackery of others.

Young Turks: FAUX News’ curious Christmas poll.

Thom debates Horace Cooper on voter fraud.

Jennifer Granholm ponders how Republicans get people across the country to vote against their own interests:

Newsy: Unemployment hits a three-year low.

Young Turks: What Americans think about socialism.

Alynoa’s Tool Time: Capital One is greedy.

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

Ed: Obama campaign lays out multiple pathways to victory.

The G.O.P. Primary Reality Show:

• Maddow: Iowa chaos!
• Sharpton: Who is more dangerous for America?
• Buzz 360: Iowa polls are all over the freakin’ place.
• Maddow: Going rogue in Iowa.
• The Obama campaign lays out multiple pathways to victory.
• The nutcases caucus for Sarah Palin in Iowa.
• Buzz 360: The I’s that really matter.
• Thom: …then THEY came for Newt & then Perry!!!
• Young Turks: Newt chokes up over his mother.
• Newt considers Sarah Palin for his Energy Czar (via Right Wing Watch):
  [audio:http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/mp3/Newt Gingrich Palin VP 12-29-11.mp3]
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Newt’s disorganized campaign.
• Newt intends to pack courts with judges from Regent & Liberty University, Federalist Society (via Right Wing Watch):
  [audio:http://www.rightwingwatch.org/sites/default/files/mp3/Newt Gingrich WallBuilders Judiciary Regent 12-28-11.mp3]
• Young Turks: Newt’s energy flip-flops are a case study in corruption.
• Thom: Did new voter I.D. laws bite Newt in the ass?.
• What is Mitt hiding?
• Young Turks: Bachmann’s Iowa State Chair jumps ship to Ron Paul.
• Ed: Bachmann’s campaign implodes. Accusations fly.
• Newsy: Bachmann’s campaign manager jumps ship.
• Newsy: Romney takes aim at Big Bird.
• Mitt Romney takes aim at Big Bird.
• Young Turks: Mitt wants to turn Big Bird into a corporate whore.
• Ezra Klein: Republicans self-disenfranchisement.
• The Romney Rule (via Crooks and Liars).
• Newsy: Perry’s part-time Congress idea.
• Young Turks: Racism isn’t the worst thing about Ron Paul (via Crooks and Liars).
• Young Turks: Ron Paul’s more sinister than ‘peace, love and no jail for pot’
• Ed, Pap and Lizz: Michele meets metal man.
• WTF??? Michele reads speech from iPAD (i.e. teleprompter) (via Crooks and Liars).
• Animated Santorum.
• Newsy: Santorum surges from behind!
• Sharpton: Santorum’s solution for joblessness.
• Lawrence O’Donnell: G.O.P. establishment efforts to destroy Santorum are on!

Buzz 60: A weekend left in Iowa.

Young Turks: Crazy right wing group’s ad with straight couple in cross-hairs.

Newsy: Very bad news for Republicans—Unemployment hits three-year low.

Sharpton: Oddly…Republicans have no concerns about voter fraud in Iowa caucus.

Thom to US Senator Ron Wyden (D- OR): “You’re fired!”

The Obamas wish you and military families “happy holidays”.

Young Turks: Larry “wide stance” Craig IS BAAAAAAACK.

Seattle protesters do a Christmas foreclosure on Bank of America (via Crooks and Liars).

Thom with some more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Year In Review:

• The top 10 G.O.P. moments of 2011:
• Mark Fiore: The year in crazy.
• Ann Telnaes: Year in Review.
• 2011: Year of OWS
• Ezra Klein: The year in repealing and replacing:
• Lawrence O’Donnell: The year in political comedy.

Pap: The Republican’s war on voting.

Not exactly Rick Snyder (R-MI).

Young Turks: Good riddance, Sen. Ben Nelson.

Thom: NE Democrats…take back your state!.

White House: West Wing Week.

Mark Fiore: Aggregating Arianna.

Alyona: TSA needs more intel, less groping.

Newsy: Ben Nelson retirement to hurt Democrats?

Cenk: Has Obama beaten Republicans at their own game?

Ed: Justice Department blocks SC voter suppression laws.

Thom: TSAs Security Theater is going on the road!

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

– New Approach Washington has submitted the signatures for their initiative.

– Today in Ron Paul totally isn’t racist or homophobic.

– The Reconstruction-era South didn’t invent dishonesty, but its response to America’s defining trauma has become a foundational lie, supporting an ever-growing edifice of false history. It’s a lie so big no one will forcefully challenge it, a lie that’s too big to fail.

– Mitt Romney Is Running For America’s Embarrassing Dad

– Awesome species identification, Orkin.

The Seattle Times’ editorial board is talking vaguely about reforms without ever explaining how much money (if any) they actually save, let alone what they’ll do to the people working in government. And even after mentioning that many of the so called reforms they want have already passed, they seem to get angrier. This is bad enough, and I considered a more general critique of it. But the opening paragraphs are what really pissed me off.

DEMOCRATS who take cheer from business leaders’ support for a tax increase should make sure they are hearing the whole statement: taxes and reforms.

That is what Jim Albaugh, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said last week. Add to his voice that of Microsoft’s general counsel, Brad Smith: “It’s important reforms are approved along with revenues.”

Phew, I was worried that an attorney for Microsoft and the CEO of Boeing might not have a space to push their preferred policy. Thank goodness The Seattle Times editorial board will act as stenographers for them!

Now, perhaps I’m being unfair here. I mean those tax policy changes affect those companies. Well the editorial goes on to mention some of the reforms they want: “formulas for pensions, pay increases, medical reimbursements, benefits, etc.”* Oddly, they don’t quote anyone who will be hurt by those things. People losing a good deal of their pensions and pay over the long haul, or who’ll have worse medical care maybe deserve as much time as a CEO of a Chicago company.

[Read more…]

Current Attorney General and gubernatorial wannabe Rob McKenna is feeling the heat over an early December AP piece showing the “State payouts up threefold under [him]”:

During his 2004 campaign for attorney general, Rob McKenna vowed that he would use the position to curb how much state agencies pay out for major lawsuits. Instead, those costs have grown rapidly under his watch.

Today’s TNT has a letter defending McKenna from Rob Costello, a deputy AG, and Howard Fischer, a senior assistant AG:

The Washington attorney general and the men and women of the Attorney General’s Office who defend the state in lawsuit deserve a more balanced telling of the story regarding lawsuit payouts than they received in this Associated Press article.

They go on to blame it on the legislature that eliminated immunity to lawsuits…in 1961. I don’t think so. A non-immunity bill passed before Rob McKenna was conceived could be used to explain a higher lawsuit burden in Washington compared to states with immunity provisions, but not the three-fold increase under McKenna since he was elected in 2004.

But that isn’t what caught my eye. This is (emphasis added):

In 2004, as a candidate for attorney general, Rob McKenna promised to reduce lawsuits by seeking reforms to state liability laws. If any significant savings are to be achieved, this is absolutely the right place to look, and McKenna has consistently done so. He has worked to inform legislators and has repeatedly invited the Legislature to revisit and reform state tort laws. Every major proposal, however, was killed in committee.

Two points. First Rob McKenna didn’t keep his 2004 promise. He had grand ideas about what an agent of change he could be, and he engaged in some slick campaigning to let everyone know. But he failed to live up to his promises. Perhaps I am being unfair…I mean, McKenna didn’t have complete control over it. He had to work with the Legislature. On the other hand, he knew he would have to work with the Legislature when he made the promise.

The second point. McKenna failed to succeed in working with the Legislature. Keeping his promise required him to be highly skillful in working with the legislative and executive branches. It required him to go beyond being a slick campaigner to actually get something he promised done. He couldn’t and he didn’t. He failed as a politician.

And now he wants to be Governor?

Remember this when he makes slick promises that sound too good to be true.

Either he hasn’t thought through what he must do to make it happen, or he isn’t a skillful enough politician to see it through.

Darryl and I have been doing some live blogging recently. Darryl has been on fire with the GOP Presidential debates, and I also did one of them. Mostly, I’ve been live blogging either events I’ve gone to as an activist or been invited to (or weaseled my way into) as a writer for this blog.

Recently, I’ve been influenced by this piece by Tim Wood. And while not everything about a sports blog applies to a politics blog, especially to the events where most of the readers aren’t able to follow along, there are some style things that are important.

There is an art to every format we use at Bleacher Report, but none more than the live blog. Done right, a live blog can be your ticket to a loyal following on B/R, because the live blog is the spot where you can most spotlight your personality.

You’re keeping readers up to date on the event, but more importantly, you’re giving the reader the feeling of watching it with you at a sports bar. You’re the buddy for the reader to interact with, so perspective and variety are two keys to keeping your readers interested.

I think change sports bar to watching the debate and you have a pretty good summation of Darryl covering the debates. For me, I think the most important thing is to put the updates below the older things. That way people just finding it half way through don’t have to scroll up and down a bit, then back up, and people can hit refresh from one point in, and be in the same spot. I try to remember to put times at the start of each update, but sometimes I forget. I’ve also made more of a point of going back and correcting grammar/punctuation/starting sentences that I don’t finish so it stands as something.

So, my question to you on this holiday shortened week, while most of you are perhaps still out with family: are these things you’d like to see more of? Less? Would you like advance warning? Would you like something different stylistically?

Darcy Burner gets her wish … and doesn’t.

Yes, her home is located in the 1st District. And yes, she’ll be in a no-incumbent CD. But no, it doesn’t much overlap with what had been Jay Inslee’s District. Most of it is what had been represented by Rick Larsen, who now has much of the former Inslee CD (and a safe Democratic seat).

I don’t know how most of the other 1st CD prospects made out.

Off the top of my head, I’d say that Marko Liias struck out … he’s almost surely in the new 2nd, and would have to face Larsen. I don’t know where in Snohomish Steve Hobbs lives. Suzan DelBene is now in the 9th District, with incumbent Adam Smith. The others — Goodman, Ruderman, and others — are still a mystery for me. [CORRECTIONS (12:51pm): If DelBene lives in Medina, she’s actually in WA-01, not WA-09. Roger Goodman is definitely in WA-01. It’s possible that Liias is now in WA-07, not WA-02 (either way, he’s SOL).]

Yes, majority-minority, but …

The redrawn 9th Congressional District is “only” 49.67% non-Hispanic white. However, it already has a well-entrenched incumbent in Adam Smith. And, as I noted yesterday, the voters of the CD will be majority non-Hispanic white.

In terms of cojones, Ceis and Gorton fought to a draw.

It really depends on the new 1st District. They built five Democratic Districts: 2nd (Larsen), 6th (Dicks), 7th (McDermott), 9th (Smith), 10th (Thurston County-based, no incumbent). There are three, maybe four, Republican CDs: the 4th (Hastings), 5th (McMorris Rodgers), and 8th (Reichert) are solid red, and the 3rd (Herrera Beutler) might, but probably doesn’t, have a whisper of a chance for a Democrat to squeeze her out. The new 1st will be the battleground. In a Presidential year, Democratic chances up there probably improve a bit.

More thoughts as I get a better chance to review the maps.

– When I finally stopped talking, I exhaled. I’d finally told someone I was falling for my whole story. And I was afraid that my biggest fear would come true: Aaron would look at me differently. (h/t)

– We might be all redistricted out by the end of the day, but this vignette from the 1960’s was fascinating.

– Is anyone else but Erika surprised that she finds it more remarkable that she would defend Kim Kardashian than that she would defend child sweatshops? You shouldn’t be because one of the questions on the wingnut welfare eligibility exam is to write an essay explaining the benefits of child sweatshops, poll taxes and climate change.

– Those Ron Paul newsletters are really, really, really awful.

– I think the question about Edgar Martinez and what would his Hall of Fame case would look like if he’d been a terrible third baseman is interesting.