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A Different Perspective

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I know I already linked to this, but I really quite enjoy the Google Street View of bike trails. I think part of it is the little I’ve explored, people are impressed by this thing. There are people waving and pointing in what looks like giving directions. And yeah, you get that some in the street view, but not as much.

And I think this reflects the best part of riding a bike: the fact that you aren’t boxed into a car. The interactions when you’re at a stop light that you just couldn’t get with other things. The fact that you can slow down and look at something. You get an experience that’s totally different from driving.

It’s not all positive; Seattle’s rain and hills make me glad to sometimes trap myself in my car. And I hate sharing the road with shit drivers. While it’s unnerving in a car or in a bike those thousands of pounds of metal a seat belt and air bags will protect me better than my helmet. Still, I’m glad for the experience biking provides.

I’m glad chat with people about we’re going or the weather. I love exploring nooks and crannies of the city you can’t get to in a car. And I love seeing things I wouldn’t on a car.

One of the saddest things I’ve seen in Seattle was the Pier 91 Trail after nightfall. I was going into downtown after spending some time in Magnolia. It really shocked me, even as someone who lives downtown, how many homeless people there were.* It wasn’t an experience you’d get in a car even passing a homeless camp by the freeway. It’s a different perspective from a bike than from a car.
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Open Thread 11/14

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– Repeal Seattle’s jaywalking laws.

– Google street view of Seattle Trails

– You would think that a study analyzing the consumption of fast food by poor people would take into account a massive sea change in the way fast food was consumed by poor people. But then again, I’m not a science-type person.

– How dare you call our hero self-sacrificing?

– Hanson endeavors to drag Cain up by Cain’s bootstraps, and he does so by denigrating women and black people with such ease one suspects that Hanson has never met a stereotype or bias that he didn’t call “science.”

– This Twitter language map is pretty amazing.

HA Bible Study

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Revelation 19:17-18
I then saw an angel standing on the sun, and he shouted to all the birds flying in the sky, “Come and join in God’s great feast! You can eat the flesh of kings, rulers, leaders, horses, riders, free people, slaves, important people, and everyone else.”!

Discuss.

Strange Fiction

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In a shock to no one, Bill O’Reilly’s latest book on Abraham Lincoln has a few errors:

On Friday I wrote about the decision of Ford’s Theatre not to offer Bill O’Reilly’s bestsetlling new book on the Lincoln assassination at its bookstore because an expert National Park Service reviewer found the work to be riddled with factual errors.

Now, in a review in a leading Civil War magazine, a second expert has flunked O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln,” calling it “somewhere between an authoritative account and strange fiction.”

The review (which is not online) appears in the November issue of North & South, the official magazine of the Civil War Society.

“The narrative contains numerous errors of people, place, and events,” writes reviewer Edward Steers Jr., author of more than five books on the Lincoln assassination. He goes on to list about 10 errors of fact in “Killing Lincoln,” which O’Reilly co-authored with Martin Dugard and which has been atop bestseller lists for weeks.

I’ve started up a hashtag on Twitter, #oreillyfactsaboutlincoln, for people to add their own creative “facts” about our 16th President…

Another Republican Melee!

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The last Republican debate was spectacular—both comedy and tragedy. Here’s hoping tonight’s is equally entertaining.

You can stream the debate here.

Here’s your debate sandbox….

5:05: Mitt Romney SCORES…on the moderator.

5:10: The Paulistias are in force tonight!

5:28: Rick Santorum is asked, “If a Pakistani nuclear weapon goes missing, what do you do?” Rick proffers a complete non-answer. Correct answer for Santorum, “Shit my pants.”

5:30: Act I has concluded. Pretty disciplined debate so far. Lots of Obama bashing. But really, I haven’t heard much in the way of actual foreign policy proposals that differ from Obama’s.

5:37: Rick Santorum promises to surround himself only with people who think like he does. That’s fucking frightening!

5:35: And by asking Newt how he would “think outside the box,” I must assume the moderator means, “after pulling your head out of your ass.”

5:40: Rick Perry can see Mexico from his back porch!

5:41: Cain is no torturer…unless you consider his stint with Burger King and Godfather’s Pizza.

5:42: Cain is no torturer…except for stuff you can rebrand “enhanced interrogation.”

5:42: Michele BELIEVES in torture. I’m suspect that’s one of the things Marcus loves about her.

5:43: Kudos to Ron Paul for smacking down his fellow Republicans over the torture question.

5:44: And Kudos to Jon Huntsman for smacking down his fellow Republican over the torture question. Some things transcend party.

5:45: Mitt and Newt are pro-killing American citizens engaging in terrorism outside the U.S. Still…sounds like the Obama foreign policy!

5:48: Rick Perry is outrage that “cybersecurity can go on”?!?

5:50: Mitt will fix the china problem by, “Number one…acknowledge that they are currency manipulators.” There was no number two.

5:59: End of Act II. I missed the last 5 minutes of this act, so perhaps I missed something new, but I didn’t hear any real solutions (I mean, besides Michele and Herman reinstating torture).

6:02: Michele Bachmann way out-crazies my ability to liveblog about it!

6:04: Shorter Herman Cain on Middle East: “I can’t even put together a coherent sentence about the region, but Obama is doing everything wrong there.”

6:09: Rick Santorum’s understanding of the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and unlawful combatants is staggeringly naive!

6:11: Michele Bachmann has been chomping at the bit to get some zinger out about torture!

6:13: And…Michele Bachmann throws in her endorsement for Obama’s policies!

6:19: Wikipedia: “Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice.” If I understood correctly, Michele Bachman just argued to reverse Johnson’s vision. Michele Bachmann: Pro-poverty, Pro-racial injustice?

6:24: There’s that “lost nuclear weapon” question for Rick Santorum again. “I’d shit my pants.” Just say it, Rick!

6:28: That’s it?!? Just like that? Sheesh!

Postscript: There were no big winners or losers in this debate. And it wasn’t very entertaining. The most annoying thing was the perpetuation of the myth that the debt is the biggest threat to the U.S. right now. No…that isn’t the biggest threat.

The single biggest threat is the willingness of politicians to put party ahead of the good of the country.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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

Veteran’s Day:

Prosperity for WA: What does it look like?

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

America Occupied:

Greenman: Ben Santer crushing the myth of global cooling.

Thom: There are no “free” markets.

Extended Daily Show interview with Bill Clinton.

The G.O.P. Primary Asylum:

White House: West Wing Week.

Stephen on SuperPAC issue ads.

Rep. Joe “Dead-beat-dad” Walsh (R-IL-8) Comes Unhinged:

Young Turks: GOP pretend to attack the rich.

Alyona: Drone policy will come back to haunt us.

Rick Santorum nominates his way to Worst Person in the World.

Mark Fiore: SuperCommittee.

Jay Inslee for Washington:

Thom: Why is FAUX “palling around with terrorists?”

Campaign in 100 seconds: Why Obama’s numbers are on the rise. (via TalkingPointsMemo).

ONN week in review: Latest GOP debate concludes with candidates wrestling a pig and slaughtering it, and other news.

About Last Tuesday:

Bill Maher with some New Rules.

Joe Paterno is Worst Person in the World.

Maddow: A Pantheon of Pregnant Pauses:

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

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

Making Up Quotes

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I was reading this piece from Goldy about how we need to repeal the B&O exemption for newspapers in these troubled times, and he quotes a recent Seattle Times editorial that says:

Essentially I-1163 says to legislators, “Find $36 million per biennium and spend it on this. We do not care where you find the money. That is your problem.”

Now I understand from the context, and the fact that they’re using a made up number, that this isn’t an actual quote. No, the initiative doesn’t have that language in it, and it hasn’t come to life and started talking. But, why put it in quotes at all? That has to be confusing to the senile segment of the population that still reads the Seattle Times Ed board for information. I don’t want to do Ryan Blethen’s job for him, but wouldn’t it make more sense to just say, “I-1163 fores legislators” and not deal with imaginary quotes?

Also, as I understand it, the initiative is talking here. So why is it speaking in the second person plural? If you’re going to make up a quote from a single inanimate object, it should probably say “I” rather than “we.”

At 11 on 11/11/11

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In Canada, Australia, India, Kenya, the UK, and the remainder of the 54 Commonwealth nations, today is Remembrance Day, a holiday honoring those who gave their lives for King (or Queen) and country while serving in the armed forces. As such, Remembrance Day is much more like our Memorial Day.

In my youth, this holiday was alternatively called Armistice Day. Officially, it became Veterans Day in 1954, but of course many adults kept calling it by its original name for years and years thereafter. The armistice referred to in the earlier title was the one that ended hostilities on the Western Front of the Great War. That occurred, famously, in Marshal Foch’s railway car, deep in France’s Forest of Compiègne. Though signed by representatives of Germany, France, and the Allies in the wee hours of that morning, the agreed-upon time for the laying-down of arms was “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month”.

Today, on the 93rd anniversary of that armistice, on Veterans Day, we can go that timestamp one better, adding “of the 11th year”. Hence, my decision to publish this epistle at 11am on 11/11/11.

Over at Peace Tree Farm, I’ve written posts marking Veterans Day on almost every November 11 since 2003. Somehow, I missed it last year, breaking a seven-year streak. In case you’re interested, here are links to those essays:

I’m not a veteran myself. To be honest, only a few of my friends and family served in the military. I come from a long line of non-soldiers … had a student deferment during Vietnam and then a high enough number in the first draft lottery to avoid being called, my father was 4-F in World War II (he was deaf in one ear), and my maternal grandfather was a temporary New York City cop while many of the real policemen were marching “over there” in World War I. My father’s father did serve, if you consider playing the French horn in Czar Nicholas II’s army band to be military service.

But you don’t have to be a veteran to honor those who did serve. So here’s to Shaun Dale, whose blog Upper Left has been running almost as long as my own, and to Michael Hood of the well-respected BlatherWatch. Here’s to HA commenter-extraordinaire Roger Rabbit and to Robby, occasional HA commenter and erstwhile blogger on the late, lamented Effin’Unsound. And a salute to my Congressman Jim McDermott, one of only 90 House members with military service of any sort. Jim was a Navy psychiatrist treating sailors and soldiers with PTSD during the Vietnam War (to be fair, both of Washington’s Republican Congressmen, Dave Reichert and Doc Hastings, were reservists).

And, in fact, greetings and salutations in honor of all of the veterans hereabouts.

Open Thread 11/11

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– Occupy Comics

– If anyone who voted for (or against, I suppose) the Seattle Housing Levy wants to know where your money goes. It goes in part to “seven new apartment buildings that will serve homeless individuals, low-income families and seniors. The investment, primarily Seattle Housing Levy funds, will help create 476 new permanent apartments, including some set-aside to serve veterans.”

– Someone should probably do something. Maybe throw a body upon the gears and what not?

– You know when I was a kid the War On Christmas didn’t start until after Thanksgiving.

– Yikes, again.

– Seattle Transit Rider’s Union public forum.

– Hippocracy

– There are too many stars.

– Very realistic.

The Competition

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I’ve watched this presentation by Bug Girl on social media a couple times. The part that intrigues me the most is who she finds her competition to be. And it isn’t other insect bloggers, but rather everything else. She finds other insect bloggers to be her collaborators. And I sort of feel the same way about Washington/Northwest liberal blogs.

In the early days of local blogging, the landscape was pretty bare. Before Slog, before Postman’s blog or the rest of the local media, before Goldy started blogging, it was a threadbare community compared to now. And I made an effort with what little platform I had 2 blogs ago to promote the rest of the community. It grew into something fun and interesting. And even with my 100-150 readers a day at most, I remember having people come up to me at Drinking Liberally or at other blog events and thank me for a link and tell me all the traffic they got out of it.

Some of them have gone, but a lot of them are still part of the community. I hope that the support of this community comes through in the Open Threads where I try to link to a variety of local blogs, even if I unfortunately tend toward the more established ones. Because I really don’t consider them the competition. I love the community both of comments and of other blogs. I don’t know what that means going forward, but I’m going to try to keep it in mind when I write here.

Joni Balter’s lazy lie about Mayor McGinn

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Un-fucking-believable, that Joni Balter is. I’m told by journalism insiders that she used to be a young and eager reporter. But with age, and her acceptance into inner-sanctum of the Seattle Times misanthrope society, she has undergone the journalistic equivalent of atherosclerosis that has left her lazy and apathetic. Worse, her written opinions are banal, and lacking substantive intellectual analysis.

Here is a perfect example of lazy and substance-free Balter:

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn has got to be joking, but I fear he is not. McGinn actually argues that if only the failed $60 car tab request to voters had been bigger — $80, if only — the poorly hatched plan would have been approved.

No, Joni. That isn’t what he argued. Here are his words:

I wanted a bolder transit package to get rail out to the neighborhoods. The City Council chose to fund a lot of smaller projects. It wasn’t clear to people what they were getting for their money.

Now, look, I am not a Seattle resident and I’m an infrequent consumer of the Seattle Times’ “product” (I mean, unlike Goldy, I hardly ever comment on their editorials…simply because I almost never bother to read their editorials). I don’t really feel compelled to protect McGinn from that fossil we know as the Seattle Times. But Joni’s claim is lazy to the point of being dishonestly misleading. It’s irresponsible.

McGinn was talking about substantive differences, and how voters might perceive a different value in the more extensive package.

Joni refuses to fire her synapses enough to get past the dollar amount.

McGinn is playing chess. Joni is playing checkers tiddelywinks dead.

Wednesday Night Open Thread

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– The situation at Penn State is still a huge shock to me. Before all of this news broke, it was hard to imagine the kind of scenario that could lead to Joe Paterno being fired. My sister is an alum, and I’ve been there a number of times. People not familiar with the school and the town of State College have trouble understanding the level of reverence that community has for “JoePa”. It’s intense to the point of being creepy. I’m not even remotely surprised by the reaction. Or that the story itself was largely buried until after Paterno broke the all-time wins record last month.

– There’s so much irony here, it’s hard to know where to start.

– Tim Fernholz has a good overview of the latest in the Obama Administration’s medical marijuana crackdown.

– It would probably shock us to know exactly how many people are arrested like this by corrupt cops.

– Can anyone explain how this man was actually elected governor of a state?

And From Here?

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Joel Connelly has a piece, the last half dealing with the rejection of Prop 1. Here’s the conclusion, and the only part that talks about the future:

The state can hopefully get on with transportation projects, using variable (rush hour) tolls as a constructive carrot-stick approach to relieve congestion.

The Sierra Club will, one hopes, go back to being a player in Northwest conservation rather than an instrument of the McGinn-O’Brien agenda. Bellevue plutocrat Kemper Freeman will, one trusts, think twice before blowing another $1.1 million on an Eyman initiative.

The Seattle City Council should have the sense to bring more cooks into the kitchen, and give its next transportation package a little more time in the oven. Voters don’t like spending hard-earned money on something half-baked.

For someone who has written repeatedly (including in the non-quoted part of this piece) that a big problem with the car tabs was that it was regressive, he seems to have forgotten to make any sort of push to the legislature to give us an MVET or some other progressive means of paying for it (a 1% high earner’s income tax would be even better, although I have no idea how much it raises).

Anyway, the only solutions by government agencies Joel mentions are the legislature should do something transit related and the city should talk to more people. But unless the state allows us to tax ourselves more fairly, the biggest problem will persist (and Olympia isn’t likely to act without people like Joel pushing them).

Finally, not to spend too much time on an aside, but the Sierra Club does a lot of conservation work. The first non-election thing on the Cascade Chapter’s website is logging trails, for instance.

In a unanimous decision issued in NEDC v. Brown, a case involving logging roads on Oregon State lands, the Ninth Circuit ruled that polluted stormwater generated by logging roads is subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The August 2011 decision requires that logging roads meet the standards of the Clean Water Act that would protect our clean water and salmon and steelhead. We are stunned that Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna would join with very conservative states such as Arkansas in urging the Supreme Court to overturn this court decision.

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