HorsesAss.Org

In many cases, it’s these guys:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last week highlighted what he called a “shocking” internal Pentagon report that concluded defense companies defrauded the military by $1.1 trillion.

“The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money,” Sanders said in a statement. “With the country running a nearly $15 trillion national debt, my goal is to provide as much transparency as possible about what is happening with taxpayer money.”

More than $250 million “went to 54 contractors convicted of hard-core criminal fraud in the same period,” Sanders said, summarizing tables included with the DoD report. “Of that total, $33 million was paid to companies after they were convicted of crimes.”

Last week’s contest was won by Poster Child, who found the location along Highway 18 in Maple Valley.

This week’s location is related to something in the news from October, good luck!

Genesis 2:2
By the seventh day God had finished his work, and so he rested.

Discuss.

At Slog, Dominic Holden fires back at the opposition from medical marijuana patients to New Approach Washington’s Initiative 502. He writes [emphasis his]:

But it’s dishonest to declare this this measure will subject people to more blood testing or result in a change of policing protocol. If voters pass I-502, officers would be held to the same standards as they are today: They would still require probable cause to stop a car, evidence of driver impairment, and any tests would have to be conducted by a medical professional (typically at a medical clinic or an ER). Those are the standards now, they wouldn’t change, and we hardly ever see those consequences for medical marijuana patients now because they aren’t impaired and cops don’t have probable cause to stop their vehicles. If cops didn’t have probable cause or evidence of impairment, but took action anyway, a defense attorney could move to have the whole thing tossed out—just like today.

It’s true that officers will continue to be held to the same set of rules as they are today, but it’s also true (and I’ve heard this echoed by several defense attorneys) that their motivation to push for a blood draw could certainly change. As of today, it’s very difficult to prove impairment in court. With no limit written into the law, any reputable defense attorney can have that charge thrown out. But with a 5ng/ml limit written into the law, that won’t be so easy. The concern is that this change will empower more police officers to push for blood draws in situations where they never did before. Will it be a significant difference? Maybe, maybe not. But the history of DUI enforcement for alcohol should make anyone wary of the possibilities.

Second, the point he’s trying to make in this paragraph isn’t true at all:

Some medical marijuana patients note that the cut-off is automatic—anyone who exceeds 5n/mg is automatically guilty of DUI. But I-502 actually does something very useful for marijuana users accused of DUI. It separates active metabolites, which indicate inebriation, from THC-COOH, the inactive metabolite that remains in the system for days or weeks. In other words, it tests to see whether people are currently stoned, not simply whether they’ve used marijuana in the past month.

No, it doesn’t test to see whether or not people are stoned. It tests to see whether or not people have more than 5ng/ml of active metabolites in their system. That certainly can indicate that a person is stoned, but sometimes it doesn’t. As I’ve pointed out before, people who use marijuana medicinally (and in particular, those who consume it within food) often have that much active THC in their system at all times. And because their body has that much, they no longer experience the “high” that brings about the impairment in the first place. This is a real concern for medical marijuana patients and I don’t find their concern here to be irrational in any way.

As for the overall initiative, I still find myself incredibly pained by this whole thing. And depending on how it all plays out in the legislature, it’s likely I’ll vote for it. But I’m still very unhappy that the ACLU and New Approach Washington decided to include the DUI provision. I don’t think it was necessary to pass something. It’s not based on sound science. And now it’s led to an organized effort to kill it from within the ranks of the drug law reform community. I worry that they may have misread the politics behind the failure of Prop 19 in California and will end up having people who normally should support legalization turn against it in large numbers – which doomed the Prop 19 campaign as much as any other factor. No one knows how this will play out, but I do find it ironic that the ACLU was willing to shit on the rights of an unpopular segment of the population in order to have a better chance of securing a popular vote.

Thom: Harold Camping tells us Friday is our last day.

Herman Cain jokes all the way to Worst Person in the World.

Obama Ends the Iraq War:

• Obama: End of combat operations in Iraq….
• Ed and Pap: Obama keeps his promise on Iraq.

Pap: GOP ready to steal 2012 election.

Occupied:

• Young Turks: Rep. West’s bizarre OWS “Nazis” and “Communists”.
• Jon with Scorn in the U.S.A. (via OneGoodMove).
• Thom: Has OWS blown up the Santa Claus theory?
• OWS: Outing the ringers:
• Young Turks: Goldman Sachs run-in at OWS.
• Olbermann with Markos: The GOP’s inability to “get” the OWS movement.
• Thom: How the 1% are reacting.
• Mark Fiore: Dog Boy and Mr. Dan in Thanks for Nothin’.
• The Daily show does OWS.
• Roy Zimmerman: Hope, Struggle, and Change:
• Young Turks at OWS: Americans love a millionaire tax.
• Olbermann with Rev. Jesse Jackson on saving the medical tent

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

ONN: Week in review.

Ann Telnaes: Sen. Graham—Give me your oil….

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News bias on health law constitutionality?.

Lawrence O’Donnell: VP Joe Biden schools Republicans on math.

Sam Seder: Marco Rubio’s fictional biography.

The Teabaggers boycott Aladdin Episode 2.

Pap: How anti-science Republicans are destroying America.

The GOP Primary Asylum:

• ONN: GOP race heats up as candidate in coma more appealing than rest of field:
• Keith and Nia-Malika Henderson (WAPo) on infighting at the debate
• ONN Follow-up: Comatose John Clarkson drops out of GOP race due to sex scandal.
• Alyona’s Tool Time: Bachmann ‘Iraq should reimburse us!’
• Actual Audio: Michele takes on Herman.
• Young Turks: Herman Cain on unemployment, “blame yourself”.
• Stephen: Herman Cain’s electrified fence.
• Young Turks: Herman Cain’s gay “choice”.
• Ann Telnaes: Herman Cain’s, “No abortions ever.”
• Young Turks: Cain’s secret addendum to the 999 plan.
• Did Mitt forget?
• Maddow: Mitt Romney does not understand his own position on birth control!
• Mitt’s housing plan.
• Ann Telnaes: Perry’s inner Palin.
• Rick Perry calls Herman Cain, “brother.”
• The first lady Gaga:

Glenn Beck conspires his way to Worst Person in the World.

The Tea Party Nation Engages in Blatant Sabotage Against America:

• Young Turks: Tea Party Nation’s sabotage.
• Sam Seder: Tea Party Nation’s bizarre new “pledge”.
• Stephen on The Tea Party Nation’s Pledge

Pap and Ed: Republicans now claim to be concerned about income gap.

Alyona: Poverty spreading across the states..

White House: West Wing Week.

Gaddafi is Gone:

• Newsy: How did Gaddafi die?
• Alyona: MSM celebrates a death.
• Obama on Muammar Qaddafi’s death.
• Jon: No ‘Amour Gaddafi.
• Olbermann and Bill Press on Republican’s reaction to the death of Gaddafi
• Alyona: Who gets “credit” for Libya?

Sen. Cantwell (D-WA) on the threat of Salmon anemia:

Obama on The American Jobs act.

Thom: ALEC is targeting your sick leave.

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

This is shocking news. I knew White and had tremendous respect for him as a person and as my former state Senator. This is a huge loss.

Just a note, this post contains some racist language, and violence.

I go to Westlake more days than I don’t, even if I haven’t always reported everything up to the moment. If news isn’t breaking or something important happening, I’ll just write the same as if I’d been in my apartment. So when the incident in #3 happened, I was 10, 15 feet away, but I didn’t report on it because “crazy person is crazy” didn’t strike me as a story. But since it’s on Publicola, someone thinks it’s news, so here’s a quick summary:

It was at the General Assembly. That day it was under the trees. About 7:30, I guess; the GA had been going on for a while. There’s a core group that sits down, and there are people who stand at the edges and sometimes come in and out. Someone walks up to the Assembly and starts yelling. “Niggers. Fuck you niggers.” And a few people go to confront him. It looked from my angle like he just ran into one of the people who walked up to him, but someone said he threw a punch. Then he ran over to 4th. He was then tackled by several cops as he was running North down the sidewalk.

I honestly don’t think this says anything about either Occupy Seattle or the opposition to it. As far as I can tell, it was just a crazy person, and Publicola’s report doesn’t make me think anything different.

This morning, public radio stations across the nation played a Marketplace piece about small businesses supporting the OWS family of protests.

And who did they feature in the story? Occupy Seattle and Big Mario’s New York Style Pizza:

Big Mario’s has made it cheap and easy to feed the protesters. As The Ave points out, even if you cannot join the crowds at Westlake Center or other occupied sites, you can still support the cause by sending food (or other essentials of life).

I could live the rest of my life on pizza alone, but that may not be true for all. The Ave article asks people to identify other places that support the protesters through discounts and deliver to Occupy Seattle. If you know of any, leave details in the comment thread, here or at The Ave.

It’s seems like an epidemic among Republicans these days. Earlier this week it was Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA-3). Today we have ourselves another cowardly Republican on full display.

This time it’s Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA-7) cowering at the thought of appearing before an un-screened crowd:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is abruptly pulling out of a scheduled Friday lecture on income equality at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, according to the school.

[…] According to Cantor’s office, the Congressman pulled out after discovering that the speech would be open to the public and seeing reports that the university was allowing protestors to gather on the campus itself.

I cannot substantiate the rumor that instead of giving the speech, Cantor held a meeting with Herrera Beutler and Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-8) to draft the bylaws of the G.O.P. Coward’s Club.

– As a liberal guy, I’ll say, this is fucked up (Also, wow) .

– The Abacus sign and a sign from Occupy Olympia.

– Handbills and posters for the weekend events at Occupy Seattle.

– During the 2008 Democratic primary, I was always quick to point out that it wasn’t particularly nasty as primary fights go. Certainly nobody was grabbing anybody.

– Of course, the title itself creates high hopes for Master Cantrall’s article, promising to fall right in line with the current wingnut weltanschauung that everything is socialist. Obama is a socialist. Public schools are socialist. Freeways are socialist. Stoplights are socialist. Glazed doughnuts are socialist. The 3-D version of “The Lion King” is socialist.

– It won’t get anywhere for now, but the GOP effort to ban discussion of abortion over the Internet is brazen even for Jim DeMint.

– When the machines take over, they won’t kill us outright. They’ll just program our GPS’s to make us drive around in circles.

When the Washington State Democrats hold their annual “Maggies” (Warren G. Magnuson Awards dinner/fundraiser) on Saturday, the keynote speaker will be former two-term Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak. In and of itself, that’s not particularly notable … the WA Dems bring in an out-of-stater every year. Last year it was Iowa’s Senator Tom Harkin, and previous speakers include Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean.

Joe Sestak is a different kind of politician. I refer not only to his biography — the highest-ranked military officer ever elected to Congress (he was a three-star Vice Admiral), commander of a carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, deputy to the Chief of Naval Operations, National Security Council liaison, director of a top-secret Navy counterterrorism unit — but to some unusual-for-a-politician attributes.

I’ve been a Sestak fan for quite some time. Not long after he first decided to run for Congress in 2006, he participated in the YearlyKos (now Netroots Nation) gathering in Las Vegas. In his post-YK diary post, I wrote the following comment:

thank you, Admiral

I knew very little about you before attending YK, but since returning home I’ve made a (very small, alas) contribution to your campaign through ActBlue.

I don’t want to sound like I’m dissing Eric Massa, your colleague on the panel at YK, because I appreciate his fire. But I found your quiet, measured, from-the-soul passion far more compelling than his fervor. I can imagine that in a debate against Curt Weldon’s delusional bombast, your approach will be all the more effective.

Your words carry immense authority. As a non-military person, I find myself reassessing my views on the military if a man with a style such as yours can so successfully command a carrier battle group.

I grew up across the Delaware, in Cherry Hill. So most of the towns and locations you mentioned are familiar to me. I wish you the best of luck in your campaign, and hope that I’ll be able to put together the funds to send along some additional tangible $upport.

At that YearlyKos panel, Massa strutted and shouted, even tearing off his dress shirt at one point to reveal some clever (he thought) t-shirt. Though I had no idea he’d turn out to be so wacky, it was readily apparent to me that he was hiding behind all the noise he made. On the other hand, Sestak spoke slowly and carefully, but it was evidently from the heart and deeply personal. The authority and passion of his presentation made it clear how such a soft-spoken man could have inspired sailors in a combat zone.

I made small contributions as well to Sestak’s 2008 re-election campaign and to his Senate campaign in 2010. In that one, he edged Republican Democratic incumbent Arlen Specter in the primary but lost narrowly to Club For Growth teahadist Pat Toomey in November.

As a longtime backer, I wasn’t particularly surprised when I received an email from Sestak a couple of weeks ago. After all, I get messages daily, from dozens and dozens of candidates, legislators, and interest groups. The content, however, was completely unexpected. Noting that he’d soon be here in Seattle (though he didn’t mention the reason for the visit), he invited me and his other Washington supporters to join him for coffee on Saturday so that he could thank us for our help. That was all … just to thank us, just to meet us. No request for a check or Paypal or credit card, not even to “retire his campaign debt”. There was no “ask” of any sort.

To say this action was unusual is a vast understatement. I don’t recall anything remotely like it in my years of political activities. Politicians don’t go out of their way to thank (or even notice) small donors like me. Hell, they don’t take a step from morning to night without pleading for cash. Yet here’s Joe Sestak, 3000 miles from home, who wants to spend an hour or so doing precisely the opposite.

Not to suggest a deeper meaning, I’m macabrely amused by the keynoter choices of the WA Dems and WA GOP at their big fundraisers. On Tuesday, the WSRP’s Fall Dinner featured political trickster/Plame unmasker/US Attorney firer/Dubya inventor/secret superPAC creator Karl Rove. The guy whose friend Dubya calls him Turd Blossom. The guy who, through his shadowy American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS organizations, funneled nearly $5,000,000 into last year’s Murray-Rossi race.

Make of the Sestak vs. Rove comparison what you will. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to shooting the shit with Joe on Saturday.

In the past 15 years, support/opposition for legalizing marijuana has skyrocketed from 25%/73% in 1996 to 50%/46% in 2011. Yet there’s still not a single elected official in the United States holding a statewide office (Senator or Governor) on record supporting it. Even some of the best on the issue, like Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin and Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, have only gone as far as to advocate for decriminalization.

If anyone caught the wonderful Ken Burns documentary on alcohol prohibition earlier this month, they know the legacy of Wayne Wheeler, the main political leader behind the Anti-Saloon League (ASL). Wheeler made himself into one of the most powerful men in Washington by organizing prohibition supporters into large voting blocs capable of swinging elections. His incredible success at doing so led to a Congress in the 1910s where even members who privately enjoyed their liquor would publicly rail against it.

Wheeler didn’t need 50% of the people in his voting bloc. In fact, many times he didn’t. Yet he was able to turn elections his way time and time again. As Daniel Okrent explains in Last Call:

With the ASL’s decision to embark on the “next and final step”, Wheeler’s skill at manipulating majorities through the power of a minority became yet more crucial. The referendum and initiative movement, which drys had supported before they fully grasped how to control legislatures, turned out to be potentially ruinous to the ASL. When two candidates opposing each other in a popular election could be differentiated by isolating one issue out of many, Wheeler’s minority could carry the day; a candidate with, say, the support of 45 percent of the electorate could win with the added votes of the ASL bloc. But when voters were offered a simple yes-or-no, dry-or-wet choice on a ballot measure, a minority was only a minority. In a statewide popular vote on a dry law, wrote historian Jack S. Blocker Jr., the ASL “wielded no power greater than its actual numbers”; in legislative elections, the power of Wheeler’s minority could be measured in multiples.

In theory, the same should be true for marijuana today. Even if only 10% of those who support marijuana legalization (5% of the overall population) vote as a bloc against any candidate who fails to support it, it could function as the same wedge that Wheeler used to bring about alcohol prohibition. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen, and it didn’t play much of a role in the end of alcohol prohibition either.

Even in 1928, as the Democrats nominated prohibition opponent Al Smith in a country that had become mostly fed up with the failures of the Volstead Act, the nation voted for prohibition supporter Herbert Hoover. And Pauline Sabin, the prominent socialite whose support for ending alcohol prohibition was key to showing that women stood against it, was brushed aside by her fellow Republican Hoover, and left the party because of it. Neither Sabin, nor Smith, nor the powerful DuPonts (who thought that ending alcohol prohibition would lead to the reversal of the income tax) could exert the kind of singular political force wielded by Wayne Wheeler. Why?

The easy – and stupid – answer is that drunks and stoners don’t vote. And while there’s some truth to that in general, the 50% of Americans who support ending marijuana prohibition are comprised mostly of people who don’t use it – or use it moderately – but have a strong belief that the law is bad for any number of other reasons. The same was certainly true during alcohol prohibition. The potential voters are clearly out there today to do what Wheeler did.

What I think it comes down to though is that the drive to bring about prohibitions has such a fervent religious element to it that it allows for single-issue voting en masse in ways that hardly any other causes can duplicate. There may be large numbers of people who support the cause of ending prohibition, but few think it’s such a matter of divine importance that all other issues take a backseat. It’s seen as another institutional issue, alongside other serious institutional issues we face, like income inequality and the soaring costs of health care. The same wasn’t really true of those who made up Wayne Wheeler’s voting blocs. And it hasn’t been true of those in the past who’ve supported the drug war and reflexively voted for the candidates who they see as “tough on crime”. This imbalance is just a part of what keeps the drug war going, and it may be just as important as the prison lobby or the pharmaceutical industry or the anti-drug bureaucracies – the groups who often get the blame/credit for keeping politicians silent.

Freshman Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA-3) got a little attention today from the national press. And, um…it wasn’t exactly a profile in political courage.

The original story comes from The Columbian (my emphasis):

Who should be informed of the opportunity to meet with their elected officials? Who decides how that should happen? According to U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, she does.
[…]

On Friday The Chronicle in Centralia received a phone call from Herrera Beutler staffer and Communications Director Casey Bowman informing the newspaper of the meeting. Bowman asked that a meeting announcement not be placed in the paper. However, he did invite the paper to cover the event.

The Chronicle refused his request and published an announcement in Saturday’s paper.

The reason for not publishing an advance notice of the meeting was the fear that people from outside the immediate area could come and “just yell” at the congresswoman “whatever’s on their minds,” Bowman said Friday.

Perhaps Herrera Beutler can get together with Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-8) and charter a G.O.P. Coward’s Club.

Inevitably, when a bicyclist death by a car is in the news, asshole comments will try to figure out why the bicyclist is at fault. And maybe the bicyclist was acting stupidly. Maybe they were riding poorly, making themselves tough to see, etc. But the thing those comments miss is that drivers have a responsibility not to kill people.

And it’s not just cars and bikes. Anyone that’s a step up on size and safety has a special obligation not to hit something that’s a step down. I have friends who ride their motorcycles pretty dangerously. They ride ridiculously above the speed limit and ride between the lanes. They sometimes don’t wear helmets. Stupid, stupid; don’t do that. Still, if you’re a driver, have the wherewithal to not hit one, for Christ sake. Be aware of motorcycles long before they get to you, and check your fucking blind spots. Even if a motorcycle was driving poorly, if you want to be on the road, be a good enough driver that you don’t hit one.

Motorcycles and cars similarly have an obligation to be extra careful of bikes. Ideally, they’ll wear bright colors, have lights, and drive defensively. But even if they’re ninja riding the wrong way, you should be able to avoid them. Slow goddamn down, and chill the fuck out when you’re near one. If you hit one, after all, there’s a good chance they’ll die. And they aren’t even coming particularly fast.

And finally, cars, motorcycles, and bicycles have an obligation to avoid hitting pedestrians. While a car-pedestrian collision is more likely fatal than a bike-pedestrian one, in both cases, the driver and the bicyclist are moving faster than the pedestrian and will hit them with a hunk of metal. If you can’t avoid hitting a pedestrian, even one who’s jaywalking poorly. Even one obsessed with their phone, and not paying attention at all.

None of this is to say that motorcycles, bikes, and pedestrians shouldn’t look out for their safety, of course. Only that we’re sharing the space, and the larger modes have an obligation to the safety of the rest of the road.

– Mitt Romney is a terrible person.

– The Stranger’s endorsements.

– You guys, the anti car tabs people are totally grassroots.

– a dangerous, hypersexual, unhealthy, emotional, and enraged mass of unmarried drama.

– The New Yorker’s Occupy Wall Street cover.

– Milquetoasts