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Right now the protesters are building a canvas structure in the middle of the plaza at Westlake park. The rumor is that the police were taking it down, but other than a few bike cops under the awning, I don’t see any police. I was going to head home after the GA, but I guess I’ll be staying here a bit longer. Updates if anything happens.

… So it’s about a 5 foot cube with polls on each corner. 3 sides are canvas and the other side is open as an entrance. There isn’t a roof, but they’ve put some bamboo and some Christmas lights. There are half a dozen people sitting cozy inside.

While I was writing the paragraph above a bike cop rode by, slowed down, took a look and then went back to join the others.

… I apologize that this update is super boring, but most of the cops rode off a few minutes ago. There are only 2 left. I tried to see if the ones who left were massing somewhere, but I went a couple blocks up Pine where they went, but they weren’t there. No police cars, so I doubt the city will do anything until 10:00 if they do anything at all.

… Still nothing, so I’m going to grab some warmer clothing. Will be back before 10:00. There have been a few people who said they think tonight is the night. But rumors fly around like you wouldn’t believe.

… I’m back and so are the police. There are about a dozen at the mall. There are 3 cars and a wagon as well as the ones bike. There were a few riding through the park. I don’t know if that’s been going on. Still, it’s quite festive at the park.

[9:40] About 4 cops just walked up to the people in the structure. Now there’s a crowd. I can’t get close, but it looks like the police have left.

[9:51] They’re kind of milling about but I counted 30 officers at the mall. Still, only one wagon, so I imagine there will be arrests but not in large numbers.

[9:59] The police have moved into walked through the park. No announcement to leave yet.

[10:06] The police are by the Bank of America (and the medical tent). Still no announcement to leave. The chanting by the other structures have quieted down a bit.

[10:25] The police came up to the structure. Some are there and some are under a nearby awning.. The structure in the park has 4 or 5 layers of people.

[10:29] Looks like the first person has been taken out. I still haven’t heard an order to leave the park.

[10:33] A second person taken out.

[10:37] “You are the 99%” directed to the cops

[10:51] The structure is down. About 10 people were arrested so far and there are a few more where the structure was still getting arrested.

[11:17] Those last few people are still in a tight circle. Still no announcement to leave the park.

[11:30] The police have cleared out without arresting the last 5 who were together. There’s pandemonium here.

[11:54] I’m out for the night, but there are still quite a few people around.

Coming out of the 2010 elections with avictory in taking the House, Republicans were boasting about their inevitable Senate victory in 2012. Now they may need to worry about simply keeping the House (via TPM):

…voters are starting to favor a Democratically-controlled Congress, as disapproval of the legislative body grows.

A Reuters/Ipsos survey released on Wednesday showed a major gap between the two parties, with 48 percent of voters going for Democrats while 40 percent went for Republicans. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed a four point lead for Democrats, and Public Policy Polling showed a six point edge for Dems.

Two mistakes the Republicans made: First they let the extremist minority of their party (i.e. Teabaggers) drag them to the far right way-crazy, resulting in a year filled with seeming political chaos in Congress. What could have come off as principled defiance instead came off as sabotage.

Second, Republicans have gotten absolutely nothing productive done to solve the problems of a stalled economy and high unemployment. Negative, angry rhetoric is great stuff for giving voters an outlet for their angst and a common cause. But the voters wanted more than a big vent-fest…they wanted and expected real improvements. The Republicans failed to deliver. The voters are noticing.

The police arrested 1 (I think) person in a tent and then all left. About 2 dozen cops mostly bike cops but a few in cars made the announcement that the park was closed at about 10:15. They took down the tent only and arrested the person.

There was another group of people willing to get arrested, who locked hands, but it appears they were left alone. No riot gear or attempts to clear the entire park. As far as I could tell nobody was pepper sprayed. While, once again, I think the arrests were a serious mistake, I applaud the police for their professionalism.

TPM reports that some dumb-ass Florida state Rep. wants to eliminate lethal injection as a method to kill death row inmates…and replace it with execution by firing squad.

Drake said…his bill is a response to debate over the effectiveness of the cocktail of drugs currently used for lethal injections. “So, I say let’s end the debate,” he said. “We still have Old Sparky. And if that doesn’t suit the criminal, then we will provide them a .45 caliber lead cocktail instead.”

Some states, like Florida, still allow death row inmates to choose between electrocution and lethal injection. Drake’s bill would replace the lethal injection option with a firing squad.

Hmmm…if lethal injection is controversial because it may, potentially, be ineffective, how could a bullet to the head (or heart) be any less controversial from the perspective of effectiveness? There are numerous recorded cases of individuals surviving a firing squad, and in some cases, going on to recover from their injuries.

Man…those Floridians sound like a bunch of fucking barbarians to even think about such a method!

Oh wait….

At 12:17 a.m. Friday, convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner was pronounced dead after a Utah firing squad fired a volley of bullets into the murderer’s chest, where a target was pinned over his heart. It was the first execution by firing squad in the United States in 14 years.

That was in June of 2010!

I think Jon Huntsman would see an immediate rise in his poll numbers by pointing out that he was Governor of the state until about a year before this execution. Oh…and that, as Governor, he would have personally joined the firing squad.

Man…I’m glad I don’t live in one of those barbaric states like Florida or Utah. I mean, we don’t do shit like firing squads, do we?

Washington utilizes two methods of execution: lethal injection and hanging. Lethal injection is used unless the inmate under sentence of death chooses hanging as the preferred execution method.

Oh.

Well…if it’s good enough for Iran, Iraq and the KKK, I guess it’s good enough for us.

At least we’re pro-choice barbarians! I mean how often was the KKK all like, “Hey Boy, y’all prefer to be lynched by hangin’, by firing squad, or by gettin’ dragged behind a pick-up truck?”

Yes…we’re definitely superior.

The Occupy movement took over Red Square at the University of Washington today. Here are a few images from the event:

– it’s wrong-headed to think that voting down a fee will somehow make driving affordable.

– Maybe now we can raise taxes on the richest members of society.

– You see a certain amount of commentary complaining that the young people involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests should put down their signs carping about student loans and big banks and go get a job. What the commentators don’t say is that no one is willing to hire them.

– The freeloaders who don’t pay federal income taxes.

– This sort of vigilante justice will probably become more common in the Internet age, so let’s at least try to get the right people.

– It was especially nice to see the handful of cartoonists pretending to care so very much about [Steve Jobs] , but just not enough to know he’d been a Buddhist for decades and in fact made several speeches about how it guided his life and career and how imagining he’d be in front of St. Peter

It’s Tuesday…which means its time for our weekly Occupy the Montlake Alehouse event. Please join us for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.

We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. at 8:00 pm. Some of us will be there earlier for dinner.

Hell…some folks will begin the occupation at 5:00 pm to watch the Republican primary debate!

Can’t make it? Drinking liberally is all over the place! There are also meetings tonight in the Tri-Cities, Bellingham, and Vancouver, WA. Tomorrow night, Drinking Liberally Bremerton meets at 5:00pm. Next Monday, there are meetings in Olympia, Woodinville, Shelton, and Yakima.

With 227 chapters of Living Liberally, chances are good there is one near you.

The Sierra Club has released their report card for Washington state’s congressional representatives:

• Jay Inslee (D-01), A+
• Rick Larsen (D-02), A
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-03), F
• Doc Hastings (R-04), F
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-05), F
• Norm Dicks (D-06), A+
• Jim McDermott (D-07), A+
• Dave Reichert (R-08), C
• Adam Smith (D-09), A+

Notice a pattern?

The best of the Republicans, Reichert, who was once taped confessing to pro-environmental votes as a way take environmentalists “out of the game”, only gets away with a C—and that’s based on his voting record.

The bottom line: Republicans are really, really bad for the environment.

Last Thursday, Pramila Jayapal and George Cheung of United for Fair Representation wrote an op-ed column in the Seattle Times. Though it ended up on the doorsteps of a couple hundred thousand readers, their opinion piece was actually addressed to an audience of four — the members of the Washington State Redistricting Commission.

Jayapal and Cheung are challenging the Commissioners to create a “majority-minority” Congressional District at their next public meeting, tomorrow morning in Olympia. They’ll probably get their wish … which, sad to say, might eventually work against their interests.

Before explaining what I mean, we need some background information. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 contains several provisions that bar racial discrimination in redistricting plans. Sixteen states are required to go through “preclearance” of their plans, automatic submission to their plans to the feds; Washington is not one of those states. In practice, application of the VRA has resulted in district lines that collect members of a racial group into one district, thereby greatly increasing the probability that that CD will be represented by a member of that group. One might call it “reverse gerrymandering”, concentrating a group instead of diluting their influence by drawing districts that put small pockets of the group into several districts dominated by other ethnicities. In creating such Congressional Districts, you can end up with some really ludicrous maps. For instance, look at Illinois’s 4^th District, in which the two convoluted sections of Chicago’s Latino communities are connected by the median strip of I-294.

Another majority-minority district is the 12^th District of North Carolina, which crawls along I-85 picking up African-American communities while skipping past other towns. It even looks a little bit like the original 1812 gerrymander.

Those two CDs, and others around the country, achieved the goal of fostering diversity in the House of Representatives. Luis Gutiérrez represents IL-04 in Washington and the Congressman from NC-12 is African-American Mel Watt. But I doubt that the same could easily happen if our Redistricting Commission takes the advice of Jayapal and Cheung, because any such district would be majority-minorities. Unlike the largely Mexican-American IL-04 or the mostly black NC-12, a Washington district would be Eritrean and Pakistani, Thai and Guatemalan, Indian and American Indian, Vietnamese and African-American, Iraqi and Filipino … on and on and on. No race, no language group, no national origin would predominate. Some of those groups are antagonistic to others — would a Bengali vote for a Pakistani? a Honduran for a Salvadoran? an Iraqi for an Iranian? With such splintering, in a multi-candidate electoral race, it just might turn out that someone from the largest single demographic group in the CD (non-Hispanic whites) would win.

This is not to suggest that racial identity would be the reason for any citizen to vote for a particular candidate. I’m merely saying that the situation wouldn’t be nearly as cut-and-dried as it would be in a locale with a large concentration of a single racial/ethnic group.

There’s another issue as well. Republicans love majority-minority Congressional Districts. Racial minorities are generally Democrats, and concentrating a racial group into, say, a 75-25 Democratic district may make it possible to generate a bunch of 53-47 Republican CDs around it. That’s probably not the case in Illinois, where the excluded middle of IL-04 is largely a black community, but it certainly applies to North Carolina. And it could happen in Washington as well.

In their op-ed, Jayapal and Cheung summarize the first round of Redistricting Commission maps (emphasis added):

Republican commissioners Slade Gorton and Tom Huff and Democratic commissioner Tim Ceis made strong and positive statements that reflected their appreciation for people’s participation in the process and their belief that there was a real need for this change. Huff’s map exactly matched our unity map. No maps had all of our asks reflected but many had some and we will continue to push for as much representation as possible for people of color.

While Tom Huff may have given United for Fair Representation what they want, he found a lot of ways to screw Democrats. His map, IMHO, is even more Republican-friendly than Skeletor’s Gorton’s. For instance, he separates uber-Democratic San Juan County from the Whatcom County-based CD, replacing those voters with large chunks of rural Republicans in eastern King, Snohomish, and Skagit. I see that district as lean-R. Huff drew four strong-R districts on his map, and another that could swing that way when Norm Dicks decides to hang ’em up. Also, he has the Seattle-based CD wrapping around the northern border of Lake Washington, far enough to include most of Kirkland. His map certainly doesn’t come close to representing the state’s overall makeup.

Tomorrow, we’ll get to see each Commissioner’s second iteration. It will be interesting to see who has moved his boundaries the most, as well as who has hardened his position. I still have confidence that the Commission will agree on a final map by the end of the year. And I think it’ll have a majority-minorities Congressional District. But I don’t have much confidence that the m-m district will be represented by a minority group Congress(wo)man. If Tom Huff or Slade Gorton gets his way, it will be slightly more difficult to elect enough Democrats to retake control of the House from the crazies who run it these days. And a Democratic Congress would do far, far more for Jayapal and Cheung (and the rest of us) than building the Congressional District they seek.

– The Occupy Seattle Calendar of events (H/T Howie on Facebook)

– I don’t know if this says much about the Republicans as it does about the difficulty of comparing polls against each other. Candidates will have a higher name recognition right after a person on the other end of the phone mentions them.

– Whatever the legal status of this arrangement, it is morally wrong. If those who lost their houses in the housing market collapse are getting their just desserts, what do you call what the banksters are getting?

– Nobel Laureate Parking

– I’ve never seen an episode of Glee in my life, so I didn’t understand about 90% of the words in this Lindy West recap, but it was quite funny.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Aberdeen, Scotland.

This week’s picture is related to a TV show or a movie. It’s a tough one, so I may have to provide a clue. Or maybe not, you guys often surprise the hell out of me. Good luck!

Job 9:23
When a good person dies a sudden death, God sits back and laughs.

Discuss.

Pap: No-tax, no-regulation Tea Partiers are killing America.

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

Young Turks: Turning your dead relatives into bullets.

Obama: The American Jobs Act.

The Republican Primary Asylum:

• Red State Update: Are Herman Cain, Ron Paul, an Rick Perry jackiebaggers?
• Newsy: Cain faces heat over statement that black voters are brainwashed.
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Cain moves to the back of the bus.
• O’Donnell: 999 brainwash.
• Stephen: The rise of Herman Cain.
• Young Turks: Koch brothers are funding Herman Cain.
• Romney’s foreign policies sound just like Bush’s.
• Jon: Out with the Christie, in with the Romney.
• Romney’s policies run up against reality.
• Newsy: Whoda thunk? Christie isn’t running.
• Thom: A scorned love affair with Chris Christie
• Actual Audio: Chris Christie at the Reagan Library.
• Stephen on a post-Chris Christie G.O.P. field
• Sam Seder: It’s cool to be racist in the GOP primary.
• Jon on Rick’s family ranch.
• Newsy: Media writes Bachmann’s campaign obit.

Thom: Eric Cantor…no jobs bill, no safety net, no regulations…no! no! no!.

Young Turks: Did Senator Reid screw Senate Dems?

White House: West Wing Week.

Pap: The GOP’s cult mentality.

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber on the American Jobs Act.

Stephen: Obamacare and the Supremes.

Fleeced Palinistas:

• Newsy: Sarah’s out.
• Jon: Take the money and don’t run (via Political Wire):
• Ann Telnaes: Who to thank for former Gov. Sarah Palin.
• Stephen: A tragic end
• Young Turks: Down goes Palin!

Young Turks: FAUX News—we hire hot women for ratings.

Taxes on the wealthy: Reagan and Obama (via ThinkProgress).

Pap: Chris Christie’s Koch addiction.

Thom: Proof the Heritage Foundation flip flopped on ObamaCare:

GOP supporters take honors as Worst Person in the World.

Young Turks: Meghan McCain vs. Red State.

The Demise of al Qaeda Operative Anwar al-Awlaki:

• Newsy: Media misses the mark on Paul’s impeachment statement.
• Mark Fiore: Drone attack.

Newsy: DNA clears Texas killer after 25 years in prison.

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

Hartmann: The Romney Rule vs. Buffet Rule.

Glenn Beck is back in the saddle as Worst Person in the World.

Occupied:

• Occupy your city
• Olbermann: First collective statement of Occupy Wall Street
• Sam Seder: Occupy Wall Street doesn’t need demands!.
• Newsy: Unions join the occupation.
• Sam Seder: Occupy Wall Street more popular than Congress & Tea Party…What next?
• Thom: American Exceptionalism versus Occupy Wall Street
• Olbermann: Portland police with infant.
• Susie Occupies LA.
• Young Turks: Republicans are “uncomfortable” with Occupy Wall Street.
• Republicans are on the side of Wall Street.
• Jon: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea party.
• Sam Seder: Occupy Wall Street will outlast Erin Burnett’s show.
• Hartmann: From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy America!
• Young Turks: Cenk talks with Occupy LA occupants.

The Tea Party’s not-so-funny comedian.

Young Turks: Scott Brown gets a bit sexist.

Pap: The GOP’s plan to raise taxes on the middle class.

Thom with another episode of The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Liberal Viewer: What does our jails say about us?

Rep. Wasserman Schultz talks about Eric Cantor’s comments on the American Jobs Act .

Hank and Hitler:

• Newsy: Hank Williams, Jr. pulled from MNF.
• Young Turks: Hank Williams, Jr. Obama Hitler comments.
• Sam Seder: Making sense of Hank’s statement.
• Ed and Pap: Fox’s new celebrity has-been.
• Hank apologizes
• Red State Update: Hank Jr. & Hitler, N-wordhead & Perry
• Young Turks: Hank Williams, Jr.’s fake apology.

Obama hosts the 1985 Chicago Bears.

Young Turks: Koch Brother’s benzene emissions.

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

I love the Metro, but there are a few routes that are trouble. The 358, that goes up Aurora Ave N. and through some of the worst parts of Downtown is one of those routes. So don’t think of the following exchange as typical, or anything:

Homeless person #1: “I’m getting off at the next stop, do you have a light I could borrow?”

Homeless person #2: “Sure here.”

Homeless person #1: “Oh a Bic. They’re pretty good. Last a long time.”

Homeless person #2: “Yeah. Well no. Not if you smoke crack anyway.”