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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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ONN: News of the week.

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

Ohio Gov. Kasich is Worst Person in the World.

Fiscal Apocalypse:

Mark Fiore: We are the whirled.

White House: West Wing Week.

The G.O.P. Presidential Lunatic Asylum:

Obama calls the International Space Station.

Thom talks to a deprogrammed teabagger.

Allen West’s Letter:

Young Turks: Abstinence-only education problem in Texas.

Sen. Smith and Bill-O-the-Clown lose to James Murdoch as Worst Person in the World.

Obama ends DADT.

The ALEC Caper:

ONN: Tensions mount after North Korea destroys all of Asia.

Sam Seder: The Teabaggers don’t pay their debt.

West and Palin lose out to Casino boss Steve Wynn as Worst Person in the World.

News Corpse:

Thom: Can Republicans get elected without fraud and treason?

Stephen: CA gay history bill.

Sam Seder: Rush claims “It’s not hot—Government trying to fool you”.

Young Turks: FAUX News asks whether there are any poor families in America.

Faggot joke amuses FAMiLY LEADER’s (14-point marriage fidelity pledge) Bob Vander (via ThinkProgress).

Cenk Leaves MSNBC:

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

Rupert Murdoch’s Herpes

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Reading this editorial, I think perhaps The Seattle Times does the “family newspaper” thing as an excuse. Maybe it’s just that they’re bad at making a decent edgy metaphor or joke. Take for example the idea that Rupert Murdoch gave news outlets STD’s.

RUPERT Murdoch’s malicious contagion, News Corp., has spread through journalism like a social disease. British politics picked up a nasty NC infection for Prime Minister David Cameron.

For what it’s worth, I agree with the premise that media consolidation is bad in general and in Murdoch’s case. I just question if a corporation had sex with the British Prime Minister.

Legislation by the wealthy

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Washington’s initiative process has failed as a tool of The People. It has largely become a means for the wealthy to pass their own pet laws.

The problem is so bad that even the Seattle Times has had to acknowledge it:

WITHOUT addressing specific pros and cons of any of the three statewide initiatives that appear likely to qualify for November’s ballot, it is hard to deny one glaring truth: None are truly grass roots in origin.

Got enough money and a bug up your ass about something? Buy yourself an initiative! It’s easy. It’s fun!

Just ensure the initiative dangles a small, tangible, immediate benefit to voters, and their eyes glaze over with green dollar signs as they unwittingly vote to dismantle the The Commons that they previously supported and put in place. Seriously…it’s a perverse exploitation of human greed.

This year’s prime example is Tim “biggest lie of my life” Eyman’s I-1125, which is likely to qualify for the ballot (maybe today).

The initiative will severely restrict the State’s ability to toll highways AND prevent light rail from crossing on I-90.

An initiative born of a populist grassroots uprising? Hardly. The effort is primarily funded by Bellevue real-estate baron Kemper Freeman, who has contributed over a million dollars to the initiative campaign.

Freeman has a bug up his ass…he doesn’t like light rail or something. So, he is attempting to purchase himself a law.

The law would thwart the will of the voters, who have twice voted to bring light rail to the east side. Freeman sued to stop it, and lost. So now, Freeman will exploit fear of and self-interest over tolling to pass an initiative that will stop light rail—something that voters have made abundantly clear they want.

Yesterday, King County executive Dow Constantine was on KUOW. He pointed out:

“If you shop at Bellevue Square you contribute to [the I-1125] campaign.”

Conversely, you, your family, your friends can choose to take your money elsewhere.

Ultimately, the initiative process itself must be repaired. My first choice for repair is to get rid of paid signature gatherers altogether, as Oregon did in 1935. But Oregon’s current process, passed in 1985, that prohibits signature gatherers being paid per signature would be an okay start.

Until reform happens, the wealthy will retain the privilege of purchasing their own laws.

The G.O.P.’s “top recruits”

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The National Journal takes a look at Republican prospects to defeat Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in 2012 (my emphasis):

The biggest news nugget in the otherwise sleepy Washington Senate race this week was the emergence of Scott Stanzel, a former George W. Bush spokesman, as a possible candidate against Sen. Maria Cantwell, who unlike many other Democratic incumbents, looks to be in very solid shape in her 2012 reelection bid. While Washington leans Democratic, Republicans have fielded competitive statewide candidates in recent years. But so far, no one has stepped up to take on Cantwell.

and then, again…

While no major Republican is currently running against Cantwell, the GOP have landed top statewide recruits in the recent years, and have done so this cycle in two other races.

Who are these “top statewide recruits” the article mentions? By “recent years” does the author mean 2004?!? Because, it seems to me, that’s the last time the G.O.P. “fielded competitive statewide candidates” who weren’t incumbents. Namely, Dino Rossi in his close-but-no-cigar gubernatorial bid and Rob McKenna in his U.S. Chamber of Commerce-supercharged victory over Deborah Senn.

Rossi came back a couple of times, but was he a “top recruit” after the self-inflicted damage of the recount contest?

Remember Rossi’s un-statesmanlike quasi-concession speech:

“With today’s decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington state Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest.”

That statement told voters a lot about Rossi they didn’t know seven months earlier. Can a person really be considered a top recruit after that kind of statement?

Did Mike McGavick ever threaten to become a competitive candidate?

“Competitive statewide candidates?” “Top statewide recruits?”

Where do these silly memes come from?

Shooting Themselves

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The thing that I’ve been most perplexed about during the debt ceiling debate is that the Republicans in the Tea Party have to live in the same country as the rest of us. They’ll suffer the consequences of a default the same as the rest of us. It’s not as if they and their constituents are going to be shielded from the horror show if we hit the debt ceiling. If anything, it’ll be Republican constituents hit harder. After all, the money spent goes (in general) from Democratic urban areas to Republican rural ones. If we stop sending out Social Security checks, every state will suffer, but Republican Arizona and Florida will suffer worse. If we have to stop farm support all states will suffer, but rural Republican states (and here in Washington, Republican Congressional districts) will suffer worse than urban Democratic ones.

Additionally, the liberal cities and counties aren’t the ones teetering on the edge in danger of default if their credit rating worsens. While Seattle will surely suffer through a default, Jefferson County, Alabama will suffer worse (h/t). In short, the pain isn’t distributed evenly.

Of course, I don’t want anyone to experience the pain that will come from unnecessarily defaulting (I don’t think it’ll be awful, but I do think it’ll be bad, and totally unnecessary, if it happens). The point is that on the policy alone, Republicans should want a clean bill. Nobody benefits from hitting our heads on the debt ceiling, but Republicans stand be hit harder.

Take a walk

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If you live in Seattle, chances are you can do most of your errands by walking:

Seattle was ranked as the sixth most walkable city of the 50 largest cities in the US, according to Seattle-based WalkScore.com which rates neighborhoods, cities and states to determine how walkable they are.

The site found New York as the nation’s most walkable city, followed closely by San Francisco. Boston, Chicago and Philadephia were the other states [sic] that triumphed above Seattle in the walkability category.
[…]

The top three walkable neighborhoods in Seattle were Denny Triangle, with a Walk Score of 98, and South Lake Union and Belltown, which both received the high score of 97.

Cool graphic of the Day is this this interactive map of Seattle neighborhood walkability scores. Walkability scores for other Washington cities are found here.

Oh…and this interactive map is runner-up Cool graphic of the Day. It allows you to see walkability scores for cities around the country, and you can restrict it to cities that fall within a desired minimum and maximum population size. Nifty.

Open Thread

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– News reports on Laura Ruderman have stated that she’s running for the 1st Congressional District seat being vacated by Jay Inslee, however in her FEC Statement of Organization filing, she left the district field blank. On June 28, the FEC sent her a letter asking her to specify which district she plans to run in.

– Remember those Hitler-loving teenage twins who started a band called Prussian Blue? Well, they’ve changed quite a bit since then…

– Scott Morgan writes about the myth that support for marijuana law reform is political suicide. This actually reminded me of an incident recently at Drinking Liberally in Burien. A certain city council candidate for a city just outside of Seattle showed up with his campaign manager on a night when I came by to collect signatures for I-1149. The candidate himself was very forthright with me that not only did he think marijuana should be legal, but that we should even look at different ways of dealing with harder drugs. But his campaign manager (both men were probably in their 50s) sternly advised him not to sign my petition. He was convinced that if it became public that he signed a petition to legalize marijuana, it would wreck his chances in the campaign.

I found that to be laughable and said that in the greater Seattle area today, the opposite is almost true. Failing to support the legalization of marijuana could actually hurt you politically. Not to mention that Ron Paul, who’s been on record supporting the legalization of marijuana for over twenty years, keeps getting re-elected in the one of most conservative parts of the country. But this is how many folks in the political establishment still think. The taboo that marijuana represented long ago still lives on in the minds of political consultants, even though the political risks to supporting reform are non-existent today.

Later on at that Drinking Liberally event, though, State Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon – one of the youngest, if not the youngest, member of the state legislature – signed my I-1149 petition as that same campaign manager tried to warn him not to.

– Seattle has become the first city in the state to move forward with a plan for regulating medical marijuana establishments. Under the parts of the bill that escaped the governor’s veto pen, it’s now legal for a group of up to 10 authorized patients to band together and form a “collective garden”. And there’s nothing in the new law that prevents someone from opening up a storefront and making it the shared access point for a large number of those collective gardens (Seattle alone probably has more than 20,000 authorized patients, meaning the city could have over 2,000 collective gardens). The city of Seattle has an interest in controlling where those access points will be located and have them pay business taxes just like any other establishment.

But now, attorney Douglas Hiatt is threatening to sue the city over the regulations. I’ve worked with Douglas a lot for I-1149 and I’m frankly baffled by what he’s doing. When I emailed him about why he was planning to sue, he told me that it’s because marijuana is illegal at the state level still, so the city can’t regulate it. After re-reading the actual language of SB 5073 that passed, I don’t think that’s true, but that’s actually beside the point. These are regulations that will allow for Seattle to have a system of access for medical marijuana that’s above-ground and – while still an administrative mess (thanks governor!) – better for patients. And the relevant local law enforcement figures are perfectly ok with it. The only entity I would expect to nitpick the legality of all this in order to shut it down is the DEA, not someone with a well-earned reputation for defending the state’s medical marijuana patients in court.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottle Please join us tonight for drinks, conversation, and dinner at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.

We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but a few folks show up earlier for dinner.

Last week we had a terrific turn-out for state Rep. Roger Goodman (D-45 LD), who is running for Congress in Washington’s 1st CD, the seat currently held by Rep. Jay Inslee. We also had first-hand reports from folks who attended a public hearing on King County Transit service cuts.


Can’t make it tonight? Drinking Liberally Tacoma meets on Thursday, July 21 at the Hub Restaurant. Starting time is 7:00pm. And with 230 chapters of Living Liberally, including seven chapters in Washington state, chances are good there’s one near you.

A Republican opponent for Cantwell?

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The AP reports that former Pres. George W. Bush Deputy White House spokesperson and Bush-Cheney ’04 Press Secretary, Scott Stanzel, is mulling over a run against Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA):

Scott Stanzel said Monday he will look at whether to challenge Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell in a race next year. He said he won’t decide until after he gets married in September.

One shouldn’t take lightly the propagandist who (1) helped sell George and Dick’s Excellent Military Adventure, (2) got Bush and Cheney reelected, and (3) managed to keep Bush and Cheney from being impeached or arrested for war crimes. Those are remarkable accomplishments.

On the other hand, many of the PR disasters that made George Bush the most unpopular President ever occurred on his watch.

As a former Bush-Cheney ’04 propagandist, Stanzel leaves behind a trail of statements that, quite frankly, won’t win over the hearts Washington voters. A search of the InnerTubes will reveal appearances of Stanzel attacking Sen. John Kerry that, outside the context of a heated presidential campaign, come off as petty. Likewise, his statements in his role as White House propagandist for Bush/Cheney administration will likely come back to haunt him. Finally, Stanzel has had some participation in the media campaign by ex-Bush administration people against Pres. Obama. That, too, will provide some fodder that will be used against him.

If you recognize the name Scott Stanzel at all, it is probably because he was the campaign manager for Defeat 1098, the group credited with defeating the Washington state high earner’s income tax initiative (I-1098). The up-side for Stanzel is that he has a track record on a “populist” issue in Washington state.

The down side of Defeat 1098 for Stanzel’s potential senatorial bid? In a post Citizens United world, I am imagining the kind of independent campaign that William Gates, Sr. might decide to fund against Stanzel.

Payback’s a bitch!

Nile Valley Area Residents Who Benefit From The Project

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This is a bit old, but good for the state for rebuilding state route 410. And now that the precedent has been set, I assume there’s a cost overrun provision. I mean to have a cost overrun provision in a county that gets $0.62 back for every dollar it puts into state coffers, but not one that gets back 2.24, well that would be madness. So while I don’t like the idea of cost overrun provisions in general, at least we’re being fair.

What? The state only has the cost overrun provision in the King County project? Well then, I guess I’ll have to vote to Reject Referendum 1.

Food Trucks

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I can’t tell you how glad I am that the Seattle City Council passed the food truck ordinance. Having hotdog vendors and taco trucks downtown is great. You can grab one on the go. You can realize it’s 10:30 PM on a Saturday and you haven’t started anything, so you know what it’s time for a hotdog. In the suburbs or further out you don’t get that. Also, any additional eyes on the street and incentive to get people walking at night is going to be good for the city.

Of course, the quality varies from place to place. Generally though, they’re pretty good food. And if you’ve had a few drinks and are stumbling home, the quality of the food isn’t really the prime concern.

Don’t Tell Joni

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The Seattle Times editorial on the possibility of letting some Seattle bars stay open past 2:00 (emphasis mine).

The 2 a.m. closing time, which is the rule across Washington, is fairly common — it is the closing time in Austin, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego and San Francisco. Vancouver, B.C., closes bars at 3 a.m. and New York and Chicago close them at 4 a.m.

I don’t know who wrote the editorial, but it got me thinking about Joni Balter’s piece a while ago about how if San Francisco does anything, Seattle shouldn’t. It seems to me that the fact that San Francisco does or doesn’t do a thing can provide guidance (how did it work out there?), but isn’t in itself particularly useful as an argument for or against doing something.

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