HorsesAss.Org

The Seattle Times has an opinion piece* claiming “Washington Legislature should get serious about budget solutions.” Then they proceed to act like spoiled assholes.

THE value of the two-thirds requirement to pass a tax bill is amply demonstrated by most of the revenue bills offered in Olympia.

The value of writing in the active voice has never been demonstrated by The Seattle Times.

There are a few exceptions. Being heard Wednesday is Senate Bill 5947, sponsored by Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way. This would repeal the sales-tax exemption for bull semen and fuel for heating chicken coops. We have been hearing Democrats talk for years about these breaks as if they were big and important. The Republicans should do the gracious thing and vote yes. The bill, however, raises only $5 million a year, which is about two ten-thousandths of the state budget.

The Republicans won’t. Because they fuck bulls and are worried about having to pay taxes. There, I said it. Prove me wrong, Republicans, but as long as you vote against this tax hike that even The Seattle Times supports, that must be why.

Anyway, The Seattle Times calls in their headline for the Leg to “get serious” and then throws out a misleading number. Who cares what percent of the budget we’re dealing with? Tell us the percent of the budget hole. That, while still a small amount, comes to much more (the special session is to fill the budget hole, after all).

Also being heard is SB 5945, sponsored by Sen. Phil Rockefeller, D-Bainbridge Island. It raises $245 million a year. But it raises all preferential rates of the business-and-occupation tax by 25 percent, whether the preferences make sense or not. It wipes out a preference for first mortgages. This bill raises 50 times more revenue than the first one, and is much more difficult to justify.

A serious discussion demands that we reinflate the housing bubble while we cut Basic Health, K-12 Education, and Higher Ed. Anyway, they go on, with the same nonsense mentioning a proposed tax increase and then saying something stupid. Why call for a serious discussion and then not even try for seriousness?

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The world’s worst editorial board just barfed all over the internet again. Let’s see if we can tally up the inaccurate statements and complete nonsense in their latest embarrassment.

Washington’s carefully restricted policy on medical marijuana – enacted by voters in 1998 – got along fine for 10 years without attracting much notice from the U.S. Justice Department.

No, it didn’t. In fact, it got along so poorly that most patients struggled to find a reliable source of medicine, patients who tried to grow for themselves often got fucked, and those who tried to provide for others out of a sense of compassion were putting themselves at significant risk. The law was a gesture of compassion by voters that was never followed up with a workable system.

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As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently doing a lot of work with Sensible Washington and the I-1149 campaign. Here’s their latest press release, which I put together:

Last week, Governor Gregoire dealt a huge blow to tens of thousands of Washington’s most vulnerable citizens. By partially vetoing the proposed medical marijuana bill, the governor shut down a slowly emerging industry that was providing safe access to medicine for cancer and AIDS patients, multiple sclerosis sufferers, and those dealing with severe pain. As a result, criminal gangs are now poised to reclaim the market, bringing more violence to our streets, greater dangers to our children, and making it unnecessarily difficult for the sick and terminally ill to get the medicine that their doctors authorize. The governor’s stated reason for leaving us in this mess was that she feared the federal government’s response.

Fifty years ago, the Civil Rights Movement saw the federal government use its power to overturn injustices being carried out by the states. Today, the fight for sane and sensible marijuana laws has turned that dynamic on its head.

You can read the rest here. Sensible Washington is really the only reform effort happening this year, so if you want to see change soon, now’s the time to get involved.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is facing re-election and a new Elway poll takes the pulse of the electorate. Josh at Publicola writes.

First the bad news for U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, who’s up for reelection next year: A new Elway poll finds her “Job Performance” rating at 52 percent “negative” to 42 percent “positive.” (It was nearly the exact opposite in 2005, also a year out from reelection, when her numbers were 52 positive vs. 38 negative.)

The good news?

The GOP doesn’t have any promising challengers. In Elway’s imaginary open primary against a batch of Republicans including: U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert; former KIRO TV anchor Susan Hutchison; Tea Party activist Clint Didier; and Port Commissioner Bill Bryant—Cantwell wins big with 47 percent of the vote.

And that pretty much guarantees Cantwell a spot on the November ballot.

You may recall that Cantwell beat Mike McGavick 56.9% to 39.9% in 2006. Clearly, she can do a lot worse in 2012 and still come out on top. And as flawed as McGavick was, it is not clear that the Republicans have anyone better in the wings. Let’s explore some other polling results for Cantwell in order to better frame the Elway poll.

Survey USA has collected a series of polls from May 2005 until the last poll taken from 16-18 April 2011:

On May 10 of 2005, the first poll on the graph, Cantwell had an approval of 45% and a disapproval of 35%. The most recent poll has her at 49% approval to 40% disapproval. The spread is about the same, but her approval and disapproval are higher in the recent poll because there are fewer undecided folks now.

Clearly, after that May 2005 poll, Cantwell’s approval increased dramatically and stayed relatively high until the Summer of 2009. Since then Cantwell’s approval has been more volatile. Six of the last 20 polls since then show her with higher disapproval, but with an overall trend of a higher approval. And given the absence of a strong opponent on the horizon, I am simply unwilling to fret over a single Elway Poll….

– Looks like the NPI fundraiser was a blast.

– I slept through the royal wedding, but this is more or less what I assumed.

– The planets we’re discovering around other stars are pretty amazing.

– Interesting ideas for the Seattle Center.

What are some of the conversations you are likely to hear at the Montlake Ale House tonight? Let’s see…

• Gregoire vetoes the medical-marijuana bill
• The first poll of the 2012 gubernatorial election is out
• OBL is dead
• And Rep. Dennis Kucinich is coming to Washington State?!?

So please join us tonight 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. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but feel free to join some of us for an earlier dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 223 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Just a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post on the request for Rob McKenna to weigh in with his legal opinion on the recently vetoed medical marijuana bill. I just spoke with Rep. Roger Goodman who tells me that Congressman Jay Inslee will be sending a similar letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

UPDATE: Dominic Holden has the most detailed explanation of why Gregoire’s partial veto is such a disaster. This doesn’t just leave us where we were before. This removes all of the gray area wiggle-room that allowed for progressive prosecutors like Dan Satterberg to allow for some dispensaries to quietly operate. Now, those dispensaries are clearly in violation of state law, meaning that thousands of medical marijuana patients who had access to medicine before this bill passed are likely fucked now.

I met up with Douglas Hiatt for a little bit yesterday afternoon, and he told a story of a woman who once had to rely on her teenage grandson to get marijuana for her at his high school. Governor Gregoire’s veto puts us back in that situation. And it’s not clear she has any interest in fixing it.

A new King 5/SurveyUSA poll of the 2012 Washington state gubernatorial race has Attorney General Rob McKenna (R-WA) leading Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-01) by +7 (48% to 41%). A match-up with Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-08) has Reichert slightly ahead of Inslee, 46% to 44%.

The poll also matched up Gov. Christine Gregoire (D-WA). (Right…Like that’s gonna happen.) She’s down 12% to McKenna and 4% to Reichert.

The poll sampled 610 registered voters and has a margin of error of about 4%.

I decided to grease the gears and wind-up the ol’ calculating machine to tabulate some probabilistic outcomes from these poll data. I’ve posted these Monte Carlo analysis on HA for many years now, but in case you want more details, see that (somewhat outdated) FAQ. Here are results for the Inslee match-ups.

In the Inslee versus McKenna race, a million simulated elections has Inslee winning 95,892 times to McKenna’ s 898,897 wins. That is, if the election had been held yesterday, Inslee would have a 9.6% chance of winning, to McKenna’s 90.4% chance. Here is the distribution of outcomes:

That’s a lot of red.

Less so in the Inslee versus Reichert match-up. Inslee takes 350,198 of the simulated elections to Reichert’s 638,521. That is, Inslee would have about a 35.4% chance of beating Reichert in an election held now, based only on the evidence collected by the poll. Here is the distribution of outcomes:

So…is Washington going all Wisconsin on us? Are we going to get our own replay of the radical right-wing War on Workers, War on Women, War on Railroads, War on Health Care, and relaxation of child labor laws, seen in other states with newly elected Republican governors? It could be, but not really based on these polls. They are taken way, way too early to have any predictive power for an election held in a year and a half.

If there is any message here, it is that its never too early to start working for the candidate that most closely reflects your vision of what Washington should be.

Fifteen State House Representatives, led by Roger Goodman, have sent Attorney General Rob McKenna a letter asking him to weigh in with his opinion on the recent furor over Governor Gregoire’s partial veto of the medical marijuana bill. The legislators would like to know McKenna’s official opinion on the following three things:

1) Where the federal Controlled Substances Act prohibits state activities that create a “positive conflict” between state and federal laws (see 21 U.S.C. Section 903), would the exercise of our state’s (and its instrumentalities’) regulatory, licensing and zoning powers related to cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensing, as set forth in SB 5073, create a “positive conflict” with federal law, even where no state employee would be required to engage in specific activities that are prohibited by the Controlled Substances Act?

2) What is the likelihood, in consideration of current federal policy respecting individuals whose actions are “in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws,” (see so-called “Holder Memorandum” of 10/29/09) that Washington state employees would be subject to federal criminal liability for activities to implement the cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensing system as set forth in SB 5073, where no such comparable federal criminal liability has ever been attached to any state employees in the past and where state employees’ activities in this case would fall far short of “aiding and abetting” the violation of federal law?

3) How enforceable is Washington’s medical cannabis law in general and what is the permissible extent of Washington’ police power to protect the health, welfare and safety of the people in the face of the absolute federal prohibition of cannabis?

The first two parts of this letter focus on the main excuse Governor Gregoire has used to justify her partial veto. She continues to claim – despite UW law professor Hugh Spitzer’s dismissals – that state employees are at risk of arrest for regulating the industry.

It’s been brought up several times that other states regulate marijuana production distribution without any problem. This is far from secret. In fact, in a recent episode of CNBC’s “Marijuana Inc” series, you can see one of those state employees at work. Go to the 10:30 mark of the following video to see a Colorado state employee – a former narcotics officer, no less – doing exactly what Christine Gregoire says her state employees will get arrested if they do.

In response to the growing awareness that Gregoire’s stated reasons for the partial veto are fiction, she’s now claiming that the policy under Obama has changed recently. But as Dominic Holden points out, Western Washington’s U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan disputes that. The Obama Administration won’t go after folks who are in compliance with state law. Goodman’s letter to McKenna is an attempt to have the Attorney General weigh in to provide some clarity in this mess.

UPDATE: Dominic Holden has more analysis at Slog.

Juan Cole has a tremendous post on the life and death of Osama Bin Laden, and how we can use his death as way to continue to make progress against Middle East extremism:

The Arab Spring has demonstrated that the Arab masses yearn for liberty, not thuggish repression, for life, not death and destruction, for parliamentary democracy, not theocratic dictatorship. Bin Laden was already a dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War and the age of dictators in which a dissident such as he had no place in society and was shunted off to distant, frontier killing fields. The new generation of young Arabs in Egypt and Tunisia has a shot at a decent life. Obama has put the US on the right side of history in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya (where I see crowds for the first time in my life waving American flags). People might want a little help from a distance, but they don’t want to see Western troops deployed in fighting units on their soil.

If Obama can get us out of Iraq, and if he can use his good offices to keep the pressure on the Egyptian military to lighten up, and if he can support the likely UN declaration of a Palestinian state in September, the US will be in the most favorable position in the Arab world it has had since 1956. And he would go down in history as one of the great presidents. If he tries to stay in Iraq and he takes a stand against Palestine, he risks provoking further anti-American violence. He can be not just the president who killed Bin Laden, but the president who killed the pretexts for radical violence against the US. He can promote the waving of the American flag in major Arab cities. And that would be a defeat and humiliation for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda more profound than any they could have dreamed.

UPDATE: And on a less serious note, this Washington man finally shaved his beard.

UPDATE 2 [Darryl]: The White House releases some photos of the day’s events from within the White House.

Still waiting for President Obama to speak, but sources tell me that the CIA tracked down Osama bin Laden’s location via his iPhone. Happy “Spring Offensive,” Taliban!

Consider this a Dance on bin Laden’s Grave open thread.

UPDATE:
Not a Predator attack, not renal failure, but a US Special Operations mission (Navy Seals), eight months in the making. Meanwhile, let’s all take a moment to remember the immortal words of former President George W. Bush:

“So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.”
— 03/13/2002

Last week’s contest was won by David Aquarius (and thanks to Change in Time for the link). It was the TEPCO building in Tokyo.

Here’s this week’s contest, a random location somewhere in the world. Good luck!

Deuteronomy 28:22
The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.

Discuss.

Maddow: Michigan Gov. thinks Democracy is a problem (via Crooks and Liars).

Thom: Who is organizing the Republican War on Workers?

G.O.P. budget plan having some difficulties at home.

Mitt on Hanging Obama:

Ed and Pap: Boehner is corporate America’s bagman.

GritTV with Thomas Frank: What is happening in the town hall meetings this year?

Ann Telnaes: Privatizing Social Security.

Thom: Republicans organize like KKKrazy to lie.

The Carnival Barker:

• The Donald drops a few F-bombs.
• The Donald’s obscenity laced rant unbleeped (via Crooks and Liars).
• Sam Seder: Trump thinks outsourcing to China is bad…but his own clothing line is made there.
• Stephen: Obamas and The Donald (via Crooks and Liars).
• Ed and Pap: Trump is the New Village Idiot along with his birfer friends
• David Letterman on The Donald (via Slog).
• Young Turks: Another racist comment from Trump.
• John King: Debate with The Donald.
• One proud Carnival Barker (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Liberal Viewer: NBC Trump abortion privacy question made both look bad?
• Tweety: Trump’s sorry-ass voting record.

Cenk: Introducing potential radical G.O.P. candidate Rick Santorum.

Ann Telnaes: Sen. Kyl amends the record…

Oklahoma…apparently NOT OK:

• Young Turks: Oklahoma KKKrazy.
• Oklahoma Rep.: Women and Blacks ‘Lazy’.

White House: West Wing Week.

ONN: Troubled Democrats to undergo party counseling.

Newsy: Ummm…check your watch.

Sam Seder: Atlas bombs.

Long Form Birferism:

• Obama: “Ahh…Here.”
• Sam Seder: The Birth Certificate
• Thom wears a tin foil hat for World Net Daily
• Young Turks: Lawrence O’Donnell gives the Birfer Queen The Boot
• The Froot Loop® Brigade play with their new toy (via Crooks and Liars).
• Mark Fiore: The United States of Reality TV.
• Deathers ask, “Is Obama alive?”
  
• Newsy: Did Obama put the Birfer controversy to rest?
• Thom does Orly Taitz
• Maddow: Donald Trump and the racist roots of ‘birtherism’.
• O’Donnell savages the Birfer Queen.
• Tweety & friends: Obama wins
• Baratunde Thurston’sheartfelt message.
• Ed and Pap: Republicans suffer from shared psychotic disorder.
• Tweety: ‘Pitch-Fork’ White Nationalist Pat Buchanan says ‘Obama is affirmative action all the way’
• Thom goes to town on Philip J. Berg, Birfer Esquire.
• Cenk: Does the G.O.P. have a racism problem?

Sam Seder: Gov. Chris Christie revives the Xanadu Project.

Cenk: G.O.P. = The Gas and Oil Party.

Young Turks: Another racist comment from Trump.

Greenman: Climate denial crock of the week…the “trick”:

Ann Telnaes: The Republican’s trickle down economics.

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

Well, it’s official. Governor Gregoire has vetoed much of the medical marijuana bill, leaving patients and providers across the state at greater risk of arrest and with less access to the medicine that their doctors have authorized them to have. To call this a failure of leadership is an understatement. To knowingly lie in order to promote bad policy is a failure far greater than that of mere leadership. It’s a failure of character and integrity.

I used to be somewhat regretful over my vote for Dino Rossi in 2004. But as clownish and smarmy as Dino Rossi is, having him serve a term as governor would have been a good wake-up call for the progressives in this state. What we’ve just seen from Governor Gregoire is what happens when you blindly support the candidate from your party no matter how incompetent they are. I’m rather convinced at this point that we’d be in a lot better shape on a variety of issues in this state – from education to health care to transportation to tax policy – if Rossi had won that razor-thin election in 2004 and Democrats had a chance to do some soul-searching and run someone who had potential to be a good governor in 2008 (when it was a much easier go for Democrats everywhere).