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 show up earlier for dinner.
Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 215 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.
In case this passed under your radar, there is an election today:
Online voter applicants who have received an emailed confirmation of voter eligibility may vote online until 9 p.m. Tuesday. The King Conservation District is also providing an “in-person” voting option from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.Tuesday at the district’s offices located at 1107 SW Grady Way in Renton.
That’s right…a King County election with email voting and a single polling place. Goldy rants about it here.
You may say, so what? I’ll either be somewhat inconvenienced or I’ll find another route. Yes, you would, but Stefan Sharkansky decided that a mode of transportation he doesn’t like not working perfectly occasionally means that it’s time to pack in this whole public transit experiment.
Because trains are more dependable than cars
Usually, yes.
“Sounder train between Everett and Seattle canceled for Monday”
If only there was a commuter bus you could take you from Everett to Seattle, this whole post would be a fucking waste of everybody’s time.
There seems to be a lot of that.
My God, occasionally trains get delayed or canceled. Traffic jams literally don’t exist, because otherwise this post is so stupid that you’ll lose fewer brain cells banging your head against a wall while drinking grain alcohol than you would reading it.
As the Sound Transit enthusiasts have been telling us for years, the Sounder is “a dependable, stress-free commute” and a “reliable service”
Compared to driving, it sure is. Seriously, how many traffic jams have there been on I-5 between Seattle and Everett since Sounder opened? Do scientists even know have numbers that reach that high?
The taxes we pay for it are a reliable and dependable outflow.
Roads are literally free.
The trial is finally underway this week. The background of the case is here. Updates from the courtroom using the Twitter tag #kcvbg. Most interesting update so far is this one.
Prompted by the need to manually adjust HA’s GMT offset to accommodate for Daylight Savings Time (what’s up with that, WordPress?), I once again opened a support ticket with the hosting company asking them to adjust the server’s clock, which has been off by about 40 minutes for I dunno, months. And possibly prompted by other support tickets related to DST, this time they did.
Yay.
Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was in Edinburgh, Scotland.
This week’s is related to a TV show or a movie, and before you grab the pitchforks and hunt me down, this image is probably 2-3 years old, so that’s a clue. Good luck!
I was so busy following the disaster in Japan that I couldn’t even crack open my bible. So let’s just ask the believers to explain how a compassionate God could do something like this.
Discuss.
Yesterday, legislators around the state held town hall meetings. I’ve lived in the 5th Legislative District for a year now – and expect to live here for many more – and thought it was a good time to actually hear what my state representatives are up to. I showed up at 10am at the Maple Valley Community Center. Glenn Anderson and Jay Rodne (my two Republican state reps) were just starting to speak to a crowd of about a dozen people.
The meeting started off with Anderson talking about the budget difficulties. As you’d expect, Anderson and Rodne believe that our budget problems are related to Democratic overspending (something that Goldy has repeatedly pointed out is not true). One particularly interesting accusation that they made was that the cuts to the budget this year were specifically put in areas that would be most painful (health care and education) in order to scare people into raising taxes in a November referendum. Rodne seemed to believe that we could’ve balanced the budget merely by cutting L&I and the Department of Ecology. That sounded like the equivalent of folks saying that we can eliminate the federal budget deficit by cutting NPR and arts funding, but I’ll let my wonkier friends evaluate that claim.
Anyway, Rodne then asked for a show of hands on who in the room wanted to solve the budget problems by raising taxes. My hand went up and about half the room uneasily raised their hands half-way up with some uncertainty. Rodne then asked me if I was a firefighter (what?). I said no. He asked if I was a public union worker. I said no again, somewhat perplexed by his questions.
The meeting continued on. The political affiliation of the attendees wasn’t overly obvious, except for one gentleman wearing a Republican pin on his jacket. I was expecting it to be largely a conservative crowd, however it was probably closer to 50-50. Either way, it was a small crowd. At one point, the older couple in front on me, who had both worked in the public sector, spoke up to challenge some of the prevailing anti-union rhetoric coming from the front of the room.
The husband (who actually was a firefighter) got somewhat agitated with Rodne in what was the only really tense part of the entire meeting. I spoke up to defend him – primarily because Rodne was attempting to claim that the budget problems we have aren’t related to nationwide problems in the economy, which is absurd. Rodne once again asked if I was a firefighter. This time I more fully elaborated on the fact that I’m a private-sector employee. In response to me, Anderson actually put together a somewhat rational response.
Rodne then asked the room if they agreed with what was happening in Wisconsin. I saw only 2 hands go up, although a gentleman in the back spoke up saying he didn’t understand what Rodne was asking. It’s possible that some in the room thought Rodne was referring to what the protesters were doing, but Rodne seemed genuinely surprised not to see a roomful of hands go up.
Well, my son is waking up now, so I’ll try to wrap this up. At the end of the meeting, I went up to speak to Anderson about my pet pieces of legislation, the drug law reform measures currently making their way through the legislature. I asked him if he was going to support the legalization bill, which would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the state budget, lower crime, and protect families. He first copped to having been a ‘head’ back in the day and said he could potentially support the medical marijuana bill, but couldn’t support HB 1550. I asked him why and his response was that there were soccer moms, and “that gateway thing”, and because meth was really, really bad. So after an hour long town hall of two Republican legislators accusing Democrats of playing politics instead of dealing responsibly with the state budget, it took me roughly 15 seconds to get Anderson to do the same.
Time change for Tea Baggers: set clocks back 400 years. So 2 AM tomorrow becomes 1611, and don’t be late for witch drownings/church.
— Jon DeVore via Twitter.
(Man…I sure wish Jon would post his stuff—even really short stuff—on HA again!)
Ann Telnaes: Gov. Huckabee lays an egg.
ONN: Small town throws pride parade for openly gay resident.
The Republican War on Workers:
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.
Mark Fiore: How to be a political pundit.
Disaster in Japan:
Newsy: NASA study finds ice caps melting at a much faster rate.
Lawrence O’Donnell: What Newt mean to say.
Maddow: Republican fake family values.
UBC Comedy: Fuckin Tea.
Newsy: Illinois executes the death penalty.
Obama announces Gary Locke for Ambassador to China:
Sam Seder: Republicans to America: Poor kids don’t have enough pain.
The Republican War on Muslims:
Stephen: Angry at Huckabee (via Crooks and Liars).
Newsy: Republicans vote to kill net neutrality.
Young Turks: Newt had affair because he loves America.
Obama welcomes The Chicago Black Hawks.
ONN: Oklahoma doctors can legally pretend to give abortions.
Jon: Indecision 2012–weak Republican contenders (via OneGoodMove).
The Great NPR Controversy:
Whodathunk: Evangelicals denounce Glenn Beck as a “New Age” Mormon because of new feel-good book (via Crooks and Liars).
Young Turks: Why Republicans cut education.
Newsy: College student’s voting rights at risk.
White House: West Wing Week.
Ann Telnaes: Obama signs executive order to close for indefinite detention at Gitmo.
Cenk: Newt just loved America too much:
GritTV: Paris Hatcher on keeping an eye on anti-abortion antics.
Newsy: The Dalai Lama retires from political role.
Young Turks: Will Glenn Beck be fired?
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
There are a couple of things happening this weekend that you might consider being part of.
Are there others? Leave a comment.
After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the National Weather Service has issued a tsunami warning for the West Coast. You can see the forecast here, but fair warning, I have no idea what it means.
The Wisconsin Republicans have rammed through a bill that strips collective bargaining rights from public employees. The new legislation only allows collective bargaining for wage increases up to the rate of inflation. In other words, public employees will only be allowed to bargain over how much of a pay cut they will take each year.
Isn’t that special.
There are questions about the legality of the conference committee meeting. The brief meeting itself is well worth watching:
A complaint has been filed, which would be unlikely to void the law, but give another cause, and one based on violations of the law, for the campaigns to recall G.O.P. Senators.
And there are also questions about the constitutionality of the legislation. Regardless of the legal challenges, the legislation will probably become, and stay, law. At least it will until Wisconsin no longer has a Teabagger for a Governor with a G.O.P. controlled Senate and Assembly.
Following the Senate vote last night, the cowardly Republicans were whisked away in a semi-commandeered Madison Metro bus, while protesters surrounding the bus screaming, “Shame!” and “Cowards!”:
Recall campaigns are underway for six the eight Republican Senators currently recallable. The first phase is a 60 day signature collection period that has been going remarkably well—roughly 15 percent of the needed signatures had been collected by last weekend.
Greg Sargent has an early release of polls conducted by SurveyUSA in the eight districts:
When asked if they would vote for Hopper or someone else if a recall election were held right now, 54 percent said they’d vote for someone else, versus only 43 percent they’d vote for Hopper.
In Kapanke’s district, the numbers were even worse: 57 percent said they’d vote for someone else, versus only 41 percent who said they’d vote for Kapanke.
It gets even more interesting. The poll was taken yesterday, before last night’s events, and fifty-six percent of voters in Kapanke’s district, and 54% of voters in Hopper’s district, said if their Senator voted for Walker’s plan, it would make them more likely to vote for someone else.
Finally, by all measures, the fundraising for the recall campaigns has been nothing short of astonishing:
As of this morning, according to Ben Smith, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America had raised $750,000. As of this afternoon, MoveOn’s ActBlue page for the recall reports around $860,000 of donations from around 27,000 people; the Daily Kos page reports around $340,000 from around 12,500.
As Goldy pointed out, all it takes is money.
At least I think this is live:
Illinois has ended their death penalty, making them the 16th state to abolish it. And there’s no reason Washington can’t go next. It’s too late in the legislature this year, but the problems in Illinois are the problems in every state. And while we aren’t offing people at the rate of Texas or Florida, it’s still a stain on us that we do it at all.
So we have a chance to say we believe as a state that we are going to have more compassion, more humanity, more decency than the people on death row. We can say no to an irreversible punishment and yes to our humanity. It’s time to end the death penalty in Washington, and make ourselves number 17.
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