HorsesAss.Org

When there are much publicized problems in our state’s K-12 public education system, the Seattle Times is quick to blame teachers and their unions. But when Washington students lead the nation in average SAT scores — for the eighth year in a row — the Times gives “Kudos to Washington students who put the state No. 1 for SAT results.”

Washington state’s continued high SAT scores are evidence of a growing number of students working hard, and successfully, toward college.

No doubt. But what about the teachers? Don’t they deserve mention too? Or are teachers only held responsible when they fail to educate, and never when they succeed?

You gotta hand it to those teabaggers… they certainly know how to raise the level of political discourse:

Criticism has arisen over a float in the annual Naches Sportsman’s Days parade that some are calling offensive and in bad taste.

Sponsored by a local group that’s part of the tea party movement, the float resembled an oversized red wagon. Riding on it was a man wearing a President Obama mask, cracking a whip over a youth pulling the wagon.

Several people on the float carried signs critical of federal spending, Wall Street bailouts, tax increases and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, who is locked in a re-election battle with Republican Dino Rossi.

Well, at least this float was in better taste than the group’s original idea, which featured Obama praying to Mecca while raping a white woman.

Progressives have a lot of reasons to feel disappointed with President Obama and the Democratic Congress. This ain’t one of them.

UPDATE:
Oops. I trust TPM. But they apparently trusted FOX News, which has now retracted the report. It’s not that Warren won’t be appointed, it’s just that she hasn’t been. At least not yet.

As has already been widely reported, the latest Elway Poll has Sen. Patty Murray leading real estate speculator Dino Rossi by 50-41%, which is pretty damn consistent with internal Democratic polling, including a recently released DSCC poll that showed Murray up 50-45%.

Curiously, and unlike previous campaigns, not a single Rossi/Republican internal poll has been leaked, suggesting that their numbers don’t diverge much from the Democrats. Of course, recent SurveyUSA and Rasmussen polls showed Rossi in the lead,but the crosstabs suggest SurveyUSA’s sample is totally whacked, while Rasmussen generally leans Republican until the final weeks of the campaign. So both my brain and my gut still tell me that the edge goes to Murray.

That said, the only the poll that matters is the one that closes 8PM, November 2. So Dems better get their shit together and vote, or else.

Update [Darryl]: Elsewhere I do a little number crunching with this poll and other recent polls in this race.

No word yet from Attorney General Rob McKenna on whether he might reconsider his endorsement of Hans Zeiger and his call to reunite conservatives in opposition to Islam (and radical feminist, lesbian, cookie peddling Girl Scouts), but there’s at least one Republican willing to put principle — and, well, sanity — above party loyalty: Zeiger’s GOP primary opponent, Steve Vermillion.

The TNT’s editorial blog has posted a condensed version of an email sent to supporters by Vermillion today, in which he endorses Democratic incumbent Rep. Dawn Morrell in the 25th LD race, and pretty much trashes Herr Zeiger as unqualified and dishonorable. It’s a great read:

In hopes that a “mystery box” of missing ballots would appear with sufficient votes to move me into second place, my hopes were extinguished with my wife’s reminder that we lived in Pierce not King County and the likelihood of missing votes appearing was slim to none.

Zeiger asked for my endorsement, which I declined to give him. Early on, I told the folks in the Pierce County GOP that I had no intention of supporting him should be win in the primary as I do not think he is remotely qualified to be in the Legislature.

I have been asked to at least remain neutral, which were my plans until Zeiger recently moved into his cover-up mode by working to delete many of his controversial writings. I expect that he is working on his “dishonorable” scout badge for the next level of his scouting adventures.

My plans are now to endorse Dawn Morrell for Position 2. I’ve known Dawn for several years – she is the only legislator that has served our district that is willing to respond to email questions. I’ve disagreed with some of her votes but I am sure she would have disagreed with some of mine if the situation had been reversed.

I’ve studied Zeiger’s writings from 2003 to 2009. Whether I agree or disagree with his position is a moot point. I take deep umbrage with his selection of verbiage and his focus on judging people versus being inclusive of others. The problems with his writings are they are either reflective of the “Zeiger Values” he campaigns on taking to the legislature or formulated via his political courses and religious studies at Hillsdale College.

Had I not read his writings, I wouldn’t have known that, being a Baptist, I was praying to a pagan god all these years. No wonder I haven’t won the lottery yet.

Cordially,

Steve Vermillion

Wow.

Vermillion got only 16% of the vote in August, compared to Zeiger’s 36%, but if Zeiger hopes to win in November he’s gonna need the bulk of Vermillion’s voters to swing his way. Normally, you’d expect that to happen, but you gotta wonder how many voters would have the exact same reaction to Zeiger that Vermillion did if only they had access to the exact same information?

And you gotta wonder how much longer our local media can keep their lips sealed on what is shaping up to be a pretty entertaining story?

Subject: Does Rob McKenna endorse Hans Zeiger?

From: david@horsesass.org

Date: September 13, 2010 1:28:21 PM PDT

To: Janelle Guthrie (ATG)

Cc: Dan Sytman (ATG)

Janelle,

As a long time reader, perhaps you’ve seen my series on 25th LD Republican nominee Hans Zeiger? Over the past couple weeks I’ve reported a lot of startling things about Zeiger’s offensive and disturbing views, but perhaps my most surprising discovery is that Attorney General Rob McKenna headlines the list as Zeiger’s most prominent endorser.

Surely, this must be a mistake. Surely, Mr. McKenna would not endorse a candidate who called the Girl Scouts “a gathering of radical feminists, lesbians, and cookie peddlers,” who described the National Education Association as a “terrorist organization” that “has made greater progress in the tearing down of American institutions and ideals than Iraq or Al Quaeda,” who berates other religions and Christian dominations for “praying to the generic god,” who dismisses Seattle’s St. Mark’s Cathedral as “hardly a Christian church,” and who argues for conservatives to fight against “the problem of Islam” as the organizing principle behind a reunited conservative movement and a resurgent Republican Party.

For surely, wouldn’t the endorsement of Zeiger by Washington state’s most prominent elected Republican appear to some as an endorsement of Zeiger’s hateful and intolerant opinions?

So could you please ask the Attorney General if he has in fact officially endorsed Zeiger, and if so, whether he is prepared to publicly withdraw his endorsement now that he has been made aware of Zeiger’s vast portfolio of disturbing and bigoted commentary? Or, if Mr. McKenna maintains his endorsement, could you please ask him to defend it?

As always, I thank you for your cooperation, and look forward to your reply.

David Goldstein
HorsesAss.org

[cc: my readers]

We get a lot of people with crazy views running for office, but it’s no so often that they’re endorsed by the most prominent Republican elected official in the state. So I just sent this email to the Attorney General’s office to ask whether Rob McKenna really endorsed Hans Zeiger, as Zeiger claims on his website, and if so, whether McKenna would withdraw his endorsement now that he nows how crazy Zeiger is.

I’ll let you know if I get a response, but you might want to contact the AG’s office and ask for yourself.

But there is evil in our world that will destroy souls and nations if conservatives don’t unite against it. Our response to the problem of Judaism cannot mainly be war, though it may include war. We must respond with a renewed culture. We must counter the rise of Judaism with a faith of our own.

That is not to say that conservatives must be Christians, but conservatives must understand that the only defense against Judaism is a vibrant Christian culture. Politics is a contest of opinions about how best to protect a culture; while culture has to do with ideas and relationships, politics has to do with force and order. Our politics need not be immediately religious, but our culture must be.

The cult of Judaism repudiates self-government and all we hold dear. If we are to continue to be a self-governing people, we must be a people of strong character, and strong character is founded in the Christian faith. If conservatives are to be reunited, we must first unite against Judaism. From there we can renew our determination to be a self-governing and Christian nation.

Had any general election candidate written an overtly anti-semitic statement like that, no doubt our local media would be all over the scandal, and you can be damn sure the candidate’s own party wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. But substitute “Islam” for “Judaism,” and those are all direct quotes from 25th LD Republican nominee Hans Zeiger.

Yet except for a couple bemused blog posts about Zeiger’s labeling of the Girl Scouts as a bunch of “radical feminists, lesbians, and cookie peddlers,” we’ve so far heard crickets from our local media about Zeiger’s intolerant, hateful, and dare I say fascistic political views.

Why? Well, I can only assume that our region’s journalists and editorialists are simply more accepting of anti-Islamic bigotry than they are of anti-Jewish bigotry. I mean, how else to interpret such an extraordinary double standard?

—

(Ironically, should Zeiger defeat Democratic incumbent Rep. Dawn Morrell, the media post mortem will no doubt berate her for failing to get her message out. Imagine that.)

Last week was the 100th Bird’s Eye View Contest, so instead of looking for a good view to post, I decided to do a tally of the winners. Some contests had multiple winners, so there are more than 100, but here’s the list of those who won more than once (31 people won one contest):

Wes.in.wa – 20
Milwhcky – 20
Mlc1us – 10
Don Joe – 5
YLB – 4
Dave Gibney – 3
Waguy – 3
2cents – 3
ibogaine – 2
Liberal Scientist – 2
Dan Robinson – 2
Brian – 2

I’m always open to suggestions for this contest. If you have a good idea for how to make this contest more fun, please feel free to post it in the comments. I’ve always wanted to make the views difficult but possible, and it’s been a challenge of my own to keep finding ones that strike that balance. Thanks for playing everyone, and enjoy some football this afternoon.

Deuteronomy 7
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

Discuss.

(And there are links to 40 more media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

Yesterday I asked whether batshit-crazy 25th LD Republican nominee Hans Zeiger agrees with me and the Seattle Times that, in their words, “loathing of Muslims … humiliates Christians and demeans their beliefs in the eyes of the world.”

Of course, it was a rhetorical question, as Zeiger’s extensive written record makes it clear that he does not.

For example, in a December 2006 column in the online wingnut mouthpiece WorldNetDaily, titled “The right must unite against Islam,” Zeiger actually makes the extraordinarily cynical and prescient suggestion that opposition to Islam should replace anti-communism as the organizing principle that unites the conservative movement:

When conservatism began its popular resurgence in politics and ideas in the 1950s, the thing that tied together the intellectual camps … and made their adherents a collective force, with time, for Ronald Reagan was the spirit of anti-communism. Conservatives, after all, are generally trying to conserve something good in the face of something bad. Conservatives need not agree about the ultimate good (the good could be liberty, or equality, or truth, or tradition). But they must agree about what is bad (communism was bad).

Today, as in 1964 and 1980 when communism was pulsing and the right was united, there are different views among conservatives about what constitutes the good. However, unlike 1964 and 1980, conservatives today are divided about what constitutes the bad. Some say that terrorism is the great enemy; others say that war is the great enemy. Some say that government is our undoing, others that the popular culture is evil. It is possible to hate terrorism and war and government and popular culture all at once, but it is not likely that a winning political movement can come together on all these themes.

It’s actually a pretty cogent if simplistic reading of history. According to Zeiger, even though the various flavors of American conservatism couldn’t agree on a single agenda, they were ultimately united in their opposition to communism. That was the organizing principle on which social conservatives and neo-cons and free market libertarians et al were able to join together into a united, disciplined and effective political movement. That was the unlikely coalition at the core of a resurgent Republican Party.

Huh. It’s as good a thesis as any. I’ll give him that.

But with the Soviet Union collapsed and communism vanquished as a meaningful threat, the conservative movement and its party lost it’s way.

Indeed, there is no winning conservative movement. Even if the Republicans are still a force in politics, what passes for the conservative party today is hardly conservative, because it is more driven by special interests than a resistance to something bad.

Zeiger’s solution? Find a new bugbear… a boogeyman… a scapegoat against whom conservatives can reunify into a dominant political force. It is a strategy straight out of Mein Kampf, all the way down to the semitic origins of this new enemy and the disturbingly unselfconscious turn of phrase Zeiger chooses to describe the threat they pose:

But there is evil in our world that will destroy souls and nations if conservatives don’t unite against it. Whatever arguments are to be made for the war in Iraq, the fact is that Iraq in the equation of public opinion and practical statesmanship has distracted from the realities of Sept. 11. It has moved conservatives away from what could define their calling at the launch of the 21st century. Our response to the problem of Islam cannot mainly be war, though it may include war. We must respond with a renewed culture. We must counter the rise of Islam with a faith of our own.

Understand that Zeiger is not simply advocating that conservatives and Republicans unite in their opposition to Islamist terrorism, he is arguing that they need to unite in opposition to Islam. You know… the Islamic Problem.

And Zeiger’s Hitlerian rhetoric doesn’t end there…

That is not to say that conservatives must be Christians, but conservatives must understand that the only defense against Islam is a vibrant Christian culture. Politics is a contest of opinions about how best to protect a culture; while culture has to do with ideas and relationships, politics has to do with force and order. Our politics need not be immediately religious, but our culture must be.

I mean, I hate to drop the F-bomb… but that bit about “force and order” is a fascistic political sentiment if I ever saw one.

And there’s no reading between the lines here. Zeiger goes on to clearly demonize “the cult of Islam,” while reiterating his call for conservatives to reunite in opposition…

The cult of Islam repudiates self-government and all we hold dear. If we are to continue to be a self-governing people, we must be a people of strong character, and strong character is founded in the Christian faith.

[…] If conservatives are to be reunited, we must first unite against Islam. From there we can renew our determination to be a self-governing and Christian nation.

Perhaps Zeiger truly believes that Islam is as “evil” as he says it is. Perhaps he doesn’t. Cognitive dissonance can yield strange results. But in his call to exploit opposition to Islam as the organizing political principle of the American right, one can’t help but hear a chilling echo of the German anti-semitism of the 1930’s, and its transformation of old fashioned, church sanctioned Jew hatred into an organizing political principle that would ultimately lead to the slaughter of millions. Thus as clever or as prescient as Zeiger’s call to action may be, there is little in it to distinguish his political instincts from those of the fascists… or even al-Qaeda for that matter.

—

Unfortunately, while young Zeiger fashioned himself a reputation as a sorta right-wing prodigy, based purely on his prolific portfolio of wingnut commentary, our local media seems prepared to dismiss it all as mere youthful indiscretion… even batshit-crazy columns such as this one, written less than four years ago. So if 25th LD voters are going to learn the truth about Zeiger, they’re going to have to learn it directly from his Democratic opponent, Rep. Dawn Morrell. So you might want to throw her some change.

In an editorial today, the Seattle Times warns that “Police shootings threaten the public’s trust.” Yeah, true. But you know what else these shootings threaten? The public.

The Times goes on to caution against “armchair quarterbacking or efforts to prejudge the police,” and again, I’d agree that the we have not yet had enough time or facts to determine whether any or all of our region’s seven recent police shootings were completely justified or not. But it’s never too soon to put these events in context and attempt to discern some truth that might prevent more such tragedies from occurring in the near future.

And the obvious context is that our recent spate of police shootings comes in the wake of a string of tragedies that left six police officers dead in 2009.

Human nature being what it is, and the memory of their fallen comrades still fresh, it is perfectly understandable, if not necessarily forgivable, if when confronted with a perceived threat, local officers are a bit quicker to react with lethal force than they might have been only a a year ago. Likewise, it is also understandable if supervisors, politicians, the press and the public are more willing to justify such violent confrontations than they might have been before last year’s tragedies.

In other words, it is reasonable to ask if last year’s tragic slaying of six police officers played any role in facilitating the spate of police shootings we’ve seen this year? And it is incumbent upon our law enforcement officers to ask themselves whether the heightened sense of danger they must surely feel has in any way endangered the public they are sworn to protect?

It is not illegal to openly carry guns, knives and other weapons in Washington state, and the failure to instantly respond to police commands should not inevitably result in a barrage of bullets. Police officers are presumably trained to quickly react to perceived threats, but they should constantly remind themselves that the public is not. Deafness, inebriation, confusion, stupidity or even perhaps a misplaced trust in the restraint of the officers confronting them, need not result in tragedy.

Our police officers choose to put their lives on the line on our behalf, and for that they deserve our respect and support. But we should be wary of using last year’s tragic police slayings as any justification for the unnecessary use of lethal force.

I meant to post this last night, but have been buried up to my neck in changes to my fantasy football website. Throw out your predictions for the season in the comments below. Will the Seahawks be a .500 team? Can they win the division? Does the old man in Minnesota have another year in him like last year (didn’t look that way last night)? Will McNabb and Shanahan make the Redskins a winner? Can the Cowboys become the first team to play in their home stadium for the Super Bowl? Has the NFL milked the Saints-Katrina storyline enough, or is there still some juice in that raisin?