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Please join us tonight for some politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

Perhaps tonight we can all bring our bound and gold-foil bordered copies of “Your Life, Your Choices: Planning for Future Medical Decisions” and group-plan our grizzly Jonestown-style mass suicides for the next time one of us gets depressed or an ingrown toenail.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0dz1e-Wo88[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 335 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to shoot for.

Over on Publicola there’s been some speculation about State Sen. Ed Murray launching a write-in campaign for Seattle Mayor, an idea which at first glance sounds a little stupid. Write-in campaigns are exceedingly difficult things to run, and in a citywide, top-of-the-ticket race, nigh impossible. And Murray is nothing if not a savvy politician who wouldn’t dare risk his reputation on a farce or a folly.

But on second thought…

I’ve got no polling data to back this up, but there’s a strong argument to be made that, considering their lack of name ID and zero experience in public office, a goodly sum of the votes for both Mike McGinn and Joe Malahan were really votes against Mayor Greg Nickels. I’m less impressed with Mallahan buying his way into public consciousness than I am with McGinn’s grassroots success, but I’m still not all that impressed with either campaign; Mallahan has proven himself uninformed on many city issues, while McGinn has yet to make a strong case that he is qualified in both experience and temperament to serve as chief executive. The well-known and well-respected Murray, on the other hand, would have instant credibility.

But the real wildcard that makes the goofy notion of a mayoral write-in campaign just a little less goofy is our new, all vote-by-mail format. Voting at our leisure at the kitchen or dining room table, it really doesn’t take that much more effort to write in “MURRAY” than it does to completely fill in that little circle. And, as Josh points out, with R-71 likely to be on the ballot, Seattle’s strong and politically activated gay community will have extra incentive to send a message by electing our city’s first openly gay mayor. And, the sheer novelty and drama of such a challenge would draw oodles of valuable earned media, and if properly played, national coverage as well.

Could a Murray write-in campaign be perceived to be credible enough to, say, earn an endorsement from the self-proclaimed arbiters of credibility at the Seattle Times? My spider-sense says yes.

So… should Murray run? Only if he’s willing and able to raise the money and commit the time and energy to make it a real campaign, and only if he’s got some reliable polling data telling him that he’s got better than a snowball’s chance in Hell. What he shouldn’t do is kinda-sorta run, just to make a statement, or to drive turnout for R-71. I know from running joke campaigns, and somebody with Murray’s ambition and potential shouldn’t make the mistake of lowering himself to my level.

That said, if Murray does declare as a write-in candidate, and does make a serious effort to win the race, there’s no shame in losing, and probably no long term political cost either, as long as he’s perceived to take the challenge seriously. After all, as any self-respecting pundit will tell you, a mayoral write-in campaign is nigh impossible.

What David Waldman says:

Maybe I’m just not sufficiently wonky on the health care subject, and after all, this isn’t likely to happen to me right away, because I have insurance through my wife that I’m pretty sure we’re keeping as long as we can. But I don’t get how you can possibly hand me a health care bill with an individual mandate and no public option. If I’m uninsured or poorly insured, and the answer coming out of Congress is that I now have to buy crappy insurance from some private company that has no plan to actually help me pay for my health care without raking me over the coals, then I’ve gone into this fight an ardent supporter of strong reform, and come out a teabagger.

You’re going to force me to pay an insurance company for shit insurance that as a free market actor I decided not to even try to buy?

And the insurance companies that paid for organizing the clown shows are just drooling.

From Media Matters:

Fox’s Carlson offers no criticism of guest’s suggestion Pelosi is a Nazi

Fox guest at town hall: “If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own arm.” Fox & Friends hosted David Hedrick, who at a town hall for Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), stated:

HEDRICK: I also heard you say that you’re going to let us keep our health insurance. Well, thank you. It’s not your right to decide whether or not I keep my current plan or not. That’s my decision. Now, I’ve heard recently in the media you and some other people on the political stage call us brownshirts because we opposed —

BAIRD: No, I did not. No, I did not. What I said was — and I’ve apologized for it, sir.

HEDRICK: OK, well, thanks for apologizing. But let — I won’t speak to you, then. I’ll speak to others. But I’ll remind you — a little history lesson. The Nazis did not — the Nazis were the National Socialist Party. They were leftists. They were — they took over the finance. They took over the car industry. They took over health care in that country. If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika, maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own arm.

Now, what I want to know is, you’ve done a lot of things that violate your constitutional oath, as you know. What I want to know is, as a Marine, as a disabled veteran that served this country, I have kept my oath. Do you ever intend to keep yours?

Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson aired a clip of Hedrick comparing Pelosi a Nazi, but did not condemn his remarks or criticize Hedrick for them. Indeed, at no point in the interview did Carlson address Hedrick’s comment. Instead, Carlson introduced Hedrick as “the Marine vet who took the congressman to task” and said only that his remarks got “quite the response.” [Fox & Friends, 8/24/09]

And just for the record, only a person completely ignorant of 20th Century history would make the ridiculous claim that because the Nazis had the term “socialist” in their name that they were “leftists.” For example:

The directive ordered that SA and SS men were to be employed in the planned .’ occupation of trade union properties and for the taking into protective custody of personalities who come into question.” At the conclusion of the action the official NSDAP press service reported that the National Socialist Factory Cells Organisation had “eliminated the old leadership of Free Trade Unions” and taken over the leadership them selves. Similarly, on the 3rd May, 1933, the NSDAP press service announced that the Christian trade unions ” have unconditionally subordinated themselves to the leadership of Adolf Hitler.” In place of the trade unions the Nazi Government set up a German Labour Front (DAF), controlled by the NSDAP, and which, in practice, all workers in Germany were compelled to join. The chairmen of the unions were taken into custody and were subjected to ill-treatment, ranging from assault and battery to murder.

So the Nazis were such “leftists” that they took over the trade unions and murdered their leaders. Yeah, um, okay.

But since we’re living in a post-fact, post-reality era, I guess history doesn’t really matter much either. It’s just a collection of invective to be hurled as the situation arises; one day it’s socialism, another day it’s Naziism, another day it’s Scientology, whatever. If they feel it, it’s true, because others in the tribe say it’s true. Feelings are true, facts are not true.

Pretty soon they’ll call us Vikings and accuse us of invading England. Well, they won’t do that, because that would involve actual knowledge of history, but you know what I mean.

There is no meaning, Winston thought, as he drained the last of the Victory Gin.*

*May not be an actual literary quote, it’s more of a feeling

It’s pretty much a distortion per day with these people.

Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, went on Fox News today to fan the flames of the latest fabricated “death panel” controversy.

Goldberg equated a Veterans Affairs pamphlet — one that’s reportedly no longer being used — with Nazi eugenics, saying “death panels may not be too far off the horizon.”

The pamphlet in question is one that, Fox reported this weekend, encourages disabled veterans to decide whether their lives are worth living. Tammy Duckworth, an assistant secretary of the VA, told Fox on Sunday that the department instructed VA doctors to stop using the pamphlet in 2007.

It never stops. Manna could fall to all hungry people, and the righties would all it socialism, unless, of course, they could somehow take credit for it during a Republican administration.

Some days you really wonder if the Democratic leadership understands that they are not facing a traditional opposition political party. We’re facing a senseless, radical authoritarianism that lost power and now wants it back.

This month proves that beyond all doubt, and Democrats and their allies forget that at their own peril. You don’t debate these people, you don’t compromise with these people, you either beat them or you lose. It’s really that simple.

(Props to TPM.)

It’s a beautiful day, and only a week before school starts, so my daughter and dog and I have gone hiking. Talk amongst yourselves.

While Josh muses on the more obvious narrative of Republican Susan Hutchison’s visit to the 43rd LD Dems’ annual picnic, you know, the strategery of her showing up, I think there’s a more interesting story to be drawn from Saturday’s event, and one that comments more broadly on the cultural divide that currently separates our nation’s two major parties:  the relatively cordial manner in which Hutchison was received.

As far as I’ve heard, nobody shouted Hutchison down, accusing her of being a Nazi or a communist (or oddly, both). Nobody vandalized her car, or attempted to intimidate her by showing off their firearms. And nobody angrily yelled at her to stay away from their children.

Hutchison was accompanied by a couple of burly, t-shirted aides, but she certainly didn’t need any bodyguards, if that’s what she was thinking.  No, this gathering of very partisan Dems greeted her politely, quietly milled about as she gave her stump speech, and then chatted her up for about an hour.

And that’s not the exception that proves the rule. Ask any of the number of Republicans and even the few righty trolls who have accepted our open invitation to show up at Drinking Liberally, and they’ll attest to their friendly reception. (I mean, it’s so easy beating your guys’ rhetorical ass, why would we ever feel the need to threaten to beat your physical one?)

What we see in comparing Hutchison’s uneventful visit to a Democratic picnic versus the hostile and intentionally intimidating Republican crowds who have recently taken to storming town hall meetings, is not just a contrast in style, but a contrast in political culture. Democrats in general, and as a whole, really are more democratic, while the anti-government reactionaries who now seem to comprise the base of the Republican Party have long since forgotten the true meaning of the word they use as a party label.

It may have been savvy of Hutchison to show up at a Democratic picnic, though I doubt she earned herself any votes, but it certainly wasn’t gutsy. I can’t help but feel the opposite would be true if Dow Constantine were to make a similar surprise foray onto partisan Republican turf.

One of the big differences between bloggers like me and so-called real journalists like those at the Seattle Times, is that I tend to mix in generous amounts of editorializing with my reporting, whereas the dailies maintain a strict wall between editorial and news. Or so I’ve been told…

Dear Seattle voters: That must have felt good.

You finally took out your long-simmering resentment of Mayor Greg Nickels by shoving him aside in last week’s primary.

Yup, as far as news ledes go, you can’t get much more objective than that.

Here are some drug war items I’ve wanted to write full posts about but haven’t had the time:

– Anthony Citrano writes about the latest wave of medical marijuana raids in Los Angeles. According to Attorney General Holder’s previous statements, federal authorities wouldn’t be targeting any establishments that are complying with state law. Unfortunately, many of these raids are happening without any disclosure of what state law the establishments are being accused of violating. For Obama’s policy to provide any real protection for legal dispensaries, there needs to be that level of transparency to ensure that the DEA isn’t violating it.

– The saddest part of the attempts to raid medical marijuana dispensaries is the fact that California is desperately trying to figure out how to fix the problem of its overcrowded prisons. Even worse, Governor Schwarzenegger is still trying to increase funding to anti-drug units. I just remember back in 2003, when I was in Belgium and I told a group of people I was having drinks with that Arnold Schwarzenegger might be the next governor of California, and they were all shocked. At the time, I wasn’t as alarmed as they were that a brain-dead action movie star would be running the largest state in the country. Maybe I should have been.

– I was never much of a Michael Jackson fan, so I didn’t pay much attention to the news surrounding his death, but the fact that they may charge one of his doctors with manslaughter certainly has my attention now. How doctors treat people with chemical dependencies or how they subscribe potentially addictive opioid medications is a very touchy subject where prosecutors and judges often decide that they have better judgment than a physician. It’s still way too early to know what the doctor in this case was doing, but I have trouble believing that he could have been doing anything that warrants a manslaughter charge.

– This week’s drug war outrage comes from Florida, where a man named Donald May spent three months in jail for being in possession of breath mints. The arresting officer claimed the breath mints were crack-cocaine. The officer involved also lied in his report, claiming that the man admitted to buying crack. In the three months he was in jail, they auctioned off his car. He’s now suing. [h/t to the Crackpiper]

– Toby Nixon and Jeanne Kohl-Welles write in the Seattle Times in support the State Senate bill to decriminalize marijuana.

– In Bolivia, where President Evo Morales kicked out the DEA but still claims to oppose cocaine trafficking, there’s a new bar gaining some worldwide notoriety.

Last week’s contest was won by mlc1us in an impressive 19 minutes. The view was of Tokyo, and the link is here.

Here’s this week’s contest, good luck!

What Danny said, and more…

A rap on Mayor Greg Nickels was that he was a strongman. He supposedly made decisions without taking the full advice of the public or City Council. Many citizens felt, therefore, that he was arrogant.

We say we want leadership… we like to whine about not getting it from our elected officials… but the truth is, we hate leadership, for as soon as a politician attempts to actually use political power and exert it, we attack him or her for being arrogant.

Take the Viaduct for example, perhaps the classic textbook illustration of the political cluster fuck we quaintly refer to as “the Seattle Way.” It’s been eight years since the Viaduct was nearly dismantled by the relatively mild Nisqually quake… eight years of watching it topple over, slow motion, onto the waterfront as its western supports gradually sink into the muck at a steady rate of a fraction of an inch a year. Eight years of knowing that we are one inevitable shake away from, depending on the time of day, perhaps the greatest man-made disaster in our region’s history.

And we could be on the verge of electing a mayor with workable plan to stop the plan to replace the Viaduct, but with no real plan to build political consensus for an acceptable alternative. I oppose the Big Bore too, and hell, I might even vote for Mike McGinn myself. But you gotta admit, on this issue at least, our city/region/state is more than a little fucked up. The Viaduct is a triple-digit fatality waiting to happen (or worse), and no elected official with an ounce of common sense or humanity could choose to allow it to stand any longer than absolutely necessary.

And the truth is, given our current financial, environmental, geographic and political constraints, there is no good alternative to the current structure—at least not one that could likely satisfy a majority of voters. The proposed tunnel is hugely expensive and technically uncertain, the current deal placing untenable risks on Seattle taxpayers, all in the service of an outmoded transportation philosophy that ignores the energy and environmental reality of the twenty-first century. Despite the claims of its proponents, the surface/transit option would likely exacerbate congestion, at least in the short term, and by dumping tens of thousands of vehicles a day onto surface streets, could prove the least pedestrian and bike friendly of the three major alternatives. And while a rebuild might seem like the perfect compromise in both price and function, no city planner in his or her right mind would propose building a double-decker freeway today across such a vital and beautiful waterfront, if one already didn’t exist, and it would be crime to burden future generations with such a stunning lack of civic pride and vision.

In their favor, by diverting traffic underground, the tunnel would do the most to open up, revitalize and beautify our waterfront into a civic treasure future generations would come to cherish. The surface/transit option is by far the least expensive and most forward thinking of any of the plans. And the rebuild… well… current generations of Seattleites grew up with the Viaduct, and if it was good enough for us, it’s good enough for future generations as well. (You know, stop trying to change Seattle into New York or San Francisco and all that.) But even if you believe there is a best alternative, good luck convincing a majority of elected officials, let alone a majority of the voting public.

Though, of course, that’s half of what Mayor Nickels somehow managed to do. He always favored a tunnel, and voters be damned, he ultimately got the governor and the legislature, who originally pushed for the less expensive rebuild, to agree to a tunnel deal, albeit an awfully bad deal for Seattle taxpayers. Call that arrogance if you want. But it’s also leadership.

And as we saw in Tuesday’s election results, we hate leadership.

In helping to end Mayor Nickels career, Mike McGinn has made blocking the tunnel one of the centerpieces of his campaign, and like him, I favor the surface/transit option, if not always for the same reasons. And if elected, I’ve little doubt that McGinn will succeed in fulfilling this campaign promise. For in Seattle, saying “no” is what we do best.

But whether a Mayor McGinn could succeed in building political consensus for his own favored alternative to the Viaduct before nature succeeds in knocking the current one down, well, that’s another question. And if he does show the leadership necessary to force his own plan into implementation, how could he possibly survive the dire political consequences of his success?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRE5UK6NQU[/youtube]

An angry right wing guy insists that Nazis were leftists because they were “National Socialists,” and he also demands that Baird “stay away from his kids.”

This was from the Brian Baird town hall last Tuesday.

Yeah, we’ll stay away from your kids, angry guy, and you and your kin, because you’re a crazy angry ignorant moron. No problem. My main goal in life is to avoid people like you.

I sure wouldn’t want to risk pulling in front of your grocery cart by accident, because that might be about the same as something Pol Pot would do. I hear old Pol was a real asshole when he was shopping, which would make me a Pol Pot shopper. Or something.

It’s hard to argue with stupid. But this is a pretty good example of what we’re dealing with. G-d bLess tHe UsA.

UPDATE [Lee]: Jon, I hope you don’t mind my piggy-backing on your post here, but the following passage is from the very beginning of Volume 2 of Mein Kampf, where Adolf Hitler lays out the general philosophy of the National Socialist movement:

[Read more…]

I’d heard from a couple woeful Greg Nickels supporters this week who hadn’t bothered to vote in Tuesday’s primary election, figuring the incumbent mayor was a shoe-in for the general… but you know, one always hears stories like this, so I hadn’t given it much thought. But yesterday I heard from a Nickels volunteer who told me a story that gave me pause.

The volunteer (anonymous to you, but well known to me) had been working the phone banks over the last couple days of the campaign, encouraging likely Nickels supporters to mail in their ballots, and he talked to “at least a dozen” voters who said they planned to vote for Nickels in November but were intending to game the primary by voting for who they perceived to be the weakest opponent (usually, but not always, Mike McGinn). The assumption was that Nickels was a shoe-in to make it through to the general, and so they could afford to divert their vote to game the system.

Oops.

Of course, this anecdote is merely, um, anecdotal, so unless I hear from other phone bank volunteers who report similar conversations with voters, I’ll have to leave it at that. But it does make me wonder how complacent Nickels supporters might have been, and if the broader public had understood that the mayor might really come in third to Mallahan and McGinn, whether he really would have come in third at all?

Speculation, sure. But that’s a lot of what I do.

Did you know that a round trip ticket bought at a Link light rail station is actually a day pass for the fare zone purchased, good for as many rides as you can fit into the current calendar day?

Riding the Link to the mayor’s press conference yesterday I bought a roundtrip ticket between Othello and downtown, and happened to run into one of the Sound Transit inspection teams while on the train. I flashed my ticket, and that was that, and apparently none of the other passengers on the roughly half-full train had any problems either. But it got me thinking.

My ticket had the date and the $2.00 zone value printed boldly on the card, with “Adult $4.00” in smaller print along with the names of the starting and destination stations. But there was no time stamp or expiration printed anywhere on the card… and really, how could there be? I might return any time, and the same ticket was issued as valid fare in both directions. And since the ticket is never punched, scanned or collected, I could use it multiple times throughout the day, getting on and off at various stations within the purchased zone.

So I asked folks at Sound Transit whether I had discovered a flaw in their fare system, and was flatly told no. They don’t seem to advertise it, but these tickets are day passes; in fact, it says “Puget Pass” on the front of the ticket, and clearly states on the back: “Pass is valid during the day(s)/week(s/month(s)/year(s) shown.” Furthermore, it’s valid for face value service throughout the region, on Community Transit, Sound Transit, Pierce Transit, Metro and Sound Transit. In that sense it’s even better than a bus transfer; one can ride the light rail, and then use the same ticket repeatedly throughout the region’s bus and commuter rail system, paying the difference between the face value and the fare where need be.

At least through the end of the year.

When I asked why anybody would use an Orca Card, which dings you for every boarding, rather than an all-day Puget Pass, I was told that a) few commuters take more than a single roundtrip ride a day; and b) come January, paper tickets and bus transfers would no longer be accepted as valid transfers, while the Orca Card would continue to seamlessly operate as such.

Fair enough. But for the moment, these roundtrip tickets are one helluva bargain, and will still be a pretty damn good deal after the first of the year, especially for folks looking to explore the neighborhoods along the Link line.