HorsesAss.Org

One of the most thoughtful and insightful people in the blogosphere has decided to hang it up. Hilzoy from Obsidian Wings wrote her last post here.

The Imperial College in London is right on the Circle Line a tube route that, as the name implies, is a circle around Central London and Westminster. I studied at Imperial College for a quarter, and after school would take the reading assignment or a newspaper and sit for a while, and when I came to a good stopping point in the reading would get off the train and explore whatever part of the city was around the next stop. I still remember a chip shop where one of the locals I talked to complained that you have to bring your own vinegar because they don’t provide it in this part of town anymore and some gloriously spicy Indian food.

Well today, on the first day of light rail service, I went out and explored Othello, a neighborhood that previously might have been Mars for how infrequently I got down there.

The station is great. Beautiful itself and right across from King Plaza, a two story strip mall that was doing a brisk business on this weekend day. Beyond that, past a couple blocks of London plane trees was a very nice little park (I’m not sure it was a city park; I didn’t notice any signage), a perfect place to sit under a gigantic willow and read with a scent of lavender planted nearby mingled with that of some burgers a family was grilling.

I walked back to, and then down MLK, parallel to the tracks. A few businesses that may benefit from having light rail eventually were pretty empty when I looked into the windows. I stopped in and had a late lunch at a Thai place a few blocks from the station. It was empty except for me at about 2:30, and a bit fuller when I left, but hopefully it and places like it will get more business as people see what’s out from the stations.

After lunch back at the station, Sound Transit did a great job with a little fair. There was music and some booths. I got my undriver’s license and took in some music, and then back home to downtown.

The line wasn’t as bad as I had feared but it was about a half hour before the ST people let me on a train (going there from University Street Station there was almost no line at all).

The point of this (admittedly overindulgent) post is that light rail opens up a piece of the city for those of us without roots there and who make most of our trips without a car. Sure, this is something I could do yesterday if I’d wanted to. But it’s much easier to just get on a train than it is to figure out the bus schedule or to find parking if I’d wanted to drive. And I know exactly how to get home: hop on one of the trains that come every few minutes.

In the coming weeks, I hope to explore other neighborhoods that I normally wouldn’t get to. I’ll probably wander around another station tomorrow. Perhaps after work some time before it starts getting dark early, I’ll take a bike to one of the stations and ride it home. Given that the trains were stuffed, I doubt I’ll be the only one.

Walter Cronkite – March 1, 2006:

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: “And that’s the way it is.”

To me, that encapsulates the newsman’s highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire – least of all in a time of war.

I remember. I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost – and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens.

I am speaking of the war on drugs.

And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.

I’m not old enough to remember Walter Cronkite as an anchorman, but the post above made me understand the kind of man he was – someone who put truth above everything, regardless of whether or not his words would be uncomfortable for people to hear. As he approached the age of 90, he never lost his willingness to question authority or his ability to see through the lies. Even today, it’s almost impossible to find a news anchor who would say the things that Cronkite wrote in that post. And even if one of them did, I’m not sure we’d be smart enough to recognize how important it was.

UPDATE: Greenwald has more.

UPDATE 2: David Borden has another Cronkite piece on the drug war from 1995.

UPDATE:
I posted the picture above hours earlier, from my iPhone, while on the train, somewhere south of the Beacon Hill tunnel. But I just thought I’d take a moment to explain the headline, which really isn’t as snarky as it sounds. In fact the words had come  to me spontaneously, earlier in the day, as I climbed the stairs into the bright daylight and chaotic street scene outside Nordstrom’s, above the transit tunnel at Westlake Station.

It was a moment of serene familiarity, one like many hundreds of other moments I experienced in many other cities, but mostly New York, where I lived for a couple years… that sudden rush of sensation as one emerges from the subway, and is thrust headlong into one’s destination. Riding a subway is much like taking an elevator. You are one place, the doors close, the doors open, and suddenly you are someplace else.

Standing outside Nordstrom’s, adjusting my eyes and ears to my surroundings as the crowds rushed by me, I exclaimed to my daughter “It’s almost like living in a real city.”

I’ve walked through downtown Seattle many times since moving from Second and Pike to my South Seattle house. But for the first time in a long time, the downtown really felt like home.

Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, has died at age 92.

Remember a time when you’d watch the news on TV, and just, well, believed it? I do.

If you’ve had puppies in your home you know why. Ahh, isn’t she cute? We named her Sarah.

First she bit me, then she peed on my shoe. Later she accused me of attacking her and refused to be our puppy any more. We’re giving her a book contract.

I’m not ashamed to admit I that I like Joel Connelly. Sure, he’s a curmudgeonly old curmudgeon with a penchant for repeating the same old jokes and stories again and again (and again), and yeah, as a writer, he’s one of those persnickety old-timers who apparently believes that Strunk & White was carved in stone by the almighty hand of, well, Strunk & White. And then there’s his wistful nostalgia for the mythical days of statesmanlike bipartisanship. Oy.

But Joel’s also a walking encyclopedia of Northwest political lore and a deft practitioner of the lost art of the follow-up question, and unlike the rest of our local media’s persnickety curmudgeons and curmudgeonly persnickets, he respects us unruly whippersnappers enough to actually engage with us… sometimes passionately.

Take for example his column today at SeattlePI.com (or, “coloooom” as Dwight Eisenhower used to pronounce it), in which Joel attempts to slap me and Erica for our “anti-religious bigotry.” At least it shows he cares.

Militant secularists in the Internet estate are demonizing the former KIRO-TV anchor and candidate for King County executive. David Goldstein, on his Web site Horsesass.org, sneered at Hutchison for her Honolulu prayers, and witness that the prayers were answered with the message that God wanted her both “professionally ready” and “spiritually ready for the next step.”

“What is this thing with Christians praying for touchdowns, and lottery tickets and news anchor jobs, and thinking that God doesn’t have more important things to do than answer their petty, materialistic prayers?” Goldstein wrote.

Huh. I think I snickered more than “sneered” at Hutchison getting down on her knees and asking God “Why aren’t you doing this for me?” in regards to a coveted job promotion that wasn’t happening, but regardless, I think I raised a valid theological question.

I mean, what is it about this Santa Clausification of God in which earthly rewards are lavished upon those who pray (to the right God, in the right way), and at what point does this brand of religious devotion border on mere magic?  I’ve read my Max Weber, and I understand the Calvinist ethos in which our material success here in this life is supposedly a reflection of our eternal glory in the next, but I don’t need to accept or respect it. Praying for a weeknight anchor job just strikes me as petty and narcissistic, and voicing that opinion is not an act of religious bigotry. Perhaps Hutchison is one of the millions of her fellow Christians who absolutely believe that I am going to burn in Hell for all eternity, simply because I refuse to accept Christ as my savior; would it be religious bigotry for me to question that particular religious tenet as well?

Whether Hutchison actually talks to God, and whether He actually answers back in His own voice—as in, “And He told me something then that I have never forgotten…”—or whether her reported conversation with the Lord was merely meant as a metaphor for her own internal dialogue, I don’t know. But when she uses this anecdote to talk about how being “spiritually ready” is more important than being “professionally ready,” I think it a reasonable springboard to a discussion of how professionally unready she is for the job she seeks.

If Joel wants to get his undies in a knot over such blunt theological discourse, that’s up to him, but when he argues this Christians-as-an-oppressed-minority bullshit, I’m totally unapologetic.  First of all, to even imply that my opposition to Hutchison is based on religious bigotry is patently ridiculous when I’ve been such a famously unrepentant fanboy of Ron Sims, an openly devout Christian himself. It’s not their faith that sets them apart in my mind, but how Hutchison, through her association of with the Discovery Institute, endorses the dominance of a Christian theistic world view in the public sphere.

Second, from my perspective as a non-Christian in a nation dominated by Christians, Joel, I’m not sure you understand how incredibly overbearing, intrusive and insulting your people’s incessant proselytizing can really be.

Missionaries are allowed to come to my door to tell me that I’m going to burn in Hell for not believing what they believe, and that’s okay. Preachers are allowed to go on television and tell me that I’m going to burn in Hell for not believing what they believe, and that’s okay. Rev. Ken Hutcherson is allowed to come on my own radio show and tell me that I’m going to burn in Hell for not believing what he believes, and that’s okay. But publicly critique their crazy religion, and apparently that’s off limits.

Or, God forbid, publicly embrace my own atheism, and that makes me, in Joel’s eyes, a “militant secularist.” Talk about a double standard.

The truth is, Joel, as both a Jew and an atheist, I’m the oppressed minority, not you or Hutchison or any of your Christian brethren. I’m the one your people are so convinced is condemned to hellfire (except, technically, for the Catholics, who officially grandfathered us Jews into Heaven under Vatican II), and honestly, if they believe their benevolent Lord would have me tormented for all eternity in the next world, how can I trust them to treat me with respect in this one?

Tell me Joel, in all your years of covering politics, how many overtly open, self-proclaimed atheists have you ever known to be elected to Congress? And how many Bible-thumping Christians? Now tell me, in the political realm, who is the real victim of bigotry here?

As for Joel’s other critique, that I am a brazen sexist:

Goldstein is also brazenly sexist in his treatment of Hutchison. He calls her “Suzie” and headlined his commentary: “Susie talks to God.”

That’s just plain silly. As Erica pointed out in her own response to Joel, that’s what Suzie’s close friends call her, and in fact I was merely mimicking what her close friends and fellow far-right-wingers David and Peggy Boze called her on air (as in, “Hey Suzie… you are our Sarah Palin”). Similarly, my close friends call me “Goldy,” which is an admittedly faggy nickname for a grown man, yet I don’t consider it anti-gay to hear it come from even total strangers.

In referring to Hutchison’s job as director of the Charles Simonyi Fund for the Arts and Sciences, he has called her a “philanthropic kept woman.”

Yeah, sure, that snide quip comes off as a little sexist, I’ll give Joel that. But it sure was funny, so I stand by it 100 percent.

But all this misses the point, which is: are Hutchison’s religious beliefs pertinent to her campaign for King County Executive? Joel emphatically says “no.” Erica and I say “yes”… not because we are religious bigots, but because we rightly fear that Hutchison would attempt to use the office to impose her values on others in a way that the equally Christian Ron Sims never did. Indeed, even those issues, such as Intelligent Design, which on the surface appear to have no bearing on the duties of the county executive, offer voters a useful glimpse into the candidate’s character and competency, yet Joel would apparently consider such a discussion off limits if she came to the issue from of a position of faith.

Had Hutchison rejected the science of evolution due to a cognitive deficit resulting from an unfortunate boating accident, I suppose even Joel would agree that voters had the right to know, and the right to reasonably question whether her head injuries might similarly impact her capacity to grapple with other complicated issues. But reject evolution from a position of faith….

Yeah… I better pull back from that analogy before I prove Joel’s premise.

The point is, Hutchison’s presumed opposition to abortion, her rejection of evolution, and her financial support of candidates who oppose even birth control, are pertinent campaign issues, however relevant they are to the duties of the executive, because they speak to her values, her intellect, and most of all her willingness and ability to decide complex issues based on the facts, rather than her faith.

Ironically, for all his fury, I think it’s safe to say that Joel, Erica and I are on the same side in this race, and that none of us wants to see the woefully unprepared Hutchison win office. Which briefly brings us to one last point of Joel’s, that of strategy.

Charles Darwin is not an issue in deciding how King County will better deliver services, cope with budget deficits and manage growth in a place of great beauty where 1.6 million people live.

[…] Instead, we should ask a question she didn’t answer at Thursday’s debate: Will Hutchison try to change (read dismantle) King County’s urban growth boundaries? Will the Building Industry Association of Washington find in her a willing ally? Hutchison has excoriated the county’s Critical Areas ordinance as a scourge on rural residents. “It tells citizens who own land how they will use it,” she told a Bellevue debate on Thursday.

OK, but how do you protect endangered salmon populations and keep building in flood plains?

Problem is Joel, people don’t vote for issues, they vote for people. And with the latest poll showing Hutchison still attracting support from 28% of Democrats and 18% of liberals, there are clearly plenty of voters who haven’t yet gotten to know Hutchison well enough.

So you stick to the issues Joel, it’s the responsible thing to do, while I do my thing and drag Hutchison through the muck. My muckraking may not be as noble as your pursuit, but after all, it’s the only time the persnickety curmudgeons seem to pay much attention to anything I write. Even, alas, lovable persnickety curmudgeons like you.

I’m increasingly becoming a big fan of Seattle Times financial writer Jon Talton, who once again calls bullshit on his colleagues’ lazy and/or biased coverage:

Most Americans don’t get out much, so light rail is exotic, strange, even threatening (especially to a mythmaking minority of anti-transit fetishists and to the oil industry). The media, which are curiously incurious about the hidden costs and damage caused by freeways, will scrutinize every bump and burp of light rail.

For example, three non fatal collisions with light rail trains since testing started have garnered huge headlines, while how many people have died on our region’s roads during the same time period with nobody questioning the inherent safety of our roads and highways?

It’s a good thing for Susan Hutchison that she’s expected to breeze through the August primary into the general election for King County Executive, for as Richard Pope reveals in the comment threads, it looks like she probably couldn’t count on herself to deliver a crucial vote:

Someone should make an issue of Susan Hutchison’s voting record. Susan S. Hutchison (DOB: 03/24/1954) failed to vote in the August or September primary elections in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007. […] She didn’t vote in the presidential primaries in 2000 and 2008 either…

Eh… who bothers to vote in odd-year primaries anyway, what with only those peripheral local races on the ballot?

UPDATE:
Richard points out that the other four county executive candidates all have perfect general and primary voting records from 2000 through 2008.

Future Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in 1989 on the completion of the I-90 floating bridge:

”It’s a dinosaur,” Greg Nickels, a member of the King County Council, the governing body that covers the Seattle metropolitan area. He said the transportation solutions of the next century would include light rail systems and car pools.

Twenty years later, light rail is about to open, and soon to be extended across that very same bridge.

You can read Mayor Nickels in his own words, about the significance of tomorrow’s milestone, in a guest post over at Seattle Transit Blog.

As painful as it may be to write, I once again agree with the Seattle Times in their efforts to have court documents unsealed from Susan Hutchison’s discrimination suit against KIRO TV:

Hutchison, through her lawyer, says she supports open records but not when it comes to intruding into the privacy of an individual who availed themselves of the court. That sounds too much like she supports open records — just not her records.

That’s called hypocrisy, especially coming from someone who claims to have been a journalist. (Though in all fairness to Hutchison, it’s hard to call reading words off a teleprompter “journalism.”)

Court records and proceedings are generally public by default, both as a First Amendment right, and as a matter of judicial principle, as public oversight of the courts is our primary safeguard in ensuring that justice is meted out fairly. Indeed, such openness is fundamental to our entire system of justice. Think about it: secret courts equal tyranny and oppression.

That’s why court records are normally only sealed under certain circumstances, such as closed adoptions, juveniles (criminals and victims), witness protection, trade secrets and national security. Personal privacy is generally not one of these circumstances, apart from obvious things like social security numbers. Choose to bring a civil suit and you choose to make the information disclosed by both parties public. That’s the way the system works, and that’s likely the second most common reason, after cost, that parties choose to settle disputes privately, before their dirty laundry is aired out in court.

Hutchison was an aging female newscaster demoted from her weeknight anchor job in favor of a younger (and less expensive) woman. Right or wrong, that’s not uncommon in the cutthroat TV news biz. Still, she probably could have secured a modest severance settlement out of KIRO TV, simply by threatening a discrimination suit. That too is common in the biz. But whatever KIRO TV offered apparently wasn’t good enough for Hutchison, so she exercised her right to sue in civil court.

Hutchison and her surrogates claim that KIRO TV’s willingness to settle proves her discrimination claims, but with the records sealed and the terms of the settlement secret, such assertions are totally unsupported. Perhaps little or no money changed hands. For all we know, Hutchison ended up paying KIRO.

What we do know is that Hutchison failed to win her old job back, and she failed to secure a comparable anchor position at any of the three competing stations, so while age and gender no doubt played a role in her demotion, it was a cold, cruel business decision based on ratings and performance more than anything else. I mean, not every female newscaster is shoved aside once their youth fades; for example, Jean Enersen’s reporting and interviewing chops have earned her a steady hold on the KING-5 anchor chair since 1972.

The Times warns that Hutchison risks “squandering credibility by fighting this case,” but really, how much credibility did she have to start with? As a newscaster, certainly not as much credibility as Enersen. And as a political candidate for executive office with little or no political or executive experience at all… well… um…?

Perhaps we’ll be able to answer that question better once the court documents are unsealed.

Pat Buchanan mixes in a little ignorance to his outright bigotry [emphasis mine]:

When asked why the overwhelming majority of justices have been white, Buchanan declined to explicitly cite discrimination, but explained that “White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks, who were 90% of the nation in 1960 when I was growing up and the other 10% were African-Americans who had been discriminated against. That’s why.”

I think Buchanan needs to brush up on his Civil War knowledge:

In May and June of 1863, 1600 Black troops fighting and dying under the official label of United States Colored Troops (USCT) at Milliken’s Bend, across the Mississippi River northwest of Vicksburg, made General Ulysses Grant’s Siege of Vicksburg a success and brought that “Gibraltar of the Confederacy” crashing to the ground on July 4, 1863.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paeuC-i8E1o&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I grew up about a half-mile from Cynwyd Station, and as kids, my friends and I found the train to center city Philadelphia much more convenient than relying on our parents to cart us around to movie theaters, sporting good stores, and other attractions. But it wasn’t just those of us with youthful vigor who frequently hoofed our way to the rail stop, for every morning as I prepared to walk to school, I’d see a stream of business suit clad men lugging their briefcases down the street in the other direction, some of whom routinely walked to the station from more than a mile away.

These weren’t granola crunching tree-hugging hippies. These were doctors, lawyers, businessmen and other professionals who, weather and circumstances permitting, left their cars at home in the driveway most days, not because it was the right thing to do, or the less expensive thing to do, but because it was the obvious and natural thing to do. Why battle traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway each morning when the train was a 10 minute walk away?

The commuter suburb of my youth grew up around the station, not by accident, but by design. Built in 1886, this short spur of the Pennsylvania Railroad was as much a real estate development project as it was a transit line, and that rail-centric ethos survived at least a century, before SEPTA budget woes resulted in drastically reduced schedules. The point is, people didn’t take the train because they had to, but because they wanted to, and with parking always limited at the station, many were happy to walk a mile or more for the convenience.

So when I continue to read news reports about complaints over the lack of free parking around most stations on Seattle’s soon to be opened Link Light Rail, I can’t help but shrug my shoulders. Build it, and they will walk. And if the folks who live there now aren’t willing to hoof it, over time these neighborhoods will attract new residents who will.

Which gets me thinking about my own relationship to the Seattle light rail system I’ve so passionately advocated, and how far I’m willing to walk to use it. I’ve half-jokingly complained for years about the elimination of the Graham Street station from the final plan, which would have been a mere 10-15 minute walk from house, quite possibly close enough to bump up my property value. I’ve also wistfully talked about moving into Columbia City to be walking distance both to its business district and its light rail station. But I’d never actually measured the distances myself.

As it turns out, the little map app on my iPhone says that Othello station is about a mile away, only a quarter mile further by foot than the corner of MLK Jr. & Graham, so my dog and I decided to walk it today for ourselves. At a comfortably brisk pace we clocked 18-minutes there, and 20-minutes back (climbing the hill from Rainier Ave. on the way home), and we could probably have made it a little faster but for the need to obsessively mark the path with urine, and briefly stop to pick thistle from our paws.

So, will I walk to light rail?

Well, at least for the moment, I don’t commute, so it’s kinda a moot point in the context of this discussion, but if I were a commuter, and the rail line took me reasonably close to my workplace, yeah, I’d be willing to walk a mile in each direction, weather and circumstances permitting. If it was really hot or really cold or raining very hard, I don’t know that I’d be up for that hike, and if my afterwork plans took me inconveniently off-route, I’d probably take my car. But some days—perhaps most days—I find it a reasonable distance to walk.

Of course, if my circumstances were different, a daily walk to and from the train station would be more of a no-brainer. Before our divorce, we were a one-car family, and the opportunity to save the expense of buying and insuring a second car (let alone fueling and parking it) would make a walk+rail commute all the more attractive. But as a single father, going carless in Seattle isn’t as much of an option, and thus the cost savings of commuting by rail aren’t nearly as great.

As for my recreational use of light rail, the 2-hour parking restriction presents much less of a problem, as it’s only enforced 7AM to 6PM, Mondays through Friday, leaving the spots open nights and weekends for casual hide & riders like me. Meeting folks for drinks or dinner downtown? You can freely park your car near the station starting at 4PM, and make it downtown in plenty of time for happy hour. As a moderate drinker (even when Drinking Liberally), I’d likely choose that option over hiking it home late at night.

Opponents of light rail have long criticized it as social engineering, and to some extent they’re right. Like the commuter lines of the old Pennsylvania Railroad, the South Seattle segment is proving as much a real estate development project as it is a transit line, as evidenced by the massive residential redevelopment going on along MLK Jr. Way. Mixed income houses, townhouses, apartments and condos are being built for folks who want the convenience and economy of living a reasonable walking distance to a light rail station, and as these developments expand further out from the stations, so will the notion of what a reasonable walking distance is.

If anything, these quarter-mile restricted parking zones are too small, and neighborhoods will likely clamor for their extension when hide & riders cluster along the border. And after a while, the notion of healthily walking a couple miles a day to and from work, rather than driving to and from the fitness club for your daily workout, will become as commonplace around here as it was in the commuter-rail suburb of my youth.

And the best thing is, if you don’t want to be part of this new, socially engineered, walk & ride culture, there will always be plenty of Seattle neighborhoods without it.