HorsesAss.Org

Exactly how I like games that I’m not personally attending:

A winter storm from the Midwest could dump as much as eight-inches of snow at the Meadowlands, site of Sunday’s Eagles-New York Giants NFL playoff game.

The forecast calls for the snow to fall throughout much of Saturday to be followed on Sunday by sub-freezing temperatures accompanied by a gusty wind.

For everyone here affected by the floods, I hope you find a way to stay warm and dry this weekend.

If you have a used car you’d be willing to part with, I’m interested. I’m about to start a new job, and I’m going to need some wheels, at least for a few months. (Until my Maserati clears customs… Damn American emissions regulations!) Click on my name to contact me via email.

Thank you! Back to regularly scheduled programming on the demise of local media…

Well, it’s official:

The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication or discontinued entirely.

“One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print,” said Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.’s newspaper division.

At the end of the next decade I think we’ll see a lot of cities without daily newspapers publishing in print, but it’s still sad to see it happen in the here and now.

I sure hope Hearst does invest in a web-only venture, but if they don’t, and they can’t find a buyer, I’ll be sure to put my bid in.  It couldn’t hurt.

So how is it that KING-5 TV has “a source close to the deal” telling them that the sale (and ultimate closure) of the Seattle P-I is imminent, while everybody at the P-I and the rival Times seemed to have been totally in the dark?  Could it be that KING-5 got the scoop on the deal because they’re at the heart of it?

That’s the rumor that’s making the rounds now, which has Hearst in a deal to buy KING-5’s parent company Belo Corp., and it’s 20 TV stations, thus being forced offload the P-I in compliance with the FCC’s cross-ownership rules.  And since nobody’s buying newspapers these days, that’s essentially a death sentence for Seattle’s oldest daily.

Expect light posting from me the next few days, and perhaps a few service interruptions, as I implement some major upgrades under the hood in preparation for some exciting new changes here at HA.  Stay tuned and be patient.

KING-5 is reporting that the Hearst Corporation is putting the Seattle P-I up for sale… a prelude to the folding of Seattle’s first daily newspaper.

[A] source close to the deal tells KING 5 that the paper’s owner, Hearst Corporation, will announce as soon as tomorrow that it’s putting the P-I up for sale. Under the joint operating agreement between the P-I and The Seattle Times, the P-I must be offered for sale for at least 30 days before it can cease operation.

[…] We’re told Hearst does not expect another buyer to step forward and that Seattle will likely become a one newspaper town within the next few months.

Fuck.

Ironically, there’s been much chatter recently about the Seattle Times’ fast deteriorating financial situation, with speculation that the Blethen family might be forced to sell or shut down it’s paper.  Hmm.  I wonder if Seattle might become a no-newspaper town?

No doubt you have a damn good reason for closing down such a large chunk of Rainier Ave South, but when you detour traffic from such a major arterial, you might want to think about placing the detour signs along the entire route, instead of just leading us into the hills above Renton, and leaving us to figure out the rest by ourselves. (The u-turn on Waters ST followed by the sharp right on Holyoke was not intuitive.)

I’m just sayin’….

The Seattle Times editorial board has published a correction today regarding a school scheduled for closure:  “It is the Old Hay building, not John Hay Elementary.”

That’s okay.  Mistakes happen, and it’s always good form to correct them. No biggie.

But as long as the Times’ editorialists are admitting their factual errors, it sure would be refreshing to see them admit their editorial errors as well.  You know… those times when their opinions were just plain wrong.

For example, take this bit of oh-so-conventional wisdom from a February 13, 2008 editorial:

The transit-only folks delude themselves if they believe voters killed last fall’s “Roads and Transit” ballot measure because they didn’t want the roads. They do want the roads. And the idea of combining transit and roads was right. Both are needed. The ballot measure failed because the light-rail part was too expensive and created a tax that was too high.

Uh-huh.

In hindsight, with the subsequent passage of the transit portion of the measure, and by a comfortable margin, the opinion leaders at the Times look pretty damn out of touch.  But it didn’t take much hindsight to pick apart the Times’ analysis, for as I wrote at the time:

Um… when the Times says voters “do want roads,” and the “measure failed because the light-rail part was too expensive and created a tax that was too high,” they’re basing those assertions on what? Polls? Intuition? Gentle assurances from John Stanton over foie gras and Chateau Lynch-Bages at the Rainier Club? A public opinion fairy they plucked out of their ass?

Yeah, that’s right, Prop 1 failed solely because of the rail portion of the package. All those polls that showed RTID dragging the measure down, and all that opposition from anti-roads advocates like the Sierra Club — that had absolutely nothing to do with Prop 1’s failure. Jesus… talk about deluded.

Of course, nobody’s perfect, and even I got it wrong on this issue, insisting during the months leading up to the 2007 measure that the powers that be would never allow a transit only measure on the ballot in 2008.  My bad.  But at least I admitted it.

Flooding shuts down I-5 in Lewis County. The communist choo-choo is no good either.

Can’t we all just get along?

Why do people insist on living in New Orleans Lewis County anyhow? They should just move, abandon their property and history and scatter their families to the wind, that’s what they should do, ’cause I heard it on the talk radio station.

I don’t wanna pay to help my fellow citizens, because I’m a heartless bastard. Now back to the regularly scheduled talk about cutting the pay of the people who teach your children, because they are freeloaders.

Barry Ritholtz at Big Picture, noting that porn impresarios Larry Flynt and Joe Francis intend to ask Congress for a $5 billion bailout for their sagging industry:

According to TMZ website, Adult DVDs (and by Adult, we mean XXX) sales are, well flaccid. DVD sales are off 22%.

Leave it to the porn guys to make a point all Americans can stand behind.

I demand bi-partisan hearings chaired by John Cornyn.

The King County Democrats had a great turnout for their Elections Director Candidate Forum last night, at least amongst the members of the King County Democrats.  But the candidates however, well, not so much.

Of the six official candidates only Sherril Huff, Bill Anderson and Chris Clifford bothered to show up, and Clifford only stayed for the first fifteen minutes or so.  Pam Roach, David Irons and Julie Kempf were all no-shows, which if you ask me, was a mistake.  Five of the six candidates showed up for a Rotary Club forum earlier in the day, and apparently nearly outnumbered the audience, and yet Roach, Irons and Kempf chose to dis a packed room of some of the most engaged voters in the county.  Huh.

Ah well, the result was probably a better format, with Huff and Anderson having plenty of time to trade answers to the many thoughtful questions the audience had prepared.  And while Anderson and Clifford can be commended for their passion, I think those in attendance came away pretty damn clear that Huff was the only candidate at the table with the expertise to run elections in one of the largest jurisdictions in the nation.

As I’ve often said, I think the idea of electing an elections director is pretty damn stupid (Huff agrees, Anderson does not), as I’d rather have an elections director who knows how to run elections, than one who knows how to run for them.  And from what I saw of Anderson and Clifford last night, I’m not confident that they can do either.

Huff, on the other hand, while far from a polished politician, has done an admirable job running King County Elections over the past couple years; if you consider her the incumbent, I don’t see anybody making a cogent argument to kick the bum out.  On the contrary, Anderson seemed to trip over himself throughout the forum, commending Huff on her job performance.  I appreciate his honesty, but its an odd way to run a campaign.

I’ve refrained from writing about this race up until now, out of deference to my role as moderator, for which I wanted to maintain a degree of impartiality and civility, but apparently my restraint was wasted.  Obviously, this low-turnout/low-information race will come down to a battle between Huff, Irons and Roach—Huff on her qualifications, Irons and Roach on their name ID.  And now that I’m freed of my self-imposed shackles, I’m guessing I’ll have little bit of fun at Irons’ and Roach’s expense.

Too bad regular folks don’t have any lobbyists.

Programs approved by the Legislature but not yet implemented, including a paid family leave benefit and a working-class tax credit, should be among the first to go, Zarelli said. Cutting programs now would reduce the amount lawmakers will have to slash from the 2009-11 budget, he said.

Yeah, that blasted little tax credit that hasn’t even been funded sure is causing problems. The working poor don’t deserve tax cuts or government bailouts, only corporations and executives do. This leaves aside the pressing question of who the heck is actually going to buy stuff from these corporations, but as long as Republicans get to punish someone I guess it’s okay.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Republicanism is at such low ebb. Even in the midst of the worst economic meltdown in 70 years, they still want to punish those they see as undeserving. Sad, really.

MORE–If you want to see what I mean, peruse these sections of RCW 82.08 concerning sales tax exemptions. I’m sure all of them are well intentioned. But I don’t think the public understands how many of these there are, or how they got there. And yes, many of them were likely sponsored and passed by Democrats. I don’t care who passed them. If there’s a budget problem, all of this needs to be on the table, with apologies to bee-keepers, purchasers of milk cows for use on the farm and makers of anodes and cathodes used for making aluminum for sale, etc. Stop bagging on the regular people for once.