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Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We start at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Some of us will show up early for dinner.

Tonight we will raise a toast to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who turned 85 years old and lost his re-election bid—on the same day. We wish Sen. Stevens luck as he transitions from a great institution to another, um…lesser, institution.

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally. Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Republican incumbent Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland has finally conceded the race to Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark.

In a phone call to The Daily World this morning, Sutherland said he was disappointed with the loss, which he blamed on the voters of King County.

“At this juncture, the people of King County have spoken,” Sutherland said. “As a rule of thumb for Republicans, you do well in the rest of the state and do at least 40 percent in King County and you can win. It’s been that way for the last couple of decades and it’s just getting worse.”

Yeah, well, it’s an odd thing about America, but we tend to apportion votes by the person rather than the square mile, and, well, King County is where the largest chunk of the people live.  In fact, while Goldmark only won five of 39 counties, those five counties still account for about 45% of the electorate, so it wasn’t nearly as narrow a win as Sutherland bitterly makes it out to be.

Still, to Sutherland’s credit, he did concede only two weeks after the election, which is about three years, eleven and a half months quicker than Dino Rossi.

So… when are folks going to start heaping the ridicule on Michael Dunmire that he so richly deserves?

In 2008, Dunmire personally contributed $285,000 to I-985, plus another $100,000 to Tim Eyman’s personal compensation fund, and in return bought himself an initiative that lost by a better than 60-40 margin, going down to defeat in all 39 counties.  And that’s on top of the $530,000 he paid Eyman in 2007.

Any idiot could get an initiative onto the ballot given a half million dollars to buy the signatures, and over the past few years it’s been Dunmire’s millions that have kept Eyman’s name in the headlines.  So doesn’t Dunmire deserve the same sort of scrutiny?

I mean, really… I-985 was perhaps the stupidest, most incoherent and ill conceived Eyman initiative yet (and that’s a pretty high bar), so doesn’t Dunmire deserve a little bit of the credit for personally financing this train wreck?  Or do really rich people retain unquestioned credibility regardless of how incredibly stupid they act?

I was listening to an NPR report on the recently convicted Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who appears to be headed toward a narrow defeat against Democratic challenger Mark Begich, and the question arose:  “What’s next for Ted Stevens?”

Well, considering today is Stevens’ 85th birthday, I’m guessing death, political and otherwise.  In fact, even had he won reelection—and not been convicted of multiple felonies—the Social Security Administration’s actuarial tables suggest that Stevens would have been unlikely to have survived the coming term.

By the way, the latest batch of ballots have widened Begich’s lead to 2374.  Happy birthday, Ted.

Stevens Expulsion Vote Postponed

Democrats Let Lieberman Keep Senate Chairmanship

It’s the world’s most exclusive kleptocracy. There is nothing a United States Senator can do, apparently, that will cause his fellow senators to hold him accountable. A regular person sneezes wrong at work they might get fired. A United States Senator gets convicted seven times over, or actively helps the competition try to ruin his own side’s chances, and oh well.

Get the figurative pitchforks. As if our country doesn’t face enough challenges, we have to contend with this Bozo the Clown “leadership” in Congress.

You enable crooks and liars, the people don’t respect you. It’s pretty simple.

I’m guessing Harry Reid is not faring too well in the Daily Kos leadership poll. (Note: the poll is not scientific and is only a rough gauge of the sentiments of people who chose to participate because they were so fucking pissed.)

I haven’t written much about last week’s “stakeholder meeting” on Internet lobbying, because I came away confident that the PDC had listened to our concerns, and is unlikely to make the mistake of attempting to regulate the political blogosphere.  In fact, my hope is that in any new rule making, the PDC actually clarifies its current stance by explicitly exempting from reporting requirements bloggers like me.

The PDC’s current media exemption reads as follows:

“Persons who are working members of the print or broadcast media preparing news reports, feature articles or editorial comment.”

Obviously, both times and technology have changed to the point where this definition needs to be expanded to included “print, broadcast or electronic media,” and I doubt there would be any opposition to such a change.  But there is also a need for the PDC to clarify what they mean by “working members,” and I would hope that they would construe this term as liberally as possible, for to do otherwise would create an untenable and unfair legal disparity between traditional and new media.

For example, consider my dual role as both an independent blogger and a paid talk radio host.  Does it make any sense that my direct advocacy in one medium would be exempt from PDC reporting requirements while the same advocacy in the other might result in a reporting violation and a fine?  No, of course not.  But unless the PDC explicitly grants bloggers a media exemption, our status will eventually be challenged via a complaint, or before the courts.

The PDC can avoid this hassle and expense for all parties, by proactively expanding the old media exemption to fit the new media reality.  And my hope is that this is exactly what they will do.

I wonder if the Bush administration and their Republican allies in Congress would be more supportive of bailing out the US auto industry, if it wasn’t such a union stronghold?  Hmm…

The Seattle Times has a new(ish) blog. It replaced Postman on Politics. It’s called  NW Politics or Politics NW.  

There hasn’t been a post up there since November 10. 

The first rule of blogging: Blog.

After a knock-down drag-out fight over I-1000, I’m still pretty amazed by the margin of victory bestowed to the initiative I worked to pass:

58% to 42%

I-1000 won in every country west of the mountains, and won 11 out of 20 counties on the east side.

You know, for such a “controversial” issue, voters seemed be able to cut through the baloney pretty easily. Campaign-types like myself would like to take credit for this, but I think the credit belongs to my friend Nancy and others:

Nancy’s husband Randy died an awful death. His allergy to morphine, combined with a particularly nasty manifestation of brain cancer, resulted in one of the five percent of deaths that can’t be eased with palliative care. Nancy’s husband knew he was going to die a painful, undignified death, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do for him. Until now.

Folks have been talking past Nancy for most of the past year, arguing that I-1000 is a basic human right, or that I-1000 will result in full-scale euthanasia. It’s easy to bash Booth Gardner, or to slam the Catholic Church. Nobody wants to talk about Randy and the humiliation he went through.

Whatever. For 57.77% of the voting public, some issues are less complicated than the headlines would suggest.

The Western Washington Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is holding a training session today, “Blogging 101 – what you need to know to blog effectively and get read.”  And the instructors?  Why, two of the state’s leading bloggers… um, Nancy Leson and Jerry Brewer of the Seattle Times.

Hey Nancy and Jerry… here’s a tip from a rank amateur you might want to share with your paper’s own political bloggers/reporters:  if they want to “blog effectively and get read,” they might want to post a little more often than say, once a week.

I’m just sayin’…

State Senator and noted right-wing nutjob Pam Roach is seriously considering a run from the newly created elected position of King County Elections Director… or at least, that’s what the TNT’s Joe Turner is reporting.  But don’t you worry, because the Elections Director is officially a non-partisan position, so we can expect whoever wins it to operate it in a completely non-partisan manner, regardless of their established record as a right-wing nutjob.  Um… right?

The new elections director will be chosen in a February 4th special election.  Here’s hoping only one qualified Democrat files for the office lest Roach win on name recognition alone.

Nearly two weeks after the election, Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland still has not conceded the race to Democrat Peter Goldmark.

Sure, Goldmark only leads by about 18,000 votes, and with aproximately 63,000 ballots left to count statewide, I suppose a Sutherland victory isn’t quite a mathematical impossibility.  But more than half the remaining ballots come from King County, where Goldmark has won nearly 62% of the vote, so Sutherland is more likely to see monkeys fly out of his ass than pull off a come from behind win.

Oh, and with the race this close, I think it is fair to claim that HA’s coverage of Sutherland’s sexual harrassment scandal was a definite difference maker.  Without a vibrant, progressive blogosphere this story never would have appeared on the front pages and the evening news.  So score one for the good guys.

Very, very sad…

A 6-year-old girl who was shot in the head while her father was cleaning a gun has died, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office reported.

Whenever I post a link to one of these tragic stories, I usually get a bunch of angry comments in the thread accusing liberals of wanting to take away everybody’s guns.  But I’m just trying to make the point that under most circumstances, guns don’t make you and your family safer, especially if you have young children in the house.

You want to protect your kids?  Get a dog.  They tend not to blow your head off while cleaning them, and they’re a helluva lot more fun to play with.

The Seattle Times editorial board thinks a buck an hour increase in downtown parking meter rates is too much, to which I say:  damn commies!

I mean, whatever happened to supply and demand?  If the city leased out these spots to a private company, what do you think they’d be charging an hour?  Buck fifty?  Two bucks?  Two-fifty?  I don’t think so.

Even at $2.50 and hour, downtown parkers will drive around in circles looking for a street spot rather than paying two to four times that rate for a short term spot in a private lot.  So quit your grousing and stop trying to force your decadent, free-parking, Plateau values on the rest of us.

Don’t mess with the new White House. Seriously. All Democrats are like this. It’s not worth it.