HorsesAss.Org

No Danny, you are neither a righty nor a lefty (though I kinda agree with your emailers that you sometimes come off  as a bit of a “whiner”).  No, what you are, Danny, is conventional, in that peculiar establishment media sense that so internalizes the traditional journalistic paradigm of objectivity and impartiality, that you seek to impose your own values on the rest of the world.

You accuse others of “open cynicism and closed minds,” all the while unskeptically embracing your own open cynicism toward party politics.  And that makes you at best an observer, and at worst (and despite your best intentions), occasionally a tool, because it is through partisan politics that public policy is enacted and executed in the real world.

And that’s what pisses off your readers on both sides of the ideological divide, because despite your genuine centrism and your devout nonpartisanship, as a newspaper columnist with a relatively large audience, your opinions can make a difference, whether they be informed by the conventional wisdom spoonfed to you by district officials during the school closure controversy, or the relentless equivalency with which you approach the often unequivalent failings of politicians in both parties.  Yet your oft repeated disdain for the workings of our two-party system leaves your commentary mostly devoid of constructive criticism but for the easy attack on partisanship in general… an attack that can’t help but irritate us partisans.

You fret about “polarized, triballike camps” as if man hasn’t always been tribal by nature, while implying that the “nichification of news” of which bloggers like me have been a part, is a cause of, rather than a response to, the realpolitik that rules our world. No, you’re not a partisan, but don’t be deluded that your refusal to actively engage in these partisan battles isn’t occasionally useful to one side or the other.

So criticize all you want.  That’s your job, as it is mine.  The difference is, I also view my job as trying to make a difference, and if that means getting my hands dirty in the real world of partisan politics, well that’s fine by me.

One thing I’ve noticed this year as I’ve been enjoying my purchase of NFL Sunday Ticket every weekend is that coverage of the NFL has gone in the past few years from being somewhat aware that fantasy football exists to being overwhelmingly about how what’s happening in the game is affecting everyone’s fantasy football match-ups.

As a fantasy football geek, I love it. I’m in two leagues, the younger of which is in its seventh season. But is this radically changing the appeal of the game to some people? To me, baseball was always the sport for stats geeks. Football was the sport where you drank your face off and berated people who were wearing a different colored jersey. Is this changing that? Is football now the domain of stats geeks? Are non-fantasy football geeks turned off by it all?

I’d imagine that going to the games themselves hasn’t changed much. There’s no ticker telling you who’s scoring touchdowns in the other games, no red button on your remote that you can press for instant live stats, and I’m pretty sure people still berate people for wearing a different colored jersey (or in the case of Raiders fans, looking like some combination of Darth Vader and Mad Max). Then, of course, back when I was a Seahawks season ticket holder, I’d often be at my seat during timeouts hoping my phone could connect to the internet to get stats. Sigh…

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 373 electoral votes	Mean of 165 electoral votes

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by 372 to 166 electoral votes (on average). Today we have eight new polls in seven states weighing in on the contest. Obama gains very slightly.

After 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins them all. Obama receives (on average) 373 to McCain’s 165 electoral votes—a gain of one electoral vote. If the election had been held today, Obama would have won with near certainty.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa, just barely within the first hour (at 7:57). It was Titusville, Florida. Here’s this week’s contest, good luck!

Is five years in a prisoner of war camp really a qualification for president?  Hmm…

As much as we’re all appalled and disgusted by what McCain campaign worker Ashley Todd did this week in Pittsburgh, she’s not a criminal. She’s a person who likely has some mental health problems. We really need to get over this notion that everyone who offends us or does something that we find morally reprehensible needs to go to jail. No one was victimized here. No one had any money or property stolen from them. At worst, write her a fine to cover the administrative costs of having the police pursue the case and suggest a good mental health facility for her to check herself into. We’ve got too many goddamn people in jail already in this country.

UPDATE: Richard Pope in the comments provides some excellent perspective:

Isn’t $50,000 bail a little bit excessive for a misdemeanor? If Ashley Todd had really been attacked in the manner that she falsely claimed, I wonder whether the hypothetical attacker would have received anywhere near that amount of bail.

For example, a man “charged with robbery, burglary, giving false identification to law enforcement, loitering and prowling at night, simple assault, making terroristic threats, theft, receiving stolen property and false imprisonment” in Pittsburgh (Allegheny County, Pennsylvania) was only held on $10,000 bail.

Sen. John McCain gets a theme song:

(There are some sixty more media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 372 electoral votes	Mean of 166 electoral votes

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by 376 to 162 electoral votes. There were 21 new polls in 15 states released today. The polls slightly favor McCain, so that he gains a handful of electoral votes today.

Now, after 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins 100,000 times. Obama receives (on average) 372 to McCain’s 166 electoral votes. Obama would still have a 100.0% probability of winning an election held now.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

So, it looks like it’ll be a crisp autumn weekend coming up in Bellevue. Good to get some exercise before it gets too cold. It won’t be rainy. Hint hint.

Markos pegged it:

Look, here’s the deal: The local media and the local political establishment see themselves as kingmakers. They get to decide who sinks or swims in their areas of influence. Then along comes Darcy Burner, thinking she can crash the gates and get elected for office in the district, and the local elites are pissed. So they conspire with Reichert, a supposed local hero, to dish all sorts of crap about Darcy and bury Reichert’s dirt.

Yesterday’s bullshit resume story was the Seattle Times playing kingmaker. Reichert needed a major newspaper to validate his bogus charge, and the Times went out of its way to give him exactly what he wanted. They knew exactly what they were doing, and they wrote a headline to perfectly fit the needs of Reichert’s ad.

Make no mistake, this is potentially a devastating ad that could have a real impact, especially on low information voters, regardless of the fact that it is based on lies and exaggerations. After all, a newspaper said it, and for some voters, that’s all the credibility they need.

Don’t let Frank Blethen use the power of his inherited press to change the outcome of this race. To win, Darcy needs to fight back hard, but do so she also needs our help. Yesterday Markos set a target of $50,000, but after passing that mark in under 12 hours, he’s doubled it to $100,000. I myself contributed another $200, a big chunk of change for a dirty hippie like me. Won’t you please reach deep into your pockets and do the same?

This is not only a chance for us to put a smart, accomplished, creative woman in Congress who clearly understands and represents the values and economy of the 8th CD… it is also our chance to kick Frank Blethen’s ass, and prove once and for all that owning a printing press no longer gives one ownership over public opinion. Please give to Darcy today.

As long as we’re obsessing on personal resumes, I thought I’d share a little biographical tidbit of my own.  I graduated college intending to pursue a career on Broadway, and while I guess most people might write off my dreams as a failure, I still managed to get further than most, having co-written the book and lyrics for a musical that opened Off-Broadway at the well respected Vineyard Theatre in December of 2001.

It was in many ways a personal disaster, four years of hard work dissipating in a three-week run and a series of scathing reviews, but I’ve always lived by the philosophy that I’d rather fail big than succeed small, and so I’ve often proudly (if self-deprecatingly) described myself as the co-author of an Off-Broadway musical flop.

Problem is, the program, and thus the subsequent nasty review in our nation’s paper of record, the New York Times, doesn’t give me credit for co-writing the book, so I guess, given recent precedent, our local media would accuse me of lying, or at the very least exaggerating my failure.

But I did co-write the book.  For four years I collaborated on that script, writing and rewriting and re-rewriting the book and lyrics, but after a falling out with the artistic director over a series of last minute cuts that I vehemently opposed, he retaliated by removing my name from the book credit… and that’s how the NY Times and other papers credited the show in their reviews.

So while I’ve got no documentation to back up my claim, the truth remains:  I co-wrote the lyrics and book of an Off-Broadway musical flop.

The point is, in reporting, “the facts” don’t always equate to the “the truth.”  At most other universities, Darcy Burner’s degree might have been recorded as a B.A. in computer science with a minor in economics, but that’s just not the terminology used at Harvard.  Still, the truth remains that Darcy did at least enough work for a minor, having completed five economics courses at one of the top business schools in the nation, along with two related mathematics courses, earning what her Harvard dean agrees is accurately described as a degree in computer science and economics, even if that is not exactly what is written on the diploma.

To parse a conjunction in an effort cast Darcy as a liar is thus absurd, especially in light of the very real and pressing issue in which this bogus charge was raised:  our nation’s unprecedented economic crisis.  The question voters should care about is, given Darcy’s extensive economics education at one of the finest schools in the nation versus Reichert’s two-year social work degree from a small Christian college, whose education leaves them better prepared to understand and address this crisis?

Darcy earned a degree in computer science and economics, as Dean Lewis attests, but whatever the so-called facts, I think the truth is obvious.

King County Superior Court Judge Paris Kallas ruled today that the lawsuit alleging illegal coordination between Dino Rossi and the BIAW’s fundraising efforts can go forward. 

Kallas will decide on Monday if Dino Rossi will be deposed. Rossi’s deposition could be scheduled next Wednesday.