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The markets are down, the financial sector is a shambles, and yet even facing an economic downturn and declining revenue projections, Washington state government bonds continue to enjoy one of the highest credit ratings in the nation, earning an AA+ score from Standard & Poors and an AA rating from Fitch.  Meanwhile, King County announced today that both Standard & Poors and Fitch have renewed its coveted AAA rating, the highest score possible.

What that means for taxpayers is that it costs our government less to borrow money, at least a quarter point for every ratings step.  And if you read the reports issued by these credit rating agencies, our high ratings are largely due to the sound financial management of the governor and the executive.

Dino Rossi says he wants to change the culture of Olympia.  The question is, to what?

“Cheney experiences abnormal heart rhythm.”
You mean, Dick Cheney has a heart…?  Maybe the “abnormality” was that his heart was actually beating…?  (Add your own punchline in the comment thread.)

Sarah Palin’s Alaska fringe alliance
Seattle’s own Dave Neiwert, an author and expert on the formation of  the Northwest militia movement, appeared on CNN yesterday to outline Sarah Palin’s connections to the Alaska Independence Party, a far-right secessionist organization who’s founder dabbled in domestic terrorism.  Must see TV.

“Sorry Dad, I’m voting for Obama.”
Conservative columnist Chris Buckley is no longer welcome at the National Review, the magazine founded by his iconic father, William F. Buckley Jr.  Why?  Because of a blog post in which he announced his intention to vote for Barack Obama.

Is FL-16 cursed?
If freshman Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney’s reelection prospects are sunk by his arrogance and hypocrisy, there won’t be many tears shed in the progressive netroots, who have long berated him as a bad vote and an even worse team player.  But I take issue with those who say he’s as bad as the Republicans, for if he was indeed a Republican, Mahoney’s sex scandal most likely would have been with a boy.

SurveyUSA has released a new poll in the governor’s race it conducted for KING-TV (Seattle) and KATU-TV (Portland.) No surprise really, the race is a statistical dead heat, with Gov. Chris Gregoire polling at 48% and Dino Rossi (GOP Party) 47%.. From the SurveyUSA summary:

Among men, Rossi has regained the nominal lead, swinging from a tie to a six-point lead. Among women, Rossi has fallen off, increasing Gregoire’s lead from 4 points to 7. The gender gap between the two candidates is now 13 points, the largest since Mid-August. Independents, who make up 28% of likely voters, have consistently preferred Rossi since June, by margins of 24, 8, 10, 6, 2, and 10 points; today, independents favor Rossi by 8.

While there’s always a danger in becoming too reliant on polls, two other things are worth mentioning. Rossi has a large lead among 19-34 year old voters in the poll, leading Gregoire 54%-38%, and Rossi is ahead everywhere outside Metro Seattle.

So the fact that the final debate tonight between the pair is in Seattle and will be available outside the Seattle market only on cable is something of a tactical victory for the Rossi campaign. Plus it’s after the presidential debate, and surely only the hardest of hardcore followers of politics could sit through four hours of debates and coverage.

People are going to be voting any day now, so it looks like another extremely close gubernatorial election is a possibility. The BIAW and the Republican Governor’s Association obviously think they can buy the election for Rossi, but dropping such obscene amounts so late could backfire on them as traditional journalists inform the public about it. Postman or Ammons or Herrington or Mulick will be all over it.

(To be fair, Garber is on it. At the Seattle Times. Which I believe is widely read in um, Metro Seattle.)

And yes, Gregoire benefits from union money. Whatever. It’s not even as much as the phoney-baloney PAC money BIAW alone raises, however it actually raises it.

The Darcy Burner campaign has seemed awfully cheerful in recent days, and now we know why.  A new poll conducted on behalf of the campaign by pollster Lake Research Partners shows Darcy now leading Dave Reichert 47% to 40% in the hotly contested race for Washington’s 8th Congressional District.  And this comes on the heels of yesterday’s DCCC poll showing Darcy with a 49% to 44% lead.

I’m sure Reichert fans will self-soothe themselves with the notion that this is just an internal poll, but as I mentioned yesterday, campaigns are not in the business of deceiving themselves.  In fact, this represents a substantial turnaround from previous Burner campaign internal polls, which have never once before shown her with a lead. The partisan propaganda part of internal polling comes not from how they are conducted, but rather, from whether or not they are publicly released.  And there’s a damn good reason the Burner camp is releasing this poll, as the internals are just as promising as the top line.

Reichert’s job performance rating has “plummeted” to 34% “good or excellent” versus 54% “fair or poor.” And Reichert’s re-elect now stands at just 36%, meaning nearly two-thirds of 8th CD voters would consider voting for somebody else.

No doubt this race is far from over, and will likely come down to a point or two in either direction, but the gloom and doomers who had already written off this race based on polls conducted during the now deflated Palin bounce better start rewriting their post mortems.  Given sufficient resources and effective messaging, Darcy is in a position to win this race.  So if you haven’t already given all that you can toward turning WA-08 blue for the first time, well, ever… please give to Darcy today.

UNCONFIRMED TIDBIT:
Reliable sources tell me there is another, as yet unreleased private poll that shows Darcy with a small lead over Reichert.  I’ll publish details if I can track it down.

UPDATE:
I don’t know if this is the third “poll” I’ve been hearing about, as it’s not really one per se, but a source with the Washington State Labor Council confirms that they are doing phone ID work in preparation for their GOTV efforts, and that among union members, Burner is above 50% and Reichert is down around 38%.  Not a scientific poll, but encouraging nonetheless.

It is a fact that there are folks out there who actually believe that Barack Obama is an Arab, a Muslim, a terrorist, a communist or some combination of all four, and who believe that those of us who describe ourselves as progressive, liberal or even as nondescript Democrats, are traitors and appeasers who represent a clear and present threat to the security of the republic. Add to that the Republican Party’s far-right evangelical base, a constituency that fervently believes that all those who do not believe as they do will be condemned by God to suffer eternal torment, and you have the real potential for violence.

Given the far-right anger that McCain and Palin have been only too eager to whip up, it has become increasingly important that Obama not only win this November, but that he win by a convincing margin, carrying states in every region of the nation.  Any close Obama victory will be portrayed by the angry right as a stolen election, and any failure by Democrats to totally capitulate to the Republicans, like we did in 2000 and 2004, will be viewed as an attempted theft itself, thus confirming right-wing fears. And considering how dangerous and un-American these people think we are, we should be prepared for some on the angry right fringe to respond with actual violence.

Sure, such musings might come off as a little paranoid. But a little paranoia can be a healthy thing during times of crisis.

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by 369 to 169 electoral votes, on average, in a hypothetical election held today. There were 16 new polls in 11 states released today. The polls lean Obama’s way, so that he gains a bit.

After 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins every one. Obama receives (on average) 370 to McCain’s 168 electoral votes. Needless to say, Obama would 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.

– Glenn Greenwald catches the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein unloading some grade A bullshit on Treasury Secretary Paulson’s role in the economic crisis. It’s amazing that there are still journalists who don’t comprehend out how easy it is to compare something you said a month ago to something you’re saying today and then compare both of those things to facts. Or they just don’t care.

– Latin America’s revolt against the drug war continues with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Honduran President Manuel Zelaya talking about various forms of decriminalization and legalization and Bolivian President Evo Morales blocking U.S. anti-drug flights.

– Someone snarkily emailed me this link about how pot farms are destroying national parks, apparently as evidence that marijuana is dangerous. The danger is not from marijuana, though, which can be grown safely all over the world. The danger is from marijuana prohibition, which forces this crop (the #1 cash crop in the United States) to be grown in hidden and secret locations; and also ensures that criminals who could give a fuck about the environment will be the only people overseeing it’s production. You want to fix this problem? Legalize it. Regulate it’s production and sale. And tax it. Hell, that might even raise enough public revenue to clean up the messes being made in those parks.

– Sarah Silverman wants young Jews to go on a Great Schlep to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama. After watching this Daily Show video, all I can say is, good luck with that…

– Finally, How awesome is Dino Rossi’s old Idea Bank Committee? While Mathew Manweller (known to us at Effin Unsound as the Nutty Professor) was going off on a protestor who dared challenge his middle school-level understanding of liberty and free markets today, a post at the top of their WhackyNation blog from fellow Idea Banker Lou Guzzo was advocating that tobacco be banned nationwide. I don’t know how Dino Rossi stays so serene and smiley being surrounded by such crazy people.

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

Tonight’s special guest will be Seattle Mayor Greg Nickles who will discuss, among other things, Sound Transit’s Prop. 1.

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.

As I reported earlier today, the BIAW has dropped another $4 million into the governor’s race, bringing their total for the cycle to over $7.2 million.  Well now  it appears that the Republican Governor’s Association has dumped another $3.5 million into their anti-Gregoire smear campaign, bringing their total to more than $5.5 million.

That’s $12.7 million in so-called “independent” expenditures on behalf of Dino Rossi, more than half of it coming just weeks before the election, a game-changing number that simply shatters previous state spending records.

How much of a game changer is this?  Well, to put it in perspective, $12.7 million is pretty much what Dino Rossi and Chris Gregoire spent combined in all of 2004.

This is not politics as usual; this is shock and awe.  The question is, will our media do their job and warn the public about this dangerous effort to buy our votes, or will they just shrug it off with the kind of “both sides do it” equivalency we’ve come to expect?

Oh. My. God.  That’s not just anybody spraying angry spittle at the masses, that’s Kittitas County Republican chair Matt Manweller, a top economic adviser to Dino Rossi, aggressively confronting a lone Democrat before a Rossi rally in Ellensburg.

The young man is holding a sign criticizing Rossi’s proposal to slash our state’s minimum wage by $1.50, and Manweller just goes ballistic, repeatedly calling him “stupid,” and angrily disparaging him and the rest of our state’s minimum wage workers:

“You and those 300,000 people are dumber than a post”

Yup, that is the elitist economic world view of the co-creator of Rossi’s “IdeaBank”:  if you work for the minimum wage you must be “dumber than a post,” so really, your problems are just your own damn fault.

I’m guessing Lee and Carl, who are well familiar with Manweller’s ravings over at Whacky Nation, might have more to say about the “Nutty Professor,” but understand that he is not an anomaly.  Dino Rossi is running a mean-spirited campaign, as he would run a mean-spirited administration, and his allegiances are clearly to the people with money, not to the people.

Late yesterday, the Building Industry Association of Washington dumped another $4 million into the governor’s race, bringing their spending on behalf of Dino Rossi to an astounding $7 million.  That’s $7 million from BIAW alone, apparently the largest such “independent” expenditure in state history.

This is a stunning, disturbing and potentially game changing development that will allow the BIAW to saturate the airwaves with vicious attack ads, quite possibly swinging this election to Rossi.  And without that type of layout, the BIAW has clearly made the decision that a Governor Rossi would be well worth the price of any fines it will pay for its illegal activities.

Will our state’s editorialists express the appropriate outrage out this effort to deceitfully buy the governor’s mansion?  Sadly, I’m guessing not.