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Yesterday, Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey seemed puzzled:

I am trying to figure out the argument not to drill for oil.

Um.. okay, Bruce, how about this…?

The Arctic Ocean’s sea ice has shrunk to its second smallest area on record, close to 2007’s record-shattering low, scientists report. The ice is in a “death spiral” and may disappear in the summers within a couple of decades, according to Mark Serreze, an Arctic climate expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Look, nobody’s saying don’t drill any new oil wells (well, some people probably are, but nobody’s listening)… but the Republican campaign slogan, “Drill, Baby Drill,” is just plain crazy.  Opening up environmentally sensitive coastal areas to more drilling and exploration won’t do anything to lower short term prices at the pump, and in the end is little more than a twentieth century solution to a twenty-first century problem.

Drill if you want.  Potentially sully some shorelines or damage a few more fisheries.  But for McCain to put offshore drilling at the center of his energy proposals may make for some effective election year sloganeering (or not), but it does nothing to address our long term environmental and energy crises.  The future is in wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels and yes (gasp), even nuclear (if we can deal with the waste issue)… not to mention the most promising technology of them all:  conservation.

The call for more drilling is nothing but a distraction… an empty promise that perhaps six years from now, gasoline might only be $7 a gallon instead of $8 or $9.  Meanwhile, we’ll all be enjoying the consequences of an iceless Arctic sea.

Over the weekend I posted a videoblog entry critiquing some comments made by Attorney General Rob McKenna in a video voters guide posted online by the Association of Washington Businesses.  And tonight I discover that YouTube has pulled the video.

Why?  I can only assume that the cowards at the AWB complained to YouTube that I had violated their copyright by including clips from their video.  And at this point, I’ve had so many bogus complaints filed against me by the likes of the BIAW, the AWB, the Washington Association of Realtors and other Republican front groups, that YouTube just automatically yanks my videos assuming I’m a shameless pirate.

Whatever.

So, I’d like to offer the AWB the same deal I offered the Realtors:  sue me. Really.  Sue me.  Because every time you have my video yanked, I’m just going to repost it somewhere else, as is my right under the fair use doctrine.  So if you think you have a case, take me to court.

Or don’t you have the balls?

UPDATE:
And apparently, I’m not the only one who has trouble seeing John McCain as an agent of change.  According to the latest NY Times/CBS poll:

Despite an intense effort to distance himself from the way his party has done business in Washington, Senator John McCain is seen by voters as far less likely to bring change to Washington than Senator Barack Obama. He is widely viewed as a “typical Republican” who would continue or expand President Bush’s policies, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

And that Palin bounce?

[T]he Times/CBS News poll suggested that Ms. Palin’s selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among women in general.

[…] This poll found evidence of concern about Ms. Palin’s qualifications to be president, particularly compared with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Mr. Obama’s running mate. More than 6 in 10 said they would be concerned if Mr. McCain could not finish his term and Ms. Palin had to take over. In contrast, two-thirds of voters surveyed said Mr. Biden would be qualified to take over for Mr. Obama, a figure that cut across party lines.

The Times/CBS poll shows Obama leading McCain 48 to 43, which is right in line with the latest Daily Kos/Research 2000 tracking poll, that shows a 48 to 44 margin.

Free market!

Goldman Sachs, which Washington Mutual has hired, started the process several days ago, these people said. Among the potential bidders that Goldman has talked to are Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC. But no buyers may materialize. That could force the government to place Washington Mutual into conservatorship, like IndyMac, or find a bridge-bank solution, which was extended to thrifts in the new housing regulations.

All Citizens will not panic and will maintain order and respectfulness to the proper authorities. A special commemorative bottle edition of Victory Gin honoring our glorious banking regulatory framework will be distributed with new accounts. Large investors depositing over €300,000.00 qualify for a spot on the DNC platform committee.

Face the telescreen and smile. Please to return to your duties immediately.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down almost 450 points today, at 10,609.66… only 22 points higher than where it stood on January 20, 2001, the day George W. Bush took office.

Adjusted for inflation, a $100 investment in a DJIA index fund just before Bush took office would now be worth only $81… but that’s still better than the approximately $69 a similar investment would be worth, had you invested in the broader S&P 500, which now stands down 186.15 points, or almost 14% off its pre-Bush close, or the inflation adjusted $55 value of a $100 investment in the NASDAQ Composite, down a stunning 32% over President Bush’s seven and a half years in office.

But, you know, John McCain bills himself as “the greatest free trader” and “greatest deregulator” ever, so who better to trust to fix the underlying causes of this unprecedented financial crisis?

I’ll be posting a story in a few hours. By “story,” I mean a more traditional news story than you typically read on HA. 

This is all part of the grand experiment Goldy and I are up to: Goldy assigned me to cover the local ’08 races—Gregoire vs. Rossi, Reichert vs. Burner, and some of the statewide contests further down the ticket like the actually-kind of-thrilling race for Commissioner of Public Lands.

In addition to the hard-hitting analysis and dogged partisan offense that you’ve come to expect on HA, we want to add some original news reporting to the mix to see if we can turn this new media thing into a full-fledged new media thing, man. That’s a translation of me and Goldy after a few drinks.  

First, though, here’s something I came across while doing the reporting for my story (an outtake, I guess): Along with voting for a voucher school program; voting to cut $7 billion in student aid; voting to freeze Pell Grants; and voting to repeal the estate tax (which would have torpedoed education funding) to earn his lowly C rating from the National Education Association after his first term in office, Rep. Dave Reichert also voted for this.

The successful amendment to the 2005 bill reauthorizing Head Start funding repealed established civil rights protections by allowing federally funded Head Start programs with religious affiliations to hire and fire teachers and staff and volunteers based on religion. 

At the time, an alarmed  ACLU fired off this letter to protest the amendment.

I’m a little suspect of the polls right now in the wake of the national conventions, but as Lee just pointed out, the latest KING5/SurveyUSA poll on Prop. 1 is sure to dishearten the anti-rail crowd that maniacally trolls HA’s comment threads.

When asked about Sound Transit’s proposal to expand rail and bus service, 49% of respondents said that they were certain to vote yes, while only 16% said they were certain to vote no.  And when the uncertain respondents were asked whether they lean toward one side or the other, Prop. 1’s advantage expanded to a whopping 65% to 20% margin.

But perhaps more interesting…

Among those who describe themselves as conservatives, those voting or leaning “no” slightly outnumber those voting or leaning “yes.” Among those who identify themselves as Republicans, “yes” slightly outnumbers “no.” Among all other groups, the measure passes by no fewer than 31 points.

So Prop. 1 seems to have pretty damn broad support, even within the constituencies where you would expect the strongest opposition, a finding that is consistent with some internal polling numbers I heard whispered about a few weeks back.  Of course, unlike the actual ballot language, the SurveyUSA question didn’t include the $17.9 billion estimated cost, so I’d be surprised to see Prop. 1 pass by such a large margin… but I’d be even more surprised to see it fail.

There are several major differences between this year’s Prop. 1 and last year’s failed measure of the same nomenclature:  the proposal, the electorate and the economic reality.

This Prop. 1 is not tied to an unpopular and controversial road expansion package that split the environmental community and dramatically escalated the costs.  This Prop. 1 will benefit from the significantly larger and more progressive electorate that tends to turn out in this region during presidential election years.  And most of all, this election will occur with memories of $4.50/gallon gasoline still fresh in everybody’s minds… so fresh that bus and commuter rail ridership continues to grow even as gasoline prices have temporarily stepped back from their historic highs.

As I’ve repeatedly argued, the era of cheap gasoline is over, and that means that 2008 is most definitely not 2007:

I know conventional wisdom still suggests that now is the wrong time for Sound Transit to come back with a ballot measure, just one year after the defeat of Prop 1, but the conventional wise men are missing the point: 2008 isn’t 2007. The era of cheap gas is over, and Americans—even Seattle-Americans (and yes, I know, Seattle is different from every other city in the world)—are beginning to change their behavior in response. Voters get that, even if our politicians and editorialists don’t.

Traffic congestion has far from disappeared as a volatile political issue, but public demand for affordable transportation alternatives is rising at least as fast as the price of gas. And the thing is, whether it’s cheaper and more efficient or not, when current drivers envision their future mass transit commute, they much prefer to envision themselves riding on a train, than on a bus. People like trains; that’s a fact. And if I were an elected official, I’d probably want to focus on delivering the services that the people want.

Many of our region’s political and media old timers still seem mired in the auto-centric transportation vision of the 1950’s.  But I’m guessing we’ll find out on November 4 that the majority of voters are not.

SurveyUSA has done some polling on Sound Transit and it’s looking good for Prop 1.

On Proposition 1, concerning an expansion of mass transit, are you certain to vote yes? Certain to vote no? Or, are you not certain how you will vote on Proposition 1? {“Not Certain” voters were asked: At this hour, do you lean toward yes? lean toward no, or do you not lean?}

Lean Toward Yes – 65%
Lean Toward No – 20%
Don’t Lean – 14%

Is your opinion of Sound Transit favorable, unfavorable, neutral, or are you unfamiliar with Sound Transit?

Favorable – 52%
Unfavorable – 17%
Neutral – 27%
Unfamiliar – 4%

As someone who was skeptical that a transit-only package could pass so easily, I happily stand corrected on that point. The folks in our comment threads who are maniacally opposed to Sound Transit really are a fringe around here.

Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and now, AIG… so the question is:  what the hell did Lehman Brothers do to piss off Ben Bernanke?

From The New York Times:

Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group.

I’d like a line of credit too, please. I’ve developed a new type of pizza oven and I need money to stay in business. The oven tends not to work, either burning the pizza or not cooking it inside, plus it has a strange tendency to burn buildings down. Oh, and I sold a bunch of them to people with no money, so I’m broke.

Still, my pizza oven is as good as the investment products the insurance-financial complex have been offering.

More seriously, it’s obvious we’re all on the hook for this mess because the alternative is a worldwide depression. Things are still looking fairly serious, but the point is that sometimes we have to do what is practical and leave the vacuous right-wing ideology where it belongs, on the shelf. Most of us learned this lesson from reading basic American history about the Great Depression/New Deal era. But the righties were so busy trying to repeal the Enlightenment they couldn’t process little details like capitalism needs a referee or it will destroy itself.

This should be the end of conservative nonsense about “free markets” being, in and of themselves, the answer to nearly everything. It won’t be, but any conservative arguing today that regulation always needs to be reduced or eliminated is arguing in favor of worldwide depression. Nice platform.

Let’s see the Republicans put some lipstick on this pig. I’m sure they’ll start blaming Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson or something.

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 folks show up early to enjoy the cuisine.

For tonight’s activity, we’ll brainstorm on ways to shuffle and funnel money to create multiple shadowy front groups that will bankroll Swift-Boat attack ads against Rossi. You know… they’ll smear him as a Republican in “G.O.P. Party” clothing:

Tonight’s theme song comes from Seattle’s Winlar (appearing at the Jewel Box Theater this Friday at 8pm):

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

Greatest.  Free trader.  Ever.

“You are interviewing the greatest free trader you will ever interview, and the greatest deregulator you will ever interview…”
— Sen. John McCain, May 29, 2007

See, it’s easy for a president to know what to do in response to an economic meltdown if he fervently believes that the correct response is to do nothing at all.  And that’s what John McCain believes in.  Do you?

A new poll in the Washington state gubernatorial race between Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) and Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party) has been released by Elway Research. I mentioned the poll in yesterday’s poll round-up, but I had not seen the full report.

It turns out the polling was somewhat complex. The poll sampled 450 registered voters between 6-Sep and 8-Sep. The overall margin of error is 4.5%, although in the most interesting analyses, they split samples in half, giving a margin of error within a group of 6.5%.

Elway split the sample into two groups. Group one was asked to chose between “Republican Dino Rossi” and “Democrat Christine Gregoire.” Group two was asked to chose between labels as they appear on the Washington state ballot. That is, they were asked to chose between Rossi, “who prefers the GOP party” and Gregoire, “who prefers the Democratic party.”

Subgroup one gave Gregoire a 50% to 41% lead over Rossi. Group two gave Gregoire a 48% to 44% lead. With a 6.5% margin of error, the differences in these findings are nowhere near achieving statistical significance. In other words, the differences between the two subgroups could simply reflect sampling error.

Just for fun, let’s analyze these as separate polls and combine them later. As usual, I use a Monte Carlo analysis, consisting of one million simulated elections, drawing from the polled population.

The weakest results for Gregoire come when Rossi is introduced as preferring the “G.O.P. Party.” Following a million simulated elections, Gregoire wins 660435 times and Rossi wins 321369 times. This suggests that, if the election was held now, Gregoire would have a 67.3% probability of beating Rossi. Here is the distribution of vote outcomes from the simulations:

When Rossi is called a Republican, his chances go down a bit. Now, after a million simulated elections, Gregoire wins 834,999 times and Rossi wins 153,178 times. This subsample, treated as its own poll, gives Gregoire an 84.5% of defeating Rossi (if the election were held now).

I would argue for using both samples. First, because the difference is not significant. It may be that Washington voters react negatively to Rossi as a Republican. Or not. The sample size was not sufficient to statistically support the idea. Secondly, because I have a difficult time believing that come November the voters will not think of this as a race between the state’s top Democratic candidate and the state’s top Republican candidate.

In the pooled analysis Gregoire wins 838,346 times. Rossi wins 153,042 times. If the election were held now, based on this poll alone, Gregoire would have an 84.6% probability of defeating Rossi. Here is the distribution:

Let’s consider one more permutation. The new Elway poll actually falls between two other recent polls, so lets pool all the recent polls. The recent Rasmussen poll was conducted on 10-Sep. It gave Rossi a 52% to 46% lead over Gregoire. And the slightly older SurveyUSA poll was conduted from 5-Sep to 7-Sep. It gave Rossi a 48% to 47% lead over Gregoire.

When the Elway results are pooled with the Rasmussen and SurveyUSA results, Gregoire wins 451,469 times and Rossi wins 541,349 times. In other words, these recent polls suggest that, if the election were held now, Gregoire would have a 45.5% probability of winning and Rossi would have a 54.5% probability of winning.

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One final note. In my previous analysis of this race I pointed out that both the SurveyUSA and Rasmussen “polls show a surprising decline in Obama’s standing against McCain—a post-convention decline that is larger than anything I’ve seen in other blue states.” The suggestion was that, perhaps, both polls, by chance, drew samples that were favorable to both Rossi and McCain. There were some hints of this in the cross-tabs of both polls (like a surge in women chosing McCain in the Rasmussen poll).

The Elway poll lends a bit more support for the idea. In a McCain–Obama match-up, Obama came out ahead of McCain, 45% to 38%. The +7% advantage for Obama is more in line with other polling than is the +2% found in the Rasmussen poll and the +4% found in the SurveyUSA poll.

But without additional evidence, I’m forced to take the pooled results and giving Rossi a very narrow lead over Gregoire right now.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)