HorsesAss.Org

Josh Farley at the Kitsap Sun provides another recap of the Robert Dalton case. Dalton was arrested after WestNET, a local drug task force, searched his property in August of last year and found 88 marijuana plants, which he says he was growing for his own personal supply of medical marijuana. Dalton is an authorized medical marijuana patient. Prosecutors tried to claim that he was supplying others, but the judge, Anna M. Laurie, threw out the “with intent to deliver” charge because of a lack of evidence.

Laurie will give her ruling on this case Friday. The case has boiled down to a man with a doctor’s authorization being accused of growing marijuana for medical reasons. Washington voters first said in 1998 that this should be legal, and the percentage of the state’s residents who support it has only grown since. In the comment section of Farley’s report, there are 27 comments, not a single one supportive of this prosecution. Why is it still happening?

For one, you can definitely blame Rob McKenna, the state’s Attorney General, who appears to believe that the Federal laws on marijuana should trump our state laws (and that putting sick people in jail is more important than protecting consumers from fraud). At a meeting I attended in April with patients, there was nearly unanimous agreement that McKenna and his office’s attitude towards them was a large step backwards from when Christine Gregoire was in that position.

But Christine Gregoire and the state Democrats are not without blame here either. Gregoire derailed the Department of Health’s efforts to establish good limits, leaving us in limbo past the original deadline and with a lesser likelihood of ending up with guidelines that can protect patients like Dalton. The legislature, which should have no reason to be tentative about this issue – considering the widespread support for medical marijuana – caved to law enforcement pressure to water down the original bill that was meant to provide better protections for patients under the initial voter-approved law.

The polling from the end of this week should be a wake-up call for the Gregoire campaign. I obviously don’t think that the Dalton case, or even medical marijuana in general, is having this effect on the polls, but the lack of courage that has been demonstrated by her in this area is something that we’ve seen across the board, especially the infamous cave to Eyman on I-747. And this perception is having a profound effect on the Governor’s chances for re-election. Right now is not the time for timid leadership that’s constantly worried about perceptions, or worse, completely beholden to special interests (the state’s law enforcement union in this case). Maybe it’s too late to do anything about this. It likely is for trying to win my vote.

The saddest thing is that if Gregoire’s terrible handling of this situation was based upon the fear of public perception alone, her fear is unfounded. The public’s attitude towards the drug war is not what it used to be. This is one topic that often brings policy wonks on both the left and right together, and it’s one that finds almost no support from people under the age of 40. The marijuana decriminalization initiative in Massachusetts has polled at over 70%. Taking a stand against the wastes and abuses of the drug war is a smart move in a state like Washington, but only a handful of politicians here have figured this out. Christine Gregoire is not one of them.

The rematch of the Washington state gubernatorial race has seen Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) holding a small, but consistent, lead over Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party”) from early in the year through August. Now, with less than two months to go to the general election, Rossi has “surged” to a modest September lead.

A new Rasmussen poll gives Ross a 52% to 46% lead. The poll of 500 likely voters was taken on September 10 and has a margin of error of ±4.5%.

This is the second consecutive polling lead for Rossi. A few days ago, a SurveyUSA poll gave Rossi a 48.2% to 47.4% lead over Gregoire.

The +6% lead in this new poll is Rossi’s strongest performance since November, 2006:

What is the probability that either Rossi or Gregoire would win an election held now? As usual, I’ll use a Monte Carlo approach to address the question.

After one million simulated elections, we find that Gregoire wins 166,063 times and Rossi wins 825,788 times. If the election was held now, we would expect Rossi to have an 83.3% probability and Gregoire a 16.7% probability of winning.

Here is the distribution of electoral votes resulting from the simulation.

Given that we have two polls taken back-to-back, it is worth combining the SurveyUSA poll (taken 5-Sep to 7-Sep) with the Rasmussen poll (taken on 10-Sep).

The resulting analysis gives Gregoire 226,762 wins to Rossi’s 766,697 wins. The combined polls suggest that, if an election was held now, Rossi would win with at 77.2% probability and Gregoire would win with a 22.8% probability:

Is the lead real? There is a reasonable possibility it is—the probability of two consecutive statistical outlier polls is pretty small.

On the other hand, consider this: both recent polls also show McCain doing better against Obama than anyone could have reasonably expected. The Rasmussen poll in Washington state gives Sen. Barack Obama a narrow 49% to 47% lead over Sen. John McCain, and A few days earlier, a SurveyUSA poll offered Obama a 49% to 45% lead over McCain:

Both of these 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. So…maybe the lead is real. (More polls, please.)

In any case, given that the polling now has him ahead, can somebody please ask Dino to wipe that sublime grin off of his face? It’s just looking creepy these days.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

I don’t have any personal anecdotes to explain why I support I-1000, the Death With Dignity Initiative. Unlike Geov, I’ve never been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Unlike Goldy and Michael, I’ve never been beside a loved one whose once vibrant life was replaced by something barely recognizable in the time before their passing. And unlike Jesse, I’ve never had a job that put me so close to death and dying.

But I-1000 is personal for me. It can be personal for anyone. End of life situations can be complicated – they can be heart wrenching. And they are always unpredictable. Even as a healthy person in his 30s, I know that if I’m ever at a point where my death my imminent, the biggest tragedy for me might not be the death itself – death is inevitable and mostly out of one’s own hands – but finding out that the government is limiting the options I have because it doesn’t trust me with the ability to make my own choices.

We talk a lot about liberty when we discuss politics. Regardless of one’s particular orientation, we all tend to think that we’re coming from the standpoint of maximizing our own liberty. But while many talk about their liberty, not everyone follows the famous advice from Thomas Paine:

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.

This truism extends to a number of our political debates today, as we often see politicians and partisans hold two completely opposing viewpoints on a subject depending on whether or not they or someone else is affected by it. When it comes to the opposition to I-1000, what many people see as government protecting their liberty is nothing more than a restriction on the liberty of others. What they desire is a system where government makes our choices for us because the decisions are difficult and potentially painful. This is the real slippery slope of I-1000.

I-1000 opponents will often come up with scary stories within a law like this. They imagine scenarios of being coerced into taking one’s own life or being overcome by the feelings of being a burden. These types of scenarios exist, but I-1000 does not create them, nor would it make them more common. I-1000 does not cause the insurance companies to do the wrong thing or a relative to lust after your inheritance. But I-1000 does prevent those people from dictating the choices you make at the end of your life. I-1000 ensures that the decision about how you die can be made by you, and no one else. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying about the law or does not understand it.

Many people desire a higher authority who protects them from themselves. I have no problem with such beliefs. But where I do have a problem is when the people work to make their own personal higher authority the higher authority for everyone. Government should exist to create systems that protect people from the things that we can’t control as individuals – the environment, natural disasters, unexpected health problems, the shifting winds and complexities of the economy. But government should not exist to tell us what decisions we make at an individual level that relate to our own moral compass – unless of course those decisions directly impact the public at large. The opponents of I-1000 are crossing that line – attempting to make choices that should be left up to individuals and their loved ones, without government interference and without having to submit to anyone else’s religious doctrines.

This is why I-1000 is personal for me. I’ve seen a growing desire in this country to have government take on the role of moral nanny in many ways. The end result of such a movement is undoubtedly a loss of liberty and a loss of our desire to be free adults, fully responsible for our own choices. This is why I feel compelled to speak up and this is why I’m working so hard to make sure I-1000 is passed – even though I’m far from being in a situation where the law would ever apply to me. As Thomas Paine knew, and as we still understand today, protecting liberty is not just about protecting your own freedom, but making sure that you live in a society where everyone’s is protected.

Please vote Yes on I-1000.

Yup, that’s what I’m listening to.  Make of it what you want.

Good old Charlie Gibson has inadvertently done a great public service. From the transcript of his interview with Sarah Palin:

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn’t we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.

Wow. Maybe we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves.



I am a man with disabilities.

Moving HURTS.

My walking stick has been in my family two generations.

Like many people, I have disabilities you can not see. But the being a gimp thing is pretty damn obvious.

Back before I became a crip, I was a paramedic and a flight medic.

I worked as a paramedic for almost ten years. Houston, Little Rock, Tucson & South Tucson, Oakland, and up in the mountains doing rope work. The videos you see on television of medics going down hoists out of helicopters with red crosses on them, into floods, ravines, and mountains? That was me. I flew all over the western United States in both little prop planes and on high-flying Lear Jets. I worked in big-city inner-city neighborhoods — the ghetto — and I flew above it all as a flight medic. Except for the moments when I dropped in and pulled someone out.

All that is behind me now. Even walking hobbling to the bathroom hurts.

Some people, who claim disabled status, are lying about I-1000, the Death With Dignity initiative. They claim it is a trick to put down folks like me, people with long-term chronic injuries or medical issues. They are liars trying to scare people.

Don’t be fooled.

Death With Dignity has NOTHING to do with people with disabilities. That is a vicious, cruel, dishonorable lie.

I’m going to tell you the truth:

If you’re a cripple or a gimp or a wheelie, or just so hurt you don’t know how you can take it some days, I-1000 doesn’t apply to you AT ALL. Nada. Nicht. Non. Not one fracking bit. The ONLY people Death With Dignity applies to are people who are TERMINALLY ill.

If you have a disease which multiple physicians sign off as fatal, that you’re going to DIE and die soon, then and only then can YOU request a dose. That’s it. It is your call, no one else.

None of this has anything to do with people with disabilities. Not a thing. If you have pain, get a good pain doctor. It’s amazing how much pain can be managed with meds these days. I KNOW. I take pain and associated meds every three to four hours around the clock and have for years. Most of the time they work.

Here’s my point. Pain hurts. Disabilities suck. But Death With Dignity isn’t about people with disabilities. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Don’t listen to the liars.

Unless what you have is fatal NOW, unless you are dying NOW, Death With Dignity has jack shit to do with you. Because it only applies if you are dying NOW and multiple doctors say so.

In that final moment, I know I want my mother, my children, myself, to be able to be as PRESENT, as AWARE as possible. When death comes — and it is coming, one death to a life, that’s the way it works — I want my eyes to be open so I can watch the transition happen.

Death With Dignity allows this to happen.

The liars would have you believe otherwise. That it has something to do with being a gimp, a cripple, a wheelie, or otherwise a person with a disability. It does not.

Death With Dignity has to do with YOU and the people you love; with being in charge of your life… and your death… when it is time. YOU, and your doctors, and your family, will know when it is time.

Right now it is time, please, to Vote YES on Prop. 1000.

[Jesse Wendel is the Publisher of Group News Blog.]

NPR’s Day to Day has been running an excellent series on autism, and I encourage you to listen to it all, but I was particularly struck by the final episode that ran yesterday afternoon, featuring a mother taking her son to a specialist:  “Autism: Helping Children Connect.”

As a parent, it was heart-wrenching listening to this woman receive the diagnosis that her son did indeed suffer from autism, but even more so listening to her recall how hard it was to concentrate on the doctor’s prescribed course of treatment while worrying how she would pay for this single office visit, let alone a lifetime of intensive therapy.  Just listen to this brief, three minute clip, and try to keep the tears from welling up in your eyes:

[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/autism.mp3]

There is a lot at stake in the November election, but perhaps the issue that will have the deepest and most enduring impact on the lives of most American families is that of health care.  Sen. John McCain proposes tax credits to make purchasing private health insurance more affordable, while Sen. Barack Obama promises universal health coverage for all Americans.

No, Sen. Obama’s plan is not the more sweeping single-payer system that many of us would prefer, but it is sweeping nonetheless, bringing all Americans into our health care system, and guaranteeing a minimum level of care.  And yes, we’ve been promised this before, but with a Democratic president and strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, we might have our best chance at real reform in more than 40 years.

The difference between the two health care proposals couldn’t be more stark, and it is a difference rooted in a genuine philosophical disagreement.  Sen. Obama believes that there are some problems that are best addressed by a government working to raise the standard of living for all its citizens, whereas Sen. McCain believes that all our problems—including whether a young, autistic boy gets the therapy he desperately needs—are best addressed by market forces.

Sen. Obama’s plan intends to address the needs of all our families, while Sen. McCain’s plan intends to deliver more of the same… which in the case of this particular mother and her autistic son, means delivering nothing at all.

That’s the reason why Sen. McCain would prefer to talk about pigs and lipstick, rather than actually issues.  Because if the majority of Americans truly understood where he stands on the issues—and what his stance ultimately means for all of us—he wouldn’t stand a chance this November.

The only thing green about the anti-light rail “No on Prop 1” campaign are the greenbacks behind it, mostly coming from the deep pockets of the usual pro-roads/anti-transit suspects:  Kemper Freeman Jr., Mark Baerwaldt and the rest of the choo-choos equal communism crowd.  But according to The Stranger’s Erica C. Barnett, that hasn’t stopped the No campaign from attempting a little astroturffing.

Lacking the Sierra Club’s green gravitas, the anti-Prop. 1 campaign has seized on a little-known, 32-year-old political consultant named Ezra Eickmeyer—a self-proclaimed environmentalist whose list of industrial and business lobbying clients outweighs his thin environmental résumé.

Eickmeyer’s clients include a mining company that’s seeking to ship sand and gravel on barges from the Hood Canal, two septic-system manufacturers, and a Seattle real-estate developer. Although Eickmeyer puts an environmental spin on his choice of clients—for example, he argues that barges produce fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than trucks—numerous lobbyists and environmentalists say they either haven’t heard of Eickmeyer or don’t regard him as an ally. … [E]ven folks like the Master Builders’ Scott Hildebrand are skeptical—he notes, “I don’t know exactly who Ezra is associated with“…

Huh.  I don’t know exactly who Ezra is associated with either, but looking at his Tribe.Net profile (via Google’s cache), perhaps his environmental credentials are a product of his “magickal work”?

I live many paradoxes. I am a feral pagan with 9 acres creating an intentional community. I also am a professional contract lobbyist and political operative. I work for a mixture of corporate, small business, political, and environmental interests. I am a global warming activist and dedicated father and husband. I grew up in a very small town and now live outside an even smaller one where we are beginning to farm. I also travel frequently in a fancy car wearing suits and playing politics. I come from the Libertarian arm of the Democratic Party, meaning that I am a fairly anti-authoritarian liberal (except when it comes to the regulation of business). I have a very deep relationship with the creator/spirit and do a lot of praying and magickal work.

My wife and I are dedicated polyamorous and thinking it would be pretty cool if we met another couple interested in poly family-raising . . .

Yup, you can’t get much more paradoxical than a self-proclaimed “global warming activist” in his “fancy car,” whoring himself out to Kemper Freeman Jr., in an effort to kill our region’s last best chance at expanded clean, electric light rail.

Not that Eickmeyer’s personal life has anything to do with the anti-rail campaign.  But then, neither does environmentalism.

This Dino Rossi TV spot  and this Dino Rossi TV spot criticize Gov. Gregoire for the gas tax.  

For example:

“Our families need a break. But Governor Gregoire made it worse. She raised the gas tax. It’s the highest in the nation. So, you’re paying more for roads. But … the traffic gotten any better?”

But Dino Rossi wants to build more roads too. Here’s his plan.  

And how does his plan pay for roads?  Ta-dah! It’s right there in the footnotes on page 18. He wants to use gas tax money. Specifically, he wants to use $560 million in gas tax money.

I’ve got a call in to the Rossi campaign so they can explain the contradiction between his ads and his spending plan. 

I imagine Rossi would say $560 million is a small percentage of his $15 billion roads expansion plan (which includes building an eight-lane 520.)

That’s true. Although, it certainly doesn’t excuse the double standard. A half-a-billion dollars is a lot of money to be scoffing at on TV while also figuring it into your own spending plan. 

Where’s the rest of the money come from? The biggest portion comes from sales taxes that currently go into the general fund. So, if Rossi doesn’t want to discontinue $900 million worth of general fund programs in the next biennium, he’s going to have to (shhhh) raise taxes.

He’s also planning to take $690 million away from light rail to pay for roads—even though the voters in Pierce, Snohomish, and King County  said the money is for mass transit.

Longtime CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware blows apart McCain’s attempts to claim that the “Surge” was responsible for the drops in violence in Iraq.

The real reason for the reduction was from a willingness to engage in diplomacy with some of our enemies and by bringing insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr into the political process – things that the Bush Administration vehemently refuses to say they do, but are eventually forced to do by circumstance. Yet this fundamental flaw in how both Bush and McCain see the world and how it functions is still seen by many as an asset. America’s standing in the world will continue to diminish until we put people in charge who understand this flaw and work to fix it. This, more than anything, shapes my decision on November 4, and it’s not a tough call. Obama and Biden understand this stuff at a level that McCain, Palin, and the current folks in the White House just don’t reach.

To start, the panel ponders the political Palinolithic era. Is “pathological liar” too strong a phrase? Would an actuary predict a probable Palin presidency? Did Palin add a punch to the post-convention polls? The panel next takes on some Washington state issues, like who is the real Rossi and would the public really respect (or even recognize) him if they knew him? And with the incredible shrinking media, could that even happen? ’Sup with the Supreme Court and I-960? And what’s the (non-) deal with the Boeing strike?

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Executive Director of the Northwest Progressive Institute Andrew Villeneuve , HorsesAss and EFFin’ Unsound’s Carl Ballard and Peace Tree Farm’s blogging pioneer N in Seattle. Oh…they even permitted me a few words.

The show is 54:11, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_sep_9_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting PodcastingLiberally.]

Dad looked ready for space travel lying there in the ICU.

Tubes and wires hooked him up to costly machines precisely recording the metrics of his inevitable and upcoming demise. He didn’t have to do a thing, the robots were taking care of business: collapsing his lungs and filling them up; feeding and watering him; transporting the leftovers through expensive hoses to labs for weighing and measuring.

We had all the information but on his dying day (which stretched achingly to two and a half) we didn’t have Dad. The pain drugs and the impressive medical equipment jammed down his throat prevented him from speaking to us, his gathered family.

What we could do was wipe his brow, hold his hand, and make uncomfortable, one-sided conversations to be answered by the whoosh, whoosh of the breathing machine, the last sound we’d ever hear out of him.

He wasn’t in any pain, they said, but how could we know?

What was important was the letter of the law. And that every last minute of “life” they could get out of him was spent on this earth, and damn everything else. What we had was a familiar piece of meat in suspended animation. It was like a mortuary viewing except he was alive and we knew that only because the lines on the monitor were not flat.

I don’t want to go that way, he’d complained months earlier, get me a gun. No, we cried, the thought sickens us.

My mother wouldn’t allow the legal option depriving him of food and water; the silly woman wouldn’t watch her husband die of starvation and dehydration.

My Dad died a bloodless, soulless death over which he had few choices — dignity wasn’t one of them.

It was somebody else’s death, not his own.

Please vote Yes on I-1000.  It’s the compromise between the not-so-benign neglect of starving someone to death, and the violence of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. It puts dying back in the hands of the dying.

For me, it’s that simple.

[Michael Hood publishes the media blog BlatherWatch.]