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The ongoing attempts to mislead Washington state voters about Initiative 1000 continue with a guest editorial in the Seattle Times from Margaret Dore. Dore is an attorney in Seattle who deals with Elder Law, and is the President of the Society of the Friends of St. Patrick. She writes:

Up until two months ago, I had no strong opinion on the proposed Death with Dignity Act, which is on the ballot as Initiative 1000. That was, until I read its actual language. I urge you to read it now: The backers’ claims are misleading; the proposed safeguards are illusory.

I’ll second the encouragement to read the bill, but I was more than a bit skeptical of this attempt by Dore to paint herself as an impartial person just discovering what this bill is all about. Opponents of I-1000 have been desperate to portray themselves as just ordinary folks, rather than fringe extremists, but they should probably keep in mind that Google exists.

Ms. Dore is far from being just your average Democrat concerned about I-1000. For starters, she’s still listed as a contributor to this blog, which contains a bunch of posts in support of Terri Schiavo, like this one:

The Schiavo vs. Schindler case symbolizes the plight of thousands of vulnerable people throughout the USA who are being ripped off by the fraudulent guardians. Terri’s fight has given a lot of publicity to only one aspect of the issues that are being faced on a daily basis by a very vulnerable group of people. The Greer decision to allow hearsay evidence by the husband, who is incidentally also the guardian, has far reaching consequences for others who are in the same circumstances as Terri.

For this woman to start a guest editorial in the Seattle Times by claiming to be someone who was undecided until recently about this initiative is laughable. Knowing that the issue is central to her life’s work and is a hot button issue for Catholic groups like the Friends of St. Patrick, it’s clear that Dore takes the kind of extreme view of these matters that caused Ms. Schiavo to have the most undignified death in modern American history.

But the problems with this editorial go far beyond her initial misrepresentations. Ms. Dore’s argument against the initiative is a mess of poor logic and misconceptions. Let’s go through it:

The Initiative’s campaign literature states: “All decisions made by the patient must be entirely voluntary,” and that the application to obtain the lethal dose has “objective witnesses.” The proposed act, however, allows one of two required witnesses to be an heir.

When signing a will, the same situation would create a presumption of undue influence, for example, that greedy son pressured dad to sign.

This is just nuts. We’re talking about terminally ill people who have been determined by a doctor to be unlikely to live for another six months. Does Ms. Dore really believe that an heir is going to coerce a terminally ill relative to repeatedly lie about wanting to kill himself, find a willing accomplice who stands to gain nothing, and then attempt to defraud two separate doctors, all so that he/she can get an inheritance a few months earlier? Really? That’s a conspiracy theory on the level of 9/11 Truth. I haven’t heard stuff that crazy since, well, since the Terri Schiavo mess.

If someone is that motivated to off their own relative in order to collect an inheritance, they’re not going to wander through a highly safeguarded process like this one. I recognize that there are a lot of very unscrupulous people that Ms. Dore deals with in her practice, but these people aren’t going to find I-1000 to be an easy avenue to exploit. Doctors are very smart about how to tell when patients are being coerced. If anything, people who are dumb enough to try to coerce a suicide through the I-1000 process are just making it more likely for themselves to get busted by a conscientious physician or mental health expert.

Getting past the bad logic there, let’s move on to the distortion. She writes:

The initiative’s campaign literature also states: “No one other than the eligible patient may administer the [lethal dose].” The proposed act, does not, however, say this. It states only that the patient “may” self-administer the lethal drug. The act also defines “self-administer” as merely the act of ingesting.

…

In other words, greedy son putting the lethal dose in dad’s mouth qualifies as “self-administration.”

Here’s the actual passage that she’s referring to:

To receive a prescription to medication that the qualified patient may self-administer to end his or her life in a humane and dignified manner, a qualified patient shall have made an oral request and a written request, and reiterate the oral request to his or her attending physician at least fifteen days after making the initial oral request. At the time the qualified patient makes his or her second oral request, the attending physician shall offer the qualified patient an opportunity to rescind the request.

Somehow, Ms. Dore read through that passage and came up with the idea that “greedy son” would be able to take advantage of these provisions by forcing old dad to go through all of these hoops, with the knowledge that in the end, “greedy son” is going to just violate the law and pour the prescription down his throat anyway. Is she serious? If “greedy son” really wants to collect the inheritance that badly (and I don’t doubt that these situations occur), they’re not going to wander through the detailed process laid out by I-1000 and risk getting busted. They’re just going to push dad down the stairs and say it was an accident. Yes, these things happen, and they’re terrible. But there’s absolutely no basis to believe that I-1000 makes it any easier for “greedy son” to collect his old man’s inheritance.

I don’t fault the Seattle Times for seeking guest editorials from both sides of an issue, but could they possibly find someone who isn’t a fringe lunatic to represent the anti-choice viewpoint on I-1000? Or is this initiative so straightforward and obvious that it’s only the fringe lunatics who are opposing it?

It would have felt good to see Darcy Burner come out of yesterday’s primary with a modest victory.  Good, but not especially comfortable considering the low turnout, partial results and unfathomable dynamics of our new top-two primary.  But at what will likely be less than a three-point deficit to Dave Reichert once all the votes are counted, I’m not feeling especially uncomfortable either.

On the obvious down side, Reichert ended up on top, and by a similar margin as his 2006 general election victory.  But on the up side, Reichert was held significantly below 50 percent… not a great place to be for a two-term incumbent.  Indeed, according to a memo distributed today by Burner pollster Celinda Lake, Reichert’s demonstrated lack of support should be “sobering news” for the incumbent:

[D]espite his turnout advantages, the incumbent has been held under 50 percent of the primary vote, and the combined Democratic vote is greater than the Republican vote. This is sobering news for Reichert. The top two system, which allows for voters to split tickets on the primary ballot, most closely resembles the blanket primary system that prevailed in Washington State prior to 2003. Our research indicates that in the 94 congressional races that took place under a blanket primary between 1982 and 2002, the incumbent failed to register 50 percent of the primary tally in 10 of those contests. In seven of those contests, the challenger went on to victory in November…

Prior results do not guarantee future performance and all that, but it’s hardly a bleak situation for Darcy, who finds herself in a significantly stronger position than she was in at this stage of the 2006 race.  Heading toward November Darcy can expect a resource advantage, a turnout advantage and presidential coattails to help carry her through to victory.  And even yesterday’s results show progress; I don’t know of a single  public or private poll that showed Darcy closer than six points to Reichert in recent months, and yet after only two weeks of advertising (at a cost, I’m guessing, of about $400,000) she’s managed to cut that gap in half.  By comparison, an August 21-22 2006 SurveyUSA poll gave Reichert a 54-41 percent lead, a 13-point margin Darcy eventually whittled down to three by election day.

So yeah, I’d rather be up three points than down, but given all the same caveats I issued in my discussion of the governor’s race, I’m no more or less worried than I was Tuesday morning.  For if there’s a conclusion to be drawn from the primary results, it’s that this race is once again going to come down to the wire.  And that’s something we’ve known all along.

Caveats abound in any analysis of yesterday’s primary election, with low voter turnout, partial results and a first ever top-two format making direct comparisons and general election projections all but impossible.  But trends are trends, and the one that immediately jumped out last night from the very first drop was the dramatic improvement Gov. Chris Gregoire registered in county after county, relative to the performance of her Grand Old Party Party opponent Dino Rossi.  And that can’t bode too well for Dino.

The top two format and the lack of any legitimate intraparty nomination battle essentially turned yesterday’s primary into a straw poll between Gregoire and Rossi, and so I have chosen to compare the two candidate’s relative performance to the last time the two faced off against each other head to head in the 2004 general election.  This is admittedly an imperfect comparison—the primary electorate is not the same universe of voters as that in the general—but far preferable to attempting to draw conclusions from a comparison to the 2004 primary, which might as well have been conducted in an alternate universe.

The 2004 general was of course excruciatingly close:  a legitimate win for Gov. Gregoire under Washington’s election statutes, but realistically, a statistical tie.  In Gregoire’s favor this time around are the inherent advantages of incumbency, a campaign team that recognizes Rossi as a legitimate threat, and a track record in office that establishes her as a competent, moderate and unscary executive.  In Rossi’s favor… lingering, bitter resentment over his almost-victory four years ago.

Opinion polls have long shown the governor with a modest but consistent lead, and after a couple months and a couple million dollars of attack ads, yesterday was an opportunity to see if voters were moving toward one candidate or the other.  And, well, it’s hard to argue that they’re moving toward Rossi.

Even with more than a half dozen spoilers in the race compared to the lone Libertarian in the 2004 general, Gregoire has thus far increased her percentage of the vote in 23 of 39 counties, compared to only three such counties for Rossi.  But a more meaningful analysis of Gregoire and Rossi’s relative, county by county performance, as illustrated in the chart below, comes from comparing the margin separating the two candidates… a margin that has moved in Gregoire’s favor in a whopping 30 of 39 counties.

Once King County’s votes come in, Gov. Gregoire will likely end up leading Rossi by a roughly 50% to 45% margin statewide, and while it is no doubt tricky to adjust for the impact of minor candidates, there is no reason to suspect that the remaining five-percent of the vote will strongly break one way or the other in the general.  Likewise, there is no compelling evidence that turnout in this primary advantaged one party or the other in any region of the state.  Indeed, yesterday’s election proved awfully damn consistent with opinion polls that continue to show Gregoire with a modest but steady lead.

If there is a conclusion to be made it is that this was an opportunity for angry voters to repudiate Gov. Gregoire… and they didn’t.

Still, this race is far from over; an awful lot of money will be spent between now and November attempting to sway voters from one side to the other, while the expected crush of general election voters makes any analysis of primary results speculative at best.  But if Rossi supporters were looking for good news in yesterday’s results, I don’t think they found any.

Primary night festivities for me began at Drinking Liberally in Seattle. But “festive” didn’t really describe my mood. Rather I was feeling about 80 years old and in pain owning to a back injury I sustained Monday morning.

At 9:00, I shuffled back to my car and began the slow process of climbing in without the use of specific back muscles. I almost went straight home. But heading back to Redmond, I swung by the Darcy Burner party in Bellevue.

Perhaps it was my heightened sense of senescence, but I ended up in lengthy conversation with an older woman. She had something to get off of her chest and was eager to share it. I didn’t catch her name, but I’ll call her Daisy.

Daisy’s issue was the Bush prescription drug plan that, she felt, had needlessly cost her money. But, more importantly, the plan had made it impossible for some of her less healthy friends to afford the medications they needed. She mentioned cost issues (resulting in maxing out on benefits) and problems that some needed medications were simply not covered by the plan.

Daisy felt strongly enough about the issue that she had talked to Dave Reichert. She reenacted her conversation with Reichert, in which he didn’t seem to “get it.” Rather than listening to the specifics, Reichert simply asserted that she and her friends must be better off under the plan. That’s what it was supposed to do.

When she finished with her story I asked, “So that’s how you became a Darcy Burner supporter?”

Daisy responded emphatically, “No…that’s how I became: ‘Anyone. But. Reichert.'”

Fair enough!

Thirty minutes later, I noticed that Daisy had struck up a conversation with someone else:

In the middle of a busy night filled with media, hugs, handshakes, and cheers, Darcy Burner took some time to listen to Daisy’s story. I’m guessing that’s how Daisy became a Darcy Burner supporter.

On my way out the door, I ran into Darcy and asked, “Can you share a few words with HorsesAss readers about tonight?” And she graciously obliged:

[Audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/darcy19aug2008.mp3]

So that, dear readers, will have to serve as our podcast—let’s call it our micro-podcast—for this week.

I stayed up late last night watching the election results come in, when clearly my time would have been better spent speculatively writing about the results, uninformed.  Ah well.

Obviously, the big winners last night were the Supreme Court and Appeals Court incumbents, who all won reelection yesterday by securing 50% plus one majorities (and for the most part, much higher) against their opponents… assuming they had one.  So much for that “throw the bums out” attitude.  Gov. Gregoire also appears to be a big winner, improving her performance in county after county… but you’ll just have to wait for me to digest the incomplete results and my morning pot of green tea before I comment any further.

In the Washington Post, Michael Dobbs writes about the recent outbreak of hostilities in Georgia. Dobbs has a good amount of experience in the region, and he explains how Georgia played a big role in provoking this crisis, possibly at the encouragement of the Bush Administration. Russia’s response was overly aggressive, but despite our promises to Georgian president Saakashvili, there’s little to nothing we can do militarily to stop what’s happening.

John McCain’s electoral hopes are pinned on his abililty to breathe life into the dying myth that Republicans are “tougher” on foreign policy, and he certainly sees this crisis as a way to do so. He decided to send the Larry and Curly to his Moe out to Tbilisi to do whatever it is that they do when they travel closer to the countries they’re terrified of. But beneath the surface, this conflict brings out some of the glaring weaknesses in the Bush-McCain foreign policy playbook. It may sound like toughness, but in the end, our allies get kneecapped and fewer people around the world trust us.

Publius from Obsidian Wings reiterates the central failure of McCain’s foreign policy approach:

David Kirkpatrick’s piece on McCain’s response to 9/11 and the “McCain Doctrine” should have been titled “McCain Repeatedly, Horribly Wrong on Virtually Everything About Iraq.” Kirkpatrick lays out several damning facts, but — frustratingly — makes the reader draw the most important conclusions.

Anyway, what’s frightening about McCain’s response to 9/11 is that it was basely entirely on false assumptions and the knee-jerk use of military force. But it’s more than simply that McCain was wrong about Iraq — lots of people were wrong about Iraq. What’s particularly troubling about McCain’s reaction is that his wrongness stemmed directly from the assumptions of his manichean worldview — assumptions he would bring with him to the White House.

In short, his is a world of good versus evil, where threatening and using force is always necessary, and where wildly diverse countries are lumped together as evil “autocracies.” No matter the country (Serbia, Iraq, Georgia), no matter the circumstances — the problem is always the same (evil), the solution always the same (threaten or use force).

The past decade has shown us how the dangers of this thinking – our belief that we must boil every issue and every conflict that arises in the world into a bi-polar good-vs-evil struggle and use force to combat that “evil” – has stretched our military to the breaking point and left us unable to address real threats. When you become locked in this mindset, and you and your allies are always the “good” in that equation, your view of the world becomes incredibly distorted. In the end, you begin to sound like a confused madman, chastising others for doing the exact same things that you’ve been doing yourself. But in your mind, it’s always justified because you are the “good” in the struggle against “evil.”

Over the past decade, the world has come to see this growing emptiness in our supposed moral authority, even if many Americans never question it. But one can’t cover their eyes with their hands and expect the entire world to become invisible. The Bush Administration has made America weak, and what we’ve been seeing in Georgia this month was Russia’s ability to exploit that weakness with ease.

But while endorsing another 4 years of this failed foreign policy mindset is bad enough, I’m not sure we’re thinking about how dangerous this is when the people in charge feel that the “evil” they’re fighting is lurking domestically as well. Speaking in front of the Urban League recently, John McCain said the following:

Answering a question about his approach to combatting crime, John McCain suggested that military strategies currently employed by US troops in Iraq could be applied to high crime neighborhoods here in the US. McCain called them tactics ‘somewhat like we use in the military…You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement.’ The way he described it, his approach sounded an awful lot like the surge.

Every large myth is supported by a series of smaller myths, and the myth of Republican foreign policy superiority is certainly no exception. The myth that the Surge was some magical tactic that single-handedly ended violence in Iraq is still around. For those who haven’t been keeping score, the drop in violence in Iraq started happening before the Surge, some of the most prominent reductions in violence happened in places where coalition troops left, and Baghdad is now a city of walls rather than a newly pacified urban area.

After everyone with the means to do so fled Baghdad for places like Syria and Jordan, the Iraqi capital city was turned into a series of ethnic prison enclaves in order to dampen the violence. I sure as hell hope this isn’t John McCain’s vision for solving inner city crime. But as Publius explained, for John McCain every problem is an “evil”, and every solution is to threaten or use force. Short of genocide, there’s no greater indication of an intent to use force than trying to turn the place where the “evil” resides into a giant prison, caging it inside.

America’s crime problem is certainly growing again. Mexico’s crime problem is a national crisis. And the amount of illegal immigration that occurs from Mexico is certainly fueled by the latter. While illegal immigrants, on the whole, commit less crime than legal immigrants or American citizens, the sensationalizing about their massive presence overshadows this and quickly drowns out the facts. And the presence of so many people in this country working and living outside the system will undoubtedly start to have serious societal repercussions if nothing is done.

There are two ways to attack these problems. One way involves understanding the roots of why these phenomena are happening, addressing those issues, and beginning to undermine the criminal gangs by going after how they make the money they need to survive. The other way involves seeing drug trafficking and illegal immigration as an amorphous evil that we must combat through brute force. For years we’ve tried the latter, and for years, we’ve watched these problems get worse and worse. In the end, many people have just thrown up their hands and said, “just build a wall,” but while that might work for a while in a city like Baghdad, it won’t work at all across a 2000 mile border. At some point, we need to get smarter, and that’s obviously not going to happen if we put John McCain in the White House.

When it comes to our attempts to keep the peace in Iraq, we’ve seen the use of private security contractors grow. But it’s not just in Iraq that companies like Blackwater win government contracts. Blackwater personnel were on the ground during Katrina, and they’re also conducting anti-terrorism training at a new facility along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In Southern California recently, one of the DEA agents carrying out a raid on a medical marijuana dispensary was seen wearing a Blackwater T-shirt. The picture was then removed from the L.A. Times website. No one knows why this agent was wearing it. Hell, he may have ordered the thing online. But the image reminded us that having a private security agency with little or no oversight like Blackwater enforcing the drug war, or enforcing our immigration laws, is a line no thicker than many of the other lines that the Republican Administration currently in power has crossed.

The growth of paramilitary police tactics throughout America is one of the scariest developments of this era. When someone like John McCain stands in front of us and says that he wants to “clamp down” on the violence in our cities and towns, too many of us still just assume that we won’t get caught in its grips. But tell that to someone like Berwyn Heights, Maryland mayor Cheye Calvo, who had a SWAT team raid his home, terrorize his wife and mother-in-law, and shoot his two dogs for no reason, all because someone randomly addressed a package of marijuana to his house as part of a drug trafficking scheme. Tell that to people like Cory Maye and Ryan Frederick, two young men with no criminal records who awoke to the sound of people breaking into their house at night, reacted by shooting at the intruders, only to realize they’d killed police officers and might have to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

Whether it’s halfway across the world, or in our own backyard, the idea that our power and authority does not come with any form of accountability or responsibility – simply because we are “good” fighting against “evil” – is rapidly eroding the trust in that power and authority. The Bush Administration’s hypocrisy between the Kosovo and the South Ossetia situations shares a common denominator with the hypocrisies over how America fights crime domestically. It starts with a belief that a desire for autonomy can be a dangerous thing if it’s viewed as running counter to that larger struggle.

But the battle for autonomy is the larger struggle. There’s no greater representation of democracy than having the ability to express your desires freely. George Bush and John McCain often say they understand this, and that they’re “spreading democracy,” but by their actions, it’s very clear that they don’t, and they aren’t. And the most dangerous thing we can do right now is to take another 4 years to learn how the failed approach of our foreign policy also fails when applied right here on our own streets.

So much to drink, so little time tonight, as I try to split my evening between two locations.  The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM onward at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E., and I’ll be stopping by a little early to chat with the regulars and watch the initial returns.  Then I’ll be heading East to join Darcy Burner at The Mustard Seed, 5608 119th Ave SE, Bellevue, for her election night party… and you’re all invited to join us in cheering her on to November.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

When I walked into my polling place this morning at around 11:30 AM, the worker attending my precinct was actually asleep, head on the table.  I was only the third person to vote in my precinct, and the 26th to cast a ballot across all five precincts.

“Busy day?” I asked the roomful of aged poll workers, who responded with a mix of forelorn bemusement and total confusion.  If there is a retirement home for fictional Maytag repairmen, I imagine it looks pretty much like this.

Turnout is reportedly low throughout the state, but particularly in heavily Democratic King County, one of the only counties yet to move to all vote by mail. I’d say this bodes poorly for Democrats if I could say this primary means anything at all.  Things will be different in November with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.

Still, if you haven’t voted yet, don’t give the other guys the opportunity to spin the results into campaign momentum… get out there and cast your ballot.

UPDATE [Lee]: When I walked into my polling place a little after 8am this morning, the poll workers let out a small cheer just to see somebody, anybody coming in to vote. While there wasn’t a person sleeping at my precinct table, there was an orange and white cat sleeping on the chair. Not a single person came in to vote while I was there. I put my ballot in the machine, told everyone there to “stay awake,” and went across the street to catch my bus.

Today is Primary Election Day, so if you haven’t already voted, vote.

Yeah, I know, it’s the middle of August, and with our new top-two primary, there aren’t really many meaningful contests on the ballot. But there are a few, and as my mother relentlessly reminds me whenever she sees me wearing my usual shmatas, appearances count.  The Republicans are downplaying expectations in the governor’s and 8th CD races, but they’re also pushing an aggressive get out the vote effort, and you can be sure they’ll claim momentum tomorrow morning if they’re even close.  So help Rossi and Reichert meet expectations by turning out for Gregoire and Burner.

Remember, both Reichert and Rossi support that clueless old guy in the video above, and they’re 100% behind his economic policies.  There are differences between the two parties, and there’s a lot at stake in this election for both Washington state and the nation.

I don’t generally do formal endorsements, but here are a few other top races I have my eye on:

Commissioner of Public Lands / Attorney General
Again, not real contests, as we’ll be getting rematches in November, but again momentum counts, especially as Democrats Peter Goldmark and John Ladenburg make their final fundraising drive post-primary.  Goldmark looks like he’s in a pretty good position to win this thing, putting the Commissioner of Public Lands office in the hands of somebody who actually cares about public lands, and Ladenburg is a dynamic public speaker who could certainly give McKenna a run for his money… if he can manage to raise enough money to get his message before voters.  Vote for Goldmark and Ladenburg.

Initiative 26: “The PVR Incumbency Protection Act”
Initiative 26 claims it would make King County Council, executive and assessor positions nonpartisan, when in fact all it will do is remove partisan labels from the ballot, thus giving voters less information with which to make their choices.  For example, if it passes (and it probably will), Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer will still be a Republican… he just won’t have to say he’s one in his literature, on his advertising and on the ballot.  That’s great for PVR, as it makes it easier to win election in a district that is steadily trending Democratic, but I don’t see how it makes the Council operate any better.  I-26 is bullshit.  Vote no.

Supreme Court:  Mary Fairhurst
Let’s get this race over with by giving Justice Mary Fairhurst the 50% plus one she needs to retain her seat.  I’ve got nothing against her opponent Michael Bond—he’s been HA’s most loyal advertiser this year, and seemed like a nice enough guy when he stopped by DL a couple weeks ago—but he’s given us no reason to toss out Fairhurst, who has proven to be one of the most even handed and legally competent justices on the bench, despite the Seattle Times’ anti-government ravings.  And… well… she’s a family friend, one of the nicest and most down to earth Supreme Court justices you’ll ever meet.  Vote for Mary Fairhurst.

King County Superior Court Position 22:  Rebeccah Graham
Hell, I’m no lawyer, so when I’ve got no idea who to vote for in judicial races, I usually ask my lawyer friends (well, the ones I respect), and that means I usually consult with Becca.  (I haven’t asked, but I’m pretty sure she’d suggest herself in this race.)  But I’m biased, so listen to the Seattle P-I:  “Graham has a diverse background, calm demeanor, passion for the law and has six years of experience as a pro tem judge. All make her an excellent candidate.”  What they said; vote for Rebeccah Graham.

UPDATE:
Dan Savage writes:

you’re going to ignore the commissioner of public urination race?!?!

I assume he means the Superintendent of Public Instruction, since I already mentioned Commissioner of Public Lands, in which case, yeah, vote for Randy Dorn, even though it’s another one of those meaningless exhibition bouts.  For eight years I’ve watched the emphasis on WASL transform my daughter’s classroom into an elementary school equivalent of a Stanley Kaplan prep course.  Anybody but Bergeson.

I leave bright and early tomorrow morning (as soon as the polls open — I’m one of those hopelessly old-fashioned people that likes my polling place) for Denver — with stops en route to meet with activists and bloggers in Boise and Salt Lake. Goldy and Darryl fly out to join me early Saturday. Look for some exciting new wrinkles in HA coverage from us at the Denver convention!

So what would you like to see us report on?

This e-mail alert really was sent out, exactly like this:

From: Washington State Ferries [mailto:WSFAlert@wsdot.wa.gov]
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 4:40 PM
To: WSDOT-WSF Alert Recipients
Subject: Ferry Alert: Edmonds / Kingston – Late Boats

Both vessels are running 15 to 20 minutes behind schedule. We apologize for any incontinence this may cause you.

This alert was sent on 8/8/2008 at 4:39PM to subscribers of the Edmonds / Kingston route.

A reader reports from the campaign trail:

Last night, I was listening to a bartender out in Quilcene who was completely in love with Rossi after his recent visit.  In a moment of unintentional irony, she noted that he made a joke about Gregoire’s budget-cluelessness:

“If you’re going to hand a woman the checkbook, you’d better make sure she knows how to balance it.”

Ouch.

Yeah, sure, it’s only a third-hand account, and I would prefer to verify a macaca moment like this against an audio or video transcript of the August 9 event at the Olympic Timber House, but since Dino Rossi doesn’t allow video cameras into his events—apparently out of fear he’ll be caught saying something stupid, mean spirited or sexist (or all three)—I guess I’ll just have to run with it as a rumor.

And a very believable rumor at that, as it seems entirely in character from a man who opposes the right of a woman to control her own body, who opposes medically accurate sex education, and who quite frankly has come off as angry and bitter throughout this campaign, his patented shit-eating-grin notwithstanding.

Of course, if Dino would like to confirm or deny this third-hand account, and clarify his position on whether women are or are not inherently deficient at balancing checkbooks, I’d be happy to print his response in its entirety.  Or… if somebody else in attendance at the event in Quilcene can confirm or deny the accuracy of the statement, I’d be happy to print that too.