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It turns out, McCain doesn’t know what kind of car he drives either:

In our News interview, he was asked what kind of car he drove. As with Politico’s question about home ownership, he didn’t know and had to ask a nearby aide. “A Cadillac CTS,” she told him.

But then again, he is 72, so cut him some slack.

There were more than a few miffed members of the press Wednesday evening after being lured to Dave Reichert’s campaign headquarters by a media advisory promising a “major announcement,” only to find delusional fringe challenger Jim Vaughn at the podium, offering his enthusiastic endorsement.

“He’s earned my respect,” Vaughn (drunk on the power that comes from capturing a whopping 3% of the vote) said of the “yes man for George Bush” he previously accused of not having passed “one piece of legislation.”

Um… a “major” announcement…?  Yeah, well, I guess so, that is, if Reichert was referring to Vaughn’s former army rank, but as far as announcements go, this one wasn’t all that.  But then I guess that’s just an indication of how incredibly close Reichert expects this race to be, that he’s now aggressively wooing the crackpot vote.

“I really did want to knock Dave out,” [Vaughn] said. But that was a strategy rather than a disagreement with Reichert’s positions, he said. He figured if he beat Reichert in the primary, he would earn conservative Democratic and Republican votes and easily beat Burner.

Yeah… sure you would, Jim.  Here, have some gum.

Still, every vote counts, so perhaps Reichert is onto a winning strategy that might soon be adopted by other nervous contenders, suddenly transforming the dregs of the ballot into the toast of the power elite.  Familiar names like Stan Lippman, Will Baker and David Blomstrom could find themselves courted by top-two finalists eager to win over the tens of votes each almost-also-ran commands, a loyal political base earned from years of running hopeless campaigns without ever smelling of poop.  (Well, maybe Will.)

Indeed, at this very moment I wouldn’t be surprised if Linda Averill is busy negotiating a workers paradise in exchange for her prized endorsement, while Goodspaceguy Nelson has all but secured federal earmarks to fund the colonization of orbital space.  And then there’s Mike the Mover, the Boss Tweed of perennial crackpottery, who in the context of this closely divided electorate not only has the political muscle to get you to the other Washington, but the truck as well.

Think about it… if the gubernatorial race is anywhere near as close as it was in 2004, Javier Lopez could be the deciding factor, his endorsement bringing with it the small yet highly sought after “I had sex with my high school teacher, and I’m proud of it” vote.

So kudos to Reichert for running such a groundbreaking campaign:  first his pioneering use of web videos, and now his successful outreach to Jim Vaughn, a grassroots champion who by the end of July had nearly come within $1,980,000 of the $1.98 million Darcy Burner has raised thus far.  I’m sure the press is sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for Reichert’s next “major announcement.”

At Hempfest last weekend, posters titled “What’s Gregoire Smoking?” were being circulated through the massive crowds of people checking out the nation’s largest pro-pot gathering. The posters are advertising a rally for the hearing that the state Department of Health will be holding in Tumwater on Monday to discuss the proposed draft limits for medical marijuana patients.

The limits were patterned after Oregon’s limits, and while their limits have managed to protect their patients (even ones who require more than the limits allow), there are some differences between our system and theirs, the major ones being that providers can grow for multiple patients and that there’s a state-run registry system for patients that the police respect. The Cannabis Defense Coalition, a newly formed group of activists working together to protect patients from arrest (I’m a member), details some of the concerns with having to rely primarily on the limits to protect the patients:

1. The definition of a “mature” plant as any plant that reaches twelve inches in height is neither reasonable, nor grounded in science.

2. The new rules as written are absolute upper bounds, not “presumptive amounts” as mandated by SB-6032. If a patient has more than the presumptive amount, the new rules require a doctor to state the amount of marijuana required by that patient. This is illegal under the federal Conant v. Walters case, and doctors risk losing their federal licenses if they abide by this state requirement. This will have a disastrous effect on the legality of medical marijuana in Washington State.

3. That the limit of six “mature plants” — is too low. Cannabis typically takes 8 or more weeks to mature once blooming is triggered. Most patients produce 1-2 ounces per plant, or 6-12 ounces for their 60-day supply. Blooming at twelve inches will decrease yield to under half an ounce per plant, or less than 3 ounces for a sixty day supply.

These numbers are far less than the 24 ounces of dried medicine allowed for under the new rules. In short, the new rules do not honestly take into account the real world mathematics of marijuana growing, let alone the non-scientific, arbitrary limit on plant height written into the rules at the request of Governor Chris Gregoire.

On Saturday at the Hemposium tent, the area of Hempfest where music takes a back seat to politics, there was a lively panel of patients, activists, and attorneys discussing what happened during the process and what still needs to be done to make sure that patients stop getting arrested around the state. During the session, Douglas Hiatt – a local attorney who represents patients across the state – introduced Robert Dalton, a qualified patient who was not only arrested by Kitsap County authorities but may also lose a quarter-million dollars worth of his property.

Among the panelists, there was little disagreement over how we got into this mess. The State Department of Health originally came to a very workable proposal for the limits, 35 ounces and a 10ft by 10ft growing area. The Governor then told the DOH to solicit more input from doctors and law enforcement. The proposed limits were far more restrictive, and as Hiatt pointed out, every patient he knows is now at risk of arrest, and that some arrests have already taken place in Spokane County.

Where there’s a lot of disagreement is on why the Governor stepped into the process and told the Department of Health to revise the numbers. Some are chalking it up to cluelessness or apathy, but others think the Governor is deliberately making the limits unworkable in order to keep law enforcement happy (although Steve Sarich, the loudest voice in that camp, had to be corrected by the crowd when he asserted that every single police group in Washington State supports Gregoire, which we know pretty well by now is not true).

After getting a chance to ask the Governor about this mess in person at her recent pop-in to Drinking Liberally, I’m still in the camp that chalks this up to cluelessness and apathy. I don’t think she understands how disingenuous the concerns from law enforcement are, and I don’t get the impression that she cares enough about authorized patients getting arrested. After I pressed the issue, she said that if patients continue to get arrested after the limits are set that she’d work with the police chiefs to have the situation resolved. However, when you have rogue prosecutors like Russell Hauge in Kitsap County, I’m not sure how much the Governor can do.

Monday’s hearing is at 11AM at the Department of Health offices at 310 Israel Rd. SE in Tumwater. This may be the last chance to get this right, so whether you care about protecting patients or just don’t like law enforcement wasting more of your taxpayer dollars to throw sick people in jail, it’s your chance to be heard.

Apparently he even lied about his age in trying to seduce her….

Oh…and for the record…

Yep…it’s an Open thread.

Note to self: Stephen Roach is the gun-toting drug dealer… Dan Roach is merely the campaign fund embezzler.

Remember that video of off-duty police officers roughing up a Democratic Party cameraman at a press conference at the Seattle Police Officers Guild?  Well, an observant 45th LD viewer asked me, “Isn’t that Republican legislative candidate Kevin Haistings?”

Hmm.  Above is a picture of Haistings compared to a frame from the video, and they do indeed appear to be the same person.  Haistings is also an active member and past president of the Guild, so I guess it makes sense for him to have been there.

Am I the only one who finds it a touch unsettling watching a Republican candidate for the state legislature roughing up a Democratic Party staffer for attempting to video tape the Republican candidate for governor?

Perhaps we can just blame sundowners, but John McCain doesn’t even know how many houses he owns.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own.

“I think – I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where – I’ll have them get to you.”

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

And we’re told Barack Obama is the elitist?

What’s fair is fair.  I give the Seattle Times editorial board a lot of shit for propagandizing on behalf of their favorite candidates and issues… so I suppose they deserve some kudos for giving some shit to one of their homies, Dino Rossi, for his own lying propaganda:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi is running radio and TV ads that lambaste Gov. Christine Gregoire for doing precisely what our state needed to do. Raise the gas tax. Get a few transportation projects done. Help businesses and motorists get moving.

Rossi’s ads are artfully misleading. They all but blame the governor for today’s higher gas prices. That is not what happened.

[…] Rossi’s gas-tax ads are unfair; he would be wise to pull them.

Of course, Rossi won’t pull these ads, because they accurately reflect his own artfully misleading personality, but it’s heartening to see the Times calling him out on it.

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.