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Did Obama just wrap up the Democratic nomination? Is Hillary’s gas tax relief a bunch of hot air? Would raising the gas tax be the responsible thing to do? Are Democrats dismissing Dino Rossi at their own peril?

Goldy and friends engage in some friendly sparring but, as the evening wore on, nearly ended up in a death fight over these and other big issues of the moment at the Montlake Ale House. Goldy was joined by blogging pioneer N in Seattle, the lovely, talented, and hard-working Molly, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, and HorsesAss personality Carl Ballard.

The show is 46:04, and is available here as an MP3 file.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_may_6_2008.mp3]

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

Far be it from me to offer advice I rarely follow myself, but I think the editors at Crosscut might want to actually read Crosscut before slapping on headlines. Take for example Knute Berger’s latest Mossback, whose teaser scolds:

Seattle’s mayor waves the flag of secession. In so doing, he may have waved goodbye to a future in state politics.

… but whose closing paragraph acknowledges:

One thing we can be certain of: Greg Nickels’ ambitions do not include running for governor. Being Seattle mayor has long been a dubious Olympia springboard.

So… Nickels has, uh, waved goodbye to a future in state politics he’s never had? Um… huh?

In fact, Nickels destroyed any chance he might have had for statewide office the minute he was elected Seattle’s mayor, because the rest of the state fucking hates us, a cold reality implicitly (if politely) acknowledged in Berger’s closer. Which brings us back to subject of Nickels’ little rant.

Nickels criticized the Legislature and regional governance. He said he was tired of rural legislators weighing in on issues like the Alaskan Way Viaduct and gun control. He was frustrated that Seattle was being held back by the rest of the state and said that it was time to consider secession.

Berger dismisses Nickels’ assertion that his call for secession was “tongue-in-cheek” because apparently, journalists are much more capable of climbing inside the heads of their subjects than their subjects themselves, and no politician could ever be subtle enough to deliberately suggest an absurdity purely for dramatic effect. But absurd as secession is, there is a truth at the heart of Nickels’ complaint that deserves more scrutiny than our state’s holier-than-thou editorialists are willing to proffer.

The fact is, Nickels isn’t the only Seattleite who is sick and tired of the rest of the state interfering in our business. We’re tired of being told by voters elsewhere that we’re not allowed to tax ourselves locally to build the local transit we want. We’re tired of being told that we shouldn’t have a say in whether a massive double-decker freeway continues to mar our waterfront, or whether the 520 bridge should have six or eight lanes. We’re tired of being told how much we can spend on our schools or on our roads, and having our hands tied behind our backs by the legislature when it comes to options for raising tax dollars. And we’re goddamn sick and tired of sending our tax dollars out of city and over the mountains, only to be abused and reviled under the deliberately perpetrated false impression that money flows in the other direction:

The Yakima Herald-Republic called Nickels’ secession call “absurd” and wondered where Seattle would get its food if it lopped off its agricultural arm. Looking on the bright side, they opined that at least “we’ll get out of our share of the billions needed to fix Puget Sound’s traffic problems.”

A) We’d get our food the way we’ve always gotten it: we’d buy it! And B) Where the fuck do they think the billions needed to fix our traffic problems is coming from? It sure as hell ain’t coming from Yakima. If Seattle were to secede, Yakima’s share of its state’s transportation budget would be a helluva lot less than it’s getting now, so have fun maintaining all those roads we built.

What galls me about the reaction to Nickels’ comments is how incredibly one-sided the discourse in this state has become. Politicians and columnists throughout the state have free reign to dream up paranoid fantasies about big bad Seattle—Dino Rossi wades in it; Mike McGavick ran on it—but heaven forfend if a Seattle politician responds in kind. Do Nickels’ comments help tear down the Cascade curtain? Hell no, but at least they add a little balance to the popular fiction that Seattle is a drain on the rest of the state’s tax coffers, rather than the other way around.

The Columbian is reporting that officials now don’t know what caused the deaths of six sea lions near Bonneville dam earlier this week.

The mystery is thickening in the deaths of six sea lions over the weekend near Bonneville Dam, with federal authorities reporting this morning that a preliminary examination of the bodies “found no evidence of recent gunshot wounds.”

Although authorities initially suspected the animals died due to gunshot wounds, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported today that the cause of death remains unknown.

“We are assuming nothing at this point,” said Brian Gorman, a NMFS spokesman in Seattle. “We don’t have a working hypothesis, but we’ll come up with one and we’ll pursue it and try to find a cause of these deaths. It’s a mystery right now.”

Okay then. We’ll just call it a mystery and leave it at that. Odd how this story was presented as some kind of mass carnage, and now it’s like “oops.”

Sure, the Clinton’s say they’re fighting on through West Virginia, Oregon and beyond, but their faces say something entirely different. This thing’s over, and they know it.

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation this afternoon at about 1:20PM for our weekly “Beat the Press” segment. Topics of discussion will include those dangerous harmless Arab European terrorists tourists planning to blow up take snapshots of the WA state ferries, and Hillary Clinton’s big win loss in the Indiana primary.

And tomorrow morning I’ll be filling in for Dave Ross during the final two hours of his show, 10AM to noon on 710-KIRO.

Looks like I spoke too soon. It’s not a split decision after all, at least not in terms of the expectations game that drives political coverage and momentum.

Obama won big in North Carolina, the way he was expected to win weeks ago, but significantly better than recent polls suggested. Meanwhile, it’s still “too close to call” in Indiana, with a lot of precincts left to report from the Gary area. That means Obama beat expectations there too.

But more important than my opinion is that of the legacy media, who seem to think it’s a big night for Obama too. And that’s the spin that’s gonna give uncommitted superdelegates the excuse to swing to Obama.

The game’s not over, but we’re all pretty sure how it’s gonna end.

UPDATE [7:39]:
Clinton is speaking, and it doesn’t sound like she’s conceding.

UPDATE [7:43]:
Q: What do Hillary Clinton and I have in common?
A: We both plug our websites asking for money.

UPDATE [9:15]:
I just got an email from SEIU with the subject header:  “Obama: Clearly the Presumptive Presidential Nominee.”  So I guess that’s it, huh.  It’s all over.

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, although some of us will show up a little early for dinner.

Tonight’s activity will be a brawl over tonight’s theme song: either Goin’ Back To Indiana by The Jackson Five or Carolina in My Mind by James Taylor. So get past your bitterness, dodge a little sniper fire and get involved…in the political mêlée.

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

The networks have called North Carolina for Barack Obama, and the exit polls suggest that Hillary Clinton will likely win Indiana by a comfortable margin. No surprises there. Once all the ballots are counted, it appears Obama will likely pick up a few more delegates today than Clinton. Again, no surprise.

This settles nothing, so it’s time for the super delegates to step up and do their job and settle this for us.

Get out your ice skates Satan, me and Newt Gingrich actually agree about something!

The Republican loss in the special election for Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District last Saturday should be a sharp wake up call for Republicans: Either Congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.

The facts are clear and compelling.

Saturday’s loss was in a district that President Bush carried by 19 percentage points in 2004 and that the Republicans have held since 1975.

This defeat follows on the loss of Speaker Hastert’s seat in Illinois. That seat had been held by a Republican for 76 years with the single exception of the 1974 Watergate election when the Democrats held it for one term. That same seat had been carried by President Bush 55-44% in 2004.

Writing in the conservative online rag Human Events, Gingrich outlines the desperate situation Republicans find themselves in these days. President Bush’s approval ratings are at historic lows, while the Democratic advantage on the generic Congressional ballot is at historic highs, both “reminiscent of the depths of the Watergate disaster.” The Republican brand has been so damaged that anti-Obama or anti-Clinton attack ads “are simply going to fail.” And when it comes to the issues Americans care about most?

A February Washington Post poll shows that Republicans have lost the advantage to the Democrats on which party can handle an issue better — on every single topic.

Americans now believe that Democrats can handle the deficit better (52 to 31), taxes better (48 to 40) and even terrorism better (44 to 37).

This is a catastrophic collapse of trust in Republicans built up over three generations on the deficit, two generations on taxes, and two generations on national security.

Remember, this isn’t me saying these things (though I’ve already said many of them myself), this is Newt Gingrich, the man who engineered the Republican takeover of the House back in 1994.

Man it must suck to be a Republican right now.

UPDATE:
More bad news for GOP Inc.

Um, Dino… shouldn’t you be setting a better example for Washington’s youth, by actually wearing a seat belt? (You know, as required by law?)

And couldn’t you find something better to reward that poor woman than that crappy book? It’s printed in 18-point type for chissakes, like a children’s book. (And at about the same vocabulary level.)

And Dino… that pathetic, poor-loser whining about winning “again,” this time with a “recount-proof majority of votes”…? It just comes off as bitter, bitter, bitter… despite that shit-eating grin of yours.

I’m just sayin’.

Did you know that despite an increase of 13 cents a gallon over the past few years, Washington state’s motor fuel excise tax, as a percentage of the retail price of a gallon of regular grade gasoline, has actually fallen from about 21.9% in May of 1998 to about 9.6% in May of 2008? And did you know that at 36 cents a gallon, our state gas tax is still well below historic averages in inflation adjusted dollars?

Surprised?  I wasn’t.

Coming up, I’ll one-up Barack Obama and explain why we not only shouldn’t be cutting the gas tax, but raising it.  Dramatically.  Stay tuned.

I’m sitting in the Starbucks at the corner of Rainier Ave. S. and MLK Way S., waiting for my tires to be replaced at Firestone… and tapped into the WiFi network emanating from the construction site at Sound Transit’s Mount Baker Station across the street.

While I appreciate the free wireless access, and I’m certainly not sucking up much bandwidth, I wouldn’t recommend they leave their WiFi router wide open like this. I’m just sayin’.