HorsesAss.Org

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) inserted a provision in last year’s energy bill that gave the Federal Trade Commission the authority to investigate manipulation of the petroleum market, and now with gasoline expected to top $4 a gallon this summer, Cantwell wants the FTC to use it.

“Their response has been tepid,” Cantwell said in an interview. […] She said she expected the agency would “run out the clock” and leave the manipulation regulations for the next administration to write and implement.

“They didn’t ask for the authority and they’ve never been excited about it,” Cantwell said. “They say they want to work with us. Given the impact on the economy, they need to get started.”

Now I know you knee-jerk free-marketeers will tell me that this is merely the market in action, and that the invisible hand of God will sort everything out just fine as long as we don’t let those damn government regulators interfere. But with crude oil now hovering around $110 a barrel, the supposedly inviolable law of supply and demand appears to have been magically suspended:

Cantwell noted that crude oil prices have doubled over the past year despite adequate inventories, no major disruption in supply and a slight drop in demand in the United States as the economy has cooled.

At congressional hearings over the past several weeks, oil company executives and market analysts have been at a loss to explain the sharp increase in crude oil prices. Cantwell said an Exxon Mobil executive recently told a House of Representatives committee that he thought the price of crude oil should be about $50 to $55 a barrel, given current supply and demand.

It was Cantwell who also authored a law that banned manipulation of the natural gas and electricity markets, and ordered the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to enforce it. Subsequent investigations have resulted in 15 settlements and nearly a half billion dollars in fines. I’d wager the FTC would find similar manipulations in the petroleum market… that is, if it ever bothered to follow the law.

Hey, it turns out US Sen. Jim Bunning is not, in fact, the nuttiest politician in Kentucky. Saturday night, at KY-04’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner, the appropriately named US Rep. Geoff Davis (R-1960) displayed that famous Southern charm, saying of Sen. Barack Obama:

“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,”

And that cracker’s lily white ass doesn’t need to be in the US House.

Remember this from just before last year’s November election?

I wonder what all the centrist, but-transit-without-roads-just-isn’t-realistic Seattle editorial writers, bloggers and erstwhile environmentalists who say the roads and transit proposal is the “best we’re ever going to get” are going to say when Prop. 1 fails, as a recent King 5 poll indicates it will? Will they band together and fight for a new light rail package that doesn’t include sprawl-inducing highway expansion—or, as their defeatist endorsements of Prop. 1 indicate, will they just give up?

It’s funny how at the last Sound Transit board meeting, it was one of the “sell-out” environmental groups that dropped off a petition demanding that rail be on the ballot this fall. The Sierra Club has yet to “marry” itself publicly to a “transit only” ballot measure this fall. I’m certain many of their members are a “go,” but… When environmental groups have to spend time convincing other environmental groups of the need for a ballot measure this fall, the entire effort is in jeopardy.

Tune in to KUOW’s Weekday with Steve Scher this morning at 10AM, when I’ll be joining Eric Earling of (u)SP, Tom Forbes of Palousitics, and Liz Burlingame of SeattlePoliticore for a political blogger roundup. Topics of discussion will surely include how goddamn depressing it must be to be a Republican these days.

UPDATE (9:55AM):
I’m sitting in the green room at KUOW, with Eric Earling, and he seems normal. KUOW is still $25,000 short of their pledge week target, so if folks call in now and put $25K on their credit card you’ll get an extra 20 minutes of me and Eric!

UPDATE (10:01AM):
$19,000 to go. They’d like us to live blog during the interview, which shows you how much they know about blogging. Not likely to happen.

UPDATE (10:20AM):
Apparently, according to Tom, Democrats are the party of the wealthy elite. Who knew?

UPDATE (10:38AM):
Wow… Dino Rossi is about “change.” I should talk to Republicans more often.  If this is the best they have in defense of Dino, it’s not gonna be much of a campaign. 

Welcome to HA v3.0, only the third major update since I started blogging almost four years ago, and HA’s first total redesign ever. It’s slick. It’s feature-packed. And it may even be a tad annoying until you get used to it — or I fix the annoying bits — whichever comes first.

But the best thing about the HA v3.0, is that unlike the previous versions, it won’t be another two years until I dive back into the code. As big a change as this may look on the surface, the big news is what’s going on underneath the hood, where I’m laying the groundwork for an ambitious development roadmap intended to greatly expand and diversify HA’s content and features. This is very much a work in progress, so if you see something you don’t like, or don’t see something you think you should, you’ll let me know.

So what’s new, apart from the strikingly, um, different site layout? Well, some whiz-bang features for starters, including…

[Read more…]

At the beginning of this weekend, I posed a challenge for blogger Pat Rogers concerning Barack Obama and his drug policy positions:

Recently, I’ve been debating with Pat Rogers from A Left Independent. Pat and I generally agree on most matters of drug policy, but we have some pretty stark disagreements in our outlook for the 2008 election. While both of us have been critical of Obama over his flaky drug policy positions, I’m not convinced to vote for a third-party candidate, even though the Libertarian and Green nominees – and even Ralph Nader – will all have better drug policy platforms this year.

In the past, I’ve voted for third-party candidates with no chance for that reason, but I can’t this year. While I’m definitely disappointed in his positions, I also recognize that being honest about drug policy is difficult for Obama, and that McCain, who has vowed to continue fighting medical marijuana laws, will certainly be worse. The perceptions and prejudices that exist in this country about drugs and the African-American community make it especially tough for Obama to be bold on this front. This is why I think we have this disconnect between someone who claims The Wire as his favorite TV show, but as a politician has often promoted the drug war in ways that the show has been critical of. I tend to be more sympathetic to these political realities than Pat, so I want to lay out a challenge to him:

Write up a speech that Obama could make on drug policy that would…

a) Win your vote
b) Not wreck his chances in November to beat John McCain

Pat was already one step ahead of me, as he’s already worked on such a speech. He sent it to me and I’ve posted it here. He’s welcoming feedback on it. I’m very impressed with it, but I’m not yet convinced that Obama could make that speech and not find it to be a political landmine. What do you think?

From an editorial in today’s Seattle Times:

From the day Seattle owners sold the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma businessmen, we should have known.

Yes, they should have. As should have the editors at the Seattle P-I:

We’ve often faulted political leaders for passivity and lack of creativity about the Sonics. Well, it appears that if the out-of-town owners were going to keep the team here, it would have been only because they got a too-lucrative-to-refuse deal. More than creativity, that’s about cash — oodles of taxpayer cash.

That’s pretty much all the gloating I’m going to do today, except to say “Hey Tom and Erin… read my post, then read the two editorials, and tell me… who’s influencing whom?”

Seriously, it’s 60 degrees at about 1:00am, according to the Seattle Times.

I blame this guy.

Headline at the Times’ website:

Scientists baffled by swarm of quakes off Oregon coast

Duh! It’s Godzilla.

Steve Haver (aka diarist ‘Red No More‘ at Daily Kos) discusses how Pennsylvania police attempted to confiscate his home after police responded to a burglar alarm and found 5 pot plants.

From today’s Seattle Times:

If money is any indication, this year’s race for governor is going to make the 2004 contest look like a low-key affair.

You have no idea.

The article focuses on money, which both Gov. Chris Gregoire and real estate salesman cum motivational speaker Dino Rossi are raising at a record clip — over $7.5 million combined thus far, with some observers predicting a $20 million-plus race.

“This is one of those things that never ceases to amaze me, the amount of money in politics,” [former state Dem Party chair Paul] Berendt said. “Certainly the rematch is a factor here. But it’s not the dominant factor. There’s just more money in politics.”

But money is only part of the reason the 2008 campaign will be a helluva lot different than the last time around. The big difference, in my opinion, will be the lessons learned from 2004, a race in which an overconfident Gregoire allowed Rossi to get away with running as an amiable tabla rasa, on to which voters could project a fanciful image of the Rossi they’d like him to be.

First rule of political campaigning: if your opponent refuses to define himself… define him for him define your opponent. And you can be damn sure that a substantial chunk of Gregoire’s (and her surrogates’) war chest will be spent doing exactly that. Rossi is simply too conservative for WA state, on both social and economic issues, and this time around he’s not going to get away with refusing to talk about issues that don’t poll well for his campaign. There are also character issues regarding Rossi — his dubious business ethics and his documented reputation as a downright mean spirited campaigner — and in 2008, voters are going to be informed of that too.

Since Rossi’s near miss in 2004, David Irons, George Nethercutt and Mike!™ McGavick have all tried to duplicate the Rossi model — a low-key, likable, issue-less run toward the middle — and all with disastrous results. That strategy simply won’t play here anymore… at least not if your Democratic opponent is awake. And I don’t believe even Rossi is willing or able to duplicate the Rossi Strategy in 2008.

Sure, Rossi’s going to attempt to avoid those many issues where he’s clearly out of step with WA voters, but we’ve seen a different Rossi — a meaner, angrier Rossi — on the campaign trail thus far. No doubt he truly believes he was cheated out of the governor’s mansion four years ago (cognitive dissonance is a powerful drug) and thus he’s understandably pissed off. And it shows. He likes to joke that at the start of the last campaign most folks thought that “Dino Rossi” was a brand of wine. Add an “h” after the “w” and you’ve pretty much described Rossi’s 2008 campaign thus far.

The point is, it’s going to be a much nastier campaign from both sides, which in this particular race, I think is a good thing, because it will leave voters much better educated about who the candidates are, and what they stand for, than in 2004. And as little influence as Rossi uber-patron BIAW wants you to believe bloggers like me have, in their heart of hearts they know that a lot has changed since 2004 in the way the media covers political campaigns, and that the emergence of the blogs as media watchdogs has a lot to do with it. Perhaps I give them a little shit, but there isn’t a single political reporter I have met who is not a dedicated professional, and while they may chafe at our criticism (and the tone in which we offer it), as long as it is substantive, well-supported and relevant, it generally doesn’t go unheeded for long. Much of what I do as a blogger is the media equivalent of complaining to the refs, a time honored sports tradition that yields real, if hard to quantify results.

So hold onto your hats. This won’t be the same Rossi. This won’t be the same Gregoire. And this won’t be the same passive media environment in which the 2004 campaign played out into a virtual tie.

The world’s most widely read blogger:

(There are some sixty other media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

To everyone who donated during my fund raiser, thank you. I really appreciate it. I was meaning to post this a week or so ago, but I’ve been so busy.

To everyone who bought me a beer, or pizza, or Indian food, or very nicely bugged people for dough on my behalf- thank you. It means so much.

If you you were meaning to donate but never got around to it, click here. To the folks who donated, again, thank you.

Sometime this weekend I’ll upgrade HA with an all new look and a handful of the new features I’ve been working on.  Just thought you should know.

Other than that, talk amongst yourselves.