HorsesAss.Org

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.

Oh man, this lawsuit attempting to force the Sonics to honor their Key Arena lease is gonna be a lot of fun, as city attorneys use the discovery process to reveal the dishonest dealings we all assumed were going on behind the scenes, but our sports-page-hawking editorial boards refused to acknowledge. And it looks like I’m going to get the opportunity for some delicious gloating.

For example, today the Seattle PI reports on recently uncovered emails between Clay Bennett, his fellow Sonics owners, and NBA Commissioner David Stern, that establish once and for all what an unrepentant bald-faced liar Bennett has always been. “I so cherish our relationship,” Bennett breathily wrote Stern on August 17, 2007, after co-owner Aubrey McClendon frankly told Oklahoma City’s The Journal Record that “we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle.” In what can only be described as a digital blowjob, Bennett described Stern as “just one of my favorite people on earth,” attempting to reassure him:

“I would never breach your trust. As absolutely remarkable as it may seem, Aubrey and I have NEVER discussed moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City, nor have I discussed it with ANY other member of our ownership group. I have been passionately committed to our process in Seattle, and have worked my ass off.”

Uh-huh. Yet only four months earlier, during an April 17 email exchange, Sonics co-owner Tom Ward bluntly asked Bennett if there was “any way to move here for next season or are we doomed to have another lame-duck season in Seattle?”

Bennett’s reply: “I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can. Thanks for hanging with me boys, the game is getting started!”

Ward: “That’s the spirit!! I am willing to help any way I can to watch ball here (in Oklahoma City) next year.”

McClendon: “Me too, thanks Clay!”

Those e-mails came during the one-year grace period supposedly earmarked for good-faith efforts to keep the team in Seattle.

Isn’t legal discovery fun? In fact, just two weeks after purchasing the team, Bennett’s co-owners made their intentions absolutely clear :

Corresponding after one partner had dropped out of the group, apparently after deciding a move to Oklahoma wasn’t certain, Ward told McClendon on Aug. 2, 2006, that Bennett was angered by the defection.

“I don’t think that you and I really want to own a team there either, but we are better partners,” Ward wrote.

Shocking, huh? Well, I assume it is to the grownups on the editorial boards at our two dailies, who repeatedly vouched for Bennett’s character and intentions throughout the entire sham arena process. On February 15, 2007, the PI naively insisted that “Clay Bennett deserves credit for sincerity in his efforts to work out a deal that keeps the team in the Seattle area,” while on May 2, 2007 the wise old folks at the Seattle Times went so far as to chide cynics like me for suggesting otherwise:

There have been whispers and shouts that SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett is only buying time until he can move the teams to his home state of Oklahoma. This is an unfair claim. Bennett has done nothing to suggest that moving the teams is a foregone conclusion.

“Nothing to suggest that Bennett is being insincere?” I responded at the time…

Um… how about seeking $400 million in taxpayer subsidies on a $500 million hoops palace, just weeks after 74-percent of voters rejected $200 million in subsidies on a $220 million Key Arena renovation? If that’s sincere, it’s sincerely stupid.

And it’s not like I’m puffing up my analysis with the benefit of hindsight. Our local media reliably reported Bennett’s pronouncements at face value, refusing to read between the lines while excoriating those of us who did. But I never believed Bennett ever intended to keep the team in Seattle, and the basis for my cynicism seemed obvious:

Even the most casual observer of Washington politics could have told Bennett that his $530 million hoop dream would be D.O.A., so I can’t help but view it as a disingenuous con game intended to fill Key Arena with gullible fans until the lease expires in 2010.

And…

I’ve never believed that Bennett ever seriously wanted to keep the Sonics in the Seattle area, but rather has always intended to move the team back home to Oklahoma City, where he will be welcomed as a conquering hero. In that admittedly cynical scenario the arena proposal must be just believable enough to keep gullible fans (and editors) in their seats until the Key Arena lease runs out in 2010, but outrageous enough to make the deal politically DOA.

And what if I was wrong, and state lawmakers actually caved to Bennett’s unreasonable demands and gave him his taxpayer funded hoops palace? Well, I always believed Bennett and his partners had that angle covered too:

See, if as expected, taxpayers (and the lawmakers representing them) rejected his extravagant proposal, he could claim he made his “good faith effort,” and then pick up and move the team to Oklahoma City, where he’ll be greeted as a local hero. But if we foolishly caved to his demands, well, he still might end up with an Oklahoma City team… just not the Sonics.

The Renton deal would dramatically increase the value of the team, allowing Bennett and his partners to sell out, taking a couple hundred million dollars in profit… money which could defray the cost of buying a smaller market team, like the Hornets, and moving it to Oklahoma City instead. In that scenario, Washington taxpayers would indirectly subsidize professional basketball in Oklahoma. Sweet.

Yeah, I know, it sounds a little too devious. But the fabulously wealthy generally don’t get that way by being artless and uncalculating.

Which brings us back to those emails, where Ward wrote to McClendon about just such an eventuality:

“I assume that I will be ready to sell there and work on a team here if they build a new arena, but we shall see.”

Bennett and his partners never intended to keep the Sonics in Seattle, and never negotiated in good faith; that not only should be obvious by now, it should have been obvious the day they purchased the team. As McClendon bragged to that Oklahoma City paper:

“We started to look around, and at that time the Sonics were going through some ownership challenges in Seattle,” McClendon told the newspaper. “So Clay, very artfully and skillfully, put himself in the middle of those discussions and to the great amazement and surprise to everyone in Seattle, some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we’ve been called, made off with the team.”

They certainly did. And in the process they played our local media for fools.

Over on Slog, Josh Feit reports that the Waterfront Trolley is dead.

[Deputy Mayor Tim] Cies told me tonight that the waterfront trolley idea “no longer fit into the city’s transportation plan.”

He also cited the fact that plans to revamp the viaduct had thrown the waterfront trolley plans into limbo. Also: too expensive.

“It’s not in our plans, and we’re moving ahead,” Ceis says, saying the new priorities were servicing the transportation grid around the viaduct and around light rail through Capitol Hill.

I dunno, just seems kinda silly that we  spent all this money laying down tracks for the SLUT, with City Hall talking ambitious plans to build a half dozen other trolley lines throughout the city, but we’re just not interested in using the tracks we already have.