HorsesAss.Org

With the possibility of snow this evening, I may not get out tomorrow to pollute the wooded areas of a small patch of Western Washington with poorly struck Titleists, but it also reminded me of a conversation I had with my wife earlier this month.

She mentioned that when she was in elementary school in South King County, she was taught the famous adage that March goes in like a Lion, out like a Lamb. I was taught that too in Elementary school (in Pennsylvania), but I was kind of surprised that it was an expression here too. After all, the weather doesn’t change all that much over the month of March here. So I just looked up some numbers.

If you look at the average temperatures between February and April in other American cities, the expression makes sense:

New York
February – [avg temp (F)=33.6, avg extreme weather days (< 32 F)=20] April - [avg temp (F)=52.5, avg extreme weather days (< 32 F)=1] Chicago
February – [avg temp (F)=25.4, avg extreme weather days (< 32 F)=25] April - [avg temp (F)=48.6, avg extreme weather days (< 32 F)=7] Atlanta
February – [avg temp (F)=44.8, avg extreme weather days (< 32 F)=11] April - [avg temp (F)=61.5, avg extreme weather days (< 32 F)=0]

The changes from February and April in all three places are only matched by the reverse changes in November. But here, the average weather changes between February and April are less pronounced than several other three month swings:

Seattle
February – [avg temp (F)=44.3, avg extreme weather days (< 32 F)=4] April - [avg temp (F)=50.4, avg extreme weather days (< 32 F)=0]

So, I guess my question here is for the Seattle (and Washington State) natives. Is that a common expression here?

• Thanks to everyone who donated during Goldy’s fund raiser for yours truly. I am very thankful. If you still feel like donating, click here.
• New media, old people. I wonder what the average age is over there at the ‘cut? I remember a forum on “News On The Web” which featured Crosscut’s Chuck Taylor. He was asked what his website was going to do to attract younger folks. His answer was , “I don’t think we have to.” Bless his pea-pickin’ heart.
• Ron Paul superfans to Sen. McCain: “You’ve got T-Rex Arms”
• If you haven’t already, meet Meghan McCain. Apparently, she’s “socially liberal and economically conservative.” My favorite?
  

  And what will the young McCain do at the end of Election 2008?

  According to GQ, “(McCain) insists she wants to properly commemorate the experience’ by getting another tattoo at the end of the campaign. (She already has a star outline on the top of her right foot, a souvenir of spring break in San Diego last year.) She and her friends are batting around ideas. The only proposal that’s gained any traction so far is to have McCain written in Old English on the small of her back.”

  As Vince Vaughn would say, it “might as well be a bullseye.”

• Ballard Denny’s? Landmark. Seattle’s longest continually running hotel? Not a landmark. Go figure. Thing is, the folks who own The Sorrento actually want it to have landmark status, while the owners of the shuttered Ballard Denny’s don’t.
• Cigar bars? Illegal, but maybe not for long.
• What do you do when your favorite band never leaves Austin? Watch their concerts on YouTube, that’s what. Besides blogs, YouTube is the best thing about the web.

What’s more:

• The hardest part about baking a cake? The frosting. Add too much water, and the frosting looks like- well, it looks bad. The cake part is so easy. The frosting part- not so much.

Also:

• If you emailed me at “will@horsesass.org” in the last several months, I just now got your email. Sorry. It was busted for a while, and Goldy just fixed it. I didn’t much mind since most of it was awful, awful spam, but some of it was really important, time-sensitive hate mail. Oh well.

The other day I posted a little fundraiser for Will, my most prolific co-blogger, and at last report Will says he’s raised $700 from fifteen contributers. Thank you all for your generosity. (Well… all fifteen of you.)

If you haven’t put a little change in Will’s cup yet, here’s another chance to show your appreciation for the kind of hard work that helps make HA the leading progressive blog in WA state… but not so progressive that we don’t occasionally enjoy poking fun at the anti-rail polar-bear-huggers at the Sierra Club.

Please click on the Donate button; any amount is appreciated. Thanks.

Seattle’s Winlar shares his mother’s advice (and you can sing along):

(There are some 60 other clips from the past week in politics posted at Hominid Views.)

Really. These guys are nuts. Totally fucking nuts. And any politician who curries their favor or seeks their endorsement should be asked to condemn them and return their dirty money.

Last month BIAW Stormwater Field Representative Mark Musser had the poor judgment to compare the state Department of Ecology to Nazi Germany, but if you thought he might follow up with an apology, think again, for in the latest issue of the BIAW’s newsletter Building Insight, Musser actually defends his comparison by offering readers a little history lesson: “Hitler’s Nazi party: They were eco extremists.” I kid you not.

Knowing my parallel would illicit screams of protest—how politically incorrect of me to mention Hitler and Nazis in the same breath as DOE or the environmental lobby—I explored the actual connection between environmental extremism and Hitler’s Nazi party.

You mean the modern environmental movement has its roots in Nazism? You know, the way the modern Northwest militia and Christian identity movements have their roots in the BIAW? Fill us in on the details, Mark.

The German Nazi party expressed many of the ecological refrains we hear today. Nazis were the vanguard of conservationism—they sought to remedy the increasing alienation of people from the natural world, deforestation, urban sprawl, the destruction of ecosystem balance, the extinction of species and the indiscriminate slaughter of animals.Hitler himself was a sometime vegetarian and an animal lover, and the Nazi government implemented some of the first laws protecting animal rights.

Hence, all vegetarians and animal lovers must be Nazis! (Well, maybe the folks at the Sierra Club.) Mark’s a logical guy.

The Nazis also blamed capitalism for destroying the European continent and believed environmental holism was the solution. They investigated sustainable forestry and institutionalized organic farming to advance experimental homeopathic cures and medicines.

I’m not sure if that stuff about sustainable forestry is true, or what the alleged connection is between organic farming and homeopathy, but I’m confused… is Musser trying to slander environmentalists or rehabilitate Hitler? (And, oh, by the way Mark, when he wasn’t weaving hemp or raising free-range chickens, I think Hitler also started a world war, firebombed London and exterminated six million Jews. I’m sure there’s a footnote in your history book about that stuff somewhere. Look it up.)

Nazi bioengineers were also very concerned about construction maintaining harmony with the natural landscape—the autobahn freeway in Germany was designed by Nazis with the utmost ecological care in mind and presented as a way to bring Germans closer to nature.

I hadn’t realized the autobahn was “bioengineered,” or that environmentalists were so into building freeways. Huh. I guess you learn something every day.

The Nazis also came up with far reaching land use restrictions and centralized environmental planning for the same purposes, and were very zealous about protecting wetlands and other ecological sensitive areas.

You know, just like Ron Sims. Ergo, Ron Sims must be a Nazi.

Thus green building and smart growth ideas are not something new.

Again, I’m not conceding anything to Musser on the facts, but is he implying that “smart” growth ideas are a bad thing?

Another familiar refrain—the Nazis complained the degradation of German soil was due to the landless, capitalistic, greedy Jews who pillaged and raped the European landscape for money and power. Today’s environmentalists still blame capitalism for the destruction of the natural world—greedy builders are routinely accused of pillaging and raping the landscape for money.

So, um, what you’re saying Mark, is that BIAW members today, under the regulatory regime of the Democrats in Olympia, have it as bad as my grandparents’ extended family did under the Nazi occupation in Poland and the Ukraine? Really? See, last time I checked, nobody was rounding up contractors into camps, starving them, gassing them, and shoving their bodies into ovens. But then, Europe’s Jewry didn’t have to contend with DOE’s stormwater regulations, so I guess they had it easy.

Of course, this Nazi environmental zealotry was insanely tied to German nationalism (racism), which relied heavily on the ideals of social Darwinism, a doctrine which some environmentalists have kept alive in spite of its evil reputation. When radical environmentalists oppose famine relief, medical aid and sanctuary for refugees because of overpopulation concerns, the whiff of Nazism is unmistakable.

Mark, are you sure you’re not getting environmentalists confused with your friends in the militia movement, you know, like all this local Minutemen with long ties to the BIAW?

Less vocally strident enviros are not quite sure what to do about overpopulation, aside from an insane obsession with anti-development, urban sprawl land use restrictions. Hitler, of course, had his own solution—wipe out the Slavs so the Germans could enjoy greater ecological health. Himmler had all kinds of grandiose ecological plans in mind for a depopulated Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Again, no mention of Hitler wiping out six million Jews. Must not be in Musser’s history book.

What environmentalists offer today, instead of the racist German National Socialism that defined the Nazi party, is an international environmental socialism, an amalgam of Nazism and communism—an international environmental socialism with a centralized planning scheme. But this amalgam is increasingly at odds with itself, causing a rift within the environmental lobby, with builders caught in the middle.

I was at a Washington Conservation Voters workshop this summer at Islandwood, and the tension between the neo-Nazi wing of the movement and the neo-Stalinists was palpable.

Case in point: Builders in Washington State are being squeezed by an environmental movement which extols ecofascism on the one hand (where the most important thing on the construction jobsite is not a house but “Earth First”), while on the other hand they are micromanaged to death by an ecological bureaucracy that would make any Soviet commissar green with envy. This communistic ecological micromanagement is perfectly exemplified in DOE’s breathtakingly detailed, 976-page stormwater manual and BMPs.

It’s not so much a stormwater “manual” as it is a manifesto.

So, much like Stalin and Hitler were divided on how to best go about their socialistic schemes, environmentalists are also divided over how to best go about their socialistic scheme of controlling human development—either by burning houses down with Molotov cocktails, or slowly squeezing the life out of it through extensive, Sovietesque micromanagement. Homebuilders are thus caught between militant ecofascism (radical environmentalists like ELF) and communistic bureaucracy (DOE).

Yup, that pretty much sums up the entire environmental movement: we’re all either ecofascist terrorists, or Stalinist butchers. Some of us are even both.

For the time being, it is the suffocating Soviet version which is winning this war, but the recent arsons claimed by ELF, and the mainstream environmentalists’ refusal to denounce them, demonstrate the other side’s “ecological blitzkrieg” approach could be gaining traction.

I checked; it’s the March issue of Building Insight, not an April Fool’s edition. But either way, over-the-top, fantastical hatemongering like this, coming from one of the most powerful political organizations in the state, is no laughing matter. Musser’s BIAW sanctioned paranoid rants are not only batshit crazy, they are downright offensive.

As a Jew whose entire extended family in Eastern Europe was exterminated by the Nazis, along with most of the rest of European Jewry, I take personal offense at efforts to diminish Hitler’s historically unparalleled war crimes in the service of rank political partisanship. How dare the BIAW trivialize the deaths of tens of millions by comparing the DOE to a psychotic war machine that tossed babies into mass graves in the name of racial purity and lebensraum?

And how dare our elected officials — in both parties — grant credibility to the insane, hateful and extremist rhetoric of the lunatic fringe at the BIAW by appearing at their functions and pocketing their money.

If our political and media establishment continue to ignore the BIAW’s violent rhetoric, then eventually it will be deemed an acceptable part of our political discourse. And eventually, some crazed nutcase will act on it.

Over the coming months I plan to roll out a series of updates to HA, including more content, more features, and better layout. Some of the changes will be rather trivial, and some quite dramatic (including the total redesign I’m currently elbow deep in coding.) And some might be only passing fancies, as I intend to experiment freely, modifying or even tossing “improvements” as I go along. It will be a work in progress.

The goal is to provide the HA community a better and more compelling user experience, and so I hope you not only tolerate the disruption, but work with me to help get it right. I’m willing to consider anything, no matter how radical, so if there’s something you’d like to see HA do better — or completely different — please consider this comment thread a suggestion box, and freely offer me your input over the coming months.

(Oh… and if a professional graphics designer wants to offer me some pro bono service, I could use the help.)

Ever wonder what kind of grizzled veteran of world affairs and international trade has the kind of credentials to win a $300 million Pentagon bid to supply ammunition to our troops overseas?

Well, you can check out his MySpace page.

The whole amazing story about how a tiny Miami company being run by a 22-year-old was being paid with our tax dollars to send boxes of ancient ammunition to our troops is right here (more at TPM here).

With 44 Democratic challengers now having signed on to the Responsible Plan for ending the war in Iraq, the national media is beginning to pay attention not only to the Plan, but to the “infectiously energetic” force behind it: Darcy Burner. From today’s Washington Post, page A3:

Rejecting their party leaders’ assertions that economic troubles have become the top issue on voters’ minds, leaders of the coalition of 38 House and four Senate candidates pledged to make immediate withdrawal from Iraq the centerpiece of their campaigns.

“The people inside the Beltway don’t seem to get how big an issue this is,” said Darcy Burner, a repeat candidate who narrowly lost to Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) in 2006.

From MSNBC:

One criticism of Democrats in past elections is that they have railed against President Bush on Iraq without having a plan of their own. But 38 Democratic House challengers along with four Senate contenders have decided to run on a common platform outlining a strategy of withdrawal from Iraq.

[…] The plan was introduced about a week and a half ago, after six months of preparation. The plan combines existing legislation in Congress, packaged by Darcy Burner, a candidate for Washington’s eighth congressional district, with assistance from national security experts and retired generals.

And from The Nation:

At the plan’s unveiling, Burner–articulate, impressive and infectiously energetic–refused to be pessimistic. Despite the White House’s indifference, despite the war’s diminished presence on the front page, the people want the war to end.

“We can do this,” she said.

This fall, Rep. Dave Reichert will attempt to run as a Beltway outsider, fighting the entrenched D.C. establishment, while characterizing Darcy as just another Nancy Pelosi clone, blindly adhering to the Democratic party line. Don’t you believe it. Darcy is obviously not your typical politician — that’s what so endears her to the netroots, and that’s what’s beginning to endear her to the national press.

This week, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank plans to introduce a bill to decriminalize the personal possession and use of marijuana. When announcing it on Real Time with Bill Maher, he jokingly referred to it as the “Make Room for the Serious Criminals” bill. Out here in Washington State, Edmonds resident and travel show host Rick Steves continues to fight for similar reforms. He has a column in the Seattle PI and, as always, he does a great job of explaining why we need to completely re-think our marijuana laws:

Some concerned U.S. parents are comforted by the illusion of control created by our complete prohibition of marijuana. But the policy seems to be backfiring: Their kids say it’s easier to buy marijuana than tobacco or alcohol. (You don’t get carded when you buy something illegally.) Meanwhile, Dutch parents say their approach not only protects their younger children, but also helps insulate teens over 18 from street pushers trying to get them hooked on more addictive (and profitable) hard drugs.

After a decade of regulating marijuana, Dutch anti-drug abuse professionals agree there has been no significant increase in pot smoking among young people, and that overall cannabis use has increased only slightly. European and U.S. government statistics show per-capita consumption of marijuana for most of Europe (including the Netherlands) is about half that of the U.S., despite the criminal consequences facing American pot smokers.

When it comes to marijuana, European leaders understand that a society must choose: Tolerate alternative lifestyles or build more prisons. They’ve made their choice. We’re still building more prisons.

To be fair, though, I should probably point out this news article from November to provide an example of the how dangerous this drug can be:

Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne fired back Thursday at criticism of his leadership and allegations of inappropriate behavior published in the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reported that Cayne was playing bridge and golf and was often out of touch from his embattled Wall Street firm this past summer while its hedge funds collapsed and helped to spark a credit crisis in global financial markets.

The Journal said that during what it described as 10 critical days of the crisis in July, Cayne was playing in a bridge tournament in Nashville, Tenn., without a cell phone or an email device.

Cayne shot back in a memo to Bear Stearns employees that he “stands by” his 14-year record at the firm and that allegations of “inappropriate conduct” are “absolutely untrue.”

The paper also reported that Cayne has sometimes smoked marijuana after bridge tournaments, citing attendees at the tournaments, although the paper did not say whether he did so in Nashville in July.

Cayne denied one specific alleged incident in 2004 that the paper asked about, but it reported that when it asked more generally whether he smoked pot during bridge tournaments or on other occasions, he said he would respond only “to a specific allegation.”

Remember kids, if you smoke pot, the stock holdings in the company you run might fall from $1 billion to less than $100 million. Stay away from that shit.

Presenting Recession: the Movie….

The folks at Crosscut got ahold of an in-house Seattle Times memo, and well, things aren’t looking so rosey these days over at Fairview Fanny. Print revenue is down 10.7% for January and February compared to the same two-month period last year. That’s worse than the 9% drop Times publisher Frank Blethen had been predicting, and considerably steeper than the 7% average decline for the newspaper industry last year. But the news only gets worse:

An even more ominous stat is the drop in the Times online revenue for January and February. That number was down 6.5% from the same period last year, according to Kelly’s memo.

The Times, like the rest of the newspaper industry, has been banking on the continued brisk growth of its online ad numbers to head off the well-documented drop in print advertising, as readers move to the Internet…

I’ve never been shy about airing my beefs with Blethen and his paper, but I’m not one of those bloggers who cheers the decline of the legacy media. I love the dailies, and typically browse at least a dozen a day. Indeed, I consider myself as much a media critic as a political commentator or reporter, which in itself should be understood as an act of love and respect. (You wouldn’t become a theater reviewer if you didn’t love the theater, or restaurant critic if you don’t appreciate dining.)

So let me offer a bit of free advice to Frank and the next generation of Blethens preparing to replace him: the medium is not the message. You can’t just move your content online, add a comment thread, and coast through the rest of the 21st century. If you want to thrive in this new medium pioneered by upstart bloggers like me, you need to do more than just update your technology. You need to update your content. You need to think a little more like a blogger.

Or maybe… you could just hire some of us. Really. You could benefit from a little blogger perspective (not to mention a more engaging writing style), and I could benefit from… well… a steady paycheck.

So Frank, gimme a call. Let’s work something out before I get a job offer from an industry that isn’t seeing its revenues decline ten percent year over year.

On March 17, when Darcy Burner stood at a podium in Washington D.C. and introduced the Responsible Plan to end the war in Iraq, it was hard to predict what might happen. It was an overly ambitious venture for a mere Congressional challenger to cajole a group of generals, national security experts and fellow candidates behind a unified legislative blueprint on such a divisive issue, and while the nine initial co-endorsers comprised an impressive lineup, that coalition was months in the making. Candidates are generally advised not to get too specific on the issues this early the campaign; you don’t want to give your opponent even the tiniest club with which to bash you. Would other challengers momentarily put conventional wisdom (and their precious “call time”) aside, and join Burner in sticking her neck out on such a bold endeavor? Or would the Plan, and Burner’s energetic efforts to promote it, more than likely fizzle?

Only ten days later, 43 Democratic challengers have already signed on to the Responsible Plan — with many more closely considering it — and the national media is beginning to take notice. Mother Jones, the Washington Post and NPR have all cited the plan, and The Nation will publish an editorial in their next issue. Beltway buzz has been building ahead of a media conference call scheduled today with Burner and several of the other endorsers, and the call is expected to be well attended by both local and national journalists. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a flurry of fresh coverage in the coming days, and with it, a flurry of new endorsements.

Some have started comparing the Responsible Plan to the GOP’s “Contract With America” back in 1994, but the differences are as striking as the similarities. Like the Contract, the Plan delivers to voters a clear and coherent message about what they can expect from the endorsers should they be elected, but while the Contract never reached beyond core principles, the Responsible Plan offers specific proposals and cites existing legislation. And while the heavily focus-grouped Contract was formulated by GOP uber-strategist Frank Luntz and imposed on the challengers from above by incoming Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Responsible Plan is the outcome of a genuinely grassroots efforts, outside the purview (and I’d wager, the wishes) of the DCCC.

Back in August of 2007, when Burner closed her Internet Town Hall on Iraq with a promise to work with Gen. Paul Eaton to develop a plan, her staff and advisers dared to hope that the announcement was just some clever political ploy; indeed they strongly advised her not to get distracted from a candidate’s primary task: raising the millions of dollars necessary to wage a viable campaign. Well… if they thought they’d dissuade her, they sure didn’t know our Darcy. Burner may be eager to seek out advice, but she’s not so quick to follow it blindly. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the three years I’ve known her, it’s that she’s not to be underestimated.
 

Support the original ten endorsers of the Responsible Plan:

Darcy Burner (WA-08)	$
Donna Edwards (MD-04)	$
Eric Massa (NY-29)	$
Tom Perriello (VA-05)	$
Chellie Pingree (ME-01)	$
Jared Polis (CO-02)	$
George Fearing (WA-04)	$
Larry Byrnes (FL-14)	$
Stephen A. Harrison (NY-13)	$
Sam Bennett (PA-15)	$

There’s a great piece in the New York Times laying out the many woes facing NRCC chair Tom Cole, including this particular gem illustrating the lack of enthusiasm amongst the Republican base:

Many conservative activists have become so dissatisfied with the party’s heresies, particularly on immigration and government spending, that as Cole’s staff took over, the committee’s fund-raising pleas were being ignored and, on at least one occasion, returned in an envelope stuffed with feces.

Because, of course, stuffing an envelope with shit is one of those “conservative values” we hear so much about. It is a fascinating (if lengthy) read, and I’ll probably come back to it in a later post, but I just wanted to highlight the following tidbit regarding a meeting Cole held with an unnamed Congressional challenger:

Cole began to talk through Republican figures who might be brought in to help raise cash. If McCain were the nominee, Cole and the candidate agreed, donors would turn out for a fund-raiser he headlined. Cole mentioned Bush, but everyone thought that would be a mistake. “I think this cycle he and the vice president are going to be doing a lot of fund-raisers in the South and the Plains,” he said, and everyone guffawed in agreement. Even for an audience of Republican donors, in politically contested parts of the country, the president provokes complicated feelings. On another occasion Cole said to me, “I love the president, but his appeal isn’t universal.”

Huh. It would be “a mistake” to bring the President of the United States in to raise money for a Republican candidate. I wonder where they got that idea?

Back in August, when a coalition of national and local bloggers set an ambitious $100,000 fundraising target to help Darcy Burner counter President Bush’s funder on behalf of Dave Reichert, I was very clear about our objective:

Sure it’s a lot of money, but money seems to be the only political currency Republicans understand. Reaching our target will not only send a strong message that we want our troops out of Iraq, it will also teach other Republicans that bringing in Bush isn’t worth the financial and political cost, thus neutralizing the GOP’s most effective fundraiser.

In fact, we raised $123,000 from over 3,400 donors… and President Bush virtually disappeared from the Congressional fundraising scene. Mission accomplished.

I know there are some in the netroots who worry about turning their blogs into online ATMs, but I’m not one of them. The money we raise, and our growing ability to focus national resources into local races, is absolutely crucial to extending our influence and challenging the longstanding political hegemony of corporate America. We may never be able to get money out of politics, but at least we’re beginning to even the playing field. And the powers that be are beginning to take notice.

Speaking of which, it’s the end of the quarter, so please show Darcy some love.

By now, HA’s regular readers must have an inkling of how much time, energy and passion goes into making this blog informative, relevant and entertaining, and to be honest, I couldn’t possibly have kept up the pace without the help of my co-bloggers. Will Kelley-Kamp has been especially helpful covering very local issues I don’t have the time or knowledge (or interest) to cover myself, along with his OCD-like focus on all things transportation. Well, now it’s time to help Will out a little in appreciation of all his hard work.

Last summer Will quit his day job to go back to college, and the part time work just isn’t enough to pay all his bills, so I’m launching a little fundraiser on his behalf. Will is an integral part of HA, not just through his frequent posts, but in taking some of the daily pressure off me, and so I urge you all to show your appreciation by clicking on the “Donate” button below and throwing a little cash his way via PayPal. (And some kind words in the comment thread would likely be appreciated as well.)

All donations go directly to Will, not me — I won’t even see them. But I personally thank you for your generosity as well.

The end of March is fast approaching, and as always, Darcy Burner is racing to meet her end-of-quarter fundraising target. I hate that these races are so much about money, but they are, and if we want real progressives like Darcy in the other Washington, willing and able to challenge the orthodoxy in both parties, then we all have to do our part.

37 other challengers have now followed Darcy’s lead and signed on to the Responsible Plan for ending the war in Iraq. Please show your support by going to the Responsible Challengers ActBlue page, and giving whatever you can. Thanks.