HorsesAss.Org

It’s Election Day today, though you wouldn’t know it by reading the front page of the Seattle Times, which devotes its biggest chunk of column-inch real estate to telling us that 784 people are waiting for a copy of Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns” at the Seattle Public Library. (That the library has long waitlists for popular books, would only come as news to folks who don’t use it.)

Of course, library books are paid for with taxes, you know, those things the Times constantly rails against, but which voters here seem to constantly pass because they like things like library books… taxes that are more likely to pass in high turnout elections. Which may explain why the Times is so hush-hush about Election Day (shhh… don’t let the voters know,) whereas the P-I fills two-thirds of its front page with an article on controversial Prop 1. Hmm… trains, cars, bikes and buses… you mean all those commuters depend on public investment? Who knew?

Yup, even low-impacting biking requires building infrastructure, and both papers agree that Seattle’s new 10-year Bycycle Master Plan is front page news, calling for 118 miles of new bike lanes and 19 miles of trails.

David Hiller, advocacy director for the Cascade Bicycle Club, which worked with the city to develop the plan, said it isn’t perfect but deserves an “A.”

Not perfect, huh? Then I fully expect Hiller and his friends at the Sierra Club to dress up as polar bears and picket the council. In that spirit, I’ve decided to vehemently oppose the plan because despite its goal of tripling bicycling in Seattle by 2017, it won’t do anything to relieve congestion. Of course, nothing short of The Rapture™ would relieve congestion, and in Seattle, even then not so much.

And speaking of The Rapture™, the WA state Republican House Caucus is beginning to look like some pre-Tribulation prophesy come true, with yet another member leaving his stunned colleagues behind screaming “Jesus Christ!” Rep. Jim Dunn (R-Frat House Row) reportedly made an “explicit” and “inappropriate” remark to a young female staffer, prompting House minority leader Richard DeBolt to take the unusual step of asking Democratic speaker Frank Chopp to strip Dunn of all committee assignments and travel reimbursements. Wow. That must have been some remark. A pitcher of beer and a muckraking post against the political enemy of your choice to the first of the 30 or so witnesses to forward me a direct quote.

In other signs that the End Times are upon us, supposed fringe candidate Ron Paul raised a GOP record $4.3 million dollars in online contributions in one day, despite the fact that he is, you know, Ron Paul. Or, I suppose, because he is Ron Paul, and thus the only Republican presidential candidate running on an anti-war platform. The media and political establishment can try to dismiss this if they want, but this is historic. I’m not sure that Paul even knows what the Internet is, but his supporters sure do, and his burgeoning grassroots campaign is a sign of things to come. One of these days a not-batshit-crazy longshot will discover the magic formula, and turn national politics upside down.

But for the moment, I’d just settle for some really high voter turnout. It’s Election Day, so put down the Times, walk away from your computer… and VOTE!

Hey… it turns out not all “extreme right-wing” Republican state legislators are closeted homosexuals. Who knew?

State Rep. Jim Dunn will be stripped of his committee assignments and denied travel reimbursement after the 17th District lawmaker made what even Dunn acknowledged was an “inappropriate” remark to a woman at a legislative function in the Tri-Cities last month.

“We want to have zero tolerance for our members for inappropriate comments,” said House Republican leader Richard DeBolt. “We asked (Dunn) to go get sensitivity training. Until he does that, he won’t be serving on any committees.”

Dunn told Postman that he can’t remember exactly what he said to the “young lady”…

He was buying her a drink and said something like, in his words, “I’m buying you this so I can take you home, something like that.”

Yeah. Something like that. Though judging from Dunn’s photo, I’m guessing he’d have to buy an awful lot of drinks before he’d ever have a chance of a young lady coming home with him. Maybe a fifth of Everclear and roofie. And a paper sack over his head.

Dunn says he didn’t really mean it, which is of course what we all tell ourselves after we strike out, but that’s not really the point. Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-37), who was at the table, says the remark was far more explicit and inappropriate than Dunn recollects, and describes a Republican sitting next to her as “absolutely mortified.”

How explicit? Well, Dunn claims that DeBolt actually asked him to resign, potentially putting this rare, Republican, swing-district seat into Democratic hands. It beggars the imagination.

Nah… no it doesn’t. Post in the comment thread your guess of what Dunn actually said, and we’ll vote on the most creative suggestions in a later post.

Holy shit! Ron Paul is holding an online fundraiser today, and he’s already raised over $4 million!!! Really. No joke. 4 million bucks in one day. Infuckingcredible.

To put that in perspective, that’s almost twice what Mike Huckabee has raised all year, and closing in on John Kerry’s record $5.7 million nomination day haul. Not Rudy Guiliani. Not Mitt Romney. Not Fred Thompson. But Ron fucking Paul!

I’m not sure exactly what to make of this, but dollars to donuts the GOP establishment isn’t rejoicing. A) Ron Paul is an ultra-libertarian nutjob; B) Ron Paul is the only Republican presidential candidate running on an anti-war platform; and C) Ron Paul is an ultra-libertarian nutjob. That Paul is able to marshal this kind of grassroots support should send shivers up the spines of his fellow Republican hopefuls, not because he can win the nomination, but because it signals how out of touch the GOP leadership is with its own base, at least on the topic of the war in Iraq. It also makes one wonder if out of the ashes of the failed neocon experiment we might see a resurgent libertarian movement emerge? Hell, something’s gotta take its place.

Over $4 million in one day, from over 35,000 contributors — and for a “fringe” candidate. This isn’t just big, this is goddamn historic. And I just can’t see how it’s good news for Republicans in 2008.

* Finally, we’re winning the war in Iraq. I swear to God this month.

* It’s bullshit how little we spend on rail in this country.

* John Fund stepped away from beating his girlfriend long enough to pretend 8 of the 9/11 hijackers would have voted for Democrats.

* Before Hillary Clinton, nobody ever tried to get people to vote for them based on their gender. Just ask the NASCAR dads.

* General Petraeus’ spokesman is a liar.

* Vote on your favorite wingnut post of all time! Sadly, my favorite crazy post, that will be burned in my skull for ever, My Sharia is losing.

Locally:

* The Seattle Times’ Ed Board is shall we say, wrong-o on Prop-1.

* And speaking of the Times’ Ed Board. Yikes.

* Representative Curtis‘ story made the national blogs.

This is an open thread.

To the asshole who keeps calling my home phone and hanging up every 10 minutes or so, the ringer is off, and has been since yesterday afternoon, and anybody who really needs to get in touch with me knows my cell phone number. So you’re wasting your time.

Because if this guy doesn’t need 60 percent of the vote to get approved…

…then neither should Washington school levies.

If you want to get involved…

Sign up to phonebank here. If you want to do some rush-hour sign waving, contact the campaign here.

That’s the local news media for you; always looking for the pony… before, you know, shooting it in the head and leaving it to rot on the side of trail.

Don’t get me wrong — I love ponies — and I hope whoever capped those two ponies in North Bend are brought to justice for their cruel and inhumane act. But you’d think if the region’s news media was going to spend an entire weekend obsessing on yet another high profile case of animal cruelty, they might want to focus a little on the race for the office of the guy whose job it is to prosecute the evil doers, and report the obvious fact that Dan Satterberg and his Republican cohorts are cheating. I suppose if Bill Sherman was found shot through the head on the side of a trail, lying dead in a pile of Skip Rowley’s business cards, our objective media would want to wait until after the election to report all the facts.

Yeah sure, I know, that’s a pretty violent image, but I’m feeling pretty violent right now. Must have been all those Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons I watched as a kid:

Preschool boys who watch violent television become markedly more aggressive and anti-social as they grow older, according to a study by Seattle researchers in one of the largest examinations so far of such connections.

At the same time, girls appear impervious to the effects of television violence, a finding that has the researchers puzzled.

Hint to researchers: testosterone. Hint to media: you know what else causes violence? War. The media dutifully reports President Bush’s latest upbeat update on the war, at the same time 2007 is headed toward becoming the deadliest year yet in Iraq. How do we explain the constant contradiction between the news in the headlines and the facts on the ground? Um…

The Iraq war represents the end of the media as a major actor in war. … [I]n Iraq the number of journalists killed (now at least 138) means that this war is near private – the images and people who might make the horror of this war real don’t reach our screens. It’s no longer a war that is accessible to public scrutiny or to democratic engagement.

Perhaps if there were more images of dead ponies, Americans might finally take to the streets in opposition to the war.

And you know what else isn’t being made accessible to public scrutiny or democratic engagement? The fact that Skip Rowley, Bruce McCaw and Martin Selig illegally earmarked $100,000 in excess contributions to Dan Satterberg’s campaign. You’d think, maybe, a scandal like this coming in the final days of a high profile race might garner at least a little interest from working journalists. You’d think somebody might sit down and try to connect the dots instead of just taking Satterberg at his word that he is above politics. But apparently they’re all too busy focusing on King Tut’s mummified face, or the man who lost his penis in prison, or gee, I dunno… wild mustangs being offered for adoption.

That’s the local news media for you; always looking for the pony.

The “Commission,” in this case, is the Federal Communications Commission, and if this sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

Twice before — on March 7, 2003, and just last year, on November 30, 2006 — hundreds of area residents jammed auditoriums to testify overwhelmingly in opposition to a Republican-dominated FCC’s attempts to further weaken ownership limits on broadcast television and radio properties. In each case, the crowds testified only before the two Democratic commissioners; the three-person Republican majority was MIA. But those crowds were broadly representative of a national movement for media democracy that in only a few years stymied former FCC Chair Michael Powell’s deregulation bid, preserved net neutrality, and stopped a telecommunications lobby “reform bill” widely expected to pass the Republican Congress in 2006. In last year’s hearing, local testifiers against deregulation spanned an unlikely ideological range, from Reclaim the Media’s Jonathan Lawson to Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen, from KVI Radio host John Carlson to UW President Mark Emmert.

This time, FCC Chair Kevin Martin, architect of the latest (big) industry deregulation scheme, is bringing the whole Commission to town to “prove” to them that Seattle really doesn’t care all that much about this arcane stuff. Which is why, despite the entreaties of local Congresspeople (who wanted four weeks), he has given exactly five business days’ notice for this unprecedented local hearing. The hearing was announced late in the day Friday, November 2, timed for the least-read and -viewed news time of the week. The hearing itself will also be on a Friday night, from 4-11 PM November 9 at Town Hall, 8th & Seneca near downtown Seattle.

For the first two hearings, a significant number of people traveled from throughout the region, from California to Montana to Alaska, to make their opinions known to the FCC. The short notice and inconvenient time seem particularly designed to suppress regional testimony. Seattle area supporters of media democracy will need to stand in their stead. The FCC is hoping for a sedate dog and pony show that will ratify its ideological desire to give the public’s airwaves to the biggest companies and highest bidders (think Murdoch), regardless of content. They are looking to ram this through before opponents can get organized.

Our job is to be organized. And show up.

In a significant way, we already are organized. Much has changed since 2003, when the FCC first came to town. Nationally, the media democracy movement that barely existed five years ago is now a potent political force. Locally, newspaper lovers dodged a bullet when an ongoing court bid to dissolve the Times’ and P-I’s Joint Operating Agreement was going so badly for the Times (which initiated it) that the JOA was extended instead. But King County’s other daily paper, the King County Journal, was dissolved in the last year, and the 2006 purchase of the Seattle Weekly by the country’s largest “alternative” weekly chain led to the effective dismantling of its news department. Among the companies owning the 30 or so major local radio and television stations, only Fisher Broadcasting (KOMO TV/radio, KVI and Star 101.5 radio) is locally owned.

I have a personal stake in this, of course. I was a columnist and editorial board member at the Weekly for eight years, until its shift in editorial direction. Plus, a media company I started over 20 years ago is now owned by Clear Channel, which is also the nation’s largest owner of radio stations, with over 1,200. When Clear Channel started, the FCC allowed a maximum of 14 stations per company nationally.) Now Clear Channel, CBS, Entercom, and Sandusky own five radio stations each in the Seattle area alone.

Ultimately, though, my personal stake is the same as everyone else’s: I want to know about decisions being made that might affect my life, and I don’t trust Clear Channel or CBS or Belo or Entercom or any of the other companies controlling our TV and radio dials to tell me what I need to know. I don’t like the idea of media monopolies on information. The same is true of the music I listen to or the entertainment programs I watch. The number of people who access radio or TV programming through satellite or their computer is still minimal. And so the FCC’s proposed ruling — which would, for the first time, allow radio, TV, cable, and newspapers in the same cities to all be co-owned by one company — is a recipe for a media monopoly on local news, entertainment, and culture.

November 9 is our chance to tell the FCC what we think of the idea. If you care about a free flow of information in our democracy, please turn out, and let them know what you think. Whether they want to know or not.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Are Skip Rowley et al buying the KC Prosecutor?
Eastside developer Skip Rowley, Seattle developer Martin Selig and cellphone billionaire Bruce McCaw illegally launder $100,000 through the WSRP and into Dan Satterberg’s campaign… and the local media shrugs with indifference. Is this what Satterberg meant when he said he would keep his office out of politics and politics out of his office? Democratic candidate Bill Sherman joins me in studio. I expect him to speak bluntly.

8PM: Who is the father of the two-party system?
In his book American Creation, Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, historian Joseph Ellis wrote of the founding fathers: “they created political parties as institutionalized channels for ongoing debate, which eventually permitted dissent to be regarded not as a treasonable act, but as a legitimate voice in and endless argument.” The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner joins me by phone to discuss his book.

9PM: TBA
More liberal propaganda.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Over on Slog, Josh has cross-referenced Satterberg donors with those who have also recently contributed large, lump sum contributions to the WSRP. What did he find?

[P]eople who made big donations to Satterberg, the Republican candidate for KC Prosecutor, subsequently made large donations to a Washington State GOP account that has now downloaded about $125,000 to Satterberg.

Of the 18 donations to this GOP account, 13 donations were made by big Satterberg supporters. Or put another way: 78 percent of the money in the account, $139,500 out of $176,700, came from Satterberg supporters.

Was the GOP soliciting money from Satterberg donors, telling them the money would go directly to Satterberg—and then making good on that promise? That would be illegal: Parties cannot earmark donations for specific candidates. The GOP denies they earmarked the money. […] It certainly looks like Satterberg donors and the GOP are circumventing contribution rules…

Yes, it certainly does. Of the 18 donations to the WSRP “Non-exempt” committee, one donation for $200 was made in April of 2007; the other $176,500 was dumped in over the past few weeks.

17 wealthy contributors laundering $176,500 through the WSRP and into Satterberg’s account during the final days of the campaign is not politics as usual — it is a blatant and cynical effort to skirt our state’s campaign finance laws. By comparison, the Dems “non-exempt” committee has raised money from over 4,300 donors, mostly in contributions of $100 or less… and no large, lump sum, last minute contributions. The difference couldn’t be more stark.

Think about it: the WSRP committee had only $4,000 in the bank as recently as October 9. How could the $125,000 since spent on Satterberg have been raised for anything else? It defies belief to argue that Rowley, Selig and McCaw wrote checks totaling $100,000 for any other purpose. It just doesn’t pass the smell test!

What the fuck does it take for our dailies to connect the dots?

UPDATE:
Bill Sherman will be my guest tonight at 7PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO. Tune in to find out if he’s as angry as I am.

You know, everybody assured me at the outset of this race that Dan Satterberg was a decent guy, but I dunno, this sort of statement sure does strike me as beyond disingenuous:

“It is ironic that I’m getting help from the Republican Party even though they are well aware of my desire to make the office nonpartisan. I do expect they would rather have me running a nonpartisan office than Mr. Sherman running a partisan office.”

“Ironic” huh? Really? Did he say that with a straight face? What sort of fucking idiots does he take us for?

I hate people who think they’re smarter than me, unless they really are. (And then, I only just mildly resent them.)

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: D. Parvaz burns churches, plus the Stranger Hour
Seattle P-I editorial columnist D. Parvaz joins us at the top of the hour to tell us why she hates Christians, God and America, and to relate her experience through the looking glass of right-wing blogs, radio and TV. Then Josh and Erica join me from The Stranger for our recap of the week’s news, and a look ahead to Tuesday’s election.

8PM: Who knew?
Pakistan’s Musharraf declares a state of emergency, the Sonics declare they’re moving to Oklahoma City, and I declare that Dan Satterberg is just another law-breaking Republican politician. Who knew? And who cares? Apparently not the traditional media establishment. And if you think it’s bad now, just wait to see what happens if FCC chair Kevin Martin gets his way, and media ownership rules are further loosened.

9PM: TBA
More liberal propaganda.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

I don’t know what makes me angrier right now, the fact that Dan Satterberg is about to win this election on the back of $170,000 in illegal contributions, or that my friends in the media are allowing him to get away with it without repercussions.

As I predicted eight days ago, the Washington State Republican Party is flooding the prosecutor’s race with money over the final few days of the campaign, laundering huge, lump sum contributions from developers and other special interests, through the party, and back into Satterberg’s coffers. Make no mistake, these contributions were earmarked for Satterberg’s campaign, and Satterberg clearly knew the money was coming. First Satterberg goes $40,000 into debt buying TV time, and then magically, Thursday night, nearly $40,000 gets transfered into his campaign from the WSRP. Then after he books yet more TV time for the final few days of the campaign, the WSRP transfers another $81,000 into Satterberg’s account. That brings the total to over $155,000 from the state and county party in just the past couple weeks.

Where is this money coming from? $75,000 from Eastside developer Skip Rowley, $25,000 from Seattle developer Martin Selig, $25,000 from cell phone billionaire Bruce McCaw, plus a rogues gallery of GOP faithful including Mike McGavick, Reagan Dunn, and Nuprecon Construction’s John Hennessy… all making large contributions well in excess of the $700 limit for the general election, and all timed for the final few weeks of the campaign. This was clearly a deliberate attempt to skirt our state and local campaign finance limit and reporting statutes… and our TV, radio and print media just doesn’t seem to care!

Satterberg ran promising to keep his office out of politics and politics out of his office, and yet he has run the most shamelessly partisan political campaign for PAO in recent memory. He has made a mockery out of his non-partisanship pledge, and fools out of our region’s political reporters by coordinating large, illegal contributions through state and county party organizations, and timing the disclosure for the weekend before the election, when newsrooms are reduced to skeleton staffs, and two-thirds of the ballots have already been cast.

I doubt they left a paper trail, but I have no qualms in stating that Rowley, Selig and the others gave their money to the WSRP specifically for the purpose of funneling it into Satterberg’s campaign, and that Satterberg and his staff operated in coordination with the party and their contributors. Satterberg, the GOP and their contributors have perpetrated a fraud on the citizens of King County, and if they dispute this charge I challenge them to sue me for libel. Of course they won’t, because they couldn’t possibly prove their innocence in a court of law.

So congratulations to my friends in the traditional media: your vaunted “objectivity” and hunger for non-partisanship has once again allowed a savvy politician and his operatives to play you like a violin. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see this coming, and yet you willfully ignored it, because it just didn’t fit your frame. Satterberg’s strategy always relied on your negligence — or complicity — to put this fraud over on the voting public, and he obviously judged you right.

I just ordered myself a new MacBook, taking advantage of HA reader Adam’s Apple employee discount. It’s my first new laptop since I purchased my recently deceased iBook in October, 2001. Thanks Adam, I’m really looking forward to it.

But my semi-impoverishment is nothing compared to that of fellow HA blogger Will, who recently quit his day job to go back to college full time. Will frequently finds himself at the UW libraries doing research, and a laptop sure would make it easier for him to both complete his studies and blog here on HA. Just about anything, Mac or Win, with WiFi and a copy of Word, would do the trick.

So if you have an old laptop lying around that you no longer use, and you’d like to donate it to a worthy cause, just drop me or Will an email and we’ll work out the details. We really appreciate your generosity.