HorsesAss.Org

One of the things that’s always bothered me about Democrats in general and progressives in particular is our tendency to be, well… a bunch of pussies. While Republican tacticians routinely pay tribute to Machiavelli (which is a helluva lot easier than actually reading him,) my fellow Democrats often seem more inspired by The Little Prince. Politics is about seizing, maintaining and exercising power, and in a Democracy that means winning elections. Republicans seem to get this. Democrats… not so much.

Take for example the race to replace the late Norm Maleng as King County Prosecuting Attorney, where two smart, dedicated, qualified, and by all accounts decent men are running for office. Were this a primary, the decision might be tougher, but in a general election in a county with a two-to-one Democratic advantage, this race is a no-brainer: the guy with “D” next to his name on the ballot should win. And yet a fair number of Democrats have come out in support of Republican Dan Satterberg over Democrat Bill Sherman.

Pussies.

Yeah, sure… no doubt Dan is a nice guy and all that, and I can certainly understand the legal establishment’s instinctive urge to preserve the status quo. But this is about politics, and politics is about winning… and if Democrats ignore this basic tenet it will surely come back and bite us in the ass.

There is this myth that has been perpetuated by Satterberg supporters that the PAO is a magically nonpartisan office, but as Alex Fryer points out in yesterday’s Seattle Times, that is not always the case. The prosecutor controls a seat on the county’s three-member canvassing board, and as Maleng’s delegate on the board, Satterberg took some disturbingly partisan positions.

Satterberg’s tenure on the canvassing board highlights the intense political pressure on those who count the votes, and how almost every decision the board makes can be cast as partisan.

[…] During the initial vote counting, with Republican state Sen. Dino Rossi clinging to a 1,920-vote lead over Democrat Christine Gregoire, the King County Elections Division — on advice from the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office — ruled that it would not give the Democratic Party a list of voters whose provisional ballots had been rejected because of missing or mismatched signatures.

Democrats wanted to use the list to contact voters to try to resolve the questioned signatures and count the ballots.

The issue went to King County Superior Court, and a judge ordered the names released.

[…] A few weeks later, with Rossi’s margin hovering around 100 votes after a recount, the canvassing board made what many consider a pivotal decision.

Canvassing-board members Dwight Pelz, a Metropolitan King County Council member, and Election Director Dean Logan outvoted Satterberg to direct election workers to reconsider 573 absentee ballots that county officials said had been erroneously disqualified.

In fact it was the court order releasing the list of voters with missing or mismatched signatures that likely proved more decisive, as it enabled Democrats to canvass for updated signature cards, resulting in a far larger number of qualified voters having their ballots counted. But it was Satterberg’s vote to exclude the 573 566 “Phillips ballots” that Democrats should find most disturbing.

These were ballots that were legally cast, but for which signatures could not be found in KCRE’s computer system. Standard procedure called for these ballots to be put aside until the signature cards could be pulled for comparison, but instead these ballots were forgotten… tucked away in a couple of trays inside “the cage.” Forgotten that is, until King County Council President Larry Phillips discovered that his ballot had not been counted, and inquired as to why. That led KCRE to discover 735 misfiled ballots, of which 566 were eventually verified and counted.

Understand that these were ballots of known provenance, legally cast by registered voters, and safely secured in the cage throughout the entire process, and that the Washington State Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the canvassing board had the right to add these ballots to the count. And yet Satterberg voted to exclude these ballots and deny these 566 citizens their most basic democratic right.

When push came to shove, that was the kind of nonpartisan office we got from Norm Maleng. And that is the kind of nonpartisan tradition Satterberg promises to continue.

Had Republicans controlled the canvassing board in 2004, just enough legally cast ballots might have been suppressed to give Dino Rossi the governor’s mansion, and don’t believe for a moment that isn’t the primary motivation behind a GOP-backed ballot measure to make the elections director an elected office. How else to explain the bizarre February special election called for in the proposed charter amendment, perfectly designed to permit a Republican to squeak through a crowded field in a low-turnout, nominally nonpartisan race? And if they succeed in taking the PAO and the elections director, Republicans would seize a two-thirds majority on the canvassing board that oversees elections in a two-thirds Democratic district encompassing one-third of the state’s electorate.

The PAO is a partisan office that plays a major role in the administration of our elections, serving as both KCRE’s attorney, and controlling one of three seats on the canvassing board. This is a partisan political race, and Democrats need to wake up to what is at stake. This is not about whether Satterberg is a good lawyer or an experienced administrator or decent guy. It’s about whether or not he is a Republican.

And in this race, facing a qualified Democratic opponent, that should be all we need to know.

Hopefully Goldy will forgive me for two pot-related posts in the past 24-hours, but Paul Kiel has the latest silliness from the Duke Cunningham corruption scandal:

In a filing today, prosecutors allege that John Michael, who’s been indicted for laundering Cunningham’s bribes and lying to investigators, hid incriminating documents by keeping them with what prosecutors call “a stash of personal entertainment materials and paraphernalia.” You can read the filing here.

The prosecutors don’t identify exactly what those items are, but note that “Michael has expressed extreme embarrassment” over them and that “their nature objectively supports his perspective” (read: he has good reason to be embarrassed). They say that they’ll identify the materials at a court hearing if need be.

Prosecutors want to introduce evidence of Michael’s embarrassing “stash,” in order to prove that he knew the Cunningham documents were, in their own way, as embarrassing. That he kept documentation of Cunningham’s sketchy mortgage details in a place where he also stored “materials he did not want to anyone else to learn about” proves, they write, that he knew he was up to no good.

It’s important to remember that Duke Cunningham’s son went to jail for this:

Randall Todd Cunningham was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison yesterday for marijuana smuggling, after his father, the Republican congressman from Escondido, made a tearful plea for leniency.

The term was half the mandated five years and was supported by the prosecutor. In imposing sentence, Judge Reginald C. Lindsay noted that the 29-year-old Cunningham had no prior convictions and had provided information that led to the arrests of higher-ups in the smuggling operation.

It was the first time Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham had come to the court in Massachusetts since his son and several others were charged with smuggling 400 pounds of marijuana from the San Diego area to Lawrence Airport on Jan. 17, 1997.

Of course, Duke Cunningham has always been a staunch drug warrior:

Crucial to winning the war on drugs are education and community campaigns. So on Thursday, my House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families will team up with Government Reform Oversight to send a strong message to Americans: Drugs kill. We will hear from health and community experts on what can be done to reverse the drug crisis. And we will also examine ways to marshal community leadership and resources to start local anti-drug coalitions.

Finally, I believe we must revive in word and deed the simple phrase, “Just Say No,” coined by Nancy Reagan in the 1980s. While cynical elites once joked about its effectiveness, I believe it played a significant role in reducing drug use.

That editorial appeared a few months before his son was arrested.

UPDATE: In comments, RonK doubts that the “stash” is drug-related. He could certainly be right, as “paraphernalia” could refer to items of an embarrassing sexual nature as well. I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough as the trial progresses.

Time to MoveOn edition.

* So, yeah, I’m about as pissed off as Brad. The country has gone nuts. Seriously, 22 Democrats, fuck the heck (and thank goodness our Senators weren’t among that group)? Of course, nobody seemed to be mad when Republicans you know, did much worse. But at least the liberal media will stand up to this nonsense. And just because we’re pissed off at some Democrats doesn’t mean that the righties and their pathetic excuses get a pass. Anyway, the best way for MoveOn to get into the good graces of the far right is probably to needlessly insult Muslims.

* And if you want to know who hates the troops, the real answer is the anti-sex right.

* And speaking of the anti-sex right, did you know they were anti-sex?

* So how did you spend your International Day of Peace?

* Ann Coulter needs a better fact checker. Or to stop lying, I guess.

* Comcastic

* According to those guardians of the free market, crazy assed Republicans, there’s no difference between price fixing and press releases.

Locally:

* Dave Reichert still isn’t independent or bi-partisan.

* The people who named the South Lake Union Trolley should have thought a bit harder.

* Dino Rossi’s idea man can’t figure out why some people might find the name of the Washington Redskins offensive.

This is an open thread.

Every 38 seconds in this country, someone is arrested for a marijuana offense. In 2006, 738,915 Americans were charged with marijuana possession only.

In past years, roughly 30 percent of those arrested were age 19 or younger.

“Present policies have done little if anything to decrease marijuana’s availability or dissuade youth from trying it,” St. Pierre said, noting young people in the U.S. now frequently report that they have easier access to pot than alcohol or tobacco.

If past trends are any indication, those arrested are likely to be disproportionately non-white, despite the fact that drug use rates are roughly equal when compared across racial lines. Considering that 8 million people have been arrested for marijuana offenses over the past decade, and nearly 100 million Americans have admitted to having used it, can anyone explain the point to all of this? Or is the only explanation that still makes sense that it gives police and prosecutors more to do?

I sometimes wonder if the Seattle Times editorial board actually reads their op-ed pieces before publishing them? Apparently not…

MoveOn.org’s ill-considered, outrageous New York Times newspaper ad calling Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, “General Betray Us” not only slimed a well-respected general, it distorted a very real and very serious debate about the course of the war. Instead of the U.S. Congress making progress on troop withdrawal, as some expected this month, the Senate wasted time debating and voting on a measure to condemn the ad.

Damn you MoveOn.org for forcing the Senate to waste time debating an ad!

No… really. That’s the logic that leads the Times to blame MoveOn.org for the Senate’s lack of progress on troop withdrawal — the same sort of sanctimoniously twisted thinking that once prompted Times editors to berate me for having “successfully placed the phrase ‘horse’s ass’ into dozens of family newspapers.” As if I held a fucking gun to their heads. Now, more than a week later, MoveOn’s evil geniuses have apparently forced the Times to waste its time as well.

The war is bad enough. Nobody needs MoveOn.org’s stupid advertising campaign.

Yeah, sure… George Bush’s trillion dollar war and its thousands of American and million-plus Iraqi dead… is… um… “bad.” But MoveOn’s ad… well that’s just inexcusable.

The Times asks why we cannot “disagree about policy without undertaking childish ad hominem attacks?” To which I thoughtfully reply: “Eat me,” for how else to respond to an editorial that equates a mere newspaper ad with a brutal war of aggression? Once again the Times confuses solemnity with seriousness, embracing a notion of civility more befitting a dying empire than a thriving democracy. It is this sort of myopically polite sensibility that permitted 19th and early 20th century British society to “civilize” the subjects of their far flung colonies by, you know… killing them, polite debate notwithstanding.

The Times’ pious call for civility is also an offensively one-sided misreading of recent history. No doubt the MoveOn.org ad is “outrageous,” and intentionally so, but it is far from “ill-considered.” In fact it deliberately adopts the same sort of rhetoric the Bush administration has so effectively used to bully Congress into authorizing and funding this ill-advised war. Every display of opposition to administration policy has been met with accusations of disloyalty, cowardice, stupidity, lack of patriotism, and even treason. But when MoveOn.org attempts to co-opt the White House’s frame, the Times finally finds this tactic beyond the pale.

As for Gen. Petraeus, it was President Bush who chose to make him a political human shield, and Petraeus who allowed himself to be expressly used for this purpose. In the heat of battle, verbal or otherwise, collateral damage is inevitable, and with so many lives at stake it would be ill-considered for the anti-war forces to hold their fire for fear of damaging a general’s honor, whatever his service to our nation.

There is nothing civil about the civil war we created in Iraq. The civility of the debate surrounding it should be judged accordingly.

UPDATE:
I just got around to reading today’s Seattle Times editorial page, and I just have to ask… what the fuck? I mean, really… what the fuck is this editorial about it, and why was it published in our state’s largest newspaper? Were they drunk or something?

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Looks like Dan Savage had the exact same reaction.

Case in point:

Washington has the MOST regressive tax structure in the entire United States mostly because of its high sales taxes. Now, politicians want to punish poor people even more with a dramatic hike in the sales tax to build climate changing highways.

Or this:

The simple fact is that highways as the basis of a transportation system are inherently unfair to working people, burdening them with the high costs of car ownership, maintenance, insurance, parking and gas prices.

Then why are they FOR this?

We think it’s time to look at congestion pricing. In the business world, we deal with supply and demand issues daily, and the market sends us pricing signals to lead us to the most efficient use of resources. In our transportation system, there is clearly more demand for highway lanes than there is supply at the current price — free.

The local Sierra Club is using an “populist, anti-tax” message to attack the Roads and Transit package while at the same time pushing a tolling scheme which will disproportionally affect working people — just for driving to work!

They are pushing for congestion pricing everywhere (“Lexus lanes”!) and have the gall to call freeways discriminatory and the sales tax regressive? Tolls and a higher gas tax (which they also support) are the most regressive forms of taxation out there. With transportation, you don’t have a choice about how much you pay. People have to get to work!

It’s disingenuous at best, and weaselly bullshit at worst. Then again, what can you expect from Kemper’s favorite environmental group?

Your weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.

First, a moment of silence for local historian Walt Crowley and Essential Bakery founder Jeff Fairhall. I knew them both — principled progressives who died much too young this past week.

In Iraq, dying prematurely happens hundreds of times daily. But the killing of up to 25 Iraqi civilians by private Blackwater contractors set off a firestorm last week in both Baghdad and Washington. It also, not incidentally, showed just how irrelevant the Iraqi government is. Prime Minister Maliki immediately condemned the killings, yanked Blackwater’s operating license, and ordered its personnel to leave the country — a move which was summarily ignored by the U.S., as without private contractors our heavily privatized military effort would grind to a halt. (And besides, U.S. contractors are immune to Iraqi law.) But Iraqis were so enraged by the murders that U.S. personnel were confined to the Green Zone for four days anyway.

Less covered, but more significant, was the withdrawal last week of Moktada al-Sadr’s parliamentary allies from Maliki’s ruling coalition — not only splitting the Shiites, but leaving Maliki with less than half of parliament in his camp. Who’s left? The Kurds and the Shiite exile parties (SCIRI and Dawa) with little constituency in Iraq itself. If Iraq had a, you know, functioning government that followed the law, this would end Maliki’s rule; if you want to get all technical and stuff, without a ruling majority, his leadership (sic) is now illegal. But this won’t happen, for two reasons: first, Parliament rarely has a quorum, and second, the opposition can’t agree on anything anyway. Iraq’s “government” is a joke.

Also on that theme, the target date for Iraqi control of security forces was quietly pushed back again last week, from November 2007 to July 2008. It’s the second delay this year, and security forces are under Iraqi control in only seven of the 18 provinces. (Generally, the least violent ones.) Most Iraqis, as well as Gen. James Jones’ recent commission, have been calling for Iraqis to assume full control immediately.

More bad news in the “Iraqi Life Is Cheap” Dept.: Word last week that northern Iraq’s cholera epidemic, which has now struck some 5,000 people, has spread to both Baghdad and Basra, with first cases confirmed in both cities. Cholera is a disease that happens only when there’s no safe drinking water and the public health infrastructure has broken down completely — conditions more than met throughout Occupied Iraq.

In the “But Life Is Cheaper In D.C.” Dept., Congress continued showing its priorities last week, spending ample time debating the appropriateness of a newspaper ad while Republicans blocked measures to address the war itself. In the Senate, the Reid-Feingold bill to cut off funding in June 2008 failed 28-70 (Patty Murray voted yes, Maria Cantwell, no). The Senate also rejected Sen. Jim Webb’s bill to give troops equal time at home, 56-44, short of the 60 votes needed to break the Republican filibuster. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that even drawing down to 55,000 troops in Iraq (a proposal on nobody’s table), George Bush’s perpetual war would cost $25 billion a year, or up to two trillion dollars overall. Those numbers actually seem low. And the ever-busy Rep. Henry Waxman has a new target in his oversight investigations: State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, who Waxman accuses of cover-ups in investigations of waste and fraud in private contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization representing Foreign Service diplomats has joined in, calling on Krongard to resign.

In the latest confirmation of just how bad the internal refugee crisis has become in Iraq, a Red Crescent report last week says that not only have two million people (one in 12 Iraqis) fled their homes in Iraq, but a staggering one million of those were in Baghdad alone. What does that mean? Ethnic cleansing. Baghdad was one of the most ethnically diverse provinces in Iraq; all those people have been leaving because death squads would no longer allow neighborhoods to be mixed. Sunnis have all but been driven out of Baghdad, part of the de facto partitioning of Iraq that has already happened, much of it while the escalation surge was supposed to be putting an end to the problem.

In the latest US attempt at provoking Iran, last week the US arrested an Iranian trade diplomat in northern Iraq and accused him of smuggling IEDs into the country. The Kurdish government, which was hosting the man, protested strongly, but to no avail. And in the week’s most surreal bit of Iran-bashing — I know this didn’t happen in Iraq, but it’s too good to pass up — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, set to be in New York this week for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, was refused permission by the U.S. to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center. (In the wake of 9-11, there was an outpouring of support from both the Iranian public and its government — a measure of how things have changed in six years.) Why? Well, the request angered U.S. diplomats, who accused the Iranian leader of — gasp — “wanting to use Ground Zero as a photo-op.”

Well, if that’s the criteria…

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

7PM: Has WA “utterly failed” to do the right thing on reproductive rights?
That’s the strong assertion of state Rep. Brendan Williams (D-Olympia) after joining a rally outside Ralph’s Thriftway, where supporters of the pharmacy’s refusal to stock “Plan B” birth control verbal attacked female protesters, calling them “whores,” and asking a pregnant protester why she didn’t “scrape that baby out of her uterus.” Rep. Williams joins us for the hour.

8PM: Is it time to do what “believe is right” on same sex marriage?
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican, and former Chief of Police, held an emotional press conference this week in which he reversed his opposition to same sex marriage, tearfully explaining that his daughter and several staffers are gay, and that he “couldn’t look any of them in the face and tell them their relationship, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife, Rana.” Is it time for America, even Republicans, to finally do what we “believe is right” on same sex marriage?

9PM: Remembering Walt Crowley
Michael Hood eulogizes populist pundit Walt Crowley over on BlatherWatch, and he joins us by phone to remember his close friend.

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

(Wanna help? Start here.)

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

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Josh
The Stranger’s Josh Feit joins me for our weekly round up of the week’s news, and a look ahead to coming headlines. Tonight’s topics include dead bikers, teen prostitutes, get-out-of-jail-free johns, and the education of Jane Hague.

8PM: Are you your (adult) child’s keeper?
Alan and Stephne Roos didn’t just loose their 24-year-old son Thomas to a drug dealing conviction, they lost their two cars as well, seized by police as a drug forfeiture. A three judge panel upheld the conviction this week, chastising the parents for not keeping a closer eye on their son. Their attorney, Peter Mazzone joins us at the top of the hour.

9PM: Regional blog roundup with Jim and TJ
TJ from Loaded Orygun and Jim from McCranium join us for our monthly regional blogger roundup. Windmills in WA, candidates tilting at windmills in OR, and other news of the day.

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

So I’m heading south on 1st Avenue through downtown, and I’m lapped by two pro-looking cyclists. I finally caught them at the next red light, hit the brakes and stopped. I said, “how do you guys do this?”

The bicycles messenger said, “this is the fun part!”

Me: “What, stopping?”

Messenger lady: “No, the—,” and she was gone already, into the evening traffic jam ahead. I think she was talking about cycling through stopped traffic, and how cool that is. It’s true, it is cool, but a little scary when I was trying to negotiate getting around a Metro bus that was all ass over tea kettle on 1st Avenue. From what I’ve gleaned, bus drivers hate cyclists, and cyclists can’t stand bus drivers.

Also, a big shout out to the nice guys at Elliott Bay Bicycles, who fixed my brake pad for me without charging me. Thanks, fellas.

I bought a CatEye light, which is working pretty well.

Also, I got a new saddle, which is the size of an Ikea love seat. I swear, this thing is huge and comfortable.

Last item: After riding a mountain bike around Seattle for a few months, I can see why a road bike might just be the shit. Oh well.

Walt Crowley, 1947-2007. More here.

Sorry for adding to the OJ noise surplus, but this video was too funny not to post:

Small-world side note: I once played a round of golf with Yale Galanter’s father’s golf clubs (although I’ve never met either one). And much like OJ, I was unsuccessful in locating the real killers.

At least that’s the message I’m hearing from light rail opponents with Sierra Club.

“I think it’s not the most efficient use of tax dollars,” local club Chairman Mike O’Brien said during a campaign debate over this fall’s multibillion-dollar Proposition 1.

He called the Tacoma line a “political decision” made to satisfy elected officials in Pierce County. “If transportation planners were in charge, they would come up with a more efficient solution,” he said.

Mike is right about one thing. It’s not as efficient to build light rail in the poor part of town. Or the racially diverse part of town.

This arguement reminds me of how white liberals form the north end are still miffed that blacks, Asians, hispanics in the south end are getting light rail before they will. Truth is, light rail could have skipped SE Seattle and headed north sooner to Mike’s neighborhood of Fremont, and the U-District, and to whiter, more affluent neighborhoods further north. But they didn’t. A decision was made to put light rail through a part of town they usually gets the shaft. Instead of ignoring the south end, we invested in it.

After the debate, O’Brien said South End trains would take too long to reach Seattle, because of the system’s slow surface segment currently under construction through South Seattle’s Rainier Valley. He suggests building separate lines outward from downtown Everett and Tacoma, serving local riders into those urban centers.

O’Brien (and Sierra Club) are ill served by their Seattle-centric view. Folks in Fife are just as likely to be taking the train to Tacoma, Federal Way, or Sea-Tac, as they are to Seattle. The city leaders of Fife are getting really excited about light rail, even if urban Seattle liberals aren’t. Besides, where was the Sierra Club on the issue of route alignment? What studies have they done? Where are their ridership statistics?

See, this is what “lying” looks like.

Last week Republican King County Councilmember Jane Hague blamed staff for repeated errors in which published questionnaires and profiles claimed a four-year college degree she had not earned. But even if Hague won’t admit the truth, the document above, uncovered in a front page story in today’s Seattle Times, pretty much speaks for itself. As the Times explains:

The Municipal League, which publishes annual candidate evaluations, sent a letter to Hague in 1993 asking her to proofread the biography she had submitted: “Please review this information for accuracy and sign your name at the bottom of this page to indicate that you have approved the information … ”

The document was amended in several places to indicate that Hague had lived in the area for 24 years, was an active volunteer, and was on unpaid leave from her job as King County’s elections manager while running for the County Council.

But no correction was made to the sentence that stated she had earned a bachelor’s degree.

Just look at Hague’s attention to detail in amending the document. Then look at the detail she left unchanged. Now reread what she told the Times last week about circumstances surrounding her failure to be awarded a degree:

“About 20 years ago,” when Hague contacted her alma mater in an attempt to document her credits and get a degree, she learned that credits from the law class hadn’t been transferred to Western Michigan and by then it was too late. She said she never tried to portray herself as a college graduate.

That’s right, she learned she never received her diploma “about 20 years ago.” That would be “about” 1987. And yet she portrayed herself as a college graduate in 1991. And in 1993. And in 1996, 1997, and again in 2000.

In the end, this is not about a little white lie from 15 years ago, it’s about a long pattern of prevarication and blaming others that continues today. It is about whether Hague deserves voters’ trust, regardless of who her opponent might be.