HorsesAss.Org

There are times when I’m not sure I inhabit the same planet as Eric Earling, let alone the same city:

Behold more evidence that MoveOn.org and the netroots community – including our own local friends in that following – have lost touch with political reality. Their attack against Giuliani in Iowa after his response to their Petraeus ad is a blessing of the first order for Team Rudy.

Giuliani is hitting back with an ad that drives home his feisty willingness to confront obnoxious liberalism that endears him to conservatives…even those otherwise skeptical of him.

Exactly who is out of touch with political reality here?

There were two high-profile media events about Iraq last week: The top U.S. commander testified before Congress and President Bush delivered a prime-time speech. What impact did they have?

Very little, according to two polls taken at the end of the week.

Before the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and the President’s speech, 26 percent of Americans polled by CBS News approved of President Bush’s handling of Iraq. After the speech, 25 percent approved.

Before the testimony and the speech, 41 percent of Americans believed the United States did the right thing to take military action in Iraq. After the speech, 39 percent said it was the right thing.

And also consider from a month ago:

In another poll taken August 6-8, 53 percent said they did not trust Petraeus to report “what’s really going on” in Iraq. The survey interviewed 1,029 adult Americans. The results from the Petraeus question had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

So let’s recap. A majority of Americans in early August did not trust General David Petraeus to report the truth from Iraq. General Petraeus comes back last week and does not report the truth from Iraq. Instead, he continues to maintain that the “surge” is working, even though a majority of Americans think that he’s wrong and the evidence doesn’t back him up. Even if you somehow manage to convince yourself that this isn’t some sort of betrayal by a military official who we expected to be truthful, a majority of Americans still think that Petraeus went in front of Congress and fed us a pile of bullshit. And Americans sure as hell care more about that than about an ad in a newspaper that riled up the right-wing PC police.

Giuliani may very well be able to use this as a way to make him look tough to the 29% of Americans who are still inhabiting the fairy tale world where Bush is a great president and victory in Iraq is just around the corner. But for the majority of Americans whose heads are not up their own asses, the political reality is quite different.

In Lou Guzzo’s latest LouBoob installment, Dino Rossi’s “idea” man decries organic farming: “It’s as much a national hoax as the fantasy over what has been called ‘global warming.'” Guzzo is apparently fond of ingesting petrochemicals. That explains everything.

You’re gonna be hearing a lot over the next few days about the new Elway Poll that just came out, focusing on this November’s $17.8 billion Roads & Transit measure (shorter Elway: it’s damn close,) and I’ll be adding my own spin to the cycle as soon as I’ve had time to digest the numbers. But I wanted to quickly comment on another survey Elway summarizes, almost as an afterthought: that showing that when it comes to making the Director of Elections an elected office, voters aren’t nearly as enthusiastic as most of us assumed.

According to Elway only 45% of respondents favored an elected director, with 26% opposed and 29% undecided. No doubt proponents would rather have those numbers than the other way around, but it is never a comfortable position to have your measure under 50% this close to an election. It’s a small sample with a relatively high 6.4% margin of error, but dollars to donuts these numbers are raising a few eyebrows.

While I firmly believe the proposed charter amendment is politically motivated bad policy, pure and simple, I never thought there was much of a chance of defeating it at the polls. I could write essays refuting the opponents’ arguments… but arguing the facts is rarely a winning strategy, and I’ve publicly despaired the rhetorical challenge of convincing voters that “more democracy” can be a bad thing.

But perhaps voters don’t need all that much convincing? What the Elway Poll tells us is that voters are sufficiently skeptical of the measure that an adequately funded and competently crafted “No” campaign would stand a good chance of defeating it at the polls. Of course, there is no “No” campaign, and I can’t think of an organization with both the financial resources and the financial stake to fight one.

But if there was, they could win.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here. And a heads up… the Southeast Seattle chapter meets tomorrow night (and the third Wednesday of every month,) 8PM at the Columbia City Alehouse. Come join me and my neighbors for a pint of Manny’s a few miles closer to its source.

No matter your politics, this is not good:

COLLEGE STATION, TX — Traffic congestion continues to worsen in American cities of all sizes, creating a $78 billion annual drain on the U.S. economy in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel—that’s 105 million weeks of vacation and 58 fully-loaded supertankers.

[…]

Worsening congestion, the study notes, is reflected in several ways:

* Trips take longer
* Congestion affects more of the day
* Congestion affects weekend travel and rural areas
* Congestion affects more personal trips and freight shipments
* Trip travel times increasingly are unreliable

Researchers spent two years revising the methodology using additional sources of traffic information, providing more—and higher quality—data on which to base the current study.

The report identifies multiple solutions to the congestion problem that, researchers say, must be used together to be effective. These include:

* Get as much service as possible from existing infrastructure
* Add road and transit system capacity in critical corridors
* Relieve chokepoints
* Change usage patterns
* Provide choices
* Diversify the development patterns
* Keep expectations realistic

“Congestion is a far more complex problem than is apparent at first glance,” Lomax said. “The better the data we use to define the problem, the more successful we will be in addressing its root causes.”

Roads and Transit, baby.

What he said:

There’s been a marked recent increase in the number of people asking me to write about their organization, campaign, or client. Whether it’s a non-profit with some new-fangled incredibly-esoteric project, a politician promoting their latest highly-interesting-to-them but-kind-of-boring-to-you policy proposal, or a public relations firm being paid big bucks to push the lame ideas of yet another client, the volume of “give me free publicity” requests has skyrocketed of late.

Interestingly, at the same time, the number of ads these same groups are running on blogs has plummeted.

Now, you don’t have to pay to get me to write about your story. (And the corollary, even if you paid me I still wouldn’t write about a non-story.) You simply have to have a real story, and it has to be news. And by news, I mean that it has to be novel and interesting, and it has to matter. … [I]n essence, these non-profits, political campaigns and PR firms are not asking me to write about a big news story, which IS what we write about, they’re asking me to do them a favor by writing about something that might not interest my readers. And therein lies the problem. Why should I do them a favor when they’ve never lifted a finger to support my blog or the blogosphere at large?

[…] My point isn’t that the blogs should be bought, or can be bought. My point is that the blogs should be supported by the larger progressive community, and they’re not. Liberal non-profits, political operations, and companies interested in reaching either a progressive audience or an inside-the-beltway crowd wouldn’t think twice about spending $60,000 on a Washington Post ad, spending a good chunk of change on an ad in The Hill or Roll Call, or paying a PR firm a $20,000+ a month retainer to get their news on the blogs, among other venues (NOTE: the very best way to get me NOT to cover a story is to have a PR firm contact me). But the notion of spending $800 (or hopefully, several thousand dollars) on a blog ad gives them serious pause. Then they turn around and expect favors.

There’s an old trite saying: “Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?” Well, the milk just dried up.

There’s an election six weeks away, a ton of candidates and ballot measures vying for attention, and the usual progressive organizations with their usual agendas… not to mention progressive business owners who wouldn’t be hurt by supporting progressive media once in a while. And yet my BlogAds are surprisingly empty. Hmm.

Fed slashes interest rates half a percent. Man… I am such an idiot.

UPDATE:
Shorter Bonddad: “Fuck inflation.”

Once again the Seattle Times and the Seattle P-I feature the same story at the same time but from rather different angles… and I’m wondering if we’re beginning to see a pattern emerge here?

Both dailies feature transit news on their front page, the Times with a big photo of a Sound Transit light rail train in the soon to be reopened downtown tunnel, and the P-I with a photo of the new South Lake Union Trolley being lowered onto the tracks. The Times article is thorough, informative, and typically dry, while the P-I chose to go with a rather frothy piece (the text actually starts on B1) focused on the trolley’s amusing acronym, and a local coffee shop’s t-shirts inviting visitors to “Ride the SLUT.”

There’s nothing particularly political about either piece, so it’s not really worth another line by line close reading, but like yesterday’s divergent take on the governor’s race, there are noticeable stylistic differences as well. The Times mostly reports facts and quotes, whereas the P-I seems to be searching for the story behind the story. (I’m not saying they actually found the story behind the story today, just that they’re looking for it.) I’m generally not a big fan of our media’s gradual drift from news to features, but I’ve got to give the P-I some credit for embracing an edgier and more overtly opinionated approach to the news. They couldn’t quite print the word “SLUT” on the front page, but it made it to B1. And that’s a start.

Some good bullshit while the bullshitin’s good.

* Alan Greenspan wrote a book, and if it had been a few years ago or so, it would be very insightful. But since he forgot to speak out until Bush has been mired in the 30% range for over a year, and he had been out of office for sometime, it’s too late.

* And speaking of the 30% range, Glenn Reynolds is thrilled that Bush is all the way up to 33%, and hopes that the upcoming bombing of Iran will boost him even more.

* Any notion of attacking Iran is bullshit in and of itself, and it’ll be important that we call bullshit on the enablers of that horrible idea, even if they’re Democrats, and even if we agree with them on most other issues.

* Unfortunately, we know the kind of people who have the president’s ear. Sad pathetic people. People who get all hot and bothered to see the President of the United States act like an ass, especially when talking about Iraq.

* And the President certainly won’t acknowledge the maybe 1,000,000 dead in Iraq.

Locally,

* The Columbian comes out against paid family leave in the state. You see, they didn’t need no family planning in the dark ages, so we don’t need any now.

* Seriously, drinking water? What the fuck conservatives?

* And finally, it may have been mentioned on this blog once or twice before, but Jane Hague is a liar.

This is an open thread

Okay, I’ll try my best to maintain my journalistic “objectivity” so as not to offend any of my friends in the traditional media, but the contrast between today’s Seattle Times and Seattle P-I present one of those classic illustrations of how the local electorate benefits from having two major daily newspapers… and engaged bloggers prepared to critique them. Both papers feature articles covering the current state of the 2008 gubernatorial campaign, but if you didn’t know better, you’d think they were writing about two entirely different races.

The P-I pastes its four-column headline across the top of the fold, boldly declaring:

Rossi run for governor?
All signs point to yes

A photo of Dino Rossi accompanies the headline with a caption quoting a party insider as saying close advisors “feel 100 percent confident that he is in.” And Neil Modie’s lede is equally blunt:

He doesn’t admit it, but Dino Rossi seems to have made up his mind to run again for governor.

Even as the 2004 Republican nominee faces an investigation of whether he illegally used his public policy foundation as a front for a 2008 campaign, he reportedly is moving toward an announcement of his candidacy sooner than he has indicated. Some of his 2004 campaign operatives have been touting his 2008 prospects.

The story? Everybody who is anybody says Rossi is running for governor… except for the candidate himself, who continues to officially hide behind his so-called foundation. The race is on, and “officially,” probably sooner than later.

Ralph Thomas’ story in the Times, on the other hand, appears on B1 (I haven’t yet seen a print copy,) and presents an entirely different take on the governor’s race:

Gregoire gearing up for ’08

OLYMPIA — If money matters — and who in politics would suggest otherwise? — the state Republican Party has a problem.

Though the 2008 election is more than a year away, Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire already has raised nearly $2.7 million in campaign cash. The Republicans, meanwhile, still don’t have a candidate for governor.

The story? Gov. Gregoire is raising big money, but the Republicans… they don’t even have a candidate yet!

It’s not until more than halfway through the article that Thomas even mentions the status of Rossi’s efforts, and when he does, he initially allows Republicans to characterize it in their own words:

Like most Republicans, Esser is hoping former state Sen. Dino Rossi — who barely lost to Gregoire in the 2004 election — will soon announced a rematch. In their last race, Rossi matched Gregoire nearly dollar for dollar in fundraising.

Rossi has said he will decide by the end of the year whether to run.

486 words into the 600 word piece — well beyond the attention span of many readers — Thomas finally mentions that Rossi has not been “sitting idle,” but again allows him to characterize his own efforts:

For months, he has been traveling the state, giving speeches and raising money on behalf of the Forward Washington Foundation, a nonprofit group he formed last year.

Rossi says Forward Washington is simply an effort to engage the public in finding solutions to the state’s biggest problems.

It is only in the closing paragraphs that Thomas briefly presents what “Democrats contend”….

But Democrats contend it is a de facto “Rossi for Governor” campaign. They point out that, at his Forward Washington gatherings, Rossi uses many of the same pitches that he used in 2004.

In July, the state Democratic Party filed a complaint accusing Rossi of using the foundation to sidestep state campaign-disclosure laws. That complaint is being investigated by the state Public Disclosure Commission.

Compare that to Modie, who spends the bulk of his P-I article — and nearly 600 words of bullet points — laying out the evidence that Rossi is in fact running for governor, including a rather definitive quote from Tacoma News Tribune editorial page editor David Seago, who blogging after “an informal ed board” interview with Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, wrote: “McKenna said there’s no doubt Rossi’s going for it.”

Notice that like Thomas and Modie I have up until now attempted to avoid editorializing. As far as I know, neither Thomas nor Modie got a single fact wrong; likewise, I have made a sincere attempt to present an accurate and neutral close reading in an effort to understand how a typical reader’s perception of the governor’s race might be shaped, depending on which paper they read. I do not believe that my characterization of the two articles was any more consciously biased than the articles themselves.

That said, no doubt I prefer Modie’s take, and believe it presents a more accurate, nuanced and useful understanding of the current state of the governor’s race. It probably could have benefited from a paragraph or two on Gregoire’s fundraising lead, but “Incumbent raises buckets of cash” is not exactly a “Man bites dog” sorta headline… which I suppose explains why Thomas’ money-focused article ran on B1 instead of A1.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not intending to impugn Thomas’ motives or his reporting skills, and the Democrats’ impressive statewide money lead is certainly newsworthy; these are two different articles focusing on two different aspects of the same race. But the fact that the Times and the P-I, on the very same day, would so dramatically diverge on the status of Rossi’s candidacy, gives lie to the traditional paradigm that proclaims objectivity as even a possible, let alone worthy journalistic pursuit. Modie’s lede claims Rossi has “made up his mind to run again for governor,” whereas Thomas’ lede says Republicans “still don’t have a candidate.” Both are technically correct, but I’d wager political insiders from both parties would privately acknowledge that Modie’s take is the more accurate characterization of Rossi’s intentions.

Think about it. Rossi will certainly generate obligatory headlines when he finally and officially announces his candidacy, and I suppose the event will be at least as newsworthy as the first half-dozen or so of Mike McGavick’s many campaign kickoffs. But should Rossi shock the political and media establishment by announcing that he will not seek the governor’s mansion, well, that would be a huge story. Modie’s lede acknowledges this on the ground reality. Thomas’ lede does not.

Two newspapers, one governor’s race, two very different takes on Dino Rossi’s intentions. Objectivity just isn’t all its cracked up to be.

Dave Neiwert has a great guest column in today’s Seattle P-I, and while he’s writing about bicyclists, the same holds true for pedestrian and transit commuters as well:

Trier, like a lot of misinformed folks, seems to believe the only road taxes we pay are motor vehicle licensing fees and fuel taxes. But the truth is that those fees largely pay for state and federal highways, and even then only a portion of them. The rest of the costs of those roadways are borne by all taxpayers generally, including bicyclists, through local, property and sales taxes. Local roads, where you find most cyclists, are another story altogether.

Indeed, most bicyclists in fact also own cars, so they’re also paying the licensing fees and gas taxes as well. But by using their bikes in place of cars, the wear and tear (and subsequent maintenance costs) they inflict is exponentially less than that caused by cars and trucks.

A 1995 study titled “Whose Roads?” by cycling advocate Todd Litman laid all this out in detail. The study estimated that automobile users pay an average of 2.3 cents per mile in user fees, including fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, while they actually impose 6.5 cents per mile in road service costs. Who pays the difference? It’s picked up by general taxes and property assessments. So while bicyclists pay an equal share of those taxes, they impose costs averaging only 0.2 cents per mile in road service costs.

The amount bicyclists overpay leaps out when you look at the costs of local roads, the roads cyclists use most. Litman found that only a third of the funds for their construction and maintenance comes from vehicle user charges; local property, income and sales taxes pay the rest. Automobile user fees contribute only about 1 cent per mile toward the costs of local roads but simultaneously impose costs more than six times that amount.

This is the type of clarity that makes Dave one of my favorite local writers, and it highlights an argument that should be raised in the midst of the debate over the controversial Roads & Transit measure on the November ballot. The anti-rail folk often argue that they shouldn’t have to subsidize transit riders, when in fact it is transit riders who have long been subsidizing roads via the sales and property taxes that pay for the bulk of their maintenance. Likewise, relatively light drivers like me — I average less than 6,000 miles a year — get substantially less for our sales, property and MVET tax buck than a more typical 15,000 to 20,000 mile per year commuter.

The idea that automobile drivers pay as they go, while everybody else is a freeloader, is complete and utter bullshit that fails to evaluate our transportation system and tax structure as a whole. But I’ve never before been able to put it into words quite effectively as Dave.

Hey, unfortunately, it’s not This Week in Bullshit, but here’s your weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.

Well, speaking of Bullshit, Gen. David “Ass-Kissing Little Chickenshit” Petraeus spread it thick over Congress last week, touting “success” in Iraq (as did the Ass-Kissee-in-Chief in a nationally televised address) and dominating American media headlines. That’s too bad, because far more important stories were unfolding in Iraq itself, and they tended to directly and badly undermine Gen. AKLC Petraeus’s assertions.

The same day that Pres. Bush made his speech to that remaining fraction of the nation that cares what he thinks about Iraq, the tribal leader Bush had embraced only ten days previous in Anbar Province as an example of heroic leadership, uniting various Sunni tribes to try to rid the province of the widely despised Al-Qaeda and its foreign fighters, was assassinated. Thing is, the Americans are just as despised as Al-Qaeda, and so when Bush embraced the thuggish Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha as his kinda guy — Time Magazine described Abu Risha last week as having “a rather unsavory reputation as one of the shadiest figures in the Sunni community,” with a personal militia, a history of drug running, and a tribe notorious for highway banditry — he essentially signed Abu Risha’s death warrant. He was assassinated the day of Bush’s speech, somewhat undermining the claim that all Anbar is now happy and pro-American. While the White House blamed the murder on Al Qaeda in Iraq (of course), more likely it was a local hit, confirming the first rule of Middle East politics: the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

BBC/ABC/NHK polling last week showed just how unpopular the Americans are after the “success” of the escalation surge in Anbar. The results were grim enough in Iraq as a whole: 70 percent of Iraqis think security is worse in escalation surge areas now compared to before it began (and another 11 percent thought it unchanged, meaning over 80 percent of Iraqis believe the whole exercise has been a waste). A whopping 60 percent now think attacks on US troops are justified; 47 percent want the US to leave now, up from 35 percent before the escalation surge; and 35 percent believe American withdrawal would make further civil war more likely, compared to 46 percent who think it’d be less likely. Pretty damning stuff.

But in Anbar Province it was worse:

In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar expressed no confidence whatsoever in United States forces. Seventy-six percent said the United States should withdraw now — up from 49 percent when we polled there in March, and far above the national average.

Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq — 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.”

Every. Anbar. Respondent. So much for winning hearts and minds.

Another poll released last week was even starker. The British polling agency ORB, in surveying Iraqi families to find how many families had members who’ve died in the occupation and war, estimated that one in two families have lost at least one member, and that overall a staggering 1.2 million or more Iraqi civilians have killed so far. That number is roughly in line with the widely ridiculed 655,000 number published in an epidemiological study in Lancet last summer, and confirms not only that the civilian death toll has been far higher than official estimates, but that the violence has worsened sharply in the last year.

The escalation surge wasn’t popular in Baghdad, either: on Wednesday, residents of one of the few remaining areas where a Sunni and a Shiite neighborhood adjoin each other took to the streets to protest the U.S. military’s erection of a wall to segregate them from each other. The walls being built to “protect” residents from each other have been fiercely criticized by many residents themselves, who argue that they promote ethnic segregation, are as likely to keep attackers in as out, and separate family from family.

But perhaps the biggest Iraq story of the week got almost no media play here: the oil deal cut by the Kurdish provincial government with Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas. Why is this a big deal? First, it means local governments are starting to ignore the Green Zone government entirely and cut their own deals, which is a death knell for the oil “revenue-sharing” law that is perhaps the U.S. government’s biggest benchmark for political “success” in Iraq. It also suggests that Big Oil is now betting on the failure of the U.S. mission in Iraq and the subsequent partitioning of the country. And the deal itself (along with one the Kurds recently cut for natural gas) makes that partitioning more likely, as the Kurds and Shiites have plenty of their own oil resources and need neither the Sunnis nor each other, let alone the phantom al-Maliki “government.”

The last element undercutting Gen. AKLC’s testimony last week was the Pentagon report it was supposed to accompany. That was quietly released just before the weekend, and showed that even with the administration’s extremely generous definition of “progress,” only half of Congress’s 18 benchmarks showed progress, exactly one more than in an interim report in July. That area was in allowing former Ba’athists into the government, and the “progress” there was only in a tenuous deal between a handful of politicians that has yet to be implemented — and that is similar to numerous such deals that have collapsed in the past. Meanwhile, a separate State Department report, also quietly released in a Friday Afternoon News Dump, revealed that — surprise! — religious freedom in Iraq is down sharply in the last year.

Somehow, this all is being spun as “success,” and Bush is now promising a “withdrawal” to celebrate it — next Spring, six months past schedule, back to pre-escalationsurge troop levels because the US military can’t sustain its current deployment without either extending tours (again) or starting a draft. Which is to say Bush is keeping in as many troops as he can as long as he possibly can, and then seeking credit for giving our poor men and women in uniform (the ones that survive his vanity project for a few more months, anyway) a long-overdue rest.

Or maybe he’ll just send them to Iran. That propaganda campaign also continued apace last week, with the US claiming that a fatal mortar attack on U.S. military headquarters was carried out with an Iranian rocket. Even if you accept the curious logic that the Iranian government is responsible for every Iranian-made weapon Iraq — after all, the U.S. has utterly flooded Iraq for the last four years with weapons now on the black market, and you don’t see Washington bombing itself — the evidence to support the claim that the rocket was Iranian-made turned out to be less than compelling. Here’s Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner: “Can I hold up a piece of fragment today that has a specific marking on it that traces this back to Iranian making? At this moment I can’t do that.” THEN SHUT THE HELL UP.

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

7PM: Fire or Ice?
The once fabled Northwest Passage has been open for weeks as the Arctic icecap continues its retreat, and dozens of major American cities are threatened as and Greenland’s massive glaciers prepare to slide into the seas. Meanwhile new science suggests that global warming could shut down or slow thermohaline circulation, triggering a cataclysmic and sudden flip into a new ice age. And yet the ideological deniers continue to ridicule and disparage those of us who give credence to the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Mark Sumner, a contributing editor to Daily Kos under the screen name Devilstower, joins me for the hour to discuss past climate shifts, and disturbing new evidence that the Arctic is melting faster than computer models predicted.

8PM: Greenspan on Bush: “The President Sucks” Who’d a thunk?
In his long awaited memoir to be released tomorrow, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan praises President Clinton, criticizes President Bush, the Republicans and their irresponsible tax and spending policies, and makes the not-so-startling claim that “the Iraq war is largely about oil.” So now he tells us.

9PM: Is conservatism a brain disorder?
A controversial new study released this weeks shows that the brains of liberals and conservatives actually work differently, leaving liberals more flexible to responding to unexpected event… thus angering conservative pundits, who had difficulty responding to such an unexpected event. UCLA researcher Marco Iacoboni, one of the paper’s authors, joins me to explain the results.

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

Independent pollster Research 2000 conducted a recent poll of Connecticut voters:

For whom did you vote for in the 2006 race for U.S. Senate, Ned Lamont, the Democrat, Alan Schlesinger, the Republican, or Joe Lieberman, an Independent?

	Lieberman	Lamont	Schlesinger
All	49	42	9
Dem	34	62	4
Rep	67	10	23
Ind	53	41	6

If you could vote again for U.S. Senate, would you vote for Ned Lamont, the Democrat, Alan Schlesinger, the Republican, or Joe Lieberman, an Independent?

	Lieberman	Lamont	Schlesinger
All	40	48	10
Dem	25	72	3
Rep	69	7	24
Ind	38	49	9

The main takeaway from this survey is obvious. If the 2006 election were held today, Ned Lamont would be the U.S. Senator from Connecticut and Joe Lieberman would be getting ready for afternoons of chasing the neighborhood kids off his lawn. But beyond that, the survey also reveals the continuing disintegration of the frames that have defined (and misconstrued) the reality of our current political debates.

What’s interesting about this slow changing of opinions is that the biggest shifts come from independent and Democratic voters, but there’s almost no difference at all from Republicans. I think Democrats in Connecticut have clearly been disappointed at how Lieberman hasn’t just abandoned Democrats, but is still actively fighting against them. But for independents, there are likely other reasons for the shift. Independent voters tend to see themselves as moderates. They see themselves as being appalled by both extremes and parties and look for candidates with the courage to stand somewhere in the middle. But while there’s certainly extremism at both ends of our political spectrum, the extremism that drove the Iraq War has become the overriding divide in recent elections, and especially in the 2006 Connecticut Senate race. Being somewhere inbetween the two parties was no longer the most anti-extremist position.

As this divide has taken shape, Joe Lieberman occupied a fairly unique space, and his example is a good way to understand the shifting views of independents and moderates. He’s gone from being the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee to losing a Democratic Senate primary in the span of less than 6 years. But his overall view of the world hasn’t really changed that much. He’s always been a staunch authoritarian. But back before 9/11, his main targets weren’t Iran and Syria, they were video games and the music industry. As a college student during this time, it helped cultivate for me the image of left-wing extremism through political correctness.

The Bush Administration’s war in Iraq then completely shuffled the deck on what we consider to be left and right. The right-wing in this country pre-9/11 was defined more by their free market economic outlook, but following the attacks, it began to redefine itself through the war on terror. Joe Lieberman went from being an authoritarian left-wing nanny who threatened the bottom line of big business to seeing his authoritarian outlook fall perfectly in line with a party eager to drop bombs on the enemies of Israel. But while his political philosophies were always rooted in authoritarian extremism, his diversion from the Democratic Party was painted as “moderation” for being willing to stand up to the supposed “far-left”.

And thus the “moderate” Lieberman was seen by voters as being the centrist candidate – a bi-partisan independent who could relate to both Democrats and Republicans – and defeated Ned Lamont. But being a centrist does not make you a moderate. A moderate is just the opposite of an extremist. And a growing number of independents in Connecticut now realize, as Joe continues to cheer on this deeply unpopular war, and begging for another, that he’s no moderate at all. He’s the same crazy extremist he’s always been, and now his extremism is promoting an agenda much more dangerous than restrictions on video games. And in the new political climate we find ourselves in – defined greatly by how we view what’s happening in Iraq – the “left” is where all the moderates are, while the “right” is where all the extremists have ended up.

Locally, the Burner-Reichert 2006 Congressional race took on a lot of the same frames as the Senate race in Connecticut. Reichert was portrayed by many as a moderate and as having an independent streak. He appealed to independent voters in the district and won re-election. Burner, like Lamont, was a young and inexperienced candidate tied closely to the netroots community through their high-tech backgrounds, and was continually portrayed as an extremist, simply by adhering fairly closely to the Democratic Party platform. Yet Dave Reichert has now just returned from Iraq and is still enthusiastically supporting a war that has become deeply unpopular. He has never voted against the president, nor has he spoken out against any of the extremist tactics (secret prisons, warrantless spying, pre-emptive warfare) he’s employed for fighting terrorism. Darcy Burner has never taken any position even close to as extremist as what Dave Reichert now currently supports. Yet I’m sure we’ll continue to hear from the Republicans about how Burner is the more “extremist” candidate. As independent Connecticut voters have started to figure out that the labels of who was a moderate and who was an extremist in 2006 were reversed, it’s not hard to imagine that the independent voters in the 8th District of Washington are doing the same.

ABC News has a new report that displays architectural visualizations of major American cities before and after a 3 to 16 foot rise in sea levels. Here’s Seattle as it currently exists:

And here’s Seattle after a 3 meter rise in sea level:

Downtown Seattle itself is fortunate to be built mostly uphill, but we lose our entire waterfront, including the port and surrounding industrial areas that are so important to our economy. (I say if we build the Sonics a new arena, we put it somewhere in there.)

We can argue all we want about whether climate change is primarily caused by human activity (although the overwhelming scientific consensus is that is,) but even the most vehement, ideologically driven deniers are beginning to admit that our climate is warming. If indeed the climate continues to warm (as opposed to say, shutting off the oceans’ thermohaline circulation, suddenly plunging us into another ice age,) sea levels will rise, and our children and grandchildren will have to deal with consequences.

You’d just think, maybe, we all might want to start planning for this possible future, rather than sticking our heads in the sand, or accusing “alarmists” like me of being dirty commies.

FYI, King County has performed its own analysis of the impact of a sea level rise on the region, which I reported on way back in May of 2006. Take a look at the image showing the Duwamish flooding all the way to Southcenter, and explain to me why the best and most prudent approach to this threat is to simply ignore it.