HorsesAss.Org

For Chapter One, click here.

Josh Feit, 8/15/07:

I’m not sure King County progressives owe that much to Gregoire (hello, elevated viaduct), but it’d sure be a fitting metaphor if Seattle sold out, compromised, and approved a package that includes $1.1 billion on I-405 expansion as a way to support her.

Josh Feit, 12/19/06

The surface/transit option involves investing in local transit, upgrading downtown arterials, investing in bike and pedestrian upgrades, and building a four-lane surface road to replace the viaduct and spark neighborhood and commercial development along the waterfront. (Total bill hovers around $2 billion.)

The Stranger’s News Editor, Josh Feit, is totally opposed to replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with another viaduct. Josh is almost entirely opposed to investing money in roads, in the Seattle area or elsewhere.

He’s in a pickle.

The Roads and Transit package headed to voters this fall funds the investments in Seattle-area arterials. These are the investments that make the Surface + Transit option possible.

From the Roads and Transit website:

Lander Street Improvements: Builds overpass above BNSF train tracks between 1st Avenue South and 4th Avenue South to increase traffic flow for trains, cars, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians; I-5/Spokane Street Viaduct: Increases capacity by widening viaduct structure, adding one lane between I-5 and 1st Avenue South, building transit-only lanes and an off-ramp at 4th Avenue South. Adds shoulders and installs a permanent median barrier. Improves safety, freight mobility and traffic flow on the major east/west connection between I-5 and SR 99, Port of Seattle and West Seattle

To make Surface + Transit happen, we have to invest in the arterials south of downtown Seattle. If we don’t invest in these roads, it’ll be pretty difficult to keep the folks in Olympia from shoving another viaduct down our throats.

On my way home today I got stuck in some heinous post-Mariners traffic. To make matters worse, the closure of lanes on I-5 had put more buses on city streets. On city streets near the stadium, it was a parking lot full of Metro buses, Sound Transit buses, and maybe even a few Community Transit buses. The roads were clogged.

As it turns out, northbound bus traffic was directed from 1st Avenue South, 4th Avenue South, and 6th Avenue South all on to 4th Ave South north of Royal Brougham Street. I got home about 45 minutes late. The buses’ interior reach about 80 degrees or higher, and the toddler on the seat across from me crapped his diaper. (Although you never can tell on a Metro bus exactly who has shit their pants, the toddler was my best bet. Sometimes it’s the driver.)

I don’t know a single car owner who would give up their automobile for the kind of experience I had today. Even in Seattle, a city known for doing good for goodness’ sake, most folks won’t ride transit if they have other options. Which is why I’m amazed that serious people actually think that adding buses, and not light rail, is the best route to take.

You mightn’t have noticed, but Goldy has been blogging from the road all this week. Tonight he called from the East Coast to report that his trusty old (ca. 2001) laptop finally bit the dust. It’s OS Nein (or OS #2) for Goldy until he returns.

A moment of silence for the character in the foreground of the photo, please.

What this means for you, loyal readers, is that your rants, raves, cease-and-desist orders, and complaints about the precious comments of yours that I’ve had the unmitigated effrontery to delete will all go unanswered by Goldy for a day or two.

It also means that if you have a great news tip, send it to Lee, Will, Geov, Carl or me until Goldy resurfaces.

Now…I offered to conduct a quick fund-raiser to help Goldy replace his mighty electronic pen. Goldy, demonstrating uncharacteristic modesty, declined my offer. (Still…he’ll need a lot of beer to mourn the loss of a trusty friend over the next few weeks, if you catch my drift….)

But here is an offer that someone just shouldn’t resist. Somewhere out there in the liberal Pacific Northwest there is a reader with a spare late-model, fully-functioning Mac that is mostly doing duty as an expensive night-light in the guest bedroom. If you are that reader, consider how much better it would be utilized fighting the good fight.

I mean, Just imagine the deep sense of pride you will feel each time Goldy posts (making use of your generous contribution) a ground-breaking piece that topples the incompetent head of a federal agency or leads to the defeat of a matricidal political candidate. And when you tune into the David Goldstein show on Saturday and Sunday nights, if you listen very closely, sometimes you will be able to hear the clickity-clack of your former laptop being broadcast into thousands of living rooms and cars….

Here is the offer part: if you do donate your Mac to Goldy and really need that night light, let me know and I’ll donate my spare to you. Really. Think about it.

Dick Cheney:

Dick Cheney is under fire for shooting birds. The Vice President has come under attack from an animal rights group for participating in a “canned hunt” in which he reportedly killed pheasants that were released for the purpose of being shot by hunters.

Now, Karl Rove:

The first thing Karl Rove plans to do when he leaves the White House at the end of this month is go dove hunting in West Texas, The Sleuth has learned.

“He loves to go hunting,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino says.

Uh, that’s hunting? Really? To me, hunting usually means the hunter doesn’t know where the prey is. Thus, he’s got to “hunt” it. You know? To me, hunting is not a Rubbermaid container full of quail released so some limp dick Republican can blow them away. That’s faggy douche bag hunting.

And to think, the NRA endorsed these assclowns.

Matthew Yglesias has a great post up about Rudy Giuliani and his truly alarming foreign policy strategy. Part of the modern illusion about the Republican Party is that it was a party of moral conservatives and free-market libertarians. But neither of those groups have had any real sway. The party has been run by people with very authoritarian views who only have passing commonality with the other two groups. Compared to the average church-going Republican in a place like Tennessee or Nebraska, Rudy Guiliani is extremely liberal. And compared to the average libertarian, Giuliani is a wannabe-dictator who has absolutely no love for the 2nd Amendment or any other civil liberty.

The success of Rudy Giuliani’s candidacy in the polls is revealing the long-hidden truth about what the “base” of the Republican Party really consists of – people who believe that the long-standing American values (moral strength and a focus on liberty) that made us the envy of the world are now a significant weakness as we deal with the rest of the world. The fakeness of the Republican Party’s moralizing and rhetoric about liberty has long been known to people paying close attention, but it’s now as obvious to the average observer as it could possibly be. And if Giuliani actually becomes the nominee, god help us if Americans can’t figure out how wrong he is when it comes to the role America needs to play in the world.

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for another fun-filled evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Tonight we’ll raise a toast to Republican family values—specifically, to even more Republicans realizing that they need to spend more time with their family.

Our Seattle hosts are Nick Beaudrot of Electoral Math and HorsesAss’ Lee (also at Blog Reload and EFFin’ Unsound).

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally. Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times for a chapter near you.

Jack McClellan is one twisted dude. He’s the sicko who posts photos of children on his website, where he chronicles the best public places to stake out little girls, or “LGs.” While McLellan emphatically claims he’s never inappropriately touched a child, his obsessive public fantasizing certainly pushes the limits of the First Amendment, and demands extraordinarily close scrutiny from law enforcement officials.

McClellan is under a restraining order prohibiting him from loitering within 30 feet of minors, and as a father of an LG, news of McClellan’s arrest yesterday outside a UCLA child development center elicited no empathy from me. Yet I couldn’t help but notice the curious way the AP wire story was reported.

As of 9AM PST this morning, a quick Google News search found over 200 published articles on McClellan’s arrest, and in nearly every single one the headline refers to him as a “pedophile” or “admitted pedophile” or “self-described pedophile” as in the Los Angeles Times headline, “Pedophile arrested outside UCLA child development building.”

That is, every single headline except that in the Seattle Times, which had its own unique take on McClellan’s dangerous perversion: “Controversial blogger is arrested near children.”

“Oh no, a controversial blogger?” I thought, reading the headline, “Which of my trusted colleagues turned out to be a disgusting pervert? Hmm… Postman is down in California for a few days, perhaps it’s him?” But no, it turned out to be not a blogger at all, but rather a “self-proclaimed pedophile.”

Over two hundred other papers saw this wire story and described the perp as a pedophile, but to the fearful headline writers at the Seattle Times, McClellan’s most disturbing biographical detail is that he blogs. How many readers clicked on this misleading headline, expecting the juicy details of a well-known blogger brought down by scandal? I sure did. And how many righties turned away disappointed to learn the “blogger” in question wasn’t an evil netroots leader like Markos or Atrios or even a lesser local blogger like me?

To primarily describe McClellan as a “controversial blogger” would be like introducing Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen as a “dog shooter.” In fact it’s worse, since blogging on its own is a neutral activity, whereas shooting your neighbor’s dog is both a heinous and criminal act.

That the Seattle Times would imply that McClellan’s infamy stems from his blogging rather than his pedophilia says something about the paper’s own fearful approach to new media competition. But it also provides a warning to which the blogging community should take heed: if the old media is willing to spin the arrest of pedophile into a headline about a fallen blogger, just imagine what they’ll do given the whiff of a real netroots scandal. No doubt there are some amongst the broader netroots community with skeletons in their closets or ethical and/or legal lapses in their future. As we gain readers and influence the media and political establishments will surely attempt to use their vast resources to defend their turf. And they won’t stop at misleading headlines.

Following up on my post from yesterday, SeattleJew set up a Cafe Press page with some designs showing Giuliani and his terrifying 1994 quote about freedom. I think the text is too small, but otherwise, I love the idea. If anyone else wants to try their hand at a design using that quote, send the Cafe Press link to me or post it in the comments. If it looks good, I’ll post it up here on the front page.

This is an open thread…

* I’m glad that there’s someone calling bullshit on the foreign policy establishment. A desire to attack anyone who didn’t attack us on 9/11 is acceptable, but the idea of getting the people who attacked us is beyond the pale. Odd those serious people.

* Seriously chicken hawks, don’t complain about being called chicken hawks unless you’re willing to get your head handed to you.

* And speaking of chicken hawks, Bill Kristol is impressed with what the U.S. Military is doing in Iraq.

* But at least Kristol isn’t wishing for another terror attack on U.S. soil. You know, for unity sake.

* And in any event, an interviewer’s questions totally proves that all liberals are looking for an Islamic version of creation science.

Locally, the crazies can’t compete with all that. But they’ll try.

* Dino Rossi’s idea man has decided that we should annex Mexico. Just make it a state. Oh and then force them to all speak English. That’s my favorite part of the plan.

* Some conservatives engaged in media criticism.

* Dave Reichert is still neither independent or bi-partisan.

This is an open thread

Dino Rossi’s idea man, Lou Guzzo, has already called for a gambling ban across the United States. But he’s far from done with his efforts to protect all of us from ourselves. He’s got another item in his list of things to banish from the globe:

Boxing

What?! You mean a group of Oklahoma City billionaires, desperate to bring a major league team to their home city, had no intention of keeping the Sonics in Seattle when they purchased the team? Who’d a thunk?

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma City energy tycoon says the group that purchased the Seattle SuperSonics hopes to move the NBA franchise to Oklahoma City, but he acknowledges the team could make more money in the Pacific Northwest.

“But we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here,” Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy, told The Journal Record for a story in Monday’s edition. “We know it’s a little more difficult financially here in Oklahoma City, but we think it’s great for the community and if we could break even, we’d be thrilled.”

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

That’s right, Clay Bennett — the guy the easy marks at the Seattle Times editorial board judged to be negotiating in good faith — “artfully and skillfully … made off with the team.” Hoity-toity editorialists comfort themselves by dismissing bloggers like me as unserious, but they do their readers a disservice when they infuse their coverage with the kind of naivete that comes from their solemn dedication to establishmentarian objectivity:

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

No, I guess it was never a foregone conclusion, but with Bennett and the other owners willing to lose money in Oklahoma City — in fact, preferring it over making a modest profit in Seattle — it would take a helluva sweet deal to keep the team in the region. You know, something like a free half-billion dollar arena from which they keep all the revenues. Bennett and his buddies never negotiated in good faith (hell, they never even negotiated,) they always intended to move the team to Oklahoma City, and they laughed at the naive, big city rubes who ever believed otherwise. You don’t get to be a billionaire by taking the first deal slapped on the table, yet that’s exactly what the Sonics asked WA state and local officials to do.

Unless the NBA intercedes for the good of the league, the Sonics are moving to Oklahoma City. All the talk thus far has been little more than a charade to keep hopeful fans in their seats until the Key Arena lease expires in 2010.

Some rich person is throwing a shindig in Gasworks Park, and everyone’s been abuzz over just who it is. Dan Savage decides to check it out:

SIK [Dan’s codename for his friend who worked the posh event. -Will]also told me that, just a few moments before I breached security, a Wallingford resident—one of the with-friends-like-these-who-needs-enemies “friends” of Gasworks Park—had treated him to a screaming fit. SIK told this “friend” of Gasworks that parks all over the city can be rented for weddings, and the “friend” of Gasworks insisted that his wasn’t the case, that it was theft, that it was a public park and what SIK and his crew were doing was illegal, blah blah BLAH.

Most of the park was open to the public, including a large lawn right next to the spot where the tents were set-up—the perfect spot to watch the fireworks display later that night.

I took my son’s dog for a walk after I got home from my party-crashin’ bike ride… and what do you know? There was a wedding in Volunteer Park the same night. Most of the lawn in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum was covered by a huge white tent. That lawn not only has the best views of the Space Needle and the reservoir, but it also happens to be my son’s dog’s favorite place to take a shit. I noticed that a couple of other dog walkers—park regulars, always fully clothed—nearby; apparently that lawn is a favorite for lots of neighborhood dogs. The best man was giving a speech about the lucky couple—when they met, when he first realized it was serious, how nervous the groom was the first time he met his future in-laws. The folks with dogs standing outside the tent joined in the applause at the end of the speech, and then strolled off to find other places for their dogs to crap.

No one screamed “theft!,” and no one threatened to sue. Everyone in the neighborhood seemed genuinely happy for the couple. The next day we got our park back, no harm done.

The “Friends of Gasworks Park” are ridiculous ninnies who need to take a Valium with their wine spritzer. Gasworks belongs to everyone, not just the neighbors, and like all Seattle parks, it’s for rent for special events. Always has, always will be.

I just got back from a weekend away in the hinterlands of Washington state. Specifically, at a family cabin on the Natches River. It’s a nice place to visit, even if it’s “red”, in a political sense. I also get the chance to see where my transportation dollars are going. With just about 18% of the state’s population, the east side gets 22% of the transportation dollars. I don’t mind, I just wish they’d stop complaining so much.

In the 14th legislative district, Curtis King is challenging Sen. Jim Clements. He’s attacking Clements for doing liberal things. You know, investing in health care, school funding reform. While Sen. Clements is no liberal, he’s maybe a little better than Curtis King in my eyes.

That said, if I were a Yakima area GOP activist, I’d be for Curtis King. He’s the real deal. Clements has the orchardists on his side, along with Dino Rossi’s endorsement. King is fighting an uphill battle against powerful special interests. The GOP isn’t going to get back in the majority by playing along with Senate Democrats. I say: fight on!

Speaking of what people were saying back in 1994, here’s a gem from Rudy Giuliani:

Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

If you weren’t clear about what the term Nanny State refers to, read that quote again. A Nanny State is what you get when you elect people who think like that. If Rudy were President, and Congress passed a bill that made cross-dressing illegal, I have trouble believing that Giuliani wouldn’t sign it.

On a completely unrelated topic, how much taxpayer money was wasted on this bullshit:

Several search-and-rescue groups collaborated today to rescue 10 sheriff’s deputies stranded in the Skamania County wilderness Saturday night.

Skamania County Sheriff’s deputies and Clark-Skamania Drug Task Force officers had removed more than 3,000 marijuana plants on the east side of Dog Mountain Saturday.

With some of them exhausted and dehydrated, the group decided to spend the night in the wilderness rather than hike out of the narrow gorge, said Skamania County Undersheriff Dave Cox. All but one of the 10 sheriff’s deputies had been rescued by early this afternoon.

This video is from a 1994 interview with Dick Cheney in which he gives reasons why the U.S. did not invade Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War:

(Via Crooks and Liars.)