HorsesAss.Org

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

7PM: Is America’s health care system sick?
As a 44-year-old man with catastrophic insurance, I’d say yes. Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic joins me to talk about his new book “SICK: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price.” Cohn will be speaking and signing books this Thursday, May 17, 7:30PM at Seattle’s Town Hall.

8PM: Are you willing to pay for parks?
King County Councilman Larry Phillips joins me to talk about the upcoming Parks Levies and to take your calls on whatever other issues are on your mind.

9PM: Are there smarter ways to fight terrorism?
Congressman Adam Smith calls in at the top of the hour to talk about the Iraq War debate and discuss some of his ideas for smarter ways to fight terrorism.

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

Chuck Taylor’s snipe hunt notwithstanding, someone is actually being prosecuted for actual voter fraud.

The CBS News Investigative Unit has learned a man who was a field coordinator in Congressman Patrick McHenry’s (R-NC) 2004 campaign has been indicted for voter fraud in North Carolina.

The indictment charges that Michael Aaron Lay, 26, illegally cast his ballot in two 2004 Congressional primary run-offs in which McHenry was a candidate. The charges indicate that Lay voted in a district where it was not legal for him to vote.

At the time Lay was listed as a resident in a home owned by 32-year-old McHenry but campaign records indicate Lay’s paychecks were sent to an address in Tennessee. McHenry won the primary by only 86 votes. According to Gaston County, North Carolina District Attorney Locke Bell, Lay was indicted on Monday, May 7 by a local grand jury.

Uh oh.

The reason I mention Taylor’s story at the Crosscut was because regular reporters (you know, guys with fedoras with a card that says “press” on it) have low balled this US Attorney firings scandal ever since it came out. The story wouldn’t be around for Chuck Taylor to poo-poo if it were not for some liberal bloggers.

Religion is under attack in the US!

Religious organizations have long competed for federal contracts to provide social services, and they have tried to influence Congress on matters of moral and social policy — indeed, most major denominations have a presence in Washington to monitor such legislation. But an analysis of federal records shows that some religious organizations are also hiring professional lobbyists to pursue the narrowly tailored individual appropriations known as earmarks.

A New York Times analysis shows that the number of earmarks for religious organizations, while small compared with the overall number, have increased sharply in recent years. From 1989 to January 2007, Congress approved almost 900 earmarks for religious groups, totaling more than $318 million, with more than half of them granted in the Congressional session that included the 2004 presidential election. By contrast, the same analysis showed fewer than 60 earmarks for faith-based groups in the Congressional session that covered 1997 and 1998.

Onward Christian soldiers.

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

7PM: And I suppose that means The Stranger isn’t part of our media elite?
What does our local media elite’s chumminess with our local business elite have to do with a $100,000 no-bid contract issued by Safeco Field? The Stranger’s reclusive Josh Feit comes into the studio to explain all.

8PM: TBA

9PM: What’s up with Oregon?
TJ from Loaded Orygun joins me for our monthly rundown of what’s happening South of the border.

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

I’m filling in for Frank Shiers tonight, 9PM to 1AM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

9PM: Are the Republican presidential candidates a bunch flip-floppers?
Liberal pundit Cliff Schecter calls in to talk smack about flip-flopping Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, who hates abortion, but supports it nonetheless, and suddenly conservative Mitt Romney, (who by the way, is hot.)

10 PM: Do you have faith in FDA? (The Faith-based Dining Administration)
Ben Huh from Itchmo.com joins me for the hour to give us the latest on our nation’s pet food recall cum food safety scandal, and to talk about the what’s happening in the Puget Sound “pet parent” community.

11 PM: TBA

12 AM: TBA

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

Our friend Stefan over at (un)Sound Politics is back on his one trick pony again, attempting to fisk fired USA John McKay’s KUOW interview into a display of unabashed hypocrisy.

For his purposes, Stefan presents this quote about WA’s disputed 2004 gubernatorial election:

I personally made sure the FBI was assigned to this case and I won’t go into all the details and I don’t think it’s even appropriate today to do that, but I can tell you that we did a tremendous amount of work to examine all of the allegations. and we determined and in the end I made the decision, which I absolutely stand by, that there was not sufficient evidence to take anyone before the grand jury.

Against this statement about the US Attorney firing scandal:

Yes, of course there is. And people often make a mistake and they assume that circumstantial evidence is not powerful and good evidence. It is, under all of the rules … there are some very troubling pieces of evidence out there … telephone calls from members of Congress related to a specific public corruption case.

Stefan wants to know why “hundreds of illegally counted ballots are not evidence of election crimes, but that telephone calls are evidence of obstruction of justice?”

Hmm. Off the top of my head, I’m just guessing that maybe the difference here is that the evidence of corruption and obstruction surrounding the US Attorney firings have not been criminally investigated yet, whereas both the FBI and the US Attorney’s office thoroughly investigated the circumstantial evidence surrounding alleged voter fraud in WA state, and determined “that there was not sufficient evidence to take anyone before the grand jury.”

How many times does McKay have to say it? He investigated the evidence. The FBI investigated the evidence. And they did not find sufficient cause to empanel a grand jury.

I know it is hard for Stefan to accept, but a Republican King County Prosecutor, a Republican Secretary of State, a Republican US Attorney, and a Republican judge in a Republican county all failed to find sufficient evidence of fraud or corruption. Furthermore, a Republican state Attorney General has publicly stated that Gov. Gregoire won that election under the statutes in place… statutes Republican gubernatorial nominee Dino Rossi had voted for just a few years prior, while serving as a Republican legislator.

No doubt Stefan has evidence of something. Mistakes. Errors. Whatever. But I hope he understands if I choose to accept the determinations of professional judges, prosecutors and investigators over the conspiracy theories of an amateur dick like him.

At Wednesday’s Friends of Seattle get-together, I got the impression that our city council candidates aren’t big drinkers.

This may be a problem.

You see, Seattle city politics can be awfully dull. Everyone is for parks. Everyone supports the schools. If we had the money, we’d hire 5000 new cops. When it comes to transit, the question isn’t “why?”, it’s “where and how much.” There are lots of lopsided votes on the council. Lots of 9-0, or 8-1. Consensus matters, maybe too much. On most issues, the difference of opinions between the members can be a matter of degrees.

The interesting stuff is in the details, and if it takes a PBR tallboy to coax it out, so be it.

Venus Velasquez told me she wants young people to be able to buy houses in Seattle. My reply was, “House? I’ll never afford a house in the city.” She said “home” might be a better word to use. In the downtown area, the condos being built are mostly luxury units. The developer community is going to learn soon that you have to serve the whole market, not just the high-end folks. Venus and the other candidates ought to have (eventually, I know it’s early) specifics about how we’re going to accommodate young families in the city.

Venus is running to succeed Peter Steinbrueck on the council, and claims him as a supporter. While I don’t know a lot about the challengers, I do know some about the guy they’re looking to replace. Peter Steinbrueck stands for something. On the great issues facing the city, he’s not afraid to pick a side and fight. Venus told me about how she’s good at solving problems and bringing people together. Sure, that’s important, but sometimes you have to pick which side is going to be the winner. These campaigns for council should be about what decisions they’d make and why.

I’ve got a busy schedule over the next week, so here’s a peek at what’s coming up.

• Extra Radio:
  I’ll be filling in for Frank Shiers tomorrow (Friday, May 11) from 9PM to 1AM, in addition to my usual Saturday and Sunday shows, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO. Scheduled guests include:
  • Friday, 9PM: liberal pundit Cliff Schecter talks smack about flip-flopping Republicans.
  • Saturday, 7PM: What does our local media elite’s chumminess with our local business elite have to do with $100,000 no-bid contract issued by Safeco Field? The Stranger’s reclusive Josh Feit comes into the studio to explain all.
  • Saturday, 9PM: TJ from Loaded Orygun joins me for our monthly rundown of what’s happening South of the border.
  • Sunday, 7PM: Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic joins me to talk about his new book “SICK: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price.“
  • Sunday, 8PM: King County Councilman Larry Phillips joins me to talk about the upcoming Parks Levy and other issues, and to take your calls.

• Portland World Tour:
  I’ll be reluctantly absent from Drinking Liberally this Tuesday, May 15, as I head down to Portland to join David Sirota at the Digital Politics Forum, sponsored by the Oregon Bus Project, the Portland Mercury and my friends Carla and TJ at Loaded Orygun. 7PMish at ACME, 1305 SE 8th in Portland. Free admission, but feel free to buy me a drink afterwards.

• 48th District Dems:
  Are you an Eastside party activist wannabe who just can’t bring yourself to attend your local Legislative District meeting? Well you 48th LD‘ers can drop by Stevenson Elementary School (14220 NE 8th ST, Bellevue) at 7PM, Wednesday, May 16 to hear me give my usual spiel on how the key to politics is telling a better story, and how if Dems want to tell a better story they could learn a lesson or two from the progressive blogs.

Blogging can be a lonely, thankless avocation, but there are those little things that make it all worthwhile. An appreciative comment or email. The occasional donation. Getting banned by the Chinese government.

During the six weeks I’ve dogged the pet food recall story, I’ve often grown frustrated with my failure to raise a louder alarm that melamine-tainted Chinese imports may have widely contaminated the human food supply, but yesterday I learned that my hard work has not gone entirely unnoticed. Sometime late Tuesday or early Wednesday the Chinese government blocked Internet access to HorsesAss.org, apparently fearful of what its citizens might learn of their own unregulated food supply — like the fact that Chinese vegetable proteins and livestock feed are routinely adulterated with scrap melamine and scrap cyanuric acid, and that in addition to renal failure, chronic exposure may cause cancer and reproductive damage. You know, stuff like that.

My local political blog typically averages just a few thousand readers a day, so if China’s billion-plus citizens were routinely checking in over their morning congee, I think I’d notice. But regardless, China’s government isn’t taking any chances.

I first became aware of the ban via an email from a reader, who wrote:

Congratulations! You just got blocked by the Chinese government! I happen to live in China at the moment, and couldn’t click into the article and had to go through anonymouse.org

The thought was oddly flattering, but I figured it was probably just some temporary network glitch. Then later in the day, I saw a link come in from Peking Duck, an expat blog in Taipei:

For some marvelous commentary on this subject, including a scathing indictment of how the US FDA (mis)handled this mess, you have to go here. Oddly enough, the site seems to be banned here in China. Fancy that.

Hmm. I wonder if Yahoo has handed over all my email yet?

That Chinese authorities would bother blocking a Washington state political blog because I’ve covered their food safety scandal a little too closely, says something about the total disregard they have for the health and welfare of their own people. And perhaps it says something about their growing unease over the details of this scandal that have yet to come to light.

Either way, it reassures me that I’m on the right track.

Washington state Republican ignorati are falling all over themselves to see who can most thoroughly, um, fall all over themselves personally berating our friend Richard Pope for his inexcusable efforts to force his fellow Republicans to observe our state’s voter-approved public disclosure laws.

First Richard had to endure the epistolary pugilism of King County GOP standard bearer David Irons. And now Benton County GOP Chair Patrick McBurney goes in for the kill:

Dear Mr. Pope:

Congratulations on your dubious accomplishment. I would say more but you have already recieved [sic] a response from David Irons [sick], and I don’t need to comment further. However, I thought I would pass this link along where you can connect with like minded people www.kcdems.net.

Sincerely,

Patrick D. McBurney – Chair
Benton County Republican Party

Hmm. Like minded people? You mean, people who can spell? If McBurney’s cruel caricature of a King County Dem is someone who can remember “i” before “e” except after “c”, then, guilty as charged.

Or is McBurney merely implying that Richard’s uncompromising effort to keep his own party honest and accountable relegates him to the rank ranks of us public disclosure fetishists in the donkey party? Ouch.

And as long as I’m taking my red pencil to McBurney’s missive, I suppose it is only fair to go back and grade the writing skills of former Issaquah School Board President David Irons, particularly his eloquent closing paragraph:

I personally forgive you for your actions and the manor [sic] in which you have so aggressively attack [sic] good people. As for your hate, I sorry [sic] to say that is likely to continue to consume you for now until eternity.

You’ve heard of Ebonics? Well, apparently Irons speaks his own peculiar dialect of English, colloquially known as Ironics.

Of course, coming from an oral tradition, Irons’ native Sammamish ghetto patois doesn’t translate well into the written word. To truly convey the full meaning and eloquence of Irons’ prose you have to imagine it being screamed in the face of a frightened female underling.

In the last several months I’ve talked to several people who are supporting Hillary Clinton for president primarily because she is a woman. Personally, I can’t overlook a candidate’s stand on the issues, but when female friends say they want to see a woman president in their lifetime, I don’t blame them.

But, why Hillary Clinton? I totally dig how she stirs up hate by the right-wing mental midgets who comment on this blog. That said, Clinton would be a continuation of her husband’s two terms in office. While I loved the 90’s, I think we need to move forward with some new blood. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is at least one Democratic woman out there who will one day be on the national stage.

I’m talking about Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who is sticking it to President Bush:

For months, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and other governors have warned that their state National Guards are ill-prepared for the next local disaster, be it a tornado a flash flood or a terrorist’s threat, because of large deployments of their soldiers and equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then, last Friday night, a deadly tornado all but cleared the small town of Greensburg off the Kansas map. With 80 square blocks of the small farming town destroyed, Ms. Sebelius said her fears had come true: The emergency response was too slow, she said, and there was only one reason.

“As you travel around Greensburg, you’ll see that city and county trucks have been destroyed,” Ms. Sebelius, a Democrat, said Monday. “The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower.”

While the Governor and the White House have cooled the war of words, the issue still stands. When resources from states like Kansas are sent to the occupation in Iraq, our local authorities won’t have the ability to respond to disasters like they would if they were fully equipped. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but governors all over the country have been sounding the alarm for years now.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius could be on the ticket in 2008. With good reason. She’s ready for prime time. Of all the women in politics today, she’s the toughest. Kansas tough. And whether it’s an incompetent president in DC or a tornado, she proves she can deal with anything.

A few observations to chew on this sunny Wednesday morning:

• Once again the Seattle Times editorial board urges the Washington State Supreme Court to follow the will of the voters. I’m no lawyer (much to my mother’s chagrin,) but I always thought their oath was to follow the, you know, um… Constitution.

• See, this is why public education fails. How can we expect our children to succeed in life when they’re wasting time on frivilous things like music, instead of studying for the WASL?

• Manhattan District Attorney Fred Thompson won the straw poll at the WSRP’s 25th Annual Gala Dinner & Auction, leading Party Chair Luke Esser to pronounce that the other candidates (you know, the ones actually running) have their work cut out to match the support Thompson is receiving from “grassroots activists.”

  Hmm. More revealing than Thompson’s victory is Esser’s definition of “grassroots,” which apparently refers to the 29-percent who bothered to vote at a $100-a-plate Republican “Gala.” Perhaps the word he was searching for was “elite”…?

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Join us for some hoppy beer and hopped up debate.

Join us for some yummy, gluten-free beer.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

“FDA and USDA believe the likelihood of illness after eating such pork is extremely low.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We have no reason to believe that any of those are currently in the human food supply as a direct ingredient.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We have no reason to believe that anything other than the rice protein concentrate or the wheat gluten have been a problem in the United States recently.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“But overall, we believe the risk to be extremely low to humans.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

“We believe that the likelihood of illness from such exposure is extremely low.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“One of the reasons we believe that this is very low in humans is due to the dilution effect.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We believe the situation in the poultry is very much like that for the swine.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We do not believe that there is any significant threat of human illness from consuming poultry.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/1/2007

“We believe the likelihood of illness to humans, including infants, is extremely small.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

“We believe the likelihood of a human illness is very remote.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

“We have no reason to believe those animals are any risk to the public.”
— USDA/FDA, 5/3/2007

—

“There’s no tolerance for any of these compounds, either melamine or cyanuric acid. […] We just don’t know when we get these mixtures together. So there is no, really no acceptable level.”
— USDA/FDA, 4/26/2007

I’m not a very spiritual person, but I’m having a crisis of faith.

Twice a week I sit in on the FDA’s media teleconference regarding our growing food safety crisis, and twice a week I come away struck by the difference between what officials believe and what they actually know. As a born agnostic and a fan of science, I can fully appreciate the FDA’s reluctance to express absolute certainty. But as a devoted father and pet owner, I can’t help but find their reassurances less than reassuring.

First we were told that none of the adulterated wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate had made its way into the human food supply, and then we were informed that a mere 6,000 hogs had eaten feed contaminated by “salvaged” pet food. Next it was chickens. 3 million of them. Slaughtered, butchered and eaten by unsuspecting Americans.

Then 20 million more chickens, and today another 50,000 hogs… not to mention the God-knows-how-many fish in the US and Canada raised on farms now known to have received Canadian fish meal manufactured from contaminated Chinese flours.

Still… not to worry, we are told, because large manufacturers are “unlikely to have exposed their animals to large amounts of the tainted pet products.”

Uh-oh. Qualified statements like that set off alarm bells, and every bell this scandal has rung thus far has been answered a few days later with another revelation. The practice of selling salvaged pet food for livestock feed is more widespread than previously acknowledged, encompassing nearly the entire US pet food manufacturing industry. Given what we know of these practices, and the nature of the livestock and feed industries, it is reasonable to speculate that hundreds of millions of U.S.-grown hogs, chickens and fish have been contaminated, dating back to November or July of 2006, or perhaps even further.

But not to worry, we are told, for even that only represents a small percentage of the 9 billion chickens raised in the U.S. annually, a number the FDA bizarrely considers to be “a small part of [our] overall diet.” Affected hogs and chickens “appear to be healthy.” Even if the boneless breast in your freezer does contain melamine, it’s only a tiny amount. And besides, we are told, “we have no reason to believe” this poses a risk to human health.

Uh-huh.

I know I sometimes come off as a tad alarmist, but before you dismiss my skepticism lets first review what we know versus what we believe.

What we know:

• Tainted pet food has killed or sickened tens of thousands of cats and dogs, some dropping dead within a meal or two of first ingesting melamine and related compounds such as cyanuric acid.
• Autopsies have discovered “plasticized” cat kidneys, clogged with crystals comprised of equal parts melamine and cyanuric acid.
• Laboratory tests have have reproduced the formation of these crystals in a test tube by mixing melamine and cyanuric acid in the presence of urine.
• Tainted pet food containing melamine and cyanuric acid was “salvaged,” and sold as livestock feed, contaminating untold millions of hogs and chickens.
• About three million chickens and several hundred hogs are known to have been slaughtered, butchered and presumably eaten. At least another 20 million chickens are known to have consumed contaminated feed.

What we believe:

• Tainted meat poses little risk to human health.

I would love to join my friends in the legacy media in reporting that our food supply is safe. I love food. I eat it every day. But I’m having trouble taking that leap of faith, not simply because of what we know, but because of what we don’t know. For example, we have no idea if melamine/cyanuric acid crystals bio-accumulate in human kidneys over time, and we’re not even sure exactly how long or how widely these toxins have contaminated our food supply.

And… despite USDA/FDA’s recent assurance that contaminated meat is safe to eat, this “most extreme risk assessment scenario” was conducted without ever bothering to test melamine and cyanuric acid levels in the meat of contaminated hogs and chickens.

At least, that’s what they told me. FDA spokesperson Julie Zawisza explained that “identifying these compounds in high protein environments (eg, muscle/tissue) is not that simple” and that they “are still working on a valid test.”

Fair enough. So I asked Midwest Labs, a widely respected testing facility, if they could test “a pork chop or piece of chicken” as reliably as they could test, say, a can of dog food. Their response?

“We can certainly test a food item or a pet food item for melamine. Their is a bit of prep work involved in testing a food sample for melamine, but this is certainly not a problem. Testing muscle tissue will only give a different consistency to the prepped sample. Neither should be a problem.”

When USDA/FDA released contaminated animals from quarantine, and approved them for market, they did so without ever directly testing the meat, and with no restriction on the sale or consumption of organs such as liver or kidney, where the melamine/cyanuric acid crystals are known to accumulate… organ meat that millions of Americans do consume on a regular basis, sometimes knowingly.

USDA/FDA say they believe the melamine level in meat would be very low, but they haven’t bothered to test it. They say they believe melamine is nontoxic to humans, but then, a few months ago we believed it was nontoxic to dogs and cats too. They say they believe that there have been no human health problems due to eating tainted pork and chicken, but admit that the Centers for Disease Control has “limited ability to detect subtle problems due to melamine and melamine-related compounds.”

And while USDA/FDA have focused their efforts almost entirely on inspecting imports of vegetable protein concentrates, and on tracking contaminated product through the animal and human food supply, the import of processed foods, meat and farmed seafood products from China has continued unchecked and unabated, despite the obvious potential of contamination within China’s own, largely unregulated, agriculture and food industries.

According to recent studies, 81-percent of America’s seafood is imported, and about 40-percent of that is farmed. China is the world’s aquaculture leader, accounting for about 70-percent of global production. It is also a major U.S. supplier of farm-raised shrimp, catfish, tilapia, carp, clams, eel and other aquaculture products.

We now know that it is common practice in China to spike the nitrogen level of livestock feed by adulterating the product with both scrap melamine and scrap cyanuric acid. And it has also been widely reported that this contaminated feed is routinely used in China’s burgeoning aquaculture industry.

The chemical producers said it was common knowledge that for years cyanuric acid had been used in animal and fish feed. […] “Cyanuric acid scrap can be added to animal feed,” says Yu Luwei, general manager of Juancheng Ouya Chemical Company in Shandong Province. “I sell it to fish meal manufacturers and fish farmers. It can also be added to feed for other animals.”

Fish physiology can leave them particularly prone to bio-accumulating certain contaminants, and the nature of common aquaculture practices tends to exacerbate the problem. Farmed seafood raised on a steady diet of contaminated feed would surely retain some of the toxins in its flesh. But as far as we know, no imported, Chinese aquaculture products have yet been tested.

The fact is, due to greed, negligence and uncontrolled Chinese capitalism our food supply has been widely contaminated by melamine and related compounds, and USDA, FDA, CDC and other government agencies have no idea what the long term human health effects might be. Throughout this unfolding crisis, the regulatory agencies tasked with assuring the safety and purity of our food supply have consistently downplayed the risk to humans — a somewhat understandable attitude considering Chinese and American consumers have apparently been eating melamine-tainted food for months, if not years, with no known epidemiological impact. But given the harm to our pets, and the fact that kidney damage is cumulative and can remain asymptomatic until renal function is mostly lost, I wonder how many Americans would be willing to accept on blind faith USDA/FDA’s reassurances that products containing “low” levels of melamine are perfectly safe to feed to our children?

Personally, I find it hard to believe.