HorsesAss.Org

UPDATE:
Of course, some veterans will never need to rely on the VA. Like the 44 American soldiers already killed in Iraq during the first three weeks of September. Bob Geiger lists them all.

The sun is shining, the Seahawks are demolishing the hated Giants… what better way to celebrate than to kick back with a cold beer and “The David Goldstein Show” tonight on Newsradio 710-KIRO, 7PM to 10PM?

7PM: Is it time we stop electing judges? The Seattle P-I thinks so, and I agree. We dodged a bullet Tuesday in the Alexander-Groen race when WA voters rejected a $2 million smear campaign against a sitting, centrist justice, but that’s just a hint at the kind of special interest and out of state money putting the independence of our courts at risk. Don’t believe me? Former WA Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn will join me to talk about the $1.5 million the US Chamber of Commerce spent to defeat her (read “The Secret Chamber“,) and the hundreds of millions they’ve spent to elect right-wing judges nationwide.

8PM: Tunnel, rebuild, or no-build? Now that the latest cost estimates have come in, it doesn’t look like we can replace both the Alaska Way Viaduct and the 520 floating bridge for much less than $9 billion, raising the question of whether we can afford to replace them at all. The Stranger’s transportation maven, Erica C. Barnett joins me to discuss our region’s transportation quandary. We’ll also be joined by an advocate of the controversial “surface street” option, which essentially replaces the Viaduct with, um… nothing.

9PM: Is torture an American value? President Bush and the Republican leadership seem to think so, and so far the American people have failed to rise up in protest. David Neiwert of the blog Orcinus says the President is leading our nation into a “moral abyss,” and he pins part of the blame on the “abysmal […] performance of the press.” David will join me in the studio to take your calls.

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

I was in the car yesterday listening to a radio report about how Saudi authorities believe that Osama bin Laden died a couple weeks ago from a severe bout of typhoid, when my 9-year-old daughter chimes in excitedly from the back seat: “Does this mean the war is over?!”

“No,” I had to disappoint her, though I was at a bit of a loss to adequately explain why.

Of course, the “war on terror,” or “The Long War” as some administration officials refer to it, was never really about bin Laden or al Qaeda, and in hindsight it seems clear that the Bush administration would have led us into this war even if 9/11 had never happened. Knowing what we know from the record, it is not paranoid to assume that President Bush was determined to invade Iraq one way or the other — the specter of bin Laden only made it a tad easier. And there is no doubt that it is our occupation of Iraq that now serves as the number one recruiting tool for anti-American, Islamic extremists.

Oh, I know that statements like that will attract the usual vitriolic attacks accusing liberals like me of being soft on terror, of being appeasers and self-blamers, of caring more about the terrorists than their innocent victims… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Assholes.

But facts are facts. We now know through official documents and interviews with administration officials that Bush was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq from the moment he assumed office, and days after the 9/11 attack he had to be talked off of Iraq and onto Afghanistan as the first battlefield in his war. And what has been intuitively obvious to all but the most partisan observers — that replacing Saddam Hussein with a foreign occupation and a bloody civil war is creating a generation or more of anti-American extremists — has now been confirmed by our own intelligence agencies.

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

[…]

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

Republicans use the war on terror to vilify Democrats, to accuse us of being weak on defense and homeland security… but even its own intelligence agencies now admit that the administration’s policies have made us less safe, not more. And yet the Bush administration and the Republican leadership in Congress hold steadfast to their failed policies.

When our state’s editorial boards consider their endorsements in the Senate and House races it would be irresponsible of them not to take into consideration the stark assessment of our nation’s intelligence agencies, and weigh heavily the fact that a vote for a Republican — any Republican — is a vote for policies that endanger all Americans. Only a change of leadership will change our nation’s course, and without a change of course it’s going to be a long war indeed.

I have an odd affection for Richard Pope.

Sure, his long and futile record as a perennial candidate and his obsessive posting in the comment threads here and on (un)Sound Politics have painted a picture of a man who is rather, well, unbalanced — a perception unrefuted by a 2005 court document in which Richard bluntly admits: “Frankly, counsel thinks his own mental health situation is terrible.”

I’m also a bit unsettled by Richard’s mean streak, especially his well worn habit of trolling through court records for dirt on public and private individuals, a dubious exercise that is almost acceptable behavior for partisan political bloggers, but totally unbefitting a supposedly impartial judicial candidate.

That said, unlike most of my righty trolls, Richard does sometimes make useful contributions to the occasionally lucid debate that somehow manages to survive the toxic wasteland of HA’s comment threads. And he’s also one of the few righties here who has the integrity and humility to back down when confronted by irrefutable facts. (Usually.)

Furthermore, as a divorced father myself, I have genuine empathy for Richard as he struggles to raise his daughter through what must be some very difficult and trying times.

But… what I absolutely don’t know about Richard, is whether he is in any way qualified to serve as a District Court judge.

An editorial in today’s Seattle P-I suggests “no”, citing his “poor” and “not qualified” ratings from groups such as the King County Bar Association, and his “unprofessional conduct,” some of which I have documented here. But Richard ably defends himself:

Yes, I have made some mistakes during the 15 years that I have practiced law. [M]ost lawyers have. On a few occasions, I have paid monetary sanctions to the other side to compensate them for the harm caused by mistakes. On other sanctions, opposing lawyers have paid monetary sanctions to me to compensate for the harm their mistakes have caused for my clients.

However, I have NEVER been disciplined by the Washington State Bar Association or the state Commission on Judicial Conduct. Very few lawyers or judges have ANY sort of disciplinary record at all, much less an extremely serious disciplinary record like Ottinger does.

The Seattle P-I points out that the “King County Bar Association” has rated myself as “Not Qualified” for this position. But the Seattle P-I completely fails to mention that Ottinger

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From yesterday’s Seattle Times:

Safeco plans to lay off or reassign at least 240 employees as part of a restructuring program meant to cut $75 million from the company’s annual expenses by the end of 2006.

Most of those employees will lose their jobs, spokesman Paul Hollie said. The nationwide cuts are across all departments and affect about 80 employees in the Puget Sound area, he said.

Hmm. Let’s see now. Safeco plans to lay off about 240 employees to save about $75 million annually. That’s a savings of about $312,500 per employee.

And yet, Safeco’s board renegotiated Mike?™ McGavick’s exit package — after he’d already announced his resignation — to give him a $28 million golden parachute.

How much is $28 million really worth to Safeco? Well apparently, that’s about equal to 90 jobs that otherwise wouldn’t have to be cut. Or to put it into starker perspective, the $2 million of McGavick’s “own money” that he’s already put into his campaign might have saved at least 6 Safeco employees their livelihood.

I’m just saying.

In his primary night victory speech, Mike?™ McGavick went on the attack.

With Social Security going broke already, I don’t think paying benefits to illegal workers makes sense. And yet Sen. Cantwell voted to keep that practice in place.

But as Josh Feit points out over on Slog, that’s just plain uncivil:

These are direct attacks on Cantwell’s opposition to an amendment that would have prevented former illegal immigrants (who had paid into the Social Security system) from getting those payments back when they become legal.

Social Security does not pay benefits to illegal residents; what McGavick wants to do is deny legal residents from drawing benefits based on what they paid into the system when they were illegal.

Hey… you know what’s illegal Mike? Driving with a 0.17 blood-alcohol level. Maybe we should deny Social Security benefits to you and your family?

The amendment in question failed 50-49 with 11 Republicans voting with 39 Democrats. So much for McGavick’s claims of bipartisanship.

I was going to ignore them, but it’s so hard to pass up such a golden opportunity to illustrate how my friends at (un)Sound Politics have frittered away any credibility they might have once held with local journalists. Um… it has something to do with lying.

First there was Stefan’s dig…

Goldstein’s other coup this week was to predicted [sic] that Doc Hastings would be defeated in the primary. (He won 77% to 23%). Keep up the good work, David. At this rate, soon you’ll be making Joni Balter look good!

And then Stefan’s puppy Eric picks up on the meme, talking about how my “euphoria prompted some puzzling preening” about Hastings.

Only problem is, I never predicted Doc Hastings would be defeated. Never. Never ever. In fact, here’s the post they mock:

It turns out that Hastings is facing a surprisingly tough challenge from Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver, and some Republican insiders are even predicting an Oliver upset in tomorrow’s GOP primary.

Quite frankly, I find this hard to believe, but if Oliver even comes close to Hastings tomorrow it will speak volumes about the degree to which even the Republican base is just plain sick and tired of corruption, incompetence and intransigence from their own national leaders.

Hmm. I simply reported what I was told by two different sources in the 4th CD — that Republican insiders were really excited about Oliver’s chances. And then I wrote that I didn’t believe it. That’s some prediction, huh?

(In fact, 77% in a primary is nothing to cheer about for a six-term incumbent. Whatever the reasons, a sizable chunk of Republicans are clearly unhappy with Hastings.)

Of course, (u)SP’s posts are only petty sniping… the kind of childish snarkery that makes our adversarial relationship so much fun. (And stupid.) But it is also typical of the kind of intellectually lazy rhetorical subterfuge that Stefan routinely passes off as fact. But then, what do you expect from a man so disconnected from realty that he frightens his Everquest meetup group?

Should Peter Goldmark and Darcy Burner go on to lose in November, you can be sure that me and my fellow netroots denizens will be in for some uninspired (u)SP-style taunting, but of course, they would be missing the point entirely… for we already won. Our tireless support for Burner and Goldmark was never about predicting the outcome — it was about influencing it.

We didn’t help make Burner a credible candidate by merely saying she was one, we did it by convincing people she is credible, and by persuading them to donate time and money to her campaign. We did it by feeding and perpetuating the very real buzz that was building around Burner’s candidacy, and by helping her amplify it to the point where journalists and party officials could ignore the buzz no longer.

And now we’re doing the same for Goldmark — not attempting to do it, but doing it. No doubt Goldmark is a longer shot than Burner, and in both races the incumbent still holds the advantage. But even the experts in the other Washington — folks like Congressional Quarterly and the DCCC — have opened their eyes to the fact that Goldmark has a legitimate shot at winning… and that’s the first hurdle any challenger has to overcome.

And we’re even raising money, something I didn’t believe bloggers could do heading into this campaign season. Burner has now raised over $98,000 from various ActBlue pages, and HA readers alone have contributed an impressive $8,243 to the Burner and Goldmark campaigns combined. We’re making a difference!

As for (u)SP, well… hey Stefan… how’s that Doug Roulstone insurgency going for you?

Truth is, Stefan is just plain jealous. Jealous of the growing influence of us liberal bloggers in the face of the obvious political impotence of him and his fellow (un)Sounders. But then, to be fair to Stefan, from a grass roots perspective he was always at a disadvantage, being little more than a local mouthpiece for the neo-con’s top-down message machine, whereas us liberal “nutroots” are filling a vacuum, building a brand new media infrastructure from the ground up.

You see, (u)SP is nothing more than a stiffly written, amateur knockoff of the Wall Street Journal op/ed page, whereas HA is part of a movement.

Will Burner and Goldmark win in November? I dunno. A helluva lot of money is going to pour into WA-08 over the next few weeks and my gut feeling is that, barring an October surprise or some major campaign screwup or scandal… the best ads win. As for Goldmark, in Tuesday’s primary he out-polled McMorris in Okanogan County, proving that he can do damn well in traditionally Republican farm country. Whether Goldmark has the time to get his message out across his sprawling district, well, that’s up to him and his schedulers. Whether he has the money to get his message out, well, that’s up to you. (Hint: give now.)

All I know is that they’re both great candidates, they’ll both make tremendous representatives, and they both have legitimate shots at winning. I’m cautiously optimistic.

But win or lose I’m absolutely confident that our nascent, local netroots movement played a significant role in helping to force Republicans to divert substantial amounts of money to two districts they thought they wouldn’t have to defend. We’ve played our part in extending the “50-state Strategy” to WA. For that, we can all be damn proud. And it’s only the beginning. The very beginning.

So I hope you can all join me in forgiving Stefan for seeking solace in misinformation and name-calling. Compared to what we’re doing, it’s pretty much all he has.

There’s a new blog in town, and I think I’m gonna like it. From EFFin’ Unsound‘s FAQ:

Q: What does EFFin’ Unsound mean?

A: Well the two biggest local right wing assholes (but I repeat myself) are the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) and (Un)Sound Politics. But there are a lot of righties in Washington who are EFFin’ Unsound.

Q: Why are you such an asshole?

A: Look, usually I’m a nice guy outside of this blog. Volunteer firefighter. Give to charity. But I don’t think you treat crazy people like they’re making serious arguments.

Welcome back Carl.

Come join me tonight; tickets $13 to $15.

Seattle Follies: The Jeopardy Edition
Thursday, September 21 , 7:30 PM

Seattle Follies opens its fourth season with special guest Ken Jennings, the record holder of the longest winning streak on the TV quiz show Jeopardy. He faces off against Nicole Brodeur, columnist for the Seattle Times; Steve Scher, host of KUOW’s Weekday; and The Stranger’s associate editor and Police Beat columnist Charles Mudede. Channeling Alex Trebek is David Goldstein, KIRO radio host and the Seattle Weekly Readers’ Pick Best Political Blogger. Fifth Avenue Theatre stars Billie Wildrick and Candice Donehoo, with David Armstrong, producing artistic director, provide musical entertainment, accompanied by Seattle’s favorite cabaret performer and composer Rich Gray. Beer, wine, and copies of Brainiac, Jennings’ personal tour through the seamy underside of television trivia, will be available for purchase. Presented with University Book Store. Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street.

It’ll be fun. I hope.

It’ll probably be a light posting day for me as I have a busy schedule. At noon I’ll be moderating a panel discussion on initiative and judicial races before a meeting of the executive council of SEIU Local 925, and this evening I’ll be emceeing the Seattle Follies at Town Hall.

The Initiative 933 campaign has a poll in the field, the kinda-sorta pushy kind that’s probably intended to help them refine their message. How can I be so sure? I got robo-polled this evening.

The poll starts off with the usual questions: Bush approval, gender, age, income, party and ideological self-identification. How likely are you to vote? Do you plan to vote for Maria Cantwell or Mike McGavick? That kind of stuff.

And then it started focusing on I-933. The recording described the initiative pretty much the way it’s described in the ballot title, while stating that opponents argue it would hamper government’s ability to regulate property and do proper planning. Do you plan to vote yes or no? I punched in no.

Then the questions started getting a little curious. Do you think local governments are operated well, or controlled by special interests who are in it only for the money? Hmm. I had to think about that one. I guess it depends on the local government, but I didn’t want to give them the answer they wanted, so I punched in no.

Are you familiar with the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision that says governments can take away property by eminent domain for use by commercial developers? Do you agree with the decision? If you knew that I-933 was intended to address Kelo, would you be more or less likely to vote for it?

Well clearly, you can see where the I-933 campaign is going. They are testing a message that focuses on eminent domain, even though they most certainly know that I-933 has absolutely nothing to do with eminent domain. Nothing. Nothing at all.

They are preparing to lie to voters.

So when the I-933 campaign starts inundating voters with broadcast ads and mailers citing Kelo and pushing the issue of eminent domain, I expect my friends in the press to come down on them like a ton bricks, for now you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the I-933 campaign didn’t just accidentally get it wrong. They polled on this lie. They tested and refined it. And when they run on this lie they will be running without a shred of regard for the truth.

The irony of the Kelo frame is that it’s not only based on a lie, it’s intended to entirely flip the debate on its head, for I-933 was written and financed by the same private developers and wealthy special interests who the Kelo frame is intended to demonize.

But then, that’s exactly the kind of cynical, dishonest campaign we’ve come to expect from the building industry.

It was a primary election night edition of Podcasting Liberally, and like most elections there were mixed emotions. Us DL regulars were sharing a packed Montlake Alehouse with a couple other election night parties, and while we all cheered as BIAW-backed, winger-ringer Supreme Court candidate John Groen went down to defeat, the Yes on I-88 and Bill Sherman for Legislature folks were left crying in the beers.

Joining me in live coverage as the election results poured in were Mollie, Jon, Daniel, Carl, and Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly. A fascinating evening of breaking news, erudite commentary, brilliant analysis, and of course, penis jokes.

The show is 49:39, and is available here as a 45.5 MB MP3. Please visit PodcastingLiberally.com for complete archives and RSS feeds.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for producing the show.]

If passed, Initiative 933 would cost taxpayers billions. Up to $9 billion to be exact. According to the state Office of Financial Management’s (OFM) fiscal impact statement:

Initiative 933 is estimated to cost state agencies $2 billion to $2.18 billion over the next six years for compensation to property owners and administration of the measure. In the same time period, the initiative is estimated to cost cities $3.8 billion to $5.3 billion, based upon number of land-use actions since 1996, and is estimated to cost counties $1.49 billion to $1.51 billion. Costs are derived from the requirement that, with specific exceptions, state agencies and local governments must pay compensation when taking actions that prohibit or restrict the use of real and certain personal property.

The OFM also found that I-933 is “more expansive than Measure 37,” the Oregon developer’s initiative that is wreaking havoc in the Beaver State. The result? Hundreds of millions of dollars in litigation costs.

This is a bad initiative, poorly written and ill-conceived. No wonder its biggest backer is New York real estate tycoon Howard Rich, while farmers, environmentalists, labor and even many local business interests are aligning against it.

“Burner Wins!” If Washington’s 8th Congressional District primary had the same rules as a judicial primary, that might be the headline splashed across the top of the Seattle Times and P-I this morning.

Of course the totals are extremely close, and far from complete, so when the final numbers are in Rep. Dave Reichert may turn out to have tallied more primary votes than Democratic challenger Darcy Burner, but what we’ve seen so far should have 8th CD R’s very worried. As of the last report Burner has received 19,529 primary votes compared to Reichert’s 19,133. Both candidates ran unopposed, and while primary results can be misleading, these results are a classic sign of a vulnerable incumbent.

Perhaps most encouraging (or distressing, depending on your party affiliation) is Burner’s performance in Pierce County, where Democrat Dave Ross got trounced in 2004. At the moment Reichert is only leading by a 6,699 to 6,424 margin. If Burner can keep the race close in the Southern part of the district come November, she’s virtually assured victory.

Remember, Burner went into this race with zero name recognition against one of the best known politicians in the region, and has spent very little money thus far getting her name and face in front of voters. Barring disastrous polls (and the Reichert camp’s silence on their own internal polling indicates there aren’t any) Burner can cash in her performance yesterday to assure that the DCCC follows through on the substantial financial support it has already committed.

Any way you look at it, the primary results represent a big win for Darcy Burner.

For me the biggest surprise in yesterday’s primary election was the fact that $2 million was not necessarily enough money to buy a seat on the state Supreme Court. Chief Justice Gerry Alexander — a man whose politics could probably best be described as a Dan Evans Republican — survived a bitter right-wing challenge from property rights attorney John Groen and his powerful backers in the building and insurance industries.

I suppose I should have had more faith in voters, but I just didn’t see how Alexander could overcome the flood of vicious attack ads while being outspent five to one. But the Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly proved prescient on my show Sunday night when he suggested that Washington voters have a history of rejecting smear campaigns. It looks like they’ve done it again.

Still, Alexander’s victory is no reason for liberals and centrists to relax. The BIAW clearly overreached, with the character of the Groen campaign reflecting the meanness of his backers. But the race was still close, and there’s no reason to believe that $2 million better spent wouldn’t have given the building and insurance industries the handpicked justice they wanted. And don’t forget that it took two tries for the BIAW to get their personal attorney Jim Johnson on the bench. Expect to see Groen back on the ballot in 2008.

Now the attention (and the money) shifts to the general election, where Justice Susan Owens faces a runoff against BIAW-backed Stephen Johnson. It will be interesting to see what if any lessons the BIAW has learned from its failed Groen campaign.