5th Congressional District candidate Peter Goldmark has a post up on Daily Kos right now, and he’s online active answering questions in the comment thread. So if you have a question or comment for Goldmark, now is a great opportunity chat with him.
Oh… and while you’re there, please recommend his diary so that more Daily Kos readers can get to know Goldmark.
REUTERS, London — British police foiled yet another terrorist plot today, announcing the arrest of a 340-pound Egyptian man planning to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic using homemade explosives derived from his own body.
British authorities say the unidentified man planned to use the on-board lavatory as a mobile chemical lab, where he would render his own fat and refine it into bio-diesel while extracting urea nitrate from his own urine. According to an NSA terrorism expert who spoke on condition of anonymity, a typical “fat arab” could easily extract sufficient material from his own fluids to mix enough ANFO explosive to bring down a Boeing 747. “This is the nightmare scenario we’ve all been predicting,” the NSA official told Reuters.
In response, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) immediately instructed airport screeners to prevent fat people from boarding planes, and ordered all bathrooms to be locked and sealed on flights of six hours or more. A spokesman for the International Airline Passengers Association called the TSA’s new regulations a “mixed blessing” in terms of its total impact on passenger comfort.
A fat man mixing ANFO from his own bodily fluids? Sound preposterous? Well as it turns out, it’s not that much more ridiculous than the scenario we were treated to last week with tales of terrorist plans to mix triacetone triperoxide (TATP) on board jetliners using common household chemicals. According to The Register, it’s just not that easy.
Assuming you can get your hands on adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide…
Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together. […] Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It’s all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don’t forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked “perishable foods”), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You’re going to need them.
It’s best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate – especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation – to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.
Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you’ll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you’ll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.
After a few hours – assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven’t overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities – you’ll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.
The genius of this scheme is that TATP is relatively easy to detonate. But you must make enough of it to crash the plane, and you must make it with care to assure potency. One needs quality stuff to commit “mass murder on an unimaginable scale,” as Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson put it. While it’s true that a slapdash concoction will explode, it’s unlikely to do more than blow out a few windows. At best, an infidel or two might be killed by the blast, and one or two others by flying debris as the cabin suddenly depressurizes, but that’s about all you’re likely to manage under the most favorable conditions possible.
[…]
To release the energy needed to bring down a plane (far more difficult to do than many imagine, as Aloha Airlines Flight 243 neatly illustrates), it’s necessary to synthesize a good amount of TATP with care.
Hmm.
But surely, the threat was imminent–the terrorists were only days away from carrying out their dastardly plan. At least, that’s what US and British officials told us, and that’s what the media dutifully reported.
Craig Murray, Britain’s outspoken former Amabassador to Uzbekistan is skeptical:
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
And as it turns out, no charges have yet been filed in the case.
Which raises the question… was the danger really so imminent to disrupt travel for millions of passengers and warrant making flying even more uncomfortable than it naturally is by banning beverages and other carry-on items? Or was this just another cynical Bush administration effort to ramp up the fear at a time when his party’s approval is at a record low, and with a crucial midterm election just around the corner?
Forgive me for being suspicious, but it seems like every few weeks we hear of another dire terrorist threat that turns out to be a load of crap. You know, like that supposed plot to flood lower Manhattan by blowing up the Holland Tunnel, ignoring the fact that the so-called terrorists had neither the means, the training, or the know-how… let alone the brains to realize that water doesn’t flow uphill.
And then there are all those recent reports of suspected “terrorists” arrested for buying large quantities of prepaid cellphones for use as detonators or to assist them in evading surveillance. Again, a load of crap.
Of course there are real terrorists out there who pose a real threat. But if their goal is to strike fear in the American public, they face some awfully stiff competition from our own President.
“I grew up In Alabama, and I understand, and I know this from my own experience, that blacks are not the greatest swimmers or may not even know to swim.”
— Tramm Hudson, GOP candidate for Congress, FL-13
This was Katherine Harris’ seat. Figures.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is conducting an online poll to select three favorite candidates to receive special campaign support:
We all know that the battle to defeat Rep. Dave Reichert is going to be damn close; well this is the kind of extra support that could put challenger Darcy Burner over top. So I strongly urge you to cast your vote for the DCCC’s “Candidate for Change” today… and cast it for Burner. It’s also a chance to prove again how strong our local netroots are.
(And while you’re at it, why not write in Peter Goldmark? I did.)
The contest ends August 23rd, so vote now, and please pass this along as widely as possible.
In the weeks leading up to the Connecticut primary, Republicans described Democratic challenger Ned Lamont’s anti-war position as “extreme” and “out of touch” with mainstream America. In the days after Lamont soundly beat three-term Democratic incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman, Republicans described Connecticut voters as “extreme” and “out of touch” with mainstream America.
But looking at recent national public opinion polls, it seems that it is the Republicans who may be extreme and out of touch.
Indeed, a new Elway Poll commissioned by the Seattle Times confirms that there is widespread support amongst Washington voters for either an immediate or timed withdrawal of troops from Iraq, with half of all respondents choosing one of those options… though only 21 percent of Republicans.
But the crosstabs are even more revealing. 19 percent of WA voters support immediate withdrawal — 27 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of independents — but only 5 percent of Republicans support this option.
So, um… who’s out of the mainstream here?
In fact, only 66 percent of WA Republicans support President Bush’s stated position of leaving only when Iraqis can keep the peace (which of course, could mean never,) and it is curious to note that in a recent Survey USA poll, that’s exactly the same percentage of Republicans who plan to vote for Republican Mike!™ McGavick in his lightly contested US Senate primary.
Hmm.
Early on, the press glommed on to the state Democrats’ supposedly divisive split over the Iraq war as the big story in the Senate race, yet the same poll shows Sen. Maria Cantwell garnering 90 percent of the vote in her much more high profile primary contest.
I’m sure that some of this disparity can be explained away by Mike!™’s lower name ID, but it begs the question: has the press been focusing on a bitterly divisive split in the wrong party?
I’ve only read the New Testament cover to cover once (and I have to admit it was more an exercise in opposition research than it was a journey of spiritual discovery) so correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember Christ teaching things like charity, loving thy neighbor, feeding and clothing the poor… you know, social justice stuff like that.
Thus it came as bit of a surprise to learn that Pastor Joe Fuiten — who routinely jostles with Reverend Ken Hutcherson for the role of Washington state’s loudest defender of Christian values — is in the process of turning retired ministers and missionaries out of their homes and onto the streets. I dunno… doesn’t sound very Christian to me.
I’m referring to the longtime residents of the Cedar Springs Bible Camp near Lake Stevens, who over the past thirty years, and with the Camp’s active encouragement and support, have built conventional homes on leased lots in the Camp’s five-acre residential area, and who have volunteered many hours of their time to Camp improvement projects.
The Camp leased lots only to “qualified tenants” with the stated purpose of providing low-cost, year-round residency to both active and retired Assemblies of God ministers, missionaries and lay people. Monthly leases remained low, sporadically rising by no more than 15 dollars a month from $10.50 per month in 1966 to $150.00 per month in 2004. Leases had historically been renewed annually at the option of the tenant.
That is until Pastor Fuiten’s mega-church, the Cedar Park Assembly of God, purchased the Bible Camp in 2005.
In September of 2005, Fuiten’s church offered residents a new lease that would increase rents by 83% over three years, a particular burden on the Camp’s retired seniors living on low, fixed incomes. But the most devastating alteration of the lease terms under Fuiten’s management was the elimination of the option to renew… destroying the resident’s resale value, and forcing them to abandon their houses and improvements in the event the leases are not renewed.
Under the terms of the new lease, there is only one potential buyer for the residents’ homes — Pastor Fuiten’s mega-church — which would be unjustly enriched should it choose to terminate the leases, or the tenants be unable to afford the new terms.
The residents have filed suit in Snohomish County Superior Court, and while I have no idea how the judge will rule, I’m pretty damn sure that if it were up to Christ, he’d feel a tad uncomfortable evicting a bunch of retired ministers and stealing their homes.
So now that the residents’ plight has been publicized, the question remains: what will Pastor Joe Fuiten do?
It was a night of media navel gazing as former Seattle Weekly writer Geov Parrish and former Stranger writer Sandeep Kaushik joined us to ponder the fate of the post-purge Weekly in Seattle’s tech-savvy, blog-heavy media market. Oh yeah… me , Will, Carl and Mollie also chimed in from time to time, and just for good measure we also talked a little politics, including al-Qaeda’s stunning victory in last week’s Connecticut Democratic senate primary.
The show is 50:12, and is available here as a 34.6 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.]
The same coalition of business, labor and environmental organizations that came together last year to handedly defeat Initiative 912 (gas tax repeal,) filed a lawsuit today in Thurston County Superior court seeking to disqualify 3000 pages of signatures for I-917, Tim Eyman’s doomed “Yet Another Thirty Dollar Car Tab” (YATDCB) initiative.
Fifteen business, labor and environmental organizations announced the challenge on Tuesday, invoking a 2005 law that requires signature-gatherers to personally sign a declaration that the information on the petition is correct.
Initiative 917 solicitors did not sign the statement on more than 3,000 of the 17,000 petitions, and those pages must be thrown out, the group said.
“The Legislature passed a law to ensure that signature-gatherers are honest and accountable,” said Steve Mullen, president of the Washington Roundtable, the organization of top corporate CEOs. “There has been substantial fraud in other states, and laws like this are necessary to keeping the initiative process clean and to protect the voters.”
Substantial fraud in other states? More like massive fraud, with signature rejection rates surpassing fifty percent with some initiatives.
One of the primary purposes of the 2005 law was to require signature gatherers to identify themselves on petitions so that authorities could better track cases of intentional fraud to individual signature gatherers. But in response to a query from state Rep. Toby Nixon (R-45), Attorney General Rob McKenna issued a rather tortured opinion, arguing that while the law requires the declaration to be printed on the initiative, it does not actually require the declaration to be signed.
Huh? Then what’s the purpose?
That’s what the court is going to be asked to decide — the actual legislative intent behind the declaration — and in an email exchange Rep. Nixon insisted that McKenna got it right:
I’ve seen the opinion and agree with it. In fact, it was me who pointed out the legislative history of the bill
The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. I’m told that Port Commissioner Lloyd Hara will be joining us tonight. Mmm. I love port.
And if you happen to be a liberal drinker on the other side of the mountains, the Tri-Cities chapter of DL also meets Tuesday nights, 7 PM, Atomic Ale, 1015 Lee Blvd., in Richland. Go ask Jimmy for more details.
The good news is, Geov Parrish now has more time on his hands to devote to blogging. The bad news is, that’s because he just gave notice to the Seattle Weekly that he will no longer write for the paper.
In a letter sent out to friends and associates, Parrish explains his decision:
This morning I informed Seattle Weekly’s new Managing Editor, Mike Seely, that effective immediately I will no longer write for Seattle Weekly. I like and respect Mike, and wish him great success in his new job. I regret having made his immediate challenges that much more difficult. However, in recent discussions with him and with corporate owner Village Voice Media’s Executive Associate Editor, Andy Van De Voorde, particularly in the wake of the recent departures of Editor-in-Chief Skip Berger, Managing Editor Chuck Taylor, and Political Editor George Howland, it became clear that my journalistic priorities were not compatible with VVM’s current and future plans for Seattle Weekly. For this and other reasons, I feel it most appropriate to move on immediately.
Hmm. Parrish, Berger, Howland, Taylor and several other key employees have all left the Weekly in the wake of the New Times/VVM “merger.” That’s pretty much the purge we all expected. It’s going to be a dramatically different publication.
Howland has reportedly landed a job with Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata’s office, and Berger tells me he’s looking forward to exploring new opportunities. As for Parrish, well, he needs a job:
So here’s where the “help” portion of this note comes in: I now need a job. I have a Master’s Degree in Political Science and East Asian Studies, and nearly 30 years of experience in both media (primarily print, radio, and online, both in providing content and on the business side) and in progressive political organizing. I have been based in Seattle for the last 16 of these years, and would like to stay here. With the loss of Seattle Weekly, my remaining paid media work is national in scope, but I am comfortable tackling global or local issues, or both. I am most interested in either further media work (national or local, and either print, radio, online, or some combination thereof, doing administrative, editing, and/or content work), progressive political work, or reentering the nonprofit world. Further details regarding my experience, skills, and/or priorities are available for the asking.
I hope Geov doesn’t mind me reprinting his private want ad, but that’s the only help I have to offer. In fact, if you have two jobs, I could use a little income too.
I’m miffed. Rep. Dave Reichert was too scared busy to come on my KIRO radio show Sunday night, but had no problem finding the time to spend an hour on KUOW with host Steve Scher Monday morning.
Whatever. The more the public hears directly from Reichert the better Darcy Burner’s chances look in November.
You can listen to KUOW’s podcast here, or read thoughtful analysis from local bloggers Darryl, Michael and Dan. Then talk amongst yourselves.
Inlander Online has a great feature on 5th Congressional District Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark… only it’s more than just an article about Goldmark, it’s an article about the decline of farm towns in Eastern Washington.
Decline in farm towns has long been considered a function of fewer farmers running bigger farms. But now, Goldmark says, “Even the bigger farmers are leaving, even the larger farms are struggling.”
Corde Siegel, who farms near the Whitman County outpost of Pine City, says, “My accountant says there is not a single grain grower who is making money.”
The math is as simple as it is harsh. Six years ago, Siegel says, his cost per acre for fuel was $5; today it’s $20. Fertilizer penciled out to $20 an acre in 2000 and is $45 today. Chemicals have gone from $12 to $35 an acre in the last six years; labor from $8 to $18 an acre; machinery from $10 to $33; crop insurance from $4 to $12.50.
Meanwhile, “I have farmers harvesting wheat for the same prices their fathers and grandfathers did,” says Gretchen Borck, director of issues for the Washington Association of Wheat Growers based in Ritzville.
It’s a bad equation, Goldmark says. “Here are the people [who] we say are privileged to grow food for the entire world, and now you’ve got to pay to do it.
“Ag families are going to dry up and go away and nobody cares. I care,” he says. “This is the big issue about why I got into the race
Last night on my radio show I spent some time laying into Mike!™ McGavick (Joel might call it poisonous partisanship) for lending his campaign $2 million before paying back SAFECO shareholders the $1.275 million no-interest loan they gave him to lure him into the CEO’s office.
Here’s the deal for those who missed it.
Essentially, SAFECO gave Mike!™ what amounts to a free mortgage to help him buy his $4.5 million home in the gated Highlands community. According to SAFECO’s own proxy statements this free mortgage has already saved Mike!™ (and thus, cost shareholders) $541,386.25. Better yet for Mike!™, since this represents dollars saved not dollars earned, this indirect form of compensation was entirely tax free.
Loans like this became illegal in 2002, one year after Mike!™ cut his deal, under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that passed in the wake of the Enron, Tyco, Adelphia Cable and Worldcom scandals that rocked corporate America.
But none of this is really the point. Legal or not, we all know that Mike!™ was lavishly compensated during his years as SAFECO CEO, and we all expected a substantial portion of his $28 million golden parachute — negotiated after announcing his resignation — to be invested in his US Senate campaign. And given his obvious willingness to take as much compensation from SAFECO shareholders as humanly possible to extract, nobody really expected Mike!™ to pay back early a no interest loan.
But I think it is fair, if McGavick is going to take credit for turning SAFECO around, that voters be made aware of exactly how much money McGavick “earned” and under what circumstances. And I also think it fair that voters should hear from the employees and policyholders who were asked to tighten their belts (or who lost their jobs and policies entirely) while Mike!™ and his top executives were enriching themselves.
Last night I heard from a couple of former SAFECO employees who described how the corporate culture changed with Mike!™ at the helm… we learned of the jobs that were outsourced and the benefits that were slashed under his leadership. We learned how SAFECO’s egalitarian bonus policy — where all employees once received the same percentage bonus based on profits — was dramatically rewritten so that top executives would receive by far the lion’s share. And we learned how SAFECO’s charitable matching program shrunk from $10,000 per employee per year to a mere $1,000.
Whether or not you can justify these changes I think it says something about Mike!™’s view on wealth and class in America, and who he believes deserves the bulk of the reward from our nation’s economic growth. However much credit he may or may not deserve for SAFECO’s turnaround (he came in at the bottom of both a down cycle in the insurance industry and a crash in the stock market,) there is no doubt that during his tenure he enacted policies that favored the highly paid executives at the top over the average employee.
And there’s one other important point I want to make. Much of the collapse of public confidence in the Republican controlled Congress is due to the culture of corruption that has permeated the other Washington. Voters are simply sick and tired of the revolving door in which highly placed congressional staffers leave the Capitol to instantly become highly paid corporate lobbyists.
Which is the exact career path Mike!™ followed to obtain his riches.
Mike!™ was Sen. Slade Gorton’s campaign manager, and then his chief of staff, before cashing in on his political access to become a high priced insurance industry lobbyist. This was the path he took to SAFECO’s executive suites, and that is the undisputed truth. And now that he’s “earned” his millions, Mike!™ wants to head back to the Capitol, this time as a US Senator, so that he can write the laws that regulate his corporate benefactors.
When critics decry the revolving door of power and money that is corrupting our government, they are describing Mike!™ McGavick’s career. I know it might strike some as negative campaigning to point this out, but I think that with this knowledge in hand voters can make a more informed decision come November.
Apparently, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly got a lot of angry email regarding his column last week that categorized former SAFECO CEO and insurance industry lobbyist Mike!™ McGavick as a victim of partisan politics. To sum up my response at the time: boo-hoo.
So Joel is back again this week defending bipartisanship, with reasonable sounding advice like “American democracy is about debating issues and trying to change minds,” and “A polarized country shouldn’t stop us from judging people on their merits, not attaching horns to their heads.”
I can’t disagree.
Unfortunately, we’re not living in an age of reasoned politics — at least not at the national level — where reasonable advice such as Joel’s can be unilaterally followed without risking utter defeat.
This is the age of Karl Rove. This is the age of the K Street Project. This is an age where war heroes are swift-boated and morphed into cowards and traitors while those in the press who are not actively complicit tend to dismiss the rhetorical violence with a “kids will be kids” shrug.
In this context, to advise Democrats to refrain from negative campaigning would be like advising the Israelis to respond to Hezbollah rockets with heated letters to the editor.
No doubt one should be wary of a disproportionate response, and yes, Joel is right in warning that negative campaigning can generate a backlash. But more often than not, muddying your opponent is damn effective, which is why political consultants resort to it with such frequency.
And while it is certainly reasonable to judge candidates on their merits, if you fear for the welfare of our nation under exclusive Republican can control, it is absolutely necessary to vote for candidates based on the letter next their name. Whatever one may think of Mike!™ as a person and however you may want to believe his claims that he represents the center, if his election to the Senate assures Republican control it will also assure the unchallenged agenda of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Tom DeLay and their corporatist and right-wing extremist sponsors.
Is unbridled partisanship like I am advocating a danger to our democracy? Under current circumstances I’d argue that it is democracy’s only defense.
Josef Stalin… he didn’t allow political partisanship to threaten his rule, and neither does Fidel Castro or the Chinese Communist Party. That is what the Republican leadership wants for our nation, a one-party state in which the Democratic Party becomes nothing more than an impotent, useful foil. As Norquist once famously quipped:
“Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans… Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant. But when they’ve been ‘fixed,’ then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful.”
If that’s bipartisanship, I want no part. I want a Democratic Party with the balls to be Democrats.
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