HorsesAss.Org

As Dino Rossi continues to maintain his silence on Initiative 912, the message-sending, KVI publicity stunt cum ballot measure is beginning to expose deep rifts in the WA state Republican Party.

Prominent Republicans from the business community, including Western Wireless Chief Executive John Stanton, have contributed mightily to the campaign to preserve the tax.

They hope to draw a distinction between themselves and the more conservative anti-tax base and help diffuse the partisan politics behind the support for the initiative.

Mainstream Republicans of Washington, a group of moderates, has endorsed the No on 912 campaign and is spending about $80,000 (most of it from Stanton) for direct mail opposing the initiative.

“Republicans have a long history of defending user taxes and particularly the gas tax,” said Mainstream Republicans Executive Director Alex Hays. “The gas tax is constitutionally required to fund roads and ferries. Taxes don’t get much fairer than that. You drive on the roads, you use gas, and therefore you pay for the roads.”

Hays said virtually every Republican to hold statewide office has come out of the mainstream movement. Mainstream members include Stanton, Secretary of State Sam Reed, Attorney General Rob McKenna, Commissioner of Lands Doug Sutherland and Senate Minority Leader Bill Finkbeiner.

Rossi should take note. Stanton, who has contributed over $100,000 to the No on 912 campaign, has often been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor or other high office, and while at this point in time it would be surprising to see any Republican seriously challenge Rossi for the 2008 nomination, the Sammamish real estate salesman cannot take for granted the enthusiastic support of business leaders, particularly a potential rival like Stanton who clearly disagrees with Rossi on substantive policy issues.

Of course, Rossi ran very well in 2004, pretending to be a mainstream Republican, but as he’s proven with his conspicuous silence on I-912, Mainstream Republicans in the business community and elsewhere really can’t count on him to support their agenda. If three years from now the state and regional economy is strong, and business leaders are largely satisfied with Gov. Christine Gregoire’s job performance, they will open their wallets less widely to support a challenger who has failed to support them in return.

“For a lot of the politicians, this is a vote (the public vote on 912) that they realize is best argued on the merits rather than turned into a partisan issue,” Stanton said. “I was on a podium with John Carlson,” the radio talk show host and I-912 supporter, “and he talked about sending a message. This is not about sending a message,” Stanton said.

“Or if it is, it’s about sending a message that transportation’s important.

And don’t think that Stanton and other business leaders haven’t been shy about sending a message of their own. That a lowly blogger like me should receive an earnest phone call from “Executive X” was a subtle message in itself. Less subtle was his questioning of whether Rossi “fully appreciates the political ramifications” of his failure to speak out against I-912. More recently, the Seattle P-I reported that Boeing would be diverting money away from the parties and giving it directly to those individual legislators who voted for the gas tax increase… implying that those opposing the tax should expect zilch. As the P-I editorial board wrote:

The state Republican Party backs I-912. Boeing opposes it. All but the most clueless of Republican candidates will get the message.

Is Rossi really that clueless?

I suppose it is possible that Rossi really does oppose the transportation package, and believes that we can afford to continue to delay maintenance and improvement projects… that he’s so deeply entrenched in the reactionary, anti-tax wing of the GOP that he’s willing to dismiss the fervent opposition to I-912 from the businesses and wealthy executives who financed his last campaign. If that’s true, he should just come out and take a principled stand.

Or perhaps Rossi quietly agrees with Stanton, but is willing to sacrifice the economic welfare of the state as part of a political gambit he hopes will weaken Gregoire for 2008? If that is the game he is playing, he should understand that even “winning” doesn’t come without risks. Assuming she governs well, Gregoire’s approval ratings will continue to climb, the further removed we are from the GOP’s viciously dishonest — yet effective — election contest PR campaign. And Gregoire won’t sleepwalk through a rematch the way she did the 2004 election: 2008 is going to be a meaner, more energetic, more costly campaign, and if Rossi expects to be competitive, he’ll need business leaders to continue to cut the big checks that he and his fellow Republicans have come to take for granted.

But my guess is, before they open their checkbooks again, some of these executives are going to look back at the I-912 campaign and ask: “Where was Rossi?”

Dino’s got a few more days to answer the question.

I’m heading out to make french bread pizza for 300 people at my daughter’s school, so I’m posting the open thread a little early today. I suppose there’s probably stuff to talk about.

I found a “scooter” under my Fitzmas tree this morning, how about you?

A federal grand jury today indicted Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, after a two-year investigation into the leak of a CIA agent’s identity but spared — at least for now –President Bush’s top political strategist, Karl Rove.

Libby was indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. The indictment charged that he gave misleading information to the grand jury, allegedly lying about information he discussed with three news reporters. It alleged that he committed perjury before the grand jury in March 2004 and that he also lied to FBI agents investigating the case.

Libby has resigned.

Holidays are often a bit anticlimactic, and I’m sure there are more than a few disappointed Democrats who had hoped for a Karl Rove Frogmarch doll. But according to reports, Rove is not in the clear yet, so keep your fingers crossed.

I’ll leave more thorough reporting and analysis to the MSM and national blogs. But please feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

I’m not a big fan of censorship. The trolls here know this, and so they gleefully abuse my tolerance in a relentless effort to drive real debate off my threads, filling them with offensive, dumb-ass and downright racist comments. My philosophy has always been that rather than delete or edit a particularly offensive comment, I leave it untouched for all to see, so that the author can hang himself on his own public display of hate and stupidity.

Yes, HA can be an odd place, and one gets numb to it after a while… but it is always a bit shocking to see how comfortable some people are in posting comparable bile in other, more solemn forums. For example, an anonymous author posted the following to the Seattle P-I’s comment thread on their editorial board endorsement of King County Executive Ron Sims:

Yes lets stay the course and keep the incompetent OREO in office…

(The P-I does censor their comment threads, so catch it while you can.)

That somebody would feel it appropriate to post such a racist comment in such a very public forum raises a number of issues, the most obvious being the inherent racism that still infects society. I am certainly not implying that a substantial number of David Irons’ supporters oppose Sims due to the color of his skin, but certainly, some do. Racism is still a very real electoral factor facing all minority candidates, and when the state and local GOP publicly embrace somebody like (un)Sound Politics’ Stefan Sharkansky — who repeatedly referred to Sims as “the Robert Mugabe of WA politics” — they send a very strong message to voters that this kind of behavior is not only acceptable, it is welcome.

The second issue this raises is what this lack of civility means to the prospect of a broader public debate. It is one thing to post on a no-holds-barred blog like HA, where such vile crap is grudgingly tolerated. (For the moment.) It is another thing to post it on the website of a major newspaper. I have argued with people at the Seattle Times that they are missing the boat by not transforming their own website into a more interactive experience… and this is exactly the type of incident that they insist prevents them from doing so. When public debate is squashed by a few unruly bullies, we all lose.

And finally, I am disturbed that anybody feels comfortable posting such a statement in any public forum, under any circumstances, and view it as just part of the growing mainstreaming of violent hate speech most visibly embodied in public figures like Ann Coulter, and more dangerously, by the swarm of anonymous cowards on sewers like Free Republic. Of course, the “oreo” comment is mild compared to the eliminationist rhetoric that is now routinely aimed at me in the comment threads on my own blog, where apparently some feel it an act of patriotism to call for my death in response to a display of informed dissent.

Those who long for “The Cleansing” or whatever they choose to call their giddily imagined modern day Kristallnacht, remind us daily that even in this, the world’s oldest functioning democracy, we must remain vigilant against the ever-present and creeping danger of fascism.

Did you ever wonder what 2000 looks like?

In a bizarre and dramatic twist to a bizarre story, David Irons Jr.’s mother, Janet C. Irons, submitted herself to a polygraph test yesterday morning… and passed with flying colors. A four-page report from Evergreen Polygraph, Inc. concludes that Mrs. Irons was “truthful” in her telling of a 1994 incident in which she claims her son knocked her to the ground and tore the phone off the wall to prevent her from calling 911.

Based on the physiological responses produced by the subject on two polygraph charts, in the opinion of this examiner the subject was not attempting deception when she answered “NO” to the following relevant questions.

43. Did you lie to me when you said your son David assaulted you?

44. Did you lie to me about being assaulted by your son in 1994?

45. Did you lie to me when you said you were not having a diabetic reaction when your son assaulted you in 1994?

While it is true that polygraph results are not admissible in court, they are commonly used during both criminal and civil investigations. Even Dori Monson, one of Irons’ most adamant defenders, apparently considers polygraphs to be credible, as just last Friday he repeatedly issued on-air challenges to both Irons and Ron Sims — the two candidates for King County executive — to submit to just such a test. (Dori may be a bit of a blowhard with whom I passionately disagree on most political issues… but he’s a fair blowhard, and thus I fully expect him to report to his audience the very credible results of Mrs. Irons’ own examination.)

It should also be emphasized that while the polygraph test addressed only the one incident in question, Irons’ parents allege that their son has displayed a pattern of dishonesty and abusive rages that should disqualify him from high office, the details of which I have previously outlined. From my conversations with the family I have no more reason to doubt their broader character testimony than I did their description of the 1994 assault.

I spoke with Mrs. Irons briefly yesterday, before she received the polygraph results, and she repeated her challenge to David Jr. that she made last week on the John Carlson Show… that he join her in taking a polygraph test. However she doesn’t expect him to respond: “liars won’t usually take tests unless forced,” she told me. Still, she hopes this will be the last she needs to speak on the issue.

“I’m very tired of Jr. using us for political fodder, and I’ll be thankful when every few years we don’t have to keep talking about having a dishonest and abusive son. Maybe we can get him to quit lying about us, but I wonder what it will take for him to quit lying about his political opponents?”

Hmm. How about getting him out of politics?

UPDATE:
I received an updated polygraph report that correctly numbers the questions, and have uploaded a new PDF that reflects these changes.

Man… that was easy:

Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush ended his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court Thursday and promised a quick replacement. Democrats accused him of bowing to the “radical right wing of the Republican Party.”
…
The withdrawal stunned Washington on a day when the capital was awaiting potential bad news for the administration on another front – the possible indictments of senior White House aides in the CIA leak case. Earlier in the week, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq hit 2,000.

My regular readers must have noticed that I commented little on the Miers nomination, preferring instead to sit back and watch the normally disciplined Republican Party implode on its own. Let this be a lesson to those few moderates and true conservatives left in a position of authority within the GOP… the far right wing of your party expects absolute loyalty and allegiance from you, but should you stray one tiny step from the Good Book, they’ll throw you to the lions without a moment’s hesitation. They don’t give a shit about fiscal conservativism or federalism or strict constructionism… they’ll stop at absolutely nothing in pursuit of their theocratic agenda, even if it means turning on a Republican president at a time he desperately needed party discipline to save his crumbling administration.

Whatever her qualifications, Miers was without a doubt a reliably pro-business, corporate attorney who could be counted on to favor the GOP’s financial backers for decades to come. But even this devout, born again, Evangelical Christian failed to pass the religious right’s rigid litmus test, that demands justices who will criminalize abortion and homosexuality, while undermining our nation’s sacred tradition of separating church and state.

And isn’t it curious… that her dramatic, surprise withdrawal comes on a day the White House expects criminal indictments of high-level members of the administration? I guess it should come as no surprise that Karl Rove would sacrifice a Supreme Court nominee in an effort to save his own skin.

So where’s Dino Rossi? Well according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review (boneheaded, paid-subscription required), the man who claims to be “taking a well-deserved break from politics,” is actually out in Spokane… campaigning.

In his blue suit, pressed white shirt and red tie, Dino Rossi appears every inch the candidate.

He’s got a book on leadership coming out.

He’s making a few select speaking appearances, like the one this morning to Republican state Senate leaders meeting in Spokane.

He’s returning the favor of friends who helped with his past campaigns, down to recording a few automated “robo-calls” for candidates in the 2005 election.

Yeah… sure… except for all the campaigning and political stuff he’s doing, he’s taking a break from politics.

What a load of crap.

So Dino… as long as you’re returning favors of friends who helped with past campaigns, how about returning a favor to the business community that bankrolled your run for governor? Why not record one of those robo-calls, asking voters not to support I-912? Or at the very least, why not just stake out a public position on an issue on which you’ve surely taken a private one… the most contentious issue on the November ballot?

Where’s Rossi on I-912? We’ll probably never know, because he’s apparently too busy campaigning for governor to display the kind of leadership necessary to be one.

Washington Defense is holding a demonstration this morning, 10 AM, at the 1st Ave. S on ramp of the Alaska Way Viaduct, to warn drivers of the imminent danger, and demand that WSDOT post permanent hazard signs along the length of the structure. Yard signs will be made available to those who attend.

This is not the well financed “official” No on I-912 campaign, but rather an independent, grassroots effort, that nonetheless has managed to raise enough money to print yard signs. Just another example of the growing opposition to I-912.

For six years, David Irons Jr. has supported building “I-605”, a four-lane freeway cut through the heart of rural King County:

“When 605 came up in the past, it was largely pie-in-the-sky,” said David Irons Jr., newly elected King County councilman who represents the district where the freeway could be built. … “It’s time for discussions and hard decisions. It’s time to talk about 605.”

And in his recent radio ads and prerecorded robo-calls, Irons continues to talk about I-605, though not by name. When he refers to a study claiming that adding more lanes is the only way to relieve congestion, he’s referring to Bellevue Square developer Kemper Freeman Jr.’s selfishly skewed study… which of course, relies on I-605 at the heart of its plan. It’s all there, documented on a new website, IronsHighway.com.

With I-605 would come the unmitigated sprawl that accompanies all freeways… exactly the kind of land use policies Irons’ financial backers in the building industry were looking for when they yanked him out of obscurity back in 1999. Freeman builds malls, and what do you find at nearly every freeway off-ramp? A mall! Indeed, Freeman alone has contributed over $6,760 to Irons over the past couple years.

So if you want to transform rural King County into an endless swath of strip malls and sub-divisions… vote for Irons. Because that’s clearly what he intends to deliver.

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

Buy me a couple drinks and maybe I’ll blab to you about all the new dirt I’m digging up on David Irons.

After a sexual assault, a Tucson AZ woman spent three days frantically trying to obtain emergency contraception — the “morning after” pill — to no avail.

While calling dozens of Tucson pharmacies trying to fill a prescription for emergency contraception, she found that most did not stock the drug.

When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections.

“I was so shocked,” said the 20-year-old woman, who, as a victim of sexual assault, is not being named by the Star. “I just did not understand how they could legally refuse to do this.”

But of course it is legal, and under growing pressure from the religious right, many of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains are refusing to stock or dispense emergency contraception, under any circumstances.

Imagine this woman is your girlfriend your wife or your daughter… she was essentially assaulted twice: first by her assailant, and next by the right-wing religious extremists who would deny her access to safe, effective and legal contraception. These are the extremists who have hijacked the GOP… and those more moderate Republicans who nonetheless whore themselves to their party’s theocratic agenda must be held accountability.

Pharmacists have an ethical obligation to dispense legal medication, and they should have a legal obligation as well. We need laws now, guaranteeing access to contraception. All the more reason to vote Democratic.

Courtesy of Andrew Wahl

I come from a family of doctors, so I understand the burden of malpractice insurance, but I-330 isn’t a pro-doctor initiative, it’s a pro-insurance industry initiative. And either way, it certainly ain’t pro-patient. There is no medical malpractice crisis in WA state, and no need for some insurance industry written and financed anti-consumer fix. Quite frankly, I-330 sucks.

(Hmm. Why is it Republicans are always trying to put trial lawyers and organized labor out of business? You think if hotdog vendors were big contributors to the Democrats, the GOP would be trying to bust them up too?)

Rosa Parks has died at age 92.

Speaking in 1992, she said history too often maintains “that my feet were hurting and I didn’t know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long.”

Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

“At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this,” Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. “It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.”

A simple act of defiance by an ordinary person can change the world.

Reuters is reporting that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald “appears to be laying the groundwork for indictments” this week, possibly including charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation over the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. If that’s not surprising, neither is the Republican’s typically hypocritical spin:

In a preview of how Republicans would counter charges against top administration officials by Fitzgerald, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas brushed aside an indictment for perjury — rather than for the underlying crime of outing a covert operative — as a “technicality.”

A technicality, huh? Oh… you mean like lying about a blowjob?

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Hutchinson accused Fitzgerald of trumping up perjury charges in an effort to show that “two years’ of investigation was not a waste of time and dollars.”

Hmm. So how does the Fitzgerald investigation compare to the four-year witch hunt that Ken Starr conducted against President Bill Clinton? Well, Armando reports on Daily Kos that Fitzgerald has spent $723,000 to date, whereas Starr spent $40,835,000 to catch a president lying about sex. Remember… Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, and everything else he investigated… and all he came up with was Monica’s stained blue dress. And a Republican Congress impeached a president for that.

So now that their ox is being gored, and Republicans start explaining away perjury as a “technicality”… I have to laugh.