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That’s not change we can believe in…

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UPDATE:
And apparently, I’m not the only one who has trouble seeing John McCain as an agent of change.  According to the latest NY Times/CBS poll:

Despite an intense effort to distance himself from the way his party has done business in Washington, Senator John McCain is seen by voters as far less likely to bring change to Washington than Senator Barack Obama. He is widely viewed as a “typical Republican” who would continue or expand President Bush’s policies, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

And that Palin bounce?

[T]he Times/CBS News poll suggested that Ms. Palin’s selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among women in general.

[…] This poll found evidence of concern about Ms. Palin’s qualifications to be president, particularly compared with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Mr. Obama’s running mate. More than 6 in 10 said they would be concerned if Mr. McCain could not finish his term and Ms. Palin had to take over. In contrast, two-thirds of voters surveyed said Mr. Biden would be qualified to take over for Mr. Obama, a figure that cut across party lines.

The Times/CBS poll shows Obama leading McCain 48 to 43, which is right in line with the latest Daily Kos/Research 2000 tracking poll, that shows a 48 to 44 margin.

Teacher’s Pet

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How Dave Reichert’s C Grade Voting Record Turned Into an NEA Endorsement

By Josh Feit

Apparently the National Education Association grades Republicans on a curve. Consider: Suburban Washington state Democratic U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee (D-1, WA) and Adam Smith (D-9, WA) earned A’s for their 2007 voting records. Makes sense. Inslee voted the union’s way over 90 percent of the time and Smith voted the union’s way 100 percent of the time. Suburban Republican Rep. Dave Richter (R-8, WA) got an A for the session too. But he only voted the union’s way 69 percent of the time. (According to the NEA’s official grading scale, you need to vote with the union at least 85 percent of the time to get an A. Reichert’s score, between 55 and 70, should have actually rated a C.)

Perhaps Reichert came into the session with some extra credit. In the previous term, he joined the Democratic majority by voting against a “merit pay” pilot program. Merit pay—tying raises to student performance—is anathema to the teachers union.

Randall Moody, the NEA’s chief lobbyist, told me: “It’s not fair to link pay to things like test scores. It’s unrealistic. There are a lot of other factors. Did the child have breakfast that morning? Do they come from a dysfunctional home?” Elaborating on the NEA’s opposition to merit pay, Moody also asks, “Who judges? What’s the criteria?”

Along with Reichert’s “A” grade, his opposition to merit pay, which he reiterated in his endorsement interview, was one of the factors leading the NEA to endorse Reichert over Democratic challenger, Darcy Burner, earlier this year, according to Lisa Brackin Johnson, the head of the Kent Education Association and one of the members on the Washington Education Association (WEA) endorsement board. Brackin Johnson also reports that Burner told the union she wasn’t against merit pay. “Burner didn’t understand the issue,” Brackin Johnson says.

The endorsement was atypical for the teachers union, which usually backs Democrats. Like John McCain, Reichert, who votes with the Republican majority position 88 percent of the time according to an analysis done in 2006 by the Democratic blog “On the Road to 2008,” has been trying to portray himself as a more independent Republican this election season. He has wisely been hyping the NEA’s stamp of approval on the campaign trail.

If the press had taken a closer look at the curious NEA endorsement, they would have found that in addition to Reichert’s inflated grade, it’s Burner who’s behaving independently. Burner is bucking A-student, WEA Washington Democrats like Inslee and Smith, and the rest of the local Democratic roster—Reps. Rick Larsen, Brian Baird, Norm Dicks, and Jim McDermott. Washington’s Democratic House members consistently voted with the monolithic, union-friendly Democratic House caucus to defeat the merit pay bills repeatedly sponsored by Republican Rep. Tom Price (R-GA, 6).

“During her interviews she didn’t rule out the possibility of paying good teachers well if there’s evidence that it could provide a better education for kids in the district,” Burner spokesman Sandeep Kaushik says. “She was honest with the teachers when she met with them. Like Sen. Obama she believes we should not rule out reform options.”

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has also bucked the traditional Democratic line. He supports merit pay programs.

Isn’t Reichert bucking his caucus too by telling the union he’s against merit pay? Hard to say. While he did vote against the merit pay measure in 2005, and while he did tell the WEA he didn’t support merit pay during his endorsement interview, he actually voted for a separate merit pay bill in 2007.

Despite several requests, Reichert would not comment for this article.

According to Brackin Johnson, Reichert believes it’s unfair to gauge a teacher’s year-to-year performance on the success of his or her students because groups of kids differ from year to year in ways that are beyond the teacher’s control. For example, social issues outside the classroom may impact students’ ability to do well in the classroom. Brackin Johnson suggested that Reichert, as a former Sheriff, has a keen sense of the issues that affect kids outside the classroom.

There were certainly other factors in the WEA’s decision to endorse Reichert over Burner. Reichert told the endorsement board that No Child Left Behind is an “unfunded mandate” that needs to be reformed. And the WEA “contact team” says he’s become newly accessible to WEA lobbyists. This is an encouraging turnabout from his first term, they say. The change, the union says, was reflected in his improved voting record. “He listens to us,” Brackin reports. (This is a reference to Reichert’s recent “A” grade—again, 69 percent—an improvement over his 35 percent score from his first term in Congress.)

WEA spokesperson Rich Wood also cited Reichert’s “A” as the reason the union endorsed him, highlighting Reichert’s vote to override President Bush’s children’s health care veto; Reichert’s vote to lower student loan interest rates; and a vote for Head Start, the $6.8 billion program for low-income school children.

However, while Reichert did vote to reauthorize the Head Start program late last year, he also voted for an earlier amendment (it failed) which the NEA opposed because they believed it would have limited access to the program. And in 2005, Reichert voted for a successful amendment to the Head Start reauthorization bill that allowed religious groups participating in the federally funded program to hire and fire based on religious grounds. The NEA (and the ACLU for that matter) opposed the amendment.

The chief lobbyist for the NEA, Randall Moody, did explain Reichert’s “A,” telling me that in addition to voting records (which can often be complicated by partisan traps) they add things like how accessible a Rep. is to NEA lobbyists.” It’s a fairer evaluation of a member’s support for public education,” Moody says.

Light rail expansion appears headed toward victory

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I’m a little suspect of the polls right now in the wake of the national conventions, but as Lee just pointed out, the latest KING5/SurveyUSA poll on Prop. 1 is sure to dishearten the anti-rail crowd that maniacally trolls HA’s comment threads.

When asked about Sound Transit’s proposal to expand rail and bus service, 49% of respondents said that they were certain to vote yes, while only 16% said they were certain to vote no.  And when the uncertain respondents were asked whether they lean toward one side or the other, Prop. 1’s advantage expanded to a whopping 65% to 20% margin.

But perhaps more interesting…

Among those who describe themselves as conservatives, those voting or leaning “no” slightly outnumber those voting or leaning “yes.” Among those who identify themselves as Republicans, “yes” slightly outnumbers “no.” Among all other groups, the measure passes by no fewer than 31 points.

So Prop. 1 seems to have pretty damn broad support, even within the constituencies where you would expect the strongest opposition, a finding that is consistent with some internal polling numbers I heard whispered about a few weeks back.  Of course, unlike the actual ballot language, the SurveyUSA question didn’t include the $17.9 billion estimated cost, so I’d be surprised to see Prop. 1 pass by such a large margin… but I’d be even more surprised to see it fail.

There are several major differences between this year’s Prop. 1 and last year’s failed measure of the same nomenclature:  the proposal, the electorate and the economic reality.

This Prop. 1 is not tied to an unpopular and controversial road expansion package that split the environmental community and dramatically escalated the costs.  This Prop. 1 will benefit from the significantly larger and more progressive electorate that tends to turn out in this region during presidential election years.  And most of all, this election will occur with memories of $4.50/gallon gasoline still fresh in everybody’s minds… so fresh that bus and commuter rail ridership continues to grow even as gasoline prices have temporarily stepped back from their historic highs.

As I’ve repeatedly argued, the era of cheap gasoline is over, and that means that 2008 is most definitely not 2007:

I know conventional wisdom still suggests that now is the wrong time for Sound Transit to come back with a ballot measure, just one year after the defeat of Prop 1, but the conventional wise men are missing the point: 2008 isn’t 2007. The era of cheap gas is over, and Americans—even Seattle-Americans (and yes, I know, Seattle is different from every other city in the world)—are beginning to change their behavior in response. Voters get that, even if our politicians and editorialists don’t.

Traffic congestion has far from disappeared as a volatile political issue, but public demand for affordable transportation alternatives is rising at least as fast as the price of gas. And the thing is, whether it’s cheaper and more efficient or not, when current drivers envision their future mass transit commute, they much prefer to envision themselves riding on a train, than on a bus. People like trains; that’s a fact. And if I were an elected official, I’d probably want to focus on delivering the services that the people want.

Many of our region’s political and media old timers still seem mired in the auto-centric transportation vision of the 1950’s.  But I’m guessing we’ll find out on November 4 that the majority of voters are not.

Gregoire leads Rossi in new Washington state poll

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A new poll in the Washington state gubernatorial race between Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) and Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party) has been released by Elway Research. I mentioned the poll in yesterday’s poll round-up, but I had not seen the full report.

It turns out the polling was somewhat complex. The poll sampled 450 registered voters between 6-Sep and 8-Sep. The overall margin of error is 4.5%, although in the most interesting analyses, they split samples in half, giving a margin of error within a group of 6.5%.

Elway split the sample into two groups. Group one was asked to chose between “Republican Dino Rossi” and “Democrat Christine Gregoire.” Group two was asked to chose between labels as they appear on the Washington state ballot. That is, they were asked to chose between Rossi, “who prefers the GOP party” and Gregoire, “who prefers the Democratic party.”

Subgroup one gave Gregoire a 50% to 41% lead over Rossi. Group two gave Gregoire a 48% to 44% lead. With a 6.5% margin of error, the differences in these findings are nowhere near achieving statistical significance. In other words, the differences between the two subgroups could simply reflect sampling error.

Just for fun, let’s analyze these as separate polls and combine them later. As usual, I use a Monte Carlo analysis, consisting of one million simulated elections, drawing from the polled population.

The weakest results for Gregoire come when Rossi is introduced as preferring the “G.O.P. Party.” Following a million simulated elections, Gregoire wins 660435 times and Rossi wins 321369 times. This suggests that, if the election was held now, Gregoire would have a 67.3% probability of beating Rossi. Here is the distribution of vote outcomes from the simulations:

When Rossi is called a Republican, his chances go down a bit. Now, after a million simulated elections, Gregoire wins 834,999 times and Rossi wins 153,178 times. This subsample, treated as its own poll, gives Gregoire an 84.5% of defeating Rossi (if the election were held now).

I would argue for using both samples. First, because the difference is not significant. It may be that Washington voters react negatively to Rossi as a Republican. Or not. The sample size was not sufficient to statistically support the idea. Secondly, because I have a difficult time believing that come November the voters will not think of this as a race between the state’s top Democratic candidate and the state’s top Republican candidate.

In the pooled analysis Gregoire wins 838,346 times. Rossi wins 153,042 times. If the election were held now, based on this poll alone, Gregoire would have an 84.6% probability of defeating Rossi. Here is the distribution:

Let’s consider one more permutation. The new Elway poll actually falls between two other recent polls, so lets pool all the recent polls. The recent Rasmussen poll was conducted on 10-Sep. It gave Rossi a 52% to 46% lead over Gregoire. And the slightly older SurveyUSA poll was conduted from 5-Sep to 7-Sep. It gave Rossi a 48% to 47% lead over Gregoire.

When the Elway results are pooled with the Rasmussen and SurveyUSA results, Gregoire wins 451,469 times and Rossi wins 541,349 times. In other words, these recent polls suggest that, if the election were held now, Gregoire would have a 45.5% probability of winning and Rossi would have a 54.5% probability of winning.

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One final note. In my previous analysis of this race I pointed out that both the SurveyUSA and Rasmussen “polls show a surprising decline in Obama’s standing against McCain—a post-convention decline that is larger than anything I’ve seen in other blue states.” The suggestion was that, perhaps, both polls, by chance, drew samples that were favorable to both Rossi and McCain. There were some hints of this in the cross-tabs of both polls (like a surge in women chosing McCain in the Rasmussen poll).

The Elway poll lends a bit more support for the idea. In a McCain–Obama match-up, Obama came out ahead of McCain, 45% to 38%. The +7% advantage for Obama is more in line with other polling than is the +2% found in the Rasmussen poll and the +4% found in the SurveyUSA poll.

But without additional evidence, I’m forced to take the pooled results and giving Rossi a very narrow lead over Gregoire right now.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

Palin admiringly quotes writer who called for Kennedy assassination

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With all the hoo-hah over Sarah Palin’s documented desire to ban books from the Wasilla public library, and her vindictive effort to fire a popular city librarian who openly expressed her opposition to mayoral censorship, perhaps we should have been focusing less on the books Palin wanted to ban, and a bit more on the books she actually reads.

As New York Times columnist Frank Rich astutely pointed out on Sunday, Americans should find Palin’s apparent reading list downright scary:

This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palin’s acceptance speech. Aligning herself with “a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri” who “followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency,” she read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.”

[…] There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.

Palin, who lies with ease about her own record, misrepresented Pegler’s too. He decreed America was “done for” after Truman won a full term in 1948. For his part, Truman regarded the columnist as a “guttersnipe,” and with good reason. Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese,” he called them) were all likely Communists.

So… exactly how right-wing was Pegler?  As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out today on the Huffington Post, so right-wing as to have publicly called for his father’s assassination.

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that “some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.”

When a vice presidential candidate can admiringly quote a fascist, racist, anti-semitic hate-monger like Pegler—in her acceptance speech no less—and America barely bats an eye, it tells you a lot about where our nation is potentially going.

John McCain invented the Blackberry!

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They lie about big things.  They lie about little things.  They forcefully repeat their lies to the faces of reporters even when confronted with irrefutable evidence to the contrary.  In fact, it’s gotten so ridiculous that you’ve got to start wondering what the McCain campaign isn’t lying about?

Take for example today’s inexplicable fabulation, in which McCain’s top economics adviser bizarrely pointed to his BlackBerry as evidence of his candidate’s understanding of financial markets:

Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the commerce committee so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”

That’s right, John McCain invented the BlackBerry!

Only, of course, he didn’t.  It was invented by a Canadian company.  McCain doesn’t use BlackBerry.  Hell, he doesn’t even use email.

And if this seems like a petty thing to go after the McCain camp on, well A) McCain repeatedly mocked Al Gore during the 2000 campaign for the bogus “I invented the Internet” claim (which Gore never said, but for which there’s actually a kernel of truth); and B) This is just one in a series of shameless lies and distortions that have been emanating from McCain, Palin and their campaign for weeks.

Can we trust McCain or his advisers on anything?  For example, McCain surrogates have repeatedly reacted with outrage over accusations that he doesn’t use email, indignantly claiming that injuries incurred as a prisoner of war make it physically impossible for him to use a keyboard.

Really? He can’t even hunt and peck with a single stiff index finger like the majority Internet-savvy seniors his age? So how does his campaign explain the dozens of email exchanges between him and reporters that have been referenced in the New York Times and other publications?  Are staffers writing his emails for him? And how do they explain the nimble fingers displayed in this video of McCain handling his cell phone on the floor of the Senate?

I suppose if the 72-year-old McCain would release his complete medical records, like every other nominee in recent years, we might know for sure.  But they won’t.  Because the McCain/Palin administration promises to be the most opaque since… well… Bush/Cheney.

Honestly… if in the midst of what former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan calls the greatest financial crisis in his lifetime, McCain’s top economics adviser has to reach so far into his bag of bullshit as to make the facially ridiculous assertion that John McCain had a role in inventing the BlackBerry, how can we trust anything from any member of the McCain campaign on any issue?

The truth is, we can’t.

UPDATE:
And as it turns out…

Blair Levin, who is currently Managing Director at Stifel Nicolaus and served as [former FCC chair Reed] Hundt’s chief of staff … pointed out that McCain actually voted against the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA ‘93) that “authorized the spectrum auctions that created the competitive wireless market that gave rise to companies like Research in Motion [the creator of Blackberry].”

Why am I not surprised?

Alaskans stand up for American values

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From Anchorage Daily News:

A crowd of anti-Sarah Palin protesters gathered in Midtown Anchorage soon after the Republican nominee for vice president left Alaska to resume campaigning in the Lower 48.

The Saturday protest in front of the Loussac Library appeared bigger than any Anchorage has seen in recent memory. The crowd looked to be in the high hundreds at least, and organizers said they counted 1,500. It included roughly 100 counter protesters supporting Palin.

It sounds like a lot of Alaskans have solid American values. From the same article:

“Sarah Palin frightens the hell out of me. I don’t want her anywhere near the White House,” said Marybeth Holleman of Anchorage.

—snip—

Alison Till, a geologist in Anchorage with the U.S. Geological Survey, said issues such as energy and global warming require solid and unbiased science to make good decisions. Palin’s opposition to listing the polar bear as threatened under the endangered species act and her support of teaching creationism in public schools are not the hallmarks of someone who relies upon solid science, Till argued.

“She is unqualified,” Till said.

The Alaskan blog Mudflats has photos and their own account of the rally, including this little tidbit regarding a right-wing talk radio host named Eddie Burke, who tried to intimidate the organizers of the rally by calling them maggots and reading their phone numbers on the air:

Then, the infamous Eddie Burke showed up. He tried to talk to the media, and was instantly surrounded by a group of 20 people who started shouting O-BA-MA so loud he couldn’t be heard. Then passing cars started honking in a rhythmic pattern of 3, like the Obama chant, while the crowd cheered, hooted and waved their signs high.

And I’m sure this spontaneous display of courage in standing up to this twisted man with a microphone will be spun by the right as “not respecting freedom of speech.” You know the drill by now. The right spews its hate and then explodes in phony outrage when people dare to stand up to it.

So while some people might wish to continue the culture wars and attempts to pit rural versus urban, gay versus straight or black versus white, normal people aren’t buying it. I can’t say if the American people as a whole have had enough of Republican lies and hypocrisy, but it’s heartening to see 1,500 Alaskans standing up to the bully-boy tactics of the right. Given the relatively small population of the state, that’s quite a display.

Mudflats also has lots of cool pics of the rally.

Podcasting Liberally

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To start, the panel ponders the political Palinolithic era. Is “pathological liar” too strong a phrase? Would an actuary predict a probable Palin presidency? Did Palin add a punch to the post-convention polls? The panel next takes on some Washington state issues, like who is the real Rossi and would the public really respect (or even recognize) him if they knew him? And with the incredible shrinking media, could that even happen? ’Sup with the Supreme Court and I-960? And what’s the (non-) deal with the Boeing strike?

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Executive Director of the Northwest Progressive Institute Andrew Villeneuve , HorsesAss and EFFin’ Unsound’s Carl Ballard and Peace Tree Farm’s blogging pioneer N in Seattle. Oh…they even permitted me a few words.

The show is 54:11, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_sep_9_2008.mp3]

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

Banned Books

This is the list of books Palin tried to have banned. As many of you will notice it is a hit parade for book burners.

This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board.
When the librarian refused to ban the books, Palin tried to get her fired.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

My death with dignity

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There’s a pretty fair chance that at some point, I’m going to kill myself.

And when I do, it’s none of the government’s fucking business.

Opponents of I-1000, November’s statewide assisted suicide initiative, are cloaking their basic, essentially religious concerns about the measure in scare tactics over a potential for “abuse” which, in ten years of Oregon’s experience with assisted suicide for the terminally ill, simply hasn’t happened. They’re also playing with our culture’s irrational fear and avoidance of any discussion of death (the one thing everyone has in common). Their real interest is that they consider suicide immoral under any circumstances. Which is fine. I don’t care whether they kill themselves; it’s not my decision. When and if I kill myself, since it doesn’t harm them (and since we live in a secular society), it is, also, none of their fucking business. They have no right to impose their essentially religious beliefs on me. They also don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, because they’re by and large not terminally ill.

I am.

In March 1991, I was diagnosed with a terminal disease (End Stage Renal Disease, a fancy name for total kidney failure), and given a year or two to live.

As it developed, I was able to stretch out my time on the planet to 1994, when I received a double-organ transplant (a pre-owned kidney and pancreas, courtesy an 18-year-old who didn’t believe in motorcycle helmet laws). My insurance company fought authorizing the surgery for a couple of years, on the grounds that it was experimental, in the probable hope that I’d die first so that they wouldn’t have to pay for the surgery and the even more expensive aftercare. They almost succeeded. I fell into a coma three separate times in 1993; by the time the transplant was approved, I was too sick to receive it. It took another eight months of nursing me to the point where I was strong enough to endure the ten-hour surgery. By that time, my wife had been laid off and our insurance was set to expire; had matching organs not been found barely in time, the stalling would have started all over again with new insurance, or none, and that would have killed me.

All through that three-year ordeal, I had plans in place to kill myself if I reached a point of no return. I still do. I had and still have no interest in living my days out as a vegetable in intractable pain, with zero quality of life. Been there, done that; it sucks. That’s my personal decision, my right, and I’m going to do what I’m going to do regardless of what any government or other self-appointed moral arbiters think of it.

The problem was (and, until I-1000 or something like it becomes law, still is) that my plans require a minimum amount of mobility, which I could lose at any time. They also require that I either ask my loved ones and care providers to break the law, or, in order to protect them from the law’s wrath, that I exclude them from the most important decision of my life, and a central one in theirs.

I-1000 is not for the terminally ill. For the most part, we’ll find a way to carry out our own wishes. It’s for everyone around us, the people who care for and love us. The current law forces us to act perhaps prematurely (while we have the capacity to personally carry out our decision), without the input of other people, and in an isolated way that is either risky or unspeakably cruel to our loved ones. The people who’ve cared for me over the years, starting with my loving and preternaturally patient wife, deserve far better than that. They’ll have a hard enough time with my illness and passing; intentionally excluding them from my death is something no compassionate society should countenance. I-1000 is for them.

The punch line to my story is that I finally did get my transplants, and they’ve been fabulously successful. I have chronic health problems (due to both the underlying disease and the immunosuppressant drugs needed to prevent organ rejection). I’m in pain daily, take preposterous amounts of medication, and once or twice a year I’m in the hospital with something scary. But I’ve mostly had good quality of life for the last 14 years and been a productive member of society. (Not everyone would agree with that last part, but, whatever.) I’m pretty stubborn about this Continuing To Live thing.

However, the reason I-1000 is not only deeply personal but immediate for me is that those 14 years are many more than any of my doctors, or I, expected. At some point — could be tomorrow, could be many years away, but it was supposed to happen a long time ago — one or both of my non-native organs will start to fail. Then, I’ll be right back where I was in 1991, only a couple of decades older and frailer. At some point I could easily reach the position where things are both intolerable and clearly have no hope of getting better.

By then, I hope I-1000 will be law, so that I won’t be asked to put my loved ones and friends through a living hell in order to die on my own terms.

Do right by my loved ones. Their fate is up to you, as voters, in November. My decision, as to what I’ll choose to do with my failing body, is not.

Republican congressman calls Obama “uppity”

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Let’s be honest, when Republicans like Sarah Palin accuse Barack Obama of being an “elitist,” they’re really calling him “uppity.”  (As opposed to when they call Jews like me “elitist.”  Then they’re just calling me, um, a Jew.)

So you gotta at least applaud Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) for his honesty:

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

Yeah, Westmoreland knew the word “uppity” was racially tinged, and he intended to use it in that context.  Because… well… that’s how Republicans win elections.

Podcasting Liberally returns

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Goldy and panel ponder the important questions of our time: Was the Sarah Palin choice crazy or simply reckless? (And should the words “Palin” and “choice” ever appear together in the same sentence?) Will the Republicans get any real mileage out of the flip-floppin’, tax-increasin’, book banin’, enemy firin’, ear markin’ half-term Governor? Where was the Seattle media at the Democratic National Convention? And why was The Big Tent such a spectacle? Did anybody show up for the Republican National Convention and, if so, who will be the target of their anger frenzy this year? Is Joe Lieberman a traitor? And why are Washington state Republicans shunning their own Convention?

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Executive Director of the Northwest Progressive Institute Andrew Villeneuve , HorsesAss and EFFin’ Unsound’s Carl Ballard and HorsesAss, EFFin’ Unsound, and Blog Reload’s Lee.

The show is 48:07, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_sep_2_2008.mp3]

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

Enquirer: Palin had affair with husband’s business partner

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Uh-oh…

John McCain’s campaign threatened legal action against the National Enquirer today for running a story about McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, allegedly having an affair with her husband’s business partner.

“The smearing of the Palin family must end. The allegations contained on the cover of the National Enquirer insinuating that Gov. Palin had an extramarital affair are categorically false. It is a vicious lie,” said McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt.

“The efforts of the media and tabloids to destroy this fine and accomplished public servant are a disgrace. The American people will reject it.”

Yeah… well… maybe. The National Enquirer is a tawdry, supermarket rag with low standards, and I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could spit.  But they do occasionally break stories, as liberal-hater Jonah Goldberg ironically reminded us during the early days of the Edwards love-child story…

Also, it’s worth pointing out that while the Enquirer may or may not be scrupulous in its choice of stories — that’s in the eye of the beholder — it is pretty scrupulous about its facts. They win lawsuits. They’ve broken a host of stories the MSM guys couldn’t.

So if the Enquirer is scrupulous enough for right wingers when they’re tearing down Democrats…?

On the other hand, Karl Rove can be a crafty fucker, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the R’s seeded the Enquirer with a false scandal, so that when it blows up it discredits all the real scandals too.  We’ll see.

The Crackpiper Chronicles with Scott St. Clair – Part 4

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It’s been a while since our all-time favorite troll, Scott St. Clair (AKA The Crackpiper) has given me some good material for a post, but he’s been writing columns now at places like Crosscut and the Kirkland Reporter, and his insane and nonsensical ramblings have once again caught my eye. Here’s a recap of two of his latest efforts in unintentional comedy.

[Read more…]

What are Republicans afraid of?

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They aren’t just tear gassing, macing and arresting protesters in Minneapolis Minneapolis/St. Paul, or even dirty, fucking hippy bloggers.  They’re arresting credentialed journalists like Amy Goodman.

What are Republicans so afraid of?  Everything.

UPDATE:
The Stranger’s Brendan Kiley reports first hand for Minneapolis/St. Paul where a police officer dumped a canister of mace on him for daring to flash his media credentials:

… my skin feels like it’s being peeled from my body. Pepper spray: It’s not just crowd control, it’s exfoliation.

[…]

A voice behind me said: “Hey! Keep moving!” It was another phalanx of police. Stupidly, I flashed my media credentials and said “You go on without me. I’m just reporting on this.” I felt a cool shower over my head and heard the cop throw the canister on the sidewalk. She dumped the whole damn thing on me.

(She was a lady. I’ve always wanted to be pepper-sprayed by a lady.)

In a couple of seconds, I was a blind, wheezing, snotting, doubled-over wreck of a man, trying to push my bike toward safety while being jabbed in the back with a baton and told to hurry up. I bumped into several small trees along the way.

When the police can brutalize and arrest journalists with impunity, for the simple act of doing their job, democracy ceases to function. This is what fascism looks like folks… but you won’t be watching it on the network TV news, because… well… that’s what fascism looks like too.

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