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No doubt state Rep. Geoff Simpson (D-47) is facing a tough reelection fight, what with the press gleefully trumpeting his arrest on suspicion of domestic violence, yet quietly chirping like crickets when the case was quickly dropped without charges being filed.  But it’s not just his bad press that’s made Simpson vulnerable this election cycle, it’s also his stalwart opposition to all things BIAW, which has made him the target of some very powerful enemies.

And when the BIAW goes after you, they fight dirty, unimpeded by the law, let alone the Queensberry Rules.

Take for example an email sent out recently to a number of lobbyists by Drew Stokesbary, the campaign chair for Simpson’s Republican opponent Mark Hargrove… an email so inappropriate that even lobbyists were disgusted, prompting several to forward copies directly to Simpson and his campaign.

I noticed that one of your clients, [REDACTED], has contributed to Geoff Simpson. I’d like to encourage you to see if you can get Simpson’s opponent, Mark Hargrove, a similar contribution from [REDACTED].  I understand there are political reasons for that contribution, but the dynamics of the race of have been shifting lately.

[…] The caucus is making a significant hard-dollar contribution, and probably a larger soft-dollar contribution.  Builders, construction, insurance, pharma, NFIB, ag, and others are jumping in now.

You gotta appreciate young Stokesbary’s eagerness to take the initiative, if not his respect (or lack thereof) for our state’s campaign finance laws, for three things immediately jump out from both his email and his public record:  A) Stokesbary is clearly using Simpson’s PDC reports to solicit funds, which is illegal; B) Stokesbary clearly implies that he is coordinating soft-dollar expenditures with his state caucus, which is illegal; and C) Stokesbary is… well… an asshole, which isn’t illegal per se, but turns out to be quite pertinent to the rest of this post.

For in addition to being Hargrove’s campaign chair and son-in-law, Stokesbary turns out to be an employee of both the BIAW and Attorney General Rob McKenna, a bigot, a racist, a George W. Bush fan, a teacher-hater, a sycophant, a hothead and, well, an asshole.

Hmm… where to start?  How about with the most damning of the epithets I just tossed Stokesbary’s way, his association with the lying, cheating, equally assholic bastards at the BIAW, where according to their annual report, he was employed at least through 2007.  And it was with a fellow BIAW employee Tom Kwieciak, that Stokesbary most visibly displayed the organization’s unique approach to public discourse, by notoriously heckling professional golfer Curtis Strange from the hospitality box of the 2007 Boeing Classic.

“Go for it, Curtis,” Drew Stokesbary, 22, of Olympia yelled from the Canyon Club. “Be a man.”

Strange, 52, took his time while he surveyed the troublesome hole. His expression didn’t change.

“Go for it, Curtis,” Stokesbary repeated loudly, seated at a table. “Hit it like a man.”

Choosing the conservative route, Strange swung and put one in the fairway. Another verbal assault followed him off the tee.

“That’s what the ladies’ tour is for, Curtis,” Stokesbary chided as the golfer passed in front of the box.

[…] “I heard on the radio that he’s considered a hothead, which is why I singled him out, and he proved it,” Stokesbary said, referring to Strange.

I mean… what an asshole.

That is the sort of antisocial behavior Stokesbary has displayed throughout his short life, which of course makes him perfect BIAW material.  According to a blog post by a Chinese classmate of his at Duke, Stokesbary used to intentionally “stir up trouble with his incendiary arguments” during history class…

Once, when he made a remark about how if immigrants wanted to keep their traditions alive, they shouldn’t have come to the US in the first place, my friends had to literally restrain me from knocking him over.

And in his Amazon review of Gordon Park’s classic 1964 “The Learning Tree,” a novel about growing up black in a white man’s world, Stokesbary displayed his usual racial sensitivity:

this was about the worst and slowest-paced book i’ve ever read. In english class we had to read a book by a black author and my teacher thought i might like it. but i didn’t. it was terrible. by the time you get about halfway through the pace picks up, but by then it’s pointless. don’t buy this book or read it. please.

Yup.  Nothing worse than being forced to read a book by a black author.

I don’t know much about Hargrove, but if I were him I’d be more than bit uncomfortable having this unrepentant fratboy chair my campaign, let alone marry my daughter.  And as for Rob McKenna, I think he needs to answer a few questions about whether Stokesbary was acting on his authority, since the email certainly appears to give that impression.

This email, in which Stokesbary warns lobbyists that clients who have given to Simpson better give to Hargrove too, was sent from a RobMcKenna.org email address, and signed by Stokesbary with the title “Field Director, Re-Elect AG Rob McKenna.”  The clear impression left with some recipients was that this was a direct request from McKenna, the most powerful Republican in the state, and a man in a position to impose political fealty.

So why would McKenna risk putting his name on such a legally and ethically dubious email?  After obtaining a copy of Stokesbary’s email from a political consultant, I contacted Rep. Simpson and asked him for his response.  Not surprisingly, he seems to believe it all comes down to the BIAW:

“Why are they coming after me? They want existing taxpayers to pay for the roads, schools and fire stations their new development requires and I think  the developers should pay their fair share through impact fees. They are one of the state’s most powerful political group but I stand up to them and am one of the biggest obstacles to them getting what they want in Olympia. They want growth without regulation. I want controlled and planned growth. They want to maintain their ability to skim industrial insurance money to use for political purposes but I worked to stop them.  Hargrove hasn’t even been elected yet and he’s already sold out to the BIAW.”

If so, expect this campaign to get much nastier.  And, less legal.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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?

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.

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.]

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.

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.]

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.

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.

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