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Over at Slog, ECB sticks it to Knute Berger for his latest column on Crosscut (you know, that online “newspaper” that has no news and no paper), and while I genuinely like Skip personally… Erica’s kinda got a point. There’s a “Blast From the Past” like quality to the Brewster/Berger/Van Dyk crowd that fails to connect with mere 16-year transplants like myself. Their’s is a Seattle more commonly found in history books than in, um… Seattle.

But I was particularly struck by Erica’s snide comment on Skip’s snide comment about Mayor Greg Nickels’ supposed call for secession:

Nickels’s “call for secession,” as Berger surely realizes, was a joke.

Or does he? This is the second column in a row in which Skip has raised this canard, to which I previously (and sarcastically) responded:

Berger dismisses Nickels’ assertion that his call for secession was “tongue-in-cheek” because apparently, journalists are much more capable of climbing inside the heads of their subjects than their subjects themselves, and no politician could ever be subtle enough to deliberately suggest an absurdity purely for dramatic effect.

In writing that sentence I was very conscious of my own recent run-in with the joke police, when the Times’ David Postman rejected my explanation that my intent was satirical when I responded in kind to BIAW charges of eco-Nazism. In his headline, Postman put the word “satire” in quotes, clearly refusing to accept my explanation as anything but an ex post facto excuse.

So I feel Nickels’ pain. Nickels denies that he really supports secession, in the same way that I denied that I really think the BIAW are Nazis. (Compare that to the BIAW, who passionately defend their assertion that our state’s stormwater regulations are the environmental equivalent of the Nuremberg Laws.) In both cases, journalists have concretely taken our original comments at face value, while stubbornly refusing to do the same when we explain that we were speaking tongue-in-cheek. Apparently, they did not find it funny, so it couldn’t possibly have been joke… a standard by which the bulk of sitcoms would be properly classified as reality television.

Years back, before I started blogging, I responded to yet another Eyman tax-cutting initiative by writing an update to Jonathan Swift’s classic satire “A Modest Proposal,” in which I proposed slaughtering students who failed the WASL, and using their flesh to supplement our school lunch programs. My column was instantly rejected by the Times and P-I, but the editors of the TNT mulled it over for weeks, eventually declining due to the consensus opinion that their readers “lacked the satire gene.”

I’m beginning to wonder if our journalists suffer from the same genetic defect?

Did Obama just wrap up the Democratic nomination? Is Hillary’s gas tax relief a bunch of hot air? Would raising the gas tax be the responsible thing to do? Are Democrats dismissing Dino Rossi at their own peril?

Goldy and friends engage in some friendly sparring but, as the evening wore on, nearly ended up in a death fight over these and other big issues of the moment at the Montlake Ale House. Goldy was joined by blogging pioneer N in Seattle, the lovely, talented, and hard-working Molly, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, and HorsesAss personality Carl Ballard.

The show is 46:04, and is available here as an MP3 file.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_may_6_2008.mp3]

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

The Columbian is reporting that officials now don’t know what caused the deaths of six sea lions near Bonneville dam earlier this week.

The mystery is thickening in the deaths of six sea lions over the weekend near Bonneville Dam, with federal authorities reporting this morning that a preliminary examination of the bodies “found no evidence of recent gunshot wounds.”

Although authorities initially suspected the animals died due to gunshot wounds, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported today that the cause of death remains unknown.

“We are assuming nothing at this point,” said Brian Gorman, a NMFS spokesman in Seattle. “We don’t have a working hypothesis, but we’ll come up with one and we’ll pursue it and try to find a cause of these deaths. It’s a mystery right now.”

Okay then. We’ll just call it a mystery and leave it at that. Odd how this story was presented as some kind of mass carnage, and now it’s like “oops.”

Jesus, if that’s how they treat the second place finisher, I’d hate to be the horse that came in third.

What?! You mean Rep. Dave Reichert really isn’t a moderate? The Politico reports:

It is a pattern. Many of his moderate moves turn out to be pretty empty upon closer inspection.

In fact, Reichert has reversed his vote on “moderate” bills a whopping 25 times this Congress. Why would a politician expose himself to charges that he was for a bill before he was against it?

According to an analysis of House procedure by local blogger Dan Kirkdorffer, Reichert often votes with Republicans on every procedural step for a bill, but if it is headed for passage anyway, he reverses himself on the final vote. The crass objective is to get credit from gullible reporters for backing some Democratic legislation.

Take the Democrats’ renewable energy bill. Reichert voted with Republicans to thwart the legislation five times. On Feb. 27, he voted to kill it one last time; when that failed, he turned around on the same day and voted for the final bill, with only 16 other Republicans.

These are facts, not opinions, and if our local reporters and columnists want to continue aping Reichert’s campaign propaganda, the least they could do is examine the facts and offer an alternative interpretation before once again touting his supposedly “moderate” voting record. To do otherwise simply serves to deceive the voters of the Eighth Congressional District.

Dan Kirkdorffer has been relentlessly pushing his analysis since the 2006 campaign, and while it is heartening to see a professional journalist finally examine the data, it is disappointing that the scrutiny had to come from the D.C. press corps rather than our own backyard. No doubt Dan is at least as partisan as I am, but facts are facts and they stand for themselves.

Is it acute media silliness or has the Rev. Wright issue now cost Obama the election? Should a prescription for medical marijuana come with a death sentence? Do Americans have something to learn about war from Europeans? (Are we traitors for even contemplating such a thing?). Will Sound Transit take the road less traveled? Is Dino’s fantasy transportation plan going to put him on the fast track to Olympia or board him on a bus back to Bellevue?

Goldy and friends dig into these savory questions over a pitcher of beer at the Montlake Ale House.

Goldy is joined by Geov Parrish, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly. Carl, and Lee.

The show is 55:10, and is available here as a 51.7 MB MP3.

[Audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_april_29_2008.mp3]

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

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, although some of us will show up a little early for dinner.

While you’ve got Drinking Liberally in mind, check out the Tri-City Herald‘s write-up of the blogosphere’s newest media darling, Jimmy of McCranium, and the Richland chapter of Drinking Liberally. Better yet, stop by and have Jimmy buy you a beer (or ten) at O’Callahan’s, in the Shilo Inn, 50 Comstock Rd, in Richland.

If the Seattle and Richland chapters are out of your commuting range, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

I generally like the job that Chris Mulick does, and I love the fact that smaller papers like the Tri-City Herald still maintain an Olympia bureau, but I just gotta call him out for a recent blog post in which he succumbs to the classic journalistic sin of equivalency. Mulick writes:

One of the more amusing aspects to covering campaigns in an election year is digesting all the yelling and screaming political parties intend for public consumption.

A favorite tactic is the missive from one party telling the other party’s candidate what they should do, as if they were playing a high stakes game of Simon Says.

For instance, the state Republican Party issued a press release last week titled “Gregoire Should Denounce Her Presidential Favorite’s Elitist Rhetoric.”

A week earlier the Democratic Party issued a press release titled “Rossi Should Reject and Denounce the BIAW.”

Yeah, no doubt, the two parties routinely do this sort of thing, and it can sometimes get quite silly, but Mulick chose a dubious example to illustrate his point. On the one hand, the state GOP demanded that Gov. Gregoire denounce Sen. Barack Obama for saying that small town voters are “bitter.” On the other, the state Dems demanded that Dino Rossi denounce the BIAW for repeatedly insisting that environmentalists are “Nazis.”

Sure, both parties sent out press releases, but there’s no equivalency between Obama’s statements and the violent, extremist hate-talk of the BIAW… and to imply such is simply irresponsible.

Michael Ennis at the right-wing millionaire funded Washington Policy Center takes exception to my post about his group’s attempts in Clark County to scuttle light rail.

No one can escape the fact that light rail across a new Columbia River Bridge would add over $1 billion dollars to the project costs. This means adding light rail would increase costs by 40%, but only serve between 2.4% to 9.8% of all bridge crossings by 2030. That presents a significant gap between public costs and public benefits.

There is a better way: maintaining the current transit configuration (rubber-tire buses) across a new bridge would carry just as many transit riders as light rail or BRT, yet cost a billion dollars less.

But of course, DeVore doesn’t address these facts and only engages in an Ad Hominem attack. The people of Clark County deserve to know both sides of an issue when public dollars are used.

Facts are funny things, actually. I mean, Ennis was at this forum on Apr. 10, agitating in our community, when a director of the Columbia River Crossing project put forth a different figure than one billion dollars:

Crossing officials likely will seek up to $750 million in Federal Transit Administration’s grants to pay for construction costs of bringing light rail over the Columbia River and into downtown Vancouver.

Doug Ficco, co-director of the Columbia River Crossing project, said the $750 million figure comes from federal officials and roughly matches how much crossing officials estimate light rail would cost.

But what’s a quarter billion dollar difference when it helps you make your right-wing millionaire funded point? All that Coors (or whatever) money has to be used for something I suppose. Follow me past the jump and we’ll talk about the issues.

[Read more…]

Did Sen. Hillary Clinton win the Pennsylvania primary in any meaningful way? Does cutting a fighter jet into little pieces make for good art? And who is the single most conservative member of the house on foreign policy? These questions and more are raised, pondered, re-examined, synthesized, refined, interrogated, beat to death, waterboarded, and stacked on the floor in neat little pyramids by Goldy and friends.

Yes…it was another evening of Podcasting Liberally.

Joining Goldy was a panel of the blogosphere’s finest: Will, Ray, mcjoan, and Daniel .

The show is 50:07, and is available here as a 47 MB MP3.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_april_22_2008.mp3]

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

If Oklahoma City really is as small as the hearts and minds of its local sportscasters, Clay Bennett is gonna have a helluva tough time making a profit while meeting the payroll of a competitive team. Just take a gander at the neeter-neeter-neeterism that passed for journalism over at KOCO’s Sports Blog in the wake of the NBA approving the Sonics move:

Why does the city of Seattle want to keep the Sonics for two more lame duck seasons? Why wouldn’t the city want to take a huge lump sum payment and keep the Sonics name?

Why? Arrogance.

Seattle leaders and state legislators never really believed the Sonics would leave. Somehow, someway an arena deal would get done. Why would a team and a league abandon the 14th largest TV market in the country? There’s no way the team would leave the greatness of Seattle for the blandness of middle America, right? For some reason the “haves” in Seattle just thought it would all work out, now the city “has not” when it comes to a NBA future.

The city of Seattle wants to drag this thing out, to make it as painful and costly as possible for Bennett. Hopefully, they think, Bennett will sell the team to someone local and the Sonics will stay. Arrogance at its finest. As we say here in Oklahoma, “That ain’t happening.”

Talk about arrogance. Just remember that in a league where money easily trumps a 41-year history of fan loyalty, what goes around comes around.

And then there’s this thoughtful commentary from yet another KOKO sportscaster, who advises lifelong Seattle Sonics fans to just “deal with it.”

I am getting really tired of everyone else from Seattle crying about this move. If you really cared about the Sonics, then why didn’t you buy a ticket or even better yet approve payment on a new stadium?

One fact of life is that there are always consequences for your actions, and Seattle is now learning that lesson. But, so is OKC: It acted by supporting the Hornets. It acted by saying, “Sure, tax me,” to improve the Ford Center, and now they get the NBA.

Sorry, Seattle, but you had your chance and failed.

Now, we Okies get a shot to prove we really are a “Major League City” and can support an NBA franchise. Don’t worry, though: You still have the Seahawks and Mariners.

Yeah, well, I hope all you Okies enjoy paying a one-percent sales tax to build luxury boxes for the wealthy in your five year old Ford Center… a tax that will no doubt expire right around the time Bennett demands yet another new arena or renovation. Neeter, neeter, neeter.

It’s official. President George W. Bush has united the American people, who have collectively declared him: Worst. President. Ever.

President Bush has set a record he’d presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt.

The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.

The title comes at the end of a long downhill slide from having the record highest approval rating in September, 2001. Bush earned that record by ignoring a daily presidential briefing dated 6 August 2001 titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.” (Among other things, the memo pointed out, “…FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”)

Besides the USA Today/Gallup poll, there was an ARG poll released today and a Rasmussen poll released Sunday that included presidential approval.

The ARG poll gave Bush 22% approval and 72% disapproval. This isn’t the worst Bush has done in the ARG poll…in February, his approval was a mere 19% and his disapproval was an astounding 77%. But, then, ARG presidential approvals polls seem to be biased against Bush, and ARG, in general, has something of a reputation for quirky (i.e. highly variable) results.

The Rasmussen approval poll (which is now taken weekly instead of daily) has Bush’s approval at 34% and disapproval at 64%. The Rasmussen presidential approval polls have always been biased in favor of Bush relative to other major pollsters (but consistently and reliably so). We can compare Sunday’s results with past performance in the Rasmussen poll. When the April polls are averaged at the end of the month, this is likely to be Bush’s worst performance to date–easily beating the 36% approval and 61% disapproval from last May. Rasmussen points out:

Sometimes it is difficult to keep the ratings in perspective. In February 2005, at the beginning of the President’s second term, the number who Strongly Approved was roughly equal to the number who Strongly Disapproved. Now, three years later, just 13% Strongly Approve while more than three times as many—45%–Strongly Disapprove.

Aggregates of multiple polls (e.g. Prof. PollKatz or Pollster.com) also show Bush at the lowest point of his presidency.

So…we have a lame duck Worst. President. Ever. But consider this: at this point in the second term, Ronald Reagan was hovering around 50% approval and Bill Clinton’s approval was in the low 60%. It isn’t just a “lame duck” effect.

Does Bush’s pathetic approval/disapproval matter? From Rasmussen:

In March, as the President’s Approval Rating slipped, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Democrats remained near the highest levels ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports.

Yeah…I guess it does a little. Besides needlessly sending our soldiers to their death and running up enormous debt for an illegal war that was fraudulently foisted upon the American people, besides the erosion of our civil liberties, the invasion of our privacy, and the approval of torture contrary to our treaties, in addition to causing massive (and, quite possibly, permanent) damage to our reputation abroad, it looks like the Bush administration has also made it downright distasteful (or, perhaps, embarrassing) to be a Republican.

Lee:

I’m totally fine with building fences along the Aurora Bridge, but can we cut out the nonsense that it’s going to save the lives of the suicidal? Fencing off the Aurora Bridge will not save those lives for the same reason that fencing off the Mexican border will not stop illegal immigration.

Normally, Lee is a wellspring of wisdom, but he could not be more wrong. Suicide barriers and border fences serve altogether different functions, and the forces at play in each case have little in common.

When individuals decide to cross the United States’ southern border, they’re reacting to economic conditions. They know that in America they can earn in a day what they can earn in a month in their home countries. There are plenty of low wage jobs in America that will not be filled by Americas. (Or, more accurately, there are plenty of jobs Americans won’t do because the jobs pay so little.) Lee’s right about the U.S./Mexico fence: it’s poorly thought-out, and flies in the face of economic realities. That said…

Suicide isn’t a fungible thing. Ryan Thurston, founder of Seattle Friends, says that suicide is “a very impulsive act.” His group is advocating the installation of a suicide prevention barrier.

More from Thurston’s group:

Why build a suicide barrier — won’t they just go somewhere else?

No. This is a common misconception:

* Two suicide bridges in Washington D.C., the Taft and the Duke Ellington, are located a block away from each other. When officials erected a barrier on one bridge, suicides on the other bridge did not increase.
* Dr. Richard Seiden, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, studied 515 individuals who were prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. Ninety four percent of them went on to live normal and productive lives — a mere six percent attempted suicide again.
* The Memorial Bridge in Augusta, Maine was the sight of 14 suicides before officials erected a safety fence there. After installing the fence, suicides at the bridge fell to zero — and the suicide rate in the entire state did not increase.

We can reduce the number of suicides by installing a fence on the Aurora Bridge. We should, and not only for the benefit of the individuals who will be dissuaded from taking their own lives:

The neighborhood beneath the bridge used to be docks and warehouses, and the suicides went largely unnoticed. But during the technology boom of the past two decades, it morphed into a trendy area full of office buildings, shops and restaurants, and the bodies began to fall where people could see them.

“They end up in our parking lot,” said Katie Scharer, one of Edwards’ co-workers at Cutter & Buck, a sportswear company based in the Adobe complex. “Nobody’s ever totally used to it.”

Grief counselors regularly go to Cutter & Buck, paying a visit as recently as a month ago.

I can’t imagine how awful it must be to work in that area, knowing that at any time someone could fall to their death. If a fence can successfully prevent people from killing themselves, then it’s worth building.

UPDATE [Lee]: I’ve responded in the comments and will leave it at that as I’ll be signed off for the rest of the day, but I want to make it clear that I actually do support the fence for the fact that the jumpers are a huge concern for the businesses and residences below.