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Thom: Politically correcting Bill-O on his crazy climate change statements.

Season’s Greetings:

• Roy Zimmerman: Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa:
  http://youtu.be/9MIKzPavUro
• Nick Offerman reads a more casual “Twas the Night Before Christmas”
• Mental Floss: 16 innovative origins of holiday traditions
• Slate: Pain and violence in Christmas movies
• Roy Zimmerman: Christmas is Pain.
• Sam Seder: Bill-O-The-Clown claim victory in the War on Christmas.
• Young Turks: Mission accomplished–the Grinch who SAVED Christmas
• James Rustad: The Bush’s 12 Days of Christmas

James Rustad: Ted Cruz…a rebel without a clue.

Thom: You don’t frack with New York.

Jon hits Hannity over referring to Jay Z as a “crack dealer”

The Cuban Mingle Crisis:

• Lawrence O’Donnell: Sen. Rubio’s blatant hypocrisy
• Stephen hits the Pope over Cuba
• Young Turks: New Cuba policy provokes nutburgers into a frenzy of nonsense
• Obama defends his actions over Cuba.
• Sam Seder: U.S. begins normalizing relations with Cuba
• Young Turks: Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have a Cuban missile crisis.
• Ann Telnaes: Sen Marco Rubio responds to normalizing relations with Cuba.
• Sam Seder shares his stories from Cuba

Congressional Hits and Misses.

Ed and Pap: Another corrupt Bush seeking White House?

Young Turks: Andrew Hawkins has some powerful words:

Megyn Kelly: When things go weird with Obama.

Torture in our Name:

• Jon: Dick Cheney’s mind is the scariest fucking place in the Universe
• Jimmy Dore: The torture report is so funny you’ll shit your hummus.
• Farron Cousins: The Bush Administration needs to stand trial. Period.
• Thom: Will Europe prosecute Bush or Cheney for torturing?
• Ann Telnaes: Dick has no regrets about torture.
• Stephen: Debates a formidable opponent on torture
• David Pakman: For 1st time Cheney admits some detainees were innocent. Doesn’t care.
• Jimmy Dore: Here’s what nobody understands about torture
• David Pakman: CIA didn’t just torture…they did human medical experiments
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Dick Cheney—The disgusting torture apologist

Larry Wilmore’s Nightly Show promo.

Sam Seder: Jeb Bush and the Republican clown car.

Obama talks about his own experience with racial profiling.

Thom: Is a climate disaster lurking off of the coast of Washington state?

Poison Pills:

• Jon: Look what Congress slipped into the spending bill.
• Mark Fiore: Citygroup Democracy
• Sam Seder: The argument for voting FOR the CRomnibus
• Ed O’Keefe: What’s inside the spending bill

White House: West Wing Week.

“Mom…you’re embarrassing us!”

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Obama takes a swing at Keystone.

Sony and Kim-J:

• Lawrence O’Donnell: North Korea wages war on Sony.
• Obama: I am sympathetic…but Sony made a mistake
• Young Turks: FBI confirms the source….
• Jon: So now Kim Jong-un determines what movies get made?
• Ari Melber: Is canceling ‘The Interview’ caving to terrorists?
• Slate: The Interview, as reenacted with pencil puppets

Jimmy Dore: Ben Stein reveals his racist side talking about Ferguson.

Mental Floss: 13 inventions and innovations creating a better future for women.

Matt Binder: Ten Sandy Hook families sue gun maker.

Maddow: On Putin, GOP & FAUX News must eat their words:
http://youtu.be/Ezh5hQKI9ho

Jimmy Kimmel: The YEAR in unnecessary censorship.

Does Stephen Commit Comicide?:

• Stephen: 12 very good moments from the Colbert Report.
• The final Colbert Report
• FAUX News dullard thinks Colbert should write a check to FAUX
• Slate: A tribute—Stephen’s music
• Stephen holds a yard sale.
• Stephen: 10 years of ALMOST staying in character
• Stephen’s final “Word”.

Thom: Is George Zimmerman right?

Sam Seder: Ted Cruz “own goals” the G.O.P..

Farron Cousins: Jeb Bush is the worst Republican traits on one package.

Not Mental Floss: 13 thing you think are true but aren’t.

Nutbag Republican state lawmaker proposes women have to ask men’s permission to have an abortion.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Governor Jay Inslee proposed a politically ambitious cap-and-trade-ish plan on greenhouse gas emissions yesterday. No doubt a complex proposal on which there is plenty of room for policy analysis and political debate.  But this is how the Republicans responded:

State Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, who chairs Senate’s energy and environment committee, called Inslee’s cap-and-trade plan “an energy tax, which is really a tax on mobility — which is a tax on freedom.”

So, um, Senator Ericksen, I sincerely hope you take my criticism in the most constructive way possible, but you, sir, are an asshole.

Seriously. Governor Inslee proposes pricing carbon in a way similar to British Columbia, California, and a number of northeastern states—a modest and much studied market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by forcing polluters to pick up just a small portion of the externalized costs—and you respond by accusing him of taxing our freedom? Because he hates our freedom, right? Just like Al Qaeda!

Of all the assholery an asshole could have devised, this has got to be the most assholic.

This is not a tax on freedom. If it is a tax, it is a tax on carbon emissions. Period. And only an asshole would equate carbon with freedom.

Oy…

“The tunnel project is 70 percent completed, according to WSDOT, so there’s no turning back at this point,” [Seattle City Council President Tim Burgess] added. “It is city government policy that this project be completed. The governor agrees. The mayor agrees. We must move forward.”

Look, I’m not suggesting that now is necessarily the time to pull the plug on the deep bore tunnel (or more accurately, put a plug in it). I’m not privy to enough information to make that decision one way or the other. But we should at least be open to that possibility, regardless of how much money we’ve already spent on the project.

No doubt Burgess understands this. If the engineers were to estimate that it would cost an additional, say, $20 billion to “move forward” and complete the tunnel, I’m guessing Burgess would be more than willing to turn back at this point. But would he turn back if the cost of completion was another $1 to $2 billion? How about $4 billion? Or how about $10 billion?

The money we’ve already spent on the tunnel is a sunk cost (in more ways than one), and as such should have no impact on our future spending decisions. What matters from here on out, given the known cost overruns and risks, is whether we’re likely to get more for our taxpayer money completing the remaining 30 percent of the project, or whether it makes more sense to to turn back and pursue a different option. Our prior expenditure of both financial and political capital should in no way influence our decision.

1 Kings 11:1-3
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.

Discuss.

The magic of the market at work:

Just months after it opened, First Place Scholars, the first charter school in Washington state, is in turmoil.

Its first principal resigned in November, more than half of its original board of directors have left, too, and the state’s charter-school commission has identified more than a dozen potential problems that need to be fixed soon if the school wants to keep its doors open.

[…] First Place was the first charter to open in part because it wasn’t starting from scratch. It had long been a private elementary school, founded to serve homeless students, in partnership with Seattle Public Schools.

To be clear, First Place Scholars had been successfully serving homeless students for years as a privately funded not-for-profit. As a charter school it got to replace its private charitable funding with state and local tax dollars, allowing it to more than double its capacity to up to 100 students. But the transition has not gone smoothly.

I sincerely doubt the state’s charter school commission—packed with charter school advocates—would allow First Place to close. They have too much at stake here. But First Place’s journey from successful private school to flailing charter certainly belies the notion that charter schools are somehow magically efficient.

The other day I challenged our state’s editorial boards to take the lead in urging state legislators to raise new revenue. And while I’ve no idea if he actually saw my post, yesterday Seattle Times editorial columnist Jonathan Martin did exactly that:

To level the tax burden, the Legislature should give a hard look at a 5 percent state tax on capital gains, the profit reaped on the sale of an investment such as stocks. The idea needs a full airing, because a capital-gains tax would affect the angel investor network that fuels Seattle’s startup engine. Revenue from capital gains taxes are also volatile, swinging with the market.

But nearly all competing tech-centric states have capital gains taxes. California has a 13.3 percent capital gains tax for millionaires, plus a big income tax, and that has not slowed Silicon Valley.

Washington voters have gone all in on the progressive policy agenda, with marriage equality, legalized marijuana, gun control.

It’s time for a bit more progressivism in tax policy.

Sure, it’s just the opinion of a single editorialist instead of the editorial board board as a whole, but it’s an encouraging start. Here’s hoping Martin can persuade his colleagues and his publisher that Washington’s future economic prosperity requires a fair and sustainable tax structure.

According to Crosscut, it was a year ago today that we first learned that the giant tunneling machine “Bertha” had become stuck in the muck beneath Seattle. One year later, Bertha remains stuck, and construction of a deep bore tunnel replacement to the teetering Alaskan Way Viaduct remains no closer to completion.

On this anniversary of ineptitude it is useful to remember whose brainchild this boondoggle was in the first place: none other than Seattle’s infamously faith-based “think” tank, the Discovery Institute! Yes, that Discovery Institute—the equally proud progenitors of the science-denying theory of so-called Intelligent Design! As I scoffed nearly 7 years ago today:

I once proposed building a gigantic rollercoaster along the West Seattle to downtown portion of the Monorail’s abandoned Green Line, and you didn’t see my joke of a transportation proposal picked up by the MSM, let alone labeled “visionary”. And yet the Seattle Rollercoaster Project is no less technically challenging nor politically, well, utterly fucking ridiculous than Discovery’s deep bore, crosstown tunnel. Engineering and economic feasibility aside, God himself could descend from the heavens with a blueprint in one hand and an infinite supply of cash in the other, only to be greeted by polar bear clad environmentalists and angry Eastside developers complaining that He isn’t doing enough to ease congestion on I-405. In a city where completion of a 1.3 mile vanity trolley line is feted like some transportation miracle, the very notion that local voters might commit more than a half billion dollars a mile to an untested technology is a dramatic tribute to Discovery’s primary mission of promoting the exercise of faith over reason.

Of course, with hindsight, I was wrong about the political feasibility. A cabal of elected officials ultimately shoved Bertha down our throats. Where it remains lodged to this day.

Deuteronomy 22:23-24
If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

Discuss.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Puppet Nation: News of the week:

Ever notice how America is like a bad boyfriend.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about Sleep.

David Pakman: More guns = more crime, no matter what NRA feels.

Thom: The secret ALEC conference.

Black and White and Red All Over:

• Sam Seder: St. Louis cops versus St. Louis Rams
• Protesters fill the streets of D.C. for Eric Garner
• Young Turks: Another unarmed black teen killed, in AZ this time
• Sam Seder: When Social Media reacts to the shooting of young Black men
• Daily Show: The “Shitty White People” in Ferguson race debate
• Jon asks Aqua Buddah Man: What the fuck are you talking about?!?
• Congressional Black Caucus slams Ferguson ruling
• David Pakman: Obama calls for police body cams
• Young Turks: Jackass Peter King blames Garner’s death on obesity.
• David Pakman: No indictment for cop who killed unarmed black man
• “I Can’t Breathe” read on House floor
• Sam Seder: Scumbag Peter King on why Eric Garner died
• Chris Hayes: How prosecutors manipulate grand juries
• Liberal Viewer: Officer Darren Wilson lied about knowing of store theft before killing Michael Brown
• Jon: On the Eric Garner decision
• Rep. Al Green responds to a media jackass.
• David Pakman: Darren Wilson’s story makes no sense.
• Stephen: Eric Garner isn’t Michael Brown
• Sam Seder: A tipping point in the crisis of police abuse against black men.
• Maddow: Cops who killed 12 y.o. kid had awful records:
  http://youtu.be/U5xdivUg2tE
• Tom and Pap: Racism in the American criminal justice system
• Mediaite: Nine cable news pundits who blame Eric Garner for his own death
• Ed and Pap: GOP White privilege highlighted by Ferguson comments
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Blame the Prosecutors, not the grand juries.
• Young Turks: NFL won’t apologize…
• Former RNC Chair Michael Steele: A Black man’s life is not worth a ham sandwich
• Mark Fiore: Who Killed Michael Brown.
• Jon accuses FAUX News of ‘racial plagiarism’ during Ferguson coverage
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Rand Paul’s idiotic Libertarian ideas about the murder of Eric Garner

Mike Pesca: A tribute to Nancy Grace.

Sam Seder and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The Republican mission to destroy climate action.

David Pakman: Nutburger Republicans consider banning Obama from delivering State of the Union Address.

Mental Floss: 26 little things that changed history forever.

Richard Fowler: The GOP plan to rig the 2016 election.

White House: West Wing Week.

Immigration Action Reaction:

• Brian Williams and Jimmy Fallon slow-jam the immigration news.
• David Pakman: FAUX and Fiends are angry that Obama quoted the Bible.

Sam Seder: What the fuck is up with Uber?

Guess who’s coming to The Colbert Report.

Maddow: AZ, KS, and Florida GOP are trying to kill solar power.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

University of Virginia Rape Story:

• Young Turks:
• Mike Pesca: About the University of Virginia rape case.

Young Turks: Glenn Beck sued for defamation by Saudi he constantly defamed.

Thom: Some more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Stephen thanks Nazis for getting Congress to agree on something.

David Pakman: Nutjob Christan pastor calls for killing gay people.

TurkeyGate!

• Sam Seder: The GOP staffer who criticized the Obama kids is no angle herself
• David Pakman: Republican who criticized Obama girls was arrested as a teen.
• Maddow: A lame excuse.

Obama speaks on the economy.

Richard Fowler: Voter proved he wasn’t quite dead yet.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

As much as I love to hate the Seattle Times editorial board, the truth is I actually agree with much of what they write. Sure, sometimes they’re just plain awful, like their shameful “death tax” lies. And sometimes they’re just hamfistedly insensitive and stupid, like Wednesday’s editorial that came off as placing more value on Black Friday than on black lives. But much of the time, and on many issues, I more or less agree with their general sentiment, however incoherently stated.

Take for example yesterday’s editorial urging legislators to protect funding for early and higher education:

MORE money will flow into Washington’s kindergarten through high-school programs in the next two years, but state lawmakers must ensure that doesn’t come at a cost to early and higher education.

The state’s education system should foster student success from ages 3 to 23…

Well, of course. Who could disagree with that? It’s great to see such commonsense advocacy coming from the editorial board of our state’s paper of record. And 3-to-23 education isn’t the only worthwhile program on which the editors have advocated spending more money. The problem is they’re missing in action when it comes to advocating for raising the revenue necessary to pay for it. In fact they’re worse than missing in action—they’re goddamn obstructionists!

The editors assert that it will cost the state an additional $10 billion over the next two biennial budgets to fund both McCleary and Initiative 1351. Whether you trust their numbers or not (and you usually can’t) it’s a lot of money. And the editors’ only revenue suggestion? “Raising the sales tax another percentage point would be unpopular, but effective.”

Unpopular, maybe, but effective, not so much. A percentage point increase in the sales tax would raise about $1 billion a year. So even in that unlikely scenario in which we pass a sales tax increase through the Republican-controlled state senate, where’s the other $1.5 billion a year coming from, let alone any additional money to fund early and higher education? On this the editorial board is silent.

What’s so frustrating about this editorial is that they’re almost there! They recognize the need to spend billions more on 3-to-23 education, and they even appear to understand that it will require significant sources of new revenue. But they just can’t bring themselves to take the lead in moving our state closer toward an actual solution. Which is what we need—especially after their years of knee-jerk obstructionism on revenue issues.

Washington is a very affluent state. We can easily afford to invest in education. But more importantly, our future prosperity depends upon it. It is past time to stop arguing about whether to raise taxes, and to start arguing about which taxes we’re going to raise. And if our editorial boards really want to live up to the civic role they claim for themselves, they might want to start leading this debate.

– Protections for free speech are awesome, but I don’t think they covers threatening to murder your estranged wife.

– It strikes me as strange that we didn’t know who would be the GOP leadership if they’d won the state Senate, but now we know.

– If you’re terrified of mostly-peaceful protesters, imagine what it’s like to be terrified of the police every day of your life.

– While I fully admit that I don’t understand all the technical issues, I would like quicker Internet in Seattle, pleez.

– As sad as the perpetual closing/almost closing of neat theaters in Seattle is, maybe it’s the market speaking?

Mark Fiore: Congressional Turkeys.

Young Turks: People love ObamaCare, so long as they don’t know what it is called.

Puppet Nation: U.S. News:

White House: West Wing Week.

Richard Fowler: Sen. Elizabeth Warren takes her fight to Walmart.

Young Turks: Governor insists food stamps come with drug tests.

Roll Call: Congressional hits and misses of the week.

David Pakman: Republican Koch House passes bill muzzling EPA scientists.

Sam Seder: Solyndra turns out to be the opposite of a scandal.

Ferguson, Goddamn:

• Young Turks: Darren Wilson’s testimony is pure weird racist fantasy
• Eric Schwartz: How many shots.
  http://youtu.be/cAOmqnvoVh8
• Liberal Viewer: Unfair Ferguson grand jury?
• Lawrence O’Donnell: FALSE Grand Jury instructions by Wilson prosecutors
• Young Turks: Darren Wilson shares his side of the story.
• Pap and Ed: Darren Wilson’s PR charm offensive
• Thom: Shouldn’t conflicting witnesses warranted a trial?

Thom: Is Walmart playing “Hunger Games” with its employees?

Farron Cousins: Net Neutrality battle rages on.

David Pakman: Director of ex-gay conversion clinic ends up marrying his same-sex partner.

Sam Seder: How Republicans ran from their right wing victory…

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

– Happy Thanksgiving and Shopping Day.

– Shorter Cathy McMorris Rodgers: The President’s immigration executive order is the democratic process on the rocks. Not the last 4 years of House leadership that I’ve been a part of.

– Does sadness have levels? I guess so. I’m not sure what “more than sad” feels like so I keep quiet.

– The today’s Uber versus future Uber is an interesting lens for policy debates.

– Kids today…

– West Seattle scenes: Sea-star sighting, and a video review

– (a) Uber seems nice, I’m glad the city caved to everything they want. (b) Seems like a solid arrangement, press.

– The Town Hall on Gender Pay Equity is happening December 2.

– It’s strange because every war is also the Cold War for the GOP.

– What Fair & Balanced Would Look Like

– How come Obama never cites scripture? How dare Obama cite scripture?

– Just consider how many utterly wrong turns one has to take to arrive at the position in which a little girl comes to your Sunday school class and your first thought is “Do I need to turn her in?” That’s sick.

– Now that Obama is an emperor for doing something other presidents have done, how does it feel living in a not free society?

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about pets.

Sam Seder: Tommy Chong smokes FAUX News.

Executive Action:

• Obama speaks on immigration action:

  
  

• Annotated: Boehner’s message before the President’s immigration speech
• Young Turks: Self-righteous FAUX hosts OUTRAGED when Obama quotes the Bible.
• Lawrence O’Donnell: How John Lennon affected our immigration laws.
• Sam Seder with Greisa Martinez: Obama’s historic move on immigration.
• Ann Telnaes: The emperor Obama has no clothes.
• Young Turks: Republican extremist practically begs for violence over Obama’s action
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Obama takes action on immigration, Republicans go crazy
• Chris Hayes: Nutbag Republican suggests Obama could face jail time over immigration actions.
• David Pakman: Many Republicans used executive action on immigration, only Obama should be impeached
• Young Turks: Obama goes it alone on immigration reform.
• Thom: Latinos threaten GOP with “Political Hell”
• Young Turks: Wingdings explain how Obama’s immigration policy is just like Hitler.

Matt Binder: The KKK does some “rebranding”.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Why the 2014 election spells disaster for Republicans in 2016.

Stephen: Assholes for Freedom.

Sam Seder and Dahlia Lithwick: What’s ruining the Supreme Court.

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News politicizes ISIS beheading.

WaPo: Sentenced to death without all the evidence.

David Pakman: Libertarian “champion” Rand Paul helps kill NSA reform bill.

Lawmaker asks about a moat for the White House.

Sam Seder: Bill-O-The-Clown kicks off the 2014 War On Christmas Season for FAUX News.

Political Keystone:

• Mark Fiore: Sustainable Keystone XL.
• Ann Telnaes: Keystone XL pipeline isn’t about jobs.
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: The Politics behind the Keystone XL rejection
• Jon pokes Dems for cynical Keystone ploy
• Thom: Politifact left the house without their pants.

Olbermann: Bill-O the Clown is BACK as Worst Person in the World!
http://youtu.be/KDFzLm8I-HY

Sam Seder: The funniest public service ad ever.

Puppet Nation: U.S. News of the Week:

White House: West Wing Week.

Lewis Black breaks down FAUX News’ relationship with Black Friday.

David Pakman: Court rejects challenge to contraception rules.

Stephen does Jon.

Chris Hayes: More deceptive FAUX News propaganda.

Neutrality Confusion:

• Young Turks: Ted Cruz’s worst nightmare is Al Franken explaining the internet.
• Farron Cousins: Ted Cruz is absolutely clueless on Net Neutrality.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Mental Floss: 62 last name meanings.

Maddow: What we want and who we elected to do it.

Jon: Who is Jonathan Gruber?

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.