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1. Thanks to everyone who followed along with my live-tweeting of Tuesday night’s WSLCB meeting for establishing rules in the upcoming legal marijuana market. It’s fascinating to watch this process unfold and it gives me greater appreciation for the job that the WSLCB is doing.

Today, my dim-witted Congressman, Dave Reichert, made the following comments about our state’s new law:

“I think it was a bad decision,” Reichert said. “I think it’s going to crumble here in the state of Washington.

“I’ll be very clear: I am not going to assist the federal government in any way in finding a solution to the conflict between the state and federal law — I can’t do it.”

This is about as profoundly irresponsible as you can imagine. The state that Dave Reichert represents voted by a comfortable margin to set up a legal market for marijuana. But instead of working with his fellow Washington representatives to stand up for his voters, he’s just going to sit with his thumb up his ass and watch it “crumble”.

Personally, I don’t think it will crumble. There will be problems, in particular with how new businesses do their banking, but the fact that people would much rather buy marijuana in regulated stores will eventually bring us to a stable system. But the important point here is that these are problems that Congress has the ability to fix. So Dave Reichert’s position is: I could do something about it, but I’d rather watch it crumble and let criminal gangs continue to run the market. He really does fit in with his fellow House GOP buffoons.

2. I’m delighted to witness Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s evolution on understanding medical marijuana. Despite all the noise about people abusing medical marijuana programs to get recreational weed, people who’ve followed this issue have always known about the remarkable stories like this one, where the staunchly anti-pot parents of a 5-year-old in Colorado eventually discovered that medical marijuana was able to stop her seizures after no other medicines worked. And that appears to be one of the centerpieces of Gupta’s special on CNN Sunday night. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

3. I haven’t written much about the NSA spying scandal. There are a lot of parts and angles to it, and many professional journalists are doing a wonderful job covering it.

But if there’s one particular aspect of this story that I find fascinating, it’s the reactions that people have had to NSA’s spying overseas in friendly countries. For many who are old enough to remember the Cold War, the reaction is mostly a shrug. But for younger folks (particularly those close in age to Snowden), there’s far more outrage and concern.

Two things have really made a big difference in this shift. The end of the Cold War is one. We no longer face a military threat on the scale of the Soviet Union. America’s supremacy in the world isn’t challenged by anyone. And global terrorist networks kill fewer Americans than toddlers with guns. The fact that we’re spying on Germans, Brits, and Australians in response to this threat looks absurd, especially if you’re too young to even remember the Berlin Wall coming down.

Second, the internet age has greatly changed the perceptions that we have about borders, and about how different we are from those across the globe. This is one of the most monumental cultural shifts the world has gone through. A generation ago, few people in this country had any social contact with people across the globe. Today, we regularly converse and interact in real time with people all over the world.

Much of the existing law that currently governs what NSA is allowed to do makes distinctions between domestic and foreign surveillance targets. But in a world where America can wield power in largely unchallenged ways, it makes little sense to most young people why the privacy of their friends in foreign lands is worth less than theirs. And these revelations are a big part of why the rationale for the NSA’s activities is starting to crumble.

Politico speculates about possible replacements for Darrell Issa, whose “adventure” as Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is term limited:

Issa’s term as the Obama administration’s chief inquisitor expires at the end of 2014, and unless leaders waive party rules, he won’t be eligible to keep running the committee.

Awww…it’s a sad.

No…really! Issa has been a real gift to the Democrats in his role as Chair of the Oversight Committee. It begins with the irony that a man who was charged twice with auto theft, and charged twice and convicted once of weapons charges is at the helm of the Oversight Committee. It sort of fits in with the Republican Projection Phenomenon of “we think you are doing something bad, because we know what we would do in your shoes.” In other words, pick the most corrupt, shadiest, morally bankrupt member to hunt for corruption, shadiness, and moral bankruptcy.

The fact is, Issa has been a disaster as Oversight Chair. He is undisciplined, politically unsavvy and, frankly, ineffective. He doesn’t seem to have a nose for investigations.

This is no more evident than in the “IRS Scandal”, where Issa made a fatal investigatory blunder. As a Partisan Issa would certainly want people to believe that Teabagger groups were being targeted. But, the Investigator Issa should have initially focused on reality first and used what he could later for the spin cycles.

Instead, Issa directed IRS Inspector General J. Russell George to investigate IRS targeting of only conservative and tea party groups. The results made for some weeks of good sound bites, but proved embarrassing and amateurish when the truth came out that the IRS was targeting all political-oriented groups. More importantly, it undermined Issa’s credibility to effectively conduct investigations.

So, this is one reason way we should hope that Issa gets a term limit waiver and remains Chair of the Oversight committee! But that probably won’t happen.

Among the prospective Chairs in Politico’s list is Washington state’s Doc Hasting (R-WA-4):

Call this Boehner ally and personal friend the wild card.

As current Natural Resources Committee Chairman, Hastings, like Issa, is term-limited [as Natural Resources Committee Chairman] at the close of this Congress.

He raised GOP eyebrows when he joined Oversight earlier this year — a rare move for someone who’s been in Congress for nearly two decades.

Republican rank and file call that “committee hopping,” and many on the panel wonder if he joined with an eye on the gavel.

Hastings’s office wouldn’t confirm or deny rumors that he‘ll throw his name in the pot. If he chooses to, he has more than Boehner’s friendship at his back: He has money.

I’ll just say this: if there is anyone in Congress that I perceive as more incompetent and ineffective in the role of Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, it’s “Doc” Hastings. A dumber Congressman you will not find.

Please…let it be so!

— King County Election Results, and links for all state counties.

— The King County parks levy passed with 69%!

— A new concept in the periodic table.

— Breaking: Transcript of al Qaeda’s worldwide conference call.

— MLA produces an official format for citing intellectual property contained in tweets.

— Fantasy Politics—2016: Weiner–Gore versus Boehner–Trump.

— The G.O.P.’s Insane “Leninist strategy”.

– The campaign for Oregon to join the rest of the West Coast for marriage equality.

– Abortion is an extremely safe procedure that rarely results in serious complications, and despite anti-choicers’ vehement efforts to cloak such laws in feigned concern for maternal health, current medical practices are such that risk to patients won’t be reduced by restrictive rules requiring admitting privileges.

– I’ve never had Miss Marjorie’s, but now Steel Drum Plantains are all I want. (h/t)

– I remember thinking this when the column was written. And to think Douthat is considered one of the heavyweights of the conservative movement.

– Oops

I want to agree with Dan Savage here about Anthony Weiner.

Even if you find Weiner’s behavior disgusting, even if you’re mystified by Huma Abedin’s stand-by-her-mannishness (hey, maybe they have an agreement, people? Maybe she’s enjoys getting her virtual freak on too?), won’t you please think of the children? Think of your own children. I promise you, moms and dads of America, your kid is online right now sexting up a storm, swapping dick pics and boob shots, flirting with classmates, cranking up their BFs and GFs before school, during school, after school, etc., and all of their flirty chats, texts, IMs, and pics are going to wind up stored somewhere. Kids today: each and every one of them is creating a smutty digital trail that could be used against them one day—unless we defuse these ticking dick pic time bombs now.

That’s fine as far as it goes. However, I don’t think that Weiner’s penis is the one you want to hang your dick pic hat on.* The norms around these things are still evolving with the technology. They have new risks (like perminance) and new benefits (hotness, you’re not going to get a disease or preggers no matter how reckless you are with the pictures or texts you send). Still, those of us who want the rules to evolve into a reasonable direction should be defenders of consent and of honesty, and it’s tough to say Weiner lived up to either of those.

When the scandal first broke, what turned me from it’s none of my business to he should go was the fact that the pictures weren’t consensual (NY Times link).

“It didn’t make any sense,” Ms. Cordova, a 21-year-old college student in northwestern Washington State, said in her first extensive interview since Mr. Weiner confessed in a news conference Monday to sending her the photo. “I figured it must have been a fake.”

Ms. Cordova’s experience with Mr. Weiner appears to fit a pattern: in rapid and reckless fashion, he sought to transform informal online conversations about politics and partisanship into sexually charged exchanges, at times laced with racy language and explicit images.

Ms. Cordova, who had traded messages with Mr. Weiner, a New York Democrat, about their shared concern over his conservative critics, said she had never sent him anything provocative. Asked if she was taken aback by his decision to send the photo, she responded, “Oh gosh, yes.”

Surely those of us who think that sending pictures of your penis, or boobs, or whatever to strangers isn’t inherently immoral should be the ones who are strongest in trying to defend people’s right to not get unwanted pictures. Consent still ought to matter in our digital age.

Now, there has been no indication that his post-Congressional sending pictures was anything other than consensual. Maybe he has learned that lesson (I haven’t seen any evidence that he has discussed a lack of consent as a problem). If it’s intentional or not, it’s a step in the right direction. Still, he clearly lied to at least one of the women, promising to leave his wife for her (all of the articles I can find that I’d want to block quote use her name, even though she wants to stay anonymous so no link, I’m afraid; any comments with links to articles that name women who wish to stay anonymous will be deleted). That’s more forgivable, but it still seems creepy to me. I don’t think those of us defending the morality of sending pictures to people who want them should also feel an obligation to say lying to get pictures is no big deal.

And finally, there is the cheating aspect. Maybe Dan Savage is absolutely right, and Weiner’s wife, doesn’t mind or is in favor of it. But publicly, their stance is that she’s against it. And for the discussion of the ethics of sending pictures, I think we can say it’s wrong to go outside of the agreed upon boundaries of a relationship. We can do that even when we’re defending people’s right to define their relationships however they want. And look, I’m not going to judge their marriage from the outside: the fact that they have both decided to stay together, is enough, and frankly that part is still none of my business. We say that isn’t a deal breaker for electing people, and more generally that people probably shouldn’t be fired over it, but we can still say it’s not OK.

As I say, I agree with a lot of what Dan Savage says here. I just don’t think defending people’s right to send raunchy pictures means we have to defend Anthony Weiner in this case.

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The New York Times has a piece on people who encouraged Chris Christie to run for president before the last election:

Sixty people, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and prominent business executives, sat facing a small table with a phone on it. The phone allowed David Koch, the industrialist and conservative billionaire, and John J. Mack, the former chairman of Morgan Stanley, to call in and encourage his candidacy.

After Mr. Langone announced that the group would raise as much money as Mr. Christie would need, Mr. Kissinger picked up his cane and made his way to the front of the room. (In a previous conversation, Mr. Christie recounts, Mr. Kissinger had told him that he hadn’t “seen a politician connect with someone in a long time” the way Mr. Christie did with people.)

“Your country needs you,” Mr. Kissinger declared, and the room erupted in applause. (Mr. Kissinger declined the author’s request for an interview.)

As Dan Robinson notes (and he also gets the hat tip):

Henry Kissinger intoning,"Your country needs you" should be all the reason needed to run from Christie. http://t.co/kSmI0AbKrF

— Daniel Robinson (@daguro) July 24, 2013

Yes, quite. I know Kissinger is thought of more as village elder these days than as the terrible person he is. It’s also probably a reminder, as if any were necessary, for those of us who are frustrated by the slow pace of change in foreign policy in the Obama administration. If people like Kissinger think there are real differences between him and Obama, then whatever Kissinger wants will be less likely to bomb Cambodia, or whatever the 2013 equivalent of that is.

– All the people who don’t like Elizabeth Warren make me like her more.

– Seattle Children’s Hospital will be a major sponsor of the Puget Sound Bike Share.

– I am very glad to see the advice that General Martin Dempsey gave President Obama on Syria. Even if it took John McCain being John McCain to get it.

– City Council set a target to prevent flooding around Seattle’s drains and pipes by capturing stormwater and reducing rain runoff by implementing emerging green technologies. This “Green Stormwater Infrastructure” (GSI) includes raingardens, vegetated roofs, rainwater harvesting and use of permeable pavement in Seattle neighborhoods.

– If you believe in the Bible, then abortion is never an option — it’s a requirement. And it must be performed by a member of the clergy in the house of God, just as the Bible says.

Jean Godden has an opinion piece in The Seattle Times on Seattle’s unacceptable wage gap by gender, the city taskforce to fix it, and what can be done now (h/t, Seattle Times Link, obvs).

In response to the city’s report, Mayor Mike McGinn announced the formation of a Gender Pay Task Force to “develop short-term and long-term strategies to address gender-pay inequities.” The task force would report this fall and develop a gender-justice initiative by January.

We know the causes of the pay gap are complex. We know that our male colleagues find the study conclusions as maddening as we do.

The task force should be bold and innovative in finding solutions both inside city government and beyond, such as ensuring that workforce-development training and apprenticeship programs — programs designed for family-wage jobs — are targeted at and utilized by women. My council colleagues and I should consider adopting elements of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which has yet to pass Congress, to strengthen equal-pay laws.

We should encourage flextime policies that make it easier to balance family obligations with a career. Only about a third of employers allow some of their employees to work from home on a regular basis. We should expand access to child care so that women do not have to choose between higher-paying jobs and taking care of children.

I’m encouraged that Council Member Godden isn’t going to just wait around, and I hope that her Council colleagues will join her. It’s great that she has some solid proposals (I’m not thrilled about the bit making public employee pay easier to access, but in general, I think what she’s saying is good). That whatever the task force ultimately decides, the city can get started now.

I also want to echo her call for the task force to be bold. Sometimes task forces and other government agencies looking for solutions to problems will come up with a pre-compromised version in the hopes that it can get passed. It’s understandable, but Seattle deserves the best solutions presented for this problem, especially with the Seattle area being the worst of the top 50 metro areas for gender pay equality. It’s up to our elected officials to see how far they are willing to take any recommendations (and it’s up to the public to hold their feet to the fire). If the Council and the Mayor don’t like all of the recommendations, they don’t have to implement them, and the public can decide if they want members who will. But they ought to be given the best options, so we can judge them against that.

Of course, I hope that elected officials actually pass something, and that the recommendations of the task force don’t just get reported on and then sit on a shelf collecting dust.

Ben Schiendelman at Seattle Transit Blog has the latest on studying the Ship Canal Crossing.

In order for this study to give answers that the city needs in time for Bridging the Gap and Sound Transit 3, it needs to start at the beginning of 2014. It takes three to four months after the council approves funding for a project for the scope to be written, bid on, and the contract awarded, so the funding has to come well before the beginning of 2014 – really, now.

So on Monday, council member O’Brien ran an amendment to the first quarter supplemental budget to fund the study starting now, instead of in 2015, where it’s currently scheduled.

O’Brien, Conlin, Bagshaw and Harrell voted for it, and the other 5 opposed it. So it failed, and as such:

This may have been the last chance to have the ship canal crossing study done early enough that it could influence BtG or ST3. I plan to get more details from SDOT about the shortest possible timeline for the work, and whether it could still provide guidance before being entirely complete. I’ll report back on a path forward in the next few weeks.

OK. Ben goes over the reasons they opposed it and here’s what he has to say about Licata:

Licata, the same day as the amendment, ran an insert in the Seattle Times with one of the worst false premises I’ve ever seen in Seattle politics. On Metro, it says: “We must not reduce its service in order to build major new rail projects.” This is unreal – in no universe is Metro’s funding shortfall related to rail. The worst part about a campaign message like this is that it makes people less able to understand what’s going on with transit funding – and because they’ll waste their time on a fake battle, it makes getting Metro revenue harder. It’s completely irresponsible on Licata’s part.

Sound Transit has a different budget than Metro. Neither one is controlled by the Seattle City Council. Spending city money on rail, or in this case, studying a rail corridor doesn’t take county money away from buses. This is so confusing. I really just wish I could follow his argument here.

Also, I feel like maybe with the ad implying that buses are the most reliable form of transit, neither he nor whoever wrote the piece has ever been stuck on a bus as it inched along stuck in traffic. Maybe they never had a bus pass them at a stop even though it isn’t even near full (or for that matter when one is full). Maybe they’ve never seen two or three of the same route bunched up together after waiting a long time. Maybe he’s never had One Bus Away screw up* or been on a snow route.

Don’t get me wrong: yay for our many aspects of our bus system. It’s pretty amazing in the urban core with the bus tunnel and with 3rd Ave closed off to traffic. If you don’t mind waiting you can get pretty far out. What it isn’t, what it can’t be as long as it uses the same lanes as cars, is reliable.

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Tim “Biggest Lie of My Life” Eyman’s I-960 and I-1185 require “advisory votes” for tax increases passed by the legislature. Unfortunately, it comes with a lengthy and burdensome voter pamphlet statement:

The Secretary of State’s office says explanations for last year’s measures added about eight pages to the voter pamphlet, which cost about $100,000. Using the same layout, this year’s measures would add about 20 pages, and $240,000.

And then there is this:

But Tami Davis, the voter education and outreach manager, is looking for a way to cut pages and costs.

So on top of the printing costs, the initiatives force us to use state employees to write, proof, and figure out new layouts that save money. All that costs money.

Eyman defends himself:

…whatever the cost may be, it will be “chump change” compared to the taxes those five new laws will collect. Voters deserve a chance to weigh in, he said.

Except that the advisory votes are only…well, advisory. Very expensive ones, at that.

Has the process done anything besides bloating the voter pamphlet and require the legislature to raise taxes to pay for bloating it? Well…maybe. Rodney Tom indicated he used these advisory votes in his decision to join the Republican caucus. And the result was a cluster fuck….more gummed up government leading to a wasteful double overtime legislative session.

The scam Eyman has going here is self perpetuating. He preys on unpopular topics—essentially forcing voters to give a thumbs up or down to raising their own taxes—in order to pass initiatives that gum up government. And when the government gets gummed up, people become unhappy with government. They make a statement through their next initiative from the Mukilteo Menace.

This is the very definition of wasteful government—the very thing the admitted liar is supposedly against.

Eyman isn’t against wasteful government, of course. It is a sham. The only thing Eyman is interested in is lining his own pocket.

– RIP Kip Tokuda

– “I’m appalled that Alaska Airlines is trying to stop SeaTac citizens from being able to vote on the good jobs initiative. What are they afraid of? Why don’t they want to share the success of the company with me and my community?” asked Chris Smith, a SeaTac resident and worker at Sea-Tac Airport. See also, Goldy.

– This is not our system malfunctioning. It is our system working as intended. To expect our juries, our schools, our police to single-handedly correct for this, is to look at the final play in the final minute of the final quarter and wonder why we couldn’t come back from twenty-four down.

– It is strange that the city cut down the cycle tracks that activists put up and then put up its own. But whatever, it looks nice, and I’m glad they responded to activist’s concerns.

– The overall push is laudable. Indeed, given Tukwila is so diverse and yet economically disadvantaged, transformation into a truly urban center, with plenty of transit access and walkability, could improve things. Tukwila seems to be making a real push for renewal, so hopefully it continues successfully.

– Zimmerman gets justice

– I think I will go on twitter and start another trend: #AmericaisGeorgeZimmerman

– Seriously, gents, get a different sign.

– Washington is taking steps to keep Boeing here (Seattle Times Link). The thing they could best offer is that they aren’t South Carolina.

– So white people who kill black teenagers shouldn’t even go to court. Because blacks are violent … even if conservatives have use video of rioting (white) hockey fans in Vancouver to prove it.

– Harrell’s attitude about speeding is disappointing; it reveals how ingrained speeding is in American culture, and reminds us that traffic crashes are thought of as “accidents” – things that just happen, and we have little control over. Little could be further from the truth.

– Trayvon Martin was stalked by George Zimmerman because he was black. Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the boy Zimmerman killed was black.

– The GOP press release failing Rep. Mark Takano’s grading is hilarious.

Psalm 94:4-7
God, the wicked get away with murder—
how long will you let this go on?
They brag and boast
and crow about their crimes!
They walk all over your people, God,
exploit and abuse your precious people.
They take out anyone who gets in their way;
if they can’t use them, they kill them.
They think, “God isn’t looking,
Jacob’s God is out to lunch.”

Discuss.

– “I can tell you this: No matter who introduces it, it is not going anywhere in the Senate,” Murray said. “We are not going to let it come up in the Senate. There is no reason for it. This is settled law. We are not going to be sidetracked by a debate on women’s health yet again.”

– I don’t know why I keep mentioning these and then not going, but there’s a Seattle Balloon Juice Meetup.

– So how long is it respectable to pretend that David Boardman was anything other than a right wing hack who survived at The Seattle Times for 30 years by being a right wing hack?

– You wouldn’t think this would be necessary to say, but in the last two days, I’ve seen 2 different cars that looked to me anyway to not be county vehicles on bike paths. Don’t do that.

– I haven’t had fruit flies yet this year (something something eat more fruit, Carl), but this is a neat idea for when they come.

2 Samuel 13:10-15
And Tamar took the bread she had prepared and brought it to her brother Amnon in his bedroom. But when she took it to him to eat, he grabbed her and said, “Come to bed with me, my sister.”

“No, my brother!” she said to him. “Don’t force me! Such a thing should not be done in Israel! Don’t do this wicked thing. What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel. Please speak to the king; he will not keep me from being married to you.” But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.

Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, “Get up and get out!”

Discuss.