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This gets more interesting:

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox is arriving in Seattle on Wednesday night to meet with local marijuana entrepreneur Jamen Shively.

On Thursday, Fox will join Shively and other leaders at his Kirkland-based company, Diego Pellicer, for a press conference at the Columbia Tower in downtown Seattle. They will announce details of the company’s new acquisitions and plans to expand domestically and internationally.

A lot of people have been breathing a sigh of relief that the DOJ has been very quiet about their intentions so far. But that doesn’t mean nothing will happen. Everything they’ve said and done in recent years has been centered around one basic truth – if you get too big, you become a target. In fact, San Francisco’s U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said exactly that when it came to her decision to target the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the country, Harborside. As the war they’ve been foolishly fighting for decades slowly falls apart, nothing raises the ire of drug warriors more than seeing people get rich in an industry that they’ve been conditioned to believe is illegitimate.

Shively is an interesting individual. At this month’s Cannabis Freedom March, he spoke about how he’s only recently discovered marijuana, when a “brilliant programmer” he worked with at Microsoft introduced him to it. As a corporate strategist, he obviously knows a lot about how to set up and run a company, but it’s not clear he knows what he’s getting into when it comes to the drug war. Mark Kleiman, our state’s marijuana consultant, thinks Shively may be trying to scam some folks out of investment capital without actually crossing any lines that would get his ass arrested. I’m highly skeptical of that, but Shively’s approach really has me scratching my head. I guess we’ll see what happens at the press conference tomorrow.

– I hope you had a good Memorial Day.

– But the bigger lesson to learn from the Skagit River bridge collapse is that government matters.

– So, basically, the Washington Post just made me less likely to agree with them because they didn’t seem to understand what the actual stakes were. Just because James Rosen isn’t a North Korean intelligence asset (or the dupe of one) doesn’t mean that he isn’t stupid enough to do just as much damage as if he were.

– Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, you’ve got some explaining to do.

– I would have assumed the IRS would be more politically sophisticated than to devise the crude screen they used during those cycles. But they did have an obligation to check.

– It’s always a bit tough to tell from pictures, but it looks like a good turnout in Olympia for the day of action against Monsanto.

– The first time I read the Silicon Sound I thought it sounded pretty good. But maybe it’s catching up to somewhere else.

– So, related to the Salon piece, I think articles like it serve as important reminders of how Wikipedia’s form, so to speak, can’t always be separated from its content. (h/t)

– Jesus, London

– Just remember: the state can’t touch our guns (or require tornado shelters) because of freedom…but adults’ private decisions about whom to love must suffer the full brunt of state power.

– I am going to opt for not being in the same car as your dog, sorry.

– I digitally scan bowling ball surfaces and I vote

This is pretty neat:

Mills, a Central District resident, said Books on Bikes is a “full-service library model. I’m not aware of any other library that does this. We will be able to provide people with help on digital downloads, as well as offer reading suggestions, have popular new titles available for check-out, provide Library card sign-ups, assist with research and much more,” he said. The trailer to accommodate all the librarians’ needs was developed and constructed by Colin Stevens, who runs Haulin’ Colin in Seattle.

And just to head off the almost inevitable how-come-there-aren’t-books-on-cars trolling, there are. And that’s pretty cool too, but not a new program.

– The most surprising thing about this poll is that 32% of Seattle voters think McGinn did a good job handling the police department. Who?

– Erica C. Barnett has a not good for McGinn take on the poll.

– Vermont is the 4th state with a Death with Dignity law.

– I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to seize Apple’s assets until it came to a reasonable agreement on its tax bill.

– It feels like we’re overpaying our college sportsball coaches.

– Virginia is for haters.

– 5 Ugly Lessons Hiding in Every Superhero Movie

In an interview with Publicola, even with Josh Feit softballing it, Rodney Tom decides to act like an asshole. When asked why he’s endorsing someone who would undo the progress made on civil rights for gay people, he decides to attack Seattle.

I think that there is a lot of talk of that. The politics over there get a little weird. If we’re measuring any of their politicians from a Seattle basis, they think Seattle’s crazy, and Seattle’s probably going to think they’re crazy. But overall, she’s an intelligent legislator that I think can serve her community well. I think she’s an intelligent lady that can work her way through some very complicated issues that we need more of in Olympia.

I’ll defend Seattle any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but that’s pretty fucked up. Oh those awful Seattle folks with thinking gay people deserve not to be discriminated against and that workers deserve basic rights. Crazy.

Also, it doesn’t really paint a picture that Rodney Tom respects Eastern Washington either. “Vote for Sharon Brown, you crazies” is maybe not as great a slogan as he thinks it is.

Anyway, later Josh asks him why he didn’t support the DREAM Act on the floor of the Senate if he supports it in theory (the aside is Josh’s):

Sen. Tom: I don’t know. If 25 and 50 are the magic thing to get anything past out of both the house and the senate, that’s a very different element in the way this place has been run. There’s a ton of votes over in the house that I can get 50 votes for that never see the light of day. If that’s going to be the measuring stick, let’s use it for both the house and the senate. [PubliCola, has, in fact, pointed out this Democratic double standard before.]

PubliCola: Can you give an example?

Sen. Tom: A lot of the workers’ comp type issues. A lot of labor issues. Pension issues. There’s a lot of business-centric Democrats like myself over in the house that would be voting for these things that don’t stick in labor states—you know, they don’t love it—but our business communities and small businesses in particular need some of these reforms.

If you wanted to have a say in how the House does business, you probably shouldn’t have left that body. Also, the difference is that the Speaker HASN’T SAID HE SUPPORTS GUTTING WORKERS COMP. The House Speaker killing a bill he doesn’t like is not analogous to the Senate Majority Leader killing a bill he says he is for.

See, that’s why the analogy doesn’t work. If Chopp was trying to convince people he really wanted to gut worker’s comp, then that would make sense to make that comparison. But the leader isn’t going to have a vote on gutting workers comp because he doesn’t want it to pass. In fact, the only way the analogy works is if Rodney Toms critics are right and he doesn’t want the DREAM act to pass. So, we’re all on the same page then.

– Upon order of the King County Sheriff, Jeremy Griffin was supposed to be out of his home by Tuesday at midnight. Instead, starting late last night, he has played host to members of Standing Against Foreclosure & Eviction, a group that grew out of the Occupy movement.

– In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan status apparently disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”

– The mechanics of getting death penalty drugs to states that use them is both fascinating and disgusting (h/t).

– That’s right: “Save the Boobs.” Not the human beings those boobs are attached to—women who, like Jolie, could benefit from potentially life-saving mastectomies—but the boobs that give those women value. Boobies: Save ’em! Ladies: not so much.

– I would hope Pam Roach’s plan to make it easier to recall elected officials would include abusing staff.

– Thurston County dams.

From Think Progress:

Issa: Obama Covered Up Benghazi Terrorism By Calling It An ‘Act Of Terror’

That’s even stupid for a car thief!

It was nine years ago today that I relaunched HorsesAss.org as an “almost daily blog on Washington State politics and the press.” You can read my very first post here. It is a touch fascinating to look back on how I managed to preserve the original vision of HA without at all anticipating how it would ultimately take over my life.

Anyway, in celebration of this milestone (and prodded Darryl) here is a list of some of my nine favorite and/or most influential posts, in chronological order. Thank you all for the past nine years, especially to all my co-bloggers who have carried on the HA tradition in my absence. And enjoy.

Stick a Foulkes in it, this case is done! (02/23/2005)
I’ve always been particularly proud of my legal analysis. In this early post, I explained exactly why Dino Rossi would lose his election contest, months before the court ultimately ruled.

FEMA director Mike Brown, a “total fucking disaster” (09/02/2005)
You know that Arabian horse story that hastened the demise of incompetent FEMA director Mike “Heckuva Job” Brown? This is the post that started it all, and first brought HA to a national audience.

Raging Bullshitter: the sad twisted tale of the Irons family feud (10/20/2005)
The day before this post hit, explaining why his own mother wouldn’t vote for him, King County Council member David Irons Jr. had a small lead in the polls in his bid to unseat Executive Ron Sims. After the media storm I generated, Irons ended up losing by 17 points.

Luke Esser fucks pigs (10/17/2006)
It is a sad irony that one of my funniest and most outrageous posts was written in defense Rodney Fucking Tom.

HA EXCLUSIVE: Seattle Times election day redesign revealed! (10/23/2006)
A rare display of my extraordinary Photoshop skills.

Falwell That Ends Well (An Ode To The Mortal Majority) (05/16/2007)
For a change of pace, some poetry!

Goldy’s Adventures in Muniland (04/25/2008)
In which I masquerade as David Postman and accept his Municipal League award.

Young woman quit DNR after being sexually harassed by Commissioner Sutherland (07/15/2008)
And election-changing bit of muckraking that all the other papers had, but refused to run with. Until after I did.

A layman’s refutation of Rob McKenna’s bullshit lawsuit (03/29/2010)
More than two years before the US Supreme Court surprised pundits by upholding Obamacare on Congress’s taxing power, I explained why the court would uphold Obamacare based on Congress’s taxing power.

Today is the 9th anniversary of HA. So I thought I would celebrate by remembering the top nine most memorable trolls who have lurked in the comment threads.

Any such list is necessarily subjective—trolls are memorable for may different reasons, sometimes rather personal ones. Some have invoked anger, some have provided “entertainment,” some were just very, very…VERY different. Okay…so here goes:

1. Mr. Cynical was Goldy’s first real troll. He showed up during the Great Election Contest of 2005, and loudly and boldly tried telling us how things would come out. Cynical was largely a propagandist for Republicans, so his many, many prognostications almost always came out dead wrong. Cynical was so wrong over the Great Election Contest of 2005, that the took on the moniker, “Mr. Irrelevant after his side lost. At least he had a sense of humor. An example of a Cynical long term political prediction, from the summer of 2005:
   

   Santorum and Rice will win in 2008 and 2012….
   Then Rice will become the first African-America and first woman President of the United States in 2016 and 2020.

   Mr. Cynical occasionally returns to the comment thread to offer his opinions on important events, like presidential elections. During the 2012 election, Cynical came back as Ryanistheman, Jody, and likely other commenters. A little know fact is that Cynical was the first troll to really get under Goldy’s skin…until Goldy got toughened and jaded into the troll-aloof person we know and love day.

2. Another of HA’s early trolls, JCH, was hell-bent on simply being disruptive. And he left lots of comments in attempts to disrupt. He was also a racist, spewing anti-Semitic slurs ad nauseum. It’s hard to know what drove him. He admitted that he lived in Hawaii, and I was able to deduce that he had previously lived in California, where he actively wrote letters to the editor of his local newspaper, pushing wingnut causes, of course.

   JCH has the distinction of being the first troll to be banned from HA. It was largely for his unwillingness to stop the barrage of anti-Semitic insults. And even his banning came after a long spell of having his comments moderated.

3. Chardonnay was HA’s first “concern troll,” but really stood out for being an (apparent) female in a largely male-dominated field. Something else that stood out about Chardonnay: she was excessively stupid. Now, whether this was an act or real is hard to tell. But she specialized in taking Republican talking points and re-framing them as “concerns” that were promptly demolished by other commenters. Here is a fun Chardonnay comment that came during the Ron Sims, David Irons, Jr. King County Executive election:
   

   oh ya Ivan, King Ronny is toast he’s as wacked as algore if not more. ronny f’d up with his trumped up enviro BS. and his election dept debacle. stick a fork in him.

   I’ll tell ya what ivan, if ron wins I’ll donate money to Goldy’s beer fund. You ‘buddy’ get zip unless Goldy wants to share his beer with you. If David Irons wins you buy Goldy a beer.

   I cannot say whether she ever donated beer money to Goldy. Chardonnay disappeared (under that name, anyway) after that election in late 2005. She made one more appearance in 2007.

4. Christmas Ghost is notable as another female commenter. She was much brighter than Chardonnay but, perhaps, crazier. A notable characteristic of her comments was an absence of upper case characters. Eventually, she moved to the Bay area and quit commenting on HA, but not before EFFin’ Unsound had some fun with her.

   Interesting, odd facts: She was a raging asshole to Goldy in the comment threads, but he reports that she was a nice and reasonable person in her emails to him. Goldy once posted a missing person piece on behalf of Christmasghost. The niece was eventually found, though I don’t know any of the details.

5. Piper Scott makes this list, because no commenter was more full of himself than was Piper. He was seriously insufferable and really did take himself seriously. Everyone else…not so much. In fact, Lee started a series of posts about him called The Crackpiper Chronicles (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4).

   Part one highlighted one of my favorite protracted exchanges with any troll. It’s still a fun read that shows, in the end, underneath all the pretense, Piper was reacting emotionally like a very typical reality-challenged wingnut.

6. Puddybud. Ahhhh, yes. What can we say about our beloved Puddybud. First, he gets kudos for longevity, having first posted back in 2005. Puddybud is a smorgasbord of illogical thoughts, nonsense, child-like arguments, illiteracy, hatred, bigotry, and right wing tripe, oddly mixed, on occasion, with pious religious fervor. And to add to it all, Puddybud has some deep insecurities as evidenced by his need for silly bragging. (Anyone remember the conversation about Puddybud serving in the military?)

   An interesting thing about Puddy is the he has actually engaged with some of us in person by coming to Drinking Liberally. In person, he is a friendly, articulate, and intelligent person—really, the antithesis of his online persona. How could this be? The answer is that Puddybud is a character. The person producing the character is engaging in performance art. This explains everything about Puddybud. Think about it…if your objective is to maximize disruption and “make liberal heads explode,” then debate using emotional arguments, use bad logic, be inflammatory while saying stuff that is barely comprehensible, misuse data. Hell…just blatantly lie—it’s the character Puddy, not the God-fearing person playing Puddy lying to you.

7. Mark the Redneck is a typical, if once prolific, propagandist/troll. What puts Mark the Redneck on this list is an infamous bet he made with Goldy…and reneged on.
8. Marvin Stamn was a prolific, nearly robotic troll. He had commenting down to an art:
   1. Open up Drudge and find an “outrage”
   2. Excerpt a quote from the piece
   3. Write just enough commentary so that it constitutes “fair use”.
   4. Go to 1

   Marvin eventually did himself in when he admitted to getting paid for his propaganda. It is hard to know if he was serious or joking, but since he lived in Southern California, commented for many hours a day, and had nothing to say about local politics, it seems more plausible than not. I don’t miss him.

9. I had a hard time picking just one last troll to memorialize. I considered pbj, chuck, manoftruth, howcanyoubePROUDtobeanASS, Max, YO, josef, and so on. But I choose Klake. What I remember about Klake was his long, rambly, semi-coherent comments, with random parts of the text in bold. Like here and here. Classic stuff.

So those are my “top” nine. How about you? Who are the trolls you would memorialize and why?

Joel Connelly snarks on McGinn’s anti-violence stuff. But I think it’s good. Mostly on the teach kids not to be violent aspect.

“Weapons to Words” will ask Seattle schoolchildren to come up with a short quotation about gun violence. The best of their quotations, on what a violence-free future means to them, will be inscribed on plaques made from the 760 weapons collected earlier this year in the gun buyback program. Schnitzer Steel is making the plagues. Chihuly Studio is “shaping the aesthetics” in the words of Leslie Jackson Chihuly, its president.

“The plaques will be placed across Seattle so they can leave a lasting legacy,” McGinn said.

Sounds like a good idea. Teach kids to think about what a violence free world would look like. And it’s a nice metaphor to use the returned guns for that. It seems like a win-win. Except that it gives Rush Limbaugh a sad, so he doesn’t win.

When he got back to the office, McGinn found himself a politician doubly blessed. The “Weapons to Words” program was promptly lampooned over the air by that rhinoceros of right-wing talk radio, Rush Limbaugh. Liberal Seattle doesn’t boast many of the followers Limbaugh calls “Ditto Heads.”

If this was a bad idea, the fact that Rush Limbaugh doesn’t like it wouldn’t improve it. But the fact that it’s a decent lesson for children that he’s upset about means that it’s really icing on the cake.

And the fact that Limbaugh is upset about it is probably all you need to about if compromise is possible. Taking guns that people voluntarily turned in, and making them into quotes about not being violent is too much for these fuckers.

It’s tough to hold out much hope for the special session when the Republicans put out press releases like this.

It is the last day of the 105-day legislative session and we have just adjourned. Unfortunately, a special session is on the horizon — an outcome that is disappointing for everyone.

We are headed to overtime primarily because of one issue: the operating budget. The governor and House Democrats want to spend roughly $1 billion more than the state plans to take in for regular tax collections in the next budget cycle that begins July 1. To do so, they would increase taxes on Main Street sectors of our fragile economy.

…

Some things are worth fighting for — no matter how long it takes. We don’t want a special session, but the alternative is accepting an approach that has led to many of the problems our state faces today.

Honestly, if you don’t want any loophole closing no matter how ridiculous they’ve become over the years, it’s tough to imagine any amount of cooling off time being enough. But maybe being a few weeks closer to a deadline will help? Sure.

– There was a mayoral candidate’s debate last night (Seattle Times link).

– Really the only thing I learned from following it on Twitter is that Jim Brunner doesn’t know who the Blue Scholars are, but still feels like he can make fun of other people’s taste in music.

– Hey, Seattle, no more shootings, OK?

– Women’s Work

– Has there ever been a military conflict that McCain hasn’t agitated for? And must every news outlet stumbles all over themselves to give him a platform?

– Chris Hansen’s statement after the Relocation Committee’s decision.

– The Columbia City Farmer’s Market is starting up again.

– Is that a homemade lightsaber in your pocket, or are you just glad to shut down the bus tunnel?

– The legislature adjourns sine dud. Don’t worry, there will be a special session where there’s a brand-new chance to not get anything accomplished starting in a few weeks.

– A background checks initiative drive starts today.

– Jesus and Muhammad and the Question of the State

– It was Abedin’s last day in the Pacific Northwest and The End Death Trap tour was headed to Renton’s Walmart. The original plan was to erect a makeshift memorial for the victims of Tazreen against the store’s outside wall. But newly bought boxes of pink and white carnations were also included to honor the victims of the Rana Plaza collapse the night before.

– I am not one who spent much of the Bush presidency trying to figure out how smart he actually was, but some of these (especially the Swedish Army!) are pretty yikes.

– The WMD Wing (h/t)

I love that my two favorite local politicians are hashing things out in the mayor’s race. In this case, they have dueling posts on Slog about sub area equity. Sub area equity is an important issue for a Seattle mayor who will have a seat on the Sound Transit Board of Directors. First, was Ed Murray, who I agree with in general, opposing sub are equity (I’m ignoring the political sniping in both; I’m pro political sniping, but not what I want to write about here).

Sound Transit’s sub-area equity requires that any money raised in one of the five sub-areas of the Sound Transit district must be spent in that sub-area. It may seem sensible on the surface, but it is really a terrible policy, originally cooked up by light rail opponent Rob McKenna (when he served on the King County Council and the Sound Transit board) as a way of forcing transit dollars that should have been spent in Seattle to be diverted to the suburbs instead.

Sub-area equity has done more harm to the cause of efficient deployment of limited transit dollars in the central Puget Sound—and thus more harm to Seattle—than any other single decision made in the last two decades of transit planning. It allocates dollars based not on density and demand for service, but on political geography. Instead of building a system from the inside out to maximize ridership and benefit smart land use decisions, it balkanizes the region and facilitates sprawl.

Sub-area equity needs to go. And it needs to be replaced with a more sensible policy that stipulates that Sound Transit dollars will be spent efficiently to add light rail where it will have the maximum impact in terms of moving people, i.e. in denser cities like Seattle and our growing inner-ring suburbs. Such a policy would ensure that Seattle’s transit needs are better accommodated – particularly our underserved West side Green Line communities including Ballard and West Seattle – while also ensuring that hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars are not diverted to building light rail in outlying areas where population densities are insufficient to support strong ridership.

I’m not sure it encourages sprawl (it brings transit to less dense places, but those places are already sprawling). But in general, I agree that there’s more bang for the buck in denser areas. And transit ought to be built more in our big cities and inner ring cities, and sub area equity is a hindrance to that. So fair enough.

Mayor McGinn has a response.

In fact, at the urging of myself and others, the Sound Transit board accelerated all of their planning around the region so we are prepared to go to the ballot in 2016 if the legislature gives Sound Transit revenue authority to support expansion.

All of that work falls apart if a Seattle mayor suddenly decided they wanted to change the deal. By attacking sub-area equity Ed Murray threatens to blow up Sound Transit. Sound Transit’s board was willing to advance these rail planning studies in Seattle in part because I pledged Seattle’s support to help complete the regional system. Communities outside of Seattle have been banking on future rail while the central portion has been built in Seattle. Proposing to end sub-area equity and take the money for Seattle is guaranteed to destroy the regional political coalition for rail and doom the chances of putting Sound Transit 3 on the ballot in 2016.

Further, sub-area equity protects Seattle. The recession significantly reduced Sound Transit’s revenues too, and they are working hard to meet their commitments elsewhere in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties. We need to ensure revenue raised in Seattle stays in Seattle to support our projects – which is why Seattle needs to defend sub-area equity, not attack it.

Even though McGinn probably wrote the better piece, I still agree with Ed Murray on sub area equity.