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The tale of Petraeus’ resignation now involves two jealous women, a threatening note from one to the other and, ultimately, an FBI investigation of intimate relationships and potential security breaches.

The F.B.I. found no security breaches.

But one F.B.I. employee wasn’t convinced:

Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, said Saturday an F.B.I. employee whom his staff described as a whistle-blower told him about Mr. Petraeus’s affair and a possible security breach in late October, which was after the investigation had begun.
[…]

Mr. Cantor talked to the person after being told by Representative Dave Reichert, Republican of Washington, that a whistle-blower wanted to speak to someone in the Congressional leadership about a national security concern. On Oct. 31, his chief of staff, Steve Stombres, called the F.B.I. to tell them about the call.

Here is what I don’t understand. If the whistle-blower wanted to speak to “Congressional leadership,” shouldn’t Reichert have taken this person to Speaker Boehner? Reichert brought this person to Majority Leader Cantor, who is only the leader of the House Republicans, not Congress.

What’s wrong with Reichert? Is the man brain damaged or something?

With the passage of I-502, I’m hoping to get back into some more regular blogging here. I’ve waited a long time for this day, and now that it’s here, I want to closely follow how this all plays out. Here are some of the early developments in this new era:

– You’ve probably already seen the news that King and Pierce Counties have dismissed 220 marijuana possession cases. But at the end of that post from Jonathan Martin was another interesting nugget:

Earlier this week, the chief criminal deputy prosecutor in Spokane County, Jack Driscoll, appeared to take a more conservative position. He told the Spokesman-Review that, even after Dec. 6, the only marijuana which was legal to possess was pot sold in the state-licensed stores called for in I-502. Those stores won’t be created for at least a year.

“The only thing that is legal is selling marijuana through those stores,” Driscoll said. “That will be regulated by the state. You can’t under this initiative have an ounce of marijuana that doesn’t come from a state-issued provider. You still can’t have black-market marijuana.”

Looking forward to the first judge who gets to laugh out loud at that argument.

– One of the most interesting things to watch now is the international reaction to what Colorado and Washington voters have done. Especially in Mexico, where over $1,000,000,000/year pours into the pockets of drug gangs from the illegal marijuana trade.

– NCAA student-athletes in both Washington and Colorado still won’t be able to use marijuana, even if they’re over 21. Last year, Pullman police arrested several Washington State basketball players for pot possession. Considering that underage use is still illegal, that’s likely to keep happening.

– Of course, even with the passage of marijuana legalization, reefer madness isn’t going to just disappear. This gem – from the New York Daily News, but featuring a “chemical dependency professional” at Argosy University in Seattle – is about how this initiative will somehow cause Boeing and Microsoft to suck at building planes and software unless the feds intervene. As someone who worked at both companies in my 20s (quite successfully) while also being a regular marijuana consumer, I’m not sure I even know how to start making fun of that. It’s a good reminder that even though initiatives can fix a broken policy, they can’t fix stupid.

Well, not exactly… but since I, nor anyone else, know how to make the connection to the markets and Fox News watching investors, it’s only an amusing assumption.

Box Fizzness:

“Given the opposing views on the speed and degree of fiscal consolidation necessary, the status quo outcome implies difficult negotiations ahead on the fiscal cliff … and the debt ceiling,” analysts at Nomura wrote in a note to clients.

Reading recent Krugman makes you wonder if that loyalty has in fact spread past the republican caucus.

Given the starkness of this difference, you might have expected to see people from both sides of the political divide urging voters to cast their ballots based on the issues. Lately, however, I’ve seen a growing number of Romney supporters making a quite different argument. Vote for Mr. Romney, they say, because if he loses, Republicans will destroy the economy.

I’d come to the conclusion some time ago that watching TV news is not a healthy activity. And as dangerous as irrational exuberance is, I’d add that the dangers of irrational pessimism are equally as bad. But if we were to have a Jonestown style fiscal suicide among conservative investors, the dirty rotten little liberal in me hopes it happens just before a robust Obama economic resurgence. And despite my health advisory, I’ll watch the squealing on Fox News.

– You’re going to vote for the liar. Because he shares your moral values.

– I’m both horrified at the GOP disenfranchisement machine and awed that people are pressing ahead in spite of it.

– It’s not all irrational programing at Fox News?

– Bales himself will not make any statements during the Article 32 hearing. The court proceeding in Tacoma is similar to a pretrial hearing in civilian courts. It’s scheduled to last at least one week.

– A West Seattle man accused of attacking a gay man with a bat while shouting homophobic slurs now faces a hate crime charge.

– This is as good an explanation for the trolls as anything.

[HA Bible Study is on hiatus through the November election as we honor Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by studying the scriptures of his Mormon religion.]

Doctrine and Covenants 130:22
The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

Discuss.

Over at The Ave a guest editorial appears from Robert called, “The Worst Case Scenario” (my emphasis):

Assuming Romney & Ryan (these lethal bozo’s should not have even been close) win their attitude of extreme conservative austerity, the sworn oath of the Tea party politicians to never raise taxes on the wealthy and the republican obsession to regain power by sabotaging the black man’s presidency at any cost will result in America’s very own holocaust. The next four years will include a collapse of the American economy, drastically increased unemployment, destroy the social safety net, gut the public schools system, close the US Post Office, deprive millions of healthcare, expand the war on collective bargaining and working people, on women, on the underemployed, on minorities, end fair elections, end affordable higher education, reinforce a corporate dominated supreme court, keep money in politics, start unnecessary wars resulting in millions of casualties, destabilize world peace, put global warming on steroids which could be the beginning of the end of the human species. The Tea party republicans then would give the trillions they skin for social services to the already obscenely rich and a bloated military.

Robert argues his case from these premises.

To me, the essay is a little over the top, and a little on the pessimistic side. But it raises a good question: “What is the worst case scenario for a Romney–Ryan presidency?”

I remember when Shrub more-or-less won in 2000. I imagined that we were in for a depressing four years in which not much got accomplished except the decimation of the responsible fiscal budgetary policy of the Clinton administration.

And then came 9/11.

Rather than impeaching the President for ignoring a memo titled, “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US”, America reacted by turning over and playing dead.

The nine years that followed were a worst case scenario, from throwing fiscal responsibility totally out the window, starting two wars, including one that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, allowing N. Korea to develop and test a nuclear weapon, providing for unprecedented powers of spying on the American people, creation of the seemingly biblically inspired Department of Homeland Security and the fucking TSA (together a huge expansion of the federal government), sanctioned torture in our name, indefinite detention, vilification of Islam, and the Roberts/Alito court.

And the whole clusterfuck was capped by the collapse and near-ruin of the U.S. economy.

Man…that was some shitty scenario! But not really on the level of a holocaust—except, maybe, what happened in Iran.

Would a Romney–Ryan administration be worse than that? I cannot imagine it so…

But, then again, I could not foresee the profound wounds that the Bush–Cheney administration would end up inflicting on my country.

So what do you think? Am I not pessimistic enough? Is Robert too pessimistic? Seriously, what is the likely and the worst case scenarios from a Romney–Ryan administration?

Just how bad could it get?

I don’t have much to add to this Seattle Transit Blog piece. But right on.

The few million in this proposed budget seems like so little compared to the huge Sound Transit projects many of us are used to – but in this case, at this time, it goes a long way.

In the next couple of years, Sound Transit is likely going to put together their ST3 package; sources in Sound Transit say it’s looking more likely that we could see a regional vote in 2016. The primary goals for the next package are to connect Everett, Tacoma and Redmond (and maybe Issaquah) with extensions of Link. This means there will be money in Seattle for projects too, but it might not be exactly the right amount for the big projects we need in the city – it could be too much for one surface or elevated rail line, or too little for underground rail. We don’t know.

The projects on the table right now – major improvements to the streetcar line on Westlake (likely making it more like Link than streetcar), connecting it through downtown to the First Hill line, to Ballard via Fremont, and to the U-district via Eastlake, building real BRT on Madison, and extending the First Hill streetcar to Aloha – are all projects that might fill in those gaps.

Seriously, Donald Trump is like the worst person in the world. It’s tough to imagine someone you don’t like offering to give money to charity, and you liking them less as a result, but kudos to Trump for paving the road to that particular place.

To be fair, we did enjoy your impression of Dr. Evil as you sat behind your very big desk and shouted into the camera, vowing to contribute “five mill-ion dol-lars!” to the charity of the president’s choice if he releases “to my satisfaction!” all of his college records and passport applications by, appropriately enough, Halloween at 5 p.m.

Seriously, Donald Trump, if you’ve got $5 Million to spend on charity, don’t play this game. Just give it to charity. Don’t waste the finite amount of time the President of the United States has on your paranoid nonsense. Just give the money to charity.

Also, passport applications? I’m pretty disorganized, but I’m not sure if I was better organized that I could just pull up all of the passport applications I’ve made in a week. And I’m not in the middle of, you know, running for president. Do you keep them? Would the government keep the passport applications of a 7 year old (or whatever) kid from Hawaii from when he went to visit his dad, like years after it had expired? That’s such a strange request. And really, can you imagine Obama using the last week of the campaign to argue with Trump about if that was really all, and the correct, passport applications to his satisfaction? That’s just bizarre.

– There ain’t enough fuck you in the world for this guy.

– Nepotism on full view on TV.

– At what point do the R-71 people give up their court case to keep their signatures hidden?

– It is ridiculous — RIDICULOUS — that we live in a society where it’s a good guess that a shooting in a place often frequented by women is going to be an extension of a “domestic dispute.”

– Family values.

– Bikers and walkers spend more money than drivers over time.

– Anyone interested in seeing a MST3King of BIRDEMIC tomorrow?

The last in a series of presidential debates is on tonight, featuring President Barack Hussein Obama II (D) and former Massachusetts Governor Willard Mitt Romney (R).

This debate will focus on foreign policy. But since Willard has little foreign policy experience beyond a courtesy visit to London (plus Israel and Poland) so that he could totally avoid watch Ann’s dressage horse compete in the Olympics, be prepared for the candidates to twist everything back into domestic issues.

I’ll be at the Montlake Ale House liveblogging as I can. Please join me there, or have fun in the comment threads, if you prefer.

6:04: Romney wins!!!! (the coin toss.)

6:05: Mitt opens with a lot of babbling and proclaims, “We can’t kill out of this mess.” Uh-huh.

6:08: “Gov. Romney, you strategy has been all over the map.” Certainly is was based on his opening answer.

6:09: Mitt wants “Gender equality”. Does he really know what he is saying? But this second answer is so babbly it’s hard to know what he is saying.

6:12: Obama hits Romney HARD on his inconsistent positions on foreign policy.

6:13: Romney hits Obama back on the “after the election” comment to Putin.

6:15: After a short bicker-fest, Obama comes out with a pretty coherent positive agenda.

6:18: Romney doesn’t have a plan for Syria…he just regurgitates factoids about the situation. Then, when he gets down to “action” points, his plan is what the Obama administration is ACTUALLY DOING RIGHT NOW. Sheesh!

6:21: Obama complements Romney on supporting the Obama administration on Libya and then punches him in the nose on his “mission creep” statement.

6:23: Mitt Romney tells us what “we all hear intelligence sources saying”. Damn…I can’t say…left my national security briefing binder at home.

6:27: Mitt declares himself a peacenik

6:28: Both candidates work in domestic issues. Obama did a better job sneaking it in. Romney criticizes the sequestration cuts…as if that’s Obama’s doing!

6:30: Mitt gives a speech directed toward the Priests of the Military Industrial Complex.

6:31: Obama does it again—turning the debate into a list of his accomplishments.

6:32: Obama hits below the belt…”[Romney] praised George Bush for his economic stewardship and Dick Cheney for ….”

6:34: Romney said “teacher’s unions” and Obama looked down! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo……!!!!!!

6:36: We are now on the topic on whether class size makes a difference. In Afghanistan?!?

6:37: Obama gets surly while Romney babbles on about “his” education successes in MA.

6:39: No, Governor, we cannot afford to repeal Obamacare.

6:40: Obama gets his do-over from Debate 1: “five trillion dollar tax cuts…military spending that the military isn’t asking for…”

6:41: I’m watching NBC. Why is Obama on the right and Romney on the left? This is a conspiracy!!!!

6:42: Romney, “I balanced the budget for the Olympics”. Yes…Governor, with a little help of your taxpayer friends.

6:43: Obama finally defends himself against Romney’s bullshit of blaming Obama for sequestration cuts.

6:44: Obama lands a left hook with the “horses and bayonettes” zinger. Perhaps the best zinger of all three debates!

6:48: Mitt’s flaggey-flag pin is bigger. Obviously, he loves America more.

6:49: Mitt Romney thinks Ahmadinejad has committed more war crimes and crimes against humanity than George W. Bush and Dick Fucking Cheney???? Very curious.

6:51: We have about 20 folks at the Ale House who are, apparently, here for the debate.

6:54: Note to Obama…watch out for Tagg Romney running toward you….

6:55: Obama contrasts his visit to Israel with Romney’s…it seems pretty effective!

6:59: Mitt lets us know he has “a relationship with the Prime Minister of Israel.” No doubt he cultivated that relationship the same way he cultivated a relationship with the Prime Minister of the U.K.

7:01: Obama goes after Romney hard on his flip flopping. I noticed, he always ends those bits with a positive message. Good debate coaching.

7:04: Mitt just told all the terrorists when he will pull out of Afghanistan. Why does he hate our soldiers?

7:08: Bob: “Obama bin Laden”

7:10: I’ve heard Mitt say lots of things about Pakistan, but I am still not sure where he stands and what he would do?

7:11: Mitt drones on about his support for Drones. But, but, but, I thought we couldn’t “kill our way out of this”

7:14: Trending on Twitter (US): #horsesandbayonets

7:18: Via Twitter:

Abby Huntsman ‏@HuntsmanAbby
I’ve never heard two candidates agree more during what is suppose to be a “debate.”

7:17: Mitt wants to label China a “currency manipulator.” That will bring them to their knees.

7:21: Obama pushes the “Romney has bad political instincts” meme: outsourcing, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, etc.

7:23: Mitt: “I would do nothing to hurt Detroit.” Obama calls him out on that bullshit.

7:25: “Governor, you keep on trying to airbrush history.” Look up history here.

7:28: Romney keeps bringing up the same old bullshit about how much worse things are now then they were when Obama came into office. Two words: “Bikini Graph”

7:31: Mitt: “I want to see growing peace in this country.” Huh? This is the kind of thing that is said when politicians are on autopilot.

7:38: Promoted comment from Michael:

Moderate Mitt’s plans all seem to come down to being just like Obama, only white.

7:47: Debriefing: Michael nails it. Romney etch-a-sketched so far back to the center that he was, essentially, agreeing with Obama more than he was disagreeing. That ends up being a huge problem for him. After all, the power of incumbency is that given identical choices, the devil you know is better than the identical devil you don’t.

But, of course, the other problem is that by becoming The White Obama, he contradicts his past “non-Kenyan” self. You know, like most of the stuff he said in the G.O.P. primary. His strategy depends on potential moderate supporters not being disturbed by his total abdication of past positions. That may have worked 20 years ago, but in the age of The Twitter and a plethora of other social media…maybe not so much.

I’m not a fan of our nonpartisan election system here in Washington where we don’t have to register by party to vote in the primary. But I had thought when the national scandal about GOP operatives dumping voter registrations.

A campaign worker linked to a controversial Republican consulting firm has been arrested in Virginia and charged with throwing voter registration forms into a dumpster.

The suspect, Colin Small, 31, was described by a local law enforcement official as a “supervisor” in a Republican Party financed operation to register voters in Rockingham County in rural Virginia, a key swing state in the Nov. 6 election. He was arrested after a local business owner in the same Harrisonburg, Va., shopping center where the local GOP campaign headquarters is located spotted Small tossing a bag into the trash, according to a statement Thursday by the Rockingham County Sheriff’s office. The bag was later found to contain eight voter registration forms, it said. The arrest was reported Thursday night by WWBT-TV in Richmond.

But maybe not as tough as I’d thought.

In Virginia, where the Pennsylvania man working for the state GOP was arrested Thursday, Chesterfield County’s General Registrar Larry Haake was seen explaining to Richmond’s CBS 6 in late September that he had received complaints of Strategic employees discovered doing the same thing in a library last month.

“They were responsible for people that appeared in some libraries in Chesterfield County, supposedly to conduct voter registration drives,” Haake said, “but they were asking voters for whom they are going to vote.”

Haake says he informed the GOP of the incident at the time, but, apparently, no action was taken.

If, in fact, Small, or the workers he is said to have supervised, were using the same technique of misrepresenting themselves to voters about being a pollster, rather than being a registration worker, it’s likely he would have been able to glean whether those registrations he was allegedly seen tossing into a dumpster were for Democratic or Republican-leaning voters.

I think this is what you get when people keep screaming ACORN, ACORN, ACORN. They think they’re just leveling the playing field.

– This story about puppy mills in Lewis County will break your heart.

– The Burden of a Black President

– Before spending millions on Initiative 1240′s unproven charter schools that admit only a tiny fraction of students, with no guarantee of improved performance, let’s do what the state Supreme Court has told us to do

– Charming people watching the previous debate.

– I love this XKCD piece on presidential election conventional wisdom.

This is a terrible decision from The Seattle Times.

The Seattle Times Co. jumped directly into two of the state’s hottest political contests Wednesday, launching an $80,000 independent-expenditure campaign promoting Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna and announcing a similar effort in support of the referendum to legalize gay marriage.

I don’t like either of these, but the R-74 ad makes a tiny bit of sense on its own. They look like they might win a squeaker, so the Seattle Times can say, “oh look our ads made the difference.” I don’t think that’s good for the brand of independent minded fair people, but at least I could see a path to it working. But since McKenna is losing, and will probably lose, the pitch will be buy an add, it won’t help you? Or do they think it will turn it around?