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– If Iowa taught me anything, it should be that I’m not the person on this blog to make predictions. But fuck that, here are my uninformed New Hampshire predictions:

Win: Mittens
Place: Paul
Show: Huntsman

But more space between Mittens and Paul than 8 votes.

– Speaking of Romney.

– Saying CE instead of AD is anti-Christian now. So tough to keep up.

– Vietnamese Cultural Center to dedicate Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial

– I couldn’t decide what of these two pieces to use as a goof on creationists. So I’ve included both.

– Gregoire’s B&O proposal looks bad for cities, especially Seattle.

– How dare moderators talk about wedge issues?

– In Saturday’s debate Ron Paul said Martin Luther King was one of his heroes (and a libertarian!!?!). But not enough, as some of his supporters claim, to support the holiday.

– We really need to fix immigration system.

– Having lived in Olympia, it’s felt a bit odd hearing the new Congressional district as centered around Olympia as if it, or even North Thurston, was almost 1/10 of the state. Turns out the district lies 2/3 in Pierce County, and might be a problem for Democrats.

– Absent hard numbers Mr. Ben-Joseph settles on a compromise of 500 million parking spaces in the country, occupying some 3,590 square miles, or an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. If the correct number is 2 billion, we’re talking about four times that: Connecticut and Vermont.

– Who would have guessed that anti-choice assholes would be assholes?

– My Hometown Is Better Than Yours

Last night I stumbled across Larry Ishmael’s YouTube announcement and campaign website for his bid for the open WA-01 congressional seat. Here is a little more information.

Larry was the Republican who challenged Rep. Jay Inslee (D) for WA-01 in 2006 and 2008. He lost both elections 32% to 68%. Should he seriously pursue the seat this year, his Republican competition^* will likely be James Watkins, Inslee’s challenger in 2010, and John Koster, who ran unsuccessfully against Rep. Rick Larsen (WA-02) in 2004 and 2010.

From Larry’s blog we learn:

I really am enjoying this year in South Africa. […] My singular focus has been the dissertation, but I also have to remember that there is an election year coming up and I need to be positioned for that now. So, I spent Monday working on my “unofficial announcement” that I will be running for the 1st Congressional seat again in 2012. I ran in 2006 and 2008, but took 2010 0ff to concentrate on my Ph.D. work. Now, as my dissertation work is starting to shape up nicely, I hope to be Dr. Ishmael by the time the election rolls around next year.

After pondering potential opponents, Larry clarifies his campaign announcement:

Now that I have informally announced, I can run my Congressional Exploratory Campaign until I have raised the limit for “testing the waters,” and then I will officially declare and register with the FEC. There is much work to assemble a team between now and then, and that means I need to start that process right now even though I’m still in South Africa.

On the issues, Larry sounds like a typical “shrink government” Republican, but with a big emphasis on environmental sustainability—sort of like Dave Reichert (R-WA-08) but probably smarter and without all the “I’ve stared down the business end of a gun,” sheriffy bullshit.

Even so, from his Twitter feed we learn he is a anthropogenic climate change denier^&:

@Fun2BTan @ishmael1stcdwa Just so you know, I have scientific evidence of the fact that global warming is not man made.

— Larry W. Ishmael (@ishmael1stCDWA) December 1, 2011

And, predictably, he is anti-cap and trade:

Thank God that the Senate stopped Cap and Trade. The House is a bunch of sheep!

— Larry W. Ishmael (@ishmael1stCDWA) July 25, 2009

The good news for Larry is that, unlike 2006 when he lived in WA-08, his current residence is in WA-01. In fact, Larry’s condo is near the center of Redmond, a short walk from my own residence.

One other thing I noticed on his issues page:

As a member of the Creek Indian tribe, Larry respects the wisdom of his Native American fore-fathers…

I look forward to having Larry in the race. I mean, if we are going to have more than one Republican going into the top two primary, we might as well have lots of Republicans. And if the voters force a Republican on me as my next Representative, at least we should have someone who will add diversity to Congress and provide a congressional voice for Washington’s Native American community.

So welcome to the race Larry!

^* In the comment thread Larry points out he is running as an independent this time.
^& In the comment thread Larry clarifies his beliefs.

It will be worth listening to Governor Christine Gregoire on KUOW this morning at 9:00. Cool stuff is the table.

One big issue is yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that:

The State has failed to meet its duty under article IX, section 1 by consistently providing school districts with a level of resources that falls short of the actual costs of the basic education program. The legislature recently enacted sweeping reforms to remedy the deficiencies in the funding system, and it is currently making progress toward phasing in those reforms. We defer to the legislature’s chosen means of discharging its article IX, section 1 duty, but the judiciary will retain jurisdiction over the case to help ensure progress in the State’s plan to fully implement education reforms by 2018. We direct the parties to provide further briefing to this court addressing the preferred method for retaining jurisdiction.

As Publicola points out, this feels like

…one of those damning federal court orders to put a bankrupt business or corrupt union in receivership

The real problem isn’t that lawmakers somehow dislike funding education. Rather, the education funding problem arises from four issues:

1. The worst economy since the Great Depression that has resulted in drastic shortfalls in projected revenue
2. Another Constitutional duty, a balanced budget, that has resulted in massive cuts in numerous state services
3. Republican obstructionism in adequately funding the government
4. Lawmaker’s inability to raise new revenues with a simple majority to a great extent because of the 2/3 majority requirement in Initiative 1053

Many of us believe I-1053 is unconstitutional, and a July court case is pending. The Supreme court has previously weaseled its way out of making a decision about whether an initiative can impose a standard on lawmakers that trumps the state Constitution.

Yesterday Gregoire announced that:

…she plans to bypass the state attorney general’s office and seek court guidance on the constitutionality of a law limiting tax increases.

Gregoire, who is technically listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, said she is working with outside counsel to petition the courts for a ruling on Initiative 1053, which requires lawmakers to have a two-thirds majority to raise taxes.

Gregoire says, “fuck you, Rob McKenna,” and goes straight to the Supreme Court.

Given that I-1053 is one of the biggest impediments for lawmakers to adequately fund basic education, and given that the Supreme Court is now playing an active role in forcing lawmakers to meet this Constitutional duty, Gregoire’s request is an offer the Supreme Court cannot refuse.

I was recently reading Bus Chick’s year in review, and I was struck by this:

What’s a little kid-related bus inconvenience compared to no buses? Those of you who live in King County no doubt remember this summer’s terrifying, “we might have to cut 17% of your service” moment. The County Council passed the (temporary) congestion reduction charge, but the problem hasn’t gone away–for KC Metro, or for transit agencies across the state (CT and PT have already implemented drastic cuts) and the country. If the state doesn’t figure out a real solution to the transit revenue problem ASAP, those barely averted cuts will become a reality.

In the meantime, riders (including this one) are already feeling the pinch. Metro is closing stops, reducing hours, eliminating routes, and taking other steps to save money in anticipation of its bleak revenue future.

I agree and would add that the cost of riding is also up quite a bit. With fares up to $3.00 for 2 zones at peak times and with the upcoming elimination of the free ride area, the recession is really pushing the cost of riding onto riders and employers. Fortunately for me, my work pays for it, but that’s a cost to the company I work for is up.*

Last year could have been a lot worse for Metro. And while we celebrate that we avoided that, we should also realize what we’ve lost.

[Read more…]

– Hornswoggle is a great word.

– But as sure as the followers of Farrakhan deserved more than UFOs, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, those of us who oppose the drug-war, who oppose the Patriot Act deserve better than Ron Paul

– Richard Cordray will get a recess appointment to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

– Application for Kanye’s Magical Awesomeness Factory

– I don’t agree with North Korea very often, but it’s true that both the regime and I think Mayan apocalypse is bunk (point 7). Although for very different reasons.

That was fun. Seriously…we had a terrific turnout with lots of new faces last night at the Montlake Alehouse. And the contest itself was quite amusing. So here are the thoughts that I came away with.

• Mitt wins by the slimmest of margins—eight fucking votes! Eight votes!
• I couldn’t really hear Santorum’s victory speech. Based on how long it went on, I assume he was just filibustering or trying to put people to sleep before Mitt’s victory speech.
• My favorite (straight) MSM post-game quote (so far) comes from CBS, “Santorum pulled off a stunning come from behind performance in Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses….”
• How much of a fucking loser must Mitt Romney feel like now? Four years of nearly continuous campaigning since the 2008 Iowa caucus…Mitt goes from 30,021 votes in 2008 down to 30,015 in 2012.
• In the mid-December debate open thread I wrote :
  

  And how ’bout that Ron Paul at 18%!?! Most of the other nutberger candidates have had their fling with the pole position…Ron Paul should get his shot, too. And to top the whole thing off like a layer of creamy chocolate frosting, we should get Rick Santorum [the] next week.

  So…the MSM meme that the Santorum surge was totally unexpected isn’t quite right.

• This is almost pathetically sad:
  

  Michele Bachmann told a small group of supporters Tuesday night that she’s staying in the presidential race as the only true conservative who can defeat the sitting president, despite a bleak showing in the Iowa caucuses.

  This borders on delusional—Bachmann currently polls worse against Obama than even Rick Perry.

  And either she was “misunderinforming” people or needed time to sober up or chat with God. Because this morning she surrenders.

• Rick Perry, either more sober or with God on speed dial, surrendered last night.
• The real winner last night: Barack Obama. Really, he won both caucuses.

More fun next Tuesday!

Well…here we go. At least I think so. I have a few errands to run this afternoon, so I wrote this post well in advance and scheduled it to fire off at 5:00 pm, when the Iowa caucuses start. So…I might still be stuck in traffic or fixing a flat tire or even dead right now.

So…feel free to go on (and on and on) without me, and I’ll catch up right after I order myself a beer. I mean, unless I’m dead.

We will mostly focus on the Republican caucus this evening because, as the LA Times points out:

For Democrats, the process will be simple since President Obama is the party’s de facto nominee.

(And for the benefit of our “low-information commenters” [a.k.a trolls] I’ll point out that, no, “de facto” is not some kind of racial epithet.)

The LA Times does a pretty good job of describing the Republican caucus. But…the Republican Party of Iowa does a better job…they have it down to bullet points:

All caucus participants arrive at their precincts where they will sign in at the door upon arrival. Caucuses will begin at 7:00PM CT.

That would be 5:00 our time.

The caucus meetings begin with the pledge of allegiance. A caucus chair and secretary will be elected by the body to run the meeting and take notes.

What! No reading of the Constitution?!? What a bunch of Constitution-hating reactionaries! (And shouldn’t the second sentence be its own bullet point?)

After the chair and secretary are elected, candidate representatives from each campaign are given time to speak on behalf of their candidate.

Here is where uncomfortable things might happen—like, say, Santorum getting smeared by a Paulinista.

Once the speakers have finished, sheets of paper are be passed out to every registered Iowa Republican from the precinct. Voters then write down their candidate preference.

Wait…where is the part where they check for government-issued photo ids?

All votes are then collected.

Every vote is counted. The caucus chair and secretary will count the votes in front of the caucus and a representative from each campaign is allowed to observe the counting of the votes. The results are recorded on an official form provided by the Republican Party of Iowa and are announced to the caucus.

A caucus reporter is chosen to report the results to the Republican Party of Iowa, accompanied by campaign representatives to verify the results reported to Iowa GOP officials.

Republicans sound so distrustful of Republicans!

RPI officials do not count results; they aggregate them from around the state and report them to the media. To ensure consistency in reporting, campaign representatives have the opportunity to be present with RPI officials as votes are reported to the public.

I hope they at least add them up (which is kind-of like counting). I mean, I don’t want to listen to the reports from all 1,774 precincts.

We will be reporting the votes for Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, “No Preference,” and “Other.”

“No Preference” votes include those who vote “present,” “no preference, “uncommitted,” or “none of the above.”

That’s the process…enjoy!

5:31: I got here a bit late, and there were three new attendees to chat with. CNN is on the teevee, but I might be totally antisocial and put headphones on to listen to NPRs coverage of the circus caucus.

5:40: I cannot really hear what is going on, but the whizbang graphic on CNN suggests that born-again evangelical Christians rate Santorum as number 2. That sounds about right.

6:07: It is a three way race between Paul, Romney and Santorum, so far. With something like 14,000 votes in…Huntsman has 106.

6:22: That is one hairy-ass microphone cover I see on CNN.

6:25: Santorum slides right by Romney to number 2!

7:04: Romney puts Santorum behind him!

7:05: ….and Santorum surges ahead of Romney!

7:06: I’m getting pretty excited about a last minute Huntsman surge!

7:08: With Santorum in the lead, one must ask: Don’t they have Google in Iowa?!?

7:12: It’s loud…I cannot hear the TV. People are talking to me. Santorum is all over the teevee. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out!

7:25: Promoted comment from Michael: “Romney 23%, Paul 23%, Santorum 23%. The Republicans are having themselves a three-way.”

7:30: Santorum may come out of this in the pole position!

7:38: Okay…so Michele Bachmann isn’t going to win this one. At least she has her Aimes Straw Poll victory to propel her into the lead. Go Michele!

7:40: Gingrich is going to win. I mean, just look at the numbers!

7:44: I heard on the news this evening that Gov. Gregoire has some sort of big announcement tomorrow related to gay marriage. Does this have anything to do with Santorum’s Iowa showing???

7:46: New update. Santorum is sandwiched in the narrow gap between Romney and Paul.

7:49: And, once again, and to Romney’s great shame…Santorum percolates to the top!!!

8:00: James Carville missed his calling in life. He should have been an evil villain in a Batman movie. The Snake™ (says N in Seattle and Rebecca, independently).

8:13: Wow…all night, Romney and Santorum have been swapping positions. Mitt’s on top the Rick’s on top, Mitt’s on top then Rick’s on top.

8:17: Newt speaks. “We are at the beginning of an extraordinarily important campaign.” Yes…there are books to sell!

8:29: Santorum squeaks ahead of Romney. Yeah…well, I cannot wait for next week’s New Hampshire primary, because I want to see Mitt Romney lick Santorum.

8:34: Michele Bachmann says thanks to the 5,891 people of her “home state” of Iowa that voted for her.

8:51: I just tweeted Dan Savage: “As Seattle’s Drinking Liberally organizer, I want to express our deep gratitude 2 u for making tonight so fucking enjoyable”

8:53: Now I just tweeted Dan Savage: “As the person liveblogging at HorsesAss, I want to thank you on everyone’s behalf for making tonight so fucking entertaining!”

8:55: Is that Rick Perry’s daughter standing behind him??? She has his eyes and Steve Tyler’s mouth. My GAWD! The Perry rumors are TRUE!!!!

9:08: My vision of a Santorum—Brownback ticket may yet be realized!

9:09: A decade and a half ago, I voted against Santorum. Even then, long before Dan Savage’s neologism, there was something really, really icky about the man and the candidate.

9:22: Santorum is on the teevee spreading his philosophy….

1 Samuel 18:25-27
“Say to David, ‘The king wants no other price for the bride than a hundred Philistine foreskins, to take revenge on his enemies.’” Saul’s plan was to have David fall by the hands of the Philistines.

When the attendants told David these things, he was pleased to become the king’s son-in-law. So before the allotted time elapsed, David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.

Discuss.

– New Approach Washington has submitted the signatures for their initiative.

– Today in Ron Paul totally isn’t racist or homophobic.

– The Reconstruction-era South didn’t invent dishonesty, but its response to America’s defining trauma has become a foundational lie, supporting an ever-growing edifice of false history. It’s a lie so big no one will forcefully challenge it, a lie that’s too big to fail.

– Mitt Romney Is Running For America’s Embarrassing Dad

– Awesome species identification, Orkin.

Current Attorney General and gubernatorial wannabe Rob McKenna is feeling the heat over an early December AP piece showing the “State payouts up threefold under [him]”:

During his 2004 campaign for attorney general, Rob McKenna vowed that he would use the position to curb how much state agencies pay out for major lawsuits. Instead, those costs have grown rapidly under his watch.

Today’s TNT has a letter defending McKenna from Rob Costello, a deputy AG, and Howard Fischer, a senior assistant AG:

The Washington attorney general and the men and women of the Attorney General’s Office who defend the state in lawsuit deserve a more balanced telling of the story regarding lawsuit payouts than they received in this Associated Press article.

They go on to blame it on the legislature that eliminated immunity to lawsuits…in 1961. I don’t think so. A non-immunity bill passed before Rob McKenna was conceived could be used to explain a higher lawsuit burden in Washington compared to states with immunity provisions, but not the three-fold increase under McKenna since he was elected in 2004.

But that isn’t what caught my eye. This is (emphasis added):

In 2004, as a candidate for attorney general, Rob McKenna promised to reduce lawsuits by seeking reforms to state liability laws. If any significant savings are to be achieved, this is absolutely the right place to look, and McKenna has consistently done so. He has worked to inform legislators and has repeatedly invited the Legislature to revisit and reform state tort laws. Every major proposal, however, was killed in committee.

Two points. First Rob McKenna didn’t keep his 2004 promise. He had grand ideas about what an agent of change he could be, and he engaged in some slick campaigning to let everyone know. But he failed to live up to his promises. Perhaps I am being unfair…I mean, McKenna didn’t have complete control over it. He had to work with the Legislature. On the other hand, he knew he would have to work with the Legislature when he made the promise.

The second point. McKenna failed to succeed in working with the Legislature. Keeping his promise required him to be highly skillful in working with the legislative and executive branches. It required him to go beyond being a slick campaigner to actually get something he promised done. He couldn’t and he didn’t. He failed as a politician.

And now he wants to be Governor?

Remember this when he makes slick promises that sound too good to be true.

Either he hasn’t thought through what he must do to make it happen, or he isn’t a skillful enough politician to see it through.

Darryl and I have been doing some live blogging recently. Darryl has been on fire with the GOP Presidential debates, and I also did one of them. Mostly, I’ve been live blogging either events I’ve gone to as an activist or been invited to (or weaseled my way into) as a writer for this blog.

Recently, I’ve been influenced by this piece by Tim Wood. And while not everything about a sports blog applies to a politics blog, especially to the events where most of the readers aren’t able to follow along, there are some style things that are important.

There is an art to every format we use at Bleacher Report, but none more than the live blog. Done right, a live blog can be your ticket to a loyal following on B/R, because the live blog is the spot where you can most spotlight your personality.

You’re keeping readers up to date on the event, but more importantly, you’re giving the reader the feeling of watching it with you at a sports bar. You’re the buddy for the reader to interact with, so perspective and variety are two keys to keeping your readers interested.

I think change sports bar to watching the debate and you have a pretty good summation of Darryl covering the debates. For me, I think the most important thing is to put the updates below the older things. That way people just finding it half way through don’t have to scroll up and down a bit, then back up, and people can hit refresh from one point in, and be in the same spot. I try to remember to put times at the start of each update, but sometimes I forget. I’ve also made more of a point of going back and correcting grammar/punctuation/starting sentences that I don’t finish so it stands as something.

So, my question to you on this holiday shortened week, while most of you are perhaps still out with family: are these things you’d like to see more of? Less? Would you like advance warning? Would you like something different stylistically?

– When I finally stopped talking, I exhaled. I’d finally told someone I was falling for my whole story. And I was afraid that my biggest fear would come true: Aaron would look at me differently. (h/t)

– We might be all redistricted out by the end of the day, but this vignette from the 1960’s was fascinating.

– Is anyone else but Erika surprised that she finds it more remarkable that she would defend Kim Kardashian than that she would defend child sweatshops? You shouldn’t be because one of the questions on the wingnut welfare eligibility exam is to write an essay explaining the benefits of child sweatshops, poll taxes and climate change.

– Those Ron Paul newsletters are really, really, really awful.

– I think the question about Edgar Martinez and what would his Hall of Fame case would look like if he’d been a terrible third baseman is interesting.

NY Times tech blogger Nick Bilton has a thorn up his ass about the FAA prohibitions on electronic devices during take-off and landing. Bilton just cannot understand why some pilots are now being allowed to use iPads in the cockpit for paper flight manuals but he cannot use his Kindle for the take-off and landing parts of the flight.

As it happens, this is one of Goldy’s pet peeves as well. Neither person seems to believe that electronic devices can affect flight safety during critical (take-off and landing) phases of flights. At least Goldy leaves it at complaining and denial. But not Nick Bilton.

Bilton decided to do something about it. You know, use science and technology to “prove” that electronic devices are safe.

What he did, however, amounts to horse shit. As I show below, Bilton, sets-up and then destroys a straw-man argument.
[Read more…]

Just how badly has the G.O.P. lost on the payroll tax break issue? Bad enough to lose the Wall Street Journal editorial page opinion like this:

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.

The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.

That’s pretty damn bad.

And if that’s one outcome of yesterday’s House Republican fiasco, today’s theater should sting at least as much.

In trying to complete a quick pro forma session of the House today, Speaker Pro Tempore Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) walked away while Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) implored the House to take up the bill that would extend the tax break (via ThinkProgress):

Hoyer got a few good slams in on the Republicans before turning the microphone over to Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Van Hollen never got a chance. His microphone was cut off, and a few seconds later, the video feed was terminated.

But the issue isn’t just about how Scrooge-like the Republicans have become for the holiday season. The other side of this story is about the collapse of Republican discipline. Speaker Boehner had a revolt among the House masses that forced him to beg-off an agreement he made with the Senate leadership and, in particular, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (via Politico):

While the two men have been remarkably united this year, the year-end package has prompted an unusual amount of confusion, disunity, frustration and increased finger-pointing, both publicly and privately, between House Republicans and Senate Republicans over who is at fault in the political fiasco.
[…]

“This is a colossal fumble by the House Republicans,” said a senior Senate GOP aide, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about his own party. “Their inability to recognize a win is costing our party our long-held advantage on the key issue of tax relief. It’s time for Boehner and [House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor to look these rookies in the eye and explain how the game is won or lost.”

For most of the past year, the House Teabaggers have been less of a liability than I figured they would be. But with reelection campaigns on the horizon and a distinct lack of positive accomplishments to their credit, the House Teabaggers are feeling unsettled and maybe even nervous.

Boehner will have increasing difficulty keeping the feral hordes from further trashing the Party.