Search Results for: drinking liberally

It seems recently the comments in non-open threads have been pretty derailed pretty quickly. And so I’d just like to remind people that there is a comment policy that bans, among other things, “deliberately off-topic comments (except in “open threads”), as well as pointless comments on these comments.” And since that time there has been a greater effort to put up open threads. We have at least 3 open threads a week (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) and the Drinking Liberally and Friday Night Multimedia threads. There’s usually one near the top, so please use them.

When Gov. Christine Gregoire signs same-sex marriage into law the week after next, Washington state will be catching up to that uber-liberal state known as Iowa.

So when they heard the news, the Des Moines chapter of Drinking Liberally couldn’t resist teasing us a bit at the same time they sent a congratulatory message:

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….

I’ve watched this presentation by Bug Girl on social media a couple times. The part that intrigues me the most is who she finds her competition to be. And it isn’t other insect bloggers, but rather everything else. She finds other insect bloggers to be her collaborators. And I sort of feel the same way about Washington/Northwest liberal blogs.

In the early days of local blogging, the landscape was pretty bare. Before Slog, before Postman’s blog or the rest of the local media, before Goldy started blogging, it was a threadbare community compared to now. And I made an effort with what little platform I had 2 blogs ago to promote the rest of the community. It grew into something fun and interesting. And even with my 100-150 readers a day at most, I remember having people come up to me at Drinking Liberally or at other blog events and thank me for a link and tell me all the traffic they got out of it.

Some of them have gone, but a lot of them are still part of the community. I hope that the support of this community comes through in the Open Threads where I try to link to a variety of local blogs, even if I unfortunately tend toward the more established ones. Because I really don’t consider them the competition. I love the community both of comments and of other blogs. I don’t know what that means going forward, but I’m going to try to keep it in mind when I write here.

– War on Cars

– Market forces are incredibly powerful. It’s amazing what can happen when they’re pushed in a certain direction through regulation.

– It’s time to end the Electoral College.

– Hollywood has run out of ideas.

– I was just telling Darryl at Drinking Liberally, that I probably link to too many bug things in the open threads. This post on zombie caterpillars will have to add to the number.

Young Turks: Bill-O bribes cops to investigate his wife’s lover.

Ed and Pap and Lizz Winstead: No adults at home in the GOP:

Alyona’s Tool Time: Megyn Kelly.

Thom: Presidential firsts.

Dem video blasts GOP on…angry town halls (via TalkingPointsMemo).

Young Turks: GOP—cut FEMA, first responders, and hurricane hunters.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

The Return of Darth Cheney:

• Pap: The criminal history of Dick Cheney.
• Young Turks: Cheney says it isn’t okay to waterboard Americans.
• Ed: Cheney’s tell-all book.
• Powell blasts Cheney.
• Ann Telnaes: Cheney says his book will make heads explode.
• Alyona’s Show & Tell: Charge Cheney with war crimes?
• Pap: Dick Cheney belongs in jail, not on a book tour.

Olbermann with Ambassador Joe Wilson: Cheney…Pt I.
Olbermann with Ambassador Joe Wilson: Cheney…Pt II.

TED: Fourth Quadrant Politics.

Piers Morgan asks Rick Santorum if he’s a bigot.

Thom: This is what anti-Americanism really is:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is Worst Person in the World.

Alyona’s Tool Time: FL GOP doesn’t want you ‘living in sin’.

FAUX News viewers are, apparently, confused by Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Newsy: Obama moves back joint session address.

Sam Seder: Gov. Rick Scott blows money & proves he’s wrong about welfare recipients being druggies.

Young Turks: Republican will lead Supercommittee.

Mark Fiore: The future now.

Newsy: Daryl Hannah arrested for environmental protest.

Olbermann and Makos: The Nat. Geo. Geo. Bush interview.

Republican Committee of Pima County, Arizona is Worst Person in the World.

Young Turks: Eric Cantor’s disaster relief flip-floppery.

Ed with some racist Psychotalk from Rush Limbaugh.

Thom: Sen. Chuck Grassley lies on camera.

Limbaugh: Melanin is thicker than water (via Blatherwatch).

The G.O.P. Primary Asylum:

• Ed and Pap: G.O.P. candidates think about disaster response.
• Newsy: And then there were two—Perry and Romney.
• Pap: GOP candidates embracing the “Sovereign Citizen” extremists.
• Actual Audio: Mitt on corporate personhood.
• Maddow: How Perry dumps waste in your backyard in exchange for campaign donations.
• Young Turks: No stimulus programs under Perry.
• Thom: Rick Perry is a big-government Socialist!
• Sharpton: Perry’s plan for America.
• Ed: Perry’s gangster government for rich Texans.
• Young Turks: How Rick Perry got rich on the job.
• Buzz 60: Perry Polls
• Pap: Perry, the French cuff cowboy
• Sharpton: Bachmann gasping for air with Perry on the scene.
• The Michele Bachman KKKRAZZZY Comedian video.
• Ed with some major Michele psychotalk.
• Young Turks: Bachmann—Christians should run government.

Young Turks: Tea Party wants blacks lynched.

Olbermann with Brian Beutler on politics of Obama’s EPA decision.

Newsy: Arizona GOP raising funds with Glock gun raffle.

White House: West Wing Week.

Rubio’s Ruin:

• Ed and Pap: Marco Rubio’s troubled financial history.
• Ed: Marco Rubio is so stupid he doesn’t even know when he is being offensive. Pt. I
• Ed: Marco Rubio is so stupid he doesn’t even know when he is being offensive. Pt. II

A big change coming to Whitehouse.gov.

NPR: “It’s All Politics” political news round-up.

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News attacks Google as anti-church?!?

Olbermann: The real-life impact of WI Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union efforts.

Mike Shaw, the acting chairman of the Republican Committee of Pima County, AZ is Worst Person in the World.

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

Bill-O the Clown is Back! As Worst Person in the World.

Young Turks: Obama’s jobs speech cave.

PBS: The devastating Texas drought.

Goldy and his friends engage in some Podcasting Liberally at Seattle’s chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Pap: Republicans want climate science removed from text books.

Sharpton: Gov. Haley’s ridiculous response to question on new ‘Jim Crow’ vote rigging law.

Olbermann and Maysoon Zayid discuss O’Reilly-Gate:

Alyona’s fireside chat: US failing on civil liberties post 9/11.

Ed with some major psychotalk from George Pataki.

Young Turks: Strippers prepare for GOP convention.

Eric Cantor cuts the competition on the way to Worst Person in the World.

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

The Podcast returns from a long vacation hibernation incarceration a coma the dead to tackle the big political issues of the day last many months. And freshen the sidebar.

The discussion starts with bold analyses of the recent election: the panel re-litigates The Tunnel (long after the topic is hip, relevant, or even interesting), and contemplates the meaning of the pro-tunnel vote for Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn. The discussion meanders into a referendum on Seattle itself (whereupon, Goldy briefly attempts to re-litigate the Chihuly Museum, long after the topic is hip, relevant, or even interesting).

Circling back to the election, the panel ponders the piss-poor performance of King County Councilmember Jane “37.9%” Hague, and the remarkable candidacy of challenger Richard Mitchell. Catalyzed by another lame-ass Seattle Times editorial, the Podcast closes on the topic of public employees, education and (of course) Seattle schools.

Goldy (The Stranger) was joined by Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly, and Horsesass’ Carl Ballard and me.

The show is 30:15, and is available here as an MP3.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_aug_30_2011.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

– News reports on Laura Ruderman have stated that she’s running for the 1st Congressional District seat being vacated by Jay Inslee, however in her FEC Statement of Organization filing, she left the district field blank. On June 28, the FEC sent her a letter asking her to specify which district she plans to run in.

– Remember those Hitler-loving teenage twins who started a band called Prussian Blue? Well, they’ve changed quite a bit since then…

– Scott Morgan writes about the myth that support for marijuana law reform is political suicide. This actually reminded me of an incident recently at Drinking Liberally in Burien. A certain city council candidate for a city just outside of Seattle showed up with his campaign manager on a night when I came by to collect signatures for I-1149. The candidate himself was very forthright with me that not only did he think marijuana should be legal, but that we should even look at different ways of dealing with harder drugs. But his campaign manager (both men were probably in their 50s) sternly advised him not to sign my petition. He was convinced that if it became public that he signed a petition to legalize marijuana, it would wreck his chances in the campaign.

I found that to be laughable and said that in the greater Seattle area today, the opposite is almost true. Failing to support the legalization of marijuana could actually hurt you politically. Not to mention that Ron Paul, who’s been on record supporting the legalization of marijuana for over twenty years, keeps getting re-elected in the one of most conservative parts of the country. But this is how many folks in the political establishment still think. The taboo that marijuana represented long ago still lives on in the minds of political consultants, even though the political risks to supporting reform are non-existent today.

Later on at that Drinking Liberally event, though, State Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon – one of the youngest, if not the youngest, member of the state legislature – signed my I-1149 petition as that same campaign manager tried to warn him not to.

– Seattle has become the first city in the state to move forward with a plan for regulating medical marijuana establishments. Under the parts of the bill that escaped the governor’s veto pen, it’s now legal for a group of up to 10 authorized patients to band together and form a “collective garden”. And there’s nothing in the new law that prevents someone from opening up a storefront and making it the shared access point for a large number of those collective gardens (Seattle alone probably has more than 20,000 authorized patients, meaning the city could have over 2,000 collective gardens). The city of Seattle has an interest in controlling where those access points will be located and have them pay business taxes just like any other establishment.

But now, attorney Douglas Hiatt is threatening to sue the city over the regulations. I’ve worked with Douglas a lot for I-1149 and I’m frankly baffled by what he’s doing. When I emailed him about why he was planning to sue, he told me that it’s because marijuana is illegal at the state level still, so the city can’t regulate it. After re-reading the actual language of SB 5073 that passed, I don’t think that’s true, but that’s actually beside the point. These are regulations that will allow for Seattle to have a system of access for medical marijuana that’s above-ground and – while still an administrative mess (thanks governor!) – better for patients. And the relevant local law enforcement figures are perfectly ok with it. The only entity I would expect to nitpick the legality of all this in order to shut it down is the DEA, not someone with a well-earned reputation for defending the state’s medical marijuana patients in court.

Will the Republicans come up with a credible challenger to Sen. Maria Cantwell for 2012? The topic came up at Drinking Liberally last week, and I’ve been been thinking about it on and off since then. Specifically…who?

Jim Brunner puts together a good analysis. At this point, the big challenge for any potential Republican is money. The clock is running. Cantwell is raising money. Her non-existent Republican opponent isn’t.

Former Washington state Republican Chairman Chris Vance has the political side figured out. (I like how he is able to say reality-based stuff that current Chairman Kirby Wilbur could never say):

“[R]ight now, it’s very much in doubt whether there is going to be a strong candidate.”

“The Republican brand got hammered on the West Coast during the Bush years, and it has not recovered….There are just so many more Democrats than Republicans in Washington state right now — the math just becomes very difficult.”

and

“If a Republican is going to have any chance to beat Cantwell, they have to immediately and sharply distance themselves from the national Republican Party”

Brunner offers three possible challengers: Susan Hutchison, who lost a race for King County Executive to Ron Sims Dow Constantine in 2009, Rep. Dave Reichert, and Port of Seattle Commissioner Bill Bryant.

Not impressive.

Dino! Your party needs you!

I think as the campaign season kicks into swing, I’m going to ask candidates for various offices questions. But I’d like to hear from the folks here. So far, I can think of some things I’d like to ask Seattle, King County, and Port candidates. If pressed, I could probably reasonably ask some things of some people running for mayor in some of the ring cities and some of the bigger cities in the area, or Seattle School board. But it’s an odd year, so nothing statewide. And I don’t know what local issues exist outside of the Puget Sound area.

Basically, while I have preferences that I’ll probably express pretty strongly about some of those positions between now and November, I want to ask questions that are more openended and to ask all of the candidates the same questions. So I’d email, say, 3-5 questions to each candidate per position and post them unedited here in some predetermined order on a predetermined date.

So is there anything you’d like a semi-popular Washington State political blog to ask of anyone?

Here are basically what I have so far, I’ve kept them vague for the most part so far so people can flesh out ideas in the comments without me saying here’s the question ahead of time:

Seattle City Council:

• Something about the Viaduct, probably cost overruns
• Something about police, preferably including accountability and safety
• Something about faster Internet across the city
• What is the city’s role in education and public transportation given how important they are to the city, but that other agencies are tasked with them?

King County

• Something about Metro service
• Something about services in general since the voters rejected Proposition 1 last year

Port of Seattle

• Something about how people run on reform, but it doesn’t seem like much has been done.
• How can the Port create jobs in the region?
• How can the Port reduce pollution/greenhouse gases, etc.
• Something about parks*

[Read more…]

Between Memorial Day weekend and my general laziness, we went a long time sans an open thread from the end of last week (From Friday morning to the DL Thread put up early on Tuesday). By the end of that time conversation generally dried up in the previous open thread, and people started writing off topic in other threads.

Those off topic comments got deleted, and it naturally caused some anger. It’s one thing to say “post that in an open thread” when there’s an open thread from today or yesterday. It’s another thing to say, “post that in an open thread, um from a week ago.” Darryl and I discussed it at Drinking Liberally, and I’m not sure we came up with an answer, but we had some thoughts. I’d like to explain what I usually do and what I did the rest of this week, and then I’ll discuss some possible things going forward.

Normally, I try to do 2 or 3 open threads a week, spaced out, but it’s more when I have enough things that I find interesting to link to than a specific amount of time. I try to have at least one local link and one thing that doesn’t involve politics (sports, science, music, etc.) in every open thread. I’ve been making an effort to link to some Eastern WA content with not that much success, and to link to women and people of color with more success, but neither of those has been a hard and fast rule. Also, if someone else does an open thread, I’ll wait until the next day to do one, even if mine is ready.

This week, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I changed that up a bit. I posted open threads all three of those days (and tried to post all in the morning, but didn’t have the time on Thursday). I don’t think the quality of the links was as good in general, and there was a pretty major fuck up in one of those links on Thursday (from me scanning the headlines instead of reading the post). I think that looking for stuff for more open threads took away time for writing other posts.

So, going forward, I don’t really want to manually do an open thread with links every day. But here’s some thoughts that Darryl and I discussed:

• Just keep doing what we’re doing. We usually have them every few days, and so what if nothing comes up because of long weekend or one of us is on vacation, well that’s not the end of the world.
• Creating an open thread user that the rest of us can edit. Everyone add links as we find them. There’s some possibility that we can step on each other’s toes, and it might be annoying to do it from the back end. We’d have some problems deciding when it’s ready to go.
• There’s no inherent need to have links. I think they add a place to start the discussion and in general I like most of the blogs I link to. I think there’s some responsibility for higher traffic blogs to link to other blogs, especially in my case where my place at a high traffic blog isn’t really from my own hard work, but from being given the spot. But I imagine people will find something to talk about even without a link.
• We could do some sort of hybrid where, for example, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we just have an open thread and on Tuesday and Thursday we have an open thread with links.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten something since I discussed with Darryl on Tuesday, but those are my thoughts. I’d like to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

At a recent Drinking Liberally, Goldy and I were discussing what the comment threads have become. I think regular open threads have kept most of the things that would otherwise be off topic out of the other threads (although not completely). And while the threads have always been pretty loose, since the 3 regulars are all part time, the enforcement of the comment policy has gone somewhat downhill.

So the question is: do we need a new comment policy now that Goldy isn’t posting, do we need better technology, or is it working fine now? Goldy said he would be willing to work on something with registration, but I’m not sure that he has the time, and I don’t know exactly what it would look like. I can step up enforcement somewhat, but between 8:30 and 4:30 (give or take depending on the day) on weekdays, that’s not going to happen, and I can’t really force the other posters to do anything.

– This post brought back strong memories of doing flash cards with my mother on the train to her parents’ house.

– This is 100% factual.

– Freedom!

– This looks like a hoot, but I’ll be at Drinking Liberally tomorrow.

– I wouldn’t say genius.

– I’m sure glad we voted for a Republican house, or we might never get a vote on this shit.

Goldy has been (mostly) gone for almost two months now. And during this evening’s Drinking Liberally event, the topic of a slight HA re-branding arose. The winning slogan idea was:

The New HorsesAss…Same great flavor, 50% less “fuck.”

What do you think?

(H/T to occasional poster Goldy for contributing the “50% less ‘fuck'” bit.)

The state Senate Democratic Caucus just released its recommendations for committee chairs, elevating Seattle Sen. Ed Murray to the top position on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. And according to a statement released through the caucus, this leaves Ed very, very humble.

“I’m humbled to be considered for the role of Ways & Means chair.

I don’t come with any illusions about the challenges facing our state budget. But I believe my experience working across the aisle to write a budget well prepares me for the significant task ahead.”

I dunno, Ed’s never struck me as particularly humble, but he is the kinda a guy who will occasionally show up at Drinking Liberally and argue with dirty bloggers, so I’m cheered by the news.

So congrats Ed. And if you stop by DL tonight and join us for a frosty brew, I’d be happy to tell you how to solve the budget crisis.