Let’s start with the most taxing of all: Your Their Oklahoma City Sonics stunk out the joint against Orlando last night, losing 103-76 in a game that wasn’t that close. Rashard Lewis, one of the two Sonics stars dumped in the offseason by new Oklahoma owner Clay Bennett, had 19 by halftime. The Sonics are now 0-8, and, having lost the last five games last year, have now lost 13 straight over two seasons, a new club record.
Lee may well be right that the plot may be to make the Sonics so bad that nobody will care if they leave, but if so the ploy is backfiring: the Sonics are so bad one can’t help but watch, like a slowly unfolding car wreck or a grisly horror movie. They’re that bad.
The local papers are reporting this morning what HA readers already know: EHJR 4204 is now passing. The measure to allow school districts to pass levies with 50 percent, rather than 60 percent, of the vote, while dropping the requirement of a 40 percent voter turnout, has pulled ahead primarily on absentee ballots from King County, which has solidly supported the measure (unlike much of the state).
King County Council passed three new taxes yesterday: a one-tenth of a cent hike in the sales tax for a dedicated fund for substance abuse and mental health programs; 10 cents per $1,000 valuation in additional property tax to pay to repair substandard flood control levees; and 5.5 cents per $1,000 valuation to pay for new passenger ferry district.
Anti-war protests continued yesterday at the Port of Olympia, where protesters poured cement onto railroad tracks to try to keep trains from leaving the Port with military shipments. The brief, unbylined Seattle Times article on the topic is notable for relying solely on Olympia police as a source, without bothering to pick up the phone and call, you know, anyone from the Port or any protesters. Without any context at all (e.g., the protests that have been going on since last Friday down there), the article is a complete cipher. If you want context, try this much better piece from yesterday’s Olympian.
Nationally, after carefully taking a full working day to consider the seven hours of public testimony at last Friday’s FCC public hearing in Seattle, on Tuesday FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin issued details of his proposal to further deregulate broadcast station ownership, specifically lifting a ban on newspaper/TV cross-ownership in any one market. A tale of two headlines: New York Times: “Few Friends for Proposal on Media.” The always-friendly-to-DC-bureaucracy Washington Post: “FCC Chief Offers New Plan On Cross-Ownership.” Amazingly, neither article mentioned the overwhelming public opposition to Martin’s proposal, choosing largely to focus on the Tribune Co., Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and other large broadcasters that would be affected by the change. The Times’ “Few Friends” headlines refers to broadcasters who want still more lenient rules — not the public that thinks media has already consolidated quite enough, thank you. But then, it’s kind of hard to expect that public concerns would be acknowledged, let alone that we get (God forbid) balanced coverage on this issue, when both the Post and the Times have extensive newspaper and broadcast media properties themselves.
I know I’m going to get flamed for this, but I don’t fucking care. The protestors at the Port of Olympia are fucking idiots who get what they deserve. I agree that I don’t like the war, but their desire to get their point across is less a political statement than an act of simple-minded anarchist vandalism. Trying to block the supplies that might save the lives of my wife’s two sons (both of whom are in the Middle East as we speak), or trying to keep them from returning home is no political statement to me. It’s an act of treason. It says, “We don’t give a fuck about our fellow Americans, we don’t care that they didn’t choose to go there, we don’t care that they’re volunteering to serve their country, they’re just brutal killers, and they’re as guilty as the people who sent them there.” Most military people I know respect the protestors’ right to their opinion, and they also want this charade ended ASAFP. But this is just fucking ridiculous. Enjoy the pepper spray, and just be happy I’m not there to join in on the beatdowns. Endanger my family, you little peckerheads, and watch this fourth-generation liberal get ugly fast. You want to protest this farce? Go to the source! Put a million people on the Mall in DC, a million surrounding the Capitol and White House. That will get a point across! Blocking access to a port is typical anarchist Greener bullshit that accomplishes nothing other than adding to individual arrest records, some bullshit they can brag about while getting drunk down at the Brotherhood Tavern. And then to add insult to insult, the Right uses them to paint everyone else opposed to the war (like ourselves) as being no different than the wild-eyed lunatic fringe. I have no problem with protesting this farce of a war. But the ‘direct action’ crowd only makes it harder for the rest of us to get the point across over their white noise of uselessness.
Way to go, Greenies. You’re still scum to me.
Broadway Joe,
I think those of us that have been in the military would agree with you that the Olympia protestors are a bunch of fucking assholes. Too bad the cops just didn’t machine-gun them down.
Wait, I forget, wasn’t switching to Vote-By Mail going to make vote counting faster?
From Sam Reed’s News Release November 03, 2006
“On election night, vote by mail counties will be able to produce results promptly. Poll site counties must wait for poll sites to report in, some of which require long drives to the tabulation center. All mail counties will have already processed all the vote by mail ballots received before Election Day. At 8:00pm on election night, mail counties will be able to hit the tabulation button to receive results. Overall, mail counties will be reporting quicker than those counties waiting on poll sites.”
County Council passed three new taxes yesterday.
Time to down size the council to 7 members. The have gone crazy.
I agree. The protestors may have their hearts in the right place but their actions will only push people to the right.
These actions are counter-productive.
Too bad the cops just didn’t machine-gun them down.
Typical. The answer from the right is ALWAYS more killing.
@4…George…
Take Metro Transit from the KCC, give it to a genuine regional transportation authority, and all you have left is a utility.
How about downsizing the KCC from nine to nothing?
The Piper
http://www.olyblog.net/newsflash-port
@5…YLB…
Understand…the protesters threw themselves at vehicles, resisted arrest, provoked serious responses, broke any number of laws, then complained and literally cried when they got what they asked for and had coming.
And this Johnson guy on the Oly City Council? Who publicly condemned the Oly PD for police brutalilty (he used those words)? What a disgrace!
My guess? Given most of this happened over, of all things, the three day VETERANS’ DAY weekend, it looks to be a lot of spoiled and pampered Evergreen State College students.
You wonder why this infuriates a lot of people? No respect shown, no appreciation for the service of men and women in uniform, endangered both life and property…and then bitch about suffering reasonable and foreseeable consequences of their actions!
These clowns don’t have their hearts in the right place…Can’t have in the right place what they genuinely don’t have…Immature, spoiled, self-focused, narcissistic Millennial Generation types…
Shoot them? No…just let them suffer the consequences of their self-absorbed behavior, something they’ve probably never had happen their entire lives.
The Piper
@3:
Counting the ballots would go faster if we were like Oregon, where your ballot has to arrive on election day, not be postmarked on election day. That makes a big difference.
Of course no one would want to change the rule here because of all the thousands of votes that wouldn’t count due to those that did’t get the memo.
re 9: Another thing we can do is have on the spot ‘literacy tests’ and poll taxes in poor areas.
There must be some way we can count only the votes of the people who agree with us.
Hmmm, pouring concrete on train tracks, injuring an officer’s knee, breaking windows on police vehicles and store fronts…..Your side’s not lookin’ too good at this moment. “But they support the troops, dontcha know??”
It’s also interesting that they would use themselves as human shields to keep trucks from moving (footage of that on michellemalkin.com). I’m sure the thinking is that “we’re humans, they’re not going to run over and kill US!” Yet I’ll bet they all support the literal ripping apart of babies in abortion (yes, that is what happens. You can see photos of baby arms, legs, heads many places online)
The right-wingers are pouring in. Using these protestors to tar and feather the entire anti-war movement and what is that?
70-80 percent of the population?
So much bullshit in such a small thread.
..and just for fun, there was Louisiana politician Carla Dartez, who called the mother of an NAACP president “BUCKWHEAT”. (as in “See you later, Buckwheat!” which were her exact words) Wow, but it’s okay if she makes such racist comments, because SHE’S A DEMOCRAT!
Did any of you happen to see the meeting, forum, or what have you the other night led by an Olympia City Coulcilman? These spoiled and self absorbed children with an inflated grandiose sense of self importance were apalling as hell. Literally crying about police tactics when they disobeyed police orders. What the hell did they expect? The cops to just let them stop the movement of Army equipment? IDIOTS!!!!
but it’s okay if she makes such racist comments, because SHE’S A DEMOCRAT!
Nope, that’s not all right. How’s this for all right – fuck you, braindead wingnut!
Michelle Malkin? LMAO!!
Literally crying about police tactics when they disobeyed police orders.
Baaaa! Baaaaaaaaa! Cry the right wing sheep.
BTW, Broadway Joe is MY kind of liberal. Has his opinions, but he’s no wimp. Loves his family and will protect them at all costs. Has no respect for random vandalism and completely childish behavior trying to pass for real protest. You go, Broadway Joe! Too bad not many of your other lib pals aren’t real men like you! (I don’t really see many of them condemning the terrorism—yes, putting cement on a train track IS an act of terrorism!)
aren’t s/b “are”
Those two high speed passenger-only ferries owned and currently unused by the Washington Ferry System?
4 Sale 2 Best Offer…
On E-Bay…
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/.....n-on-ebay/
Buy an old Monkees LP, some outlandish neckties, psychadelic rock concert posters, and…a Washington State Ferry…all on E-Bay, and all using PayPal…
Only two remain…They make wonderful Christmas gifts!
The Piper
@12…YLB…
Anti-war or anti-lack of progress? There’s a difference.
We all need to be careful to not over generalize and over stereotype…
Witness the contrarian Broadway Joe…
The Piper
20 – It’s anti-war! Anyone with any semblance of a brain can see this was a bullshit war for oil. The oil didn’t pan out so it turned to corruption. The connected have made a killing.
End the war, end the corruption. People want it to stop because they’ll be paying for it for a generation – at least.
putting cement on a train track IS an act of terrorism!
A bullshit right wing canard!
@21…YLB…
For what oil? Iraq’s? And we’ve gotten how much of it? When we could have simply taken the oil fields and held them against all comers? Or leveraged the post-Saddam Iraqi government to give us all we want?
G’won!!!
If you’d said it was a war to force Iraq to buy two passenger-only dry-docked Washington ferries, you’d have made more sense.
The Piper
For what oil? Iraq’s? And we’ve gotten how much of it?
Like I said, it didn’t pan out. It’s all about the corruption now. Building half-billion dollar white elephants like an embassy the size of the Vatican, shoddy hospitals, government building, running empty trucks all over the country on cost plus contracts.
When we could have simply taken the oil fields and held them against all comers?
Isn’t that what we did? Only the insurgents blow up everything they can.
Or leveraged the post-Saddam Iraqi government to give us all we want?
Exactly what we’re trying to do with manipulating the Iraqi’s Hydrocarbon law. The Iraqis aren’t dumb – they know what we’re trying to do and that’s why the government is stalled.
Pooper, did you get a degree in stupid?
Hundreds of people show up at the Seattle FCC meeting to voice their concerns about deregulation that threatens our democracy, and the big newspapers ignore them. Totally ignore them. And they wonder why they’re losing circulation???
@1 Why do you call those people “Greenies”? What evidence do you have that they’re from the Green Party?
@2 On the other hand, there are those of us who — unlike you WingNut (TM) Pretenders (SM) — have actually fought in a real live fucking war who DO NOT agree with your silly Nazi notions of machinegunning your fellow Americans simply because you disagree with their politics. After all, some of us disagree with YOUR silly politics, and would LIKE to machinegun all of you fascist assholes, but we wouldn’t really do it!*
There’s these things you 3rd-grade dropouts never heard of called “due process” and “proportionality.” Just arrest ’em, give ’em a fair trial, and give ’em a sentence proportionate to the crime: As they didn’t kill anyone, give ’em 30 days in the county hoosegow for disorderly behavior and tack on some extra time for those who damaged property.
* Just kidding! Lifted from WingNut (TM) Humor (SM) Inc., no royalties paid.
@23…YLB…
Long on shadows and conspiracie theories, short on hard facts…
BTW…heard about the new book by FBI agent George Piro? Lebanese-born, Arabic speaking interrogator of Saddam? Reveals how Saddam deliberately fomented the notion that he did, in fact, have WMD’s because he thought it would hold the Iranian’s at bay. Worked well enough such that even his generals thought he had them.
And he fully intended to get them, too, once sanctions were lifted…and by bribing enough UN inspectors.
The Olympian article Geov links is worth the read…just to get a good sense of disgust at the baby-like way many protesters behaved and reacted…it was all about them.
The Piper
@2 Back when I was in the military, they didn’t take 3rd grade dropouts, so either you served recently or only in your imagination.
@4 Sure. Are you gonna start by getting rid of the Republicans who voted for those tax increases?
@6 So. Crackpiper finally reveals himself. He’s a fucking anarchist.
OK. So now we have a 9% sales tax in King County. I consider this additional 1/10th cent tax a Bush War Tax, because that’s exactly what it is. These aren’t new services. This is merely a case of the funding shifting from the federal and state governments to the county because Bush’s profligate war spending has dried up the federal money and Bush’s unfunded federal mandates has dried up the state money that used to support these mental health services, which tend to be utilized by the homeless, a quarter of whom are, um, veterans.
So now we’re paying higher sales tax because Bush is making our young people crazy in Iraq and then dumping them on Seattle’s streets without federal services or support after they come home crazy from Iraq.
The Vashon foot ferry is idiotic, although no more so than light rail, according to my calculations. Danny Westneat wrote in today’s fishwrapper that the foot ferries will cost countyt taxpayers $200 million over the coming decade, and that a total of 1,450 passengers ride them. That works out to about $13,800 per passenger per year, and if you divided that by 250 commuting days, you get $55 a day or $27.50 per ride. That’s what it’s costing us taxpayers. Light rail as envisioned by Prop. 1 would have cost about $25 to $30 per ride. If you drive a single occupancy vehicle (SOV) to work, it probably costs you about $25 per ride. There’s still low cost transportation available in some parts of the state that don’t like paying road taxes, though: http://www.stinkychester.com/man-riding-donkey.jpg
@11 “Hmmm, pouring concrete on train tracks, injuring an officer’s knee, breaking windows on police vehicles and store fronts…..Your side’s not lookin’ too good at this moment.”
Trouble is, they’re not our side. Oh, they’re definitely not on your side of the war issue, although they otherwise behave like your side, especially the protesters you bussed to the Miami canvassing office back in ’00. Nope, I would call ’em fringies, and we don’t have anything to do with them. We support our troops. Your side doesn’t; you send them to Iraq to bleed, then you throw them into moldy barracks to wait months for shoddy medical care; you try to cut off their combat pay; you defund veterans benefits; etc. So, go ahead, play your childish “support the troops” game here; we enjoy kicking your ass on that one. Thanks for playing, you lose again. Next.
@22 “For what oil? Iraq’s? And we’ve gotten how much of it? When we could have simply taken the oil fields and held them against all comers? Or leveraged the post-Saddam Iraqi government to give us all we want?”
Ummm … piper, you really should lay off the crack when you’re posting … have you ever heard the expression about “the best laid plans of mice and men”? Except in the case of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice you can forget the “men” part because you’re dealing strictly with mice …
@27 Piper, are you really this dumb? The gargantuan U.S. embassy in Baghdad isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a building in being, that dwarfs any of Saddam’s palaces in size and cost … and it’s a fact the U.S. occupation administration dictated the terms of Iraq’s oil laws to the U.S.-installed government. Do a little research before you shoot off your idiot mouth.
Wingnut = willful ignorance
And to top it all off – the equipment these idiots were blocking was RETURNING from Iraq. Not very effective plus bad PR equals stupid^3.
Personally, I would have used water cannons after I sent the kids they had with them to CPS.
Re: taxes
The King County Council raises taxes for mental health courts, foot ferries, and floodcontrol/levies. Yet, we just had to vote a special levy to fund Medic1 service. We should have funded Medic1 in the base budget and voted on a special levy for foot ferry service.
@12:
They’re jealous of our freedom.
Roger: The failure to take care of the veterans is actually the BEST thing that could happen to them. Free market solutions are always the best and the cheapest way to go. I wish that you could appreciate the fact that by doing nothing, this administration is taking a bold stance for freedom and the free market system.
The government forcing a sick, injured soldier to recover against his will is the worst form of nanny statism.
I’ve had enough of tthis welfare for injured soldiers socialistic program!
I just checked this blog’s readability index. Piper Scott and Broadway Joe have dragged it down to kindergarten. Wen their comments are excluded the readability index for horsesass soars to high school level.
http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx
@42…Whatever…
The readability index would improve if you’d at least spell names correctly.
And I always take rants such as yours as a compliment to my ability to use the English language in a way that you can’t even dream of doing. I read books you know – history, literature, polemics – you might try it…Without pictures, that is, and with words that aren’t all monosyllable in nature.
In the meantime…I don’t care what you say about me, but could you at least spell my moniker correctly?
The Piper
#21 YLB says:
The oil didn’t pan out?? Because just like the WMDs, there was no oil? Or the soldiers are so inept they couldn’t find the oil-wells? Maybe bush couldn’t figure out a way to get the oil back to the states? Did saddam transferred all the oil to syria in the 15 month long rush to war?
Why didn’t it pan out?
#42 Piepr meet me at the Motel 6-love Broarway Joe says:
Wow, high school level? Proves what I’ve been saying, the posters on here are a bunch of high school dropouts living in the basements of their parents.
p.s. Wen is spelled with an h, when. I learned that on the no child left behind test.
p.p.s. I’m a little offended I wasn’t included in the dragging down of this blog.
29 Roger Rabbit says:
@4 Sure. Are you gonna start by getting rid of the Republicans who voted for those tax increases?
11/14/2007 at 10:55 am
The voters would decide. Better yet down size to 5 with all the annexation to the cities.
re 43: Don’t embarrass us, Piper. The word is ‘politics’, not ‘polemics’. Sheeesh!!!
@45…CGE…
A polemic is an argument or debate, and I study debates and debating technique.
The Piper
re 46: You mean like the Lincon/Douglas debates and the debate that Leonard Cohen had with Whittaker Chambers?
Talk about a bird on a wire act inside a secret hollow pumpkin!!!
WOW!!! That one was a knuckle dragger!
re 46 : Have you ever read Gerry Spence’s, How to ‘Win Every Argument’?
@47…CGE…
You mean this Leonard Cohen:
“Leonard Cohen was an attorney who worked in the United States Department of the Interior during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Cohen at the time was a contact with the Soviet Militiary Intelligence GRU Illegal apparatus. Cohen, according to FBI investigations, exchanged information with GRU Illegal Officer Ignacy Witczak.
FBI report, “Soviet Espionage Activities, 19 October 1945”.
New York FBI report, 5 April 1946, Comintern Apparatus file (FBI file 100-203581), serial 5236.
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press (1999).
Retrieved “http://www.conservapedia.com/Leonard_Cohen_%28spy%29”
Of course, Whittaker Chambers, an admitted and repentent former Soviet spy who testified against Alger Hiss and who authored Witness as well as working as an editor for Time Magazine…
Not a Gerry Spence fan…
The Lincoln – Douglas debates were interesting in that they were genuine debates on issues between men with solid convictions and principles, yet they were held before a public that had no say in the underlying election. At that time, US Senators were chosen by the respective state legislatures.
Lincoln lost, yet Lincoln won since the debates gave him a stature he would not otherwise have attained and propelled him to the 1860 Republican nomination and subsequent election, which he won with less than 50% of the vote.
What passes for debate these days, especially on the presidential candidate level, is too awful to watch, irrespective of candidate or party…Between one of them and a Gilligan’s Island Film Festival, I’ll go with Gilligan and The Skipper…
The Piper
Referred earlier to Haynes & Klehr. Debate’s over with regard to Hiss, Duggan, Chambers, Bentley, Abt, Perlo, Ware, and many more, many of whom were prominent in the New Deal.
Spence, my homeboy, from my little town, and an agressive John Birch Republican for Congress in c. 1962.
Who do you think is sexier: Ginger or Mary Ann?
Maybe I’ll debate you on it.
Mary Ann was real. That’s why the Bud commercial girls looked like Mary Ann!
Ginger was fake, like most Hollywood liberals and the ‘Wipers (TM) here.
They were both fake.
Don’t get hung up on the spelling guys. It’s my poor typing that’s to blame. Aim your criticism a little higher. So you read lots of books Piepr. I’ll bet you have a real problem with the pages sticking together when you go back for a second read.
The oil didn’t pan out?? Because just like the WMDs, there was no oil?
Seen the price of gas lately fool?
fake, like most Hollywood liberals and the ‘Wipers ™ here.
and MWS.
LMAO!!!
Odyssey, thank you for your support. You’ve got a point there, more than a few people who post here are so blinded by the anti-Bush hysteria that they willingly support domestic terrorists, so long as they’re on the right side.
Roger:
Greener: Student at, or alumni of, Evergreen State College.
Greenie: Personal term used to differentiate radical idiots/domestic and international political agitators from normal Greeners.
Fuckwad @ 42:
Act like you’ve got a pair and say that to my face. You’ll have to fly to Reno to get your beating, though.