Archives for 2010

Rep. Jay Inslee on Attorney General Rob McKenna’s “absurd” lawsuit against health care reform:

“If Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General can figure out it’s absurd, why can’t Rob McKenna?”

Yeah, I suppose Marcelas Owens would kick McKenna’s ass, but it’s the debate between Inslee and McKenna that I’m really looking forward to.

Hundreds of supporters gathered today to celebrate and defend health care reform, though I doubt the Seattle Times will bother to report on it, as it’s not like two governors, two U.S. Senators, and two U.S. Representatives were there or anything.

Now if there had been some angry handmade signs or something, now that would’ve been news.

A reader CC’d me on their email to the Seattle Times:

Michael Sheehan, Director of Circulation Operations

Please cancel my subscription to the Seattle Times as I now find it far too biased toward the National Chamber of Commerce agenda and that of the far right ideology. Balance has been missing for a long time and there is no longer the Seattle P-I as the local default newspaper. Plus, why is there a Business Section and no Labor Section in this publication. As a lifelong independent voter who has split my vote between the two major political parties (local and national) I can no longer justify spending my hard earned money on your source and content of news.

Copy or forward me your email canceling your subscription to the Seattle Times, and I’ll be happy to post it on HA, with or without attribution.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky in less than 10 minutes. It was Missoula, MT.

I have a feeling this week’s won’t take too long either, good luck!

Come celebrate and defend health care reform today with Gov. Chris Gregoire, Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, Representatives Jay Inslee and Brian Baird, and 11-year-old activist Marcelas Owens, who stood at President Obama’s side during the bill signing. 3 P.M., Machinists District 751 Hall, 9125 15th Place S., Seattle.

Then let’s all go out for a drink afterwards and plot our continued assault on the American way of life.

Leviticus 11:12
Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

Leviticus 11:7
And the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.

Clams Casino
1 doz. Littleneck clams
4 slices bacon
4 tbsp. red pepper, minced
3 tbsp. bread crumbs
4 tbsp. garlic butter (see below)
3 tbsp. Parmesan cheese, grated

Yum. Discuss.

– I started to fully understand the root cause of the infighting at Fox News over Glenn Beck after his insane interview with Eric Massa. The problem is that – unlike pure con artists like O’Reilly and Hannity – Beck actually believes his own bullshit. What he does isn’t an act. He’s an emotionally disturbed person working through various psychological issues while trying to confront an inability to comprehend both the rationale and the popularity of progressive politics. But while the average teabaggers are being exposed as ideologically incoherent buffoons in relative obscurity, Beck is going through that journey in front of millions of television viewers every day. It’s been quite the spectacle.

– Glenn Greenwald has written some good posts recently on our special relationship with Israel. Maybe Americans are finally starting to recognize that the way the Israelis have been treating the Palestinians doesn’t quite jibe with our nation’s historic emphasis on the importance of property rights.

– As always, lots of drug war news to pass along. Paul Armentano debates former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey about California’s approved ballot measure to legalize marijuana. Scott Morgan writes about the NFL and pot. Radley Balko on the Jonathan Ayers case. Officials in Texas are still waging war against KopBusters creator Barry Cooper. And Pete Guither on the enemy within.

– I’ve recently been checking out the Analytics X competition, a contest that offers up a small prize for anyone who can use analytics to most accurately predict the incidence of homicides across the city of Philadelphia.

– Good to read something from this guy again.

Join U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, along with Rep. Jay Inslee, 11-year-old Marcelas Owens and others at a rally in defense of health care reform, this Sunday, March 28, 3 p.m. at the Machinist 751 Hall, 9125 15th Place S., Seattle.

Rob McKenna, the Teabaggers and other opponents of reform don’t believe this fight is over, and neither should we, so I urge you all to turn out to thank our elected officials who passed reform, and show the media that we’re just as passionate as the angry rabble on the other side. Hope to see you all there, and then maybe go out for a beer afterwards.

Just a provide even more of an exclamation point on Rob McKenna’s hypocrisy over the Commerce Clause, here’s a page that the Marijuana Policy Project put up shortly after the Gonzales v. Raich decision came down. In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled that the Commerce Clause gives the federal government the right to arrest people who are following their state’s medical marijuana law. This decision (which was agreed upon by both the more liberal members of the court and Scalia) is why most legal experts believe that the challenge to the health care reform bill’s mandates will rejected.

What’s interesting about that page is that, of the 10 states that had medical marijuana laws at the time of the decision, all but two of the respective state Attorney Generals publicly affirmed that their state medical marijuana laws were still valid despite the ruling. One of the two who sat silent was Rob McKenna. In fact, I can’t find a single public statement from McKenna at that time standing up for the Washington voters who’d voted overwhelmingly to allow marijuana use among seriously ill individuals. This is why the Seattle Times editorial claiming that McKenna’s opposition is somehow rooted in his deep convictions about the Constitution is such a joke.

Instead, Josh Feit gets this one exactly right:

I’ll tell you exactly what Rob McKenna was thinking: Charlie Crist.

Sure McKenna may have jeopardized his shot at winning the governor’s race in 2012, but he has to make it through the primary to even have a chance. And even in a top-two primary (or especially in a top two primary), he needs the Republican base.

Feit thinks that McKenna’s gamble could work and get him to the Governor’s Mansion. I’m not so sure. But for the Seattle Times not to be able to see through his transparent bullshit – well, that’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from them.

I’ll get to the rest of their editorial later, but I just want to start off briefly with the lede of the Seattle Times ass-licking defense of Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna’s blatantly political ploy:

“THE politically orchestrated hiss at Rob McKenna has not been convincing.”

Hear that? The 17,688 people who spontaneously joined the “Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit” Facebook group in a matter of days…? We’re just a politically orchestrated hiss.

So the question remains: why on earth would you still hand over your money to Frank Blethen and his editorial cronies when this is what they think of you? In their opinion, our opinion doesn’t count. We’re not real Americans. We’re not the real grassroots. We’re just a politically orchestrated hiss.

A hiss. That’s the noise a snake makes.

I mean really… fuck that.

There isn’t anything in the print version of the Times that you can’t get online for free, and most of that you can get better from another source. So if we’re just an orchestrated political hiss, let’s orchestrate something the Blethens understand. Cancel your subscription and let them know why: that you’re sick and tired of handing over your hard earned money to folks who so clearly disrespect you.

Now that’s a hiss they won’t find so easy to dis, orchestrated or not.

“Hell No, you can’t!”

(And there are almost fifty more media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

They finally editorialize: “AG Rob McKenna has a case to challenge the health-care law’s individual mandate.”

Need I say more?

UPDATE:

(And we promise not to spend any the money raised buying advertising from the Seattle Times.)

I couldn’t make it down there myself, but I’m told a healthy media contingent showed up to watch the protesters drop off petitions at the Attorney General’s office, presumably on the off chance that there might be a little drama.

I’d say that was well played on my part, but, you know, one can only go to that particular well so many times.

When several thousand health care reform backers packed into Westlake Park last September the rally earned relatively little media coverage and absolutely zero ink in the Seattle Times. Yet when maybe a hundred or so Teabaggers gathered on a street corner to mark the anniversary of their so-called “movement,” the Times deemed that worthy of a reporter, a photographer and twenty column inches.

Why? Media bias, of course, though not necessarily of the kind you might think.

Yeah, sure, our media’s corporate owners are biased toward the right-wing agenda and away from ours, but outside of, say, Fox News and handful of other ridiculously partisan media outlets, that only explains a small part of the disproportionate coverage the Teabaggers have enjoyed. No, what the media is really institutionally biased toward is a good story. And the angry, crazy, froth-at-mouth Teabaggers are nothing if not a good story.

Peacefully dropping off a bunch of petitions on the other hand, not so much… not at least unless you’re Tim Eyman prancing about in a rented costume, and spouting off his usual anti-tax/anti-government sound bites. But up the ante a little — provoke the AG’s office into ordering a lockdown, for example — and voila… three TV cameras show up. You know, just in case.

Am I proud that it took turning up the angry rhetoric a couple notches to spark some attention? Not particularly, but neither am I ashamed. I’ve been at this too long not to know how this game is played.

In my emails today with AG communications director Janelle Guthrie, she wrote: “It doesn’t have to be as ugly and contentious as you seem to like to make it. Reasonable people can have reasonable discussions.”

Yeah, well, reasonable people can have reasonable discussions, but apparently, if you want the media to pay attention, it does unfortunately have to be a little ugly and contentious. After all, my long time readers know that at my core, I’m a policy wonk who often digresses into lengthy, technical policy discussions, only to be completely ignored by the legacy press. But break a bit of dirty muckraking — or vaguely threaten to vaguely threaten a public disturbance — and that catches the media’s attention.

I’m a smart critic, an entertaining writer and a damn fine analyst with long track record of getting stuff right, but honestly, I know what my main role is: publicly saying the things respectable folk wish they could publicly say, if they weren’t so cautious and polite. That’s why folks read me, because I’m willing to call a spade a fuckin’ spade. And there’s something naturally cathartic in that.

But like I said, one can only go to that particular well so many times before it runs dry, and if I’m the only person around here expressing any real emotion, the media will continue to largely ignore our side of the story while heaping outsized coverage on the handful of loud, angry wingnuts across the street.

And for those in the media who take issue with my assessment of what it takes to manipulate you, well, actions speak louder than words. (Or at least, actions would speak louder than words, if only there was anybody around to report on them.)

State Attorney General Rob McKenna has ordered his offices on “modified lockdown” today in anticipation of protests against his bullshit lawsuit to block national health care reform. According to spokesperson Janelle Guthrie:

“We understand that a number of groups are going to be rallying tomorrow and bringing petitions over to our office. Some blogs have been encouraging acts of violence toward our office,” Guthrie said, declining to identify which ones caused alarm. “It’s for protection of all the employees here who have nothing to do with this lawsuit.”

Uh-huh. Well, I didn’t make an exhaustive search, but I haven’t seen any of the local blogs I usually read advocating violence, so I can only assume that Guthrie is referring to me. And here’s what I wrote on the subject:

Tomorrow at the AG’s office, let the polite petitioners do their thing, but if you’re pissed off at Rob McKenna for pandering to Teabaggers and threatening health care reform with his cheap political ploy, I encourage you to show up at his office and make a ruckus. Get loud, get angry, get threatening. I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage, but I’d love to see the genuine fear of it.

So here’s my question to our state’s top law enforcement officer: if saying that “I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage” can be understood as advocating violence and property damage, then you damn well better send a state trooper to my door and have me arrested, because I’m not backing down.

I mean, Jesus Christ… the teabaggers are faxing nooses and cutting gas lines and flashing their weapons and generally behaving like health care reform is the legislative equivalent of Red Dawn, and you’re locking down your offices because some blogger says he hopes protesters will be loud and angry? Could you be a bigger pussy?

That said, protesters will be gathering at the Tivoli Fountain on the Capitol campus at noon today, and marching to the locked-down AG’s offices at 1125 Washington Street SE to deliver over 18,000 petitions. And yes… I urge you to show up and get loud, angry and disruptive. But you know, not violent per se, because that sort of behavior is apparently only acceptable from the right.

UPDATE:
Guthrie confirms via email that yes, she was referring to my post, but claims she was misquoted.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Guthrie elaborates that it was this line that allegedly prompted the need for a lockdown — “… it’s not our fault if some people get out of hand” — a line that parodies the refusal of Republican congressional leaders to forcefully condemn the violent acts and threats from the right that has been spurred on by their party’s incendiary rhetoric during the health care debate.

But, you know, I am a liberal, so you can never be too careful.

The Seattle Times editorial board has yet to chime in on Attorney General Rob McKenna’s misguided lawsuit to undermine the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but they did publish an editorial this morning calling for an expansion of our state’s medical marijuana law to allow for licensed dispensaries, so credit where credit is due.

Ironically, it’s under the leadership of our state’s top law enforcement officer, Rob McKenna, that the spirit of our existing, voter-approved medical marijuana laws have been undermined to the point of being useless. No mention by the Times of McKenna’s role in our state’s war on medical marijuana, but then, no surprise there.