Goldy

The end of March is fast approaching, and as always, Darcy Burner is racing to meet her end-of-quarter fundraising target. I hate that these races are so much about money, but they are, and if we want real progressives like Darcy in the other Washington, willing and able to challenge the orthodoxy in both parties, then we all have to do our part.

37 other challengers have now followed Darcy’s lead and signed on to the Responsible Plan for ending the war in Iraq. Please show your support by going to the Responsible Challengers ActBlue page, and giving whatever you can. Thanks.

I don’t generally make a habit of passing on third-hand accounts from unnamed sources, but this source is so credible, the account so believable and the timing so impeccable that I just can’t resist.

My source, who travels in high circles within the sports/entertainment industry, was talking to an executive with an NBA team, when the subject of the Sonics came up. My source expressed the opinion that he couldn’t believe the owners would let the Sonics move from a market like Seattle to Oklahoma City, and the executive replied that the decision had already been made. (My source emailed me the news half a day before NBA commissioner David Stern made his recent public comments, so you understand why the timing strikes me as so impeccable.)

The executive went on to say that his own boss wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of the Sonics moving to such a smaller market, but that Stern had insisted that Seattle “must be made an example of.” Essentially Stern had determined from the moment Clay Bennett bought the team that there wasn’t much chance of keeping the Sonics in Seattle, so he decided to use it as an opportunity to teach other cities a lesson that if they don’t play ball with NBA owners, the owners will take their ball and, um… go to a different home.

Yeah sure, it’s a little bit of whisper down the lane — Stern to an NBA owner to the executive to my source to me — but it sure does explain one of the most confusing aspects of this whole sorry affair: Stern’s absolute failure to intervene constructively in an effort to keep the Sonics in Seattle. From day one Stern’s manner has wavered between standoffish and heavy-handed, ignoring Seattle fans and their plight when he wasn’t issuing an ultimatum or a threat. Seattle’s business and media establishment been waiting patiently for Stern to put aside the tough guy act and finally broker a deal, but it’s never happened; indeed, the commissioner has seemed determined to scuttle the few hopeful developments that have occasionally popped up.

So Stern wants to “make an example” of Seattle, as a warning to uppity taxpayers in other cities. He tells us that if we let the Sonics go (as if it was ever up to us), we’ll never get another NBA team. Well I think it is time for the citizens of Seattle to tell Commissioner Stern that his product sucks, his business model is broken and quite frankly, he needs our market more than we need him. The NBA’s loss will be the Huskies and the Cougars and the Storm’s gain, not to mention the hundreds of other businesses that are happy to vie for our entertainment dollars. I think it is time to tell Stern that if he takes the Sonics away, we’ll never take the NBA back… at least not while he is still commissioner.

If Stern wants to make an example of Seattle, I say we happily oblige. Let’s make Key Arena the heart of a revitalized Seattle Center, and work to fill those 40-some dates of sorry-ass playground hoops with other events. Let’s show other cities that there is life after the NBA, and that our culture can flourish and our economy prosper without paying half a billion dollars of taxpayer money into the league’s arena ponzi scheme. Let’s shrug our shoulders and say goodbye, and wait for the league to come crawling back to what is, after all, one of the most dynamic, prosperous and trend-setting regions in the nation. It may take a decade or two before we see Seattle atop the NBA standings again (…hell, it may have taken that long regardless), but if Los Angeles could survive just fine without an NFL franchise, we can surely thrive without the Sonics.

(Courtesy of DownWithTyranny!)

Darcy Burner has an op-ed in the Seattle Times today on our disastrous five-year occupation of Iraq, and her Responsible Plan to end it: “Five years is long enough.” My understanding is that the Times offered Burner the opportunity to write an op-ed, unprompted, which suggests to me a possible shift in attitude from the powers that be at a paper that once attacked her in perhaps the most viciously one-sided, mean-spirited and dishonest editorial endorsement I have ever had the misfortune of reading. We’ll see.

One of the most persistent attacks on Burner has always been her supposed lack of experience, as epitomized in Reichert’s mockingly sexist (and apparently effective) job interview ad. (How a two-year AA degree and a police career prepares one to be an effective legislator, I’ll never know.) But Burner’s leadership in developing and promoting the Responsible Plan puts that canard to rest:

Over the past six months, I have worked with military and national-security experts such as retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was a predecessor of Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, to create a clear path forward for our country. […] The response has been phenomenal. More than 30 House and Senate candidates from across the country have signed on — including both Democratic U.S. Senate challengers in Oregon — and the list is growing. Some of the leading minds in the national-security establishment have reviewed and endorsed the plan, including Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan, and Rand Beers, a counterterrorism expert who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes.

What Burner has demonstrated as a mere candidate is exactly the kind of legislative leadership, initiative and effectiveness we have never seen from Reichert — who GOP Beltway insider Robert Novak describes as having “not distinguished himself during three years in Congress.” She consulted closely with national security experts, drafted a proposal, sought additional input from fellow candidates and other interested parties, and ultimately built consensus around a comprehensive Plan so credible that it has already earned the endorsement of 37 Democratic challengers, only one week since its introduction. That is effective leadership. That is exactly the process by which one successfully crafts and passes legislation. And that is also exactly the kind of job Burner was trained to do as a high-level manager at Microsoft.

Anybody who has worked in the product development cycle can recognize in Burner’s efforts creating and promoting the Responsible Plan, the skill set necessary to successfully bring a product to market on time and on budget. As a longtime Macintosh partisan it pains me to suggest this… but couldn’t we use a little bit of that Microsoft culture in the House of Representatives? Perhaps Darcy’s high-tech experience is at least as applicable to the job of representing the interests of the 8th Congressional District as Reichert’s 18-year investigation of the Green River Killer?

And if our editorial boards are going to place such an emphasis on experience, perhaps it is time to ask Dave Reichert what he has to show for his three years in Congress?

I cut my blogging teeth covering the contested results of the 2004 gubernatorial election, and I’m particularly proud of the legal analysis I provided throughout the court proceedings. And so for today’s installment of the The Best of Goldy, I’m linking all the way back to February of 2005, when I essentially called the case for the Democrats, four months before Judge Bridges ultimately dismissed it with prejudice: “Stick a Foulkes in it, this case is done!”

Go back and read Judge Bridges’ decision and I think you’ll find that I was not only right, I was right on the money. But the real eye-opener for me was going back and reading the comment thread. My comment threads have always been a nasty place, but I was surprised by the amount of substantive conversation that actually took place back then. Makes me a little wistful. And all the more ready to clamp down on abusive comments from all sides the ideological divide.

Yet another McCain Moment™. Back before Super Tuesday, Yahoo News asked each of the Republican nominees what kind of computer they used, Mac or PC. Huckabee… PC. Paul… PC. Romney… PC (though in his typical all things to all people style, he said that his sons swear by their Macs, so he’ll “probably convert.”) And McCain…?

“Neither. I am an illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get.”

I guess that’s one advantage to marrying a woman 18 years your junior. But see what I mean when I say that McCain is too old to be president?

UPDATE:
My apologies to Sen. McCain; looks like he does know how to use a computer. In fact, it looks like he’s just written his very first blog post.

Apparently, state Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt (R-Buttcrack) did indeed moon Sen. Pam Roach, as she alleged… at least according to yet another inflammatory intraparty email, this one from Sen. Don Benton:

“First, the fact that our elected leader, Senator Hewitt screamed uncontrollably at both Senator Roach and myself during the meeting was degrading and embarrassing. I believe it made everyone in the room feel uncomfortable. No one wants to attend a meeting like that and perhaps that is his goal since we are in such dire straights. His immature and vulgar display of lifting his coat and showing his rear end to Senator Roach may be comical to some but was over the top and most certainly behavior unbecoming any senator let alone the leader of our caucus.”

I sure find it “comical,” but not necessarily in the way that Sen. Hewitt intended. As for those “dire straights” Sen. Benton writes about…?

“I was shocked to discover at the meeting that $300,000 of the $400,000 raised in 2007 was also spent in 2007 even though we had no races that year at all. It appears that no attempt whatsoever was made to conserve funds for the crucial 2008 election cycle. This is greatly disturbing. A statewide mailing list composed of only 2600 donors is pathetic. And I hope you caught the fact that $100,000 was spent on direct mail to break even and only add 200 or so additional names to our list. If this wasn’t so sad it would be laughable.

[…] The other serious concern after spending over $300,000 last year is the fact that we still have no candidates recruited for 14 of the 16 “D” seats that are up this cycle. The filing period is only 2 months away. In fact, we only have two candidates, one of which found us. This is a sad commentary on the effectiveness of our whole team in recruiting candidates.”

A “sad commentary”…? Gee… ya think?

Read the whole email over at the TNT’s Political Buzz.

Nico Pitney | Huffington Post

As most of you have heard by now, America reached a tragic milestone yesterday when the 4000th U.S. soldier was killed in Iraq. Less well publicized is the fact that 97% of American casualties have occurred since President Bush declared “mission accomplished,” and that the 4000 mark was hit after a two-week surge in violence which saw the deaths of 25 American servicemen… the highest two-week death toll since last summer.

4000. 97. 25. In the abstract, they’re just numbers, but to the family and friends of the dead and wounded, each increment represents a personal tragedy.

But there’s another number that offers a glimmer of hope. 33 Democratic challengers have now signed on to the Responsible Plan to end the war in Iraq that Darcy Burner introduced last week in Washington D.C., and the momentum seems to be building day by day. 33 candidates, working outside the purview of the Beltway establishment, have come together to offer a comprehensive legislative framework for leaving Iraq responsibly, applying the diplomatic, political and economic surge necessary to stabilize the region, and reinforcing constitutional safeguards that might prevent a fiasco like this from happening again in the future.

I’m not so naive as to think that the Responsible Plan is so perfect that it can’t be improved upon, or that it will likely be approved by Congress as is, in toto. But it represents a genuine grassroots and grasstips effort to change the conversation on national security and move us toward a responsible end to this disastrous occupation. While Dave Reichert continues to wait to see if the surge is successful before considering changing course, Burner is leading an effort to address the real-world reality enunciated by Gen. David Petraeus: “There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq.”

33 fellow challengers have now joined Burner in her efforts. And counting.

Another in a series of The Best of Goldy, I reprint for your reading pleasure this Easter Sunday a bit of theological verse I wrote upon the death of Rev. Jerry Falwell: “Falwell That Ends Well (An Ode To The Mortal Majority).”

Reverend Falwell, fond farewell:
Your soul has fled its mortal shell
And flown across the great divide
To savor at your Savior’s side.
Or so you think… um… so you thought,
Well, so, at least, your Bible taught,
While unbelievers who deny
Eternal afterlife, like I,
Think when you’re dead, well, you just die.

But if, when I give up the fight,
I’m strangely drawn into the light?
And there your reverent form I see?
Don’t laugh sir, that the joke’s on me,
For since I’ve never claimed nor known
Your Savior Jesus as my own,
If you should meet this faithless Jew
In Heaven or in Hell’s review,
Well, either way… the joke’s on you.

Via Think Progress:

Last week Sen. John McCain repeatedly and falsely claimed that Iran was training al Qaeda in Iraq. Watch FOX News’ Brit Hume defend McCain’s blip as merely a “senior moment.”

Ouch. If even McCain’s most ardent boosters acknowledge his age is an issue, that doesn’t bode well for McCain or the nation. A President McCain would turn 76 before the end of his first term, and 80 before the end of his second, making him the oldest man ever to be elected president of the United States, and potentially the oldest man ever to serve. I emphasize “potentially” because nearly three-quarters of our previous 43 presidents failed to see their 80th birthday.

And this certainly wasn’t McCain’s only “blip” on the campaign trail, where he has at times appeared angry, unstable, confused, out-of-touch, and well… just plain old. None of this is necessarily a sign of encroaching dementia or Alzheimers per se, but most of us who have watched our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents grow old understand that mental changes, if not actual decline are a familiar part of aging, and that such “McCain Moments” are not all that uncommon. My own mother is about McCain’s age, and while I love her dearly, I wouldn’t elect her president, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want her finger on the button. (My 11-year-old daughter isn’t too keen even about having her grandparents behind the wheel of a car.)

Anybody who remembers the Reagan administration must admit that there was a noticeable mental decline over his eight years in office… and Reagan was three years younger than McCain will be on election day. I’m just sayin’.

Mother Jones on “The Peace Movement and Darcy Burner.”

In all, five anti-war leaders spoke during the Take Back America panel discussion and not one of them devoted more than a half-sentence to the surge, which any reality-based observer would admit seriously complicates the anti-war movement’s efforts to generate popular opposition to the war. And none made any mention of how America ought to withdraw.

But then Darcy Burner spoke.

A former Microsoft middle manager who is taking her second run at Congress in Washington State, Burner said that she was fed up with telling voters she wanted to end the war, only to be stymied by the question of how she planned to do so. So she met with Paul Eaton, the retired army general responsible for training the Iraqi military between 2003 and 2004, and developed a comprehensive withdrawal plan.

On the key issue of removing troops, Burner’s 30-page plan, dubbed “A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq,” glosses over the details. It notes that “troop draw-downs should begin immediately and continue until no more troops remain in Iraq,” but the timeframe for the withdrawal and the path(s) out of the country aren’t described. Eventually, they will be “based on planning provided by our military leadership.”

But the plan is comprehensive in every other respect. Using a combination of Iraq Study Group recommendations and legislation already before Congress, the plan provides for refugee assistance and a diplomatic surge that would bring together regional leaders and aims to initiate political reconciliation within the country. It would create non-military Provincial Reconstruction Teams that would “strengthen the capacity of towns and villages to resist the insurgency” and would reach the “entirety of the Iraqi population.” It calls for the departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Justice, and the Treasury to work with international groups to rebuild the country. In short, it de-militarizes the occupation.

The plan also aims to restore habeas corpus to detainees, make extraordinary rendition illegal, and phase out the use of private military contractors. (It can be read in full here.)

It is far from a perfect plan, and it would likely get seriously reworked if it were introduced in Congress, no matter how large the Democratic majority. But it recognizes the anti-war movement’s need to add depth to its rhetoric. For that, Darcy Burner has done folks like Cagan, Chaudhury, and Swan a great service.

At last count, 29 Democratic challengers have already signed on to the Responsible Plan, with more to follow shortly. I’ll post a complete update tomorrow.

Another installment of “The Best of Goldy”:

David Irons Jr.’s mother has mixed emotions about her son. On the upside, she says he’s “very good with his hands.” On the downside, she claims he’s used them to beat her.

An HA classic if there ever was one, read more of “Raging Bullshitter: the sad twisted tale of the Irons family feud.”

I keep hearing nervous talk from several segments of the progressive community that Gov. Gregoire is “wavering” on several key pieces of legislation passed during the recent session: the climate change, toxic toys, and working families credit bills.

Gee… I sure hope not, and I gotta say, I’d be surprised if the chatter proved true. The climate change bill was the environmental community’s top priority this session, and actually came at the governor’s request, while the toxic toy legislation — which merely requires that children’s toys be… um… nontoxic — has broad appeal across ideological lines. I’d imagine the working families credit to be the most vulnerable of the three because in the long run, it actually costs money, but in a state with the most regressive tax structure in the nation (by far) it may be the most important legislation of the session, and a veto would surely piss off a large chunk of the Dems’ progressive base.

Gov. Gregoire needs to win big in King County this November, and vetoing any of these three bills would be an inauspicious campaign kickoff. So for the moment, I’ll choose to believe these rumors are nothing more than that.

It was a good Friday for US financial markets today, free from the volatility of the past few weeks, because, of course, it was Good Friday, and Wall Street was closed. But come Monday, we’ll be back to partying like it’s 1929.

Five more Democratic challengers have officially signed on to the Responsible Plan to end the war in Iraq, including Alan Grayson (FL-08), Harry Taylor (NC-09), Leslie Byrne (VA-11), Bill O’Neill (OH-14), and Greg Fischer (KY-Senate). That brings the total number of endorsers to 25 from 16 states, with several more expected shortly.

On this week’s podcast, the Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly explains that challengers are generally loathe to get out in front on issues like this because the safer strategy is to make the campaign less about themselves and more about the incumbent. So why are so many challengers willing to stick their necks out on the Responsible Plan? Well, it could just be that the Plan is surprisingly, well, responsible.

In a commentary posted to Democracy Arsenal, Moira Whelan of the National Security Network addresses the understandable skepticism with which “national security wonks” and other experts generally greet any candidate plan: “… you roll your eyes [and] you know it’s not wonky enough to meet your standards… right?” But, she continues, “Not so with this plan…”

Folks at NSN have become pretty familiar with this plan in the last few weeks. When we got a call asking us to meet with Darcy Burner, who drafted a plan, we thought of it as nothing new…after all, lots of candidates want to find the silver bullet to change things in Iraq, and often don’t have a feel for all of the moving pieces in Iraq and around the globe. Sometimes, candidates are more concerned with developing the plan that won’t get them in trouble, rather than the one that embodies their approach and forces real change. We were pleasantly surprised by Darcy.

Darcy laid in front of us 20 pages of a comprehensive approach to Iraq—a project that started after a conversation with General Paul Eaton. She’d done her research, and based her ideas on legislation already introduced in Congress. She went beyond the idea of troop deployments, and political stability to address more systemic problems with the US government that got us into this mess in the first place. The Responsible Plan for Ending the War in Iraq looks at things like media accountability, government transparency, torture, FISA and trade-offs on issues such as Afghanistan. She wrote the whole thing herself, and sought advice from “experts” as well as her fellow challengers. In other words…her plan is peer reviewed…and approved.

Two things make the plan especially compelling, and demonstrate a changing dynamic in elections that we’re surely going to see this cycle.

First, the people who drafted it—the 10 candidates who’ve attached their names to it so far—understand Iraq in very real ways. Burner’s brother served in Iraq. Donna Edwards is a military brat. Tom Periello worked in Iraq and Afghanistan doing development work. The list goes on and on. In other words, the idea that progressives “don’t get it” is completely blown out of the water based on those who are introducing it. Not only do they get it, they’ve embraced it and are now running for Congress to change the realities they see—that’s public service of which you can be proud. They’re actually walking the walk.

Second, voters and candidates care about Iraq and the rest of the world—in a detailed way. Contrary to what some political advisors are saying, these candidates started this strategy because “what are you going to do about Iraq?” is the top question they’re getting from their voters. It’s no longer sufficient for candidates to say they believe in ending the war, voters want to know how they’re going to do that. Voters are insisting on details because they know the details. In other words, our candidates and our voters are smarter on Iraq and the world we live in than we’ve seen in recent elections.

[…] A few months from now, people will look back on this crew with a “where it all started” approach. We’ll be counting this class as a new generation of leaders who are smarter and stronger on security than ever before. More will adopt their plan as a blueprint, and they’ll walk into the halls of Congress with a mission, with allies, and with knowledge.

Through his spokesman, Dave Reichert insists that he wants to bring our troops home from Iraq as well. The difference is, Darcy Burner is actually attempting to do something about it.