Goldy

Another in our exciting lazy new series, The Best of Goldy: “Goldy responds to the Republican Governors Association.”

See, here in the other Washington, we have something we call “laws,” which are written by democratically elected legislators, not half-witted, cirrhotic PR hacks like you. And according to our laws, Christine Gregoire was duly elected governor. So rather than cynically laboring to undermine the electoral process of a state no Republican governor has called home for over twenty years, why don’t you just focus on something you’re good at… like helping your members devise new and exciting ways to deny poor children health care.

Read the whole thing. Or not.

We had so much fun (and perhaps, beer) at Drinking Liberally Tuesday night, that I haven’t gotten around to posting the podcast until Thursday.

Joining me (Goldy) in our typically insightful and inciteful evening of drunken discourse were Chris, Carl, Lynn and Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly. Topics of discussion include Barack Obama’s possibly historic speech on race, Hillary Clinton’s gender problem, Darcy Burner’s "Responsible Plan" to end the war in Iraq, Rep. Dave Reichert’s ridiculous flip-flop on earmarks, and the teetering state of the national toilet economy.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_march_18_2008.mp3]

The show is 53:21, and can be downloaded here as a 48.8 MB MP3.

[Podcasting Liberally is recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Darryl for producing the show, and Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

For all the criticism tough love I showed House Speaker Frank Chopp during the final weeks of the legislative session, at least the Democratic caucus isn’t totally and irreparably dysfunctional. From the Seattle P-I:

Sen. Pam Roach has been forbidden from dealing directly with Republican caucus staff because GOP leaders say she has created a hostile work environment.

In a letter sent to the Auburn Republican last week, Senate Republican leaders say Roach has shown a lack of boundaries with caucus staff, including making them listen to her recount “past perceived slights” by lawmakers, lobbyists and party leaders.

The letter says Roach asks staff to state that their loyalties lie with her and are subject to treatment that violates the Senate’s prohibition on creating an “intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.”

All contact with caucus staff must be between Roach’s legislative assistant and staff, and Roach must not contact caucus staff “in person, via phone, e-mail or through any other means,” according to the letter.

Roach was traveling in Honduras and could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but on Monday evening she sent out an e-mail blasting the leadership and saying she was being targeted for criticizing the caucus’s plan to recruit new members.

And man, what an email that was. In a fisking worthy of Effin’ Unsound, the News Tribune’s Niki Sullivan reprints the press release-ish email, adding her own emphasis and thoughtful interjections. As for Roach, her email earns the appellation of “instant classic” in what was already a vast and impressive oeuvre of id-inspired nuttery. My favorite excerpt…?

Minority Leader Mike Hewitt (R-Walla Walla) has verbally abused members in caucus, and has bent and exposed his backside to a female senator while screaming at her during a caucus meeting.

“He is a desperate man with personal problems,” said Roach.

And you can trust Roach on this, because when it comes to desperate personal problems, she’s an expert.

But there was one other section of Roach’s email that particularly stood out to me, the one in which she mentioned the late State Senator (and infamous sexual hypocrite) Jim West:

“Five years ago, Hewitt joined then leader Jim West, in attacking me fearing I would go public with questionable e-mails that were uncovered. They fired my aide who discovered and reported them, then Hewitt joined West in a campaign to silence me with smear and intimidation tactics.”
Roach was exonerated.

“Now Hewitt, with his own closet full of skeletons, is resorting to the same tactics of intimidation and harassment,” said Roach.

Back in 2005, two independent sources suggested to me that it was Roach who originally tipped off the Spokesman-Review to West’s personal indiscretions, something folks at the S-R denied. But… well… you gotta wonder….

A new feature in our open threads, something I like to call “The Best of Goldy” (although it’s really just lazy recycling) in which I link to an old post from my gloried past, and then go off and do something useful like, you know, sleeping.

For my first installment I invite you into my wayback machine to a post from October 2004, back before I had much of an audience. In this post I meticulously fisk some court depositions in a lawsuit against the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, the main financier of Initiative 892, Tim Eyman’s “Slots for Tots” initiative that went on to fail by 23-point margin. So what sort of ethical standards did Great Canadian promise to bring to its Washington state casinos?

But apart from the fraudulent Mexteam relationship, the undocumented cash disbursements, the profit skimming, the mob connections, and the loansharking, rape and illegal cigarette sales at B.C. casinos… Great Canadian is an upstanding corporate citizen, right?

For the answer to that and other questions, read: “Keep loansharks, prostitutes, drug dealers, mobsters, and Canadians out of our neighborhoods: Vote No on I-892!”

As Oregon US Senate candidate Jeff Merkley was recording this video explaining his reasons for signing on to the Responsible Plan for ending the war in Iraq, even more Democratic challengers were coming on board, including Faye Armitage (FL-07) and Cheryl Sabel (AL-02).

Meanwhile more national security experts are adding their public endorsement, including Rand Beers, a counterterrorism expert who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush:

“The Democratic challengers that produced this responsible plan to end the war in Iraq prove that Democrats can successfully and responsibly discuss national security issues of the first order, and discuss them in ways that represent real solutions to the real problems that we face.”

But, then, what do a bunch of generals and national security experts know about this stuff compared to the man who took 18 years to catch the Green River Killer?

Update: Darcy Burner will be on KUOW (94.9 FM) at 1:50 pm today to discuss The Responsible Plan — Darryl

Sarah Linden, the women in the picture… that’s Darcy Burner’s little sister.

When Darcy talks about the war in Iraq and its impact on military families, she talks from experience, citing her own brother, who served in the initial invasion force. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard her talk about her sister Sarah, who has served her nation as an FBI analyst, helping to uncover and prosecute a nationwide spy network of former Iraqi agents. Partially that’s to protect her sister’s privacy, and partially that’s because she wouldn’t want her sister to run afoul of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities like, you know, Darcy’s campaign.

Darcy comes from an impressive family, deeply involved in the war and its impact. Perhaps that partially explains her passion and expertise on the issue.

It hasn’t been 24 hours since Darcy Burner and nine other Democratic challengers introduced their Responsible Plan for ending the war in Iraq, and we’re already seeing a surge of new challengers signing on. Blue Jersey reports both Dennis Shulman (NJ-05) and Tom Wyka (NJ-11) have endorsed the plan, while Darius Shahinfar (NY-21) announced his support in a post to The Albany Project. Closer to home, Larry Grant (ID-01) marks the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion by signing on to the plan, while Left in the West reports that Lt. Col. Jim Hunt (MT-At Large) is on board too.

Meanwhile, down in Washington’s Mexico, where Jeff Merkley and Steve Novick are in a battle for the Democratic nomination to face off against Republican incumbent Gordon Smith in Oregon’s US Senate race, the two candidates issued dueling endorsements just minutes apart.

Novick lauds the Responsible Plan and its creators:

“I am proud to throw my support behind this new effort to build a progressive consensus on ending the war in Iraq in a way that will help that nation rebuild, while reversing the damage the war has done here at home,” said Novick. “Many of the ideas contained in the plan are not new and, indeed, I and others have been advocating for them over the past months. But with this clear set of objectives, I believe that Darcy Burner, Major General Eaton and others are laying the foundation for a coalition that I believe can bring our troops home with honor.”

Meanwhile, Merkley stresses a point that holds as true in WA-08 and other districts as it does in the Oregon Senate race:

“I opposed this war publicly from the very beginning. It’s now long past time to bring our sons and daughters home, repay the debt we owe our veterans, and restore America’s standing in the world,” said House Speaker Jeff Merkley said. “Gordon Smith and the Bush Administration led us into this war and have never offered a plan to get us out. Smith has manipulated and confused the media and the public and done nothing to bring an end to this war.”

That’s a theme that Burner could easily push in her district where Dave Reichert talks about wanting to get out of Iraq, while voting 100% with President Bush on the war. In response to the Plan, Reichert aide Mike Shield even told the Seattle P-I, “I think both sides would agree we have the same plan: We want our troops home as soon as possible.” The difference is, Burner is actually doing something about it, her efforts made even all the more impressive by the fact that she’s not the one in Congress. And in talking to the Seattle Times, Shields sticks his foot yet further in the congressman’s mouth…

A spokesman for Reichert said the congressman believes military leaders on the ground — not candidates for political office — should make decisions about when and how to end the war.

Huh. Last time I checked, civilian control of the military was a cornerstone of our democracy, and a sacred principle that has guided our officer corps for better than two centuries. But, you know, if an independent military works so well in Pakistan, I suppose it would work here too.

So far, Republican efforts to refute or dismiss the plan have been rather feeble, but I sure hope they keep trying, for as long as Republicans keep championing the status quo, the more voters will start looking elsewhere for leadership. The GOP has long attempted to brand itself as strong on defense, but as Julie points out over on Red State Rebels, voters have already started to redefine the notion of national security: “It’s the Iraq recession economy, stupid.”

That in the end is one of the Responsible Plan’s greatest strengths. It does look to the generals on the ground to determine the logistics of the pull-out, but it doesn’t get bogged down in the logistics itself; the generals will receive instructions to initiate a withdrawal, and as they have done throughout our nation’s history, the generals will follow their orders to the best of their ability. Meanwhile, the Plan broadens the conversation to include the political, diplomatic and economic efforts absolutely necessary to achieve stability in the region, to repair the economic, political and constitutional damage done at home, and to prevent a policy fiasco like this from happening again in the future.

If Reichert and his fellow Republicans have better ideas on how to give the American people what they clearly want, I suggest they come up with their own plan, rather than dismissing this one out of hand. In the meanwhile, Democratic challengers, recognizing an opportunity to change the conversation on national security from the current narrow (and pointless) debate over the outcome of “the surge,” will continue to sign on to the Plan in droves.

UPDATE:
The Oregonian reports on the Merkley and Novick campaigns squabbling over who was first to sign on to the Responsible Plan, but the real money quote comes from the Smith campaign:

And as for the incumbent, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.? “I went to the executive summary and thought Gordon Smith wrote it,” said the senator’s campaign spokesman, R.C. Hammond.

If the immediate goal of the Plan is to change the conversation on national security, then they hit a home run in Oregon. Meanwhile, Merkley elaborates on his endorsement over on Huffington Post.

Yup… you read the headline. And all I can say at the moment is that I’m both surprised and disappointed.

“Wow!” Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed said when told of the decision. “That’s terrific! It means the people of the state of Washington are going to be able to control who gets elected through this process.”

Reed said the top-two system will take effect with the August primary election.

“This is a victory for the state of Washington,” he said in an interview.

Reed said the ruling sets a precedent that will allow other states to break political party control on primary elections.

Yeah, well, be careful what you wish for Sam. Now that the parties have lost all control over the nominating process, their only influence can come from raising and spending huge gobs of cash on their favored candidates. That means rather than being hands off a primary battle, the party bigwigs will be forced to pick a candidate early, and the role of money (and the wealthy people who have it) only becomes more pronounced.

In fact, primary elections in Washington state have just become a big, fat waste of time and money. The whole purpose of a primary election is to enable the parties to choose their candidates through more democratic means, rather than via smoke filled rooms. Now that you’ve done away with that, and entirely removed the parties from the nominating process, we might as well skip the primary and go straight to a general election… that way the ultimate winner can be chosen on a ballot that folks actually turnout for.

Dumb fucking Washingtonians and our pathological need to be different. And dumb fucking party leadership for challenging the old blanket primary, which may have sucked, but was a helluva lot better than what we’re stuck with now.

“I think we’ll see it around the country,” [Reed] said.

Hey Chris Vance and Paul Berendt… how’s that working out for you?

[UPDATE: The presentation is now over. Learn more at ResponsiblePlan.com.]

Darcy Burner and nine fellow Democratic challengers release their “Responsible Plan For Ending The War In Iraq” today at the Take Back America conference in Washington DC. The presentation is scheduled to begin at 2:30PM PT (though don’t be surprised if it’s a few minutes late), and you can download a PDF of the Responsible Plan here.

Yes HA was down for well over an hour, and no, I don’t know the cause. But the timing couldn’t have been worse.

Overheard at a DC restaurant, one Beltway insider to another on learning that Dino Rossi had once again hired GOP hatchet man Scott Howell to do his media:

“You think Dino Rossi knows that Gregoire isn’t a black man? Because that’s the only kind of race Scott wins lately.”

Howell is a notoriously vicious ad man who learned at the feet of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. His credits include the notoriously race-baiting ads against Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee’s 2006 US Senate race, and the infamous campaign against Sen. Max Cleland, who left both legs and an arm on the battlefield in Vietnam, only to see Howell run an ad morphing him into Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Howell also produced an ad for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn that accused Democrat Brad Carson of being soft on welfare while showing two black hands counting cash, and ran an ad in Virginia claiming Gov. Tim Kaine wouldn’t have used the death penalty against Hitler.

As Max Blumenthal wrote on Huffington Post back in 2006:

If a political attack ad crosses boundaries of good taste, is emotionally manipulative, excessively ominous, twists facts, exploiting hot-button issues of race, sex and terror, and winds up being condemned by civil rights groups, the chances are that ad has been produced by Republican hitman Scott Howell.

Howell had a banner year in 2004, winning nearly every major race except Rossi’s. In 2006… not so much, the Tennessee race being his biggest victory. That Dino has hired Howell once again speaks volumes about Rossi and the the tone we can expect from his campaign.

UPDATE:
A source inside the Rossi campaign tells me that they have not in fact hired Howell: “I don’t want to get too deep into our negotiations, but we decided to go a different direction.”

Huh. I guess Rossi does know that Gregoire is not a black man. Good for him.

Darcy Burner and nine other Democratic challengers will introduce their “Responsible Plan To End The War In Iraq” today at 2:30PM PT in the nation’s capital. And I sure hope our local media is paying attention, else they find themselves scooped. The Kennebec Journal (Maine) already writes:

“It is not just to separate myself from the pack,” [Chellie Pingree] said. “We candidates are coming in with what we hope will be a very strong mandate for change.”

Pingree said the candidates want to “get elected on a wave of change” and “send a signal to Democratic leaders that there are a lot of candidates who are frustrated that the Congress does not look responsive to the public.”

[…] Burner drafted the manifesto while the candidates contributed thoughts and edited drafts, Pingree said.

When the Republicans announced their “Contract For America” in 1994, it was a top-down affair led by then-Minority Leader Newt Gingrich, in which the NRCC urged their candidates to sign on. But the Responsible Plan is a grassroots effort, initiated by Burner, drafted by her, her fellow challengers and their military advisers, and organized outside the purview (and wishes) of the DCCC. If that’s not political leadership, I don’t know what is.

“I wholeheartedly endorse this plan as a responsible and forward looking plan for ending the war in Iraq. As Burner and her colleagues correctly note, bringing our troops home is the first, but not the only step that must be taken to ensure a debacle like Iraq never happens again,” said Dr. Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. “This plan addresses the root causes that allowed the Bush Administration to lead this country into this mess, and sets us in the right direction. I applaud their efforts on this ambitious and sound strategy. This is progressive strength on national security in action.”

Darcy Burner has long been a netroots superstar. The rest of the nation is about to discover why.

Nervous yet? The world’s central bankers certainly are, as the sudden collapse of Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth largest investment firm, raises fears of a financial collapse unseen since the days of the Great Depression.

Bear Stearns Cos. reached an agreement to sell itself to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., as worries grew that failing to find a buyer for the beleaguered investment bank could cause the crisis of confidence gripping Wall Street to worsen.

The deal calls for J.P. Morgan to pay $2 a share in a stock-swap transaction, with J.P. Morgan Chase exchanging 0.05473 share of its common stock for each Bear Stearns share. Both companies’ boards have approved the transaction, which values Bear Stearns at just $236 million based on the number of shares outstanding as of Feb. 16. At Friday’s close, Bear Stearns’s stock-market value was about $3.54 billion. It finished at $30 a share in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading Friday.

Wow. A 93% discount off of Friday’s close. Now that’s what I call a bargain, especially considering that Bear Stearns’ Manhattan office building is valued at around $1.2 billion, more the five times the price of the buyout. So… how much liability is J.P. Morgan assuming?

JPMorgan said that in addition to the loans extended to Bear on Friday, the Fed had agreed to fund up to $30bn of Bear’s less liquid assets – a move that will alleviate the need for a fire-sale of mortgage-backed securities.

That means you, dear taxpayer, are picking up the bulk of the risk, not J.P. Morgan. That’s the way things work in America: privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

Of course the Fed claims that Bear Stearns’ problems were unique, and that no other major US financial institution is on the verge of collapse, which I suppose is why they also cut interest rates a quarter point. On a Sunday. Ahead of an expected 1-point cut in the discount rate this Tuesday. And still, Asian markets and the dollar continue to fall… I wonder why?

As Bonddad wrote on Friday:

The only way to prevent this mess from happening again is to let some of the big banks fail. Then in the future when someone says, “let’s stop performing due diligence on borrowers” someone can respond with, “Bear Stearns tried that and they went belly up.” Now in 10 years, someone will say, “Let’s stop performing due diligence” someone will respond with “that’s a great idea. After the borrowers default, the Federal Reserve will bail us out.”

I guess that pull yourself up by your bootstraps, free market, rugged individualism stuff is only meant for us little guys.

UPDATE:

In Tokyo, the region’s largest stock exchange, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index was trading at an almost three-year low. By midday, the index dropped 4.2 percent to 11,726.99, falling below 12,000 for the first time since August 2005.

[…] The declines in Tokyo came even as the Japanese central bank, the Bank of Japan, moved to shore up financial markets by injecting $4.1 billion into short-term money markets.

Ten Democratic challengers have joined forces with top military generals to create “A Responsible Plan For Ending The War In Iraq,” a document Brig. Gen. John Johns describes as a “well reasoned… broad framework for getting out of Iraq responsibly.” The list of challengers who have embraced the Responsible Plan now include:

Darcy Burner (WA-08)
Jared Polis (CO-02)
Donna Edwards (MD-04)
Eric Massa (NY-29)
Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Tom Perriello (VA-05)
George Fearing (WA-04)
Larry Byrnes (FL-14)
Steve Harrison (NY-13)
Sam Bennett (PA-15)

Monday at 2:30PM PT, Darcy Burner and her fellow “Responsible Challengers” will introduce the Responsible Plan at the Take Back America conference in Washington D.C.; the event will be live streamed on Burner’s website, here on HA, and on dozens of websites nationwide. In addition to drawing down US forces, the Responsible Plan calls for a diplomatic, political and economic surge to help establish stability in Iraq and the surrounding region, addressing humanitarian concerns created by our invasion and occupation, restoring our constitution, our military and the independence of our media, and creating a US-centered energy policy that eliminates our dependence on oil.

This is an ambitious plan, particular coming from a group of congressional challengers, and these candidates deserve to be rewarded for their leadership. To this end a new Act Blue page has been created — Responsible Challengers — where you can show your support either by giving to the individual challengers of your choice, or by splitting your contribution evenly across the entire slate. If you’re unhappy with failure of Congress to move decisively toward ending the war, send a message by showing support challengers who have shown their willingness to take this issue into their own hands.

Please give today, and tune in tomorrow for the release of the Responsible Plan.