One would think something like Inslee’s proposal for an Economic Competitiveness and Development office would be the sort of thing that Rob McKenna would mostly ignore because it’s bland and obvious: the government should do more to help grow the economy, especially in areas where we can press our advantages. It’s, in short not the issue you’d think McKenna would want to draw a distinction. But:

A TV ad from Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna features a small business owner mocking Democrat Jay Inslee for part of his jobs plan: a new government office dedicated to helping businesses

Hmm. Well, I think that would backfire on its merits. Again, the government might help small businesses isn’t exactly a monster under the bed type story. But, it turns out that this particular small business owner had help from the government.

But elsewhere Bresheare has had great praise for one government office that helped her business, along with many others. She’s featured on the website of the Small Business Development Center at Western Washington University, complimenting the advice she’s received there (a fact pointed out by the Inslee campaign).

Those small-business centers are a partnership of the federal Small Business Administration and the state, and they offer services such as aid in writing a business plan or obtaining financing. The services are publicly funded and provided at no charge to small business owners.

Look, of course there’s room for debate about what are the best programs to help grow the economy and individual businesses. And, yes, sometimes the best thing the government can do is get out of the way. Still, the facts remain: very often government at all levels helps businesses.

Holy balls on toast, you guys. If we elect Obama some terrible things will happen. Iraq will be overwhelmed and Christians won’t be able to say a prayer even before school. Massive tax increases for the middle class. The Boy Scouts will shut down and by October 2012 we’ll — wait 2012?

Oh, I see. That was predictions from the last time Obama was on the ballot. None of them came true.

Look, I get that it’s difficult to make predictions. Especially when you’re up your own ass with a right wing ideology. But if you’re not good at making predictions then, um, don’t make predictions.

– The forest fires in Central and Eastern Washington are keeping students inside.

– I know in a few months we’ll look back at this and think how quaint it was. But Dreams of my Real Father feels like maybe peak wingnut.

– Unfortunately, these sort of things have real world consequences.

– Metro System Maps! [h/t]

– Sexy liberals came to Seattle.

– I’ve always said babies are smarter than Republicans.

– FYI, the Open Threads are going to be Monday-Wednesday-Friday for a while.

1:02: I’m on the Rapid Ride going from Downtown to West Seattle. It smells like a new car, but stronger. I’ve smelled worse smells on the bus. I’m still downtown and so far it feels pretty much like any other ride. Maybe it’s because the Orca Card reader at my stop wasn’t up yet. Maybe it’s because the display for how many more minutes there are to go wasn’t up yet. In any event, I’m using the bus’s WiFi, so here goes.

1:05: All the doors open, although, as I say, the card reader wasn’t working yet, so it doesn’t feel like that’s an advantage.

1:06: And I’ve had my first random dude speaking to the driver through the light. Fuck you that guy.

1:11: I just typed something about how we’re on the Viaduct now, and got an error message. Lovely. Switching to ClearWire.

1:15: The views on the Viaduct and the West Seattle Bridge are quite nice. When it’s a Saturday, this is quite Rapid for real. Of course the real test will be Rush Hour on Monday and beyond.

1:19: First stop in West Seattle. I didn’t take the 54 enough to compare, but it feels better than the circuitous route it used to be.

1:24: The junction. 22 minutes feels about the same as before, maybe a bit quicker.

1:27: The person next to me says I shouldn’t use my wireless, because it’s really fast on the bus. I told him I got an error earlier, and he didn’t believe it. I don’t have to justify my WiFi device to you, random guy.

1:30: Morgan Junction.

1:31: I realized I’ve got used to the smell of the bus. Usually when it smells of homeless person piss, that’s something you can be thankful and maybe a bit worried about. With new bus small, I guess the same.

1:36: Ferry terminal. Whenever I go to Vashon via the bus, it feels like a crapshoot as to if the bus and the boat are well timed. With more frequent bus trips, I imagine it’ll feel like a crapshoot with better odds.

1:41: Westwood village. So fine route, but it doesn’t feel like that much of an improvement over the old. People who take it more often than I do will probably have a better sense of it.

I’m just got off my last free ride I’ll ever take on Metro (provided there isn’t another policy change, and I don’t start sneaking on). For me as a supporter of the elimination of the free ride area, and a Puget Pass holder, it’ll hopefully be fine. And I think it’ll be good for the county too. But it will probably take some getting used to.

So, it’ll probably be a bit longer in the mornings, at least for a while, while drivers and passengers sort it out. But 3rd Ave will still be nice. And for the rest of the county, not having to figure out if it’s pay as you enter or leave will be good.

I understand that the Internet is awful. But for serious, this is disgusting. First off, as Tate notes, “The refs made the call not me.” So yeah, your anger is directed at the wrong person.

But even if the anger were focused like a laser at the right place, don’t call anyone a nigger or a cunt. Don’t wish anyone were raped.

I don’t know why this is difficult for some people. I believe in a rough and tumble debate (the other day I called some people shitheads). But racist and sexist shit is just stupid. And even random sports fans on the Internet can do better.

– The map for the 7 proposed Seattle districts does a better job of keeping the downtown area in one district than the state or county districts.

– I have not finished reading the Living Under Drones report, but so far, it’s pretty awful.

– There will still be blown calls, but the NFL refs will be back, and will be significantly better than the old ones.

– The 36th is an interesting race.

– People in swing states don’t like bad policy either.

– Those forest fires fucked up the air.

In 1995, there was a proposal to elect the Seattle City Council by districts. Mostly, it was on the ballot because Tom Stewart was a jackass (pdf). That said, the way we elect the city council is made of stupid. There’s no reason to have 9 at large districts. It means downtown and poorer areas are underrepresented on the council, and it means that communities of color and other groups that are geographically grouped have a tougher time electing people.

So, while I would prefer all district elections, I can see myself supporting a proposal to have some districts and some at large representatives if it gets on the ballot. Still, the people running it don’t seem like good people. The only one I know of is John Fox who has been on the wrong side of a lot of issues. Most recently he helped kill decent transit in this town because he didn’t like the tax structure, but whoops, forgot to ask the legislature to give us a more equitable way to pay for it. The rest of them seem worse.

The group, which will announce its plans in a press conference tomorrow morning, is headed up by three business representatives and one low-income housing activists [sic]. The business reps are Faye Garneau, director of the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association, who fought for years against bus lanes on Aurora; Fremont Dock owner Suzie Burke, who fought, most recently, against a bike lane on Stone Way in Fremont; Eugene Wasserman, one of the plaintiffs suing to stop the city from completing the “Missing Link” of the Burke-Gilman Trail; and Seattle Displacement Coalition founder John Fox, who has steadfastly fought against pro-density legislation, from Yesler Terrace to Roosevelt to, well, the entire city.

So, maybe I’ll support districts. But if these people think it’ll give them what they want, maybe I’ll have to reconsider.

– I didn’t watch the game because of the scab refs. Did anything happen?

– I’ve never heard Seattle Center called Seattle’s Living Room.

– But the reality is that Chick-fil-A showed that their flawed value having kitchen is filthy and I’m not going to forget that shit just because they are now saying they won’t allow filth mongers back there anymore.

– Just open the plane windows

– The avenging uterus.

At least until it’s up and running on Saturday. Or until I think of something else. But I was looking at the map of C route on West Seattle Blog that I linked to in the Open Thread, and I had a few more thoughts.

First off, every time before now that I saw the maps, I’d completely missed that they were connected. Up at the top it says, “Continues as Rapid Ride D.” For some reason I had thought they were separate routes. So, it’ll be sort of like now from West Seattle downtown, the 54 changing into the 5, sometimes. You won’t have to get off. This alleviates some of my worries about the D route deadending in North Downtown. So if you’re in Pioneer Square and you’re heading to Ballard you catch the C North and it quickly turns into the D. Hopefully always? Like it’s one route.

I don’t know if that was a branding issue, or what, but it seems like it would make more sense to call it one line now that there’s no free ride area to confuse when you board. Maybe it’s a lesson from the failure of the Monorail where everybody criticized it for going from West Seattle to Ballard, when obviously the point was it went from Ballard or West Seattle to Downtown and then continuing to the other.

The other thing I noticed is that it goes on the Viaduct. This makes sense for now: it’s going from West Seattle to Downtown. But the Viaduct won’t be around much longer, and the tunnel won’t have an exit on Seneca or an entrance on Columbia. Presumably it’ll either go through SoDo or I-5, but either way will make it less rapid. If it’s through SoDo, hopefully, they’ll have figured out signal prioritization.

– Rapid Ride C and pay as you enter both ways are coming to West Seattle.

– A plurality of Shoreline residents would support a plastic bag ban. So it’s not just the dirty hippies in Seattle.

– We are free to be assholes. But we can never be free to do so without thereby making ourselves assholes.

– Bullshit.

– Now, some health officials and communications experts are saying the symbol for climate impacts should be a child, not a polar bear.

– Only one of these things is a gaff.

– Obama needs to work on being a better antichrist.

While I’m generally a McGinn partisan, I haven’t been impressed with his handling of police reform. After the Williams killing, he was quick to do symbolic things right: he declared a John T. Williams day, and did his part to make sure the totem poll got a place in Seattle Center, something I think most mayors would have fought. And there are other times where individually or symbolically he’s been good. But after the DOJ report, he dragged his feet, when he should have lead.

So, I’m heartened to read, at least initially, that Connie Rice seems to be saying the right things.

“I need to understand the factions,” Rice told me after her first day of interviews with community groups, the mayor, and cops. She says a court order approved by US District Court judge James Robart last month to remedy patterns of excessive force and racial bias in policing is “just a document.” Before the city can make cultural changes, everyone involved—the mayor, council, city attorney, beat cops, community groups, etc.—must decide that “you all want to jump off the cliff together.”

Dominic Holden is still pretty skeptical. And perhaps rightly so. For now, I have some hope that things might work out.

It’s that time of year again. When Saint Park(ing) magically tuns a few parking spaces throughout the city into tiny parks.

PARK(ing) Day happens every third Friday in September and is an opportunity for artists, activists, and community members to temporarily make parking spaces into parks. The event raises awareness about important issues like creating a walkable, livable, healthy city.

If any of those spaces are near you, and you have time at lunch, or whatever, check them out.

Patty Murray’s press release about the GOP killing the Veterans Jobs Corps Act.

“It’s both shocking and shameful that Republicans today chose to kill a bill to put America’s veterans back to work. At a time when one in four young veterans are unemployed, Republicans should have been able, for just this once, to put aside the politics of obstruction and to help these men and women provide for their families.

“But this vote is stark reminder that Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans are willing to do absolutely anything to fulfill the pledge he made nearly two years ago to defeat President Obama. It doesn’t matter who gets in their way or which Americans they have to sacrifice in that pursuit, even if it’s our nation’s veterans.

“It’s unbelievable that even after more than a decade of war many Republicans still will not acknowledge that the treatment of our veterans is a cost of war. Today they voted down a fully paid for bill that included bipartisan ideas to put veterans in jobs that will allow them to serve their communities. Jobs that would have helped provide veterans with the self-esteem that is so critical to their successful transition home.

“Today Senate Republicans told the less than 1% of Americans who have spent the last decade serving and sacrificing for the other 99% of Americans that they are not willing to honor that sacrifice with new investments in their well-being when they return home.”

I hate that we went to war in Iraq. I hate that the war in Afghanistan is still going on (and I wasn’t happy with it from the beginning, although unlike Iraq, I understood the case for it). But as long as we decide to go to war, we’d damn well better make sure we do right by the people who fight it.

– Increases in human services in Seattle.

– Romney’s Responsibility Map

– Who could have predicted tolling 99 would be a problem?

– How dead is the Romney campaign?

– GIF Parade!

– I’m voting for whichever candidate like pudding pops!