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It’s another stunningly beautiful summer day in Seattle. So join us this evening for some celebration and politics at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday evening at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm, although some people show up earlier than that for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities and Shelton chapters also meet. The Enumclaw and South Seattle chapters meet this Wednesday. And the Woodinville chapter meets on Thursday.

With 208 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.

– I don’t know enough about the Frequent Network Plan but it’s worth a look.

– 82% of Americans are correct.

– Goldy is more thrilled than me with the prospect of a State GOP Chair Pam Roach. I think she would be as problematic as before, but with a larger platform.

– Just as was the case before Roe, women’s abortion access in many states across the country is largely becoming dependent on two arbitrary things: where she lives, and how much economic privilege she has.

– Cascade Bikes is asking you to write a letter to SDOT to help complete the Missing Link.

– I think we are on solid biblical footing, in other words, to say that the current effort among House Republicans to gut SNAP is an example of the sin of Onanism. The anti-welfare rhetoric and ideology of the tea party — with its denunciations of “takers” and “moochers,” and the rallying cry of its founding in rejection of mortgage assistance for soon-to-be-homeless families — is a virulent, vicious strain of Onanism

– Anyone going to see Romeo & Juliet at the Sculpture Park? Also, in case you ever have to promote it, it is not “the greatest love story ever told.”

In the current issue of The Seattle Weekly, Ellis E. Conklin has a piece on the Seattle Times-Mike McGinn perpetual dispute. It begins thus:

On February 24, 2011, Seattle Times reporter Lynn Thompson penned a comically snarkish account of how (“Seattle’s most famous bike rider”) Mayor Mike McGinn’s dark-green GT Slipstream was stolen out of the City Hall parking garage. The bike, which McGinn accidentally left unlocked, actually belonged to his wife, prompting the mayor to tweet: “Peg is pissed.”

The story, complete with the requisite “Mayor McSchwinn,” included anonymous e-mails from readers. One sarcastic missive, in particular, drove McGinn through the roof. After suggesting the theft was a publicity stunt by a pol seeking sympathy, the commenter meanly observed, “He has the body of Homer Simpson and apparently doesn’t own a bike himself.”

The city’s since slimmed down chief executive is reportedly still seething about the Homer Simpson crack.

Says McGinn, “We let them know that was inappropriate.”

Not long after the article appeared, an angry Peg Lynch called The Times and canceled the McGinn family’s subscription.

When the Stranger’s Eli Sanders brought the news of Mrs. McGinn’s pique to light more than a year later, Times executive editor David Boardman tweeted, “What kind of mayor cancels his subscription to his city’s daily newspaper? Our mayor. Thin skin, @mayormcginn?

Sooooooooooooooooo: The Seattle Times realizes that Mike McGinn has been the victim of a crime. Rather than just report that, they go for making up nonsense with about as much evidence as a birther. In the process they call him fat using a cultural reference that’s two decades past its prime.

In response to that, McGinn’s wife cancels their home copy of the paper. Their ostensibly straight newsman sees that and tweets that the problem is Mike McGinn. Holy shit. I’m being serious when I wonder: (a) How the fuck did that get into the paper in the first place? (b) How in God’s name wasn’t Lynn Thompson publicly disciplined? (c) How is it that David Bordman thought that was a thing to rally behind? If The Seattle Times were a real newspaper, they would hire him back just so they could fire him for this, that’s how pathetic it makes their paper look to rally around making fat jokes about an elected official they don’t like.

To be clear, I want a Seattle Times to be tough on elected officials. But if they can’t tell the difference between journalism and bullying, they should pack it up because they don’t do the city a service.

– Oh, that Glenn Greenwald guy thinks governments can abuse their authority. Hey, we’ll show him by detaining his partner for 9 hours.

– In case you want to know what the SPD Doritos at Hempfest look like, Mike O’Brien has a picture.

– The fraudulent signature gatherer has been charged.

– I’m not quite sure how I feel about Kitzhaber’s veto of a loophole to Oregon’s law opposing Native American school mascots. Basically, the school could ask a tribe for permission. On the one hand, I suppose with having to do that, they could figure out how to be sensitive. On the other, it seems like just asking one tribe if a thing is offensive is maybe not a substitute for actually being sensitive.

– But while the fire at Med Mix was tragic, it should not be swept aside by just calling it childish or simply criminal.

– Oh, look what’s coming to Cinerama.

Last week’s contest was won by Geoduck. It was Valley Falls, RI.

This week’s contest is somewhere in Alaska (3rd Sunday in the month is now a rotating state contest), good luck!

Proverbs 31:6-7
Let beer be for those who are perishing,
wine for those who are in anguish!
Let them drink and forget their poverty
and remember their misery no more.

Discuss.

testing

John Oliver: Rand Paul defends his objections to Obamacare.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Patrick Keane: Violent history.

Sam Seder: Conservatives fear Megyn Kelly will turn FAUX News gay.

New Fronts in the G.O.P. War on Voters™:

• Ann Telnaes: N.C. Gov. signs voter ID bill.
• Sharpton: Republicans spin big-lies to defend their vote-rigging fraud
• Chris Hayes: N.C. GOP’s racist & restrictive voting bill betrays their fear of Blacks.
• Maddow: The G.O.P. war on voting, past and present, Part I
• Maddow: The G.O.P. war on voting, past and present, Part II
• Young Turks: Strick voter ID bill signed into law.
• The political and practical effects of the N.C. voter ID law.
• Sharpton: Voter suppression and racism and Rand Paul.
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Rand Paul versus Hillary Clinton on voting rights.

Young Turks: God fails to help a Christian right-winger family fleeing the US by boat.

Congress is as unproductive as it is unpopular.

Meet the Republican candidate for N.J. Senate, Steve Lonegan.

Sam Seder: ‘Hillary can’t be President until al Qaeda has a woman leader,’ says nutjobber Donny Deutsch.

Pap: Ignorance is bliss for conservatives.

Army Corps and coal terminal:

White House: West Wing Week.

At Least Someone Listens!

• Stephen on Obama’s denial of NSA spying
• Young Turks: NSA breaks rules thousands of times a year.

John Fugelsang chats with Lewis Black about politicians.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: GOP War On Women™ rages on.

Obama: About Egypt.

Young Turks: How Congressmen are bought.

Sam Seder: Movie executive Rick Santorum thinks “Middle class” is “Marxism talk!”

Clowns:

• SlateTV: Rodeo clown mocks Obama.
• Martin Bashir: Republican’s Obama derangement syndrome.
• Sharpton: ‘Klans-man’ Steve Stockman(R-TX) invites ‘Obama Rodeo Clown’ to Texas
• Lawrence O’Donnell: White racist Teabaggers enjoy ‘Obama clown show’

Chris Hayes: The Republican allure of climate change denialism.

Tom: Even more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Pap: Right wing media’s downward spiral.

Kimmel: This Week in Unnecessary Censorship.

Sharpton: Post Romney, the Republican “re-branding” has failed…miserably.

Mental Floss: 37 odd college mascots.

Thanks, John:

• John Oliver thanks Anthony
• Daily Show: John Oliver gets a Correspondents’ send-off.

Mike Huckabee asks Ted Nuget to turn his hunting dogs lose on Dems (via Crooks and Liars).

Matt Lieb: Detained by Israeli security.

John Fugelsang: If you’re a Christian American who discriminates, you suck at both:

Republicans Self-deport for the Debates:

• Maddow: Republicans won’t hold primary debates on CNN and NBC, and other news of the day.
• Lawrence O’Donnell: The GOP’s dream debate moderators are Limbaugh, Hannity & Mark Levin.

Sam Seder: Missouri Republican Rep. Paul Wieland believes Obamacare will cause his kids to HAVE SEX!.

Maddow: Gov. Bob McDonnell’s (R-VA) Rolex stinks of corruption.

Thom with some Good, some Bad, and some Very, Very Ugly.

Snowden holds a presser.

Pap: Progressives taking action against G.O.P. obstruction.

Stop and Frisk is Stopped and Frisked:

• Stephen takes on Stop and Frisk ruling.
• Young Turks: FAUX News suggests Black people need Stop and Frisk.
• John Oliver explains Stop and Frisk to White people.
• Sharpton: Republican clowns defend racist Stop and Frisk.
• Thom: Stop and Frisk Wall Street or Main Street?
• Young Turks: Bill-O-the-Clown claims stop and frisk claims are clueless and wrong.

Sam Seder: White House brings back solar panels.

Global warming: Republican global warming denialists’ outrageous reasoning.

Mark Fiore: Keystone clones.

Thom: Will D.C. be renamed “Reaganville”?

Changing Drug Policy:

• Seattle’s Hempfest.
• Sam Seder: DOJ’s new stance on low-level drugs.
• WA delays date for legal retailmarijuana stores to open
• Young Turks: Harsh US drug laws to change, says Eric Holder.
• One Minute News: Operation Orange Fingers.

Rev. Sharpton takes on G.O.P. Pseudoscience:

Ever wonder “What’s wrong with black people?”

Pap: The right wing assault on affordable healthcare.

Ann Telnaes: Coup? What Coup?

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

I don’t have a TV Box* so nothing is appointment TV for me except sports that I’ll go to a bar for or watch on ESPN3 or MLB’s website. I’ll watch a few shows on the Internet later on, or see clips that make it onto some website, especially what Darryl plays in the Multimedia Extravaganza. And while that’s the far end, a lot of people have TiVo or watch their TV on the Internet in some way. So the schedule is less important than it was even a decade ago, not just for me but for all sorts of people.

So maybe Fox News’s shakeup is less important than it once would have been. But the fact of the matter is it’s coming:

The media world was abuzz last week as Matt Drudge reported a rare prime-time shakeup at Fox News: Rising star Megyn Kelly is moving to 9 p.m., bumping the current inhabitant of that hour, the “Great American” Sean Hannity, to parts unknown.

The domino effect has not yet been revealed, with speculation that Kelly’s move might produce other changes, including hard news star and 7 p.m. anchor Shepard Smith potentially shifting roles, and 10 p.m. host Greta Van Susteren moving hours.

Maybe it doesn’t matter at what point in the day assholes are saying asshole things. Maybe being given time to say nonsense on the TV is important enough, and the rest are just details. Still, the fact that the top brass at Fox News thinks this is something maybe means it’s something, so they’re doing their shakeup.

[Read more…]

Hempfest starts today. I’ll be down at the “protestival” all day tomorrow (Saturday). Seattle PD’s tongue-in-cheek efforts to do public education with tasty snacks has gotten a lot of attention. But as Slate points out, 1000 bags of Doritos doesn’t go very far in a festival that generally sees over 200,000 attendees. Somehow this feels like foreshadowing of what the first weekend that pot stores open in the state will feel like.

I get that a student dying is terrible. And I understand the desire at WSU to keep underage kids from drinking, especially from binge drinking. But I’m not sure telling their parents is necessarily helpful.

With the first day of classes less than a week away, Washington State University has a new plan to reduce binge drinking that includes scheduling more Friday morning classes and calling the parents of drunk students.

WSU has been looking for ways to curb underage drinking since last October when a student died of alcohol poisoning.

Freshman Kenneth Hummel, 18, had a blood alcohol level that was five times the legal limit. His death last fall came after three students were injured in alcohol-related falls from buildings in recent months, two at WSU and one at the University of Idaho.

Among the changes, WSU will call parents the first time an underage student violates alcohol and drug policies.

I didn’t have a drop of alcohol my entire 4 years of college,* but for a lot of people, college is a chance to get away from their parents. I think you can have consequences that treat people as adults instead of going to mom and dad.

[Read more…]

Tom at Seattle Bike Blog is getting reports of trouble on the trail.

I’ve already received one email from a reader who said he had to swerve into the grass to avoid a truck driving on the trail. Last year there were many close calls and several crashes due to Hempfest operations. But organizers say they are working to make this year go more smoothly and better mark cables and hoses.

The Elliott Bay Trail is a vital regional transportation corridor for people biking and walking from downtown to Magnolia, Queen Anne and northwest Seattle. There is no other option available for people biking through the area. With workers blocking the route for a week and a half and people on bikes with no other way through, it’s a recipe for frustration and conflict.

That was a couple days ago, and with more setup, I’m sure there is more difficulty. I was there yesterday evening for a jog, and it was fine for me. It was drizzly and past rush hour so the traffic wasn’t bad, but there were tents and trucks and a partially built stage up. I can see how it could be annoying, but it didn’t seem like too bad.

There may also be traffic problems for cars according to a press release I got from SDOT.

The 22nd annual Seattle Hempfest expects 50,000 – 70,000 attendees everyday this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Centennial and Myrtle Edwards parks. Saturday evening the Seattle Seahawks anticipate a crowd of 55,000 at CenturyLink Field when they take on the Denver Broncos for the team’s second pre-season game. There will likely be heavy traffic associated with these and many other events taking place throughout Seattle over the weekend, so please see the attached schedule and plan ahead to avoid delays.

The Seattle Department of Transportation suggests motorists join in the effort to reduce air pollution by parking their cars and opting for one of the many alternate modes of transportation available – Metro Transit, the West Seattle Water Taxi, the Seattle Streetcar, the Sounder commuter train, Link light rail, car pool, bicycle or walk, if feasible.

A lot of those suggestions are more football related than Hempfest, given SoDo’s nearness to rail and the Water Taxi. But the warning and some of the suggestions apply to both.

And seeing the press release mentioning the football game in the same paragraph as Hempfest puts the traffic complaints people always seem to have into some perspective. Yes, it can be annoying (although the worst that’s ever happened for me personally is I had to take a different route from Downtown to Ballard one year). But sometimes those sort of things happen in a big city with big events.

– The police distributing Doritos at Hempfest is a bit on the nose.

– RE this, I think Carla Saulter says all the words that need to be said:

Wait, I'm confused. #russellsimmons #wtf

— Carla Saulter (@seattlebuschick) August 15, 2013

– “Sonic Bloom” is a solar-powered work of art created by Dan Corson on behalf of City Light’s Green Up program, which supports the development of new renewable energy sources.

– Could you just move some of the Olympic events if there’s the treat of some athletes being arrested, or simply as a protest?

– We must always be vigilant of capitalism’s inclination for this sort of business, and while we encourage capitalism, be aware of its potentially abusive power.

– When you’re digging yourself into a hole, the saying goes, the first rule is to stop digging. Fortunately, regarding the downtown tunnel, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has taken this aphorism to heart. Unfortunately, it’s only partial, and temporary.

– Wendy Davis is going to be in town. It’s an event sponsored by Washington NARAL, and I’m not 100% sure if your ticket goes to her or to them.

– If you’re interested in Helsing Junction Sleep Over, you probably don’t need me saying it’s coming up, but it’s coming up.

The deadline for applications for PARK(ing) Day in Seattle is coming up.

Create your own park on September 20, 2013 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.! PARK(ing) Day happens once a year, on the third Friday in September, and is an opportunity for any Seattleite to temporarily make parking spaces into parks. The event raises awareness about important issues like creating a walkable, livable, healthy city.

I didn’t go last year, but in the past it’s been pretty cool what people have come up with. Seattle has some creative people who really make some incredible things with the limited space available. You can see at the link pictures from past years. Here’s hoping it’ll be dry and warm come September.

Someday, hopefully soon, Republicans will, once again, show a genuine interest in good governance. Until then, we get this shit:

Heritage Action for America – one of the conservative groups leading the charge to pressure Republican lawmakers against voting to continue government spending unless they can defund President Barack Obama’s health care law – said its new poll of likely voters in 10 relatively competitive congressional districts showed that forcing such a shutdown would not be fatal for the GOP in 2014.

The right question isn’t whether shutting down the government will hurt a political party. The right question is whether shutting down the government will hurt the United States of America!

Of course, some old-guard Republicans have come out against a government shutdown. Not because it is terrible for Americans and America, but because they remember the hit they took the last time they tried that little trick.

Instead, some of these asswipes have decided that, if not a shutdown of the Federal government, they will, instead, refuse to raise the debt ceiling—that is, they will refuse to pay for the stuff they’ve already bought. The last time they tried that, the U.S. took a bond rating hit. And notice the “big picture” reason for that downgrade by S&P (emphasis added):

More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned….

Again, these shitheads fail to seriously consider this question: “Is defaulting on our debt good for America, or does it harm America?”

Jonathan Chait enlightens us:

This is actually even more dangerous than shutting down the government. A government shutdown is disruptive, but can be endured. Nobody knows just what would happen if Congress were to default on payments to holders of Treasury bills, but it could be catastrophic, and at the very least would probably spur bondholders to demand a premium from Washington for years or decades to come. Republicans here are talking themselves out of using a conventional bomb and instead using a nuclear bomb.

These douche bags would gladly suffocate America to within inches of death if they could manage to squeeze even a tiny political advantage out of it….