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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Thom: Shouldn’t we all be getting a check for the wealth of our nation?

Gov. Elect Jay Inslee with some important transition metrics:

Sam Seder: The fall of FreedomWorks and the conservative con.

Ann Telnaes: AIG adds insult to bailout.

Thom: Will Republicans do far more harm than al Qaeda?

Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

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

Sharpton: New Republican War on Women as Rep. Paul Ryal (R-WI) introduces fetal personhood bill..

Maddow: On the popularity of Republicans versus cockroaches, lice:

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News hides U.S. spying on citizens?.

Gingery Goes All Aiken On Us:

Thom and Pap: KBR committed crimes all over the planet.

White House: West Wing Week.

Jon: First FAUX News “Boner Alert” of 2013.

Young Turks: FAUX News nutjob suggests algebra is part of the liberal agenda.

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

Buzz 60: Congress less popular than colonoscopies, lice, root canals, cockroaches less than congress..

Nominations:

Ed: Republicans lose leverage in debt ceiling debate .

Sam Seder: corporate personhood on trial in California.

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

A date with Mitt Romney:

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

Open Thread 1/11

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– I like Wyble, but I think he’s wrong about still supporting Rodney Tom

– Christians are not supposed to take the side of wage-deniers against wage-earners. Christians are not supposed to take the side of slut-shamers against women. Christians are not supposed to take the side of ignorance against truth. Christians are not supposed to take the side of indulgent pride against love.

– Transportation Advocacy Day is coming up.

– It’s not far to caricature people. Except liberals, obvs.

– There might be several little ants in that acorn.

In Need of an Editor

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I was intending to do another zzzzzzz post for McGinn. I’ll probably vote for him, but I’m still giving Ed Murray and Peter Steinbrueck a look. I mean mostly, he’s been good but his standing in the way of police reform has been problematic. Part of the original consist was that it was the holidays when the other people announced. But still, mayor runs for mayor would have worked. Anyway, in stead of that, I’m going to make fun of this article in Crosscut (h/t to my friend Brice):

Luck of the Irish: McGinn makes his campaign move

Awesome title. The fact that he’s Irish is relevant to his campaign, somehow. And I think we can all agree that the colon was appropriate: after all a campaign move flows naturally from luck/and or his ancestry. He quotes his mom as saying “it’s better to be lucky than smart” without any context from the piece. And there’s no mention of his Irishness after the title, so really great job all around. I don’t know if Crosscut writers write their own headlines, but this is certainly not a great start.

Location, location, location, and the location where Mayor Mike McGinn chose to announce his bid for reelection spoke volumes: far from the madding club crowds of Capitol Hill and Belltown that helped drive his first election, at the Filipino Community Center on MLK Way in the heart of the Rainier Valley.

I didn’t know where to break this up, but that’s one sentence. “Location, location, location, and” what the fuck is that? I know it’s supposed to be what people look for in real estate, but Mike McGinn isn’t buying it. You can say the location, location, location thing, I guess, but just throwing it out there doesn’t help anything. Then he seems to think there are club crowds in Capitol Hill and Belltown on a Wednesday afternoon. FACT: Some people go to clubs and live in the South End.

It was a perfect stage for a perfectly casual event, in a suitably undersized, overstuffed room that reinforced the impression of clamoring urgency for, as supporters chanted twice, four more years.

Anywhere is fine for a casual event, especially on Wednesday afternoon. I don’t think holding it in South Seattle is bad. I’ve been to several South Seattle McGinn events, and I’m glad McGinn makes an effort to include that area.

A representative selection of minority community leaders sang his praises. El Centro director (and campaign co-chair) Estela Ortega, who, “in the spirit of Roberto Maestas,” capped her passionate panegyric with a few fist-pumping rounds of “Viva Mike McGinn!” Rep. Kip Tokuda, fellow co-chair Tony Lee, and Mohammed Yussuf variously echoed the themes she sounded: The mayor listens.

This isn’t a particularly good place to break it up, but it’s as good as it gets from here (and we’re still in the lede!). The support of this community is great for him. Still, I suspect they’d get on the light rail if the event were Downtown. Or on a car if it was further North. Or maybe take a car. Some McGinn supporters drive sometimes.

He didn’t cut social programs during the bust, and now that the money’s rolling back in he’ll expand them (including ours). He gets “tangible results”: rebuilding the seawall, a new basketball stadium, clearing the snow from the streets (a dig at McGinn’s predecessor, Greg Nickels). He got the libraries open on Sundays and a jumbo Families and Education levy passed.

Yay. We’re finally done with the first paragraph. I’ve been nursing a cold today, so I don’t think this will get the metacommentary it deserves. But I’d be missing the reason to write it if I didn’t skip to:

When he enumerated his transportation accomplishments and goals, Mayor post-McSchwinn [?] knew not to mention bikeways to this crowd. Many here still smart at seeing steep Othello Street/Myrtle Place squeezed down to one crowded lane each way for bike lanes that no pedalers [sic] use — while no one thought to include bike lanes when Sound Transit ran rail down wide, level MLK Way.

There were probably political reasons for not mentioning bikes. But honestly, my fat ass has no problem riding those hills, so at least don’t pretend nobody does it. Hell, McGinn probably rode there, so he might have taken those same routes that nobody takes.

Honestly, it’s not a bad rough draft. But it’s not a story yet, Crosscut.

Here’s To An Improved Seattle Weekly

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I haven’t read the Weekly in years. Since the sale to VVM, really. Between the stories that hardly ever felt local, and writers I never got used to, I never picked it up, and I think that was probably true of a lot of the casual readers. I had more or less stopped reading before it became apparent that their business model relied in part on ads for child prostitution and it wasn’t a tough decision not to read them at all after that.

So it’s for the good that they were just bought by Sound Publishing. Here’s hoping it’ll get more of its local flavor back, and that there’s a business model that makes sense. The Weekly still has a constituency, even though I don’t read it. More newspapers is generally better for Seattle.

Open Thread 1/9

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– A largely sympathetic look at cops who drink.

– I also wonder if they understand what Cherry Point – Xwe’chi’eXen in our language – means to the Lummi people? Do they understand that we trace our heritage at Cherry Point back to at least 1500 B.C.? That our ancient ones are at rest there? That the entire landscape is flagged as a cemetery by Washington State? Does anyone believe that we would ever stand by while our sacred ground – our Arlington, our Jerusalem – is sacrificed for profit?

– A new record number of safe routs to School in Seattle.

– The Tea Party is suuuuuuuuuper popular.

– The gun buy back program.

– How about instead of Gun Appreciation Day, gun safety day? Or literally, anything else?

Rodney Tom’s Majority

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Who could have predicted that building a legislative coalition where Pam Roach got plumb assignments might not work out well?

A report says Sen. Pam Roach of Auburn violated the Senate’s policy in March by verbally attacking a Senate Republican staffer charged with upholding sanctions against Roach that prevented her from having direct contact with staff. The report was compiled by a subcommittee created last summer solely to investigate incidents involving Roach.

When reached by phone Tuesday, Roach said she didn’t know anything about the report.

“I’m looking into it,” Roach said. She declined to comment further.

I mean, never bet against Pam Roach being an asshole. But I would have guessed that it would have taken at least until the session for her to abuse staff again. Now we see that as Rodney Tom was scheming to give her the chair of the Government Operations, Tribal Relations & Elections Committee, she had already gone back to her old ways. Rodney Tom should probably apologize to the staffer at the very least.

Tom has said the sanctions against Roach would be lifted, even though they recently were reaffirmed under a legal settlement announced in September. Tom did not return a phone message Tuesday seeking comment.

Courage.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottlePlease join us this evening for some politics under the influence at our first meeting of 2013—it’s the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.



Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings over the next week. Tonight the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, WA chapters meet. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. On Thursday Drinking Liberally Bremerton meets.

With 227 chapters of Living Liberally, including fourteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.

Dear Senators Cantwell and Murray;

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I’m writing today to ask you to oppose John Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA. This country should not put into office someone who helped bring about the torture regime. It’s bad enough that it happened at all. It’s bad enough that it happened in our name. It’s bad enough that that there were no prosecutions above the lowest levels. But for God’s sake, the least the Senate can do is oppose a high level torturer for a job at the CIA.

And look, I know that other than the torture, Brennan is highly qualified. But what a qualifier to have to add! It seems that some things should be off limits.

And yes, I realize this could be a political blow to Obama. I recognize the problems with that, and as someone who supported him, that will be too bad. But he shouldn’t have nominated someone who supported a program that “included slamming detainees’ heads against walls; prolonged standing in stress positions; beating and kicking; prolonged shackling of hands and feet; and much more.”

Thank you,
Carl Ballard

If you want to write Cantwell or Murray an email, the forms are at their names.

OK, But Let’s End The War Sooner

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This is a great thing Patty Murray did to prevent active duty suicides.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced Thursday that President Obama has signed her amendment to require the Pentagon to create a new suicide prevention program for active military members.

The new program would also expand eligibility for Department of Veterans Affairs mental health service to family members, improve training and education for health care providers and create more soldier-to-soldier counseling opportunities, according to Murray.

Great work, Senator. Still, as long as the war in Afghanistan is going on anything like this is going to be a small part of the solution. Because this is an inevitable consequence of a decade of war. This is going to happen in a war where the end is still over a year away. This is what happens when people are going to be away from their families for an extended period of time.

So by all means, let’s do everything we can to prevent military suicides. But let’s not pretend they’re going to stop while the country is at war.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Young Turks: Time for the GOP to shut down the government.

The Joe Biden reality show.

2012 in Hindsight:

Lawrence O’Donnell: Why the fiscal cliff deal is so awesome!

Thom: The battle for 2014 begins in the Senate.

The Republican War on Women:

Ed: Hypocrite-narcissist O’Reilly fails to quit after his taxes go up.

Young Turks: Why did Republicans block Sandy relief?

Sam Seder: Farewell Joe Lieberman. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass….

Orange and Weepy:

SlateTV: States pass laws prohibiting employers from asking for your social media passwords.

Sam Seder: “Conservative” ideology works until THEY are suffering.

Young Turks: Fake fiscal cliff drama.

Guns Don’t Kill Guns…People Kill Guns:

Sharpton: Birfer Republicans try to convince Justice Roberts to refuse to administer the oath of office to Obama.

White House: West Wing Week.

Young Turks: Wiretapping hypocrisy?

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

The Republican War on Kwanza™:

Bill Press flunks the G.O.P. on Hurricane Sandy relief and the fiscal cliff.

Pap: G.O.P. hate knows no bounds!

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

Documenting the King Tides

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West Seattle Blog passes this along this Department of Ecology request to help document the high tides in the coming month.

The dates for January’s king tides vary slightly depending on location:

· In the Strait of Juan de Fuca, king tides will occur Jan. 8-13.

· Along Washington’s outer coast, they occur Jan. 10-12.

· The Puget Sound dates for king tides are Jan. 14-17.

Follow these steps to participate:

· Use Ecology’s king tide map and schedule to find when and where the highest tides will occur. Go to http://www.ecy.wa.gov/climatechange/ipa_hightide_map.htm.

· Locate a public beach by checking out Ecology’s Coastal Atlas at https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/coastalatlas/.

· Take photos during a king tide, preferably where the high water levels can be gauged against familiar landmarks such as sea walls, jetties, bridge supports or buildings.

· Note the date, time and location of your photo – then upload your images on the Washington King Tide Photo Initiative Flickr Group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/1611274@N22/.

· Play it safe! While the winter king tides occur during daylight hours, don’t venture out during severe weather and keep a close eye on rising water levels.

I love the citizen participation aspect of this. Hopefully they get a lot of good data.

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