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There’s a lot of disillusionment with the state of our political system right now. We have two major parties that are largely beholden to powerful economic interests who’ve figured out how to funnel taxpayer money into their own pockets. We have a massive – and largely privatized – military that kills and maims innocent civilians across the globe with almost no oversight. We have the most people living behind bars (by far) of any country in the world, continuing to grow with an immigration crackdown that has continued largely under the radar. And our electorate is largely tuned out, not even able to muster the ability to demand that the two main candidates for president present a clear vision of how to deal with climate change, something that looms as potentially the most dangerous thing we’ll deal with in our lifetimes.

Yet this year, in this state, we got the chance to take two small steps forward. Voter initiatives are often cynical attempts to con voters into voting against their own economic interests. I-502 was a reminder of why they serve a real purpose. It was a genuine effort – decades in the making – to demand that government stop its foolish and wasteful crusade to keep adults from enjoying a recreational drug that’s been used by humans for thousands of years. This Tuesday, we’ll make it official. Marijuana prohibition’s days are numbered. Change is coming.

And Washington is set to become the first state (hopefully with several others on Tuesday) to end marriage discrimination at the ballot box. If only people who were personally affected by either of these initiatives cared, they wouldn’t have a chance. But more and more people are beginning to recognize the value of standing up for the rights of others, even when they involve rights you don’t ever plan to exercise yourself.

Thanks to all the folks in both the I-502 campaign, the R-74 campaign, and everyone who’s worked over the years to bring reform to where we are today. These seem like small steps compared to some of the challenges we face, but these are big victories that can give us the confidence to know that positive change can happen. And as people who’ve fought for years for gay rights and drug law reform can tell you, it’s a long battle with many setbacks. Tuesday can’t come soon enough.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the park in Arvada, CO where the body of Jessica Ridgeway was found.

This week’s contest is a random location somewhere on earth, good luck!

[HA Bible Study is on hiatus through the November election as we honor Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by studying his Mormon faith.]

Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 2:182-84
When the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they will have to call for the “Mormon” Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it.

Discuss.

Washington Senators for Washington:

Young Turks: Republican’s War on Math.

Maddow: End of campaign bluster.

White House: West Wing Week.

Willard (and Friends):

• Liberal Viewer: Should Mr. Burns endorse Mitt Romney?
• SlateTV: Chrysler refutes Ohio Romney ad
• Young Paul Ryan.
• Ann Telnaes: Romney’s change.
• Mitt Romney is autistic:

SlateTV: Why don’t we get rid of the electoral college.

Schoolhouse Rock: Election Rock, with conspiracy theories.

Young Turks: debate audience laugh at Michele Bachmann.

Cock-block the Vote.

Roy Zimmerman: I’m in:

Politics of Disaster:

• Ann Telnaes: Romney’s all wet..
• Sam Seder: Occupy Sandy….
• Young Turks: Mitt v. Climate change.
• Sam Seder: Mitt Romney implies hurricane Sandy recovery just like cleaning up HS football celebration
• SlateTV: Chris Christie can’t stop praising Obama.
• Mark Fiore: The Emergency Private Sector Alert System.
• Sam Seder: FEMA + Romney Administration = Disaster
• Stephen: Hurricane Sandy nightmare

Political Kombat ’12: Obama vs Romney.

Maddow: States with weird election laws.

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

Jon: Dystopian hellscape that Is Ohio.

Liberal Viewer: Romney stung by repeating a FAUX News lie in debate.

Letterman: VP Joe does the top-10 on voting early.

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

Mike O’Brien has the story of Seattle City Light helping out in the wake of Sandy.

Seattle City Light, our local publicly-owned utility, is sending 18 linemen, their trucks and all their gear out to Long Island, NY to help restore power in the aftermath of Sandy. I am incredibly proud of our utility for finding a way to help out.

Many utilities across the country are lending a hand. I am especially proud of City Light for not only sending staff, but also finding a way to send the critical equipment they need to be most effective in the relief effort. City Light has been working hard all week to find a way to help and it paid off. This weekend, City Light crews are catching a ride with the U.S. Air Force to the storm ravaged area where millions are without power and heat.

It’s not very efficient to send the trucks and workers to help, so I’m sure there are some run-everything-like-a-business-I-don’t-want-my-utility-bill-going-to-that people out there. But I’m glad they’re helping. And I’m proud that my utility bill is going to help pay for that.

– On our last blog, Lee and I used to make fun of right wingers. Matt Manweller was on the top of the list. And ick for ever to that guy.

– Melissa McEwan’s take on the John Koster story.

– Seattle’s plans for the storm season.

– Being wrong is the most important thing for conservative pundits.

– It’s a better world.

– I didn’t know anything about assassin bugs before reading this post.

I’m a pretty harsh critic of The Seattle Times. I think their coverage is more biased for a corporate status quo than they’ll care to admit and their editorials are sloppy and often off the mark. And with the ad for McKenna, they’ve put their partisanship on display.

But I don’t get any joy from their declining circulation numbers. For the best corrective to the Seattle Times’ sloppy efforts is better competition. When I read that they’d fallen off of the top 25 papers in the country, I thought of George Orwell’s lament at the end of World War Two that London only had 12 daily papers.

It is only when there are large numbers of newspapers, expressing all tendencies, that there is some chance of getting at the truth. Counting evenings, London has only twelve daily papers, and they cover the whole of the south of England and penetrate as far north as Glasgow. When they all decide to tell the same lie, there is no minority press to act as a check. In pre-war France the press was largely venal and scurrilous, but you could dig more news out of it than out of the British press, because every political faction had its paper and every viewpoint got a hearing.

Of course people get their news from the Internet now and from TV more than they did back then. But the biggest problem with TV news, with the Seattle Times, and most other daily papers in the region, is that they’re reporting from a similar perspective.

Well, it’s been something of a rough week for me. But I am mostly recovered now, I’ve been off narcotics for almost a day, and I’ll likely be discharged this evening.

With any luck, I’ll do a new poll analysis by late this evening or tomorrow morning. I’ve entered most of the polls up through yesterday, but since they were entered under the influence of morphine, I’ll have some error checking to do.

Oh…and sorry about Kentucky thing. That’s the kind of error I usually find before posting, typically while writing up the summary of polls. But I skipped all that to get up what I figured to be the last analysis for awhile.

Just looking at the polls that have come in, I see no big shake-ups. I expect Obama will still be above a 90% probability of winning and somewhere around a mean of 300 electoral votes.

I thought I might be all out of what the fucks this campaign season. Especially after the shitty hurricane coverage. But there’s still at least one more. What the fuck, John Koster?

Koster: “When a mother’s life in in danger. I’m not going to make that decision. You know, I know they go out and… incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare. But the rape thing…you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept her child, gave it up for adoption, she doesn’t regret it. In fact, she’s a big pro-life proponent. But on the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s a consequence of this crime, how does that make it better? You know what I mean?”

First off, if that story is true it doesn’t really change the facts for the women who get an abortion after being raped. If a woman decides to have a kid after being raped, I want to live in a society that respects that. But society should have just as much respect for a woman who doesn’t want to bring her rapist’s child into the world.

Now I think all women should be able to make that decision for themselves under any circumstances. But it’s tough to imagine that a person wouldn’t feel a little compassion sneak in when we’re talking about rape victims.

– Aside from the anti-bus one, I like these reasons to bike to work.

– I’m not an evangelical, and we live in a secular society is a better response on policy than to tell them what they should believe about religion. But the relatively recent change to opposition to abortion in the evangelical community is pretty fascinating.

– Good for Italy.

– Bogus photos, however, are a strange new form of popular expression attached to unfolding crises, hovering somewhere on the boundary between art and commentary.

– Obviously, it’s limited in geography and scope, but I think the MTA Flickr had the best pictures.

– When I was in England and people would ask me why people call it football, I would tell them it was because the ball was shaped like a foot. I like this answer better.

I don’t care how desperate you are for a local angle on the biggest story right now. If the story you’ve decided to write is What does Michael Brown think of Sandy (h/t) you’re writing the wrong goddamn story. I mean maybe if you preface it with, and do the opposite of what this fucker says.

Seriously, after his monumental fuckup in the wake of Katrina why the hell would you ask his opinion if you had a hangnail? Honestly.

Also, even if you didn’t know it was this fucker, that’s really terrible advice. Obama is being too prepared for a disaster and Something something Benghazi.