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Another day, another horrendous shooting.

Several people were shot, one of them fatally, by a gunman outside the Empire State Building shortly after 9 a.m. on Friday, according to the police and city officials. The gunman was killed by the police, officials said.

One city official said that eight people were wounded.

“There are two people on site dead, a civilian and the gunman,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide information to the media.

While the details are still murky, I think we can all agree that the shooter knew exactly what the founders were going for when they wrote the Second Amendment.

– Todd Akin is the logical conclusion of flattering people like Todd Akin for 30 years.

– You would think Tim Eyman would learn something after the biggest lie of his life. But no.

– Jay Inslee releases his tax returns.

– I was afraid for over 60 years and those 60 years were wasted

– First of all, I am neither an empty man-socket nor a fucking venus flytrap. I am not looking to “attract a man.” I am just trying to do my stuff and then maybe meet a person who likes me because I am also a person.

– If you must fact-check, develop a cutesy scale that talks down to your audience.

Following Todd Akin is a Jackass Gate, Josh Feit did an interview with US Senate candidate Michael Baumgartner. Then Baumgartner decided he wanted to talk about Afghanistan, but Feit still asked him questions about his positions on abortion and wrote about those extremist positions. Then, I guess because Feit’s focus, Baumgartner emailed him to “go fuck yourself” and has been digging himself deeper since. Now look, as someone who has been protesting the war in Afghanistan for over a decade, I’m sympathetic to complaints that the media do a bad job covering it. And I agree that Cantwell hasn’t been particularly good on war issues. And Christ knows there are times when Josh Feit has written stupid things and completely missed the mark.

But you know what, you don’t get to chose what the media write about. The best way to get better coverage of war issues is to be more compelling on those issues. And you really don’t have a leg to stand on when the media are responding to your press release.

Further, you don’t get to call a truce on social issues if you’re still planning to vote to force a woman to carry her rapist’s baby to term, or to force women — and other people who can become pregnant — to have to have all the medical problems that can go along with pregnancy and child birth. When you’re still planning to vote with the extreme elements of the forced pregnancy wing of the party, you haven’t actually declared a truce, and people are still going to talk about that.

Over at Publicola, Erica C. Barnett takes the piss out of this King 5 report.

But first, KING offers viewers a lesson in transportation taxonomy. Specifically: Cars are “traffic”; transit is not.

“Here on Alaska, two traffic lanes have been taken away and turned into bus-only lanes,” reporter Natasha Ryan intones, gesturing—with no apparent irony—at the completely empty street behind her. (Screen shot above). “Residents say there already aren’t enough parking spots. … Now residents fear that once the RapidRide stops that are already in place here on Alaska actually start service it’s going to mean even less parking.”

Got that? Bus-only lanes “take away” lanes from the streets’ rightful users—single-occupant cars.

This is fine as far as it goes, but it got me thinking: it’s yet another TV report that assumes its viewers are drivers. I assume a majority of its viewers are drivers as a majority of the people in the region are drivers. But plenty of their viewers must take the bus, as the bus is regularly quite crowed.

A while ago, I wrote that I was always surprised when newspapers aren’t the biggest advocates of public transit. Since we’re getting to an era when TV news can be watched on the bus (but still not in the car, hopefully), I wonder if maybe the knee jerk anti-transit stuff will come to an end. But I won’t think it’ll come any time soon.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics and conversation over a pint at 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.

Special Event: On Sunday, Sept 9th, Comedian Dean Obeidallah will bring his progressive political stand up show to Seattle. Here’s the information:

Dean Obeidallah for Vice President Comedy Tour in Seattle on Sunday, September 9

A night of stand up comedy featuring award winning comedian Dean Obeidallah. 

The San Francisco Weekly wrote: “Dean Obeidallah is a gruff-voiced, shoot-from-the-hip New Yorker…fresh and clever.”

The Washington Post called Dean: “an angsty Arab Chris Rock.”  

Dean Obeidallah has appeared on numerous US and international TV shows including Comedy Central’s “Axis of Evil” special, ABC’s “The View,” “Comics Unleashed,” NBC’s “Rock Center,” MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes,” Current TV’s “The Young Turks,” and can be seen weekly on CNN offering comedic commentary on political and topical issues. He also writes weekly opinion articles for CNN.com.

He is co-director/co-star of the soon to be released documentary “The Muslims Are Coming!” which also features The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, comedians Lewis Black, David Cross, Maz Jobrani, Janeane Garofalo, Colin Quinn and more. Official Trailer is here.

Special guests for the show:

Khaled the Comic – Based in Chicago, Khaled has performed at comedy clubs all over the US and Canada. He was featured in the Best of the festival show in the 2011 NY Arab-American Comedy Festival.

Melissa Shoshahi – One of the top Iranian-American comedians in the country. Melissa has performed in venues across the US bringing her witty personality to the stage and knows no limits when it comes to comedy-discussing thoughts on her perspective on life to her unique upbringing into society. Her edgy comedy can be best described as ‘beautiful, so beautiful’ by her mother. 

Sunday, September 9, 2012 at 8:00PM

SCCC Broadway Performance Hall
1625 Broadway
Seattle, WA 98122
United States

Tickets: $25
Student tickets $15 at the door with valid student ID

For tickets please visit: Brown Paper Tickets or call 800-838-3006

Here is Dean in his Comedy Central “Axis of Evil” Comedy special:

Can’t make it to Seattle’s DL tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter meets tonight, the Burien chapter meets on Wednesday, and the Woodinville chapter meets on Thursday.

With 233 chapters of Living Liberally, including thirteen in Washington state four in Oregon and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

– I love the fact that The Stranger are trying to bring down Frank Chopp with a Socialist candidate.

– Last year I paid 22.6 percent in federal taxes after all the special deductions afforded me. That’s a pretty darn low effective rate by historical standards, and it’s low for all I receive from this country. My business depends on a country that continues to make savvy investments in its infrastructure, in its oversight of industry and in its people. Those public investments are instrumental to private market growth.

– He just said in public what these conservative fiends say behind closed doors after refusing to allow a vote on legislation that would establish a consistent standard of care in emergency rooms that includes information about emergency contraception.

– But one thing to keep in mind is there is no real penalty for respectable lying in our world of intellectual discourse.

– Want [h/t]

– This is the best headline I’ve seen in a while.

Money Magazine came out with its list of America’s [100] best small cities.

Number five on the list: My home town of Redmond, WA. Well deserved, if I do say so. Here’s a KOMO-TV report on it.

The next best Washington small city on the list is Bellevue at #40.

The snapshot for Bellevue mentions, “Traffic into Seattle is a perpetual snarl,” but that “a light-rail line that will connect Bellevue and Seattle is in the works.”

Huh…imagine that. The light rail from Seattle to Bellevue isn’t even built yet. Just having it planned is adding value to Bellevue.

Suck on that, Rob McKenna!

The ordinance that passed last year will officially be the city law on September 1. But the law is only as good as the people working and employing people in Seattle know about it. In that vein, Council Member Bagshaw has a post on her blog with details. Who is and isn’t covered, and what the law actually does. There are also 3 workshops open to the public.

• Tuesday, August 21, 12 noon: North Seattle (Ballard Campus Swedish Medical Center, 5300 Tallman Ave. NW)
• Tuesday, August 28, 5:30 pm: West Seattle (Neighborhood House, 6400 Sylvan Way SW)
• Wednesday, August 29, 3 pm: Capitol Hill (Century Ballroom, 915 E. Pine Street)

– The real solution to streets like this involve engineering: road diets, curb bulbs, striped crosswalks, and/or crossing signals. But for now, I recommend crossing with a camera.

– This is a horrible story, but it did get respectable news organizations to say “Pussy Riot.”

– On the one hand, I don’t care about the Republicans on a junket in the Sea of Galilee boozing it up and skinny dipping. On the other hand, if it were a bunch of Democrats.

– Pro life

– Taylor Bridge fire is 47% contained.

– The ghost of Ayn Rand

There is a lore about Rep. Paul Ryan that goes like this: whether you agree with him or not, he is a principled, thoughtful, fiscal wonk. So if you do disagree with him, you have to at least respect him for his deeply held convictions. He is a True Believer.

It must follow, then, that when Ryan criticizes Obama over the stimulus spending that was used to turn around the catastrophic economic collapse that occurred during the end of the George W. Bush administration, it’s because he studied Keynesian economics in college—and rejected it. It must follow that the young economics major was exposed to many economic theories and philosophies, including those of Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and (*snicker*) Ayn Rand. After much contemplation and fiscal navel gazing, our young hero internalized a passionate distaste for deficit spending, Keynesian stimulus, and “big government” solutions to unemployment.

Oh, sure…we saw a few cracks in the Ryan edifice this past week with the revelations that he actively sought millions in stimulus funding on behalf of his constituents. But that was a constituent services mistake that “should have been handled differently.” Because he’s a busy guy, and that’s just so not Paul Ryan.

The lore is entirely bullshit. Chris Hayes uncovers some video of Rep. Paul Ryan in 2002…when George W. Bush was asking Congress for a stimulus package:

Paul Ryan’s philosophy on stimulus spending is entirely this: If a Democratic President asks, I am vehemently against it. If a Republican President asks, I am passionately for it.

This is pretty much the same with all of the Congressional Republicans who voted in favor of unfunded wars, Bush’s deficit stimulus spending during a mild recession, not to mention record-breaking deficit spending during times of economic stability. These hypocrits, under Obama, turned around and squealed like stuck pigs and writhed in fiscal agony at the thought of deficit spending to avert economic calamity.

Paul Ryan is a fraud. He’s a hypocrite. He is an ordinary, lying Republican politician. He is a political opportunist.

His “principles” amount to gaining power for his political party—even if it means harming America.

This year I will be starting college in France and I am going to France for two reasons. One being that I love France, its language and culture; the other being that I will be paying roughly $400 for my annual tuition without scholarships, grants, loans taken out or federal aid. (And additionally, I am still able to apply for federal aid for my housing). I am not able to go to a respected university in my own country without going into debt for the next few decades. It wasn’t always this way. And it doesn’t have to be.

Since the 1980’s the percentage of the federal budget that has been spent on education has decreased significantly, while the cost of education has skyrocketed and increased more than 5x the rates of inflation.

Some argue that we can’t afford to put more money into public universities. I say that’s a lie. We waste plenty of money into defense spending on weapons we will never use. Some defense spending is of course important, but to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into things we have no need for, or will never use is fiscally irresponsible.

What we can’t afford is committing an entire generation of educated people to the debt sentence. People starting their lives with tens of thousands of dollars in debt will not only severely damage our economy but it will also alienate entire groups of people who are brilliant and have potential that will either never be able to develop it or be struggling too hard to pay back into loans to be able to invest in their dreams.

The tuition costs we have now specifically hinder growth and that is not what education is about and it is not what our country says we’re about either. We say that we are the country of possibilities that anyone who works hard can make their way in the world. So then why am I someone who has worked hard for years needing to leave my country just to have access to a decent education without starting my adulthood in debt? I have stayed in the top 5% rankings in my class in one of the best schools in the country, a National Honor Society Member, took 10 AP classes, 5 honors classes and 5 classes that were considered college in high school classes for which I received college credit. I was a JV athlete in cross-country, a captain and varsity athlete in gymnastics and a varsity athlete in track and field in my high school. Additionally, I have babysat since I was 12 and babysat with an additional job from the time I was 16. And this year, on top of those two jobs, I had an internship with Darcy Burner.

So the fact that I didn’t receive enough scholarships to make school reasonably priced is not based on the fact that I didn’t work hard or didn’t do well in school. For every dollar in scholarships available there are 2 dollars of tuition. In the past, this number was reversed.

This week at a student activism conference, I met some students who have been in the ongoing protests in Quebec. They have had hundreds of thousands of students in the streets protesting and on strike because of the plan to have tuition raised from $2,168 to $3,793 between 2012 and 2017. When an American student at the conference asked, “why are you striking? You have the lowest tuition in Canada.” The Quebecois student responded, “we have the lowest tuition in Canada BECAUSE WE STRIKE.”

So, why are we not all in the streets? We’ve normalized the way in which we deal with tuition and higher education but that doesn’t make it right. We need to fight for our right to an education. As a country we seem to agree with that from elementary school until high school so what makes higher education any different?

We can do better than this. We can fight for our right to education. If not an education that is as cheap as it is in France, at least something that is more manageable for the average citizen.The students of this country need to step up and stand together to fight for access to education without going into debt before it’s too late.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was the Paris location of Jason Bourne’s apartment in the Bourne Identity.

This week’s contest is a location somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

2 Samuel 17:29
Cheese.

Discuss.