HorsesAss.Org

If you thought the brutal head stomping of a MoveOn activist outside last night’s U.S. Senate debate in Lexington KY was some sort of random act of mob violence, well, think again. It turns out that the assailant was Tim Profitt, Paul’s now-former Bourbon County Coordinator. And, according to the victim, it appears to have been premeditated as well.

“The Rand Paul campaign knows me and they have expressed their distaste for my work before,” Lauren Valle, 23, told TPM and two other reporters on a conference call this afternoon.

According to Valle, several men surrounded her before Paul arrived at the event in Lexington last night.

“They surrounded me,” she said. “There were about five of them, they started motioning to each other, and they got behind me.”

Valle says her partner, whom she identified as Alex, overheard the men threaten, “we’re here to do crowd control and we might have to take someone out…”

“Rand Paul’s car arrived, and as soon as it did, a couple of them stepped right in front of me and so I stepped off the curb to get around them, back out to the front, and at that point they started grabbing for me and I ran all the way around the car with them in pursuit, and the point at which they see the footage is after I’ve run all the way around the car and am in front of the car and that is when they take me down,” Valle said.

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, the thought that this might have been an unprovoked, premeditated act of physical violence, or the thought that assailants actually believed that a 23-year-old, female MoveOn activist presented enough of a clear and present physical threat to Paul, that they chased her around car, tackled her to the ground, and stomped on her head in self-defense?

Because if they really believe that our mere presence is so dangerous, absolutely anything could happen next.

Attention 41st LD voters: in the state Senate race between Democrat Randy Gordon and Republican Steve Litzow, only one of the two candidates is Jewish. And despite his Jewishy sounding name, it’s not Steve Litzow. Just in case that kinda stuff is important to you.

Now be a mensch, and vote.

If voter fraud is as rampant in Washington state as Republicans like to say it is, then Secretary of State Sam Reed might want to rethink his enforcement priorities.

From: Ammons, Dave
Subject: `Voting service’
To: blatherwatch-mail@yahoo.com
Cc: “Blinn, Katie”, “Handy, Nick”, “Zylstra, Brian”
Date: Monday, October 25, 2010, 11:06 AM

Please take down your blog post on Voting Service. I assume this is satire, but our Elections Division reminds that you could be charged with a crime:

This is illegal:

RCW 29A.84.610 Deceptive, incorrect vote recording.
A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who knowingly:
(1) Deceives any voter in recording his or her vote by providing incorrect or misleading recording information or by providing faulty election equipment or records; or
(2) Records the vote of any voter in a manner other than as designated by the voter.
Such a gross misdemeanor is punishable to the same extent as a gross misdemeanor that is punishable under RCW 9A.20.021.

We are pretty sensitive about talk of ballot selling, etc. And of course the ballot would never be counted, because the signature would not match the one on file for the voter. But attempted vote fraud can be penalized by a prison sentence and a big fine.

If you have any questions, please contact Katie Blinn, assistant director of elections and an attorney, 360-902-4168.

David Ammons
Communications Director
Office of Secretary of State

Um… really Dave? The most pressing threat of voter fraud in Washington state is a satirical blog post lampooning Republicans’ hyperbolic claims of voter fraud in Washington state? For this you send an email threatening legal action?

I don’t doubt Ammons when he writes that his office is “pretty sensitive about talk of ballot selling, etc.,” but he should remember that most if not all of this talk has come in the form of bogus charges from Republicans… charges that can only stem from either a genuine (if loony) belief in massive, endemic, Democratic voter fraud, or from the fact that the accusers are a bunch of cynical, democracy-hating liars. So if Ammons and Reed really believe that intimidating bloggers is the best means of protecting the integrity of our elections system, rather than harassing BlatherWatch, perhaps they should focus their lawyers’ attentions on the vicious, hate-spewing, voter-fraud-conspiracy-spinning, paranoid propagandists at Sound Politics and Orbusmax?

(And again… really Dave? You’re gonna take your cues from a sociopathic, delusional,  wingnut who calls himself “The Orb”…? … A proto-fascist, shooting-spree-waiting-to-happen, who Michael aptly describes as “a rightie blogger whose political agenda requires he not get the joke,” and who ironically considers me “frightening,” “treasonous” and “a danger”…? Really?)

The truth is, elections in Washington state are extraordinarily clean, resulting in only a handful of voter fraud prosecutions, even in the wake of the hotly disputed 2004 gubernatorial election contest. In fact I asked Ammons for an actual count of recent voter fraud cases, and he responded, “None that I’m aware of…”

We do want to be hypervigilant about potential fraud. There is a lot of misinformation out there – urban myths, if you will – that keep roiling in some quarters, including some media outlets.  It’s something our Elections folks take seriously, to the point about not joking about it.  Too many people don’t get the humor and think it’s really possible to do such shenanigans, or worse.

No doubt. But I’m not convinced that pandering to the baseless fears of humorless conspiracy theorists is the best communications strategy.

Indeed, as a sometimes-satirist myself, I’d argue that the best remedy against the slanderous ravings of the likes of Stefan Sharkansky and Jim “The Orb” Walker, is to heap even further ridicule upon them. And in that noble public service, BlatherWatch deserves an official thank you from the Secretary of State for a job well done.

A few thoughts on this latest act of Republican political violence, over at Slog.

There are two separate court dates tomorrow – one in Thurston County (8:45am) and one in Kitsap County (1:30pm) – where controversial medical marijuana prosecutions are occurring. The one in Thurston County involves a wheelchair-bound man with hereditary spastic paraplegia who didn’t get an authorization from a doctor until after his arrest. The one in Kitsap County involves a caregiver whose patient re-sold marijuana to an undercover cop. I know little more about these cases, but will update this post tomorrow with any further updates.

On my way home this evening, I came across a pick-up truck parked on the street in Redmond, towing this trailer:

Without even thinking about, I started glancing around for evidence of a Dino Rossi campaign event….

One of the biggest issues in the race to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Brian Baird in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, is not Social Security privatization per se, but rather, where Republican nominee Jaime Herrera stands on it.

Like most Americans, the vast majority of WA-03 voters oppose Social Security privatization, because they understand the role this crucial program has played over the past 75 years in raising our nation’s elderly out of poverty, and they understand that, if Republican privatization proposals had prevailed, many retirees would have been wiped out by the Bush recession and its resulting stock market collapse. That’s not really up for debate.

But whether Herrera would be a reliable vote for privatization—or whatever Republicans choose to call it next time around—that’s an issue that should weigh heavily on WA-03 voters as they struggle to fill out their ballots during these tough economic times.

Of course, after being pounded on the issue by her Democratic opponent Denny Heck, Herrera now claims that she opposes “privatization.”  But that wasn’t her position at a Republican candidate forum in Lewis County last May, when the moderator bluntly asked the panel:  “Do you believe that Americans should be able to use all or a portion of their Social Security taxes to invest in individually owned retirement accounts, such as a 401-K or an IRA?”

As you can see in the video above, Herrera joins her fellow Republicans in answering “Yes.”

That’s the sorta answer Herrera needed to give to win a primary against an insurgent Tea Party challenger… though now her campaign claims that she merely “misunderstood” the question.

Huh. Really?

“Private accounts” and “privatization” are two ways of describing the same thing, and if Herrera doesn’t understand that, how can voters really trust her to protect Social Security from Wall Street backed “reforms?” Of course, they can’t, which perhaps explains why New York billionaire investor David Koch and his Social-Security-privatization-shilling Americans for Prosperity have already invested big in electing Jaime Herrera?

Anybody else notice a pattern here?

On October 14, a man was arrested for threatening Patty Murray supporters with a meat cleaver outside a debate in Spokane. Four days later, a man was arrested outside Walla Walla County Republican headquarters for assaulting a young woman who was protesting Dino Rossi, hitting her with “force.” And just a few days ago, a man was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for threatening to kill Sen. Murray.

Which begs the question: if this how the Teahadists are behaving before the election, how the hell are they going to react after Rossi loses?

On the one hand, you gotta give the Seattle Times credit for withdrawing their endorsement of Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders. That’s a tough thing to do.

On the other hand, Sanders has always been a notorious whack-job, so I gotta think the Times editorial board might not have found itself in this unusual and embarrassing situation if it had only based its original endorsement on the candidates’ legal qualifications rather than Sanders’ reliable record of writing anti-government, anti-labor, pro-business opinions.

I’m just sayin’.

When the Republican nominee can’t even draw the endorsement of Eastern Washington’s largest daily, that says something about the candidates.

… the Senate is composed of individual senators, who represent their separate states and the voters who live there. And even a leaner, more efficiently focused federal government will have work to do, and Congress must decide where and how that work gets done.

With her 18 years of seniority, Sen. Patty Murray would be better positioned than Rossi to make sure her constituents are treated fairly in that process.

Shorter Spokesman-Review endorsement: “We like Dino Rossi’s talking points, but we trust Patty Murray to serve the needs of our region.”

So far, Rossi has been endorsed by the Columbian and the Yakima Herald-Republic, while Murray has garnered the endorsement of everybody else. Again, I think that says something.

Last week’s contest was won by uptown, who edged out Steve by only a matter of seconds. It’s was Sterling Heights, MI.

This week’s is related to something in the news from October. Good luck!

Hosea 13:16
The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.

Discuss.

It is one thing for the Seattle Times to miss a story happening in its own backyard; that sorta thing happens all the time these days, what with the devastating newsroom cutbacks suffered industrywide over the past few years. But it’s another thing to fill that gap by credulously running an AP piece that totally mischaracterizes the underlying story, and under the misleading headline “In Washington, illegal immigrants canvassing for Democrats.”

Hear that…? Those dirty Democrats are at it again folks, this time using illegal immigrants to help steal another election. Or at least that’s the spin that’s prompted news outlets to pick up this provocative headline nationwide.

But in reality, that spin couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the real story here, the one which truly deserves the headlines, is the story about how Seattle-based OneAmerica Votes has put together a team of enthusiastic volunteers to canvass immigrant voters throughout Washington state. It is an inspiring story about how our region’s newest Americans have passionately embraced their adopted nation’s grassroots democratic traditions.

Instead, the AP cynically cherry-picks its lede:

When Maria Gianni is knocking on voters’ doors, she’s not bashful about telling people she is in the country illegally.

She knows it’s a risk to advertise this fact to strangers — but it’s one worth taking in what she sees as a crucial election.

The 42-year-old is one of dozens of volunteers — many of them illegal immigrants — canvassing neighborhoods in the Seattle area trying to get naturalized citizens to cast a ballot for candidates like Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who is in a neck-and-neck race with Republican Dino Rossi.

As a writer, I can’t argue with the storytelling; admittedly, that’s a damn compelling lede. But as a journalist, AP reporter Manuel Valdes (or maybe, his editor) has selectively mischaracterized the nature of these outreach efforts, doing both his subjects and his readers a great disservice.

According to director Pramila Jayapal, OneAmerica Votes has recruited a team of over 150 volunteers, only four of whom Valdes interviewed. And of those four only Gianni told the reporter she was undocumented. That’s one out of four out of 150. So I’m not sure where Valdes conjures up the assertion that “many of them” are “illegal.”

“I have my suspicions,” Jayapal told me when asked how many volunteers were undocumented, “but we certainly don’t ask people about their status.” And while she’s “proud” of Gianni for the personal risk she is taking, Jayapal insists that whether it’s one or a handful or a dozen, the media’s focus on undocumented volunteers entirely misses the point.

“The exciting story here,” (and one, by the way, that starkly contradicts the prevailing national narrative), “is that even people who cant vote are energized about this election, because they understand that it’s their future that is at stake.” Indeed, many of OneAmerica Votes’ volunteers can’t vote, not because they are undocumented, or even non-citizens, but because they are simply underage.

“We have an amazing group of high schoolers who are canvassing with us,” Jayapal told me, “who say to me ‘Wow… I just woke up to politics.’ That’s very exciting to watch.”

As are the results. Over the course of this election over 162,000 immigrant voters throughout the state have been contacted by OneAmerica Votes, including over 41,000 homes canvassed by phone and/or at the door by volunteers. That’s a huge chunk of the 230,000 registered immigrant voters who make up over 7.5% of the Washington state electorate.

And far from this being the Democratic GOTV effort the AP headline implies, much of  OneAmerica Votes’ efforts have focused largely on the many initiatives cluttering the November ballot, with the organization translating voter guides into six languages, and inviting proponents and opponents alike to initiative forums in neighborhoods with large immigrant communities. That’s a unique, grassroots voter education effort that should be celebrated, not vilified.

“It’s a shame,” Jayapal lamented. “The way that this whole story has been spun is scary.”

And ironic, especially considering that at the same time the FOX News crowd frets over a 13-year, tax-paying undocumented resident urging her fellow immigrants to exercise a precious right she doesn’t have, our media has for the most part shrugged off as politics as usual the tens of millions of dollars of out of state money pouring in to influence our local elections, many of the contributors undisclosed, and some of them even foreign.

Is it any wonder then that the most intelligent commentary on this latest manufactroversy comes from a satirist, the website Wonkette?

Does this make you feel bad about being a lazy Yuppie/voter? Well it should. Because it’s sort of sad that the only people willing to “get out the vote” are the people who can’t vote and also that these same people are hunted like feral animals by douchey government agents.

In the end, I understand the national media picking up this AP story, and lazily inferring the worst from its misleading headline and selective lede; that’s the way the wire services work.

But the Seattle Times has no such excuse. This is a story unfolding in its own backyard, and they could’ve just as easily picked up the phone and talked to Jayapal as I did. In fact, far from reprinting the AP story unchallenged, as Seattle’s sole surviving daily, and the largest newspaper in the state, I’d argue that the Times has a unique obligation to debunk it, thus setting the record straight.

So yeah, I’d say the Seattle Times owes OneAmerica Votes and our local immigrant communities a followup story… if not an outright apology.

(And there are almost 50 more links to media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)