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A new FOX News poll released on Tuesday shows Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) leading real estate speculator and perennial candidate Dino Rossi (who prefers the GOP Party) by 48% to 47%.

You read it right…Murray leads Rossi in a FOX News poll. The poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters in Washington state on 25th of September.

This is the fifth consecutive poll that has Murray ahead of Rossi, and she has now led in seven of the last nine polls taken over the past two months. Elsewhere I take a closer look at the polls and its implications.

Another Tuesday, another evening of insightful political conversation, confabulation, consultation, and colloquy…under the influence. Please join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Stop by early for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 247 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

I’d originally intended for this post to go to HA, but I’ve written on this subject so many times before, I decided wonkify the readers at Slog:

Indeed, by nearly any meaningful measure, Washington’s state and local governments have been steadily shrinking over most of the past two decades, through both boom times and bust. You wouldn’t know it from reading the papers, but state tax revenue as a percentage of the total economy has fallen from 6.6% in 1995 to about 5.5% today, while per capita state spending in IPD-adjusted dollars fell by 10% over the same period.

And those aren’t numbers you can easily dismiss as mere liberal claptrap. Eventhe conservative Tax Foundation — the same think tank frequently cited by Tim Eyman — reports that our state and local tax burden plunged from 10.4% in 1994 to 8.9% in 2008, dropping Washington from 17th to 35th place nationally in only fifteen short years.

You know… Dems gone wild.

But just so you don’t feel cheated, I saved the recycled graphic above for HA. As always, read the whole thing.

Matt Taibbi has written the most insightful take on the Tea Party movement that I’ve ever seen:

Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it’s going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I’ve concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They’re full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry’s medals and Barack Obama’s Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.

…

The individuals in the Tea Party may come from very different walks of life, but most of them have a few things in common. After nearly a year of talking with Tea Party members from Nevada to New Jersey, I can count on one hand the key elements I expect to hear in nearly every interview. One: Every single one of them was that exceptional Republican who did protest the spending in the Bush years, and not one of them is the hypocrite who only took to the streets when a black Democratic president launched an emergency stimulus program. (“Not me — I was protesting!” is a common exclamation.) Two: Each and every one of them is the only person in America who has ever read the Constitution or watched Schoolhouse Rock. (Here they have guidance from Armey, who explains that the problem with “people who do not cherish America the way we do” is that “they did not read the Federalist Papers.”) Three: They are all furious at the implication that race is a factor in their political views — despite the fact that they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed by reports about how the New Black Panthers want to kill “cracker babies,” support politicians who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to enact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over Charlie Rangel, ACORN and Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Four: In fact, some of their best friends are black! (Reporters in Kentucky invented a game called “White Male Liberty Patriot Bingo,” checking off a box every time a Tea Partier mentions a black friend.) And five: Everyone who disagrees with them is a radical leftist who hates America.

To hammer home these points, Taibbi follows the campaign of Rand Paul, and notes that the Kentucky Senate hopefuls candidacy – and his standing among most Tea Partiers – hasn’t diminished since he began disavowing all the limited government views that initially made him the “Tea Party” candidate.

Given the circumstances it’s hard to imagine they could have done otherwise, but the Tacoma News Tribune endorsed incumbent Democratic state Rep. Dawn Morrell today in her 25th Legislative District race, citing her influence and independence. But they also spent a couple paragraphs taking a whack at Republican nominee Hans Zeiger and his “wacko commentary.”

Zeiger, 25 and working on a graduate degree, doesn’t have enough seasoning or life experience for the Legislature. He also hasn’t put enough years and mileage between him and some wacko Internet commentary he authored all too recently as a college student.

Zeiger’s comments – which included attacks on the Girl Scouts and a suggestion that Baptists worship a dubious deity – should be a cautionary tale for young people accustomed to spouting off on the Web. Diamonds are forever; so are embarrassing rants cached on Google.

Exactly. Old men like me have the right to dismiss far past embarrassments as “youthful indiscretions,” 25-year-old kids like Zeiger, do not.

Try again in a decade, Hans. In the meanwhile, you need to get about to proving you really have moved into the mainstream, instead of just saying it.

Kinda a crappy, generic ad that could pretty much run in any state, with little modification, but does anybody else find it ironic that Dino Rossi is running as political outsider intent on fixing the other Washington, while being almost totally dependent on “independent” expenditures from consummate insiders like Karl Rove?

When the NRSC first started talking up Rossi last spring, I thought part of his appeal was supposed to be his reputation for raising huge gobs of cash. And yet he’s becoming as much of a welfare case as Dave Reichert. Go figure.

The Hillsdale College Collegian, the school newspaper of Hans Zeiger’s alma mater, calls their “favorite son” to task for his long record of bigoted commentary:

If Hans Zeiger’s recent skirmish with liberal blogs can teach us anything, it’s basic common sense: Don’t call the Girl Scouts a feminist training corps and expect to get away with it.

Learning common sense from the liberal blogs. That’s not a bad start.

But too bad the editorial doesn’t stop there, for in attempting to elaborate on the lesson, the author provides an unflattering window into Hillsdale College culture that probably explains an awful lot about Zeiger and his abhorrent views:

Your friends at the table in Saga might think it is okay to make jokes about women needing to know their place. Your professor might jokingly refer to Catholics with a derogatory phrase. And your frat buddies might even crack the occasional racially-charged joke.

At Hillsdale, most students overlook offensive comments like these. But in the future, your coworkers, neighbors and pew-mates may not.

That’s because Hillsdale College –– despite the school’s history of gender equality and racial inclusion –– consists primarily of white Christian conservatives.

Um… so let me get this straight: your professor might “jokingly refer to Catholics with a derogatory phrase,” because Hillsdale College “consists primarily of white Christian conservatives.” So that means… uh… Catholics aren’t Christian?

Coming from an alma mater that was home to the infamous “water buffalo” incident, I can’t imagine students just shrugging off a professor’s anti-Catholic remark, but I guess white Christian conservatives say the darnedest things. Which I also guess is why Zeiger chose Hillsdale College, and why he felt so comfortable routinely disparaging woman, gays, Muslims, Catholics, Unitarians, mainstream Baptists and whoever, during his four years there. He felt right at home.

Of course, a lot of us regret some of the things we did (or didn’t do) in college. For example, I regret not having taken more philosophy courses, while Christine O’Donnell regrets having dabbled in Satanism. But both Christine and I have had a couple decades to maturely muse over our regrets, and reshape ourselves into more philosophical, less Satanic people.

Zeiger on the other hand is only 25, just a few years out of college — and sexist, racist, anti-Papist Hillsdale College at that — and only weeks removed from regretfully pulling down from the Internet huge swaths of his hate speech. So forgive me for not taking his sudden mea culpa at face value.

The piece I taped last week for FOX News is being broadcast today, first at 8:45 AM Pacific on The Strategy Room, airing live at FOXNews.com, and then at 9:20 AM Pacific on the real TV. Best of all, I’m told the clips they used are from me and my good friend, 710-KIRO sports talker Dori Monson. Just like the old days.

UPDATE:
Just saw the clip on The Strategy Room, and out of a 20 minute interview, they showed maybe five or six seconds. But at least that’s better than Dori, who got a second or two, max. But, you know, that’s TV.

Not sure what they’ll show on the TV, but I’m not sure I ever will, as I don’t have cable.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmOyaWaEwNk&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was West Hill, OH, along the PA-OH border.

This is the fourth Sunday of the month, so this location is related to something from the news in September. Good luck!

Genesis 4:13-18

Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,  east of Eden.

Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

Discuss.

I’m pretty sure that I have the exact same right to sign off on things on behalf of the city as Richard Conlin does. Neither of us are members of the city’s executive branch of government. Unlike Conlin, I don’t want a tunnel. Although nobody has asked for my signature on anything, I’m certainly willing to provide it:

So, on behalf of the city, I’ll sign onto any bike path anybody is proposing. Finally complete the Burke Gillman? Don’t mind if I do! A road diet on all roads over 4 lanes? Provide bike lanes and you’ve got me — on behalf of the city — on board.

Hell anybody can do it! Got a project you’d like completed, just sign off on behalf of the city. Feel your neighborhood is being deprived of sidewalks, parks, or other amenities? Just sign off on behalf of the city, and presto!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtNxpn6NltU[/youtube]

I’m kinda busy today on a side project, but over on Slog I’ve posted a rather massive piece I’ve been working over the last few days, in which I ask, is Rep. Dave Reichert brain-damaged?

And I’m not asking it in a snarky, mean-spirited, metaphorical sense. I’m asking it literally, based on medical literature and recent events that suggest that Reichert’s brain may actually be damaged.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Reichert’s hand-sized cerebral blood clot is necessarily an indication of prior brain atrophy or wasting, or that such a severe head injury, untreated as it was for two months, would have certainly caused permanent impairment.

[…] But extended or even permanent impairment is far from out of the question … thus it is not unreasonable to expect that a brain trauma as severe as that described by Reichert, in a man of his age, and untreated for so long, could very well have resulted in some degree of permanent neurological impairment.

You’ll need to read the whole thing for the background, but I ask you, if President Obama had suffered a similar injury, and then gave an interview like the one in the clip above, don’t you think this would be the number one story on talk radio and cable news?

I’m just sayin’.

As we approach the vote on California’s Proposition 19, I’ve been seeing variations of this assertion in a number of places. Here’s David Sirota:

Here’s a fact that even drug policy reform advocates can acknowledge: California’s 2010 ballot initiative to legalize marijuana does, indeed, pose a real threat, as conservative culture warriors insist. But not to public health, as those conservatives claim.

According to most physicians, pot is less toxic — and has more medicinal applications — than a legal and more pervasive drug like alcohol. Whereas alcohol causes hundreds of annual overdose deaths, contributes to untold numbers of illnesses and is a major factor in violent crime, marijuana has never resulted in a fatal overdose and has not been systemically linked to major illness or violent crime.

So this ballot measure is no public health threat. If anything, it would give the millions of citizens who want to use inebriating substances a safer alternative to alcohol. Which, of course, gets to what this ballot initiative really endangers: alcohol industry profits.

Beer distributors believe this to be the case as well. The California Beer and Beverage Distributors, has given $10,000 to defeat the measure. But is it true? Gus Lubin at the Business Insider writes:

Would marijuana legalization really cut into alcohol consumption?

Probably so. The interest group also includes Heineken, which knows from Amsterdam how legalization affects the market.

But the numbers don’t back this up. The WHO statistics on alcohol consumption across European countries don’t show any difference between the Netherlands and other European countries when it comes to alcohol consumption. Nor does it show any marked decrease in alcohol consumption since the Dutch started tolerating marijuana sales in the 1970s. In fact, while alcohol consumption across the entire EU dropped from 1980 to 2003 by 27%, it only dropped by 18% for the same time period in the Netherlands.

Marijuana and alcohol are often compared to each other in order to drive home the parallels between our historical attempts to prohibit each drug. And those comparisons are valid and illuminating. But the drugs themselves aren’t so similar in their effects on users. Marijuana is far more psychoactive than alcohol, but also more safe to consume. Alcohol tends to make people more aggressive and more social, while marijuana tends to make people more passive and less social. As a result, each drug caters to different personalities and different situations. And since marijuana is already widely available to whoever wants it, that segregation of use occurs already. As with the Netherlands, I’d expect that the eventual end of marijuana prohibition won’t have any noticeable effect on the current rates of alcohol consumption.

What it would have an effect on, however, is our prison overcrowding problems.

Dino Rossi has released four TV ads (as opposed to those anti-Murray ads from IE campaigns that flooded the airwaves prior to Labor Day), but his latest is the first not to feature him narrating on camera.

Why? Perhaps because it’s relentlessly negative, and those aren’t the kinda words you want to put in the mouth of the candidate. But perhaps also, focus groups found Rossi a little, I dunno… creepy?

In any case, I never really thought those ads worked. And apparently Rossi’s media strategists agree.