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When I see bad, or for that matter good, polls I can’t be too worked up. Of course I prefer the Democrat up, and up by a lot. And of course I’d prefer the generic ballot look better. But I’m not staring into the abyss, because the Democrats aren’t in the same place as the Mariners.

Believe me, as a Mariners fan, I’ve slogged through some terrible seasons without being able to change anything. A few years ago at the end of a bear of a season when Seattle and Texas were long eliminated, I was sitting in the first row of an outfield seat. Right in front of me, a Mariner’s popup came near the warning track, and the Ranger’s right fielder went into a dive for the ball. “I got it, I got it!” I yelled, and the Ranger dropped the ball. While I like to think I made him drop it, the truth is he probably just bobbled it because he was an AAA call up without much Major League experience. That’s the closest I’ve come to changing anything on the field.

But it’s often said that politics isn’t a spectator sport. And this year as every year, I’m not going to just sit and watch. I’ve worked the phones, donated, and knocked on doors for candidates I believe in, and will continue through November.

And that’s where the next few months for the D’s can be a lot better than the next few months for the M’s. There are enough fine candidates that we can all make a difference. I don’t know what the polls show for DelBene, but I’ll be making calls and knocking on doors for her. Same with Patty Murray (the poll Goldy cited earlier aside). Those of you who live south of here can do the same for Heck.

If you aren’t inspired by those people, there are plenty of state and local races and initiative campaigns. If you don’t like to talk to strangers about politics, they can all use money. They can all use letters to the editor. They can all use you mentioning them on Facebook and Twitter. They can all use you talking to friends and putting up yard signs. All of those things will change the facts, and matter more than what you see in polls.

Goldy is on the East Coast and I am at a family reunion in the Midwest, but please join a friendly group of Seattle-area liberals, progressives, radicals, and commie pinkos tonight for a Tuesday evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. (Talk about a run-on sentence!) We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Some folks will be there even earlier to enjoy dinner before the political fireworks begin.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 286 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Murray 47, Rossi 33? Now that’s the kinda stuff I like to read on the beach.

Yes, those are my toes, wiggling in the warm, white sands of Longport NJ, even as I tap this out on my iPhone. Enjoy the rain currently forecast for Seafair weekend.

Speaking of going negative, Rep. Rick Larsen has a very effective web video up bashing is opponent, John Koster, for his lavish praise of the Tea Party. “The Tea Party Movement, the Patriot Movement to me is one of the most exciting things to happen to this country for a long time,” the video opens with Koster pronouncing, before proceeding to illustrate the teabaggers’ legacy of racism, stupidity, hate.

Just as disturbing is Koster’s praise of “the Patriot Movement,” long known for its white supremacist and anti-semitic rhetoric, and its close ties to the right-wing militia movement. Either Koster doesn’t really know what the Patriot Movement is, or more frightening… he does.

UPDATE:
Eli Sanders at The Stranger notes that “Patty Murray Goes Negative“…

Not surprising, given that the Dino Rossi campaign (and its allies) have been hitting her for some time.

Yeah, but also not surprising considering that going negative is exactly the right strategy in this particular electoral cycle, and that Murray, smart politician that she is, has never shied away from going negative in the past.

I’m writing this post from the new SoDo office of the Cannabis Defense Coalition. The CDC recently moved from its old office in South Park up to this new location right next to Showbox SoDo. The inside of this place needs a ton of work, but folks in the organization are thrilled to be moving into a more visible location within the city.

Tomorrow night, the CDC is planning to take part in the Seattle Police Department’s Night Out with their own gathering behind the office along Occidental, just south of Safeco Field (the M’s play Texas at 7:10pm).

I’m in Philly this morning, preparing to drive down to the Jersey shore, so don’t expect much from me in the way of posting today. I’ve been working on a monster post on the future of newspapers — a very simple thesis that’s extremely complicated to explain — but I just can’t seem to get it right, so… maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, just thought I’d give folks a heads up.

Time to vote on July’s “Golden Goat”

Last week’s contest was a tough one, but it was eventually won by mlc1us. It was Tiffany’s Cocktails in San Antonio, TX, where “Big Mexican Women” are allegedly (according to Fox News) helping Afghan soldiers who are here to learn English go AWOL from nearby Lackland Air Force Base.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Revelation 13:1-2

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

Discuss.

So my daughter and I flew east today for our annual summer trip to the Jersey shore with my family. (For my daughter it’s a vacation, for me it’s, well, visiting family.)

At the time we booked the flight we couldn’t get two seats together; the best we could get were two middle seats one in front of the other. Not too much of a concern though, as this has happened before, and seats generally open up 24-hours before departure. And sure enough, when I went to check in online, there was an open aisle seat next to my daughter.

But rather than trying to accommodate a father and daughter flying together, fuckin’ US Airways insisted instead on charging me an extra $15 to upgrade to a “Choice Seat.”

You know, it’s not really the money that pisses me off. In the end, it’s never really the money; I mean, it’s only fifteen bucks. In fact, I wouldn’t even mind paying a little more to fly if I knew I was getting better service and a well-maintained plane. But this endless nickel and diming is just so goddamn irritating and insulting. You spend hundreds of dollars a ticket to fly, and then they want to charge you extra to sit next to each other? Fuck that. I mean, really.

The airlines may be raking in millions on these extra fees, but they’re sure as hell losing money on me. Because I simply loathe forking over money to companies who treat me like crap, I now fly maybe half as much as I used to, and considering they fly the only nonstop from Seattle to Philly, it’s mostly coming out of US Airway’s pocket. This year alone I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger on tickets for my daughter and I to visit my mother in Florida, or to come in to Philly for my 25th college reunion. That’s four tickets in only a few months that US Airways didn’t sell, not because it cost too much, but because their whole customer experience sucks.

But, you know, they’re the experts, so who am I to tell them how to run their business?

UPDATE:
Yes, I know, my daughter and I arrived at our destination safely, and that’s all that really matters. But honestly, how many other legal products or services do we consume, where the most commonly accepted measure of customer satisfaction is not dying? Could we set the bar any lower?

I’ve recently gotten into Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio, Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic’s sports-talk morning show. Now that I’m driving into work every day, it’s been my regular morning listen in the car. Earlier this week, they were discussing the report about the health violations at America’s sports venues. Greenberg was bothered by it, but Golic, their in-studio guest, and the vast majority of people writing emails into the show were largely ambivalent. Most people had the attitude that they’d rather not know what goes on on the other side of that counter. As long as the nachos taste ok, it doesn’t matter if there’d been rat feces in the box or if the employees didn’t wash their hands.

After listening to it, it made me realize that there’s an interesting parallel between that and how Americans in general have reacted to two far bigger news stories. The first was the Washington Post’s impressive expose of America’s bloated and disorganized intelligence bureaucracy that’s developed since 9/11. The second was the revealing of tens of thousands of secret documents on the progress of the war in Afghanistan.

Both of these stories are of huge importance. America’s expanding intelligence bureaucracy has no oversight, no organization, and is so unwieldy it does more to keep us from identifying and stopping actual terrorist threats than it does to actually stop them. The war in Afghanistan has been nothing but an unmitigated disaster for a number of years. It has no clear goal, no clear path to any improvement, and no easy way for us to get ourselves out without leaving behind a terrible situation.

But by and large, Americans shrugged off both stories. No one marched on the Capitol demanding that we stop wasting so much money on our various intelligence gathering operations. And Congressmen and Congresswomen who will mostly be re-elected in November dutifully voted to continue funding our occupation of Afghanistan, despite the fact that the public was reminded yet again that elements within Pakistan’s own intelligence services are actively supporting our enemy; and that the longer we stay there and keep killing civilians, the more we destabilize the region and minimize our influence.

Both of these stories (and the administration’s attempts to lash out at Wikileaks for releasing the documents) are certainly part of a pattern. The government, in its publicly stated desire to give Americans security, are doing so – whether foolishly or disingenuously – by following a totalitarian impulse. By believing that the normal mechanisms that restrain governments are a threat in and of themselves, we’ve allowed ourselves to go down a path towards an environment where government can’t be restrained at all. Students of history and those who’ve lived in other parts of the world understand the value of resisting this, but America still unfortunately has too many people who are neither.

As a result, we’ve reacted to these stories with a shrug and a “why should I care?” To a great extent, we’ve lost something that used to be central to American culture. The world has become so small and our view of its many complexities so all-encompassing, that far too many of us have become believers in predestination over free will. The idea that we have the power to affect changes has given way to a belief that we have no real control over the vast array of forces around us. The only thing that seems to trigger the opposite impulse is a terrorist attack or anything else that might kill us. That gets us off the couch and screaming for action, but it’s still not enough to get us angry when that action isn’t the right one. We’ve conceded our ability to control anything less than blindly allowing our government to do whatever it wants when it comes to fighting terrorism.

And that’s creating a major distortion in our ability to deal with what actually threatens us. The way that we’re responding to terrorism – by wasting trillions of dollars on futile wars and on vast government bureaucracies that inefficiently gobble up all of our communications – will actually harm us far more than any unstable religious fanatic with a grudge against American foreign policy ever will. And of course, the more American foreign policy follows a totalitarian mindset without Americans giving a fuck, the more unstable religious fanatics there will be with a grudge against our foreign policy. The money spent on that never worries us in the same way that money spent on safety regulations or infrastructure or education worries us. Even though that’s the kind of stuff that’s far more likely to affect us.

But as long as the nachos don’t kill us, we’ll keep buying them.

(And there are links to some 40 more media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

Dino Rossi is holding another one of his last minute, barely publicized, “underground” meet-ups this weekend, and if any of my HA regulars would like to politely attend, maybe make a small donation to Dr. Coday to assuage suspicions, and surreptitiously record the events, I’d love to have some audio or video.  Here’s the invite:

Dear PSCU Members,

If you were part of “Art’s Army” this past spring and supported Dr. Coday’s bid for the Senate, he could now use your support in his campaign for State Representative. Even if you don’t live in the 32nd District, helping to elect Dr. Coday will benefit all conservatives. (His Democrat opponent supports a state income tax!) Bringing a principled, common sense conservative to Olympia, with the bonus of someone who has first hand experience in Medicare and Medicaid, will be a welcome change.

The Kickoff Event for Art Coday’s State Representative campaign is on Sunday, August 1, at 5:30 pm at the Hess family’s home in Kenmore.

Senate candidate Dino Rossi will be there as will conservative talk show host Kirby Wilbur, both to talk about Art’s campaign and the need for conservatives to be elected this November so they can make positive changes both in Olympia and Washington DC.

This Kickoff Event will include a great BBQ meal for the family!

Donations to Dr. Coday’s campaign are encouraged, so please remember to bring your checkbook with you. If you want to meet Dino, meet Kirby, and support Art, please RSVP here:

http://www.meetup.com/PugetSoundConservativeUnderground/calendar/14164105/

or directly with Dr. Coday’s campaign by emailing: info@artcoday.com

They may ask folks to take the batteries out of their cameras and cell phones, so hide an extra recording device in your underpants or something. Be creative. And be sure to play the part of a teabagger and ask whether he supports some of their issues. I mean, the public deserves to know what he’s saying in private, right?

And again, be polite and well behaved, even if they’re not; we don’t want to disrupt their events any more than we want them to disrupt ours. And if your hosts are unfriendly, try to record that too.

UPDATE:
Oh… and if you do go, on your way out, say hi to Kirby for me.