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NPR’s Day to Day has been running an excellent series on autism, and I encourage you to listen to it all, but I was particularly struck by the final episode that ran yesterday afternoon, featuring a mother taking her son to a specialist:  “Autism: Helping Children Connect.”

As a parent, it was heart-wrenching listening to this woman receive the diagnosis that her son did indeed suffer from autism, but even more so listening to her recall how hard it was to concentrate on the doctor’s prescribed course of treatment while worrying how she would pay for this single office visit, let alone a lifetime of intensive therapy.  Just listen to this brief, three minute clip, and try to keep the tears from welling up in your eyes:

[audio:https://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/autism.mp3]

There is a lot at stake in the November election, but perhaps the issue that will have the deepest and most enduring impact on the lives of most American families is that of health care.  Sen. John McCain proposes tax credits to make purchasing private health insurance more affordable, while Sen. Barack Obama promises universal health coverage for all Americans.

No, Sen. Obama’s plan is not the more sweeping single-payer system that many of us would prefer, but it is sweeping nonetheless, bringing all Americans into our health care system, and guaranteeing a minimum level of care.  And yes, we’ve been promised this before, but with a Democratic president and strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, we might have our best chance at real reform in more than 40 years.

The difference between the two health care proposals couldn’t be more stark, and it is a difference rooted in a genuine philosophical disagreement.  Sen. Obama believes that there are some problems that are best addressed by a government working to raise the standard of living for all its citizens, whereas Sen. McCain believes that all our problems—including whether a young, autistic boy gets the therapy he desperately needs—are best addressed by market forces.

Sen. Obama’s plan intends to address the needs of all our families, while Sen. McCain’s plan intends to deliver more of the same… which in the case of this particular mother and her autistic son, means delivering nothing at all.

That’s the reason why Sen. McCain would prefer to talk about pigs and lipstick, rather than actually issues.  Because if the majority of Americans truly understood where he stands on the issues—and what his stance ultimately means for all of us—he wouldn’t stand a chance this November.

The only thing green about the anti-light rail “No on Prop 1” campaign are the greenbacks behind it, mostly coming from the deep pockets of the usual pro-roads/anti-transit suspects:  Kemper Freeman Jr., Mark Baerwaldt and the rest of the choo-choos equal communism crowd.  But according to The Stranger’s Erica C. Barnett, that hasn’t stopped the No campaign from attempting a little astroturffing.

Lacking the Sierra Club’s green gravitas, the anti-Prop. 1 campaign has seized on a little-known, 32-year-old political consultant named Ezra Eickmeyer—a self-proclaimed environmentalist whose list of industrial and business lobbying clients outweighs his thin environmental résumé.

Eickmeyer’s clients include a mining company that’s seeking to ship sand and gravel on barges from the Hood Canal, two septic-system manufacturers, and a Seattle real-estate developer. Although Eickmeyer puts an environmental spin on his choice of clients—for example, he argues that barges produce fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than trucks—numerous lobbyists and environmentalists say they either haven’t heard of Eickmeyer or don’t regard him as an ally. … [E]ven folks like the Master Builders’ Scott Hildebrand are skeptical—he notes, “I don’t know exactly who Ezra is associated with“…

Huh.  I don’t know exactly who Ezra is associated with either, but looking at his Tribe.Net profile (via Google’s cache), perhaps his environmental credentials are a product of his “magickal work”?

I live many paradoxes. I am a feral pagan with 9 acres creating an intentional community. I also am a professional contract lobbyist and political operative. I work for a mixture of corporate, small business, political, and environmental interests. I am a global warming activist and dedicated father and husband. I grew up in a very small town and now live outside an even smaller one where we are beginning to farm. I also travel frequently in a fancy car wearing suits and playing politics. I come from the Libertarian arm of the Democratic Party, meaning that I am a fairly anti-authoritarian liberal (except when it comes to the regulation of business). I have a very deep relationship with the creator/spirit and do a lot of praying and magickal work.

My wife and I are dedicated polyamorous and thinking it would be pretty cool if we met another couple interested in poly family-raising . . .

Yup, you can’t get much more paradoxical than a self-proclaimed “global warming activist” in his “fancy car,” whoring himself out to Kemper Freeman Jr., in an effort to kill our region’s last best chance at expanded clean, electric light rail.

Not that Eickmeyer’s personal life has anything to do with the anti-rail campaign.  But then, neither does environmentalism.

This Dino Rossi TV spot  and this Dino Rossi TV spot criticize Gov. Gregoire for the gas tax.  

For example:

“Our families need a break. But Governor Gregoire made it worse. She raised the gas tax. It’s the highest in the nation. So, you’re paying more for roads. But … the traffic gotten any better?”

But Dino Rossi wants to build more roads too. Here’s his plan.  

And how does his plan pay for roads?  Ta-dah! It’s right there in the footnotes on page 18. He wants to use gas tax money. Specifically, he wants to use $560 million in gas tax money.

I’ve got a call in to the Rossi campaign so they can explain the contradiction between his ads and his spending plan. 

I imagine Rossi would say $560 million is a small percentage of his $15 billion roads expansion plan (which includes building an eight-lane 520.)

That’s true. Although, it certainly doesn’t excuse the double standard. A half-a-billion dollars is a lot of money to be scoffing at on TV while also figuring it into your own spending plan. 

Where’s the rest of the money come from? The biggest portion comes from sales taxes that currently go into the general fund. So, if Rossi doesn’t want to discontinue $900 million worth of general fund programs in the next biennium, he’s going to have to (shhhh) raise taxes.

He’s also planning to take $690 million away from light rail to pay for roads—even though the voters in Pierce, Snohomish, and King County  said the money is for mass transit.

Longtime CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware blows apart McCain’s attempts to claim that the “Surge” was responsible for the drops in violence in Iraq.

The real reason for the reduction was from a willingness to engage in diplomacy with some of our enemies and by bringing insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr into the political process – things that the Bush Administration vehemently refuses to say they do, but are eventually forced to do by circumstance. Yet this fundamental flaw in how both Bush and McCain see the world and how it functions is still seen by many as an asset. America’s standing in the world will continue to diminish until we put people in charge who understand this flaw and work to fix it. This, more than anything, shapes my decision on November 4, and it’s not a tough call. Obama and Biden understand this stuff at a level that McCain, Palin, and the current folks in the White House just don’t reach.

To start, the panel ponders the political Palinolithic era. Is “pathological liar” too strong a phrase? Would an actuary predict a probable Palin presidency? Did Palin add a punch to the post-convention polls? The panel next takes on some Washington state issues, like who is the real Rossi and would the public really respect (or even recognize) him if they knew him? And with the incredible shrinking media, could that even happen? ’Sup with the Supreme Court and I-960? And what’s the (non-) deal with the Boeing strike?

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Executive Director of the Northwest Progressive Institute Andrew Villeneuve , HorsesAss and EFFin’ Unsound’s Carl Ballard and Peace Tree Farm’s blogging pioneer N in Seattle. Oh…they even permitted me a few words.

The show is 54:11, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_sep_9_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting PodcastingLiberally.]

Dad looked ready for space travel lying there in the ICU.

Tubes and wires hooked him up to costly machines precisely recording the metrics of his inevitable and upcoming demise. He didn’t have to do a thing, the robots were taking care of business: collapsing his lungs and filling them up; feeding and watering him; transporting the leftovers through expensive hoses to labs for weighing and measuring.

We had all the information but on his dying day (which stretched achingly to two and a half) we didn’t have Dad. The pain drugs and the impressive medical equipment jammed down his throat prevented him from speaking to us, his gathered family.

What we could do was wipe his brow, hold his hand, and make uncomfortable, one-sided conversations to be answered by the whoosh, whoosh of the breathing machine, the last sound we’d ever hear out of him.

He wasn’t in any pain, they said, but how could we know?

What was important was the letter of the law. And that every last minute of “life” they could get out of him was spent on this earth, and damn everything else. What we had was a familiar piece of meat in suspended animation. It was like a mortuary viewing except he was alive and we knew that only because the lines on the monitor were not flat.

I don’t want to go that way, he’d complained months earlier, get me a gun. No, we cried, the thought sickens us.

My mother wouldn’t allow the legal option depriving him of food and water; the silly woman wouldn’t watch her husband die of starvation and dehydration.

My Dad died a bloodless, soulless death over which he had few choices — dignity wasn’t one of them.

It was somebody else’s death, not his own.

Please vote Yes on I-1000.  It’s the compromise between the not-so-benign neglect of starving someone to death, and the violence of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. It puts dying back in the hands of the dying.

For me, it’s that simple.

[Michael Hood publishes the media blog BlatherWatch.]

Yet another example of Republican values:

A “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” existed in the federal agency that handles royalty payments from oil companies, including sexual encounters between government employees and industry representatives, according to a memorandum released today.

[…] “When confronted by our investigators, none of the employees involved displayed remorse.”

FYI, from news accounts, it is unclear whether the drilling occurred on or off shore.

I just got off a media conference call with Obama Campaign National Director of Latino Vote Temo Figueroa, as well as members of the Washington Latino Vote Project and the newly announced Latinos for Obama Steering Committee, where we were promised an unprecedented Latino outreach program in Washington state between now and the election.

“This election will be determined by the Latino vote,” Figueroa told the participants, predicting that a handful of swing states will be decided by a few thousand votes.  If those states are New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona, I’m guessing Figueroa is exactly right, potentially providing Obama a mountain state swing that could rewrite the electoral map.

As for Washington state, I’m guessing we’re not quite as big a priority, even with the recent SurveyUSA poll showing the presidential race here narrowing to within four points… which is shame because a strong Latino turnout would benefit Democrats up and down the ticket.  So far the Obama campaign has been absent from our airwaves, and I haven’t heard any hint of a TV buy, Latino or otherwise, hitting WA markets anytime soon.

That said, the state Dems’ Latino outreach program is “unprecedented,” consisting of a statewide director, four paid field operatives, plus a Latinos for Obama committee populated with an impressive array of elected officials and other civic leaders.

According to Figueroa, Latinos comprise about 4.1 percent of Washington’s eligible voters (and growing), but as many as 102,000 of these eligible Latinos remain unregistered.  If the Dems can leverage the Obama campaign to dramatically increase both registration and turnout, it won’t just cushion the margin at the top of the ticket and generate longer coattails further down, it could result in a substantial electoral shift for years to come, especially in areas of the state that haven’t been kind to Democrats in recent elections.

We’ll see.

A new poll in the Washington state gubernatorial race has Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party”) leading Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) for the first time since February.

This race is a rematch of the 2004 contest that Gregoire won 133 votes out of 2.8 million votes.

The SurveyUSA poll sampled 658 people. Gregoire received 47.4% support, Rossi received 48.2% support, 2.9% preferred another candidate, and 1.5% were undecided. The poll was taken between the 5th and 7th of September, on the heels of the Republican National Convention that ended on September 4th. The poll’s margin of error is ± 3.9%.

Prior to this poll, Rossi had not held the lead for fifteen consecutive polls, stretching back to late February. One July poll had found the race tied.

Clearly, Rossi’s new lead is well within the margin of error. Even so, the evidence offered by this poll gives Rossi a higher probability of winning. (All statisticians mean by “statistical tie” is that the poll leader’s probability of winning is less than 95%.)

We can empirically determine the probability that either Rossi or Gregoire would win an election held now using a Monte Carlo analysis.

A million simulated elections gives Gregoire 440,892 wins and Rossi 548,161 wins. These results suggest that, if the election were held now, Rossi would have a 55.4% probability of winning and Gregoire would have a 44.6% probability of winning.

Here is the distribution of electoral votes resulting from the simulation.

The poll results could reflect a couple of things. The obvious possibility is that Rossi has benefited from a post-convention bounce. Or maybe a post-convention bump—time will tell. The bounce/bump possibility is supported by the observation that the same poll found the race between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain tightened-up to a narrow 49% to 45% lead for Obama. The previous poll was the August SurveyUSA poll that gave Obama a stronger 51% to 44% lead.

The second possibility is that this is a post Democratic Convention bounce for Rossi. The Rossi campaign ran advertisements that sandwiched Obama’s acceptance speech, offering Rossi’s local version of Obama’s message of change.

This leads one to wonder…Given Rossi’s implicit endorsement of Obama’s theme, will he vote for Obama in November? Don’t bother asking him, though. It’s probably not an issue he wants to talk about.

(Cross posted on Hominid Views.)

Because nothing keeps your family safer than having a gun in the house:

The father of a 4-year-old Cottage Grove boy says his child loaded a bullet into a borrowed gun and accidentally shot himself… Doctors removed the bullet, which had slightly penetrated his skull.

[…]  The gun was unloaded, but the boy found a smaller bullet that was the wrong size, and it still fired when loaded in the gun.

You mean the toddler found a “smaller bullet,” just lying around?  Jesus… doesn’t the boy’s father know that small objects like that can be a choking hazard?

When my daughter was that age, I never let her play with any cartridge smaller than a .308 Winchester.  This father should get a clue.

Amazon.com has a different kind of election tracker up. The online bookseller is tracking red and blue sales, state by state. Pretty interesting and pretty scary–as it’s dominated by red books right now. There are only eight blue or bluish states (including Washington, DC). 

The good news is: I’m not sure political book sales are the best way to capture the zeitgeist. People who buy and read political titles are probably a small segment of the electorate overall, and probably, non-political books and movies and popular TV shows would be better at capturing the mood of the country. Prison Break? The Dark Knight?

However, this is a fascinating project by Amazon.

Washington state is leaning slightly red right now, 51% to 49%. The best-selling title in Washington is Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down.

Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope is trouncing John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers, 77 to 23 nationally.

So I missed the last 18 hours or so of the news cycle doing normal people things. And as we all know missing 18 hours of a news cycle means when you come back there is certain to be something idiotic going on.

Turns out the McCain campaign is throwing another bogus hissy fit, this time because Barack Obama dared to compare McCain’s economic plan to the proverbial pig wearing lipstick. So in the continued effort to define what liberals may or may not say, the GOP is now claiming ownership of hackneyed old sayings. All of this is utterly irrelevant to anything, but that’s by design.

Atrios recently observed:

At this point even Republicans all know it’s full of shit, but they don’t care. It pisses off liberals! And that’s really all they care about.

The blogger tristero, writing at Hullaballoo, proposes that statement be known as “Atrios’s Law.” Tristero makes an important point as well:

Republicans feel no compunction about using racist language – no, not racist code words, racist language – while objecting furiously if Barack Obama warns his audience that they will be doing just that.

Because of the way conservatives constructed the playing field, and no one jumped all over them in time to stop it, liberals aren’t allowed even to use common phrases like “lipstick on a pig” to describe an opponent’s plans. But describing blacks as “uppity” is fair fame.

In the sub-text of the campaign, this kind of stuff is important. Republicans are arrogating to themselves the meaning of the English language itself.

It’s enough to make you want to hit yourself in the head with a hockey™ stick. (Ooops, can’t say “hockey.” Sorry.)

It’s enough to make you feel like we need a new bridge™. (Uh, again, sorry about using a Republican trademarked word. I meant “permanent conveyance built of steel over a body of water.”)

Really, I’m so upset about all this I think Ill drop by church on the way home and pray™. Or not.

Um, maybe I can get a dog. And it would be a pit bull™ of course.

On second thought, maybe I’ll just lie™ around and watch old television shows. I always liked Maverick™.

I suppose, if the American people want Sarah Palin a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency, that’s up to them, but as for me, I’d fear for my liberty should she ever take the reins of our government.

Nazi Germany banned books.  The Soviet Union banned books.  Saudi Arabia bans books.  But a small town American mayor firing a librarian for her lack of political compliance?  You’d think that would be a career killer for anybody trying to climb the political ladder in, you know… a democracy.

KOMO News is the first local news outlet to cover the case of legal medical marijuana patient Robert Dalton. Kitsap County prosecutors are trying to seize his property and send him to jail because they allege he had more plants than was allowed and that he said that he was going to give some of his harvest to other patients. At his trial in Port Orchard today, witnesses will be called in Dalton’s defense.