Search Results for: drinking liberally

There’s lots of news besides the McGavick lawsuit to talk about….

• Catch Richard Wright on KUOW (94.9 FM) this morning
• A former Bush White House policy adviser will plead guilty to theft
• Examine this progress report on the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Man…and Wingnuts complain about WSDOT!
• A Reichert ad with a veracity “issue” gets fixed
• Kansas science education isn’t in Kansas anymore
• I-Seattle Times (a.k.a. I-920) qualifies for the ballot
• (not) Breaking News: The President’s ignorance is dangerous
• In Pennsylvania, the Green Party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party
• The dot-blog bubble bursts: Washington State Political Report folds
• Remember the collective gasp (followed by a reluctant sigh of relief) when we learned that Dick Cheney boldly ordered United Flight 93 to be shot down if necessary? It was a total fucking lie! Listen to the NORAD recordings for yourself
• In related news, the 9/11 commission felt deceived by the Pentagon (hat tip: Upper Left)
• My excellent adventure with Willy J.
• Andrew at NPI has a pile of other news

Update: This week’s Podcasting Liberally was hosted by Will with guests Mollie, Gavin, Nick, and Carl. The 57:06, 39.4 MB show is available here (mp3). The show was recorded at Seattle’s Drinking Liberally and produced by Confab creators Gavin and Richard.

Today is a day full of accomplishments for Goldy. The only problem is, he is largely unplugged and off in the boondocks somewhere trying to vacation or something.

First, he has the distinction of appearing in two pieces in the Seattle Weekly today. The Weekly came out with their Best of Seattle issue, and it looks like, once again, HorsesAss has been voted the Best Local Blog.

David Goldstein’s HORSESASS.ORG blog is the one you like best, presumably because it is reliably liberal, ruthless, and funny. Goldstein also helps host and promote the local Drinking Liberally club gatherings at the Montlake Alehouse, where pols and wonks make regular appearances. Those events are recorded and disseminated via podcast. And this year, Goldstein expanded his liberal empire to the airwaves of KIRO-AM (710), where he holds forth Sunday evenings.

“Liberal empire.” Cool!

Last year, Goldy ran something of a campaign to win the honor. This year, however, I didn’t hear a peep out of Mr. Goldstein about it.

I noticed that Tim Eyman was voted Best Fish Market this year. Oh…wait… that was Best activist/hell-raiser. WTF? I guess voting took place before the I-917 debacle. Feel the love:

TIM EYMAN? You voted for Tim Eyman? The washed-up, citizens-initiative-addicted watch salesman whose obsession with monkey-wrenching worthy public spending knows no bounds? The guy who recently delivered petitions in Olympia wearing a Buzz Lightyear costume? This is some sort of counterintuitive subliminal message you’re sending, right?

Given his spectacular string of failures lately, I suspect this will be Tim’s last “activist award” for awhile. Well…unless he uses The Force….

Speaking of Hell Raisers! Goldy also made the front page of the Weekly online edition for another reason:

Democratic activist, blogger, and KIRO-AM radio host David Goldstein confirms that he played a role in the lawsuit filed on Tues., Aug. 1, against Republican U.S. Senate candidate and former Safeco CEO Mike McGavick. KING-5’s Robert Mak first reported that Goldstein had provided a crucial nexus in the lawsuit.

Wow…Goldy is now a “crucial nexus!”

David Postman at the Seattle Times follows the story up with some incredible journalism!

(Speaking of Postman, he was awarded the Weekly’s Critics’ Pick for Best Mainstream-Media Blog. Congratulations!)

Back to Goldy. If all that isn’t enough, I noticed today that sometime within the last 24 hours, HorsesAss had its millionth visitor (937,000 tallied visitors plus an estimated 63,000 before Sitemeter was installed).

Man…you guys really do like Goldy!

I can’t stand the heat so I’m getting into a cool, air-conditioned studio tonight on “The David Goldstein Show” — Newsradio 710-KIRO, from 7PM to 10PM. Here’s the line-up, but as always, things could change depending on breaking news and guest availability.

7PM: Hot enough for you? Sure feels like global warming. Is modern society to blame for our massive carbon emissions? Or perhaps “God has already started punishing us” for abandoning his ways? We’re gonna talk about the weather… and if that doesn’t get folks hot underneath the collar, perhaps we’ll spend a little time talking about the escalating war in Lebanon.

8PM: Is our democracy being undermined by greedy corporate interests? Political strategist, journalist and blogger David Sirota joins me to discuss his bestselling book HOSTILE TAKEOVER: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government — And How We take It Back. Sirota has served as a press secretary for Rep. Bernie Sanders, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and as a senior strategist to Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana. He is a frequent contributor to several national publications and a twice-weekly guest on The Al Franken Show. Sirota will be speaking and signing books Thursday, July 27, 7:30 PM at Seattle’s Town Hall.

9PM: Has the Republican Party abandoned its libertarian base? Are small “l” libertarians abandoning the Republican Party? Joining me to answer that question is local blogger Lee Rosenberg (Blog Reload,) a self-described libertarian and the co-host of the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Huh? How can he be both? In a lengthy and oddly titled post, Lee explores the inherent contradictions of economic libertarian absolutism, and describes how an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party is driving social libertarians to support Democrats. Also, be sure to check out Glenn Greenwald’s controversial post: Libertarians and the Republican Party — Irreconcilable Differences.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

…Of course, that goes without saying. We all know I need help, and recognizing this is the first step towards recovery.

Specifically, what I need is some technical help.

Like many of you, I’m sick and tired of my own comment threads. Sure, they can be amusing at times, and certainly the trolls contributed to HA’s early success (inadvertently) in their own weird way. But I work hard on many of my posts, and once in a while I’d like to generate a little substantive discussion. It would also be awfully nice to finally expand some of the functionality on HA to enable user “diaries” or something like that.

But I just don’t have the time or the money to get to where I want to go.

Perhaps I just need some help to complete the final 10 percent of the transition to SoapBlox I started in February? Or maybe something like CivicSpace would be a better solution? Or maybe I should go all the way to Scoop? Or maybe there’s some other better solution out there I haven’t even heard of?

Anyway, if you want to play a role in moving HA to v2.0 (and by that I mean do a lot of work for no money,) please drop me an email or show up at Drinking Liberally sometime and let’s chat. I can’t pay you, but I can barter you some valuable promotional space on one of the most widely read local liberal blogs in the nation.

(Oh… and if you’re a top-notch graphic designer, I could probably use some help in that department too.)

Looks like a pretty typical piece of campaign literature, huh? An oversized, glossy, folded pamphlet touting Rep. Dave Reichert’s reelection.

Only it’s not a piece of campaign literature, it’s a piece of congressional franking, paid for with our taxpayer dollars, and a clear violation of the spirit of the franking rules, if not the law itself. Oh… and it’s only one of six such mailings Reichert’s office has recently sent to voters.

Indeed, Reichert’s mailings have been raising eyebrows and filling mailboxes for months. At last night’s Drinking Liberally an experienced campaign staffer actually laughed when he saw the congressional seal on the pamphlet, while another knowledgeable politico rolled his eyes in disbelief. And this morning I corresponded with a longtime Republican consultant who confided that there’s a pretty blurry line between what is or is not a legitimate use of franking privilege, but that this one “crosses it by a mile.”

But it’s not just the content of Reichert’s mailings that pushes the limits of the franking rules. House members are prohibited from franking mass mailings to constituents within 90 days before an election; with a September 19 primary date, that means the last day this latest mailing should have been postmarked was Tuesday, June 20th. Yet this latest flyer didn’t start hitting mailboxes until Monday, June 26th.

Of course, presorted standard mailings like this can take over a week to go cross country, but since the cost is distance sensitive and the mailing was likely produced by local consultant Bruce Boram, chances are it was printed locally and mailed from the USPS’s Seattle Bulk Mail Center.

So the question is… when did this mailing drop? If it actually went out after June 20th, then Reichert broke the franking rules. Not exactly the kind of disregard for the law you’d expect from an ex-sheriff.

An Inconvenient Truth opens in Seattle today at Pacific Place and the Guild 45th. I’m going to the 8:40 show tonight at Pacific Place, and a bunch of Drinking Liberally folk are going to the 8:40 show on Saturday.

You must see this movie this weekend. Big crowds will assure wider release.

It looks like the Seattle P-I has been Drinking Liberally:

“It’s the physical manifestation of the blogosphere,” Goldstein, 43, said. “It has allowed us to establish friendships and relationships with people that we couldn’t do otherwise.”

Once again, that David Goldstein guy really knows what he’s talking about.

The momentum continues to build for Darcy Burner in WA’s 8th Congressional District, with the announcement today that she has become the newest national “Netroots Endorsed” candidate. This is a huge accomplishment that will lead to national attention, and tens of thousands of dollars pouring in from online activists throughout the nation.

A couple weeks ago the national blogs Swing State Project, MyDD, and Daily Kos asked their readers for nominations — kind of like a national, online primary — and Burner won. As Matt Stoller wrote over on MyDD:

The next netroots candidate is Darcy Burner in Washington’s eighth Congressional district.  The district is trending blue, and Burner is incredibly smart and a natural camapigner going against vulnerable incumbent David Reichert.  She is also young (35) and web-savvy, having worked at Microsoft, and these traits will serve her well in a House that is desperately in need of new blood.  She has promised, for instance, to post on her Congressional web site a list of all meetings with lobbyists by her or any staff member, which is a fundamentally new approach to governance.

The Washington State blog community is one of the more mature blogging communities out there.  They don’t fall lightly for a candidate, so seeing this kind of note on the exceptional Horse’s Ass is quite meaningful.

I personally have known Burner for nearly a year, yet I didn’t start actively promoting her campaign until February, after I became absolutely convinced that she was not only a candidate who could win, but who would well serve the interests of the 8th district and the citizens of WA state. During that time I’ve watched her grow from just another passionate Camp Wellstone classmate, into a compelling campaigner and a formidable fundraiser. And the more I learned about her personal story, the more I became convinced that she was the perfect candidate to represent the demographically diverse 8th district.

Burner regularly attends Drinking Liberally, and was at the Pacific NW Progressive Bloggers Conference.  Her diaries at Kos are here.  She’s got a good shot to win this district, and she is part of a new wave of internet candidates who know what it takes to win and know what democracy really can mean.

Aww, gee… Matt called HA “exceptional”. But as much as I’d like this to be about me, it’s not. This is about Burner, the entire local progressive blogosphere (Andrew at NPI should be thrilled,) and the respect we’ve earned from the national netroots. But most of all it’s about the incredible support we receive daily from our readers; if you didn’t read us, nobody else would, and in the end our strength comes from our numbers.

So go check out Burner sitting at the top of the “Netroots Endorsed” page on ActBlue, and show her some love.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos fame reports from his “Crashing the Gate” book tour, and recaps for his readers some of the “local buzz” he’s picking up along the way. First stop, WA-08:

Darcy Burner is taking on freshman Republican Dave Reichert in WA-08. She will report numbers of over $300K for Q1, which is impressive. But more so than that, the Washington state blogosphere helped her raise over $90K online in the closing hours of the fundraising quarter without any national buzz. That’s not Daily Kos or Atrios, that’s the local bloggers, and $90K is more than what we “big boys” can usually raise. If that’s not a sign of the growing power and influence of the local blogs, I’m not sure what is.

I think perhaps more than any other race, WA-08 has the potential for being a true testing ground for some of the strategic rethinking Markos and co-author Jerome Armstrong propose in Crashing the Gate. We have a smart, energetic candidate in Darcy Burner, well matched to a district that should be “swing,” but which hasn’t swung into the Democratic column since, well… forever. She is also a candidate that has recognized and embraced the power of the netroots since well before declaring her candidacy.

But equally important, Washington state has quickly evolved some of the most influential and mature local netroots in the nation… a loose coalition of bloggers who have enthusiastically embraced Burner in return. Unlike the high-profile candidacy of say, Paul Hackett, where national netroots raised gobs of money for his Ohio campaign, it was local bloggers who jumped on the Burner bandwagon early, helping to push up both her fundraising totals and her profile — and with zero national support.

Andrew Villeneuve at NPI has been in the Burner camp since day one (almost from the day we first met her at Camp Wellstone,) advising her campaign and personally introducing her to his fellow bloggers. While I waited for the field to shake out before publicly endorsing her, I’d been in regular contact with the Burner campaign for months.

And the relationship has always been two-way: Burner not only actively sought our support, she also welcomed our input and advice. Burner and her staff trust us… and that trust has been returned in spades. When Burner stopped by Drinking Liberally last week to thank the netroots for helping her blow past her fundraising targets, she knew she wasn’t going to garner any new votes — hell, most of us don’t even live in her district. I’m guessing that part of the reason she stopped by was simply to share in the genuine excitement and enthusiasm of a gathering that was about as close as you can come to an election night victory party… seven months prior to the election.

Burner came to this campaign as a political outsider, a designation proven once again in yesterday’s Washington Post, which described her as a “third tier” candidate, citing the Democrats’ failure to recruit a stronger challenger. In fact, the Democrats didn’t recruit her at all. Nearly a year ago Burner told me she was running because she was absolutely convinced that, conventional wisdom be damned, she was the perfect candidate to represent the 8th District, and since then, she’s managed to convince an awful lot of other people, including me.

Would State Rep. Ross Hunter have brought more name recognition, money, and experience into the race? Absolutely. But I sincerely doubt that an establishment Democrat like Hunter could have garnered the kind of genuine grassroots excitement that Burner has generated over the past few months. Burner is for real, not because the consultants and power brokers say she’s for real, but because she has managed to prove herself to the grassroots, the netroots, and the party leadership.

Of course, with her early success comes risks. One of the things that Markos and Jerome rail against is the way the national party steps into local campaigns, bringing in their establishment consultants, and demanding the same-old losing strategies. This not only ignores and devalues the unique insight of local political talent, it stunts their development… and judging by the Democrats near permanent minority party status at the federal level, it doesn’t seem to be working.

But if the national party should respect local perspective and talent then the same should hold true for the netroots, and just as Burner has proven herself to the DCCC, so too have our local netroots proven to our national counterparts our ability to generate buzz and money beyond all expectations. We know the district. We know the candidates. We know the muck that’s going to make Reichert’s reelection a muddy row to hoe. So when we ask that Burner be “netroots edorsed” — with all the money, support, and attention that will bring — we ask the national netroots to trust our local judgement.

Burner has quickly gone from unknown, political neophyte to the cover of Roll Call, and while she and her campaign deserve most of the credit, I don’t believe she could have done it without the enthusiastic support of local bloggers. Now it’s time to help Burner move to the next level, and we simply can’t do it without a little national support.

Markos also saw fit to comment on Sen. Maria Cantwell… and it wasn’t so glowing. Tomorrow I’ll talk about the opposition Sen. Cantwell faces from local Democratic activists and what impact this could have on the entire Democratic ticket.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos fame, and his co-author Jerome Armstrong of MyDD will be in town this week promoting their new book, “Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People Powered Politics.”

Please join me tonight in welcoming Markos and Jerome to Seattle:

Friday, April 7th, 7:00 p.m.
Seattle Labor Temple
2800 1st Ave, Hall 1
Seattle

There will be a discussion, Q&A, and book signing, open to the general public and the media. Think of it as a very special edition of Drinking Liberally… but without the drinking. (Though expect there will be some of that afterwards.)

If you can’t make it tonight, there will be to more opportunities tomorrow (Saturday, April 8th) to meet the authors:

11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Marymoor Park
6046 West Lake Sammamish Pkwy NE
Redmond

7:00 p.m.
Orca Books
509 E 4th Ave
Olympia

Again, all the events are open to the public, no reservations needed, so please come out and show your support for Markos and Jerome, and the tremendous work they are doing in building the netroots and transforming the Democratic Party.

NOTE:
I’m out playing the role of “publicity flak for a day,” so consider this one and only post an open thread. There will be media availability at all three events, so if you are a journalist looking for some one-on-one, please contact me, or just show up and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.

Oh man… there’s so much to talk about:

• The Seattle Weekly’s Geov Parrish on Aaron Dixon’s voting record: “Totally clean — nonexistent. His driving record, not so clean.”
• The Seattle Times on the Burner buzz: “Dems’ hopes rise in 8th, along with rookie’s fortunes”
• The Stranger’s Cienna Madrid on Darcy Burner’s fundraising prowess: “I would have built a fort of money and then had sex in it.”
• Carl Ballard on Darcy Burner at Drinking Liberally: “What Cienna said except without the sex in a fort made of money.”

8th Congressional District candidate Darcy Burner blew past her fundraising targets with an impressive surge during the final few days of the first-quarter reporting period.

Burner will report over $536,000 raised thus far, $320,000 in the last quarter. More important, her $355,000 in cash-on-hand comfortably beat the threshold required to qualify for $250,000 from the DCCC’s Red-to-Blue program.

But perhaps most impressive was the way in which she exceeded her targets, raising over $150,000 in the last ten days, and an astounding $90,000 in the final 48 hours of the quarter.

The campaign credits much of this fundraising surge to the grassroots support Burner received from local bloggers, and if that’s true, we not only helped her campaign reach “the next level” as campaign manager Zach Silk told The Stranger, but such an impact would suggest that the local progressive blogosphere has reached the next level itself.

We’ve got a competitive race, my friends. More later….

In the meantime, stop by Drinking Liberally tonight and meet the candidate herself; 8pm, Montlake Alehouse, 2307 24th Avenue E.

The final numbers aren’t tallied yet, but the last I heard from the campaign was that Darcy Burner expects to exceed her fundraising target for the March 31 reporting deadline. The DCCC had set her a goal of $320,000 cash on hand by the end of the quarter, and by beating it, Burner becomes eligible for $250,000 in new funds from the national Dems.

For those who understand how the DCCC functions, this is big, big news, and DC insiders tell me that Burner has raised quite a few eyebrows with her fundraising prowess and grassroots support. For example, Burner has raised over $130,000 during the last ten days alone, with the overwhelming majority of her contributions thus far coming from individual donors.

I am particularly gratified by the support shown by my own readers. I routinely tell candidates that blogs are a crappy means of achieving any kind of call to action, so don’t expect us to raise you any money… and so when I started attempting exactly that just a few days ago, my expectations were low.

And yet over the past week 32 HA readers have donated $1,176.33 through my Act Blue link, with several others telling me they have contributed directly to the campaign. I thank you all for your generosity, and for your willingness to get involved this early in the election year.

Burner is also grateful for all the support shown on all the local blogs, and will be dropping by Drinking Liberally this coming Tuesday to thank you all personally. This will be a great opportunity to raise a toast to the next congressperson from Washington’s 8th Congressional District. I hope to see you all there.

UPDATE:
I keep getting emails and comments from readers saying they contributed directly through Burner’s campaign web site. Perhaps I should rethink my assumption that blogs aren’t much good at raising money?

Two of my favorite bloggers, Carla of Preemptive Karma and TJ of Also Also, have joined forces on a new Oregon-focused political blog: Loaded Orygun.

Despite being out-of-staters, Carla and TJ became lynchpins of the progressive blogosphere’s response to Dino Rossi’s ill-fated, ill-intentioned election contest, joining me in refuting the many lies, errors, and deceitful “analyses” coming from the conspiracy theorists over at (un)Sound Politics. Carla made an impact early, dismantling the GOP/BIAW claim that overseas military personnel were disenfranchised. (In fact, they voted at higher rates in King County than regular absentee voters.) And both played a crucial role in picking apart our friend Stefan’s faulty thesis on reconciliation discrepancies.

While HA may have garnered much of the attention, Carla and TJ did much of the hard work.

But more than just being smart, passionate, hardworking, advocacy journalists (yes, that’s right… what they do really deserves to be called journalism,) they are also kindred spirits. Um… to me. In fact Carla and I got along so well at the recent NW progressive blogger conference, that they had to separate us to keep us from disrupting the rest of the class.

I’m usually pretty damn slow adding new blogs to my blogroll, but Loaded Orygun deserves instant recognition. If you want smart, entertaining, informative coverage of Oregon politics, that’s a good place to start.

UPDATE:
As noted on Loaded Orygun, the Portland Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight, 7pm, at The Lucky Lab brew pub, SE Hawthorne in Portland.

Last week I wrote that Dwight Pelz had the inside track on being the Democrats’ new state party chair, but now that former state senator/supreme court justice/gubernatorial candidate Phil Talmadge has entered the fray, I hear it could be a horse race. Already the landscape has changed, with former King County Democratic chair Greg Rodriguez withdrawing from the competition.

I like Greg. I don’t feel particularly qualified to pick a party chair, but I’m sorry to see his voice lost from the debate. In a letter to supporters Greg said his decision to withdraw was mostly due to family matters, but he also sounded more than a bit disappointed by the tone of the politicking against him. I’d heard the questions about his fundraising prowess, but nothing more personal than that. But then, appearances to the contrary, I’m not much of a party insider, so who knows what’s been said?

Greg’s letter also contains some suggestions for what he’d like to see from the new chair, and I think they’re worth repeating:

First and foremost we must run our Party in a more business like fashion. We need to provide our Districts and counties with up-to-date and efficient communications, lists and training resources. We must find and hire the most professional people and insist on the utmost levels of ethics and accountability. The thoughts and ideas of the Eboard, Chairs, and caucus leaders should be listened to and acted upon much more than they have been. Decisions should be made collaboratively and not done in back rooms and assumed that everyone will go along with them.

We must improve our voter file and technology presence. It is true we have one of the most advanced systems in the country, but that does not mean we should rest on our laurels. We must utilize the people that have the technological know how and who have offered support to this Party (but have been turned away) to make our system better and more user-friendly. Our website must be translated into Spanish and other languages as well as any printed materials we develop.

We have to pay more attention to our Democrats outside the I-5 corridor. This means in rural and urban places on both sides of the mountains. We will never regain a Democratic stronghold if we write these places off. It will not happen over night, but we must find ways to get our message out, recruit and train candidates, and work with our local County and District organizations to strengthen the Democratic base across this state. In addition, we must utilize all of our caucuses, our friends in labor, choice and peace groups, environment and yes even business to craft and deliver messages appropriate to the different demographics and geographies of the State of Washington .

We need to develop a Party leadership mentoring program and learn how to encourage our youth to take on more positions of leadership. We must end the politics of personal and organizational destruction that occurs even within our own Party. This will get us nowhere and in fact has caused people to leave the Party organizations in this State. While so many of our goals in this Party may be different, we have far more that are the same and should work more and more to find that common ground and assist our rising stars and growing organizations in achieving their fullest potential.

Good points all. That said, I also like both Pelz and Talmadge.

As I’ve previously stated, Pelz can be a bit of an asshole… but he’s our asshole; if local elections were decided by a barroom brawl between party chairs, I’d want Pelz slugging it out for the Dems. As it is, there’s something enticing about the thought of Pelz verbally kicking Chris Vance’s fat tuchus all over the evening news. But maybe that’s not the chair’s primary role.

I understand that Talmadge can be a bit of an asshole too (again, in a good way), but mostly, I like him because he’s smart. In fact, last night at Drinking Liberally there was some discussion as to whether Talmadge was too smart to be chair.

I’m not suggesting that Pelz isn’t smart too, it’s just that Talmadge is all about being smart… and he’s not shy about letting people know it. The couple of times I’ve had the opportunity to talk to him I’ve found him insightful, passionate, and incredibly well informed on a wide variety of issues. But again… maybe that’s not the chair’s primary role.

What do I know? Neither Talmadge nor Pelz might be the best choice for party chair… but either one should be fun to watch in the role.