EFFin' Unsound

You guys, this is real. I didn’t think it was real, but for whatever reason I searched for it at Powell’s again, and there it was. And I just plunked down some hard earned money for it. Expect me to go chapter by chapter through it at some point either here or at HA. It’ll be a while, as there’s a long queue of non shitty books ahead of it, and it hasn’t even shipped yet. But oh my God, I’m so excited.

post by Carl

Pastor Hutch plans to sue the state for teaching evolution. And that’s bound for failure and all, but I’d like to focus on a phrase he keeps using.

Dear Prayer Warrior,

That’s me! How can I go to war?

Put your prayer knee pads on.  I think God is leading me to raise support to sue the state of Washington Board of Education for teaching a known lie, evolution.  Let’s see how we can win this battle and then take it to the federal level.

Seriously, how many sets of knee pads do you think I have?

So, I know this is super mean spirited and all, but I noticed a while ago that Dino Rossi’s last tweet of the campaign said that there would be more information forthcoming. In early November. This is a worse blackout than here recently.

Surely when the campaign worker posted that, they were aware that Patty Murray would probably win. Couldn’t he have done the classy thing and said good things about Patty or the classless thing and somehow blamed the state supreme court?

Erica C. Barnett already picked apart this editorial in The Seattle Times. But I’d like to add a couple things.

Perception about parking is almost as important as the rates themselves. There is no good reason for Seattle to have rates among the highest in the nation, which, at $4 an hour, is exactly what we will have.

If perception is so awful (and matters more than the facts!), why not praise it? Why not talk about the low low prices? And I thought The Seattle Times was for user fees now (um, for small government).

A very good example is Pioneer Square. The latest plan would set rates at $3.50 an hour. Yes, the neighborhood is close to the stadiums, but $3.50 an hour is too high in a place trying to reinvent itself following the loss of Elliott Bay Book Co., which moved to Capitol Hill last year. Do not forget, construction is expected to begin later this year on the deep-bore tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct and that compounds Pioneer Square’s woes.

Remember how you fought to push through the tunnel that McGinn doesn’t want? Now you’re saying he has to keep rates lower because the tunnel will fuck Pioneer Square up? I assume this doesn’t mean we’re seeing a sudden change of heart on the part of The Seattle Times.

And not being able to find parking when there’s a game is somehow not a problem for Pioneer Square businesses?

Post by Carl Ballard

Joni Balter has the kind of inside baseball piece that justifies the existence of local papers. I mean the NY Times and USA Today aren’t going to cover this, and so I’m glad it is being covered. Even if the coverage is poorly written.

Democrats are bungee jumping with joy after learning that the Washington State Republican Party selected, as one Democrat put it, “The Rush Limbaugh of Washington” as its new party chairman.

Bungee jumping with joy? The bungee part seems pretty unnecessary. The rest of the piece doesn’t explain why they would be joyful enough to jump off a cliff, so we’re left with simply a terrible metaphor.

Most Washingtonians, mind you, could not name the chairman of either party and wouldn’t cast a vote in the 2012 governor’s race based on such a thing. The selection of former KVI radio host Kirby Wilbur is very insider-ish, but has ramifications for state Attorney General Rob McKenna, widely considered the Republican front-runner for governor in 2012, and a very promising one.

Rob McKenna is widely considered by the Seattle Times to be liked by The Seattle Times. Anyway, then she points out how it’ll be tough to thread the needle between the activist base and the people who vote.

Should McKenna pander to the Teabaggers and the inevitably nutty platform they’ll put in place, he risks alienating himself from the centrist swing voters every Republican candidate desperately needs to win statewide in WA. But neither can he afford to disillusion the rank and file party faithful manning the all important GOTV campaign. I’d say the smart money is still on McKenna in 2012, but without Esser in place to run interference, those odds certainly just got longer.

Hmm, that’s an interesting if a bit caustic paragraph, Joni Balter. Wait, you know what I did, I accidentally copied and pasted from something Goldy wrote several days earlier.

McKenna is the best GOP candidate in years, but 2012 could bring another Democratic tide of young voters supporting the president. McKenna needs Wilbur to raise money like, well, a newly adjusted Seattle parking meter. If independents and Democrats are to vote for McKenna, it will be because of his moderate demeanor and nuanced stance on issues.

Hmm. Other than a terrible parking meter joke, that’s a pretty similar analysis. Now granted, there are only so many things you can say about the selection of a party chair. If anything, I blame bloggers for being on time instead of several days late to the party.

And frankly, Goldy’s piece had neither the parking meter joke nor the bungee jumping. All it had was good writing and several days advance. Yep, it sure is good The Seattle Times still has opinion writers.

This is about the most perfect paragraph ever by Jim Miller

Pointlessly.  American voters delivered reasonably clear messages to Congress in last November’s election; they want limits put on the national government.  And the voters want Congress to work on the business of the country, not play partisan games.  Democrat Jay Inslee, among others, is unhappy about those messages.   That’s the most likely explanation for the silly obstructionism shown in this video, where Inslee goes on and on, trying to delay the reading of the Constitution.

Yes, the Republicans decided that they were going to start the session wasting time. Jay Inslee decided to point out that the time wasting reading of the Constitution didn’t include some of the difficult bits. JAY INSLEE IS TEH OBSTRUCTIONIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!! QED!!!!!!!

An error happened here before Christmas, where buy viagra and I haven’t been able to fix it, but while I was under the hood, I just installed the latest version of WP, and at least now I can type words so hopefully I’ll get the archives and the rest of the team back. Sorry for where buy viagra the interruption.

I remain an idiot.

Carl out

Post by Carl Ballard

I know this is kind of old, but I find it strange how much praise the Republicans are putting on Gregoire’s budget. Even if they do think it doesn’t go far enough.

OLYMPIA… Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, offered this statement in response to the release of the governor’s proposed biennial budget for 2011-13.

What will these retrograde assholes say?

“It appears the governor has given the Legislature a good place to start. Once we get into the details I expect we will disagree with some of her choices, especially considering the commitment Senate Republicans have made to protect the most vulnerable residents of our state. At the same time, some of what she proposes is what we need to make the state budget sustainable over the long term. Her budget includes more fund transfers, but at least we’re not seeing every budget gimmick in the book.

Wait, what? I’m not sure who the most vulnerable are, but are right wing senate Republicans attacking Gregoire’s budget for not being liberal enough? I know it’s a trap and all. And that the Republican’s commitment to “the most vulnerable” probably doesn’t include, for example, the urban poor. Or the poor at all. Still, what?

Hey, if you had some commitment to the poor, perhaps you should have come out for figuring out how to make our tax system more fair instead of applauding a proposal to eliminate Basic Health.

“Judging from this budget the governor is open to making government smaller. That makes sense given the smaller amount of revenue available. To me, the way we get to a smaller government is not by asking ‘What do we cut?’ but ‘What do we fund?’ and ‘How can we do things better and more efficiently?” based on the priorities of government process. I have concerns about the governor’s approach to reducing personnel costs, and her proposed consolidation of state agencies seems more a case of rearranging than reforming. The 15 million dollars that would be saved in a year by merging agencies may not even cover what is lost through fraud and abuse in the state’s social and health services programs over that same amount of time.

So eliminate all fraud in social and health services is a better plan than things she can actually do. Of course any budget should aim to root out fraud, but I don’t see how you can actually make a statement like that: Fraud isn’t a line item.

“When we begin the 2011 session next month Republicans will again be ready with cost-saving ideas that didn’t make it into the governor’s budget. Those include allowing state-employee health savings accounts, changing qualifications for social services, reforming the bilingual education system and allowing private-sector competition when it comes to providing public services, to name several. We have proposals that the Legislature can no longer afford to ignore.

So cutting employee health benefits, presumably. I don’t suppose they’ll put the legislative health plan on the block first. Anyway, how do you know they aren’t interested in actually protecting the vulnerable? Well, because they like the Governor’s budget that doesn’t. Also, since they’ll be arguing that the voters said we couldn’t raise taxes, it’s funny how the defeat of the liquor store privatization initiatives won’t stop you from pitching privatization of all sorts of things.

“I can’t help but wonder how the state’s financial situation could have been better if we had seen a budget proposal like this from the governor two years ago, after she finally acknowledged the state was in financial trouble. The Legislature could do worse by taxpayers than to adopt a budget that is the same general size and shape as this one. It won’t bring about the ‘reset’ of state government that is overdue, but the governor’s budget looks like a step in the right direction.”

Yes, if only we’d cut spending earlier. Imagine if we’d managed to dismantle Basic Health 2 years ago how much stronger the economy could be! I can’t help wonder how many parks we could have closed. I can’t help wonder how many teachers we could have fired. Just think of how high tuition could be.

- posted by demo kid

Shorter Chicken Wing [link removed by Carl with DK's permission, see comment]: No woman — including women of the Tea Party like Bachmann and O’Donnell — should be in government, because they might keep us from beating women like good conservative males.

Remember folks… rape is an invention of radical feminists!

I wonder if Doug will write a poem about it.

Post by Carl Ballard

The Seattle Times had a couple editorials cheering some compromises. In fairness to McGinn and Obama, the Seattle Center proposal and the tax cut package aren’t as bad as I’d feared a few weeks ago. But The Seattle Times doesn’t seem to realize that doing nothing was an option in both cases.

Paul Krugman made a good case for doing nothing on taxes. Letting the tax cuts expire is less bad than what’s in the package.

But while raising taxes when unemployment is high is a bad thing, there are worse things. And a cold, hard look at the consequences of giving in to the G.O.P. now suggests that saying no, and letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule, is the lesser of two evils.

And for the Seattle Center editorial, the Mercer Island Mutt Murderer never even asks what would happen if the Fun Forrest stayed instead of the Chihuly-not-a-museum. They applaud what we got. And I sort of appreciate that. I appreciate that moving KEXP into that space probably means more concerts for me, and that a nice playground means that families will still have some incentive to come down here. And while I don’t get Chihuly, I understand that people do. Still, not even a mention that the Fun Forrest is paying a significant rent (although not as much as the city wants, or will get for the land under the proposal) or that the Fun Forrest is a good place for children, including children tourists.

And that’s going to be a problem going forward now that Republicans control a house of Congress and have more power in the state. When Republicans inevitably propose some nonsense to fix something that isn’t really an issue in the first place, don’t expect the Seattle Times to point out that doing nothing is better than their plan.