EFFin’ Unsound

Shorter Jim Miller: Jay Inslee is almost as big of a threat to the republic as the First Amendment.
Shorter Radio Equalizer: Al Franken. Blarg

Shorter Max Redline: If scientists think climate change once killed off 95% of the planet’s species, what possible impact could it have today?

– posted by thehim

Eric Earling puts on the concern troll hat and shares some thoughts on the Darcy Burner - Rodney Tom primary contest:

Keep an eye on a couple dynamics in the budding primary between Darcy Burner and Rodney Tom to take on Dave Reichert in 2008.

I haven’t said anything about this primary yet, but I might as well divulge where I’m at on this since I’ll be moving into the district shortly and plan to be quite involved in the effort to unseat Congressman Drebin next year.  I know Darcy personally and strongly supported her in 2006.  I’m impressed by her enthusiasm, her intelligence, and her work ethic.  That said, primary challenges are always good for a party and good for the candidates themselves.  And as someone who wasn’t much of a partisan until recently, though, the sniping about how Tom isn’t a pure Democrat actually rubs me the wrong way.  But if I had to cast my vote today, it would still be for Darcy. 

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– posted by thehim

There are few things in this world more entertaining than Lou Guzzo writing about smut.  One of those things is when he’s having trouble deciding who he hates more, pornographers or feminists.  Let’s roll the tape:

Whenever the subject of America’s morals comes up — and it comes up often these days — I recall a promotional stunt pulled off by Playboy magazine, which pretends that it isn’t pornographic, as if anybody believes that.

This may be a relic from another era, but I’m not familiar with Playboy magazine’s attempts to pretend that it’s not pornography.  Maybe it was a legal classification or something where lawyers got involved and definitions were parsed, and money was wasted, all because people like Guzzo need to be protected from seeing nipples.  Lou’s memory is pretty good for a 130-year-old man, so I’m pretty sure there’s a story behind that statement. 

At any rate, the magazine’s major domo, Hugh Hefner, king of the pornographers, once staged a promotion in which several gorgeous co-eds were engaged to display their undraped bodies in the magazine.

I think Playboy has done this more than once.  In fact, I’m pretty sure they’ve done at least “Girls of the Big Ten”, “Girls of the SEC”, and “Girls of the Pac Ten”.  Of course, I just read the articles.

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Andrew’s Dad has a conspiracy theory

Minimum wage $9.50? Democrats Say If That Is What Unions Want.

Is there some reason why wage isn’t capitalized? Anyway, sounds nice. When you don’t raise the minimum wage for over a decade, the value of the minimum wage is pretty small. And then to get it up to a decent amount, an amount where someone at the bottom of the wage scale doesn’t need to take two or three jobs just to survive, we have to raise it by what seems like a lot to an asshole who’s had plenty of breaks go their way in life.

The minimum wage, nothing more than a giveaway to labor unions. Why else do unions push so hard for these people who are not union members. How many minimum wage earners are union members? Why would you join a union if you are getting minimum wage? The minimum wage simply increases the cost of non union labor.

Well, this might sound crazy, but maybe unions are for helping working people. And also, the minimum wage lifts the wages of people who don’t currently make it. It will obviously up it for everyone below $9.50. And people who make close to the new minimum wage, too.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Just days after the first increase in the minimum wage in 10 years, Democrats on Capitol Hill led by Sen. Edward Kennedy are discussing a further increase to $9.50 an hour.

Liana Fox of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute said part of the reason for Kennedy’s initiative is that by July of 2009, when the federal minimum is $7.25, 12 states with their own minimum wage law will be over $7.25.

ACORN is one of the groups involved in advocating for higher wages for poor and working-class families.

“It’s not an issue that divides the country,” she said

Says who?

Well, I haven’t seen poling for the $9.50 minimum wage, but the minimum wage we did pass was had favorable ratings in the 80%’s. So yeah, it divides crazies from the rest of us. But so does the war.

It has always struck me as odd that in a country that I can pretty much say anything I want and the government can do nothing about it, if a consenting adult offers to clean my office for $5 an hour, that is illegal.

Poor baby.

Chris Vance has a prescription for Republicans. I’ll spare you most of it (and by that I mean I’m am in a hurry, and don’t feel like writing it all up), but here’s the conclusion.

The real problem in recent years, however, has been in legislative races, especially state House races. Until the national wave hit them in 2006, the Senate Republicans had been holding their own. They recruited good local candidates for key races, like Whatcom County Sheriff Dale Brandland. Their numbers hovered at or near a majority. Not so with the House.

Well it takes a little longer to oust senators, because they aren’t up for re-election as much. But yeah, we have kicked ass in the house recently. Next election, how about, the tri-cities? Can you feel it?

Legislative races are largely controlled by the caucus political committees, not the state party. Caucus leadership and their political committee staff recruit the candidates, raise the money, hire consultants, and decide which races to target. Over the past several elections, Democratic Speaker Frank Chopp has built a formidable political operation while his opponents have been in a constant state of turmoil.

Sooo, what he’s saying is that legislative losses under his tenure weren’t his fault. I like how in both of these columns there isn’t a lot of mention of the fact that Republicans’ issues are at a variance with the majority of Washingtonians. That their mean spirited go it alone nonsense might have done something to people who actually give a shit about their neighbors, and who want the government to help. But really that’s not near as important as the fact that Chopp has a political operation.

Clyde Ballard led the House Republicans from 1987 to 2002. I served on Clyde’s leadership team in the early 1990s. He wasn’t as political as Chopp has been, but Ballard always had his eye on raising money, recruiting candidates, and winning elections. Since Ballard retired, his successors have had to spend more time watching their backs than they have working to win races.

Yes, they keep losing and for some strange reason people keep wanting to replace them. Go fig.

Since Ballard left, the House Republicans have gone from one leader to another. From Cathy McMorris to Richard DeBolt to Bruce Chandler and now back to DeBolt. One acrimonious leadership election after another. Constant turnover among top legislative and campaign committee staff. A caucus at war with itself is in no position to challenge the Chopp machine.

And that totally explains why McGavick did so shitty. Or why Senate Republicans have had similar problems. It’s totally not their brilliant ideas about hating poor people and making sure the rich don’t pay taxes. It isn’t their opposition to public transit. It sure isn’t their hatred of civil rights for gay people and others. It can’t be that they would let our vital infrastructure degrade, like we saw when they controlled the legislature. Nopers, it’s that Frank Chopp is such a meanie.  And they are divided on style.

The House Republicans need to settle on a leadership team and give it time to turn things around. DeBolt was re-elected last November, along with a leadership team of those considered loyal to him, so it appears that has occurred. Now the House Rs need to dig into the hard work of politics.

Because they wouldn’t want to dig into the hard work of, what’s it called again? Legislating? Their jobs?

They need to raise more money.

Maybe if they cut taxes, Republican coffers will magically fill up. It seems to be their economic model.

They can’t out-raise the Ds at this point, but they can and must do better. They need to upgrade their political staff and improve their relationship with consultants. Given their financial disadvantage, they need to be patient and disciplined, and focus their money on five to eight races, maximum.

Build relations with consultants. That’s good advice from a consultant. My advice is that the Democrats have more in common with suburban Spokane than Republicans do there. So keep them on defense. Oh! And Clark County and the 5th. Can you believe there are a few Western Washington seats, including one in King County, that the Republicans control and that should still be competitive? We can totally keep putting the R’s on the defense. They are terrible on the issues that Washingtonians care about.

Most importantly, they need to get serious and systematic about recruiting high-quality candidates. Rather than simply allowing GOP activists to become candidates in winnable races, DeBolt and company need to identify and meet with Republican-leaning suburban city council members and mayors, school board members, PTA presidents, and other civic leaders. Those are the folks who need to be persuaded to run for the Legislature. This needs to be a full-time, year-round program that will aid the House and eventually provide candidates for the state Senate and other offices. Nothing could be more valuable in terms of rebuilding the party’s long term viability.

Good, I say. We need more Bellevue City Council members running for other offices so that we can kick out the dead weight and put in Democrats. Democratic majorities are the future of suburban cities.

Politics is a cyclical, unstable business. When I left the House for the King County Council in 1993, I was one of only 33 Republicans. A year later, there were 62 Rs in the House. Maybe the national mood will swing Republican as Bush leaves the stage. Maybe Dino Rossi will be elected governor. Much, much stranger things have happened.

Well the national mood, and especially the mood in Washington State will still be pretty pissed off at the war, regardless of how much the cult of personality around President Bush fades is transfered to “Hollywood” Fred Thompson. I have no idea how things will shake out years after that, so we’ll see.

In the meantime, Washington Republicans need to re-focus on the basics. Keep your message suburban-friendly. Talk about the things voters care about: traffic, taxes and spending, crime and public safety, schools. Raise money. And most importantly, start recruiting candidates who are part of the civic fabric of the communities they seek to represent. Doing so will not only be good for the GOP, it will be good for our state.

Don’t explain how you can pay for spending, traffic, public safety, and schools when those tax cuts hit. That’s crazy talk.

Our entire political system is based on competition and the accountability it brings. A one-party democracy isn’t healthy. Politics is about struggle and choice. We need the Republicans to put up a fight.

This is still one of the the stupidest tropes I hear from people. A one party democracy is healthy when that party is the Democratic party, and when the playing field is level for challengers in primary and the general elections. It took one party in charge to bring us Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, win World War Two, institute the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Department of Education. It took one party rule to pass the Family Medical Leave Act and the Brady Bill, and finally bring sanity to the budget. One party rule is fine when that party is the Democratic Party, and when other parties have the same rights as they do, and when there are active primary challenges to skim off the dead weight from time to time.

Jim Miller is wondering how Democrats can want to leave Iraq and to do more than nothing in Darfur.

Liberals And Genocide: Jonah Goldberg wonders about their reversal on that difficult subject.

If by reversal on that subject, you mean have two different feelings about two subjects, then yeah, sure.

Liberals used to be the ones who argued that sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home.

That was when Clinton (and our myriad allies) were able to stop genocide in Kosovo without, you know, a single American combat death. It’s slightly different than George W. Bush causing the situation where years ago now, the U.S. Ambassador described the situation in terms of “ethnic cleansing” happening “in almost every Iraqi province.” We did that and it’s only gotten worse since then. That’s what we’re opposed to. And by the way, supporting the idea of helping to pay for enough African Union troops to quell the situation is somewhat different than a for all intents unilateral invasion.

. . .
Conservatives are at least still arguing about the national interest — but they’re also the ones touting the moral imperative of preventing genocide and even the need for nation-building. Where is the principle in the hash of liberal foreign policy today? How does liberalism recover? If you can justify causing genocide in order to end a nation-building exercise that — unlike similar efforts elsewhere — is fundamentally linked to our national interest, then how can you ever return to arguing that we should get into the nation-building and genocide-stopping business when it’s explicitly not in our interest?

The principal is that President Bush turns everything he touches to shit, and there’s already enough shit in the world.

How, for instance, can Barack Obama justify supporting intervention in Darfur — as he did just two years ago — to prevent genocide, and now oppose protecting Iraqis from the same evil? Morally, those two stands conflict. (And they conflict too, if Obama claims to care about our national interest. We have much at stake in Iraq, but almost nothing at stake in Darfur.)

Easy! There are forms of intervention short of a unilateral invasion. Also, we aren’t shielding the Iraqis from genocide. We’re causing it and making it worse by the day. Our presence is making things worse.

There is, of course, a simple and cynical explanation for the reversal; in each case the liberals are taking the politically popular stand. (Not all of them, of course. There is still Senator Lieberman, and you can find a few others if you look hard. And I suspect that at least a few of the Democrat senators who are posing on this issue would hesitate to take the final step of leaving the Iraqi people to the killers.)

The simple explanation is that we’re opposed to genocide when we cause it and when we don’t. As a side simple explanation, we’re opposed to dead Americans generally. But we’ve already left the people of Iraq to the killers.

I actually have a hard time imagining what Miller thinks is going on over there. People are dying, almost a million based on their ethnicity or religion. Almost 4 million displaced to another part of the country or to another country all together, again in large part because of their ethnicity or religion. It’s a genocide, we’re already there, and we aren’t doing anything about it. Maybe if the “surge” or any of the dozen this time we mean it operations before it were actually directed at stopping what was clearly years ago a genocide, the Republicans would have some credibility on this. But it’s always, if we stop doing what we’re doing, then bad things would happen in Iraq. Too fucking late.

– posted by thehim

It looks like P-Tard is on a mission:

I put in a few public records requests early in the week, and have now heard back from all of the agencies.

The first record request was to Governor Christine Gregoire’s office. The reply was pretty standard, and produced two documents. The second was to King County. I’m looking into the possible inappropriate political activity in a particular office. More on that soon. The third request was to the State, and asked for records regarding inappropriate use of state resources. Also a strike out, but all of the requests provided good contact points for future requests.

Stay tuned for future blogging on this topic! It’ll be a new feature here at RespectfullyRepublican.com.

Considering that he has been very busy accusing Christine Gregoire of being behind the recent attacks on Dino Rossi’s crazyperson road tour, including falsely implying that Josh Feit made this hilarious video, P-Tard could very well be on the verge of making another world-class ass of himself.  Let’s see how much taxpayer money gets wasted in his attempts to discover the great conspiracy of why everyone in this state is making fun of Dino Rossi.

Back to the quick and dirty version. I gots bidness to take care of.

* Shorter Lou Guzzo: The real victims of the sex abuse in the Church are the sex abusers in the Church.

* Shorter Seattle Times editorial: The city of Woodenville isn’t banning tent city 4, they’re just not letting them use the land.
* Shorter Radio Equalizer (1): I hate Al Franken

* Shorter Radio Equalizer (2): Joking about what Dick Cheney might do as president is hateful.

Will over at Horses Ass already did a good job making fun of Gary Randall over at the Faith and Freedom network today as the civil unions law finally takes effect. But I couldn’t resist this from the official blog.

Gay Times in WA State

The Gay Times is the Capitol Hill newspaper.

As homosexuals lined up today to register as “domestic partners,” the celebratory attitude displayed in the Governor’s office a while back when she signed the bill into law seems to have changed.

Different groups of people have different ideas about the same law. Gregoire thinks that adding some rights is good, people who still don’t have all of their rights think it’s not as good.

Gregoire, with hands in the air, declared the day a victory. The benefits that homosexuals had been denied were now provided – or are they?

It’s tough to sign a bill with your hands in the air. But to the point, some important rights like hospital visitation were added, but many still aren’t granted. No state law can add everything because of a bad federal law, but the state could do more and still not call it marriage, or they could call it marriage too.

It seems the message changed from that day forward and has now become a mantra.

Some rights are better than no rights but more rights would still be nice, is what they are saying, actually.

“No,” they say, “we didn’t want faux marriage, we want the real thing.”

How dare they!

Ed Murray is quoted by Rachel La Corte of the Associated Press, “When it comes to gay and lesbian issues, change is coming at the state level.” David Ammons, of the AP, says that according to Murray, the gay community isn’t much interested in civil unions as a next step; they are going for full marriage equality. Equal Rights Washington echoes that sentiment. They say an interim step would only serve to detract from the ultimate goal.

I like that Randall is trying to get into an argument on liberals’ tactics to sneak in his anti-marriage sentiment. Here’s a hint though: that’s what pressure groups do. The good ones at least, say what they want to happen, not what an awesome compromise might look like.

There is nothing much that is new in that. That’s what they always say – and they mean it.

They mean it so much that with near super majorities in both houses of the legislature and the governor’s mansion, they managed to pass the weakest civil unions bill in the country. Hoo Ray!

I was, however, surprised and disappointed at the comment of one former Christian lobbyist told the AP he thought it “looks like a losing battle.” (Click here to read story).

Have I suddenly forgotten how to use quotation marks? That was David Ammons’ characterization, not what Higley said.

I agree with him that there is a culture shift but I do not agree that, “The likelihood of a turnaround is very remote.”

Well the bigots of a certain generation are dying off. And a new generation of people are coming of age at a time when many people that they know are out earlier.

If God’s people pray and humble themselves, God promises to heal their land.

God wants you to discriminate against His people.

This is truly a watershed time in this state. Washington will either join Massachusetts as a leader in homosexual endorsement or we will decide to take a position to uphold and affirm the most important societal building block in human history – the family, built around marriage between one man and one woman.

You know who else has the homosexual endorsement? Jeff Somers. And throughout most of human history it was one man and some other number of women. Sorry, it’s even in the bible.

I personally do not believe this is a losing cause. In fact, Faith & Freedom is holding strategy meetings across the state, confirming at least eight rallies with David Barton to remind people of our God Heritage, holding our first youth leadership retreat this coming November and will be working to remove certain state legislators that we feel are vulnerable in their district.

Well good luck with that. Here in the real world, I’ll be making fun of you.

We are prepared to mount an extensive voter registration campaign leading up to the 2008 elections.

Because what is going to scare Democrats most is more empty threats.

And most importantly, we believe that God will help us. We also believe that thousands of citizens across the state will continue to join in as well.

I wonder why God didn’t get involved in state politics last time? Or, maybe He did because He wants the gays to have some rights after all.

While we may be experiencing, “gay times” at the moment, it will only last for a season.

Next season: the rapture.

I sincerely believe God will honor the prayer and actions of His people in this regard and we will see the tide turn.

Seems likely to me. No don’t pray for the people in Darfur! Don’t pray for the needy around the world! Pray for, you know, pray for the right coupling laws in Washington.

Thank you for standing with us.

I’m standing against you, but you’re welcome just the same.

– posted by thehim

It’s been awhile, so I think I need to check back in with Lew Waters to get the crazy old curmedgeon perspective on how the Democrats are fucking up our successful Iraq adventure:

So, you want a “withdrawal of American Troops” from Iraq?

Yes, please.  Even without the scare quotes. 

Think you can count on the Democrat party to engineer it?

Maybe.  I’ve already determined I can’t count on the Republicans to do it.

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