EFFin’ Unsound

– posted by thehim

Sorry I haven’t been posting much either, but I’ve been closing out some long-overdue house projects. In the meantime, here’s some year-end fun, the TPM Golden Duke Awards.

Post by Carl

Sorry for lack of posts recently, I just haven’t been inspired by wingnuttia lately. Hopefully there will be a lot of insanity in the new year.

* Shorter Bruce Chapman: If we kept calling it “the War on Terror” and pretended we give a damn about Muslims, there wouldn’t have been an underpants bomber.

* Shorter Crack Piper: Was Max Baucus drunk? I don’t like the health care bill, so yes.*

* Shorter Tim Eyman: The real heroes are the people who give me money.

(more…)

Post by Carl

Someone needs to teach our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan the true meaning of Christmas.

- posted by demo kid

So, as I’ve told Lee and Carl, I’m going to be leaving Seattle in a few short weeks. My position here in Seattle has ended, and I’ve picked up a new job that will let me make more of a difference with some issues that I really care about, albeit in a slightly more conservative part of the world. Without going into too many personal details — lest I get stalked by the likes of Doug Parris! — it’s an amazing step up in my career, and I’m quite excited.

The downside, of course, is that I’m going to have to end my time as a contributor to Effin Unsound.

All good things must come to an end, and I did have an amazing year and a half here. Many of the commenters have been great to correspond with, and I’m amazed that there are so many people that are as invested in and concerned about the local political scene. I also think that this has been a great way to stay on my toes… many folks complain about politics, but it’s another thing to stay up on the issues well enough to comment intelligently on them.

This entire website would not be possible, though, without the hard work and diligence of one group: those far right-wing idiots with a shocking lack of intelligence and awareness of reality that would probably write their blog posts in crayon if they could. You can’t run a website like this one without a large group of folks giving you great material: fossilized newspapermen claiming that Elvis Presley and rock music are at the root of all evil and (falling) teen crime rates, wannabe cub investigative reporters spouting off about how they uncovered a sex scandal that… well… isn’t, batshit crazy lunatics that harass members of the KCGOP enough to make me feel bad for them, dipshit newspaper reporters that just plain suck because they don’t know the difference between Washington DC and Washington State, fascist theocratic libertarians that want no government except for that which can execute gays and adulterers, gun-nut lawyers that are quite willing to tell you how you can outfit your property with pillboxes straight from the invasion of Normandy, a whole host of insane commenters who would be better suited for living in a repressive Third World dictatorship given their attitudes towards freedom and rights that don’t involve guns, and so forth.

One special mention here: I’ll partly spare pudge from this broadside. While I’m opposed to most of the silly things that he comes out with, and I’m thoroughly amused at his hypocritical hissy-fits, his dogmatic fundamentalism, his pauncy minstrel ways, and his close-mindedness, he’s pretty much the only sign of any kind of intelligent life on Sound Politics. He did teach me something about selective incorporation, in fact! So, I have to give him a grudging tip of the hat.

But the two lessons that I’ve learned here are simple: these people are absolutely dangerous, and these people are absolutely absurd. As much as some things that they write are absolutely awful — support for killing government officials to push their agenda comes to mind for one! — showing that they are absolutely crazy is really the best way of dealing with them. I have no problem with some well-argued mainstream conservative ideas, and I even agree with some. But barring Muslims from serving in the military or teaching creationism as well-reasoned scientific fact or uniformly eliminating social welfare programs to save a few people a couple bucks? Some ideas are so ludicrous that they deserve absolutely no respect whatsoever, and they SHOULD be laughed right out the door by rational people unwilling to put up with that bullshit.

So I’ll be back to visit from time to time, and I’ll certainly comment when situations arise. I might even harass the (u)SP folks just a little bit more just to demonstrate how absurd and impotent they are. However, the end of this year also signals the end of my blogging career, I’m afraid.

Good luck, godspeed, and I’ll see you when I see you!

Post by Carl

The Seattle Times is opposed to health care reform. Not on teabagger grounds (ostensibly), but because it’s too difficult. I guess we shouldn’t expect more from the ed board that endorsed Joe Lieberman for president after he dropped out.

THE health-care dance in Washington, D.C., has gone on long enough. Congress needs to focus on the economy and set health care aside.

It’s literally impossible to work on the economy while there’s a health care bill looming. And, by the way, I like how we should give it a rest now that we’re almost there (this was written before Nelson agreed to it, but still).

This is a change of position for us. This page supported Barack Obama for president, enthusiastically. We have supported the health-care effort until now. We still support universal coverage as a social goal.

We’d like to have universal coverage, but not to get universal coverage.

But the longer the fight goes on, the more it feels that the timing is all wrong. The economy is wounded. Employers are hurting. The time to think about loading employers with new burdens is when they are strong. Not now.

Except the small businesses, who will be helped right away with tax credits to support health care.

Right now, Congress needs to focus on the economy. It needs to follow the lead of Sen. Maria Cantwell and re-enact Glass-Steagall, the law that separated investment banking from commercial banking and for 50 years helped maintain sanity on Wall Street. It needs to bolster the antitrust laws. It needs to lower the estate tax.

I was with you until the estate tax. But even if you assume that that list is all good things, they are all certainly lower priorities for Obama than health care reform. What makes you think if Obama takes a major loss on health care, as you’re suggesting, that it will strengthen him to do those things you want him to do?

It needs to target the rest of the stimulus money at things that really stimulate — all of these actions to provide breathing room to small- and middle-sized family businesses that were once the backbone of the economy and can be again.

The small business I work for had its health care costs go up by a third this year. Do you honestly think giving up on health care will help us? Anyway, I’m skipping the support for trade and ending the wars we’re in. Fine.

President Obama has promised that any health-care bill he signs will not add one dime to the deficit, which already has swelled beyond anything since World War II. The president has put himself in a position where he cannot keep that promise. He has let each house of Congress come up with its own health-care bills.

Not the most important thing in my mind, and I’m not sure it’s actually true, but where was the Times on cost containment?

The result has been chaos: The public option is in then out; the Medicare buy-in for 55-year-olds is in, then out. When the congressional dance stops, the Senate may have 60 votes, but for what? It will satisfy neither Obama’s frugal promise nor progressives’ lavish hopes. Already the Democratic Party’s former chairman, Howard Dean, says the bill is not worth passing in this form.

Puh Leez. The Seattle Times would rather shoot a dog than support Howard Dean*, but now Dean is the end all be all for the Times? Look, there are real problems with the bill. First and foremost the anti-abortion stuff. Still, on the whole it moves toward the goal of universal health care. It will save lives and it will save people from bankruptcy. It will end the horrible practice of denying people care based on preexisting conditions. It will help small businesses pay for health care right away.

My proposal (and it’s not that much crazier than the Seattle Times’ proposal of we should let the obstructionists win, and start over when Obama has less influence, and there are more Republicans in Congress) is we eliminate the Senate altogether. I like the middle House member a lot more than I like the 50th Senator, and a hell of a lot more than I like the 60th Senator.

You know he’s right when you hear statements that something has to be passed, for political reasons. This issue is too important for that. It should wait for a unified proposal and an economy on the mend.

It should wait until the Republicans get on board. So never.

(more…)

– posted by thehim

My fantasy season season just came to an inglorious end this afternoon and I’ve been writing too much serious shit here recently, so let’s break out a classic Lou Guzzo post:

Like most observers of the news over the past five or six decades, I remain deeply concerned over the continuing rise of teen crime across the nation

I don’t think he’s been observing closely enough over the past fifteen years or so.

and there don’t seem to be any indications that the situation will get any better soon

Actually, Lou, it has been getting better since the mid-90s.

The problem is just as serious in other nations in what has been called the First World.

I’m too lazy to look those stats up.

Why have the teen-crime statistics continued to rise?

Because you’re looking at 20 year old statistics?

Some observers blame the increase of violence in movies.

I think movies were already as violent as they could be by the time I was in elementary school.

Others point a finger at television for the same reason.

I must admit, Glee makes me want to kill people.

Others blame the failure of parents to discipline their teen-agers.

They should’ve had abortions instead.

Still others cite the virtual glamorization of teen-age violence in the news media, print and broadcast.

I don’t recall seeing newspapers glamorize teenage violence, but then again, I only read the online versions.

I have frequently stated my own belief.

I know, and it still cracks me up every time.

The main culprit, I have been convinced for a long time, is the advent of the Rock-n-Roll Era, which has lowered the bars of decency, introduced young people to drugs and alcohol, and fed them a constant barrage of violent, noisy, harsh trash it calls music, replete with raunchy sex-ridden gestures.

Jackpot!

Rock performers emulate Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson and their genital-touching gestures and, in Presley’s case, the strumming of a guitar as if it were a phallic symbol or substitute.

C’mon Lou, the man just died. A little respect?

For reasons I will never understand, teens and sub-teens make heroes of these noisemakers and mimic their moves and even memorize their foul lyrics.

I think we call them pre-teens now.

In the meantime, what should we do to counter the miserable Rock-n-Roll Era and all its performers and drive down the teen-crime statistics?

Should we force them to join traveling folk music troupes?

I believe we need both short-range and long-range action to put an end to youth violence and crime.

We should throw people in jail for playing Guitar Hero.

In the short range, we must toughen our laws to get guns away from all juveniles, including the imposition of stiff penalties against parents who carelessly make them available to their children.

Take that, Bono!

We also need to separate the incorrigible juveniles from the well-behaved teens so the good ones can get on with their lives without the frequent jarring antics of the bad ones.

I suggest concentration camps.

That means we must have greater discipline in the schools and neighborhoods.

In neighborhoods? How would that work?

If we don’t, we can kiss America goodbye as gangs, hoodlums, and the rackets take over.

Call me naive, but I really don’t see a scenario where teenage gangs overthrow the government.

In the long range, we must eradicate the slums and the poverty that produce most of the malcontents and create the violent gangs.

I was joking about the concentration camps, but I don’t think Lou is.

That should include much stronger laws to crack down on drugs and drug dealers and three-time losers.

Uh, we’ve tried that. Didn’t work.

It also means closing down the revolving door that puts criminals back on the streets before they have done their time.

Again, been there done that.

And that also means a tougher stance among our judges and prosecutors.

Nope, tried that one too.

They must support the cop on the beat, who has the toughest job of all.

We’ve done plenty of that.

Finally, we must bring a rapid end to the Rock-n-Roll Era, which has done so much damage to young people everywhere in the Western World.

Yeah, sure. We’ll fix the problems of poverty and gang violence as soon as we convince Pearl Jam to stop releasing albums. Yikes.

– posted by thehim

Only Bruce Chapman can cram this many incorrect assumptions into just two paragraphs:

For nearly a year we have been urging Mr. Obama to be the kind of president he promised to be: one who listens, who tries to find common ground, who is genuinely bi-partisan. Had he followed that path he could have had a health bill by now that enjoyed Republican as well as Democratic support and he could have had energy and environmental policies that were reasonable, forward looking and productive. The reason these paths have not been pursued has to be ideological. It is not smart politics or statesman-like policy.

Oddly, even the liberal base (e.g., Howard Dean) isn’t happy now. The Administration is failing, and while that is good political news for Republicans, it probably is bad for American leadership in the world. Only on Afghanistan, where the President actually has listened (to Defense Secretary Bob Gates) is his approach working.

One would imagine that if a Democratic President really acted the way Chapman is pretending that Obama is acting, Chapman would be constantly sending his house servants out to Costco for more boxes of adult diapers.

– posted by thehim

The following exchange actually happened with Seattle’s most mentally challenged political commenter, Steve Schwartz (aka SeattleJew). It was in the comments of my latest post at HorsesAss about the directive given by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops that Catholic hospitals must force patients to accept feeding tubes, even when they have a living will that directs otherwise.

Schwartz: BTW, there are similar issues at Jewish, methodist, Seventyh Day Adventist, etc hospitals.

Me: Name one.

Schwartz: Try Google.

Exactly how retarded does one have to be in order to think that when you’re challenged to back up a claim, it’s ok to then challenge the person challenging your claim to find your answer for you? The saddest thing is that this isn’t the first time he’s done this.

A few comments later, he made an attempt to link to some relevant cases. Here are the links, none of which are even remotely relevant to what the bishops are doing. Just pathetic.

– posted by thehim

The following session of our state legislature will see two marijuana bills, one to decriminalize and one to fully legalize. I’m obviously quite interested in seeing them passed (although, passing the latter would make the former irrelevant), but I’m also bracing myself for the onslaught of ridiculous op-eds trying to defend the folly of marijuana prohibition. I doubt we’ll see anything this hilarious (managing to confuse North Korea and South Korea in an editorial on marijuana is truly an epic achievement), but this effort from Jill Wellock in The Olympian is a good one to kick off the silly season. While Wellock’s editorial does not specifically weigh in on the pending legislation, it’s appearance in The Olympian at this time is definitely not a coincidence.

I attended a rough junior high outside of San Jose, Calif., a school where the stoner girls at my ceramics table carved “Joe Elliot” into their forearms with wood screws to prove Def Leppard allegiance.

Def Leppard? I guess that counts as tough in the Bay Area.

In eighth grade my friend started hanging out behind the portables with the stoners, which was weird because she was the school’s star softball pitcher.

Just a quick policy note. The recently introduced bill legalizing marijuana and regulating it like hard alcohol would move the place where pot sales take place from the schoolyard to the liquor store, where an 8th grader isn’t able to buy it whenever they want.

She could swing her arm around so fast that I thought it might dislocate and fly off toward the bleachers.

Was she on meth too?

She smoked pot before school every day.

Alright, let’s do a little thought experiment here. If you knew an 8th grader who was sneaking into his dad’s liquor cabinet and drinking some vodka before school every day, would your reaction be to condemn alcohol as an evil drug that needs to be banned for all eternity? Or would it be to assume that this kid has an underlying problem that needed to be dealt with? And would you be more or less concerned about that kid’s prospects of getting that help if he could just go behind the school and buy more vodka from the local vodka distributor - who happened to be a tenth grader?

Before long she started missing practice, which didn’t matter once her grades failed and she couldn’t play softball.

Think about how many Cy Young Awards Tim Lincecum could have won if he’d never smoked pot.

She had spent years perfecting that pitch.

Think about how many gold medals Michael Phelps could have won if he’d never smoked pot.

My friend and I attended different high schools, but I saw her at the end of freshman year at the mall, about 20 pounds heavier, with greasy hair and dirty clothes.

Well on her way to ending up on PeopleOfWalmart.

I asked a guy from her school what had happened, and he just said, “Burn out.”

Sure, and from what I remember about the “burn outs” in my high school is that they almost universally had difficult home situations and/or neglectful parents. Blaming the drug is stupid, especially when the way that we’re dealing with the drug is making it easier for young people to get their hands on it.

Gateway drug marijuana is now legal, used medicinally in Washington and 12 other states, with 15 states pending legislation for its medicinal use.

Nope, not a gateway drug.

With California’s new over-the-counter cannabis sales, marijuana dispensaries have appeared like pox.

No, they’ve appeared like any business for which there’s demand.

The Durango Herald reported Nov. 8, that in Los Angeles, dispensaries now outnumber Starbucks Coffee shops, and almost match the number of public schools.

Part of this has happened because the DEA’s attempts during the Bush Administration to shut down all dispensaries made it impossible for cities to regulate them (because the DEA would simply use whatever recordkeeping the city had to shut them all down). That’s why LA has hundreds of new dispensaries and why they’re only now able to implement some form of real regulation.

It’s real life reefer madness.

No, it’s real life demand. This editorial is real life reefer madness.

With the legalization of medical marijuana, its legal distribution, and the federal government’s pledge not to prosecute medical pot users, stoner society might have legitimized its panacea.

Or cancer patients might be helping themselves endure chemotherapy without having to buy their medicine from criminal gangs.

Or, it might have found reason enough to claim fibromyalgia; not all those doobie cafe patrons have cancer, debilitating pain, or even a legitimate illness.

No, they don’t. But as long as recreational use is still illegal, some recreational users will be able to exploit the medical laws to buy it.

Most users likely work.

The vast majority of pot smokers work.

If demand is so high that comedian Jay Leno framed a whole joke segment around the new medical marijuana industry on Dec. 3, then Californians can expect to encounter a lot of high workers.

Marijuana use levels are actually lower than they were in the 1970s. And teenage drug use in California has declined since the medical marijuana law took place. So, what the fuck are you talking about?

Drivers, too.

My god, get a grip.

Lawsuits now encumber California’s Department of Motor Vehicles for revoking the licenses of people with medical marijuana permits.

Just because someone has a medical marijuana permit does not mean that we can take away their driver’s license any more than having a prescription for an opioid would. It’s not a good idea to drive under the influence of either, but many medical users use the drug at a frequency where the psychoactive effects (which are what effect your driving skills) no longer occur anyway. Just trying to revoke everyone’s license is overbearing and unnecessary. If a medical marijuana patient exercises bad judgement and gets on the road in a state where they can’t drive, then you take their license away.

Cannabisnews.com posted Dec. 12 that Washington state ranks second on the nation’s list of marijuana outdoor grows, and advocacy groups work tirelessly toward approbation of dispensaries wherever medical marijuana is legal.

Yes, that’s true. And that’s why implementing a smart mechanism for distributing the drug will be beneficial not just for protecting young people, but also for our economy.

Washington state is on the short list.

And Ms. Welloch appears to have spent some time on the short bus.

Making marijuana easier to obtain puts society at risk, especially when used under false pretenses of pain or illness.

Does she have any data to back this up? Of course not! She has an irrelevant anecdote to share!

I learned this first-hand in Colorado, living next door to a user who couldn’t even leave the house to light up.

I’m betting that she didn’t smoke outside because she knew that her crazy anti-pot next-door neighbor would call the cops on her if she did.

Her kids lay around stoned second-hand, and had to fend for themselves at meal times.

Of course, this never happens with alcoholics. Not to mention that this happens despite the fact that pot is still illegal. And I’m still not sure how legalizing marijuana will create more of these situations.

Their grandmother fought for custody.

Man, if some parents ever lost custody of their kids because they drank too much, we’d immediately have to make alcohol illegal again.

Marijuana saps initiative, ambition and responsibility from its smokers.

One can only imagine what Barack Obama would have been able to do with his life had he not smoked pot when he was younger.

The psychoactive compound in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol ( or THC ) impairs the brain’s body movement coordination ( cerebellum ), learning and memory ( hippocampus ), higher cognitive functions ( cerebral cortex ), and other abilities with effects lasting one to three hours when inhaled.

Ok.

Eaten, marijuana’s effects can last much longer.

Ok.

Consider marijuana’s effects on workers who multitask, or who safeguard others.

How exactly is this any different from alcohol? Alcohol is legal, yet we fully expect people who have either difficult or safety-intensive jobs to be able to refrain from using it when they’re at work. Why is marijuana any different?

How about the staff at your child’s day care?

Again, I wouldn’t want them to be high any more than I’d want them to be drunk. What’s the difference between alcohol and marijuana?

Bus drivers?

Again, I wouldn’t want them to be high any more than I’d want them to be drunk. What’s the difference between alcohol and marijuana?

Construction workers?

Again, I wouldn’t want them to be high any more than I’d want them to be drunk. What’s the difference between alcohol and marijuana?

No one wants their ER phlebotomist to smoke a joint before an IV start, but if Washington state follows California’s lead in legalizing dispensaries, health care facilities - and all businesses - will have to drug test workers with frequent signs of fatigue and red eyes.

No more companies will need to drug test than already do. You’re still making an assumption that marijuana use will go up in some significant fashion if people are able to buy it from regulated sellers instead of from street dealers. Where’s the evidence of that?

Some users insist their senses, coordination, reflexes and mental acuity are not compromised by the drug, demanding that science and observation are biased.

Who are these people, and why should I care?

People frequently insist the same when their friends take their car keys to avoid a DUI.

What an irrelevant way to end an irrelevant post. If the arguments we see against the two bills this session are even half this ridiculous, it’s going to be a fun ride.

Post by Carl

The Seattle Times is upset with the process of replacing Dow.

IN an election overshadowed by gubernatorial and presidential contests, voters last year opted to change the Metropolitan King County Council from a partisan to a nonpartisan office. The vote was one thing, the reality quite another.

A perfect example includes the political high jinks associated with naming the council replacement for longtime Democrat Dow Constantine, the new county executive. His departure leaves eight members — four Democrats and four Republicans — or, four former Democrats and Republicans.

At risk of crushing the illusion, harsh partisanship reigns. Yes, the council voted unanimously for the budget. But when it came to creating a process to replace Constantine — a process! — the council broke along party lines, 5-4, with Constantine breaking the tie before becoming executive.

Then came Monday’s more-pronounced outbreak of party fever. The council deadlocked along party lines, 4-4, for state Rep. Joe McDermott, a Democrat, and another 4-4 vote, for outgoing Seattle City Councilmember Jan Drago, a more business-oriented Democrat.

No decision, no deal. Democrats supported McDermott; Republicans said no. Republicans supported Drago and Democrats said no.

It will take time to wash the partisanship out of the council. Since these council members were all elected as Democrats and Republicans, there is no secret about party affiliation. Council members still caucus weekly as Democrats and Republicans.

Councilmembers Bob Ferguson and Reagan Dunn attempted to launch a suburban caucus, but that fizzled for lack of interest.

In the old days, precinct committee officers in a council district would offer recommendations to fill a vacancy.

But now the council had to establish a new process.

So far, not so good. The council is officially nonpartisan but the culture has not changed. The council remains partisan in many ways. Citizens should watch to see how long it takes for the council to pick a successor for Constantine. The next attempt comes in January.

So not who, just that it gets done.