Note changes… more coming.

“The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese model and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things — resign, or go commit suicide.” - Sen. Grassley

Why in the world would I agree with a man who suggests people commit suicide?   Well, first I know he is just expressing his outrage and despite the fanatical tone, the outrage is certainly there and it’s not lost on me.  The executives taking those bonii are a bunch of unrepentant jackasses… maybe not the same unrepentant jackasses in the sense that the division of AIG they worked in may not be responsible for the mess they created, but they were for the same unrepentant jackasses who are handing out bonus’ to more unrepentant jackasses.  Ethics be damned!  Not a care in the world but for the bottom line and that line is thier own personal wealth.  That personal wealth, you know, that same personal wealth built upon the same greed that brought us to where we are today.  And they would do it all over again without hesitation.  Don’t you think for a minute they wouldn’t.

AIG and the rest of these failures weren’t after anything but thier own financial benefit.  They went after the fast quarter because they knew there was no slow dollar to be made.   Un-f-ing-repentant jackasses.

Anything else Mr. Grassley says is just more talk from crazyville but in this case, I’d just like to see a little honor amongst the theives.

I once went to a St. Patty’s day party in a very small conservative town in Indiana where I was nearly accosted by a patron who, for some strange reason, brought his own green food coloring turn his beer green.  Unfortunately, for him, the more he drank the less the food coloring mixed in his beer… and more on his face.  Before long he had essentially colored the lower half of his face green and was making a drunken conservative ass out of himself.

Conservatives are always getting it wrong and making a mess of things.

Drinking Liberally in the Tri-Cities is tonight and a special St. Patricks Day celebration is in order.  I’m pretty sure there will be green beer - and plenty of good cheer - so come on down and join us.

Location(s)

Richland, WA

I got turned on to this from Eli Sanders over at Slog and “Made in America” seems like bad ass documentary to me.  Eli’s review was something of a rememberance for me for the very brief experience I had with an LA gang.  Nothing dramatic happened in my experience of course.  In fact, if I was to define my life in LA, it was a mixture of brief luxuries, Hollywood excess, surfer subtleties, horrid violence, questionable moral choices and abject poverty.  Mingling with gang members was only in passing chance.

The girlfriend I had at the time was cousin to a Wilmington (Long Beach area) gang member and for his birthday we very white Orange County/Garden Grove nitwits rented a motorhome and took him and his “friends” to up the Grapevine to Valencia for a day at Magic Mountain amusement park.  For a goofball white kid from Richland Washington, it wasn’t nearly as shocking as I would have expected.  Instead of the hip ass image you might expect, they were just a bunch of (not that they were building playhouses for children) normal 20 somethings.  MM security made them take off their “colors” (it was the 80’s… ok) and they had fun just like anyone else.  But I thought about the conditions and why they were where they were and who they were.  Sanders brought a bit of that to mind…

The story of gang violence in Los Angeles, and around the country, is usually told as a law enforcement problem. Sometimes it’s also told as a contemporary social problem, with a discussion of the role that poverty and drug policy and the penal system play. But I’ve never seen the problem so thoroughly excavated as it is in Made in America, which first sets the Los Angeles gang problem in its historic context, looking at what brought African-Americans to the city in the first place (World War II and the auto-makers, among other things); what confined them to areas like Compton and Watts (racist housing covenants, racists police practices, white fear); and what helped create a leadership vacuum in the community that was filled, in part, by gangs (the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, for starters).

My job at the time took me to Compton alot (I actually met some of the best people there).  Another job I had landed me in Paramount (east LA).  You could see it all around you.  It was in a sense though, the beginning of the explosion and I didn’t witness anything extreme or extrordinary.  But the conditions that created this “war”, the incredible poverty and social inequity were glaring.  But then, I could always go home to Garden Grove and never witnessed the night.

We here on the WA - Dry Side probably won’t get a public screening of this movie but you can buy it here.

Check out the trailer:

Your service is getting nearly useless.  I was promised much better internet speeds.  So much for that promise?  Fix it!

If you were thinking about ordering Clearwire, don’t do it until they get their shit together.

For most folks, it’s easy to take for granted the DNR.  And equally easy for us all to let slip into the grey matter or our minds the totally great and awesome Commissioner of Public Lands, Peter Goldmark.  Fortunately for me, having been a supporter since Peter’s 2006 congressional run, I’m on the cool people’s email list from the Dept. of Natural Resources where I get really cool information via e-mail like BAD BUGS!

The caterpillar life-stage of the Douglas-fir tussock moth eats the needles of fir and spruce tree species. This moth is native to Washington, and population levels run in cycles, dropping for a period of years between major outbreaks. The last outbreak in the state occurred from 2000 to 2002, leaving at its peak in 2000 more than 45,000 acres of defoliated trees.

Outbreaks typically collapse within two to three years due to a buildup of natural enemies such as a virus and parasites. However, during an outbreak, up to 40 percent of the trees in an affected area can be killed. Surviving trees may have top-kill—damage to the uppermost foliage on the trees—or may suffer growth loss, or are weakened and more susceptible to other insects, such as bark beetles.

Now I don’t have any bugs (honest girls!).  But I have a great appreciation for the DNR and Peter Goldmark. Keep the emails coming.

I’ve been reading the Seattle PI as long as I can remember. When I was 6 or so, my brother and I had 2 delivery routes in a then not-so-wonderful Seattle neighborhood near Madrona where we fought off angry dogs and angered subscribers with our superior throwing skills (remember aluminum screen doors? A well thrown Seattle PI never sounded so good). And if I remember right, I think my early driving skills were honed on the way back from a PI distribution center with my mother while hauling bundles in the back of our 72′ Ford station wagon, where at 6 (or so), on my mothers lap I nearly ran us into a ditch.

Tomorrow, after 146 years, the last Seattle PI will be printed and for that I am sad.

While the PI is going online only, it’s still a bitter pill to swallow for me (I should be excited right?).   In a large sense, I understand the failing business model of the printed paper.  The Internets win, economics overtake, and in the midst of that… the thinner, lesser content versions of dead tree news contracts until gone.  I just don’t have to like it.

Embryonic stem cell research is fascinating.  But what becomes of the therapies once available?  It’s a little early to know if we will see television ads from Pfizer on their latest therapy (just imagine that in today’s context of marketing… ick).  Here’s an  interesting and informative Slog post that brings up the commercial aspect that deserves some awareness.

I believe that the donation of blastocysts and the distribution of the subsequent embryonic stem cell lines should be strictly decommercialized. The entire process should be like how we handle organ donation from adults—with oversight, and the prohibition of money changing hands in the process.

Now you too can apologize to Rush Limbaugh!

I wish republican leadership would toss Rush to the curb.  They will have to at some point so why not now?  They need ideas and strategy and Rush embodies neither.  Neither does O’Reilly.  Watching republicans right now is like watching an alcoholic bottom out.  They haven’t bottomed out yet but they will.  Then, and only then, we will see them renew.  And tossing Rush Limbaugh (and Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter etc…) to the curb will be the first step to admitting they have a problem.

More here from Wonkette…

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald - Fox News “war games” the coming civil war - article has been talked up on the internets pretty well so I won’t expand on my shared sentiments.  I’ll just share my favorite quote.

In sum, they dressed up in warrior clothing to fight against Bill Clinton’s supposed tyranny, and then underwent a major costume change on January 20, 2001, thereafter dressing up in cheerleader costumes to glorify George Bush’s far more extreme acquisitions of federal power.

Who’s the food taster…

DALLAS — A month after leaving the White House, former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, moved into their new Dallas home Friday.

[...]

Dallas police and Secret Service agents have set up a barricade in recent days limiting access to the neighborhood. They have even turned away delivery vans; packages must be dropped off with security personnel, who hand-deliver them.

The big story may not be the selection of Grant’s sucessor [Laura Grant-Herriot], but rather the coming election they will face, and more importantly when.  It’s no secret Republicans would like to gain a seat in the legislature and given the nature of the 16th LD, this may be the place to do it.  And the sooner that seat can be challenged the better.  While the State Constitution provides for vacancies in the Legislature, it gets a bit ambiguous in its application.  Here’s the text that I believe applies in the State Constitution:

[...]and from the list of nominees provided for herein, appoint a person who shall be from the same legislative district, county, or county commissioner or council district and of the same political party as the legislator or partisan county elective officer whose office has been vacated, and the person so appointed shall hold office until his or her successor is elected at the next general election, and has qualified: Provided, That in case of a vacancy occurring after the general election in a year that the office appears on the ballot and before the start of the next term, the term of the successor who is of the same party as the incumbent may commence once he or she has qualified and shall continue through the term for which he or she was elected[...]

The problem appears to be within the definition of “qualified” whereas the successor or appointee has not been “elected”. The “qualified” definition doesn’t address this by simply defining a successor as not “qualified” and the SOS office assumes that this requires a special election.  Is the SOS office just pulling this out of thin air?  What about a successor vs. appointee definition?  What decides which was which, and when?  Would an appointee would be just that until the oath is taken and then they could be defined as successor?  Or, to be a successor you must be elected and “qualified”?  It simply doesn’t say that and provides for an aweful lot of wiggle room for decision making.

And neither the RCW or the state constitution say what actually triggers a special election in that context.

As noted above, the current position of the Sec. of State office is that there will be a special election in November for this seat.  In an email reply they wrote:

The vacant legislative offices will be up for election in 2009 for the remainder of the terms, which end in 2010.  The appointees will serve until the 2009 General Election, at which time the winner of the 2009 General serves (or continues to serve).

Some people are misinterpreting RCW 42.12.040(2) to claim that the appointees serve until the end of the term, 2010.  This is incorrect.

This RCW contemplates that the incumbent did not run again at the end of his/her term, a successor was elected, and then the incumbent vacates office in December, between the General and the end of the term.  In that narrow scenario, the successor can just take office immediately.

It states, “the term of the successor … may commence once he or she has qualified [RCW 29A.04.133]…”  The RCW does not refer to an “appointee” but to the “successor” who has “qualified.”  An appointee cannot “qualify” because he/she has not been elected.

It also says, “…and shall continue through the term for which he or she was elected.”   It assumes that the “successor” was elected.

Head spinning yet?  Here is the definition of  “qualified”

“Qualified” when pertaining to a winner of an election means that for such election:

     (1) The results have been certified;

     (2) A certificate has been issued;

     (3) Any required bond has been posted; and

     (4) The winner has taken and subscribed an oath or affirmation in compliance with the appropriate statute, or if none is specified, that he or she will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of the office to the best of his or her ability. This oath or affirmation shall be administered and certified by any officer or notary public authorized to administer oaths, without charge therefor.

As I understand it, the state Democrats are looking at whether or not to challenge the decision for a special election.  And, as I understand it, the SOS has not released a final statement.  I also asked the SOS office if there were any similar situations in a vacated office.  They knew of none. 

I guess my biggest problem with this is that I can see it the arguement from both postitions.  But without a legal precedent, and/or clear language and even clearer definitions, the door is left wide open for partisan shenanigans.  Republicans would much rather have see an election this November for Grant-Herriot than allow her to establish herself for nearly two years in the legislature. Knowing that makes the Republican controlled SOS decision appear partisan - whether it is or not.