Columbian - wacko letters should be axed

Columbian Editor Lou Brancaccio writes that Letters to the Editor should be opinions. Sounds good. But when letters contain obviously erroneous opinions stated as if they were fact, most reputable newspapers won’t publish them.

The New York Times, for example, fact checks every letter.

Not the Columbian – nearly every day they print a letter with some ridiculous unfounded assertion.

A wingnut named Jock Demme wrote a letter last week, “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder” that is a prime example of the balderdash they accept for publication. He lists 13 pieces of “evidence” as if he were quoting from some liberal position paper. Among the most outrageous: “Liberals want to teach children sexual deviance and ignore American history.” “Liberals believe children are acceptable sexual targets for sexual predators.”

I’ve never met a single liberal who holds these beliefs. And I bet Demme hasn’t either. He’s just spouting Coulter or Limbaugh. The trouble is - some folks take the letters as fact.

This is not reasoned discourse and has no place in a community paper.

Maria Cantwell - Rising in my esteem

Last week she voted against the noxious GOP tax package that tried to slide an estate tax repeal by the Senate by coating the pill with a raise in the minimum wage. But even that cookie was poisoned for Democrats because it voided state laws which protect workers who get tips from having their wages reduced because of tip potential. Washington is one of the states that protects such service workers.

She was down here last week talking to local labor groups about this... I was there.

She also came right out and backed Ned Lamont after he won the CT primary over the smarmy Joe Lieberman. Her opponent, former Safeco CEO gazillionaire, Mike McGavick sucked up to Joe, as so many Republicans are doing right now. Evidently the lonely Republican in that race is being left to flap in the breeze. Joe should just move right over and BE a Republican. But no, "for the sake of my party [sic]" he is running as an independent. Gecccchhh, what a creep.

Judgeships - the new Republican stealth strategy

Back out at the County Fair again. The Republican booth is still pushing judicial candidates with more vigor than their Senatorial and congressional candidates.

Come to discover that state law says that if a judicial candidate wins a majority of votes in the primary, the race is over and the winner becomes a judge without going on to the Nov. election. The primary is September 19 and most voters don't really notice the judicial candidates, just checking ones whose names have the best sound, or whatever. It's hard to find campaign info on judicial races so ignorance is easy.

Judicial races are supposed to be non-partisan, but the Reps are spending LOTS of money to unseat the incumbents (Susan Owens, Gerry Alexander, Tom Chambers, and Joel Penoyer - all of whom are experienced and well-respected for fairness) and put in people with either fundamentalist religious views or strong property rights/anti-regulation views.

Brent Boger, who is running against Penoyer, was formerly the chair of the county Republican party and is given a high five by Judicial Forum... who are they???

The mission of the Judicial Forum is to review the activities of the judges and attorneys and report how they measure up to Biblical civil law (the foundation of our nation), the Constitution (the supreme law of the land) and the statutes that are lawful (to interpret what is written). Read more . . .

Bible Verse: PSA 119:139 [NIV]
My zeal wears me out, for my enemies ignore Your words.

What else can I say?

Here's the Republican booth...

I strolled by the Republican booth to see what they were promoting. The biddy behind the counter spouted the original Rove talking point: like she’d made it up herself: “We gotta re-elect Republicans because they’re keeping us safe from the terrorists. We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here at home.”

I noticed that she was wearing a big sticker – not for a senator or state rep but for a JUDGE and that the brochures on the front table leaned heavily towards the State judicial races – conservative Supreme Court candidates John Groen (darling of the building industry) and Stephen Johnson. And Brent Boger (former chair of the CC Republicans) for the state Court of Appeals.

Judicial elections are SUPPOSED to be non-partisan!!

When she saw me looking at the brochures, she whispered conspiratorially that these guys believed in upholding the constitution, not like those “activist judges” who want to let gays marry. Since their new stealth tactic is to take over the courts with their right-wing ideologues we’d better start promoting the incumbents who are simply fair-minded.

Oh, and that big manifesto on the right is What Republicans Believe. Stuff like the dignity of every person regardless of age, race, religion or gender... (no mention of sexual orientation or economic status...) Bunch of hypocritical twaddle. I'll read it more closely when I go back Thursday. 

Staffing the Dem Fair Booth

The usual underdressed and overweight crowd is at the Fair this weekend -- youth with hardware, burly men in muscle shirts, moms trying to steer bus-sized strollers laden with a couple of toddlers plus large stuffed animals (prizes?), balloons, diaper bags, shopping bags. A bunch of older people in wheelchairs who look like they ate themselves into immobility.

Our booth is in a fine spot – on a corner right by one of the main doors to the new exhibit hall, so you’d think folks would see us, but no. Most streamed by in a daze, not registering our presence at all – much less positively or negatively. Enough folks stopped to give us a thumbs up – and even sign up to be volunteers – that we felt our time was worthwhile. And not to have been there, when the Republicans were, would have made observant Dems wonder what was wrong with us if we couldn’t even get it together to show up at the Fair…

The gal selling a $259 vacuum-pack system in the booth across from us was having a slow day too. She says that weekend fair-goers are zonked from working all week - that weekday visitors are much more alert. She’s been doing the fiar circuit for several years and says that this is the worst year ever for vendors. “Nobody’s buying,” she said. “Folks tell me they just don’t have any spare cash these days. Other vendors say the same thing. I tell them, that's what you get for electing a president who is more concerned with rescuing his rich buddies from estate tax than giving the middle class a chance to make a living!”

Democratic Booth at the County Fair

Several party loyalists including me have spent the past few days setting up our booth at the annual county fair. It's an old-fashioned kinda red-neck affair - we're in the new (air-conditioned!!!) exhibit hall along with the Veg-e-Matic and Waterless Cookware demos, the hot-tub and patio furniture booth, the vitamins and miracle cleaner booths, and....

ssss... the Republican booth, which looks like a patriotic orgasm - so much red-white and blue bunting. I'll take a picture and post it when I go back on Sunday.

They posted a long statement: "What Republicans believe" that is such hypocritic twaddle (dignity and rights of all regardless of age, sex, nationality etc...). Right.

The good news is that several folks stopped by the booth (security guards, other booth operators, etc) and said things like, "We gotta get rid of those Republicans". Yepper, that's why we're doing it.

Bicycle!

As of today, I've traded the car keys in for a helmet. Going two-wheeled in my post-"Inconvenient Truth", fervor.

Crashing the Republican Gate at McGavick fundraiser

Taking inspiration from Maura in VA’s visit to a Lieberman event, I’ve decided to make it a point to attend Republican town halls and fundraisers in my county whenever possible to ask the questions that they don’t want to answer. I know I won’t change Republican hearts and minds, but the press is usually there, and if the questions are good enough and the candidate’s answers devious enough it will make the local paper.

Last night I crashed a fundraiser for ex-Safeco CEO Mike McGavick, who is hoping to unseat Senator Maria Cantwell. This morning I’m in the newspaper. The reporter was not kind to McGavick…

McGavick stopped in my town of Vancouver (Clark County – in SW WA) on his “OpenMike tour.” He is tooling around Washington State in a huge red rock star style tour bus (he folksily calls it his “RV.”)

I got there ten minutes early to get a good seat up front. I needn’t have worried. The only other folks there were staffers and the miffed political reporter from our newspaper, who was on deadline to file and didn’t appreciate that the event was basically a schmooze-fest. I’ll let her tell it:

It was billed as a “community town hall style forum,” but Mike McGavick’s campaign event proved to be more of a country club affair, complete with sun-dried tomatoes on toast rounds, crab cakes and a cash bar.

[snip]

But though a press release had billed McGavick’s visit as an “Open Mike” event, the liquor and canapés weren’t intended for the general public. They were for the three dozen guests and potential contributors who showed up to meet McGavick.

In fact, the Vancouver event was a fundraiser—less an “Open Mike” event than an “Open Your Wallet” event, with McGavick chatting up potential donors for most of the evening before delivering a campaign speech. At the end there was time for three questions –two from Democrats. Then people were asked to get out their wallets.

Given the elaborate setup it was obvious they’d expected many more guests. I was surprised that besides me only one other Dem thought to show up. He asked about privatizing Social Security.

McGavick said he does not agree with Bush’s proposal, now shelved, to privatize Social Security. But he outlined a plan that sounded similar to the Bush plan. The difference, he said, is that it would use “voluntary means testing” to encourage people not to collect their Social Security and allow young people to create personal retirement accounts managed by the government.

So once again we’re trying to use the term “personal”. His idea that we could help Social Security solvency if wealthier recipients volunteered to toss their stipends back into the pot was laughable.

I shared the story of my brother-in-law who had worked as an engineer for Polaroid for 30 years but saw the value of his pension evaporate when a series of greedy CEOs bled the company dry with their multi-million dollar pay packages. Then he got laid off, and at 58 can’t find a job, has no health insurance and has no pension. I asked how we can protect loyal workers from pension theft and what we can do to unlink health insurance from employment so workers can take it with them.

McGavick commiserated but then went off on an irrelevant story of what happened when his 7-year old son took a bad spill on their last ski vacation, and how the doc wanted to do a lot of tests because they were insured and she wanted her ass covered, even though it was obvious the boy was only bruised. (The reporter noted his lengthy answer and that it didn’t seem to answer the question.)

I got the last word in the story.

The questioner said she planned to vote for Cantwell. “I feel the Republicans have done so much damage to our democracy that even though I don’t agree with everything Maria Cantwell stands for, I don’t feel I have a choice.”

I’m glad I went, glad I got to hear McGavick’s spiel. It’s important for us to witness what Koolaid is being dispensed so we can counter it.

I was lukewarm about Cantwell till this event but McGavick is so in the Republican mold (immigrant-bashing, family values, free enterprise and fewer regulations, lower taxes, strong defense[offense], etc etc) that I’m now going to work on Cantwell’s campaign.

He is taking his experience at turning Safeco around as evidence that he knows how to fix insurance problems. Since he considers Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare to be insurance problems, he says he’ll be in a unique position to help solve three of the biggest drains on the federal budget. Some voters may buy this logic.

I think he’s a real threat to Maria because he’s very personable and she’s a cool cucumber who doesn’t get down to our part of the state very often. Republicans have been winning our county, and part of the reason is that our elected officials forget that there are a lot of voters outside the Seattle metro area who deserve attention.

Report from the County Convention

I spent seven hours at our party convention in Clark County WA (suburb of Portland OR) yesterday as a precinct officer and precinct delegate. It was the best in memory for a lot of reasons, described below.

As Democratic ACTIVISTS (we DO get out of our pajamas, don’t we???) we should realize that what happened at County Conventions around the country is what feeds delegates and resolutions to the state and national conventions.

What worked so well at Clark County:

1. We have a new hip chair (a Kossack) who understands technology, knows how to run a meeting, can speak (thank you Toastmasters), and has tremendous organizational skills.
   
   
2. As folks were gathering, a looped slideshow was running on a big screen to set the mood. Images alternated among local candidates and elected officials; inspiring quotes on democracy, courage, peace, etc; party gatherings; local scenes.
   
   
3. Our keynote speaker (State Senator Craig Pridemore) did a great job laying out the issues before us on just a few hours notice because our scheduled speaker, Congressman Brian Baird had gotten stranded on the tarmac in DC with a lame plane. [Note to meeting planners: always have a skilled understudy in the wings!]
   
   
4. Candidate and current officeholder speakers were limited to 3 minutes and we had a timer.
   
   
5. The two most frequent resolutions that came up from the caucuses: Get out of Iraq now, and Impeach Bush. (Lots of cheers when these results were announced!) I thought, WOW, we’re more progressive here than I thought. But then I realized that we were a self-selected group of extremely devoted Dems and it wasn’t that surprising.
   
   
6. Resolutions from the caucuses had been sorted by topic, cleaned up, organized and printed by the Resolutions committee in the convention handbook and posted on the party website ahead of time so folks could review them. Similar ones had been combined so we only had ONE HUNDRED FIFTY to review (daunting in itself!).
   
   
7. We were surprisingly agreeable. I know getting Dems to agree is like herding cats, but when it came time to fine-tune some of the resolutions, the word-smithing went really fast. Only two people were allowed to speak to a change and were limited to one minute. Sometimes a change was a little off and someone would offer a friendly amendment to improve it. Some were just struck wholesale. There were no shouting matches, no hard feelings if a pet resolution went down. Amazing.

I left feeling more hopeful for our local party than I have in years.