Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 166 of 177)

I’m not going to be so lame that I cross post everything here at Olyblog and vice versa, but here’s my first (real) post over there:

I’m not assuming that anyone watched “Tommy Lee Goes To College” last night. If you did, I think you know what I’m talking about when I say that 5 minutes watching that was five minutes you wish you had back.

Its a not a credit to the average student at the University of Nebraska that they spent more time mugging for pictures with Mr. Lee than kicking him in the shins. It surprises the hell of me that our Evergreen State College was in the running for hosting this show:

The college answered an invitation from TV producers wanting to secure a college or university willing to welcome the rocker and creatively tape his experiences as a college student.

“Lee likely would have benefited greatly from Evergreen’s unique method of collaborative, interdisciplinary teaching as well as the highly creative environment, and the college’s independent study programs probably would have fit his personal approach,” Hanna said.

And, it ain’t CNN.

In addition to the use of the word “ain’t” and the reference to a Southern-based news network, I hate the catch phrase that Olyblog uses. And, that is the only thing I hate about Olyblog, because in general, in the 6 minutes and 1 second I’ve been User #3 down there, I love it.

They just have to get a new catch phrase.

Just in case that link doesn’t work for you now or in the future, here’s a nice picture for you:

Got a comment back from Michael Normoyle on my list of who’s the no-names are running for city council, and he calls my bluff on my claim that he was a partisan staffer for that R of all Rs, Sen. Mike Carrell. So, here are my cards:

Dear Shawn,

My name is Michael and I work for Senator Carrell. I showed him your letter regarding gun control legislation. He asked me to assure you that he is sympathetic to your cause and that he will fight to uphold your Constitutional rights. Also, he informed me that you are not in his district and he urges you to share your thoughts with the legislators from your district. If you need assistance finding out who to contact please visit http://www.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/Default.aspx and type in your address. Thank you for sharing your views and expressing an interest in state government.

Thank you,

Michael Normoyle
(Sen. Carrell’s Office)

It is from a post from the Olympic Arms Owners Association online discussion forum. I can’t actually voutch for the email authenticity, but the post is from last January, so it would be hard to think of some logic of lying about Michael Normoyle’s partisan leanings eight months ago. Anyway, Normoyle’s status as a Republican isn’t even the topic of the email, it just points out that he works for Sen. Carrell.

“I was a non-partisan staffer for the Senate last session, and not the legislative assistant to Sen. Mike Carrell” and “My name is Michael and I work for Senator Carrell” are two way different things. I realized that being a “legislative assistant” is a very specific job, and that one could work in a Senator’s office and not be a so called L.A., but I wouldn’t say that working in a Republicans office makes you a non-partisan staffer for the Senate either.

Mike didn’t add his email, so I’m hoping he comments on this post or emails me back.

Also, if you need to be told why being a Republican of any sort is like a death knell to anyone’s hope of being an Olympia City Councilmember, you don’t follow politics in Olympia very closely. Even Doug Mah, arguably one of the most conservative of city council guys, is an active Democrat PCO.

Its kind of strange sometimes how these ideas bounce around, but some folks in Oregon are trying to adopt our old Top Two primary:

Imagine choosing candidates that best represent you and the issues and values that you hold closest, regardless of political party affiliation.

Imagine receiving your ballot and having real choices among candidates that actually represent your values and beliefs.

Imagine, if every time Oregon held a primary election, every voter – regardless of political party registration, or lack thereof – receives an identical ballot, one ballot.

Change the face of Oregon politics for the better and shift the balance of power back to voters. Choose a primary election system that gives candidates access to all voters and gives voters the choice of all candidates.

On face, calling it “One Ballot” instead of Top Two is a good idea, but this also reminds me of California stealing our original open primary, which of course blew the entire party.

In Washington we argued for the Top Two and the original open primary because it had always been that way, at least since the 1930s, that we could vote for whoever we wanted to. Tradition, though, isn’t always the best argument, so I’m eager to see how the debate in Oregon goes.

While I’m at it, Oregon was also discussing whether to simply make some statewide elected positions non-partisan, something we might be coming into in Washington because the parties pushed to hard on rolling the Top Two primary:

…Grange officials have said they might file yet a new initiative, one that could pass constitutional muster by having candidates file for all elective offices on a non-partisan basis.

At Demfest 2005, Chris Warshaw, field director for DFA, talking about “migrating” off of meetup.com.

So there.

There are a lot of advantages of the DFA meetups to the Dem ones. DFA has been using meetups as its single most powerful grassroots recruiting and organizing tool. Except in a few spots, like here in Thurston County, the DNC has completely dropped meetups.

A webpage on democrats.org was left un-updated for months, replaced for a short time with a survey, and now it gone. In places like here, we’ve been marching on with our own meetups, but without any direction or suggestion from higher up.

It looks like now Democracyforamerica.com is about ready to leave meetup.com, just like conservative townhall.com did months ago.

In its most recent agenda, they talk about: “Discuss the transition to new organizing tools on DFA’s website.” I’m assuming they’re referring to a transition from meetup.com to a DFA hosted system. Similarly, on the DFA Meetup Hosts yahoo group, there is another reference:

The new tools will also make it easier for DFA to promote your events because it will be centralized through the DFA website. We are planning to send Meetup organizers a “beta version” of the new tools on July 25th. The beta period will last approximately one week. DFA then plans to publicly announce the new tools in the first week of August so you can introduce them to your group at the August Meetup.

If DFA separates itself from meetup.com, it could be the death of meetup being used as a political organizing tool. It shouldn’t be the death of social networking tools, and since townhall.com and DFA are actually replacing meetup.com with their own tools, I assume they see some need for them.

My point isn’t that the DNC should break ties with meetup.com. They’ve basically already done that. They need to step up and replace meetup.com with something else, or risk losing momentum to other groups that are doing a better job organizing from online to offline, like DFA and moveon.org.

After all the mumbling I’ve done about building communities online and offline for Democrats and progressives of all kinds, its important to note that the YDs of Washington have a new tech director, Jacob of Democracy for Puget Sound.

With the YDs having their first contested election in a decade, maybe and important step for us. Maybe something along the lines of growohio.org maybe?

Last time around we had the classic “I’m not going to say I’m a Republican because I know that will get me killed here” duo of Sandra Miller and Dave Kent entering the fray. This year, we had the typical folks. Either they are on the council now or you really had to not be paying attention to not know that they wanted to run for council.

Outspending your opponent 3 to 1 and still getting beat hard can be pretty deflating for some.

No one, like Miller of Kent, who represented the so-called Conservative wing of Olympia politics entered the fray. Off year I guess. Anyway, up until Friday it seemed like there weren’t going to be any interesting races. Still doesn’t look that way, but at least there are going to be some primaries.

Here is a rundown on the mystery candidates that the Olympian couldn’t google:

• Michael Normoyle is (as of Jan 2005 at least) the Leg assistant to Senator Mike Carrell (R) of the 28th district (Dupont, etc…)
• Ira Knight is the VP of the Springwood Homeowners Association, which is off of Lilly Road.
• Robin Torske endorsed Sam Reed.
• There are two John Bells in Olympia, one who lives up on Division and possibly presented a paper called “Compassionate Listening” at “De-polarizing the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: An Experiment in Town-Gown Dialogue in Olympia, Washington” at the 2004 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation.

or

• He could be John Bell, who works for the state Administrative Office of the Courts. No, its the first guy.

I’m not a huge fan of Sen. Hillary Clinton, but I do agree it takes a village and that Democrats would be better off if we talked about building communities more. So here’s some more of that from the 43rd State Blues:

In an attempt to bring some sanity to the boards (what the hell was I thinking?) I just asked if a good community couldn’t have stopped this and many other tragedies by being more proactive. Damn, you would have thought I stepped between a mother bear and her cub. The women all went on attack mode and attempted to lay bare my hide.

So why should concerned social progressives continue to try?

Now some may wonder how I can blame the community for what happened on that highway. I say that communities should be watching each other, helping each other, there as a first line of defense against abuse, neglect and worse. But in my mind communities isn’t a reference to City XYZ, its groups of people that are aware of their neighbors, their friends and their family. Its people that arn’t looking for that next wreck on the highway to see the blood, but those that deliver a home cooked meal for the elderly couple down the road.

But I suppose I’m just a lone voice, hoping against trend that our society can still move forward from the state of fear and paranoia we’re living in and start accepting our neighbors for who they are, not what they can offer. I don’t know how to make such radical social re-programming happen, but I do know that its not going to happen under Republican-corporate leadership. I think its only going to happen when real community leaders step forward, organize and set examples for everyone else.