Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 174 of 177)

You could say that support for a new Walmart in Tumwater from the Tumwater business community is lukewarm at best. At worst, more than a third of responding businesses say that they are not only against Walmart coming to Tumwater, but they are against Walmart in general.

One bonehead though said that while he was against Walmart personally, that the chamber should support business. I’m going to count on this guy when I open my murder for hire business next to the Dollar Store.

—–Original Message—–

From: Tumwater Chamber [mailto:office@tumwaterchamber.com]

Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 6:13 PM

To: office@tumwaterchamber.com

Subject: Wal-Mart Survey Results

Here are the Wal-Mart survey results . . .

34 Responders

14 Support

17 Against: 12 Against Wal-Mart/5 Against Added Traffic Congestion

2 Neutral

1 Answered – Personally against; however, Chamber needs to support business.

A big thank you to everyone who responded to our survey. I will be taking the survey results to the City Council meeting tonight (12/7).

Corinne M. Tobeck

Executive Director

Tumwater Area Chamber of Commerce

5304 Littlerock Road S.W.

Tumwater, WA 98512

(360) 357-5153 Phone

(360) 786-1685 Fax

office@tumwaterchamber.com E-Mail

www.tumwaterchamber.com Web

Ukraine’s revolution in a box may seem contrived, but I’m becoming an admirer in the short time I’ve been paying attention to the Pora movement.

A lot of planning, work and money has gone into efforts to design a US model for promoting democracy around the world. The model’s first success was notched in Serbia. Funded and organized by the US government, which deployed US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organizations (NGOs), the campaign defeated Slobodan Milosevich at the ballot box in Belgrade in 2000.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role in the campaign to oust Milosevich. In November last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, Miles reapplied the same method successfully. Thanks to his coaching, US-educated Saakashvili brought down Eduard Shevardnadze. When the US ambassador in Belarus, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in Central America, notably in Nicaragua, organized a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus strongman, Alexander Lukashenko, he failed. “There will be no Kostunica in Belarus,” the Belarus president declared, referring to the United States’ Belgrade success 10 months earlier.

But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable to the US in planning the operation in Kiev. It is thus easy to understand such slickly organized spontaneity. The operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience, which would be the envy of even a Gandhian – is now so smooth that methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections. Located in the center of Belgrade, the Center for Non-violent Resistance, staffed by computer-literate youngsters, is ready for hire and will carry out operations to beat even a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations.

A lot of people would demean the movement as contrived, supported by Western carpet baggers, but I have to respect the amount of planning that went into recent events. Simply amazing.

Here’s another good article: Serbs Lend a Hand in Ukraine Protests

They should be prosecuted for their criminal acts and forbidden from returning to the arena, ever.

I can usually depend on Dan for some law and order common sense, so you can be assured I was surprised when he argued that at times violence is “part of the game.” I called Dan on my way up to Puyallup earlier this week to ask if I got into an argument with someone at work and popped him in the nose, what I would be charged with. Dan said, likely, simple assault. Not a felony, but not something you want to spend your afternoon sorting out either.

Our long conversation on Ron Artest, Detroit fans, the city of Detroit in general and criminal law boiled down to whether or not athletes on the field of play who take part in criminal activity (simple assault) should be charged.

Its my impression that if a ball player runs after a pitcher for throwing inside, hits him a couple times, that is criminal activity. But, the police officers that are always at Mariners’ games never step in to do anything about it. If they were walking back to their cars after the game and saw a similar activity, they would pull out their cuffs.

Especially after the Pistons/Pacers brawl, the fact that professional athletes are allowed to literally get away with criminal behavior on the field baffles me. People are watching it happen dozens of times every season, and no one considers it criminal. Take away the field, the stadium and uniforms. Make it a beer league even, and you have cops, cuffs and all that.

Dan made one valid point. In the case of simple assault, a fist fight, if their isn’t anyone willing to press charges, no action by the police can be taken. Now, this is a part of our law that I haven’t thought about much. Its possible for someone to break a law, but not be punished, because someone who is not a police officer or public servant of any kind, rather the victim, decides that the criminal should not be hauled in.

Either way, there is no way in my mind that Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O’Neal should not have been hauled away in handcuffs

Right now, I’m listening to the new U2 album on their website. After SNL, I think I may not be able to take much more of this.

Good article on how the Puget Sound no longer centers on Seattle and how Rossi and McKenna use that to win:

At Seattle’s Town Hall, Democrat Christine Gregoire would later that night buck up her supporters and urge confidence in the face — and the hope — of a recount. Town Hall, that graceful building with encircling pews, the epicenter of urban, urbane Seattle, looked like the Alamo.

Rossi and McKenna are distinctly and artfully suburban. Their political base in Sammamish and Bellevue grew in the high-growth 1990s, a decade that now appears to be the defining pivot from city to non-city life in the region.

That shift is accelerated in Snohomish and Pierce counties. It was the suburbanizing Pierce County portion of the 8th Congressional District that kept that seat Republican. It is the growing suburbanization of Kitsap County across the water that makes it less and less a ferry stop to Seattle’s urban center. It was traditionally Democratic Snohomish County that pivoted away from Gregoire.

While pollsters and political consultants talked about the “suburban crescent” that would go Republican or shift Democratic, I think we are all missing the point of the departure of the suburbs from city life. It just happened here later than in Eastern metropolises. The suburban voter is more independent — not many swing voters reside in Seattle — and less abiding of the urban agenda that dominated our state.

They can go centrist Democrat as they do for Congress with Reps. Jay Inslee and Adam Smith. They can go right of center with new member of Congress Dave Reichert. They are certainly looking for voices to represent them that are neither rural nor urban.

Talking with one of the more-seasoned politicians of the Sammamish Plateau Wednesday night — a group gloriously indifferent to Seattle — there was something of a realization that Puget Sound had changed, even if Seattle has not. He spoke of highs and lows over the years, but of those who know Sammamish well and have seen it evolve in the past dozen years.

Sammamish? Nobody in Seattle knows Sammamish. They don’t know its life and its troubles or why people move there with aspirations and hopes for a life in suburban America.

Interesting post over at Pacific Views on the pro, cons and thoughts on the “takings” argument against habitat protections. I’ve been reading emails from the anti-CAO group up in King County for the past few weeks, and the one thing that strikes me about their argument is how is doesn’t seem to address environmentalism at all.

Their argument is stuck on the track of freedom and private property rights, seemingly saying that “I have the freedom to do with my property what I want.” On the surface a solid argument, which hits some potholes though when I start thinking of putting up a 7-11 on my property.

They never talk about the problem that these ordinance are supposed to deal with. When the do, they refer to it as a “problem that really isn’t there” sort of thing, or shluffing off the responsibility of the problem to urban dwellers, saying that the Seattle residents created the problem, now rural residents have to come up with a solution.

Former city council candidate Alfonso Botana did not sign the back of his absentee ballot. If anyone out there knows Alfonso, tell him to call the county auditors office so his vote can count!

Maybe this is why he lost.

Linda Smith left and then Don Carlson and Joe Zarelli lost in the 3rd

Randy Tate lost in the 9th

Now Dave Reichart and Dave Ross are going at it in the 8th District, the last seemingly Republican District in western Washington. And, the question begs to be asked. If the Republicans lose there, will they retreat from the last bastion of conservative power (such that it is) in western Washington.

In logical terms, the 3rd and 6th Districts should be rural bastions of conservative politics, but they’re not. Of course, Norm rules in the 6th, and by pulling in strangely yet almost religiously Dem Grays Harbor and some of Tacoma, he’ll most likely keep the district until the end of time.

And, it seems like the Republicans have given up on the 3rd, at least for now. You would think of having the double bad luck of first Trent Matson pulling out and then Joe Zarelli turning out to be a neocon welfare cheat, that they would come back with someone serious this time. But they didn’t.

They did almost as bad in the 9th, when perennial candidate for Alaska’s congressional seat (as a Dem) C. Mark Greene ran.

Basically, in three districts in western Washington where the Republicans should be putting a serious hurt on the Dems, they’ve been reduced to also rans and joke candidates.

This is somewhat like what the Weekly is saying today, but different. They seem to think that da’Dems have a chance to win back the Inland Empire district. Well, maybe a chance, but in a high Dem turnout primary Don Barbieri was out polled by all Republicans 55,000 to 84,000.

Is it indifference or are they just lazy? Will the same thing happen if Dave Ross wins? Boy, I hope so.

You know how there are some things that will happen in other parts of the country that generally won’t happen in Washington and there are somethings that will happen here, but not across the country. And, that thing here end up being just a bit dorky?

Yeah. We got that.

It started with civil rights activist Carl Mack challenging Seattle police on their growing use of Tasers, and police officials defending the electric stun device. It has come to this: Mack, president of the Seattle chapter of the NAACP, and police Chief Gil Kerlikowske each will be shot with 50,000 volts of electricity at 10 a.m. today at police headquarters.

…”I said, ‘Well, I’ve never actually experienced it, but if you’re willing to experience it, then maybe I should do this also,’ ” he said. “Of course, immediately thinking that (Deputy) Chief Harry Bailey or (Assistant) Chief Nick Metz would jump in and say, ‘Oh no, chief, we’ll do it.‘ Instead, neither one of them did.”

Yet another Republican who wasn’t there…

In preparation for my impending shopping spree at Powells early next month, I’ve been trying to bone up on some of the authors I want include in the spree. So, I’ve been perusing some new Vaclav Havel, and I realized something that I hadn’t heard brought up at all during all the arm chair history writing during the week after Reagan’s death.

Reagan gets a lot of credit from Republicans and the like for ending the cold war and freeing eastern Europe and the entire world (short of parts of Asia and Latin America) from the cold, un-Godly grip of Communism.

In all that talk, I heard no discussion of the people who actually were there, like Havel and Lech Walesa (both of whom went to jail and suffered under communism). I’m sure, though, none of them had anything do to with the fall of communism.