Olympia Time

History, politics, people of Oly WA

Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 98 of 176)

Oly-er than though

February 24, 2008 / / 0 Comments

That, I am. Slog links to me here and comments ensue.

Maybe my point wasn’t really that clear, but it isn’t about people saying “Oly” or “Olympia,” but rather the term “Oly” eventually meaning “Washington state government.”

The first comment:

I am from Oly and people like you this person are why I left.

This is where I started to think I was Oly-er than though.

At least one got the language thing:

Metonymy is not going away because you say so. Crown for royalty? Washington for the federal gov’t? You’ve got a big crusade on your hands.

Also, someone who thinks about the language thing way to hard:

See, all I’m thinking about is if he’s used the concept of “metonymy” correctly. “Oly” is an abbreviation, and it’s stretching it a bit to consider an abbreviation to be a piece of something that represents the whole. Or is what he’s saying that “Olympia,” which is connected strictly to the the state government, represents only a piece of “Oly,” which is the complete place, so “Olympia” is the metonymy? Hm.

Also, I wonder if he gets mad about people using “Washington” to refer to “Washington, DC,” which in turns refers to the federal government in Washington, DC. I’ll be looking for his next post on that pressing matter.

Overall good talk.

The thing that really makes me sad is that after calling my first post “awesome,” Josh Feit is still saying Oly. All for naught, but at least I’m still smug about it.

Cheryl Crist gaining attention in run against Brian Baird

February 22, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Crist will meet the press on February 27.

Politics is a blood sport chimes in, but takes a shot at her credibility:

Cheryl Crist is a nice person, but will simply get ignored by the Baird campaign. No credible challenger emerged, and that’s too bad, as a healthy debate on the war would have made for an interesting race. It goes to show you that maybe the Donna Edwards primary win over Al Wynn might be an isolated event, even in this wave year.

…

A growing congressional district deserves a lot more clout, especially when there’s this little $4 billion bridge project to get done.

So indeed, there’s more than just Iraq to challenge Baird on. Too bad there’s no one credible to go after him.

albaum over at DKos points to Cheryl:

Check out Cheryl Crist’s website. This is probably the best opportunity we’ll get to replace a pro-war Democrat with a Peace democrat, so send her $10. Now would be the time to show lots of small donor support.

What I’m thinking right now is that before Baird, this was a district that elected Linda Smith. And, before that Jolene Unsoeld and Don Bonker held the seat. While Unsoeld could be considered fairly liberal, she did have some very strong guns rights beliefs that would put her in
the libertarian wing. And, Don Bonker was Don Bonker, much like Baird is Baird.

I’m just saying, defeating Baird in the primary could end up handing the district over. Not a big deal to some folks, I understand.

Contact your Superdelegates (credit where credit is due)

February 22, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I take a lot of time to criticize the state Dems, but this was a great idea:

The Washington State Democratic Central Committee (WSDCC) has six superdelegates. Superdelegates are unpledged Party leaders who will have a vote for the Democratic nominee for president. Because the race is so close this year, superdelegates could play a vital role in choosing the nominee. The six WSDCC superdelegates are Chair Dwight Pelz, Vice Chair Eileen Macoll, and DNC members Ed Cote, Sharon Mast, David McDonald, and Pat Notter.

Use the following form to send a message to the superdelegates about which nominee you think they should support. You can choose to lobby individual superdelegates or choose to lobby all of them.

I never thought of emailing my super delegates to get them to vote one way or another. Honestly, I think of them as isolated activists that weren’t likely to care what I thought. But, now I will because Dwight showed me how.

I don’t say this often so: Thanks Dwight Pelz!

Stop Josh Feit before he ruins Oly

February 22, 2008 / / 5 Comments

I’ve been quiet throughout most of the legislative session about the cruel metonymy of Olympia.

While I’ll probably never be able to stop reporters, bloggers, pundits and conservative politicians from using the term “Olympia” to signify “state government” or rather “everything I hate about state government,” Feit of the Stranger has gone too far.

In recent posts on Slog, Feit has started to use the shortened “Oly” when talking about state capital campus goings-ons:

Oly Update: Take Heart Carless in Seattle
Oly Action
Oly Inaction

I’m sure you’d say: sure, Feit writes for the Stranger, so it could be assumed that he’d use the hipper, shorter “Oly” when writing about state politics.

Hell no!

Olympia is not Oly.

Olympia is the capital of the state of Washington, identifiable on maps in classrooms and travel lodges nationwide. It is a city that every elementary school kid memorizes (do they still do that?) as a state capital of a state near the end of the list of states. It was the first state capital and through a hard fight with Yakima and Ellensburg, stayed the state capital. Now we have fancy greek type buildings on a hill. It is home to state agencies, even the ones that are in Tacoma. And, for a couple months or so every winter, we’re home to folks like Josh Feit, though we actually try hard to ignore them.

Oly is a hometown, its where a lot of us are from. Though, tons of us are not from here (I’m from here, btw), the transplants will defend Oly with the fervor of a converted Catholic. Oly’s connection to Olympia is that we have some activists and many of us feed at the public trough. But, Oly as Oly has more to do with Evergreen, Lakefair, the house that Kurt Cobain lived in, and the Spaghetti Bowl. And the wood bat tournament. Oly is Oly in relation to Tumwater (Scumwater) and Lacey Sucks.

While I’d rather people use terms like “state government” or “the state legislature” when they’d rather be lazy and say “Olympia,” using the term “Oly” is entirely unacceptable. Please stop.

Thomas à Kempis on partisanship

February 21, 2008 / / 0 Comments

My Lentin mission is reading and listening to Imitation of Christ.

One very good passage that got me thinking last night about more than Jesus:

If God were always the sole object of our desire, we should the less easily be troubled by the erring judgment of our fancy.

Better translation for my purpose here:

If God were the sole object of our desire, we should not be disturbed so easily by opposition to our opinions.

Granted, this is a very small quote from a very thick book where every sentence seemingly has great meaning. So, I’m not trying to say that Kempis was talking about politics, just that that passage made me think about politics.

The debate going on between Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton, and their supporters, on the style of politics that works best, I think relates to this. And, the overall debate over partisanship, whether working together is actually a good thing.

Opposition to your belief shouldn’t result in knee capping your opponent. Some things are bigger than winning.

Ideas on how we can improve, “not ditch,” the caucus system

February 19, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Andrew over at NPI blog writes a post about I guess improving the precinct caucus system, but spends the entire time defending them against folks that like the primary. Good for him, but I would really have liked to hear some ideas on improvement.

Seriously.

Because it’s been a demoralizing few months leading up to the precinct caucuses.

Anyway, I’ll start a list. Feel free to join in when you’re ready.

1. Hold caucuses more often. Why do we only force folks to attend a precinct caucus when we want them to choose a presidential nominee? If all that hooey about getting out of the house, meeting your neighbors and freedom of association was not a big lie, then we should hold caucuses to nominate every Democratic candidate, from governor down to state legislator and county commissioner. Not dog catcher, because we don’t elect dog catchers in this state.

Pros: Like I said, we would actually do what we mean when we defend the caucuses.

Cons: If you thought it was hard to pull off the presidential cycle caucuses, what makes you think we can do this all the time? Then again, fewer people will turn out for non-interesting caucuses.

This stuff costs money too, and the primaries the state pays for.

And, can’t we just have it both ways? Private political organization when it suits our needs and public, primary based party when we don’t have the money?

2. Hold them in separate rooms. One of the major complaints that I keep on running into following the caucuses was that people couldn’t hear what was going on because there were more than one being held in one room.

That was reality because a) we couldn’t book classrooms because of student privacy issues and b) we didn’t expect 10 percent of the voters to show up. More like 6 percent or something.

But, we as Dems should make a list of all the publically available small rooms in the entire state that are ADA accessible, just so people can have quiet civic conversations.

And, that’s it. I don’t have any more ideas.

Candidate public financing in Olympia

February 14, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Just some quick thoughts on the possibility.

SB 5278 was passed by the Senate. I’ll just go ahead and assume the bill will be signed by the governor.

You need 15 percent of registered voters to send an initiative to the polls in Olympia. Close as I can figure that’s about 1,900 people.

No limit on petition size in this case, so we can do 8.5 x 11.

The next step, I guess, is to look up ballot language. The old ordinance in Seattle might work, I guess. Oh, that was quick. Here it is.

Anyone have any experience writing city code?

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