Category: Uncategorized (Page 11 of 49)

Be warned. I left around 4:20 p.m. before Cantwell even made an appearance. I had a faucet cover to buy, otherwise I probably would have stuck around longer.

I got to the Olympia Center a bit early, waiting around for folks to show up, I was mostly curious to see people mill around before the event.

I was sitting down, underneath the “Salmon Run” statues, a local Democrat I know came up to me. “I’m not happy, we shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. Turns out he had been recruited as a “bouncer” to make sure no one came into the event with any hand-made or McGavick signs. I agreed with him, but there didn’t end up being much of a chance of that happening.

I guess they still think keeping folks with competing large print words out of their events is a good idea.

The only non-Democratic folks that came around that I could see where a nice slug of Green Party members carrying those nice small Aaron Dixon signs. After milling around the lobby talking to a handful of interested folks, they politely ditched their signs before they went inside.

Before I went inside, I knocked my head accidentally on the legendary Wishupona Fish statue. Ouch, I was showing a fellow Young Dem who I hadn’t seen in awhile pictures of my son on my cell phone and I got excited. Ouch.

Also, I chatted with a Black Hills High School student out in the lobby who was there to see her sister. She said she liked government, but not politics. She takes part in a club/class at her school were she helps write mock legislation, and she hates politics. Likes the practice of participation, but hates how the campaigns tear each other down.

I got into the event, listened to Rep. Sam Hunt, Thurston County Commissioner Bob Macleod and state Sen. Karen Frasier, and then I took off. Oh yeah, I also met Particle Man from Washblog. And, its true what they say: the water got him instead. Particle Man.

UPDATE: In the comments, Particle Man picks up where I left off and the Olympian covers the event.

This is a great song I’ve been enjoying for awhile off of Son Volt’s best album since “Trace.” Maybe even better than Trace.

Anyway, Jet Pilot is about GW. Rock it:

NPR Roots Rock has a nice mp3 of a concert Son Volt did in Washington DC over a year ago.

Be there or be square:

Cantwell’s Checklist for Change Tour in Olympia

When

Thursday, November 2, 2006 at 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM

Where

The Olympia Center 222 Columbia St. NW Olympia, WA 98501

Description Join Maria Cantwell for the Checklist for Change tour stop in Olympia. Maria is spending the final week before Election Day crisscrossing the state in a biodiesel bus, talking to supporters and voters about her ten-point checklist to change the agenda in Washington DC to reflect our Northwest values. We hope you can join us in Olympia for this great event. Please email comment@cantwell.com with any questions. Host Andrea Johnson

Pierce County is well on the way to deploying wifi county wide, even in such small burbs as Orting and Eatonville.

Spokane built their downtown network so long ago it isn’t even news anymore.

Now, Bellevue is putting their’s up.

What the heck in wrong with Olympia?

The last time anyone seriously talked about wifi within our city government, they took a “wait and see” position.

CIRGO, even though everyone mentions to me that they’re going to get us going in this direction, is still very very quiet about what they’re even going to do. Low cost wifi? Public wifi?

Diary over at Washblog about some stuff in the last few days. Maybe its just the end of campaign season, but I’m glad I got voting out of the way first thing. Not sure I feel like it now.

How can we claim to be for the “common good,” any of us?

The difference between Mike Stark being put in a headlock and tackled and Mike Stark being told to “shut up” or ignored is that he wasn’t a credentialed reporter. Granted, a reporter probably wouldn’t have shouted a question, but reporters all the time ask questions that are “innapropriate.”

So, count up to two politicians in the last few days who “don’t take questions from bloggers.” Allen just does it a bit more forcefully.

“It forces taxpayers to pay bad neighbors to just follow the law.” Spot on. Hat tip to Jon.

Most people may care about farming, in some distant way. They aren’t farmers themselves, but sure, farms are good. Though the Yes on 933 folks are using the farmer argument too, which just muddles it.

The High Taxes argument is better, but it doesn’t hit the issue on the head, which is bad neighbors suck. Why give in to them?

He can put out negative, untrue ads. But, he can’t take true negative ads. He gets all bunchy about Mike Rechner’s new ad:

A Democratic challenger’s televised blasting of Rep. Richard DeBolt, the state House Republican Leader from Chehalis, has grabbed some attention in Thurston County.

…

DeBolt said the ad has a “negative, nasty tone,” and he disputed its claims. Rechner said it informs the voters.

…

DeBolt said Rechner and his party are avoiding issues in favor of a negative campaign, noting that the Thurston County Democratic Party also filed a complaint over his campaign finance reporting this year.

“I guess personal attacks are OK with them, but when you attack issues, they don’t want to do that,” DeBolt said.

Here’s the ad:

The funny part about this ad, and Debolt’s reaction to it, is that the second part of the ad is about Debolt using untruths in ads he funded earlier this year:

Democratic lawmakers were livid Tuesday over a Republican-backed ad campaign blasting them as being soft on sex predators.

The latest salvo in the $75,000 radio, TV, phone and mail campaign by The Speaker’s Roundtable has been a wave of postcards that blanketed five legislative districts over the weekend. Republicans, who are outnumbered by Democrats in the statehouse, say the ads are their way of pushing for tougher sex-offender laws.

…

Marked “SEX OFFENDER NOTIFICATION,” the cards picture a real child rapist. “This violent predator lives in your community,” the cards say. They also list the names of local Democratic lawmakers and urge people to call and tell them to “protect children and not violent sex offenders.” At least seven Democrats in five legislative districts have been targeted in the mailings.

As it turns out, the 57-year-old man pictured in the photo actually lives in Pierce County’s Gig Harbor, not in Vancouver, Walla Walla or most of the other cities where the postcards were received.

…

Several of the Democrats blamed DeBolt, R-Chehalis, who helps raise money for The Speaker’s Roundtable. In a letter Tuesday, they demanded an apology.

“Sometimes, I guess, Rep. DeBolt thinks he’s having fun, kind of a junior-high mentality,” said Rep. Bill Grant, D-Walla Walla.

Groan. I know she was talking about Sharkansky, hell I wouldn’t want to take questions from Sharkansky. Justice Susan Owens should have said something to that effect, that she just didn’t like the person asking the questions. Instead she ended up sounding snobbish and elitist, to say the least.

Uninformed is getting a bit more accurate.

I’m still glad I voted for her, Steven Johnson would be a disaster on the court. She’s still a grade A turd though.

Good lord:

I don’t answer questions from bloggers, and that was apparently the moderator’s only credentials. They didn’t want to get a regular journalist to do it. I have other reasons to, I’m working as a justice and we had a full slate of cases on Tuesday. So I said no — in my view it wasn’t a big deal. I apologize for any inconvenience for anybody. But Sen. Johnson and I have been all over the state, together and alone, even when gas was at its highest price. I had hoped to hit all the counties….

I don’t take questions from bloggers. I just don’t blog and don’t read them. Every forum we’ve been at has been moderated by an attorney or a credentialed journalist, and one by the state president of the League of Women Voters. I personally did not know who this other moderator was. My people might have agreed to that, but when I found out the reality, I said no.

By discounting not only the entire medium, but everyone who isn’t a lawyer or a journalist, she is drawing an arbitrary line. I know Joel Connelly is a nice and smart man, but there isn’t anything about him that makes him any more qualified to ask questions then a few experienced, smart and nice people I know.

At this point, I know I’m reading into it a bit too much, but it seems like she’s almost spitting the word “bloggers” out.

As election day continues (since most of us got our ballots more than a week ago, is there really an election “day”?), we continue to see the polling on 933 drop through the floor. For the first time, the No responses beat out the Yes responses. Even on the better question for “yes.”

See here and here also.