Washblog

Once a year the professional golf community comes to visit my neck of the woods, in the form of the PGA’s Champion’s Tour.

It’s an event that changes the character of the community in several ways: spectators swell the size of the town, there’s a media focus that usually doesn’t exist...and an actual, no kidding, traffic jam might develop—on a weekend.

It’s a great economic barometer, as well. Despite the efforts of the Professional Golfers Association (the PGA), there is a lot more of an upper-income demographic attending the tournament than there is a Happy Gilmore kind of crowd.

Which brings me to the point of today’s examination: what can we learn about the state of the economy from the perspective of the tricklers, as opposed to how it looks from the point of view of the trickled upon?

This is so frustrating.

I'm working on trying to find election results from August 19th at the county level, and I discovered that our Secretary of State's office is trying to help the county auditors by hosting their websites.  It's a neat idea, and I approve.  However, whoever is doing the programming of these .aspx pages is having trouble dealing with all of the complications.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you probably know that the 2008 Democratic National Convention is well underway in Denver, Colorado.

If you've been following the traditional media's coverage of the convention, you might get the impression that Demorats are squabbling nonstop out here in the Mile High City. Hopefully you're wise enough to be skeptical of what you read in the newspaper or hear on television.

Either way, if you're curious to know what's happening here, new media is going to be your best bet.

At NPI, we're doing our best to provide everyone back home with thoughtful, timely, and useful convention coverage.

We've just released an update to Pacific NW Portal's front page that allows you to better track what's going on. Among the special features are a news ticker that flashes the latest happenings from the Mile High City, a widget displaying the latest image from our photostream, and an aggregator indexing local blogs that have writers in Denver to cover the convention.

And we're liveblogging almost nonstop, following the speeches, the parties, the state delegations, the special events happening around the Convention, and more. A roundup of our posts is below the jump.

For the past two weeks we have paid more attention to the rest of the world than usual, what with the Olympics drawing our attention to Asia, and the conflict in the Balkans forcing us to learn that Atlanta is not in danger...that indeed, there is another Georgia—and how events in that Georgia could affect life in our Georgia.

As it happens, I belong to an international blogging collective (the Blogpower community) with voices that happen to be especially well-placed and often powerful to boot...a combination that will be most helpful for today’s exercise.

We are going to take a journey, Gentle Reader, all the way from India to Australia. We’ll visit Canadian friends, then we have much to discuss in the UK...and we get to meet a friend in the Sudan—and just for fun, we’ll toss in a few discussion questions based on Russian history.

Finally, through the miracle of Facebook, we’ll meet an actual volunteer soldier from South Ossetia who will describe the Georgian attack on his city.

There’s a lot to cover, so put on your travel hat, grab your virtual passport, and let’s hit the road.

To the three of you who posted comments to my previous post on peak oil, thank you.  It will be through such dialogue that we will spread the word, while learning form one another.  In fact, as recently as this morning I made connections with a couple of activists and acquired links to new resources that will be useful to me.

A very helpful acquaintance read my previous and suggested that I had failed to answer three key questions that some of you may have had.  So this post will try to rectify that little shortcoming.  The questions are: 1) What is peak oil and what are its implications to my community?  2) What can be done about it?  and 3) Are we approaching peak oil?

So, follow me over the jump and see if my answers are useful to you.  Then post a comment to keep the conversation going.

In 2006 I stood in a packed room at Bellevue Community College to listen to Obama, Cantwell and Burner. I knew then Obama would be one to reckon with. His entire person emanated change and a new beginning.

At West Woodland Elementary in Seattle ballot numbering in the upper right hand corner of the tearoff stub was completely hosed. This reads "X of Y Ballots Remaining".

Y read "POLL1721" (SEA 36-1291) to "POLL1730" (SEA 36-1341) for the various precincts. This string appeared to be unique and the associated number appeared to be monotonically increasing for each precinct. This value was fine however on the provisional ballots.

X read the same as the ballot number: monotonically increasing with each ballot instead of decreasing.

[Front paged: NM]

I'm supposed to be finishing another story tonight, but I've just come from Darcy Burner's primary night party and I have in front of me the results of the important races tonight in Washington's newfangled "top two" primary.

It is unfair to extrapolate the results of elections in the "People's Republic of Washington" directly onto a national map, but as I look as these results it seems fair to say that if any Republican strategists aren't sweating bullets this morning it's because they'll be hustling for votes in towns like Maggie Valley, North Carolina (don't forget to stop by Saratoga's for the Wednesday night jazz or, perhaps, Bessemer Bend, Wyoming.

For the rest of the Republican community, tonight's events are not good news.

We have a fair amount to cover, so let's get to it.

        Brainless: a pro-choice song A musical examination of when life begins.
       

(Belongs in the apparently non-existent category of women's rights.)

Quickly...

My opponent has predicted a "strong" 46 percent voter turnout for today's primary.

After cranking the numbers, my campaign projects a 41 percent turnout statewide, with a 39 percent turnout in King County.

I believe that moving the primary to August will depress turnout far more than the incumbent admits. However, with the Republican incumbent's aggressive purging of the voter rolls, his prediction percentage wise may be correct, even if fewer voters actually cast a ballot.

For reference, turnout for 2004's primary was 45 percent.

Jason Osgood, Democrat for Secretary of State

Georgetown Radio, a film by Tom Steffel. Sound by Nico Vassilakis and E. Hope
Part one
Part two

I moved to Georgetown, Seattle's oldest neighborhood, from Brooklyn, NY in the early 90s.  My ex-husband, Nico Vassilakis (he and E. Hope did the brilliant soundtrack on these films) and I lived for a couple of years in an apartment with no shower, no central heat right by the clocktower that you see at the start of this film. Actually, the opening scene is from the roof of the building we lived in.  After our son was born we moved to a house -- $550 for a 2 bedrooms, a garage, basement and backyard.  At that rent, one of us was always able to be with the baby.  Affordable housing changes everything...

What Bernie says -- in 2005 the top 1% of earners made more than the bottom 50% in the United States.

That means 300,000 people made more than 150 million people.

That's just income. The unfair distribution of wealth is even more severe. The most wealthy 400 people are worth $1.54 trillion. And we have the highest percentage of childhood poverty in the world, he says. 18% of the children are in poverty in this country -- almost one in 5 children.

Those people who make between 100 million and a billion per year in the US spend an average of $182,000 on watches. (I spent $30 on a watch in 2000, and it keeps on ticking.)

To the richest in the country: "President Bush has given you hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks and yet we have children in this country who are hungry, we have millions of children who lack health insurance."

Please watch the video after the fold:

Now that high chain link fences topped with razor wire are considered the norm for anyone who resists the American government's current puppets, we should take in stride the fact that in Denver  if Cindy Sheehan shouts out at the wrong time or Daniel Ellsburg is quoted saying the wrong thing, the no-smile ear-phone and sun-glass-wearing criminal minders will cart them right off.  

Oh, and that of course includes any other of you lesser lights who might be willing to speak out.

God help the ones who dare flash a camera in the wrong direction.
I wouldn't advise taking a picture of an American Flag flying over a stadium.

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[Front paged: NM. Editorial comment: 1.) See Jason Osgood's 5/12/07 story specifically congratulating Councilmember Constantine for protecting our secret ballot: KING COUNTY PROTECTS OUR SECRET BALLOT. 2.) Councilmember Constantine knows that King County Elections has not used unique identifiers on ballots. Having been told, erroneously, by the King County Director of Elections that Jason Osgood was misinforming people that King County had used these unique identifiers, I understand why he recommended against contributing to Osgood's cammpaign. Therefore, I don't agree with the characterization of his comments that appears here as "trashing" the candidate. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that Sherril Huff appears to have not verified the information in her email before she sent it out and that, therefore, she spread misinformation that makes it more difficult for voters to make an informed choice in this election. I'm front-paging this story despite my disagreement with the author's characterization of Councilmember Constantine's comments, as it is reporting important information.]

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Wednesday night I attended the regular membership meeting of the 34th District Democrats.  Part of the night's agenda included approval of proposals to donate money to Democratic candidates for statewide office.

Following decisions to make donations to Christine Gregoire, Jim McIntire, Peter Goldmark and John Ladenberg, I stood and introduced a motion to contribute to Democratic Secretary of State candidate Jason Osgood.  I expected little or no opposition, as Osgood enjoys the strong support of a large number of 34th LD activists. However, to my surprise, King County Council Member Dow Constantine stood to speak in opposition.  Constantine was clearly upset with Osgood, and proceeded to trash him before the group.  His anger was focused on public statements he claimed Osgood has recently been making to the effect that King County uses bar-codes on ballots which allow votes to be tracked back to voters.  King County uses no such system - and therefore Constantine was upset that County officials have allegedly been forced to deal with confused, angry and misinformed citizens. Following his talk the motion to contribute to Osgood (who was endorsed by the 34th last month) was easily defeated.

Many Democrats in the room were shocked that the Osgood campaign would spread such false information and agreed with Constantine's assertion that the group should postpone any contribution until the candidate "gets his act straight."

This would all be perfectly sensible, except for the fact that Constantine's accusations were entirely false and that Jason Osgood has never said any of the things about King County ballots that he was accused of saying.  In fact, Osgood has consistently and publicly said the exact opposite - that King County does not use bar-codes and that this is a good thing.

So where did Councilmember Constantine come by this false and defamatory information about a Democratic candidate for statewide office?  Well, that's where it gets interesting.

Hello Washington!  Did you know that Wyoming is having their Congressional primary on the same day as you?  Believe it or not, there are still 15 Congressional primaries yet to unfold   across the country .  There are a number of issues to consider when voting in a primary.  Among these are a candidate's position on FISA and other Constitutional issues ... but how do you get that information?

The Get FISA Right group is finding out the answers, using a questionnaire developed on our wiki.   The survey includes a section on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 followed by a section on Constitutional Rights.  Challengers are scored on a curve with a grading method discussed in our web forum.  Incumbents are graded on the vote they made in the House and Senate when the flawed bill was passed.  Those who voted Nay get an A; those who voted Aye get an F.

There's more after the jump.