Sarah Palin dropped the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers game tonight—and just listen to the crowd boo when the “most famous hockey mom in America” steps out on the ice.

Considering that Philadelphia is a big city, and considering that sliming big cities is an important part of Sarah Palin’s schtick—excuse me, campaign rhetoric—should it be a surprise that big city crowds aren’t happy to see her?

Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights legend who John McCain has said he admires, today issued a harsh warning to McCain over the tone of his rallies:

What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse…

George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama…

As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better.

John McCain’s response? He’s leaning right into it:

Congressman John Lewis’ comments represent a character attack against Governor Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale. The notion that legitimate criticism of Senator Obama’s record and positions could be compared to Governor George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I’ve always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.

I call on Senator Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign has now issued a response of its own that tries to thread the needle, disagreeing with the George Wallace comparison but condemning the “hateful rhetoric” from McCain’s crowds and the “irresponsible charges” from Sarah Palin.

Sen. Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies.

But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States ‘pals around with terrorists.’

As Barack Obama has said himself, the last thing we need from either party is the kind of angry, divisive rhetoric that tears us apart at a time of crisis when we desperately need to come together. That is the kind of campaign Sen. Obama will continue to run in the weeks ahead.

Film

‘Appaloosa’

• See what else is happening in Film on Saturday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

As Hugo Chavez welcomes “Comrade Bush” to the land of socialism, he himself is boarding the train to neoliberalism:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced a plan to help the country’s businesses as rising inflation threatens the economy.

Under a stimulus package unveiled on Wednesday, Mr Chavez scrapped a tax and eased currency controls that made it harder for Venezuelan firms to operate.

He also announced a $1bn fund to help key industries such as food and oil.

There are a ton of readings today.

At The Comics Dungeon in Wallingford from 2 to 4, Chris Onstad, who does the comic Achewood, will be signing. Achewood is a very funny comic strip most of the time. You should go to this one.

At Seattle Mystery Book Shop, Rosemary Poole-Carter reads from Women of Magdalene, which is a mystery about women in a lunatic asylum dying of natural causes…or is it MURDER? Probably murder, since it’s the Seattle Mystery Book Shop.

At the University Book Store, Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson discuss their book about being a photojournalist in Iraq, which is called Unembedded.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Laurence Gonzales, who also read yesterday, reads here today from Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things. This book looks kind of like Blink for Dummies. Then, later, Deborah Copaken Koga, who wrote Shutterbabe, reads from her new novel, Between Here and April. I don’t think the book is about a threesome, but a book editor can dream, right?

And up at Third Place Books, Wendy Barnard reads from Custom Knits. One of the custom knits is, as you can see on the cover up there, a wetsuit for surfing. Now, I’m not a crafty person, but I think that might not be a good idea.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

We’re not playing the race card, a McCain supporter insisted yesterday on MSNBC. J.P. Freire is the managing editor of American Spectator, a conservative rag, and he and his mag are both in the tank for McCain, of course. Despite all evidence to the contrary (every McCain and Palin rally over the last two weeks), Freire insists say that McCain isn’t whipping up racists for votes (which they are). Why? Because that would be wrong? Nope, because it wouldn’t be effective. Why not? “Unfortunately, no one wants to be a racist,” says J.P. Freire (at the 2:01 mark).

And if you think Republicans would stoop to exploiting racial tensions, says Freire, “you have to assume that a whole bunch of Republicans are racists.”

Don’t know how we got that impression, J.P.

Via Gawker.

Gail Collins:

The Republican campaign strategy now involves sending their candidates to areas where everybody is a die-hard McCain supporter already. Then they yell about Obama until the crowd is so frenzied people start making threats. The rest of the country is supposed to watch and conclude that this would be an enjoyable way to spend the next four years.

Posted by News Intern Aaron Pickus

Bush Tackles Crisis: He promises to fix us.

Portugal: No gay marriage.

Rossi’s Rapists: Scared?

UW Police: UW accused of practicing something called “racial and sexual discrimination.”

Nicklesville Moves: Homeless campers spruce up U-District.

US v. North Korea: North Korea is no longer a terrorist country.

US losing influence: America’s decreased power around the Caspian Sea.

Poor Sports: Real reason for current global crisis is the status of sports in Seattle.

Iran Helps: Iran opens two health clinics in Bolivia.

Comrade Bush: Hugo Chavez welcomes President Bush to socialism.

How low can these shitheads possibly sink?

Early today, Obama remarked on the all the wackos yelling shit at McCain rallies:

“It’s easy to rile up a crowd,” Obama said. “Nothing’s easier than riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that’s not what we need right now in the United States.”

The McCain camp quickly jumped on this unprovoked attack on hardworking, blood-thirsty American xenophobes.

Senior advisor Nicolle Wallace:

“Barack Obama’s assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising. These are the same people obama called ‘bitter’ and attacked for ‘clinging to guns’ and faith.” …

“Attacking our supporters is a new low for the campaign that’s run more millions of dollars of negative ads than any other in history.”

That’s right! If anyone’s going to tell our supporters that they’ve crossed the line, it’s going to be our candidate!

Added McCain spokesman Brian Rogers:

“Barack Obama’s attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn’t understand regular people and the issues they care about. He dismisses hardworking middle class Americans as clinging to guns and religion, while at the same time attacking average Americans at McCain rallies who are angry at Washington, Wall Street and the status quo.”

It’s true. Barack Obama doesn’t understand the issues these people care about. They care about middle names and forwarding bulk emails. They care about keeping their kids out of Harvard and away from people who seem like they might be foreign. They care about spending tax money, not paying it. They care about yelling out barely veiled threats to assassinate a Senator.

Come on, Obama! These hardworking bigots and morons are just trying to attack you in peace! Stop attacking them! How could you?

Joe Pony Keg: Frat boy found dead in a “pool of vomit.”

Jesus, That’s a Lot of Pot Smokers: October marks 20 millionth pot arrest since it was prohibited in 1937.

Too Bad: We don’t have much to show for it.

Rockefeller Horror: The push to overturn New York’s incomprehensibly fucked up Rockefeller drug laws.

Blow Away: Man freed after substance turns out to not be cocaine.

Not That Anyone Should Vote Based on This: Voters guide to drug reform.

Don’t Vote Based on This, Either: Judge flips out over Michigan’s medical marijuana initiative.

The Tokenator: Vetoes employment bill for pot patients. He “always knew how to enjoy” pot, he says, and here’s a video of him enjoying it. But Arnold doesn’t want you employing people like him, okay?

The IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games is afoot in Bellevue right now. For today and tomorrow, the show caters only to game makers (seminars, round-table chats, and so on). If you make games, you need to attend this—over a dozen international nerd geniuses are talking shop and waiting for budding developers (or major publishers searching for the next Portal) to pick their brains.

Not a dev? Starting Sunday, the fest transforms into a public, all-you-can-play show for $10 entry. And for the first day of this switch, if you’re a teenager, you can attend and play for free.

I love that they’re encouraging teens to come to an exhibit with the Dark Room Sex Game, which proved far more fun than I’d expected during my playtest today. Turns out the thing is a four-player game, in which your “partner” is a surprise every round, and you work to out-hump your competition by waving Wii remotes at each other at the perfect tempo (and hearing aural moans to confirm you’re doing it right). The developers are still wrapping their heads around what they can do with the Wii remote—I asked if they might add some ass-slapping motions to the game, and they didn’t rule the idea out.

It proved to be a developer favorite—and a loud audio distraction in the small gallery—but it couldn’t outdo the wow factor of levelHead. This demo footage I shot explains things better than I ever could, though skip ahead 20 seconds to get past some glitches:

Rotate the cube in real-life, and the computer camera at the base of the table turns it into a gaming snowglobe. Then tilt to help the little man walk around in there; when he reaches a door, rotate the cube some more to find him again, and repeat. It’s still a little wonky, but this experience alone was worth the drive to Bellevue.

Some of the dozen-plus games on display are just as phenomenal to witness, like a stop-motion Myst-alike that would get Tim Burton wet. And Yet It Moves is another treat, a hand-drawn side-scroller game where you rotate the world 90 degrees at a time to get from place to place. Unfortunately, other games on display are too complex for a crowded, public showing, like Democracy 2, a civil engineering sim—complete with a real-time terror-watch matrix—that only freaks like Jon Golob could appreciate.

Don’t attend this expecting something akin to GameWorks. Many of these are more interesting in concept than in complete gameplay. The Unfinished Swan is decidedly unfinished, though its mindblowing “paint to see” mechanic is fun to toy with. Or there’s the one where you make an old lady walk slowly in a straight line, have her sit down, and then walk her back the other way. Just call that one “interactive art” and move along.

But the good at IndieCade totally outweighs the bad (though I can only hope they switch out their awful, one-foot-tall table setups). The fact that so many of the titles are done by one-man teams—and often in as few as seven days—is something to behold.

The AP reports:

BERNALILLO, N.M. — A hot air balloon crashed into power lines and burst into flames Friday during Albuquerque’s annual balloon fiesta, throwing both men on board to the ground and killing one of them.

According to the local NBC affiliate KOB 4:

Friday’s fatal balloon accident is not the first for the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, which began in 1972… During the 1998 fiesta, a woman was killed when a balloon plowed into power lines, two men died in 1993 when their balloon hit power lines, and two men died during the 1990 fiesta when their balloon crashed into power lines.

KOB 4 also has photos of the incident on their site taken by witnesses Mike and Shaunie Briggs of Winters, California—including this one, the most ghastly/striking/artful thing I’ve seen all day, in part because it makes whimsy (the balloon in the distance covered in sea creatures) look evil (never trust whimsy):

Jesus Christ. Condolences to all, and nice photo, Mike and Shaunie.

The verdict on Troopergate: abuse of power.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state’s public safety commissioner.

This, the video companion to Charles’s earlier post, is a disaster for McCain. The key for Republicans, for many many years, has been to keep these sorts of conservatives out of sight—or at least keep them quiet when cameras are around. Now that they know they’re McCain’s only hope, they won’t be silenced:

Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president who has done a lot of international conflict resolution work, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Many expected the Prize to go to Chinese dissidents as a little slap to China after this year’s Olympics.

But another group was snubbed, maybe even robbed, and the mainstream media, predictably, isn’t paying any attention:

Dr. David Ray Griffin and everyone involved in the 9/11 truth movement have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The recipient of the Peace Prize will be announced this Friday, October 10.

Let the conspiracy theories begin. I hope they involve evil Finns.

Panicking McCain tries to control the monster he conjured up from the underworld:

LAKEVILLE, Minn. — Sen. John McCain responded Friday to the increasingly angry crowds at his rallies and town halls by urging them to be respectful of his rival, Sen. Barack Obama, despite their deep policy differences with the Democratic nominee.

Speaking to skeptical supporters at a town hall in this Minneapolis suburb, McCain prompted boos from his crowd when he called Obama “a decent person” and told an expectant father that he does “not have to be scared if he is President of the United States.”

Yes, I referenced the greatest poem ever written, The Communist Manifesto:

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.

A report just released by Office of Professional Accountability Auditor Kate Pflaumer appears to have cleared the Seattle Police Department of allegations from civil rights groups and attorneys that officers have used obstruction charges to cover for improper or violent arrests.

Pflaumer, who compiled the report at the request of Mayor Greg Nickels, examined “obstruction only” arrests between January 2006 and July 2008 and found “no pattern of abuse” in how officers use obstruction charges.

According to Pflaumer’s report, only 16 SPD officers have three or more obstruction arrests, and of the 76 cases Pflaumer examined, only 14 resulted in OPA complaints.

A number of the obstruction charges stemmed from drug arrests—when suspects attempted to swallow drugs or destroy paraphernalia in front of officers—while 24 cases came from interference in an arrest. Seven obstruction cases involved jaywalking.

22 of the 76 cases obstruction cases were dismissed, 18 defendants were given “dispositional continuances,” like probation, two defendants were found not guilty and 31 plead or were found guilty. Data on the five other cases was unavailable. According to Pflaumer, no one actually served jail time from an obstruction charge as sentences for convictions were suspended.

Although Pflaumer didn’t find a pattern of abuse in her report, there still appears to be a disturbing disparity in the number of obstruction arrests. In the two year time frame Pflaumer examined 51% of the people arrested solely for obstruction were African American while 37.5% were White and 10% were Asian. Two additional arrests were reported as “other.”

Mayor Nickels is apparently looking to make the OPA Auditor position a full-time gig—it’s currently part-time—and Pflaumer says she’ll be moving on from her position sometime next year. Before then, she’ll be putting together an annual report as well as a study on the relationships between communities and the police department.

From the comments on this post earlier today:

Anyone else a little frightened by all of the calls to “kill him”? Holy crap. I really hope the Secret Service is up for what the next 4 (hopefully eight!) years are likely to bring. —scharrera

And:

Barack Obama and his family must truly love this country to want to lead and actually try and help morons like these people. If people are saying ‘kill him’ in situations like this I bet there’s a few nut cases out there thinking about it all day and night. Very chilling. —Gregus

The New Yorker’s George Packer is thinking along the same lines—and in a blog post today he starts out by mentioning that Joe Klein, Andrew Sullivan, David Gergen, and others are starting to worry about this too:

A number of people are afraid that the ugly tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign are going to incite violence, maybe assassination. Joe Klein, Andrew Sullivan, McCain’s former adviser John Weaver—even the ultimate sober-sided moderate David Gergen last night on CNN. I hope they’re wrong. It’s a big leap from hateful talking points and shouted epithets to vigilantism and the lone gunman. What’s undeniably true is that Republican rallies and the incendiary language of party leaders are stirring up the darker, destructive mob passions that have a long history in American politics. At the very least, the Republican ticket is making sure that, if Obama wins, he’ll be regarded as an illegitimate and dangerous President by thirty or forty per cent of the country.

The next sentence in Packer’s post is brilliant: “Palin is too shallow to understand the weapon she’s playing with; she’s just thrilled to be the birthday girl and the object of so much semi-erotic devotion.” Anyway, the whole post is here. (And if you haven’t read Packer’s excellent reporting from the working class/racist reaches of Ohio, it’s here.)

LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) — Some of the anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is mostly letting it flare. A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Barack Obama. They’re making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of “traitor,” “terrorist,” “treason,” “liar,” and even “off with his head” have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies, and gone unchallenged by them.

In this week’s paper, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee takes a hard look at the “epidemic” of violence in Southeast Seattle…

In the last month alone, there have been at least half a dozen shootings, many of them attributed to rising tensions between rival gangs. As Mayor Greg Nickels trots out his Youth Violence Prevention Initiative—a $9 million program designed to keep kids out of gangs and reduce violence in South and Central Seattle—South Seattle residents like Rachel Risley and Scott Schenk are getting used to the sounds of gunshots and police helicopters outside their home.

… and Dominic Holden talks to one Capitol Hill resident about his vision for the Broadway light-rail station:

Carter Kinnier, a 48-year-old Capitol Hill resident, has an idea. He envisions a new, permanent home for the farmers market, currently a block north of the transit station, which will soon be displaced by an apartment building. Sound Transit expects 14,000 people a day will board light rail at the station—all potential customers.

Meanwhile, on Slog, Dominic dropped in on a group of South Seattle residents who’re unhappy that light rail will mean taller buildings; Jonah got the scoop on a probation officer who accused cops of sexually harassing her and was subsequently charged with assault; I wrote a long-ass analysis of the presidential debate; Eli Sanders polled the Slogerati to find out how much they’d donated to Obama’s campaign; I wrote about the layoffs that are coming at King County; Dominic tells Catholics what they can do with their moralistic laws; and Eli — along with Paul Constant, David Schmader, and Christopher Frizzelle—liveSlogged the presidential debate.

From the A.P.:

The absentee ballots sent to voters in Rensselaer County identified the two presidential candidates as “Barack Osama” and “John McCain.”

The article goes on to helpfully point out:

In the United States, the best-known individual named Osama is Osama bin Laden, leader of the al Qaida terrorist group behind the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City.

Wow. Is this on purpose or not?

(Thanks to various Slog Tippers including Tracy and Jeremy.)

Opening this week:

Brendan Kiley on the Darby Crash hagiography What We Do Is Secret: “Note to the world: Unless you’re a reporter or a historian, striving for authenticity is played. Fuck authenticity, whether you’re writing a novel or starting an Indian restaurant. We don’t need authentic, we need imaginative and good.”

Paul Constant pretty much likes Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married: “Anne Hathaway should be commended for not drooling all over the part in a Method-inspired frenzy. Her performance meshes easily with Debra Winger’s unrepentantly distant mother; the two seem seriously confused—and injured—by their own awful actions even as they commit them. But it’s Rosemarie DeWitt’s Rachel who holds everything together; she’s a normal woman trying to enjoy her wedding day, even as two self-involved drama queens tear it apart.”

And he’s pretty much bored with Secrecy: “You wish the filmmakers would realize that there’s a perfect, preexisting technology for transmitting this kind of information-dense material; using this technology, interested parties can work through the material at their own speed and go back through parts they maybe didn’t initially absorb with maximum efficiency. It’s called a book.”

Body of Lies, according to Eli Sanders, appears to be exactly as good as the millions of other spy-action movies: “If you’re not worried about plot déjà vu or stale themes, and are into spy-action movies mainly for the spy-action itself, then Body of Lies is just perfect. People die—mercilessly, surprisingly, repeatedly. Friends betray friends. Helicopters swoop in to blow up SUVs holding jihadists wielding RPG launchers. Vans roll through crowded Arab markets trying to snatch up wanted types without attracting notice. And through it all, the unblinking eye of the CIA drone hovers over the action—the view from on high, repeatedly laid low by the complexities of life on the ground.”

As I mentioned yesterday, there are two timely documentaries out right now: here’s Eli Sanders on Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, and Christopher Frizzelle on I.O.U.S.A.

And in Concessions, I torture myself (why!?) with the conservative “comedy” An American Carol. Sorry, Republican relatives. I’m mad at you guys.

Over in Limited Runs, there’s a Shakespeare-on-film series going on at SIFF Cinema, including Richard III and the Orson Welles-in-blackface Othello. Grand Illusion has Anatomy of a Murder and some rare religious propaganda films from Ron Ormond. There’s a new 35-mm print of The Godfather at Cinerama. Northwest Film Forum is showing the dark and lovely The Exiles. The Egyptian midnight movie is Pulp Fiction, if you need to see it again. And tomorrow, from 4 pm to midnight, MOHAI is hosting the Revenant Film Festival for all your zombie needs.

For anything I missed, check out our Movie Times page.

After seeing the collections on this week’s episode, can anyone deny it? Leanne’s architectural math waves are the perfect distillation of her aesthetic while doing something that feels evolved and new. Kenley also delivered. The other two, not so much.

Counting the minutes till Leannimal’s impending triumph….

First: A study by Harvard post-doc fellow Daniel J. Hopkins (pdf here) which argues that the Bradley effect disappeared around 1996:

African Americans running for office before 1996 performed on average 2.7 percentage points worse than their polling numbers would indicate. Yet this effect subsequently disappeared. Although precision is limited because there were only 47 observations for 18 elections with black candidates in this period, these finding accord with theories of racial politics emphasizing the information environment. As racialzied rhetoric about welfare and crime receded from national prominence in the mid-1990s, so did the gap between polling and performance.

Second: Virginia is leaning towards Obama. Virginia hasn’t voted for a democratic presidential candidate since 1964. It wouldn’t even go for the Bubba tickets of the mid-90s. Some Virginia polls show Obama with a double-digit lead over McCain.

Even those who still believe in the Bradley Effect (like gloomy, gloomy Andrew Hacker) say “subtract seven percent.”

Third: Racism is not a monolithic thing. It has shades and nuances, and Obama’s particular heritage—being a descendant of voluntary African immigration rather than slavery—will help him with the borderline bigots. And it’s the borderline bigots, the ones who are a little shy about being perceived as bigots, that the Bradley effect concerns.

You can’t accurately survey for racism (though Gallup has tried), since the Bradley effect is all about people polling one way and voting another. Anecdotal evidence will have to do—and it just so happens that I have a bunch of relatives, some of them openly racist, who live in Suffolk, Virginia, in a town just across from the North Carolina border and right next to the Great Dismal Swamp.

^{Some of my relatives used to run liquor from wet counties to dry ones through the Dismal Swamp. They’d race the local cops over the state line and they never got caught.}

All about them after the jump.

Continue reading "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Ignore the Bradley Effect" »

Having just gone through Richard Misrach’s press preview this morning, I can say with certainty that you’re going to want to hear him speak tonight at UW. (Full details here.)

He’s talking about his latest completed series, On the Beach, which he made between 2002 and 2005. In it, he stood on a balcony at a Hawaii hotel and shot downward, geometrically reversing the relationship between photographer and subject that occurred when the victims of September 11 were falling out of their buildings toward the photographers below.

On the Beach is about the way Misrach saw things after the attacks. He noticed floaters in the water that looked like Ophelias, a man who came every year and laid in a fetal position in the sand, the way that a single person doing a handstand in the middle of the ocean resembles Bruegel’s great painting of Icarus’s tiny splash after his fall—when everyone else around Icarus just keeps on doing what they’re doing without noticing that anything’s happened.

(Icarus’s feet are in the bottom right corner.)

There’s a lot to see, and a lot to talk about. Definitely go.

(And I did give the Henry’s new web site another chance: the horizontal scrolling feature that’s basically the overarching design of the site is actually very cool. You can scroll back—left! get it? timeline-style!—to 1927 to see which shows were on then! My previous complaint about available, high-quality images of the museum’s collection stands, though. Having the collection viewable online should be a serious priority for any museum, IMO.)

… Want to do with your tax dollars?

Find out on Slog, where we’ll be posting exclusive video of the Stranger Election Control Board’s interview on I-985, Tim Eyman’s latest initiative.

A pet store! (Via Boingboing.)

To get some storefront art in Seattle this weekend, take a stroll down the east side of Broadway south of John. It’s a veritable museum out there, and it’s only up temporarily (until construction starts for the light rail station).

Here’s Gretchen Bennett’s phone photo of her temporary Teen Spirit installation on the former Jack in the Box.

In the spirit of objectively tracking the downfall of the global economy, I’ve decided to begin a semi-regular post conglomerating data on the (non-)functioning of the financial system. If I’m going to panic, I want evidence backing it up.

Rather than focusing on the stock market (equity), like most daily coverage of this crisis, I’m going to focus on liquidity. The inability of companies, big and small, to borrow seems the most likely thing to impact people on a day-to-day basis. (For those of you seeking to retire shortly, well, this might not be the case. My apologies. You can read about the implosion of the stock market elsewhere.)

I’ve included the TED spread, US bond yields, Corporate bond yields, and a spread of the two I’ve crafted. If you know of an index that you think I should include here, please let me know. I fully admit I’m out of my depth here. Instruct me, and I’ll modify the post. A ton of data is available. Help me coalesce it into something coherent.

I’ve also included a subjective “beaker scale of economist panic” based on my sense of relative state of fear on experts writing about the crisis. As I get a set of objective data together, I plan to make this a calculated value—an SI-unit of doom.

(It’s all after the jump.)

Continue reading "Economic Apocalypse Data for 10/10/2008" »

A couple weeks ago, I took a tour of the factory that produces the vegan foodstuff Field Roast. This week, I write about it in the Chow section.

Two things that didn’t make it into the piece:

1. The concept of imitation meat—veggie “mock chicken” and the various other products designed especially to replicate the taste and texture of animal flesh—as the culinary equivalent of fake kiddie porn. If the original thing (meat, kiddie porn) is gross, why would you want to impersonate it, via “mock chicken” or Max Hardcore’s placing of legal-age vixens in kiddie-porn settings? The moral: A close approximation of grossness is gross, too. (I cut this because it’s kinda confused and maybe bullshit and I strive to keep kiddie-porn comparisons out of food reviews.)

2. Acknowledgement of the strange orange oil-juice that’s a component of a number of Field Roast products—in my case, the Mexican-y Field Roast sausage and Italian-y Field Roast deli slices. This orange oil-juice is the most tenacious food substance I’ve ever encountered—a single drop can somehow transmit oiliness to every surface in your kitchen, and slicing the stuff on a wooden cutting board will leave a permanent orange stain. Unfortunately, the products featuring the orange oil-juice are the most delicious Field Roast products of all, so handle with nuclear-waste-level care and you’ll be fine.

Ah ha haaa! You funny vegans with all your “funny” rules. Ah ha ha! Hooo! That’s rich. Funny, funny vegans!

Slog Tipper Mark informs us of a reading nobody knew about, coming up tomorrow:

Chris Onstad, the Achewood creator, is signing copies of his new book on Saturday at the fucking Comics Dungeon between two and four. I haven’t seen word one about it anywhere except on his blog.

Achewood is a very funny webcomic. Like many funny things, it can occasionally be very non-funny. But I guarantee it is ninety-thrillion times funnier than Get Fuzzy, which for some reason people insist is the most amazing thing to hit the comics page since Bill Watterson.

The signing is on Saturday the 11th, from 2 to 4. The Comics Dungeon is at 250 NE 45th St in Wallingford, and their phone number is 545-8373. Thank you, Mark.

Currently going for only £10,000,000!

^{*Björk not included.}

Theater

‘Jails, Hospitals & Hiphop’

• See what else is happening in Theater on Friday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

^{Juan Alonso’s Excelsion #1 (2008), ink and graphite on Claybord, 24 by 24 inches}

Seattle artist Juan Alonso is taking a stand on the continual drain on artists represented by auctions and all manner of do-gooders. He makes the point that in the last 18 months, he has donated more work to causes than he has sold. Don’t mistake this for the statement of somebody who simply can’t sell: Alonso has a pretty healthy market among Seattle artists. (He’s represented by Francine Seders Gallery.)

It’s a perspective that can’t be ignored. Check it out:

To Whom It May Concern,

I feel lucky and blessed to be an artist and have the opportunity to create for a living. It is part of my philosophy as an artist to give back to my community, from local to global. In the last 18 months I have sold some and donated over 30 works of art to organizations (some art related, some not) and fundraisers, and have done so willingly. That is more work given than work sold. The issue is, and more so now with the current economic crisis, it seems every organization believes that artists are the first professional group of people to ask for donations for their fund-raiser, no matter what the cause is. It has gotten out of hand. I don’t know of any other business group, as a lot, that is automatically called when money needs to be raised. Perhaps there are some out there. Perhaps people raising funds don’t realize that artists are single-person businesses for the most part and that as a general rule, artists are on the lower end of the income levels, and that every piece given away to help a worthy cause is also income we are not bringing in to our business. Perhaps fund-raising organizations don’t realize that so far there is no tax incentive for artists to donate our own work. If another individual donates my work, they get to deduct it from their taxes. If I donate my work, the only thing I can deduct is the cost of my materials, which I would do anyway at the end of the year. Under current laws, our skill, talent and labor is seen as worthless and it might be a good idea for some of the organizations asking artists for work to start lobbying governmental agencies to change their policies. As far as I know, Artist Trust is the only one doing so. How about artists being able to deduct a percentage of the price for which the piece sold? How’s that for determining fair-market value?

Until recently, I gladly gave and even served on acquisition committees for a couple of art-related organizations. At this point, however, I’m suspending all donations of my artwork in order to make a living at my job as an artist. I hope that other artists also realize that the “exposure” incentive or the 10% back just doesn’t cut it anymore. I hope organizations start tapping other, wealthier sources for enriching themselves and that the IRS finally comes to realize that artists are assets to the community as a whole.

Respectfully, Juan Alonso

(Thanks, Sara!)

First a HUGE thanks to all of you who came out to Slog Happy last night—I think the College Inn Pub was the perfect place to have it in October. Hot food, lots of beer, and I was pretty impressed with how well our server managed to remember a list of orders a dozen drinks long. How do they do that?

Jonah was a great trivia host (and I was glad to see Scary Tyler Moore and Joh put him in his place when we got too cocky!), and in the end, all the scores were pretty close! I think there was only a six-point spread between the first and last place teams, with, what, seven teams in all? Eight maybe?

Scary Tyler Moore and Fnarf’s team, won, of course. I think we all saw that coming. But in a close second, was Abby and Original Monique’s team. Not far behind them was Joh’s gang (forgive me for not remember who exactly was on what team).

But really, in the end, we were all winners since we all got to try wisepunk’s AWESOME homemade chocolate sea salt caramels. They were so good I had a dream about them last night.

So thank you again, all of you, for making the trip to the U-District. And hopefully next time someone can take take down Scary Tyler Moore’s team. We need to get a good rivalry going.

And now, the important question… what do you want to do for Slog Happy in November? Karaoke? Guitar Hero? Just drinks and mingling? And where do you want to have it? Back on the Hill? Downtown? Leave your suggestions in the comments, and we’ll do our best to make all your Slog Happy dreams come true.

A King County Superior Court juvenile probation officer who says she was harassed by Seattle Police Department officers last month has been charged with misdemeanor assault.

Yvette Gaston, who described her encounter with police at an NAACP press conference on racial profiling two weeks ago, says she was grabbed and harassed by officers in September after she attempted to intervene in an encounter between police and one of her teenage clients.

Last month, Gaston says she took a young man clothes shopping and dropped him off in the Central District. Minutes later, she received a call from the teen, who told Gaston that police had stopped him for jaywalking and accused him of stealing the clothes.

Gaston, who is black, drove to the scene to show the (white) officers the receipt for the clothing.

Gaston says the officers then grabbed and harassed her, and claims that when she tried to call 911, one of the officers involved in the confrontation told the 911 operator to cancel the call. Gaston says officers later called King County Superior Court to complain. She is now being charged with assault for the incident.

Gaston—who not arrested during the incident—has filed a complaint with SPD’s Office of Professional Accountability.

We have an open mic and two other readings tonight.

Up at Third Place Books, Laurence Gonzales reads from Everyday Survival, which is about how people don’t make stupid mistakes, until they do. It’s basically about the life or death decisions we make every day, and why we sometimes make mistakes.

Then at Elliott Bay Book Company, Gioia Timpanelli reads from What Makes a Child Lucky. Here is what SFGate says about the book: “Like a pot of lentils, Gioia Timpanelli’s stories are elemental, simple but filling, and her new novel, “What Makes a Child Lucky,” is no exception, teaching the basics of survival in a time of great hardship.” Despite this review, I recommend this reading. It’s a novella about a young boy who watches great violence happen. He then slowly build himself back into a real human.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

ABC News reports on the 15-year-old girl facing kiddie-porn charges after allegedly sending nude photos of herself to classmates:

A 15-year-old Ohio girl faces felony charges and may have to register as a sex offender for allegedly taking nude photos of herself and sending them to her high school classmates. The girl, whose name has not been released, was arrested last week and charged in juvenile court with possessing criminal tools and the illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, said Licking County, Ohio, prosecutor Ken Oswalt.

If convicted, the girl could face a sentence of anywhere from probation to several years in a juvenile detention center. A judge also has the discretion to make the girl register as a sex offender under Ohio law. Oswalt said other teens who received the photographs, which are considered child pornography under state law, may also be charged.

Poor stupid kid.

First of all, I wrote a short review in the print edition of the paper but the full review is here.

Second, here are some installation shots from “WACK!” taken this week at the Vancouver Art Gallery. (Photos by Rachel Topham.) All of these works were made between 1965 and 1980.

Senga Nengudi’s pantyhose

Sylvia Mangold’s laundry-pile painting

Ree Morton’s wall sculpture

Carolee Schneeman’s actual Interior Scroll, which she pulled out of her vagina and read from in the 1970s

Continue reading "Feministartfeministartfeministart" »

After a terrific (for a few) and brutal (for many) 30-year run, neoliberalism has reached death’s door. That door will have to open and the world economy will enter the solution to everything: a permanent and universal state of socialism. Welcome to the future!

The crisis was caused by the largest leveraged asset bubble and credit bubble in the history of humanity were excessive leveraging and bubbles were not limited to housing in the US but also to housing in many other countries and excessive borrowing by financial institutions and some segments of the corporate sector and of the public sector in many and different economies: an housing bubble, a mortgage bubble, an equity bubble, a bond bubble, a credit bubble, a commodity bubble, a private equity bubble, a hedge funds bubble are all now bursting at once in the biggest real sector and financial sector deleveraging since the Great Depression…

…At this stage central banks that are usually supposed to be the “lenders of last resort” need to become the “lenders of first and only resort” as, under conditions of panic and total loss of confidence, no one in the private sector is lending to anyone else since counterparty risk is extreme. And fiscal authorities that usually are spenders and insurers of last resort need to temporarily become the spenders and insurers of first resort. The fiscal costs of these actions will be large but the economic and fiscal costs of inaction would be of a much larger and severe magnitude. Thus, the time to act is now as all the policy officials of the world are meeting this weekend in Washington at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings.

Civil unions were not equal enough in the “Constitution State,” according to its state constitution.

Connecticut became the third state to legalize same-sex marriage today in a 4-3 decision by the state Supreme Court.

In an 85-page decision issued at 11:30 a.m., the court ruled that the state had “failed to establish adequate reason to justify the statutory ban on same sex marriage.”

The justices noted in the majority opinion that they recognized “as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health … that ‘our decision marks a change in the history of our marriage law.’”

The case, Kerrigan v. the state Commissioner of Public Health, was brought by eight same-sex couples who were denied marriages licenses by the Madison town clerk. They argued that the state’s civil union law was discriminatory and unconstitutional because it established a separate and therefore inherently unequal institution for a minority group. Citing the equal protection under the law, the state Supreme Court agreed.

“In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry,” says the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Richard N. Palmer.

From the ruling (.pdf):

It is instructive to recall in this regard that the traditional, well-established legal rules and practices of our not-so-distant past (1) barred interracial marriage, (2) upheld the routine exclusion of women from many occupations and official duties, and (3) considered the relegation of racial minorities to separate and assertedly equivalent public facilities and institutions as constitutionally equal treatment.’’ …

Like these once prevalent views, our conventional understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional protection. Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice. To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others. The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us from doing so. In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry.

I’m sure the court’s logic will upset Ken “civil rights is not a theological debate” Hutcherson. But he’s a bully with a book, not a bench with a gavel.

This is sure to come up at the next presidential debate, which focuses on domestic policy. Obama and McCain will, no doubt, condemn same-sex marriage. But it’s a moot point. The wall is crumbling. With three separate states allowing it—Massachusetts, California and now Connecticut—and the fabric of society remaining strong, the specter of gay marriage threatening straight marriage is soundly proven to be a canard. Which state will be next?

I’ll be on KUOW’s Weekday this morning, starting at 10 a.m., to talk with other journalists about the news from this crazy week.

That’s 94.9 FM. Suggestions for what we should discuss?

Kudos as well for the healthy amount of flesh on young Ms. Duff’s arms. She’s a national heroine.

^{Christian Jankowski’s The Hunt (1992/1997), single-channel video, 1 minute 11 seconds}

At the ICA Boston.

For this piece, the German artist ate only what he could shoot an arrow into at grocery stores. When I saw the video in Boston recently, a group of older women also happened to be watching it. One of them immediately said, with some concern, “What did he do for juice??”

Widening gyre: U.S. stocks up and down after global selloff.

Loosed upon the world: The anger of the Republican rally.

The ceremony of innocence: Obama says he assumed Ayers had been rehabilitated.

Somewhere in the sands of the desert: Charges of secret Iraq troop talks.

Surely some revelation is at hand: Palin clears self in Troopergate.

Surely the Second Coming is at hand: Connecticut overturns gay marriage ban.

Rough beast, its hour come round at last: The end of American capitalism?

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun: The numbers, which tell the tale.

Full of passionate intensity: A struggling Christine Gregoire.

While all about it reel shadows of indignant birds:

By Seattle artist Mike Leavitt.

“Is he going to turn her completely inside out?”

“Do I have one of those inside me too?”

“That proves the existence of an evil God.”

“I can’t believe Kelly left right before that.”

“It’s like Goatse live.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I’d like to talk to the medical board about revoking Dr. Bloom’s license.”

“What do you think her job is?”

“I expect she’s a smuggler of some sort.”

The average of eight polls indicates Obama is now leading McCain by 5.1 percent in Virginia. Considered in spring a solid red state, and then in summer a toss-up state, Virginia’s electorate now leans blue, pushing Obama’s numbers on the electoral