From weather.com (sorry, National Weather Service, but their suns are all bright yellow):

Shorts weather, kind of! Have a lovely weekend.
That's right suckas, IT'S IN THE FIFTIES! Where's my tank top? And my shorts?**

** I love Seattle and sun deprived worshipping.
More photos after the jump...
A pastor who—I presume—isn't affiliated with Mars Hill put up a post on The Broken Telegraph about "church discipline," as well as a partial answer to the question I posed in this story about Mars Hill Church and its way of exercising "church discipline": When does submission to a pastor's human authority go too far?
He/she writes:
We’re called to hold each other accountable because, if we’re going to wear the t-shirt that says we belong to Jesus, we need to help each other look like Jesus.
This is, of course, precisely where the rub comes because without severe limitations on this action, we run the risk of becoming the Taliban, both in our levels of scrutiny, and punishment, and hypocrisy. Unrestricted control of fallen people, in the name of ‘discipline’ doesn’t just turn people off from a particular local church - it turns people off to Christ. For that reason, the misuse of discipline needs to be held up to the light of scripture and exposed.
The pastor posted anonymously, which is too bad: An argument has so much more force when the arguer shows the courage of his convictions in public. But it's a start.
And it's a start for Christians who don't want to abdicate their reputations to loudmouths—behind the pulpit, on the campaign trail, wherever—who do not, in fact, represent them.
Rick ("to remove with your tongue") Santorum ("the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex") today:
Rick Santorum told a gay man in Fulton, Missouri Friday afternoon that he didn’t deserve the “privilege” of marriage because his same-sex relationship does not “benefit” society in the same way that opposite-sex marriage does. Marriage, Santorum explained is an “intrinsic good” in which gay and lesbian people should not be allowed to partake in.
So... my same-sex marriage hasn't benefited society in the same way that, say, Scott Peterson's opposite-sex marriage has.
The Supreme Court has ruled time and again—at least when it comes to heteros—that marriage is a fundamental human right. The question we're wrestling with now is whether gay people are humans and therefore entitled to fundamental human rights. Courts have ruled that states can prevent murderers and rapists and child molesters from living in certain neighborhoods, from voting, from driving. But the state cannot prevent them from marrying:
Joseph Lyle Menendez (born January 10, 1968) and Erik Galen Menendez (born November 27, 1970) are brothers who are known for their conviction in a highly publicized trial for the shotgun murders in 1989 of their wealthy parents, entertainment executive Jose Menendez and his wife Mary "Kitty" Menendez (née Anderson).... Since entering prison, both brothers have married, even though California does not allow conjugal visits for those convicted of murder or for those serving life sentences.
How do the marriages of Joseph and Erik Menendez "benefit society" exactly? Someone needs to put that question to Rick Santorum.
Really?
The good folks at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Film Festival were kind enough to ask me to help judge this year's SFFSFF, which means a few months ago, I got to watch 21 neat, strange, nerdy short films from around the world. Lindy West, who helped judge the SFFSFF last year, told me before I agreed to be a judge that the quality of the films at SFFSFF were remarkably high, and she was right; I thought maybe only one of the movies was a total bust, 12 of them were very good, and 8 of them were phenomenal. Here's a trailer for the festival:
They're showing all 21 movies tomorrow at the Cinerama in two screenings. Those two showings are sold out. But! A special encore screening of ten SFFSFF films is happening on Sunday at noon at SIFF Cinema. If, like me, you don't care about the Super Bowl, this is your perfect nerdy afternoon diversion. Go buy tickets now.
It's been a long, teeth-gnashing week in the world of women's health, albeit with overwhelmingly positive results: Planned Parenthood is $3 million richer and Susan G. Komen's weasely Republican board members have learned an important lesson about using poor women as punching bags boobs to push their political agenda.
The fight's not over—Komen hasn't technically pledged to fund Planned Parenthood in the future (they've has simply reinstated PP as eligible to apply for their grants) and Congressional Republicans are still working to defund and discredit the women's health organization at the federal level—but fuck it, you helped Planned Parenthood raise $3 million dollars in three days! That's impressive! And you deserve a reward for your boob-loving altruism! Like a three-of-a-kind FEMINIST KILLJOY t-shirt!!!

Remember those important home foreclosure bills (here, here, and here) that I've been following?
One of them, SB 6070, would shed light on the mysterious world of mortgage securitization by forcing big banks to record, in the county of the property in question, every selling and re-selling and re-packaging of a particular home's mortgage.
This would raise money for cash-strapped counties while also allowing home owners—including those facing foreclosure—to figure out who really owns their mortgage, all without the homeowner having to go to MERS.
You ask: What's MERS?
Take it away, New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman:
NEW YORK, Feb 3 (Reuters) - New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Friday accused three major U.S. banks of fraudulently using an electronic mortgage database to avoid the need for recording mortgage transfers...
"The mortgage industry created MERS to allow financial institutions to evade county recording fees, avoid the need to publicly record mortgage transfers and facilitate the rapid sale and securitization of mortgages en masse," Schneiderman said.
But down in Olympia, SB 6070—which addresses exactly the problem that the New York AG is now going to court about—won't be going anywhere except an extended study session that could last until December. Here's what went down when the bill was recently discussed at Sen. Steve Hobbs's Financial Institutions, Housing & Insurance Committee:
The short this week is Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes’s “Felt,” a short film/music video for Shabazz Palaces. The reason I couldn't resist posting “Felt” so soon after posting Shabazz Palaces’ “Black Up” is because the company that produced it is run by a young filmmaker with great promise, Shaun Scott (Seat of Empire, 100% OFF). In Scott's words: “My production company, 47th Parallel Films, produced... the new Shabazz Palaces video for "Felt," which we shot over summer immediately after getting done with with my [feature film] 100% OFF. Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes [the former owner pun(c)tuation gallery] was the director, and Andrew Schwartz produced it for 47th Parallel Films.”
What this video makes clearer than previous videos is that Shabazz Palaces represents cultural laboratory that is South Seattle. Shabazz Palaces is black nationalism weaved into the expanding global fabric.
I'm writing to you because I suspect you'll confirm something I am pretty sure is true, but all my friends are telling me isn't true (probably because they want to be nice). I'd like an honest answer once and for all.
See, I'm an overweight woman. Not obese, but chubby—not big enough for fat fetishists, I've been told, but still quite a bit larger than what's conventionally considered attractive. The problem is that I like conventionally attractive men—confident guys with classically handsome faces who look like they take care of themselves. But the only dudes who seem interested in me are old men who hit on me in bars, and geeky, socially awkward guys who I suspect see me as approachable because of my weight. I'm not blanket criticizing men in those categories; they're just not my type and I don't feel like I need to settle. I tried lowering my standards and met a really sweet guy, but I found his meekness, lack of self esteem and doughy body unattractive, and it wasn't sexually fulfilling for me. I'm not doing it again.
I see a direct connection between my socially undesirable body type and the fact that the men I like don't want me. My friends say it's all down to my attitude, but I don't think I would attract ANYONE if that was true. I do get some interest, just not from anyone who really interests me. I take generally good care of myself (probably don't exercise as much as I should, obviously); I have a pretty face and I present myself well, but it does nothing for me. Meanwhile, even the meanest of my thinner friends always manage to date the kind of men I'd love to have a shot with. So let's cut to the chase here—the best explanation for my not bagging hot dudes is my extra poundage, right?
I Can Handle The Truth
My response after the jump...
1. Did you know that Rick Santorum is still in the presidential race? I had to check, but it's true! Apparently, he is very upset about Mitt Romney saying he doesn't care about poor people, too:
We saw something the other day that Mitt Romney said. It sort of sent a chill down my spine as a conservative and a Republican. Mitt Romney said, 'I don't care about the very poor as long as they have a safety net there, I don't really care. If we need to repair the safety net, that's fine, I'm not going to focus on them. I'm going to focus on' — I think he said — 'the 95 percent.' That's not the Republican Party I want to belong to. I want to belong to a party that focuses on 100 percent of Americans and creating opportunity for every single one.
2. But when he's not busy feeling concern for every single American, Rick Santorum is coming down with a bad case of the Glenn Becks, seeing doomsday everywhere:
To hear him tell it, the United States will collapse under the weight of its health care system and basic freedoms will be history. Iran will annihilate Israel and then South Carolina if Iran isn't blocked from building a nuclear weapon. And divorce will yield higher taxes for all Americans.
3. On the lighter side of things, Slog tipper Ben sent along what he calls his "nominee for gif of the YEAR." I think I agree with Ben.

But by the time her plane touched down in Seattle, Murray had won her battle. "I found out about Komen's decision to continue funding Planned Parenthood as I stepped off the plane," she explained this morning while standing in front of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest's (PPGN) E. Madison Street headquarters. So instead of censure, her scheduled presser became a well-deserved victory celebration.
"I want to congratulate Susan G. Komen on reversing their decision today," Murray told the crowd of Planned Parenthood volunteers, supporters, and staff. "This is a huge win for men and women... I have stood and will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with so many men and women across the country, with on voice, to fight to ensure that women have vital screenings for breast health."
Planned Parenthood's victory here is twofold: Since Komen's decision to stop breast cancer screenings through Planned Parenthood went public on Tuesday evening, PPGN has raised $50,000 to continue funding breast cancer screenings and education programs, while nationally, Planned Parenthood has raised a staggering $3 million earmarked for breast health. Meanwhile, Komen's reputation has taken a hit and conservative Republicans—who have long attempted to defund and discredit Planned Parenthood—have learned that a nation of men and women stand behind them with their wallets open.
Thanks to the public's generous donations, the 710,000 breast screenings Planned Parenthood conducts annually will continue uninterrupted, as will the 1,000 breast screenings that PPGN offered last year using local Komen funds. "We chose to serve Native American women in Cle Elem and refugee women in Boise using Komen grants and we're going to remain focused on that as our top priority," said PPGN's CEO Chris Charbonneau, ensuring that women like 29-year-old Sharona Lindgren will have access to the services they desperately need.
From the mailbag:
Good Day:
There is a small mention of a theatrical play on the Stranger's website, Corpses Make Poor Dinner Guests, playing over at the Odd Duck Studio on Capital Hill, that reads the following:
"A new company called House of Cards presents their inaugural show, written and 'actor-managed' (is that like a hands-off version of directing?) by David Kulcsar, about a small-town restaurant's brush with fame and death."Since I am David Kulcsar, I am here to point out kindly that "actor managing" is not hands off directing: in truth, it is the jobs of the Director, Lead Actor, and Stage Manager rolled into one delicious roll: and a very difficult roll, I might add.
The "actor manager" was a position in theatre that died out in the late 19th, early 20th century when the "director" and "stage manager" was invented. (it made theater easier and boring to operate.) Currently, the only actor manager that I know of that exists is Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic in England; making me, to current knowledge, the second best actor manager in the known world (a very distant second, I must add).
It turns out the folks at Apple aren't the only ones trying to make the push to digital textbooks — in an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and FCC chairman Julius Genachowski state that the Obama administration has set a goal for getting digital textbooks in the hands of all students, and that goal is a very ambitious five years. The benefits of moving to digital are of course numerous, but Genachowski puts it well when discussing the flexibility of digital: "When they get to something they don’t know, the device can let them explore."
Wow: Moving to e-textbook-friendly schools within five years would have a huge impact on a bunch of different sectors. Would each student be issued a tablet? Would that tablet be an iPad? What would the DRM on those e-books be? Would this be essentially priming an entire generation to accept e-books as the "real" versions of books? Even if the five-years goal doesn't happen—that is a crazy ambitious goal—it seems that e-textbooks are the way the government is heading.
Whatever the case, this I, Anonymous submitter is pissed, and fair enough:
Dear concert-going pothead,
Your secondhand weed smoke is not a divine gift that you bring forth from your lungs to bestow upon the lucky wretched sober souls within a 10 foot radius at a show. No, in fact, much like tobacco smoke, it's a putrid, allergen-riddled contagion vector. Particularly one that smells like a mixture of skunk ass and Doritos when being purged from your lungs. (Have a mint.)
No one who isn't already as high as you appreciates your complete disregard for the rights of others to breathe and not be in a position to pass a drug test in the coming weeks. As my eyes swell and water to the point that I am unable to see the band I'm there for, despite being a whopping 20 feet away from them, all I can wonder is why, if I have the decency to take two Benadryl before a show, despite the inconvenience to my mood and energy levels, you can't have the same decency and hotbox your car before coming into the show, or perhaps smuggle in baked goods.
Because of you, pothead concertgoer, I will fight even harder now for the legalization of marijuana, not only because I don't want to waste taxes arresting and prosecuting imbeciles like you, but because if it's legal, they can ban weed smoke indoors as well, and perhaps then I wont have to risk full anaphylaxis to see some live music just because pot smokers like you are inconsiderate shitheads.
...isn't buying Pastor Ken Hutcherson's victimy victimhood routine about the four Republicans who voted for same-sex marriage. Laurel Ramseyer at Pam's House Blen has the radio transcript.
Sometimes simple images capture the most complex information. It's impossible to know, for instance, all that's going on inside the heads of the soldiers pictured by Suzanne Opton.
Tonight at the Henry Art Gallery, Opton will talk about why she took their pictures, and what the process was like for her and the soldiers. For the Soldier series, she framed them simply, isolating their heads, each one lain on its side. There's a double association; they appear to be daydreaming, sort of, but in context they also appear to have been shot down.
Opton had trouble getting access to soldiers; she was turned down by several bases before Fort Drum allowed her to come on and take pictures of the soldiers who'd just returned from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The titles of her portraits include their names and the length of their most recent tour: Williams-396 Days in Iraq or Pry-210 Days in Afghanistan. Pry has his eyes shut; he looks like he is grateful to be back. One says, Mickelson-Length of Service Undisclosed. Mickelson looks worried, like he's not going to getting comfortable in front of the camera, or maybe for a very long time.
Of course, the truth is that there is really no information at all in these photographs, or none that's conclusive in any way. You cannot compare one man's 210 days to another man's 255 days in Afghanistan by looking at their faces on film any more than you can really compare them at all, ever. Events have slipped into the folds of their memories; some will never come out again. And what is one day in combat compared to another?
But taken as a group, the series provides an impression of a moment—which is again only a construction: the moment between being over there, and being back here. Opton took the pictures on a view camera, the kind of contraption that seems to slow down time, which gave the soldiers the chance to get used to their position, to get out of and then back into their heads, to let their minds wander. The posed heads in the pictures look like screens where thoughts and feelings are in the midst of crossing, but with her choice of the shared time frame of her subjects, Opton is also capitalizing on the eventful here-nowness of a snapshot.
In 2008 and 2010, the Soldier photographs were seen as billboards in nine American cities. Now, they appear much closer to life size, at Platform Gallery in Seattle. The exhibition remains up at the Pioneer Square gallery through February 11. (Details are here of tonight's talk.)
Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually enjoy fisking Seattle Times editorials any more than I enjoy reading them, but sometimes they are just so stupid or hypocritical or dishonest that I feel I have no other choice. But today's editorial, warning "Voters Beware," really takes the cake:
Democratic opponents of Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna mashed up and misquoted reporting in The Seattle Times.
Democratic operatives are entitled to their own opinions, but not the distortion of reporting by The Times. Party Chairman Dwight Pelz and spokeswoman Reesa Kossoff took McKenna to task, and out of context, on gay marriage.
Oy. We've been over this before. The Seattle Times itself reported that McKenna raised the specter of incest and polygamy within the context of gay marriage, a right-wing dog whistle if I've ever heard one. Read the quotes and judge for yourself.
But it's the editors' closing admonishment that really pisses me off:
Playing fast and loose with the facts is revealing in its own right.
Oh, really, Seattle Times editorial board? "Playing fast and loose with the facts"...? You mean like when you recently shilled for charter schools by claiming that "about 20 percent of charter schools have been found to do a better job of educating students than public schools," without telling your readers that the Stanford University study you cite actually found that only 17 percent of charters do better, while a whopping 37 percent "deliver learning results that are significantly worse"...?
Or the time you shamelessly pimped for estate tax repeal by writing that even Sweden "abolished its death tax," without revealing to readers that they replaced it with a 1.5 percent annual wealth tax that hit Sweden's wealthy even harder?
ThinkProgress reports that Mitt Romney, in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, said he doesn't know why the government holds so much land in the west. He waffled before saying he wanted to sell the land to the state outright, but he sounds very anti-conservationist here:
...I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land, so I don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m about to hand it over.” But where government ownership of land is designed to satisfy, let’s say, the most extreme environmentalists, from keeping a population from developing their coal, their gold, their other resources for the benefit of the state, I would find that to be unacceptable.
ThinkProgress points out that Nevada's public lands add about a billion dollars to the state's economy annually.
OMG!!! I HAVE A BILLION EMAILS!!!!!
Haha! Seriously everyone is so amazing and great! I have my own little private invisible army! Thank you so much, I feel so much better now! Things have kind of gone silent with the parents thing. My auntie's coming down tomorrow for the weekend and I'm not sure if it's gonna be a double team of them against me or just an excuse for them to go out and get locked! I'm hoping they just go on a bender and give me some space and I'll just read these emails and feel better about everything!—POD
We're all rooting for you, POD.
Sorry to ruin your sunny Friday lunch. Get more depressed here.

Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and next week's paper is going to be crammed full of thousands of little love notes sent from Stranger reader to Stranger reader. Have you submitted yours yet?
Get over here and craft 150 characters' worth of sweetness. It's free! And unlike flowers, Stranger valentines don't die.
Write your valentine before 5 p.m. and it's 99.99 percent likely to make it into the paper! After that, it's just pixels.

02/03/2012
Hello Prayer Warriors!
Please tune into the Rush Limbaugh Show today. I will be on with Rush during the third hour.
Thank you in advance for praying that my time on the air with him will honor our Lord.
Pastor Hutch
This is how the bunnies roll in Sweden.
Yesterday, Barack Obama's official Twitter feed tweeted video of Donald Trump's endorsement of Mitt Romney. The only comment, before the link to the video: "In case you missed it."
You don't have to be a political expert to know that when your opponent posts your message without any kind of spin, you've made a terrible mistake. An even bigger sign that the Romney campaign has made a huge mistake? There's absolutely no reference to yesterday's Trump endorsement anywhere on Romney's official Twitter feed. The feed mentions endorsements all the time. But if you're just looking at official Romney materials, it's like the Trump endorsement never happened. It's not on the Romney site's home page. A quick search of that site just turns up one lonely press release from yesterday. (John McCain, by contrast, pulls up multiple hits.)
Romney's trying to have it both ways, here. The Trump endorsement, as I said yesterday, was necessary to shore up the fringe, idiot base of the Republican Party. But Romney knows that Trump is a joke, so the official campaign spin is to pretend it never happened. The motherfucker is twisting in the wind, right now, and Newt Gingrich's comment that Romney "is counting on us not having YouTube" is seeming more true every single day.
Roseanne Barr is running for president:
“I am running for Green Party nominee for POTUS. I am an official candidate. I am4 the Greening of America&the world. Green=peace/justice,” she wrote on Twitter.
This actually isn't the first time Roseanne has announced she's running for president. She did so back in August, too, so we know she's doubly serious.
But here's the thing: Roseanne is pro-pot and anti-war. Maybe Ron Paul fans should throw their support behind Roseanne. She's got the issues they believe in, and to my knowledge, she doesn't consort with white supremacists or plot Aryan libertarian paradises in the Caribbean, so she's actually a stronger candidate. I think Roseanne Barr is more likely to become president than Ron Paul, anyway.