As the the Presidential campaign begins--how long till November? Fuck. . . --I'll endeavor to provide updates from Chicago on issues involving our sorta native son Barack Obama.

Yesterday, political fixer Tony Rezko was convicted of 16 of 24 counts against him, and some Obama-haters see this as a way to get at Obama. He arranged a house deal through Rezko, and had taken campaign contributions from him (since donated to charity). While some have dismissed this as Obama's Whitewater--a manufactured scandal, ginned up by political foes, but ultimately empty--it will still be a factor in the race. But a factor in ways that are complicated by the details of local politics.

To wit: John Kass of the Chicago Tribune points out that McCain and the Rs cannot make too much of a stink about Rezko, since Rezko had such close ties to two Illinois R power-brokers, Bill Cellini and Bob Kjellander. All Obama has to do is point this connection out, and the attack bounces back on McCain and Co, since their boys are (currently) un-indicted co-conspirators.

But it might get more complicated, in that inimitable Chicago Way. In a very rare move, Rezko decided to begin serving his sentence immediately, rather than going free on bond while awaiting sentencing. Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times speculates as to why this is: perhaps Rezko will feel safer inside of prison, since there are a lot of people who really really want him to keep his mouth shut, people who might know people who know how to shut mouths permanently. Brown never quite comes out and says that someone might put Rezko in the River or a landfill, but it's happened in the past. With his immediate surrender to the Feds, Rezko could either be sending the message that his lips are sealed, he's going to do his time quietly (like John "Quarters" Boyle did) or he's going inside now to begin cooperating with the G.

Either way, this is going to be part of the general election campaign, and I'll keep Slogfans informed of the latest, leaving the best-in-baseball Cubs for Brad to weep over as the M's suck in so many ways.

(Originally published in the October 26, 2006 issue of The Stranger, after Obama had visited town for a book signing.)

A state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in California—and forcibly divorce thousands of gay and lesbian couples that will have married between June 17 and November—isn't the only problematic constitutional amendment being placed before voters this fall. Colorado voters are being asked to approve a constitutional amendment that will make a fertilized egg—not an implanted egg, just a fertilized egg—a "person" under the law. From the Denver Post:

A proposed amendment to the Colorado state constitution that would define a human egg as a "person" from the moment of fertilization would go far beyond its intended purpose of outlawing practically all abortions.

Philosophers may debate when human life begins, but scientists are unanimous on the subject of when pregnancy begins: it's when a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus. But the proposed Amendment 48 specifies that the egg be considered a "person" in the eyes of the law even before it is implanted in the uterus. That means, effectively, that those forms of birth control that prevent such implantation would be classified as homicide under the proposal.

Even without the use of drugs, many eggs just naturally fail to implant in the uterus. Likewise, many eggs are implanted only to result in a miscarriage in the early days or weeks of pregnancy — often before the woman is even aware she is pregnant. Should a woman who suffers a miscarriage be charged with negligent homicide because she failed to protect a fertilized egg she may not have even known she carried? Should a man who fertilized an egg be entitled to file a civil lawsuit against a woman who miscarries, charging her with the wrongful death of his week-old fertilized egg?

Hm. If a fertilized egg—even one that hasn't gotten around to implanting itself yet (negligence!)—is a person, with all the legal rights and, presumably, responsibilities of personhood, perhaps our response to the latest effort by the religious right to seize control of women's reproductive organs should be this: A fertilized egg is a person? Great, then women who don't want their uteruses inhabited by these microscopic fertilized egg persons should be able to have them evicted. If eviction isn't possible—because these microscopic fertilized egg persons would presumably perish in the process (just like some fully grown evictees, but whatever)—then women should be able to at the very least charge these egg persons rent.

So let the state of Colorado declare fertilized eggs to be persons—but let's be fair, folks. A woman's a person too, with certain legal rights. And just like I couldn't squat in some woman's apartment rent-free, a microscopic fertilized egg person shouldn't be allowed to squat in a woman's uterus for free either. So it seems to me that any woman whose uterus is being occupied by an egg person should, at the very least, qualify for federal Section 8 Housing Subsidies.

The New Yorker's political-commentary columnist took a break from politics on his blog yesterday to write about... that musical. That everyone's (still) talking about. Directed by that guy from Seattle. He doesn't mention Sher by name, but he's definitely a fan.

This “South Pacific,” the first on Broadway since the original run sixty years ago, is a revelation even if, or maybe especially if, you’ve seen the 1958 Joshua Logan film, starring Rossano Brazzi, John Kerr, and the wonderful Mitzi Gaynor. I’m no theatre critic, but I can testify that every single second of the Lincoln Center revival is absorbing, and long stretches of it are by turns enthralling, exhilarating, and/or moving.

Still, Hertzberg's post lands on a connection between the plot of the musical and the punishing Democratic primary (the context):

Those two adorable, latte-colored children are like a pair of little Barack Obamas. As in “South Pacific,” today’s ending will be a happy one only when the blonde from Arkansas realizes that all it takes for everybody to be a lot happier is for her to stop standing athwart the future those kids represent and start doing her part to make it happen.

After a nominating convention that was thrown into chaos when a missing ballot was discovered in the house of a supporter of 46th Democratic District legislative candidate Scott White, who had narrowly lost the nomination vote to Gerry Pollet, White supporters have reached a tentative agreement not to challenge Pollet's nomination. The decision, made at a special meeting of the 46th District's executive board this past Monday, means that Pollet will be the district's official nominee. "The efforts to overturn the vote are over and it's now resolved and I'm the official nominee," Pollet says. "I am very pleased to have the [46th District's] support."

However, that official support may not have much practical benefit--under terms to be laid out in a letter that's currently being drafted by 46th District Democratic Chairman Javier Valdez (who did not return a call for comment), Pollet could not mention the fact that he's the official nominee in campaign literature or in the official voter guide sent out to voters. "Basically," White says, "the trade-off is that [Pollet] would not use the phrase ["official nominee"] or terminology relative to being the nominee in any capacity, and I would agree not to challenge." Instead, both candidates will (again, according to the tentative agreement) seek a dual endorsement from the 46th District Democrats.

The confusion over the nomination in the 46th started at a special "nominating convention" earlier this month, at which about 100 of the district's precinct committee officers (PCOs) cast ballots for their preferred nominee. (That rather odd process for picking the district's state legislative nominee was chosen by the state party and its chair, Dwight Pelz, after a Supreme Court ruling kept alive the state's voter-approved "top two" primary--in which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary move on to the general election, regardless of what party they're in. In Seattle, this will usually mean that two Democrats move forward to the general). Under that system, White lost by three points, according to the tally at the meeting. Subsequently, however, Dean Fournier, a White supporter who took the ballot boxes home with him recounted the ballots on his own--and found, according to an email from Fournier to Valdez, an extra ballot that put White in the lead. Thus ensued the lengthy debate about which candidate was the true winner in the close and bizarre nominating battle.

The 46th District Dems will meet again on June 19, when they'll vote on which candidate or candidates to endorse. Because a single endorsement requires two-thirds support (which neither candidate has) and because of the terms of the tentative agreement between Pollet and White, 46th vice chair Betty Means says "there will be a recommendation for a dual endorsement," which only requires a simple majority. "Scott and I will both expect to be endorsed in a dual endorsement" at the meeting, says Pollet, who calls the deal a "gentlemen's agreement."

White, former chair of the 46th District Democrats, says that "in our area, we have long-established endorsement processes that are well-vetted, and this nomination process clearly was not something that was well-vetted... One of the things we’re trying to do [with the dual endorsement] is show unity within the Democratic Party."

The whole debacle, White adds, speaks to the problem with the top-two primary, which the Democrats are continuing to fight in court. (Pelz did not return a call for comment about the Democrat's ongoing case.) "It's created a lot of confusion at the grassroots," White says. "This [process] is exactly why the Democrats have been so frustrated."

Am I the only one who not-so-secretly likes the neo-situationist /crimethinc.-y chalk-written slogans at Cal Anderson Park:

"Is your commute worth your destination?"

"Are you rewarding your curiosity?"

I mean, they're no "Sous les pavés, la plage!," but they're cute, right?

In keeping with the American spirit of small, family run business—and, well, hereditary third world island dictatorships—Rep. Ron Paul has decided to turn his dormant campaign for freedom into a massive financial wellspring for his extended family.

From the Washington Post's Matthew Mosk:

Paul's granddaughter Valori Pyeatt helps organize fundraising receptions and has been paid $17,157. Another granddaughter, Laura Paul ($2,724), handles orders for Ron Paul merchandise. Grandson Matthew Pyeatt ($3,251) manages Paul's MySpace profile. Daughter Peggy Paul ($2,224) helps with campaign logistics. The candidate's sons Randall and Robert and his daughter Joy Paul LeBlanc have all been paid for campaign travel and for appearing as surrogates at political events.

Who keeps track of all these finances? Paul's brother and daughter, naturally, who have been paid a combined $62,740 to handle the campaign's accounting.

You might be thinking that this is, at the very least, nepotism (if not something much, much worse). According to the Paul campaign, that would be an incorrect assumption:

"You always think about those kinds of things," said Jesse Benton, Paul's spokesman and, it just so happens, the fiance of one of the candidate's granddaughters (he has been paid $54,573). "But his family is very important to him. There is something important about having a family element involved in a campaign. Having people around you that you can unconditionally trust."

This morning, Politico's Jonathan Martin described the intrigue over who will be our next Vice President as "breathless." How breathless?

“The VP story is a little bit like sex,” observes Tucker Carlson, the writer and NBC political analyst who falls into the skeptic column. “When it’s happening, you’re totally focused on it, it’s all you want. Then, the second it’s over, you can barely remember why it seemed so important.”

That's pretty breathless. And completely mentally scarring.

But the overall point still remains: with two unusual candidates about to face off for the presidency, who will they pick as their ultimate surrogate? Someone who accentuates their attributes, or someone who fills in their perceived weaknesses? Someone well known to politics, or someone slightly off the map?

These are all important questions to take into consideration when your life spirals to the point of engaging in MSNBC's Veepstakes 'o8!. Set up to mimic an NCAA playoffs bracket (and thus make you feel less crushingly sad for participating in it), internet political animals of all stripes can now make meaningless, semi-informed guesses about who John McCain's running-mate will be.

Mitt Romney? David Petraeus? Securities and Exchange Chairman Chris Cox? Only you can decide.

But not really.

The Wall Street Journal today has published excerpts from Scott McClellan's new book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. McClellan worked for Bush for eight years, eventually becoming White House Press Secretary. ("I know the president pretty well," he writes.) The Wall Street Journal's editors have titled the excerpts "Scott McClellan's Confession."

To this day, the president seems unbothered by the disconnect between the chief rationale for the war and the driving motivation behind it, and unconcerned about how the case was packaged. The policy is the right one and history will judge it so, once a free Iraq is firmly in place and the Middle East begins to become more democratic.

Bush clung to the same belief during an interview with Tim Russert of NBC News in early February 2004. The Meet the Press host asked, "In light of not finding the weapons of mass destruction, do you believe the war in Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity?"

The president said, "That's an interesting question. Please elaborate on that a bit. A war of choice or a war of necessity? It's a war of necessity. In my judgment, we had no choice, when we look at the intelligence I looked at, that says the man was a threat."

I remember talking to the president about this question following the interview. He seemed puzzled and asked me what Russert was getting at with the question.

This, in turn, puzzled me. Surely this distinction between a necessary, unavoidable war and a war that the United States could have avoided but chose to wage was an obvious one that Bush must have thought about in the months before the invasion. Evidently it wasn't obvious to the president, nor did his national security team make sure it was. He set the policy early on and then his team focused his attention on how to sell it. It strikes me today as an indication of his lack of inquisitiveness and his detrimental resistance to reflection, something his advisers needed to compensate for better than they did.

More excerpts (they're amazing) are here.

Whatever his thousand-word diatribe yesterday against Barack Obama might have suggested about the downward trajectory of his mind, Senator John McCain's body appears to be about as healthy as one would expect of a 72-year old.

From the pool report's summary of the medical records, via Mark Halperin of Time:

The records document the following major issues that he has faced over the last eight years:

cancer (melanomas on his left face, his left arm and his nose); dizziness that was diagnosed as vertigo; blood in the urine, which was diagnosed as caused by an enlarge prostate and bladder/kidney stones; high cholesterol, which appears to be successfully treated with medicine; some pain in his shoulder, hand and knee joints diagnosed as degenerative arthritis; evidence of polyps and diverticulosis in th colon, and some other minor medical ailments along the way.

This should also reassure Americans:

From Dr. Suzanne Connolly, his oncologist:

“Buttocks unremarkable except for some very light tan freckling.”

The gist of the initial assessment seems to be that McCain's battle with melanoma has been a successful one since his diagnosis and subsequent surgery in 2000, and will not likely be an issue should he become president.

There are still a lot of questions left unanswered by all this: the records were a massive 1,200 pages, and the hand-selected batch of reporters were not allowed to photocopy any of the material for later analysis. A time limit was placed on press access to the documents, and the New York Times is reporting that certain news organizations were given preferential treatment in their time alloted to view the medical records.

Barack Obama's records will be released "early next week."

You know Andrew Franz? That Seattle University prof and former Army Ranger who was arrested when he showed up in Colorado to fuck what he thought was a 13 year-old girl? The charmer brought muscle relaxants and alcohol for the girl, along with lingerie, fishnets, and a "necklace with cherries on it." Well, guess who endorsed Franz, a Republican, when he ran for the state legislature in the 47th District?

Rossi used to describe Franz as his BFF ("I've come to know him as a friend"). Now Rossi claims he never really knew this Franz person. There's much, much more at HorsesAss.

Salon on HBO's Recount...

"Recount," director Jay Roach and screenwriter Danny Strong's first-rate docudrama about the disputed 2000 presidential election, is almost too painful to watch.

I won't watch it—I can't watch the freakin' commercials; whenever they come on I lunge for the remote and change the channel. Laura Dern's creepy incarnation of Katherine Harris is spooky enough to keep me away from the teevee. Knowing how this tragedy ends, knowing that the Bush team would ultimately steal the election (with an assist from Joe Lieberman!), knowing that Bush would run the country off the rails, I couldn't possibly curl up in front of the teevee and watch this flick. If I'm going to watch anything about Bush stealing the 2000 election, I'll watch that egg hit Bush's limo during his inaugural "parade." I'll watch that over and over and over again...

But Recount? No thanks. I'd rather watch Real World.

I'm so excited about this I could poop:

In a year bursting with politics see the action from the inside! Come see the hilarious and poignant story of the successful effort of evil outside interests to capture and control Washington’s 2004 race for attorney general. Written and performed by former Insurance Commissioner and Democratic nominee for attorney general Deborah Senn. Not all ex-politicians are put out to pasture—come see it to believe it.

I'm not kidding about my excitement. I think all elected officials should be required to do one-person shows, and not just the ones who'll probably be great at it, like Senn. (I'm looking at you, Cheryl Chow.)

The latest statewide political fundraising numbers are out, and they include a few surprises and an intriguing hint or two about the political future of some of the region's political leaders.

Surprise One: Despite arguing vociferously for a spending cap at the (hotly contested) 46th District Democrats' nominating convention, former anti-Hanford activist Gerry Pollet is actually outraising his "establishment" opponent, Scott White--so called because he used to chair the 46th District Dems and has the endorsement of most elected officials in the city. Last month, Pollet raised $8,000 to White's $6,300, leaving Pollet (with around $11,000) less than $5,000 shy of the $15,800 White has on hand. (Less surprisingly, well-funded business candidate Reuven Carlyle continued to clobber his opponent, John Burbank, in the 36th, raising $25,000 in April to Burbank's $6,600. Burbank, also not surprisingly, has also called for a spending cap)

King County Council member Larry Phillips, rumored to be mulling a challenge to King County Executive Ron Sims, has more than $135,000 on hand. If Phillips does run, the incumbent has a lot of catching up to do--Sims has just $16,000 in the bank, and he didn't raise a single penny in April. Meanwhile, King County Council member Bob Ferguson, also rumored to be considering a run for County Exec, has just $8,000 on hand.

On the local front, neither of the Seattle City Council members who are reportedly planning to retire this year--Richard McIver or Jan Drago--have raised any money to speak of, and Nick Licata, about whose plans nobody is certain, has just over $11,000 in the bank. While Richard Conlin, rumored to be considering a run against Mayor Greg Nickels, has a paltry $14,800, Tom Rasmussen, another potential contender, has $109,000 on hand.

(Thanks to JR for crunching the data).

That photo, ripped from Wonkette, sums up Barack Obama's visit to Portland yesterday.

At the waterfront, he gave his standard stump speech. We need health care, we need to end the war in Iraq, McCain will carry on Bush's policies, college should be affordable, McCain's gas tax holiday idea is a gimmick, we want change, vote for change on Tuesday, etc. I've heard it before.

The bigger news: Via the Wall Street Journal, "the Democratic frontrunner attracted a crowd of 75,000 according to Duane Bray, battalion chief with Portland Fire and Rescue." Shit goddamn. That's more than twice the size of Obama's previous record crowd. Why are Portlanders so eager to risk heat stroke for a glimpse of Obama? Because—unlike you guys in Washington—our primary is so late it rarely means anything. This year we get a say, and we're giddy.

The Mercury's Erik Henriksen summed up the speech—and the t-shirt vendors—here.

Looking back from the press area, the field of infinitesimal people stretches back and back and back: John Kerry supposedly packed 50,000 people in here when he showed up with Bon Jovi (tangent: as Scott Moore noted earlier, the Decemberists are to Portland as Bon Jovi is to Jersey), and if this crowd isn’t 50,000, it’s damn close*. I can’t see where they could possibly fit anyone else in. The park is packed, people are still crossing over the Hawthorne Bridge, boats float in the water just offshore, people on their decks in swimsuits, lounging about and listening, and even the Portland Spirit is floating just N of the Hawthorne, people leaning against the railings to try and catch the words that echo over the park and bounce off of the bridge's steel and concrete.

And my colleague Matt Davis, stuck in the miles-long line to get into Waterfront Park, interviewed people swept up in Obama-mania (and a small cadre of Hillary Clinton supporters).

Tim Frasier, 24, in the Obama t-shirt, had dragged his friends Sarah Stevenson, 24, and Aaron Martin, 25, along. Martin said he was drunk when he got Frasier's email from Obama's site on Thursday night, and just agreed to sign up. The next evening he got a call from Obama's campaign asking him to volunteer. "I said yes again," said Martin. "But I don't think I can actually do it. I have a biology exam to sit, and if I don't show, I won't graduate." Excuses, excuses. "We were saying wouldn't it be great if there's Obama water on sale when we get down there," said Frasier. "For like $25 a bottle. It's going to be elitist water..."

If Kay Barnes gets elected to Congress from Missouri, black gay abortionists drunk on champagne will leave their illegal-immigrant boyfriends in San Francisco and travel to Missouri to engage in interracial three-way dancing in empty clubs.

Kay Barnes is a threat to all things good and decent.

Via JoeMyGod.

Is this a crowd of 50,000?

I can't tell. To the left of that stage, there's another group of several thousand, and in the river, dozens of boats are bobbing near the shoreline. We're awaiting Obama.

The line to get in to see Barack Obama on the Portland Waterfront today, according to one cop I spoke with, stretched from the waterfront, on the east edge of downtown, to the South Park Blocks on the other side of downtown. The officer pegged the line at 20,000, and the doors hadn't even opened yet. People who biked here have turned the railing along the waterfront's bike and pedestrian path into the longest bike rack I've ever seen (every bike rack and parking meter for blocks in every direction is at capacity).

Local and national reporters are grumbling that we're three hours away from actually seeing Barack Obama. Portland's indie-rock darlings the Decemberists are going on at 2:30, followed by the candidate.

But it takes that long to shuffle tens of thousands of people through security. One of the communications staffers herding the press says they're expecting 50,000 people at the waterfront today—Obama's biggest crowd ever. (He pulled in a record 35,000 in Philadelphia, four days before Pennsylvania's April 22 primary, and he's had a 30,000 crowd when Oprah took the stage beside him. Take that, Oprah—the Decemberists can kick your ass!)

Stay tuned for photos and updates.

UPDATED to reflect new information and interviews.

Members of North Seattle's 46th District went home after last night's nominating convention thinking they had chosen a nominee for state legislature from their district. (Unlike the intransigent members of the 36th District, the 46th agreed to abide by a Democratic Party-sanctioned scheme to anoint a single "official" candidate in the wake of a court decision upholding Washington's top-two primary.) That nominee, chosen by a group of 100-plus precinct committee officers in the district (who, thanks to an arcane system that allots votes based on total Democratic Party presence in each precinct, each got more than one vote), was longtime anti-Hanford activist Gerry Pollet.

That outcome, which had Pollet's opponent, longtime Party activist Scott White, losing by a scant three points, would have been astonishing enough in itself. White, the former head of the 46th District, was widely favored to win the nomination. The endorsements listed on his web site include 76 PCOs from the district--an impressive showing among the rank-and-file party activists—as well as numerous elected officials, including most of the Seattle City Council.

Nonetheless, the final vote count showed Pollet ahead, with 329 (weighted) votes to White's 326—prompting Pollet to declare victory in an e-mail to supporters this morning.

And that's where things get interesting. Because at the same time as Pollet was declaring victory, so was White--asserting on his web site that although "the initial tally suggested that Scott's opponent, Gerry Pollet, had won the nomination... after three re-counts it was confirmed that Scott had in fact won the official Democratic nomination of the 46th legislative district! More information to come as it becomes available. Congratulations Scott!"

Based on conversations with folks on both sides, it appears that, after the tallying committee made up of representatives from both camps went home, Dean Fournier, a White supporter, recounted the ballots on his own -- in Pollet's words, "suddenly found another ballot in the middle of the night"--and wrote an email to 46th District chair Javier Valdez telling him that White had won. In his email, Fournier wrote:

Javier, this is most embarrassing. Because the State Party has sometimes asked us to keep our ballots for examination if requested, I brought them home to await any later instructions. Having them, I wanted to tally the nbr of individual PCOs (unweighted) who'd voted for each; it was Scott 56 and Gerry 59, but that doesn't and didn't really matter. I also wanted, more importantly, to make sure that no 6's had been counted as 9's or vice versa; none had. But in the course of doing so, I had to sort the ballots by weighted nbr, and FOUND ONE EXTRA "8" ballot for Scott. That means that Scott got 334 to Gerry's 329, so SCOTT really won. OUCH!!

Neither Valdez nor Fournier have returned calls for comment; consultant Christian Sinderman, who is supporting White, says his "understanding is that the individual who counted the ballots was selected as a neutral party and is known for his integrity. The fact that he found a similar result to the initial count is no surprise.”

There are a few problems with this regardless of whether Fournier's count was correct, of course. One is that, assuming this account is correct, the official nominating process was over. As Pollet puts it, "You can't just find a vote in the middle of the night at somebody's house and say that counts." Pollet says his campaign agreed not to count a ballot that was printed on the wrong color paper; if that ballot was counted, he says, he would still have more overall votes than White's adjusted, higher total.

On the other hand, White says Fournier didn't just "find" a ballot--he counted the ballots three times, and came up with the same total each time. "To suggest that one of the most respected and honest people in our district would [fabricate] ballots in his house is very disappointing and smacks of sore-loser sentiment on Gerry's part," White says. He blames the confusion, in part, on the fact that many ballots were not signed, something he protested at last night's meeting--making it difficult, incidentally, to reconstruct exactly what happened in last night's ballot tallies.

Where does this leave the 46th District? That's anybody's guess. Both White and Pollet continue to claim victory. (In an email this afternoon, 46th District chair Javier Valdez said no recount had taken place and that it "no decision has been made" on what steps the party would take moving forward. "All I can ask it that we be keep cool heads and be respectful while this needs to be sorted out," Valdez wrote.) White wants a recount of all the ballots in Fournier's possession. Pollet supporters, meanwhile, accuse White of being the real sore loser. Bob Ferguson—a King County Council member who ran against then-incumbent Cynthia Ferguson Carolyn Edmonds*, whom White supported while White was the county council's chief of staff—says bluntly, "you've got to be gracious when you win and gracious when you lose, and right now, he's lost."

*White supported Sullivan when Ferguson ran against her in 2003, when White was chairman of the 46th District Dems. He went on to support Edmonds when Ferguson challenged her after the county council was redistricted and reduced to nine members in 2005.

Although, under the top-two system, both candidates will move forward as Democrats no matter what happens, having the official sanction of the party could be a big advantage. It's unlikely that the district will formally endorse either candidate over the other (a separate and more inclusive process from the nominating convention), because any nomination requires a two-thirds vote from district membership, although a dual nomination seems like a distinct possibility.

Contacted after the vote, Pollet said he wasn't surprised the vote was so close "We knew it would be extremely close despite the fact that Scott boasted that he had it all locked up and I would be dropping out of the race. If he had listened to the people who are elected committee officers, he wouldn't have been boasting like that." White denies that, adding: "I believe that it's possible to get elected and to still take the high road and I think it is unfortunate that Gerry did not choose to do so."

With the Democratic Party choosing congressional district delegates tomorrow, it's unlikely that the 46th will make any decision on how to move forward before early next week.

The land of pot, functional socialism, and cultural tolerance continues its immigration freakout. From the International Herald Tribune:

A Dutch political cartoonist was arrested this week on suspicion of insulting people because of their race or religion through his work, authorities said Friday.

The cartoonist, who works under the pseudonym Gregorius Nekschot, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of violating hate speech laws and held overnight before being released, a spokeswoman for his publisher Uitgeverij Xtra said.

"He was arrested with a great show of force, by around 10 policemen," the spokeswoman said.

Some NSFW examples of Nekschot's cartoons: Mohammed getting a blowjob
from a child (with the caption, "an inconvenient truth") and Mohammed fucking (an apparently consenting) Anne Frank.

And a SFW one:

All of Europe is doing a lousy job of integrating its immigrants, but the Netherlands is doing an extra-lousy job, with a resurgence of neo-fascism on the right, attacks on free speech by the left, a culture-and-language test that may violate international law, etc.

Last month, author Ian Buruma (who wrote an excellent book a couple of years ago about immigrants, Pim Fortyn, and the murder of Theo van Gogh) gave a good interview to Der Spiegel about the Netherlands and its Muslims. He's against the impulse to censor criticism of immigrants, but recognizes, as the Dutch right doesn't, that

... you need to convince European Muslims that they have a stake in liberal democracy and that the freedoms that one tries to protect against radicalism are also theirs. If you start to tell these people the problem is not just violent ideology inside Islam but that the Muslim religion itself is the source of all evil, then you alienate the very people you need to have on your side.

Read the rest of it here.

Jewish Congressman Rahm Emanuel responding to President Bush, who stood before the Israeli parliament today and said, in a comment that was widely interpreted as a swipe at Barack Obama:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Obama as Nazi appeaser? The Obama campaign's response:

George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.

Also: Sen. Joe Biden calls bullshit, literally.

And McCain agrees. With Bush.

The piece opens auspiciously with the line:

LUIS SALGADO will forever see Hillary Clinton on his thigh.

This raises all kinds of hope for where this story may go next, but then it just turns out that some guy in Philadelphia is giving out free tattoos of Hillary Clinton.

Salgado, 28, owner of the Ill Skillz (4948 N. 5th) tattoo parlor just got a portrait of Clinton inked on his leg at a tattoo convention in Baltimore.

Artist Buffalo Bill, of Sunbury, offered a free Hillary tattoo to any takers because his daughter Sarah Taby is a big Clinton supporter and thought the tattoo would give Clinton good exposure...

"Hell, yeah," Salgado says, when we asked if he voted for Clinton recently.

As for the tattoo itself?

That's pretty cool, but it's nothing compared to the full portrait of Dennis Kucinich, riding a winged horse and battling a dragon, that I'm considering having done on my back.

As Josh noted earlier today, something very odd happened: While Obama suffered an absolutely brutal loss in West Virginia last night, the Democrats went on to win a congressional seat in rural Mississippi that has been in Republican hands since 1994—and more specifically, a seat where the Republicans used the specter of Obama and his mad, America-hating pastor to try to drag down the Democratic candidate.

When combined with Obama's win in Nebraska last night (a contest that's a mirror image of Washington's system, wherein the caucus is king and the primary is a beauty contest), it kind of raises a question:

What's so different between rural, white America in West Virginia and the same rural white voters in Nebraska and Mississippi?

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo attempts to explain the historical context of Appalachian politics, and why the first black president will probably never be a popular concept there. I'm only able to post a portion of it (and it's a pretty long piece), but here's the crux:

These regions were settled disproportionately by Scots-Irish immigrants who pushed into the hill country to the west in part because that's where the affordable land was but also because they wanted to get away from the more stratified and inegalitarian society of the east which was built by English settlers and their African slaves. Crucially, slavery never really took root in these areas. And this is why during the Civil War, Unionism (as in support for the federal union and opposition to the treason of secession) ran strong through the Appalachian upcountry, even into Deep South states like Alabama and Mississippi.

As I alluded to earlier, this was the origin of West Virginia, which was originally the westernmost part of Virginia. The anti-slavery, anti-slaveholding upcountry seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union after Virginia seceded from the Union. Each of these regions was fiercely anti-Slavery. And most ended up raising regiments that fought in the Union Army. But they were as anti-slave as they were anti-slavery, both of which they viewed as the linchpins of the aristocratic and inegalitarian society they loathed. It was a society that was both more violent and more self-reliant.

This is history. But it shapes the region. It's overwhelmingly white, economically underdeveloped (another legacy of the pre-civil war pattern) and arguably because of that underdevelopment has very low education rates and disproportionately old populations.

This map has been floating around the lefty-end of the blog world, giving a pre-West Virginia breakdown of counties where Hillary has beaten Obama by over 65% of the vote. Other than her strongholds in Hispanic-dominated areas and her well known popularity in upstate New York, the map almost geographically matches the spine of the Appalachian mountains:

That's probably as good a guess as any for whats going on, or at the very least a step up from the hallowed argument: 'They're Slackjawed Klansmen vs. Obama Doesn't Understand The Tender Sensibilities of Jug Band Aficionados.'

Intelligent Americans aren't the only ones who consider George W. Bush a colossal waste of sperm and egg. Creativebits rounds up advertisements from around the world that try dissing Dubya to sell product. Some are pretty, some are cute, and they're all here.

(Thanks for the heads-up, MetaFilter.)

Meanwhile in Mississippi: A Democrat—a conservative Democrat, but still—won what had been considered a "safe" U.S. House seat for the GOP tonight. And he won it by eight freaking points. Sucks to be them. More here.

It continues to amaze that substantive interviews with former members of the Bush Administration about the war in Iraq aren't found on CNN (too busy with Clinton vs. Obama, or else the news that Barbara Walters apparently at some point in time slept with someone) or MSNBC (same) or Fox News (same), but on that fake news show. You already know this. But it's amazing, right?

Last night, a focused, substantive, unyielding interview with Doug Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2001 until 2005.

Via Orcinus comes this pic from the Houston Chronicle.

Is Idaho's Walt Bayes just another Republican homophobe running for office? Or is this candidate a highly-placed operative of the international homosexual conspiracy?

Homosexual and heterosexual students should have separate bathrooms and showers in Idaho schools, a Wilder Republican running for the Idaho House said Friday.

Walt Bayes, who gained notoriety two years ago by going on an anti-abortion hunger strike that lasted 59 days, said he wasn’t sure how the issue could be handled other than providing different facilities for gay and straight students in schools.

The topic came up after Bayes mentioned it in his campaign literature, where he wrote, “It is absolutely wrong to force any student to share the same bathrooms and showers with homosexual teachers or students.” ... Bayes said that when he was 18 it would have been “an absolute catastrophe” for him to have showered with girls.

The Washington State Democrats have crunched the numbers, and found that--surprise!--Dino Rossi's transportation "choices" plan isn't just a lowballed, car-centric, environmentally irresponsible mess--it also screws Eastern Washington, the very place where Rossi's support was highest in 2004. As reported in today's Tri-City Herald, Rossi's plan would devote just $2.3 billion -- or 15 percent-- to eight projects in the eastern half of Washington (most of that to just one project in Spokane). Rossi's plan, in other words, would divert money from eastern Washington to pay for road projects on this side of the mountains--where voters rejected a roads-heavy transportation plan just last November.

As regular readers of the The Stranger's print edition might be aware, I've found myself in a mild housing problem, which has left me in the market for a new home. And while many considerations have been brought into play while searching for said new home—distance to ethereal Vietnamese dinner option Ballet being paramount among them—there's always been a certain nagging thought:

"No matter where I decide to settle, my landlords will almost certainly not have the covenant of freedom espoused by Ron Paul guiding their every decision."

And really, if I'm to be a true American, can I really settle for the petty tyranny of a landlord anyway? What if they come for my guns in the middle of the night? What if they won't accept my Ron Paul gold dollars as payment for my rent? These are the things that keep me up nights.

With this in mind, my discovery today that Paul supporters have apparently bought a small chunk of West Texas with the intention of turning it into a gated Community of Freedom (dubbed 'Paulville'!) pretty much settled my looming housing crisis:

The West Texas Community was selected for it's warm climate and great solar and wind generation capabilities, along with low cost of establishment. Close to the small agricultural community of Dell City, Texas in Hudspeth county.

Hudspeth county has no building codes, this is important to people who want to experiment with alternative building technologies such as straw bale, rammed earth, papercrete an other non traditional building styles for these off grid homes.

Many investors of this property are seeking off grid technologies such as solar and wind power, realizing true freedom is when you have no obligations to pay and or rely on the grid for services like electricity. However most investors are very technology orientated and will have needed convenience items such as cell phones and internet connections.

I don't even know what 'rammed earth' means, but I'm all over it. Any idea what the media market is like in Dell City, Texas?

As for Gary's late reporting, Kos nails it:

The question is whether this was legit. The way the vote is being released makes this stink to high hell.

If this was legit, that's some serious machine action at work. If it's not legit, that's some serious machine action at work.

I doubt very much that the vote was not legit, but Machines get out the vote one way or the other.

By the by, my slog moniker "Chicago Fan" refers to politics as well as sports, and when I got done teaching tonight and logged on to see that the results from Lake County Indiana, an Obama stronghold, hadn't come in yet, it was deja vu all over again.

Back in the bad old days of ballot-box stuffing and vote stealing, it was common practice for political bosses to withhold results from precincts or larger areas that they knew would go overwhelmingly their way. They wanted to know exactly how much over they needed to whelm. Hence, in the 1960 Presidential election, Kennedy won Illinois by a mere 10,000 votes, and Cook County reported very late in the process, after Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Democratic bosses could see how many votes they would need. The legends of stealing the election are not wholly accurate, and it wasn't just Kennedy they were concerned about: they were actually more interested in preventing Ben Adamowski, a Dem turned Republican, from winning the Cook County State's Attorney race, since that would give the R's power to investigate Democrats.

Now, I'm not accusing the good folks of Lake County Indiana with anything; but one benefit of your stronghold reporting last is that your opponent might do something dumb, like declare victory, and then lose a few hours later. "Dewey Defeats Truman" anyone?

What a FUCKING GORGEOUS day, right?

Sorry there's been almost nothing on Slog today, kids. It probably had something to do with how FUCKING GORGEOUS it was. Highlights: riding one's bike down steep, sylvan Interlaken Drive; then across the University Bridge (up in the air, Titanic-like); then (as the bridge slowly lowered) seeing Michael Seiwerath and his daughter on a two-person bike (with orange flag!); then that award-winning ride along Lake Union past Gasworks and past Fremont and past that part just past the Fremont Bridge ("Wait, am I in Europe?"), then a stop at Dutch Bike Co. Seattle in Ballard; then a weird salad and many soda refills at Baja Fresh; then riding along Westlake, in the shade of Queen Anne Hill, and passing the staggering sight of two half-crunched cars on top of each other and attentive, practically weeping police vehicles stretching in both directions; and, of course, a breeze and sunshine the whole way. One was going to write something long and reflective on Slog about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Meet the Press and The O'Reilly Factor, but then one thought to oneself: I can do that tomorrow.

Because, man, what a FUCKING GORGEOUS day.

On a slow news day, massive time wasters are of essential value to anyone tasked with producing blog content. Thankfully, New York magazine has produced a time waster of such staggering depth that you could literally disappear into it for hours of lost productivity:

The Electopedia is the home for all minutia—sometimes interesting, often pointless— regarding the three remaining contenders for the presidency. Who is Barack Obama's worst political enemy? What Swedish band does John McCain threaten to play in the White House elevators? How do the three candidates get along with their siblings?

(Answers after the cut!)

It's Friday, and it's approaching late afternoon. Don't even pretend you have something more interesting to be doing.

Continue reading "My Life with the Electopedia" »

A question more daunting for Barack Obama than "How do I win working class whites?" may end up being "How do I win working class white supremacists?" My feeling is that it may take more than having a beer at the local VFW Hall.

From George Packer, of The New Yorker:

J. K. Patrick, a retired state employee from a neighboring county, wore a button on his shirt that said “Hillary: Smart Choice.”

“East of Lexington she’ll carry seventy per cent of the primary vote,” he said. Kentucky votes on May 20. “She could win the general election in Kentucky.” I asked about Obama. “Obama couldn’t win.”

Why not?

“Race,” Patrick said matter-of-factly. “I’ve talked to people—a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.

Why not?

“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”

What about race?

“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion. After 1964, you saw what the South did.” He meant that it went Republican. “Now what caused that? Race. There’s a lot of white people that just wouldn’t vote for a colored person. Especially older people. They know what happened in the sixties. Under thirty—they don’t remember. I do. I was here.”

As it often seems that, lacking any other kind of metric to decide who will win the Democratic nomination, campaign coverage lingers over how a candidate will win their most improbable demographic, this seems to be an important case study:

Will Obama assure the voters of rural Kentucky that he won't appoint an inappropriate amount of 'minorities' to lord over the white race? And if not, doesn't Senator Obama risk losing out on an important slice of the electorate that fears an impending race war?

Is the man who once coined the term "vast ring wing conspiracy" now an integral part of the monster he once decried, willingly abetting a yellow journalism vendetta against Barack Obama?! Peter Drier, of the American Prospect and the Los Angeles Times (amongst others), brings forth the case against Clintonista Sidney Blumenthal:

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.

Amongst the questionable media narratives Drier accuses Blumenthal of pushing (there are many, and it is a long and winding piece):

• Obama's high school exposure to a Hawaiian Marxist poet, who Obama mentions briefly in Dreams from My Father and who has since been elevated to an Obama father-figure by hard-right press critic Cliff Kincaid.

• The recent 'Obama as Radical Black Nationalist' narrative, and his Chicago connections to Weather Underground member William Ayers.

• A National Review article which accuses Obama of being an integral part of Chicago machine-style politics, which notes: "Blacks adapted to both the tribalism and the corrupt patronage politics."

• A plethora of different Tony Rezko stories.

• And lest anyone forget, the circa February 'Obama as Cult Leader' narrative penned initially by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer.

Hardball politics or cavorting with the enemy? Read the piece and draw your own conclusions.

Mukilteo watch salesman-cum-Republican activist Tim Eyman--fresh from mortgaging his house to pay for his latest ballot measure--has been barraging supporters with emails begging for donations. Yesterday's plea, subject-lined "$250,000 loan will ensure I-985's success -- PLEASE help retire this debt ASAP," asked supporters to kick in a total of $290,000, an amount that would bring Eyman's total initiative war chest to $612,000. "I'm jumping off a big cliff --please help catch me," Eyman wrote. "As you can imagine, this is scary stuff -- but failure is simply not an option."

Today, Eyman followed up on his initial plea, asking supporters to "let opponents' comments inspire you" to open their checkbooks. "Donating to I-985 not only gets the initiative qualified for the ballot and helps me out of this huge financial challenge, but you will drive these opponents absolutely bonkers. It's win-win-win.:)"

Why does Eyman need so much money, anyway? Because under Washington State's hopelessly flawed initiative process, the only way to get an initiative on the ballot statewide--especially an initiative that's unpopular in densely populated urban areas like Seattle, where gathering signatures is less difficult--is to hire a firm to gather signatures for you, paying signature gatherers as much as a dollar a name. Paid signature-gathering efforts are the single biggest reason so many bad ideas make it onto the ballot in Washington State. Ban the signature gatherers, you'll ban most of the dumb ideas.

And speaking of bad ideas, I-985 is one of Eyman's worst yet. The measure would open up all carpool lanes to all drivers during "off-peak" hours--that is, all hours except between 6 and 9 am, and between 3 and 6 pm--and on weekends. Given that many roads in the Puget Sound region are now experiencing "rush hours" that last allday with congestion starting in the early morning and not letting up until well into the evening, Eyman's proposal would effectively render HOV lanes useless. With no incentive to carpool (because the HOV lanes will be just as clogged as the general-purpose ones), the number of people driving alone during "off-peak" hours will go up... making traffic congestion even worse. (The initiative would also make conditions worse for people riding on Metro and regional buses--again, eliminating the incentive to take transit instead of driving to work alone).

Eyman's proposal would promote congestion in other ways, as well:

• It would restrict the use of funds from high-occupancy toll lanes (carpool lanes that solo drivers can access for a fee) to building and operating those lanes; all other revenues from HOT lanes would go into a special "Reduce Traffic Congestion Account," which would pay, in part, for "expanding road capacity and general purpose use to improve traffic flow for all vehicles." In other words, Eyman would siphon money from transit, carpool, vanpool, and trip reduction services and pour it into more general-purpose roads.

• It would also redirect all proceeds from traffic tickets obtained through red-light cameras toward Eyman's road-building account, siphoning money away from cities' general funds; and he would end all transportation-related funding for public art, directing that money to roads as well.

• Finally, Eyman would prohibit tolls on I-90 (and require that all tolls on 520 be spent exclusively on 520, rather than going, say, to HOV lanes and transit)--an idiotic proposal that would have exactly the opposite effect of what Eyman's "congestion relief" proposal promises. State transportation planners generally agree that if 520 is tolled, I-90 will have to be, also, to prevent people from clogging up the "free" cross-lake bridge and making congestion even worse.

Eyman's proposal, like Dino Rossi's single-solution road-building plan, would worsen traffic congestion and reduce transportation alternatives in the guise of improving the roads for all. Let's hope that this time, Washington State voters won't let him get away with it.

The publicity stunt du jour:

Senator Hillary Clinton, highlighting her enthusiasm for a summer holiday from the gas tax, carpools with an Indiana steelworker to get his tank refueled. There's really nothing I can add that the AP report doesn't do justice to already:

The Democratic presidential candidate and sheet metal worker Jason Wilfing, 33, pulled into the station in a large white Ford 250 pickup truck, Clinton riding shotgun. Never mind that it wasn't even Wilfing's truck — he had borrowed his boss's larger vehicle to accommodate Clinton's security agent and personal assistant, who rode in the back.

Trailing Wilfing and Clinton was a Secret Service motorcade consisting of six gas-guzzling Suburbans, two squad cars and a green SUV bearing photographers and TV cameras. Several other reporters and cameramen stood shivering in unseasonably cold temperatures, ready to capture the multi-vehicle arrival.

Then there's this, from the Washington Post:

Asked by one of the reporters when she had last pumped gas herself, Clinton said she did not know. Her staff was not only not sure when the last time the former first lady drove a car (it's not clear she's allowed to as the the Secret Service takes her everywhere for security reasons) but had to check to make sure that she actually has a valid driver's license.

Hillary Clinton rides around in a Ford F250 and can't believe the price of gas, which may or may not be more important to the common man than Barack Obama loving pot roast. Has anyone asked how John McCain feels about Larry the Cable Guy?

Meanwhile, here are policy critiques of the gas tax holiday via ECB, Annie Wagner, and the inimitable Mr. Golob.

The New York Times takes us into the raging id of the hard-right Congressional Republican, now faced with reconciling their often less-than-cordial relationship with Republican nominee John McCain:

“For the pure, die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool Republican, they probably have a little bit of heartburn,” said Representative Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican and McCain supporter retiring from the House at the end of this year

...

Mr. McCain also liked to ridicule Congressional earmarks, the pet projects on which Republicans were feasting. And he led a Senate investigation into the bilking of Indian tribes by the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a source of great embarrassment and trouble for Mr. DeLay and other Republicans.

“They just hated McCain’s style of politics,” said Charles Bass, a former House member from New Hampshire who now leads a moderate Republican group.

And yet for many House members trying to shake off the Republican reputation of Byzantine wheeling and dealing during the DeLay years, they find themselves having to applaud McCain's prior stances, even when that stance was at the time firmly placed on their collective throats:

Many Republicans have now concluded that it is only Mr. McCain’s willingness to challenge recent Republican orthodoxy that has left him in a position to credibly contend for the White House, given public dissatisfaction with Republican leadership.

“If he hadn’t disagreed with us, he wouldn’t have a chance of being president,” said Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee. “He is the one guy who can be the candidate for us this cycle.”

Noam Scheiber of The New Republic believes that should the McCain candidacy look dead in the water at any point, the Congressional knives will likely come back out.