2000 Days

The United States has now been occupying Iraq for 2000 days.

Will it ever end?

3

Three years later, Gustav reminds us of the disaster of Katrina, and brings disaster anew to New Orleans and the Gulf coast.

72

John McCain turns 72 today.

Don't Forget to Vote in the Washington State Primary

It is time for the Washington State Primary.

Let your voice be counted: Vote!

100

100 days until the November 4 elections.

Sound Transit 2 Fifteen Year Plan To Go To Ballot

Good!

Time Running Out to Register for Primary Voting

There are only 32 days until the Washington State Primary elections on Aug. 19, 2008.

With the primaries only 32 days away, that means there are ONLY 2 MORE DAYS to get registered by mail to vote, or 17 days to register in person to vote in them:

Registration Deadlines

The deadline for registering or transferring your voter registration is 30 days before an election. If you register by mail, your application must be postmarked by the 30-day cutoff or it will not become effective until after the election.

If you are not already registered to vote in Washington and you miss the 30-day deadline, you can register in person at your county elections department until 15 days before the election. Contact your County Auditor for assistance and information.

You can even register online.

Bush, Indebted to the Chinese, Will Attend Opening Olympic Ceremony

So President Bush has declared that it would be "an affront to the Chinese people" if he were to not attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August.

I'm sure one could quibble about whether or not the Chinese would prefer he attend, and of course it will be an affront to many Americans if he does attend, but given that China owns $500 billion of U.S. Treasury Securities, and over $1 trillion in dollar denominated assets, one can understand why Bush might not want to piss the Chinese off any more than necessary, even while his popularity here continues to set new record lows.

The Truth Behind Reichert's Voting Record - Part 6

This is the long overdue sixth in a series of postings that seek to look more closely at Dave Reichert's voting record. You can read the first five postings here:

• Part 1 - H.R. 1, Implementing the 9/11Commission Recommendations Act, and H.R. 2, Fair Minimum Wage Act
• Part 2 - H.R. 6, Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation Act
• Part 3 - H.J.Res 20, Further Continuing Appropriations for FY 2007
• Part 4 - H.R. 1361, Relief for Entrepreneurs: Coordination of Objectives and Values for Effective Recovery Act
• Part 5 - H.R. 1592, To provide Federal assistance to States, local jurisdictions, and Indian tribes to prosecute hate crimes

You can also read my thoughts about why these vote switches matter.

Votes on this bill, H.R.1684, known as the Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, followed the same pattern I've described in detailed previously, where Dave Reichert voted with his Republican colleagues against the bill every step of the way, until the final passage vote, at which time he flipped his vote when it was clear the bill would pass regardless. Roll calls 310, 311 and 314 through 318 taken May 9, 2007 provide the details.

The first order of business was H.Res.382, providing for consideration of the bill. After an hour of debate, the previous question was ordered and passed 217-199, with all Republicans, including Reichert, voting against. The resolution then passed 222-197, again with total Republican opposition.

After voting on a couple of amendments that were proposed, one of which would have deleted a provision that requires that identification cards, uniforms, protective gear, and badges of Homeland Security personnel be manufactured in the United States, and failed across party lines, and another that passed along party lines, Republican congressman Charlie Dent (PA-15) made a motion to recommit the bill with instructions to Homeland Security, inserting a section pertaining to an automated targeting system for persons entering or departing the United States. The motion passed with all Republicans voting to recommit the bill. However, an amendment was then passed by voice vote to include the section contained in the Dent motion to recommit, allowing the bill to come up for a final passage vote, at which point Reichert flipped from his previous opposition, and voted for the bill, which passed 296-126, but with a majority of Republicans still voting against it.

So here's Dave Reichert, a member of the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, voting against a bill that came out of the Committee on Homeland Security, that he sits on, with unanimous consent, before finally voting for it on final passage in the House.

You'd think that this seeming incongruity would be covered by the local press, but it never was.

Terrorism Defeated in Iraq!

Iraqi PM says government has defeated terrorism

BAGHDAD: Iraq's prime minister said Saturday that the government has defeated terrorism in the country, a sign of growing confidence after recent crackdowns against Sunni extremists and Shiite militias.

So, that's that then, we can bring all our troops home, right?

We hold these truths to be self-evident...

Every year we need a reminder of the truths we hold to be self-evident:

A Simple But Powerful Message Garners Huge Support

Tuesday was a bad day for WA-08 candidate Darcy Burner. Her house went up in flames. She and her family barely escaped before the raging fire engulfed just about all her possessions, and unfortunately killed her cat. The family dog somehow managed to survive despite being caught inside the house while it burned down.

That afternoon while visiting the Seattle Times Web site I came across this front page:

The photo of Darcy Burner with the gutted house behind her was heart wrenching, but I was also taken by the T-shirt she was wearing.

The caption for the photo made mention she was "wearing a gray T-shirt", but fellow geek that I am, I understood that this was XML code for "End War", and knowing she must have been wearing it when she was woken up by the screams of her son Henry when the fire started, said to me something more. The primary issue that Darcy has made the central focus of her campaign is bringing a responsible end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. She doesn't just campaign about this, she's consumed by it, and literally eats, sleeps and drinks the issue. Her passion led her to spearhead the creation of A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, that has now been endorsed by over 50 other candidates for Congress.

So there she was wearing a simple T-shirt, yet it said so much, so concisely.

At Drinking Liberally that evening I showed fellow bloggers the photo and the quick posting I'd put up about it. David Goldstein of HorsesAss.org was there and talked about working with national blogs to do a campaign fundraiser to help raise money while the Burner family dealt with rebuilding their home and the loss of their possessions. He and others also saw the power of the photograph when I showed it to them, particularly within the Netroots, a grassroots group fervently against the war and made up of a lot of geeks who'd recognize what the T-shirt was saying.

The next morning I quickly threw up a similar posting at Daily Kos, which got a modest number of recommends and comments. An hour later Goldy posted his fundraising appeal, which was quickly joined by postings at Open Left, Eschaton, MyDD, and Swing State Project, but most significantly by one by Markos at Daily Kos. The goal: raise enough money for the campaign so that Darcy could spend as much time she needed focusing on her family and new house. The estimate was that every $5,000 raised would buy her an extra day she would be able to spend putting her personal life back together. Markos' ambitious target was $150,000, enough to buy her a full month of such personal time. All of these online appeals showed a copy of the same photograph with the T-shirt.

At 11pm on Tuesday night Darcy Burner's ActBlue totals for this election cycle stood at 7,669 supporters and $247,088 raised. Within 40 minutes of Kos' posting $8,000 had been raised. That grew to $15,000 in a little over an hour. By noon, $30,000 had been raised. By 1am this morning the totals stood at 9,095 supporters and $327,099 raised. Twelve hours later and we're at 9,343 supporters and $341,012 raised.

In little over a day the Netroots have raised, through ActBlue alone, $93,924 from 1,674 supporters, for an average of $56 per supporter. Surely more has come in directly to the campaign. That's simply amazing!

Last year the Netroots also rallied in support of Darcy Burner when George Bush came to Bellevue for a Dave Reichert fundraiser. Over a four day weekend period in late August, in an election off-year, the Netroots collectively raised close to $125,000. Back then the impetus was George Bush's visit. That drive managed to negate its effect and propel Burner to a better fundraising quarter than her opponent. It also led to the germination of the Responsible Plan.

This time Burner's personal loss, and that simple T-shirt have managed to garner an even greater response from Netroots supporters, and will help propel Burner into the final four months of this campaign with added determination and drive.

This is a critical time for the campaign due to the head to head nature of this year's primary. With only 46 days until the August 19 primaries, there are only 16 more days left to register by mail to vote or to transfer a voter registration if you've recently moved, or 31 days to do so in person if you want to be able to vote in the primary. If Darcy cannot campaign or fundraise during this time we need to help her out. Your donation is one way you can help. Volunteering to help get people registered is another, or you can simply spread the word by talking to your neighbors and friends to remind them.

Loss of Seattle Sonics Will Reduce Road Congestion

So the Sonics will move, supposedly with a new name, colors and logo to Oklahoma City next year.

While Don Ward is blaming elected officials for this, instead of Howard Schultz who sold the team to the Oklahoma buyers a couple of years ago, I'd think that Republicans should be dancing in the street over this news. After all, the absence of the Sonics will result in 41 nights of less of road congestion, particularly along the always troublesome Mercer, Valley and Broad Streets.

Alternatively we could have poured hundreds of millions of public dollars into financing the construction of a new arena to prop up a money losing private business venture. Perhaps that's good public policy to some, but most people in this area didn't think so. Maybe it is time for city sports teams to be actually owned by the citizens of the city and the fans. At least then we'd make more responsible decisions, and the team wouldn't move to another town.

Rising From The Ashes

Political candidates will have their good and bad days, but this was one rough day Darcy Burner certainly didn't envision with just over four months until election day. The above photo shows a distraught Darcy in front of the charred remains of her house. While the house is a complete loss, the Burner family thankfully made it out safely. Unfortunately they did lose their pet cat to the flames.

It is easy to dehumanize candidates during a heated campaign, but then with a thud, stuff like this happens and suddenly the political race seems far less important than the need to pick oneself back up and rebuild a home and a life.

We learn a lot about other people, and about ourselves in times of adversity. The Burners will have a different outlook on things because of this personal loss, but I suspect they will also bounce back strong, and Darcy, the candidate, will find renewed determination to do whatever it takes over the next four months to win the election so she can work in Congress to end the war in Iraq.

We need to do whatever we can to help.

White House and Congress - A Very Dangerous Escalation of Iran Situation

Seymour Hersh continues his investigative reporting of U.S. actions against, and now in Iran.

Crooks and Liars has an interview with him from CNN, in which he states:

...The end game is, as far as -- and I do have some access into some of the thinking, particularly in the vice president's office. They do not want -- Bush and Cheney do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program, with, they believe, a nuclear weapons program. They simply don't believe the national intelligence estimate that came out late last year that said they haven't done anything in nuclear weapons since '03. They just don't believe it.

So they believe that their mission is to make sure that, before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program.

Forget what the intelligence has told us about the state of Iran's nuclear program. Forget how wrong the Bush administration were about WMDs in Iraq. Forget the mess we're in now in Iraq and the fact the military is stretched so thin. Forget all that. These guys in the White House live in their own world, make up their own rules. Be damned everything and everyone else.

Meanwhile, our congressional representatives are just handing over all the rope we need to collectively hang ourselves. In late May, a resolution (H.Con.Res.362) was introduced and referred to the House Committee of Foreign Affairs that escalates the situation further. The resolution's title: "Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States by Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony, and for other purposes." A Senate version, S.Res.580 was introduced in early June.

Here is what the text states:

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress--

(1) declares that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, through all appropriate economic, political, and diplomatic means, is vital to the national security interests of the United States and must be dealt with urgently;

(2) urges the President, in the strongest of terms, to immediately use his existing authority to impose sanctions on--

(A) the Central Bank of Iran and any other Iranian bank engaged in proliferation activities or the support of terrorist groups;

(B) international banks which continue to conduct financial transactions with proscribed Iranian banks;

(C) energy companies that have invested $20,000,000 or more in the Iranian petroleum or natural gas sector in any given year since the enactment of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996; and

(D) all companies which continue to do business with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps;

(3) demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran's nuclear program; and

(4) urges the President to lead a sustained, serious, and forceful effort at regional diplomacy to support the legitimate governments in the region against Iranian efforts to destabilize them, to reassure our friends and allies that the United States supports them in their resistance to Iranian efforts at hegemony, and to make clear to the Government of Iran that the United States will protect America's vital national security interests in the Middle East.

While the resolution stipulates that "nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran", what would in effect be a blockade would be exactly that if not endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. The Seattle P.I. editorialized about this very fact a week ago.

Republican congressman Dave Reichert has joined Democrats Norm Dicks and Adam Smith as co-sponsors of the resolution, that has 83 Republican co-sponsors and 64 Democratic co-sponsors in the House. 12 Republicans and 8 Democrats are co-sponsoring the Senate version, including Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray.

Is this the road we are heading down? Is this what Americans want their government to be doing, calling for embargoes and blockades and provoking a war? Have we not learned anything from the Iraq invasion? Will our arrogance never end?

If we keep silent we will have given our tacit approval. Contact your Representatives and Senators and tell them that they're heading down a very slippery slope that will lead to no good and possibly to a war we want no part of.