BlatherWatch

Is mike mcgavick losing because he's too liberal for republicans?

"God is real. Mike McGavick’s posturing on conservative issues is not." Doug Parris, The Reagan Wing

It's been a mystery to some: Mike McGavick, the friendly, tow-headed Republican who looks like Charlie Brown and sounds like Julia Childs just hasn't gone anywhere. Or at least his US Senate candidacy against Maria Cantwell hasn't.

He' has gone all over the state, but continues wrestling in the tofu of 8 to 10 points down despite, it seems, anything and everything he says or does.

The conventional wisdom is that it's a bad Republican year, or the media's not giving him a chance or maybe the Seattle Times endorsement might be fatal. Some say his voice is too squeaky, or his Washington insider/insurance lobbyist image too difficult to shed.

Horse's ass radio tonight. philip gold, darcy burner and peter goldmark!

At 7p, military analyst and author Philip Gold will join Goldy. He's the paleocon, ex-Marine, former military historian (Georgetown) think tanker (Discovery Institute) and conservative national columnist (Washington Times) who publicly broke with Bush, the Republicans, and conservatism in 2003.

Gold, who lives on Mercer Island, is a prolific author, and commentator who gained renown when he  accurately predicted the 9-11 attacks in print in the summer of 2001. He  broke with the GOP over the undue influence of the neocons and the religious right. His latest book,The Coming Draft: The Crisis in Our Military and Why Selective Service Is Wrong for America was released in September.  Read about Gold here.

Goldy will also host the two Democratic candidates in the hottest Congressional races in the state.

Darcy Burner is in a toss-up race in the 8th District against a fearlessly-haired incumbent who's fighting upstream against an rising anti-Republican tide about to wash over the land

Peter Goldmark is in a surprisingly close race in the dryside's WA 5, a district that's been so red, it was not thought to be in play. But that changed as the Republicans and Bush's popularity went south and Goldmark proved to be a great campaigner. the DNCCC has put a bunch of money in the race and it's now a horse race. Goldmark is a rancher, but also a thoughtful, well-educated guy with a family history in Eastern Washington politics. 

This from Horsesass.org:

Yesterday two of the nation’s leading electoral prognosticators, Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato, both upgraded the race in WA-05 from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican,” while the New York Times followed suit today, upgrading their rating from “Safe Republican” to “Leaning Republican.”

BREAKING: Stefan Sharkansky's sugar mama speaks!

Whoa. Stefan Sharkansky's wife, Seattle attorney Irene Song is yelling at us; calling us a liar, and implying we're racist and anti-feminist.

Lashing out with a passion that we never suspected existed in the Sharkansky household, (Stefan is kind of a plodder) our reference to Irene as a "significant other" (SO) has brought down her wrath.

We struck a nerve- and got an interesting admission. Being a house husband to a well-paid professional woman, Stefan can afford to do his blogging and political work for free- he's a GOP Designated Liar like Sean Hannity.

OPEN THREAD: were we wrong?

Everything John Kerry warned us in 2004 about the war in Iraq has come true. ~ Ed Shultz

If Bill Gates Sr. and Frank Blethen are together in the same room, whose head will explode first?

Monday, Weekday with Steve Scher (KUOW m-f, 9-11a) will host an hour on I-920 and the estate tax with Bill Gates Sr. arguing against the sketchy roll-back attempt with Frank Blethen, the slightly unstable publisher of the Seattle Times.

Will it be a Slugfest of the Geezers? A King Kong vs Godzilla match-up? (or would that be King Coot vs Wackzilla)?

We're hearing, unfortunately, it won't.

We were excited that they'd be duking this out in a place where the hoi poloi could hear them. These guys are the leading proponents of argument on the subject of the estate tax- they've been matched up many times before- but it's usually in the Rainier Club or a Chamber luncheon or some other place a blogger doesn't have the clothes for.

We were fantasizing Blethen grabbing Bill's old turkey neck and yelling, "Death tax, you motherfucker!" but we've now heard that KUOW was touchy about it being characterized as a High Noon showdown, and tremblingly insisted that Gates and Blethen have a sober, thoughtful discussion.

But an insider told BlatherWatch, "It will still be must-listen radio. There's at least a 25 percent chance that Blethen's head will explode within five minutes of coming into contact with the all-but-divine Gates Sr.

I-920 is the initiative to repeal the state's only progressive tax- the estate tax. It's another one of those efforts by some rich guy bankrolling a piece of legislation that would benefit his bottom line.

This time it's Martin Selig, the real estate gazillionaire who has hired Dennis Falk, a disgraced ex-Seattle cop and John Bircher to run the campaign. Read all about this right-wing travesty here or here.

I-933: a pig without lip gloss

We're so glad that talk radio is stepping up to air debate on I-933, the regressive property rights proposal carpet-bagged into the state by a sinister group of New York rich guys and an insurance company who couldn't care less about the farmers they've duped into speaking for them.

We didn't hear the Dori Monson debate Wednesday, but we did catch Bryan Suits (KVI m-f, 3-6p) pretending to be fair last week. He had on Aaron Toso of the anti-933 campaign who was there to balance pro-933's John Stuthmiller who'd been on earlier in the week.

Toso twirled around like Jackie Chan fighting Suits and a gang of hai! karate Republican callers who attacked him from every side.

He did pretty well, leaving with no broken bones, but after he left the air, just to knock it back out of balance, former County Councilmann Steve Hammond, who works for the I-933 campaign, conveniently called in and had the last word, countering in a systematic, organized manner, every Toso argument.

(Just another right-wing, weekday talk radio travesty of democracy).

Habeas Corpus 1789-2006 R.I.P.

The "great writ" of habeas corpus serves as an important check on the manner in which state courts pay respect to federal constitutional rights. The writ is "the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action."

Air America co-founders start new liberal talk network

Mike Malloy, Joe Trippi and John Zogby join Nova M Radio. Read all about it here.

We're hoping a with better business plan, more radio professionals and the grace of God, the Drobny's endeavor will get up and go.

We're sick of the conservatives convenient conclusion that the failure of Air America signals the end of liberalism.

UPDATE: Hypocrisy Watch- Idaho's Larry Craig is the closeted gay Republican in the US Senate!

Blogger Mike Rogers ID-ed Northwest homeboy, and conservative Republican Sen. Larry Craig, stating, "My sources are individual men who have had sexual encounters with the Senator. I am willing to spend the rest of my life in prison to protect their identity."

In his fourth term, Craig, 61, is married to a woman, with three children and nine grandchildren. He sits on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and is the chairman of the Veteran Affairs Committee. He also sits on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association. Craig has a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign.

Here's the rest of Craig's anti-homo record:
    * Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
    * Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
    * Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
    * Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
    * Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)

The "big tent" the GOP loves brag about has turned out to be the "big closet." With all these gay R's now out in open, do you suppose we can have a real national discussion about gay rights, and gay marriage? probably not...
~~
Listen to Ed Shultz Show today, (KPTK m-f,12-3p) to hear Michael Rogers of Blogactive.com out a Republican senator who has sexual encounters with men yet regularly votes against gays.

Read all about it here.

Autumn oddems: electrifying, gothic, nonagenarian, sagging, bragging, cuckholding, cupholding, hemorroidal, styble-ized, seritonin-soaked screams in the night: I am not dead!

~ If you google "I am from a Gothic Novel, I am electrifying, What an experiment," (as so many do) what do you get? Well, BlatherWatch, of course, which almost makes us feel Gothic and electrifyingly proud. Peculiar is how we feel about putting "breast implant slow leak pain sagging" in the search engine which also brings us to the fore...

~ We'd heard Michael Medved (KTTH m-f, 12-3p) bragging about meeting with the President, a while back, but presumed it was only one of those White House photo ops they give to Little League heroes, nonagenarians, and people they either want to shut up or lube up. Then we read this. It turns out Medved was not alone with the Prez on Sept 15, but one of a bevy of broadcast banterers that included Neal Boortz, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Mike Gallagher. The meeting was supposed to be secret until Boortz blabbed it (he can't shut-up). Not too much of a stretch that there might have been a little of that famous Rovian strategizin' going on in the face of the Republicans' degraded political stature going into the election. Those particular talkers are all Bush parrots to the man (and that includes you, Laura). If you have any doubts that the right uses talk radio as a major mouth for their talking points, this little making-sure-you've-come-to-Jesus-and-are-still-there meeting oughta dispel at least a few of them. What we're wondering: where was Limbaugh? Has he been banished after all his pubic peccadilloes?

~ listen to Al Franken talking about the Air America bankruptcy here.