Greg Sargent: "Poll: Gulf spill has created big desire for energy reform"

Greg Sargent:.

I've just obtained an interesting new poll that suggests Dems have a real opportunity to seize on the Gulf spill to make energy reform a major issue, perhaps even in the midterm elections.

The poll strongly supports the view, expressed by Al Gore and many others, that the spill represents a real chance to achieve a fundamental shift in the public conversation on energy reform. It shows how absurd it is that so many in the Senate have decided that the spill should make reform less likely.

The poll -- done for Clean Energy Works, a coalition of environmental groups, by Joel Benenson, who's also Obama's chief pollster -- was sent over by a source, and you can read it Key findings and MORE..

Ari Melber on Elena Kagan (and Paul Rosenberg on Obama and the BP "spill")

Politico:

One commentator, The Nation’s Ari Melber, told POLITICO: “As a lawyer, I think there is no doubt that: 1. Kagan is supremely qualified and merits confirmation by any standard. 2. Replacing [Justice John Paul] Stevens with Kagan moves the court to the right. Ergo, 3. The sum consequence of Obama's first term appointments will be to advance qualified nominees through a respectable selection process that ultimately tilts the court a bit more to the right. Not the end of the world, but not what most Obama voters had in mind, either.

Howie P.S.: Can we "move on" now? More rumbling from Obama's left on the BP oil "spill":

As Paul Rosenberg points out (also in a post on Open Left!), Obama appointed an Interior Secretary (Ken Salazar) with deep ties to the oil industry. Salazar was confirmed in January of 2009. The BP permit for the Deep Horizon well was approved 3 months later in April, with zero meaningful oversight.

"Seymour Hersh on Obama Being "Dominated" by the Military"(video)

mmflint (Michael Moore),video (02:48).

"A Mother's Day Pro-Marijuana Tea Party"

I am reposting this today. I am told this issue is not as important as immigration reform, racism or renewable energy, as examples. Maybe not, but it is a good case study in moronic public policy that requires correction.-Howie

Jessica Cory (HuffPo):

Most Americans think of Mother's Day as a day of rest for our nation's moms. This year, however, I'm excited to be part of a new movement that is capitalizing on the holiday to encourage mothers nationwide to take a stand for ending federal marijuana prohibition and the devastating consequences it has brought to our families, our communities, and our nation.

For the past several years, I've been an active voice in the pro-legalization movement. I was initially greeted with skepticism by the movement's left-leaning activists and tokenized as the "pro-pot Republican mom." Over the years, I've devoted too many column inches to lamenting the fact that more conservative women wouldn't join me in this cause. Just last July, in a column I wrote for the Colorado Daily, my lead read: "As a Republican mother committed to legalizing marijuana, political life can be lonely. But while many in my party whisper about the Drug War's insanity, we should shout it from the rooftop: the time to legalize is now."

Fortunately, on this Mother's Day, I'm anything but alone.

While the national media frequently highlights polls showing that nearly half of all Americans now support ending the federal war against marijuana--nearly doubling the support demonstrated just two decades ago--reporters miss the bigger story all too often.

Women have been the key to this jump. Within hours of the aforementioned column's publication, I was inundated with supportive e-mails and calls--and not just from liberals. Republican moms and dads from across the nation responded positively. After the Washington Post's Kathleen Parker, a fellow Republican mom, penned an October column highlighting Colorado's pro-pot mom movement, messages from likeminded moms took over my inbox. And after a series of national news appearances where I made the case for legalization late last year, the emails grew into the thousands.

The tide has turned.

This Thursday, I will have my daughters by my side as I help launch a new organization called the Women's Marijuana Movement. We'll be speaking to our fellow moms--and dads--knowing that if we convince just one in 10 of them to rethink this issue, we will succeed.

Joining me will be other mother-daughter teams, including Mari and Ashlee Clauss. My fellow Republican, Mari, has spent most of her adult life fighting back against lupus and other chronic conditions. Ashlee, my fellow diabetic, has such a serious form of the disease that she was forced to be home schooled due to a series of hospital stays left her unable to manage a traditional school schedule. As medical marijuana patients, they see medical marijuana as one small part of their overall health treatment strategy--one that has freed from a lifetime of dependency on conventional narcotic medications.

But Thursday isn't just about medical marijuana. Or even about Republican moms. Participants will span the ideological spectrum, each speaking of their own moment of awakening--when they chose to stop blindly accepting government talking points proclaiming the alleged harms posed by marijuana use.

For younger moms, we reflect on our college days, comparing the impact of marijuana versus alcohol on our lives as students. Impartial analysis reveals that alcohol had a far more harmful impact on our bodies, our relationships, and our safety than pot ever could. Every year we hear more tragic stories of college kids dying from alcohol overdoses, whereas there has never been a single marijuana overdose death in history. In a perfect world, my kids would never experiment with marijuana or alcohol, but as a realist, I also fear the pain alcohol could cause in their later lives far more than I fear any detrimental consequences of marijuana use.

As organizers, we question aloud how we could ever defend to our children the fact that America spends $30,000 a year to put non-violent drug offenders behind bars at the same time we issue a $45,000 bill to each baby born today as his or her share of the national debt. One of several small business owners who take part in the event, I'm downright angry that this insane tax burden will inevitably mean more hours spent away from my children.

In 2010, we must rethink every budget line item. Anything less is generational child abuse. Across ideologies, we resent government bureaucrats insisting on parenting our children. We need to reclaim responsibility. Just as pot prohibition failed to stop our generations from using marijuana, it is failing to stop today's students too, with an estimated half of all high school seniors admitting to past or current marijuana use.

Anti-marijuana extremists will inevitably slander us as bad moms or pot-smoking hippies, but we will remain undeterred. Our stance isn't just about endorsing the behavior of 95 million Americans who have used pot, and it's not even about endorsing the medical use of marijuana by the hundreds of thousands of medical marijuana patients across the nation. This is about something so much greater.

We are coming together to reclaim our country. For our children. For our pocketbooks. And for the long forgotten American ideal that in the absence of harm to others, government should not interfere in our personal lives.

While we face challenges ahead, we also have some pretty amazing role models--the thousands of women who organized to end alcohol prohibition. As I wrote in 2009: "In 1929, it was the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform successfully leading the charge to end America's decade-long experiment with alcohol prohibition. While many of these same activists fought just years earlier to forbid booze, they quickly witnessed prohibition's devastating consequences, including increased violence....Just four years into the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform's repeal efforts, prohibition was over."

California voters will be asked to support legalization on this November's ballot. Polling promises a close contest, with supporters appearing to hold a slight edge. Regardless of the outcome, other states, such as Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, will be following suit. In 2006, when Colorado voters were asked to support legalization for adult recreational use, more than 41 percent said yes--a total greater than that received by the GOP's gubernatorial candidate.

The bottom line: We need only convince one more person in every ten to end the nightmare of marijuana prohibition. We will show our faces proudly and publicly, inspired by the countless couragous Americans who have gone before us, including those who organized the Boston Tea Party.

Seeing this as own little tea party moment, we'll hope to make our voices heard above the chaos of kids running around and cell phones ringing with calls from clients who will just have to wait until tomorrow.

And here is what we'll say. Marijuana prohibition has failed. Our nation is beyond broke. Let's make the future better for our kids.

Jessica P. Corry is a Denver attorney who represents dozens of medical marijuana caregivers and patients. In March 2010, she was named High Times' "Freedom Fight of the Month" and in 2006, she served as a co-founder of Guarding Our Children Against Marijuana Prohibition.

Burbank on WA taxes: "...middle class families pay quadruple the tax rate of the very wealthy.--- place an income tax on the wealthy"

John Burbank (Seattle Post Globe):

Can we put all these pieces together to create a common sense solution? The people behind Initiative 1077 [since refiled as I-1098], and I am one of them, think so. What does this initiative do? It cuts property taxes. In Snohomish County, that means on average a $127 cut in property taxes for families and a $445 cut in property taxes for businesses. The initiative also eliminates the business tax for the vast majority of businesses, leaving the current tax in place only for the top one-thirteenth of businesses.

It brings in $1 billion of new public revenue, dedicated to education, expansion of Basic Health, public health and long-term care for the disabled and elderly.

Where is the magic?

The magic is in the beginnings of a fair tax structure. Initiative 1077 puts in place an income tax on the wealthy, the top 3 percent of families in our state, those with incomes in excess of $400,000 a year. It is not a big tax. For a family making $500,000, it amounts to $4,382 in net taxes, or less than 1 percent of their income. For a family making $1 million, it amounts to less than 3 percent of income. Put all these contributions together from the wealthiest 3 percent of families, and we have enough for the property and business tax cuts and expansion of education and health care.(italics by Howie)

So this may be a good idea, but can it win? A poll by KING-TV showed 66 percent support for this approach. We’ll see how that holds up.

We can put on our ideological and no-can-do blinders and dismiss Initiative 1077, or we can engage in a vital discussion for our democracy. I am rooting for the latter.

Howie P.S.: Here's the whole op-ed.

Sable: "Oops We Did It Again: SPD Caught Beating Man In Video" (with video)

Sable Verity, with videos:

It was just last week that I brought you an exclusive interview with Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, a name synonymous with police brutality.

In 2005 he was savagely beaten by members of the Seattle Police Department…for doing absolutely nothing.

We only ever found out about Maikoiyo’s story because video existed that captured a sliver of what happened to him. It was the video that brought an end to his criminal trial. It was the video.

Without it…who knows.

It’s nearly impossible to count how many times police brutality happens because 99% of the time the stories never come to light.

Now five years after Maikoiyo’s beating was captured on tape, comes another- this time by a freelance journalist.

Howie P.S.: READ MORE, including video of Shandy Cobane, one of the officers involved in the most recently discovered incident.

Bageant: "Blogging toward the Kingdom---Booze, rage and justice in the participation age"

Joe Bageant:

...The brutal way Americans were forced to internalize the values of a gangster capitalist class continues to elude nearly all Americans. Most foreigners too. This is to say nothing of how our system replaced our humanity with ideology, our liberty with money, and fostered fascist nationalism through profound degeneration of the people's mind and spirit. It's not as if one can ever escape that sort of thing, either by going to a place like Mexico, getting drunk or whatever. We are made in Americas' image, whether we admit it or not, and America's image is the face on a ten dollar bill

Liberal or conservative, money is what we care about -- period. From birth, the empire has made one thing very clear to us: If you do not produce or acquire enough of the green stuff, meet the quota, you will be ground beneath the heel of the machine we call a society. No universal health insurance or higher education, no guaranteed minimum income, no worker rights, nothing for you suckers but the tab. So keep humping.

With such a national ethos, who can blame Americans for caring most profoundly about money? Everything is secondary to money. The future of the world's children, the planet, everything. I've been watching the horrific BP oil spill on CNN (doncha love the way they call it a "spill," as if it was a cup of coffee?) The first and biggest ongoing question has been, "Who is going to pay for it?" Right off hand I'd say the fish, birds and wetlands will pay for it, along with future generations. One quart of motor oil will pollute 250,000 gallons of water, and already there have been millions of gallons of oil blasted into the earth's waters from this single spill. Yet the big question has been "Whose money and how much is going to change hands here?"
(snip)
It is now clear to me that the people's rage is a tool in the hands of the new electronic and digital corporate state. Its various channels, eddies and pools, regardless of type, can be directed toward all sorts of mischief and profit. Left or right, the angry throngs on both sides can be managed and directed. They can be sent chasing various injustices, denouncing evil characters on Wall Street, Times Square bombers, BP executives, or whatever, worked up into slobbering outrage over Sarah Palin, and thus kept divided and working against each other for the benefit of last gasp capitalism.

Once outside the furious drek of American political and economic life, and having finished the last book I will ever write, I found myself asking: "Why did the good in the American people not triumph? How can it be that so many progressive, justice-loving citizens failed? Their positions were well reasoned. The facts were indisputably on their side. Obviously, there was, and is, more going on than merely losing battles to demagoguery and meanness. Why do we lose the important fights so consistently? What has kept us from establishing a more just kingdom? Something is missing.

I think it is, in a word, the spiritual. The stuff that sustained Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and gave them the kind of calm deliberate guts we are not seeing today. I am not talking about religion, but the spirit in each of us, that solitary non-material essence, none the less shared by all humans because we are human. When we let our capitalist overlords cast everything in a purely material light -- as material gain or loss for one group or another -- we played the oppressor's game.
(snip)
I'm sure many readers bailed out back there when I first mentioned the spirit. "That crazy old peckerwood Bageant has finally blown a head gasket!" And as many more said "fuck this" at the mention of a kingdom within us. That goes to show the level of our indoctrination against anything that cannot be measured, counted, computed (and thereby controlled by the corporate state). I find it fascinating that we can so easily bandy terms such as fascism, or American free market capitalism -- two of the filthiest concepts ever devised -- yet piss all over terms indicating some higher value or quality in human beings.
(snip)
What has all this to do with blogging? Everything and nothing of course. When I do get around to blogging, I serve up whatever the ole puddin' between my ears has been festering on. Mostly what happened around me that day, and what it may suggest about the world.

Sometimes it is a topic as big as the empire, other times as small as reflections on my latest batch of tortillas. In any case, I am the same as my reader friends, ordinary and fearful. Enough so, that they can identify with my ramblings. I don't write to them. I don't write for them. And I don't write at them. We merely live on the same planet watching the unnerving events around us, things the majority does not seem to see. So I write about that. And maybe for just a moment, a few friends I've never met do not feel so alone. Nor do I.

Which is why god made blogs, I guess.

Howie P.S.: Any questions? Read the whole thing. Bageant's analysis may help us comprehend this:

Barack Obama: “Oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.”

Connelly: "Will Gulf of Mexico spill cap oil drilling?"

Joel Connelly (seattlepi.com):

Was it a dream or did I hear, on National Public Radio, Big Oil's best friend in Congress take BP to task for its "attention to safety, the attention to maintenance and the attention to using the best available control technology?"

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in 2006 when House leaders attempted to ram through refinery legislation that contained a clause to repeal tanker size limits and safeguards on Puget Sound.

He was one of the believers when British Petroleum changed its name and told us that BP stood for "Beyond Petroleum."

In a variation of that timeless nugget of wisdom -- there's nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus the mind -- it takes an oil spill disaster to focus public attention on environmental dangers.MORE

Howie P.S.: As I have opined previously, drilling won't cease until we invest in creating alternative energy sources that are price competitive with oil and coal. Joel's final question,

"Isn't it time for a time-out, or a turn in direction?"

does have an obvious answer.

Them v. Us: "An Uneven Contest" Over Money and Media? (Now what?)

"An Uneven Contest" (Ernest Partridge):

What if there were a great debate concerning the nature and future of American society, and only one side showed up?

That approximately describes the condition of the U. S. media today.

The right wing is operating a super-charged carnival of hype, hysteria and hoopla, while the left struggles along with a pipsqueek sideshow: a few magazines like The Nation, Mother Jones and The American Prospect, with minuscule circulation among the already converted, some tolerated columnists like Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and Frank Rich, and of course there’s Shultz, Olbermann and Maddow on MSNBC.

Meanwhile, one by one, the lights are going out: in January, Air America Radio fell silent, and last month David Broncoccio’s outstanding investigative program, NOW, closed shop. Last Friday, Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS broadcast its final program. Shultz-Olbermann-Maddow remain on MSNBC at the sufferance of the owners and managers of NBC and MicroSoft, while Comcast is attempting a takeover of NBC. If successful, how long will this lone outpost of progressive cable-TV commentary remain?

The good news is that the audience size of FOX News is vastly over-rated. On a good night, Beck or Hannity or O’Reilly will be seen by three million viewers. That’s less than one percent of the U. S. population. The worse news is that the progressive voices at MSNBC draw about a third as many. MORE

"Rove, GOP plot vast network to reclaim power" (Mike Allen and Ken Vogel-Politico)

The Republican Party’s best-connected political operatives have quietly built a massive fundraising, organizing and advertising machine based on the model assembled by Democrats early in the decade, and with the same ambitious goal — to recapture Congress and the White House.

The new groups could give Republicans and their allies a powerful campaign apparatus separate from the Republican National Committee. Karl Rove, political architect of the Bush presidency, and Ed Gillespie, former Republican Party chairman, are the most prominent forces behind what is, in effect, a network of five overlapping groups, three of which were started in the past few months.

The operating assumption of Rove, Gillespie and the other organizers is that despite the historical dominance of Republican fundraising and organizing, the GOP has been outmaneuvered by Democrats and their allies in recent years, and it is time to strike back. MORE

"A Mother's Day Pro-Marijuana Tea Party"

Jessica Cory (HuffPo):

Most Americans think of Mother's Day as a day of rest for our nation's moms. This year, however, I'm excited to be part of a new movement that is capitalizing on the holiday to encourage mothers nationwide to take a stand for ending federal marijuana prohibition and the devastating consequences it has brought to our families, our communities, and our nation.

For the past several years, I've been an active voice in the pro-legalization movement. I was initially greeted with skepticism by the movement's left-leaning activists and tokenized as the "pro-pot Republican mom." Over the years, I've devoted too many column inches to lamenting the fact that more conservative women wouldn't join me in this cause. Just last July, in a column I wrote for the Colorado Daily, my lead read: "As a Republican mother committed to legalizing marijuana, political life can be lonely. But while many in my party whisper about the Drug War's insanity, we should shout it from the rooftop: the time to legalize is now."

Fortunately, on this Mother's Day, I'm anything but alone.

While the national media frequently highlights polls showing that nearly half of all Americans now support ending the federal war against marijuana--nearly doubling the support demonstrated just two decades ago--reporters miss the bigger story all too often.

Women have been the key to this jump. Within hours of the aforementioned column's publication, I was inundated with supportive e-mails and calls--and not just from liberals. Republican moms and dads from across the nation responded positively. After the Washington Post's Kathleen Parker, a fellow Republican mom, penned an October column highlighting Colorado's pro-pot mom movement, messages from likeminded moms took over my inbox. And after a series of national news appearances where I made the case for legalization late last year, the emails grew into the thousands.

The tide has turned.

This Thursday, I will have my daughters by my side as I help launch a new organization called the Women's Marijuana Movement. We'll be speaking to our fellow moms--and dads--knowing that if we convince just one in 10 of them to rethink this issue, we will succeed.

Joining me will be other mother-daughter teams, including Mari and Ashlee Clauss. My fellow Republican, Mari, has spent most of her adult life fighting back against lupus and other chronic conditions. Ashlee, my fellow diabetic, has such a serious form of the disease that she was forced to be home schooled due to a series of hospital stays left her unable to manage a traditional school schedule. As medical marijuana patients, they see medical marijuana as one small part of their overall health treatment strategy--one that has freed from a lifetime of dependency on conventional narcotic medications.

But Thursday isn't just about medical marijuana. Or even about Republican moms. Participants will span the ideological spectrum, each speaking of their own moment of awakening--when they chose to stop blindly accepting government talking points proclaiming the alleged harms posed by marijuana use.

For younger moms, we reflect on our college days, comparing the impact of marijuana versus alcohol on our lives as students. Impartial analysis reveals that alcohol had a far more harmful impact on our bodies, our relationships, and our safety than pot ever could. Every year we hear more tragic stories of college kids dying from alcohol overdoses, whereas there has never been a single marijuana overdose death in history. In a perfect world, my kids would never experiment with marijuana or alcohol, but as a realist, I also fear the pain alcohol could cause in their later lives far more than I fear any detrimental consequences of marijuana use.

As organizers, we question aloud how we could ever defend to our children the fact that America spends $30,000 a year to put non-violent drug offenders behind bars at the same time we issue a $45,000 bill to each baby born today as his or her share of the national debt. One of several small business owners who take part in the event, I'm downright angry that this insane tax burden will inevitably mean more hours spent away from my children.

In 2010, we must rethink every budget line item. Anything less is generational child abuse. Across ideologies, we resent government bureaucrats insisting on parenting our children. We need to reclaim responsibility. Just as pot prohibition failed to stop our generations from using marijuana, it is failing to stop today's students too, with an estimated half of all high school seniors admitting to past or current marijuana use.

Anti-marijuana extremists will inevitably slander us as bad moms or pot-smoking hippies, but we will remain undeterred. Our stance isn't just about endorsing the behavior of 95 million Americans who have used pot, and it's not even about endorsing the medical use of marijuana by the hundreds of thousands of medical marijuana patients across the nation. This is about something so much greater.

We are coming together to reclaim our country. For our children. For our pocketbooks. And for the long forgotten American ideal that in the absence of harm to others, government should not interfere in our personal lives.

While we face challenges ahead, we also have some pretty amazing role models--the thousands of women who organized to end alcohol prohibition. As I wrote in 2009: "In 1929, it was the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform successfully leading the charge to end America's decade-long experiment with alcohol prohibition. While many of these same activists fought just years earlier to forbid booze, they quickly witnessed prohibition's devastating consequences, including increased violence....Just four years into the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform's repeal efforts, prohibition was over."

California voters will be asked to support legalization on this November's ballot. Polling promises a close contest, with supporters appearing to hold a slight edge. Regardless of the outcome, other states, such as Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, will be following suit. In 2006, when Colorado voters were asked to support legalization for adult recreational use, more than 41 percent said yes--a total greater than that received by the GOP's gubernatorial candidate.

The bottom line: We need only convince one more person in every ten to end the nightmare of marijuana prohibition. We will show our faces proudly and publicly, inspired by the countless couragous Americans who have gone before us, including those who organized the Boston Tea Party.

Seeing this as own little tea party moment, we'll hope to make our voices heard above the chaos of kids running around and cell phones ringing with calls from clients who will just have to wait until tomorrow.

And here is what we'll say. Marijuana prohibition has failed. Our nation is beyond broke. Let's make the future better for our kids.

Jessica P. Corry is a Denver attorney who represents dozens of medical marijuana caregivers and patients. In March 2010, she was named High Times' "Freedom Fight of the Month" and in 2006, she served as a co-founder of Guarding Our Children Against Marijuana Prohibition.

Connelly on Hizzoner McGinn: "create chaos, then conquer."

Chris Grygiel (seattlepi.com):

One gets the feeling that if Mike McGinn were an advisor to Napoleon, he would've told the French emperor that the British, Spanish and Russians weren't enough of a challenge. Why not take on China and Japan as well, just to make things interesting.

Seattle's mayor on Wednesday forcefully renewed his objections to the $4.2 billion tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct, saying he'd veto a technical agreement between the city and state that will likely be signed in the next few weeks. McGinn, who is fighting battles on multiple fronts right now, wants a controversial provision requiring Seattle to pay for cost overruns removed from the legislation state lawmakers approved two years ago. Considering the city's precarious budget situation, the mayor says it would be irresponsible to move forward with the provision in place.

"Don't you wish that someone at Washington Mutual had said, "Maybe we shouldn't make those sub-prime loans?'" McGinn said during a briefing with reporters. "That is where we are right now."

Nonsense, say City Councilmembers and Gov. Chris Gregoire.

"I think this is just another effort on McGinn's part to try to slow down and stop the project," said Tom Rasmussen, chairman of the City Council's transportation committee. "If there are cost overruns - and we're doing everything we can to prevent that - the state would have to take further action to make Seattle area property owners pay for those...I wouldn't stand for a veto, I wouldn't support a veto. We're working to develop agreements with the state that will protect the city's interests."

Viet Shelton, Gregoire's spokesman, said the mayor's delaying action "actually increases the likelihood of increased costs and overruns."

McGinn is also battling the Council and Gregoire right now over the State Route 520 bridge replacement. Most Councilmembers and Gregoire favor a six auto-lane option for the Lake Washington span; McGinn wants two auto lanes now dedicated to buses and carpools reserved for buses only and wants greater assurances that 520 will be able to take light rail in the future. And he and the Council are engaged in an increasingly testy war of words over Seattle's busted operating budget, which is at least $120 million in the red through 2012.

The mayor cast his latest objection to the tunnel as an appeal to frugality. If the project goes just 1 percent over budget, city taxpayers could be on the hook for $31 million, he said. If it goes 50 percent over cost estimates, the bill could be $1.5 billion - which exceeds the city's operating budget for this year by more than $600 million.

Unlike last month's debate over the aggressive panhandling bill, this is a fight McGinn is unlikely to win. He vetoed the panhandling bill and the Council seems unable to muster the six votes needed to overturn McGinn's rejection. On the viaduct tunnel, it looks like there will be enough votes to stymie a mayoral veto. McGinn acknowledged this fact Wednesday. "If the Council votes to proceed under any circumstances, I am bound by their vote."

What the mayor is trying to put his rivals on the Council in a politically awkward position. He wants them to own future cost overruns by reserving the right to say: "I told you so."

Not surprisingly, this is driving his many critics nuts. The Council played nice with Gregoire on the 520 bridge. Not without justification, Councilmembers point to the significant concessions state planners made to the city in final bridge design unveiled last month. Its better to work with people, not against them, they say.

City infighting about the tunnel is counterproductive, according to Councilmembers.

"It's a huge benefit for Seattle to get this thing done," said Council President Richard Conlin. "The surest way is to create cost overruns is to create delay."

The viaduct fight makes everything else that much more difficult, Conlin said. "We really need to work together. This budget is going to be a huge challenge. It's just not helpful when we have this kind of cross purposes."

The problem for Conlin and others is the mayor is most happy when he's duking it out. And this latest skirmish brings McGinn back to his original campaign issue. "I don't like the tunnel. I never liked the tunnel," the mayor said Wednesday.

My seattlepi.com colleague Joel Connelly has described McGinn's overarching strategy as "create chaos, then conquer." He has succeeded with the former. Whether he can accomplish the latter remains to be seen.

Howie P.S.: Once again the comments are instructive. And Erica C. Barnett (Publicola) tells the story; the headline is "McGinn Says He’ll Veto Tunnel Agreement; Council President Says Mayor is “Grandstanding.”

"Why A Catastrophic Oil Spill Makes Clean Energy Legislation Harder In The Senate"

Brian Beutler (TPM):

You might think that an oil spill of historic proportions that's just 50 miles from U.S. shores might create a groundswell of support in Congress for legislation designed to reduce the country's reliance on fossil fuels. But you'd be wrong.

In the peculiar world of the United States Senate, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe has actually intensified existing divisions, drawing offshore drilling foes into growing conflict with oil patch Democrats and industry friendly members, who continue to support exploration, and incentives, for new drilling.

With oil still gushing from the well at a calamitous pace, a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, furious Senators threatened Tuesday to block any climate and energy bill that would lead to more drilling off the U.S. coast.

[TPM SLIDESHOW: Fire In The Gulf: New Pictures Of The Deepwater Horizon]

"If I have to do a filibuster...I will do so," Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) told reporters Tuesday.

And so he may.

Nelson is perhaps the most outspoken of a group of anti-drilling Democrats, that also includes New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez. They were none-too-pleased when President Obama greenlighted oil exploration--and, potentially, full scale drilling--along vast swaths of the Outer Continental Shelf in order to shore up support from pro-drilling Democrats. But the BP spill drove them into full revolt.

That wouldn't be a problem at all if other senators, and industry players, viewed the Gulf catastrophe as oil's Waterloo. But if anything, the opposite has happened. The bill's authors see offshore drilling as one of the keys to bringing oil-patch Democrats and Republicans into the fold on climate and energy legislation--and they are unwilling to allow the industry coalition they put together to be fractured by the backlash. At the same time pro-drilling senators have seemingly doubled down.

Howie P.S.: Go to the link. The comments are instructive (not just mine).

Bullets and Borders

"No One Cares" (Chris Hedges):

The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families.

"Afghanistan: is it time to talk to the Taliban?" (Jonathan Steele-Guardian UK):

Eight years after they were overthrown by US air power, a drumbeat is starting to sound across Afghanistan in favour of talking to the Taliban, the country's once-hated former rulers. An idea that used to seem absurd, if not defeatist, is coming to be seen as the only credible way to end an ever-widening war. Moreover, the proposed agenda of negotiations is not a Taliban surrender, but an offer to share power in Kabul.

"Border First Hallucinations" (Eugene Robinson):

The notion that the first thing to do is “secure the border” between the United States and Mexico—and only then worry about comprehensive immigration reform—falls somewhere between hopeful fantasy and cynical cop-out. It’s a good sound bite but would be a ridiculous policy.

Fact-based analysis is increasingly out of fashion, however, and so the border-first hallucination has become popular among politicians and pundits reacting to Arizona’s new “breathing while Latino” law. The measure, which has sparked angry protests nationwide, orders police to act on “reasonable suspicion” in identifying, arresting and jailing undocumented immigrants.

Anyone who thinks such extremism could be quelled if the federal government would just “secure the border” really ought to visit Arizona and take a look. Or at least consult a map. Or even just read up on what is happening at the border—which, according to Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, “has never been more secure.”

Ari Melber: "Political Parties and the Internet" (video)

"Washington Journal" (C-SPAN), video (40:48):

Ari Melber talked about how the political parties use the internet to motivate and organize their partisans and raise campaign funds. He also responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.

"Four Dead In Ohio: Forty Years Later" (with video)

Victor Lana (BC Blog Critics) and video of Neil Young(03:25):

Tuesday, May 4, 2010, marks the fortieth anniversary of the murder of four students (and wounding of nine others) at Kent State University in Ohio. There is something about this horrific and surreal moment in time that is still chilling, as I vividly remember this picture on the front of the New York Daily News the next day.

Read more.

ED Show: "Spill Baby Spill!" (video)

golefttv, video (07:58).

Howie P.S.: Environmental attorney Mike Papantonio joins ED.

Cantwell Part of Senate "push to get tougher on Wall St."

AP:

Liberal Senate Democrats who until now were on the sidelines are complaining that a pending financial overhaul bill backed by President Barack Obama does not go far enough to rein in Wall Street's giants.

Some want the legislation changed to break up the nation's six biggest banks. Others would be content to restrict banks' ability to engage in speculative trading or to return to Depression-era rules that walled off Main Street commercial banks and their federally insured depositors from the lucrative investment houses of Wall Street.

Howie P.S.: The story reports that Ted Kaufman of Delaware "and such Democratic senators as Carl Levin of Michigan, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Maria Cantwell of Washington, along with Independent Bernard Sanders of Vermont, plan to propose several changes." Regarding Cantwell:

Cantwell is considering offering an amendment based on legislation she and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona proposed in December. It would reinstate the 1930s Glass-Steagall Act that separated federally insured commercial banking from investment banking activities.

"Former DNC chair Howard Dean joins 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' protest in front of White House, speaks" (video)

John Aravosis (AMERICAblog) with video (02:50):

Shortly after Dean spoke, several activists handcuffed themselves to the White House gates. Dean was not a scheduled speaker at the protest, but rather, found out about the protest that morning, and said he'd like to attend.

"The Avalon Junction" (video)

cocothechicken, video (05:20):

Howard Martin of DNDA crosses the currently dangerous un-signalled intersection at the Avalon Junction in Luna Park, West Seattle.

Howie P.S.: Cocothechicken is the stagename for one of my neighbors (Kirk Prindle). I owe him many favors---one less after this.

"**MIRROR** SENSIBLE WASHINGTON I-1068 (LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA) MIRROR** " (video)

SiCoFgOvErNmEnT, video (02:14).

Howie P.S.: Step back in time to hear some familiar fear-mongering: ""Reefer Madness in Color 1937 Part 1 of 7, video (10:58). And there's "That 70's Show" version, video (09:22).