Guardian:

Britain could be heading for it wettest August for a century as forecasters predicted more heavy rain today, but held out the hope of a drier bank holiday.

Homes were flooded and cricket and horse racing events cancelled yesterday as heavy rain lashed the country, causing rivers to burst their banks.

It appears City Hall is trying to crack down on council members’ personal blogs and campaign web pages because of concerns about possible confusion with official, city-endorsed websites.

This week, the city’s legislative department sent out a proposed policy change, which was approved by Conlin, to council members late last month. The memo is excerpted below.

It is very important for the City to maintain one identity on the Internet, so that citizens know that the information they are receiving is official information from the City of Seattle.

To this end, councilmembers shall utilize the provided City web address as their primary web site. Redirection, cross-linking, or otherwise orienting visitors to an alternate site is contrary to the policy and purpose of the City Council web site and is not allowed.

Councilmembers are discouraged from establishing and maintaining additional or alternate sites. Steps should be taken to clearly identify personal sites as non-government sites.

Election sites should be taken offline at the conclusion of your campaign.

Several city council members maintain blogs, but the rule-change appears to be directed at council members Tim Burgess and Bruce Harrell, who regularly post to blogs on personal websites.

Continue reading "City Hall Cracking Down on Council Members' Blogs" »

No to Proposition 1, the group that’s opposed to this year’s light rail expansion measure, has not yet filed as a political campaign with the Public Disclosure Commission despite the fact that they’ve begun campaigning against this year’s ballot measure.

Mark Baerwaldt, spokesman for the No to Prop. 1 campaign, says the campaign hasn’t filed any public-disclosure forms yet because it doesn’t have to. “The minute there’s a penny raised, the minute there’s a penny spent, it’ll be reported,” Baerwaldt says. “Are we going to be out there in full force with a massive campaign? Absolutely. … [But] we are still in the process of planning” what that campaign will look like.

Lori Anderson, a spokeswoman for the PDC, says whether the campaign has spent money isn’t the issue; the law says that what matters is whether they intend to do so. “They don’t have to actually do it; they just have to have the expectation,” Anderson says.

“They’ve been told that they need to file.”

Although Baerwaldt responds the campaign has no expectation yet of raising or spending money, Anderson says their web site suggests otherwise. The site—originally put up in opposition to last year’s Prop. 1, the roads and transit ballot measure that was defeated in November—refers repeatedly to the 2008 ballot measure, includes the text of a radio ad clearly aimed at this year’s measure, not last year’s, and includes news stories from as recently as late July 2008—eight months after the 2007 ballot measure was defeated. The site also includes a form, left over from last year but still apparently active, for visitors to contribute to the campaign. “That says to me that they have the expectation of receiving contributions or making expenditures,” Anderson says.

Nonetheless, Baerwaldt insists that “everything we’re doing is completely in compliance with the law.” He says that the campaign has been in contact with the PDC about filing as a political committee, which they plan to do in the next couple of weeks.
“Here we go again with all the piddly little nonsense,” says Baerwaldt, who calls Sound Transit a “rogue agency.”

“This is trivia. It’s not really important,” he adds.

The PDC, naturally, does not agree.

Intiman has been looking around to replace the steely, capable Laura Penn for months now. The search ended a few days ago, when Intiman found Brian Colburn, the 35-year-old managing director of Pasadena Playhouse for the last four years.

He seems like a good hire for a bunch of reasons:

One. Colburn is young, and all regional theaters want to do these days is youth themselves up.

Two. Pasadena Playhouse is a quality establishment, a lovely little Spanish mission-style building with a courtyard a nice fountain.

It lives in a smart community—Caltech people, NASA people, the Jet Propulsion Lab people—that also supports the Norton Simon Museum. The only play I’ve seen there, Orson’s Shadow back in February, was quality. Nothing revolutionary, but quality.

(The play dramatizes real-life rehearsals where Orson Welles directed Laurence Olivier in a production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, with New Yorker theater critic Kenneth Tynan working as a kind of dramaturge. It’s a fucking disaster.)

Three. The Playhouse is in good financial shape. It brought in $9 million in revenue in 2006—the most recent year for which tax forms are publicly available—and ended the year with a $2.7 million surplus. (Intiman, by contrast, brought in $6 million in 2007 and spent about as much.)

Four. The Playhouse also hosts a fringe company—the Furious Theater¹—something Intiman, and every regional theater in America, should do. Big theaters lending their resources to nimbler, more adventurous organizations can only help them.

ACT is already leaning in that direction with Central Heating Lab, which presents fringe theater, dance, burlesque, comedy, and other stuff you wouldn’t normally expect to see in a regional theater. ACT wisely hired the Lab’s founder, Carlo Scandiuzzi, as managing director a few weeks ago. (You can read the Theater News column about that here.)

So that’s two promising managing directors in just two weeks—a bizarrely good streak for Seattle theater.

¹Furious Theater, incidentally, produced the Los Angeles premiere of Back of the Throat, by local playwright Yussef El Guindi. That play had its world premiere at Theater Schmeater and went on good reception and reviews in NYC and LA.

The worship of the absolute substance:

The desire for the absolute substance:

City Attorney Tom Carr and several members of his staff are seeking to avoid a deposition by lawyers for Venus Velazquez, a onetime city council candidate who was arrested and charged with DUI just weeks before the 2007 election.

In court documents, Velazquez claims Carr failed to recuse himself adequately from her case—a promise he made when Velazquez was arrested in late October 2007 because he had endorsed Velazquez’s opponent, Bruce Harrell. (Harrell won the race). However, Velazquez points out that Carr’s assistant Ruth Bowman sent an email from Carr’s account responding to a Seattle P-I records request about the case three days after Carr said he would recuse himself; and that Carr sent an email to two assistant city attorneys on October 25 in response to an email about the Velazquez case. Velazquez is seeking to have the entire city attorney’s office barred from prosecuting the DUI case against her—a move that would require a total change of venue.

It’s defies belief that, eight months after being arrested for DUI, Velazquez is still trying to dodge the charge. Does she really believe Carr’s employees won’t give her a fair shake because their boss endorsed her opponent nearly a year ago? (Carr himself can make the case pretty convincingly that he actually did recuse himself; the October 23 email was sent by his assistant, and the October 25 email consists, in its entirety, of the statement, “I have asked to be walled off from the Velzaquez [sic] matter. Thanks for the info, but I really should not be involved.”) Does Carr’s alleged bias against her really justify a change of venue, after three continuations and eight months’ delay?

If Velazquez has a case (and it sure doesn’t sound like it—she was going 50 mph in a 30 mph zone, crossed the center line, and was drifting back and forth in the lane), she should make it. Instead, she’s resorting to obfuscation and delay.

The surge has worked like shaken baby syndrome works: Things have quieted down, but nobody in their right minds would consider the situation likely to end up well in the long term.

When I hear McCain, channeling Bush, prattling on about winning the war in Iraq, I have to wonder: What does he mean by win? A stable, free and democratic Iraq? Not going to happen. We all know it, I’d hope even McCain knows it.

When we leave, the oil-bearing parts of the country will become the effective property of Iran. In turn, Iran will be embroiled in an insurgency of its own. Eventually, when the country is hollowed out enough, it’ll become at best a petty oil-dictatorship.

Can we be honest with ourselves, even if just for a moment? This war was about oil. In any candid sense, ‘victory in Iraq’ means we have access, perhaps exclusive access, to the vast oil resources contained within its borders. Everything else is gingerbread.

Continue reading "How to Win an Oil War" »

Guy’s Lit Wire has a list of the 5 Most Hardcore Writers of All Time.

#2 is Thoreau:

But wait, you say. Thoreau was a pacifist. He wouldn’t hurt a potato beetle. (Literally. When gardening, he picked the pests off his plants by hand and carried them out to the woods.) He’s not hardcore!

But there are many roads to hardcore-dom, my friends. Thoreau took a rather meandering path, but he got there.

Think about it: You go to prison, it’s your first night, and you’re curious about what your new cell-mates did to wind up there. The first guy says he’s in for armed robbery, another says double homicide. Then, one guy looks up at you with a serene smile and says, “Oh, I’m here voluntarily.”

Now seriously, which one of them are you never turning your back on?

HARD MOTHERFUCKIN’ CORE! (Not really.) I’m a little shocked that they didn’t include Hunter Thompson (He did, like, tons of drugs!) or William S. Burroughs (Bro, he totally shot his own wife in the fuckin’ head!), or Rimbaud (Arms dealer!), or Emma Goldman (Totally fucked shit up!), or etc. But the internet does love its lists.

Dana Goldstein:

Sebelius, of course, would be the bold, unconventional choice—very Obama. But by choosing a female running mate, Obama would, unfortunately, thrust the Hillary die-hards and their ever-more marginal discontentment back into the spotlight. That said, anyone who believes that only Hillary Clinton deserves to be the first female president or vice president doesn’t deserve the designation “feminist.” So I’d relish watching the reactions to a Sebelius nod, not only because such a choice would double down on Obama’s most effective message—”change”—but because it would reveal exactly which Clinton boosters are ready to widen the lens and enthusiastically support women’s leadership as such.

Via Sullivan.

The Bank of America building, on the corner of Broadway East and East Thomas Street, was, no doubt, quite fresh in the 1960s—the slate on the exterior walls, the little moat of rocks, the windy plaza facing a blank wall. It is, needless to say, all quite stale now.

A chipper receptionist answered the phone today, “Thank you for calling Bank of America, the bank of opportunities.”

But the next opportunity will be a wrecking ball. SRM Development filed plans with the city this month to demolish the bank and rip up the adjoining parking lot, replacing them with two buildings. The first phase will be a four-story building on 10th Avenue; the second will be a six-story building over the bank site on Broadway. Combined, they will contain 13,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and 113 apartments above.

Continue reading "“Bank of Opportunities” to Be Demolished" »

That ad is okay, Anthony. This one’s much better:

Colorado:

Baptist Pastor David Slone dreamed of leading a church where people could expose and heal any sin or dark secret without fear of judgment or rejection.

But a decades-old secret Slone kept from his Lafayette congregation surfaced last month, not through his testimony, but through anonymous letters mailed to church deacons, to newspapers and to a local chamber of commerce.

In 1986, Slone had been convicted, after pleading guilty, to two counts of child molestation in Oklahoma. He was 22 and served a year in prison. Slone, now 45, knows in many ways it was a life sentence. Some sins are not easily forgotten or forgiven.

He resigned as senior pastor July 18…. Slone has been a member of the church since about 1998, when he, Stacey and their two children moved to Colorado from Oklahoma so he could take a job in software sales. By the time the senior pastor position opened up, Slone had been serving as a youth minister for several years.

…

Slone has admitted he groped five boys ages 12 and under, including two from a school where he worked and three from his Baptist church in Norman, Okla., where he taught Sunday school. He was convicted of only two counts. A Cleveland County district attorney claimed but never proved there were others.

Gee, maybe the Southern Baptist Convention should revisit its decision not to maintain a sexual-offender database. In June the Baptists decided against creating that database—which would help Baptists protect their children from child molestin’ pastors and youth pastors—because they were concerned about the “autonomy of each local church.” So sexually assaulting children is bad, according to the Baptists, but assaulting church autonomy? Much worse.

Remember, kids, there is no morality without religion!

It’s important for Obama to talk about what he’ll do himself, and keep on about the hope and all that mess, but it’s also important for him to tell people that McCain is a jerk, because he is.

It’s wondrous stuff, - concrete infused with glass fibre. Truly beautiful. Imagine a building made of this?! The strength and exterior texture of concrete, but a lightness imbued by, well, light itself. At night, with lights on inside, shadowy projections of the inhabitants would be visible moving across the exterior of the building … Sexy.

Continue reading "The Wondrous Stuff" »

Wasn’t Obama supposed to announce his running mate, like, today? This morning? What’s up?

I met my boyfriend on a dating site and it was suppose to only be a mistress/slave thing but when we met it turned into more. This is where the problem starts. We rarely have sex and when we do he NEVER wants “normal” sex. He has to be tied up or I’m the one fucking him (anally) and I have to do all the work. Ok, so whats the problem right? I’m a mistress and I’m the one who’s suppose to do all the work. Ok, fine yeah, but sometimes, I wanna good lay and not have my partner tied up! I’ve mention this to him and he says that sex isnt an important part of a relationship! And that I’m some nympho with a crazy sex drive (he’s the only man i’ve ever met who didn’t like lots sex), but it’s honestly becoming a problem. I’m starting to lose interest which I don’t want to happen but this lack of sex is driving me nuts! Any advice? Other than self pleasure?

Sexless Mistress

DTMFA.

And I’m sorry, Mistress, you’re totally being scammed here. You are having sex, and a lot of it—and don’t let your boyfriend/slave tell you otherwise—but you’re only having the kind of sex he wants. For him, getting tied up and/or fucked in the ass is sex. La duh. What you’re not having is the kind of sex that appeals to you. Which is hilarious since you’re ostensibly the dominant one in this relationship. Stop tying him up and stop fucking his ass and you’ll quickly see just how important a part of a relationship he thinks sex is.

And where did you get the impression that the Mistress in a D/s relationship “does all the work”? Oh, right: from your selfish, inconsiderate, spoiled, topping-from-below boyfriend. He either starts meeting your needs, you DTMFA, or you tie him up and invite someone else over to give you the sex you’re not getting from him.

I was wondering if Michael Phelps had a father.

Adfreak believes that this ad…

…is about a cow who is mad for not being eaten. I’m not so sure that that’s the case. Maybe because of my innate Catholic carnivorous guilt, I initially assumed that the cow is mad because he’s eating an animal. But whatever the case, one thing is absolutely clear: That guy has fucked that cow on more than one occasion. And this is a really creepy ad.

I have not watched one moment of the fucking Olympics. I hate the fucking Olympics. I have always hated the fucking Olympics. I always will.

Thank you.

….looks like an ugly halter top.

Carry on.

The election-night party for Terry Bergeson—running for reelection as the Superintendent of Public Instruction—was scheduled to rollick until 11 p.m. last night in the downtown Red Lion. Early results showed Bergeson with a significant lead over her opponents so we were ready to party. But a moment after Lindy West and I stepped into a fluorescently-lit, music-less San Juan room—which, at 9:30 p.m., was filled with silver-haired revelers—we were promptly shown the door. Was it because I’m a high-school drop out, Terry?

Even though we were expelled from the class, nothing could keep us from keeping tabs on Bergeson’s clique. From across the street, Lindy snapped this shot of the celebration wake, which, by 10:15 p.m., had atrophied to only Bergeson (on the left) and her press-bouncing goon, Alex Hays.

Hays told the SECB—in the hallway, because we weren’t allowed to quaff the Ensure smoothies inside—that Bergeson “leads by about 20-points” over opponent Randy Dorn. “This result is a crushing defeat for Randy Dorn and his out-of-state war chest,” said Hays. He added that “Dorn had $200,000 of out of state money.” But PDC records show that Dorn actually had a smaller war chest: $122,000 compared to Bergeson’s “war chest” of $157,000. In fact, Dorn received fewer out-of-state dollars than Bergeson: $3,181 to her $7,575. But, you know, the Bergeson camp isn’t known for its math skills.

Asked why Bergeson was leading despite pushing the controversial WASL tests—a high-stakes graduation requirement—Hays said, “A less vocal population is satisfied with the high standards and accountability.”

Nice spin, Hays, but you haven’t convinced us. Bergeson had only 41 percent of the vote as of this morning. Earning less than 50 percent support in the primary is a bad sign for an incumbent. But it’s a great omen for Dorn. He took 30 percent of the vote and continues on to the general election.

We look forward to Bergeson’s party in November.

Let’s all declare war on Joe Lieberman.

The first thing I thought when I saw this tattoo on Weird Universe was: Why would somebody get a tattoo of Charlie Crist? Is that Mr. Poe’s arm?

I eventually figured it out, but man-oh-man was that an uncomfortable minute-and-a-half.

Apparently Hustler’s going after the “I read it for the articles” audience:

HUSTLER Magazine November 2008

The Winter Soldiers Speak Out

In arguably the most shocking piece of the year, HUSTLER Magazine reports on the truth about what’s going on in Iraq. The “Winter Soldier” veterans, as they are called, speak out about the war and the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilian casualties. One of the brave soldiers brought back a video of his sergeant declaring, “The difference between an insurgent and an Iraqi civilian is whether they are dead or alive.” The soldier explains: “If you kill a civilian, he becomes an insurgent because you retroactively make him a threat.” Gruesome photos accompany the article.

(More from the release after the jump.)

I didn’t know Hustler had words.

A vaguely related anecdote: I once interviewed for a job in editorial at Penthouse in New York. The offices were quite posh, with spreads of Penthouses on the coffee table in the lobby. I perused one while waiting, which was the first time I’d ever looked at the magazine. Everyone was extremely nice, and the editorial staff was approximately 80% women (of average appearance). They offered me the job. They weren’t paying particularly well, especially for New York. I declined.

Continue reading "Press Release of the Day" »

Tuesday is the busiest day in The Stranger’s production cycle—the day the paper goes to the printer. Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of the usual stress, our phones went blank and some of the lights in our offices went out. A second later, Dan Savage looked up from his computer and said, “Why can’t I get on Slog?”

A transformer across the street had just blown. In addition to the power we’d lost—some departments had it, some didn’t (the phone system had lost power)—we’d lost internet and email access. This posed a special problem: Without the internet, we couldn’t get pages to the printer. Our solution? Senior ad designer Mary Traverse took a computer to Grey Gallery & Lounge across the street from our offices, because they have free wi-fi, and uploaded one page (the one that was ready at that moment) to the printer’s FTP site from there. Meanwhile, we were still finishing up and proofreading pages on the few computers in the production department that still had power.

Eventually, big orange trucks from Seattle City Light showed up.

There was a white truck too—according to our tech support guy Brian Geoghagan, the white truck is always the supervisor’s truck—and Geoghagan took it upon himself to march up to the white truck and ask the man inside when the power was going to come back. The man in the white truck informed him that, actually, the power was about to go out. All of it. The whole block. More than the whole block. The City Light guys needed all the power out in the area to solve whatever the problem was.

Continue reading "How We Got This Week's Issue to the Printer" »