Slog

The Morning News

ELI SANDERS — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:00:11 -0800

Obama in Germany: Press agog, crowd expectations being tamped down, speech begins around 10 a.m. PST.

Losing the new media war: The GOP.

Losing the young and connected: The GOP.

Not raining in New Orleans: So why exactly did McCain cancel his oil rig visit?

But in the battleground states: McCain is closing the gap.

White House crimes and misdemeanors: An interactive guide.

The Duwamish: Now with more mercury.

Tale of the tolls: They may stretch from I-5 to Bellevue.

And McCain's confused answer on the Anbar Awakening and the surge, helped out by some friendly editing at CBS:

This Week in The Stranger

CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:23:37 -0800

Jen Graves Profiles the Free Sheep Foundation--the Artists Behind Bridge and the Belmont--As They Move from One Dying Building to Another
"So far, the artists behind Free Sheep have delivered ephemeral monuments to the ephemeral monument we all live in, the city. They've been mythic and short-lived; the challenge now will be to preserve that spirit over the length of a three- or six-month lease. The idea is that once one lease expires, the artists will move to another disused space, or maybe even take over more than one at a time. It's a moveable feast of artists in real-estate purgatory."

Your Heatstroke-Preventing Guide to the Capitol Hill Block Party
Michaelangelo Matos interviews Craig Finn of the Hold Steady. Kelly O "interviews" Jay Reatard. Tim Harrington on the hottest show his band Les Savy Fav has ever played (illustrated!). Eric Grandy on Girl Talk. Megan Seling introduces New Faces. Plus: write-ups of every act this weekend, including Vampire Weekend, U.S.E., Kimya Dawson, Fleet Foxes, and Throw Me the Statue. Details, tickets, grid, etc., are here.

Sean Nelson on the Complex Morality of Loving Roman Polanski
"For this antisentimentalist, in film as in life, 'acceptable behavior' is something for other people to worry about. Which is, of course, the whole dilemma of being an ardent fan of Polanski's movies. Because of what we know and think we know, it's never easy to find the line between the artist and his work. Because there is no such line. Because the Polanski who made so many titanic works of cinema is the same Polanski who escaped from the Nazis is the same Polanski who not only lost his wife and unborn child to the Mansons but was initially accused of the murders in the press is the same Polanski who gave a 13-year-old girl champagne and a quaalude fragment then had sex with her on the floor of Jack Nicholson's living room. If the 20th century happened to anyone, it happened to Roman Polanski. And as a new documentary shows, it's still happening to him."

David Schmader on an Alleged Nazi Living... Like, Right Over There
"Details come from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle, which alleges Herr Egner joined the Nazis in German-occupied Serbia in April 1941, after which he allegedly became part of a 'mobile killing unit' that claimed more than 17,000 victims. Most of the victims were Jewish men, women, and children, who Egner's unit allegedly took from a Belgrade concentration camp, asphyxiated with carbon monoxide, and then dumped in a mass grave. Today, Peter Egner will spend a final day puttering around the Bellevue retirement community where he's lived for the past two years in relative anonymity."

Annie Wagner on the New Brideshead Revisited Adaptation
"It isn't at all a bad time for a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's exquisite Brideshead Revisited. The BBC miniseries is over a quarter-century old, and there's never been a proper feature. The homosexual content--never exactly disguised--can be overt now, but we're not so advanced that the crushing guilt that accompanies it seems foreign. Meanwhile, Waugh's simultaneous envy of and nostalgia for the perfumed decadence of the English-Catholic aristocracy between the wars seems especially poignant, poised as we are on the lip of another recession."

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on the CIA's New Presence at UW
"When classes at the University of Washington resume this fall, some students at the school will be under the watchful eye of a Central Intelligence Agency spook. In fact, some of them will even be learning from him."

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS ISSUE: Pink Skull; what the Zombies think of Odessey and Oracle; Implied Violence's new show in a disused City Light warehouse; rural King County; sexual harrassment at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources; the PONCHO shakeup; being ugly; Montreal; taco trucks; Taco Time; Nabokov; French detective novels; shamanism; the Double Beer Helmet (see below); and more.

Neighborhood Council Splits After Longtime Feud

JONAH SPANGENTHAL-LEE — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:06:14 -0800

After two years of in-fighting on the South East District Council (SEDC), one neighborhood group has resigned from the council to protest an "imbalance of voting power" in the SEDC.

Today, the Mount Baker Community Club (MBCC) circulated an email and fired off a letter to Mayor Greg Nickels and the city council, attacking SEDC's for giving a number of social service agencieswhich play a large role in parts of the community in South Seattlevoting power on the council.

The current imbalance of voting power has resulted in the residents of the Mount Baker Community being grossly under-represented at the SEDC. Our roughly 5,000 households have only one vote, as does each individual agency, despite having a small staff and serving a limited group.

Although the situation at SEDCwhich mostly acts as a means to distribute neighborhood project funds and offer opinions on city policycooled down a bit last October, things have generally been been tense. According to SEDC members, police have been called to meetingswhere screaming matches and name calling are commonplacefist fights have almost broken out and at least one city council member has threatened to revoke SEDC's membership in a citywide neighborhood council.

Members of SEDC have also alleged that much of the tension on the council is due to racism and classism, and it probably didn't help that some members of the MBCC have been actively involved in a campaign to keep Casa Latina out of South Seattle.

MBCC has charged that SEDC's leadership isn't looking out for low-income families in South Seattle, and that social service groups on the council are pushing the city's agenda" by backing changes to multi-family zoning, for not opposing the addition of housing for the chronically homeless in South Seattle and for supporting the use of eminent domain for "blighted" areas in their district.

The biggest problem with this whole stupid fight is that the Southeast District Counciljust like every other district councilis only an advisory group to another citywide advisory group which, truth be told, doesn't really wield a whole lot of power.

Despite the reality of the situation, MBCC is now looking to form their own neighborhood councilthe "Southeast Neighborhood District Council"and get official recognition from the city. So far, MBCC claims the Lakewood/Seward Park Community Council, Othello Neighborhood Association, Columbia City Business Association, the SE Crime Prevention Council have also resigned from the SEDC in protest, and it appears they may be banding together.

I'll check in with the city tomorrow and find out if the MBCC has any chance in hell of getting official recognition as a council.

Mercury and You

JONATHAN GOLOB — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:26:43 -0800

Mercury poisoning has a delightful triad of characteristic symptoms:

1. Personality changes. (Think: Mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland.)

2. Uncontrollable shaking of the hands. Makes things like writing difficult.

3. (My favorite.) Swollen and bleeding gums combined with drooling.

Severe poisoning (typically from concentrations above 1 mg per cubic meter) shred your lungs until you die.

Basically, it's like the delightful scene from the movie Airplane! in which the pilot collapses, dooming everyone. I can't find it on YouTube, so enjoy these instead:

(Jonah asks, I deliver.)

Update on Novak's Victim

ERICA C. BARNETT — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:10:28 -0800

The pedestrian who was hit by Valerie Plame-outing conservative columnist Robert Novak this morning in an apparent attempted hit-and-run (Novak claimed not to see the 66-year-old man, but the bicyclist who stopped him said the victim was "splayed across the windshield" of Novak's Corvette) is in worse condition than previously thought.

The victim, a 66-year-old man, appeared somewhat incoherent, said the source who had seen the victim. The man appeared to have casts on his neck and back. The victim was X-rayed and a surgical team plans to evaluate him, the source said. [...]
Novak said he didn't know anything was wrong until a bicyclist rode ahead of him and blocked traffic. The bicyclist, attorney David Bono, informed Novak he had hit a pedestrian.

"I see something of an older gentleman in the crosswalk get hit. The black Corvette convertible take a right turn onto the K Street service road; the pedestrian rolls off to the left and the car speeds away," he said.

Bono dismissed Novak's assertion that he never say the struck pedestrian.

"There was a pedestrian splayed on his windshield -- I don't think there is anyway you can miss that," Bono said.

Bono also said that the pedestrian was in a crosswalk and had the right of way.

LA Bans Plastic Bags

ERICA C. BARNETT — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:03:41 -0800

But that's not as bad as Seattle's nanny-state, socially-engineered bag fee! At least in LA, they can still get paper bags! AT LEAST THEY STILL HAVE A CHOICE!

Oh, wait. They're charging 25 cents for paper bagsfive cents more than Seattle's proposed bag fee. Carry on.

Mercury Rising

JONAH SPANGENTHAL-LEE — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:32:04 -0800

In January, Stranger News Intern Brian Slodysko wrote about toxic fumes coming from the Lafarge cement plant in South Seattle:

South Seattle residents say the odor [from Lafarge's plant] causes respiratory problems, nausea, and headaches. There are instances where children and staff at nearby Concord Elementary School have been sent home from school after becoming sick during recess or prolonged periods spent outdoors, says David Tucker, a spokesperson for Seattle Public Schools.

Along with the toxic fumes emanating from the plant, a report released earlier today by the Environmental Integrity Group and Earthjustice says Lafargewhich asked the city to allow the company to burn tires at its plant near the Duwamish Riveris releasing 30 to 39 pounds of mercury from its Seattle plant every year.

I've got a call in to our very own Dear Science to find out what happens when a plant belches out all that mercury. I'd wager it's nothing good.

For Sale at O'Hare Airport Last Weekend

DAN SAVAGE — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:23:42 -0800

Weird Synchronicity and Verbose Tattoos

PAUL CONSTANT — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:19:07 -0800

At the same time that I was writing my post about literary tattoos, Tom over at Amazon's Omnivoracious Blog was writing about literary tattoos, also. Weird.

Whereas I was writing about one post on a non-tattoo oriented blog, Tom was linking to this blog, which is specifically devoted to literary tattoos. It's an astounding blog. Here is someone with the Footprints poem tattooed on his back:

You Have One More Chance to Win Block Party Passes

MEGAN SELING — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:15:13 -0800

Head to Line Out to find out how to enter. You have 45 minutes. Hurry!

We Are Living in the End Times

DAN SAVAGE — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:09:38 -0800

The Nation is getting a sex column. They're calling it "Carnal Knowledge," which is a great name for a sex columnit's such a great name that someone already thought of it.

SPD and Prosecutor's Office Blame Each Other for Seized Pot

DOMINIC HOLDEN — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:54:19 -0800

The Seattle Police Department and the King County prosecutors office have been pointing fingers at each other, trying to explain why the marijuana seized from an authorized medical marijuana patient last week still hasnt been returned. (Background is over here.) In a nutshell, Seattle police searched Martin Martinezs storefront on The Ave on July 15 looking for pot plants. They didnt find any, but they did seize 12 ounces of Martinezs pot, a laptop, and hundreds of pages of medical records for patients involved in a medical-marijuana group.

But, in a statement last week, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced that no criminal charges should be brought against the person renting that commercial space. He added, [T]he amount of pot within Martinezs possession was arguably within the 60-day supply permitted by [the medical marijuana] statute.

SPD returned the computer and medical records last week. So why not the pot?

Yesterday, SPD spokeswoman Renee Witt told me that officers hadnt returned the pot because Martinezs cases was an open and active investigation. Therefore, she said, any further questions had to be directed to Satterbergs office. I informed her that the prosecutors office wasnt charging Martinez and they believed his pot was legit. Witt said she would call me back.

She left a voicemail, clarifyingbut not really. Said Witt: After making our initial arrest and drug seizure, we forwarded the case to the prosecutors offices for charges and they declined. So, at this point, again, any inquiries would be directed to their office.

Does this mean SPD was still investigating based on evidence that hadnt gone to the prosecutors office? That would be strangethe search warrant (shaky as it was) was based on probable cause that Martinez was growing pot. Even after ripping out a wall, police didnt find any plants. But if SPD did recover additional evidence, they would have presumably given it to the prosecutors office and there could be an ongoing case. So I took Witts advice and called the prosecutors office. I asked, "Is your office pursuing this case?"

No, says prosecutors office spokesman Dan Donohoe. Weve already decided that there will be no criminal charges. Thats what I thought, I told him, but SPD says calls about the unreturned marijuana should go to his office. On the return of the marijuana, he says, you need to contact SPD on that question.

Seriously? I just talked to the SPD and was told to call Donohoe. So Donohoe said hed get back to me. And moments later, my phone rang. It was Sergeant Sean Whitcomb from SPD.

The marijuana is still in our evidence section, says Whitcomb. We are reviewing the marijuanas final disposition. He can't say exactly how long it will be until SPD returns the marijuana to Martinez, who suffers from intractable nerve pain caused by cranial damage he suffered in a motorcycle accident, but estimates it will be within a week. He says the pot wasnt returned along with the other items because it is a controlled substance; the SPD is investigating whether returning it would conflict with any laws. In an email plea asking supporters to call Chief Kerlikowske, Martinez wrote: "There is no investigation, and the property must be returned. We will be forced to sue for this action if police do not comply with the law."

The SPD will be no doubt happy to know that they neednt face a lawsuit nor ponder the issue another moment. Courts and police departments in medical marijuana states have been returning marijuana without any legal problems. So if Martinez doesnt get his pot back within a week, he should do what these medical marijuana patients are doing: sue.

4:40 PM UPDATE: I just got a call from Douglas Hiatt, the attorney for Martin Martinez, who is prepared to sue. "I think its pretty clear from precedent in other states that the marijuana should be returned," says Hiatt. He cites cases in California and Oregon that indicate no conflict with federal law. "I expect to file a motion next week if they dont return it," says Hiatt. "Probably wait until next Monday."

An Olympic Moment

ELI SANDERS — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:45:38 -0800

Or, actually, $5 million worth of Olympic moments, just purchased by the Obama campaign.

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will be among the TV sponsors of NBC Universal's Olympics coverage. In the first significant network-TV buy of any presidential candidate in at least 16 years, the Obama campaign has taken a $5 million package of Olympics spots that includes network TV as well as cable ads.

Mister Milkshake

CHARLES MUDEDE — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:39:44 -0800

The husband of Kelis...
...Nas, has brought politics back to a place it left more than a decade ago: mainstream hiphop. Obama is the wind in Nas's sails.

New York rapper Nas has joined a protest against FOX News. Citing what he calls "race baiting" and "Obama smears" by FOX, Nas will join ColorOfChange.org and MoveOn.org to deliver more than 620,000 petition signatures demanding that the network end its "pattern of racist attacks against black Americans," among them presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.
In a statement to media, Nas, ColorOfChange.org and MoveOn.org announced the petition will be delivered to FOX's Manhattan offices on July 23 at 2 p.m. ET.

In joining the protest, Nas cites FOX's portrayal of the Obamas as outsiders, as well as an on-screen graphic referring to Michelle Obama as "Obama's baby mama" and the confusing of Obama and Osama by a pundit, who joked that they should both be assassinated. In February, Bill O'Reilly talked about a "lynching party" to deal with Michelle Obama.

"FOX poisons the country with racist propaganda and tries to call it news," Nas said in the statement.

Nas, if only you ruled the world.

Roads Don't Pay for Themselves

ERICA C. BARNETT — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:37:13 -0800

According to those wild-eyed hippies at the Texas highway department, who report:

No road pays for itself in gas taxes and fees. For example, in Houston, the 15 miles of SH 99 from I-10 to US 290 will cost $1 billion to build and maintain over its lifetime, while only generating $162 million in gas taxes. That gives a tax gap ratio of .16, which means that the real gas tax rate people would need to pay on this segment of road to completely pay for it would be $2.22 per gallon. This is just one example, but there is not one road in Texas that pays for itself based on the tax system of today. Some roads pay for about half their true cost, but most roads we have analyzed pay for considerably less. To conclude, in the SH 99 example, since the traffic volume for that road doesn't generate enough fuel tax revenue to pay for it, revenues from other parts of the state must be used to build and maintain this corridor segment. The same is true across the state, meaning that, as revealed by the tax gap analysis, overall revenues are not sufficient to meet the states transportation needs.

Drivers: The biggest welfare queens of all.