Joe Szilagyi

Publicola posted a funny little irony the other day that I just noticed:

Last week, state Attorney General Rob McKenna editorialized on the Seattle Times op-ed page against planned state employee raises, co-writing (along with three other state GOP leaders): “Taxpayers should … be spared from funding $83 million in planned pay raises for 21,000 state workers.”

He was referring to a state employee incentive program known as “step increases.”

But last year, according to a recent report from the state’s Department of Personnel, McKenna himself gave nearly $600,000 in performance-based incentives (part of the step increase program) to 901 of his 1321 employees. That’s 68 percent of his staff.

Odds that someone in the mainstream media calls this out? 10:1? 10,000:1?

To be an effective asshole and general burden to decent society, one may wish to follow the lead of one Steve King, a Republican Morlock from Iowa:

“This sounds to me like open borders advocates exercising the Rahm Emanuel axiom: ‘Never let a crisis go to waste,’” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said in an e-mail message to ABCNews. “Illegal immigrants from Haiti have no reason to fear deportation but if they are deported, Haiti is in great need of relief workers and many of them could be a big help to their fellow Haitians.”

There’s no better time to play up the political douchebaggery than when an entire society hangs on the needle’s edge of total human suffering with the streets literally piled with the bodies of their dead family members.

Just in case you weren’t aware of it, she was indeed a complete raging idiot whose contributions to intellectual thought and theory are exactly on par with that of the great spiritual leader that warned us of the dangers of disembodied alien energy creatures and galactic space overlords that haunt us today after our ancestors failed to blow them up in a volcano laced with hydrogen bombs.

In other words, the tenets of Objectivism are complete hedonistic bullshit and a license for deeply selfish people to piss upon their neighbors. Her teachings if you strip out all the crap that is strategically designed to make it look ‘good’ boils literally down to survival of the fittest and the belief that sheer unadulterated selfishness is a virtue. If Scientology’s belief system is basically a shitty Doctor Who plot from 1971, then Objectivism is basing society’s moral code on Survivor’s All-Star Season. Also, fuck John Galt.

A Washington state Senator from one of our southern counties wants to stop development of a mass transit rail system across Interstate 90’s floating bridge. You see, if you’re not familiar with our geography, we have a conundrum in Washington. It’s called water. The King County area is basically split up repeatedly by lakes, bays, harbors, and rivers–click on this link for an idea of how crazy it can be (Google Maps). See how that route goes east out of Seattle, across that massive lake? That’s I-90. Our bridges, built to float across these massive bodies of still water, are major traffic choke points for West-East commuters. The Eastside of that lake is quickly approaching almost Seattle-levels of development and population, so we need robust mass transit across both ways.

For some reason, this daffy politician from way down South, in the completely opposite direction 88 miles away, is against the idea. His bill boils down to:

A light rail system or any other rail fixed guideway system may not be constructed or operated on the Interstate 90 floating bridge.

Why is this laughably clueless? As my first link points out, the construction and transit work is already paid for by the Federal government to the tune of $900,000,000. It’s apparently important enough that this massive expansion was paid for by the US Government as an important need. We’d also have to pay back the money with interest and a loss if we don’t build the train system. Stupid and harmful to Washington state? Very much so. Thankfully, it will probably be dead on arrival in Olympia.

It looks like even our geographically cloistered corner of the nation isn’t immune to the fun times that is the Tea Bagging political movement. You have to read these completely demented bills Republicans have in the first two days of our new session introduced to the Washington State legislature. Snippets of a complete lack of understanding of how things like states’ rights, the nature of the US Federal government, and the very existence of the United States exists. All because (as this site points out) local Republicans are scared the Tea Baggers may target them next for political termination for not being completely raving lunatic anti-government ultra-Right fundamentalists.

Replace Federal paper currency in Washington with gold and silver coins:

…restore gold and silver money in accordance with the Constitution, then phasing out the Federal Reserve System and its inflationary paper money, the Federal Reserve Note.

And my favorite, get into a shooting war (?) with the Federal government if they try to take and use any Federal tax funds taken from Washingtonians:

…all federal taxes be remitted to the state, and held in escrow, and includes the rather startling threat that any action by the feds against a WA citizen for complying with the act (you know, like not paying the IRS your taxes) would be considered a “hostile and unconstitutional action against Washington state and its citizens,” against which the state would take “all necessary measures.”

Yes, let’s start a second Civil War. Sounds like a brilliant plan.

Wherein I eat four smallish bags of local crisps (chips, to us Americans) to see what is what. It seemed like a good idea for 20 seconds at the gas station by my hotel, when I wanted a bottle of soda.

At ten years old, delighted sight. At thirty-three, glee stupidity.

Doritos “Tangy Cheese”

Apparently, according to the bag, this is flavored with the well known traditional British cheese known as “Traditional cheese flavour,” whatever that is. The texture, shape and crunch are vintage American Doritos. I think they just mass-produce these chips by the trillions. The cheese flavor tastes… Latin. Kind of. And cheesy. And Doritos-y. I can’t really place what “Traditional cheese flavour” is, but it tastes like slightly exotic Doritos.

Traditional Britis--er, Americ--er, Mexican?

I’d go so far as to say they’re a bit better tasting than American “Nacho cheese” flavored classic Doritos. The cheese powder they use to infuse Doritos feels a bit… fluffier, than I’m used to.

The scent of the crisps is vintage Doritos: cheese, corn, nothing unique. That sums up just about every brand of Doritos ever made (except possibly that Buffalo sauce one) pretty nicely. Bland, inviting, wholesome, and the same everywhere, like a junk food home away from home.

Deformed Pac-Man

Scent: non existent, or barely cheesy at best. They look like weird hybrid Fritos/pork rinds. They feel like potato-based pork rinds. The mysterious “Traditional cheese flavour” makes another appearance, but with strong hints of onion flavoring. They are loud when you bite down. I mean, really, seriously loud for a chip or crisp. The first few have virtually no flavor, but then it begins to quickly build as your teeth, tongue, and taken over by puffed potato. They taste and feel incredibly rich, though.

I can’t see eating more than a couple handfuls without feeling sick.

Walkers “Worcester Sauce” crisps

The bag, upon opening, smells spectacular. The scent reminds me of hamburgers and steak with potatoes. It’s like a cook out in a little foil bag. Visually, they’re… crisps. Nothing special, there. The texture is odd; they seem to nearly crumble and explode as you bite down, but it’s not unpleasant. The taste: reminds me of a severely toned down salt and vinegar chip, almost, but with subtle Worcester flavors. It’s not a “strong” chip that tries to beat you in the face with flavor; it’s almost quietly flavorful. I think these would go great with a glass of cold beer. I was hoping for a much stronger Worcester flavor—I love the taste of Worcester sauce. They’re good, but a bit of a let down.

Like a face with a wart? Look close.

Emergency late game update: I wrote the above after eating about 5-6 of these crisps, and then discovered another 2-3 that all but screamed Worcester. It looks like the bag is uneven. The later crisps are much better.

So manly it seared my flesh on contact.

This is not an effeminate potato chip.

I was most looking forward to these, as I adore the smell and taste of paprika—I have to, I’m half Hungarian. They smell like barbeque flavor crisps. They look like what I suppose a good paprika crisp ought to look like, never having seen paprika crisps before. The texture is that thick, crunchy sort of ridged chip, rather than that weak girly kind of chip that feels stale half an hour after you open the bag.

Paprika, garlic, onion, and tomato are the flavors here. Oddly for this kind of junk food, I can actually taste them all. Even though my palate and breath have already been ruined by the preceding three types I’ve tried tonight, I can taste them all. This is my favorite chip of the bunch.

Conclusions

Don’t eat four wildly different types of little crisps bags, because it’s unholy and now I feel ill. This is my breath currently:

Did I ever tell you my favorite flavour was paprika?

In regards to this blog post from four days ago, I just found this in my inbox tonight:

Back in 2007, King County initiated discussions with the federal government’s Department of General Services Administration (GSA), who administers the DOTGOV domains on the Internet, regarding King County’s web address. King County wanted to register the user-friendly address “kingcounty.gov”. Simultaneously, the GSA wanted King County to relinquish the address “metrokc.gov” in order to comply with their web address policies and also due to possible confusion with the city of Kansas City, Missouri. After negotiations, it was agreed that both would occur–King County would receive use of the domain name “kingcounty.gov” and King County would relinquish control of the domain name “metrokc.gov” effective January 31, 2009.

…

We share your concern for effective and consistent service to our citizens. King County’s web site is critical to those services. It was for that reason that King County pursued the “kingcounty.gov” name. In fact, as you can see from the GSA’s policies regarding naming conventions (http://www.dotgov.gov/dnc.aspx#county), GSA policy requires us to have the web address “kingcounty.wa.gov” or “kingcounty-wa.gov”, however, in our negotiations with the GSA, we sought a very simple name to ensure that our citizens receive the benefit of the most logical and easy to remember address possible. It was for the reason of compliance with GSA policy that we surrender the legacy name, and with the impending shut-down of that old address, King County is now in compliance with that federal directive.

There’s a bit more and a tiny bit of interesting metrics on usage of the old name, but that’s the gist of the situation I mentioned.

Absolutely reasonable and absolutely understandable given the situation, but almost completely (near as I can see) unexplained until I fired off a “what is this?” e-mail that also CC’d the King County Executive’s office. From some searching around just now, I can’t easily find any reference to nor mention of the specifics behind this online. That’s the sort of stuff that should be, you know, mentioned to your users and stake holders. King County has a blog–it takes only one quick blog post or alternately a press release to communicate this out.

If they already did message this out back in 2007 or 2008, they didn’t apparently do so again almost a year later (a scale of years, in Internet Standard Time) when they finally flipped the magic switch before the old domain name goes dark for our regional government. An IT department’s job is to over-communicate. It doesn’t take much to do this. Lack of communications from IT is one of my biggest pet peeves professionally. Good on them to explaining it to me in e-mail, but now I wonder if they’ll actually post the reason behind this. At the least, it’s rather interesting for nerds. For everyone else around here, it will give people another reason to grumble about Kansas City and the Midwest. They steal our basketball team, now they steal one of our domain names…

The group that manages the official King County web sites has apparently retired it’s longstanding metrokc.gov domain to replace it with kingcounty.gov, which is all well and good. It’s a better name, anyway. But what they’ve done is redirect ALL requests for the old host names to a useless dumping ground instead of just aliasing the old names over the new ones. This is what they have done:

Why is this incredibly stupid and improperly done? Say you have any number of bookmarks or embedded tools (say, mobile applications–iPhone or other) that aim at http://tripplanner.metrokc.gov. That now arbitrarily dumps you on http://www.kingcounty.gov/About/metrokc.aspx rather than forward you to the matching URL on the new host on http://tripplanner.kingcounty.gov/. This applies to all of these in the chart above. Who on Earth approved this way to do it? No one just “retires” and kills off a major domain name, let alone one so old and embedded all over who knows where. All you’ve done is now break all prior internet connectivity to various parts of the county’s web infrastructure.

You also did no favors to search engine optimization and Google searches for the county, either.

If you’re in King County please e-mail them at:

http://info.kingcounty.gov/about/contact/default.aspx

To let them know what a bone head move this is.

UPDATE: I’ve been told that the KC “old” domain name previously forwarded to the new one, on a 1:1 URL basis, but that was discontinued as a practice last week. Why would you stop doing that? It makes perfectly logical sense that you do that indefinitely. Unless you wanted to actually repurpose metrokc.gov for some completely separate purpose, which would be odd and pointless, the actual stopping of the forwarding is… odd, pointless, and disruptive to all users of the web site. It needs to be fixed.

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

This is lovely. I can see the value of not naming to the general public which banks are receiving the money–it would be an invitation to have runs begin on those banks. But to refuse to name them to lawmakers, who need to know these things? And to refuse to name non-banking institutions that received the public money? Uh uh, no way. The Bush administration again oversteps it’s bounds, and provides further demonstration of how they run America as a tinpot dictatorship.

Well, the law of intended consequences from stupid people has escalated things here way, way beyond what is required. Like I only just mentioned yesterday, The Stranger, a local newspaper in Seattle, published some photos of houses with excessive Republican political advertising on them, and put up the addresses so that you could go look at them as well. Matt Drudge got wind of it, and pretty soon half the conservative blogtrollosphere went nuts, to the point where they were publishing the home street addresses of all of The Stranger’s business staff, and the employees began receiving death threats:

After the piece came out on Wednesday morning, there was no violence, no vandalism. There was some debate on The Stranger’s website on Thursday and Friday about the piece’s inclusion of addresses—about the homeowners’ and The Stranger’s right to free speech, and about yards signs as public discourse—and some readers posted addresses of Stranger staffers in comments, because turnabout is fair play. We did not remove those comments and left our own addresses up on our website.

On Saturday morning the piece exploded on right-wing blogs, and death threats were made on our staff.

Since that final post, The Stranger staff hasn’t updated their blog–which is very, very unusual for them as they put out a frighteningly frequent stream of content there. The entire situation sucks, due to the fact that some people (the people that made the calls) have now indeed won in at least a short term via political intimidation to shut down one of the most vocal left-of-center news sources in the United States.

I’m not really that cynical–I’m more sarcastic than anything–but part of me honestly keeps wondering if this is the tip of the iceberg of what could happen in the next four to eight years, if things line up a certain way. What happens if we get Obama in the White House, control of the House and Senate, and try to push through something like the Fairness Doctrine again to balance out the hatemongering out there? Will we see more things like this happening to people that try to stand up to big business and it’s supporters, and the religious right?

Speaking of freedom of speech, Palin does have a right to sound astoundingly foolish. Palin believes that the media calling her out on her negative campaigning impedes on her freedom of speech:

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama’s associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate’s free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”

Oh yeah, because those evil mainstream media types are out ta get those hockey moms, didn’ ya know? This is just simply not how things work, in any sense of what our Constitutionally protected Freedom of Speech rights work, in any level of bizarre political fantasy world. It’s another perfectly shining example of how bad things are internally within the McCain-Palin campaign if they have to push–I’d hesitate to call them ideas or talking points, because either of those classifications imply that real thought or logic went on in some level to “craft” these–these memes out like this. The Stranger has a really good, simple point on this:

What Sarah Palin can’t do is tell the media how it should cover her, and then claim her Constitutional right to free speech is being violated when the media doesn’t do her bidding.

That’s how a Banana Republic works.

Salon is even more to the point:

According to Palin, what the Founders intended with the First Amendment was that political candidates for the most powerful offices in the country and Governors of states would be free to say whatever they want without being criticized in the newspapers. In the Palin worldview, the First Amendment was meant to ensure that powerful political officials such as herself would not be “attacked” in the papers. Is it even possible to imagine more breathtaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?

This blog here has the mp3 of the comments of Palin issuing Constitutional warnings. I’m inclined to say a vote for Palin, based on this, is not a vote that would be well-spent for someone whose role it is to defend the Constitution.

Why? Because it was for the position of “State Supervisor of Construction”. Huh? Do I even vote for that?

This is the best I can get? I feel like the dorky kid at the high school prom now.

Read this lovely gem:

A Shenendehowa student who alerted his principal that he could steal private employee information now is facing felony charges.

The 15-year-old sophomore allegedly breached the district’s system while in computer simulation class and gained access to 250 names of past and present Shen transportation employees. He used his student password to view their Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and more, Shenendehowa officials said.

Then he allegedly sent an e-mail at 1 p.m. Tuesday to High School Principal Donald Flynt, saying he had the database.

The student informs the school of the security hole he found, and in turn is arrested. Well done–that’ll encourage him to be helpful in the future.

Want to see the depths Republicans are stooping to, in order to defeat Democrats this year and hold on to their failing and dwindling power? Read this. Republican operatives in Minnesota have sent a short comic book to children, all but accusing Al Franken of endorsing the rape of women.

Absolutely disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. This is why these people political creatures need to be driven out and kept out. They’re a danger to our children for sending out inappropriate mailings like this and unfit for any kind of office, let alone national ones. A bit more here.

Watch this absurd interview with Joe Biden, conducted by a “reporter” from an ABC affiliate in Orlando, Florida. It’s laughable–she tries to put words in his mouth, compares Obama to Karl Marx, and says that Obama is responsible for people that aren’t even related to the current campaign. It’s astonishingly bad, biased journalism, that would make even the saintly Fox News blush for how transparently ridiculous it is:

The funny thing is that, if you read this article, you can see how the same reporter that just tried to troll Biden on her last interview with John McCain tossed him nothing but softballs. And of course, the ABC affiliate defends it all. Meanwhile, the sycophantic conservatives that can see the likely writing on the wall (that America has finally caught on to their collective bullshit that they’ve rammed snuck down our throats since Nixon) is all about to change. Look at Michelle Malkin, the queen troll, try to spin it just right.

Comical, and sad. Their tenuous grip of control is slipping more and more because with each successive Republican president they tried to do more and more–they began to run out of steam, thanks to Bill Clinton, so they went for a new approach, pandering to the religious right to replenish their fading light. Even now, that’s not going to be enough, since they’re disregarding that base of supporters to push what has always been the Republican goal: less taxation for the wealthy. For any religious types that read this, the Republican leadership–the real leadership–could give a shit about Jesus and your opposition to abortion and gay marriage. They don’t care. They just want the wealthy to be taxed less.

Looks like the jig is up, if they have to send some fifth-string hack reporter from a second-rate market in Florida to try to pull a half-assed political hit on a respected Senator.

Christopher Buckley, columnist for the National Review and son of the magazine’s founder, conservative stalwart and entertaining troublemaker William F. Buckley, was fired (or “resigned”) from the magazine his own father began due to his having endorsed Obama in the election. Classy stuff–how long until some Conservative accuses Buckley of being a traitorous Muslim that may not be a citizen of the United States, next?

read more | digg story

Russert was one of the good ones, and one of the very, very, very, very few political correspondents I actually paid attention to.

That may be game, set, and match. She mad a big deal previously about a peace-keeping flight to Bosnia in the 1990s, and that she came off of the airplane under “sniper fire” and having to duck and hide with Secret Service agents. That is, until CBS News found video footage of her walking off of the airplane with Chelsea Clinton, Sinbad, and Sheryl Crow, waving to people and basically saying, “LOL! We’re in Bosnia! Hai people!” This is just like Vanilla Ice getting “cred” by claiming he was shot in the ass. Hillary is working overtime now to give this to Obama.

Credit to Andi for the realization that Hillary Clinton = Vanilla Ice.

Yes, the subject basically says it all. This is just what the United States needs to repair our good name with the rest of the world. A disinformation agency!

read more | digg story

Just when it can’t get any stupider. Carolyn Doran, Wikipedia’s now former Chief Operating Officer, is a felon.

For more than six months, beginning in January of this year, Wikipedia’s million-dollar check book was balanced by a convicted felon.

When Carolyn Bothwell Doran was hired as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, she had a criminal record in three other states – Virginia, Maryland, and Texas – and she was still on parole for a DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol) hit and run that resulted in a fatality.

Her record also included convictions for passing bad checks, theft, petty larceny, additional DUIs, and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gun shot to the chest.

Much more in the article. Wikinews, Wikipedia’s own news service, even has an article called “Chief Operating Officer of Wikimedia Foundation was convicted felon“.

UPDATE 7am 12-14-07: It’s on Digg now. Still hasn’t crossed major news media besides Yahoo! UK news here, but it just broke late last night Pacific time. If this gets wide coverage, it will be a few days, because other news sources will need to review it. If it hits a wire service like AP or Reuters, it’s all over.