So far I have seen two ads promoting incumbent governor Chris Gregoire, and both had the same theme:  George Bush.

In both ads a comparison was made to how Gregoire was nothing like George Bush.

I have one question:  Did I miss something, or is Bush running for Governor of Washington?

Seriously, the ads are frankly no better than the Better Then Bush sentiments in the 2004 presidential elections.

One of the ads does carry it further and that provides the connection:  they are trying to pain challenger Dino Rossi as “another George Bush” thereby scaring us into not voting for him.

Dino’s ad, by comparison targets the Washington’s government at it;s weakest areas, traffic, taxes, small businesses and education.

David Postman of the Seattle Times caught the comparison and the flaws:

Gregoire ad is off-base on Rossi v. Roe v. Wade

Gov. Christine Gregoire is airing a radio ad that tries to draw an ideological connection between her opponent, Republican Dino Rossi, and President George W. Bush.

But the ad pushes Rossi a bit further to the right than facts support. Rossi doesn’t help himself much on this front, given that when it comes to the issue of abortion, he refuses to clearly state his position.

The ad runs one minute and is airing statewide. It opens with a narrator who asks: “When you hear the name Dino Rossi, what other name comes to mind?”

Gregoire’s answer is Bush, of course. The ad lists several issues, including children’s health insurance, stem-cell research, global warming and abortion, where Rossi and Bush are on the other side from Gregoire.

And those positions are fairly fundamental with conservatives, so it appears to me that this is less about Rossi as it is about Bush.

The fact is that the Democrats seem to be wanting to draw on the negative numbers that Bush has had latently, so they will capitalize on any connection to the President that they can.

UPDATED BELOW WITH THE LATEST NEWS RELEASE

I am posting this unedited from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.  I offer the disclaimer that I do not generally like unions a whole lot.

Governor Gregoire “preserves union power” at the expense of teachers and voters; signs union “baill-out” bill into law

Today, Governor Gregoire signed House Bill 2079. The bill amends a statute that requires unions to get permission from nonmembers before spending their fees on political activity. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently reviewing the constitutionality of this statute in two cases brought by teachers and the state Attorney General against the Washington Education Association.

During committee hearings legislators disregarded the Attorney General’s office warnings that the bill is vulnerable to a Constitutional challenge. In a letter sent to lawmakers, the Office of the Attorney General warned that HB 2079 could expose the state to further litigation by adopting a “constitutionally forbidden” accounting practice.

The law uses a flawed accounting system that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in both the cases of International Association of Machinists v. Street (1961) and Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977).

On March 29, during the committee executive session, Sen. Margarita Prentice (D-11th) admitted that the bill’s intent is to protect union power. “In union there’s strength, and there’s a reason why unions exist, and why they have the kind of power—and I think we need to do everything we can to preserve that,” Prentice said.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s Director of Labor Policy, Michael Reitz, offered the following comments:

“Today, Governor Gregoire has signed a bill that ignores the First Amendment rights of workers in order to expand union power. The bill is premature, because the U.S. Supreme Court could rule on the constitutionality of the law at any time. Signing this bill virtually guarantees continued litigation.”

“House Bill 2079 uses an accounting gimmick to gut the I-134 of its effect—all but eliminating the requirement on unions to get permission before spending nonmember dues on politics.

That is only half right, since I agree with Ken’s Schrammies about half the time, even as I agree with Ken about half the time he opens his pie hole on the radio or on TV.

But this time, Ken gets complete Schramnesty from me:

The Schrammie: Rolling the political dice

Some “Schrammies” just can’t wait until Wednesday.

For instance…

I’m scratching my head trying to figure out the point and purpose of the state Democratic Party walking to the edge of the political precipice to do nothing but take a pointless stand.

So, would Dwight Pelz, the Big Kahuna of the state D’s, put the donkey back in the barn and come on down?

Seems Dwight and company - that would be the party’s central committee - recently decided to throw some political weight behind Ehren Watada - that would be the Army lieutenant up on charges for refusing to serve in Iraq.

A resolution commending Watada was passed with a healthy show of hands.

Watada was praised for his moral leadership and - are you ready for this? - for his commitment to duty.

Dwight, Dwight, Dwight: Why would you think that even remotely makes any sense?

Oh wait.

There I go trying to find the sense in a resolution that means nothing and will do nothing, well, nothing more than divide the folks who are opposed to the war but can’t abide Watada’s actions.

So…for rolling the political dice and crapping out and for sticking your nose where it really doesn’t belong, take a bow, Dwight, because this “Schrammie” - who wouldn’t burn his draft card even if he had one - this “Schrammie” is for you.

See my earlier post on this event.  Ken was a little slow.  I best him by 11 days.  Good thing he reads my blog.

In what I see as the second major blow to her authority as Speaker, Pelosi will not be installing Rep Alcee "Impeached but not Convicted" Hastings to the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

Hastings, Harman Rejected for Chairmanship: Pelosi Decides Against Both of House Intelligence Panel’s Top Two Democrats

House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has decided against naming either Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, or Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), the panel’s No. 2 Democrat, to chair the pivotal committee next year.

The decisions came despite lobbying by conservative Democrats on Harman’s behalf and a full-throttled campaign by Hastings to overcome the stigma of the 1988 impeachment that drove him from his federal judgeship.

The fight over the top spot on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has exposed the kind of factional politics that bedeviled House Democrats before they were swept from control in 1994. Harman, a moderate, strong-on-defense "Blue Dog" Democrat, had angered liberals with her reluctance to challenge the Bush administration’s use of intelligence. Hastings, an African American, was strongly backed by the Congressional Black Caucus but was ardently opposed by the Blue Dogs, who said his removal from the bench disqualifies him from such a sensitive post.

Complicating the matter was Pelosi’s relationship with black Democrats. Earlier this year, she enraged the Black Caucus by removing one of its members, Rep. William J. Jefferson (La.), from the Ways and Means Committee after court documents revealed that federal investigators looking into allegations of bribery had found $90,000 in cash neatly bundled in his freezer.

Darn it sure does suck when you have to deal with people on the basis of their actions and not their race doesn’t it?  To the race baiting democrats this was a terrible thing, but to most people it was a simply logical thing.

What makes this so odd is that Pelosi is one of the democrats who voted to Impeach Hastings after the accusations of bribery came to light.  So a few years back he was unfit to be a judge, but now suddenly he was worthy to be the Chairmen of a very influential committee?

Sounds harsh, but true.  A student who refused to answer a WASL question was suspended.

Has the State and its flawed WASL gone too far?

Via Bloomberg 

Tyler Stoken was a well-behaved fourth grader who enjoyed school, earned A’s and B’s and performed well on standardized tests.

In May 2005, he’d completed five of the six days of the Washington State Assessment of Student Learning exam, called WASL, part of the state’s No Child Left Behind test.

Then Tyler came upon this question: “While looking out the window one day at school, you notice the principal flying in the air. In several paragraphs, write a story telling what happens.”

The nine-year-old was afraid to answer the question about his principal, Olivia McCarthy. “I didn’t want to make fun of her,” he says, explaining he was taught to write the first thing that entered his mind on the state writing test.

In this case, Tyler’s initial thoughts would have been embarrassing and mean. So even after repeated requests by school personnel, and ultimately the principal herself, Tyler left the answer space blank. “He didn’t want them to know what he was thinking, that she was a witch on a broomstick,” says Tyler’s mother, Amanda Wolfe, sitting next to her son in the family’s ranch home three blocks from Central Park Elementary School in Aberdeen, Washington.

Because Tyler didn’t answer the question, McCarthy suspended him for five days. He recalls the principal reprimanding him by saying his test score could bring down the entire school’s performance.

“Good job, bud, you’ve ruined it for everyone in the school, the teachers and the school,” Tyler says McCarthy told him.

I only have two questions about the story.

Consider this:

Tyler, who’s 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and weighs 70 pounds (32 kilograms), hasn’t been the same since, his mother says.

"He liked the principal before this,” she says. "He cried. He didn’t understand why she’d done this to him.”

A while back I blogged my disgust at what I felt was the lamest state marketing slogan, the "Say WA"campaign.

Read it here:  SayWa (…ht the hell?) to the new State Slogan

Well the campaign, as I predicted was a brilliant flop, a marketing failure.

The Insider: State says ‘bah’ to ‘Say WA’ tourism slogan

What may go down in the books as one of the shortest-lived and least-loved tourism promotion slogans ever is officially kaput.

The Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development says the state will no longer use the controversial tag line in its ads.

"Say WA" was unveiled earlier this year for a series of magazine ads that ran in Sunset, Smithsonian, Travel & Leisure and Budget Travel. Devised by ad agency Foote Cone & Belding, Say WA was a play on the two-letter postal designation for the state. The campaign was supposed to evoke those tourism moments when, to quote an earlier press release, "an experience becomes emotional. In Washington state, these moments form a plentitude, a series of endless discoveries, and each will make you Say WA in a new and different way."

Good.  It was lame and deserves to die in flames.

The readers of the various blogs that covered this fiasco came out in droves to suggest other alternatives that were relevent and friendly and effective.

Maybe someone at state level should pay attention to them.

Let me preface this by saying that Possum at Roadkill and I generally have a good deal of respect for each other, even when we disagree.

One thing we have butted heads on is alignment.

Politically, I am a fiscal conservative social moderate, which usually labels me a centrist.  But the word moderate to Possum means you have to have a perfectly middle of the road philosophy, which in his opinion apparently translates to "hate everyone".   So when ever I lean a little to the right, which I admittedly do, I am hounded by him as a moderate in training.

Well Possum is MINO, a moderate in name only because he seems to fly far out to the left fringe at a moments notice, then springs back toward the middle for a while.

Unlike me though he seems determined to maintain the fiction that he is moderate.  I encourage the reader to review his comments in my blog and see how moderate he is.

Tuesday he posted a blog about the President Clinton/Chris Wallace interview.  Here is how he opened:

REPUBLICAN PARTY SUICIDE - THE NEW REALITY SHOW

By now most of us interested in politics has had a chance to view – or review – the “debate” between Bill Clinton and Chris Wallace aired by FoxNews over the weekend, and bootlegged by the Beavis channel over at YouTube…  

So wait, an interview with Clinton was Republican Party Suicide?

An interesting twist.  I eagerly sought the logic, the research and the painstaking observations that must accompany that.

I didn’t watch it – I don’t watch TV – and I won’t stoop to the level of the Drudge class hatemongers and patronize the Youtube crap, which, according to Crooks and Liars, has been deliberately altered to WJC’s detriment…

I had no trouble finding the unedited video, so I don’t understand his laziness.

And to rely on Crooks and Liars, a Liberal Pothole in the Roadkill highway, why it cannot be that he trusts liberal sources could it?

Some of the local elections have featured some good and bad things.

Mike McGavick, running against Maria Cantwell has hit upon a new strategy:  Ideas.

While he started in the time honored fashion of "look how bad She is" he moved on and is not denouncing the entire Washington DC culture.  As Eric at Sound Politics said:

Mike McGavick has a relatively new radio ad (the 4th option under "ads" here) up with is worth a listen. The ad hits Congress, and members of both parties, for lack of spending restraint in Washington, DC. It also opposes tax increases (including presumably opposing efforts to keep the Bush tax cuts from being made permanent).

It’s an effective ad for several reasons. One, despite the value of the civility theme in an anti-incumbent year, we’re at the point in the race where candidates need to be talking about issues. Two, the ad hits on an issue where there is cross-party consensus: federal spending has run amuck. Third, it touches on an issue that stokes the Republican base: protecting the tax cuts which are actually lowering the deficit and stimulating economic growth.

In short: more please.

Agreed.

Another interesting twist in that race is the revelations that Maria has some close personal financial dealings with a lobbyist, whose projects she earmarked for funding.  The Vancouver Columbian says:

In the past year, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, has helped secure $9.6 million in federal funds for a dam project at Lake Tapps (east of Tacoma) and $2 million for a biotechnology company.

On face value, there’s nothing wrong with that. But as more details are known about these deals, red flags start to rise. And the more Cantwell has to defend herself, the more clear it is that she would be better off preventing the red flags in the first place.

Red flag 1 The two projects are clients of Ron Dotzauer, a lobbyist who managed Cantwell’s 2000 campaign. But that doesn’t matter, a Cantwell spokesman insists; she worked on that federal funding, with others in the state delegation, before Dotzauer began lobbying for the projects.

The battle has been shaping up between Maria and Mike.  In this exchange the issue is my favorite where she is concerned, the Trifecta tax Bill.

Mike in his ad says:

"Maria Cantwell voted with her party, against our deduction and against our families," 

…and notes that the deduction was worth $550 to Washington families.  It continues amd says:

"Sen. Cantwell said she voted ‘no’ because she disagreed with parts of the bill, yet when she was offered a compromise, she refused to talk,".

Both of these statements are true on their face, but like most political speech they do make a few liberties with semantics.  Maria and Sen Frist, it should be noted did meet, but where he claims he offered to ease her concerns, she claims he was not making an offer in good faith.

Cantwell responded in a press release that:

"Mike McGavick is running an ad on the air right now that he knows is ‘not an accurate reflection’ of her views," said Cantwell campaign chief strategist Michael Meehan. "McGavick knows full well that Senator Cantwell supports the Cantwell sales tax deduction bill."

The truth is that the portion of the bill they are discussing, the sales tax deduction, is something Maria actually co-authored, so yes she obviously supports it.  But at the same time, the fact is also clear tat she did vote against a one year extension of it.  Sure she can claim to want it made permanent but one year is better then an expiration.

The benefit of this tax deduction is also under debate, since it is really only for people who itemize their deductions, so a lot of low income people never see any benefit.

But I have to say that while I fully sympathize with the plight of the poor, I don’t see any reason to ignore the middle class who may actually need some tax relief too.  Let’s not get so caught up in demagoguing this and making it all about the poor, that we forget everyone else.  So if the exemption was important enough for Maria to author it, then it is important enough to keep in play.

McGavick made the unprecedented move of disclosing his own political skeleton, that being a 1993 DUI.

My initial reaction was *YAWN*.

A DUI 13 years ago is not a show stopper in a political world such as ours, with "Checkpoint Cynthia" McKinney and Ted "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy, or his son Pat "DUI" Kennedy.

Yes it is a matter of character, and is something that should be noted, but what is more important to me is patterns of behavior, not single events.

In his disclosure, Mike says:

Here it is: I have lots of faults, and I have made some mistakes that I deeply regret.

In my personal life I reflect on two great failures:

Most important, my first marriage ended in divorce, and as a result my eldest son, Jack, grew up with me as a “part-time” dad.

Well, here he gets a lot of resonance from me, as I understand this issue from both sides, as a child with a part time dad, and a divorced dad, who was for a while a single dad.

Maybe Mike does understand the pain of dealing with the complexities of a split family.  It is easy to spin platitudes and such, but the reality is ugly and dark, and if Mike has a personal sense of this, I respect that.

He continues:

The second terrible mistake, which was difficult to discuss with my teenage son, was that I was cited for DUI when I cut a yellow light too close in 1993. I was driving Gaelynn home from several celebrations honoring our new relationship and should not have gotten behind the wheel. Thankfully, there was no accident, but it still haunts me that I put other people at risk by driving while impaired. All in all, it was and remains a humbling and powerful event in my life.

What is notable here is that this is the kind of event that the opposition campaigns love to dig out and parade.  By controlling the disclosure, he now controls the event.  But notably, he makes no excuses, he accepts responsibility, which is refreshing.