Sunday, May 18, 2008

James Yee, Democratic National Convention delegate

Does the name James Yee ring any bells?

He’s the US Army chaplain who was arrested in 2003 under suspicion of espionage because he ministered to prisoners at Guantanamo.  After ruining his career, the government eventually dropped all of the ridiculous charges against him.  Ray Rivera of the Seattle Times wrote a superb special report series about the case in 2005.

Yee was honorably discharged from the Army in 2004, and still lives in western Washington.

On Saturday, James Yee was elected to represent Washington’s 9th Congressional District as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

As relayed by Emmett O’Connell of Olympia Time on the website of the Thurston County Democrats, Mr. Yee had this to say:

Next, I am extremely humbled by the support everyone in the 9th Congressional District showed me today.  Thank You!  Thank You!  Thank You! - to all those who voted for me, and for sending me to Denver.  It is an honor to be reprenting [sic] our 9th Congressional District and all of you at the national convention.  You all have inspired me beyond words.

I wish I could give a full report on the results of Saturday’s Congressional District caucuses.  It has been frustratingly difficult to find out the distribution of delegates between Obama and Clinton, much less the identities of those who were elected.  While I still expect that the overall numbers came to 34-17 for Obama, which will eventually result in 52-26 when the at-large and pledged PLEOs are added next month, that distribution hasn’t yet been confirmed.

I do know who was elected from WA-07 (Obama 7, Clinton 2) and WA-01 (Obama 4, Clinton 2).  Dan Kirkdorffer gave us the names of the Obama delegates in WA-08 (Obama 4, Clinton 2); unfortunately, Casey Knowles, the now-18-year-old who was the child in the stock footage used in Clinton’s “3am phone call” ad, didn’t make the cut.  Reading between the lines of Yee’s statement, it appears that WA-09 went 3-2 in Obama’s favor.

I expect that the distributions in the other five CDs went as follows:

• WA-02 (6 delegates)—Obama 4, Clinton 2
• WA-03 (5 delegates)—Obama 3, Clinton 2
• WA-04 (3 delegates)—Obama 2, Clinton 1
• WA-05 (5 delegates)—Obama 3, Clinton 2
• WA-06 (6 delegates)—Obama 4, Clinton 2

One final note, about one of the WA-07 Obama delegates.  Iraqi-American Majid al-Bahadli is a resident of my own Legislative District.  The story of his journey from Iraq through refugee camps and somehow to Seattle and American citizenship is remarkable. 

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Not quite answering (yet)

Well, at least somebody gave it a shot.  Thanks for trying, Linkmeister!

While replying to his surmise—Portland’s PGE Park—I realized that the photos in the previous post didn’t do a good job of displaying something that might help with identifying the location.  I hope the following shot, along with what I mentioned in the sixth comment to the prior diary

I realize that these two shots don’t have sufficient detail to let you see what’s not in the stands (aside from people, that is).

will be of some use to those who want to hazard a guess.

I might mention that the second picture in the prior post displays one of the distinctive features of this stadium.  Unfortunately, it displays that feature from a distance of about 340 feet, so you can’t really tell that said feature is there.  Having stood out in deep right field, though, I can confirm the existence of that feature.

Apparently, we took no pictures of another signature feature of this ballpark, the one that’s way out in deep center field.  Silly of us, I suppose.

Anyway, if no one has the right answer after another couple of days, I’ll post it for you here.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Worth 2000 words?

[UPDATE (May 2):  No correct guesses yet, so I’ve added another clue]

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth 1000 words.  Well, let’s test that.  And let’s test my (very, very few) readers as well, with a little quiz.

The question for you is this—where were the two pictures shown below taken?  I’ll give you two three (four, actually, as the new one includes two clues) pieces of information:

• they were taken last Friday, April 25
• I’m in both of them
• the ballpark had three different names during its 88 years as a major league field

I’ve been crazy-busy lately.  Not just work-work, but also politics-work and a huge amount of SABR-work.  Not that that excuses my lengthy between-posts time gap, but there it is.  In any case, I’ll provide my pair of pictures and sit back to see whether anyone notices.  Who knows, someone might even be able to answer the location-quiz as well.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A Responsible Plan

Leading the “netroots” in a broad-based effort to take action toward extricating ourselves from the Bush fubar in Iraq, WA-08 Congressional candidate Darcy Burner began a dialogue with military, foreign policy, and energy policy experts at her Virtual Town Hall last summer.  At Monday’s Take Back America conference in Washington DC, Darcy unveiled the results of their group endeavor.

Some have compared the Responsible Plan To End the War in Iraq to the disastrous “Contract On For America” created by Newt Gingrich in the 1994 election campaign, in that it’s an outline of significant and comprehensive proposals for national action.  That comparison is completely wrong, and not only because this one is being proposed by progressive Democrats while Newt’s was a singularly odious attack on government and governance.

The “Contract On For America” was an authoritarian, top-down coup perpetrated by the Republican House leadership cabal.  Gingrich, Armey, DeLay, et al. strong-armed colleagues to sign on, demanded fealty to their radical plan, even chased off reasonable Republicans (yes, there used to be a few) who wouldn’t knuckle under.  In sharp contrast, the Responsible Plan was conceived by a lone Congressional candidate out here in far-off Washington state, gaining support from other candidates—no confirmed sitting legislators yet (but see below)—through word-of-mouth and face-to-face discussions.  Darcy’s workproduct exemplifies the burgeoning power of the netroots and grassroots in the Democratic Party.

At yesterday’s unveiling, the Responsible Plan had already been endorsed by nine additional progressive Democratic House candidates from across the country:

• Donna Edwards (MD-04), who defeated incumbent Al Wynn in the Democratic primary
• Eric Massa (NY-29), a “Fighting Dem” Navy veteran
• Chellie Pingree (ME-01), vying for Tom Allen’s seat
• Tom Perriello (VA-05)
• Jared Polis (CO-02)
• George Fearing (WA-04), trying to upset Doc Hastings
• Larry Byrnes (FL-14)
• Steve Harrison (NY-13), who hopes to remove Vito Fossella, New York City’s only remaining GOP Congressman
• Sam Bennett (PA-15)

In just a bit more than 24 hours, additional Democratic contenders have endorsed the Plan.  Off the top of my head, I can come up with such worthies as Larry Grant (ID-01) and both of the leading Democratic candidates for Gordon Smith’s Senate seat in Oregon—Jeff Merkley and Steve Novick.  I’ve also seen a report that a sitting House member, newly-elected IL-14 Congressman Bill Foster (in the House seat recently occupied by the ample butt of Dennis Hastert), is endorsing the Responsible Plan too, but I can’t find confirmation of that at the moment.

Many other bloggers, here in Washington and across the land, have written about this exciting development in the 2008 campaign season.  And, since this is a netroots-based project, put forth by perhaps the (neologism alert!!) netrootsiest candidate on the scene today, we regular Joes and Joans are invited to add our own names to the list of endorsers.  In fact, Darcy’s supplied a nice banner link to make it easy to add yourself to the list.  Just click on the red button in the image immediately below this paragraph!

Friday, February 08, 2008

Just before the caucus

Unless you’ve been mouldering under a rock recently, you must be aware that the precinct caucuses for Washington Democrats and Republicans will take place tomorrow afternoon.  It’s the first of several steps on the way to electing delegates to the parties’ respective national conventions—the Dems in Denver and the GOP in St. Paul.

Unless you’re really out of it, you’re also aware that this year’s Democratic caucuses have suddenly taken on real honest-to-god meaning in the party’s nominating process.  The two remaining candidates, Senators Clinton and Obama, are basically deadlocked in the delegate count after Super Tuesday, and Washington is one of the biggest prizes to be fought over between now and the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas.

The precinct caucuses are the first of three steps used by Washington Democrats to choose 78 of our 97 delegates to the DNC.  Delegates elected from precincts will gather on April 5 in Legislative District caucuses, and delegates from the LDs will meet on May 17 at their Congressional District caucuses.  Those CD caucuses will choose delegates who will represent us in Denver.

Right after the 2004 precinct caucuses, I wrote a rather lengthy blog post about the experience.  Tomorrow’s events will be generally quite similar.  This time, however, I’m running the show instead of working for a candidate.  I’ll be one of the site coordinators, as well as the PCO of my precinct.

Though I’m extremely involved in the presidential election season, I’m not particularly wedded to any of the candidates.  Whatever it was that Howard Dean stirred in me four years ago hasn’t been touched by any of the 2008 candidates.  I gave a few bucks to Chris Dodd awhile back, more for his stands on habeas corpus and FISA than due to any belief that he’d run successfully.  Had he stayed in the race, I would have caucused for John Edwards; his message of economic populism reasonated with me. 

Now, with just two candidates to choose from, I’m still undecided.  Not between Clinton and Obama ... between Uncommitted and Obama.  Anyone But Hillary is still my watchword, as it was from the start.  She is simply too much a creature of the “inside the Beltway” mentality for my taste.  Which is not to say that I’d vote for someone else if she ends up as the Democratic nominee, just that I’ll look elsewhere unless and until her name is the only one in the running.

Why not simply move to Obama?  Mainly because he doesn’t stir me.  His oratorical skills are extraordinary, but I’m not convinced that the substance is really there.  Since he’s the only remaining not-Clinton candidate, I’ll certainly switch to him if there are too few others in my precinct choosing Uncommitted to earn a delegate, but I’m sort of thinking I want to keep my options open as long as I can.  Or maybe I’ll just stop playing these games with myself and sign in for Obama.  I still haven’t figured it out.

Now I’m off to copy off more sign-up sheets, more maps of the precincts, and so forth.  We’re expecting a huge crowd tomorrow afternoon.  See you at the caucus!