Commonality

[bigmacbear]

What do gmjambear and I have in common with Bill Gates?

Answer: A Congresscritter.

Turns out that most of the area between Lake Washington and the Cascades, including parts of Renton, Mercer Island, Bellevue, and Medina (the ultra-rich enclave where the Microsoft mogul lives), comprises the Eighth Congressional District of Washington. It actually takes in a large chunk of eastern King County which extends all the way to Snoqualmie Pass, and about half of Pierce County to the south. You can find maps here.

And for the moment, our shared Congresscritter is a Republican.¹

After hearing the commentary on the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (the "torture bill") and reading that our Congresscritter voted for it, and then finding out the Seattle Times had given him their endorsement, I wrote a strongly-worded letter to the editor and sent it off. In a day or two I'll post it here if it hasn't been printed.

¹ Re-" as in all over again, and "publican" as in the hated tax collector of the New Testament. How appropriate, given that by some of their recent actions the government steals from the poor and gives to the rich, all over again..

Comments

[danlmarmot.livejournal.com]

Yes. Mr Reichart may be 'open-minded', but being open-minded about torture then deciding it's OK is even a bit more ugly than being dumb and blaming your decision on ignorance.

Also: notice how it's really really hard to find out how people voted on that? It's not easy figuring out how your congressman voted. Took me about 20 minutes.

So it's Ms. Darcy Burner for us as well. Ballots are mailed on Friday, so our fun weekend task is to vote.

(Oh, and no, we don't live in Medina :-) )

[bigmacbear]

Also: notice how it's really really hard to find out how people voted on that? It's not easy figuring out how your congressman voted. Took me about 20 minutes.

I Googled "Military Commissions Act how they voted" (without the quotes) and found a site (after a couple of clicks) that gathers information from thomas.loc.gov and presents it a bit better. It's called govtrack.us.

Hope this helps.

[jodfoster.livejournal.com]

I went to the debate between Reichert and Darcy and she clearly handed his ass to him. Not sure how he did on the tv stuff though. They were asked a question about Iraq and his first response was "We were attacked!" which resulted in the crowd erupting in jeers and boos and people yelling "iraq didn't attack us" and "not by Iraq", etc. It was beautiful. To have an UNKNOWN be tied with an incumbent is just unheard of. I bet this goes down to a recount. It's that tight. Get out the vote! Tell everyone you know in the 8th to get OUT AND VOTE. This election is so damn important!