Spin Control: News is something to click about
OLYMPIA – With the Legislature gone and the campaign season not officially starting until Monday, there was time last week to catch up on things like news of the world, email and important calendar dates.
The capital bureau office television has been stuck on TVW for months, but the cable subscription includes the 24-hour news channels. Wonder what’s on?
MSNBC is breathlessly covering “Bridgegate” with the latest memo from some aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to another aide implicating a third aide. Click.
Fox News is breathlessly covering “Benghazigate” with the latest memo from some aide in one department to some aide in another department implicating someone in a third department. Click.
CNN is breathlessly covering the latest speculation about newly revised data suggesting that Flight 370 may have taken a different route, suggesting naval searchers need to search in another part of the Indian Ocean. Click.
It’s amazing how little things change on cable news. Time to clean out the inbox.
Outrage of the week
An email from the tea party warns of a new outrage from President Obama, link provided. Hmmm. Can’t be the fact that he was born in Kenya, assembling death panels to kill our grandparents or issuing orders to send all gun owners to FEMA camps. Those are all old outrages.
The link explains why people should be outraged over a photo the White House prepared for the White House Correspondents Dinner with Obama sitting on the Iron Throne of Westeros.
For those who don’t get the reference, the Iron Throne is the seat of power from which the king of the Seven Kingdoms rules in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
“Some might not see the funny side of the image,” a tea party writer opines, “given that Obama is actually behaving like a king by flouting the constitution and pursuing his agenda by executive fiat on a number of different issues.”
Some might also notice there’s a crossbow in the picture’s foreground, obviously confiscated from someone despite Second Amendment guarantees of the right to keep and bear arms.
Of course anyone who has watched the series might note that the photo could cheer tea partyers, considering no one who has sat on the throne in the last four seasons has managed to stay in power very long. But why spoil a perfectly good rant?
Tra la, it’s May
Meanwhile, an email from the U.S. Geological Survey mentions that May is Volcano Preparedness Month. Considering it is also, according to other emails, National Blood Pressure Month, National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, and National Bike Month, we could combine all of them to get fit and lower our blood pressure by practicing to ride our bikes away from the next volcanic eruption.
By the way, the USGS says, magma is slowly building up in the chamber under Mount St. Helens, although it’s nothing to get too worried about. That’s a relief, considering M St. H marked Volcano Preparedness Month in a big way in 1980.
Candidate’s position not needed on signs
Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton also wrote to say that at the urging of a legislator she had delved deeper into state election law than when we last spoke, and discovered state law does not require candidates to list the office or position they are seeking in advertising. That’s contrary to what was reported in last week’s column on possible jockeying in the 4th Legislative District.
It does, however, have rules for a candidate running for re-election to a seat currently or previously held, or to keep an appointed seat. So the office and position could come into play on advertising in those cases, she wrote.
The two House seats in Spokane Valley’s 4th Legislative District have seven announced candidates, all of them Republicans, but they’re unlikely to be the busiest primaries in the state.
That distinction is likely to go to Central Washington’s 4th Congressional District seat being vacated by Richard “Doc” Hastings. Six Republicans and one Democrat have already notified the Federal Elections Commission they might run.
Also of note: The state usually has three Supreme Court races in an even-numbered year, but this year there will be four. Mary Yu, who was appointed to the seat of retired Justice Jim Johnson, must run for election and already has one opponent, Bruce Hilyer.