It’s one of the great ironies of our time. Religious right-winger types protest being kind to people and tolerance- in the name of God, they claim.

Locally, we have seen this happen. A local high school, Mt Si (which served as Twin Peaks High in that classic old TV show) has a student group called the “Gay Straight Alliance” that works for understanding and peace towards gay, lesbian, and transgendered people/students.

(More and more high schools have this kind of student group. A sign of the changing times; we would NEVER have had such a group in Enumclaw in the 80s, and Enumclaw is a lot like the Snoqualmie area where Mt Si is. Then again, to my knowlege, they still don’t have a GSA chapter at EHS, so maybe it hasn’t changed THAT much.)

Back in January, on Martin Luther King Junior Day, the school had invited a local pastor (and parent of a student) named Ken Hutcherson to speak at the school about tolerance and respecting others. This was a somewhat ironic choice, given that he is moderately infamous around here for being virulently anti-gay.

He’s also a blustering moron who bit off WAY more than he could chew by trying to challenge Microsoft a few years ago. Microsoft had initially taken a “no comment” stance on some gay rights/domestic partner legislation that was going through the Washington Legislature, but that proved to be a mistake for the company because A) their employees got pissed off and B) it made it harder for MS to recruit talented folks who happened to be gay.

Hutcherson decided that the way to defeat MS was first to threaten them in the media with a boycott or some such nonsense; he actually got a meeting with some mid-level Microsoft folks who told him that they were going to remain “no comment” on the legislation, and he came away claiming that they’d backed down to him. They said “um, no, we didn’t” and clarified what they said.

(Considering their 90%+ market penetration, good luck with that whole boycott thing anyway.) The company ultimately wound up ignoring Hutcherson and supporting the bill, which was later passed by the Legislature and signed into law. (And remarkably, the world didn’t end and God didn’t smite everyone in Washington with thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening, yikes.)

Then he later went on to bluster at a stockholder’s meeting, but in letters and emails to his flock he tried to make it sound like he’d had a one-on-one meeting with the heads of Microsoft. At the stockholder’s meeting…

At Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting in November, Hutcherson told the group that he was gathering evangelicals, Catholics, Jews and Muslims to challenge the company.

He told company leaders, “I could work with you, or I could be your worst nightmare, because I am a black man with a righteous cause, with a host of powerful white people behind me,” according to an e-mail update to his supporters. “I hope to hear from you and if not, you will hear from me.”

Does this guy have some skewed thinking or what? He suggests that his “righteous cause” alone isn’t powerful enough- that he needs those powerful white people behind him. Weird.

Anyway, the whole thing was because he doesn’t like gays. That’s what it comes down to. He doesn’t like a big company like Microsoft having an influence on public policy, he doesn’t like schools teaching kids that they should be kind to each other even if the other person is gay, and he’s just plain a bigot.

At that MLK Day gathering, he got basically heckled by two teachers who challenged his stance on tolerance in a racial arena by comparing it to his stance on gays. It’s a pretty fair comparison, really; he doesn’t want gays to have rights, and racists didn’t want black guys like him to have rights, either.

So fast forward to this past week. The school was having a “Day of Silence” to bring gay/lesbian rights to the minds of the students; people participating would go the day without speaking to get people to think about how gay folks, for so many years, had to remain silent from fear of retribution.

Hutcherson didn’t like that, so he decided to have a protest against it.

Basically, he’s protesting against tolerance, peace, and understanding. He’s unhappy that the school system has the nerve to tell kids “hey, just because someone’s gay doesn’t mean you should treat them badly.”

I have to wonder- if Jesus were alive today (Hutcherson’s church is a Christian one), would he have been on the side of the pastor, or the side of those who were simply saying “be nice to gay folks”?

The complaint of the protestors is always that they’re having some “agenda” forced down their throats. Well, they’re right. The agenda of the gay folks (and the gay-friendly types, like me- we’re such radicals) is simple.

Our agenda is that nobody should live in fear of being bullied because they’re gay. Our agenda is that gay folks should be able to get a job, own a house, and generally be treated like anyone else in society. Our agenda is that they should be treated the way WE would like to be treated. Our agenda is, in short, the Golden Rule.

You know that radical Jesus guy… saying stuff like:

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

I guess I’m still a little Christian after all.

A couple of weeks ago, the Chicago Bears came to my backyard to play a little football. Of course, my backyard is Qwest Field, and around 68,000 of my closest buddies joined me at the game, so it’s a pretty big backyard and not such a big deal that the Bears came.

The Bears have a stud kick returner named Devin Hester. The guy is, put plainly, a stud. Every team in the NFL would like to have him returning kicks for them… although his reputation took a hit the other day when he was tackled on this hit:

The reason this matters (it’s a short video, go ahead and watch it) is that the guy who made that tackle? Seahawks kicker Josh Brown.

I wonder how much of a ribbing Hester took from getting thumped to the ground by the freakin’ kicker.

Dammit, even when I think I’ve found a Republican I can vote for, I get burned.

Seattle is the county seat for King County, the most populous county in Washington. It’s been turning steadily more and more Democratic over the past several years… okay, so has most of America under George W Bush, but King County is even more so.

But for decades, we had a pretty dang good county prosecutor… who happened to be a Republican. Norm Maleng died in May of 2007 after serving as prosecutor for 28 years. You can read how the Seattle Times editorial page summed him up here.

His right-hand man, Dan Satterberg, took over the office on an interim basis and is running for election. His opponent is Bill Sherman, a Democrat who doesn’t have nearly as much experience as a prosecutor but who does have other experience- albeit experience in more partisan, politically influenced positions.

I voted absentee over a week ago. Now I’m sorry. Why?

Because I voted for Satterberg. I bought into his rhetoric about wanting to make the PA a non-partisan office, about how he just wanted to follow in the tradition of Maleng, blah blah blah.

But now it turns out that Satterberg is just another politician. King County rules limit campaign contributions to just a few thousand bucks, but guess what? The Washington State Republican Party (which has no limits) suddenly started getting monster donations from local rich fatcats… who had maxed out their donations to Satterberg.

What’s more, they’re not allowed to direct where that money goes, but the party started transferring big bucks to Satterberg. Who had, coincidentally enough, just gone into large amounts of debt buying up TV ad time.

Satterberg goes $40,000 in debt buying ads, the party transfers him 40 grand. He buys more ad time, the party gives him another 80 grand.

If I’d been paying more attention, I might have seen this coming. Goldy, a local political blogger, posted about it several days ago and predicted it. The Stranger’s reporter, Josh Feit, has been covering this as well in a couple of blog posts.

Shit, shit, shit. I was all proud of myself for voting for a Republican that I thought was decent and honorable, a guy who would truly be professional and uphold the office and the style of his mentor. Then he turns out to be so horny for office that he’d knowingly break both the intent and the letter of the law to get elected- and the office he wants IS ALL ABOUT THE LAW!

I swear I’m not voting for another Republican for years. The Democratic candidate could be filmed kicking puppies and taking candy away from babies and I’ll vote for them. I’m so sick of the scumbags, and yes, I know there’s a ton in both parties, but dammit, there’s a hell of a lot more in the Republican party.

They willingly pervert the law to gain power, and that’s just wrong. I hope nobody reading this votes for any Republicans. Screw those bastards.

I’ll post again about the rest of my ballot, which I meant to do earlier on the off chance that I might actually influence SOMEONE (haha, likely chance) and how they voted, but too late now. Still, I’m enough of a political junkie to want to blather on about it.

So there’s some pictures making their way around these crazy interwebs of a Washington State ferry making its way across Puget Sound during a pretty good windstorm.

To look at a map, you’d think that Puget Sound waters are usually pretty placid and calm. Well, they’re not always like that; it’s a big body of water and there’s long reaches where, if the wind is blowing from the right (or wrong!) direction, there can be pretty rough wave action. In addition, there’s rips and eddies and swirls where the tide is rushing in and out.

Washington State has the biggest public ferry fleet in the United States. They carry over 26 million passengers a year to over 20 ports of call. Some of the ferries carry as many 2,500 passengers and over 200 cars in a single load- and those (the Jumbo Mark IIs, such as the Puyallup, Tacoma, or http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries/your_wsf/our_fleet/index.cfm?vessel_id=14) go back and forth on runs that take roughly 30 minutes one way, plus about 10 to 15 minutes for unloading and reloading for the next trip.

I love taking the ferries that leave from downtown Seattle to Bainbridge Island and coming back. The ferry terminal is just a few blocks from my place, so I can easily walk down there and jump aboard. My favorite time is in the evenings, during the “Golden Hour” when the sun is setting and it’s just gorgeous.

Here’s a shot of Indy looking over the rail (yes, they allow dogs on board the ferries, subject to some rules… that I think we broke) at downtown Seattle. As you can see, the city comes right smack to the water’s edge:

(click for full size)

Here’s a BIG shot, stitched together, of Seattle from Elliott Bay:

The ferries are the only link for many island communities. Even some areas that aren’t completely stuck are pretty dependent upon the ferries, as driving around the long way would mean commute times of triple or even more.

The ferry Cathlamet runs between Mukilteo and Clinton and is an example of this. It holds 1,200 passengers, 124 cars, is 328 feet in length and can do 16 knots. On days when it’s stormy, they do a bit less. On this day, I’m sure the passengers wished they’d stayed at the dock!

A talented photographer named Ross Fotheringham went down to the Mukilteo Lighthouse Park to take some pictures, and he got some amazing ones. You can see his original posts with the pictures in them here, but to save you the click- and to save that web host the bandwidth- I’ve taken the liberty of reposting these photos below, along with his comments. (He says in his comments it’s okay to repost so long as he gets full credit and believe me, I couldn’t come close to these pictures!)

But even better, you can check out his photos on his own web site- and who knows, if you email him he might sell a few to you. Check it out at http://www.pbase.com/trackside_photography

On all pictures, click on the photo to see it in bigger size. They’re all uncropped (by me, anyway- I don’t know if he cropped them, they look awesome to me so if he got them through the lens he did an excellent job framing them) and pretty clear, although if you want prints you should order them through his web site as you’ll get the clearest possible enlargements.

On Thursday October 18th Western Washington was hit with a 50+ MPH wind storm. Here are my pictures of the event.

After work I made my way down to the Mukilteo Lighthouse Park where I witness the Mukilteo to Clinton ferry taking a pounding.

These Issaquah 130 Class ferries are over 300 feet long and 78 feet wide and weight in at 2477 tons (4,954,000 lbs) unloaded……

I’ll start with some Rock & Roll.

Ok, here’s one for you Long Flume lovers…

During storms like this the crew plots a course which puts the ferry in the least vulnerable position, but at some point they have to change course, and when they did Puget Sound made up for lost time.

After this run the ferry system stopped running at full capacity and ran 1/2 empty for the rest of the night.

Each shot was taken 0.3 seconds apart hand held at 320mm’s.

I’m glad you guys liked them; I was amazed at what I saw through the lens. During the wind storm I like to go down to the Lighthouse Park in Mukilteo and watch the ferries, but I’ve never seen a ferry take a hit like that. After this run they added a 3rd ferry and ran them 1/2 empty.

I’m going to have Costco print up a few 20×30″.

Someone either PM’d me or posted that I should send these to the WS Ferry System. I tried to sell them a much tamer, but similar shot and they told me these kind of shots don’t promote rider ship. I couldn’t argue that one.

I bet they didn’t think it’d sell people on riding on the ferries- especially when, as he points out, it looks like that big wave smashing into the deck washed the cars backwards a bit.

Anyway, his photos are making the rounds in emails, but he’s not getting the credit he deserves, so while I wanted to show them to the folks reading here I also wanted to be sure that Ross gets the props.