![]() The shortfall is in a tax called the real estate excise tax. The result, city staffers say, is that the city may need to siphon money from the same pool of general funds for which advocacy groups are clamoring. About $15 million in taxes from real estate sales that the mayor’s office expected to be available-based on an August forecast-is vanishing because of the slowing real-estate market. Next Wednesday, city finance director Dwight Dively will announce a bleak outlook for city-funded improvements at a city council budget hearing. I fell asleep writing it! But the folks tasked with plugging holes in next year’s city budget say it’s sexy. Revenue shortfalls are dry as turkey burgers. What can we learn about McCain by reading For Whom the Bell Tolls? The scene, which was written by John Steinbeck, is clearly an inspiration for one of McCain’s latest ads, wherein a rainbow coalition of men and women stare into the camera and proudly announce, one after the other, “ I am Joe the Plumber.” Viva Zapata!, McCain’s favorite film, closes with a stirring scene wherein villagers dress like Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata to show solidarity. Jordan is especially influential for McCain, a man who models real-life actions on fictional events. “ You know he is a fictional character?” Salter said he asked McCain, who replied, “I know, but he was influential!” Robert Jordan is everything I ever wanted to be.”Īccording to a recent New York Times story, McCain tried to be Robert Jordan, imposing the narrative of Tolls onto his own autobiography, leading to fights with his cowriter Mark Salter. “I am an incurable idealist and romantic. “My number-one hero of all time!” McCain said on the campaign trail in 2007. He talks about Ernest Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War novel and its hero Robert Jordan with a passionate adoration he’s never even displayed for his own wife. John McCain loves For Whom the Bell Tolls. In this week’s book section, I read some of John McCain’s favorite books. We do not want harm to come to anyone-to those who live in the houses (from wannabe Ashley Todds) or to our staff (from right-wing nuts)-so we’ve taken the piece down. What began as political satire changed from reasonably intelligent, irreverent discourse to something ugly. On Saturday morning the piece exploded on right-wing blogs, and death threats were made on our staff. We did not remove those comments and left our own addresses up on our website. MICHAEL RYAN MOUSTERPIECE FREEThere was some debate on The Stranger’s website on Thursday and Friday about the piece’s inclusion of addresses-about the homeowners’ and The Stranger’s right to free speech, and about yards signs as public discourse-and some readers posted addresses of Stranger staffers in comments, because turnabout is fair play. Because in an election year, nothing’s more terrifying than the future.” From later in the piece: “Without a doubt, this is no home to man, but a monolithic holding cell packed floor-to-ceiling with bubbling black goo.”) The point was that our readers, typically liberal, would be chilled by these “Halloween” displays.Īfter the piece came out on Wednesday morning, there was no violence, no vandalism. That’s where we found the most pants-wettingly scary houses…. If you’re looking for the most hair-raising Halloween horrors, try scouring the streets of the Eastside. ![]() (The introduction: “Cobwebs and witches are for children and morons. ![]() ![]() There was no incitement to violence or incitement to anything else, and the piece was very clearly parody. We were parodying a certain kind of daily newspaper feature-the “houses with the best Halloween/Christmas decorations” article, which typically includes addresses-and so we included addresses. Last Thursday we published a story called “Hell Houses” about houses on the Eastside displaying McCain and Palin yard signs. ![]()
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