In 2004, I went to the caucus and it was a zoo, with far more people than expected. In my precinct alone, over a dozen people showed up.

Today, in my Fremont precinct, 104 people voted.

It was like that in the other half-dozen precincts in our building, too. The turnout was astonishing. Anecdotally, most of the people I talked with had never been to a caucus before. Aside from the neighbor who’s had a Ron Paul yard sign up for nearly a year (I assume he was at the Republican caucus), I’m not sure who could have even been left in our nine-square-block precinct that wasn’t at the Democratic caucus. Apparently it’s been like that all over the city.

At least in Fremont, we overwhelmingly voted for Obama (84 of 104 in our precinct, to 11 for Clinton). In each precinct, Obama was getting four, five, or six delegates to one for Clinton. If that’s at all representative, it’s a landslide of epic proportions for Obama.

One more thing: did anyone else notice that when you went to the wa-democrats.com (as opposed to .org) web site today, as many folks looking for caucus sites undoubtably did, it took you to the web page of the Washington State Republican Party? What kind of shit is that?

Locally, again, not much going on today. The best local story is a sordid Seattle Times piece detailing the efforts of fanatic UW football boosters to get the Athletic Director, Todd Turner, and football coach, Tyrone Willingham, fired last month after a disappointing season. (Disappointing, but predictable, given the nation’s toughest schedule.) One booster went so far as to offer $200,000 in law school scholarships if UW President Mark Emmert would pull the plug. (He did, but only on AD Todd Turner, presumably gaining the school a tidy $100 k to help offset the contract it had to eat.)

Moronic UW fans tend to overlook that along with winning, idolized former Husky football coach Don James left one other legacy: cheating. (OK, two: quitting on his team when he got caught.) And that while the wild successes of some of James’ teams mostly left when he did, the culture of lawlessness and a football program run amok pretty much continued up until Willingham, by all accounts, was brought in by Turner to run a clean ship. Obviously, the ugly old ways are dying hard.

Idle thought: what on earth does a football team (or any scholarship athlete, for that matter) have to do with a state land grant university’s mission to educate its state’s residents? Just wondering.

What else? Local TV was all over the dramatic video of a rare tornado in Vancouver, Wash., damaging property and “causing moments of fear” but injuring nobody.

The top world story: a brief moment of silence for Sir Edmund Hillary.

Nationally, American media, embedded in the Middle East with George Bush, continued to credulously report the cruel hoax that is the “Peace Process.” (Overseas, they’re not being quite so sycophantic.)

Meanwhile, the New York Times is once again doing its patriotic duty to whip up war fever this morning. Even as the official Pentagon/White House story of the kayaks and the aircraft carrier, er, “naval confrontation” between Iran and the U.S. unraveled, the Times was busily looking elsewhere for reasons to remind Americans that They are, after all, an obliteration-worthy Axis of Evil.

We now pause for a brief word from our sponsor.

Once again, the affairs of the world ground to a halt yesterday in solemn observance of a small American state voting for presidential nominees. The results (with 96% of precincts counted):

Democrats

Hillary Clinton 39.2%
Barack Obama 36.4%
John Edwards 16.9%
Bill Richardson 4.6%
Dennis Kucinich 1.4%
Others 1.4%
Mike Gravel 0.1%

Republicans

John McCain 37.2%
Mitt Romney 31.6%
Mike Huckabee 11.2%
Rudy Giuliani 8.6%
Ron Paul 7.6%
Others 2.0%
Fred Thompson 1.2%
Duncan Hunter 0.5%\

Me, I’m getting kind of sick of media’s attempt to create instant, sweeping generalizations on the basis of first Iowa, now New Hampshire. Clinton led NH polls all last year, and McCain was expected to win; now, somehow, they are the “comeback kids.” Clinton “escapes to fight another day” with her “return from the political dead,” even though only an idiot thought that her $100 million campaign would have been finished off by a second-place finish — just as nobody should write off Obama now. And Edwards is now the one being written off, for having finished pretty much exactly where the last year’s worth of polls had him. Bollocks. Same thing on the Republican side, where the Beltway punditocracy has been desperate to portray a McCain “surge” since the barbarian (i.e., Mike Huckabee) won in Iowa. Now that McCain (aka “Lazarus”) has performed as expected, someone, somewhere, will opine that his nomination is inevitable. (One thing’s for sure: Fred Thompson sure doesn’t seem like much of a threat.)

And establishment journalists wonder why the public hates them.

In other, lesser news yesterday, President Bush quietly attempted to remind people that he’s still relevant.

Locally, beyond you-know-what, the P-I brings us the shocking news that area home prices have dropped (shocking, that is, if you’ve been relying on the local dailies for your information for the last six months), and asks the burning question: “Have prices hit bottom?” (The P-I doesn’t risk an answer, so here’s one: No.) The Times also has the story, natch. Bothell’s Best also gives us Nicole Brodeur, with the sort of incisive analysis she’s renowned for: Sometimes pit bulls bite people. Sometimes they don’t.

Local TV is, unsurprisingly, even worse. KING-5 set the standard last night; their top four stories were about crime.

Give the P-I credit, though, for a priceless photograph of Port Commissioner Pat Davis in the blandly titled “Port of Seattle enacts reforms.” Nothing like a criminal investigation to perk ’em up, huh?

And now, for a bit of HA heresy. For a solid year now, people have been asking me who I’d like to see become President in 2009. For most of that time, I’ve offered the same unsatisfying response: it’s far too early, a lot can happen between now and then. But as the fascination with the race among local political types I know has heightened leading up to this week’s Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries next Tuesday, I have slowly begun to embrace a different response: why do you care?

Not that the question of who will try to clean up (or exacerbate) George W. Bush’s, er, messes isn’t important: on multiple fronts, it will influence nothing less than the future of humanity. At present, our likely choice will almost certainly be between two of eight less than inspiring people, who break down roughly as follows (based on their past governing records, not their campaign rhetoric): two liberal members of the bipartisan D.C. establishment (Obama, Edwards); one “liberal” who would have been considered a moderate Republican not too long ago (Clinton); four guys who would for all practical purposes be a third term of Bush (Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Thompson); and one charismatic loon (Huckabee). There’s a lot of room between those positions, most of it not good, and it matters a lot which of them will, in slightly over a year, become the most powerful person in the world.

And, of course, there’s a good argument to be made that even the most powerful person in the world can only do so much, and given the country’s political realities, isn’t likely to accomplish much of what s/he is now promising.

Still, it does make a difference who the next president is. It’s a pity Washington state residents will have virtually nothing to do with that choice. Today’s front page P-I headline — “State could turn into big player” (with the subhead “New front-runners might give our caucuses more sway”) — is a truly embarrassing bit of nativist wishful thinking. Sure, our caucuses might have a big impact. Mount Rainier might erupt next week, too.

In the Evergreen State, the presidential campaigns are and will be close to meaningless. Candidates have used our area primarily as an ATM, and that won’t change. Actual visits by candidates will continue to be rare, and any public appearances will be filled in around big stakes fundraising as almost an afterthought, useful almost solely for the resulting free local media coverage.

Of course, we will have a chance to register our opinions in the race next month. Our state’s Democratic and Republican caucuses are on Feb. 9, and the primary vote is on Feb. 19.

Unfortunately, 23 different states and territories, including heavyweights like California, New York, and Illinois (encompassing the country’s four largest media markets) will be having their primaries on “Super Tuesday,” Feb. 5, four days before our caucuses. And six other states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, and Florida) will have decided before that. Voters representing 326 of the country’s 538 electoral college votes will weigh in before we do. (Another state, Louisiana, is on the same day, and three more states follow in the next three days.) The upshot: the party’s nominees will likely be decided before we have our say. It’s certain that most of those eight frontrunners will be gone.

Even then, the Washington state process is something of a fraud. The Feb. 19 Democratic primary vote is completely meaningless; all the party’s nominating delegates will have already been chosen at the caucuses, so unless you’re willing to sign up for a political party, invest half a day at some church social hall, and get fund appeals for the next two years, your opinion won’t matter. The state Republicans, to their credit, at least factor the primary results in with the caucuses in determining their delegates — not that the race is likely to still be much of a race by then.

And, of course, come November, Washington state’s 11 electoral votes will all go to the Democratic candidate, just as they have for every presidential election since the days of Reagan. Regardless of how or whether you vote.

So why does it matter what you, I, or any other local person thinks about the 2008 presidential race? Sure, you could join a campaign and fly to a state where the votes matter. (Most of us won’t.) And we can all send in our $25, $50, or $1000 (or whatever) to the candidate of our choice. That’ll make a big dent in the over $100 million that Clinton and Obama have already raised, or the likely combined total of over $1 billion that the two major party nominees will raise for 2008. And since when did “one dollar, one vote” become the standard for our democracy?

The end result is that much of the fascination with the 2008 race hereabouts reeks of rooting for one’s favorite sports team (albeit with more meaningful stakes). It’s fun, it’s entertaining, but it’s not to be confused with the functions of a healthy democracy. That would require, among other things, a national primary day, abolishing the electoral college, public campaign financing, and allowing more than two competitive parties. Since we don’t have any of those things, locally or nationally, and aren’t about to get them, sure, I’ll get some popcorn and watch the race. But we’re spectators in this race — not participants. And that’s a problem.

Meantime, we also have a governor to elect, a local congressional race likely to be hotly contested, and a lot of other offices and measures on the ballot where we can have far more direct impact. So why all the focus on the White House?

Nothing else at all happened yesterday as the world stopped and a smallish-midsized rural state without many delegates apportioned them to this summer’s nominating conventions for the two major parties’ 2008 presidential candidates.

The final tally:

Democrats

Obama 38%
Edwards 30%
Clinton 29%
Richardson 2%
Biden 1%
Others 0%

Republicans

Huckabee 34%
Romney 25%
Thompson 13%
McCain 13%
Paul 10%
Guiliani 3%
Others 0%

(A few obvious notes: on the Dem side, Richardson, Biden, and Dodd all ran hard in Iowa, and have squat to show for it — so much for a fourth “dark horse” being propelled into the race. Dodd and Biden, in fact, dropped out of the race late last night. Among the top three, in the larger scheme of things Obama’s extra delegates over Clinton and Edwards are meaningless, and he is from one state over; this settled nothing.

The Dem caucuses attracted far more Iowans than the Republican side; of the latter, one poll showed 60% identified themselves as Christian evangelicals, which tells you all you need to know about the roots of Huckabee’s rise. Even though he didn’t campaign much there, Guiliani’s showing, for a candidate leading the pack in national polling most of the year, is shocking. And when will people start taking Ron Paul seriously? Exhibit A: This unbylined, condescending Seattle Times article, which fails to mention — as did the entire Times web site Iowa coverage — that Paul pulled 10%, only three percent behind McCain & Thompson, and instead seems shocked that Paul intends to “continue his presidential campaign into New Hampshire and other states.”)

Of course, because this is the first actual contest that counts for anything, after a full year of wall-to-wall polling and breathless analysis of candidates’ haircuts, church attendance, and tipping habits, this morning the Iowa caucuses are getting the sort of news treatment generally reserved for (other) great natural disasters. Savvy reporters are also already filing their what-did-it-all-mean stories and launching your next round of blanket coverage and pointless speculation, hosted for the next five days by New Hampshire.

Welcome to election 2008. It’s going to be like this, in greater and lesser amounts, for another 306 days.

While the earth did, in fact, stop on its axis yesterday, and all six billion of its people held their collective breaths, a few miscreants did generate other news this morning. Our Friendly Mr. Dictator, Pervez Musharraf, made the news (and doubtless lots of new friends) by essentially blaming Benazir Bhutto for her own death. And Rep. Jane Harman released a declassified letter showing that contrary to CIA public statements, the CIA planned to destroy their torture interrogation tapes two full years before they actually did so. Oh, and in a classic bury-outrageous-news-on-a-day-when-it-won’t-be-noticed move,

After a two-year investigation into the killings of up to 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, the Marine Corps has decided that none of the Marines involved in the incident will be charged with murder.

Betcha Iraqis (who consider this case right up there with Abu Ghraib among American outrages) notice anyway. Way to win hearts and minds.

Locally, the P-I gives us “Leaky leaf blower leaves slippery slick on Green Lake path,” the sort of alliterative headline about a trivial story you’d expect in, say, the local Forks paper (no disrespect to Forks). Over at the Times, the breaking local scoop is even better: “A lone coyote was spotted roaming the south parking lot of Discovery Park Wednesday morning.”

(Someone should tell our friends in Bothell that coyotes have been sighted all over town for two full years now. For example, Danny Westneat wrote a column about it six months ago in the, um, Seattle Times. Which in turn followed this story from October 2006 in the, um, Seattle Times. And so on.)

And to add to the local news mix, local TV last night gave us graphic images of our treacherous area highways, and their tragic victims (and near-victims), here, here, and here.

Maybe the Iowa coverage isn’t so bad after all.

This morning’s fare from the local dailies looks a lot like their TV counterparts: both are highlighting crime (a New Year’s Eve murder on Capitol Hill) and the frivolousness of people swimming in cold Lake Washington and Seattle’s New Year’s Eve fireworks display being delayed a few minutes by a computer glitch (oh, the humanity!)

Nationally, the Iowa caucuses (cauci?) will dominate headlines tomorrow, but today it was international news: the post-election chaos in Kenya, and the post-assassination chaos in Pakistan.

Oh, and a bunch of college teams played football yesterday. In breaking news, exactly 50% of them won their games, a total one seasoned analyst described as “about average.”

In other words, yesterday was a holiday, and nothing much happened. Iowa (and New Hampshire next Tuesday) should change that for the next few days.

Geov, Piper, & Jessica wish you all the best in 2008.

This is an open thread. Of course.

The biggest item in the news today is international: the chaos in Pakistan and the complete lack of good options in Washington following the assassination of the Bush administration’s favored pro-Western alternative to the endangered, U.S.-backed dictator Pervez Musharraf.

Locally, as our top story, you’ll be relieved to know that six members of a Carnation area family, shot and killed on Christmas eve, are still dead. Otherwise, the P-I’s three other lead stories were also all either chasing local angles on non-local stories (local Pakistanis react, tigers can’t get out at local zoos) or more follow-ups to old stories (Carnation, the tigers, and the shocking news that the guy who was shot after running onto I-5 Tuesday was “depressed.”)

Over at the Bothell Seattle Times, we learn that “Bremerton woman says generator fumes killed her cat.” Seriously. That’s a story you won’t find in the P-I. Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same: Carnation, Pakistan, I-5 guy. Tune in next Wednesday when the news starts again.

And local television — aww, don’t make me weep. (KIRO-TV, to its, um, credit, did pick up the Bremerton cat story.) At least, in TV and print both, the fatuous year-end stories are coming on thicker and thicker. By Sunday, they may make up the whole paper.

With the near-complete absence of actual news this morning — an
escaping tiger killed someone (and was in turn killed) at the San Francisco zoo! A man who ran onto I-5 in Federal Way attacking cars was hit and killed by a speeding state trooper bullet! Holiday shopping was down this year! Several flakes of snow fell in Seattle on Christmas Day! — newspapers and TV stations in town are turning from the last drops of heartwarming holiday feature stories to year-end reviews in their use of fill material prepared ahead of time while reporters and editors take the week off.

You’ve been warned.

OK, now that I have your attention, let me point out that it was Eyman’s one genuinely non-toxic initiative, I-900, that gave State Auditor Brian Sonntag the authority and resources to go after the Port of Seattle, resulting in the performance audit released Thursday.

Yes, Goldy is right; the “$97.2 million waste” figure is a shot in the dark (the actual figure is probably much, much higher, because corporate corruption isn’t being counted as “waste” here); performance audits are necessarily subjective; and the news that the Port is an arrogant cesspool of waste and cronyism is no news to anyone who follows local politics. But the latter point vastly underestimates the impact of this report, for two reasons. One, not that many of us weirdos closely follow local politics — not compared to the number of people who will see today’s (and subsequent) headlines.

And secondly, the Port’s abysmal performance is intimately wrapped up in an Old Boy (and Gal) network of privilege and you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours winking (and smirking) that also implicates our local media. For far, far too long, every journalist in town has known what the Port of Seattle, with its own independent taxing authority, is doing to taxpayers (hint: it’s not “serving”). To date nobody has mounted the sort of investigative initiative needed to drag the sewage into the light in the way that, say, the P-I has relentlessly gone after the King County Sheriff’s Office. The material is undoubtably there, but it requires a commitment from the management that hasn’t been forthcoming, ever, because at the top our local dailies and TV stations are part of the same local elite. Even if they don’t play golf together with the Port of Seattle and its “friends,” how ever would they face them at the parties?

Editorially, the Times and P-I (especially the Times, not surprisingly) have favored business-backed Port commissioners and candidates and not reform-minded candidates. That and the lack of public education (i.e., media coverage) are a major part of the reason why the Port has been bad news for years, if not decades. They’re not named in Sonntag’s report, but they’re still culpable.

So where now? Sonntag’s report at minimum legitimizes and in all probability forces more media coverage (though look for the damage control efforts to begin soon as well). Sonntag’s report recommends several steps be taken in the state legislature; legislators are already talking about the need for more oversight. Relatively new Port CEO Tay Yoshitani came in last year, replacing the relentlessly corrupt (and well-compensated for it) Mic Dinsmore, promising a changed culture. There’s no time like the present. The same applies for the two newly elected commissioners, the business-backed Bill Bryant (who narrowly ousted reform leader Alec Fisken, a result that probably wouldn’t be repeated now) and Gael Tarleton, who ran as a reform candidate but whose own potential for cronyism has been widely questioned. We’ll be watching.

It’s only a shame that Sonntag’s report was released a few days before Christmas, when news is generally slow and not as many people are paying attention. The Port of Seattle deserves the widest possible scrutiny.

Thanks, Tim.

Locally this morning, none of the top five headlines of the Seattle Times and P-I match each other, which is a clue as to how slow a news day it is. It’ll likely stay this way through the new year. The holiday fill is particularly in full force over at the Times, whose Danny Westneat informs us this morning that “Jolly isn’t mandatory.” For the other side of this breaking controversy, KOMO-TV last night gave us “Christmas will still be merry.” (We crabby secularists at HA tend to side with Westneat.)

Meanwhile, what’s actually going on in, um, news? Not much. A barge ran aground at Elliot Bay Marina, and nothing leaked. After much lobbying by the Fremont businesses that must deal with the splattered remains, Gov. Gregoire is including in her new budget $1.4 million for a suicide prevention fence on Aurora Bridge.

And, in a P-I column likely to irritate the faithful (but a sentiment a lot of local Democratic activists & pols privately agree with), Joel Connelly calls today for Jim McDermott to retire in 2008. Why? Because Baghdad Jim is broke (having just lost his long-running court case), ineffective, and carries no weight even with his own party leaders. Connelly even suggests some possible successors (all Democrats, natch):

Five names come immediately to mind: state Sen. Ed Murray, ex-City Councilwoman Martha Choe, attorney Jenny Durkan, state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, or — if he quells a midlife crisis — Ron Sims.

Nationally, we learn this morning, courtesy the New York Times, that

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the C.I.A. about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.

And, to absolutely nobody’s surprise, the FCC voted to allow newspaper cross-ownership of TV and radio stations in the nation’s top 20 markets (including Seattle).

Oh, and Senate Democrats caved on Iraq spending again. Yawn.

They Never Learn Dept.: Last August, our dailies spent two weeks hyperventilating about lane closures resulting in huge I-5 backups that never materialized. No matter. Top headline in the P-I‘s web site (and on tee-vee) today: lane closures coming for two weeks resulting in huge I-405 backups! Even worse: the traffic mess will interfere with your Christmas shopping!! (Seriously. This was the focus of the P-I’s article.) Smelling salts, please: the article made no mention of August’s I-5 experience, in which people changed their travel habits accordingly. But we can’t have a daily paper stuffed full of ads from the malls suggest that you avoid I-405 and patronize your local neighborhood stores instead, now, can we?

Same Theme, Take Two: Three days ago, we were breathlessly told that the Port Townsend-Whidbey Island car ferry run was going to be out of service “for a year or more.” Today, we learn that it’ll be back next month. Moral: Don’t believe the hype.

In another Much Ado About Nothing story, everyone is milking another day of coverage out of the SLUT by reporting — gasp! — that someone left five ball bearings in the tracks Wednesday. (Great. Now every teen delinquent in the region knows a simple way to get yourself on tee-vee and the front page.) The P-I’s story in particular was notable for a closing quote by King County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson John Urquhart:

“We have no idea what their motive was, no idea who put that there and we’re not going to speculate.”

This just after P-I reporter Scott Gutierrez had run a paragraph of exactly that sort of speculation-by-innuendo:

Despite civic leaders hailing the $52 million streetcar line, it has been controversial among area residents. During the opening run, a bicyclist group organized a protest to call attention to the dangers of streetcars for bicyclists.

What, exactly, does that have to do with the ball bearing incident? Shall we spell it out?

And, to round out our local bad media day, a tale of two headlines.

The Seattle Times: “McDermott votes against Christmas resolution to protest Bush veto.”

The P-I: “McDermott: Christmas vote was jab at bill’s GOP sponsor.” Which in turn conflicted with the story’s lede, a third, particularly treacly non-explanation from Mickey D: “Christmas is really about children…A children’s holiday, if you will.”

Barf. On so many levels.

Hard to tell whether it’s sloppy reporting, or Sunny Jim saying stupid things while trying to make a non-story go away. Or both.

Nationally: War on Terror Watch #1: The House yesterday passed a controversial and sadly redundant bill to ban waterboarding and “other harsh interrogation tactics.” Controversial: nearly 200 reps, most Republicans, voted for torture, something unthinkable even ten years ago. Redundant: didn’t we already pass a bill banning torture two years ago? Aren’t we already signatories, quaint or not, to the Geneva Conventions? Naturally, George Bush issued an immediate veto threat against a measure he already basically signed into law in early 2006 (with a signing statement saying, correctly, that he’d ignore the law).

War on Terror Watch #2: Remember the uproar last year when a bunch of jihadist wannabes were arrested in Miami, with the Bush administration, as usual, using the busts to play Fear Factor with the American public? Never mind.

Officials had acknowledged that the defendants, known as the Liberty City Seven for the depressed section of Miami where they frequently gathered in a rundown warehouse, had never acquired weapons or equipment and had posed no immediate threat. But, the officials said, the case underscored a need for pre-emptive terrorism prosecutions.

The prosecution’s case against the seven, accused of, well, let’s call it hazy plotting to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and other landmarks, fell apart Thursday. A Miami jury acquitted one defendant and a mistrial was declared in the cases of the other six when the jury deadlocked. Naturally, the feds immediately announced that the remaining six would be retried. And naturally, the outcome of the trial is getting a lot less attention than the original arrests.

Instead, the most talked about news story of the day is a sports non-story, given that we knew the general outline of it two years ago. Former Sen. George Mitchell released his long-awaited report on steroids in baseball yesterday, and it was sweeping, but far from complete, offering 91 names of current or former players alleged (at times on very thin evidence) to have taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. The Mitchell investigation was essentially a preemptive move by baseball owners to (lightly) investigate themselves, sacrificing the reputations of a relative handful of players so as to hopefully forestall any federal or criminal investigation, which would turn up far more names in what was by most accounts a drug culture pervasive in the sport for over a decade. Roger Clemens (based on one person’s uncorroborated account) was the biggest of yesterday’s sacrificed reputations. Barry Bonds has been a lightning rod for steroids criticism and headlines because he has been black, surly, and very, very good for a long time, and now you can add Clemens, who has been white, surly, and also very, very good for a long time.

Twelve former Seattle Mariners were among the 91 named in the Mitchell report (but, after Jose Guillen was dumped this fall, no current ones). Note that Bret Boone, frequently suspected of steroid use in his Mariner heyday, was not named. (Neither, thank God, was Edgar Martinez or Jay Buhner.) But that itself means nothing. Mitchell had no subpoena power, and only two current players would talk with him. Most of those accused has ties with at least one of two people who did talk, former trainers for the Mets and Yankees. Seattle Times reporter Geoff Baker, in his Mariners blog, had the most succinct take of the day on the report:

Tip of the iceberg stuff. We’ve got all these names pouring out based mainly on the sworn declarations of two people — Radomski and Brian McNamee. Just imagine how many we’d uncover if Mitchell had the power to force everyone to talk to him under oath.

Or imagine if we had a news media that didn’t often spend its time covering trivia and even screwing that up.

One massive taxpayer giveaway down, one to go: As Paul noted rather exuberantly yesterday, Seattleites will get their first chance to pay for a ride on the SLUT this morning. A slow ride, too. And expensive: The $1.50 ticket for 1.3 miles (much of which is in Metro’s Ride Free Zone) is on top of the $52 million (and counting) Seattle taxpayers are already shelling out, or about $100 per Seattle resident for a pork barrel project designed solely to benefit Paul Allen’s South Lake Union development projects. But never fear: the P-I has some shameless boosterism to put your mind at ease. (Did you know that “retailers…expect business to increase when the streetcars start running”!! Well, compared to the last year of construction chaos, yes.)

And like any good parasite, Allen wants more. As Real Change puts it,

Vulcan (Paul Allen’s development company) is seeking approval from the City to build higher in South Lake Union. Legislation before the Council would provide that allowance, if they pay $5 million dollars for affordable housing for moderate wage workers.

This afternoon, the Urban Development and Planning Committee votes on chair Peter Steinbrueck’s proposal to require, as part of that package, $7.7 million (as opposed to the current $5 million) from Vulcan for affordable housing. The committee will also vote on a one-year study and possible subsequent launching of a rental housing inspection program, to do something about the city’s persistent slumlord problem.

Also in city council news, as of Monday, harassing a homeless person is now a hate crime. No word on whether the city will arrest itself (or Mayor Nickels) the next time an encampment is torn down and private possessions seized. And as if to underscore our region’s contempt for the homeless, an unnamed “transient” was found dead in Myrtle Edwards Park Tuesday, and the Bothell Seattle Times gave it an unbylined article of exactly 58 words.

Barack Obama was back in town last night, playing, er, orating a rock star-like gig at the Showbox (tickets: $100). Unlike most other states, Obama has a sizable fundraising advantage over his rivals in Washington state, which is why his surging campaign made time for the brief Seattle stop. 23 days ’til the Iowa caucuses.

One man campaigns for a job, another loses his: Univ. of Washington Athletic Director Todd Turner was fired, er, “resigned” yesterday because only three and a half years after inheriting a complete train wreck of a department, the football team still sucks. Art Thiel has a good column in today’s P-I on Turner’s undoing: the former A.D.’s naïve belief that things other than the football team winning games should also matter at a university.

Idiot of the day: The Marysville father who gave his two-month old daughter OxyContin. She nearly OD’d. The guy’s in jail now on that and other child abuse charges.

Elsewhere on the planet, Al-Qaeda — you remember Al-Qaeda, don’t you? — set off two suicide car bombs that killed dozens in Algeria. So much, again, for the “we’ll lure them all to Iraq and they won’t be a threat anywhere else” theory.

But not all is grim in the world. Former (U.S.-backed) Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to six years in prison Tuesday in the first of several trials he faces on corruption and human rights charges. Pity that more world leaders who shred laws and abuse their citizens’ trust don’t end up doing time. No names.

And there’s this: Some rock stars, unlike Barack Obama, really are rock stars. Led Zeppelin played their first full concert in 27 years in London last night, with deceased original drummer John Bonham capably replaced by his son, Jason. Word is they can still kick it.

My good friend and former Seattle Weekly colleague, Philip Dawdy, writes one of the best mental health blogs in the country over at Furious Seasons. And today Philip is trying to figure out how he’s going to meet January’s rent — and at the same time file a complaint with the state AG office — after Google Adsense cut him off, and apparently stiffed him on $600 in revenue already earned, over an apparent malware incident Dawdy has no responsibility for. The kicker: Philip can’t even get anyone at Google to tell him what he supposedly did wrong, only an anonymous (and probably automated) response instructing him that

…your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers.

So this is how bloggers are supposed to monetize the Web?

In the top story of the day, a big storm hit the Pacific Northwest.

In other news, there was a lot of rain in the Seattle area. According to the Seattle Times, it was also windy. The P-I reports this morning that some local areas were flooded. But over at KIRO-TV, instead, their top story was the governor has declared a storm emergency. And, KOMO-TV is reporting that everything is one big mess. And that — I wish I were making this up — everyone should stay calm.

In less interesting, secondary stories, one James Michael McHaney — described as a “former” aide to Sen. Maria Cantwell even though he was only fired on Friday, after he was arrested — has been arrested by the FBI on charges of trying to meet a 13-year-old boy for sex. McHaney worked as a scheduler in Cantwell’s DC office, which raises the question: was he trying to prove that Democrats as well as Republicans can do this sort of thing, or is it just something in DC’s water supply?

In another story of people in DC trying to screw folks they don’t know, it turns out the Bush administration has known all along that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. In other words, they were lying in order to stampede the American public into backing an unprovoked war they really wanted. Sound familiar? Now, hopefully, the MSM will get around to reporting what is fairly obvious to anyone who’s been following the Middle East: that they’ve also been lying about the Iranian government supplying weaponry to the Iraqi insurgency, the other main public Bush rationale for a disastrous region-wide conflagration.

A feared strongman is claiming victory in elections observers claim were rigged. No, it’s not Hugo Chavez — he lost his election on Sunday, and conceded as much, though the New York Times still can’t let go of its Chavez-bashing. It’s Vladimir Putin, the alleged democrat whose soul George Bush approvingly peered into. And we wonder why the world thinks the US is hypocritical?

The Washington Post, meanwhile, in one of those stories headline-writers just love, is reporting today that divorce harms the environment. Honestly, professors get tenure for studying this stuff.

And proving that TV news, despite the rain and floods, is still TV news — like McHaney, they just can’t stop themselves — every Seattle TV news outfit reported last night that McDonald’s is now char-broiling its burgers. The Renton McDonald’s had a fire.

Stay calm, everyone.