Big congratulations to Sherman Alexie, who won the prestigious National Book Award last night for his children’s book The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian. Alexie, a Seattle resident, is (in addition to being an amazingly talented artist) a good guy who lends himself to innumerable worthy causes. It’s nice to see him get the recognition. (This is the second year in a row that a Seattle resident has won the National Book Award; former New York Times correspondent Timothy Egan won it last year.)

As for serious hype, the Dalai Lama will visit Seattle next April. Let the human interest stories begin.

I highlighted it yesterday when they lost, so fair’s fair: last night your their Oklahoma City Sonics (0-8) clashed with the Miami Heat (1-6) in an alleged NBA game: the resistable object meeting the movable force. (When these two teams meet, you can throw out the records…and everything else…) Someone had to win (I guess), and it was your their Sonics, 104-95, breaking a 13-game losing streak and ensuring at least one win for the month of November. Next up: the underwhelming Atlanta Hawks, Friday. Oh, and UW beat Utah Wednesday night, 83-77, sending the 2-0 Huskies to New York for the final round of the preseason NIT next week.

One last election tidbit: the school levy simple majority measure (EJHR 4204) is now up by 11,000 votes and certain to win. But you knew that.

Elsewhere in the news, 50 or so more people were arrested at the Port of Olympia yesterday trying to block shipments of military gear coming in to a Stryker brigade at Fort Lewis. This has been going on for a week now, and why both the P-I and our state’s supposed newspaper of record (the Seattle Times) have been relying on wire reports for what is by any reckoning a major local story escapes me. The Iraq war is something a lot of people are interested in, and so, whether you agree with or loathe the Olympia folks, it’s hard to read the essential ignoring of this story as anything other than a political choice by our allegedly objective local media.

(Personally, I sympathize with both the aims of the Olympia protesters and their apparent frustration at their seeming powerlessness, but their tactics mystify me. When they were trying to block shipments of gear going out to Iraq earlier this year — in advance of the troops themselves, so it wasn’t endangering anyone — there was a certain logic to their protest. But this comes off more like a tantrum.)

This tidbit, meanwhile, concerning an actual national security threat, should piss anyone off: a new GAO report reveals that while you were getting cavity-searched for rogue toothpaste tubes at the airport, and three-year-olds were being kept off flights by the no-fly list,

Undercover investigators carried all the bomb components needed to cause “severe damage” to airliners and passengers through U.S. airport screening checkpoints several times this year, despite security measures adopted in August 2006 to stop such explosive devices…Agents were able to smuggle aboard a detonator, liquid explosives and liquid incendiary components costing less than $150, even though screening officers in most cases appeared to follow proper procedures and use appropriate screening technology…

Your tax dollars at work. At least the Saudis are getting a bunch of nice new jet fighters from us, right?

Oh, and even though he hasn’t been charged with anything (yet), a new defense fund has been set up for former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Send your sacks full of small, unmarked bills to…

Let’s start with the most taxing of all: Your Their Oklahoma City Sonics stunk out the joint against Orlando last night, losing 103-76 in a game that wasn’t that close. Rashard Lewis, one of the two Sonics stars dumped in the offseason by new Oklahoma owner Clay Bennett, had 19 by halftime. The Sonics are now 0-8, and, having lost the last five games last year, have now lost 13 straight over two seasons, a new club record.

Lee may well be right that the plot may be to make the Sonics so bad that nobody will care if they leave, but if so the ploy is backfiring: the Sonics are so bad one can’t help but watch, like a slowly unfolding car wreck or a grisly horror movie. They’re that bad.

The local papers are reporting this morning what HA readers already know: EHJR 4204 is now passing. The measure to allow school districts to pass levies with 50 percent, rather than 60 percent, of the vote, while dropping the requirement of a 40 percent voter turnout, has pulled ahead primarily on absentee ballots from King County, which has solidly supported the measure (unlike much of the state).

King County Council passed three new taxes yesterday: a one-tenth of a cent hike in the sales tax for a dedicated fund for substance abuse and mental health programs; 10 cents per $1,000 valuation in additional property tax to pay to repair substandard flood control levees; and 5.5 cents per $1,000 valuation to pay for new passenger ferry district.

Anti-war protests continued yesterday at the Port of Olympia, where protesters poured cement onto railroad tracks to try to keep trains from leaving the Port with military shipments. The brief, unbylined Seattle Times article on the topic is notable for relying solely on Olympia police as a source, without bothering to pick up the phone and call, you know, anyone from the Port or any protesters. Without any context at all (e.g., the protests that have been going on since last Friday down there), the article is a complete cipher. If you want context, try this much better piece from yesterday’s Olympian.

Nationally, after carefully taking a full working day to consider the seven hours of public testimony at last Friday’s FCC public hearing in Seattle, on Tuesday FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin issued details of his proposal to further deregulate broadcast station ownership, specifically lifting a ban on newspaper/TV cross-ownership in any one market. A tale of two headlines: New York Times: “Few Friends for Proposal on Media.” The always-friendly-to-DC-bureaucracy Washington Post: “FCC Chief Offers New Plan On Cross-Ownership.” Amazingly, neither article mentioned the overwhelming public opposition to Martin’s proposal, choosing largely to focus on the Tribune Co., Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and other large broadcasters that would be affected by the change. The Times’ “Few Friends” headlines refers to broadcasters who want still more lenient rules — not the public that thinks media has already consolidated quite enough, thank you. But then, it’s kind of hard to expect that public concerns would be acknowledged, let alone that we get (God forbid) balanced coverage on this issue, when both the Post and the Times have extensive newspaper and broadcast media properties themselves.

So much for the euphoria of last year, when everything went well.

First, the numbers, as of 4:30 AM, skipping uncontested races. Then, some observations. (And I’m sure Goldy will also chime in later this morning.)

I-960: Yes, 476511 (52.4%); No, 432811 (47.6%)
Referendum 67: Approved, 520667 (56.9%); Rejected, 393924 (43.1%)
Substitute Senate Joint Resolution 8206: Approved, 603168 (68.0%); Rejected, 283238 (32.0%)
Senate Joint Resolution 8212: Approved, 532253 (60.1%); Rejected, 352683 (39.9%)
Engrossed House Joint Resolution 4204: Rejected, 472938 (51.9%); Approved, 438815 (48.1%)
Substitute House Joint Resolution 4215: Approved, 464518 (53.0%); Rejected, 411785 (47.0%)
RTID, Proposition One: No, 66549 (55.1%); Yes, 54086 (44.9%)
RTA (Sound Transit), Proposition One: No, 66450 (55.1%); Yes, 54058 (44.9%)
King County Initiative 25: Yes, 81012 (60.4%); No, 53031 (39.6%)
King County Proposition One (Medic One): Approved, 113201 (80.6%); Rejected, 27270 (19.4%)
Prosecuting Attorney: Dan Satterburg (R), 72857 (54.2%); Bill Sherman (D), 61234 (45.6%)
Assessor: Scott Noble (D), 91673 (69.4%); Jim Nobles (R), 40263 (30.5%)
County Council, District 6: Jane Hague (R), 9071 (57.2%); Richard Pope (D), 6395 (40.3%)
County Council, District 8: Dow Constantine (D), 10668 (74.8%); John Potter (R), 3562 (25.0%)
Port of Seattle, Position 2: Gael Tarleton, 61419 (51.3%); Bob Edwards, 57312 (48.1%)
Port of Seattle, Position 5: Alec Fisken, 59502 (50.8%); Bill Bryant, 57194 (48.8%)
Seattle City Council #1: Jean Godden, 29420 (71.8%); Joe Szwaja, 11396 (27.8%)
Seattle City Council #:3 Bruce Harrell, 24845 (60.8%); Venus Velazquez, 15883 (38.9%)
Seattle City Council #7: Tim Burgess, 24311 (61.3%); David Della, 15164 (38.3%)
Seattle City Council #9: Sally Clark, 28814 (74.4%); Judy Fenton, 9758 (25.2%)
Seattle School Board, District #1: Sally Soriano, 25966 (38.3%); Peter Maier, 41593 (61.4%)
Seattle School Board, District #2: Sherry Carr, 37402 (58.2%); Darlene Flynn, 26661 (41.5%)
Seattle School Board, District #3: Harium Martin-Morris, 45366 (72.2%); David Blomstrom, 17082 (27.2%)
Seattle School Board, District #6: Steve Sundquist, 39519 (60.5%); Mari Ramirez, 25612 (39.2%)
City of Seattle Charter Amendment 17: Yes, 31853 (73.9%); No, 11262 (26.1%)
City of Seattle Charter Amendment 18: Yes, 31679 (74.1%); No, 11076 (25.9%)

Thoughts: Ugh. The RTID/Sound Transit Prop. One goes down, putting our region back to square one for transportation planning, with no inkling as to whether voters said “no” because they don’t like roads, don’t like light rail, didn’t like these particular road projects or the routing for light rail, didn’t like the price tag, didn’t like the regressive tax, or didn’t like the legislature tying the fate of two separate measures together. Or any combination of the above.

Eyman wins; repealing our antiquated supermajority for school levies goes down; we’ll get an elected Elections Director on King County’s ballot next year. At least voters (a majority, anyway) weren’t fooled by the insurance industry’s millions, and R.-67 passed.

However, the WSRP’s (probably illegally earmarked) last-minute infusion of cash stole the Prosecuting Attorney’s election for Ken Satterburg over Bill Sherman. And the last-minute infusion of self-inflicted stupidity doomed the Steinbrueck-anointed Venus Velazquez and incumbent David Della, giving us two more regressive new voices on city council instead. (And note that over two percent – a very high number – opted for write-ins in the Hague/Pope race.) We’re stuck with Jean Godden for four more years, too. Oh, and the downtown establishment/Seattle Times campaign to vilify the school board paid off handsomely: “they” have “their” board back, with two incumbents being bounced handily and the progressive (Maria Ramirez) losing out in the only other truly contested race.

Eccch.

In other news:

Pakistan is going to hell in a handbasket as Bush watches helplessly, having backed yet another unpopular dictator;

Republicans joined a House vote to override President Bush’s veto of a water spending bill, handing Bush his first veto-proof majority. On the flip side, two Democrats joined all Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve Michael Mukasey’s nomination as Attorney General; he’s expected to sail through the full Senate shortly.

And finally at the national level, the House spent a good deal of time yesterday debating Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Improbably, a move to table the measure, backed by the Democratic leadership, failed when Republicans started voting to debate the measure — calculating, as did the Dem leadership, that such debate would serve to embarrass the Democrats. (Or maybe not. After all, several polls have suggested that a majority of Americans favor impeaching Cheney.) In any event, Steny Hoyer did the next best thing by referring the measure back to the House Judiciary Committee, where John Conyers Jr. has already sat on it for seven months.

And over at the Seattle Times, once you work your way past the election coverage, there’s this classic lede from an AP story:

A Chelan County fire chief says a couple were lucky they weren’t killed by a cow that fell off a cliff and smashed their minivan.

The “Commission,” in this case, is the Federal Communications Commission, and if this sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

Twice before — on March 7, 2003, and just last year, on November 30, 2006 — hundreds of area residents jammed auditoriums to testify overwhelmingly in opposition to a Republican-dominated FCC’s attempts to further weaken ownership limits on broadcast television and radio properties. In each case, the crowds testified only before the two Democratic commissioners; the three-person Republican majority was MIA. But those crowds were broadly representative of a national movement for media democracy that in only a few years stymied former FCC Chair Michael Powell’s deregulation bid, preserved net neutrality, and stopped a telecommunications lobby “reform bill” widely expected to pass the Republican Congress in 2006. In last year’s hearing, local testifiers against deregulation spanned an unlikely ideological range, from Reclaim the Media’s Jonathan Lawson to Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen, from KVI Radio host John Carlson to UW President Mark Emmert.

This time, FCC Chair Kevin Martin, architect of the latest (big) industry deregulation scheme, is bringing the whole Commission to town to “prove” to them that Seattle really doesn’t care all that much about this arcane stuff. Which is why, despite the entreaties of local Congresspeople (who wanted four weeks), he has given exactly five business days’ notice for this unprecedented local hearing. The hearing was announced late in the day Friday, November 2, timed for the least-read and -viewed news time of the week. The hearing itself will also be on a Friday night, from 4-11 PM November 9 at Town Hall, 8th & Seneca near downtown Seattle.

For the first two hearings, a significant number of people traveled from throughout the region, from California to Montana to Alaska, to make their opinions known to the FCC. The short notice and inconvenient time seem particularly designed to suppress regional testimony. Seattle area supporters of media democracy will need to stand in their stead. The FCC is hoping for a sedate dog and pony show that will ratify its ideological desire to give the public’s airwaves to the biggest companies and highest bidders (think Murdoch), regardless of content. They are looking to ram this through before opponents can get organized.

Our job is to be organized. And show up.

In a significant way, we already are organized. Much has changed since 2003, when the FCC first came to town. Nationally, the media democracy movement that barely existed five years ago is now a potent political force. Locally, newspaper lovers dodged a bullet when an ongoing court bid to dissolve the Times’ and P-I’s Joint Operating Agreement was going so badly for the Times (which initiated it) that the JOA was extended instead. But King County’s other daily paper, the King County Journal, was dissolved in the last year, and the 2006 purchase of the Seattle Weekly by the country’s largest “alternative” weekly chain led to the effective dismantling of its news department. Among the companies owning the 30 or so major local radio and television stations, only Fisher Broadcasting (KOMO TV/radio, KVI and Star 101.5 radio) is locally owned.

I have a personal stake in this, of course. I was a columnist and editorial board member at the Weekly for eight years, until its shift in editorial direction. Plus, a media company I started over 20 years ago is now owned by Clear Channel, which is also the nation’s largest owner of radio stations, with over 1,200. When Clear Channel started, the FCC allowed a maximum of 14 stations per company nationally.) Now Clear Channel, CBS, Entercom, and Sandusky own five radio stations each in the Seattle area alone.

Ultimately, though, my personal stake is the same as everyone else’s: I want to know about decisions being made that might affect my life, and I don’t trust Clear Channel or CBS or Belo or Entercom or any of the other companies controlling our TV and radio dials to tell me what I need to know. I don’t like the idea of media monopolies on information. The same is true of the music I listen to or the entertainment programs I watch. The number of people who access radio or TV programming through satellite or their computer is still minimal. And so the FCC’s proposed ruling — which would, for the first time, allow radio, TV, cable, and newspapers in the same cities to all be co-owned by one company — is a recipe for a media monopoly on local news, entertainment, and culture.

November 9 is our chance to tell the FCC what we think of the idea. If you care about a free flow of information in our democracy, please turn out, and let them know what you think. Whether they want to know or not.

And who will be losers more frequently this winter (at least 60 times) than your Oklahoma City Sonics? The OC Sonics launched their lame duck season in Seattle, displaced from their true home by a renegade hurricane arena lease, with a convincing 120-103 loss in Denver last night. After a summer in which owner Clay Bennett and partners did everything possible off-court to get Seattle fans not to care about the franchise, we enter part two of the divorce, with Sonics fans getting their first regular season look at what’s left after Bennett jettisoned the two best players from an inept team last year. It ain’t pretty: two talented teenage draft picks and a bunch of people you’ve never heard of, unless you’re a UW fan, in which case Wally Szczerbiak simply brings back bad memories. It’s gonna get ugly. “Home” opener, and second loss of the season, tonight against Phoenix.

I hear it’s nice in Oklahoma City in January.

Another loser, and the day’s top local story: Disgraced anti-gay state Rep. Richard “Big Dick” Curtis (R-Porno Emporium) resigned his House seat Wednesday, not because he’s a hypocrite, but because he’s not gay, and Republicans can never forgive someone who has to proclaim, verbally, that he’s not gay. He just likes — well, never mind. The sordid details of his Spokane sexcapades are here.

More than 100 mayors — plus former President, future First Husband, and permanent rock star Bill Clinton — hit Seattle today for a climate change “summit” that has already had Seattle mayor Greg Nickels lunging from photo-op to photo-op all week. Clinton will also do some fundraising for his wife while he’s in the area.

In a local story carried by virtually everyone, a Central Washington University chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn sign language died yesterday at age 42.

On the national front, a loser Mexican gang member in the Bronx was convicted yesterday of terrorism in a gang-related shooting, under a new post 9-11 anti-terror law. Why? Because the violence “terrorized a civilian population,” an argument that can be made about virtually any street crime. And the ever-expanding power of the state marches on…

Remember when Fox News told us Al-Qaida was behind the California wildfires last week? This is the face of Al-Qaida: a ten-year-old playing with matches. Perhaps he can be prosecuted under new anti-terror laws, too. Waterboard him. The prospective new Attorney General won’t mind.

More on the loser meme: did anyone else catch that Dennis Kucinich’s life-altering UFO sighting experience, confirmed in Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential candidate debate, came outside the home of Shirley MacLaine in nearby Graham, Washington? The Dennis turned it into a Bush-bash: “…more people in this country have seen UFOs than I think approve of George Bush’s presidency.” (He’s wrong about that. Fourteen percent of Americans claim they’ve seen a UFO, slightly shy of Bush’s numbers.) Or, as Peter Gabriel once sang: “You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home.” Safe travels, Dennis.

Happy Halloween. Wonder what Jane Hague will be going as this year? And where? And how?

In today’s Scary Politician news, an anti-gay Southwest Washington Republican (natch) state rep goes to Spokane to watch gay porn and hit on gay strangers. After all, Spokane’s thriving local gay scene did such wonders for Jim West’s career. State Rep. Richard Curtis’s semi-local newspaper, The Columbian, lays out the sordid details.

Big props to neighborhood activists (including HA’s own Paul Andrews) whose years of hard work paid off Tuesday when a hearing examiner did what neither Greg Nickels’ crony-fied Parks Department nor the City Council would do: put an end to the ill-conceived zoo parking garage scheme. Let’s be clear: the zoo’s garage was never about allowing more of the masses (and their kids) to see cute furry animals. It was all about hosting revenue-producing special events for companies, trade groups, and other people with the money to burn on them — just like the recent Seattle Aquarium Expansion, the GasWorks Park Summer Concerts series, the city’s count-’em three taxpayer-built convention centers (the big one over I-5 and the two new competitors, one the Port of Seattle’s Pier 66, the other adjacent to Qwest Field), and so on. In the case of the zoo, it would have dumped that much more traffic into an area of two-lane arterials already seeing a glut of new high end condo-complex construction along Phinney Ridge. A bad idea, illegally implemented, finally shot down not by local constituents’ elected officials, but by the legal process.

Speaking of less car traffic, it was announced yesterday that nationally and locally, FlexCar and Zipcar will be merging. FlexCar is based here in Seattle; the larger Zipcar is based in Boston. The new company will be Zipcar, based in Cambridge.

Not much in the Bothell Times this morning (we learn that “blueberries are Washington’s blue gold,” and that — do I smell a Pulitzer? — Proposition One doesn’t fully fund a new SR 520 bridge), but the P-I has a piece with a local angle on Sen. Ted Stevens’ FBI corruption probe: whether he pushed legislation that benefited the seafood industry while his son was a lobbyist for that industry. The son is a charter member of the Corrupt Bastards Club. And dad, well, dad stands to be the club’s patron saint. What do you think?

OK, this isn’t a Jane Hague joke. Honest. KING-TV reports that the county councilwoman is now being sued for defamation by opponent Richard Pope’s campaign manager over what he claims are false allegations by the Hague campaign that he’s been convicted for domestic violence. Oh, and our friend Richard (will someone hire this guy to do permanent opposition research?) has also discovered, according to the same KING story, that when Hague’s mother died last year she left Jane out of the will. (Fill in obligatory David Irons punchline here.)

Here’s an excellent example of how supposedly objective journalism isn’t, from a lede this morning on that old warhorse, local housing prices, in the P-I:

Home-price appreciation in the Seattle area led the nation for the 12th month in a row in August, but indications were not entirely positive, according to a national index report released Tuesday.

Catch that? Inherent in the lede is the assumption that having the highest home appreciation rates in the country for a year running is “positive” (though other indicators, maybe not so much). If you already own a house and aren’t on a fixed income (a category that includes, presumably, P-I reporter Aubrey Cohen), that’s true: it means your biggest asset is performing nicely as an investment. But if you’re one of the 50% of our city who rents, chasing the ever-receding hope of affordable first-time home ownership, or if you’re on a fixed income and getting squeezed by the higher property taxes that inevitably come with a housing boom, not so much. And if you’re in one of those latter categories, what the P-I has just “objectively” told you is either, at best, that you don’t count, or, even worse, that you don’t exist.

(h/t Chevy Chase)

Speaking of fake news, didja hear the one about FEMA’s fake news conference this week, featuring friendly questions from “reporters” who turned out to be FEMA staffers?

Weekends are the slowest time for actual news, and the time when the fewest people pay attention to the news, which is why so many interesting things happen Friday afternoon. The Bush administration in particular has perfected the art of the Friday Afternoon News Dump ™, in which embarrassing or unflattering news items are released at the very close of business Friday so as to show up, largely unnoticed, in Friday’s late-night news and the lightly read Saturday morning papers. It’s a cute (and often effective) way to bury a story.

No apparent FANDs today, though. The New York Times does have a nice piece on the real significance of George Bush’s tough new sanctions against Iran: the fact that they’re being carried out unilaterally, walking away from both the support of European allies and the diplomatic process the Europeans have championed. Pointedly, the sanctions came without any parallel diplomatic overtures. Another sign pointing toward the Bush cabal’s intent for war with Iran.

Back in the old war (well, the most recent of the old wars), the Iraqi government announced yesterday that it is revoking the law guaranteeing immunity for U.S. contractors. Of course, it still has to catch them, which, without cooperation from the U.S., will be virtually impossible, so it is in many ways a meaningless gesture. As is the Iraqi government itself.

The top local story: Puget Sound Energy’s sale, to an investment company comprised of Canadian and Australian firms — though you have to read to near the end of the P-I’s story to pick up on that nugget, or that the sale will take PSE private so that the utility’s finances will not be open to public inspection except during rate hikes.

The Bothell Times, on the other hand, has nothing at all on the PSE sale, but does have a lead story using a confirmed grand jury involvement to recycle the week-old news of rape allegations against illusionist David Copperfield

The P-I pulled the same stretching-for-a-story trick with a piece on the SEC investigating insider trading at Jones Soda. Well, maybe they are. Turns out the whole story is based on the paper’s reading of an SEC refusal of a FOIA request from the newspaper. That’s the basis for more digging, but not for a story in itself. Unless it’s Saturday and you’ve got space to fill.

And why is the P-I also flogging next Monday’s (sold-out) Hannah Montana Key Arena show on its front page, with not one but two stories? (The word “pandering” springs to mind — specifically, to kids who think their parents’ newspaper is boring.) Telling us above the fold that a Disney Channel teen sensation has fans who are teenagers is many things. “News” is not one of them.

Oh: while I’m here (and since Goldy does this so shamelessly, why shouldn’t I?), I’m on the radio this and every Saturday morning (and have been since 1996) from 8:30-9 AM, commenting on the news of the week on Mind Over Matters on KEXP-90.3 FM. The show is also archived, for those of you who don’t get up that early in the morning on a weekend; check it out at www.kexp.org.

Well, at UW and at campuses across the country, Islamofascism Awareness Week has come and gone, with no increasing awareness that anyone has noticed regarding the shibboleth of “Islamofascism.” But there’s been plenty of “awareness” (or at least air time) given to its sponsor, David Horowitz. Now, via Talking Points Memo, we know why. In an interview with the George Washington University student paper The Hatchet, Horowitz says:

“I’m a prominent conservative but no one is inviting me to speak at their campuses, [so] I had to create an event.”

There you have it. Horowitz acts not out of concern for the safety of the republic, but to enrich himself, in this case through speaking gigs. All that’s missing is a cozy Bush administration regulatory appointment to feather the nest for himself and his friends. Oh – wait – the whole point is that Horowitz doesn’t seem to have friends. Hence the public spectacle to create invitations.

And funny how if you substitute the word “events” for “campuses,” and “organization” for “event,” Horowitz’s words could have come right out of Dino Rossi’s mouth circa Forward Washington days. Hmm.

With less wind & cooler temps, things are settling down: The wildfires in Los Angeles & San Bernardino Counties have come under control. Farther south in San Diego, things look better, but it’s still a battle. Preliminary damage estimate: over $1 billion.

But in Northern Iraq, things are heating up: the Turkish military yesterday attacked Iraq border regions. The British newspaper The Independent profiles both anti-Kurdish nationalism sweeping Turkey in anticipation of war and the Kurdish fighters the Turks are after.
And the P-I today is carrying an AP story on Iraqi Kurds getting ready to fight Turkey when it invades. Meanwhile, the U.S. is telling its puppet Iraqi government (over which it has little remaining influence) to tell the Kurdish provincial government (over which the Iraqis have zero influence) to curb the Turkish Kurdish rebels in mountainous rural areas (over which the provincial Iraqi Kurds have no influence). That’ll fix it.

The big local story is a business story: Microsoft had plowed plowed $240 million into buying 1.6 percent of the social networking site Facebook, beating out Google & Yahoo in negotiations. Most stories on the transaction spent a few quality seconds with a calculator and announced that this prices Facebook’s overall value at a preposterous $15 billion; scroll down for Paul’s perceptive HA comments on why it just ain’t so.

Elsewhere in the dailies, in the same year that 70% of Seattle voters rejected a waterfront tunnel as too expensive, the P-I’s front page today is floating (so to speak) the idea of an SR 520 tunnel (of indeterminate cost) under Montlake Cut, and/or Portage Bay, and/or even all of Lake Washington. Their upshot: heck, a little studying never hurt anyone, right? Especially when it mollifies wealthy Montlake and Laurelhurst residents and enviros concerned about the Arboretum. Then why are voters already being asked to approve money for SR 520 construction in the current Prop One “Roads & Transit” vote? Who’s paying for these probably-to-be-ignored studies, why weren’t these options considered earlier in the process, and how much are these nods to community process belatedly costing taxpayers now?

A moose bit my sister once.

Meanwhile, a day after profiling Richard Pope on its front page, the Seattle Times returns the favor for troubled incumbent Jane Hague.

And Boston crushed Colorado in the first game of the World Series, 13-1. And the Red Sox Nation rejoices.

The Southern California wildfires are fast becoming one of the biggest natural disasters in modern U.S. history (certainly in terms of people evacuated and property affected, if not lives lost). Today’s headlines reflect it. In this morning’s New York Times an article poses the burning (sorry) question:
“Victims in Wildfire’s Path Say, ‘Why Me?'” (It’s an unanswerable question, of course, unless you’re Glenn Beck.)

The Washington Post has a good piece on why the nearly one million evacuees (as of last night) have it a lot better than Katrina’s survivors in 2005. At the football stadium in San Diego where some 20,000 refugees are camped, it’s no Superdome. It’s orderly, food and Starbucks (gag) is plentiful, the National Guard is on hand (and not threatening to shoot the victims of the natural disaster). What are the differences? The fires are capricious, hitting here and there in neighborhoods rather than destroying the whole region; the region itself is wealthy, the suburban hillside neighborhoods in the fires’ paths often more so; the National Guard was already nearby, guarding the Mexican border against, um, Mexicans. Oh, and, as a separate N.Y. Times article points out, this time the White House and the federal government have scrambled to respond. But, according to the L.A. Times, the locals are already grumbling that the region was woefully unprepared for the cataclysm.

Locally, Neil Modie at the P-I (as well as a story in The Olympian) confirm that Dino Rossi will announce his campaign for governor Thursday in dual appearances in Issaquah and Spokane. (We know, (u)SP reported this Monday, and it’s not like we don’t trust their accuracy, but, well, we don’t.) The Bothell Times reported yesterday that Rossi was “expected to” announce Thursday, and leaves it at that today. In this season of surprises, no word yet as to whether Dino’s stump speech will differ one iota from his Forward Washington Foundation “nonprofit” days.

A KING-5 poll shows the “Roads & Transit” Proposition One in a dead heat. Oddly, KING-TV didn’t make the obvious connection with another of its own stories (which KIRO-TV and the Times also had): while Prop One contains ballyhooed maintenance money for local bridges and infrastructure, that doesn’t include Tacoma’s 11th Street Bridge east of downtown — a 92-year-old bridge that WSDOT abruptly shut down permanently on Tuesday because, according to state engineers, it’s in such a state of disrepair that it could fail at any time. The city charges that it’s the state which has been responsible for maintenance, or lack of it, on the bridge.

For some reason, both dailies think it’s a big deal this morning that a Metro bus driver is going to be fired for causing a fatal accident last April.

The Times takes an almost sympathetic look at the oddly viable candidacy of Richard Pope.

And, in the category of “The Treacle Gets Earlier Each Year,” the P-I today has a heartwarming syrupy Mary Swift column (does she do any other kind?) on a retiree who makes Christmas more cheerful for homeless kids. A. Week. Before. Halloween. Diabetics, it’s going to be a long season.

More than most, this election season has been dreadful. The ballot measures are bad enough, highlighted by another draconian Eyman eyesore and the shotgun wedding of a good transit package and an awful roads one. But city voters this season also must consider the future composition of the Seattle City Council.

Can we, like, abolish it and start over?

Recent weeks have seen a rash of headlines featuring council members and candidates and their inappropriate behavior. Even when the behavior had nothing to do with the person’s job performance (or prospective performance), the poor judgment shown, time after time, and this year’s seriously weak crop of council candidates, leaves one wondering: is this really the best we can do?

* Before the primary, Councilwoman Jean Godden’s campaign shopped to her old colleagues at the daily papers a “scandalous” story about her main challenger, Joe Szwaja, and a minor 17-year-old domestic violence incident. And then Szwaja obligingly stumbled all over himself responding to the reports.

* In a remark widely trumpeted as “racist” by supporters of opponent Bruce Harrell, candidate Venus Velazquez told a largely non-white crowd at a Hate Free Zone forum to “vote for people who look like you.” It was a dumb remark–especially since Harrell is also non-white–but in this case she’s gotten a bum rap. Velázquez was only reflecting the grim reality of Seattle politics, in which David Della was elected because he was Asian Pacific Islander and Richard McIver would long ago have been retired were he not African-American. Why? Because non-whites perceive, accurately, that in our at-large system the white council majority could not care less about minority interests. Velázquez would be the city’s first Latina councilmember, and she was speaking, however clumsily, to that. But it was still a really stupid thing to say.

* Harrell himself is a disaster, a developer-backed lawyer who–“when I starred for the Huskies in the Rose Bowl…”–trots out more–“back when my grandfather settled in Seattle…”–irrelevant cliches per second than any other–“growing up in a working class Seattle household…” politician I’ve ever met. Ever. (All guaranteed actual quotes. Frequent quotes).

* Sally Clark, who was appointed to the Council last year and still hasn’t had a serious challenger in two elections since, drew as her general election opponent one Judy Fenton, who ran for office because she wants the nude male sculpture at Olympic Sculpture Park covered up to protect our children. I can’t make this shit up. I’m tempted to endorse Fenton for the sheer entertainment value. I think I’ll go lie down instead.

* McIver made headlines this month–and spent two nights in jail–for a drunken brawl in which he allegedly tried to choke his wife. (Okay, okay, “choke” is a harsh word. He allegedly put his hands around her throat and squeezed. How’s that?)

Mind you, McIver is only on the council in the first place because he was appointed in 1995 to replace John Manning, who resigned after his third domestic violence incident. Manning ran for city council this year, too.

* Councilmember David Della, facing a stiff re-election challenge from a guy (Tim Burgess) who spent years advising the far-Christian-right group Concerned Women of America, embarrassed himself twice in the same week. First, Della pulled a Velazquez, injecting race where race need not be, by lashing out at environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Washington Conservation Voters for endorsing his (white) opponent as “someone who looked like them.” Then leaders of the police and firefighters unions reported that they, too, got flack from Della when they endorsed Burgess. Della should’ve expected those endorsements, Burgess being an ex-cop, but allegedly he warned the union leaders that there would be retribution for their choice, since Della sits on the Finance Committee and the police union is in negotiations with the city and has been without a contract for months. Ugly.

* And then Velazquez gets pulled over for DUI, refuses a breath test and generally doesn’t cooperate well with police, then does an about-face and apologizes to her supporters for all the fuss, and then pleads not guilty anyway.

I’ll ask again. Is this the best we can do?

Being on Seattle City Council is a big deal. It’s an over $100,000 a year job, with staff, that controls an annual city budget of well over $2 billion, oversees more than 10,000 city employees, and makes decisions that will affect every city resident for decades to come. One would hope that the position would attract intelligent, articulate, responsible visionaries, with proven records of accomplishment in their fields.

Instead, we have this sorry lot, the survivors of a process dependent mostly on fundraising and name recognition. More and more, we’re coming to recognize their names–for all the wrong reasons. Surely we can do better.

It’s still going to be windy today.

And every (non-)story is careful to note that WindStorm 07 (cue catchy graphic and sounder) won’t be nearly as bad as last December’s storm. But that doesn’t prevent any of them from playing on people’s fear of a repeat.

In other news:

To nobody’s surprise, Seattle City Council member Richard McIver entered a plea of not guilty yesterday to fourth degree assault in connection with a drunken late-night fight with his wife last week that landed the councilman in jail for two days. He has been absent from council chambers since, but will return to work today.

McIver’s wife, Marlaina Kiner-McIver, was in court for the hearing, and told the judge both that she wanted the two-week no-contact order with her husband lifted (the judge kept it in place, but allowed third-party contact) and that she did not wish to press charges. Interestingly, none of the multiple local TV and print stories on the hearing mentioned what any social worker will tell you: that when a partner in a domestic abuse case doesn’t want charges filed, it’s no real indicator one way or another as to what happened.

Greg Nickels has quietly proposed to city council a reform that, if enacted, would ensure his re-election for life: a city government call system that, rather than dumping citizens into impenetrable jungles of voice mail, would be answered by live operators 24/7. No more publicly popular administrative idea is imaginable.

Of course, there’s no word as yet as to which country the live operators will be answering from.

The state capitol announced that it will allow a nativity scene in the rotunda this year, joining a menorah and a “holiday tree” (whatever the hell that is) that were displayed last year. A “War On Christmas” type advocacy group complained after being denied a nativity scene last year (the capitol says they simply filed their application too late), and this year they get to set up their display as well.

Most curious is the last sentence in the P-I’s article on this, which addresses the rather salient question: is any religion-specific display in the capitol legal? The “answer”:

[The General Administration Department] vetted the idea [of the nativity scene] with the state Attorney General’s Office because of the religious content of the display and was told there was not enough time to research the issue.

The holiday displays have been a controversy for a year, and religion displays on public property are a perennial issue across the country, and Rob McKenna’s office didn’t have time to look up whether it was legal? So the bureaucrats are assuming it is legal.

Doug Honig. ACLU of Washington. Lawsuit. Bill O’Reilly wet dream. Tempest in holiday teapot. You read it here first.

In D.C., it looks like the Democrats have sold us out again on warrantless domestic spying, giving the Bush administration its desired legal immunity for telecom companies now being sued for secretly turning over customer records to the illegal program. News flash: Congressional approval numbers just dropped another point.

Internationally, Turkey’s parliament voted 507-19 Wednesday to authorize military force in Northern Iraq. While Turkish leaders say they have no immediate plans to act on the authorization, Turkish troops are already massed at the border and the Turkish military has already struck across the border in recent weeks against Kurdish rebels operating from Iraqi Kurdistan. The confrontation pits Turkey, a key US ally and NATO member, against the Kurds, America’s most reliable ally in Iraq, in yet another complication to the Iraqi clusterfuck. And say, whatever happened to the George W. Bush dictum that we won’t tolerate governments (like the government of Kurdistan) that harbor terrorists?

Has anyone else noticed that there’s been virtually no meaningful local news stories in our local news this week? Which raises the imponderable question: if a tree falls on a slow news week, does the gust of wind that caused it qualify as a natural disaster?

It’s always sad when one must displace Lou Guzzo at the top of the page, but a new day beckons. Welcome to what Goldy and I hope — if we can overcome our natural tendencies to laziness — will be a daily (at least on weekdays) feature: a brief overview of a few of the day’s top stories, as determined by our friends in the local corporate media, blogs and various other sources, and our own quirkiness, offered to You The Reader first thing in the morning.

Today, in case you hadn’t noticed, is Wednesday. It’s a slow news day.

Local pundits are already gushing over Hillary Clinton’s visit to valued donors supporters in Seattle next Monday. Yet someone who’s done far more good in the world — 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus — visited the Seattle area yesterday, and local media, with one exception, could not have cared less. Local TV ignored Yunus’s visit to speak at the Microsoft campus. So did the P-I. The only local story appeared in the Seattle Times.

Why is Yunus a big deal?

Yunus, 67, developed the system of microcredit, helping poor people improve their standard of living by using tiny loans to start businesses. Since giving out its first loans in 1983, the Grameen Bank he founded has reached more than 7 million borrowers who would have no access to credit through traditional banks. About 97 percent of them are women.

So why would Microsoft care?

“Microsoft is realizing that in the future a lot of their growth is going to have to come from poorer people of the world, so they’re interested from both a business and a philanthropy perspective,” [ex-Microsoft executive Paul] Maritz said.

More to the point, because their competitors care.

The ideas are starting to receive a warm reception from some corporate giants, too. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett last month visited Yunus in Dhaka and signed an agreement to help Grameen expand technology, broadband Internet access and education programs. IBM this week announced it would throw its support behind a new software system for microcredit institutions around the world.

And tellingly, Yunus sees a lot of parallels between the predations of capitalism in his native Bangladesh and the economy of George W. Bush’s America.

“Seattle has lots of pawn shops,” he said. “I see it in every city. Payday loans, check cashing. … It’s an indication the financial system doesn’t work here.”

Well, it works for some people. Comcast announced yesterday — in public notices quietly placed in newspapers around the state — a statewide $3/month hike in its cable rates, and a story in The Olympian (of all places) gives a clue as to why rates are rising (hint: it’s not the cost of the company’s commitment to outstanding customer service):

In counties where Comcast faces more competition, monthly cable TV rates tend to be lower…

Like where? Certainly not Seattle.

In Pierce County, Comcast faces competition in the form of the Click! Network, a fiber-optic cable TV service offered through Tacoma Power…

Ah, that evil, government-run Pierce County TV service we hear so many bad things about! Well, at least the free market offers superior content, right?

TV Tacoma, the City’s 24-hour government information channel, took home four national programming awards recently at the 22nd annual National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) video awards…

Right. Meanwhile, back in the world of commercial television, last night NBC deviated from its usual parade of reality TV freaks to present us with, um, a reality TV freak: an exclusive interview with disgraced Idaho Senator Larry “Happy Feet” Craig. The interview is likely to be commented upon mostly for Craig’s shot at the presidential candidate he until recently worked for, Mitt Romney: “He not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again.” (A line Craig stole directly from Keith Olbermann.)

But my favorite Craig line from the interview was a different one: our studly senator’s assertion that

“I go to bathrooms to use bathrooms.”

Uh, to do what, Larry? With his stony-faced wife also in the interview, he could hardly say…

Locally, Muhammad Yunus didn’t make the quality cut because it’s time instead for TV to trot out a perennial favorite story fetish this time of year: It Might Get Really, Really Windy Soon! Like, blowing leaves into a big swirling pile windy! Like, sustained winds of 20 mph windy! Like, whipping rippling the hair of the poor junior reporter stuck on the roof reporting live that it’s really gusting out here windy! Expect this “story” to dominate local media for the next three days.

To its marginal credit, KING-5 noted at the very end of its story that

There are two systems in the Pacific that are moving in, so what happens with those could lead to a change in the forecast.

In other words, stay tuned for updated forecasts! Or, as National Weather Service Johnny Berg put it in the PI’s nearly-as-breathless top story this morning,

“If the storm goes north toward Vancouver Island, we may not see anything out of the ordinary in Seattle.”

And that’s the news for Wednesday morning.

Your weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.

First, a moment of silence for local historian Walt Crowley and Essential Bakery founder Jeff Fairhall. I knew them both — principled progressives who died much too young this past week.

In Iraq, dying prematurely happens hundreds of times daily. But the killing of up to 25 Iraqi civilians by private Blackwater contractors set off a firestorm last week in both Baghdad and Washington. It also, not incidentally, showed just how irrelevant the Iraqi government is. Prime Minister Maliki immediately condemned the killings, yanked Blackwater’s operating license, and ordered its personnel to leave the country — a move which was summarily ignored by the U.S., as without private contractors our heavily privatized military effort would grind to a halt. (And besides, U.S. contractors are immune to Iraqi law.) But Iraqis were so enraged by the murders that U.S. personnel were confined to the Green Zone for four days anyway.

Less covered, but more significant, was the withdrawal last week of Moktada al-Sadr’s parliamentary allies from Maliki’s ruling coalition — not only splitting the Shiites, but leaving Maliki with less than half of parliament in his camp. Who’s left? The Kurds and the Shiite exile parties (SCIRI and Dawa) with little constituency in Iraq itself. If Iraq had a, you know, functioning government that followed the law, this would end Maliki’s rule; if you want to get all technical and stuff, without a ruling majority, his leadership (sic) is now illegal. But this won’t happen, for two reasons: first, Parliament rarely has a quorum, and second, the opposition can’t agree on anything anyway. Iraq’s “government” is a joke.

Also on that theme, the target date for Iraqi control of security forces was quietly pushed back again last week, from November 2007 to July 2008. It’s the second delay this year, and security forces are under Iraqi control in only seven of the 18 provinces. (Generally, the least violent ones.) Most Iraqis, as well as Gen. James Jones’ recent commission, have been calling for Iraqis to assume full control immediately.

More bad news in the “Iraqi Life Is Cheap” Dept.: Word last week that northern Iraq’s cholera epidemic, which has now struck some 5,000 people, has spread to both Baghdad and Basra, with first cases confirmed in both cities. Cholera is a disease that happens only when there’s no safe drinking water and the public health infrastructure has broken down completely — conditions more than met throughout Occupied Iraq.

In the “But Life Is Cheaper In D.C.” Dept., Congress continued showing its priorities last week, spending ample time debating the appropriateness of a newspaper ad while Republicans blocked measures to address the war itself. In the Senate, the Reid-Feingold bill to cut off funding in June 2008 failed 28-70 (Patty Murray voted yes, Maria Cantwell, no). The Senate also rejected Sen. Jim Webb’s bill to give troops equal time at home, 56-44, short of the 60 votes needed to break the Republican filibuster. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that even drawing down to 55,000 troops in Iraq (a proposal on nobody’s table), George Bush’s perpetual war would cost $25 billion a year, or up to two trillion dollars overall. Those numbers actually seem low. And the ever-busy Rep. Henry Waxman has a new target in his oversight investigations: State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, who Waxman accuses of cover-ups in investigations of waste and fraud in private contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization representing Foreign Service diplomats has joined in, calling on Krongard to resign.

In the latest confirmation of just how bad the internal refugee crisis has become in Iraq, a Red Crescent report last week says that not only have two million people (one in 12 Iraqis) fled their homes in Iraq, but a staggering one million of those were in Baghdad alone. What does that mean? Ethnic cleansing. Baghdad was one of the most ethnically diverse provinces in Iraq; all those people have been leaving because death squads would no longer allow neighborhoods to be mixed. Sunnis have all but been driven out of Baghdad, part of the de facto partitioning of Iraq that has already happened, much of it while the escalation surge was supposed to be putting an end to the problem.

In the latest US attempt at provoking Iran, last week the US arrested an Iranian trade diplomat in northern Iraq and accused him of smuggling IEDs into the country. The Kurdish government, which was hosting the man, protested strongly, but to no avail. And in the week’s most surreal bit of Iran-bashing — I know this didn’t happen in Iraq, but it’s too good to pass up — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, set to be in New York this week for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, was refused permission by the U.S. to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center. (In the wake of 9-11, there was an outpouring of support from both the Iranian public and its government — a measure of how things have changed in six years.) Why? Well, the request angered U.S. diplomats, who accused the Iranian leader of — gasp — “wanting to use Ground Zero as a photo-op.”

Well, if that’s the criteria…

Hey, unfortunately, it’s not This Week in Bullshit, but here’s your weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.

Well, speaking of Bullshit, Gen. David “Ass-Kissing Little Chickenshit” Petraeus spread it thick over Congress last week, touting “success” in Iraq (as did the Ass-Kissee-in-Chief in a nationally televised address) and dominating American media headlines. That’s too bad, because far more important stories were unfolding in Iraq itself, and they tended to directly and badly undermine Gen. AKLC Petraeus’s assertions.

The same day that Pres. Bush made his speech to that remaining fraction of the nation that cares what he thinks about Iraq, the tribal leader Bush had embraced only ten days previous in Anbar Province as an example of heroic leadership, uniting various Sunni tribes to try to rid the province of the widely despised Al-Qaeda and its foreign fighters, was assassinated. Thing is, the Americans are just as despised as Al-Qaeda, and so when Bush embraced the thuggish Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha as his kinda guy — Time Magazine described Abu Risha last week as having “a rather unsavory reputation as one of the shadiest figures in the Sunni community,” with a personal militia, a history of drug running, and a tribe notorious for highway banditry — he essentially signed Abu Risha’s death warrant. He was assassinated the day of Bush’s speech, somewhat undermining the claim that all Anbar is now happy and pro-American. While the White House blamed the murder on Al Qaeda in Iraq (of course), more likely it was a local hit, confirming the first rule of Middle East politics: the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

BBC/ABC/NHK polling last week showed just how unpopular the Americans are after the “success” of the escalation surge in Anbar. The results were grim enough in Iraq as a whole: 70 percent of Iraqis think security is worse in escalation surge areas now compared to before it began (and another 11 percent thought it unchanged, meaning over 80 percent of Iraqis believe the whole exercise has been a waste). A whopping 60 percent now think attacks on US troops are justified; 47 percent want the US to leave now, up from 35 percent before the escalation surge; and 35 percent believe American withdrawal would make further civil war more likely, compared to 46 percent who think it’d be less likely. Pretty damning stuff.

But in Anbar Province it was worse:

In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar expressed no confidence whatsoever in United States forces. Seventy-six percent said the United States should withdraw now — up from 49 percent when we polled there in March, and far above the national average.

Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq — 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.”

Every. Anbar. Respondent. So much for winning hearts and minds.

Another poll released last week was even starker. The British polling agency ORB, in surveying Iraqi families to find how many families had members who’ve died in the occupation and war, estimated that one in two families have lost at least one member, and that overall a staggering 1.2 million or more Iraqi civilians have killed so far. That number is roughly in line with the widely ridiculed 655,000 number published in an epidemiological study in Lancet last summer, and confirms not only that the civilian death toll has been far higher than official estimates, but that the violence has worsened sharply in the last year.

The escalation surge wasn’t popular in Baghdad, either: on Wednesday, residents of one of the few remaining areas where a Sunni and a Shiite neighborhood adjoin each other took to the streets to protest the U.S. military’s erection of a wall to segregate them from each other. The walls being built to “protect” residents from each other have been fiercely criticized by many residents themselves, who argue that they promote ethnic segregation, are as likely to keep attackers in as out, and separate family from family.

But perhaps the biggest Iraq story of the week got almost no media play here: the oil deal cut by the Kurdish provincial government with Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas. Why is this a big deal? First, it means local governments are starting to ignore the Green Zone government entirely and cut their own deals, which is a death knell for the oil “revenue-sharing” law that is perhaps the U.S. government’s biggest benchmark for political “success” in Iraq. It also suggests that Big Oil is now betting on the failure of the U.S. mission in Iraq and the subsequent partitioning of the country. And the deal itself (along with one the Kurds recently cut for natural gas) makes that partitioning more likely, as the Kurds and Shiites have plenty of their own oil resources and need neither the Sunnis nor each other, let alone the phantom al-Maliki “government.”

The last element undercutting Gen. AKLC’s testimony last week was the Pentagon report it was supposed to accompany. That was quietly released just before the weekend, and showed that even with the administration’s extremely generous definition of “progress,” only half of Congress’s 18 benchmarks showed progress, exactly one more than in an interim report in July. That area was in allowing former Ba’athists into the government, and the “progress” there was only in a tenuous deal between a handful of politicians that has yet to be implemented — and that is similar to numerous such deals that have collapsed in the past. Meanwhile, a separate State Department report, also quietly released in a Friday Afternoon News Dump, revealed that — surprise! — religious freedom in Iraq is down sharply in the last year.

Somehow, this all is being spun as “success,” and Bush is now promising a “withdrawal” to celebrate it — next Spring, six months past schedule, back to pre-escalationsurge troop levels because the US military can’t sustain its current deployment without either extending tours (again) or starting a draft. Which is to say Bush is keeping in as many troops as he can as long as he possibly can, and then seeking credit for giving our poor men and women in uniform (the ones that survive his vanity project for a few more months, anyway) a long-overdue rest.

Or maybe he’ll just send them to Iran. That propaganda campaign also continued apace last week, with the US claiming that a fatal mortar attack on U.S. military headquarters was carried out with an Iranian rocket. Even if you accept the curious logic that the Iranian government is responsible for every Iranian-made weapon Iraq — after all, the U.S. has utterly flooded Iraq for the last four years with weapons now on the black market, and you don’t see Washington bombing itself — the evidence to support the claim that the rocket was Iranian-made turned out to be less than compelling. Here’s Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner: “Can I hold up a piece of fragment today that has a specific marking on it that traces this back to Iranian making? At this moment I can’t do that.” THEN SHUT THE HELL UP.