As for extracurricular headlines, fur continues to fly over New Hampshire vote fraud, with MSM like The Dallas Morning News maybe perhaps starting to get interested. My $.02 continues to be data mining. It’s early in this game for conclusion-jumping. I will say that partisanship has nothing to do with voter fraud, which is simply about rigging results to ensure it can be done better next time, and that no one disputes Diebold at all levels (not just touchscreens) is easily hacked. No one with any brains thinks Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 were clean, so why not keep an overzealous eye on the 2008 campaign as it plays out? If you dismiss all voter fraud as conspiracy nuttery, then you’re just another plutocratic patsy. More fodder here and from our own Bev Harris’ Black Box Voting.

To their credit, some of the normally self-assured TV pundits are saying they don’t know what the hell is going on any more. Until a more believable assessment of the polling disparities is provided, I’ll stick with this.

UPDATE [–Goldy]:
Or maybe, the polls were right… on Sunday. Unfortunately for Obama, the election was held on Tuesday.

UPDATE, UPDATE [–Goldy]:
Or maybe, of course, the electronic voting machines couldn’t have been hacked because, um, there weren’t any.

You don’t have to look very far around Seattle to see the benefits of the $198.2 million levy. Virtually every city park has gotten some enhancement, whether it be murals, new bathrooms or a near-makeover such as daylighting Ravenna. But the process has been frequently contentious, with open-space advocates, civic activists and neighborhood groups butting heads with Parks Department officials over insidious commercialization, including plastic grass, leasing of public buildings to private entities and favoring money-making organized athletics over more traditional but non-revenue producing uses. Parks policies have proven a flash point for community controversy, including tree-cutting in Occidental Park, concerts in Gas Works Park, field lighting and warehouse-leasing in Magnuson Park, fake grass at Loyal Heights and the notorious Woodland Park Zoo parking garage, where Parks was the city’s partner with the non-profit, private Zoo Society.

In many cases, Parks ran roughshod over citizen opinion and was later found to have violated the law or public process. With the departure of longtime director Ken Bounds early last year and overhaul of the Parks Board, fresh air seems the rule of the day. Renewal of the levy, which Conlin expects to see on the November ballot, is a politically bold but risky move. When I mentioned the contentiousness around Parks, Conlin admitted, “It’s something we’re going to have to work with.” Whether the process heals some still-festering wounds, or merely rubs salt in them, will attest to Conlin’s and the Council’s political adeptness. No one wants to see parks fiscally hamstrung, but the levy could provide a negotiating wedge for the public to ensure a transparent and fair, even if rocky, process for determining parks policies.

The move also could highlight Conlin’s own generally underappreciated political skills. While not committing to any particular office, Conlin already has begun raising funds for a 2009 candidacy that his fans hope will be for the mayor’s office. Backing the levy is a brilliant move in that sense. It will provide a high-profile issue and political test-bed for Conlin. It puts the mayor in a tricky position: If he actively opposes the levy he’ll look anti-civic and hypocritical (“Mr. Green Opposes Public-Space Funding”). If he does a 180 all of a sudden he’ll look like he’s not only flip-flopping but merely following Conlin’s astute lead.

A co-founder of Sustainable Seattle first elected to the Council in 1997 on a strong environment/sustainability platform, Conlin also is in a position to challenge some of the mayor’s inconsistencies of promoting unbridled development while pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At nearly every level, from the cars he drives to the trees he cuts down (while announcing massive stick-tree plantings, natch), the Nickels persona is fraught with hypocrisy. A lapdog media airbrushes Nickels’ flim-flammery, but a resilient City Council led by its new president could embarrass the mayor when called for. Significantly, neither Nickels nor a mayoral proxy was evident at the going-away party for Peter Steinbrueck last month, or yesterday’s swearing-in reception.

Beyond any mayoral implications, though, there’s a sense that with global warming and green initiatives driving much of public policy, especially in Seattle, Conlin’s time has come. Over the year’s he’s been a consistent advocate for the environment and the little guy in city politics. He’s done far more behind-the-scenes maneuvering than he gets credit for. He’s shown an ability to work with a variety of constituencies, including downtown developers, in forging effective compromises. And when he’s been crossed, he hasn’t gotten arrogant or rattled. I’ve never seen Conlin get really mad. But I have seen him get even. In throwing down the gauntlet as Council president and coming to the game with certified green credentials, he’s daring the mayor to practice what he preaches. It’s going to be an interesting next two years.

OK, this was supposed to be about yesterday’s headlines, and we’ve got some good ones, even if the material beneath them could use some word off the street as well. Housing prices, as you’ve been reading here on HA since the Fall 2007 days of “can’t happen here” local headlines, have been verified statistically to have hit the wall. Both papers have lead stories, The Times being the better reported while still relying on the impeccably unbiased, rock-solid reliable Windermere Services Co. for the upside. The P-I has a hilarious quote about the market having bottomed out and prices actually on the rise. Maybe they should interview these realtors about the benefits of relaxed marijuana laws. Reality-check that quote with The Times piece: “He wants to sell his Granite Falls home of four years. But he’s feeling ‘very unsure, just like most’ about whether the local residential real-estate market has hit bottom.’

I for one would hereby like to say I am not unsure: PUT DOWN THAT DOOBIE! IT HASN’T HIT BOTTOM! OK????

One clue comes from a conversation I had last week with a Seattle realtor about a North End property:

Realtor: “It’s been sold on contingency.”

Me: “Contingency? Now there’s a term I haven’t heard in awhile.”

Realtor: “Oh yes, it’s coming back.”

I checked a couple of days later. The house is back on the market, guess that contingency didn’t work out (wink wink).

You learn a lot walking the street and talking with folks. It does require passing on the budget meetings and getting out of the damn office.

If more reporters did that, we might not have to rely on state audits to uncover Port corruption. In a world of an aggressive press, there would be daily stories about the need for heads to roll at the Port. Instead a passive media sits on its hands and waits for the Justice Department to do something, so they will have some official source to quote.

What else… With Starbucks stock slowly sinking in the West, the coffee giant canned its CEO and is bringing back none other than icon Howard Schultz to run the operation. With the Sonics no longer a pother, Schultz can now focus on doing for Starbucks what he did for Seattle basketball…no wait, that doesn’t read right. Howard we luv ya! But bringing you back isn’t going to make Peet’s and Herkimer and Zoka and the whole new “greening” slash localization of coffee go away, to say nothing of jittery aging boomer nerves. One word: Tea. It’s the new espresso.

There’s other stuff too, including the Zoo’s insemination of Chai in a story that misspells Alyne Fortgang’s name and could use a hard-nosed followup, but tell you what. I’ll leave them for tomorrow’s headlines, make that headline, reporter. Once again I dodged the elections bullet, but for tomorrow there will always be jaw-droppers like this.

The Harps tragedy merely builds on 2008’s uplifting theme of death and dying. Over at The Times there is wonderment at whether a mentally ill son who killed his mother has the right to her estate. And the archives continue to swell at both papers with stuff from the Carnation Christmas eve killings, the Christmas Day state trooper shooting and other acts of homicidal holiday cheer.

Also, Seattle police have added surveillance cameras at 18 intersections, which gladdens my bicycling heart (anything to induce paranoia in the few crazy-ass drivers who threaten to give law-abiding drivers like yourselves a bad name) even as I admit these things are not so much for traffic monitoring as just another get-used-to-it data mining of our everyday lives for a plethora of doubtless innovative end uses. Someday we’ll have real-time video of an entire Capitol Hill stabbing and no one will be asking if that’s a good or bad thing.

Apart from that, what’s interesting about The Times opening screen is that a third of it is taken up by real-estate ads. When you’re facing a $6 million deficit, every little bit helps. After all, who knows how many property-ad dollars there’ll be six months from now, as Seattle hits the wall that has squished everyone else (no real-estate ads on the home page of the San Francisco Chron, for comparison). For the time being, we who have no shame humbly point out that HA remains a relative bargain for all you marketers looking to sell to smart investors like the Rabbit.

Perhaps on any other day, oil passing $100 would be Page 1 news. But an anxious nation has the Iowa caucuses to divert its attention. The Times, in one of those “amazing” measures that helped save it $21 million, does not appear to be sending anyone to cover Iowa, something even The Stranger found the wherewithal to do. As for me, pecking away in the quiet comfort of my north Seattle home office, man am I glad someone else has to do tomorrow’s headlines.

Your ad, placed here!

The Seattle Times gets the nod for the very first headline of the year, giving birth to a bouncing 24-pt. sans serif named “Skiers packing snowy slopes” at the propitious hour of exactly 12:00 a.m. And what a cute little tyke she is, all white and fluffy. Photo included!

It took the P-I 34 minutes after midnight to produce its own 24-pt. sans serif zinger, the slightly longer and heavier “Woman stabbed to death on Capitol Hill.” As my 8-year-old nephew might put it, Yuuucccck. Looks like 2008 got off a bit on the wrong foot over at the spinning globe. As for the identical fonts, looks to me like somebody’s been sharing templates…might wanna run a DNA check over there (wink wink).

These are the clear winners, folks. As far as I can tell, the TV stations haven’t registered any newborns yet for 2008. And I have to confess, I expected nothing from the folks at Slog, since their headlines are usually written by barely intelligible unpaid interns who seldom drag themselves out of bed before 9. But whaddyaknow, they get 3rd place with Ka-Bust. Breaking the mold as usual, Slog brought into the world an actual serifed head, topping a story about the Needle fireworks not working.

(Here at HA we beat everyone, of course, with Will’s kicking and screaming “Happy New Year!” video post right on the button at 12 a.m…try it with a hangover!)

1. These guys know really bad comedy. They can spoof really bad comedy. They can flop on demand.

2. Watch for digs at their corporate overlords. They’ll be subtle. But you’ll know ’em when they make ’em.

3. ZombieTV. They’re back! But with little blanderizers embedded into the back of their necks. Pod People cum (new meaning for) Podcasters.

Other speculations? Do we really think they’ll be anywhere near as funny?

So now for the 2008 Roundup. We’ll start with the local headlines:

Overbuilding Crisis: Can It Happen Here? As more hi-rises and condos and townhouses continue to get built while the ones already on the market sit unsold, alert local media sense “excess inventory” in the housing market. Not wishing to offend real-estate advertisers, however, they cast the meltdown in upbeat, forward-looking platitudes like “brief lull,” “fleeting aberration” and “not as bad as Florida.”

Richard Conlin to Run for Mayor. Someone who actually practices sustainability to take on someone who just preaches it.

Streetcar, Metro Bus Collide, Injuring Both Passengers.

Oklahoma City Bans Sonics. Says it desires professional basketball team.

7.7 Quake Levels Viaduct. God weighs in on surface-street option.

Transit Measure Defeated at Polls. By a ___ to ___ margin, voters have turned down a ____________-___________ plan, costing ________ billion, to be built from ___________ to ____________ by the year _____ in order to solve the region’s growing, critical, urgent, yikes-we’re-all-doomed transportation crisis.

And now for the national headlines:

In Replay of Great Depression, Stock Market Crashes and Banks Collapse. Bush remains upbeat about economy, calls mass suicides on Wall Street “misoverreaction.”

Bush to Seek Third Term. Attorney General, citing loophole in law, says president can run if he changes his legal name.

Bush Bombs Iran. President declares martial law “to protect the safety of our country.”

Suspected Terrorist Plot Disclosed. President declares martial law “to protect the safety of our country.”

Republicans Score Landslide Win After Osama Bin Laden Brought Into Custody on Nov. 1. Faced with riots by angry voters, President declares martial law “to protect the safety of our country.”

License that man!!!

If you are distraught at having stumbled into Journalism 100.5, then yes, you can correctly surmise that this is an extremely slow headlines day. I’m writing this at 12:30 a.m., waiting for The Times Web site to flip, the P-I having provided me with “Sometimes Scanners Get Price Wrong” (Good Lord, now I’ll never get to sleep!) and “Neuheisel Eyes Successful Return” (and even if I do, my worst nightmare will be confirmed). Of course, the scanner story doesn’t mention what to do when you’re undercharged, which in my experience happens more often. Leave it to the press to out one of consumers’ few weapons against rampant inflation. Hopefully Costco management won’t see this one.

I would be remiss not to tip my hat to Times senior political writer David Postman for his generous acknowledgment in The Stranger of my conversation with my daughter a week ago, wherein I informed her that our beloved Crocodile, where Franz Ferdinand, Turin Brakes, Tapes ‘n Tapes and so many other uncommercialized rising bands had provided so much personal joy and temporary deafness, was closing its sticky grimy doors. But this was hardly my scoop, as I noted in Tuesday’s headlines post. My only reason for bringing up the thing was to give The Weekly credit, which is more than our friends at Slog have. Not to slight them in the slightest: I was just thinking how wonderful it is to have Erica C. Barnett back rattling the cages at City Hall (which were notably undisturbed by any local media during her absence), so much so that I almost forgave her for taking yet another interminable vacation, this time with a paucity of posts that she blamed on lack of Wi-Fi. This of course being the current reporter’s “headache and flu” excuse after a night of carousing, my all-time favorite being, after a reporter called in with a bad back, his editor’s observation that the female reporter he was with the previous night was no doubt going to call in with a bad front.

At Erica’s age I was getting two weeks of vacation and wasn’t paid enough to go to Italy Barcelona, or even Austin. But it seems only fair that someone who does the work of three reporters get commensurate time off. Welcome back Erica. Now tell me what Conlin will do as the next Council president…

Ah yes, The Times site has flipped, and the lead is lead: High lead levels in kids’ jewelry, a lamentable but unsurprising development to HA readers of Goldy’s scoop yesterday, sprinkled liberally with insights and calls to action, the way real journalism is supposed to work.

Addendum: Somehow in my blurry-eyed mumblings I missed the P-I coverage of the homeless rally last night. Nothing in The Times, which apparently is content to stick with Nicole Brodeur’s boneheaded revelations of a couple weeks ago (although a search did turn up a creditable report on Gates Foundation efforts for homeless families). The best discussion of course resides at Real Change and its editor publisher Tim Harris’ great blog. Give an RC vendor a fiver next time around, it’s Christmas folks.

On The Times side, today’s banner is about a humble Sammamish vendor who makes fire-resistant t-shirts for the military. Seeking to expand his business from the Army to the Marines, the guy ran into InSport, a big corporation whose megadollars lobbied an “earmark” for t-shirt contracts — can you believe this — without a bidding process. Welcome to our post-Halliburton, no-bid-contract world…although the story doesn’t actually go all Big Picture like that. What we have instead is the reliance on polite talk for corrupt practices: bribes and kickbacks become earmarks and sole-source contracts. I for one would be interested in this guy’s suggestion about what to do, and how he might vote in 2008. Make me care…heck, make him care about the story.

Of course, even relatively tame investigations like this won’t happen under media consolidation, which is set to go forward today despite near-universal opposition at public hearings, in congressional hearings and from anyone with half a brain. In the hmmm dept., the story got A1 treatment from The Times and nary a Top 10 mention from the P-I. For today’s Reader Quiz and the chance to win a trip on the purple streetcar, can you tell me which newspaper is locally owned?

The P-I does, however, wring its hands over the closing of the Crocodile, days after anyone who cares knew about it (or suspected its imminency), the taxonomy of the scoop (I think it was The Weekly this time) somehow escaping the pit-bullish reportorial skills of the newspaper staff: “Word of the closure spread like wildfire Monday through the city’s music blogs…” Oh come on. I told my daughter about this last Thursday. And no mention of the Big Picture here either: The Showbox gets sold, the Croc shuts down. Other than being small crowded venues for up and coming bands but sitting on prime real estate prized by greedy developers, they have nothing in common.

The Times also takes a stab at relevancy with an update on the let-nature-run-its-course theory of disaster management. Dot not connected: Floods are hardly a “natural” occurrence, as The Times itself showed Sunday with the Chehalis debacle. “Flood risk is only going to get worse, scientists say. That’s because of two converging trends: climate change and development…” How about the trends of “insatiable greed” and “self-destructive stupidity”? Too Big Picture…

Finally, we bring you a new feature, inspired by Goldy’s and my debate yesterday, the Local Headline That Ran Elsewhere. Today’s donor is The New York Times, whose lead Business Day coverage, The Price of Growing Fuel, features a Portland brewery owner looking really disgusted at the skyrocketing price of barley. Also pinched by a hop shortage, some breweries are even going out of business, leaving us HAs with lamentably fewer places to cry in our beer. With that, we provide a radio segue only a true aural rebel like Goldy would ever use, to our weekly reminder for Drinking Liberally…Darryl, take it away!!!