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My posting has been a little sparse as of late. Why? I don’t think I ever really announced it, but as of the end of September, I’m a full time student at Seattle Central Community College. I have one year to go until I can transfer to UW. I’m excited to be back, but the workload is more than I was prepared for.

With full time school and a very interesting part time gig, I’ll be super busy for the near future. Some things I will be looking out for:

Roads and Transit. The latest polling puts the measure at the mid fifties, which is decent, but not great. I get the sense that Seattle’s great civic tradition of screwing the pooch on transportation will pay us yet another visit this fall. Already, the whispers of “vote this down, we’ll come back with something next year” can be read in the blogosphere.

If this this is voted down, I’ll tell you what is coming:

Last January, a commission led by former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice and telecommunications billionaire John Stanton called for a new agency of members who would plan and finance road and transit projects for central Puget Sound. The new Puget Sound Regional Transportation Commission would take functions from the Puget Sound Regional Council, the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID), and Sound Transit.

The Rice-Stanton report [2.5 MB PDF] concluded that there are 128 agencies who manage aspects of transportation in the four-county area. “Our current system of transportation governance delivers inadequate results and will need fundamental systemic change to meet our region’s transportation needs in the future,” they declared.

Sound Transit and others fought the proposal, which passed in the state Senate but died in the House.

If ST2/RTID doesn’t pass, the punishment will not be doled out equally. Sound Transit, an organization with no friends in Olympia, will get the lion share of the blame. The Rice/Stanton plan will likely pass both the Senate and the House. (Some ask, “why would Democrats shitcan Sound Transit?” Remember, we’re not talking about regular Democrats. We’re talking about Olympia Democrats. This blogger was once told the story of a Sound Transit community meeting in north Seattle, where state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson showed up in a t-shirt that read “Mag-Lev Mama.” That’s how out to lunch they are on this issue.)

If Rice/Stanton passes, Sound Transit will be folded into a larger agency which will, in all likelihood, be governed by an elected board. Seattle, home to transit loving liberals, will have its political clout diluted by the new governance scheme. A transit board member in, say, Gig Harbor will have the right to veto transit funding in Seattle. And that, ladies and gentlemen (and Sen. Ed Murray), is bullshit.

Don’t forget that even if Prop 1 goes down this fall, roads will still get built. Why? Gov. Gregoire won’t allow 520 to plunge into Lake Washington. Expansion of the south portion of 405 is popular on the Eastside (and already partially funded), and with traffic congestion statistics showing this stretch of road to be the most congested in the state, it will be an easy call for legislators. Roads spending, unlike light rail, has sometimes be handled by the legislature without a vote of the people. Initiative 912 notwithstanding, two gas tax increases came out of Olympia without public votes. This could very well happen again, but this time to fund the projects that RTID funds.

The “Let’s Wait ‘Til Next Year” crowd sometimes cites Sound Transit’s success at the ballot box in 1996 as proof that light rail can do a quick turnaround to be approved by voters. What they don’t tell you is that Sound Transit’s failed measure in 1995 was paired down significantly to gain approval in 1996. The package in ’95 included light rail north to Lynnwood, south to Tacoma, and east across the lake to Bellevue. The package voters approved in 1996 was much smaller in scope. In fact, Sound Transit 2 greatly resembles the original Sound Move of 1995. Even with the much-publicized blunders made by Sound Transit during the 90’s, approval of the original Sound Move plan would have put the region in a great position today.

People who want more high capacity transit are rolling the dice by voting “no” on Prop 1. Don’t assume you’ll get another chance to vote for visionary transit investment like this in the near future.

The Bush administration announced this week that federal budget deficit declined this year, and for the third year in a row.

Jack Cafferty examines the claims and points out, “They’re lying!”

Bonus factoid:

There has been more debt accumulated during the administration of President Bush than during all of the previous presidents combined.

(This and some 70 other media clips from the past week are now posted at Hominid Views.)

Via Slog, Newsweek reports on a very bizarre incident in Iraq:

The colonel was furious. “Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers.” He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company.

“I’ve found you can do pretty much anything you want if you do it with a smile on your face. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you do it with a smile on your face.”
— Dino Rossi, September 11, 2007

Looks like Dino Rossi has set up yet another sleazy front group to shill his non-campaign. Check this one out…

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Come join us for some hoppy ale and hopped up conversation.

Last week Gen. Wesley Clark dropped in unannounced… this week, who knows? The folks from Simple Majority will be there telling us why we should all vote Yes on 4204, and writer, pundit, activist Ari Melber (formerly of Seattle, now of The Nation) plans to drop by to slum with us bloggers in the political backwater he left behind.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

Campaigning as a Republican in a 2-to-1 Democratic district, I suppose Dan Satterberg thought it clever to make non-partisanship the central theme of his campaign for King County Prosecuting Attorney, but I’m thinking he probably should have read his Lakoff first. For the more Satterberg protests that the office should be non-partisan, the more he raises the issue, thus automatically reminding voters that this is, after all, a partisan race between a Republican and a Democrat. Don’t think of an elephant, and all that.

Of course, the other problem with this meme is that it just isn’t true, and before the editorial boards buy into this inviting notion that a politician can somehow be apolitical, I hope they first read their own editorials… such as the following Seattle P-I op-ed editorial from back in December of 2005. (The emphasis is mine.)

Voting Disputes: Maleng turns it up

King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng is right in saying that it’s time for political parties to “lower their voices” over disputed voter registrations. So why raise his own voice on the issue?

Maleng is a respected public official, but he is a partisan politician. The Republican Party has tried to criminalize election issues by alleging that nearly 2,000 voters violated the law by registering at mailboxes and mini-storage units.

Of the roughly 200 of those challenged voters who cast ballots in the Nov. 8 election, the King County Canvassing Board this week rejected the challenges on 141 of them.

Dan Satterberg, Maleng’s chief of staff and one of three members of the Canvassing Board, voted to accept the challenges but was outvoted 2-1 by Elections Director Dean Logan and Democratic County Councilman Dow Constantine.

Maleng says the board took a “strict construction” view, with which he, like Satterberg, disagrees. Maleng wants to push the point by calling for Attorney General Rob McKenna and Secretary of State Sam Reed to issue opinions on the matter.

The state is already on the way to solving many voter registration issues with next year’s use of a statewide voter database.

If the laws or lines of authority are unclear, the fix is legislation, not executive fiat.

Maleng has actually turned the partisan volume not down, but up.

How partisan were Maleng and Satterberg in support of the KCGOP’s bogus voter registration challenges? While they publicly criticized the Democrats on the Canvassing Board for taking a “strict construction” view, it must be noted that the Board’s legal interpretation was actually adopted on the advise of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office itself. In a series of memos and emails to the Canvassing Board, Janine Joly — the Sr. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney assigned by Maleng and Satterberg to advise King County Elections — addressed the legal issues in depth, laying out the grounds for dismissing insufficient challenges:

“The challenger’s failure to allege an actual address either in her challenge form or at the hearing is a fatal flaw and should invalidate the challenge. Any other decision would be contrary to the plain language of the statute even if it appears from the other evidence provided that the challenged voter is not registered at a valid residence address.”

Can you get much more partisan than attacking Democrats for following the legal advice given by the attorney you assigned to advise them in the first place?

Don’t get me wrong, I liked and respected Norm Maleng, and I believe he generally carried out his duties in a professional, fair and nonpartisan manner. But as the P-I editorial makes clear, it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that Maleng was not a political animal, or that he never used his office to turn up “the partisan volume.” And despite his protestations to high-minded editorialists, this is exactly the partisan legacy that Satterberg promised to continue when speaking to fellow Republicans at a Mercer Island GOTV drive back in August:

“I am a Republican office holder in King County. There aren’t many of us – well, actually there aren’t any of us around. We’ve been lucky enough to have a Republican in the King County Prosecutor’s Office for 60 years, and my fear is that there is a little pressure on me if we lose it that it is going to be 60 more years before we get another one.

[…] You’re going to walk up long driveways and knock on doors and there are going to be dogs barking. I just want to warn you about the dogs — they can be dangerous but I would ask you be polite. This is King County so many of them are registered voters.”
[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/satterberg1.mp3]

The crowd laughed in approval because, you know… we Democrats, we’re all a bunch of cheats and crooks, and KCRE is just laughably corrupt and incompetent. Yeah, that’s the sort of non-partisanship we can expect from Satterberg, should he be elected.

The fact is, the PAO is a partisan office and always has been, and while Satterberg could have run as a Democrat or an independent, he didn’t. Satterberg chose to run as a Republican because that is the party that best reflects his values — values that will inform his prosecutorial judgment, and values that will guide him to use the prestige and influence of his office to help elect more Republicans. That is the nature of politics.

Dan Satterberg is an elephant, and to suggest otherwise, as Satterberg frequently does, is simply disingenuous.

No doubt the anti-rail folks were disappointed to read the report issued today summarizing the independent performance audit of Sound Transit… though that won’t stop them (or bumper sticker writers like Rick Anderson) from attempting to turn an overwhelmingly positive audit into a PR disaster.

Writing at the Daily Weekly (does anybody actually read the Weekly’s blogs if real bloggers like me don’t link to them?) Anderson characterizes the report as “stinging,” before cutting and pasting a list of bullet points under the headline “New Audit: ST Wasted $5 Mil“. By comparison, Mike Lindblom of the Times (bless their hearts) instantly cuts through the crap:

Though significant, that’s a fraction of the project’s overall budget of $2.4 billion, and Sound Transit maintains the losses are actually lower.

Sound Transit may have “wasted” as much as 0.2% of its budget… not exactly the “Big Dig” scenario critics keep warning about. To put that $5 million in perspective, one of the auditor’s primary recommendations is, surprise, annual performance audits — at a YOE cost of nearly $50 million over 50 years! ($500,000 per audit, 2.5% inflation.) And for some reason, Anderson fails to include in his bullet points the approximately $6.5 million the audit says Sound Transit saved during preliminary ST2 design through its “value engineering studies.” Huh.

Whatever. Here is the audit’s actual conclusion, as summarized at the top of the report:

Sound Transit has faced, and continues to face, challenges in delivering capital construction contracts for the Link Light Rail Project. Through the course of initially planning, designing, and building the system, the agency experienced delays and cost overruns.

Before 2002, the agency experienced a lack of expertise, no established practices or procedures relating to ROW acquisition, environmental, or construction management, and limited management oversight. Gaps in best practice tools and procedures created variability in early project delivery success and resulted in project cost and schedule impacts. The agency essentially started as an inefficient and ineffective organization. As a result, the initial light rail project communicated to voters in 1996 ultimately was modified. Its original length, Central Link, 19.7 miles (19 stations) at $1.7 billon (1995 dollars) with an expected completion date of 2006 became the following:

Segment (Expected Completion)	Miles	Stations	Cost
Initial Segment and Airport Link (2009)	15.6	13	$2.6 billion (Y.O.E.)
University Link (2016)	3.2	2	$1.7 billion (Y.O.E.)

However, in the last five years, Sound Transit has responded to its challenges through improvements in construction planning and management processes and implementation of “best practices.” Indications of diligent review of proposed change orders by Sound Transit Project Controls were also identified. From its inception in 1996, the agency has gradually developed management techniques and construction project controls and procedures.

Sound Transit has improved its structure to manage projects and has standardized guidelines on cost estimating, change and cost management, project management, and risk assessments. Sound Transit has also developed procedures for addressing emerging lessons learned.

Although Sound Transit has made great strides in improving its project delivery practices, opportunities exist that will contribute towards its present culture of continuous improvement.

That’s the unedited summary of the auditor’s conclusion, and it is far from the stinging rebuke Anderson makes it out to be. Of course the report highlights things Sound Transit could do better. That’s the purpose of a performance audit: to help an agency improve its performance. But rather than merely focusing on the agency’s shortcomings, the report actually documents a remarkable turnaround, in which Sound Transit overcame its early management woes to grow into a mature and well-run organization that is largely delivering projects on budget and on time. That’s also the conclusion of state Treasurer Mike Murphy, who in enthusiastically endorsing Proposition 1 yesterday, praised Sound Transit’s cost and revenue projections as conservative, while criticizing opponents’ numbers as “bogus.”

Opponents keep reaching back a decade or more to when Sound Transit, then a start-up agency, initially over-promised the Central Link light rail, but they intentionally ignore the progress that’s been made since then. Still, voters are largely getting the same 19 miles of rail first promised (though with fewer stations, and over a longer construction period,) and without raising any additional taxes. Opponents would like this election to be about Sound Transit’s management problems in the late 1990’s, but Murphy — whose condemnation of the Seattle Monorail’s financing package played a huge role in killing the project — succinctly sums up the real issue facing voters:

“Do you want something to happen or not? If you do, vote yes,” he said. “If you don’t, vote no.”

Indeed, if there is a lesson to be learned from this performance audit, and the parallel histories of both Sound Transit and the Seattle Monorail Project, it is the inherent danger of starting large transportation agencies from scratch… which ironically, is exactly what we’ll eventually be forced to do should voters reject Proposition 1. The pro-rail critics of the roads and transit package have this pie-eyed idea that we can just come back next year or the year after that with a transit-only package, but they ignore two basic realities: a) polls show that neither roads nor transit would pass on their own, and b) there’s no guarantee Sound Transit will even be allowed to bring a package before voters.

There are many in the Legislature and the pro-roads camp who are just itching for Proposition 1 to fail, so that they have an excuse to finally pass “governance reform,” implementing a multi-county, multi-modal transportation agency intended to dilute the influence of pro-rail Seattle voters, and essentially dismantle Sound Transit as an independent agency. Such a “reform,” whatever its merits, would be so disruptive, and introduce so many delays into any effort to pass and implement a project even remotely based on ST2, that Sound Transit would surely lose the bulk of the management and engineering infrastructure it has so painfully constructed over the past five years, and the expertise that goes with it. We would, in essence, be starting from scratch, ignoring yet another one of the audit’s primary conclusions:

Strong management and mature agency skills are not created overnight. It took five years from start-up to the time Sound Transit had its policies, its systems and its management practices fully in place. The Puget Sound region should be careful to preserve and nurture this knowledge base and not to assume that every new program needs a new agency to manage it.

No doubt Proposition 1 is filled with compromises, and I welcome a debate on its costs vs. benefits. But the measure’s opponents reveal themselves to be fundamentally lazy and dishonest in their persistent efforts to slander Sound Transit itself as corrupt and incompetent.

Given the timing, I had grave doubts that this performance audit would be fair and impartial, but I see nothing in this report to suggest that Sound Transit’s management is not dedicated to constantly improving its internal processes, that its ridership, revenue and cost projections should be held suspect, or that the agency itself is not positioned to deliver ST2 largely as promised. Large capital projects are inherently risky, and in that context the report concludes:

The use of the aforementioned “best practices” in conjunction with input from technical and subject matter experts and FTA oversight demonstrate that Sound Transit’s construction planning and management systems are maturing. This should be understood in the context of the complex and high risk contracts that Sound Transit is delivering, where challenges and risks will always be present. Focus, innovation, and due diligence will always be required to avoid surprises on such projects.

A “stinging performance audit”… my ass.

Thursday morning, Virginia Senator Jim Webb, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, and New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney are holding a hearing to discuss our country’s incarceration crisis.

The United States has experienced a sharp increase in its prison population in the past thirty years. From the 1920s to the mid-1970s, the incarceration rate in the United States remained steady at approximately 110 prisoners per 100,000 people. Today, the incarceration rate is 737 inmates per 100,000 residents, comprising 2.1 million persons in federal, state, and local prisons. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but now has 25 percent of its prisoners. There are approximately 5 million Americans under the supervision of the correctional system, including parole, probation, and other community supervision sanctions.

With such a significant number of the population behind bars, expenditures associated with the prison system have skyrocketed. According to the Urban Institute, “the social and economic costs to the nation are enormous.” With 2.25 million people incarcerated in approximately five thousand prisons and jails, the combined expenditures of local governments, state governments, and the federal government for law enforcement and corrections personnel totals over $200 billion.

The JEC will examine why the United States has such a disproportionate share of the world’s prison population, as well as ways to address this issue that responsibly balance public safety and the high social and economic costs of imprisonment.

One of the witnesses will be Dr. Glenn Loury, an Economics and Social Sciences Professor from Brown University, who recently wrote about the forces behind this trend.

[Nod to David Borden at the Speakeasy]

Got nothing planned for tomorrow? How about a free ride to Bellingham for the inaugural journey of The Washington Bus, a new brand of political activism that exercises both body and mind, and, um, features an actual bus.

The Bus leaves 9am sharp Saturday morning from Seattle’s Triangle Park, at the corner of Beacon Ave. S. and S. Stevens St. Fueled by a unique blend of youth-activism and bio-diesel, the Bus will cruise to Bellingham, where it will join dozens of local volunteers to walk neighborhoods and knock on doors for Whatcom County Council candidate Ken Mann. Mann is a true progressive who needs your help to spread his message that it is time to get serious about preserving Whatcom County’s rural heritage and keeping its towns and cities vibrant.

The Washington Bus is inspired by the Oregon Bus Project, a groundbreaking statewide group that engages young people in politics by connecting them as volunteers to progressive campaigns. It’s an amazingly successful model that is changing the face of politics in Oregon… or at the very least, making that face a helluva lot younger.

So if you want to do your part to help progressive candidates win throughout the state, it’s time to get off your ass and get on the bus.

I thought I was being clever when I titled yesterday’s post “The Daily Hague,” but it turned out to be prophetic. For the second day in a row, both dailies cover the unraveling campaign of the King County Council’s most famous barfly, thus sticking me with a repetitive headline. That’ll teach me.

The P-I seems to be playing catch-up this week, a day behind on Hague’s financial disclosure mess, while the Times reports on efforts by a special prosecutor to readmit Hague’s blood-alcohol tests. Hague had signed a document verifying she’d been warned of the implications of taking the breath-alyzer test, but…

Judge Peter Nault “signed an order suppressing the blood-alcohol readings on the grounds that the implied-consent warnings were confusing,” Moberly wrote.

Um… of course Hague was confused by the implied-consent warnings. She was drunk.

Meanwhile, details of Hague’s PDC enforcement hearing emerged in an HA comment thread of all places, pretty much busting the victim meme being put forth by Hague and her drinking buddies. Jay had stopped by the PDC meeting to listen in to the ongoing debate on whether blogs deserve a media exemption (of course they do… the only real difference between me and Frank Blethen is that I’ve never shot a dog.) You can read Jay’s summary here.

But Jay stuck around for the enforcement hearings, and in HA’s comment thread he provides a telling report about the discussion involving Jane Hague’s recent settlement:

I stayed for the enforcement item on the agenda and saw the Hague discussion. A representative from the Jane Hague’s campaign read a statement on her behalf. PDC Commissioner Nolan talked about “the public being harmed by a public official who is in a position of great responsibility whose campaign finances are in a shambles.” While Nolan acknowledged that these violations and the penalty were agreed to by Hague and PDC staff, Nolan asked staff to consider larger penalties for similar violations in the future. While other candidates with business before the PDC at least called in , Nolan chided Hague for “not being present on her behalf.”

Commissioner Schellberg asked any candidates that are hearing this take the time to read the reports and be responsible for their campaign’s finances. Commissioner Seabrook finds it amazing that Ms. Hague was not aware of what was going on with late filings, missing information, and embezzlement. He complimented the staff in sorting all of this out.

Hague didn’t even bother to phone in? Hell, to his credit, even Tim Eyman shows up for his own PDC enforcement hearings. (I think he may even have a reserved parking spot.)

Through her spokesman Brett Bader, Hague keeps claiming she’s a victim, blaming her campaign finance and disclosure mess on a multiyear embezzlement by her treasurer. But the embezzlement, the late filings, the missing information and the $50,000 contribution that wasn’t, are all symptoms of Hague’s inability (or unwillingness) to be responsible for her own campaign finances.

As I’ve said before, this is all part of a pattern. Whether it’s enough of a pattern to dissuade voters from rehiring Hague, regardless of her challenger, remains to be seen.

If you said 50 cents a day (and a buck-fifty on Sunday), you’d be wrong.

At least, that’s according to “Slim” Jim MacIsaac, who’s goofball numbers are getting front page treatment at the P-I.

This is from an email received earlier today:

Using the same methodology reported in the PI to arrive at the $160B cost figure for the joint ballot measure, the Seattle PI costs a reader $60,000.

Here’s how it works: 50-cents per day for 6 days a week, plus $1.50 for Sundays. That’s $4.50 a week, multiplied by 52 weeks a year for $234 per year. But wait – those are 2006 numbers. Using MacIsaac’s terms, you go back to what you’ve been paying since 1996 and go forward to what you’ll pay through to 2057. Using ST’s/MacIsacc’s/PI’s annual inflationary factor of 5.2%, you deflate back to 1996, inflate up to 2057, add it all together and you get $60,075.37 – the true cost of the PI to the reader. I like Joel Connelly, but he doesn’t seem like much of a bargain at that price, now does he? Curiously, the PI does not use these figures to encourage purchasing their product.

But wait again – this is the “true cost” of the PI for one reader, not all readers combined. So, to find the “true cost” of the PI to the community you have to multiply the per reader cost by their circulation figure (since a growth inflator of 5.2% was already in the per reader figure, you don’t have to apply it again to the circulation figure). Keeping in mind that my degree is in Political Science, not Mathematics, the number I get is $7,943,946,401.21, or $8 billion.

I too love Joel’s column, but at 60k, that’s one expensive paper.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Please join me in tipping a birthday mug to “N in Seattle,” who turned 57 years old young old today, and to the memory of the late Walt Crowley who was a friend to liberals and taverns everywhere.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

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…

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Has WA “utterly failed” to do the right thing on reproductive rights?
That’s the strong assertion of state Rep. Brendan Williams (D-Olympia) after joining a rally outside Ralph’s Thriftway, where supporters of the pharmacy’s refusal to stock “Plan B” birth control verbal attacked female protesters, calling them “whores,” and asking a pregnant protester why she didn’t “scrape that baby out of her uterus.” Rep. Williams joins us for the hour.

8PM: Is it time to do what “believe is right” on same sex marriage?
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican, and former Chief of Police, held an emotional press conference this week in which he reversed his opposition to same sex marriage, tearfully explaining that his daughter and several staffers are gay, and that he “couldn’t look any of them in the face and tell them their relationship, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife, Rana.” Is it time for America, even Republicans, to finally do what we “believe is right” on same sex marriage?

9PM: Remembering Walt Crowley
Michael Hood eulogizes populist pundit Walt Crowley over on BlatherWatch, and he joins us by phone to remember his close friend.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here. And a heads up… the Southeast Seattle chapter meets tomorrow night (and the third Wednesday of every month,) 8PM at the Columbia City Alehouse. Come join me and my neighbors for a pint of Manny’s a few miles closer to its source.