bachmann family values?

• No, Michele Bachmann, slaves did not have stable marriages and families. Not when spouses could be re-sold to separate masters or be used as involuntary sex toys.
• Today’s anti-deep-bore-tunnel sermon comes to you in the form of cute CGI cartoon characters with synthesized voices.
• As for the tunnel project we like, the Capitol Hill light-rail tunnel is being dug by a 21-foot-wide boring machine nicknamed “Brenda.” Make your own 90210 jokes here.
• Painting murals on street surfaces—do they reduce traffic speeds, or encourage dangerous games of pedestrian hopscotch?
• The Midwestern union buster wannabes who now run Boeing are being very secretive in their “southern strategy.”
• Admitting your addiction to Facebook is the first step toward regaining control of your life. Yes, I found this link from Facebook.
• Woke up, it was a Chelsea mornin’ and the first thing that I heard was the historic hipster hotel’s been sold to speculators who want to turn it into rich folks’ residences.
• Post-made-up-“crisis” updates: Joe Biden allegedly called Congressional Republicans “terrorists.” Less famous commenters say the GOPpers are waging a “war on America” and claim they “fit the profile of the classic abuser.” Another e-pundit wonders whether the Bushies deliberately left the nation incurably “bankrupt, corrupt, ungovernable.”
• On a lighter note, here’s some fun stuff found at Grocery Outlet.

menu screen from 'mickey, donald, goofy: the three musketeers'

• We’ve just gotten over the official end of VHS a couple years ago, when now some are predicting the DVD’s similar fate. Sure, online streaming is cool if you have the bandwidth and can stand the re-buffering pauses at inopportune moments. But what about the bonus features? I’ll say it again: what about the bonus features? I want my bonus features, dammit!
• Our long local nightmare is over. What did it take to get the Mariners to actually win a baseball game after three ghastly, fallow weeks? Perhaps it was the sudden, tragic passing of one of the team’s charter employees (and best loved stadium figures), Rick the Peanut Guy.
• The city’s got a new Transit Master Plan. It identifies corridors that could use some transpo beefing up. One of them is Ballard (where, if you recall, the Monorail Project was to have gone). Now the city thinks it’d be a nice place for a streetcar (which, unlike a monorail, will be subject to the same traffic jams as cars). (BTW, this wish list is irrelevant to the more vital task, that of preserving what transit options we’ve got now from budgetary decimation.)
• On the national front, Jim Hightower pleads for any national politician to pay attention to working people instead of partisan idiocy; while Earl Ofari Hutchinson explains why Obama can’t take the big unilateral steps on the economy that FDR took. And Andrew Sullivan calls today’s GOP “not conservatives but anarchists,” obsessed only with destroying the Obama presidency even if the nation’s destroyed along with it.
• With its never-say-die attitude toward expanding its range of market segments, Costco’s re-formulated initiative to privatize liquor sales has qualified for the November ballot.
• And remember, tonight’s “Last Thursday,” the final public event in the prematurely condemned 619 Western artist studios.

• Among the Plan Vs, Plan Ws, and Plan Xs to resolve the Republican-invented “debt ceiling crisis” (which, as pundit Eric Byler notes, is “as fake as professional wrestling“) is a joint House/Senate committee that would have extra-ordinary powers to shape legislation that the full bodies would not get to amend. Huffington Post calls it a “Super Congress.” Now if we only had a “Super President,” like the one in a 1967 TV cartoon of the same name. (Yes, I am old enough to have seen the show during its one network run, and yes, I did.)
• Speaking of fantasy entertainments, Hong Kong scientists claim their tests with photons prove nothing can go faster than light. Then, they extrapolate from that to claim that therefore, time travel is impossible. Well, there are any number of Whovians who would argue about that.
• The King County Council failed to vote on Monday about the utterly necessary plan to save Metro Transit. Let’s hope the delay means enough votes are being attained.
• Who (heart)s, or at least partly defends, the Oslo terror killer? There’s Glenn Beck. And there’s a Wall St. Journal op-ed imploring its readers not to let a little thing like a mass murderer dissuade them from the true paths of racism and Islamophobia. Andrew Sullivan, meanwhile, identifies the shooter as an example of “Christianism,” which he defines as “the desperate need to control all the levers of political power to control or guide the lives of others.”
• Good news for all of us who’ve been totally bummed out by the Mariners’ record dive—turns out there will be pro football this year after all.
• If you’re going to the UW campus, don’t masturbate in public. Leave that to the profs.

from sightline.org

• Congrats. Seattle’s been named America’s sixth most walkable city by WalkScore.com. It’s absolutely purely coincidence that WalkScore happens to be based in Seattle. Why, just two months ago, the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center named Seattle America’s first most walkable city, and that outfit’s in North Carolina or somewhere like that. (I’ll have more to say about this greater topic any week now.)
• The $20 emergency car-tab surtax to save King County Metro Transit stands a good chance of becoming a referendum to the voters, now that a fifth County Council member says she’s considering it.
• Long-shot City Council candidate Dale Pusey wants to keep the viaduct, at least as a park. I heartily agree.
• If our current postal system is snarked at by the digerati as “snail mail,” what will they call it if it cuts back to three delivery days a week?
• R.I.P. Alex Steinweiss, 94, who first had the idea of making original cover art for record albums back in the 78 era, and for decades continued to be the greatest practitioner of the art form he’d invented.

• Where the state fails, the city steps up, today’s edition: With no more govt.-sponsored tourism promotion in Washington, Seattle might tax hotels for its own tourist ads.
• Tuesday’s County Council hearing on the scheme to impose a car-tab surtax to save Metro Transit: Stuffed to overflowing with citizens, sparse on County Council members.
• You know that deal for Electronic Arts to buy Seattle’s PopCap Games, the deal PopCap management emphatically denied? It’s real, and it’s on.
• Rupert Murdoch will stop trying to buy all of the satellite TV company BSkyB after all.
• So far, the Murdoch newspaper scandals in Britain haven’t been directly tied to his U.S. properties. Well, here’s a fresh, all-American scandal for you: Murdoch’s Stateside businesses not only pay no income taxes, but clever exploitation of every tax dodge on the books has let Murdoch get $1 billion or more in tax refunds each of the past four years.
• Re/Search Books cofounder V. Vale, seeing his industry falter against the winds of tech-induced change, proclaims “If I were an alien from Outer Space wanting to ruin life on Planet Earth, I think I’d invent the Internet.”
• RIP Sherwood Schwartz, 94, the radio and TV comedy writer who became the creator-producer of Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch. Fun fact: Schwartz later admitted he’d named the S.S. Minnow after Newton Minow, the FCC commissioner who’d denounced most of primetime TV as “a vast wasteland.”
• Speaking of which, Joe Berkowitz has handy tips for those of us who refuse to live in televisual abstinence and who continually take gruff for it.
• While on the big screen, Carina Chocano sees all these “strong women” movie characters and hates ’em. She says they’re not identifiable as women, but just as a different set of stereotypes.
• New Lake City strip club owner: We’re really an “adult cabaret,” and a respectable business too.
• And there are many other stories out there, important stuff about the fate of humanity and all. But there’s only one topic on all online users’ minds this day. How dare Netflix raise its rates?

vintage 1940 trolley bus from seattletransitblog.com

• Today is the day. Speak now or forever lose your ability to get anywhere in King County, with or without a car. That’s how big this is. Get thee to the King County Council Chambers, 516 Third Ave., 6-8 p.m. Speak out to save transit.
• Is local weather really getting “wetter and warmer”? Cliff Mass says not necessarily.
• After the state failed earlier this year, the city may strike out on its own to license and regulate medical marijuana establishments. The first regulations I’d want: no pot-leaf neon signs, no tie dyed scrubs, and no public display of the phrase “da kine.”
• City Councilmember Tim Burgess wants the big public todo about child prostitution to become a little less about the rival grandstandings of celebs, politicians, and publishers, and a little more about the children themselves. At least that’s what I hope Burgess wants.
• The Thunderbird Motel that became the Fremont Inn, one of the notorious drug-dealer-infused motels on Aurora shut down a year or two back? It could become Catholic-run low income housing.
• The state’s sending up helicopters to test local radiation levels. But don’t panic, officials insist.
• The old idea to put up a surplus 60 foot Lava Lamp in the tiny Eastern Wash. burg of Soap Lake? It’s on again.
• You might not have heard of it yet, but there’s a longshoremen’s protest at a new grain terminal in Longview, where management has hired nonunion workers. A recent protest got 100 union dock workers and supporters arrested.
• A Daily Kos diarist compares the continuing nonsense over the federal deficit to “worrying about the water bill when the house is on fire.”
• Time claims Americans “distinguish toiler paper brands better than banks.” Insert snarky comments here.
• What are the chances that l’affaire Murdoch could cause the decline and fall of the Fox “News” Channel? Not much, I believe; at least not directly or right away. Murdoch’s UK papers used grody methods to amass information about politicians, celebrities, the royal family, and even violent-crime victims. Fox “News” doesn’t give a damn about information; it just makes crap up.

• The bad news: The old Heidelberg brewery in Tacoma burned down. The worse news: It was scheduled for demolition anyway.
• Hey you: Got an idea to bring back the Intiman Theatre?
• Your chance to speak out against Metro Transit’s proposed brutal service cuts: 6 p.m. Tuesday at the King County Council chambers, 516 3rd Ave. Be there or be stuck in traffic, forever.

Back to the old grind. The lovely old grind.

• The former Wash. state prison boss admitted he’d quit because he’d been caught in a Tumwater motel with a female subordinate. Insert your own “subordinate” (or “Tumwater”) jokes here.
• The advocacy group Transportation for Washington explains just why public transit financing in this state is in such a mess. (Hint: It’s the dependence on sales taxes.) The group’s also got a handy list of public hearings in King County where you can support a one-time car tab surtax, so Metro can avoid draconian service cuts.
• Ex-NYT columnist Frank Rich debuts in New York mag bemoaning “Obama’s Original Sin,” which, in Rich’s eyes, was to accept big campaign bucks from the Wall St. fat cats.
• Meanwhile, some Columbia U. politics-as-horse-race wonk wonders “What If the Republicans Lose in 2012?” I suspect they will lose, and resume shrinking into regional status, with the “centrist” Democrats becoming the new Party of Business (and perhaps the only party capable of fielding an Electoral College-winnable Presidential campaign for some time).
• A Daily Kos diarist sends along word of a breakthrough in fuel cell technology for motor vehicles. Fuel cells, as you recall from the hype two or three oil crises ago, turn simple hydrogen gas (refineable from many cheap sources)  and oxygen into energy. But they need “catalysts” to undertake this transformation. Up ’til now, those had to be made from costly platinum. But earlier this year, researchers at the (more recently fire-threatened) Los Alamos labs said they’d figured out a system using a far cheaper combo of carbon, iron, and cobalt. Of course, cheaper-running, zero-emissions cars would still be cars, promoting land-killing sprawl and long lonely commutes.

• You’ve got your Fremont parade. You’ve got your gay parade. You’ve got your Seafair parade. Now get ready for a one time only “largest-ever parade” on Tuesday morning (right downtown, right at morning rush hour!). It’s part of a huge Lions Club convention.
• If the county’s proposed $20 car surtax doesn’t pass, get ready for draconian Metro bus cuts.
• Everybody loves those Lake Union houseboats, except them pesky bureaucrats, who could just regulate them away.
• While we wait to see if some new owner will reopen Rick’s strip club, another skin-spectacle joint on Lake City Way is about to open. Its name: Pandora’s. You’ll get no “box” jokes (or Avatar references) from this website, at least not today.

Local bus service around here is largely paid for by local sales taxes.

With the retail crash, those revenues have been hardly hit.

In Snohomish County, Community Transit axed all Sunday and holiday service, and is still fiscally struggling.

One response: Start a PR campaign to encourage taxpayers. Its title: Buy Local for Transit.

You want reliable public transport? Stay away from those online e-tailers. And from those Seattle and Bellevue stores.

And because Community Transit’s taxing district is so weirdly put together, don’t even shop in Everett.

You can go to Lynnwood, Edmonds, Snohomish, and Stanwood. You can shop at Alderwood Mall and the Tulalip outlet mall. All of these send a few sub-percentage points into CT’s operations.

Of course, if you really want to keep the buses running, you could buy a car. But that would be sort of beside the point.

Mayor Mike McGinn is one of the civic leaders who’ve submitted short essays to Dan Bertolet’s new CityTank.org, on the topic of celebrating urban life.

McGinn’s piece is a photo essay (merely excerpted below) that reads like a manifesto:

Sarah Palin and other figures on the right like to talk about “small town values” as being “the real America.” We know better. These are our values:

• We have great urban places, where people can live and shop in the same building. And we protect them.
• Seattleites create and use urban spaces – their way. From the bottom up.
• We take care of each other – and we feed each other.
• We’re not scared of new ideas.
• We think idealism is a virtue.
• We play like it matters, because it does.
• We stand up for each other.
• We share our cultures with each other. And the music, the art, the food…is astounding.
• We love race and social justice.
• We expect our youth to achieve.

President Barack Obama called on America to win the future. Mr. President, the people of Seattle are ready.

Since I believe one good manifesto deserves another, I hereby offer my own:

David Guterson and other figures on Bainbridge Island like to talk about the countryside as being the only real place to live. We know better. These are our values:

• We value diverse workplaces and gatherings. Upscale white men alongside upscale white women—and even upscale white gays.
• Yet we also admire African Americans; preferably if they are both musical and dead.
• We champion the institution of public education, as long as our own kids can get into a private school.
• We celebrate people’s expressions of sexuality, provided they’re not too, you know, sexual.
• We strive toward progressive, inclusive laws and policies except when they would inconvenience business.
• We take pride in our urban identity, as we build more huge edifices and monuments to desperately prove how world class we are.
• We support the arts, particularly when that support doesn’t stick us in the same room with unkempt artists.
• We value regional planning and cooperation, even with those mouth-breathing hicks out there.
• We protect and enhance the environment, particularly those environments we drive 40 miles or more to hike in.
• We love a strong, vital music scene that’s in someone else’s neighborhood.
• We appreciate our heritage. We moan about how everything in this town sucks; then, years later, we claim it was great back then but all sucks now.
• We value a strong, independent news media, regularly alerting us to the city’s 103 Best Podiatrists.
• We admire innovation and original ideas, especially if they’re just like something from New York or San Francisco.
• We support locally-based businesses until they get too big.

President Barack Obama has advocated “the fierce urgency of now.” Mr. President, the people of Seattle will get around to it once they’ve finished playing Halo: Reach.

Mayor Mike McGinn takes office today. He’s released the results of his online call for citizens’ ideas for Seattle. In this highly unscientific poll, more people want a legal nude beach than want another NBA team. (The top request: more transit.)

Urban planning blogger Josh Grigsby spent three days in Seattle recently. He totally hated it:

Seattle is predominantly low-density sprawl, and its urban core reeks of decay. Never have I felt less inclined to venture out after dark than in the International District or adjacent Pioneer Square. Heading out from the hostel on foot to find a bowl of noodles for dinner I was accosted twice by young men selling drugs, followed for several weaving blocks by five other young men, screamed at by a well-dressed but seemingly mentally ill young man, and propositioned by a strung-out pimp whose employees remained unseen. Roving gangs of teens and twentysomethings, faces hidden by oversized hoods, patrolled the streets. I saw no families, no police, no women, none of the eyes on the street that self-regulate their urban neighborhoods.

He doesn’t like our transit system either.

As promised yesterday, here are more images from Link Light Rail’s spectacular opening weekend.

I’m surprised how few people, now and during Link’s years of construction, noted the utter appropriateness of the route’s principal siting on Martin Luther King Jr. Way—formerly Empire Way, named for the “empire builder,” James J. Hill—a railroad tycoon.

Like a lot of Western towns, Seattle was made, and nearly broken, by the railroads. When the Northern Pacific decided to build its own company town (Tacoma) instead of making Seattle its western terminus, Seattle boosters persuaded Hill to bring his rival Great Northern line here. (The NP and GN eventually merged into the Burlington Northern, now BNSF.)

As big rail built Seattle as a center of shipping and industry, local rail built the city’s neighborhoods. In a few cases this was literally true, as developers built trolley lines to service their newly-built tracts.

Now, civic planning bureaucrats and “urban density” advocates hope that can happen again.

The operative phrase is “transit oriented development.” You might have read about it in The Stranger or at Publicola.

The idea is that, alongside the shiny new tracks and the trains that run on them, there should be shiny new residences, stores, and commercial structures. These would attract more regular riders for the trains, while bringing new economic activity to these neighborhoods.

(And they’d provide work for the construction biz, Seattle Democrats’ most loyal backers. And they’d help slow the ongoing tilt of the region’s population ratio from the city to the suburbs, a tilt that affects the city’s state and federal funding clout in many ways.)

So you get townhomes, neo-rowhouses, senior housing projects with ground-floor retail, midrise apartment/condo structures, and the promise of many more.

Some of these would be on tracts now owned by the city or Sound Transit, which were used as staging areas during Link’s long construction period. (It’s the taxpayers’ bad luck that the project bought this land while prices were going up, and is selling it as prices are going down.)

Of course, people already live and work in these neighborhoods (despite what you might surmise from “urban pioneer” stories in the local lifestyle mags). Light rail’s benefits shouldn’t just be for the new (read: upscale white) residents and workers, or for those current residents who happen to own saleable land.

For far too long, Seattle’s entire southeast quadrant (save for the Lake Washington waterfront) has been the city’s ignored stepchild. It’s the first place where halfway houses and social-service agencies get sited, and the last place where fancy shops and restaurants go. It’s got a lot of households that didn’t fare well when the region as a whole boomed, and that aren’t doing well now.

I’d like to see a transit oriented development that enhances the lives of south Seattle’s current populace, and doesn’t merely displace it.

Yep, I was at the first day of Link Light Rail service.

Then I came back for day two.

I took a lot of images. I’m still sorting out my favorites.

So look for more in the next day or two.

It was a glorious two-day celebration of, well, of what?

Of yet another shiny New Seattle monument to world-class-osity? Not really.

To our modest li’l seaport village finally deserving to be called a Big League City? Nope.

To a cool new way to travel from downtown (almost) to the airport? Uh-uh.

Seattle’s first urban transit solution to run longer than 1.3 miles? Not even that.

No, this weekend marked the true beginning of Seattle’s Century 21. Through what is essentially pre-car technology, we’ve launched the first practical step toward a post-car era.

And it’s swift, bright, clean, and fun too!

Crowds, thankfully, were not as totally overbearing as organizers had hoped/warned. (After all, the trains will keep running after this weekend, just not for free and not with clowns and buskers performing at the stations.)

Link gets down to business on Monday. Don’t look for clues to its eventual level of success in its initial paid ridership. What will count will be long-term ridership trends. That, and also the “transit oriented development” projects penciled in on what are now vacant lots adjoining the stations. And those won’t likely get underway until people are building homes and commercial buildings again.