• "Thousands" of Seattle residents have access to Qwest's superfast VDSL2 already, says TechFlash, with a top speed of 40 mbps download/20 mbps upstream, and all for only $110 per month...when combined with your monthly phone service.
• Don't worry, reassures the Seattle Transit Blog, light rail ridership will grow like kudzu. And then the Seattle Times will write about how crowded it is.

• Jon Talton on his Sound Economy blog has a nice overview of the state of the economy nearly two years into our current economic nightmare. Read it; it's not pretty and things aren't getting better any time soon.
• Erica C. Barnett at Publicola has liveblogged the the County Executive debate from Bellevue, featuring some choice right-wing nuggets from is-she-or-isn't-she-Republican Susan Hutchinson.
• Speaking of Hutchinson, Seattle Transit Blog has some info on her thoughts on transportation issues. Also not pretty.

Jon Talton has a great (i.e., it supports our position) piece in the Seattle Times about Boeing "overplaying its hand" with a new South Carolina love-nest. (That Vought plant is a union shop, and SC during a recession isn't in a position to write a lot of incentive checks.) Says Talton: "It's healthy to run a little scared in today's economy as long as you don't run over the edge of a cliff or throw others off. That's the risk with the most strident comments about the bad-business climate here. It's mostly a myth. And, in addition to being divisive because much of it translates into blaming workers or programs that benefit them, it obscures the real competitive issues that face us." Boom! He also presents facts and figures, if you're into that sort of thing. more ›

At long last, struggling Washington Mutual acceded to the inevitable and showed CEO Kerry Killinger the door. Thanks to our local newspapers' canny investments in business coverage, we're hearing about immensely important local news the day after the Wall Street Journal reported on Killinger's exit. The Seattle Times is running an AP story, and the P-I made its whole business staff (i.e., Bill Virgin) come in over the weekend and write something up. The Times did get a special from Jon Talton that recaps the WaMu/Killinger situation, and it's worth reading. If incoming head Alan Fishman's job is to work on WaMu's curb appeal, Seattle may be about to take a hard hit. more ›