For a Presidential candidate—especially one who has recently surged in the polls—Barack Obama is kinda a rock star. So it makes sense that he'd host his latest Seattle appearance at a rock club. The Seattle Generation Obama Concert takes place Tuesday night at the Showbox SoDo. Obama will be there, doing his campaigning thing, along with special musical guests the Dusty 45s and (the still-reunited) Brad. Since Obama and company are going after the......

When we sat down to do our endorsements we reached a disturbing conclusion. We cannot, in good conscience, vote for anyone. Position 1 Jean Godden: Wrote for the Seattle Times when it endorsed Bush in 2000. Joe Szwaja: Involved in a 1990 domestic dispute in which his then-girlfriend threw a bottle at him and he threw a plate at her. Position 3 Bruce Harrell: Doesn't spend enough time with his 15-year-old son from a previous......

Along with the million other words being written on this topic, we at Seattlest thought it was a good time to share some of our thinking on the Roads and Transit bill we're going to have the chance to vote on this November. The crux is this: Voters in the greater Puget Sound region are being asked to approve almost $11 billion for a 50-mile expansion of light rail and $7 billion on highways around......

Tomorrow is fake Viaduct Vote Day, and your meaningless ballots must be postmarked by then. The election is all mail, so you will not have the option to vote at the polls. If you want to skip the middle man and have your ballot lost directly you can drop it off at the following locations: King County Administration Building-- 500 4th Ave., Room 553, Seattle 98104 High Point Community Center-- 6920 34th Ave SW, Seattle......

It'd been awhile since we'd last been to the Tractor Tavern and, well, we found that we'd missed the place -- the faded old cowboy boots hanging from the ceiling, the curious glory-hole in the men's crapper, the huge oil painting of the bright red tractor, and then the other one of the majestic horse with all the lightning in the background. Okay, that one's kind of weird, but it fits somehow with the country......

Here at Seattlest, we yawn when you discuss the "Rose" Bowl, or the Final "Four." The moment we wait for to validate our University of Washington pride comes every January, when the Peace Corps announces which U.S. university provided the most Peace Corps volunteers. U-Dub! U-Dub! That's right! Even if we're innumerable places behind them in the NCAA basketball rankings, we finally beat out Wisconsin-Madison in the competition for being the school that sends the......

--Looking for that perfect holiday gift for your favorite barista? Something that says "You're the reason I drink twelve cups of decaf a day," without being really creepy and icky? Check out this thread at Starbucks Gossip. --Nordstrom is about to go all Starbucks on us. They'll soon be selling CDs, including two holiday collections, some jazz, and a Marvin Gaye retread. --Quick, someone resurrect Chris Penn and the career of Kevin Bacon and......

Everyone's going to get all lovey-dovey today and say, "Oh, I don't care who you vote for, just get to the polls and make your voice heard for the sake of democracy, blah, blah." Even President Bush, the most partisan president in a century, said as much this morning. Fuck that. Most voting choices on this year's ballot are ok (Honestly, is McGavick really that much more of a corporate tool than Cantwell?). But if......

On Tuesday, the American -ists will be celebrating democracy and hitting the polls, letting politicians know what they really think. It just made us wonder: if it were up to the -ist-a-verse, what would we be voting for? Londonist votes for better skincare, alternative spaces for art, cute little birds and the men who keep them, and concrete. Lots of concrete. Shanghaiist votes for one of the Bee Gees and Air Supply (it's a double-ticket),......

For weeks Mike McGavick has seen the same poll standing stiff. The latest Survey USA Election Poll has Maria Cantwell at 54% and Mike!!!!!! at 42%. The poll was taken the weekend after the kick-ass debate on KING-5, and during the release of McGavick’s Seattle Times endorsement. He has been stuck between 37% and 42% since August, and for the next week will just have to suck up that poll and push hard towards the......

Sometimes, The Seattle Times has got to make you wonder. It was one thing to go ahead and endorse David Reichert for Congress over Darcy Burner despite widespread dissatisfaction with Republican leadership, but to spin his shameless partisanship as moderation? That's a new low. In today's Times, chief political reporter David Postman tries to defend Reichert's damning comment (currently viewable in high-rotation Democratic Party attack ad) that, "[W]hen the leadership comes to me and says,......

Urban travel blog Gridskipper is in the final round of their search for the -iest cities in the world. And in this case, all the -iests are sex-related: By Friday of this week, the world shall unequivocally know which city is the fetishest, which city is the lesbianest, which city is the gayest, which city layeth with the minions, which city is the least-sexiest; which city ye shall call Man and which ye shall call......

Safeco announced today it's laying off or "reassigning" 240 employees. The company needs to cut costs, it says, which apparently wasn't an issue when it gave Mike McGavick $28 million for leaving his job (scroll down on that) so he could run for US Senate. McGavick made a fantastic showing in Tuesday's primary, eliminating such Republican party heavyweights as Brad Klippert, B. Barry Massoudi, and William Allen Chovil. He's only got one more candidate to......

Those sad, wet, cold people holding signs and waving to you this morning means that it is Election Day. Well not a real one, but a primary. Primaries are designed to get rid of the poor, self-righteous candidates, and settle on two candidates financed by special interests and who are seeking elected offices for purely selfish reasons. In the Democratic Senate race, Maria Cantwell defeated Hong Tran the day Tran didn't become a cable television......

This is going to be a hard year for Republicans to win tight races, whether or not they revealed all of the bad things that they have done. In his first television commercial Mike "!" McGavick told us that when he was a kid he put a skateboard through his neighbor's front window. (They had skateboards in 1960s Seattle?). Then a few weeks ago he admitted that he was arrested for a DUI, and maybe......

Joe Lieberman may have a very bad day. Polls say he'll lose the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, who besides being filthy rich after inventing the shoe, is also using local political consulting firm Moxie Media to design his mail (whoop-whoop). Lieberman has angered left-leaning Nutmeggers with his support of the Iraq War. Our own Maria Cantwell also voted for the war and has refused to back away from that vote. Yet, instead of fighting......

Something needs to be said about Erica Barnett's article in La Strangeur concerning the possibility that the City Council will make the final decision on the Viaduct without the requisite and meaningless public referendum, and that something is: "Hell Yeah!" Do we have to vote on every damn decision that's made around here? The City Council exists to make decisions on transportation infrastructure. That's what they do. Seattlest's job is to spend a little time......

Sometimes when you're preparing for an argument you spend so much time lining up all your facts and figures and imagining every possible counter and building such a gigantic monument of persuasivness brick by logical brick that you fail to see that if you do absolutely nothing it's probable that things will go your way anyway. Dave Sucher over at the City Comforts blog suggests that the People's Waterfront Coalition may be in that very......

Someday the Viaduct is going to collapse and kill a bunch of not-so-unsuspecting Seattleites and maybe a few guys from Everett. Only the elevated highway nymphs and the guy deep in the earth who pulls the earthquake levers knows when, exactly, that will be, but we have a pretty good idea that it will happen "someday." So we busy ourselves fixing it, or, failing that, arguing about how to fix it. So far we've got......

There are many things that Seattle liberals hate: the increasing price of fleece vests, driving over 25mph on arterials, and when one of their senators votes for war in the Middle East. Senator Maria Cantwell is facing increasing pressure from those on the left because of her vote to authorize war in Iraq, bailing on an Alito filibuster, and voting to re-up the PATRIOT Act. Two weeks ago she was booed at one of her......

Tim Eyman, no doubt making a healthy living these days on the backs of Eastern Washingtonians, filed an initiative to undo the civll rights bill the state legislature finally got around to approving last week. He's been branching out recently from his usual fare of initiatives against economic and transportation infrastructure progess in the state to include attacks on social progress as well. If we actually believed that Tim was anything more than a figurehead......

If those dirty hippies in the Bay Area wont help support our Super Bowl bound Seahawks then we will have to do the next best thing and demolish their college basketball teams. Well, in actuality the next best thing would be to go on the radio and praise the idea of an Al-Qaeda attack on San Francisco, but we're not shit-bat insane. Fresh off sweeps of the Oregon and SoCal schools the number nine Huskies......

In a clear case of East Coast bias among national basketball writers, the University of Washington did not acheive top 25 status in the latest AP women's basketball poll, despite having beaten #23 Utah and #14 Stanford. In a clear case of West Coast bias among national basketball writers, the University of Washington moved up to #7 in the AP men's basketball poll, with Gonzaga hot on their heels at #8, and UCLA at #11.......

Pac-10 Coach of the Year Jim McLaughlin and Pac-10 Player of the Year Sonja Tomasevic will lead the Husky women's volleyball team this weekend in Fort Collins, Co., where the Dawgs start the NCAA tournament as the top seed in the West Regional. The Huskies (26-1) meet Siena (20-11) Friday night in the first round of the 64-team tournament. Last year, Washington made the Final Four, but lost to eventual champion Stanford. This year's Final......

The theme of Port commissioner Paige Miller's campaign to defeat incumbent city councilman Richard Conlin has been this: when it comes to transportation, Conlin flip-flops, he dillies, he dallies, he waffles, he wavers, he can't make up his mind. In other words, he's your average Seattleite (have you been at a four-way stop lately?) The Miller campaign is, for better or worse, banking on the idea that Seattle voters will rebel against perceived indecisiveness. Trailing......

"Where is everybody?" you may be asking yourself. Well silly, they are all at the polls-- as we wrote yesterday, it is the Primary Election. But didn't we just have an election? That was last November, remember, and we all stayed up screaming and crying. However, in retrospect, John Kerry said nothing about protecting us from hurricanes. Months have passed and once again it time to head to the polls. In city races the mayor......

In contrast to local temperatures, here's three things that are heating up: the hype surrounding Spanish tennis sensation Rafael Nadal, the fire under Mariner GM Bill Bavasi's ass, and the race between presumed City Council election rivals Dwight Pelz and Richard McIver. McIver backers recently created The Dwight Pelz Magic-8 Ball, an online oracle that purports to see inside the mind of Pelz, who announced this month that he would run for McIver's city......