Yesterday, this Seattlest headed to the U-District library to meet with other Hillary Clinton delegates (Hillegates?) from the fightin' 43rd, and to learn about what lies between us and the national convention. Because we care, we thought we'd share the info with you. If you're not a Hillegate or Obamegate, you can just skip to reading about other things. Okay, so first things first: all alternates should really, really show up to next weekend's......

Seattlest grew up in a very small town in Central Florida. In our immediate area, we could count seven colleges. That doesn't include the University of Miami or Florida State, UWF, UNF, USF, the Art Institutes, and other colleges and universities (Obama's demographic). Florida is not, contrary to popular belief, peopled entirely by retirees (Clinton's demographic). Most of the folks around our small hometown are very blue collar, there are a lot of fern......

Some much-needed clarification on the primary/caucus fiasco: Washington holds both caucuses and a primary in order to decide how to allocate its delegates for the presidential candidates. We hope you were able to make it to your caucus on Saturday to cast your vote for the Democratic/Republican presidential candidate of your choice. You should have picked a party, gone to the designated caucus location for your precinct, and written in your choice next to......

First of all, let us say that we didn't plan our Super Tuesday get-together as an Obama event. We support Obama; we've even given him $$. But we didn't ask candidate affiliation before inviting some friends, who invited some friends, and it just so happened that all 10 people who came to Seattlest HQ last night were Obama supporters (except for one girl who backs the Phoenix Suns. She was not a winner). One girl......

We have gathered some of the top political writers in the country and asked them to discuss the presidential race throughout the year. Today they discuss McCain’s new frontrunner status, religion in American politics, and Edwards’ departure. Seattlest: How do you handicap the Republican race following John McCain’s win in Florida? Mark (The New York Times): The GOP in Florida has given McCain true front runner status. It must suck to be a wacko Republican......

When we first heard about the extra tax being levied on car-sharing companies like Flexcar in September, we were pretty incensed, as were many other one-car households. Sounds like the folks down in Oly may have actually heard our cries. The PI reports this morning that: Lawmakers are realizing an inconvenient truth: It might take cash incentives to get people out of their cars. Incentive, in this case, will come in the form of a......

Vedder’s first solo music video—for his critically lauded and Grammy-nominated Into the Wild song “Guaranteed”—airs on VH1 (and VH1.com) on Monday. Perfect timing, then, for the ever-more-famous guy to bump into his 1992 self while browsing Easy Street’s vinyl bins. Serendipity! 1992 Eddie (strokes soul patch; sings to himself): I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution… take a bow for the new revolution… 2008 Eddie (spots 1992 Eddie): Hey, are you ... ? Young......

Stealing Seattle's basketball team apparently isn't keeping Sonics owner Aubrey McClendon busy, so he's found another community to screw over: tiny Saugatuck, Michigan. That's the Denison Dunes--413 acres of pristine shoreline where the Kalamazoo River meets Lake Michigan. Saugatuck's citizens have long wanted to add the land to an adjacent state park, but McClendon has other plans--building a gated community for millionaires. The Concerned Citizens for Saugatuck State Park lament:Mr. McClendon, with the resources of......

Barack Obama's celebrity endorsement by Oprah Winfrey didn't go unnoticed by local Republicans. Never shy about borrowing strategy, they've recruited their own big name person--former Seahawk and Coug Robbie Tobeck. Tobeck is the putative author of a letter emailed this morning to supporters of Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi. He invokes some hoary football metaphors in an attempt to turn his football "celebrity" into cold hard campaign cash.As a former Seattle Seahawk and Washington State......

Those who attended the Issaquah Village Theater’s matinee of The King and I today may have come away a little disappointed. Dino Rossi used the stage to announce his candidacy for governor. After his Eastside announcement, Rossi raced the telegraph wires to Spokane and made his announcement again this afternoon. The man who got his asshole handed to him three years ago by current governor Christine Gregoire, has been the Republicans' guy since he decided......

In the middle of Steven Pinker's talk at Town Hall last night, the lecture morphed into some surprisingly blue comedy. We'll warn you now: what follows is adult language content. Talking about an FCC ruling (on Bono's infamous "This is really fucking brilliant!" live outburst after winning a Golden Globe award), Pinker noted that the way the FCC saw it, Bono was employing "fucking" as an adverb modifying the adjective "brilliant" -- but "did not......

Seattlest watches as a S.L.U.T. is born and Seattle Flickr users go nuts over a local art installation. A restaurant critic demands a Diner's Bill of Rights over a gnat next to her drink, and, in lieu of a Portlandist, Seattlest debates with itself over the identity of the Northwest's crown jewel. Seattlest also joins the guys from Fantagraphics for an ill-fated gun party in the woods. LAist saw national headlines soar this week with......

The Republicans, learning from the mistakes of the Democrats in King County's Sixth, may decide to run a candidate against Governor Gregoire next fall. The PI reports, in big letters above the fold, that Dino Rossi (the guy who may already be our governor) will probably run for governor. Well, no shit. He's been holding un-official rallies, giving speeches, and raising money (WIIINNNK) for a few months now. Also, everyone in the state's GOP expects......

The Mojo and the Sayso which opened at ACT last night is four actors and a car, but the car is the thing, the main entity. The car is the set, the stage, and the focal character. It may not have any lines, but it stands in for everything that moves playwright Aisha Rahman's story forward. It's the absent child, gunned down by aggro off-duty cops, it's the broken family, being rebuilt from the ground......

The 8th congressional district lost five-term Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn and candidate Rodney Tom in the last twenty-four hours. Dunn, who served from 1993-2005, died of a pulmonary embolism last night. She was 66. We'll always remember how every two years the Democrats would find some young Microsoft millionaire to run against her, claiming that the district's new tech money was shifting the votes their way. They were wrong. Her 2004 announcement that she wasn't running......

Presidential primaries in December now a possibility: The Associated Press CONCORD, N.H. — South Carolina Republicans today moved their 2008 presidential primary to Jan. 19, triggering a chain reaction among Iowa, New Hampshire and other early voting states that could push the first balloting into December 2007.......

It's always good to be reminded that here in the other Washington, our Republicans are just as nutty, corrupt and paranoid as their cousins in D.C. Today, David Postman over at the Times reports on his blog that state Sen. Joe Zarelli recently hosted right-wing Israeli politicians and others at a two-day conference down in Vancouver, to fan the flames of Islamophobia. Known as the Convergence Northwest conference, Zarelli invited "[m]embers of Israel’s Knesset, former......

Republicans in Olympia are tired of the Spend-o-crat majority rendering their very existence moot, and they've decided to do something about it—make funny noises. Representative Dan Roach, who is proving that douchebaggery is hereditary, was complaining that Democrats were railroading a bill through the House to benefit trial lawyers when he went a little off the rails himself--launching an attack on House majority leader Lynn Kessler's trial lawyer husband Keith. The Times' David Postman takes......

POLITICS: Young Republicans meetup. "Can't be any more boring than Drinking Liberally, can it?" asks Seattlest Seth. "Six of one, half dozen of the other," we reply. 5:30pm // Nickerson Street Saloon // free MUSIC: Former Velocity Girl Sarah Shannon sings selections from her latest pop album, City Morning Song, for loyal listeners and new fans alike. 7:30pm // The Triple Door // $10 BOOK: May she have your liver? Liver transplant surgeon Pauline Chen......

"I voted for Dino Rossi" is not what you say when you are dating a hard-left politics dork. Seattlest once learned this the hard way. The revelation sparked an argument. We lost. For months, we spent lonely nights reading Lewis Lapham, trying to cure our moderate streak. But, with the Democrats in gridlock over the Viaduct issue, we feel vindicated. The internecine squabbling that's led us to a point where we're having a meaningless advisory......

The 2007 Washington Legislative session begins today, and Governor Gregoire wants to spend big. Her argument, we have a $1.9 billion surplus, and we should spend that money on education, health care, and other gross poor people things. Of the four billion dollars in increased spending she is looking to add to the state’s two year operating budget, she wants half to be spent on education. None, however, will be spent to track down Sasquatch.......

King County is accepting one-time applications for absentee ballots online until 7pm today due to concerns about poll accessibility in flooded areas. Doesn't the sheer historical weight of the words "flooded areas" just make you want to go vote some Republicans out of office? We thought so. If you don't need to swim to get there, but you don't know where your poll is located, there's a poll locater on the King County site as......

Halloween is Tuesday, which means this weekend is really the time for all of the –ists to celebrate. And whether they’re designing super-spooky costumes or talking about the super-spooky upcoming elections, we’d say that they’re doing a fine job of it. Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you......

Wednesday, October 25 >>>Rendezvous Jewel Box Theater, 7:30-10pm. Are you afraid of the dimmed lights in a theater? A Guide to Visitors presents their annual Ghost Story night. Spooky stories about haunted office buildings and ghost quests, told by people such as the woman who leads a ghost tour of Pike Place Market. The press release says the Jewel Box is haunted, so maybe the dead will chip in a tale or two themselvs.......

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,......

-Republicans are arming their pols with new safety vests to protect them from the slings and arrows, and if that doesn't work, well, we'll just pretend they're Democrats. -Starbucks stock took off today due to whatever mysterious information is contained in this incomprehensible press release. -Does Reichert accept the facts of Global Warming or doesn't he? The Stranger can't figure it out and it's through no lack of trying. -Haha, someone. Very funny. Who......

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......

As both the Seattle Times and P-I are reporting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's latest national ad campaign in support of Republican lawmakers has had to be tweaked a tiny bit. The P-I's coverage strikes us as more genuinely perturbed at the gross incompetence (or political "knavery" as they put it) involved: This time, the chamber aired a TV commercial suggesting that freshman Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., voted for an expansion of the Medicare......

We were all set to write a little thing about the minimum wage protest tomorrow and belittle it along the lines of "who cares about the national minimum wage when our state's is already the highest in the country" without knowing anything about it (as is our wont), but we accidentally stopped to read what was being protested. HR 5970, which has passed the House and is now heading to the U.S. Senate, contains......

The Seattle Times editorial page--proving that it is out of touch, even by 2000 standards: Parties Try to Get Jiggy With Young Voters Republicans and Democrats have begun an awkward courtship of the young voter. A big November election and an emerging large voting bloc have a way of forcing the parties to peek out of the partisan tent. Oh, Seattle Times, your hip use of the hottest lingo is giving us a tent. SCHWING!......