…here’s what’s happenin’:

• Remember in ‘04, when the WashState GOP was all a-flutter over trumped-up allegations of ballot miscounts? Now they’ve gotta answer to the Huckabee campaign’s similar charges.
• Starbucks to give in to pressure from the indies and offer free WiFi, sort of, with a lot of conditions.
• The city council’s allocated a $350,000 fund to help limited-income tenants of apartment buildings that turn condo. Mayor Nickels isn’t spending a dime of it.
• Internet “server farms” don’t employ many people (except in construction, while they’re being built). But they could be worth millions in tax breaks for the companies that run ‘em.
• Some in Seattle would really like more transit to the Eastside. Some Eastside politicians would rather just have more highway lanes.
• Bremerton woman mistakenly deposits meth in an ATM. Arrest-arity ensues.

…a new month, and largely the same ol’ nooze:

• Ron Paul, in town for two quick speeches, brought forth some more of his right-fringe, anti-gov’t. talk. Then he and his aides drove off in a minivan to Spokane, presumably hoping the WSDOT crews had gotten the passes reopened.
• Microsoft offers a whoppin’ $45 billion in an unsolicited bid to take over Yahoo! (which, in turn, owns Flickr, HotJobs, GeoCities, and a bunch of other stuff).Of course, I remember when its name was a “backronym” for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” and its chief service was a categorized directory of other Web sites. For a couple of years, my daily morning routine included a quick glance through the “What’s New On Yahoo!” page, which told me everything that was new n’ exciting on that rapidly-growin’ World Wide Web. In time, as you can imagine, that became a too-cumbersome way to look for stuff online. Yahoo! expanded into other Web-based businesses—a lot of other Web-based businesses.

  Now, MS wants Y!’s search sites, and will pay big bucks to get ‘em. What would happen to the rest of Yahoo!’s sprawling network of sites? MS would likely keep (and rebrand) some, fold others into its existing MSN, and close or sell the rest.

• The former Harvey’s Tavern in “Freelard” (Leary Way, between Fremont and Ballard) is yet another ex-dive bar going upscale.
• Remember when Kroger/QFC wanted to take over the Metropolitan Market site on Upper Queen Anne (nee Queen Anne Thriftway), as part of a huge condo project? Now it’ll be a smaller apartment project, and the developers have invited Metropolitan Market back when it’s done.
• Joe Isuzu calls it quits, at least in the U.S. market. No more “millions of standard features.”
• Mayor Nickels hearts Obama.
• A former Bartell Drugs pharmacy technician pleaded guilty to filing fraudulant prescriptions on his own behalf.
• New border rules bring no big delays, at least in terms getting south from There to Here.
• Freak accident of the day: A truck, being towed by a crane, gets loose, rolls downhill, and runs into two bicyclists.
• Sound Transit might suspend plans to extend its still-under-construction light rail line all the way to Tacoma. Don’t stop now! Channel your inner Little Engine That Could!

…to the 27 people who attended my li’l book event at the Form/Space Atelier gallery. If I’d known I’d have had a mike and a stage and a desk, I’d have scripted something.

IN SATURDAY’S NOOZE:

• Declared too damaged to be preserved, the City’s allowed developer David Sabey to demolish the Stock House at theold Georgetown brewery complex on Airport Way, the pre-Prohibition home of Rainier Beer.
• A marriage made in heck: Wife runs a street ministry to drug addicts in Tacoma, hubby sells crack in Seattle.
• Sonic Boom Records is leaving Fremont, in another instance of the arty and funky disappearing from neighborhoods that have been sold to home buyers on the basis of their artiness and funkiness.
• BankAmericrap is bailing out Countrywide Financial, onetime big blowers of the housing bubble.
• Wash. state challenges the Bushies on draconian anti-privacy regulations.
• The ferry system doesn’t know where to put all its out-of-commission boats.
• What? You mean to tell me old pier pilings are bad for the water?
• Pat Cashman has a 30-year-old son, who won some online joke-telling contest. In other passage-of-time news, Madonna will be eligible to join AARP this year.
• And in case you haven’t heard, the Seahawks play an extremely important playoff game this afternoon.

• Even architects can’t afford to live in Seattle these days without special programs.
• The end of Netscape Navigator as a web-browser brand doesn’t mean all that much. The best of Netscape lives on in its open-source successor Firefox.
• One of the ex-Mariners named in the Mitchell Report has admitted to using steroids and uppers in 1999. His explanation: All the other kids were doing it. (Except catcher Dan Wilson.)
• It’s the law: If you’re stoned, don’t install other drivers’ tire chains.
• You can tell it’s a slow news day when every TV station reports the following: “Woman doesn’t want dog in bathroom during couple’s shower.”
• Betcha didn’t know there was anything historic in Tukwila. Except it’s not there anymore. It’s being barged to Seattle.

• Oklahoma City’s mayor, a pal of Sonics owner Clay Bennett, drops hints that Bennett and co. may already be planning the team’s move.
• You remember that ultra low-fare airline offering super-cheap seats from Bellingham to Columbus, OH? It’s not anymore.
• Canadian transportation experts voice concern that B.C. Ferry crews may be enjoying too much “B.C.bud” on the job.
• For an off-off-year election, some races are definitely heating up. Examples: Seattle City Councilmember David Della’s decreasingly rational rants about opponent Tim Burgess; the Seattle School Board battle between incumbent Darlene Flynn and centralized-curriculum advocate Sherry Carr; the skirmish for King County Prosecutor between business-as-usual Dan Satterberg and dynamic challenger Bill Sherman; and something I don’t quite understand in Renton.
• And everybody’s supposed to be afraid, very afraid, of Windstorm 2007, coming Thursday, or not.

An Oregon State U. study shows that anti-smoking ads may actually encourage teens to smoke. As if that wasn’t the less-than-completely-hidden aim of the tobacco-company-sponsored “anti-tobacco” ads to begin with. You know: The ones that show smokers as gross-out outcasts (as in cool), and non-smokers as nice clean-cut jocks and cheerleaders (as in dweebs).

…there’s only one part of private-sector employment in the U.S. that’s been gaining jobs this decade. It’s the health care biz, including drugs and biotech. The whole rest of non-governmental employment: stagnant or dropping. Including info-tech.

In other words, our only source of job growth is a corrupt system rigged to maintain high stock prices for the drug and insurance companies, at the expense of U.S. citizens’ physical and fiscal well-being (and, due to the built-in inefficiencies of the employer-paid insurance system, at the expense of the entire rest of U.S. business).

Any attempt at health care reform in a future post-conservative government will need to take this into account. Its proponents will have to argue their plan will increase more well-paying jobs than it cuts, by cutting costs for employers.

Viagra for children. (Remember, that particular pill was originally developed as a blood-pressure regulator.)

…”Long-term users of marijuana gradually become worse at learning and remembering things, a new study suggests.”

Insert your own joke here.

“Marijuana is now Washington state’s No. 8 leading agricultural product. In other news, Cheetos and Ho-Hos remain the state’s leading imports.”

Actually, no. Frito-Lay has a plant just off the Columbia in Vancouver USA, and Hostess is still ensconced in Seattle on Dexter (or “Dextrose”) Avenue.