• Joel Connelly doesn’t like the idea of still more street construction in Belltown, worrying that all these closed lanes and parking spaces could fatally disrupt business, especially if Nickels’s “park boulevard” idea (reducing Bell Street to one lane of traffic and plaza-izing the rest) goes through. I believe if Bell’s gonna be revamped, it might as well be done now, while all this other work is already going on on or near it.
• Our favorite expert on the domestic automotive collapse, Michael Moore, says good riddance to the old General Motors. (Say, since we the U.S. taxpayers now own the company, let’s bring back the Geo! And let’s make us some of those hi-speed passenger trains, too, OK?)
• As the Chase-ification of Washington Mutual nears completion, a lot of WaMu ATM cards have stopped working. The possible culprit: Chase’s deal to switch WaMu’s debit card handling services from MasterCard to Visa.
• Seattle Business Monthly depicts the Seattle Times-owning Blethen family as a dysfunctional clan worthy of soap-opera depiction.
• Our pals at the local news site PubliCola have some real investment behind them now, thanks to Greg Smith, the real estate developer who almost ran for mayor this year. Yeah, he almost ran against Greg Nickels, for whom PubliCola cofounder Sandeep Kaushik now does campaign PR.
• And the equally fine folks at another local news site, Seattle PostGlobe, have published another photo essay by yr. intrepid c’r’s’p'n’d't. It’s all about the demise of the Summit K-12 alternative public school.

…the answer is Yes!

Carl Chew, the valiant Eckstein Middle School teacher who’s risking his job to take a stand against the meaningless bureaucratic nonsense that is standardized testing, is the same person as C.T. Chew, the pop-folk artist locally beloved for his surrealistic prints, his original “commemorative stamp” series (not good for postage), and his (outsourced to Asia) designer rugs.

(He’s also got a Latin-style accordion band available “for parties, weddings, cruises, & fiestas.”)

Here’s Chew’s statement to the media about why he’s refusing to administer the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) to his sixth graders. It’s a beautiful, compelling, structured argument. Students should read it to learn about the fine art of persuasive writing. Heck, bloggers and Web pundits should read it for the same reason.

…a few days since we last met. But here are some recent events in the nooze:

• A plan’s been announced to keep the Sonics, or move in some other NBA team to replace ‘em. Yeah, it involves public arena subsidies. But the arena in question would still be our good ol’ KeyArena/Coliseum. And private interests would pick up a huger share of the tab than in any previous scheme. Of course, there’s the li’l matter of convincing current owner Clay Bennett and NBA commissioner David Stern (who hates Seattle even more than the Seattle Times editorial board does).
• No matter how much money the UW raises in its many assorted fundraising/begging programs, it just keeps on making tuition ever-less affordable. Congress doesn’t like it.
• Some self-styled radical environmentalists want to preserve exurban forest lands from sprawl. Their solution: Set fire to an unoccupied cul-de-sac, a fire which, if set at some other time of the year, could conceivably spread and burn said forest land.
• The first televised Mariners game of the pre-season is on local cable at noon today (Monday). I know it’s a game that doesn’t “count,” but hey, neither did the Ms’ last 20 or so games last season.
• Once you start looking into Port o’ Seattle corruption, it can truly become a bottomless pit.
• How to get high school kids interestedin reading newspapers: Run sensational surveys of students’ oral-sex experiences. (Hey, it’s the taste sensation that’s sweeping the nation!)
• Airbus, with a domestic company fronting for it, got the Air Force tanker plane contract Boeing really really wanted. Next stop: litigation.
• Here’s what to do the next time you see a bus with an unconscious driver heading your way.
• Since certain right-wing radio guys have no qualms about using or misusing people’s names in order to make character-assassination implications, let’s compare Vladmir Putin’s handpicked successor/flunky Dimitry Medvedev with the locally based GOP-talk spewer Michael Medved: One is a sniveling, butt-kissing toady to a ruthless, anti-democratic despot with delusions of godhood. And one is the new President of Russia.

…your Starbuckless evening. Now on to a new day!:

• Did you know Seattle’s got a waterfront maritime museum? Well, you better see it now, while you still can.
• Seattle U to students: We wanna become the undisputed top private college in the region. To do that, your tuition’s going up.
• A local politician is heeding the siren call for capital-C Change. It’s Republican Dino Rossi.
• Real headline: “Seattle home prices up a tad in Q4, says report.” I’ve been around the Seattle music scene too long to think of “a Tad” as something small.
• Jus’ for fun, let’s take a look at who’d like to buy the Seattle City Council.
• Urban townhomes: Could they possibly look any less dorky?
• Did a honeymooning hubby really invite two strippers to his and his bride’s hotel room, or was it all, as hubby now claims, an unsolicited break-in?
• The European Union’s fined Microsoft $1.3 billion. To put it into perspective, that’s enough to pay Bill Gates’s household expenses for almost a day.

…couple-O-daze for yr. o’b'd’n't web-scribe. I did a marathon temp gig in exotic Renton. (It’s now ended.) I was there, methodically shoving pieces of paper through a machine, when my Evening Magazine segment aired. (They’d promised they’d tell me when it would run; damn.) You may be able to see it at this link.

Other things have happened as well.

• Wednesday started locally with P-I political writer Joel Connelly grousing that John McCain’s been getting a free ride from the mainstream media. The day ended with the NY Times regurgitating rumors that McCain allegedly had an affair, eight years ago, with a woman far younger than he, who worked as a lobbyist for telecom firms and broadcasters—including for Bud Paxson, of the “family friendly” Pax (now Ion) network. (Pax, you may recall, in 2004 was the chief TV conduit for the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” the guys who were paid big bucks to tell lies about John Kerry’s Vietnam service.)Personally, I don’t care about his past affairs, just as I didn’t care about those of Bill Clinton (whose impeachment McCain supported). But I do care about the other half of the NYT allegations, that he’d bestowed legislative favors upon Paxson and other friends-of-friends whilst promoting himself as Mr. Let’s-Clean-Up-Government.
• In good, potentially great news, the Seattle Landmark Preservation Board decided to pursue saving Ballard’s beloved Manning’s/Denny’s building! And somebody’s already proposed a scheme to save the building, as a restaurant, while building complementary-looking housing on its parking lot.
• Discover U, the longstanding for-profit offerer of reasonably priced self-help classes and group events, has suddenly shut its doors. Now, where will Seattleites learn how to cleanse their colons, find love at any age, or start an eBay business?
• HD DVD, RIP.

…I’m skipping the morning-headlines thang on days when there’s not much interesting to pass on. Today, we’ve got a few items:

• Certain Pokemon valentine cards were recalled, after some of the heart-shaped lollipops attached to them contained metal fragments. Looks like Team Rocket has finally won a battle.
• Could the world’s oceans soon become beyond saving?
• Real headline: “State patrol to drivers: 911 not a traffic hotline.”
• Evergreeners: Not all as passive as the old stereotype.
• The state’s new plan for replacing those four obsolete ferries? Replace them with three new, smaller boats.
• Your help is needed in a one-time census of Puget Sound octopi.
• Sleazy corporate lawyers want access to a car-crash victim’s old MySpace page.
• A Starbucks barista plans to donate a kidney to a loyal customer. Let’s hope this doesn’t get into the next employee manual.

• The Philadelphia Cheese Steak stand at 23rd and Union, formerly Philly’s Best, is the best of its type in town. It’s had two owners over the years. Both are now homicide victims.
• A consultant from out-of-state refers to Seattle’s schools “a tale of two districts,” of the haves and the have-nots. Essentially, education for the downscale has floundered, while administrators have spent the bulk of their attention trying to keep upscale families from fleeing to private schools or the burbs.
• Port of Seattle officials promise to be more transparent in their operations in the future. Of course, that could mean the bribes and the kickbacks and the sweetheart deals could just become more overt.
• Developers want to stick up a high-rise hotel where the beautiful, if age-showing, 81-year-old Seattle Greyhound bus station is now. Damn! I love that place. It’s got so many stories within it of people parting, reuniting, etc. etc.
• There’s a computer store somewhere with a window sign proudly offering, “We Remove Vista.”
• Amazon buys Audible. Say that five times fast.

…electioneering going on today in NV and SC. Around here:

• Strippers at Sugar’s in Shoreline are fighting back after cops staged what the dancers call a pattern of mass arrests and harassments.
• The standardized-testing backlash in the schools continues, as the State Senate considers delaying the last WASL graduation requirements.
• The legislature’s also pondering whether to impose a cop on condo conversions, and is allocating money to provide financial counseling to foreclosure victims.
• A Canadian border guard insists he didn’t take cavity searches too far.

• Marshall Alternative School will finally close this year, its remaining programs scattered around the city.
• A Tukwila hotel manager turned himself in to face accusations that he stole $1.4 million from hotel guests’ corporate accounts.
• Gregoire’s next big idea for the 520 corridor: A mediation team.
• Makah tribal leaders want to go whaling again.
• How to keep school bus riders pacified: Use satellite music, specially curated to be squeaky clean.
• And the Mac universe impatiently awaits whatever Steve Jobs is going to announce this morning.

• The easy half of the equation has been solved, as Clay Bennett agrees to sell the Storm to owners who’ll keep the WNBA team here. The hard part, wresting the Sonics from his reverse-Midas-touch hands, now begins in earnest.
• Meanwhile, the guy who got us into this mess in the first place by selling the teams to Bennett is making new moves at his day job. Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz has fired his CEO, retaking the reins himself. Can he return the coffee chain to its former fast-growin’ ways, in spite of all the obstacles? (Among the latter: espresso drinks coming to McDonald’s.)
• Some folks got pretty snow this morning; the heart of Seattle, again, didn’t. Damn.
• The Port of Seattle’s fiscal shenanigans will be investigated by the Feds.
• House prices finally begin to go down in the area. (Insert your own “going down” joke here.) Still, local biz leaders insist it’s not that drastic really. Meanwhile, developers who’d planned to condo-convert Seattle’s historic Smith Tower are scaling back their plans; now only the top 12 stories will be converted.
• My second-ever adult job (such as it was), the student newspaper Polaris at North Seattle Community College, is a goner.
• Blacks are more likely than whites to get busted for having or smoking pot, even though that’s now the city’s official lowest law enforcement priority.
• In more positive law-related news, “serious crime” (as the FBI defines it) is way down in western Washington’s cities these days. That, alone, won’t stop the media from exploiting the occasional random shooting, or stop the talk-radio nebbishes from preaching the city=danger, suburbs=serenity meme.
• An election year’s underway. You can tell because a politician, in this case Gov. Gregoire, is trying to generate headlines on the get-tougher-on-drunk-drivers line, the encroaching-surveillance-state issue on which no one dares to disagree.
• Woodland Park Zoo tries again to make its own cute li’l baby elephant.
• The men’s fashion headline of the year is “Return to Elegance.” Just as it’s been every year since at least 1978.
• 12,000 people in Idaho lost electricity due to a stray cat wandering through a substation. Brian Setzer remains at large.
• Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert returned to their cablecasts, just in time to give writerless jokes about the New Hampshire primary.