It appears increasingly obvious that the only folks who don't understand just how dismal a failure the Metropolitan Service District (Metro) really is are the people who run the show in the country's only elected regional "government". 

Gee.  This was supposed to be a "model" for the rest of the nation.  Ever wondered why, thirty-plus years later, nobody else has followed that "model"?

Led by bicycle-happy councilor Rex Burpholder (no, wait…) ahem…that's supposed to be David Bragdon, but it doesn't really matter.  Rex is the guy who grabs the headlines, telling us all that we need to live close to where we work so that we can ride bikes or walk or take (cough) Mess Transit to get to and from where we need to go.

(The below is from a burst e-mail to y.t. regarding the Evergreen Freedom Foundation-led conflict against the Washington Education Association.)

Dear EFF Members:

We need your help!

Lawmakers in Olympia have introduced two bills, HB 2079 and SB 5921, that are nothing more than an end-run around our U.S. Supreme Court case.

Current state law requires unions to ask permission from non-member workers before spending their agency fees on politics (non-members must pay agency fees to keep their jobs). HB 2079 and SB 5921, if passed, would effectively relieve unions of this requirement.

The Washington Education Association drafted the legislation that would allow it, and other unions, to spend non-member fees on politics. The legislation uses an accounting gimmick to get around the requirement to ask permission. While the union claims it is trying to “clarify” the law, the legislation is really an attempt to mitigate a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, which is reviewing the constitutionality of the law.

The task force the UN sent to Sudan on a Darfur fact gathering mission can't get in because the Islamist Sudanese government won't issue them visas.   Red Marilyn has details and links to article, photos and background on the complicated political and murky ethnic identity issues behind Sudan's genocide in Darfur and throughout Sudan. 

What is it about professional sports teams that makes their owners want to screw the public? They’re businesses that make hundreds of millions of dollars, with some of the highest paid employees in the world, yet they always want to play their games on the public dole. From the Seattle Times:

Sonics owner Clay Bennett doesn’t want a public vote on taxes to pay for the team’s proposed new $500 million Renton arena because the outcome would probably be the same as most of the team’s games this year: a loss.

That’s exactly what it would be, and should be. The Sonics tried to extort a few hundred million out of the City of Seattle with the threat that they’d leave if they didn’t get it. The people of Seattle voted against them, so they decided to move across the lake and try it there.

Well, well, well what have we here?

Cut-and-run, version 2.0: Set ridiculous limits on deployment of our troops to fight the Islamofacist enemy at the prompting of MoveOn.org and other extremist groups.

Read the whole thing.  Speak out.  Write and blog about it.  Stop this NOW!!!!  Whatever happened to, "Finish the mission! V for Victory!"?