In some states, the Governor and Lt. Governor runs as a ticket, but not in Washington. Democrats Gov. Christine Gregoire and Sir Brad Owen run their own campaigns. But I got a piece of campaign literature in the mail this weekend that suggests Gregorie does indeed have a running mate.

His name: Barack Obama. In an elaborate four-color, eight-panel campaign mailer in advance of this week's "top two" primary election, Obama and Gregoire appear as if they're running for P and VP — smiling, hands waving, joined at the hip like Siamese twins Chang and Eng.

By my count the piece features six photographs of Obama — as many as Gregoire. The text is all Obama quotes and touts Gregoire as a fighter for jobs, children's health care, and developing "green economy" jobs. To help you get the picture about "green" jobs, there's even a photo of Gregoire shaking hands with workers in green hard hats and green coats. Apparently, every day is St. Patrick's Day down at the recycling center.

Gregoire wants a strong turnout of Obama maniacs to help put to rest any polling nonsense that might suggest a tight race with arch nemesis Dino Rossi (he who prefers the Grand Old Party party). Obama polls better than Gregoire in Washington, so it's smart to lash herself to his coattails, and as I reported last winter, she's never looked or sounded better than when sharing the stump with the Illinois senator in KeyArena.

The primary doesn't mean much for either candidate but will provide a snapshot for November. Vote percentages and totals can make fall fundraising easier or harder depending on a candidate's showing. It'll be interesting to see if Gregoire's mate makes a difference.

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The creepiest section of The New York Times is the Sunday Styles section where they print all the news that's fit for yuppie eugenicists, from Harvard-Yale marriages to new consumer fads embraced by the rich we'd like to eat.

On Aug. 17 was a classic of the genre: a story about people using Photoshop to clean-up the family scrapbook. Illustrating the piece is a large photograph of Stalin and his minions with a picture of a man edited Zelig-like into the picture. The subhead in the print edition reads: "Regimes revise history. So why not touch up your family album?"

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia, this strikes me as a tad tasteless. Stalin famously altered official photographs by erasing people from them one at a time — people who were being disappeared into graves and gulags. The Times is suggesting its readers might learn from Uncle Joe (the man in the Photoshopped picture looks happy to be one of the dictator's minions) and use the knowledge to twist reality by deposing your ex-husband from all the snapshots.

Here's what one woman shared with the paper:

Like a Stalin-era technician in the Kremlin removing all traces of an out-of-favor official from state photos, the friend erased the husband from numerous cherished pictures taken on cruises and at Caribbean cottages, where he had been standing alongside Ms. Horn, now 50, and other traveling companions.

'In my own reality, I know that these things did happen,' Ms. Horn said. But 'without him in them, I can display them. I can look at those pictures and think of the laughter we were sharing, the places we went to.'

'This new reality,' she added, 'is a lot more pleasant.'

I'm fascinated with this appeal to everyone's inner Stalin, and here I think the Times is on to something. There is some worry (even at the Times) about how our country is losing liberties with massive eavesdropping, surveillance, etc., but the fact is individual Americans are very willing to toss their liberties out at the least excuse. Sanitizing the family history is the least of it. Powerful individual technology is turning us all into Big Brother. The Times, for example, recently ran an essay by a photographer who is spying on people with her cell phone camera. Call it art, but you could also call it "totalitarian chic" because it's what all the kids are doing.

Such individual power is eroding our sense of outrage at the loss of privacy and freedom in public space. Again in New York, the city is considering setting up a security "veil" with an extensive series of surveillance cameras throughout parts of Manhattan. This system would also record the license plate of every single vehicle entering the city. We used to think of the suburbs as the repository of paranoid, gated-city mentalities, but it's now big cities that are obsessed with tracking people for security and revenue-generating purposes (not to mention the current obsession cities like Seattle and San Francisco have with the contents of a person's garbage).

Not only are we all watched, we can all watch. We can use personal technology, like Photoshop, to let loose the Uncle Joe within, and who is going to care? The propaganda tactics of the real Stalin survive as something to be harmlessly emulated on our home computers while his real crimes are airbrushed out of our collective memory. Meanwhile notions like privacy and reality are just concepts that are out of fashion.

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Today is "Top-Two" Primary's Eve, and as usual, the pundits have circled and speculated about tomorrow's big turnout. But we'll get to that in a second. First, Oregon congressional candidate Mike Erickson has a lesson for us titled What not to do when going on a "humanitarian trip" to Cuba. In 2004, Erickson said he visited a Cuban "medical center, met with doctors, and attended a presentation on the plight of the disabled." But according to a recent story in The Oregonian, the medical center Erickson said he visited does not exist. Erickson and some friends spent nearly $1,698 each for the weeklong Cuban vacation, which conveniently coincided with the Habanos Festival, an annual celebration of Cuban cigars.

Erickson insists the trip was meant for humanitarian purposes, saying "are you kidding? To make the trip and pay for my own air fare and for everything ... and donate more than $5,000 in medical supplies. If that's not a humanitarian trip, I don't know what is." But according to another person on the trip, "everyone knew it was a pleasure trip," and application papers filed for the visit were identified as "Comandante Fidel Castro's Annual Gala Cigar Dinner and Auction." Erickson is currently in his second run for Congress after being defeated in 2006. Anyone want to make a prediction for this year? ...

Cubanesque campaign gaffes aside, Washington state will hold its primary elections tomorrow, and the pundits are already saying it's not going to live up to the hype. David Goldstein at Horse's Ass says the biggest loser in the new "top-two" primary system will be the new "top-two" primary system. Both political parties continue to downplay the primary's forecasted results, while others say the new top-two format "restores broad choice" in the primary election, but comes "at the expense of the main event in November." ...

Muy bien: A recent audit of collection agencies says the state government is getting better at helping taxpayers save money. ...

Muy ridiculo: The Everett School District has spent more than $140,000 at the public's expense to investigate an underground high school newspaper and a teacher who "disobeyed orders" to support student journalists. ...

Keeping ahead: Chris Mulick at the Tri-City Herald breaks down state Democrats' substantial fiscal advantage, explaining why he believes it "isn't likely to make a difference in the vast majority of legislative races on the ballot," but could determine winners and losers in "key House races." ...

Keeping behind: Despite a hopeful year for Democrats, nearly 40 percent of the Legislative races in Idaho are going uncontested by the party. ...

Keeping mum: Jeff Mapes at The Oregonian reports U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., has some reservations about voting for off-shore drilling. ...

Keeping glum: Gov. Chris Gregoire tells KING 5 that her campaign isn't going the way she had hoped. ...

Win one for the gipper: Eli Sanders at the Stranger breaks down the presidential candidates' forum on faith yesterday in California. ...

Win one for the kippah: The Seattle Times reports Republican presidential candidate John McCain is leading Democratic candidate Barack Obama in personalized kippah sales — the Obamica and the McCippah are available for purchase at Vanitykippah.com — indicating the "Jewish vote" may be leaning Republican this election. ...

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Barack Obama visited his family in Hawaii last week, and Hawaii is America's state with the closest ties to Asia. His visit reminds us that the Democratic nominee-in-waiting would be the first non-white U.S. president in history, one with close ties to Asia, and not due only to his much-discussed schooling in Indonesia.

While the idea of the 21st Century as China's century is a long way from reality, America's links with Asia have grown ever stronger in the last half-century despite a nasty, hot war in Vietnam and a prolonged, cold one with Maoist China.

Little attention has been paid in the campaigns to Obama's Asian links, which go beyond the boyhood years he spent in Indonesia and include formative years as a prep school student in Hawaii, where his grandmother still lives. While Obama was only in Indonesia four years (from age six to 10), he graduated from high school in Honolulu, at the state's most prestigious private school, Punahou, where he was one of the few students (black or white) without Hawaiian or Asian forebears.

You cannot live in Hawaii without being conscious of Asia; when Obama lived in Honolulu in the Seventies, Honolulu was still an air connection between North America and Asia for many business people. Many of Hawaii's business, political, and educational institutions are owned or headed by Asian Americans.

Additionally, Obama's family had close connections to the island's two most important institutions of higher education, the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the East-West Center, the latter a federally funded think tank and research institution opened in 1960. According to the Center, Obama's mother, stepfather and brother-in-law all had EWC connections, with his mother holding two advanced degrees in anthropology from the University of Hawaii through EWC grants. (Disclosure: I was a fellow at the EWC on two occasions in the Eighties)

Students at Punahou, University of Hawaii and the East-West Center are overwhelmingly of Hawaiian or Asian heritage, and the university and EWC enroll large numbers of students from Asian countries. A curious and bright young man such as Obama would have ingested Asian culture and appreciation for the diversity of its nationalities.

Any American who is not of Asian background and lives for a time in Hawaii becomes acutely aware of the importance of Asia, not only economically but also culturally. In the aftermath of Vietnam, and with wrenching changes already evident in China, a student at Punahou with a mother at the East-West Center and University of Hawaii would have absorbed a liberal education on Asian values and culture.

Negative campaigners have attempted to paint Obama as Muslim because he lived in Indonesia from age six to 10, but regardless of any "feel" for Asia he might have picked up in Indonesia, the eight years Obama spent in the cultural stew of Hawaii amid its premier educational institutions is certain to be more important to his worldview today. His formative years were not the Eurocentrism of those of past presidents.

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From what I can tell from news reports, yesterday's press conference by Bigfoot hunters claiming to have found a Sasquatch corpse in Georgia had some startling revelations. One is DNA results that answer the question: Just what is Bigfoot?

DNA samples from a presumed Bigfoot corpse returned positive results for human and opossum genes. That confirms theories about interbreeding spawned in the wake of the movie Deliverance which featured two men mating in order to make a pig in the Georgia woods.

The Bigfoot hunters are keeping their pile of fur and guts in the fridge (or is it Al Capone's vault?) for the time being, though they have released photos. If this isn't a human/opossum mix, it may be an even more important discovery: the original costume from the 1953 movie Robot Monster, which features a cave dwelling alien invader in a gorilla suit suspiciously like the one found in Georgia. Only the hard-hat diving helmet is missing.

If the Bigfoot hunters want to know what to do with their find, I suggest they bring it to the Northwest, which has a long tradition of displaying corpses for public entertainment and edification, such as Sylvester at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. (He even has his own bobblehead!) It might make a good companion for an old favorite, Jake the Alligator Man in Long Beach.

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Minneapolis is the latest city to develop Portland-envy and, thanks to the Portland-imitating Seattle Streetcar, a little Seattle-desire as well. Minneapolis is now considering a starter-streetcar line, with maybe six more to follow. Minnpost.com writer Steve Berg recently visited the Northwest cities, rode and praised the streetcars, and was "reminded again how far behind downtown Minneapolis has fallen."

Berg's story is a good summary of the case for streetcars as development tools, particularly "to catalyze redevelopment on the edges" of a downtown. He cites these figures for downtown Portland, since its streetcar line opened in 2001 (and since expanded):

In the years since then, 115 real-estate projects (PDF) — new construction and renovation — have popped up along the initial loop and its four extensions. Included are more than 10,000 new housing units and 5.4 million square feet of commercial space. Altogether, that represents a $3.5 billion investment — nearly all of it private — spurred by a $103 million capital outlay by the city.

That's a return of at least $20 for every dollar invested. Not bad — and not a bad way to capture economic growth in a way that minimizes the impact on land, water and carbon emissions. Fifty-five percent of all development in central Portland has located within one block of the eight-mile streetcar loop since its route was first mapped in 1997.

"Our estimate is that one-third of that development would have happened without the streetcar," said Charlie Hayes, vice president of the engineering firm HDR Inc., and a former Portland city commissioner who championed the streetcar revival.

Those studying the advantages of these streetcars in Minneapolis estimate that they attract 15-50 percent higher ridership than buses, cost half that of light rail, and carry two to three times the load of buses, some of which they eventually replace. Another claimed advantage is that they minimize the need for cars for people living in downtowns. All kinds of American cities are now streetcar-smitten.

As it happens, a friend and I took our first ride on Seattle's South Lake Union Streetcar one morning this week, walking out to the new Lake Union Park and riding the streetcar back. Most streetcars had fewer than five passengers, though ours had about 15. A young man played his drum for the whole trip, angered when someone tried to hush him. A nanny with a small child had a long debate with the ticket-checking guard as to whether her Metro pass would work, having already tried to get that clear by calling Metro earlier. Other families appeared to be tourists. The ride is slow but very smooth.

What concerned me more was the flip side of the Minneapolis story, hoping to use streetcars to stimulate in-city living. The buildings going up along the Seattle Streetcar are mostly new office buildings, for Amazon and for biotech and for Microsoft. Streetlife was extremely thin, except for a flurry around the struggling Whole Foods. What's springing up is sleek, expensive, faux-urbanism, rather like downtown Redmond. I can't imagine that the few high-character stores will last much longer, with most of them being replaced by snazzy services for the nearby workforce (cafes, gyms, flower shops) that you expect on suburban corporate campuses. The streetcar may be slow, but the transformation of a once-mixed neighborhood will be fast.

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Despite the near-record temperatures predicted for the weekend, officials from around the state are asking agencies to "freeze." Last week, Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire ordered a hiring freeze for state employees in an attempt to ease Washington's mounting budget deficit. Yesterday, the Snohomish County Council ordered a hiring freeze for their agencies. Not to be outdone, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels proposed a $5 million spending freeze for the City of Seattle yesterday. On a related note, Seattle's fleet of ice cream carts are expanding their service around the city, in a move experts say could result in widespread brain freezes. ...

Looking for change: Things are looking up for the campaigns of Republican presidential candidate John McCain and GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi in Washington state. Both men have made gains in the latest statewide polls. ...

Change candidate: University of Washington political communications professor David Domke has a story in today's edition of The Seattle Times saying the Obama campaign might actually benefit when race is the media's "topic du jour." ...

Chump change: According to a recent study, the state's farmworkers are living way below the federal poverty line. ...

Snow job cone: The editorial board at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer says recent calls to rescind the 20-cent plastic grocery bag fee aren't worth listening to. ...

Sticky fingers: The editorial board at the News Tribune says the Washington Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns should do a better job of policing campaign mailers from judicial candidates. ...

Sticky situation: U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., tells the editorial board at the Yakima Herald that immigration reform won't be easy, but it needs to happen. (Confidential to the Herald: The super-sized photo of Murray accompanying the story is a little much.) ...

Strictly vanilla: Jeff Mapes at the Oregonian reports U.S Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., is "walking a careful line" on Social Security reform. ...

Melting: Despite the state's large budget shortfall, P-I columnist Joel Connelly says more money should be spent revamping facilities at State Parks. ...

Not melting: The state Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Renton activist Chris Clifford can continue in his effort to oust Port of Seattle Commissioner Pat Davis. ...

Melted: And finally, Larry Lange at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports a new federal rule enacted this year by the Bush administration will effectively stop cheap shuttle service from Seahawks' games. ...

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If you're upset because that two weeks in Italy isn't part of your summer plans due to our lowly little dollar, never fear. All the Europeans are over here. It seems wherever I go, there they are. On a whale-watching trip out of Port Townsend recently, there was an ornithologist from Vienna on board, along with two Swiss guys in their twenties. OK, the Swiss guys were with me, family friends from Zurich staying with us for a week on Whidbey Island. But I think they're typical of the Western Europeans who are flocking to the U.S. this summer.

Vince Steffen and Thomas Geiser are spending three weeks on the West Coast, driving and seeing the sights between Seattle and the Bay Area. And yes, eating and shopping their way through the three states. Everything here is a bargain for them, from digital cameras to jewelry and sneakers. Plus, they think the gas is cheap. While walking through the Pike Place Market with them the other day, the foreign accents were flying as fast as the iconic fish. But even without hearing their native tongues, I can usually pick out the non-North Americans.

Over a martini at Oliver's in Seattle's Mayflower Park Hotel, I spotted a stunning couple. Both blonde, tan, fit, and wearing very cool clothes. "You're from Europe, aren't you?" I asked. Yup. Camilla Brix is a SAS flight attendant from Oslo while Zacharias Nillsson is a student from Sweden. And like our Swiss house guests, they love Seattle.

According to David Blandford, PR Director of the Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau, travel to Seattle is up. Although they don't have the numbers for 2008 yet, the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Travel & Tourism Industries reports there was 25 percent growth in overseas travel to Seattle during 2007 (over 2006). That made Seattle #17 among U.S. cities, with a 1.7% share of the overseas market. Blandford said that in July 2008, the bureau along with The Port of Seattle and Washington State Tourism opened their first representative tourism office in Beijing, China.

So the next time you order that morning cappuccino, look around. That handsome couple standing next to you may be from France, Finland, or maybe Italy. It's sorta like being there — and no passport necessary.

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