1. Seattle PI.com columnist Joel Connelly—after crediting the late U.S. Sen. Warren Magnuson with inventing one of U.S. politics' oldest political tropes (and one probably not original to him), "You can be a work horse or a show horse," trashed city council member-elect Kshama Sawant on Facebook today, calling her "self-intoxicated" and then attacking Burien Democratic campaign consultant Jeff Upthegrove, brother of state Rep. Dave Upthegrove (D-33), for calling Connelly an "insult machine", telling him, "You, Jeff, have a cork up your ass."

Subsequently, according to Upthegrove, Connelly blocked and unfriended him; then he called another Sawant supporter (again, publicly) "bitter, paranoid and just plain bat shit crazy." 

2. The city council's budget committee voted yesterday not to eliminate funding for a (surprisingly controversial) program called Startup Seattle, an "incubator" for tech startups, for which Mayor Mike McGinn proposed providing $150,000 to pay for a new city staffer. 

Opponents of the spend—including liberal council member Nick Licata, who joked that "maybe [supporters of Startup Seattle] are socialists" looking for a government handout—argued that if the city wanted to create a "concierge" service to promote a specific industry, high-tech might not be the best pick, since it seems to be doing just fine. 

"In light of what has happened in Seattle and has been happening for a while, [the high-tech industry] is quite a success," Licata said. Council member Tom Rasmussen chimed in: "I would like to know ... if there is something so unique or valuable about this [industry] that we should fund it" over other industries. 

Licata's proposal failed 5-4. 

3. Also yesterday, city council members preserved $500,000 in 2014 funding for pedestrian improvements at Northgate, which council member Tom Rasmussen had proposed postponing until 2015—a move pedestrian advocates viewed as an attempt to get money for a separate project in Rasmussen's neighborhood, West Seattle, at the expense of a new pedestrian bridge over I-5 connecting the Sound Transit station at Northgate to North Seattle Community College.

However, city staffers say the Northgate $500,000 is separate from the bridge, to which the city has pledged $5 million. 

The West Seattle money, as we reported last Tuesday, would accelerate funding for a "green boulevard" on Fauntleroy Way SW.