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The phrase Obama’s Katrina will hopefully be retired after this weekend as we watch nonstop footage of failed lees and American citizens on rooftops. I would prefer instead to refer to political disasters as Sarah Palin’s “In What Respect, Charlie?” When you’ve lived through it, hearing anyone call a disaster someone’s Katrina is like hearing a pundit speculate on Obama’s That Time Your House Burned Down when you’re the one whose house burned down.

The political news front is actually somewhat quiet after a flurry of activity on Tuesday, a day which saw a few major upsets take place, one of which is still having ripple effects today (more on that in a bit). We also have new polling in a state whose nominees were determined last night, surprisingly bad numbers out of a key state in November, and Ed Case is back in Hawaii, and you won’t believe his endorsement in the Governor’s race. All that (and more!) in the mid-week edition of the Wrap… THE U.S.

Lots of electoral and ballot box stuff awaits us tomorrow (a preview, for your convenience, can be found here ). For tonight, however, we kick off the week with the Monday edition of the Wrap…. THE U.S. SENATE AK-Sen: Mama Grizzly fires one last shot via robocall While bragging on Facebook that her appointed steed in the race, attorney Joe Miller, is closing fast, Sarah Palin is trying to give Miller an extra boost at the line.

Ninety years ago, a young man named Harry T. Burn, at the insistence of his mother to “ be a good boy ,” changed his vote from “nay” to “yea,” and the generations-long struggle for women’s suffrage was at last won. It is easy to catalog the progress of the last nine decades. Women can vote, own property, earn a paycheck and keep the money in their own bank accounts, go to college and play sports there, and yes, run for and hold elected office. Three of the last four Secretaries of State have been women. The Speaker of the House is a woman.

A few months ago, I spent a Sunday morning in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart on Thomas Road in East Phoenix, just on the cusp of the immigration flare-up over racial profiling and Arizona’s repressive law called SB 1070. It was quieter then — a weathered 39-year-old Mexican in a wool cap with a New York Mets logo named Roberto Valdez told me of his trek across the desert to seek work in Phoenix as a day laborer. Weeks earlier, Mexican day laborers like Valdez had been harassed on the weekends by angry white nativists, but in March of 2010 the nativists had moved on.

We’re still counting votes in King County (mail-in ballots only had to be postmarked on primary day and they just count slowly here) but the winners and losers clearly emerged. So far, it appears that more people voted for a Republican in this primary than a Democrat, but primaries tend to skew Republican here. Sen. Patty Murray is holding at 46 percent in the top-two primary, with Rossi maintaining at about 37 percent.

I was on vacation last week, but nearly interrupted it when I saw the press release from D.C. public relations firm Clarus, touting the results of its new survey. “PALIN SUPPORT FOR GOP NOMINATION SINKS,” the headline blared, followed by this lead paragraph: A new nationwide survey of Republican voters finds that support for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to win the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination has fallen by one-third since March, sliding from 18 points to 12 points. Palin is now running in fourth place for the nomination behind former Massachusetts Gov.

Happy Friday the Thirteenth, everyone. It’s actually a fitting day for this column, which I’ll explain in a bit. Because before we get to that, we simply must begin our column the way we do every week here, which is to call for the abolition of the Pentagon. Yes, as we’ve done consistently for the past 133 weeks, we demand that the Defense Department’s budget be zeroed out entirely. Oh, and also that we immediately adopt a Canadian-style health care system.

What is the mindset inside the Obama White House these days? I’ve been wondering about this ever since Robert Gibbs went off on what he calls “the professional left” the other day. Not only did Michael Moore wind up talking with Keith Olberman n about this, but P aul Krugman (who I consider “professionally economically brilliant” as contrasted with “professionally left”) wrote about it as well. Now Robert Gibbs is no idiot. He may have said something he didn’t mean to say, but his frustration can’t be his alone.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday forcefully endorsed building a mosque near ground zero, saying the country’s founding principles demanded no less. “As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,” Obama said, weighing in for the first time on a controversy that has riven New York City and the nation.