SkyTrain in the suburbs of Vancouver, B.C..
SkyTrain in the suburbs of Vancouver, B.C.. Charles Mudede

Vancouver's Evergreen Line Will Be in Service in 2017: SkyTrain, the second-longest urban rail system in the Pacific Northwest (it has 42 miles of track, Portland 60), is to complete a new line, Evergreen Line, early next year. Construction of this line, which will add six stations and nearly seven miles of track to the system, began in 2012.

(Note: It took Sound Transit, which manages the third-longest urban rail system in the PNW, seven years to add two new stations and three miles of track to Link. In fact, their construction process is so slow, for reasons explained recently by Josh Feit, that many of us will be dead by the time Link reaches Ballard. Another note: I recently took the SkyTrain from a hotel in downtown Vancouver to the city's main train station; then Amtrak from Vancouver to Seattle; and finally Link from Pioneer Square to Columbia City, where I live. What I learned during this trip is that Amtrak is in bad shape. It's incredibly slow, ran late, and encountered even engine problems. Obama never fulfilled the dream of bullet-speed trains between our big cities.)

It's Time For Us To Stop Saying That Boeing Is Based in Chicago: It is based where the workers are, and that is mostly in Everett. Today, that city's main daily, the Everett Herald, has a special on The Boeing Century. Some history of human flight: "In 1916, Bill Boeing Jr. and partner George Conrad Westervelt made an airplane of wood and wire and canvas." 100 years later, the corporation is blowing billions on buybacks (this increases the value of its shares) and cutting jobs left, right, and center.

Plane At Sea-Tac Airport Badly Damaged by Bird During Takeoff: And the damage is much more than you would expect from just one bird. The plane, a Dallas-bound Airbus A321 that contained 150 passengers and six crew members, returned to Sea-Tac after the hit. The bird is certainly now nothing more than pulp and feathers.


Mayor Murray Hates Bikes and Loves Cars to Bits: That's the mayor some of us voted for. The words of Ansel Herz, concerning the city's new regressive plan for bike infrastructure projects: "The 2016 SDOT Bike Master Plan Implementation Planā€”an update of the 2015 implementation planā€”is less bike-friendly, not more, than its predecessor." This would not have happened if Michael McGinn was still running tings round 'ere.

Bellingham Man Talks About Making Guitars for Prince: His name is Andy Beech. He made 31 guitars for the one and only and recently late Princeā€”he died a week ago at the same age my mother gave up the ghost, 57. Four of the guitars Beech made were symbol guitars.

Handsome Young Man Dies In a Car Accident in Beaverton, a Suburb of Portland: After the head-on collision that injured three people and killed one, a young and apparently photogenic man named Brandon Wendell (his whole life is no longer ahead of him but behind him, eternally etched as it were into the expanding space and time of the universe), crews worked very hard for several hours to reopen lanes to more and more car traffic.

Pentagon Says It has Too Many Bases and Does Not Know What to Do With Them: But the GOP-controlled Congress knows what they should do with them: Keep them open. Cuts are for the poor, not the military. Get this straight: Socialism is for our banks, Keynes for our army, and neoliberalism for the rest.

Bernie Sanders Laying Off a Big Chunk of His Staff: As my friend and Marxist philosopher Nic Veroli wrote me in an email: "There will be no socialist Christmas in America this year, it looks like."

Belgian Attorney Says His Client, Paris Terror Suspect Salah Abdeslam, Is a "Little Jerk": In French, they say ā€œpetit conā€; in English, we say ā€œlittle jerk.ā€ Both have the same character in mind: a petty asshole. Salah Abdeslam, a man who is believed to have played a central role in last year's Paris attacks, was described as being exactly this type of character, a petty asshole, by his own lawyer (he also said Abdeslam did not know much about Islam, had ā€œthe intelligence of an empty ashtray,ā€ and ā€œthinks he lives in a video gameā€). One wonders if ISIS is an army of petty assholes. It's possible, but it's also hard to see how anything could be done in such a society. Petty assholes are very uncooperative types.

New Vice Video of ISIS Battling Kurds in Northern Iraq Shows How Disorganized They Are: God might be great, but the ISIS is certainly not. What this new Vice video of a recent battle reveals is an ISIS that barely has its shit together. Their weapons break down constantly, parts don't fit, troops cant handle the kicks of their automatic rifles, and the leaders seem to have no idea of this thing called planning. ISIS, however, is pretty good at sending lots of praises to God in the high heavens.

The Economy Grew 0.5 Percent in the First Quarter: This is not good news for those who believe that growth is everything that matters. Two percent growth is as low as they want to grow. Four percent is where they feel the joy. But the truth of the matter is that even one percent growth for an economy this size (a GDP of around $18 trillion) is way too much growth. The cause of the perceived "anemic" growth is considered to be a strong dollar and weak business investment (it plunged by 5.9 percent). Businesses are not buying new equipment. They are cutting costs. Consumer spending, however, rose by 1.9 percent. This can be attributed to the life in the job market.

JUST IN! Former House Speaker John Boehner Called Ted Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh": And also a very unhappy son of a woman who is a bitch. What are them? Them fighting words.



Subscribe to the Slog newsletter here. All the best posts, delivered to your inbox every afternoon.