Liberal city with shitty water...
Liberal city with shitty water... ANDREW S. WILLIAMS/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Seattle Is Third-Most Liberal City in US: In this excellent post, Seattle Times' numbers guy, and news librarian, Gene Balk (I hope he is still employed), explains Crowdpac's method (campaign-contribution data) for ranking the political position of a city or neighborhood or politician and then goes over the data that concerns, of course, the center of our part of the world, Seattle. To begin with, Crowdpac ranks the newly elected representative from Washington’s 7th Congressional District, Pramila Jayapal, who is a member of the mainstream Democratic Party, as more liberal than the Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is a member of the radical Socialist Alternative. Sadly, Balk does not provide any suggestions for this very curious conclusion. Sawant is slightly (ever so slightly) more conservative than Jayapal. Now, ain't that something. As a whole, Seattle is, according to Crowdpac, the third-most liberal city in the US. It is behind Oakland, which is number one, and Brooklyn, which is number two. Portland is behind us. The most liberal neighborhood in Seattle is not Capitol Hill, but gentrifying Judkins Park. Next is my neck of the woods, Columbia City, and third is North Delridge in West Seattle.

As For This Year's No Pants Light Rail Ride, Which Happened Yesterday and Participates in the Global No Pants Subway Ride Event That Has Its Origin in New York City: It was, according to Seattle Pi, a "smaller than usual group." The reason for the low attendance might be the cold weather. Another reason might be it's harder than ever to be quirky in the age of Trump.

Human Shit Flows, Flows, Flows Into the Body of Lake Washington: According to KOMO, something mechanical that went wrong at King County's South Mercer Pump Station on Mercer Island caused a filthy stream of human waste to flow into Lake Washington for 20 minutes or more yesterday. The amount of waste that went into this popular body of water is unknown to humans but it could be known to a universe that has a mind which keeps track or an account of all its major and minuscule events. We may or may not live in such a universe. King County warns people not go into the lake for the next few days. And besides, it's fucking freezing.

Man By Himself Transforms First Hill Into a Demolition Derby With a Stolen Truck: At around midnight, a man driving a stolen truck began smashing this and that car on First Hill, also known as Pill Hill. The rampage, which ended in a parking garage near Swedish Medical Center, included two police cars. It took a whole SWAT team, tear gas, and a Taser to break the back of this man's apocalyptic spirit. He is now cooling in a city cell. Four walls just staring at him. For more details, go to KIRO.

Car Crashes Into Utility Pole: And the power for 3,400 customers in Tukwila is cut. The driver lived. Ice alone is blamed for the accident.

She Lived For 15 years: She died trying to cross the section of I-5 near the "Chehalis exit at milepost 81." The SUV that hit her was totaled, but its driver, a 19-year-old woman, survived. What was between the dead girl and the living friends she wanted to hang out with was I-5.

Billions Made By Bezos and Other Billionaires Do Not Exist Today: But they would be forced to exist today if a crash occurred. This is the rub. Like so many of the billions owned by a few people in America, the money is really not real. They could not make that kind of cash from the economy as it is. It has to be made from the economy that might one day be. But if the market crashes today, the rich turn to the public to pay for the billions they might have made in the future. This is called a bailout. It's also called quantitative easing. It's also our entire political economy, which comes down to a monetary policy that keeps the future that will never come, except during a crash, going. Jeff Bezos made $2.6 Billion in three days.

Meanwhile:


Film About Black Women Mathematicians, Hidden Figures, Rocks the Box Office: We might have entered an era where films not about white people also have real power in the market. Proof? This weekend, Hidden Figures tied with the eternal money machine Rogue One at the box office. And what does Hidden Figures have in common with Moana? Ana Sofia Knauf's review of the latter says much the same thing as Ijeoma Oluo's review of the former. These films are important because the way we represent people on the big screen is important.

Why Are the Suburbs Becoming More Progressive? Trump lost Issaquah by a stunning 42 percent. Four years ago, Mitt Romney lost it by 22 percent. Issaquah is not the inner city. It is a suburb. And it's not the only suburb that Clinton won big. For the first time in modern political history, the GOP struggled in the suburbs. And there is even fear that it may lose this section of American society for good. So, Trump really only represents rural people. Why this sea change? My guess is the suburbs have not forgotten the crash of 2008, which hit its property values harder than those in the city. The suburbs were exposed to the raw greed of bankers. But Andy Yan, an urban planner and the director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver B.C. thinks it's because there is no political trade-off in the current movement of wealthy people into the city and poor people into the suburbs. The former are becoming more liberal, while the latter remain as liberal as they were before. "Both the core and perimeter are becoming bluer," he said to me, and also Cary Moon and Mark Reddington, the man behind the best building of 2016, the University of Washington Station. We met Yan for coffee and wine on a cold but sunny day.

This is Andy Yan...
This is Andy Yan... Charles Mudede