Me writing Morning News this morning.
Me writing morning news this morning. Stacy Walters

Donald Trump Tweets Staged Photo of Himself Writing His Inaugural Address: After looking at the image for a hard three minutes, I first recalled Susan Sontag's famous essay on camp—the bizarre sculpture of the eagle in the pic being the trigger for this recollection. There's nothing more campy (in the naive sense) than that art object, and those ornate Spanish tiles, and the look of the president-elect's eyes. This is seriousness in the mode of naive camp—camp without quotation marks. And then I thought of something I read by a forgotten cosmologist about the circularity of the universe (no beginning, no end to it). The circularity here being a public figure who communicates with the public primarily through Twitter, twitting about a speech he is writing on a pad of paper. The universe is godless. Then I recalled one of my favorite passages in Plato's The Republic. What happens is this: Socrates, the hero of the work, describes the difference between a quack and a doctor. A doctor, he says, is always about the patient; a quack is always about himself. I do not know how the Greeks of those olden, pre-scientific times could tell the difference between real and fake doctors, but Socrates's point is 100 percent correct. The quack cannot be anything but about him/herself, and fools his or her patient into thinking that they are being treated by a doctor who is all about them, their health, their illness, their recovery. Trump begins his presidency tomorrow. He will be the quack for a whole nation.


Newsweek examines the quack's "staged propaganda photo."

Head of Sleeping 74-Year-Old Man Hit By Stray Bullet: KIRO reports that at around midnight, lots of gun shots were heard in an area in the north part of SeaTac. One caller informed the police that a man had been shot in the head. The police soon arrived at the caller's house and found a man with a bullet wound on his head. He was hit while sleeping. Medics transported him to the hospital. He may or may not live to see another day. The gun-crazed person in this incident is unknown.

Police Find and Detain Three Pit Bulls That Attacked and Almost Killed 7-Year-Old Boy: According to the police, the attack happened on January 12, at the Mount Vernon home of a babysitter. The boy, identified by KOMO as Reilly Gerber, "received 70 stitches on his face, staples in his head and multiple wounds on his body." His father is said to like pit bulls, but wants something done about the ones who almost killed his son. The police appear to have had some difficulty locating and locking up these violent animals.

White Supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos Speaks At: Washington State University today, and University of Washington tomorrow. Both events are sold out and will be filled with the hate of this our Trump age, which officially begins tomorrow.

Why Does Sound Transit Want to Build Its Next Planned Link Station Without Restrooms? Mainly because it fears they will attract shady types. Public bathrooms offer a space to all, but not everybody in this all (to use a Walt Whitman expression) is a productive member of society. Some are even counterproductive (commit crimes). So, instead dealing with crime, which is a huge problem connected with how wealth is distributed in this society, we deal with the bathrooms. If you build them, counterproductive activities appear; if you do not build them, they do not appear.


Bertha: Is finally a mile away from the end of a very long and very expensive journey.


Seattle Everyday: