Watching Trumps America in a Seattle Somali business...
Watching Trump's America in a Seattle Somali business... Charles Mudede

Jewish Cemetery Vandalized in Philadelphia and Buildings in Ballard Defaced With Anti-Semitic Graffiti: Yesterday, the police in Philadelphia found 100 toppled tombstones in a Jewish cemetery. Also yesterday, people in Ballard found on buildings graffiti of the Star of David and the words "Jew," "fuck," and "Hitler." KOMO reports that Jewish residents in Ballard are terrorized by these white supremacist tags. There has also been a spike in bomb threats to Jewish community centers around America. And last week, a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri was vandalized. It doesn't end there. Three months ago, a park dedicated to the late Jewish rapper MCA (Adam Yauch) was hit with Nazi graffiti and the key words: "Go Trump!" As the New York Times points out today, "President Trump issued on Tuesday his first condemnation of the mounting threats to Jewish people and institutions, after weeks of complaints from Jewish leaders that he had been unwilling to forcefully denounce such acts."

The day after he made that statement, two Indians in a sports bar in Olathe, Kansas, were shot by a man alleged to have said "Get of my country!" One of these Indians, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, died. The other survived. (A white man who pursued the alleged killer was also shot and almost killed.) There was no word about this shooting from the White House until Friday, when the press secretary Sean Spicer said it was "absurd" to connect that shooting with the anti-Muslim rhetoric of the president. Spicer also did not want to "start jumping to conclusions.” An Egyptian who attacked police officers in Paris with a knife earlier this month got a tweet from this president, but not the brown person killed in what police have described as a possible hate crime (and not a possible act of terrorism). The fact of the president's silence on the shooting has not gone unnoticed. But the silence will certainly make the situation for people of color, for Jews, for Muslims, for Mexicans worse in Trump's America.


Seattle Times Editorial Board Wants Governor Jay Inslee to Stop Fighting Trump: Apparently Trump is all about the spotlight and not about real-world problems, and so the wise men and women at Seattle Times want our Governor, and also Mayor Ed Murray and King County Executive Dow Constantine, to stop bashing Trump and to focus on down-to-earth stuff, like the sewage situation and other woes. What is this editorial really telling us? People who have nothing or little to fear in Trump's America want all of us to normalize a situation that is in fact very dangerous for people who are not white, American, and Christian.

Grandmother Crossing a Street in Burien: Is killed while on a crosswalk. The car simply did not stop for the crosswalk, and did not stop after it hit the elderly woman on the crosswalk. Had she lived, she would have seen her granddaughter perform in a high school production of the musical Annie. The police are searching for the hit-and-run car ("a newer silver or grey sedan").

The White Spokane Woman Who Claimed She was Black Is Unable to Find Work: Or suitable work. Rachel Dolezal, who ran Spokane's NAACP branch until she was exposed to be not the color she claimed to be, black, has been offered work by porn companies. But Dolezal wants a regular job, and claims nobody will give her just that. She says she is on the brink of homelessness.

Happening Right Now:


Some Snow: Is falling.


While Trump Calls CNN, NYT, BBC, and Politico Fake News: Sweden is completely in the dark about the man recently featured on Fox News as a "Swedish defense and national security advisor." He is "unknown to the country's military and foreign-affairs officials." This unknown man claimed that Muslim immigrants are making life hard and miserable and dangerous of white Swedes. In short, he provided Trump and his supporters with what they consider to be the only news that is real.

RIP: Bill Paxton. Indeed, this is how many of us felt on the night Trump was elected. You expressed it so perfectly...