If only the 15 or so Democrats in the House did NOT decide to retire in advance of what they believed would be a 2022 Wipeout. Then think of all the nonsense we would have been spared now and for the next 2 years!

I’ve lost a bit a respect for AG Bob Ferguson with this ‘exploratory committee’ bullshit. He’s been planning on running for years, and everyone knows it.

It’s completely disingenuous for him to imply that he’s waiting to decide until after he hears what people have to say during a ‘listening tour’ - as if he’ll come off some road-trip and say ‘the people have spoken, and I’ve decided not to run so I can spend more time with my family.’

when Opportunity knocks
most pols poll
still Fergie
Rocks.

In other news Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) decided not to seek a fourth term. Ferguson is too vane not to run.

So a swarm of cops on bikes indicates full staffing why? I saw a gaggle of nurses the other day, must not be a nursing shortage then.

@1,

Yeah, this could get seriously ugly. McCarthy's not gonna budge an inch. He knows that doing so will almost surely cost him his Speaker's seat, owing to that death-pact he signed in order to win his speakership's vote. And the MTG's of the world who were on the other end of said death-pact would much rather watch shit burn than concede a single crumb to the dems/libs. It's all so comically stupid. I feel bad for my friends who don't drink.

@3: Yes, she's been invited to King Charles's coronation.

@6
my oh my
Misgendering
the Dem frontunner

all fucking Ready?
what Took you
so Long?

@6
shoobop
was Correct:
your Trolling's
Off the fucking Charts.

@7 I'm pretty sure @6 was making a lame joke about Fergie, former wife of Prince Andrew.

As for @2's complaint, sure we all know that an exploratory committee means that he's running, and we all knew that he was running the instant that Inslee said he was retiring. I don't really hate on Ferguson for it. It's all part of the standard dance. I'm sure there's campaign finance rules that make it the most advantageous thing to do.

Everyone knows that Franz running too. The big question is who jumps in on the Republican side. The top contender will be Joe Kent (or a MAGA clone). If there's also a vaguely sane Republican, they might split the vote enough for both Franz and Ferguson to advance to the general.

@8: Hardly trolling - you can't play that card after doing @7 as you responded to the joke.

@5: McCarthy probably plans to take this into a shutdown like these clowns repeatedly did under Obama.

I have no idea how negotiating over a funding bill is "buckling"; it's what's happens every single time the GQP pulls this stunt. Biden isn't doing anything he didn't do while he was in the Senate or the VP chair. Eventually McConnell will figure out something McCarthy can sell to a couple quasi-rational adults in his caucus and kick the can down the road a year.

A 2 or 3-week shutdown is coming. It's childish and pointless, but America keeps handing the reigns to Republics, then regretting it, then handing them the reigns again, then regretting it, etc. ad nauseam.

oh so you weren't Serious
your Faction still
loves you.

@10
nevermind.

@5 Perhaps this time will be different. The NYTimes is reporting that Biden's inner circle is seriously considering a constitutional challenge to the debt limit, which Bill Clinton urged Obama to do in 2011. (For those who are unfamiliar, it would entail invoking the 14th Amendment, Article 4, which states that the nation's credit "shall not be questioned.") The political blowback from such a move won't be pretty, but given the apparent willingness of so many Republicans to wreck the world economy just to take down Biden, it will probably be necessary.

@12 Unfortunately, this time it's not just a government shutdown. A shutdown might happen too, but the main effect would be crashing the US and world economy. And possibly handing either Europe or China the status of being the de facto world reserve currency. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

@15 I'm all over the 14th Amendment option, and hand Roberts and his fellow travelers the shit sandwich of deciding whether or not to crash the world economy themselves.

Given the damage which resulted after previous May Day marches. Anything less than full mobilization would be negligence.

And prisons damage the environment? Ever been around a homeless encampment where those drugs are used? Takes Haz Mat suits to clean them up.

Raindrop, it's "vain." Unless that was a play on "the politics of a weather vane," in which case fair play to you.

I believe Original Fergie was invited to one of the after parties, not the coronation itself.

@15
Yes the GOP will object to the ‘shall not’ from the Constitution in the case of destroying the US credit.
The same phrase ‘shall not’ that the GOP holds as sacred, when it comes to every nut job in the USA getting a gun whenever they want!

@18: Corrections noted. Picture it - Carly Simon's hit song with a weather vane!

@13 Lorena was going to run for atty general in 2020 until Inslee decided to run again and Ferguson backed off as well. I fully expect she'll announce a run for that office once Ferguson formerly announces as well.

It really doesn't matter who the Republican candidate for governor is as we all know they have no shot of winning, especially if Trump is sitting at the top of the ticket. The true race will be between the moderate Dem and the progressive. I'm pretty sure Ferguson is going to appeal to the progressives so either Franz or someone else will take the other. It will be interesting to see who Inslee ultimately endorses.

@15,

Interesting. I'd imagine McCarthy could be secretly hoping for that to happen. As awful & craven as he is as a human being, he's also seemingly/possibly sane enough to want to avoid a catastrophic economic disaster. And this sounds like it could potentially afford him the wiggle room to claim it was out of his control to prevent.

@1 pat L, @5 mike blob, @12 Max Solomon, @15 CKathes, and @16 boatgeek: I share your economic concerns. RepubliKKKans are horrible excuses for people. That McCarthy and his pro-Trumpists are so gleefully hellbent on winning the race to the bottom is beyond criminally insane.

@3 kristofarian: Go, SuperBob, GO!!! If Ferguson runs and is elected our next Washington State Governor, I wonder who would fill the State Attorney General seat?

@15 CKathes: I really hope so, that President Biden will utilize the 14th Amendment, Article 4, and raise our debt ceiling. Handing over global financial control to China and / or Europe would be a devastating nightmare! The U.S. would be in exponentially worse shape than we were during The Great Depression.

@19 pat L: The GOP crime syndicate could rapidly start losing their own en masse to gun fatalities, and NRA worshipping RepubliKKKans would still have their heads up their asses.

I predict Susan Hutchison or Tiffany Smiley might consider a run for Governor.

@24: Susan Hutchinson should have stayed at KIRO (CBS) TV News as a journalist alongside ex-Seahawk Steve Raible, where she won five regional Emmy Awards for writing and producing. Tiffany Smiley, to her credit, didn't pull an Orange Turd or looney Loren Culp by pigheadedly demanding a recount, hotly claiming the election was "stolen". Smiley instead gracefully conceded the results of the 2022 election, congratulating re-elected Senator Patty Murray, now in her sixth term in Washington, D.C.
I'd be more concerned if Washington's own version of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Pam Roach in Pierce County, or RWNJ Cathy McMorris-Rodgers in Spokane were thinking of entering the 2024 gubernatorial race.

@25 - CMR of Spokane may be a RWNJ, but she pales to nothingness in comparison to MTG. CMR is more of your garden-variety RWNJ.

@22 You may be right about McCarthy (I don't even want to think about what, if anything, is really going on in his head), but he presumably won't like what the Dems will try first: a discharge petition maneuver, in which a temporary bipartisan majority overrides the speaker and forces a vote on a bill against his wishes. But I don't think there are enough Republicans who are both sane ~and~ willing to cross McCarthy for that to work, so the constitutional option is likely where we'll end up.

Biden had better be prepared to give the speech of his life in defense of it, though. The political reality is that lots of people (not just self-identified conservatives) instinctively like the idea of a debt ceiling because they've been conditioned by decades of fiscal-hawk demagoguery (from both parties, tbh) to consider all deficit spending evil. Undoing that mass brainwashing won't be easy, but it will have to be done if Biden wants to be re-elected after this mess is resolved.

‘While Durkan's phone was set to delete some text messages automatically after 30 days, which is still against the law, someone manually deleted others. As the Times' Daniel Beekman reports, "Anyone who willfully destroys a public record that’s supposed to be kept is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison."’

The key word there is “willfully,” meaning a jury would have to find intent to destroy public records on the part of whomever did it. Merely putting the device to the wrong setting, or even deleting messages, does not constitute proof of intent. People do such things unintentionally all the time with their devices.

The Stranger really needs to let this one go. This repeated groundless insinuating of criminal behavior on the part of someone who voluntarily left office years ago says far more about the Stranger than it does about Jenny Durkan.

@25 CMR has a perfectly good job and is sane enough to know that she'll lose if she runs for governor. Roach is probably both of those as well. I'm more worried about the Matt Sheas and Joe Kents--no current office so they have nothing to lose. I don't think they'll win the election, but the collateral damage energizing the wingnuts won't be good. Smiley is probably the best possibility for the R side, but there's still no way she gets over 45% in a statewide race in a post-1/6 and post-Roe presidential election year.

@28 The Stranger's obsession with Durkan's texts is as tiresome as the right-wing obsession with Hillary Clinton's e-mails.

@1, Primarily, the Gerrymanders, thanks to right wing state legislatures and right wing courts, got us the psychopath republican house majority.

@15, @27 Yes, Biden may have to do the 14th amendment challenge to the supremes and give the public the FDR speech of his life because I, too, sense that those GOP psycho are not going to budge on the debt ceiling.

@31 actually it was the Dems in NY who tried to slant the maps so much the courts were forced to step in and rebalance them which led to the Rs picking up a couple seats there.

@32, that move by the courts in NY was the icing on the cake. From what I understand the supremes backed a few republican state gerrymanders in one of the midwestern states and a southern (Alabama?).

If Matt Shea runs and loses maybe he’ll get banished to the depths whatever Hell Loren Culp is currently in. Or they could bring back Clint Didier.

@29 boatgeek: OMG you're right! Matt Shea and Joe Kent are infinitely worse than Pam Roach, Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, and Tiffany Smiley combined. Neofascist RepubliKKKan men are like that.

@34 dvs99: I'm hoping that looney Loren Culp is currently getting cornholed in the same depths as the late Rush Limbaugh and Doug "The Thug" Ericksen.