Good morning: After all that smoke, we deserve a nice fucking day. Tuesday was alright, yesterday was fine, but today??? Today will be absolutely beautiful. Picture this: It’s 9 am and you’re on your way to revitalize downtown by going to the office—60 degrees. It’s 1 pm and you’re going to the corner store to grab a Hot Pocket or something on your lunch break—70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. It's 5 pm and you’re catching the light rail home—76 degrees. It's the kind of weather that makes a grown man play Spike Ball with the homies in the park. Not to get sappy on main, but I’ve recently realized that summer is sooooo close to over and I just feel obligated to remind you to savor the warmth, the sun, and the spirit of the season. 

Debate night: Eight GOP hopefuls faced off last night in the first debate of the 2024 presidential election. The candidates, including big names Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and Chris Christie, covered all the hot topics. They distinguished themselves with slightly varied stances on abortion, broadly promoted a “peace through strength” philosophy on foreign policy, and almost unanimously praised Pence for how he handled the January 6 insurrection. Also, all but Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Christie said they'd vote for a convicted felon (the insinuation being Trump) for president, none of them think humans cause climate change, they all want to invade Mexico, and they all cannot WAIT to extend the Trump tax cuts on big business. 

Where’s Trump? Though the former president did not attend the debate, a nobody “entrepreneur,” Vivek Ramaswamy, ran enough D for the guy that his opponents just started attacking him as a stand-in for Trump, like a mother who sees her husband's flaws in her son. Different pundits and normies crowned their own winners for the debate–some thought Haley acted as the “adult in the room" or that DeSantis’s relative silence somehow came off as calm rather than timid and uncharismatic. But if we are being real, Ramaswamy got the highest return on the debate. Will the debate catapult him to the front of the pack? No, probably not. But he definitely got people’s attention, which could help him get other opportunities. Basically, he gave himself a huge LinkedIn boast like a true entrepreneur.

Who among us is not but a skinny kid with a funny name?? Ramaswamy is sort of like Hannah Montana, but his two sides are Trump and Obama.

There he is! Trump instead aired an interview on Twitter with fallen Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. The interview was pre-taped, so he really could have done both, but the goal seemed to be to draw viewers away from the GOP debate to get back at Fox News, which is apparently not far-right enough for him and Carlson. Trump predictably spent the interview defending the January 6 rioters and disparaging his ex-vice president. He’s gotta keep his base sympathetic toward the insurrection for when his mugshot drops after he surrenders!

Speaking of: Trump is expected to surrender at a jail in Fulton County today after being charged with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former attorney, surrendered yesterday ahead of the defendants’ Friday deadline to get booked. Neither Giuliani nor Trump will sit in the cell. Giuliani got out on a $150,000 bond. Trump will go home on a $200,000 bond and the condition that he won’t bully anyone involved in the case on social media.

Show me the money: An independent consultant prepared a report to set the record straight on what happened with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s (KCRHA) controversial Lived Experience Coalition (LEC), which overspent almost $400,000 in their hotel shelter program and nearly had to evict a couple hundred people as a result. In a draft version of the report, the consultant basically concluded that competing egos and a lack of communication led to the failure, and that the United Way of King County probably should not have given $1 million of federal money to the LEC to run the program because they'd never run a shelter before. The draft report read very shady toward the coalition, who the consultant described as a “group with autonomy that can and did make this decision on their own, thoughtfully and deliberately" and who "are now experiencing the consequences of those decisions.” The report suggests more communication, data sharing, and more oversight from the KCRHA would have helped. 

Incoming: Aliens are about to touch down in Seattle–the Ancient Aliens live experience, that is. If you’re a fan of the hit TV series, then mark your calendar for September 14 to see your favorites from the History Channel discuss theories about aliens' involvement in worldly history. I don’t care if it makes me a nerd, I love TV shows about aliens, history, and the history of aliens. I also seemed to watch this show with a lot of Hinge dates, so its low-key nostalgic. 

We got 'em: After an investigation by the Seattle Office of Labor Standards, childcare education center Millennium Kids agreed to pay almost $25,000 to 61 workers for allegedly violating the City’s paid sick and safe time ordinance. 

Update: On Monday, I wrote about a poll that tested negative messaging on progressive city council candidates. Now we have the exact questions from the poll because voters started to get it in the form of a text. Excuse my typos in this tweet. I don’t pay Elon for the ability to edit my posts and apparently I can’t read!

Update Part II: Also, the poll covers more than just District 3 and District 4, the only districts where voters could confirm getting calls at the time of my OG story. Yesterday readers sent me the online version of the survey for District 2, which aims to crowdsource smears for Council Member Tammy Morales, and for District 6, which aims to somehow make a scary left-winger out of wannabe tough-on-crime Council Member Dan Strauss. Good luck!

Required reading: This weekend the Vera Project in Uptown will host the 11th annual anarchist book fair. If you’re not much of a theory head, you can check out the workshops, meet other lefties, or at least get some free food. Have kids? They’re providing childcare, so even anarchists with offspring can attend!

Presumed dead: Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin probably died when a private jet crashed in Moscow last night. Prigozhin's name was on a list of travelers on the jet. He used to be cool with Vladimir Putin until he lead a small rebellion march against him. Now Putin doesn't have to worry about him trying that shit again, I guess.  

I have no taste: My friend told me to put this song on the blog and I do whatever she says lol.