That president of ours seems to have taken a step back from his intense commitment to crash the US economy. Trump's budget office "rescinded a memo [authorizing] a federal freeze on hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and loans." That memo, which was in essence illegal, did nothing but send millions of Americans into a state of panic. Though some saw the freeze as a part of a plan to place the Office of Management and Budget under the complete control of the White House, I honestly believe Trump has it in mind to plunge the US's financial system into a crisis that will, at the end of the day, concentrate more wealth in the hands of a few billionaires who are hell-bent on becoming trillionaires.
I think I just heard four gunshots. I think they came from somewhere near Rainier Playfield. It's 6:10 am. I will keep you posted.
Back to the news (or the blues). Trump's administration claims that while looking for government cheese directed at "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies" (the reason for the freeze), they chanced upon $50 million dollars that Biden planned to use to buy condoms for Gaza, a part of the world that needs food and housing rather than a mountain of French letters. Al Jazeera has the story.
A judge decided that the former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez owed society 11 years of hard time. Last July, a jury found the 71-year-old disgraced politician guilty of 16 bribery charges (he, while in office, accepted "gifts, including gold bars, cash, and a Mercedes-Benz [from] foreign governments.") Tears copiously fell from Menendez's eyes before the sentence was announced. He also begged the judge "to temper [their] sword of justice with the mercy of a lifetime of duty." The judge was apparently unmoved by the tears or words. But if our justice system was truly blind, the public should also have seen tears filling and falling from Trump's eyes soon after his "hush money conviction." Instead, he was free to run for president.
It's now 6:15 am, and I'm hearing hella "woop woop," which is, of course, "the sound of da police." It's still dark outside.
An American Airlines jet attempting to land at Ronald Reagan National Airport collided in midair with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River. The plane had 60 passengers; the helicopter, three soldiers. Some on the plane, which departed from Wichita, Kansas earlier in the day, were figure skaters who attended the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. NBC news reports that "dozens of bodies [have been] pulled from the frigid waters so far." The reckoning at this point is that none of the jet's passengers or soldiers on the helicopter survived this accident.
The conspiracy theories begin:
President Trump is asking the exact same questions we all are. Why did the helicopter ram the plane? #planecrash pic.twitter.com/KnEtyqdRXP
— JereMemez (@Jere_Memez) January 30, 2025
Will it snow this weekend? Will it not snow? Which will it be? It seems this very important matter is "still up in the air." Of course, I want it to snow. I want Seattle to freeze for a week or two. Why? Not because it transforms our city into something similar to that wonderful painting by Bruegel, The Hunters in the Snow. What snow is very good at is killing lots of rats. Warm winters don't cut it. All they do is send more and more of "the grey alive" to our summers.
The grey alive? Here is the passage from James Joyce's Ulysses: "An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. Good hidingplace for treasure." At the end of AM, I will share a scientific story about a frozen rat.
A bill filed by a number of Democrats in Olympia has rattled some Republicans. The bill, HB 1630, would require "dairy farms and feedlots to report [to the Department of Ecology] the amount of methane cows burp and fart." The bill is of course rational. Science must determine the impact our addiction to cheap beef has on greenhouse gas emissions.
Repair work will close Link's UW Station this weekend. The disruption is expected to extend the frequency of trains to "12 minutes between Lynnwood and U District, and every 15 minutes between Capitol Hill and Angle Lake." Seattle Times reports that once the work is completed, trips to UW Station "will be two minutes quicker." Nevertheless, Link's extension to Lynwood has been nothing but a great success. Urbanist reported in December that ridership in October "averaged more than 100,000 daily riders." Indeed, the big-city energy in trains has become electric. So many souls, so packed with eyes, so busy flying thoughts between minds and screens.
Did those gunshots happen? Not sure. The sun is up. Columbia City is pretty quiet. N'était qu'un rêve? Anyway, that story about the two rats put in a freezer by scientists who wanted to determine the importance of petting mammals. What happened is this. The scientists petted one rat regularly, and showed no kind of affection for the other rat. After 3 months, they put both rats in a freezer. What happened? The unloved rat gave up and died right away. The loved and petted one, on the other hand, didn't. It had the illusion of hope. It wanted to live. Tomorrow will surely be a brighter day. It survived the unloved rat by two whole weeks. That's the story. And I cannot recall where I first heard it.
Let's end AM with a tune for the unloved frozen-to-death rat, "This Bitter Earth":