Oregon wins beautiful bat competition yet again: On Halloween, the Bureau of Land Management crowned a hoary bat named “Hoary Potter” as the winner of the annual bat beauty competition. This is the third year in a row a bat from Oregon has won the title. Beautiful, sexy bats down there. 

Another Boeing offer on the table: Boeing and its striking machinists are still doing their will-they-won’t-they not-right-contract dance. Boeing wants to end this strike, which allegedly costs the aerospace company a cool $50 million a day, but it’s not clear if they’ve done enough to make that happen. The newest contract proposal is the most attractive yet. It bumps up pay 38% over four years and includes other benefits that bring the starting pay for the average machinist up to $119,309. The machinists’ union is calling for its members to support the deal. But the plan still doesn’t include a reinstate pension benefit plan, which the union lost in a contentious vote a decade ago. For some machinists, it’s “no pension, no planes.” Union members will vote on Monday. 

Soggy city: It’s wet. It will remain wet for at least today. Will it be wet tomorrow? Well, yes, probably. 

Seems, uh, bad: Japan’s Mount Fuji is bare and snowless. This is the first time snow hasn’t fallen on the Japanese peak in October in 130 years. Record-keeping for snow on Mount Fuji began 130 years ago. 

ICYMI: My new column is out. This time I went looking for the Screaming Well in Renton. Never heard of it? Me either! 

Not great on the job front: In October, US employers only added 12,000 jobs. In September, that number was 223,000. Economists say hurricanes and strikes are to blame for the paltry new employment number. 

Rob Saka’s main budget priority: District 1 Councilmember Rob Saka’s main priority in the Seattle city budget is to set aside and freeze $2 million in funds so he can tweak an already-complete RapidRide H project outside his kid’s preschool, the Refugee & Immigrant Family Center (RIFC) Bilingual Preschool. Saka hates the hardened median strip along Delridge Way SW that prohibits left turns into the preschool near the SW Holly St right-of-way. He wants that median—which exists so drivers don’t turn left into a protected bike lane—gone. Because of that median, he can’t turn left into the school or exit the school where the median is. He compared the median to Donald Trump’s border wall. The median “has only re-traumatized many members of the RIFC community. It is triggering for many of our members,” Saka said. Did this guy only run for office so he could get this traffic pet peeve of his removed? 

Tech CEO charged with rape: Dan Price is the Seattle tech guy and former CEO of Gravity Payments who first became noteworthy when he raised his employee’s minimum salaries to $70,000. Price’s proclivity for being a scumbag tainted the rising star of his splashy progressive social media presence. A Riverside County, CA court officially charged Price with rape on Thursday for a 2021 incident when he allegedly assaulted his unconscious then-girlfriend. Price will be arraigned in January. 

Social media star seized by authorities: Online celebrity, Peanut, a squirrel living with a 34-year-old man in rural New York was seized by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) after the department received complaints about the squirrel’s safety. The DEC also took a raccoon named Fred from the house. Peanut’s owner of seven years is distraught. “To the group of people who called DEC, there’s a special place in hell for you,” he said. 

Spanish flood death toll rises: Historic flash floods in Spain killed at least 205 people, the majority of whom lived in the Valencia region of the country. The damage from the floods are catastrophic.

Tucker Carlson met a demon: No, he didn’t meet it while looking in the mirror! Ha. Good one, right? No, but seriously, the ex-Fox News blowhard claimed he had a “direct experience” with a demon in his bed. The demon mauled him, Tucker said, and he still has the scars of the scratches. 

Apostrophe drama: Joe Biden spoke candidly to a group of Latino activists after Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally’s ugliness turned toward Puerto Rico. At the rally, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” In Biden’s call, he said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.” However, potentially to save face from calling those ghouls “garbage,” the White House’s official transcript wrote Biden’s statement as “supporter’s” and not “supporters,” implying he actually meant Hinchcliffe’s remarks were garbage and not that an entire group of Americans were garbage. This is dumb. Let this lame duck call racists garbage. 

What we should be focusing on: Journalist Michael Wolff released a snippet of audio showcasing how tight Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s relationship was. He apparently has hours and hours of audio from Epstein demonstrating their deep relationship. Strange that this is the first we’re hearing it. 

Another preventable death: A pregnant Texas teenager died from sepsis after doctors failed to medically abort her fetus for fear of violating state abortion bans. She went to the emergency room three times and, refused necessary care, she died. 

Have you voted yet? Hurry up and do it. And, don’t think about how the Republicans are already gearing up to contest the election if Trump loses. Let’s just make sure he loses and deal with the sore losers afterwards. 

Something for your Friday: Are you marinating in election anxiety? Feel like there’s no hope? And, on top of that, your back hurts? Do this for a brief reprieve. 

 

 

Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...

18 replies on “Slog AM: New Boeing Contract on the Table, Council Member Compares Traffic Median to Border Wall, Another Preventable Pregnant Woman’s Death in Texas”

  2. Tucker Carlson (and his wife) sleeps with four dogs in their bed. He says none of them (wife, dogs) woke up during the attack, which he thought he’d just dreamed, until he saw scratches that were bleeding.

    Tucker Carlson: “Obviously a demon, that’s the sort of thing demons are known for doing”

    Normal people: “You sure you weren’t high af, and what attacked you was in fact one of your dogs?”

  3. Had to look up RIFC. For the life of me I could not figure out what the Rhode Island Football Club had to do with public transportation in Seattle then I found the Family Center.

    I hope the machinists reject the deal. Teach those capitalist pigs a lesson! Am I right comrades?

  4. “Another preventable death: A pregnant Texas teenager died from sepsis after doctors failed to medically abort her fetus for fear of violating state abortion bans. She went to the emergency room three times and, refused necessary care, she died.”

    ah, yes. it’s the ‘republican’

    “Healthcare Plan” cum ‘Women’s

    Bodily Autonomy Freedom’ campaign.

    Vote

    Accordingly

    or eltrmpfster’s gonna ‘protect’ you

    into either Forced Motherhood —

    marry your Rapist!, Prison, or

    an Early grave. right there’s

    your “Choice” America

    and the donold

    means Business.

  6. @5, How will the ad play with the few undecided voters left in Pennsylvania that will decide who the rest of us get for President?

    That should be the sole criteria for evaluating efforts to motivate and persuade voters.

  10. Remember, we don’t live in a swing state so you can feel perfectly fine about voting for the third party candidate of your choice if you haven’t done so yet!

  12. @10

    even if we Didn’t

    nekky, we might Still

    Vote our Consciences with

    some Ranked Choice Voting

    which the two “major” Parties’d

    see as a Major Threat to their

    Strangelehold over the

    Electorate

    ever since ‘Slick Willy’ Clinton

    Triangulated the “democratic”

    partay into centrists and cor-

    porate dems we’ve Lost con-

    trol over OUR Elections and

    the Reich Wing, formerly-

    Supreme ct allowed $$$

    to be considered “free

    speech” We the Peeps

    can no Longer Afford

    our little Republic

    so we get

    whomever

    The “D”NC

    fucking wants.

    small Wonder

    the donold’s

    doing so

    well.

  14. @12 RCV is a primary device, not a general election device (so it won’t really do much besides ensure candidates like NTK never make it to the general)

    And @Nat, no one cares about Epstein stories – but hopefully they care about the subsequent abortion story (I know it’s juvenile fun to tweak the Orange Racist and his Q followers but it won’t move voters).

    “Another preventable death: A pregnant Texas teenager died from sepsis after doctors failed to medically abort her fetus for fear of violating state abortion bans”

  15. @14 — yeah I Got that

    but you know What? if

    eltrumpfster don’t seize

    the Whitehouse there’ll

    BE Other Primaries where

    we can Vote for whom we

    Want, not whatever the ‘d’nc

    happens to shove down our throats

    candidates might hafta

    pay Attention to more than

    merely Their Biggest Donors

    thanks to the Activist

    Extremists on ‘our’

    far-right USSC.

  16. @14 — yeah I Get that

    but you know What? if

    eltrumpfster don’t seize

    the Whitehouse there’ll

    BE Other Primaries where

    we can Vote for whom we

    Want, not whatever the ‘d’nc

    happens to shove down our throats

    candidates might hafta

    pay Attention to more than

    merely Their Biggest Donors

    thanks to the Activist

    Extremists on ‘our’

    far-right USSC.

  17. @10, Great point – but this space is not exactly “common sense,” if you know what I mean. Most of the commentators here would melt into sludge if they even tried to vote against an authoritarian, just like the Satan worshippers in The Devil’s Rain (Happy Halloween!). It’s also important to vote independent in swing states, where vanishingly small increments can serve to destroy Killemalla’s presidential bid.

  18. Even if people don’t want the read the full Dan Price article, the last paragraph is worth ingesting:

    “Ms. Podberesky, Mr. Price’s lawyer, has worked on several high-profile cases in Los Angeles. She represented the Church of Scientology in matters related to the rape case against the “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, who was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.”

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