Our weather map looks so scary right now: Good morning and batten down the hatches, we’re about to be dealing with a bomb cyclone. The Associated Press said heavy rain and high winds are set to “pummel” Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. While most of the bomb cyclone will pound that sweet spot between Portland and San Francisco, the weather people at the National Weather Service still expect lots of rain and wind today in Western Washington, with some gusts as high as 22 miles per hour. So, you know, stay safe and dry out there. 

Seattle City Council votes on budget, JumpStart today: After an arduous and opaque process, the Council is scheduled to vote on the 2025 budget this afternoon as well as whether to loosen up regulations on where it can spend JumpStart dollars. If you don’t know anything about JumpStart, that’s okay. Basically, it’s a tax on big Seattle businesses meant to be spent on affordable housing. But Mayor Bruce Harrell wants to use it to plug the City’s deficit because the tax is so effective. That means taking money originally meant to help people afford to live in this tech-ridden expensive-ass city and spending it, in part, on a bloated cops budget rather than passing another progressive tax such as a capital gains tax. The Seattle Times wrote a good little explainer on it today. Also, follow Hannah today for budget vote stuff. You can now find her on X and BlueSky. 

FOB Sushi update: Nathalie wrote yesterday about how TikTok food reviewer Keith Lee stopped in at Belltown’s FOB Sushi Bar and, during his video review of the restaurant, his sushi twitched. TikTok sleuths and Lee himself accused the restaurant of serving him a piece of Hamachi sushi with a worm in it. FOB Sushi denied this last week, but then this week they closed their Seattle and Bellevue locations, according to KIRO 7. 

A cop on every crosswalk: The Mayor constantly talks about policing and crime, but according to the Seattle Public Safety Survey, people in Seattle consider stuff such as a car hitting them to be the biggest public safety threat in their lives. Agree? Disagree? Great, take the survey and tell Harrell your thoughts. As KUOW reports, the survey is open until November 30. 

Speaking of traffic and cops: Have I mentioned lately how much I despise carceral urbanists? They’re people who act like they’re progressive because they support a protected bike lane, but then they also support cops harassing people out of their 15-minute cities. Or, in the latest iteration, they advocate for policing the shit out of people who cover their license plates. A random urbanist from Philadelphia shared his perspective that we could somehow fix the number of people killed by dangerous drivers by impounding all cars with covered license plates. Honestly, everyone should be allowed to cover their license plates—especially when parked—and especially in Seattle with its proliferation of Automatic License Plate Readers. We’re now all the subject of mass surveillance in Seattle, a dangerous prospect considering the incoming Trump administration.

Not All Urbanists: Before too many of you yell about how you’re a good urbanist who hates mass incarceration, I know, I know. Don’t worry, I love an urbanist who just wants the city to build street cars and improve traffic safety. A recent argument from The Urbanist kind of turned me around on how I feel about Seattle’s streetcar system. We actually should have a city line. It would connect South Lake Union to Capitol Hill, something that, as someone who lives on the wrong side of I-5 from Capitol Hill, I would personally really enjoy.

Gaetzgate: Two women told the House Ethics Committee that they witnessed former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz have sex with an underage girl at a party in 2017, according to the lawyer who represented the women. The women also said Gaetz paid them for sex multiple times in multiple locations. Politico reported that numerous Senate Republicans hope Trump chooses someone else to be his Attorney General.

Speaking of being above the law: Trump’s sentencing hearing in his hush money case was today, except the judge adjourned the court. The sentencing is paused until further notice. Since sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted, the judge must decide whether to delay sentencing until after his second term or dismiss the case entirely. Man, consequences really slip off this guy like water off a duck’s back. 

Trump expected to ramp up deportations immediately: The incoming Trump Administration plans to begin its crackdown on immigrants starting on his first day in office, according to Politico. That means ending parole for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, undoing deportation constraints, as well as considering a host of executive actions to block people entering the country. While legal challenges to his actions may be hard to win, considering the 200 federal judges he managed to appoint in his last term, the project still raises serious logistical questions.

Even more alarming: Trump confirmed on Truth Social that he wants to use the military to carry out his sick mass deportation dreams. We don’t have many details from the post since all he did was post “TRUE!!!” to a conservative commentator’s assertion that Trump would “declare a national emergency and use military assets” to drive the deportations, according to the BBC. 

That Monsignor espresso: Catholic church officials stripped the priest who let pop start Sabrina Carpenter film her music video for “Feather” at a New York City church, according to The Guardian. The video played a role in the investigation of New York City Mayor Eric Adams earlier this year when an inquiry into Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello’s decision allowing Carpenter to film at the church led to the discovery of “unauthorized financial transfers to a former top aide in Eric Adams’s administration,” according to the Guardian piece. Just girly things.

And with that, I leave you with the Feather video that, arguably, helped nail Adams on charges of bribery and corruption. 

Ashley Nerbovig is a staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and courts. She is like other girls.

77 replies on “Slog AM: Seattle City Council Set to Vote on Budget, Bomb Cyclone Hits Pacific Northwest, Judge Pauses Trump’s Hush Money Case Sentencing”

  2. “Honestly, everyone should be allowed to cover their license plates”

    Nobody with intellectual honesty anywhere on the political spectrum would concur with this, so is Ashley trolling us?

  3. “Trump confirmed

    on Truth Social that he

    wants to use the military to

    carry out his sick mass deportation dreams.”

    then start with them

    Meatpacking Plants donold

    make the Price of Steak soar and

    then do Chicken and, finally, Cali’s Veggies.

    That just oughtta

    Make Inflation

    Great Again.

    @1

    knock it off

    Wormtongue.

  4. Are pedestrians actually getting hit by vehicles at a greater rate, or is it just something people are afraid of? There are a LOT of new pedestrian safety upgrades in the city: No Turn on Red signs everywhere, & the walk signals are all set to “head start”.

  5. @1, 4:

    so

    the cars

    are Israel

    the Peds Pal-

    estinians; how’s

    that NO TURN ON

    RED working out, so far?

    what if

    they’re

    Late?* does

    NTOR not Apply?

    *like

    for an Appt.

    or ‘two weeks’

    or whatverer tf?

  6. @5: “the cars are Israel the Peds Pal-estinians”

    Wouldn’t the pedestrians be smashing the cars’ windshields, setting the cars on fire, and then calling it a war crime when the cars run them over? 😃

  8. I understand why people aren’t allowed to cover their plates but public safety has nothing to do with it. That’s just broken windows theory for drivers.

  10. “Honestly, everyone should be allowed to cover their license plates—especially when parked—and especially in Seattle with its proliferation of Automatic License Plate Readers. We’re now all the subject of mass surveillance in Seattle, a dangerous prospect considering the incoming Trump administration.”

    1/ There’s no expectation of privacy in public spaces;

    2/ If you have a modern car, the car company tracks it;

    3/ Do you carry a telephone with you wherever you go?

    4/ See RCW 46.16A.200 before you consider covering a vehicle’s license plate(s).

  11. @6

    “… and then

    calling it a war crime

    when the cars run them over?”

    so that

    NO TURN ON RED

    doesn’t Apply to the cars?

    so

    they’re

    ”Special”?

    NOTR’s ‘Conditional’?

    they have Immunity cum Impunity?

    thank

    you for Finally

    clearing that up.*

    *no, not the Carnage

    just the Just-

    ifications

  12. @8- public safety has plenty to do with it. License plates, among other things, help to ID drivers involved in hit and runs including the ones involving the pedestrians everyone here is so concerned about.

  16. How many people actually remove those license plate covers every time they get on the road? Yeah, I thought not. Also, most parking meters are by plate number now.

    @10 I know someone who got pinged for not having current tabs while parked on the street. I thought there might be a loophole where you could cut away the cover over the rear tabs, but no dice.

    Finally, gusts of 22 mph are nothing to write home about. That’s a kinda blustery fall day. Get excited if we’ve got gusts of 40 or more.

  17. Twitching Sushi was my favorite band from the Seattle Music Scene days. They opened for Stenchgrinder and the Posies at the Off Ramp, the night the bassist from Ol’ What’s Her Name was found in the adjacent alley with the needle still in his arm. Good times!

  18. @12, I would wager hit-and-runs represent a tiny fraction of covered plates.

    Again, I understand why plates should not be covered but impounding all such cars would not put a dent in the number of dangerous drivers on the road.

  19. @4, “No Turn on Red signs everywhere, & the walk signals are all set to “head start”.”

    How does that make the pedestrian safer if nothing happens to the driver when they fail to observe the sign, or take the “head start” signal as an indicator that cross traffic has a red, so they can jump their own red, to get down the road a few seconds faster.

    Laws without accountability for not doing what the sign says or the signal indicates are just public etiquette suggestions. How is someone held accountable, by cops or in civil court if they injure someone, if they can drive off anonymously behind the mask of a covered plate. You have no expectation of privacy or anonymity in public. If you had that, there would be no way to hold people accountable for public actions in public shared space.

    If people voluntarily restrained themselves for the public good and were responsible, then we would not need laws or police. They don’t, never have, never will, and so every society on the planet has laws, or tribal norms, and ways that they are corrosively enforced, with force if necessary.

  20. @11, You call it war crime. Everything that is a tragedy and awful is crime to you, even when laws enacted by democratic societies, or voluntarily agreed treaties say otherwise.

  22. “Mass surveillance”

    NOBODY does mass surveillance like people on the street with smart phones. In fact, personal smart phones are probably more capable and are upgraded more regularly than a municipal system.

  24. No one is going to mention the complete made up term of carceral urbanist? Apparently its cool to be an urbanist and hate on cars however if you advocate for the police to actually do something when a car is doing something illegal you’re a bad person? What exactly is supposed to happen to the owner of the car who is blocking a bike lane? This is yet another example of why progressives are incapable of actually governing

  25. Pity the poor anti-carceral urbanist. It isn’t easy believing that 20mph school zones enforced by cameras are a great idea while simultaneously believing that anybody who doesn’t wish to obey that law should just be able to cover their license plate and drive whatever speed they like.

  26. @24 “This is yet another example of why progressives are incapable of actually governing.”

    Uh, yeah, take what some moron writes and paint all “progressives” with that brush. Seems rational.

  27. @19

    “How

    does that make

    the pedestrian safer if

    nothing happens to the driver

    when they fail to observe [obey] the sign… “

    kinda like when

    Israel IGNORES the

    International Court of Justice?

    et fucking al?

    & thank You for

    Making my point.

    @20

    nope.

    that was

    Wormtongue’s

    sockpuppet/chatterbotX’s

    see: @6

    you’re gonna hafta

    Read Harder (thnx

    Wormtongue!)

    and

    your

    Nihilism

    is no Cover

    for my Protestations.

  28. @24: “Carceral Urbanist” jumped out at me but I just rolled my eyes. Disliking squalor is oh so bourgeoise.

    @19: enforcement is a separate issue. I’d like to know if Seattle truly has a significant car-on-pedestrian violence problem. I suspect not, but I have no statistics. I just have anecdotes of defiant, imbalanced homeless walking right in front of my car at intersections.

    It could be there’s not really an issue and it’s that Seattle U survey instead. It starts with so many “how much do you love the cops” questions that I lost patience.

  29. 24, All terms are made up. If you put an adjective in front of a noun it takes on a particular meaning that you should be able to figure out even if you’ve never heard these words together before.

    It’s my understanding that plate covers interfere with automated readers but the meter guy should still be able to read the plate. Having your plates unreadable to the naked eye would be like driving around with a bullseye on your car.

  30. How does a seatbelt keep you safe if you don’t wear it? How does your key open your door if you don’t turn it? How do your shoelaces keep your shoes on your feet if you don’t tie them? Think about it! I haven’t.

    Technically all laws are just suggestions. But most people obey the law, so if you make it an infraction to turn right on red, you will minimize the risk to pedestrians because you will minimize the number of people driving through the crosswalk on a red light. You will never keep every pedestrian safe but you can reduce their risk through better driving laws.

  34. “everyone should be allowed to cover their license plates”

    TS has now entered sovereign citizen territory – congratulations for your idiotic take. Cars have plates as proof of their legality (think tax revenue) and public identification (think traffic accidents).

    The distinction between the radical far right and left becomes harder every day (they just get there via their own insane ideology).

  35. “Trump confirmed on Truth Social that he wants to use the military to carry out his sick mass deportation dreams”

    Thanks Comrade Sawant – what a great world you advanced!

  36. Thanks TS for alerting me to the public safety survey, but I took a pass on your advice to indulge in autophobia.

    My answers were informed by, as we say now, my “lived experience.” In this case, having squatters move into my home in White Center during its active real-estate listing! 20 years of struggling to make mortgage payments. A neighborhood going off the cliff.

    Ironically, the squatters fought off several thieves from my residence before the Police removed them, who proceeded to tell me 1) there will be no charges 2) don’t spend the nights at my home because it’s dangerous….malefactors will probably return 3) we are very sorry but the city is tying our hands.

    I pulled the listing.

    Rebooted in 21. Thankfully sold in 5 days. Kept vigil in my home with a neighbors dog and a new “friend” called “the Gimp.” Moved to the East side. The morning of moving day a neighbor reported on NextDoor their bicycle being stolen. The first response (sans irony) was something like “well they probably needed it to get to a job interview.” Lawns on my street were festooned with BLM and “in this house we believe…” as I careened off. Bye bye!

  37. @18- I’m not suggesting impounding. But handing out big fat tickets for this makes all the sense in the world. Maybe double your speeding fines if you also have your plate covered. Or just make it equivalent to driving an unregistered car. Of course, any of this assumes that we have even minimal traffic law enforcement, which we assuredly do not in Seattle.

  39. 37, I don’t disagree. I was responding to the original post where someone suggested that impounding covered plates would reduce dangerous driving.

  41. @26 the Venn diagram of progressives and urbanists is a perfect circle and we all know progressives disdain any type of enforcement of rules lest we somehow disenfranchise today’s aggrieved minority group. I keep wondering if there is any type of regulation/law that progressives actually support but have yet to find it. For further evidence see the proposed legislation being introduced by Mia Gregerson to make homelessness a protected class.

    @37 totally agree

  42. @38. I went full Rambo with the meanest offering that CMMG had to offer. Spent some quality time getting acquainted with the Gimp in the hills around Leavenworth, riding my wr250r up lonely fire roads. But what expensive dates those were!

    @40. Oh I was made well aware of the history. When I moved to the area in 2002, White Center was slowly improving, and frankly it was the most affordable area for my wife and I that was still near downtown. And for nearly 20 years, it continued to improve. Perhaps 2017 things began to slip…and then 2020 happened.

  43. @41 Disagree. Urbanists are probably entirely contained within the progressive circle, but there are also progressives who are not urbanists.

  45. @41 God, you’re dumb. Blacking out license plates is not a “progressive” argument. It’s moronic. The progressive argument is that all cars must be eliminated. Get your facts straight.

  47. @45: The progressive argument is that all cars must not run on fossil fuels, not be eliminated. Your take can only be achieved in an authoritarian state which is not progressive.

  48. In the traditional conservative lore, a progressive falls somewhere on the scale between nanny-state scold and outright communist, but today they are anarchists who don’t believe in laws or regulations at all. What bad thing will progressives be tomorrow? We can only wait and see.

    I’ve said this many times before but the commenters who come here because they hate it so much will twist themselves into pretzels trying to find a rational or moral basis for their disdain instead of just saying “I don’t agree with this.”

  50. @43 that’s probably more accurate

    @45 no the progressive argument as demonstrated in the Slog is not to levy any fines/punishment for blocking your plate. Phoebe’s prob right as well. Urbanists want all cars eliminated so we can walk everywhere lol and progressives want to control how you use your car via taxation.

  51. 50, No that’s the Ashley Nerbovig argument. It’s ok if you think it’s bad, in fact many people who think you’re an idiot agree with you on this one, but you can’t just retrofit it into the official progressive stance on plate blockers because it makes you feel superior to people you disagree with about tax policy or youth jail or whatever.

    Progressives aren’t a hive mind but if you were to distill progressive urban car policy down to a single thing it would be whatever gives you fewer of them and encourages alternate modes of transportation and weak enforcement of traffic violations is the opposite of that.

  52. @41 You’ve got it assbackward: the progressive movement was born out of the need to regulate capitalism and still is so. By opposition, free market fundamentalists have been fighting any and all regulations since Reagan.

  53. “Trump’s….consequences really slip off this guy like water off a duck’s back. “

    It would please me to think that all the attacks on Trump were just campaign stunts. I’m originally from Chicago where it is a long honored tradition to put a brick through the front window of YOUR OWN campaign headquarters and then claim it was a murderous attack by the opposition candidate.

    But as someone who once shot targets with a rifle made for shooting prarie dogs at 500 yards, I can guarantee you that NO ONE can reliably take a piece out of a man’s ear with a rifle even at 20 feet distance.

    Trump, indeed, is the luckiest man alive today. He’s one of the 3 or 4 things I’ve seen in my life that makes me believe in the hand of God. (Make no mistake: God touching the lives of men isn’t always what you really hope for. Think residents of Sodom & Gomorrah.)

    @17, Yeah, I too remember….what’s her name.?

  54. Again I write: I’m so impressed by the traffic laws here that are so pedestrian friendly.

    But again I have to say, that anyone who believes those laws makes them safe or protects their life is a fool.

    It seems they don’t do it any more but, when I was in grammar school, second or third grade, they would bring in people, police officers, nurses & other professionals, to teach us basic concepts beyond the 3 ‘R’s……like looking both ways BEFORE you cross the street. That’s NOT because motorists are evil people. It’s because everyone makes mistakes and people often misunderstand or incorrectly predict what other people will do in the next 5 seconds: If you walk out into the street texting with your head up your ass without looking both ways for traffic, EVEN in a crosswalk, EVEN when the light is in your favor, the universe believes you DESERVE to die. Traffic is still one of those areas where Stupidity is a Capital Offense.

  55. @30 (cc: @28) You can also make people safer by generating higher rates of compliance with existing laws.

    Studies have shown that higher rates of visible (seeing cops with someone pulled over), zero-tolerance, enforcement reduces auto accidents by 15%. There was a particularly robust study out of Pennsylvania on the subject. What is unclear is how long the effect is, which would be helpful to know, so frequency of such emphasis enforcement can be determined.

  56. @15 CDizzle (Garb Garblar?): lol Thanks, CD. I needed that.

    WTF about the Orange Turd getting away with everything, thanks to its Extreme Court, its 200 appointed judges, lawyers, fixers, loyalists, usual gang of MAGA tools, and all?

    Why was this corrupt as fuck POS and 34 TIMES CONVICTED FELON allowed to run for a second White House term instead of decades’ overdue?

    Now the Orange Turd is going to send the military out to enforce deportations on top of driving up housing, healthcare, and food costs??

    I am not looking forward to 2025 AT ALL.

  59. The SPD is basically MIA when it comes to any sort of traffic enforcement and has been for the last several years after they got butthurt that no one liked them. That’s good news if you are trying to navigate some of the streets that S-DOT has completely goofed up, like 4th Ave through downtown. I just drive in the bus-only lane.

    And, at the risk of sounding like I’m blaming victims (I’m not. The driver is always responsible, unless it’s some messed up weirdo who suddenly bolts into traffic), who in their right mind would step into an intersection without looking to make sure no one was going to run you over?

  60. In my observation the vast majority of drivers obey traffic signals. Whether for fear of the police, traffic light cameras, or dying in oncoming traffic, drivers generally stop at red lights. If you make it a law the majority of drivers will comply and it will save lives.

  61. @60, True, but isn’t it better if you get 15% higher compliance rates with visible, regular, zero-tolerance enforcement?

    Seattle committed itself to “vision zero” about a decade ago. Zero pedestrian deaths within 3 years, or something like that. Rolled out a big education campaign with traffic commission grant money, traffic engineering changes, etc. Traffic deaths have gone up every year since.

  63. I went right thru a four-way stop

    in Darrington, excited to see

    Civilization again and had

    glanced over at the two

    cop cars, right where

    they Both could

    See me turned

    back around

    Just in Time

    to see the

    Stopsign

    thru the

    passen-

    ger win-

    dow, they

    saw Me worse

    than I saw the Stopsign

    I pulled over a block up

    the street but two

    minutes later fled

    the Scene at 25

    mph. Some-

    times you

    just get

    Lucky.

    it’s Too

    Fucking Easy

    to miss one tiny thing

    and your Mercury Missle

    becomes a Speeding

    Bullet* headed for

    who the Fuck

    knows where

    it’d be Nice

    to have a Reliable

    A I Assist, another couple

    dozen eyeballs or whatever

    *brought to

    you by

    Coors

    Lite!

    Know

    your

    Limits!

    and then

    Exceed them!

    Coors! it’s the

    King of Beers!

    [and no I hadn’t

    been drinking

    nor toking.]

  64. @62, Why not? Nothing happens. You don’t want to be the only sap not using the bus lane. It really sucks to find you are the only one who is socially conscientious.

  65. @52: “the progressive movement was born out of the need to regulate capitalism and still is so.”

    They started out that way, but nowadays it’s mostly just race essentialism and thought policing. The working class can smell bullshit and is walking away en masse.

  66. And I can’t begin to describe how stupid people are when they walk along the road shoulder in lit or unlit areas at night in ALL BLACK CLOTHES!!!!! Take out your damn phone!! Even if you don’t have a flashlight function, turn on the screen even at half brightness & face it toward oncoming traffic. How little do you value your life……..or how drunk are you?

  68. @55, good point. But getting your head out of your ass, looking where you’re going, looking both ways (multiple times) while crossing, & being alert for assholes driving down the road at 85 in a 30 reduces getting hit & killed by 100%, which is slightly better than your 15%.

    I’m all for enforcement. But that’s for the other guy. For myself, I’m into prevention. While I’m anywhere near the edge of a road, there’s no phone call, no text, no web page that’s anywhere near important enough for me to look at without pulling ALL THE WAY off the road into a side street or parking lot and coming to a full stop out of any traffic.

    @57, Good point. But safer means crippled rather than dead. I’d rather be completely safe rather than a bit safer. NOBODY, NOT NOBODY gets hit by a car because it fell out of the sky. They get hit because they were not watching traffic.

    @58, good point. 15% safer is 85% deader.

    @59, I’ve had people staring at their phone walk right out in front of me on Alaska as I was coming out of the ferry terminal. The only thing that saved me from hitting them was I was at a very reasonable speed (dead slow) considering the blind corners and I was looking for it. And it wasn’t that the light had just changed. The light was green & traffic had been moving for several seconds. I’ve also had totally alert, aware people, looking straight at me, just walk out into the intersection when I had a green light because they felt that they somehow had the law or righteousness or who knows what, on their side. That’s the downside of thinking the law can circumvent reality.

    @62, 64, if you’re talking about all those people in the bus lane, the ones turning right are there legal & proper.

    And another thing which has sometimes occurred to me is that Seattle, in trying to legislate safety, has made their traffic signs, traffic signals, and lane markings among the most confusing and sometimes incomprehensible in the world. (Even long time Seattle natives get confused by the simultaneously red & green left turn signal when there’s a bicycle lane…….BOTH drivers & cyclists get confused.) Again, there’s nothing wrong with legislating orderly traffic rules. But thinking those rules will protect people who are walking around in a daze is really stupid.

    Another thing that, to me, is proof there’s just not enough education: All the time I see little kids…..even late teenagers who cross the street in the MOST dangerous way: They put their head down & run, rather than head up, continuously looking back & forth both ways, while walking across the street. If you want a good 15% type statistic, look up the death rates for those two ways of crossing the street. Again, when I was in 3rd or 4th grade they gave the teacher a chance to catch her breath while a community police officer taught us how to cross the street….or even once, taught us why we shouldn’t pick up the bullets that were in the gutter that week for some reason. But all that education takes tax money. MAGA loves that.

  70. @65 Bullshit. People like AOC, Tlaib and co had no problem getting reelected. The only progressives who were axed faced the $millions of the Israeli lobby

  71. @70: It’s a popular program in Dearborn and Queens. It’s not a popular program anywhere else. At some point, you’ll have to stop blaming all your problems on “Israel,” ha ha ha!

  74. 68, no “safer” means you are 20% less likely to be injured or killed by a driver if you are a pedestrian in a crosswalk

    59, I’ve been hit by a car before. I had the right of way and no indication whatsoever that the driver didn’t see me. Cars turning right on red by default are driving through a pedestrian’s right of way and are always at fault if they hit someone. Unless there is no traffic on the road pedestrians are always depending on drivers to be paying attention and minding the rules of the road.

  75. @23 — “Winds as high as 22 mph?

    Truly the apocalypse is upon us.

    –@ASaxman5537 on November 19, 2024 at 11:30 AM”

    nyt:

    Intense West Coast Wind and Snow

    Knock Out Power and Close Roads

    The first “atmospheric river” storm of the season battered Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, disrupting travel and leaving at least two people dead from falling trees.

    Bomb Cyclone Slams

    the Pacific Northwest

    A deadly weather system left tens of thousands without power in Washington. The “atmospheric river” storm from the Pacific Ocean also battered Oregon and Northern California.

    A wind-whipped storm tore through Northern California on Wednesday, knocking down trees, snarling highways and transit, and leaving tens of thousands of people without power. Days’ worth of rain fell on some places in just a few hours.

    The damaging deluge, which drenched the Pacific Northwest overnight, killing at least two people, was expected to stretch into the weekend. It was the season’s first major atmospheric river, a type of storm that can deliver prodigious amounts of water in a narrow band from the Pacific Ocean.

    Some of the worst damage was in the Seattle area, where heavy wind gusts tore down power lines and knocked out substations late Tuesday, leaving half a million customers without electricity.

    “This is a major storm the likes of which we haven’t seen in over a decade,” said Melanie Coon, a spokeswoman for Puget Sound Energy.

    –by Soumya Karlamangla Drew Atkins and Judson Jones

    Nov. 20, 2024

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/weather/bomb-cyclone-atmospheric-river-storm-west-coast.html

  76. once again,

    speaking of

    Genocide & How

    Much is TOO Fucking Much:

    nyt

    FINALLY:

    International Criminal Court

    Issues Arrest Warrants for

    Netanyahu and Gallant

    The International Criminal Court said on Thursday that it had issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, dealing a sharp blow to Israel’s global legitimacy as it battles militants on multiple fronts.

    The court on Thursday also said it had issued a warrant for the arrest of Muhammad Deif, Hamas’s military chief, for crimes against humanity, including murder, hostage taking and sexual violence. Israel said in August that it had killed Mr. Deif.

    Nov. 21, 2024, 8:59 a.m. ET

    oodles More, Thankfully

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/11/21/world/israel-netanyahu-hamas-gaza

    better get your

    Justifications

    all in Order

    Neolibs

    & Cons

    you’ve had More

    Than a Year to

    Polish them

    Turds.

  77. Obscuring your plate and now covering your plate is a primary offense in Washington. You can be pulled over for it. The fine will be more than $100 – those fines start Jan. 1 (what a bunch of tyrants we have down in Olympia).

Comments are closed.