Pope Francis Is Dead: Pope Francis, who was the first Latin American pontiff, is dead at 88. Francis moved the Catholic Church progressively—or, at least progressively for the Catholics. He believed in climate change, he made the church a somewhat more welcoming place for LGBTQ people, he opposed the death penalty, he condemned both the war in Gaza and Ukraine. Poetically, Francis died the morning after Easter. Tragically, one of the last people he met with before his death was Vice President JD Vance. I’d want to die after meeting him, too.
SPD “Stop the Steal” Attendees Appeal to Supreme Court: Four of the Seattle Police Officers who attended Donald Trump’s 2021 “Stop the Steal” rally, which later turned into the Jan. 6 insurrection, don’t want their names revealed in public records. The officers maintain they did not participate in the insurrection. Earlier this year, the Washington State Supreme Court ruling which found “the officers failed to show that disclosing their names in public filings would violate their right to privacy,” according to CBSNews. Unsatisfied with that, the officers, some of whom are still active within SPD, are banking on the Supreme Court to keep their political beliefs unassociated with their names. If they simply attended a peaceful rally, what are they worried about?
Xoxo, Pete Hegseth: We might as well call Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Gossip Girl since he can’t stop texting state secrets to anyone who will listen. The New York Times found that Hegseth sent details about forthcoming strikes in Yemen to another Signal group chat. This time, instead of a Signal chat with other members of the Trump cabinet and the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Hegseth texted virtually the same deets to a private chat with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer. The chat also included about a dozen people from his personal and professional life. He called it “Defense | Team Huddle.” Hegseth allegedly shared the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen.
Once again, I was left to wonder: was Pete Hegseth signal chatting military attack plans to everyone but me??
Am I the one that’s insecure, or is it his communication practices that are insecure?
— Leah Litman (@leahlitman.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 2:37 PM
The Weather: Today, it will be cloudy, but the sun could break through any gray and stick around.
RIP Sen. Bill Ramos: Washington State Sen. Bill Ramos (D-Issaquah) died suddenly over the weekend during a trail run. He was 69. Ramos leaves behind two children and his wife, King County Councilmember Sarah Perry. “Billy is my East, my West, my North and South. I don’t know how I’ll do this without him,” Perry wrote in a Facebook post.
Democrats Keep $12 Billion Tax Package Alive: Washington state senators are approving pieces of a $12 billion tax package left and right. So far senators have passed “bills to expand the capital gains tax, increase tax rates on large corporations and big banks, and begin collecting sales tax on an array of services,” reports the Washington State Standard. The big risk with all of this momentum is it’s not clear if Gov. Bob Ferguson will sign any of these bills into law. Ferguson has been a big, frugal bummer in the face of a huge hole in our state budget. Let’s get creative here, Bob!
Hey, cut that out! An electric vehicle charger company, Virginia-based Electrify America LLC, is suing three King County men for allegedly pilfering charging cords and technology trade secrets at charging stations around Seattle. The men are accused of stealing and reselling metal stripped from the stations and developing a scheme to break into station cabinets to get the inside scoop on the technological goings-on in there. The company is seeking $500,000 from the men for allegedly violating Washington’s criminal profiteering act.
What’s your jet return policy? Thanks to new tariffs on US goods, a Boeing 737 MAX airplane intended for a Chinese airline returned back to Seattle like a pair of ill-fitting jeans. Since Trump put a 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods and China levied a reciprocal 125 percent tariff on US goods, purchasing a $55 million market value Boeing airplane could now financially destroy a Chinese airline. Before the tariffs went into effect, Boeing had 130 planes scheduled for delivery to Chinese companies. Will any of those orders still go through? Boeing and all of its pre-tariff financial woes probably really hope so!
[solemnly] “Boeing” is the sound made when the check for a jetliner bounces
— Kelsey Atherton (@atherton.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Keep Being Polite to the Bots: Apparently, by saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT bots costs OpenAI tens of millions of dollars, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Can we really kill the AI companies with kindness? Probably not, but shhh.
Supreme Court Blocks Deportations: In a rare hurry, the Supreme Court issued a late night urgent order blocking the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely-invoked 18th-century wartime law. The unsigned, one-paragraph-long order came through at 1 a.m. on Saturday. It expressed skepticism about whether the administration could make good on a stipulation from a previous, April 7 order which said “detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law within a reasonable time,” reports the New York Times. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented because the Court’s involvement, in their view, wasn’t “necessary or appropriate.”
In Happy Wildlife News: Here’s a Kenyan reporter getting interrupted by playful elephants.
Kenyan #journalist Alvin Kaunda was reporting live from Nairobi when a curious baby #elephant, Kindani, decided to join the broadcast. The playful elephant stuck her trunk in Alvin’s mouth, making for a hilarious moment! A joyful reminder of wildlife’s charm and the work of the Sheldrick Trust!
— Emily Carter (@emilycurates.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 10:59 AM
In Horrible Wildlife News: Gray whales are dying by the thousands thanks to melting arctic ice. Global warming has made it almost impossible for gray whales to get enough sustenance; their food webs are disrupted. Gray whales are starving. Their population has declined by 40 percent across the last decade.
Israel Says “Oops”: Israel has admitted wrongdoing in the killings of 15 rescue workers in Gaza last month. After making excuses for killing emergency responders and then burying them in a sandy mass grave, Israel admitted to several “professional failures” and a breach of orders in a report from an internal investigation into the matter. Israel has fired one deputy commander responsible for the order to kill the aid workers and has censured another. That is the extent of the punishment for what really looks like a cut and dry war crime. The Palestine Red Crescent called the Israeli report “full of lies.”
Kristi Noem’s Purse Nabbed at DC Restaurant: A thief nabbed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse while she was eating dinner. They made off with the purse and all of its contents which included “Noem’s driver’s license, medication, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, makeup bag, blank checks, and about $3,000 in cash.”
Breeding Kink: The White House is considering a slew of new policies to incentivize Americans to reproduce more and reverse the declining birthrate. Some of the ideas include giving every mother $5,000 after giving birth to a baby, reserving 30 percent of scholarships in the prestigious Fulbright program to people who are married or who have kids, and bestowing a “National Medal of Motherhood” award to mothers with six or more kids. Trump pledged last month to be the “fertilization president.” There is something deeply stomach-churning about all of this. It’s an extension of the administration’s focus on restoring “the American family.” Of course, the American family to them is a traditional one between men and women and set within typical gender roles.
Music for your Monday: It just felt fitting. Not sure why.
RIP Halfway-Decent Pope. Meeting w/ Vance would make me want to die, too.
LOL @ Noem carrying 3K in cash.
did they Happen
to check the Couch for any
Evidence of jd Vancelot’s foul* Emissions?
*lethal?
The head-snapping thing about the Noem purse theft was that she had $3K in cash on her. I feel weird when I have more than $100 in my pocket, which isn’t often. Why the heck does she need an average rent payment’s worth of cash on hand?
“Ferguson has been a big, frugal bummer in the face of a huge hole in our state budget.”
Of course, the opposite is true. Ferguson is a breath of fresh air in the face of the idiots digging that hole. Keep cutting, and cut some more.
No income tax. No capital gains tax. No compromise.
That video ruled and made for a delightful Monday morning reprieve, I want a pet baby elephant!
@4
and NO
Billionaires
cunning as they
Are, buying our Country
right Out from Underneath US.
@6 Fine.
@3: Paying the hired help in cash.
@3 Because when you’re rich, $3000 isn’t a rent payment. It’s a night out. Between her and her husband I doubt they would even notice 3k missing. She’s probably more annoyed about the ID and stuff.
“Since Trump put a 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods and China levied a reciprocal 125 percent tariff on US goods, purchasing a $55 million market value Boeing airplane could now financially destroy a Chinese airline.”
No, it’s not about the price. The major airlines in China are state-owned, and financially supported by the central government:
‘China’s passenger airline industry is dominated by the three state-owned airlines; Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines. There are limited competition from private operators in the commercial passenger market such as Spring Airlines but the state owned operators have the political and financial wherewithal from the central government to lead the market.’
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_aviation_in_China#:~:text=China's%20passenger%20airline%20industry%20is,government%20to%20lead%20the%20market.)
The central government simply dictated the airlines must not place new orders with Boeing, and also that they must obtain central government approval prior to accepting any deliveries from Boeing:
‘Beijing told Chinese airlines not to place new orders with Boeing and to seek approval before taking delivery of aircraft they have already ordered.’
This isn’t really the big deal it’s been made out to be:
‘“It’s not like this is an immediate impact,” Benchmark analyst Josh Sullivan said. “If it lasts and turns into China canceling actual orders, it would have an impact.”’
[…]
‘Over the past five years, China has already cut Boeing deliveries by 84% compared with the five years before…’
(https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/boeing-shares-rebound-from-loss-after-china-cuts-off-new-orders-dfab86c2?mod=Searchresults_pos6&page=1)
It’s just the retaliations anyone who knows anything about economics learns from their textbook’s, “Trade War Is Bad,” chapter. There’s no economic sense in any of it.
I remember when saving the whales was a non-argument. Everyone was onboard with saving the whales but maybe the whalers. But now it’s a woke mind thing I guess and someone has “receipts” on how the whales are actually bad for the environment because they pee in the water or some such BS.
Did anyone else get rolled by some coal during their protest on Saturday? I almost got that asshole on camera. I’m hoping someone else did. Loser even had his license plate removed. MAGATs are cowards just like their coward orange cheetoh king. Glad you dropped by a showed us how stupid you are MAGAt.
@8 Ah, of course. That makes sense. The hired help is probably undocumented, too.
@9 I’m not disputing the premise that amount of money doesn’t matter to Noem, just asking why she would have that instead of using a card or something. Paying staff under the table totally makes sense.
I’m not a fan of Furguson (too elitist for my taste) but given the shitshow that is the federal government at the moment, it’s important to reserve funding options until we know what those whack jobs are going to cut. If we max out our taxing authority for nice to haves now, we risk serious problems for core state responsibilities, foremost education.
I’m still waiting on the democratic majority to put forth a serious effort to rebalance our tax system (I’m looking at you income tax). Adding yet even more in regressive taxes is only making things worse. Now is the time to rebalance the tax burden in a sustainable way (and if folks want to take a crack at the wealth tax via initiative, more power to them – just don’t make it a key funding source until it’s proven).
Obscene Court
Kripi Gnoem
@13 spot on.
Income tax is a non starter until 2027 assuming Dems can reach super majorities in both Washington chambers. A distinct possibility. Even then I would only give it a 30 to 35% chance of being approved by voters. Too much distrust in the Washington legislature to not abuse income tax authority. A reputation they earn on a daily basis by continuing to try and impose more and more taxes to cover up their poor choices.
$3000 or more can be charged as a felony. With cash and the belongings it would meet the threshold and felonies are deportable. Where was her traveling reality TV crew/ SS detail to capture this act of domestic terrorism against ICE Barbie.
@4 “Keep cutting, and cut some more.”
You must have been so excited about this news:
https://mynorthwest.com/mynorthwest-politics/doge-washington/4075746
@18 way more excited about this development: https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/04/21/washington-democrats-abandon-property-tax-hike/
@1 Max Solomon and @2 & @6 kristofarian +3 for the WIN!!!
Rest in peace, Pope Francis. If I met JD Vance, I’d want to die, too.
“Jesus” fucking RWNJ KKKorporate AntiChrist—-Mu$k’s Mein Trumpf wants to be known as the “fertility president”??? Can we say “whole new enforced race of white nationalists”?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t know who to feel sorrier for, women and adolescent girls in their reproductive years, or little girls from birth to their teens who have yet to experience their first menstrual period.
@17 You know it was Hegseth.
@11 Hayduke Forever!: You got coal rolled at a Hands Off rally?? I’m sorry that happened to you! I hope that MAGA fuckwad got promptly arrested and incarcerated. You nailed it—that was a peaceful protest, and what happened at the event shouldn’t have. MAGAs are nothing but woefully ignorant FOX TeeVee misinformation fed bullies, cowards, and among the stupidest of Mu$k’s Mein Trumpfist gang of idiots.
Shit like this is why I’m at the local Hands Off rallies. The one where I was on Saturday was very civil.
The numbers of protesters are rising. Our turnout was in the thousands.
Does anyone know where I can get an 8647 pin? I need one for my pink pussy hat and ITMFA tank top.