No. Stop. What are you doing?
No. Stop. What are you doing? Dark Horse / Getty

PUT THE DAMN PHONE DOWN: The United States is experiencing a "historic spike" in traffic fatalities, Bloomberg reports. "Over the past two years, after decades of declining deaths on the road, U.S. traffic fatalities surged by 14.4 percent. In 2016 alone, more than 100 people died every day in or near vehicles in America, the first time the country has passed that grim toll in a decade." People aren't driving, speeding, or drinking that much more—certainly not enough to explain the spike. The only trend that accounts for the spike: "distracted driving," aka assholes drivers mowing down pedestrians and cyclists while texting, scrolling through Twitter, posting status updating to Facebook, liking lunch pics on Instagram, and sharing dick pics on Snapchat.

TRUMP DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THE TROOPS: After being criticized for not making condolence calls to the families of fallen US troops, Trump claimed yesterday that "former President Barack Obama and other former presidents did not personally call the families of soldiers who died in combat," Talking Points Memo reported. That was a lie, like nearly everything else that comes out of Trump's mouth. Trump hemmed and hawed when confronted, claiming he didn't know for sure if Obama called the families of fallen troops, but "that's what he was told." Active-duty service members supported Trump in the election by a two-to-one margin.


THE BEST PEOPLE: Former Trump administration official posts offensive poll on Holocaust to Twitter ("How many Jews were killed in the Holocaust?"), Trump's drug czar pick withdraws after "reports that a bill he sponsored hindered the Drug Enforcement Administration in its fight against the U.S. opioid crisis," and member of Trump's bullshit "voter fraud" commission arrested on child porn charges.

CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH VOTE FOR: Pennsylvania went for Trump—narrowly—and helped give Trump the White House, the nuclear football, and the power to screw up everything for everyone. And here's how Trump is thanking the voters of PA:

The insurance commissioner in Pennsylvania announced Monday that premiums for health insurance plans available through the Obamacare market place would rise by an average of 30.6 percent due to President Donald Trump’s decision last week to end subsidies to insurance companies... Pennsylvania officials had initially projected rates would increase by 7.6 percent on average before Trump decided to end payments to insurance companies that help insurers cover low-income Americans with significant health needs.

Brings to mind this from Frank Rich:

Liberals looking for a way to empathize with conservatives should endorse the core conservative belief in the importance of personal responsibility. Let Trump’s white working-class base take responsibility for its own votes—or in some cases failure to vote—and live with the election’s consequences. If, as polls tell us, many voters who vilify Obamacare haven’t yet figured out that it’s another name for the Affordable Care Act that’s benefiting them—or if they do know and still want the Trump alternative—then let them reap the consequences for voting against their own interests. That they will sabotage other needy Americans along with them is unavoidable in any case now—at least until voters stage an intervention in an election to come.

JOHN MCCAIN DOES KNOW HE'S A REPUBLICAN, RIGHT? Arizona Senator John McCain "denounced the 'half-baked, spurious nationalism' that has been the hallmark of Donald Trump’s campaign in a speech accepting the Liberty Medal for his lifetime achievements at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia last night," reports Towleroad. From his widely praised speech:

“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems, is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history… We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil.”

Nice swipe at the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville chanting "blood and soil," John. But listening to a six-term GOP senator condemn those who would "rather find scapegoats than solve problems" is a little hard to take—unless that senator is announcing his departure from the GOP. Because what has your party been doing for the last five decades other than finding scapegoats? Certainly not finding solutions to our problems. Immigrants, the poor, single mothers, gays and lesbians, Hollywood, birth control, abortion, labor unions, Muslims, the media, journalists, scientists, the mentally ill, government itself—the GOP has been "all scapegoats, all the time," John, for the entire time you've been in the Senate. Maybe this classic bit of racially charged scapegoating will ring a bell: "Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

THE GOP TAX PLAN: An obscene and unnecessary and not-nearly-unpopular-enough giveaway to the filthy rich, writes Paul Krugman. It's also the only thing keeping Republicans in line behind Trump: "They know he’s unfit for office, and many worry about his mental stability. But they’ll back him as long as they think he might get those tax cuts through."

FLORIDA DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY: It's not a hurricane that's threatening the state this time—it's neo-Nazi POS Richard Spencer. Or, as Donald Trump might call him, "a very fine person."

STARS SMASH INTO EACH OTHER: There's gold in them thar cosmic collisions:

Using infrared telescopes, astronomers studied the spectra—the chemical composition of cosmic objects—of the collision and found that the plume ejected by the merger contained a host of newly formed heavy chemical elements, including gold, silver, platinum, and others. Scientists estimate the amount of cosmic bling totals about 10,000 Earth-masses of heavy elements.

MOON SHOT: Kelsey Hamlin makes the case for Cary Moon at CHS.

JUDGE KILLS KILLER INITIATIVE BACKED BY LOCAL ASSHOLES:A King County Superior Court judge ruled yesterday that an initiative to ban safe-injection sites in King County can't go on the ballot. "Letting voters decide whether to ban safe-injection sites would infringe on the power of the King County Board of Health, King County Superior Court Judge Veronica Alicea-GalvĂĄn ruled Monday," the Seattle Times reports.

I-27 sought to ban public funding for safe-injection sites and thwart the recommendations of a King County opioid-addiction task force last year. The task force report cited research on a long-operating safe-injection site in Vancouver, B.C., showing that medical supervision reduced overdoses and infections from HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. The opioid task force recommended one site in Seattle and one in an undetermined King County location.

Safe-injection sites would save lives—overdose deaths dropped by 35% after a safe-injection site opened in Vancouver, B.C., and violent crime in the area did not rise after the site opened. King County doesn't have any safe-injection sites yet—so area addicts we'll have to make do with the unsafe-injection sites all over town.

LOCAL LOSS: The owner of Cafe Racer, beloved North Seattle bar and community hub, announces that they're closing.

TONGUE IN A BOX: Carrie Fisher was all sorts of awesome.

ARMPIT OF THE DAY: Tyson Dayley—and, hey, he's not just a pretty face, shaved pits, and a pile of muscles. Check out Dayley's charming and thoughtful National Coming Out Day post. There aren't a lot of straight male competitive body builders out there who wear nail polish when they wanna, love their pink manpanties, and loudly back LGBT rights.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: "Senate Confirms Adulteress As Ambassador To Vatican"

No, HalloweenCostumes.com. Just no.
No, HalloweenCostumes.com. Just no.

HALLOWEEN COSTUME OF THE NEVER EVER: Saucy Anne Frank. “We can always learn from the struggles of history!," reads the ad copy over at HalloweenCostumes.com. "Now, your child can play the role of a World War II hero with this girls World War II costume!”