Amazon has disappointed me in so many ways recently. It has turned my city into a grovelling beggar with its plans for HQ2. Business leaders, mainstream politicians, and more are all on their knees pleading to be forgiven for a sin they never committed. The idea of HQ2 in another city comes with visions of a second dark age for Seattle. It's all very pathetic.

Then there is the matter of giving the political machine called Jenny Durkan loads of money to continue to do what she has done in the past and will certainly do in the future if elected: be a machine in a system that manages, above all, the big business interests of the city. Amazon gave her campaign an astonishing $100,000 on October 12 (it has already given Durkan $250,000). They want her to lead the city they have brought down to its knees. Durkan is best fitted for this job, best fitted to command the animal that trembles and has the huge watery eyes of a dog with a tail between its legs.

And then this had to happen. I saw it yesterday, when the amazingly long (5000 miles) cloud (it stretches from here to China and is called "The Big Dark" or the "river in the sky"—it has made national news), began dumping lots of water on our city. I was near HQ1—which for reasons that are still unknown to me, isn't large enough for many business reporters at The Seattle Times and Puget Sound Business Journal—and saw big white and orange umbrellas everywhere.

I asked one person under the half-moon of one where it came from and was told, of course: "They are owned by Amazon." They are in buckets and available to employees leaving work. Sign your name on some form, and you can hog space on the sidewalks of the city Amazon has disciplined. Small umbrellas, which are much more stylish and not obnoxious, just would not do for the employees of a corporation that has its city by the balls.