When will Washingtons bullet train talk end?
When will Washington's bullet train talk end? quintanilla/gettyimages.com

Seattle COVID-19 Cases Sharply Rising In Every Neighborhood: According to the "most recent" and "most accurate" data gathered by Seattle Time's Gene Falk, Seattle and King County are on the verge of losing control of the virus. Between Nov 7 and Nov 21, "61,000 King County residents were tested for the virus, and 8,900 came back positive — at a rate of 14.5%." As for Seattle, it has a positivity rate of 10%; and its neighborhoods like Beacon Hill/Georgetown/South Park, nearly 20%. There is more bad news. The data analyzed in this report is pre-Thanksgiving, which means the current post-Thanksgiving rate is likely much higher. If one consults King County's daily COVID-19 Summary, they will find that Seattle had on Thanksgiving weekend a 7-day average of 145 new infections. 10 days later, it rose to 170 new infections a day. We have a mighty long way to go before we return to the ideal infection rate of 2%. We have a short way to go before hell breaks loose.

I Do Not Know What To Say About This: But Time Magazine named Biden and Harris the "Person of the Year." I voted for Biden and his running mate, but I can't say that I did so with anything like excitement. They were just a thousand years better than Trump, whereas someone like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would have been a million years better than Trump. Biden has yet to do anything amazing enough to make him the person of the year. Indeed, he is still struggling to get Trump out of the White House. We are in the middle of a pandemic. Trump has been tested. We know where he's at. But Biden has not. If what matters most now is COVID-19, then the "Person of the Year'' should really be hospital workers.

Gov. Jay Inslee Thinks That the Construction of High-Speed Rail Might Be the shovel-ready project the state needs to revive the wasted post-pandemic economy. The scale of the project would generate thousands of jobs over several years. He also thinks that, once running, the service would increase the economic activities of our region's urban centers, such as Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver BC. Inslee is, of course, right. The bullet train plan is a win-win. There is only one problem, however. This talk of building a Pacific Northwest high-speed rail has been going on like forever. How many studies have been done? How many governors have shown an interest in the idea? Too many to remember. It seems the bullet train will never leave the virtual and finally arrive in the real.

Donald Trump Is Still Saying he handled COVID-19 better than Obama (and Biden) handled the Swine Flu. To really believe this you have to be—like the president—barking mad. There are no two ways about it. The CDC predicts that the US will record 3,000 deaths a day for the next two months. 300,000 already dead. Trump is over here tweeting about how his pandemic is the best ever. As I have said before, our times have so much in common with the end of Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

"Poll Shows Most Republicans Distrust Election Results": The headline could easily read, "Poll Shows Most Americans Trust Election Results by a Wide Margin." What's really surprising in the NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll is the number of Republicans who trust the election results; 1 in 4. The way the press keeps talking about Trump's nearly universal control of the GOP, one would at least expect it to be something like 1 in 10.

Brandon Bernard? He dead today. Dylan Roof, he alive today. Dylan white. Brandon black. It’s like that, and that’s the way it is.

Trump Has Five More Executions to Go Before He Is Out of Office: And why not. American death is the order of the day. Let's keep it popping. What other deaths out there can we throw into this frothing death fest?

Tacoma Gets Some Scratch from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to Help Kickstart Its Universal Basic Income program. But the amount of the award is nothing to write home about; $500,000. All that kind of money can do in Tacoma is get the things the city needs to get started getting started. Or, put another way, it's the beginning before the beginning begins. Or, put another way, this money will help Tacoma make a plan for its plan.

Andrew Yang? Mister Basic Income himself. Mayor of New York City? Talk of this kind is already in the air.


Uber, Man, Wants That Jay Inslee to prioritize its drivers in the first phase of the distribution of the warp speed vaccine. Why? Because "more than 34,000 rideshare drivers and food delivery people in Washington state have earned money on the Uber platform during the pandemic." But we know the real reason why. We know that sick drivers don't feed the cash-hungry app.

Sorry, Derek Owusu: But your feelings about English literature are really wrong. How can you say "Charles Dickens is overrated" and not straight-up laugh? Little Dorrit? Our Mutual Friend? And best of all, Bleak House? If anything, It's your beloved bell hooks who is overrated.

AOC: Sing your song...


We Are In the Middle of a Pandemic: And what do you do? You go and get chewed up to within an inch of your life by a shark. How can this big fish with its too-many teeth be a problem to someone in a time like this? Was it so impossible for you to wait for the pandemic to end before returning to our old troubles? Bitten by a shark, vanishing while hiking, crashing into a tree while skiing.