Dems finally take the reins of the Senate: Senate MINORITY leader Mitch McConnell and Senate MAJORITY leader Chuck Schumer today finalized a power-sharing agreement. The deal should allow the rest of Biden's cabinet to get through and will finally put gavels in the hands of Democrats, who will chair the Senate's committees, CNN reports. CNN noted that McConnell had obstructed the agreement for a while in order to get assurances that Dems wouldn't blow up the filibuster, but then Schumer reminded him that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema exist.
Only buy the guns if you're going to melt them: A Washington Post analysis shows that gun sales hit an "80 percent year-over-year spike and the second-highest one-month total on record" last month. These maroons think Joe Biden is going to push through "gun reform" in Joe Manchin's Senate because they obviously read a lot, and they think that police have already been defunded for the same reason.
Joe Biden promised a $15 minimum wage: And Senate Democrats probably won't give it to him. Sen. Joe Manchin "opposes" the policy, Sen. Jon Tester "said he’d like to see changes made," and "several other Democrats have been noncommittal," reports Politico. Absolutely fucking useless, these people.
Democrats in the US House are moving forward on a vote to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of all her committee seats, which would ensure she has little influence over which legislation actually makes it onto the House floor. Only a simple majority vote is needed to make this happen, meaning Democrats will be able to achieve it without any cooperation from Republicans—the majority of whom are more or less standing by their space-laser gal. The vote happens tomorrow.
Rep. Liz Cheney keeps her role in Republican leadership: Trump and his goons wanted her out for voting to impeach him, but it looks like a vast majority of the Republicans disagreed. A sign of Trump's diminishing power, or just another example of him fucking up a bullshit power-play in Congress? Surely the discourse will be riveting.
JUST IN: Liz Cheney has managed to cling on to her leadership job, sources tell me. vote was 145-61
House just voted in a secret ballot to keep her. Comes after tense, four hour meeting where dozens of members spoke their mind.
— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) February 4, 2021
You've definitely heard of Pfizer and Moderna: You've probably heard of Astra-Zeneca and Johnson & Johnson. But have you heard of Novavax? This underdog vaccine company may have yet another COVID-19 vaccine on the market later this year.
Canada has designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist group: The country's public safety agency said the group meets the criteria of "reasonable grounds to believe that an entity has knowingly participated in or facilitated a terrorist activity." In this case, that terrorist activity was the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Speaking of Proud Boys: Cops arrested an Auburn-area Proud Boy for "allegedly planning and participating in last month’s deadly insurrection," reports the Seattle Times. "Ethan Nordean, a 30-year-old bodybuilder known in right-wing circles by his alias, Rufio Panman, faces four federal criminal counts" in D.C. In this video from @streetphotojournalism, Nordean can be seen getting pepper-sprayed by counter-protesters at a Back the Blue rally held outside Seattle City Hall last summer.
Blast from the past:
NEW: Exactly one year ago today, the Iowa caucus was the first thing to go wrong in 2020.
This is a story about what we look for in one of our most flawed, complex, beloved, hated American traditions — and the man who experienced its collapse, Troy Price https://t.co/irT1p9DG0s
— Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) February 3, 2021
Teachers don't need to get vaccinated for schools to safely reopen: Look, that's not something we're saying, but it's something the CDC is saying. "Safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said today. Walensky noted that teachers are considered essential workers, but CDC's recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report concluded that with precautions like masking and reducing class sizes, "transmission risk within schools appeared low, suggesting that schools might be able to safely open with appropriate mitigation efforts in place." What about the schools that can't reduce class sizes? We need to get these teachers their jabs.
Boeing cuts 600 IT jobs: The Chicago-based company that has already announced that it will move "all 787 Dreamliner production... to South Carolina in March 2021" plans to outsource some tech jobs to Dell, according to the Seattle Times. "It’s likely the biggest hits will come at its major office facilities in the Puget Sound region, St. Louis and Charleston, South Carolina."
Come for the lox, stay for the tostada: Starting in March, Loxsmith Bagels intends to join Broadway’s Nacho Borracho at their walk-up counter, says Capitol Hill Seattle Blog. A bagel/taco collab is not something we were expecting, but considering these dark times and Seattle's sinful lack of decent bagels, we'll allow it.
Amazon's new CEO is a wing bro, and Palumbo was his wing man: A funny Twitter thread from Erica Barnett pointed me to a piece in Eater, which digs into Andy Jassy's "full-on beer and wings tech bro" lifestyle. The former director of the company's cloud services arm used to host wing-eating competitions at Wing Dome. Former State Sen. Guy Palumbo, who would later fail to take over the Seattle City Council in 2019 as an Amazon lobbyist despite dropping $1.5 million on the effort, apparently refereed one of these competitions.
The Super Bowl typically brings a lot of business to host cities—including strip clubs: But with a very different Super Bowl happening this year, strippers in Tampa Bay are unsure of what to expect. (Yes, strip clubs and all sorts of business are fully open for business in Florida right now—what a vast, wild country.)
Slog just took a DNA test, turns out it's 22.65% That Bitch who doesn't care about indoor dining.
