Where the fuck is this person even from? This is not you, Seattle.
Where the fuck is this person even from? This is not you, Seattle. 400tmax/gettyimages.com

Horror of Horrors: The capital gains tax proposal refuses to die. It's still living and making its way through the Washington Legislature. It also has what the right-leaning MyNorthwest.com describes with undisguised disgust as "broad public support."
According to a recent poll from KING5/SurveyUSA of 537 Washington state voters, 59% said they supported the capital gains tax; 30% said they opposed it; and another 12% said they weren’t sure.
Have they lost their heads? A whole lot of ordinary people are of the mind that a state without income tax can raise some income by taxing money made mainly by rich people out of the thinnest of air (stock markets and the like). The impudence. The imprudence. We are the job creators. Without us, you would have nothing to do. You would be sitting on your hands. The bill is sponsored by Democratic Sen. June Robinson.

That Atmospheric River? It's coming back. Expect to be in the rain a lot this weekend and Monday. Water in the sky. Water in the air. Water on the ground. But whatever you do, Seattle, always keep it real by not using an umbrella. This is a matter of Pacific Northwest pride. We must let the sky-river know that we are made of the stuff that can make a wet day the very same as a dry one. Rain all you want; we will still walk without an umbrella.

Biden Revives the 2015 Obama Iran deal Trump thought he had killed to death. Maybe Boeing can ask about that huge order of planes it lost to the utterly worthless and simply cruel "maximum pressure campaign' that Trump used "to isolate the Islamic Republic."

Today: The US rejoined the Paris agreement. Trump pulled the US out of it because of something that had to do with the water pressure in a shower? Do not worry none, Trump; no matter how much we coastal cosmopolitans make fun of you, they will always love you.

Nevertheless: Biden is sticking with Trump when it comes to ICE and deportations.


Also: Biden has turned his back to the "$50,000 in student loan debt forgiveness" proposal. His own words: "I will not make that happen." Are you surprised? You should not be. Biden is no Bernie. Never was, never will be.

Finally: Seattle has taken a chill pill on the worst ever form of transportation, the car. The horrible car. The ugly car. The morally bankrupt car. The enemy of the city. The killer of people just walking and minding their own business (Nicki Minaj, we are vibing you). Seattle’s own data maître, Gene Balk, has this good news:

A few years ago, during the height of Seattle’s historic population boom, I wrote about a remarkable trend: Our city was adding cars as fast as people.

That trend appears to be over, at least for now. Census data shows that Seattle’s car “population” — the number of vehicles owned or leased by city residents — has finally leveled off.

For most of the last decade, Seattle’s vehicle population grew at an extraordinary rate. In 2010, city residents had about 389,000 cars in total. The number kept going up each year, and by 2017, we’d hit 461,000 cars.


Always add this little twist to the line in that tune by the late Glenn Frey when you see an automobile: "You don’t belong to the city."

When Will This Nightmare End:

Repeal the Bike Helmet Law: Why? For one, the cops use it to make trouble with black people, brown people, homeless people. If the law goes, so does opening to policing poverty and two-tired racial profiling. Seattle Times reports that "a chorus of individuals and organizations" are "calling for the repeal of the King County law that requires bicyclists to wear helmets because of disproportionate enforcement, especially among Black, Native and homeless riders." In my view, decriminalization might be a more effective way to check police power, in the immediate sense, than defunding.


Who Is Slashing Tires in Tukwila? The police wants to know who is responsible for such appalling behavior. Can anyone help them in this way? Recent slashing incidents "occurred near the 3800 block of South 126th Street." However, the detective on this pressing case must be told right away that, yes, I hate cars, but I'm not down with this serial killing of tires business. As the UK rapper Skepta put it: That's not me.


Boeing's Disappearing Act Is In Full Effect: And now this: 1,000 employees of Boeing's Renton campus were told pretty much it's game over and to cut. (Note: “to cut” is Southern African slang for “to split.”) This de-peopling of the building, writes aerospace reporter Dominic Gates, "is a clear sign that Boeing is preparing the site for sale." My opinion? Washington State should just tell Boeing to fuck it, just go already, here is a check for your troubles, don't let the door hit you... and so on. Then it can turn over its properties and industrial capital to startups and educational institutions. Turns out Sawant wasn’t far from the mark when she suggested in 2014 that the Boeing plant in Everett be repurposed for the production of buses.

What? The most famous black intellectual in America, Cornel West, is not tenured at Harvard. Can you believe that? It gets worse. West’s recent request to initiate the "tenure process" went down in flames. How can that be? According to Harvard, his work is not up to snuff. But have they read his 1996 collaboration with Henry Louis Gates, The Future of the Race? The intellectual force of West's contribution in that work, which concerns W. E. B. Du Bois, far surpasses Gates's contribution. And Gates is no lightweight. He is a first-rate intellectual. Any university would tenure West just on his W. E. B. Du Bois essay "The Talented Tenth."

Harvard: For real. How can you deny this scintillating brother?

The Owner of the Cowboys? That old fox Jerry Jones is making bank on the backs of Texans broken by the nearly week-long power outage. People were freezing, pipes were bursting as Jones's pockets grew. ("Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just happy to see me or am I seeing the obscene bulge of catastrophe capitalism?")
NPR:

The winter storms gripping much of the United States have devastated many families and businesses, with frigid temperatures and power outages causing particularly dire conditions in Texas.

But for oil and gas producers that have managed to keep production going, this is proving to be a big payday. Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, appears to be one of the beneficiaries.

Let the Preacher Preach and the Breakers Break:


The same goes with Ted Cruz. Y'all will vote for him even though he plainly tried to splitsville Texas when it was down and out of power.

And: Did you know Cruz has a poodle named Snowflake? The pooch was abandoned by Cruz when enough was had of the cold and lack of power.