Liberals on the internet praise Metro Police Officer Michael Fanone for slamming his hand on a table and calling the indifference shown to his fellow cops disgraceful.
Liberals on the internet praise Metro Police Officer Michael Fanone for slamming his hand on a table and calling "the indifference" shown to his fellow cops during the insurrection "disgraceful." Pool / GETTY

Durkan says shootings show the need for police: After six shootings Sunday and Monday, Mayor Jenny Durkan said, “It is a false choice between community-led solutions and police officers. We need both," the Seattle Times reports. So far this year, the number of shootings countywide is 33% higher than the average for the same time period from 2017 through 2020, according to the King County Prosecutor. Durkan said gun violence disproportionately affects people of color and that “we need to stand with communities and with mothers and with families and find a way to stop the senseless violence.”

Former Seattle City Council President and mayoral candidate Bruce Harrell sounded the most like Durkan in his statement on the solutions to gun violence over the weekend. Harrell said he wants to hire more cops, "redouble effective community-led programs," work with state and local governments on new laws, and "invest in proven technology to track gunshots" such as the "Automatic Gunfire Locator Systems that I advocated for on City Council."

Automatic Gunfire Locator Systems...hmmmm, where have I heard that idea before? Oh yeah, in this VICE article from yesterday about how analysts who review the data from those gunfire detector systems "frequently modify alerts at the request of police departments—some of which appear to be grasping for evidence that supports their narrative of events." I'm sure no cops from the Seattle Police Department would misuse technology like that, especially not after we get some of that sweet, sweet, culture change.

Republicans are finding common cause:

Re: that Durkan statement: Seattle only cut SPD's budget by 20%, and the vast majority of those "cuts" came from "transferring departments like the parking enforcement officers, the 911 call center, the emergency management department, and victim advocates out of SPD."

Current Seattle City Council President and mayoral candidate Lorena González argued that we should treat "the epidemic of gun violence as a public health problem not just a criminal justice issue," and advocated for "a broad range of programs from hospital-based intervention strategies, youth employment programs, neighborhood economic development, and trauma healing programs." She also said her administration would "support the investigation of gun violence and support the passage of sensible gun safety laws and regulations to prevent more guns from coming into our city.”

Most every major city is seeing this rise in gun violence, even the ones run by Republicans, even the ones where police aren't leaving.

Man killed in Federal Way shooting Sunday night: Police say a man in his 20s died at the scene, but they have not released a suspect description or further details, according to the local Fox affiliate.

The King County Council will pick a new person to oversee the Sheriff's office today: The Seattle Times wrote a piece on the two finalists, Tamer Abouzeid and Eddie Aubrey. Abouzeid seems like the correct answer. You can watch it all go down online at 1 pm.

Parking near Climate Pledge Arena will cost more during big events: Seattle will charge $3 an hour for the first two hours and $8 an hour after that during events with more than 10,000 people, KIRO reports. Although the City Council authorized up to $12 per hour, the Seattle Department of Transportation is not planning to charge that much for some reason, to which I say boooooooooooo.

The Kshama Solidarity campaign says they have the signatures: Sawant's red army will hold a press conference downtown today at 10 am to make the announcement. As you may ~ recall ~ (kill me), the Recall Sawant campaign needs to turn in nearly 11,000 signatures from District 3 residents by August 3 to put the question to voters on the November ballot. The Recall campaign said they wanted to make that deadline, and so the Solidarity campaign stepped up to help them out, believing that a November ballot showing would give more voters the chance to weigh in, which may redound to Sawant's benefit.

A little wrinkle: Now that the Solidarity campaign has come through, it's up to the Recall campaign to actually turn in the signatures on time. Normally campaigns turn in a few thousand more signatures than required to account for any bullshit names or ineligible voters, so the number of signatures the Solidarity campaign says they've raised will matter. Over the weekend, the guy running the Recall campaign, Henry Bridger II, told some Solidarity people he'd collected a little over 9,000 signatures.

Local hospitals hitting capacity: Healthcare officials cite a coronavirus surge, health problems due to delayed care during the pandemic, and employees leaving the industry because of stress and burnout, according to KING 5. The result: The beds at Skagit Valley Hospital are nearly all full, and Providence Medical Center in Everett and Harborview are operating at capacity. "I'd say we're at our most fragile time since the start of the pandemic," Harborview Medical Director Dr. Steven Mitchell said.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee: A "Nashville-area" pastor named Greg Locke "threatened to boot mask-wearers from his Tennessee church as some places are taking additional measures to help protect against the more contagious coronavirus delta variant," the Charlotte Observer reports. The pastor stood before his congregation last Sunday and said, "'I will ask you to leave. I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church.'"

No-Context-Zappa Duchin is my favorite Duchin:

I'm probably reading too much into that tweet, but maybe it has something to do with this trend of states instituting vaccine mandates? Both New York and California "announced the mandates for their employees, while the Department of Veterans Affairs said frontline health care workers must get vaccinated or face possible termination," the New York Times reports. The numbers are probably a little higher now, but back in April the Seattle Times reported that "between 60% and 90% of staff" in hospitals west of the mountains were vaccinated, whereas hospitals east of the mountains commonly see vaccination rates among staff "as low as 30%."

Centers for Disease Control to recommend masks for some vaccinated people "in certain areas of the country": The CDC plans to make the announcement today after months of saying otherwise. The agency will clarify their instruction partly because "reports of clusters of infections among fully immunized people have suggested that the [delta] variant may be able to break through the vaccine barrier more often than previous iterations of the virus," according to the New York Times.

Biden will keep travel bans in place to slow the spread of the delta variant: People from Europe, Brazil, China, the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Iran, and India still won't be able to travel to the U.S. any time soon, Yahoo News reports. The virus is raging.

School supplies could be scarce due to factory closures in Bangladesh, China: According to the Washington Post, "Spot shortages of clothing and footwear could appear within weeks, and popular toys" may be hard to find come Christmas, too. Corporate executives expect supply lines to remain "snarled through the first half of next year or longer." This is what happens when you set up a global economic system dependent on cheap goods produced by slaves and then don't even bother to vaccinate the slaves.

Infrastructure talks broke down again because Republicans refuse to pay for "broadband, water funding, highways, public transit and financing the agreement," Politico reports. Senate "Majority" Leader Chuck Schumer threatened to keep negotiators working over the weekend and maybe even over the August recess.

House select committee holds hearing on the insurrection: So far, some Capitol Police Officers and Metro Police Officers have been reading personal essays about the crowd overwhelming them and tasing them.

Liberals on the internet are excited about this cop hitting the table and saying, "The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful" after describing an assault from the mob.

And now Republicans are blaming the insurrection on....Pelosi: The GOP argues Pelosi should have called for more cops to guard the election certification against.................................a bunch of Republicans and right-wing militia-types who wanted to overthrow the government and install a Republican leader who lost the election. Anyway, good thing Democrats, who control all three branches of government for a few more minutes, are using their power to make structural improvements on the system to ensure free and fair elections in all 50 states. Wait, what's that? They're actually not doing any of that? Thanks, Democrats!

The U.S. will "end combat mission" in Iraq by December: Biden announced the "exit" plans after a chat with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, according to the BBC. "There are currently 2,500 US troops in Iraq helping local forces counter what remains of the Islamic State group," and the "numbers of US troops are likely to stay the same but the move is being seen as an attempt to help the Iraqi PM." So....we're going to stop "combat," but we'll keep the same number of troops there to train the Iraqi army and to uhhhhh maybe do a little bit of combat if necessary who can really say at this point ha ha. The announcement comes after Biden said he'd pull all but 600 troops out of Afghanistan on the 4th of July.