Whats this job? And why isnt it mine?
What's this job? And why the bloody hell isn't it mine? Charles Mudede

Boeing execs appear to have embraced the business of throwing whoever they can under the bus. This time it is Mark Forkner, the company's "former chief technical pilot on the 737 MAX program." He has been charged with fraud. Seattle Times' aviation reporter, Dominic Gates, a fine fellow for the most part, though he failed to take Boeing's buyback bonanza seriously, reports that the "indictment alleges he deceived both the Federal Aviation Administration and airline customers by withholding information about the MAX’s new flight control system, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So on, so on, and so on. But it sounds like that guy was just doing the company's bidding. The plane had to sell like hotcakes. And more sales meant much more money could be extracted from the fantastic future and directed to the most bloated shareholders. You get the picture. But the planes fell right out of the sky. And this Texas flunky is facing "a sentence of up to 100 years in prison."

Washington State Ferries is doing its best, it says. It's hiring all the people it can during the long and very deadly pandemic. But it really needs more hands. More deckhands, more oilers, more terminal attendants. And this is what comes with these jobs:

State of Washington government employment offers one of the most competitive benefits packages in the nation. In addition to the potential for a flexible work schedule, state employees are eligible for a benefits package that includes health and retirement plans, paid leave, staff training and other compensation benefits to meet your current and future needs.

Didn't Reagan break the back of labor? It was supposed to be a done deal until, to use the words of Prince, "the end of all time". Capital was to rule with no resistance from below. Obey or don't get paid the pittance we offer. And then came the virus, and then came its big impact on social reality. Now the workers are getting restless. KOMO: "Workers across the economy are ready to walk off the job. Tens of thousands of nurses, factory workers and stagehands are striking to secure better working conditions and higher pay at a time when employers are hard-pressed to find help and can scarcely afford the turmoil." Damn labor. Damn their demands. Damn the pandemic that brought all of this about.

Don't feel a bit sorry for this "veteran firefighter". He apparently lives in a world where 700,000 American lives have not been undone by COVID-19. He can take that world back home and enjoy it all he fucking wants.


Ballots have arrived! You know the score. The mayoral race is easy peasy. We know who GonzĂĄlez is and we know who Harrell is. They apparently "clashed in a televised debate [last] night, emphasizing differences on homelessness, policing and corporate campaign contributions." Harrell is ready for some sweeping and big business pleasing. And we are ready with our endorsements.

Today, Seattle gets cracking at making life miserable for those who live in RVs and cars because they can't afford to live in homes, whose value has been inflated by an unregulated market. The law is giving the floating slum (and that's what it is) 72 hours at a time. You're here, you must move there. You're there, you must move elsewhere and begin counting the hours again. This kind of thing is as old as the capitalist city itself. If we go all the way back to Bleak House, a novel published in 1853, we find the same old same old:

"This boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to, won't move on—"

"I'm always a-moving on, sar," cries the boy, wiping away his grimy tears with his arm. "I've always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor I do move!"

"He won't move on," says the constable calmly, with a slight professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his stiff stock, "although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He's as obstinate a young gonoph as I know. He WON'T move on."

My opinion?


Horsey is a bumpkin. He is what I hate most about the old sluggy and smuggy white Seattle. Why the fuck is he even still around? And he has the gall to speak for POCs. Why doesn't he just go back under the mossy rock he came from and stay there for good. The Pacific Northwest has enough of his type. And besides, he already has a replacement. Her name is Brandi Kruse. She can do what he does with a fresh face.

Happy birthday, Black Panthers...

It looks like Bill Clinton, who was hospitalized yesterday "for urinary tract infection that spread to his bloodstream," will live to see another day.

While Clinton recovers, Trump resuscitates his world-famous golden showers. Daily Beast: "Donald Trump tells [elite donors] that he doesn’t like being peed on."

Nietzsche not only rejected the Christian God but also Christian love, which, according him, is a love without sex, a love without danger, a love that comes to be mostly through a sense of duty. Christian love is agapistic, platonic, spiritual. Christian love is otherworldly; it doesn't happen in real time, in real life, in an actual body, in the matter of the head. But as "Cloudbusting" revealed, and as Nietzsche well knew, human love is not spiritual love but "real love" ("to be real / it's got to be real"; "are you for real?"; "do you really want to hurt me?"). Love bites, bleeds, breathes. And every time it snows, and every time it rains, it's always there in the sky of your head "like the sun coming out."