Joe Manchin owns millions of dollars worth of stick in coal plants, and also opposes environmental protections. What a coincidence!
Joe Manchin owns millions of dollars worth of stock in coal plants, and he also opposes environmental protections. What a coincidence! Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images Staff

Are you still trying to figure out who to vote for in the mayor’s race? Come on. You should know by now. González. But in case you need a little more convincing, the candidates held a forum this weekend and it couldn’t be more obvious who’s the better choice, especially when it comes to policing: González wants to move money from the bloated police department budget into more effective programs, and Harrell just wants to spend more money on police as if that’s been effective. Also worth a look is this profile, which confirms that Nikkita Oliver is the superior candidate to Sara Nelson.

Good news for Washington vaccine mandates. Today’s the deadline for state workers to be vaccinated, and the good news is that about 90 percent have gotten the shot. About three percent were granted an exemption. That leaves about 500 people who would rather give up their job than help keep their coworkers safe.

With only 89% of staff vaccinated or exempted, St. Michael’s Medical Center in Silverdale (formerly Harrison Hospital in Bremerton) will close some operating rooms and redeploy some OR staff to account for the worker shortage, according to two emails sent to staff on Friday. The hospital started postponing elective surgeries five weeks ago, and will be “prioritizing our emergency department, inpatient units and family birth center operations.” This past August, St. Michael’s saw its second significant COVID-19 outbreak, with 13 cases linked to the hospital.

Probably not how they wanted that to go: An anonymous Twitter account spent all afternoon Friday “exposing” tech workers who donated to NTK to argue that her bashing Trump Republican Ann Davison’s corporate donors was hypocritical, and she raise $13K on it in one day, according to a press release. Not as much as the “Seattle for Common Sense” PAC raises for Davison in an afternoon, but not a bad single-day haul from a Streisand effect.

Are we sure Manchin isn’t a Soviet agent? What other explanation could there be for the West Virginia Congressman’s miserable, restrictive campaign to sink American wellbeing? Reports this weekend indicate that his latest demands include a weakening of the child tax credit and environmental protections.

Colin Powell is dead: The guy who turned the tide on the Iraq war toward invasion is dead at 84. Though he was vaccinated, he died of complications related to COVID-19 following a battle with multiple myeloma, "which compromised his immune system," the New York Times reports.

Movie crews aren’t striking ... yet. This weekend, IATSE, the union representing movie and TV crews, reached a tentative deal with producers, averting a strike that would have started today. But now members have to ratify it, and many say it doesn’t go far enough. Here’s the scene on the WB lot:

Florida school teachers fear shedding. A Miami school has warned students who get vaccinated that they must stay home for a month to prevent “potential transmission or shedding onto others.” Obviously the vaccine doesn’t “shed onto others,” but hey, it’s only a school, why should they exercise any critical thinking skills?

End neighborhood character. That’s always the excuse for stopping improvements to a neighborhood. “Oh, but what about our precious neighborhood character? This bike lane will hurt the character, a bunch of homes replacing a parking lot will do something to the character.” Well, here’s what they’re really defending when they defend neighborhood character:

Things aren’t going great in Haiti. A gang of kidnappers is holding sixteen Americans and five Canadians for ransom in Haiti, where the government is breaking down and kidnappings have become commonplace. The group was in the country as part of Christian Aid Ministries, a missionary group.

Now’s your chance to be a real busybody. A parking crater in West Seattle is getting developed into housing, and they’re holding a community open hour to talk about it (the poor dears). Developers will use input from the community to determine what should get built, so if you like making big noisy demands, clear your calendar for this Thursday.

There are probably better ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. Police claim there was a shootout in the I-D this weekend, following a robbery. Two bystanders were hit, not fatally. This was a busy weekend for shootings, with six killed and 38 injured in mass shootings in Houston, Saint Louis, Pennsylvania, Misissippi, two in a town in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.

Was that your car? A Reddit user reported a flaming car on I-90 near Mercer Island this weekend. At least it didn’t catch fire in the tunnel.

Are we ever going to finish that streetcar? Jenny Durkan put the project on hold a few years ago (of course she did) but now it's back on the menu. Opposing further work on the network is Alex Pedersen (of course he is) who doesn't like it because there's already enough transit in Seattle, thank you very much. He says it's redundant, but Lorena González points out that's a good thing.

Walgreens is trying to sell you a bill of goods. The company claims that they’re shutting a bunch of stores in San Francisco because shoplifting is out of control. Too incredible to be true? Maybe. Crime data doesn’t support their claim. I’m telling you this because half of what happens in Seattle happens sixth months earlier in San Francisco, so if some mega-corporation starts claiming that we need more cops because shoplifting is out of control, maybe ask if there might be something else going on.

The world’s most unlikely folk hero is dead. Earlier this month, Ou Jinzhong murdered his neighbors. Seems bad! But his story elicited widespread sympathy online. Ou, who lived in a tin shack with his family, had apparently been trying to build a house for years, struggling with a neighbor who used government bureaucracy to obstruct development. He was seen as a normal guy pushed to his limits by a system designed against him. After the killings, he spent a week on the run before police caught him. He’s dead now, cops claim, of a self-inflicted wound.