What will Joe Manchin ruin today?
What will Joe Manchin ruin today? Getty Images/Drew Angerer

One old man is ruining millions of lives. Democrats have removed paid leave from Bidenā€™s reform package, the latest attempt to get coal miser Joe Manchin to sign off on the deal. At this point ā€œmaybe now Manchin will cooperateā€ is like ā€œmaybe this time Trump will face the consequences of his actions.ā€ The plan could be watered down to just mailing everyone in the country a single slice of government cheese and heā€™d still call it excessive.

How will a highway ruin your day today? Multiple Seattle highways shut down yesterday: First I-5 because of a deadly crash, then I-5 again because of an apparent problem with a joint in the road, and then I-90 because of an overturned truck. Who knows what nightmares highways will yield today! Even if you donā€™t drive, theyā€™ll still produce enough toxic emissions to contribute to your early death via respiratory and cardiovascular disease, so thatā€™s something to look forward to.

What could be more American than keeping a person trapped, forcing them to work, and giving them less than they need to survive? The company that holds immigration detainees in Washington state will have to pay them minimum wage for the work that they do, rather than the $1/day (!) they were getting before. The GEO Group is a federal contractor that made around $18 million off of the Northwest ICE Processing Center in 2018; paying its captives would have cost the company around $3 million.

Lol, no, Bellevue is not the new Seattle. Geekwire just ran a profile of a cute little lakeside parking lot called Bellevue that likes to role-play as a city. Sure, Jan.

Not that Seattle is much better. The Seattle Dept of Transportation chickened out on plans to fix an unsafe bridge over I-5 because it might slow some cars down, and now neighbors are asking the City Council to get involved. Sign the petition here.

Hereā€™s why the Kyle Rittenhouse ā€œvictimā€ controversy isnā€™t what it appears. A judge in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three people during BLM protests last summer, told prosecutors that they canā€™t use the word ā€œvictimsā€ to refer to Rittenhouseā€™s victims. Seems weird! But itā€™s actually not that unusual for a court to restrict the use of that word during a trial.

How many fish have your lightbulbs killed? Seattle City Light maintains a dam on the Skagit River that generates clean energy for Seattle. It also prevents salmon from spawning, which causes all sorts of ecological problems for species that rely on the fish to survive. Now the Skagit County Board of Commissioners is asking Seattle to chip in a little more money to mitigate the damage caused by the dam ā€” just as the Seattle City Light is in the midst of getting its license renewed.

You werenā€™t planning on sending your kid to Lynchburg, were you? The nonprofit Campus Pride has released a list of the most unsafe schools for LGBTQ+ students in America, and the usual suspects are on the list: Brigham Young University, Liberty University, Oral Roberts, and Baylor University. The only thing I know about that last one is that when I was in college, ā€œtake it like a Baylor girlā€ meant getting fucked in the ass because (the story went) you would still be considered a virgin at Baylor as long as nothing went in a vagina. Seems like a fun place!

Better late than never. A sci-fi film about climate change shot in Seattle in 1938 (!) will get its television debut this weekend on TCM. As the Earth Turns was directed by 20-year-old Richard H. Lyford, and features some historic shots of Mount Baker, Boeing Field, and the plant that would become Gas Works Park. Everyone looks so young! If you told me this was a bunch of Tik Tok kids playing with black-and-white filters, Iā€™d believe you.

Ted Cruz on Nazi salutes: Eh, no big deal. Cruz shrugged off reports of a parent making Nazi salutes at a school board meeting, pointing out that itā€™s protected by the First Amendment. What does this guy even stand for at this point, other than being unpleasant at every possible opportunity?

Finally, some good news. A new Korean fried chicken joint will open at Pine and Harvard sometime before spring. But I want it now! Why the long wait? Owner J Hwang blames slow city construction permits and ā€¦ oh dear ... ā€œhiring at $20 an hour.ā€

Did somebody lose their Karen? Someone come pick her up, she looks upset.

What do you think Ann Davison's inevitable AM radio talk show will be called? Iā€™m thinking itā€™ll be something like ā€œAnn Independent Thinkerā€ or ā€œJust Asking Questi-Anns.ā€ The Republican candidate for City Attorney (and zero-time jury-trial winner) just dropped a new ad highlighting some of the things Nicole Thomas-Kennedy has written on Twitter that I suppose Ann thinks are damning. Ann concluded her (tweeted) video with the line ā€œIā€™ll be a leader, not a tweeter.ā€ Okay, great, delete your account.

Think pink! Thereā€™s a Buzz Lightyear movie coming in 2022, with a main character who looks like he needs to be questioned about where he was on January 6. But worry not: Photoshopping in some pink hair fixes his look, and turns him into a grad student writing a paper on the queer graffiti of ancient Roman bathhouses.