One Seattle?
One Seattle? Charles Mudede

Bruce Harrell, the honeymoon is over. Seattle's right wants you to do what they put you in power to do. KOMO, a media company owned the Trumpiest of Trumpers, has given you an order in the post: "Seattle sidewalks overrun by homeless tents as some look to new mayor for action." Don't act like you don't know. When the money that made you the mayor says jump, don't act like your ears are suddenly stuffed with wax. You say: How high?

KOMO:

The return of the tents has occurred one month into the term of new Mayor Bruce Harrell who is now facing complaints from some business owners and concerned residents who are accusing him of not following through on his promise to confront the issue.


Can you feel that? The time for your One Seattle is right about now.

A lil' note from the editor: "During a press conference with Governor Jay Inslee today, Harrell helped stump for a senate bill the governor requested. It would create a new office to coordinate state and local efforts to sweep people living in tents near highways into ‘shelter or housing with wraparound services when available.’ In an answer to a question about what he planned to do about homelessness in the nearer future, he mentioned the upcoming publication of ‘a map, if you will,’ of places in Seattle that face ‘homelessness challenges,’ as well as places where the city plans to build housing."

Nikkita Oliver coming with the fire:

So you don't want the homeless street. And you don't want them to have a place to stay. What the fuck do you fuckwads want? KIRO: "A proposal to turn a Kirkland hotel into housing for the homeless is getting pushback from the community."

The Heron Habitat Helpers want you to become a heron helper. New recruits "can help monitor the resident heron population at Commodore Park." I had no idea that herons were local birds?

Jeff Bezos to a Dutch bridge that's in the way of his new megayacht: Move bridge, get out the way, get out the way. The story: "Rotterdam will have to dismantle a historic bridge to allow Jeff Bezos’ new megayacht to pass. Jeff Bezos’ new yacht is enormous. It won’t be able to sail out to sea unless a Dutch city demolishes a historic bridge." The bridge isn't even short. It has a 131-foot clearance. But Bezos' yacht got to be of a size that lets the whole world know the size of his pockets.

As the old Dutch bridge goes down, the cost of Amazon's Prime membership goes up. And dig this: "Amazon’s net sales increased 22% in 2021, reaching $469.8 billion, compared to $386.1 billion for fiscal year 2020."

Can someone stop me from saying this? Please, anyone? You? No? And you? No, too? Please, I need someone, anyone to just say hell no to me saying: Well, your boss was, after all, a white South African:

Meta? The company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It lost hella scrilla today. For reasons that can be better explained by an astrologist than an economist, Meta's shares crashed "[23%] in after-hours trading." AP reports that "If the drop holds... the company’s overall value, known as its market capitalization, is on track to drop by a figure greater than the size of the entire Greek economy."

You may like or hate Susan Sarandon, but her tweet concerning the funeral for "slain NYPD Detective Jason Rivera," cannot easily be dismissed outright by the left. I understand that life is precious, and no cop deserves to be killed on the job. But that funeral and its coverage was a bit more than excessive. Speeches by the mayor and the chief, the heavenly cathedral, the row upon row of somber cops. We do not give this kind of exit to other public servants who provide equally (if not more) vital services to society, such as those in waste management. And know I'm not hating on cops. I'm actually grateful to the two and young SPD officers who watched over my dad's corpse on the night of his death. They were there until the funeral home gathered what remained of him at some ungodly hour of the night. But cops are not soldiers, they are public servants. They are of the world. We need to be down to earth about what they do and contribute to society.

The US Army is showing unvaccinated soldiers nothing but the door. War is not about your feelings. It's about winning. And the army that has the virus under control is one that's got a winning chance. Sorry, anti-vaxxers, but the US Army operates in a world that's real and not filled with fantastic feelings about freedom.

Looks like Canada is blaming the USA for a lot of that anti-vax trucking nonsense.

It's Black History Month. Let's talk about a black African slave, Onesimus, who taught his white master, Reverend Cotton Mathers, a treatment for smallpox which "set the stage for vaccination."

History.com:

Onesimus said that he “had undergone an operation, which had given him something of the smallpox and would forever preserve him from it...and whoever had the courage to use it was forever free of the fear of contagion.”

ISIS leader. An operation. Explosions. Death. Smoke rising to the sky. An American president on TV. And so on, and so on.

Don't just stand there, bust a move...

Of course you haven't forgotten the Portland novelist Monica Drake. Back in the day, she transformed an entire print issue of the Stranger into one short story. These days she has a Substack going on and a new novel in the works. I bring her up now because one of my fav things to happen on Twitter today was this pic she shared of a cat and gorgeous wallpaper.

And why don't we watch a Portland band, Soft Metals, kissing for a whole music video: