I’m back! And man am I behind on the news. So here’s a post that doesn’t require much thought:

I don’t know if it’s a sense of obligation or history, or if they actually think they’re making a difference, but I really don’t think most newspaper endorsements make a lick of difference. They spend most of the time pretending to be neutral observers, and then think we should care when they have opinions on who to vote for? Please.

Of course alt weekly papers are different. They have an opinion and a point of view all the time, and if you’re reading them, you probably care what they have to say about candidates. So if you’re already reading The Stranger, you probably already know this, but here are their endorsements. Whatever problems you may have with them, their endorsements probably matter more than any other paper in the region.

I’ll be back for real soon, I swear. Then I’ll go on vacation.

In theory, I get back to normal.

I’m out for a few days with computer nonsense, but enjoy this thread.

– Can’t wait to give the Rainier Vista portion of the Burke-Gillman Trail a try.

– Donald Trump is really innovating here, in that he seems to be actually conning himself

– Also, speaking of Trump, it is interesting that people are finally calling his bullshit.

– Bill Kristol is such a problem.

– Oh hey, 25 Years of Tomorrow looks pretty great.

Oh hey they’re temporarily reopening the waterfront.

But today, citing the need for access and especially because it’s tourism season (which you’ve definitely noticed because crowds of confused people, maps-in-hand, have nearly taken you out numerous times in the last week) the City of Seattle has re-opened the waterfront for a temporary summer vacation, so to speak.

“A temporary, park-like pedestrian promenade from University to Madison streets will be open with wayfinding, seawall project information, and activities, accompanied by approximately 70 new parking spaces adjacent to Waterfront Park. Seawall construction will continue from Madison to Yesler streets adjacent to Colman Dock,” reads a release from the City.

Enjoy it while you can suckers! One question: park-like? OK, I lied: another question, 70 new parking spaces? Why not more park-like stuff? Another another question: can we just ignore the thing underground keep the park-like pedestrian promenade? Whatever! I’m going to walk it this weekend! It’s going to be awesome. It’s totally going to be park-like!

The deadline for registering to vote in the primary is the 6th. So if you’re in King County, you can go here, and if you’re from another county, I guess, you can google it.

One of the things that baffles me about the GOP insistence pretending that global warming isn’t a thing and fighting efforts to fix it is that, you know, they can’t go live on some globe that isn’t warming. So when I read things like “Environmentally-concious organizations are upset that the deal would preclude Governor Jay Inslee from using executive authority to set new pollution standards, and have been calling for a no vote” I have to wonder how much of a deal Republicans think they’re getting.

I mean, if you represent farmers in Eastern Washington, why would you want to go back to your constituents and say something like “congrats, it’s going to be hotter and drier, but, also the state will have less and less water to help irrigate, and it’ll keep getting worse over time.” Or if you represent somewhere that’s on fire right now, being able to say “man in 50 to 100 years, we’ll look back and wish it was this wet and cool.”

Maybe 50-100 years is part of the key. Obviously there are differences between long term and short term incentives for these sorts of issues. But when it’s the health of the entire planet where everyone lives, you might think that GOP legislators, their campaign donors, and their constituents might find their way to a self-interested position.

– In conclusion, Jim McNerney is a terrible human being. And very emblematic of the New Gilded Age

– Oh hey, congrats to team Hanauer, and like a large portion of the middle class, on the new overtime eligibility rules.

– If you want to know what Seattle’s most radical anti-growth activists really think about multifamily housing, the mayor, transportation solutions, and “those people,” I highly recommend checking out any event put on by the City Neighborhood Council, a group founded in the 1990s to advise the brand-new Department of Neighborhoods on neighborhood planning.

– Also, I don’t know about the rest of the crew, but I won’t be posting anything on the 3rd.

– Well looks like we’ll probably have a transit package with full funding for ST but a stupid carbon thing

– Fox News just fired one of its hosts in the most vicious & humiliating way imaginable

– I wonder if Metro could steal the color scheme idea from SWIFT. If the actual buses are different colors (I couldn’t tell from the post, but I’d bet not), it might be a problem on the C and D lines, but otherwise, it’s doable. Also, holy cow, SWIFT 2 looks like it’ll be pretty great.

– Westlake Park, in a lot of ways, is ground zero for DSA and the the city’s fraught relationship with public demonstrations. Remember when people ~*~so angry~*~ about the death of an unarmed Black teenager got just too damn close to singing children at the tree lighting ceremony? A Speakers Corner would corral that pesky anger into somewhere more comfortable, giving shoppers the chance to not see that anger if it’s making them not feel like spending all their money at the mall that day! What a win for our city’s business interests!

– JEB!

– Congrats to all future married gay couples! (video loaded automatically for me)

– Even though I mostly agree with this fact-check about the rainbow flag crosswalks, how about just a little joy and whimsey is good enough?

– Even though it’s obviously based on bullshit, I suppose I support the GOP call for Roberts’ ouster, as long as Obama is still president.

– I’m looking forward to the First Hill Streetcar whenever it eventually gets going.

– Bristol Palin’s politics are awful, but her pregnancy really isn’t my business.

Anyone active blogging locally here in Washington is probably familiar with Angie in WA State. She was an early commenter on my first blog (blogspot seems to have taken down the comments from that era, but if memory serves, she was the first person who I didn’t know personally to comment there). She is most active as a diarist and commenter on Daily Kos, but she is all over. In recent years, her Twitter has been an inspiration to read.

Anyway, this is preamble to say that she’s running for Congress in the 3rd, against Herrera Beutler. She’d make a hell of a great Congresswoman, and I bet she’d make a hell of a great candidate too.

I hope you’ll consider a donation, or volunteering to walk a precinct. I don’t know if the Democrats are actively running anyone down there, but I can’t imagine there’s anyone I’d prefer to see in Congress from the area. She’s going to try to run a grass roots campaign more than a money-focused one, but all campaigns need money.

Good luck!

– The embarrassment is not limited to the flag, itself. The fact that it still flies, that one must debate its meaning in 2015, reflects an incredible ignorance. A century and a half after Lincoln was killed, after 750,000 of our ancestors died, Americans still aren’t quite sure why.

– Good for gender neutral city bathrooms in Seattle.

– So wait, there’s a cost to inaction on climate change?

– Five Thousand Ladybugs of Highly Effective People

– It’s also crucial that white allies reject the lie that there is an epidemic of black men raping white women, which has motivated so much white violence toward black bodies historically. The systematic lynching of black men in the South was routinely built on the idea that there was an epidemic of black men raping white women in the South, and so many years later, reports of the shooter’s own words indicate that the protection of white women was a direct motive for killing so many innocent people, including six women.

– Nothing can ever be politicized.

– What does that fundamentalist word-salad actually mean? It means this cartoon. It means this hideous envisioning of precisely the diseased ideology that terrorist Dylann Roof described as he murdered nine faithful Christians at their Wednesday night Bible study.

– Anyone else find #CharlestonSyllabus helpful?

– You guys, crows are awesome, but also crows are the worst

– 18 Missing Link victims will go to the hospital by the time the trail study is complete

They’ve taken the tweet down and changed the headline, but for most of yesterday, The Seattle Times had headlined their story copy of an AP soty and tweeted “Concentrated evil” or “sweet kid”: Details on the suspect in Charleston church shootings. Ansel at Slog gives some context to the harm done by various attempts by the media to humanize these killers. And that’s an important thing to say.

That context is important, but this case it’s ugly enough on its own. We’re talking about a racist crime. We’re talking about terrorizing a community. We’re talking about a man who committed the grossest of acts. And it doesn’t matter if you can find some friend’s parent who vouched for him at some point “sweet kid” is disgusting.

Look, I’m all for finding out all about how the people who knew him felt about him before. If it’s in the wire story, I guess run it. But The Seattle Times chose to highlight that. And it’s a fucking disgrace.