Sorry, but my Internet is being wonky on my commute this morning. Here’s a thread to keep you company.

– On top of everything else, the idea of a 2/3 vote for raising taxes is such an arbitrary number. Why not pi/5? Why not 8/11? Why not 100%?

– Don’t be a seat hog.

– Something something our trolls are always saying Obama is sooooo weak on Russia.

– Looks like Governor Inslee’s budget might be surprisingly not terrible.

– Looks like Dick Cheney is still not surprisingly terrible.

– But Ron Wyden is a good counter to Dick Cheney being terrible.

– When is torture torture? A thought experiment

– Merry Christmas Jose Padilla

– How did your gun assholes rally go?*

– Top 10 Other No-longer-existing Groups House GOP Should Vote to Deny Federal Funding

– Poor Ark EncounterI think my feelings about The Santa Clause can best be summed by this (100% true) sentence: It took me literally an entire day to get through this 90-minute movie because I kept getting pleasantly distracted by YouTube videos of farmers lancing cow abscesses. Happy holidays.

* Also, putting those two stories next to each other really puts the lie to the gun asshole’s claims that their guns are for freedom. Because stockpiling guns sure as fuck didn’t prevent us from using torture. Seriously, where the fuck were these defenders of freedom when they could have made the tiniest bit of difference?

– I’m not the biggest Dianne Feinstein fan, but this is pretty great. Also, Ron Wyden continues to be good on torture, and Patty Murray hasn’t answered my question from the last open thread.

– I have no idea what to make of the Pioneer Squarecrack.

– Yet Another Study Shows HPV Vaccine Does Not Cause Promiscuity

– Someone with more knowledge of high-THC vs. high-CBD please weigh in, but Senator Kohl-Welles’s proposal for getting medical marijuana out of the grey area legal seems good to me.

– TNR billed itself as the magazine for iconoclasts. But its iconoclasm ended exactly where everyone else’s does—at 110th Street.

– President Obama and Jamie Dimon are besties again.

– The roots under the Burke-Gilman Trail at the UW are going to get cleaned up. Also, “root heave” is now my favorite phrase ever.

– Former Rep. Brian Sullivan has been killed in Alaska.

– Senator Murray’s statement on torture. It’s in the right direction, but it only talks vaguely about oversight instead of anything specific about Congress preventing it or holding anyone responsible. I’ve asked if she has any specific recommendations about holding people who did it accountable, and if her office responds, I’ll post something.

– Yes, police reform matters in Seattle

– Jim McDermott’s editorial: Time is now for a new force authorization

– I don’t know. If Don Benton wanted his picture on those inserts you just throw in the trash so badly, you’d think he’d pick a better picture.

– A Holiday in Volunteer Park

– If Martin Luther King were alive today, he’d be a white conservative.

– Even-the-liberal New Republic

– Happy Bertha-Day!

– There’s a Viaduct joke with multiple meanings of settling but I didn’t have it last night or this morning.

– Over a long enough time horizon the universe will loose all of its energy, but Ross Douthat will still be making ridiculous columns.

– The Obama Recovery Has Been Miles Better Than the Bush Recovery

– Hot fruit is disgusting. Case closed. (PS, I generally agree with Mike Schur but I make a great baked apple)

– The most confusing thing about this is that Dori Monson seems to think that crime is higher in Seattle now than it was when he was growing up.

– The Great National Whitewash Continues

– I support the Graduate Assistants at the University of Oregon.

– This stops today: Seeking strategies to end discriminatory policing

– SeaTac has charged Kshama Sawant with disorderly conduct. If you would like to complain to the City Attorney’s office — politely — you can do so here.

– Existing While Black

– We should probably integrate the monorail into ORCA, and the lease to operate it being up is as good a time as any. I actually use it for non-touristy stuff fairly frequently, and it would be pretty nice (usually I walk or bike it, but not always).

– Protections for free speech are awesome, but I don’t think they covers threatening to murder your estranged wife.

– It strikes me as strange that we didn’t know who would be the GOP leadership if they’d won the state Senate, but now we know.

– If you’re terrified of mostly-peaceful protesters, imagine what it’s like to be terrified of the police every day of your life.

– While I fully admit that I don’t understand all the technical issues, I would like quicker Internet in Seattle, pleez.

– As sad as the perpetual closing/almost closing of neat theaters in Seattle is, maybe it’s the market speaking?

– Sally Clark should resign if that’s the attitude she takes after hitting a bike.

– I can’t even imagine wanting to follow protesters around with guns.

– My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK

– Jeff Merkley is right about ending too big to jail as a concept.

– Instead of trying to fix this problem by telling our daughters what they can’t like, I think it might be better to work toward a society that accepts scientists, programmers, and CEOs that like unicorns and the color pink just as much as those that don’t.

– Reasonable complaints about women’s soccer in the UK.

– Happy Thanksgiving and Shopping Day.

– Shorter Cathy McMorris Rodgers: The President’s immigration executive order is the democratic process on the rocks. Not the last 4 years of House leadership that I’ve been a part of.

– Does sadness have levels? I guess so. I’m not sure what “more than sad” feels like so I keep quiet.

– The today’s Uber versus future Uber is an interesting lens for policy debates.

– Kids today…

– West Seattle scenes: Sea-star sighting, and a video review

I can’t speak for Goldy, Darryl or anyone else here, but I’ve been running kind of slow since the election. This post is just a quick note that probably until January, I’m going to just do Monday-Wednesday-Friday open threads, but not much else. If there’s something major I want to talk about, I’ll probably have a longer bullet in an open thread.

Come January, I’ll probably be back. But for now, in case you’re wondering why there have been fewer Carl Ballard posts on HA, there’s why.

– (a) Uber seems nice, I’m glad the city caved to everything they want. (b) Seems like a solid arrangement, press.

– The Town Hall on Gender Pay Equity is happening December 2.

– It’s strange because every war is also the Cold War for the GOP.

– What Fair & Balanced Would Look Like

– How come Obama never cites scripture? How dare Obama cite scripture?

– Just consider how many utterly wrong turns one has to take to arrive at the position in which a little girl comes to your Sunday school class and your first thought is “Do I need to turn her in?” That’s sick.

– Now that Obama is an emperor for doing something other presidents have done, how does it feel living in a not free society?

– Good on Councilwoman Sawant for getting arrested in protest of the $15 minimum wage.

– No nominee is above criticism, of course, but liberals shouldn’t be reflexively anti-Loretta Lynch.

– The more the merrier in primaries, I say. But I don’t think I’ll be supporting Jim Webb for President.

– Mr Cosby – you don’t have to talk. Maybe it’s time for women to talk instead.

– I’m a sucker for a good science story, and this one about finding out the cause of the Pacific Northwest starfish die off is pretty interesting.

There has been a lot of talk — including from me in the last Open Thread — about the Seattle City Council doing a lot of great things right now. The budget looks surprisingly good. The $15 minimum wage passed. They’ve also done more symbolic (but still important!) things like opposing the Hyde Amendment.

There are certainly a lot of reasons for this. In some ways it has been building to it for a while; They passed the sick leave/safe leave bill a few years ago; Both candidates for mayor supported the $15 minimum wage. Since the election of a Socialist city wide, the rest of the City Council has to watch their left flank; Sawant has also done a better job holding the line than some other lefty stalwarts on the council before her. Now that there are districts, a lot of the City Council members have a smaller, more accountable, constituency to appease.

But, also the fact that they’re all up for reelection at the same time means they’re all accountable RIGHT NOW. This is democracy working! So this may be a unique moment to get the entire council to follow a more populist agenda than at any time going forward.

There’s a myth that you can’t get anything done in an election year. Maybe that’s true in divided governments or in particularly polarized situations. But in Seattle it certainly hasn’t been the case. Maybe every seat should be up for reelection every 2 years going forward.

– You always hope for a speedy resolution to labor strife, but I support the Longshore workers.

– Slow down on Rainier Ave, pleez.

– This year’s Seattle city budget looks pretty good.

– Sidewalks should never be ‘closed’ for construction projects

– Astronomical Sexism: Rosetta #ShirtStorm and Everyday Sexism in STEM [h/t]

– Agreed that Santarchy is The Worst Fucking Night In The Bars