It’s kind of amazing how much weird gross stuff there is on Phil Fortunato. Is there a store of gross anecdotes on a bunch of legislators, and we would hear about it if any of them ran for higher office? Was this news before, but I just missed it?

Man. Conspiracy theories are really fucking the country up. Of course there are a lot of crimes and cover ups. But there’s so much happening out in the open. Obviously Epstein got a light sentence and he shouldn’t have been able to kill himself. The administration of justice is tilted to the rich and powerful is the conspiracy. But it’s a system, not a cabal, doing it.

Amazing protest of ICE yesterday. It seems like every day there’s a new horror. Baby cages. Mass deportations on the first day of school. It would be great to have human decency at the border.

The other day, I was in West Seattle after work. Rather than take the bus Downtown like a reasonable person, I decided to walk. I used to take my bike that way pretty frequently, but it has been a while.

Anyway, I walked down East Marginal Way and there were no cars. I assumed that traffic was cut off due to all the construction, but it didn’t look like it. And there were plenty of bikes. It was eerie and wonderful at the same time. I would recommend more places inexplicably devoid of cars.

Hey everyone. Please don’t murder anyone. Don’t be a white supremacist. Don’t spread white supremacist garbage online or in person. This country needs to confront a lot of horrible things including racism and easy access to guns. But in the meantime don’t kill anyone.

Congrats to Representative, soon to be Speaker, Jinkins. A good liberal will make an excellent speaker. I am excited to see what her Speakership brings. It has been a long time, probably too long, since the Las Speaker election. Also, definitely read the article if for nothing else, the sine die joke.

Good. The state House will finally investigate Matt Shea. It was a long time coming. We knew about the chat logs months ago. We knew about the genocide fantasy even earlier. That asshole really has to go.

Dear Senator Cantwell,

I am writing because I hope that you will join Senator Murray and all of the House Democrats from Washington in support of an impeachment investigation. While I realize that the House is the body that impeaches the President, support from the Senate is important. The President has committed many high crimes in the open and, as seen in the Mueller report, behind closed doors. Congress has an obligation to hold him responsible to the extent possible.

Thank You,

Carl Ballard

I support impeachment. The President has committed many high crimes. From welcoming election interference to obstruction of justice to emoluments violations to putting children in cages, you barely scratch the surface of his many and varied crimes. All that said, I find much of the commentary in favor of impeachment to make some logical leaps. It’s like:

Impeachment

???

Removal

Or

Impeachment hearings

???

Real oversight

But the Senate isn’t going to remove him. It needs 2/3 of the Senate, so almost 20 Republicans if all Democrats support removal. I don’t think they would even have a trial (McConnell’s super power is not doing things), but smarter people than me say he would have to. And the Trump administration would certainly obstruct an impeachment investigation as much as any other oversight.

This isn’t a reason not to impeach him: If anything it’s more of a reason. The House of Representatives should be on the record that what he did was impeachable. I just hope we know what comes next.

This Mueller testimony is really something:

Democrat: [Reads from the report] Is this accurate?

Mueller: Yes

Democrat: Is that bad?

Mueller: I refer you to the report.

Republican: How come a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton wasn’t central to your report?

Mueller: ????

Republican: I don’t see anything in this report about what a bitch she is.

Mueller: That’s outside the scope of my testimony.

Hello. Let’s stop calling racist people, racist chants, racist tweets, and other things “racially charged” or “racial”? Can we stop pretending groping or unwanted kissing, especially but not exclusively in the workplace, is just “incidents”? Euphemisms help us get through conversations that we don’t really want to have. But for journalists and for HR people, these conversations need to be clear.

Your ballot should be arriving soon, Washingtonians. Local elections matter a great deal. This year city and county races are on the ballot. They will decide many quality of life issues.

Last night I saw Seattle Shakespeare’s outdoor showing of Twelfth Night. It was pretty fantastic. I had been to one of their performances a few years ago, and my recollection was that it was pretty small. This time around was quite a bit larger. My one complaint is that there was quite a bit of noise: if next time they could change the flight pattern of airplanes, that would be better.