Thank you for asking, I am enjoying my vacation.

The Mariners are slumping and The Sounders are not very good right now. And there’s a group of Seattle sports fans who are in the dumps. But OMGosh, y’all. Seattle has something special in sports right now and so many of you are missing it.

The Storm are having an amazing season. They’ve poised to get a bye in the first round of the WNBA playoffs. Jewell Loyd and Breanna Stewart are great. Sue Bird is having a renaissance.

And holy goodness, the Reign. Second place in the NWSL. Megan Rapinoe is a walking highlight reel, and the whole team are such fun to watch.

I was reading another post #metoo redemption story. This one about will Al Franken run for something. I won’t link to it, but it is already becoming a genre. I believe in second chances, and that people can change. But it strikes me that in all of these there are a few related things missing.

There’s very little discussion, sometimes nothing at all, about how the person has changed. At best there’s repeat an apology and some vague reassurances that they understand that what they did was wrong.

The thing that I never see is any proactive steps taken to make sure that women are safe around them. Or at least less unsafe.

I will be on vacation parts of the next 2 weeks. So Open Threads may be spottier than usual. But it’s 2018, so I should be fine.

I’m writing this yesterday on the bus home from Drinking Liberally. So if there was something particularly Trumpish in the mean time I’m not ignoring it by writing how stinky the bus is.

But, y’all! It’s like stale fries with a side of burning oil. Why? I don’t see anyone eating fries (or burning oil).

Also, probably unrelated, but it was 18 minutes late. One Bus Away should have a feature where they let you know how your bus will smell, so you can choose the next one.

There’s a part of me that’s still upset RKCNDY isn’t a music venue. I was pissed when I came back from college and it wasn’t a thing anymore. I still walk by where the Velvet Elvis and King Cat theater were, and there’s a nostalgic twang for past shows. If the Showbox goes away, I’ll probably feel the same about it.

But, there will be new venues. The show will go on, even if it goes on somewhere else.

It kind of sucks how much the mayor wants to kill a street car expansion. Metro seems to be committed to half empty buses in exurbia. Maybe that’s a reasonable idea maybe it isn’t. But Seattle should figure out ways to get people around. And once the stretch of track is laid, you can’t move it.

You can’t blame every heat wave on global warming. But it is to hot. And Seattle is going to have more of these. Ugh. I feel especially strange wearing short sleeves to work. At least I am not buying an air conditioner.

I know that Twitter can’t kick Trump off its platform permanently as long as he is the President. But! Surely a 12 hour ban after he threatens war with Iran. I mean some consequences are surely in order.

Your ballot should be coming soon if it’s not already in the mail. Is there any election you’re looking forward to? I will be interested to see how the 8th District shakes out. What are you excited about? Anyway, get your ballot postmarked or dropped off by August 7.

Where are the gun nuts after the government started kidnapping children?

I mean they have been saying for years that they need to assemble an arsenal to avoid a tyrannical government. Some of them even formed a militia. And then they hear news that that same government has separated thousands of children from their parents. The government is missing court deadlines to fix the problem.

If their argument had been anything but complete bullshit, they would surely be at detention facilities. I don’t think that guns are the way to make political change in a democracy, but they do. Probably has something to do with the fact that they happily voted for a fascist President in the first place.

So. Trump and Putin met. Hopefully it will prove at least as successful as the meeting with Kim. Maybe instead of an Elton John CD, they traded a DVD of the peepee tape.

Seattle, we have to figure out how to line up for the bus. A bus comes to the crowded stop and there’s a scrum for the door. And it more or less works out until some asshole comes in from the side and they’re always let in.

I don’t know how we fix that. Maybe just social stigma.

I’m glad to see the opening of the all women tiny house village in the city. It will be a much better place for the residents than on the street. Longer term we need a lot more housing and more programs to get people off the street.

I hope that the next Supreme Court nominee gets questioned about how racist Donald Trump is. It seems to me that only 5 people think Donald Trump’s Muslim ban might not have been a Muslim ban. Unfortunately, they made up a bare minimum of the Court majority. How we figure out how racist Donald Trump is going forward will determine how many acts of collective punishment the United States takes under his Presidency.