Happy Armistice day to all of America’s vets.

I saw Mother Courage & Her Children at Seattle Shakespeare. It was pretty good, but there were no title cards.

It’ll be tougher than usual to figure out if the typos in the title and accidents.

– Hunger Strike at Texas Detention Center Swells Into the Hundreds

– Why I don’t encourage my patients to report sexual assault

– Well, the rest of the country had not so liberal an election night.

– Good old self-reliance

I mentioned on Monday, I’m going to be taking a bit of a break from writing. Probably just a couple weeks. I’ll still put up open threads, but they’ll be shorter than even this nonsense. See you in a few.

Here are your King County results (.pdf) and here’s Washington.

As far as Seattle City Council, I know Goldy has been talking about low turnout for a while, but I can’t get my brain around there being around 10 thousand votes in district elections after the first drop. Those numbers will obviously go up, but I just don’t have a sense of what it means. Are the candidates who are pretty far behind in percentage but not in absolute numbers sunk? I don’t know. But for now, if it holds, the council will be majority women, and I think a bit more liberal in January than it is now. And we’re going to have a better financing system going forward. Gonzalez’ campaign wins both the most fun party of the ones I stopped by and the coveted first person to email me after their victory. I didn’t give her money, or indicate support in any way, but kudos?

Statewide, the Eyman initiative looks like it’s winning, although it’s both tight and probably unconstitutional. The State House will still be Democratic, but less so. I’m going back out, but use this to discuss stuff a couple hours late.

I’m sure all of you have your ballots in by now. But for serious, get your stuff postmarked by today or in the dropbox by 8:00.

Also, once you’re done, Seattlish has the campaign parties. I’m not sure if I’m going to Drinking Liberally or just going to enjoy their idea of Belltown pub crawl.

– This will be the last open thread before you have to have your ballots postmarked or turned in to dropboxes. Here are the dropbox sites in King County.

– Uber and Lyft really need to get their shit together for insurance and driver safety and training.

– Love the picture of the first 4 women on the Supreme Court headed to the National Portrait Gallery

– Evidently, the Fox News moderators, Brett Baier and CNN’s Hugh Hewitt along with the commie symps at CNBC are all left wing operatives. And Republicans seem to be buying it.

– Also, I think I’m feeling a bit burned out of blogging so I may participate in the election stuff and one more open thread, and after that I’ll probably just do open threads for a few weeks, and probably just short ones from my phone.

– I haven’t turned in my ballot in yet, so I sort of feel like Seattlish is yelling at me. I was going to vote Goodspaceguy to protest how Gregoire has been bad in the position. But now that the Seattle GOP endorsed him (and also he has terrible positions as opposed to blah blah space), I don’t want to send the wrong message. Should I leave it blank? Also, I usually just blindly support the tax advisory votes, because it’s dumb that they’re there, but I’m opposed to the marijuana one because it seems like it took a mess and made it messier in an attempt to clean it up. Also, Port of Seattle and Seattle School Board always feel like they’re close to turning a corner, but it never seems to actually get there. Also, why do we vote on judges? That’s kind of dumb.

– This is creationism, or crime-fighting on a hunch. But creationism is a respected tradition in America, extending from “draeptomania” to “they’re raping our women” to “negro cocaine fiends,” to “crack babies,” to “super-predators,” to “wilding,” to “the knock-out game” and now to “the Ferguson Effect.” There is something of a trend here—the creationist-style of crime control takes a special and discriminating interest in black communities. This is our heritage.

– It’s really pretty striking how much the ACA has helped states that are willing to accept that help.

– Ben Carson Is Saying Stupid Things About Abortion—Again

– What do you do with those uneasy feelings?

– Martian Law: Is Mark Watney Really a Space Pirate?

– Baby orcas you guys.

– if it’s shouting about yeast infections that makes anti-choicers as uncomfortable as they make those seeking abortions, so be it.

– Abby Wambach is retiring.

– Do conservatives have a different Constitution than the rest of us?

– Seattle Bike Blog has endorsements.

– That’s important to remember as you’re filling out your ballot; even if you can’t vote in 3, you CAN vote in District 8 (where Burgess is running against Jon Grant, who does support Kshama/is not taking money from Republican PACs). You may also, depending on where you live, be able to vote for Tammy Morales, who spoke before Sawant at a rally on Monday about housing affordability.

– Over and over, members of the Republican elite express shock at the true nature of their party, as if they didn’t cultivate it to be precisely so, and Jeb Bush’s mystified temper tantrums about Donald Trump are just the latest iteration in this same tired tale.

– The process for selecting the next Federal judge from Idaho is strange [h/t].

– The Day the GOP Turned the Benghazi Tragedy Into a Farce

I was reading about JEB! Bush’s campaign problems (h/t). This struck me in particular:

The campaign is removing some senior staff from the payroll, parting ways with some consultants, and downsizing its Miami headquarters to save more than $1 million per month and cut payroll by 40 percent this week, according to Bush campaign officials who requested anonymity to speak about internal changes. Senior leadership positions remain unchanged.

Republicans often tell us that they want to run the government more like a business. I didn’t realize they wanted to run their campaigns like a failing business: Cut payroll but keep everything “unchanged” at the top. No matter how much the senior leadership fucks up, they’re untouchable.

No, the problem isn’t that senior leadership managed to take the campaign all the way to single digits in the polls and money drying up! They still deserve what they get. I assume they’re mostly Bush family loyalists, so why should they suffer just because the campaign they’re leading is flailing?

To be clear, I’m not even saying you should count Bush out yet. A similar thing happened to McCain in the ’08 primary. And getting rid of at least the consultants makes sense. But keeping the same people at the top is pretty shit.

– I’m sure this estimate of when Bertha will be back up and running, er digging, will be the accurate one.

– The people trying to prove how Planned Parenthood isn’t necessary are really proving how necessary it is.

– Who knew Benghazi would turn out to be a fake scandal about Hillary Clinton?

– This sums up Clinton’s response

– Conservatives should maybe take the we’re patrolling the border people as a loss.

– Sorry this was so late. I had a bit of a work emergency.

– If you want to read the Democrats’ Bengazi report, here you go. It’s a 124 page PDF, so I have not.

– I wasn’t planning on voting for Biden if he ran for President, but I still always think more people running is better, so too bad he’s not running?

– Oh look, not everyone in Ballard is the absolute worst.

– Voter suppression funnies

I know, what can you expect? Gigantic asshole gonna gigantic asshole (I saw this on Facebook over the weekend, but I can’t find who linked to it now).

During his October 7 show on KIRO-FM, Dori myopically focused on a part of POC Yoga’s class description which put forth “white friends, allies, and partners are respectfully asked not to attend.” Despite on-air claims that he had “zero problems” with POC Yoga, was “perfectly fine” with the practice, and believed POC Yoga “should be free”—he also openly accused POC Yoga of being “racist,” “exclusionary,” and more than once (instead of calling the collective by its self-chosen name) referred to it as “no whites yoga class.” Dori gave no historical context, did not acknowledge whites disproportionate privilege in a white-dominated culture, and made no mention of the ongoing microaggressive to extreme racism people of color have faced in America for centuries.

Jesus. When I hear his show, he isn’t typically interested in, for example, making sure that Black kids aren’t gunned down by the police. Maybe I missed it. He’s on the air for like 500 hours a day. And, inexplicably, halftime in the Seahawks’ radio broadcast.

I guess, if he wanted to make a perfectly race neutral type argument, he would naturally spend time trying to figure out why there’s still a wage gap between the races. Again I haven’t seen it. You’d certainly think someone who wants to call out racism so much he’s worried about a yoga class wouldn’t be so quick to call George Zimmerman “a hero” and “a superhero” in the clip (not in the context of murdering a Black child, but still: Holy shit).

Anyway, that’s the argument qua the argument. But were there any consequences to his dumbassness?

Directly following Dori’s heated criticism, Teresa said hate calls and death threats started pouring in every five minutes. There were all together over 200 phone calls, and hundreds and hundreds of emails filled with hostility and hate. What had just been anger generated out of a Nextdoor post spiraled into a violent, racist fervor that swept the country and made its way onto inflammatory websites like Infowars and Drudge Report. She rushed out that day to get a security system for her home though she stayed with a friend that night for safety. From that point through the weekend POC Yoga and Rainier Beach Yoga (the studio where class was held) filed several police reports. On Monday they filed an FBI report.

“Those death threats alone illustrate exactly why people of color need safe spaces,” said Joe R. Feagin, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M. Feagin is author of over 200 research articles and over 60 books on race, class, and gender. He has been studying patterns of white discrimination against people of color in the United States for 50 years and has reviewed hundreds of empirical studies. Feagin says the empirical data is clear. “Racism is still extraordinarily widespread in this country and does great harm to people of color,” he explained. “Therefore it is not only logical but necessary that people of color create safe spaces away from whites in which to deal with the stresses of racism and build up strategies to resist.”

Now Dori isn’t responsible for all the dumbassness that his dumbass listeners do. But maybe he’ll think a little next time.

– What is Future Responsibilities and why did they give $10k to Tim Eyman’s latest initiative?

– Endorsements from Geov Parrish

– Endorsement from Seattle Transit Blog for Seattle and the suburbs.

– Worst startup ever