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The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets on Tuesday night for an evening of political conversation over cocktails. There will be primary elections in Florida and Arizona and some runoff elections in Oklahoma along with lots of local and state-wide issues to discuss.

We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the room at the rear of the tavern beginning about 8pm.

Can’t make it to Seattle? There are 255 chapters of Living Liberally, including 22 in Washington state, seven in Oregon and three in Idaho. Find a chapter near you. Or consider starting your own chapter.

Man, I went for a semi-smokey bike ride yesterday without a mask. I thought it was clear enough. But no! Semi-smokey is still too much if you’re breathing heavily.

OK last vacation post. Back to the regular nonsense schedule later.

A lot of people are sharing personal stories about interactions with John McCain on his death. And it is important that he seemed to treat constituents he disagreed with, and staffers for people on the other side of the aisle well. And his heroism as a POW is undeniable.

But while that’s important, it isn’t really how you should judge the legacy of an elected official. And on policy, he was garbage. He should be judged for his full throttle support of the Iraq war among many others. He should be judged for tax cuts for the wealthy, and fuckall for the poor. He had a few moments where he did good things (his ACA vote, saying Obama isn’t a secret Arab), but none of them would be the bare minimum if it was a Democrat.

Trevor with D.L. Hughley: Racially charged police violence and “How Not to Get Shot”

Corporate Landlords: The fight for affordable housing in California.

Mother Jones: March for Our Lives (full studio interview).

Jim Jefferies: Sitting down with QAnon conspiracy theorists:

The Atlantic: Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition.

New Yorker: What it’s like chasing the world’s biggest tornadoes

Trevor: Silicon Valley discovers Africa.

Bill Maher: Wok the vote.

Real Engineering: Why the US Airforce ejected a bear.

Vox: The fractured politics of a browning America.

Mother Jones: Indicted California Republican blames his wife.

Trevor: Alex Jones’s Twitter timeout and Andrew Cuomo’s MAGA gaffe.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Chaser the dog shows off her smarts.

Unindicted Co-conspirator Dotard Трамп and His Koterie of Krooked Kakistocrats:

• Lawrence O’Donnell: Трамп talks impeachment, as Трамп allies talk to fed prosecutors
• WaPo: Not just misleading. Not merely false. A lie.
• Chris Hayes: All the President mess
• Our Cartoon President: Трамп galactic military empire
• Conan: The walls Mexico is offering to pay for
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Dotard Трамп’s “worst week” as top allies talk to feds
• Lauren Mayer: (I thought truth was) true
• Rachel Maddow: David Pecker’s past practice puts POTUS in a pickle
• Trevor: Deregulation station—For-profit colleges and Трамп’s liberation of corporations
• WaPo: The definition of “truth” keeps changing under Трамп
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Michael Cohen says Dotard Трамп ordered him to commit crimes
• Heads of State: Giuliani and Трамп as Hall and Oates—“Truth Isn’t Truth”:

• Our Cartoon President: “Sir, is everything okay?”
• Ayman Mohyeldin: Republican “cover-up” for Трамп “shameful”
• Daily Show: My Super Tweet 16—The “best” of Dotard Трамп’s Tweets
• Lawrence O’Donnell: After Michael Cohen’s plea, “How many other smoking guns are there?”
• Conan: Трамп calls into Conan to discuss the big news
• WaPo Opinion: Трамп is facing worse than Watergate. I should know.
• Rachel Maddow: New Michael Cohen subpoena could mean new legal trouble for Трамп family
• Our Cartoon President: “Making America A Military Wonderland”
• Chris Hayes: President Dotard Трамп, The “great” endorser
• Trevor: Katy Tur on the road to the Трамп White House in “Unbelievable”
• WaPo: Pundits keep (wrongly) predicting the end of Трамп’s presidency
• Lawrence O’Donnell: The Dotard Трамп claims “I could run” Robert Mueller investigation “if I want”
• Randy Rainbow: OMAROSA!

• Rachel Maddow: Michael Cohen more than happy to tell Mueller all that he knows
• WaPo: What’s next for Трамп after the Manafort and Cohen convictions?
• Mark Fiore: The wonderful White House isn’ts
• Bill Maher: Orange Tuesday
• Chris Hayes with Sen. Chris Murphy: On impeachment and delaying the Kavanaugh hearing
• Trevor: Трамп feuds with Omarosa
• Ali Velshi: Michael Cohen pleads guilty, implicates Dotard Трамп.
• WaPo: Where The Dotard’s tweet about South African land seizures came from
• Conan: A Nazi prison guard was found hiding at a Трамп rally
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Paul Manafort evaluating options, after “tremendous victory” for Mueller
• Ayman Mohyeldin: Former prosecutor says Трамп’s language is like “kingpins and drug dealers”
• Chris Hayes: The Dotard Трамп has surrounded himself with criminals
• Vox: Michael Cohen—Sex, lies and campaign finance
• WaPo: The worst day of Трамп’s presidency?

Daily Show: 100% Трамп-free show.

The Atlantic: It’s good to be a rebel.

Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship.

Chris Hayes: Representative Duncan D. Hunter throws his wife under the bus.

WaPo: Women of color candidates break barriers in the 2018 midterms.

Trevor: The midterm elections are weird.

Songify: Zucc smokin meats.

Winlar: Racist F and Things:

Congressional hits and misses from a 2-day Senate work week

The Atlantic: Social media and hate speech—Who gets to decide?

Wendover: How to build a $100 million satellite.

Daily Show: Let’s talk about Black women’s equal pay day

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Someone in my family said that Trump ate a classified document. I refuse to look it up. If it happened, it’s so much less bad than separating families. If it’s not true, he still thinks Mexicans are rapists who can’t be judges, or at least judge him. He is a walking, talking violation of the Constitution; If he’s an eating one too, that’s probably the least of our worries.

Man, I went for a semi-smokey bike ride yesterday without a mask. I thought it was clear enough. But no! Semi-smokey is still too much if you’re breathing heavily.

Someone in my family said that Trump ate a classified document. I refuse to look it up. If it happened, it’s so much less bad than separating families. If it’s not true, he still thinks Mexicans are rapists who can’t be judges, or at least judge him. He is a walking, talking violation of the Constitution; If he’s an eating one too, that’s probably the least of our worries.

I am beginning to suspect that electing a man who admitted to crimes while he knew he was on mic, and who surrounded himself with criminals, was a bad idea. Although Donald Trump is a crisis to our democracy, the fact that he got so far for so long is also exposing a flaw in our court system. The man’s criminality was known for a long time, but allowed to fester. We have had decades to do something, and yet he has been mollycoddled for 4 decades.

Anyway, lock her up or whatever.

I’ve had my dog Feisty almost as long as I’ve had this blog, a 13-plus-year span in which she has been a source of love, metaphor, and humor. And so, while I don’t really blog here anymore, I thought it appropriate to briefly post on her passing.

She was a good dog (mostly), a loyal companion, and an enthusiastic hiking partner. In fact, without her, I don’t think I ever would have cultivated my love of hiking through our region’s many mountain trails. I already miss her deeply. But after months of progressive kidney failure that left her unwilling to eat and increasingly unable to walk, my daughter and I sadly did the only humane thing to do, and held her in our arms as the vet relieved her of her suffering.

But since this is HA, it would be a disingenuous tribute to Feisty to mark her passing without making at least one political point: When we euthanize a beloved pet, we rightly call it an act of compassion. But if we euthanize a beloved family member, the law calls it an act of murder. Whatever. When my time comes, if I am unable to avail myself of WA’s Death with Dignity law, I sure hope that my daughter has the strength to lovingly murder me the way we just lovingly murdered our family dog.

Rest in peace, Feisty. In the remote event that there’s a doggy heaven, I hope you were greeted by 72 squirrels to do with what you please.

The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally has been getting together weekly since early 2005. For our first nine months, until the indoor smoking ban, an evening in a Washington pub meant inhaling lots of second-hand smoke and going home with stinky clothes. So join us this evening for an (unintentional) retro edition of DL. I mean, if you are going to inhale smokey air, you might as well do it while sitting in a bar with a drink in your hand talking politics! Amiright?

We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the room at the rear of the tavern beginning about 8pm.

Can’t make it to Seattle? There are 255 chapters of Living Liberally, including 23 in Washington state, seven in Oregon and three in Idaho. Find a chapter near you. Or consider starting your own chapter.

Thank you for asking, I am enjoying my vacation.

Thank you for asking, I am enjoying my vacation.

I feel like there has to be a better way of explaining the smoke than an out of context number. I mean the higher number is worse. But is, like, 50 smoke tolerable? If the number doubles do I cough twice as much?

Maybe thre can be a rating based on how many tears it’ll cause standing in this crap for an hour. Or maybe this is the new normal, and in a few years, we’ll all just have an intuitive sense of what the numbers mean.

Deuteronomy 19:21
Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Discuss.