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In a world that feels increasingly bleak and tottering on a dystopian catastrophe, there is still a place where optimism shines, where hope goes to blossom. Okay…maybe not, but you can, at least, join us for a drink and some jovial conversations at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

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

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out one of the other 221 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, three in Oregon and one in Idaho. Find, or go out and start, a chapter near you.

I mean fuck.

Antisemitic graffiti in the heart of Seattle. In Cap. Hill. I mean fuck. It’s obviously disgusting anywhere. It’s obviously unacceptable anywhere. It’s awful anywhere. But fuck. Seattle, do fucking better.

Exodus 22:31
You are to be my holy people. So do not eat the meat of an animal torn by wild beasts; throw it to the dogs.

Discuss.

Al Franken explains the “Minnesota hot dish”.

Kimmel: Drunk Hillary Clinton on ups and downs.

Stephen: Lady liberty gets a well-deserved night off.

Putin’s Shit Show:

• Obama admits wiretapping Trumputin.
• Olbermann: Trumputin’s amazing speech sure didn’t age well
• Maddow: New facts on Russia influence on GOP platform
• Sam Seder: Idiot EPA Director Scott Pruitt says that CO2 produced by human activity hasn’t been proven to impact the climate
• Trevor: Trumputin’s unfounded accusations of wiretapping
• Conan: Trumputin talks to Obama about the tapp:

• Get out of the White House
• Late Show: Cartoon Donald Trumputin is visited by ghosts of Presidents past
• James Corden: White House tourists review Donald Trumputin’s appearance
• Jonathan Mann: 45
• Young Turks: Trumputin will believe anything aides put in front of him
• John Oliver: Trumputin’s Obama conspiracy
• Conan: Trumputin’s new and improved travel ban
• Olbermann: The crisis of Trumputin’s conspiracy theories.
• Four Trumputin cabinet nominees who are in limbo
• Kimmel: TMZ has all the Trumputin gossip.
• Maddow: Pence story on Mike Flynn “impossible” to believe
• Stephen: Ben Carson wants to put something in your head.
• James Corden: “Healthcare or a new phone” is the new “repeal & replace”
• Trevor: No, Ben Carson, slaves were not “immigrants.”
• Why FAUX News just can’t quit Drumputin.
• Stephen: This diagram makes sense Of Trumputin’s relationship with Putin:

• James Corden: President Trumputin tweets about the tapps
• John Oliver: Trumputin and the Russian connection
• Young Turks: Dan Savage DESTROYS Melania Trump on Savage Love
• Sam Seder: Al Franken says it is not okay for Sessions to commit perjury.
• Olbermann: The Russian developments that matter most
• Trumputin’s V.O.I.C.E. tip line for brown people illegal immigrants.

Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship.

Professor has some difficulties with children.

Kimmel: The most and least sexually diseased states.

VOX: The Doomsday Clock explained.

Republicans Work Hard to Kill Poor People:

• Jonathan Mann: The G.O.P. are going to kill people.
• Kimmel: If you want health care, don’t buy an iPhone
• Trevor: The GOP still hasn’t figured out health care
• Mark Fiore: ObamaCare Lite.
• Stephen: The creators of TrumpCare on TrumpCare, “Don’t call it TrumpCare”
• Samantha Bee: Trumpcare bill, nasty, brutish and short
• Sam Seder: Paul Ryan demonstrates he has no idea how insurance works.
• Kimmel: Drunk Sean Spicer on Health Care.
• How is the Obamacare repeal bill being received on the Hill
• PsychoSuperMom: (Health Care’s) Complicated
• The Late Show: Doctor office signs discuss GOP health care plan
• Jonathan Mann: Paul Ryan doesn’t understand health insurance.
• Samantha Bee: The week that WTF:

• Maddow: Donald Trumputin weakens, hollows out State Department
• David Pakman: G.O.P. ObamaCare lies are blowing up in their faces.
• Stephen: TrumpCare, Russian ambassadors and other things bad for your health
• Trevor: Paul Ryan’s health care bluff
• Ezra Klein: The Republican health care bill makes no sense
• Stephen: Republicans release health care plan, and we are all gonna die.

Democratic strategist explains Party’s redistricting plans.

Late Show: TSA airport pat-downs are getting WAY more intimate.

James Corden: Meet Arizona’s sex positive political candidate.

Space from Maui.

Samantha Bee: Scott Walker is a human garbage disposal.

International Women’s Day:

• Late Show: A show without women.
• A day without a woman
• Full Frontal: A day without a woman
• Young Turks: NOBODY respects women more than Trumputin.
• James Corden can’t get the show going

Kimmel: Obama’s new relaxed outfit.

Armchair Presidents: Hip hip hypocrisy.

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

Another round of the travel ban, another round of Bob Ferguson being like nope. If you have an injunction against your executive order, you can’t just take out some of it and say it’s a compromise. Jebus.

I know that I usually do local stuff, but goddamn the Jason Chaffetz iPhone garbage is super garbage. But as she often does, Imani Gandy has the best take.

So in case you’re wondering how, when it comes to health-care policy, Republicans are going to convince Trump voters that the shit sandwich the GOP is serving up is really a croque monsieur, they’ll continue to employ racial dog whistles that at this point are so loud and piercing one might best call them racial vuvuzelas.

Jason Rantz is being his regular ignorant bullshit spewing self about Sound Transit. I was just going to ignore it, or maybe just make fun of it on Twitter, but, well about half way through, see if you can spot what sets me off.

With no direct voter oversight, the Sound Transit Board of Directors is responsible for spending billions of dollars on transit expansion. That may change thanks to five Democrats teaming up with 24 Republicans in the Senate. Now, transit activists are apoplectic.

I mean ST3 was literally approved by the voters. It was put on the ballot by an elected legislature and governor. The board is made up of elected officials, including King, Pierce and Snohomish countywide elected execs. But when will we let the people have a say?

The lawmakers are pushing legislation that changes the makeup of the board. If passed, the ST board would be directly elected so that board members may face voter consequences for some of their actions (like bilking taxpayers out of car tab fees with an obscenely inaccurate formula). Further, it forces the board to create districts so that King County won’t be over-represented.

Any democratically drawn up district is going to favor the large population centers. King County has more people in ST’s region. There were 829,469 votes on ST3 from King County, 277,141 from Pierce, and 193,114 from Snohomish. If districts have an equal number of voters, there will be more than 60% of King County representatives to just be regular represented. There may be some population variations, but it’s a decent proxy.

Martin H. Duke, a blogger at Seattle Transit Blog, is not happy with these Democrats. In Duke’s world, no Republican supports high-quality transit and Democrats who see a problem with the current ST board structure must not care either.

“This bill is a transparent attempt to override the will of the voters in approving Sound Transit 3 by adding yet more veto points to the process,” Duke wrote.

That’s a great point! If the legislature is willing to give an ST board taxing authority so the region doesn’t have to go back to the legislature hat in hand every time we want to expand transit, that would be a compromise worth looking at. But that’s not the proposal.

He’s wrong. It doesn’t change the results of ST3. ST3 couldn’t be dismantled as a result of this bill. Instead, it’s an attempt to make sure the voters have a say in how their money is spent and that King County transit activists don’t get more money than they should. I am a big supporter of light rail but not happy with how it’s being approached. As a voter, I have no way to impact the decisions of unelected politicians when they waste my money.

Literally 1 of the 18 ST Board members is not elected. That’s the secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation. You literally had the chance to vote on at least one of those people if you’re paying the taxes. Anyway, enough of this disagreeing about how to organize the ST Board bullshit, let’s call Martin Duke a communist in the jack-offiest way possible and for no reason:

Activists like Duke don’t want the board accountable to the voters because the voters don’t support some of the crazy ideas Duke and his “comrades” support. He speaks for a loud but small group of activists. Understandably, he’s upset that he’s about to lose his unearned power over Sound Transit.

Really, “comrades”? Comrades? I might even have ignored it if it wasn’t in quotes. But there’s no way that’s not wink wink nod nod calling Duke and other activists communists. Fuck off. Oh a person wants a different organizational structure for a subregional government agency and so they’re a communist. You know the scariest part of the Soviet Union is how they handled transportation governance in the Ural Oblast. Comrades? Fucking unbelievable.

One of the Democrats who supported the legislation is State Senator Guy Palumbo of the 1st district. He actually supports accountability where Sound Transit represents the voters, not special interests. I supported his efforts to defeat the disturbingly dishonest incumbent, Luis Moscoso.

The First District goes pretty far into King County. You think he should run on “King County won’t be over-represented” in ST next time he’s in a competitive race?

“I supported the bill because I believe that any government organization that manages $54 billion in tax dollars needs to be directly elected and accountable to the voters,” the Senator told me. “It’s a good governance thing for me, it has nothing to do with dismantling ST3.”

Is there a timeframe for that? Oh, it’s between now and 2041. Oh, and it’s in 2041 dollars, so less than that in today’s money and even less in when the voters voted on it dollars.

Senator Palumbo and his colleagues should be celebrated for breaking the Olympia gridlock. Instead, thanks to the reaction of militant transit activists, he’s getting harassed.

Did someone imply he was a communist?

He received an email where he was called a “bastard” with the sign off “Get cancer.” Shameful.

I mean, that sucks. The cancer thing. Bastard is something I’m guessing every elected official at every level has been called. Oh hey, remember when your colleague Dori Monson got people to harass Senator Kohl-Welles for changing state laws that say “fireman” to “firefighter”? I’m sure you were equally outraged about that, but I’m just having trouble finding it.*

“I understand they disagree about an elected board and reasonable people can disagree on policy,” Senator Palumbo told me. “However to paint it as me being anti-transit, or as wanting to roll back ST3 is patently false. I come from New York where there are real mass transit options, unlike the Seattle area. I am an open advocate for large new investments in infrastructure, far beyond what we have done in the Connecting Washington package and ST3.”

So take away another veto point in exchange. Give them the ability to raise an income tax and as much car tab as they want, and to not have to beg the legislature.

This is a common sense bill. It deserves some changes (Palumbo wants to make the board positions paid and I support that), but bully activists want to kill it. They’ve been getting a free ride on the backs of drivers for too long. Let’s change that and come up with policies that are truly supporting multi-modal transportation.

Oh God! The current proposal is to have the part time non experts not even be paid? Why are you going all out for that? Anyhoo, solid ending.

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It’s Tuesday! So please join us this evening for some politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

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

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out one of the other 215 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, three in Oregon and one in Idaho. Find, or go out and start, a chapter near you.

The Freeattle myth is of course bullshit. Still and all, the media should maybe stop going out of their way to perpetuate it. It’s ridiculous that people would come in mass numbers to sleep outside in our cold wet winters. Seattle is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and the fact that we have the homeless problem we do is a disgrace.

Psalm 94:4-7
God, the wicked get away with murder—
how long will you let this go on?
They brag and boast
and crow about their crimes!
They walk all over your people, God,
exploit and abuse your precious people.
They take out anyone who gets in their way;
if they can’t use them, they kill them.
They think, “God isn’t looking,
Jacob’s God is out to lunch.”

Discuss.

Stephen: “O” Presidents.

Armchair Presidents: The CPAC Report.

The Trumputin Chronicles:

• Trevor: Media falls for Trumputin (again!).
• Olbermann: It’s time for a Grand Jury on Trumputin and Russia
• Young Turks: Fact-checking Trumputin’s speech
• Jimmy Fallon: Trumputin on his own speech.
• Kelly Conway is deeply sad.
• Stephen: Trumputin lays out his vision for moving forward
• Late Show: Waiting for Godot’s Obamacare replacement.
• Conan: Trumputin calls Obama to brag about his speech:

• Seth Meyers: Democrats call for Jeff Sessions’ resignation
• Trevor: Melania litmus test.
• Young Turks: Pence used private email and got hacked.
• Jonathan Mann: Sean Spicer Phone Check
• Olbermann: Why Trumputin is refusing to confront reality.
• PsychoSuperMom: If Trumputin’s lips are moving…
• David Pakman: Trumputin’s staff leaks story about Sean Spicer’s hunt for leakers
• Late Show: Jeff Sessions day planner
• Trevor: Sessions lied and must recuse himself from Russian probes.
• Seth Meyers: A closer look at the media fawning over Trumputin’s new tone
• Sam Seder: Jeff Sessions in 1999 tells us just what to do when a Lawmaker commits perjury
• Stephen: Jeff Sessions can’t recuse himself from the monologue
• Susie Sampson: Fake News; Real Dictatorship?
• Stephen: Late Show’s presidential leak-crets
• James Corden: Are we still applauding Donald Trumputin’s speech?
• Olbermann: Let’s be honest, Trumputin is banning Muslims and purging Hispanics.
• Watch Sessions lie to Congress.
• Stephen responds to Democrats responding to Trumputin.
• Young Turks: Trumputin lied about US steel for pipeline, everything
• Seth Meyers: A closer look at Jeff Sessions, Trumputin and Russia
• Conan: Trumputin calls Obama about Oscars and more.
• Jimmy Fallon Trumputin speaks
• Sam Seder: Trumputin announces “VOICE,” a Nazi-inspired way to persecute immigrants
• David Pakman: Trumputin told 51 lies in a 61 minute speech!
• Trumputin’s tremendous think about the Oscars.
• Trevor: Trumputin dresses up his act.
• James Corden: The secret behind Trumputin’s well done steaks.
• Stephen: After well-received speech, Trumputin’s team basks in the afterglow.

Jon Batiste and friends: Hey White people!

Trevor: The GOP versus constituents.

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

Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

It’s so frustrating that the legislature that only gave Sound Transit limited funding options is now trying to restructure them to make it less effective. I mean honestly. It’s bad enough that the Republicans are doing it, and that legislators outside of the boundary seem so excited about it. But Democrats in the ST boundary are particularly bad.

Recently if there’s Missing Link news, my reaction is something between “what a good plan to never be implemented” or just ignoring it. But this seems like it might actually come to pass.

Please join us this evening for our regular weekly meeting of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. Tonight Trump will give a fake State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. (Really…it’s fake. Google it.) The fake-SOTU address begins at 6pm.

We meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern beginning about 8pm. If you wish, show up early to watch the fake-SOTU address.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other 213 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, three in Oregon and one in Idaho. Find, or go out and start, a chapter near you.

East Link tunneling has got underway. It looks great. I’m excited about not having to take the bus or a car to Bellevue. I’d guess it gets used less than the Seattle stations but more than the buses.