by Rich Smith
Impeachment Part II?: Lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee are still trying to get White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify about that time Trump asked him to obstruct justice by firing special counsel Robert Mueller in the middle of the Russian probe, according to Politico. If the courts overrule Trump’s attempts to block the testimony—which is iffy, or at least “less urgent” now that Dems have already voted on two articles—then the House could vote to impeach him again. The news here is that the impeachment inquiry is “ongoing and active.”
The best part of this new Olivia Nuzzi convo with Giuliani: “When his mouth closed, saliva leaked from the corner and crawled down his face through the valley of a wrinkle. He didn’t notice, and it fell onto his sweater,” Nuzzi observes. Well, that part and the part where he drinks two Bloody Marys after claiming he’s not a heavy drinker.
Merry Christmas Eve:
you can clown on living in the suburbs all you want (lord knows i do) but the water pressure is fucking unbeatable
— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) December 23, 2019
Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy has created a massive encampment at the border: “The estimates are that there are around 3,000 people [in the tent camp in Matamoros] living just in squalor and in tents, and that 80 percent of them are families with young children… They have showers that are not linked to any sort of drainage systems…Prior to the existence of the showers though, people were bathing in the river, which is contaminated with human waste, and people were getting sick and these awful skin infections all over. Little kids were swimming in the same place where little kids were also vomiting and having diarrhea. It’s just kind of a recipe for humanitarian crisis, within 100 feet of an American city,” reports Slate.
Good Yontiff!: In four cities across America—including Portland, Chicago, LA and Houston—Jewish activists with Never Again Action spent the second day of Chanukah protesting Trump’s concentration camps at the border, ICE, and Geo Group, the for-profit prison company detaining so many refugees.
Lit our Chanukah candles tonight at the @NeverAgainActn protest outside the ICE detention center in Portland. Three generations standing strong. pic.twitter.com/9NqvObqvxO
— TrashBrigade Janet (@sconestextmrder) December 24, 2019
Secure scheduling is working: In 2016 Seattle passed a law requiring employers to distribute work schedules for hourly employees at least 14 days in advance. Since then, the number of workers who can now adequately plan their lives at least two weeks into the future has increased by 20%, according to a new study from the City Auditor’s office. The Seattle Times has a nice piece on it over here.
Homeless bashing in Longview, WA: “Six or eight” guys with baseball bats claimed a homeless person “threw a wrench through a car window and broke their friend’s jaw.” They then started beating up a group of homeless people sleeping outside City Hall, as well as a few people who tried to break up the fight, according to The Daily News. “It seems to be a constant narrative of this city that the unhoused are a danger, but what I witnessed last night … the violence isn’t coming from them. Citizens are attacking these people that have no place to go in the cold,” said a woman who tried to intervene.
THE BEASTMODE RETURNETH What I understand from this article in the Seattle Times is that former Seattle Seahawk Marshawn Lynch signed a one-year contract with his old team. The deal pulls him out of retirement and gives our football guys a real shot at defeating the San Francisco football guys this Sunday. We would have had less of a shot due to the fact that our other running backs sustained season-ending injuries in recent games.
I act like I don’t know anything about football, but I’m from KC, MO, and I absolutely do, GO CHIEFS: Anyway, time to watch this awesome run again and get pumped.
Lime is taking its 2,000 bikes and going home: At least until spring, when they’ll negotiate with the city on scooter numbers, according to the Seattle Times. “It’s no secret the company is shifting from bikes to scooters, which are cheaper to maintain because they are lighter weight and can run several days on a battery charge.”
The argument against free college from college presidents is infuriating: According to a report in the Washington Post, they worry free college, which would likely be accomplished through a federal funds matching program with states, would “punish” states who have recently chosen to burden students with less tuition and “reward bad actors” who have piled on costs. They also worry conservative states won’t take the money (à la Medicaid expansion), which may lead to the strange reality of some states producing more college grads than others. These are run-of-the-mill, idiotic conservative arguments made by the conservative presidents and boards who run colleges. Free college tuition would obviously be worth “punishing” the good states, who presumably value lower tuitions for students and would welcome the lowest tuitions possible. And we already live in a world where some states produce more college grads than others, and if the “bad actors” want to keep it that way, then who gives a fuck? Anyway, for anyone who is about to say something like “fuck free college, we need vocational schools,” I’d happily point out that we can and should do both and implore you to cool it with the knee-jerk contrarianism.
ANYWAY, if you’ve got the day off for the holidays: Go ahead and enjoy a slice of gabagool for the rest of us working stiffs.
A New York investment firm bought the F5 Tower: Plus three office buildings in Bellevue called the Summit. Price tag for all the buildings was $1.2 billion, according to the Seattle Times. The Summit complex in Bellevue sold for $756 million, “making it the most expensive Puget Sound transaction this year.” Now would be a prettttttyyyyy pretttyyyyyy good time to tax the rich, though last year would have been much better. Also, let’s just decide, right now, as a city, that we’re not naming one more thing “Summit.” We have too many Summits. We’re not doing it anymore. We’ve reached the…never mind. We’re done with Summit.
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