J&J announces they're almost ready to go... Washington's Department of Health gets a new star... and researchers find that Covid might be hiding in the brain while the lungs clear...

The trick is to get rid of Trump without getting any blood on the hands of Senate Republicans. Read on!

In an historic first, the chief White House correspondents from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN are all women.

Seattle pioneers came intending to found a town and get rich selling lots to subsequent settlers. The last thing Seattle’s white settlers wanted was for land near them withdrawn from the public domain and set up as an Indian Reservation.

Access is not transparency. We may be able to look in on our Legislature's proceedings thanks to the internet, but the language in which business is conducted and budgets written is opaque.

If Moderna’s preliminary results are correct, their vaccine will still suppress it, but if it becomes widespread around the world, it becomes a new jumping-off point for further mutations, and one of those might complete the jailbreak.

To get his program adopted—and have a chance for Democrats to keep their majorities—I think Biden needs to organize a massive public campaign of persuasion along with his quieter attempts at bipartisan diplomacy.

The addiction model provides a compassionate, interventionist approach that matches the seriousness of the delusive and self-destructive disease. It accords dignity, a Biden watchword, to those locked into weirdness.

Almost exactly a year after America's first confirmed case of the "novel Coronavirus" was detected in Snohomish County, two cases of the extra-contagious variant from the UK, dubbed B.1.1.7 (poets, these virologists) have been found in that self-same county, a first for the State of Washington, though hardly for the nation. You Rock, Snohomish County!

There are two huge elephants in this room. One is climate change, since the project is on low-lying shorefront. The other is the railroad, cutting right through the project. All in all, a good fit for "The City of Subdued Excitement."

These ambitious waterfront projects normally deploy the resources of large cities. Even then, as in Seattle, these efforts are littered with setbacks, political stumbles, litigation, and misguided public-sector largesse.

All markets show a big drop between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020. What is more surprising is that three of the five market areas actually peaked in 2018, and had lost units between 2018 and 2019.

"The closure of all U.S. consulates in Russia would appear a U.S. retreat and capitulation to the diplomatic visa pressures applied by elements of the Russian government.” -- Derek Norberg, president of the Seattle-based Council for U.S.-Russia Relations

As Seattle politics veers left and the state is worried about jobs and taxes, some ambitious Seattle figures may want to avoid the stigma of being Seattle mayor, which is a political albatross in the county or statewide.

Coach Carroll doesn’t have the leverage of a politician, but he has experience in one of America’s two high-profile industries with majority Black talent (the other is the NBA). He knows his material and his truths.

We were humbled on Inauguration Day by the need for so many troops and so much security, such that the Capitol was turned into a “fortress,” in the words of a news reporter. And, finally, we had been humbled by the Trump presidency itself, by how close we had come to a subversion of our institutions and of our collective sanity. Humbling has, however, had positive effects.

The pandemic has reduced student enrollment for districts like San Juan Island, and reduced funding as more students are homeschooled. The inability to collect the full amount of the district’s last enrichment levy adds to the shortfall.

An expert explains: "Trump has mastered all patterns of Lizard communications including head-bobbing, tail waving, opening jaws wide, sticking out dewlaps (the fold of loose skin hanging from the neck), and exposing brightly colored undersides. Thus, when Trump speaks, his Base become Beta Lizards receiving orders from the Alpha Lizard.”

Biden is not stopping with the Arctic Refuge. Initial executive orders include canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, stopped by President Obama in 2015 but revived by Trump in 2017. He is immediately rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, three years after Trump took the United States out of the agreement to begin curbing climate change.

At times it looked like almost any other inauguration -- except we saw the first woman, first person of color, sworn in as vice president. And everyone was masked except when singing, taking an oath of office or giving an inaugural address that emphasized "decency and dignity, love and healing."

Snohomish County, once known for its timber mills, is now part of a major technology corridor. Its inhabitants have turned to the out-of-doors, witness hundreds of cars parked at the Maple Pass trailhead off the North Cascades Highway, or lineups on the Teanaway Road during the “golden week” when needles on larch trees change color.

Along with other King County Republican leaders, Joshua Freed ought to show up at the Cascade Conference and learn how to win elections. The GOP has been hemorrhaging legislative seats in the state’s largest population center.

This anti-media vitriol has been growing for years amid burgeoning mistrust of mainstream media, and not just among extremists. Journalists have become popular targets for extremists from both the left and right, and in politics this blame the media trope has been a favorite of almost all presidents whether Democrat or Republican.

"Home" was Chinatown International District where his parents worked -- his father as head waiter at the Hong Kong Restaurant, his mother holding down two jobs as a seamstress.

The puzzles are often just a way of getting together. If Q drops some clues, then you have something to do and you have people to do it with. It’s bonding. The same reason puzzles are used in corporate team building exercises and party games.

And here we are, just days from what was once a powerful symbol of democracy, of American strength - its peaceful inauguration of a new president - looking at rows and rows of uniformed troops, as with Lincoln so long ago, gathered to protect that sacred moment from armed disruption. In this year of 2021.

If you are like me, you grew up amongst people who, when discussing some minor choice like what TV show to watch, would often fall back on the phrase, “Majority rules!” and smugly grab the remote. I heard it a lot, in many different contexts, as I’m sure you did too. Now I ask you, did anyone ever yell out: “Plurality rules!”?

In Vietnam, doctorates declare their honorific to fulfill a social expectation. In more collectivist cultures, a person’s education is the result of a community’s shared contributions and, in turn, that degree honors the whole community. In America, my choice changes depending on the context.

History has treated this mythic sanctuary with destructive indifference. But traces of the Native People's origins of the human world can still be glimpsed.

“To borrow a phrase, Democrats should stand back and stand by; but alas, the idea of a sequel is making the rounds in Washington. In their righteous and proper anger over the Trump Riot and all that led up to it, many Democrats are talking themselves into one more go-round."