The big bad wolf went to the first pig’s house, huffed and puffed, and blew the house down. The little pig ran to the second pig’s house. The big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew this house down. Now, the two little pigs ran to the third pig’s house that they thought was made of bricks.
But the third little pig had not yet built his house because it had not received all necessary building permits. The building permit from Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) did not cover electrical, HVAC, plumbing, and side sewer work. Also, this land was in Seattle’s shoreline district, so SDCI needed to review the environmental impacts of proposed development to shoreline waters, fish, and wildlife. SDCI said this would take 12 to 18 months.
The wolf had a wonderful dinner and lived happily ever after.
You may have eaten a meal in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, but how much do you know about its history? Click here for a quick video tour.
Host Rachel Belle sets out on foot for the popular Tastes of the Chinatown International District tour to visit the neighborhood’s oldest Chinese restaurant, eat handmade dumplings in the C-ID’s only Thai restaurant and enjoy gooey, fried cheese at a Korean snack shop.
The tour was created in 1985 by neighborhood travel agent Vi Mar, who wanted to restore the C-ID’s image after the Wah Mee massacre. And the tour felt particularly relevant to its roots on the heels of the pandemic, when folks stopped visiting Chinatowns across the world.
Rachel’s trek started at 90-year-old Tai Tung, a five-generation family-run Chinese restaurant that was Bruce Lee’s favorite when he was a student at the UW. Next, a visit to E-Jae Pak Mor, a Thai street-food restaurant where the dumpling skins and rice noodles are made fresh to order. And Rachel achieves the ultimate cheese pull at Chung Chun Rice Hot Dog, where you can also grab a tender mochi doughnut.
It’s a reminder that we must protect and support the neighborhoods and restaurants that we love by giving them our business.
Posted inFood, History|Comments Off on The Nosh: A restaurant wokking tour through Seattle’s CID (Tai Tung, Bruce Lee’s table and more)
Last night a new club opened in the wealthy Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C. It’s called “Executive Branch,” and it’s an invitation-only club backed by Donald Trump Jr. and megadonor Omeed Malik. Dasha Burns of Politico reported that it costs more than half a million dollars to join. The exclusive club is designed to allow top business executives to talk privately with Trump advisors and cabinet members. Burns reports that the club already has a waiting list.
When then-candidate Donald Trump celebrated the administration of President William McKinley, it was always clear he saw it as the triumphant marriage of the very rich to the U.S. government. It was the era of so-called robber barons, industrialists and financiers who flooded political campaigns with money to convince voters that those trying to rein them in were socialists or anarchists, then called upon the politicians they put into power to pass laws that benefited their businesses.
“Behind every one of half the portly well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation,” the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1884, “or of some syndicate that has invaluable contracts or patents to defend or push.” Last Sunday a new filing with the Federal Election Commission revealed that donors delivered an astounding $239 million for Trump’s inauguration. Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times notes that Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee raised $107 million. The $346 million raised by Trump’s two inaugural committees is more than the monies raised by all other inaugural committees since Richard Nixon’s committee raised $4 million in 1973. While Trump’s allies have said the money that wasn’t spent on festivities will go to other projects Trump is behind, including his presidential library, there is no oversight on how Trump uses that money.
Spending on the election was even more dramatic. Earlier this month, Americans for Tax Fairness analyzed spending in 2024 and discovered that just 100 billionaire families donated a record-breaking $2.6 billion to federal campaigns, up by 160 times from billionaire spending in elections before the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. Seventy percent of that money went to Republican candidates or causes. In the three races that determined control of the Senate—Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—outside money from billionaires made up 58.1%, 56.8%, and 44.5% of the outside money coming in. Elon Musk donated about $290 million, giving four times as much money to political campaigns in 2024 as he paid in income taxes between 2013 and 2018. (continued)
Ed note: Is 500 pounds next? What’s the “logical” extreme as football seems to be creating an atmosphere promoting its own demise–and that of the players. What are your thoughts?
Some teams wanted to get the tush push banned this offseason, but that attempt was put on ice when the vote to ban the play was tabled at the NFL’s annual league meeting earlier this month.
A vote to do away with or alter the play could still happen at the next league meeting in May, but there might be another way to slow down the Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills from shoving their quarterbacks to first down after first down.
He is 6-foot-6 and 464 pounds, moves really well considering, and he will be available on Day 3 of the NFL Draft this week. Meet defensive tackle Desmond Watson from the University of Florida, aka the “Tush Push Terminator.”
“I’m ready for it,” Watson said in a phone interview. “I am one of the best run-stoppers out there, and it’s not just because of what I am packing. There is some technique there, too.”
Watson became a fan favorite at Florida, a status that he cemented in his last couple of games — where he lifted and dropped Tulane quarterback Ty Thompson on a play and then when he carried the ball for a first down in the Gasparilla Bowl. He got NFL teams’ attention when, at Florida’s pro day last month, he bench pressed 225 pounds 36 times — that would have been the most at the NFL Scouting Combine had he been invited.
Watson also ran a 5.93-second 40-yard dash and posted a 25-inch vertical jump.
“It was a big day for me after not going to the combine,” Watson said. “I was trying to surprise some people and I think I definitely did. Didn’t even run my best time.”
His 40-time didn’t surprise him, as Watson said he comes from a family of sprinters (mom), volleyball players (sister) and receivers. (His older brother Darrian McNeal is 5-foot-9 and 165 pounds and played at Oregon.)
Watson is trying to get smaller. The Plant City, Fla., native said some NFL teams have given him a target weight, which he won’t disclose, and that he has already lost 30 pounds after coming oh so close to tipping the scales at a quarter of a ton.
A key part of his diet is paying for his gas at the pump.
“You go inside and it’s all junk food,” Watson said. “And who doesn’t like eating when they drive. … So, I try and avoid all stops and stores when I go somewhere.”
As of right now, at 464 pounds, Watson would become the heaviest player ever drafted in NFL history — and it’s not close. Houston Texans offensive tackle Trent Brown (2015) and Baltimore Ravens guard Daniel Faalele (2022) both came in at 380 pounds.
If Watson ever gets to don a size 6XL jersey in the NFL, he will become the heaviest player in NFL history. Aaron Gibson, an offensive tackle for the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bears from 1999 to 2004, once weighed in at 410 pounds for the Lions.
Florida coach Billy Napier said it’s a matter of when and not if for Watson, who never missed a game.
“He’s a unicorn,” Napier told reporters at the team’s pro day. “You’ll go the rest of your career, and you’ll never be around a guy that’s that stature.”
Spencer Rattler, now a quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, found himself on the opposite end of trying to tackle Desmond Watson after a fumble recovery in a 2022 game. (James Gilbert / Getty Images)
Watson was 440 pounds when he picked Florida over Alabama and Georgia, and he is leaving some good habits that he implemented last year.
“He’s had numerous nutritionists, numerous position coaches, numerous strength coaches, and I think this past year we probably executed the best we have,” Napier said. “I think he’s learned a lot about habit building, self-discipline, and ultimately the guy’s frame score would indicate that he’s going to be huge.
“I mean, he’s 6-foot-6, and just the density and bone structure, he’s just a big man. You get to know Dez, he’s extremely intelligent and he’s got a great sense of humor and he was a great teammate. He’ll get his shot, and I’m hoping he’ll make the most of it.”
Posted inHealth, Sports|Comments Off on Want to stop the ‘tush push’? Take a look at this 464-pound 2025 NFL Draft prospect
Today’s major stories must be seen in the context of President Donald Trump’s dramatic losses in court and his plummeting poll numbers.
Yesterday, Trump told the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support. This targeting of Democratic infrastructure would hobble the Democrats. It also plays to Trump’s base, which insists—without evidence—that ActBlue accepts straw and foreign donations, an accusation Trump repeated in his order about the investigation.
This morning, FBI director Kash Patel posted on social media, “Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction—after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.” Patel quickly deleted the post, but the story had already gotten attention.
FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan at the courthouse this morning in what, as Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo notes, appeared to be an attempt to draw attention and to illustrate that judges “must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.”
The story appears to be that on April 18, while Dugan was about to hear a pre-trial conference in the case of an undocumented immigrant charged with misdemeanor battery, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived to arrest the person. They had an administrative warrant rather than a judicial warrant and Judge Dugan asked them to produce a judicial warrant. When courtroom discussions about the man’s case ended, Judge Dugan invited the man and his lawyer to leave by way of the jury door rather than the public exit, although both exits led back to the public hallway where ICE agents waited. The man appeared in the public hallway but got to an elevator before the agents did, enabling him to run down the street before the agents caught up and arrested him.
Federal prosecutors have charged Dugan with “[o]bstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States” and “[c]oncealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.”
Tellingly, Attorney General Pam Bondi immediately went on the Fox News Channel to talk about the arrest, attacking the judge. “What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” she said. “The [judges] are deranged is all I can think of. I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today…if you are harboring a fugitive…we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”
Later today, news broke that the administration appears to have deported a U.S. citizen. Chris Geidner of Lawdork reports that the administration deported a two-year-old born in the United States and thus a U.S. citizen, along with her mother and her sister, to Honduras, her mother’s country of origin, even as the child’s father tried frantically to keep her in the U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, said that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, and set a hearing for May 16 because he has a “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.” (continued on page 2)
By Jessica Grose Opinion Writer in the NYT (thanks to Ed M)
Last week Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held his first news briefing as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to address a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about rates of autism among children in the United States.
He used the opportunity to spread falsehoods. Kennedy claimed that “studying genetic causes” of autism is a “dead end.” That’s because “we know it’s environmental exposure. Genes do not cause epidemics,” he continued. While there may be environmental factors that contribute to autism, my newsroom colleagues point out, “scientists have known since the 1970s that genetics contribute to the development of the neurodevelopmental disorder.”
But that’s not all Kennedy said about people with autism. Shortly after mentioning that a study calculated the “cost of treating autism in this country by 2035 will be a trillion dollars a year,” he said, “Autism destroys families, but more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children.” He added:
These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.
These comments are plainly untrue. Many people with autism have pushed back, saying they can write poems and play baseball. The popular reality TV show “Love on the Spectrum” proves that Kennedy was wrong about dating. After the backlash, he went on the Fox News program “Hannity” to clarify that his original remarks were meant to refer to children with “low-functioning autism,” who are about a quarter of those diagnosed with the disorder.
I don’t think that clarification makes Kennedy’s initial remarks generous or correct. To my ears, the grimmest part of what he said is not about the ability to play baseball; it’s that he started this litany with paying taxes and having jobs. That implies that those who are not able to be gainfully employed are somehow lesser citizens — that they’re destroyed. This way of speaking is further evidence that he is not fit to be in charge of the health of the country. (continued)
By Josh Shapiro — Mr. Shapiro is the governor of Pennsylvania(thanks to Mary Jane F.)
I woke up to yelling in the hallway.
A few seconds later, there was a bang on the door.
It was just after 2 a.m., and a state trooper in the hallway of our private living quarters at the governor’s residence said there was a fire in the building. We needed to evacuate immediately.
My wife, Lori, and I ran to the bedrooms where our kids and two dogs were sleeping. We got them up quickly and followed the trooper down a back stairwell to the driveway.
At that point, standing in the cold, damp air, knowing that all the kids were accounted for, we began to wonder what had happened.
We thought it must be some kind of accident — perhaps a candle had been left burning and tipped over, something had short-circuited or there had been a malfunction in the kitchen.
But once the fire was extinguished — and firefighters were tackling the last few hot spots — the chief of the Harrisburg Bureau of Fire took me back inside to see the damage.
As I walked through the doorway, my nose burned from the smell of smoke. It was eerily quiet, but I could hear water dripping from the ceiling. My feet sloshed on the soaked floor.
The beautiful state dining room — where my family and I celebrated our Passover Seder with family and community just a few hours earlier — was completely destroyed.
Windows were smashed in, and there was glass everywhere. Some tables were turned over, and others had just melted away. Artwork from the New Deal era that had hung on display for visitors to enjoy had disintegrated into the walls. Plates we had eaten our Seder dinner on were broken and covered in soot. The Haggadah — our prayer book for the Seder — was burned so badly, only a few short lines of text were recognizable.
The devastation was shocking, and to me, it did not appear to be an accident. The damage was too extreme. It looked like a bomb had gone off in the middle of our home.
As I looked around in horror, I found myself picturing where each of my kids and our guests sat the previous evening as we prayed and recounted the story of our ancestors escaping bondage thousands of years ago.
As we moved our family to a secure location, I began receiving updates from the Pennsylvania State Police on what had happened: I was told with certainty that the fire was a deliberate, targeted attack by an arsonist.
As we would learn in the coming days, the alleged arsonist had intended to beat me with the hammer he carried with him when he broke into the governor’s residence, had he found me there.
As our kids woke up that morning after a traumatic night, Lori and I thought it was important to tell them honestly what we knew and what we didn’t.
I was focused on being a good dad, a good husband and a good governor — in that order.
We shared with them that the fire hadn’t been an accident, that someone had done this intentionally. (continued)
Thanks to Pam P. for noting this small but significant contribution to Earth Day
The Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge has officially been recognized by the Old Growth Forest Network, a nonprofit dedicated to identifying and preserving ancient forests across the United States.
The designation applies to 32 acres of old growth forest within Humbug Marsh, a 405-acre site located just south of the refuge’s Trenton, Michigan visitor center. The marsh, which is considered the last undeveloped mile of the Detroit River along the U.S. mainland, contains trees estimated to be 300 years old.
“We know through historical records that the Humbug Marsh property [around 32 acres of it] has been relatively untouched for about 300 years,” said park ranger Alex Gilford.
The Old Growth Forest Network aims to recognize at least one accessible old growth forest per county in Michigan.
Gilford says visitors to the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge should look for two types of trees.
“Two tree species that are most notable when you go into that area anyone can see are our oak trees, white oak trees, and our shagbark hickory trees. These are really big diameter trees, they’re really old,” he said.
The Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge spans from Ecorse to Toledo, managing over 6,200 acres.
Posted inAdvocacy, environment, Nature|Comments Off on Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge gains recognition for trees more than 300 years old
Today is Earth Day, celebrated for the first time in 1970. The spark for the first Earth Day was the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. A marine biologist and best-selling author, Carson showed the devastating effects of people on nature by documenting the effect of modern pesticides on the natural world. She focused on the popular pesticide DDT, which had been developed in 1939 and used to clear islands in the South Pacific of malaria-carrying mosquitoes during World War II. Deployed as an insect killer in the U.S. after the war, DDT was poisoning the natural food chain in American waters.
DDT sprayed on vegetation washed into the oceans. It concentrated in fish, which were then eaten by birds of prey, especially ospreys. The DDT caused the birds to lay eggs with abnormally thin eggshells, so thin the eggs cracked in the nest when the parent birds tried to incubate them. And so the birds began to die off.
Carson was unable to interest any publishing company in the story of DDT. Finally, frustrated at the popular lack of interest in the story behind the devastation of birds, she decided to write the story anyway, turning out a highly readable book with 55 pages of footnotes to make her case.
When The New Yorker began to serialize Carson’s book in June 1962, chemical company leaders were scathing. “If man were to faithfully follow the teachings of Miss Carson,” an executive of the American Cyanamid Company said, “we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.” Officers of Monsanto questioned Carson’s sanity.
But her portrait of the dangerous overuse of chemicals and their effect on living organisms caught readers’ attention. They were willing to listen. Carson’s book sold more than half a million copies in 24 countries.
Democratic president John F. Kennedy asked the President’s Science Advisory Committee to look into Carson’s argument, and the committee vindicated her. Before she died of breast cancer in 1964, Carson noted: “Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.” (continued)
Ed note: As reported in the NYT Pope Francis and JD Vance don’t see eye to eye on what loving the neighbor should mean. “Pope Francis on Tuesday harshly criticized President Trump’s policy of mass deportations and urged Catholics to reject anti-immigrant narratives in an unusually direct attack on the American administration.
In an open letter to American bishops, Francis said that deporting people who often come from difficult situations violates the “dignity of many men and women, and of entire families.”
The pope wrote that he had “followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations,” adding that any policy built on force “begins badly and will end badly.”
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vice President JD Vance recently cited medieval Catholic theology in justifying the immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump.
“Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” he posted Jan. 30 on the social media platform X.
He posted this in reply to criticism over statements he made in a Fox News interview: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” He claimed that the “far left” has inverted that.
Vance posted that the concept is “basic common sense” because one’s moral duties to one’s children outweigh those “to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away.”
What is ‘ordo amoris’?
It’s been translated as “order of love” or “order of charity.” It’s a concept discussed by St. Augustine, an ancient theologian, who said everyone and everything should be loved in its own proper way.
“Now he is a man of just and holy life who … neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally,” Augustine wrote.
“Further, all men are to be loved equally,” Augustine wrote. “But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.”
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, expounded on this theme while also noting it depends on circumstances.
“We ought to be most beneficent towards those who are most closely connected with us,” he wrote. “And yet this may vary according to the various requirements of time, place, or matter in hand: because in certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one’s own father, if he is not in such urgent need.”
The modern catechism of the Catholic Church briefly refers to the “order of charity” where it cites obligations to honor one’s parents and be good citizens.
Posted inGovernment, Immigration, Religion|Comments Off on What is ‘ordo amoris?’ Vice President JD Vance invokes this medieval Catholic concept
A kakistocracy (/ˌkækɪˈstɒkrəsi/KAK-ist-OK-rə-see) is a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.[1]: 54 [2][3] The word was coined as early as the 17th century,[4] and is derived from two Greek words, kákistos (κάκιστος, ‘worst’) and krátos (κράτος, ‘rule’), with a literal meaning of ‘government by the worst people’.[5]
History
The earliest use of the word dates to the 17th century, in Paul Gosnold‘s A sermon preached at the publique fast the ninth day of Aug. 1644 at St. Maries, Oxford, before the honorable members of the two Houses of Parliament there assembled:[4]
Therefore we need not make any scruple of praying against such: against those Sanctimonious Incendiaries, who have fetched fire from heaven to set their Country in combustion, have pretended Religion to raise and maintaine a most wicked rebellion: against those Nero‘s, who have ripped up the wombe of the mother that bare them, and wounded the breasts that gave them sucke: against those Cannibal’s who feed upon the flesh and are drunke with the bloud of their own brethren: against those Catiline’s who seeke their private ends in the publicke disturbance, and have set the Kingdome on fire to rost their owne egges: against those tempests of the State, those restlesse spirits who can no longer live, then be stickling and medling; who are stung with a perpetuall itch of changing and innovating, transforming our old Hierarchy into a new Presbytery, and this againe into a newer Independency; and our well-temperd Monarchy into a mad kinde of Kakistocracy. Good Lord![6]
English author Thomas Love Peacock used the term in his 1829 novel The Misfortunes of Elphin, in which he explains that kakistocracy represents the opposite of aristocracy, as aristos (ἄριστος) means “excellent” in Greek.[7] In his 1838 Memoir on Slavery (which he supported), U.S. Senator William Harper compared kakistocracy to anarchy, and said it had seldom occurred:[8]
Anarchy is not so much the absence of government as the government of the worst—not aristocracy but kakistocracy—a state of things, which to the honor of our nature, has seldom obtained amongst men, and which perhaps was only fully exemplified during the worst times of the French revolution, when that horrid hell burnt with its most horrid flame. In such a state of things, to be accused is to be condemned—to protect the innocent is to be guilty; and what perhaps is the worst effect, even men of better nature, to whom their own deeds are abhorrent, are goaded by terror to be forward and emulous in deeds of guilt and violence.
American poet James Russell Lowell used the term in 1876, in a letter to Joel Benton, writing, “What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of Democracy? Is ours a ‘government of the people by the people for the people,’ or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?”[9]
The term was used to describe the first presidency of Donald Trump, going viral[4] in 2017 when used by MSNBC host Joy Reid and again, in 2018 when former CIA Director John Brennan used the term.[15] The term also was used by commentators in numerous newspapers,[16][17][18] political publications,[19][20] and books[21][22] to describe the first Trump administration.
