It’s almost America’s birthday, but before that, it’s gay people’s birthday, for a whole month. The President will not be normal about this. Things are not going well for him, you see, and a national game of smear the queer hits the spot when your approval rating is taking a nose dive over an unpopular war in Iran so economically devastating to the American public that any day now the most annoying people you know will be talking about biodiesel. Cars, powered by Chinese restaurants. Imagine. *** But the Democrats have more important things to discuss, like why did Kamala Harris lose the election, and no, we don’t know this “Gaza” you’re referring to. Is that a hashtag? The party’s 50,000-word post-mortem on the 2024 election didn’t mention Gaza once. “I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin. We know, Ken, you’re a Democrat. *** It makes us want to mail a gun to ourselves and do what comes naturally. To our great fortune, we might be able to. It’s been illegal since 1927 (too many tommy guns), but that was Second Amendment-violating liberal hogwash, thinks the Justice Department. About two dozen state attorneys general have opposed the proposed rule change, but the Trump administration is in its post-law hoe phase, and tired of this constant yammering about “democracy.” Shut up! *** The whales have the right idea. They’re dead and keep dying. In Washington this year, 21 gray whales have washed up on our shores. Scientists believe it is linked to the melting sea ice and our habit of starving all living beings. Look at it this way. With the Strait of Hormuz closed, that’s a supply of oil we can count on. Cars, powered by whales. Imagine. *** If it were an omen, the administration would tell us. They have a line directly to God and held a Christian nationalist rally on the National Mall. In school, we learned about the separation of church and state, but that’s for cucks. A nation’s power lies with God—Iran is a theocracy, and they don’t seem to be able to lose. *** We’d like to have Democracy. What we probably won’t be able to have is representative democracy in—hold on, let’s get the list—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, because Republicans are gerrymandering the fuck out of their states to bring us back to their glory days: the Jim Crow era. Gentlemen, raise your hoods. You can come out into the light. *** In a serious blow to the Russian intelligence community, Tulsi Gabbard has resigned as director of national intelligence. We thought Trump would axe FBI Director Kash Patel first, but this is a nice surprise. *** Director Patel has been busy. Busy handing out bottles of Kash-branded whiskey to anyone who would take them, busy polygraphing current and former staff, and busy snorkeling over a watery grave site at Pearl Harbor. He should take a cruise. Tickets for the MV Hondius are cheaper than ever. *** Or he could take the great American road trip. He should ask the US Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, for recs. The former reality TV star just wrapped up a drive across the nation to celebrate its birthday. Duffy’s Big Adventure was paid for in part by local safe-airplane manufacturer and war profiteer Boeing. This $1 million was surely for gas, and has nothing to do with the US Department of Transportation’s regulatory investigations into Boeing’s commercial aircraft killing passengers. *** Three cheers for the hometown heroes. It turns out the wealthy residents of Laurelhurst have been stopping helicopters carrying sick and injured children from landing at Seattle Children’s Hospital for decades. They’re too noisy! Not the moaning children, the helicopters. Word got out, and the angry response forced the Laurelhurst Community Council, the neighborhood group responsible for this mess, to allow the hospital to do its job. Who needs hope when we can believe in shame once again? *** Maybe the same tactic will work on the big bosses at the Seattle Times who won’t agree to not replace union workers with AI. Management rejected a proposal from the Seattle Times Union guaranteeing those AI protections, telling them “journalism doesn’t mean journalists.” *** No one is safe from the clunker craze. Meta fired 8,000 employees as part of its focus on all things AI. It then reassigned 7,000 other employees to jobs related to AI. Mark Zuckerberg pinky promised there would be no more layoffs this year. *** With all the money the Zucks of the world are lighting on fire to pursue the dream of a techno-feudal AI future, we could have saved thousands of Hopvine Pubs. The beloved Capitol Hill dive needs to raise $50,000 to get through a current spate of hard times. Sam’s Tavern is also closing, but who cares? *** Seattle has a lot of needs. Like more shelter beds. Mayor Katie Wilson is chugging away on a plan to create 500 more temporary and emergency shelter beds ahead of the FIFA World Cup. Seattle City Council has approved her plans to expand the size of temporary shelter sites and has greenlit another plan expanding emergency shelter capacity. At this rate, the number of new shelter beds will far exceed the number of actual hotel rooms people have booked for the World Cup. Okay, that’s hyperbole, but forecasts from the hospitality industry show World Cup bookings are bad, bad, bad. *** This is supposed to be a fun way of processing the horrors, but we have to stop the jokes and acknowledge two awful killings this month: Quusaa Margarsa, 25, shot in the back at his workplace, Growler Guys, and Juniper Blessing, 19, a trans University of Washington student stabbed to death in a laundry room at an off-campus student housing building. Both deaths were sudden and shocking, and there’s not much more to say than that.  The post Last Month This Month appeared first on The Stranger. ...read more read less