All the headlines you may have missed in February. by The Stranger's Slog AM™️ Specialists Ugh, Epstein. Props to the conspiracy theorists, it turns out there is a secret pedophilia cabal using pizza-coded language (maybe). The scale of it, and just who did what, is still murky (no thanks to the redactin’ feds), but some of the world’s richest people were involved with the financier. People like Bill Gates and the Andrew formerly known as Prince, whom British police arrested for possibly sharing trade secrets with Jeffrey Epstein. The files also implicated Hyatt Hotels heir Thomas Pritzker, who has since stepped down as the chain’s executive chairman. The files implicated another hotelier, but the president has yet to face any repercussions for allegedly molesting a child, allegedly participating in a sex-trafficking ring, or anything else. Though the Supreme Court did hang his tariffs out to dry, which is something. * * * Onto our bread and circuses: The Seahawks won the Super Bowl. To celebrate, fans climbed on top of the Pioneer Square pergola and broke it. The city asked each resident to donate $12 to fix it. The Stranger staff did not do this, and doubt you did either. Someone dig up Paul Allen! * * * After the Super Bowl win, the Seahawks’ stock rose to a new level. Jody Allen, Paul’s sister, announced she’ll give the boys and their bird to the highest bidder. For sale: football team, lightly used. Seriously, someone dig up Paul Allen. He’d say, “This is exactly what I wanted,” and we’d all smile. * * * At his Governor’s Mansion, Bob Ferguson is scheming for an NBA team. Or, at least, Zooming with NBA commissioner Adam Silver about it. Bruce Harrell’s veins are about to pop out of his neck and strangle him to death. * * * Speaking of things you can buy, there’s a waterfall up for grabs in Oregon. If you’ve got enough liquid, you can slurp up Abiqua Falls. * * * If you’re feeling generous, Oregon needs some cheddar for its public defenders. The situation is so dire that 1,400 cases could be thrown out for a lack of lawyers. You could also take the Oregon State Bar if you’re looking for a low-pay, high-stress vocation. * * * Mayor Katie Wilson swept a Ballard homeless encampment, fooling us once; she isn’t taking down the city’s police CCTV surveillance cameras, fooling us twice. * * * A report on the Seattle Police Department’s handling of last summer’s May Day USA anti-trans rally showed that SPD was biased against the counter-protesters, aka the people they’re sworn to protect. They also didn’t realize the neighborhood with rainbow crosswalks was gay. Boys, sit down. We have something to tell you about Freddie Mercury, Liberace, and Glee. * * * Seattle must cough up $29 million in a settlement to the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, the 23-year-old Indian graduate student whom Seattle officer Kevin Dave slammed into at 50 miles over the speed limit, something he was miraculously never charged for. * * * Money-laundering scheme Melania only scraped together $15.4 million at the box office—far less than the $75 million Amazon paid for it. Perhaps that’s why Bezos laid off a third of the Washington Post newsroom. Or, maybe he wanted Democracy Dies in Darkness to become a directive. * * * Fortunately, our enemies are the stupidest people alive. A Louisiana National Guard soldier left his AR-15 in a hotel bathroom on Bourbon Street while on patrol in the French Quarter. “I kind of feel bad for him because that’s one of the main rules of being in the Army, I would think, is you’re always supposed to have your weapon in your hands and not in somebody else’s,” said French Quarter performer Nervous Duane. You said it Duane, that must be one of the main rules of the army. * * * In an attempt to appease Trump’s calls for action against the fentanyl trade in exchange for lighter tariffs, the Mexican army killed cartel leader “El Mencho.” Cartel members did not take well to this. They incited violence across multiple Mexican states. They set fire to vehicles, blocked roads, and killed at least 25 Mexican National Guardsmen in six separate attacks. American tourists were advised to hunker down in their all-inclusive resorts. * * * Border czar and future federal inmate Tom Homan announced he’s reducing chud numbers in Minnesota. A quarter of the ICE agents out on the ice will get to warm their sackless junk by the fire. The whistles and the optics—try not murdering people or kidnapping children in broad daylight—proved to be too much. * * * Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is in a funding freeze. Brr? * * * The cold got to the Olympians. Ski jumpers are injecting acid into their penises. Not for fun or pleasure, but for ski suits. The extra girth gives them extra room, which gives them more lift and just a little athletic advantage. It’s a physics thing, and a cheating thing. * * * For one cheater, it was a sex thing. Immediately after winning the bronze medal, a Norwegian biathlete confessed to his worst mistake: cheating on his beautiful girlfriend of three months. He hoped his podiumside remorse would win her back. It did not. * * * The men’s and women’s US hockey teams both won gold. Guess which game FBI Director Kash Patel flew to while his agency is searching for an 84-year-old woman kidnapped from her home? * * * Everywhere in the country froze over last month except the West Coast. This is not bad news, because, according to the Trump administration, climate change is not real and neither are the dangers of greenhouse gases. To celebrate, we’re eating raw, unrefrigerated pork and sharing needles. * * * Perhaps someone can save us. Someone like Vince “ShamWow” Shlomi. The infomercial star who hawked super absorbent pads to handle spills and messes has got his eye on “soaking up the swamp.” Don’t get it twisted, Shlomi is an anti-woke warrior whose slogan is “Make America Grow Some Balls Again.” His campaign promises to “slap chop the nuts out of the ‘woke,’ making less blue-haired commies and more red-blooded Americans.” That’s not going to fit on the baseball caps. * * * Seeing as we’re on our own, we must remain vigilant. Or else our whistling Olympic marmots will continue to die off, and people will keep snatching our morning show hosts’ mothers from their Arizona mansions. Luckily, Ring cameras are here to help! In their 30-second Super Bowl ad, Ring highlighted “Search Party,” a way to trigger all of your neighbors’ cameras to look for a dog if it’s gone missing. Sweet, right? They’ve pinky-promised to limit this technology to dog-finding only. * * * Here is who died this month: Dawson’s Creek’s James Van Der Beek at 48, Harold and Maude’s Bud Cort at 77, and Rev. Jesse Jackson at 84. The Boeing IMAX theater isn’t totally dead, but it got sold to the Space Needle Corporation, and the big screen as we know it seems dead as a doornail. * * * Anderson Cooper is also dead. Well, his gig at CBS’s 60 Minutes is, at least, as well as 60 Minutes’s reputation. The gay dad of news said in a statement that he wanted to spend more time with his children. But reading between the lines, we suspect he wanted to spend less time with CBS News’ Bari Weiss. * * * Clearly, we need a hero, and his name is Punch. Because he is only a baby, and a monkey in a Japanese zoo being bullied by other monkeys while he clings to his surrogate mother (a stuffed orangutan toy from IKEA), he cannot comprehend fascism or sex crimes. But he understands the meaning of perseverance. And maybe he’ll do a Curious George thing and figure this out for us. Or, maybe something sad will happen. Probably that. ...read more read less