Our time-honored tradition continues: The leaves start changing colors, the rain returns, and every special interest under the sun dumps hundreds of thousands of dollars into political ads to sway your opinion. Luckily, you can safely ignore all that obscene political ad spending in our state legislative elections and fire up the SECB's legally binding endorsements, which are both 100% accurate and much more entertaining than the stack of screaming mailers in your recycling bin.

King County, get your shit together. A new poll shows that Leesa Manion is in a statistical tie with Jim Ferrell in the King County Prosecutor's race. I have been trying to tell you all not to vote for the bad cop since literally my first byline on Slog. We even made a video for those of you who have let TikTok destroy your attention spans. This is not a complicated choice, and if you fuck it up, a lot of poor people are going to spend much longer in jail than they should while crime gets worse in our communities. 

Get your ballots in, people!!! Axios reports that voter turnout is lagging the 2018 midterms at this point in the voting period, with only 26% of ballots returned this year compared to 35% four years ago. There is still plenty of time to vote, either by walking your signed ballot to a drop box or by voting in-person at one of King County's voting centers up until 8 pm on Election Day. If you need to update your address or even register for the first time, you can do that at any of the County's voting centers as well.

All this election anxiety is making me hungry. Thankfully, our friends at EverOut have put together this handy guide for where to get the best fall food of all, soup. It's nourishing, it keeps you warm in the cold, and in a pinch you can use it to resist fascism. Treat yourself.

Thank you, Elon: Twitter is the last social media platform with any appeal to me, and I could not be more relieved that this moronic billionaire in search of a distraction from his failure to revolutionize the car industry or space travel is killing the site. Dramatically worsening the spread of misinformation and monetizing harassment of celebrities seems like a small price to pay for my mental health.

Speaking of misinformation: According to an investigation from KUOW, undercover cops from the Seattle Police Department and the King County Sheriff's Office nearly came to blows during protests in 2021 when the KCSO deputies violated department policy by aggressively tailgating a plainclothes SPD officer. The Seattle cop mistakenly believed the sheriff's deputies were Proud Boys, an example of why maybe it's a bad idea for cops to lie to the public about the possible presence of armed vigilante groups.

Nothing to see here: Just law enforcement officials who have been sucked into the Big Lie's conspiracy theories about "election integrity" posting uniformed cops at ballot drop boxes in swing states with critical US Senate elections. I'm sure this will be the countermeasure that finally convinces conservatives that our elections are safe and legitimate. 

I agree with this sheriff: I also hope that a deranged local law enforcement official doesn't go rogue and create an unnecessary armed standoff with federal agents! You know who could make sure that doesn't happen? The guy who said the quote!!!

Really productive use of time, folks: Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 1,000-page report on how they plan to crawl all the way up the FBI's ass if their party regains control of the House of Representatives. Remember four years ago when Democrats were excited about the ability to use subpoena power to investigate rampant fraud and corruption in the Trump administration? Imagine that, but make it as stupid and removed from reality as possible. And yet, they're likely going to get that their way, because these midterms are way fucking closer than they should be.

Enough "mulling": The Department of Justice is reportedly "mulling" bringing in a special prosecutor if Trump decides to run for president again. We've seen this play already, and it doesn't end well. We spent years praying for Mueller Time. It never delivered. The proper way to keep the narcissistic dictator out of office was to convict him on impeachment charges in the Senate after his mob invaded the Capitol on January 6. We missed that boat, too, so now we're likely going to have to spend the next two years paying for those mistakes. But at least Delaware Senator Chris Coons didn't miss his Valentine's Day plans!!!

The people are catching on: A "wide majority" of Americans are finally grasping that the failure to exile everyone involved with an armed insurrection after our last national election just might lead to more politically motivated violence, reports the Washington Post. Well, half of the respondents in the poll cared. The other half are lost down an irrecoverable rabbit hole of bullshit that has convinced them Democrats are going to steal an election despite no evidence that is anywhere close to a real possibility. Fun times.

It's the economy, stupid: Or maybe that line has always been nonsense and our national media institutions construct reality for most people without the time and training to interpret raw economic data? Who can say. Anyway! If the economy were really the predictor of midterm election outcomes, it seems like the Dems should be crushing.

Baseball sucks. Why did I choose to start caring about baseball? Mariners fans, I do not enjoy this feeling. Why do you subject yourselves to it? Watching a team you know are cheaters slowly strangle the hope from your lovable underdogs over several hours is the worst. But! There is still a snowball's chance in Houston that the Phillies can come back and win this thing over the weekend, so I guess I've talked myself back into watching? Fuck.

New must-listen pod just dropped: Two of my favorite podcast hosts have teamed up to debunk pop-science books that have rotted American brains over the last few decades. The first episode on Freakonomics is pretty good! Give it a listen if you want to understand where every suburban dad in the early 2000s got all their bullshit BBQ talking points.