The man suspected of shooting to death an attendant at a Belltown gas station was arrested yesterday in Chicago by US Marshals. The murder happened on October 13 around 5 a.m. and was captured by a surveillance camera. The suspect, Micheal Fleming, is seen entering the gas station, approaching the counter, and shooting the victim, 36-year-old Graeme Dobbeck, four times at close range. Fleming, who had worked at the gas station for four years, was later identified by his former boss as the shooter in the video. Officials also suspect Fleming killed his mother and stepfather at their home in Kenosha, Wisconsin a few days ago.
Ballard keeps getting bad news from Sound Transit. First, $10 billion is needed to reach that part of town. And even if that money is secured, Ballard will not see the opening of a train station until 2042. And if that doesn’t work out, fuck all will happen until 2060. That’s 34 years from now. Many of us, including myself, will be pushing up daisies around that time. But my chances of seeing Link stations open in West Seattle are not that bad. If all goes as planned, they will open in 2035.
After I’m done with AM, I’ll take a walk through this excellent morning fog. It’s even animated like a ghost that’s silently rubbing its back on the window panes of nearby homes and creeping past and through deciduous trees that are denuding their branches for the long and dark winter. There are few things more haunting than passing a stranger in a fog. Where did they come from? Where are they going? Fog, please wait for me. I will be with you, in you momentarily. Expect a high 61 today.
Let’s consider this for a moment. Manjit Bedi, the 64-year-old former owner of a Tacoma store that, according to Acting US Attorney for the Western District of Washington Neil Floyd, “engaged in fraudulent activity by processing SNAP cards for his own personal benefit, amounting to about $600,000 of taxpayer money…” Bedi bounced right after his indictment in April 2026 and returned to India. He then ended up on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Fraudster” list and was recently captured and extradited. He now faces 20 years in prison.
But how can one find this particular execution of justice at all meaningful when corruption has become the bread and butter of the person who holds our country’s top political office? How are we supposed to applaud the FBI, when rule after rule, law after law is broken for the benefit of a president whose level of corruption is nothing short of mind-boggling? The conversion of “federal assistance dollars into [$600,000 in] cash for personal profit” looks like chicken scratch when compared to the deal that got Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan billionaire facing felony bribery charges, a pardon.
Why did Donald Trump pardon Julio Herrera Velutini? Because Herrera’s daughter offered Trump’s former attorney, and former senior advisor at the Justice Department, Alina Habba, basically $50 million bucks. That’s it. And this is not some fringe story. It’s in the New York Times. Read all about it. And what was Julio Herrera’s crime? Campaign-finance violation. And keep in mind, this is just one of many such bribes tied to the present administration. “Kimberly Guilfoyle out here begging for $100k to set up meetings while Alina Habba cashing $50M checks,” Bay Area venture capitalist Deva Hazarika posted on X.
Quickly, Wikipedia’s definition of bribery: “It is the corrupt solicitation, payment, or acceptance of a private favor in exchange for official action” Nuff said.
No, not done yet. Shocked by a Fox News poll that found 88 percent of voters placed government corruption at the top of their concerns (above inflation, above gas prices), Trump has set up a Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program (WHIP) that offers citizens up to $30,000 for a tip that results in a fraud conviction. The bizarre thing about this whole shady business is that Trump will personally decide who gets the money or not. “I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions,” Trump said in the Oval Office yesterday. “In other words, I’ll determine whether or not the person is deserving.” And who does this arbiter see as deserving? During the WHIP announcement, “Trump honored right-wing influencer Nick Shirley with a $10,000 reward for exposing suspected fraud in Minnesota.”
Enough about corruption. Let’s get some death in the AM. Yes, the end of the world is really right around the corner. New research shows that Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is going to collapse sooner than initially thought. And this is the “widest glacier in the world.” It’s “roughly the size of Great Britain or the state of Florida.” So when it goes down, much of our world, the human world, the only world we know, will go down with it. This is why it’s called The Doomsday Glacier. We have reached the point of no return. This massive pack of ice is going down no matter what we do: drive electric cars, eat plant-based burgers, tax carbon liberators, and so on. In the words of Private Hudson: “That’s it, man. Game over, man. Game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?”
Let’s end AM with a key track for an October 29 show called See You at The Crossroads, a show about death in hip hop, a show that includes me, Dr. Daudi Abe, and Vitamin D on the ones and twos. The track is “Grand Groove” by Intelligent Hoodlum (Tragedy Khadafi). It’s about “living and dying, about losing people that’s real close to you.”
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