The Buzz: An otherwise blameless account of week that wasn’t

By Jon Bauer

Herald staff

We’d like the judge who will preside over our upcoming infraction hearing for driving too fast for conditions during last month’s snowstorm to recognize our otherwise blameless life.

Mostly blameless? Mostly harmless? Relatively free of felony?

In other news begging pardon in the week that wasn’t:

White collars matter: Paul Manafort, President Trump’s one-time campaign manager, was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for cheating on his taxes and bank fraud, far lower than the 24 years in prison called for in federal sentencing guidelines. A U.S. District Court judge in Virginia said the sentence he imposed was more in line with typical penalties for those convicted of similar crimes.

What the judge meant by “similar crimes” were those committed by old white men that don’t involve possession of marijuana, petty theft or any nonviolent felony committed by a black or Latino male.

Not what’s meant by “chairman”: Mukilteo initiative promoter Tim Eyman has pleaded not guilty to stealing a $70 office chair from a Office Depot store in Lacey. A trial date has been set for April 16.

Tim, if your lawyer can swing a change of venue, we know this judge in Virginia who might be sympathetic.

Don’t do the crime if you can’d do the time: Former hedge-fund manager and “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli is under investigation by New Jersey’s prison bureau for alleging using a cellphone, in violation of prison rules, while serving his seven-year prison term for investment fraud. Shkreli faces a year in prison for the violation.

But using the same formula Shkreli used in increasing the price of one of his pharmaceutical’s drugs, that works out to 5,000 years.

Truth serum: Facebook announced its plans to curb anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and misinformation by no longer recommending offending pages and groups and blocking advertisements that include false content about vaccines.

It’s a good first step among many Facebook needs to take. Next: Blocking all the ridiculous memes that Facebook users accept as truth because they feature large type printed on a colored background.

Would a pair of shorts count as one survival item or two? An Edmonds man has joined the unclothed ranks of those appearing in the Discovery Channel’s reality show, “Naked and Afraid,” which drops a co-ed couple into the wilderness with no clothing and two survival items. Pixelation and strategically placed palm fronds keep the show at a PG-13 level.

But, really, it isn’t anything your spouse hasn’t seen every morning when you get out of bed in the morning to put the cat out.

Be kind; rewind: The Blockbuster store in Bend, Oregon, will be the last of its kind in the world with the coming closure of a Blockbuster in Perth, Australia. There were once 9,000 Blockbuster video-rental stores across the globe.

Now the world will beat a path to Bend to rent a VHS tape of 1984’s “The Karate Kid.” Guess I better return it.

You’d hope they’d know the difference: A sewage spill at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyards in Bremerton, caused when someone mistook sewage for seawater, prompted a warning from the county’s public health board to avoid contact with the waters of Sinclair Inlet.

We’re going for coffee. Write your own poop deck joke here.

Jon Bauer: jbauer@heraldnet.com.