Comments

1

The Trumpf Crime Fambly's FINALLY about to begin to go Down.
Excellent. And not a moment too soon...

But, like any cornered Rat, he's gonna get Dangerous.
Heads UP, Planet.
Here cometh Trumpfy.

2

Thank you, The Stranger, for running a stock photo of a young person riding one of those electro-scooters and fucking txting at the same time.

3

The White House just purged the reporters who are allowed to attend the Huckabee lie sessions.

4

"We're one of the last major cities in the country to allow an e-scooter pilot"

I'm reading that as both "everyone has scooters but Seattle, until now" and "no one else allows these anymore but now Seattle is getting them." Both make equal sense.

5

I was just thinking the sidewalks weren't crowded enough with slackjawed tourists and other mentally uinderdeveloped types barreling through on e-bikes. This is the logical progression.

6

Crackdown on the open-air drug markets and get rid of the cheap alcohol and the trashy ones will go somewhere else. You don't see many in Bellevue.

7

@6

Crackdown how, specifically?

So much tough, tough talk, so little to show for it. Where's the ballot measure? The march and rally? The city-hall sit-in? Where's your two-fisted crime-bustin' council candidate? What's the platform? What's the funding plan?

When are all these super-tough tough-guys going to do anything other than cluck and scold and crow in internet comments-threads, like a bunch of old, used-up hens?

8

That abortion law displays such basic ignorance about biology, law, and logic that it can only have come from a state which has given up on living in the 20th century, never mind the 21st.

9

Enough people still care about shrooms to have an election?

10

The legislators who write these anti abortion laws are voted into power by people who are mindless slaves to their religious cult. Their minister says jump and they say how high. No thought, no discussion.

These are people who perpetually shriek about gubbamint taking away their freedoms, when they've already voluntarily turned over all their freedom to their cult churches.

11

@10, and to Trump.

12

As the great PJ O’Rourke once said, you’re never too poor to pick up around your home.

13

Keeping year-round Daylight Savings will mean the sun won't rise until 9AM in the depths of winter. It'll still set about 5.
Why don't we just stick to Standard Time year round? We'll still have light till after 9 in the summer and sun setting at 4 vs. 5 ain't gonna make a bit of difference for your after-work time.

16

@15 okay, Einstein. You just admitted nobody “solved” anything they just made it someone else’s problem. If everyone “gets tough” on homelessness, what ever that fucking even means, then where do homeless go? Just into the woods to die? March into the sea?

No. Prison. That’s what you’re “solution” to poverty, mental illness and addiction is - it’s prison.

Which cost twice as much as just housing and treatment programs. Between $31,000 and $60,000 per person per year. Not including drug treatment. Which is anywhere between $10,000 and $30,000 per year per person more. Who’s going to pay that? You?

So I guess you’re FOR raising taxes. Because that’s what you’d have to do.

You stupid fucksticks voted to cut the social safety net and closed state institutions, cut outpatient treatment, and slashed public housing.

THEN. You voted for rightwing morons that deregulated big Pharmaceutical corporations who then mass marketed opiates and got millions addicted.

THEN you voted to allow private prisons - which are expensive nightmare factories that pump in mostly harmless drug offenders and pump out damaged unhireable mentally ill middle aged DRUG ADDICTED homeless people.

And now your solution is “make it some one else’s problem” which kick starts the cycle all over.

Yeah. Genius. Get tough!

17

@16: Chill. Nobody mentioned prison until you did. Stop extrapolating and projecting other people's comments into a rabid frenzy.

19

@18 To say nothing of the fact that Narcan INCREASES overdosing where it's available as junkies get sloppy with their doses:

"A controversial study suggests anti-overdose med naloxone increases reckless opioid use"

"In this paper, we use the staggered timing of state-level naloxone access laws as a natural experiment to measure the effects of broadening access to this lifesaving drug. We find that broadened access led to more opioid-related emergency room visits and more opioid-related theft, with no reduction in opioid-related mortality."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3135264

So yeah, we have to spend money in order to spend even more on programs that fail. The left will kill people with their "compassion" before they start acting like the adults in the room instead of the children.

20

If we simply did something about income inequality we could deal with the root of the problem with homelessness.

22

" income inequality we could deal with the root of the problem with homelessness."

Yes, once we figure out that problem, junkies will be able to get the $3000-5000 a month on average they spend on drugs and put it into their ROTH IRAs.

23

@22: Golly I hope you remembered to use a lot of lube before you pulled those great bif numbers out of your ass!

24

20
So true.
If only we would pay junkies a living wage we could make this an equitable just society.

25

Fun facts! That bill, now law, in Georgia calls for charging women who have suffered a miscarriage with manslaughter if it’s thought that it was caused somehow by her actions. Not just drug use! But say she falls down the stairs or goes horseback riding that counts too.
“Women can just go out of state to receive care” you say? Nope. That gets you a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. Help a woman to leave the state for an abortion in any way? That gets you charged as an accessory. So watch out travel agents! You too Avis rental cars!
Republicans are terrible people.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/hb-481-georgia-law-criminalizes-abortion-subjects-women-to-life-in-prison.html

26

@17 Oh. Jesus. What are the teeth to "get tough" laws?

If you don't supply adequate affordable housing. And you don't have enough publicly funded treatment facilities. And all you do is "get tough" shuffling homeless populations from one city to the next — well, golly gee wilikers — guess what consequences "get tough" laws have?

Incarceration. That's what you demented dumb fuck.

The entire point of that moronic "Seattle is Dying" mockumentary was that our jails "catch and release." That's the laws the "get tough" crowd want to change. They want more jail time. But they, like you, they don't want to PAY for it and are too stupid to understand consequences.

When homeless people then get concentrated in one place after being shoved from one city to the next —they concentrate like liquor in a still. And that place can't manage the concentration. So a huge portion of the homeless with out the services to turn their lives around end up going to jail or committing crime. That' is just the fact of what happens.

Getting angry when confronted with facts is useless — as useless as getting angry the sky is blue — and just a further demonstration of how profoundly stupid the trolls in here truly are.

27

" they don't want to PAY for it"

I'll pay for it. Happily.

28

More fun facts! That mansion full of guns belongs to Cynthia Beck, (although I don’t think she actually lives there) long time secondary partner of Gordon Getty (composer and fourth son of J. Paul Getty) with whom he has three daughters. Apparently Getty and his wife have had an open relationship for more than 30 of their 54 year marriage.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/1000-guns-los-angeles-holmby-hills_n_5cd3d352e4b09f321bdbcc53

29

@25: Good Lord! Imagine if soap opera writers could write about that angle into those subplots.

And since you mentioned stairs, and Georgia...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF5Om8pwXkM

30

@25: In all seriousness, it's a horrible bill and calls for life in prison for the woman!

31

The good news is that the Georgia law basically has no way to pass constitutional muster, based on pretty clear precedent set in Kentucky, Iowa, and North Dakota. As such, this is mostly a political stunt to excite the bible thumpers.

The bad news is...well, the bad news is that this shit still happens.

32

Seattle = Hills + Bad Street Surfaces.
eScooters = (Small Wheels + Higher Speeds) * Riders w No Helmets/Low Skills(avg)

Seattle + eScooters = (Riders / 3) * Traumatic Brain Injury^Hospital Bills

We are the single worst city in the USA to consider distributing eScooters.
My pre-condolences to all the soon-to-be-head-injured people in Seattle.

34

@32: At least people in Seattle might ride them. Come to Baltimore, where you can watch all of our vibrant youth toss them in the harbor for laughs.

35

@2 is correct. Better to post the pic of a certain Beckham driving his sports car and texting, and then getting a 3 month license suspension.

36

We can sweep every encampment, every time, without putting anyone in jail. In fact, sweeping encampments reduces the chances an inhabitant will end up in jail. Ask yourself: how are those addicts paying for their drugs? By stealing. Theft will land them in jail. Now we have addicts in jail for theft, not getting treatment. Sweep every encampment, every time.

Furthermore, leaving addicts to rot in filthy encampments is cruel both to the addicts, and to their housed neighbors. Sweep every encampment, every time.

Also, no encampments means no stupid arguments over cleaning encampments, so that problem will be solved, too. Sweep every encampment, every time.

37

@36 and if people rest leaving encampments or come back over and over? No arrests? Riiiiight. Total and complete bullshit. The "Seattle is dying" hysteria was predicated on incarceration as the deterrent (which does't work, btw). Nobody is falling for your bullshit. You're not curing mental illness and addiction with sweeps. You're not eliminating dire poverty caused by mental illness and addiction with sweeps. And you won't cure any of that with jail either.

Like pretty much every single conservative "solution" to intransigent social problems it's "ignore it until you can't" then "moral panic, blame the victim, and shove the problem somewhere else."

Your only pan is move them somewhere else and make them someone else problem. That's it. That's the sum total of your "plan." And it's a "plan" that results in incarceration of mentally ill and addicted populations - which none of you want to pay for.

How about every single municipality — big and small— be forced BY STATE LAW to enact and fund proportional local harm reduction and treatment strategies so that they can't just shove the problem upstream to bigger cities where it festers and explodes. How about that?

38

@37: You obviously don’t know what happens when an encampment is swept. All inhabitants are offered shelter. Anything not carried away by the former inhabitants is put into storage. If they become locally housed, they can retrieve their items. Then the former campsite is cleaned. Nobody gets arrested.

As for if they return, that’s why we should sweep every encampment, every time. Hardcore returners will get the idea eventually.

“You're not curing mental illness and addiction with sweeps.”

I didn’t claim we were. Sweeps eliminate a public health hazard. This is a basic function of local government. This is another reason why every encampment needs to be swept, every time.

“How about every single municipality — big and small— be forced BY STATE LAW to enact and fund proportional local harm reduction and treatment strategies so that they can't just shove the problem upstream to bigger cities where it festers and explodes. How about that?”

We’re talking Seattle policy here, not state policy, but ok: if the mandate is not funded, my answer is no. If it is funded, then sure. Why should Seattle be responsible for a problem the city’s own 2016 survey shows moved here from elsewhere?

You really should learn something about our existing policies before you go telling everyone else what’s wrong with our ideas.

39

@38

What's your plan for restricting the movements of people within their own country?

Build walls around the cities, and check everyone's papers on entry?

Last time I checked, one of the nicer benefits of living in a free country was that if I fell on hard times, I could pull up stakes and move pretty much anywhere I wanted in search of a better life, without getting anyone's permission first.

40

@1 kristofarian: Trumpty Dumpty cried for a Wall.
Trumpty Dumpty had a Great Fall.
None of its lawyers or paid off Yes Men
Could keep Trumpty Dumpty out of the Pen!

                  Choke on it, Trumps, Pences, Babyface Kavanaugh, Mooch McDumbbell, 

NRA, and clueless MAGAs!


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