Bike lanes: Well worth the wait. Matt Baume

Comments

1

yep. that's the face of a cat person.

2

Your header photo was without context. Report a vehicle parked in a bicycle lane here https://twitter.com/carbikelanesea

3

I'm struggling to understand why you're shitting on the mayor for going to a climate summit while it was unbearably smoky in the city. What exactly were you expecting Bruce to do to combat the smoke? Buy a really big fan and push it to the eastern side of the Cascades? Don some turnout gear and go fight the fire himself?

Until we let the forest service actually MANAGE the land properly, we're going to constantly have fires that rage out of control and are too dangerous to send crews in to battle. Of course climate change is making fire seasons worse, but not letting the USFS clear out the tinderbox-dry underbrush, these fires are going to keep getting worse.

5

but whattabout all the
sanctimonious projectioneers

what will They drink?

A. Liberal tears
no doubt

6

"Landslides are common, complex, and growing problem in Seattle"

KOMO: SEATTLE IS SLIDING!!!

7

@3 -There is not a goddamned thing the Mayor can do about air quality here. But the Stranger can't forgive him for not being Nikita Oliver or Kshama Sawant, so they have to blame him for pretty much anything.

Clearing out underbrush will help in some places but it's pretty unrealistic to expect it all to get done inside of a million years. Unless you knew exactly where the next set of dumbfucks were gong to light some fireworks or celebrate their baby's penis, there's no way to know which underbrush needed to be cleared. Maybe better we look at the long game & try to get climate change under control.

8

"[i]n case you were concerned that the British government would suddenly start caring about poor people." LOL let me blow your mind by informing you of the National Health Service, and their top tax rate of 45%.

11

RE lack of public bathrooms- Yes, it is a problem. And a big part of the reason is cited in that Urbanist article: people misuse them for things like shooting drugs (and IIRC, the experiment in Pioneer Square failed in part because the public toilets were getting used for prostitution) so that the public rightfully feels unsafe using them for what they are supposed to be used for.

Maybe it's time for a "ruining it for everyone" law so that if you do things that screw up, say, the public toilets for all, you get your hand slapped extra hard. Applying this to Bitcoin miners who emit tons of climate pollution also comes to mind.

18

You know things are bad when the UK finally lets women and people of color run the country, and alt weeklies in other time zones get their licks in.

21

@11
Pioneer Square light rail stop has been renamed “Pee-is-near Square”. My spouse now refuses to use that light rail stop, for that very reason.

23

And yes, it would be really nice if Seattle actually built out the planned protected bike lanes. Given that real estate values have doubled in the last decade, it puzzles me why bike lanes are funded at roughly a 10% rate.
From the Ballard bridge to Beacon Ave S, Seattle has no shortage of terrifying roadways if you’re on a bike.

28

This piece refers to a landslide in Magnolia as having happened in West Seattle, and does not mention the California/Findlay signal which was also installed this weekend.

29

@26
what if 'someone'
Posted blip's typically
Great Comment* on I, A?

-- @19; credited, obv.

36

Pramila Jayapal and 29 other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent Biden a letter calling for the US to enter into direct negotiations with Russia over Ukraine.

1) It isn't our place to negotiate with Russia. It is Ukraine's.
2) Putin cannot be trusted.
3) Any negotiations by anyone will be perceived as an invitation for Putin to continue murdering and raping civilians in Ukraine, Syria, etc.
4) The quickest way to end Putin's genocide in eastern Ukraine is to give the Ukrainians the weapons they need to kick the Russians out of Ukraine - including Crimea.
5) The only issue Biden should be conflicted over is whether or not to put US troops on the ground in Ukraine, at least along the border with Belarus.

Jayapal has lost my vote.

39

PrincessAngeline#2 @25: "And when you (I) got severely injured when it’s necessary to walk out into the street to just get by, they tell you that you are the guilty party and they can’t be sued anyway. I got permanently disabled when the street gave way over a small sinkhole."

Wow, really sorry to hear this. A reminder for those of us who have not experienced permanently disabling accidents and illnesses—we need to feel a certain sense of gratitude and perspective for our own good fortune.

Choska @36, a relative just shared this news with me. I've been generally happy with Jayapal--up until now. BItterly disappointed. I expect this sort of nonsense from AOC and Ilhan Omer. But Pramila Jaypal? Jamie Raskin? What are they thinking?!

She has lost my vote as well. Does that mean I'll be voting for the "prefers Republican" Moon? No way. I guess I'll just have to leave my ballot blank. I hate to be a single-issue voter, or non-voter, but the question of whether we're going to have a free world or not--I can't think of a bigger, more urgent issue, not even climate change.

40

" i can see why someone who believes the homeless should be rounded up and dumped in a field or left to die if they overdose... "

but st2's a pragmaitic liberal*
he even
Said
sso.

*who
HATES
Progressives

42

from Democrcy Now:

“Promoting Stability or
Fueling Conflict?”: Biden’s U.S. Arms
Sales Boom from Ukraine to Saudi Arabia

We speak with national security expert William Hartung about the Biden administration’s unprecedented military spending on Ukraine and the impact of U.S. arms sales on national and global security.

Despite Biden’s campaign promises to curb arms sales, Hartung says the administration has followed an “outmoded ideology” that necessitates the U.S. achieve global military dominance through weapons sales.

“Aid designed to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia has proceeded at the most rapid pace of any U.S. military assistance program since at least the peak of the Vietnam War.

But the United States has failed to offer an accompanying diplomatic strategy aimed at ending the war before it evolves into a long, grinding conflict or escalates into a direct U.S.-Russian confrontation.”

“There’s a lot of money at stake and it shapes policy in ways that are detrimental to human rights and peace and stability,” says Hartung, who also details the influence of the weapons lobby on government policy.

As the war in Ukraine enters its ninth month, NBC is reporting a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers are planning a new military aid package for Ukraine that could be worth as much as $50 billion that would bring the total U.S. spending on Ukraine to a staggering $115 billion.

tonnes More at
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/10/24/us_arms_sales_national_global_security

put another way
as is our wont
that's

$1,150,000,000,000.00
or $1.5 TRILLION$
(over 10 yrs.)

so: WHO Profits?

44

"But then of course there’s the weapons industry.

We found in our report that of the $100 billion in new major arms sales offers under Biden, more than half of them involve weapons built by just four companies: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon.

Those companies are doing everything they can to make sure the U.S. sells to as many countries as possible and as wide an array of systems as possible.

They’ve got 300 lobbyists just amongst those four companies. They employ former government employees, former heads of the Pentagon’s arms sales agency.

They tout the jobs related to arms sales as a way to rope in members of Congress to support things they might otherwise oppose. That bedrock of the military-industrial complex is something that every administration has to contend with.

But I think the question is, how do you stop the killing?
How do you end this war in a way where Ukraine has its sovereignty intact, can move forward as a nation, where you don’t have a long grinding war where these kinds of abuses go on indefinitely, where you don’t risk a U.S.-Russia confrontation, a confrontation between nuclear powers that could escalate to the nuclear level.

Our organization is supportive of supplying weapons to Ukraine to defend itself, but that can’t be a one-note policy."

--William Harting

tonnes More at
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/10/24/us_arms_sales_national_global_security

46

nyt:
Western Officials
Warn Russia Could Use
a Dirty Bomb as a Pretext

Top officials from the United States, Britain and France cautioned that there was no change in Russia’s nuclear posture and that they believed no decision had been made to use a tactical nuclear weapon.

Such a bomb is not a nuclear device; it has none of the explosive power of a nuclear weapon.

But it is an effective weapon of terror, and the resulting radiological contamination can make several city blocks uninhabitable for a period of time.

And because it involves nuclear material, it can often be confused, in public discussion, with an atomic weapon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/us/politics/russia-dirty-bomb-west-ukraine.html

this could End
very Poorly
if
Vlad the Impaler
iives Down to his name

48

'blank checks'?
we're giving them WMDs
silly. see: Boeing Raytheon Lock-
heed Martin and General Dynamics

and their Stocks.

our Masters of War.

49

oh yeah plus the Humanitarian

this just in:

Progressive Democrats Urge Biden to Negotiate with Russia

But the lawmakers said, in the letter first reported by the Washington Post, that diplomatic efforts should also be a part of the U.S. approach to ending the war that has had a catastrophic toll on the Ukrainian people as well as threatening global food and poverty crises through rising fuel and grain costs.

“As legislators responsible for the expenditure of tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in military assistance in the conflict, we believe such involvement in this war also creates a responsibility for the United States to seriously explore all possible avenues, including direct engagement with Russia, to reduce harm and support Ukraine in achieving a peaceful settlement,” the lawmakers wrote.

In a June 2022 press conference, Biden acknowledged that possibility when asked if Ukraine would have to cede territory to Russia to put an end to the conflict.

“It appears to me that, at some point along the line, there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement here. And what that entails, I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows at the time,” Biden told reporters.

“We are under no illusions regarding the difficulties involved in engaging Russia given its outrageous and illegal invasion of Ukraine and its decision to make additional illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory.

However, if there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue,” the letter said.

by Katherine Gypson | VOA News
October 25, 2022

https://scheerpost.com/2022/10/25/progressive-democrats-urge-biden-to-negotiate-with-russia/

50

@7 and @11 dvs99, @5, @29, @40, @42, @44, @46, @48, & @49 kristofarian, and @9, @14, @15, @30, @32, @34, & @37 blip: Agreed. I'm glad you're among the commenters.

@18 Totoman: Things have already been infinitely worse since Day One with men---the majority of whom are Caucasian---in charge of everything.
We get thrilled about sending a man to the moon but still too many voters, mostly white male--are still too chickenshitted, misogynist and racist to ever elect a woman President of the United States. Instead, they're perfectly compliant with electing grossly incompetent dictators and destroy the world if it'll keep women and everyone non-white powerless, voiceless, barefoot, and in the kitchen.
Was that your point?

@21 and @23 pat L: That's terrible that Seattle's bike lanes---and lack thereof--are as dangerous as sidewalks in fall and winter! I feel like I really don't know Seattle, anymore. I was born in this city. Its escalating demise is heartbreaking.

@25 PrincessAngeline#2: I am so sorry about your permanent disability from a sinkhole! I share your concerns about unshoveled sidewalks and unsafe surfaces. This last fall and winter were particularly bad.

@27: You can fall down a sinkhole any time.


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