Colchuck Peak, where an avalanche over the weekend claimed three lives and left one injured. july7th / GETTY

Comments

1

"This could reduce the number racial disparities in traffic stops."

That still doesn't make sense not to enforce laws. Broken tail lights are a safety hazard.

Wokeism kills.

3

@1 -- "Wokeism kills."

perhaps. but Nothing like
Slave Patrols nor like fascism either
say didn't we fight a War against that recently?

well not Most recently
that'd be our Fascists' illegal
invasions of Soverign Nations
say that reminds me: didja Know
the Cheney/Bush team can GO to the EU
but there's no Guarantee they'll get out Alive?

Spain's got an Arrest Warrant for War Crimes
for That Dynamic Duo: speaking of Fascism
and "Republicans" like tfg djt.

4

here's Tom Tomorrow's brilliant
take on Fascists & being Awake:

https://thenib.com/designs-by-committee/

4

I'm gonna be that asshole, but we can't kill the Earth. We can kill ourselves and take a shitload of other species with us, but Earth will be fine, eventually recover from it's unruly tenants, and keep on truckin'. Maybe the next dominant species will get things right and finally meet some goddamn Vulcans.

9

Big ball of iron found at Earth's core. Big mysterious ball of iron found on Japanese beach. I live all these years and never see even one big ball of iron story, and today I've got two. Life is weird.

10

@1: I hope that's a joke. Maybe that's funny in Florida.

11

A much better acronym for downtown Seattle improvement would be DANK, instead of DAP.
Just stroll up and down 3rd Avenue!

16

@10: Definitely not a joke.

Oh yes, because of bad policing we must implement bad policy. Also, isn't it racist to codify into law that people of color are more likely to have broken tail lights?

17

@14: "a ruse for her to boost her ego via virtue signaling"

She needed one sane thing on her resume for her next job. This was it.

@1: "This could reduce the number racial disparities in traffic stops."

Want to reduce the racial disparity? Start busting more white folks for DUI and driving unmaintained shitboxes around.

18

@NWZ:
"Will Seattle be forced
to pay out more taxpayer money
as a result of yet another feel-good, virtue-signaling policy?"

perhaps - tho we can likely
Guarantee we'll be paying out
Shitloads for $ettlements for Po-po*
hopefully Dwarfing a Movement's settlements
which is headed Nation-Wide and KUDOS to Kshama!

"Time will tell." --@NWZ

no Doubt.

*and for other
Public employees
Miscreants & otherwise

19

The caste regulation is a typical Sawant ploy. It's a minor issue that no one really opposed yet she blew it up into some major issue complete with banner ads here on TS and a pack city hall rally. I have no doubt it actually happens but I do wonder how someone who was impacted would actually prove it. Given the city's strained resources its hard to see them being able to investigate many of these claims much less levy fines etc. So while she'll champion this as yet another example of her "grassroots" movement getting things done at the end of the day there is a lot of bluster here without much substance. Since she is not running for election I guess she's all but given up on her signature issue of rent control. Over ten years on the council and she never even submitted a draft of a bill. Maybe before she goes she can pass an ordinace making throwing dog poo in someone's yard a hate crime.

20

is Caste Discrimination just
another term* for Class discrimination?

perhaps the further Left
Sawant pulls the convo
the more the less no-
ticed topics become
more Mainstream

how'd she Do
on the $15/per?

*in the long run

22

@16: sad. just like Slog in 2023.

23

*so I went to her webby
[excessive Caps all mine]:

'We live in one of the Richest cities
in the Richest nation on Earth.
here is NO Shortage of Re-
Sources. Yet the current
economic and political
system has given work-
ing people Recession,
unemployment, un-
deremployment, &
Homelessness.

Another world
is both possible. [&]
Indeed, it’s necessary.

If the COVID-19 pandemic teaches us anything, it’s that the existing profit-hungry capitalist system has failed the vast majority of working people.

And it will continue to fail us.

We must organize
our own independent
political movements, raise
our demands, and fight for
our rights as working people."

well Fuck YES.

and just say 'fuck NO!'
to Top-down Bureau-
cratic corporate Rule.

24

@19 "Over ten years on the council and she never even submitted a draft of a bill."

I always wonder what her supporters think about that. You'd think people would get tired of campaign slogans that never lead to meaningful action.

25

@21 - Well, thank you for enumerating the finer points.

27

The reporter on the CNN clip refers to the Earth’s center as a 400-mile ball of solid iron. Wouldn’t it have to be molten?

Hiding $32B, eh? A church? Hmm. Well, the people who believe in that shit won’t have any problems justifying the corruption. They have a million excuses, and when all else fails, there’s “God works in mysterious ways.” Since they so willfully and forcibly participate in our government (remember, every reconvening of either chamber in Congress begins with a prayer), make them participate. Start taxing churches is all I can say. I won’t hold my breath.

Sledding on acid? Wow. You certainly know how to handle your shit. On acid back in the day I’d spend many minutes, maybe hours, cracking myself up over stuff like the floating texture of the bathroom’s paint job while listening to “Axis: Bold as Love” or “Abraxas”. Sledding? Wow. Certainly healthier.

The freight train situation is coming home to roost. Too bad Build Back Better didn’t pass. Thanks again, Sinema and Manchin.

28

@10 Max Solomon: It would indeed be a pretty sick joke in the MAGAt-confused neofascist blood red state of Flor-i-Dumb confusion, grossly mismanaged by the Orange Turd's favorite mafia don, Ron De Santis.

Nathalie and all snow lovers--be careful of what you wish for! Public school-aged kids K-12 have to make up for snow days by the end of the academic year, whether they like it or not. Local sledders in my neighborhood loved it, but last December 2022's pre-Christmas ice storm was a bitch. Blizzards are hitting Los Angeles County? Climate change is real. It's sad about the people lost and injured in the avalanche in Leavenworth. As winter weather becomes more extreme, it's further evidence for me to keep my beloved VW tucked safely away in seasonal hibernation during the dark, stormy months.
38 years ago, back in my earlier college years, my trusty VW and I had to drive home through a blizzard. We proceeded slowly and made it home okay, but there were FAR less other drivers on the roads! Luckily a lot of our route was on flat pavement, but the last five miles of wooded, steeply winding road and deep ravine were a nerve-wracking bitch to maneuver through. My amazed parents were agog that we managed to return without a dent or a scratch. I couldn't possibly put my older stick shift car through that now, though. There are too many idiots out on the roads.
It's gonna get frigid by Thursday---lows in the teens! Stock up, everybody and be safe.

28

@AM: "Capitalism hasn't failed.
It is crony-capitalism that has failed us all.
You know where the government picks winners and losers."

and Monopolies
Rule us All.

you have it just backwards: corporate control
of the Government is NOT Socialism

"All those feel good laws designed to protect the worker instead crushes small business owners (migrants/minorities/women) so only the rich can afford to do business in your city/state" --@AM

you failed to mention the Walmartization
of America in the land o' the Free not to
mention Monopolies vs. Main Street
your fantasies of an over-coddled
working class of people stealing
food outta the gaping maws
of the Robber Barons are
Entertaining if not
farcical

remember Yesteryear? when if an
Employee was Injured on the Job
tough Luck pal, might Wanna get
that Severed Arm looked at soon

when Men were fucking MEN
Rugged Individualists with
nary a Care for Pain and
suffering or seemingly
their Family's Future?

all those horrific regulations
soon to be Gutted by the
Reich Wing 'cause WHO
Needs stupid shite like
Drinkable fucking H20
and breathable Air
& stupid Worker's
"Compensation"

guess who said this:
The Corporate State and its Organization

"The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management."

Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: ‘Ardita’ Publishers.

it's not Regulations that are Killing us.
it's Corporate Control.

30

@28, 26: here's but One example of corporate
control/ the strip-mining of the Citizenry:

"When we talk about corporate greed in this country, there is perhaps no better example than the greed of the pharmaceutical industry exhibited by the outrageously high prices that Americans pay for prescription drugs.

In America today, millions of people are making the unacceptable choice between feeding their families or buying the medicine they need. Seniors are forced to split their pills in half and many have died because they did not have enough money to fill their prescriptions.

All across this country, the American people are asking themselves how does it happen that we in the United States pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs?

Why is it that nearly one out of every four Americans cannot afford their prescription medication?

How does it happen that nearly half of all new drugs in the United States cost more than $150,000 a year?

A few years ago, I took a busload of people with diabetes from Detroit, Michigan, to a drugstore in Windsor, Ontario. And there, in Canada, they were able to purchase the same insulin products they bought in the United States for one-tenth the price."

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I)

how can you not
Hate a man
like this?
/s

31

There is no one size fits all solution, policy or otherwise, to the homeless problem. Every person is a specific case, with any number of common factors among them, and many idiosyncrasies. The only way to help such folks get back on their feet and sustain themselves as productive citizens, or to at least get the resources they need for mental health/substance use/disability care, is to recognize that they are as human as any one of you.

Any person, no matter how successful or stable, can endure damage, visible or invisible, or both, that can relieve them of their ability to sustain themselves in our society. At times, a single crucial variable is lost that the person depended on, and without it they are down in the streets. It is not that you have to feel pity for them, but feel pity for your own capacity to be in such a situation and think how you would survive and pull yourself out if the bottom fell out of your world, whether or not you were responsible for being there. If you can see that capacity in yourself, then you will understand how placing value judgments is so myopic and shallow.

In the end, we are a macroorganism. All of us dress and identify ourselves according to our genetics and nationality, but we're just organized carbon that eats and reproduces and takes hold of our surroundings to survive on this, a planetary spaceship is an intangibly massive universe. A single person can live a great or terrible life, but as a collective we won't be able to tap into our limitless potential until we can sustainably lift everyone out of poverty and scarcity.

32

@27 Bauhaus I: +1 Spot on and well said, as usual! Kudos for your consistently on-target comments. :)

@28 kristofarian: +1 Agreed, and also right on the money. How shameful that so many people in Ohio, in addition to leading the country for opiate addiction, are suffering from the toxic spill from the recent train derailment. Hazardous chemicals have contaminated the region's water supply, locals are now exposed to cancerous carcinogens, and Ohio state legislators (especially RepubliKKKans) are pulling a Marty Moose from Walley World: "SOR-ry.......a -Huh-Huh-Huh!"
That's Big KKKorporate politics for ya. Annihilate the world so the richest at the top win the race to the bottom in their haste to own everyone and everything. Public health and safety be damned! Profit$, profit$, profit$ over we, the people.

33

It's like, you were born a Brahmin? Maybe you could be born a Dalit. Maybe you should treat each other how you want to be treated in this or any life to come! It will still be you suffering!

34

@30 kristofarian: ["A few years ago, I took a busload of people with diabetes from Detroit, Michigan, to Windsor, Ontario. And there, in Canada, they were able to purchase the same insulin products they bought in the United States for one-tenth the price."

----Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, (I)

How can you not
Hate a man
like this?
/s" ]

I'm confused, kris. I'm diabetic and have to watch my sugar intake. I do not require insulin, but if I were among the Michiganders on that bus to Canada, I'd be throwing my arms around Bernie Sanders, hugging him like a teddy bear.
Unless of course, you're referring to profiteering Big Pharma.

35

sorry for the confusion
auntie Gee! the wee
/s after 'hating Ber-
nie' means 'just
Kidding' put
there for
the 'WE

HATE his SOCIALISM!' crowd
always more than Anxious
to Shoot the Messenger.

39

"Can you even imagine the amount of taxes required to cover all the medical treatment that people current[ly[ get and expect to..."

I can Imagine it Easily
because other Human Beings
can do it in Their Countries and we're
the Richest Country in the History of Earth
but we'd rather give Tax Cuts to the unimaginably
Wealthy, let Big Oil rape Us let Corps slide Tax-wise
and it just goes on and on and and what tf are WE, Stupid?

I contend
we are NOT
but're too Easily
Misguided by those
cunningly Skilled at keeping
us at each other's sick throats.

41

Brilliant Comment Garbby

also "The only way to help such folks get back on their feet and sustain themselves as productive citizens, or to at least get the resources they need for mental health/substance use/disability care, is to recognize that they are as human as any one of you."

therein perhaps
lies the problem

42

@31, @41: The problem is not the lack of humanity in the homeless, or the lack of recognition of this humanity by the housed. The problem begins with Seattle’s degraded public discourse on the topic of homelessness. Anyone who walks past a homeless encampment in Seattle knows there are drug addictions at work there. Yet how many times have City Council Members and candidates ever mentioned addiction? How many times have headline posters at the Stranger reported seeing dirty needles at encampments? You cannot address a problem unless you can talk about that problem, and both the Stranger and the candidates it has endorsed have refused, year after year after year, to talk about that problem.

If ever they did, they would immediately find the cost of housing the homeless rising exponentially, because buying them houses is only the start. Wraparound medical care and follow-up is another order of magnitude. So any civic leader who admits this then has to find a way to ask Seattle’s citizens, who have long been exhausted of compassion by endless encampments of drug-addled thieves, to pay a whole heck of a lot more to solve a problem they’ve been paying to solve for many years now. Good luck with that.

If the Stranger had called then-CM O’Brien on his false claim about the homeless being our formerly housed neighbors, if the Stranger had called bullshit on CM Sawant’s (Blame) Amazon Tax, then Seattle might have started an honest conversation about homeless policy. But lies and nonsense led to bad public policy, and the consequences of those failed public policies have been ever-escalating numbers of dead homeless persons, and a housed population which just wants their parks, sidewalks, and greenbelts back. Your yelling at them to recognize the humanity of persons they’ve already paid half a billion (and counting!) dollars to help may make you feel better, but will otherwise accomplish nothing.

44

@31: I agree with your noble prose Garb. I just caution you not to conflate the necessary actions to address pressing problems as a lack of empathy. For example, a homeless encampment sweep is not without empathy because public safety, sanitation, and environmental restoration are needed for everyone on our planetary starship to survive.

45

@35 kristofarian: Okay. Gotcha. I forgot to factor in the brainwashed, fear-mongering MAGAt crowd's over-reaction to socialized medicine, or anything in the U.S. for the public good. They're willing to risk losing everything, including their air and water quality just to "own the libs". Too much cheap beer, carbs, sugar, and FOX TeeVee makes 'em rabid. B-b-but they gets to wave their flags and keep their guns! So what if Mal-a-Tardo (GOOD ONE, kris!) is on acres of overpriced swampland? So what if their "gawd" is a delusional con artist laughing his fat, saggy ass off? They don't need to worry about missin' a foot if they're sittin' at the table!
and
@39 kris for the WIN!

46

@31 Garb Garblar: I agree with kristofarian @41 and---surprise!!---raindrop @44.
Brilliant comment! So well said and summarized. In regards to the homeless problem, you nailed it.
I nominate you @31 and kris @39 for the twofer WIN!

47

@1: raindrop, dear, if "Wokeism kills" RepubliKKKan neofascism and MAGA-induced organized stupidity annihilate.

51

'@socialized medicine The
transition would be horrendous.
January 6th would look like a picnic.'

"Notice: Congrats!
YOU've been Selected
for our M4A Plan! no, you
didn't wake up in a Socialist Par-
adise -- it's just Common Sense!"

oh, the
Humanity.

I'm Certain
too the Riots'll
be Horrendous.

good
Thing
they've
got Medical.

52

@27: "The reporter on the CNN clip refers to the Earth’s center as a 400-mile ball of solid iron. Wouldn’t it have to be molten?"

That would depend on the phase diagram (solid/liquid/gas) of iron (or whatever alloy it is) at that particular temperature and pressure. Difficult conditions to replicate in a laboratory.

53

on drugs
the Homeless
& Too much Wealth

nyt: One Year Inside
a Radical New Approach
to America’s Overdose Crisis

or

One Year With a Team
Trying to Change America’s
‘Deep Hatred’ For Those Who Use Drugs

--by Jeneen Interlandi
NYTimes Editorial Board

two comments on the article:

" Thank you. Reading this article made me realize that it takes special people to have empathy for drug addicts, especially those who are homeless.

Also that it is even harder to have empathy in a country like America which emphasizes individuality, competition and lacks a social safety net.

If many feel like they can barely afford access to housing, healthcare, etc., even when sober and working full-time or more, there is less support for providing those things to people who did not ‘earn’ them.

Sadly, we, drugs addicts or not, are all victims of a society that is so unequal, individualistic and more focused on materialism and greed than on basic human values and needs."
--@Blue, New England

"@Blue Well said, thank you! But also, take heart – the folks I wrote about in this story are just one group in a vast network of passionate advocates. That network is egregiously underfunded as I say, but it is also filled with amazing people who are out there pushing everyday to make the world better.

I’d also say that one of the assumptions I came to this story with that was really challenged by the reporting I did, was that people who oppose harm reduction or support of any kind or people who use drugs feel that way because they simply don’t see those lives as having value. I think that’s true for some people. But not everyone.

A lot of people are angry and heartbroken precisely because of how much they love or loved people in their own lives who have succumbed to addiction. In some ways, that’s obviously a dark sad truth - that all of us have been touched by this crisis in one way or another.

But I also think it contains the seeds of our salvation. Because if there is love underneath all that anger, there must also be hope, right?"

--@Jeneen Interlandi
The New York Times
Feb. 22

omg what a fucking MESS.
if only we might De-
humanize Pharaoh-
like Wealth: look-
ing at YOU mr.s
Bezos Zucky
murdoch
Musk et
All.

55

@humungusfungusamongstus:

3 peeps owning
more Wealth than
HALF the Citizenry's
got Nuthin' to do with Any-
Thing. have I got that about right?

ok troll
ignore Inequality
it's working Well so far. ain't it?

57

@56: You forgot to mention how the vast majority of Bezos’ “wealth” exists only on paper, or as numbers in some server somewhere. So, by @55’s logic, something that doesn’t really ever actually exist somehow causes homelessness. Because he demands you prove otherwise. So there, he wins, no backsies!!1!

58

It's not empathy; it's selfishness. As long as you see yourself as greater than one person can accumulate in a lifetime, then you will want to get the best for yourself in all your multitudes, selfishly, to be the best on the national stage and make shit like Shinkansen from the power of necessity and ingenuity alone. Stop projecting the bullshit about racism and homogeneity as an excuse to solve a more potentially powerful equation if you can sort out its multiple competing variables and set them on a path to success. We have a national unsustainable problem that is not being proper addressed because first and foremost people do not fucking put themselves in the mindset of their neighbors who are suffering through their inability to cope with reality as a whole and adapting by self-destructive means.

WE cannot permit that. We have the power to lift each other up. It's not our responsibility to choose for others, but to say fuck it and do the right thing anyway by investing in things that work mathematically and statistically and with humanity to reduce these cases and update what needs to be updated to stop it. WE can't fucking outsmart the immense water hose of financial pressures that keeps people collapsed in the lurch and living in ripped up tents in freezing temperatures, injecting themselves after having infused with opioids for an accident for chronic pain and being rejected by their providers, turning to where they can get access with no upkeep. You can't understand what that's like until it's in your own realm, your own world, your own family, and it is, and you can't keep fucking ignoring it and saying that well I got mine and that's it, because you're just a fucking caveman. You're a caveman in a suit without the rest of us. Without the rest of what you inherited from every single person who died in the past to bring this moment to you and the ability to be a little bitch and whine about it online instead of lifting a finger and doing what it takes.

So be fucking selfish and do the right thing by your own future, the one you will inherit when you die in this body, and are reborn as "I" again. It doesn't matter who you are now, you will be someone later, and you can affect what future that person has. Every single day. So just make that your goal. You don't have to have the answers or the path now. But you can't dehumanize those around you, or you will have no solidarity or future.

59

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AzAFqrxfeY

60

@58: Sigh. Good job ignoring everything I wrote @42. Seattle doesn’t have a homelessness crisis because Amazon expanded, and we know this because Seattle declared a homelessness crisis BEFORE Amazon’s expansion caused a dramatic increase in Seattle’s housed population. CM Sawant, like CM O’Brien before her, spent years lying about Amazon’s supposed culpability. But their lies merely cost them their jobs; it didn’t make their lies into truths.

Seattle’s homelessness crisis happened because Seattle’s political leaders ignored the clearly-stated values of Seattle’s citizens. Back when that homelessness crisis was declared, elected officials floated the idea of allowing camping on all public land. The result was a tsunami of communications from Seattle’s citizens, telling them not to allow this. City Attorney Holmes and the CMs mentioned above simply ignored the citizens, and so tents sprouted everywhere (except for in wealthy neighborhoods, of course).

Seattle’s homelessness crisis festered because those same political leaders ignored the addictions you mentioned. Pretending the homeless just needed homes led to fiascos like the Licton Springs tiny village, and the arson fire at Renton’s former Red Lion. Seattle has spent half a billion dollars failing to house a few thousand homeless persons, because those persons need to get sober before they can stay housed.

So please, stop calling your fellow citizens cavemen. Stop telling them to care more, that their half a billion dollars just wasn’t good enough. Stop lecturing them on their supposed lack of humanity because they dare to want their children to have needle-free playgrounds. Just stop. It may make you feel smugly superior, but otherwise does less than nothing to help anyone.

Please, just stop.

61

@54 & @56: David in Shoreline, is that you? Isn't it becoming a bit tedious changing your username more often than most people change socks? Are you wanted by the feds or something? Tell Muffy I said hi.

@55 kristofarian, re @54 and @56, Karl the FungusAmongUs: He's a cold, sad, lonely, angrily trolling little MAGAt, and the latest among raindrop's roomies all too eager for the high carbs, sugar, and free cable. He's most likely pissed that when they drew sleeping assignments he got the low bunk, and furthest away from the bathroom. Some guys are just lucky I guess.

62

@61: Have you one or more specific objections to what Karl TH has written? If so, please do let us know what they are. (I’ve already written my criticism of @55, which you’re free to use an an example of how to respond to another commenter.)

63

yes auntie Gee
listen to Mother
tentsy's pleadings
bleetings & rationales
or he'll unleash another
ten thousand word Tirade
on your ass sans Footnotes
replete with inanities stinkers
casual fabrications & outright Lies
and typically dripping with Condescension

and if the Truth
might somehow Leak in
even a hall monitor's 'right'
maybe as much as Twice per day:

(I’ve already written my criticism of @55, which you’re free to use an an example of how to respond to another commenter.)

[So, by @55’s logic…"

@55:
"3 peeps owning
more Wealth than
HALF the Citizenry's
got Nuthin' to do with Any-
Thing. have I got that about right?"

"… something that doesn’t really ever actually exist somehow causes homelessness.]

and speaking of cherry picking:

@58: Sigh. Good job ignoring everything I wrote @42.

64

"(I’ve already written my criticism of @55, which you’re free to use an an example of how to respond to another commenter.)

[So, by @55’s logic…"

@55:
"3 peeps owning
more Wealth than
HALF the Citizenry's
got Nuthin' to do with Any-
Thing. have I got that about right?"

"… something that doesn’t really ever actually exist somehow causes homelessness.]" --@tensy above

fixed. well
punctuationally
at any rate

66

@63, @64: So, how exactly does Bezos’ paper wealth cause homelessness? It’s not like he bought up huge numbers of actual houses and evicted their inhabitants. What’s the connection?


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