Even motherfucker's bad lawyers aren't dumb enough to put a pathological liar on the stand.

That train dodged a bullet. That landslide must have just happened prior to the train getting to Kelso.

First they came for the University Bridge, and I did not speak out—because I take light rail.
Then they came for I-5, and I did not speak out—because I take light rail.
Then they came for the U District Station—and there was no way left for me to get downtown.

whoa
that's Cool!

Israel teaching
Gazans how to get
around Bombed-Out
Gaza -- PARKOUR! what's
a little Genocide if the few
remaining Survivors can get a
good Workout whist headed to
the next "Safe Zone"? no big deal!

oh
and
Someone
oughtta Warn
deSantos his fugly
Mug might Freeze if
he holds that Grimace
for more than 25 seconds.

“The total cost is now estimated somewhere around $445 million with a completion date of 2031.”

Half a fucking billion dollars, and years of construction downtown, all to connect a trolley which has good ridership numbers (the SLUT) with one that hasn’t (First Hill), by duplicating Link tunnel service and downtown bus service. It will combine the inflexible route of the former with the speed of the latter. How on earth anyone could possibly believe this to be a good idea is totally beyond me.

Bonus points to the Stranger, for actually complaining the current City Council might kill this worthless, traffic-snarling money pit. (Because the Stranger will always and forever only complain about the current City Council, no matter what.)

Let's face it, they are too scared to go and protest against the lack of ADA accessibility at ST stations, or the user-hostile anti-ADA bus shelters in this city, because they only care about a failed war in another country they can't do anything about (yes, we're sending planeloads of equipment no you can't stop any of it)

@7
What?

no 'two-
state" solution?
accept BiBi's final of-
fer for His Final Solution*
or Nothing? kinda Doubt you
speak for ANY Anti-Genociders.

@9 -- Not
his Fault Garbby.
he's a "Republican."

*Hamas
either Surrenders
or every single Hamas
is exterminated & Never Mind! all
the Orwellian-speak "collateral damage"?

TWENTY FIVE
T H O U S A N D
Dead Palestinians?
so fucking Far & Counting?

and how many Buried
ALIVE and Never
to be Counted?

with another
Hundred Thousand
Horribly Injured & vir-
tually NO Medical Assistance?

yeah.
let the
Genocide
continue Unabated?

Excellent Plan.

On a positive note paying all these protestors to block freeways and airports has left the DSA on shaky financial ground and now they have to layoff people from their national organizations. I guess they too are all about "austerity budgeting"

https://socialistcall.com/news/a-temporary-stopgap-to-protect-the-future-of-dsa/

Ah, DeSantis. He is indeed an absolute shitbag right down to his shoe lifts. A spineless pile of naked self-interest who’d step on his own mother’s neck for another few seconds at the public money trough. Somebody hurt this guy at some point, and his ability to exist as a normal human being has been AWOL ever since.

Of course he’s gonna endorse Trump, because he can’t even conceive of acting with any semblance of integrity. He only knows how to punch down. It’s his one small, sad talent. He has a complete blank spot where his balls should be, smoother than a Ken doll and even more vacuous.

Good riddance.

re Alaska Airlines SNL skit.
Hilarious!
And @3 FTW! You can always take a Metro bus downtown, and enjoy the fun!

@9, 12,

Comically sad and embarrassing as that endorsement is, in thinking about it I'm guessing it was nothing more than a calculated and cynical political gambit on his part (albeit still very much sad and embarrassing.) Once Trump's convictions start coming down he (shitball Ron) probably thinks he'll be offered a window back into the race and doesn't want to risk alienating Trump's base any more than he already has.

A thing I've been wondering is if the RNC reserves the right to nominate someone other than the formal "winner" of their dumb campaign. Assuming extraordinary circumstances, such as their presumptive nominee's conviction on felony charges or whatever.

I guess Christopher Rufo, yet again, made the wrong call. He could have been appointed to the council as a previously failed candidate (no shortage of options there!).

Instead he tied his prospects to a disastrously failed POTUS campaign. He may be a skilled propagandist. But he has miserable political instincts — perhaps these are related?

Where to next, Wonder Bread Boy?

@14 Ahab: Hamas has the ability to stop the fighting in an instant by releasing the hostages and ceasing fire!

Egypt: Here's a proposal to cease fire and release all of the hostages. https://www.npr.org/2023/12/27/1221761431/gaza-israel-ceasefire-palestinians-war
Hamas: We agree with this plan in principle and are willing to negotiate.
Israel: Nothing doing. Keep bombing!

It's almost like the current Israeli government isn't interested in a cease fire, even if it returns all of the hostages. Weird.

It's so bad that Israel's military leadership is saying that a cease fire is a good idea if the goal is release of the hostages. So apparently senior leadership of the IDF is in league with Hamas by your standards.

Protestors "denounce the links between the publicly-funded Sound Transit and multinational conglomerate, Siemens, who works to enhance Israeli occupation and colonization in Palestine."

Good god, how many degrees-of-separation are they going use to justify their pathetic performance Art?

I hope they don’t drive Volkswagens, especially on the freeways; those were invented by Nazis.

Biden's abominable support for what's happening in Gaza along with all the other misery in this country is cratering his approval rating into the 30%'s – lowest for a first term since Truman in the 1940s, and his reelection chances are about done. Trump's second term will be difficult for some people, but it's time to start preparing and thinking of how to make the best of it.

@18:

“Hamas: We agree with this plan in principle and are willing to negotiate.”

The actual quote, from the NPR link:

‘Hamas in a statement did not reject the latest proposal outright, saying it "has received initiatives and proposals from several countries" for a permanent truce.‘

Now thaaaaaaaaaaaat’s not a big stretch, no siree!

(Finding any evidence of any kind whatsoever which could come even that close to substantiating, “Israel: Nothing doing. Keep bombing!” remains left as an exercise for the reader.)

@21 Well, golly gee, let's see.

Per the article: "Hamas and Islamic Jihad support the outlines of the proposal."

Per the article: "The Israeli war cabinet has discussed the proposal [but] offered no public response to the plan."

So that definitely says that Israel is totally in favor of the plan and Hamas is the roadblock to negotiations. Also, experimental evidence has shown that Israel did not make any further moves on the proposal from late December, and has continued bombing. So I think I'm pretty fair in my description of Israel's response. I mean, unless you can come up with some other evidence.

It’s 2024 and weather-related service stoppage still happens on the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland Amtrak run. Sounds so 1876. Seems to happen too often although it probably doesn’t compared to the days when it does run smoothly. The Los Angeles-San Diego trip is encountering that stuff fairly often these days, too. It’s a lovely ride, but that loveliness is part of the problem. More than a bit of that trip runs right along the sand with the Pacific on one side, unstable cliffs and hills on the other. Also, looking forward to that fine day when Amtrak is faster. Jesus, a three-hour car trip takes half a day on Amtrak. Fine if leisure is the goal, but if you need to be someplace, it isn’t tenable.

Yeah, ouch. But the SNL bit was high-larious. And didn’t Jacob Elordi fit in just right? Talented little boy. Don’t think he’s going to be flavor-of-the-month. And yeah, I’m old enough to be his great grand-pappy, but, you know, hubba-hubba. I’m not terribly familiar with airlines and airplanes, but should we be ragging Alaska for that incident as much as Boeing or should we rag both equally? I don’t have great affection for Alaska Airlines, but they were for years dependable (particularly for West Coast travel) and fairly courteous and professional onboard. Had a couple of sour encounters with gate personnel, but that can happen. I guess I’m sad that a once good reputation has become rather tainted.

I love watching parkour. It’s one of those incidences where young men (you don’t see many women doing it but those who do or want to, go on wich yo’ bad self) can be elegant, graceful, and butch all at once. You needn’t be Einstein. In fact, given the risks, it’s probably best not to be. You just need a frustration towards gravity and resentment at being earthbound. I can’t place something as gloriously free as parkour amongst the ruins of Gaza. I’m fighting the urge to say something highly prejudicial.

Why would Republicans choose one insincere right-wing skeezer over another insincere right-wing skeezer? The only difference really between DeSantis and the former president is who they'll fuck first. And this morning's NYT has a story about how Nikki Haley has been filling her fucking pockets from the get-go. Only $24K a year salary from being in the State House in SC with a business fuck-up husband losing money with each new scheme. She had to do something, right? Here a lobby, there a lobby, everywhere a lobby-lobby.

Remind me - did any manufacturer other than Siemens bid on the Sound Transit light rail contract? Or at least one that isn't a multinational conglomerate? Bolting those things together isn't exactly a mom'n'pop operation.

“Israel has given Hamas a proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators that includes up to two months of a pause in the fighting as part of a multi-phase deal that would include the release of all remaining hostages held in Gaza, two Israeli officials said.”

(https://www.axios.com/2024/01/22/israel-hamas-gaza-ceasefire-hostages)

Most of us learned in high school that while riding a SLUT may be easy, it’s often not as cheap as you think it will be.

@24 The cease-fire proposal cited in @31 put forward /by Israel/ is for a temporary cease fire and release of hostages. So the Israeli negotiators are pro-Hamas now since a temporary cease fire is one-sided and pro-Hamas?

FWIW, the proposal in the NPR article I cited from late December included a permanent cease-fire. But don't let facts confuse you. I know you live very comfortably in your impenetrable bubble.

@31 Per the article "the Israeli war cabinet approved ten days ago the parameters of a new proposal for a hostage deal, which are different from past aspects of deals rejected by Hamas and more forward-leaning than previous Israeli proposals."

Golly, it's /almost/ like back in December they said that the Egyptian proposal in late December was unacceptable and kept up the bombing. Something changed in the meantime and they put forward a proposal. It doesn't exactly help your case that Netanyahu has categorically rejected trading an end to the war for hostages. So there's an Israeli proposal on the table, but Netanyahu isn't on board. Good messaging, guys!

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-01-22-24/index.html [It's way the heck down the page under the headline "Gaza death toll passes 25,000 as Netanyahu rejects hostage deal to end war."

But do read this spicy little tidbit about how the Most Moral Army In The World (tm) conducts itself. Israel has desecrated at least 16 cemeteries in Gaza, upturning headstones and removing bodies. Purportedly they were looking for hostages' bodies, but that doesn't exactly explain why they destroyed graves that predated 10/7. The CNN reporters embedded in an IDF convoy were driven right through a cemetery on a bulldozed road. They could see the graves on either side of the track. And at a few sites, the IDF also bulldozed the entire cemetery and turned it into a military site complete with raised berm fortifications. I eagerly await Ahab's frothy justifications for why Hamas made them run a road through a cemetery. Should be fun.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/20/middleeast/israel-gaza-cemeteries-desecrated-investigation-intl-cmd/index.html

Dune, Dessert Planet. It was as if a long beach had many people, and the rest of the universe didn't care at all.

Which they don't.

I really appreciate the slog every morning but can the slog crew please stop linking to Twitter. I didn't think the site could get much worse but it is now overrun with really scummy advertising

If people stop caring about what's on Twitter, eventually people will stop posting on Twitter. Please do your part and let Twitter go so it can continue its death spiral into irrelevancy, bots, and crypto ads. It's already well on it's way

"Hamas: We agree with
this plan in principle and
are willing to negotiate. Israel:
Nothing doing. Keep bombing!"

fuck.
Butwhat-
tabout tentsey's
Narrative. you know:

"if only the Left'd call for
Hamas to Surrender!"? that
argument's still Valid, is it Not?

"It's
almost
like the current
Israeli government isn't interested
in a cease fire, even if [Hamas] returns all of the hostages."

no.
BiBi don't
Want no Stinkin'
fuckin' CEASEFIRE.

what
BiBi Want:
Palestine Land.

"Weird."

hiding
behind
HAMAMS!
ain't "weird."

it's
Prag-
matic.

@25 Because Hillary isn't going to run again and Bernie Sanders is the complex conjugate of John Thune.

@40 You're moving the goalposts again. In @24 you said that a temporary cease fire to exchange hostages was one sided and solely to the benefit of Hamas. Why is it then that the Israeli negotiators proposed exactly that? Are the Israeli negotiators pro-Hamas?

Also, when did I ever say that Israel doesn't have a right to self defense? All I'm saying is that Israel also has a responsibility to conduct the war in a way that respects the rights of civilians /even when Hamas doesn't/. Just because Hamas murders civilians doesn't give Israel the right to do the same.

And what about bulldozing cemeteries to build military fortifications? War crime or not? (Hint: yes)

@42 https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml, take your pick of of items b.ii, b.v, b.ix.

Note also that b.vi makes it a war crime to kill or injure an unarmed person who has surrendered (ie carrying a white flag). Israel violates that one on the regular. Item b.xxi likely prevents stripping prisoners, also a common practice. And, of course, stopping food aid to civilians violates b.xxv.

See also:
https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2021-09/2021%20Factsheet%20-%20Destruction%20of%20Cemeteries_0.pdf

https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/1954_Convention_EN_2020.pdf
And yes, Israel is a signatory to the 1954 Convention.

Yep, them goalposts is a-movin'! I guess those Israeli negotiators are tools of Hamas. Crazy how far they infiltrated into the Israeli government.

Thank you, Max Solomon, DOUG, kristofarian, Catalina Vel-DuRay, pat L, Bauhaus I, dvs99, and Garb Garblar for all your spot on comments and beating me to it.

WOW. Hilarious SNL skit or not, I have no intention of ever flying again, period. Too much fossil fuel is used, all the bad PR regarding Alaska Airlines and Boeing, and luckily I have had little need to fly anywhere. Corporate greed is going to be the end of this planet.

@13 schmacky: I knew I'd accidentally left someone off my thank you list. Sorry!
Consider yourself added to @44, joining Max Solomon, DOUG, kristofarian, Catalina Vel-DuRay, pat L, Bauhaus I, dvs99, and Garb Garblar on my list of spot on comments.

As grateful as I am about Ron DeSatan dropped out, RepubliKKKans are truly horrible excuses for people.

let us commend
Also boatgeek doing
the Anti-fascist* work that
Needs to be Done & eloquently.

*why do Fascists
Hate that
word
so?

"For the Gazan,
the choice has been Hamas"

yep.
in 2007.
nearly a Generation's
passed since Hamas's
Allowed the Gazan to
even fucking Vote. tho
with Israel's Genocidal
Ethnic Cleansing they've
likely increased Sympathy
for even their terroristic bent.

Israel's on a path
to Isolate itself from
the Rest of the Planet

they've Squandered
all the Sympathy they
once garnered and all
so BiBi Nutnyahoo can
keep his corrupt ass outta

Prison. let the War
Crimes Tribunals begin.

Hamas just rejected Israel’s offer of a ceasefire. It appears they’d rather keep their Israeli hostages than stop Palestinians from dying.

“Hamas rejects two-month ceasefire, release of hostages - report
Hamas insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before agreeing to release any more hostages”

(https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1706019134-hamas-rejects-israel-s-proposal-for-two-month-ceasefire-release-of-hostages-report)

@43 boatgeek: How did I miss your spot on posts? Bravo and well said!

@46 kristofarian: Agreed--praise for boatgeek, too!
Agreed, too, that fascists hate anti-fascists--because fascists are into hatred.
It's all part of their cult.
The U.S. is just getting too weird, particularly this year. The GOP is transfixed upon the Holocaust, with their own corrupt Adolf Hitler, DJT the Orange Turd leading them in lockstep.