Congrats to RFKJ for receiving confirmation approval from the Finance committee. When he is finally confirmed by the whole Senate, we can start Making America Healthy Again. I'd start by removing the ability to purchase anything other than single ingredient, minimally processed foods with SNAP benefits. Hello, fresh beef. Goodbye Pepsi. Did you know that 85% of SNAP dollars go to purchase highly processed foods and that a majority of SNAP recipients are overweight or obese?

Of course the Department of Education should be disbanded immediately. The quality of public education in this country has declined markedly since the Dept. Of Education was created. Leave public education to the States, that's what I always say.

Goodbye EPA probationary employees. Don't worry about "Climate Change" so much. Exactly zero percent of the devastating predictions have actually come true.

Why would UW need to message about Jones being Black? Does a certain skin color make you a better or worse at your job? He was a meritorious hire, given his previous experience. Great job President Jones! Welcome to Washington.

“This morning, car-
rot sticks and fascism
beat vaccine science.”

uh-oh Hannah
our grammar Nazi’s
Not gonna cotton to your so
Loosely tossing that word around

expect months of overly-tiresome
tediousness untethered to this
or any current reality – yet
another Distraction in
furthering fascism

"It’s like that one time you
misspelled “detail-oriented” on
your resume, but, you know, worse."

does this mean
we're gonna
finally get
our Edit
button?

THNX
Hannah!

Disappointing to hear about the allegations against Neil Gaiman. My daughter and I enjoyed reading Coraline together and the Sandman stories were excellent.
Tell me though, do we automatically assume he’s guilty like we did with Brett Kavanaugh or do we wait for the evidence like we did for Joe Biden?
It’s hard to keep straight.

"Exactly
zero percent
of the devastating
predictions [re Catastrophic
Climate Disaster] have actually come true."

see: atmospheric rivers, California
Firestorms -- it's Always smoke season!
Hurricane too; '500-year-floods' on an Annual basis

you're
''right''
as Usual
babyback
but keep 'em
comin' anyways.

Thank you for not linking to Twitter on today's Slog!

The gaiman allegations have been public for years. You’re allowed to believe whichever allegations you like for whatever reasons but I would suggest that if there are multiple corroborating accounts, you should trust the allegations. And if you have a single allegation, their consistency and their willingness to go on the public record to risk perjury or defamation charges should be decisive in your decision to believe them. If you apply those standards to gaiman, kavanagh, and biden you won’t be struggling to keep anything straight.

@4

we assumed
Kavanaughtius
Maximus was a
lying liar who just
Happened to Love
his beers more than
he respected women

but the FBI*
was too damn
Busy to Investigate
allegations against a
reich-wing apparatchik

and we DID get
Promises of Retribution
& a well-stacked USSC rubber stamp.

*Federal Bureau
of What?

Ah, the perils of Stranger sports coverage! In the high school basketball item Slog wrote that the schools are “predominantly” Black (no, West Seattle HS-4.6% and Garfield HS-29.6%, according to the state OSPI website). And, Garfield (not West Seattle) won the game, 48-38.

Bring back the real Hannah. Make the Slog great.

@10 Don't be a pathetic simp.

@10 - I think Hannah has good instincts for journalism if she peruses it. Although her views were often annoying to me, I saw her make progress in depth and comprehension and in how to tell a story.

@7,

I suspect you're underestimating the Saxman's potential to struggle and be confused.

I'm disappointed that we didn't even a mention that Hannah and Ashley have resigned, or an acknowledgment of the genuinely shocking allegations of journalistic malpractice described by Erica Barnett: https://publicola.com/2025/02/03/two-stranger-reporters-resign-concluding-investigation-into-ethical-breaches/

@1 Nutrition-related SNAP purchase restrictions may sound good in theory, but in practice they would force already super-stressed store clerks to assume the role of food cop. Violence both verbal and physical on a daily basis at supermarkets throughout the country would be the most likely result. But since cruelty is the point with Trump, we may soon find out for sure.

@CK

when our
Chaos hits
CODE f RED
our poor hair
Furor'll be Forced
to Call out HIS Military

then it's
adiosa
dear
tS

& some of this
Commentariat too
I'd suspicion. see you

on Greenland!
bring a Sweater!
& a mosquito net

It’s funny (in a stockholm syndrome kind of way, not the fun/lol kind of way) that people are more concerned with how poor people are spending their meager food allowances than the billionaires currently fleecing taxpayers to line their already overflowing pockets. They’re taking away benefits that are there for you if you ever have the misfortune of needing them. They are protecting their class interests at the expense of ours.

I will never understand why people of ordinary means are happy to bend over over and get railed by billionaires so they can make life harder for people who are within arm’s length of their own situation. You will never be a billionaire but you are one injury or debilitating diagnosis away from relying on food stamps and social security to survive. There are millions of people who think like this, many who are already dependent on the government to live, and the only thing they know how to do competently is vote away their benefits and their rights.

barth @17: "It’s funny (in a stockholm syndrome kind of way, not the fun/lol kind of way) that people are more concerned with how poor people are spending their meager food allowances than the billionaires currently fleecing taxpayers to line their already overflowing pockets."

barth, it's always worth noting that it's the billionaires, not the poor, who can afford to unleash an army of disinformation operatives to cunningly exploit human psychology and advocate for their interests. Whether those operatives are hired apparatchiks or useful idiots we'll never fully know, although I imagine that the former will eventually largely get replaced by AI. Of course, it's also the billionaires, not the poor, who can afford to own media outlets.

@1 how many muscle ups can u do

@15 - there would be no more work or stress for grocery store workers. POS systems can easily be programmed to recognize which staples are SNAP eligible and which are not. (See WIC program for an example.) Are store clerks getting into knock-down fights for refusing to sell alcohol or tobacco products on SNAP? No of course not.

@17 - yes, I'm very concerned about SNAP. We subsidize poisonous foods and then we subsidize health care for the chronic illnesses that result. But go ahead and die on that hill you've climbed. You are in good company with Coca-Cola, Pepsi Co, et al, as they all share your position.

@20 - since I have no idea what a muscle up is, I couldn't say. I do 100 push-ups every other day in sets of 20. Not all at once but throughout the day. And I walk about 25,000 steps per day. Thanks to the dogs mostly.

Remember when Michelle Obama was recommending healthier foods for kids, and conservatives were screaming that we were in Nazi Germany? I don’t think they really care about nutrition as much as installing every one of Trump’s stooges, who will invariably cave to industry lobbyists. Hell, no need for lobbyists if cabinet members just let Elon and his teenage boytoys loot every department.

@21 WIC is not a valid analogy to SNAP because WIC is a much smaller, more tightly controlled program in which each client has a caseworker who gives them a specific list of what they can buy. There's no realistic way to scale that for SNAP's tens of millions of recipients, and trying to do so would cost many times more than it would save.

Sure, the actual decision to process a SNAP transaction would be made via computer, but in most cases it would still be a human store clerk's job to inform (and absorb feedback from) the customer. Yes, most customers would take it in stride but even if only one percent don't, multiply that by the thousands of transactions that take place every day in a single supermarket, then multiply that across the whole country, and it's not hard to imagine the problems that would arise. (And yes, conflicts do occur over the few prohibited items already.)

@21, The government isn’t going to make anyone healthy by micromanaging what people can buy with their food stamps but that’s beside the point. I can recall a time when conservatives claimed to believe in individual liberty but that’s also beside the point. The richest person in the world is fleecing the American public and making a mockery of the constitution and dipshits like you are too dumb to know any better.

@25, The government isn't going to make people any healthier by trying to micromanage what objects they can buy either.

There is widespread evidence that excise taxes on sugary drinks and tobacco drive down consumption but "conservatives" are opposed to them or at least they were until yesterday (not that whatever they say should be trusted to indicate what they'll do)

@17 reminds me of:

"To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register."

from Slaughterhouse Five

Sorry to split hairs here, Ed., but
DOE is the Department of Energy.
Department of Education was DEd,
but more recently referred to as...
ED, Ed..
Keep up the good work.

@21 word then shut tf up about health, you're flabby and weak