Dismal SLOG.

To be intellectually consistent, The Stranger should be cheering the wealth and income equally effect of the stock market cratering. It bites the wealthiest and highest income earners disproportionately hard.

Meanwhile, home equity, the largest source of net worth for the bottom 90% of the income spectrum, went up 3.3%.

All progress toward wealth and income equality.

Oral rape?
The last time I ate anything (except the donuts) from 7-11 was oral rape

"So Much for Job Growth: Despite federal layoffs, US employers added 228,000 jobs last month. We'll see how this forced global recession impacts things in coming months."

I was seeing a post on Bluesky suggesting that these numbers were doctored because the federal layoffs were deliberately excluded for no legitimate reason. We'll see if a news outlet picks that up. Maybe one already has. Potemkin village labor statistics?--one of true sigs we are living in an authoritarian regime.

Big slap on the back to the apparent tens of millions of Trump voters and the tens of millions of non-voters who are somehow surprised that Trump is doing all the shit that he said he'd do. The one group of people that isn't surprised? The overwhelming majority of us Harris voters.

@1:

Of course you fail to note that the uber-greedy - er, wealthy - while taking hits, still have more than enough to tide them over (okay, maybe they'll have to sell one of their fleet of 100-foot yachts they use as tenders for their 400-foot super-yachts), and certainly enough to jump in on the upcoming Wall Street Fire Sale to pick up juicy deals on cratering stocks, thus substantially making up on whatever losses they've suffered. Meanwhile the rest of us are watching our retirement savings swirl down the loo and wondering if there will be anything left to live on by the time we're forced out of the job market for being too old and "unproductive" (read: making higher wages due to our years of experience) in favor of younger, lower-wage workers, while The Incredible Husk guts our Social Security fund like a fishmonger taking a chainsaw to a salmon.

@3 Which Harris voters?
Beyonce, Oprah, Lebron, Taylor, JLo, Bad Bunny and several other celebrity Billionaires. Or did you mean Pelosi, Schumer, Bernie and AOC and all the others that gaslit us and said that Biden had full mental acuity? There is tons of blame to share... with many bad actors, both in hollywood and politics. Wouldn't you agree?

Putting up guerilla stop signs is the most Seattle thing ever, peak passive aggression.

@5: incoherence.

@4, "Meanwhile the rest of us are watching our retirement savings swirl down the loo."

That outcome also promotes income and wealth equality by closing the gap with the lowest income workers. Finally, baristas and retail workers will have wealth and income parity with folks like you and I.

@1: Oh please, Nathalie's is the best Slog AMer we have, hardly as snarky and agenda-driven as some staffers are.

@7,

You've had the glaringly obvious logical fallacy of this attempted "gotcha!" assertion explained to how many times now?

You've also claimed on numerous occasions here to not support Trump, though I'd like to invite you to start doing so. Your childishly stupid and petty brand of rhetoric aligns quite nicely with his, and that of his childishly stupid, petty sycophantic supporters. You'll find yourself right at home in the GOP.

@5 Blame to go around? The blame lies with people who voted for Trump, sat out the election, or voted for their "protest" candidate (seriously, who the fuck votes for Jill Stein with a clear conscious?). The choice was simple if you were paying attention. But if you were trying to make a statement or clinging to your purity politics, you're reaping what you sowed. And so is everyone else.

I have a friend who was fired by DOGE and he never received the paperwork he needed to file for unemployment. I think this may be deliberate to keep the unemployment claims down, though I haven’t heard that this is a widespread problem.

@10: I disagree. No matter how people voted or didn't vote, nobody expected this amount of damage to the economy. Blaming is vengeance and it doesn't get you anywhere. America had two very problematic candidates and the blame starts with the DNC and RNC if you're really looking for someone to blame. But blaming shouldn't be your highest priority now.

I'm reading this comment @5, and of course, it's a bad-faith attempt at false equivalence which I figure even the writer can scarcely muster any enthusiasm for. But I do have to point out the first line: "Beyonce, Oprah, Lebron, Taylor, JLo, Bad Bunny and several other celebrity Billionaires."

First off, I can't imagine that JLo and Bad Bunny are billionaires. (Perhaps this makes me guilty of underestimating Puerto Rican American wealth.) But I can tell you one characteristic all these individuals do share. They would all make infinitely better POTUS's than the current one. You know why? Because none of them is a megalomaniacal, narcissistic sociopath, and all of them would sincerely want to do what is best for our nation.

speaking up, here's a little suggestion. Why not come out of your shell and communicate with the rest of us like you're a normal human being and we're normal human beings--y'know, like if we were talking to each other in person? I mean, the sort of political rhetoric you're engaging in--we might as well let AI spit out that sort of predictable agitprop anymore.

@9: um, ok. maybe you meant a different @7?

@1, This is completely backwards. Most Americans have their retirement tied up in 401Ks and they will be hit much harder than the investor class, who reap others’ losses in market crashes because they have the capital to ride it out and buy more stock when they bottom out. They’re in it for the long haul but anyone who plans to retire in the coming months-to-years or however this drags on will be fucked. Market crashes don’t fix inequality, they make it worse.

The inequality problem in this country isn’t driven by the middle class vs. the working poor, it’s billionaires and multi-millionaires vs. everyone else. The goal is not to even things out by making the middle class poor but to tax the ultra wealthy so they’re slightly less rich and the rest of us don’t have to fight over table scraps while hoping the market holds on long enough to survive through retirement. If you don’t know this already, I’m afraid you might be an idiot.

My retirement savings has taken a huge hit. Fortunately I'll be dead soon from E coli.

@15 "The blame lies with people who voted for Trump, sat out the election, or voted for their "protest" candidate"

Seems like there's a person who you forgot to mention, whose one job was to win the election, that probably bears at least a little culpability for not winning. Probably at least a little more than, say, someone who voted for Jill Stein in one of the 40 or so states where the outcome was not in doubt. But hey by all means don't let me detract from your righteous outrage.

@14,

Yeah, sorry, didn't realize there were two of you!

@12 All of us who didn't vote for him expected ALL OF this. That's why we didn't vote for him.

@15 that'd
be a BINGO.

skilled at Propaganda
shredding Any UNITY
keeping us at each
other's throats

how many Yachts're
Too Fucking
Many?

b. how many
Homeless're
Too Fucking
few? we're
About to
Find Out.

"The guerilla stop signs did prompt Seattle... to gather data... and see if stop signs would be necessary."
What?....What??!!!........WHAT????????!!!!!!!! Did the Stranger actually just acknowledge that the city has taken swift action on a potential problem, even if it is only prelim???????!!!!!!
Zut alors!!!! That's great news. It means that Trump will be gone tomorrow & Jesus will be coming Monday!!!!

Since when has Trump ever made his intentions unclear? Jesus tapdancing Christ on a cracker. There is no excuse.

@17: Most of us are pretty sure voters determine the outcomes of elections, but if you've got a different theory, please do let us know.

"Seems like there's a person who you forgot to mention,"

Oh, you mean the person who said this?

“But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.”

“This is ground zero to punish Kamala Harris and defeat her.”

No problem. No one in Seattle will ever forget who said that.

It’s always the candidate’s responsibility to earn votes. Granted, running against a pathological liar and con artist presents a unique challenge to anyone playing by the traditional rules but the responsibility is still theirs alone to secure enough votes to win.

I'm reading the comment by thirteen12 @17, and when it comes to assigning blame for Trump's victory, I certainly don't blame folks like thirteen12. If anything, I have to offer him my begrudging congratulations. If I blame anyone, it's the millions of gullible rubes who succumbed to the relentless disinformation campaign coming from the likes of thirteen12 and decided to sit this one out or vote for a third-party candidate like Vladimir Putin dinner party guest Jill Stein.

thirteen12, I do have to wonder though. I know it's hard to resist spiking the football. But rather than looking backwards, shouldn't you be reserving your energy for discrediting the new generation of Democrats who are emerging to challenge MAGA? Although, in fairness to you, you did engage in a pretty raw attempted character assassination of Cory Booker the other day for his marathon Senate speech. I dunno, could Senator Booker find himself more in your graces if he managed to get a chummy dinner invite from the Kremlin?

"Buying a Home? In This Economy?"
Home prices have nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with the corrupt state of the Real Estate Sales industry.
55yrs ago when I studied for the license I never wanted or used, first, no agent was allowed to represent BOTH the buyer & seller simultaneously (without notice). And, second, it was both illegal & unethical for an agent to present an offer to a seller if there was an earlier offer pending. The first offer had to be rejected for the second to be presented. That means BOTH buyers & sellers had to carefully consider their offers & acceptance/rejections. If the buyer low balled & the offer was rejected, he missed his chance if there was another offer waiting. If a greedy seller rejected an offer hoping for more, he might have missed the highest offer he would ever get. It was an efficient, considered market. What we have now is definitely NOT a market. It's BIDDING WARS, nothing else.
The real estate industry thinks it's smart by driving up prices to drive up their commission. (What's happened is, if the seller is smart, he just negotiates for a flat rate.) The sellers think they're on to a good deal because prices are driven up. What actually happens is, every 10-20 years, the market crashes and all the buyers relying on refinancing to pay their mortgage, lose their houses. Agents can't sell (or earn) for a couple of years. And there are no more neighborhoods. Only gated communities with people looking to sue their neighbors at the slightest irritation.

Democracy for all!
Booooooooo!
Very well, Democracy for no one!
Booooooooo!
Hmm...Democracy for some, miniature American flags for others!
Yaaaaaaaaay!

"Existing? In this economy?"
Does anyone really think Trump gives a shit about tariffs? There is absolutely only one thing Trump cares about: TRUMP'S MONEY!!!
Unless I miss my guess, this is just another Trump Pump N Dump. Trump, on behalf of his minions, is purposely tanking the market. They're Vulture Investors. They love to see the market tank because they get to Buy Low.
I checked, and Trump didn't do this when he was first elected. But one year later, Covid hit and the market tanked any way. Don't you think they learned from that? It was a perfect example of what to do this time. In a couple of months, Trump will be all....."Tariffs? What tariffs? Tariffs are the worst! Only an idiot would erect tariffs!! Where did all those tariffs come from? Who put those tariffs in place? Let me at 'em!!"
And the tariffs will come down, the market will soar, and Trump & Co will make more money.

Conservatives Democrats and their allies never take responsibility for electoral losses even though they effectively control the Democratic party. They lose twice to a terrible candidate like Trump and its always the fault of the voter, of progressives, of the 3rd party candidates who attracted less than 1% of the vote and of course don't forget the Russians. All so they can claim that their pro-status quo policies and campaign priorities had nothing to do with the losses. Pathetic losers have to be sidelined if we want to have a chance of turning this ship around

"Wear a helmet if you ride an e-scooter...."
Think of it (people who don't wear protective gear) as evolution in action.

@22 FTW!

averagebob @29, I knew my comment @25 would set off your bat signal.

I don't think anyone here is claiming that both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are blameless for Trump's victory. Personally, I believe both of them can look in the mirror as to why Trump won and both of them should shut up and disappear forever. Just, our point is that Biden and Harris's incompetence is no excuse for any of us as American citizens and responsible adults of voting age to have avoided doing our civic duty and taking the simple action of voting to prevent this catastrophe which anyone with any sense could have seen coming.

@19: So what? That's all in the past now.

"I did not think the face-eating leopards would eat MY face."

@29

"Conservatives Democrats and
their allies never take responsibility for
electoral losses even though they effectively

control the Democratic party. They lose twice to a
terrible candidate like Trump and its always the fault

of the voter, of progressives, of the 3rd party candidates
who attracted less than 1% of the vote and of course don't

forget the Russians. All so they can claim that
their pro-status quo policies and campaign
priorities had nothing to do with the losses.

Pathetic losers have to be
sidelined if we want to have a
chance of turning this ship around."

pathetic
losers're overly-
Well-Represented

here
@ tS

"Pathetic losers have to be
sidelined if we want to have a
chance of turning this ship around."

and Thanks
for the djt
wormmy
& so on.

your
Portfolio
is Safe. the
Rest of Us?

I
find
Your
Lack of
Empathy
disturbing.

@32 Quit blaming the people abandoned by Democrats for the last ~40 years. If you want the victims of neoliberal globalization and widening inequality to vote Democrat, you'll have to start fighting for them. It was crystal clear after 2016 and even more so now. Kicking a couple of leaders to the curb while pursuing the same pro-status quo policies isn't going to do it.

@32: “…doing our civic duty and taking the simple action of voting to prevent this catastrophe which anyone with any sense could have seen coming.”

Well, we did repeatedly warn the All Gaza All The Time crowd that “Gaza Isn’t Driving Votes,” but then Harris didn’t promise them every last thing they demanded, even though they stomped real hard and loud and everything, AND THEN, the engraved invitations Harris sent to each of them personally lacked even a semblance of proper gold filigree, so of course at that insult, they had to play Take My Ball & Go Home, as it’s the only game they’ve ever “won.”

And Trump is better than having “Genocide Joe” in office. Duh. Just ask the folks here! ;-)

and of course we have to suffer the very same nonsensical drivel for the umpteenth time ...

averagebob @36: "Kicking a couple of leaders to the curb while pursuing the same pro-status quo policies isn't going to do it."

Hey, good to know I'm personally responsible for the Democratic Party's platform and for the Biden administration's agenda, which was apparently too progressive for the voters but not progressive enough for the folks like you who are always trying to set a progressive trap for the Democrats (folks like you whose message is radically different from that of Bernie Sanders and AOC for anyone who's paying attention).

No, what I'm responsible for as a non-omniscient private citizen is to pick from the choices before me. I made my choice against fascism and economic calamity. I passed the test. Millions of voters and non-voters, subjected to relentless manipulation from influencers like you, chose otherwise. They failed the test.

I can understand why you would want to confuse that. Anyway, I'm falling behind with my work, so I'll have to let this be made last contribution to this thread. averagebob, the floor is yours. Have at me.

@10 -- " No matter how people voted or didn't vote, nobody expected this amount of damage to the economy. "

I don't mean to be rude, but come on! He is doing exactly what he said he was going to do. He talked repeatedly about tariffs. The Republican Convention featured Project 2025. Democrats kept pointing it out "Hey! Have you seen what they planning on doing?!!"

But to a lot of people it didn't matter. They trusted the white dude over the black woman. Or they were fed up with the economy (even though we had the best economy in the world) and figured we should try something different. Holy shit, even with all of this going on, a huge number of people still trust Trump. They will trust his ass until the economy goes belly-up. That is the way this shit works. The guy is very popular with white dudes.

spews a pile of nonsense, then runs away claiming she is too busy with work

classic move from crackpot Cressona

@40 "even though we had the best economy in the world"

It doesn't really matter to the 50+% who can't make ends meet at the end of the month. It's a stunning display of tone deafness to keep saying that the economy is doing great when it's not working out for so many people

Shorter cressona @39: “Knowing only Harris or Trump could win, I voted for Harris.”

Shorter ‘bob @40: THATS CRAZY TALK!!!

@39 "the Biden administration's agenda, which was apparently too progressive for the voters"

There is absolutely zero reason to believe this, but Democrats will act as if it's unassailably true, which will cause them to alienate progressive voters again, and then blame said voters when they inevitably lose. Only things that are certain in life are death, taxes, and Dems running to the right then blaming the left for their failures.

https://www.patriciarobertsmiller.com/2025/04/04/progressives-are-children-of-the-enlightenment/

The thing with lying trolls like tensorna is they keep spewing the same garbage over and over again no matter how many times it is shown ... to be garbage

Not only did I always say that people should vote for Harris in any and all battleground states but it isn't about me, no matter how much lying trolls like to pretend it is: it is about the many who are disenfranchised from voting and all those voting against their own interest because the party of FDR has abandoned them.

@9, "You've also claimed on numerous occasions here to not support Trump, though I'd like to invite you to start doing so."

I do oppose Trump. I have voted for his Democrat opponent twice and contributed money to Dems.

That doesn't mean I slavishly and reflexively support economic equality at any price, as an end in and of itself. It does not mean I support creating that equality by punitively punishing people with high incomes and wealth, or people one rung up the economic ladder from me, just because they have more than me.

Europe has an effective flat tax by making the poor pay highly regressive taxes and fees so that they pay the same effective rate as the highest income tax payer. The poor and the wealthy should pay the same effective rate, when all taxes remitted to the government are divided by income. Everyone having the same skin in the game, as a proportion of income is fair.

That should occur in the U.S. by first, closing loopholes for high income earners at Federal level, not because it will produce a revenue bonanza - it won't - out of fairness. In Washington it means putting an income tax in place that offsets sales tax revenue dollar for dollar. Once we all pay the same proportion, then we can decide if we ALL want to pay more for more government services, raising a variety of taxes, as Europe does, to keep everyone with the same proportion of skin in the game.

Slavish, Stranger like calls for income equality, for the sole sake of income equality, is agnostic about how that equality occurs. It is far easier to achieve by dragging people down from the top rung of the economic ladder, than by equipping the people at the bottom to climb.

People get paid more when they produce a service or product that consumers will pay a lot for without going on strike. Things like a meal out, or a discretionary retail good, if it hits a certain price point, get consumers voting against those goods and services by sending their dollars elsewhere or just closing their wallets.

Products and services that are produced with high productivity, pay workers more. It's no accident that in retail, Costco and Starbucks offer some of the best wages and benefits. The sales per employee (productivity) lead their respective sectors and the retail sector in general.

Productivity (high sales per worker) is even more true of tech and other knowledge workers. The revenue per Amazon Web Services worker or Microsoft worker is whole magnitudes of order higher than retail.

But we never see The Stranger advocating for making workers upwardly mobile with skills and training. All we see calls for, particularly from Charles, is dis-empowering the masses of consumers that decide what gets produced, at what price, and punitive measures against the rich, Seattle homeowners, or workers like @4, because they have more income and wealth than the barista that makes their coffee. They want to bring down the top, but never raise the bottom.

In the 60's and 70's restaurant and retail jobs were not careers. They were jobs held primarily by the young while they up-skilled into higher-skilled vocational trade or got a college education. We need to get back to that. We need to fund training and stipends to incentivize low-skilled workers to up-skill, but The Stranger never calls for that (Calls for debt forgiveness for the unmarketable English Lit graduate isn't that).

@44, Progressive voters have no history of staying home or voting for Republicans.

Working-class voters and swing voters do have that history. Trump won, with great Progressive turnout, because working-class, and particularly typically low-voter-participation voters, turned out, left the Democratic Party, and went for Trump.

So who do Dems need to appeal to? Progressives with no place to go, or voters that will switch to Republican?

@41: "...then runs away claiming she is too busy with work..."

Heh, when I was actually too busy with work to debunk one of your many, many items of nonsense, you declared my inaction was validation of your nonsense (https://www.thestranger.com/books/2025/02/26/79942126/author-qanda-omar-el-akkad-on-gaza-power-and-the-stories-empires-steal/comments). Then you rejected the (to you) absurd idea I had better things to do than debunk your nonsense. Limits do exist, you know.

@47 "In the 60's and 70's restaurant and retail jobs were not careers. They were jobs held primarily by the young while they up-skilled into higher-skilled vocational trade or got a college education. We need to get back to that."

That economy no longer exists and almost certainly never will again. The idea you can "upskill" people into jobs that don't exist was the most ignorant thought in what was otherwise a run of the mill Boomer-era fiscal conservative spiel

@48 "Trump won, with great Progressive turnout, because working-class, and particularly typically low-voter-participation voters, turned out, left the Democratic Party, and went for Trump"

This is factually incorrect. Turnout overall was way down from 2020, but Trump's vote total was about the same. What that means is, contrary to your incorrect assertion, Kamala lost because some people who voted for Biden just stayed home--but they did not switch sides. Those voters weren't inspired or convinced to vote for the Dem candidate this time despite the opponent being the same. Being "not Trump" wasn't enough, the Dems needed to give them something to believe in and they didn't.

@48

yet another Lie:

https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/04/02/79995231/slog-am-cory-booker-is-a-badass-trump-calls-today-liberation-day-and-bob-ferguson-shoots-down-a-wealth-tax/comments/49

@49,

We have shortages of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and other skilled trades.

We have shortages of nurses and general practice physicians.

We have shortages of engineers in the U.S. defense industry. They have to be U.S. citizens to get a security clearance.

We have shortages of cops.

We have shortages of soldiers, sailors, and marines, because the pool of people graduating high school, that meet the physical requirements, and don't have a criminal record, keeps shrinking.

Tons of positions that require skills and a lack of people with skills to fill them.

One thing we have never done well in this country is create good on-ramps to skill enhancement and mobility after people enter the workforce in retail and other low-skilled jobs. That, not tariffs, will provide well paying jobs for the middle class.

There was a documented red shift among blacks, hispanics and Gen Z voters, among others. The only demographic groups that didn't show red shift were the college educated and women. There was some blue shift in those groups. It was more than turnout.

the far 'right'
OWNs am
Radio

and
there is
Virtually Zero
Progressive Radio.

corporate america
OWNs america

we're just here
to Service the
motherfucker.

@52, That is because attempts at Progressive Radio have been commercial failures. Apparently listeners on conservative radio buy tons from advertisers on said radio. In spite of getting good ratings, Progressive listeners were unwilling to pay for Progressive Radio by buying shit from advertisers on said radio. Progessives SAY they support a lot of things, but they don't vote for those things with their discretionary dollars.

@53

and mudroach's
FOX Lost 100s
of Millions

initially.

but with
Rodger 'Dodger'
Goebbels/Ailes's far
'right' marketing Genius
they were able to turn it 'round

and now their Progaganda
has Re-shaped America
in Rupert Fucking
Mudroach's
despicably
Horrific
visage.

America
Desperately
NEEDS a few
Good Billionaires

willing to Sacrifice/
Invest in this Country
that Made Them Billionaires.

Where
ARE they?
they cannot
ALL be Fascists

.

can they?

@51 "There was a documented red shift among blacks, hispanics and Gen Z voters, among others. The only demographic groups that didn't show red shift were the college educated and women."

You're misunderstanding what this means; the shift refers only to the proportions of people who did vote. If 10 Black voters cast a ballot in 2020, with only one voting for Trump, but in 2024 only five voted, still only one for Trump, the share of Black votes going to Trump doubled ("red shift"). But the real story is the five Black Democrat voters who stayed home.

"We have shortages of cops."

Cop isn't a skilled job. If you have the qualifications for a retail job you have them for a cop job. People increasingly just don't want to be cops. Same probably goes for military, which always depended on bribing poor people for recruitment.

If there's a shortage in the trades then you're right about that though, we should be incentivizing people to enter those fields. I didn't realize that was an issue

@49
In 2000, I was meh on Gore, so I didn't bother voting. After Bush took office I resolved to never not vote again. Hopefully the regretful non voters of 2024 will learn and vote consistently going forward.

@49: 'Those voters weren't inspired or convinced to vote for the Dem candidate this time despite the opponent being the same. Being "not Trump" wasn't enough, the Dems needed to give them something to believe in and they didn't.'

Or the Uncommitted movement, the Abandon Harris movement, and Sawant got what they all very publicly said they wanted: for voters to boycott Harris in the general election, due to Gaza.

@57 I'm pretty sure what they wanted was for her to take the moral stance on Gaza so they could feel comfortable voting for her. She refused, so they couldn't and didn't.

@56 if the choices were W or Trump who would you vote for?

@55, My point exactly. Being a cop pays a hell of lot better than retail. Provided you can pass a criminal background check, complete the physical requirements for the academy and getting hired, and regurgitate back what you are told over 860 hours about legal standards for reasonable suspicion, probable cause, and evidentiary procedures on some written tests, your in.

Like with the military, the pool of people who can do that is getting smaller and smaller. The people willing to put up with what wait staff has to put up with, only when the objection comes it might be physical not just verbal, further shrinks to the pool.

Add to that the perception (which is highly exaggerated IMO) that you are going to be under an unreasonable microscope and face adverse discipline, even for good-faith errors under high stress, and the pool gets even smaller.

I agree with you its not as highly skilled as it should be. But we have to be willing to pay the extended salaries and training costs to make it more skilled. We don't want to do that as a society, either up front, or on an ongoing basis because it means increasing the numbers of cops on payroll by 30% to 50%, which isn't cheap. The big cost of having a cop take 80 hours a year of evidence-based deescalation training isn't the cost of the instructor. It's the additional cop that you have to hire to replace that patrol officer on patrol when they are in class. Add to that more mental health training, more training in the law, etc. and it adds up to a pretty big bill.

Many European countries require, and fund, more training to become a cop, and to remain a cop. They also hire far more cops per thousand citizens. In many cases as much as double, at vast expense. Where they spend far less, is on incarceration. They create higher certainty of consequence (i.e. getting caught) by having more cops, closer to the action, and pay for it with less severity of consequence by having more restorative, less carceral, and shorter consequence.

@59 "Many European countries require, and fund, more training to become a cop, and to remain a cop. They also hire far more cops per thousand citizens. In many cases as much as double, at vast expense."

I don't think that's true

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/police-officers-per-1000-people

@55, Whether they voted against the Dems by staying home, or voted against them by voting for Trump, it still was a shift away from the Dems to Trump.

Vote totals, vs. percentages, by demographic group, seem to be hard to come by with a google search. Lots of discussion of vote share by demographic group, but few by vote totals by demographic group.

And comparisons to 2020 are somewhat misleading, because the turnout in 2020 was a record high. A Black Swan event.

@10 TheTourGuide, @19 kristofarian, and @22 CDizzle: +3 for the WIN!!!!!
I have nothing more to add---you three nailed it. Kudos!

@54 kristofarian: It appears Baby Doofus has either called in sick and / or Mr. Magoo is now playing the leading clueless MAGA troll.
Ol' raindrop sure does love to keep his progeny sKKKared s-s-s-stoopid, doesn't he?

Thank you, Nathalie, for the lovely, calming photo of PNW woods. I needed this.

for the Longest time
I'd figured dewey
was a Woman

not that there's
anything Wrong
with it! so it was a
bit of a Surprise when
ol' dews announced it here

not
that he'd
been hiding it

his perspective
just seemed to me
to be quite feminine.

the Citizenry
the Empathetic
Citizenry wasn’t
able to stomach our
full-throated Unconditional
Blanque Check, 'she’s-all-Yours,
Bibi.' Who’s gonna vote to Kill People

Unless they don’t Believe
Some peeps Deserve
To even Live

& the Narrative here
Was, they’re just fucking
Animals, seem them Behead
All them Babies – yet another Lie
from The Wormtongues here & elsewhere:

they don’t
DESERVE
to Live

from Caitlin’s Newsletter

Hamas
Succeeded
In Exposing The
True Face Of The Empire

One thing October 7 did accomplish was getting Israel and its allies to show the world their true face. Getting them to stand before all of humanity to say, “If you resist us, we’ll kill your babies.

We’ll deliberately shoot your kids in the head. We’ll massacre medical workers. We’ll systematically destroy all your hospitals. We’ll rape you and torture you as a matter of policy.

We’ll lay siege to the entire civilian population. We’ll make your entire land uninhabitable and then we’ll kick you all out and take it for ourselves.

We’ll assassinate all your journalists and block foreign journalists from entry so that nobody can see what we’re doing to you.

We’ll lie about all of these things the entire time, and you’ll know we’re lying, and we’ll know you know we’re lying, and you’ll know we know you know we’re lying.

And we’ll get away with it anyway,
because we hold all the cards.”

Sometimes I’ll run into people who say “What did Hamas expect to happen? They had to know Israel would do this!”

They say this in an effort to lay the blame for Israel’s genocidal atrocities at the feet of Hamas, as though Israel is some kind of wild animal who can’t be held accountable for its actions if someone gets too close to its mouth.

--by Caitlin Johnstone; Apr 06, 2025

oodles:
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/hamas-succeeded-in-exposing-the-true

@58: I'm pretty sure most stuff about which you're pretty sure has no actual connection to any external reality, and I'm also pretty sure there's no way to get you to admit this.

What they said was that Harris should lose for not obeying their diktats on Gaza. They said this, even knowing electing Trump was the only possible result of Harris losing. So Gaza was more important to them than keeping Trump out of office. Please do feel free to tell us all about the superior moral stance inherent to electing Trump.

"if the choices were W or Trump who would you vote for?"

If the choice is between useful dialog about actual reality, and making up bullshit hypotheticals to play 'gotcha,' we know what you'll always go for.

@65: 'One thing October 7 did accomplish was getting Israel and its allies to show the world their true face. Getting them to stand before all of humanity to say, “If you resist us, we’ll kill your babies.'

Quick quiz: Who actually killed children on 10/7? (Hint: not Israel.)

@66 "If the choice is between useful dialog about actual reality, and making up bullshit hypotheticals to play 'gotcha,' we know what you'll always go for."

'I always vote no matter what and so should you' isn't useful dialogue. Demonstrating the flaw in that type of absolutist philosophy (the possibility of a choice between two subjectively unacceptable alternatives) is a proportionate response. If Gaza was the #1 most important issue to a person then, in "actual reality," both 2024 choices were unacceptable to them.

when corporate dems
shove their preferred corporate
candidates down our throats it isn't the
Voters who are at Fault. look in a fucking
mirror 'democratic' leadership -- there's your

djt.

@55, Officers, per 100,000 people.

Greece. 506
Germany. 349
France. 422
Spain. 534
Italy. 456
Germany. 349.

I cross checked the source I cite with others to verify accuracy. There is some variation but its mild and not statistically significant to the rankins and trend.

United States? 242

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers?wprov=sfla1

Those counties together have the vast majority

@60 should be @69.

@69 you originally wrote "They also hire far more cops per thousand citizens. In many cases as much as double, at vast expense."

But even your own chosen data shows some European countries hire maybe one more cop per thousand citizens, many others hire fewer, and only two countries hire roughly double what the US does.

They also all pay cops significantly less:

https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/03/30/police-wages-in-europe-which-countries-pay-officers-the-highest-and-lowest-salaries

@71, The other countries not chosen are population dust relative to the total population of the E.U.

The fact remains that they seem to appreciate something we don't. Certainty of consequence beats severity of consequence when trying to curb anti-social and criminal behavior.

We pay corrections officers much less than cops. Our theory is that a severe, punitive sentence that has a low-probability of being served, because there is a low probability of being apprehended. How is that working out for us?

Over 65% of the population if Europe lives with more cops per citizen than in the U.S.

@72 I agree with you that likelihood of being caught has a significant impact on deterrence where severity of punishment does not. I disagree that we need to hire and deploy more armed state agents to increase likelihood of being caught.

The EU as a whole has 3.4 police per 1000 citizens, which again is not "far more" than the US's 2.4 per 1000.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Police,courtand_prison_personnel_statistics

@67: "'I always vote no matter what and so should you' isn't useful dialogue."

Useful dialog could start there, which is why you're trying to stifle it from the start with a bullshit hypothetical -- one which is an un-inspiringly low-rent cribbing of the "both major parties are the same" outright lie. It's an outright lie which hard-lefties have been telling for decades now, despite the beneficiaries of said lie having included both W and Trump.

'If Gaza was the #1 most important issue to a person then, in "actual reality," both 2024 choices were unacceptable to them.'

Which, in turn, means they accepted the possibility they were contributing to a Trump victory. I have asked you very clearly why we should do anything but condemn the morality so displayed, and you have pointedly not done so. (Nor will you, I boldly predict.)

@68: Look at the "Gaza is #1 important issue" crowd. There's your Trump victory. (And yes, it is yours.)

@75 like everything you write there's no principle to this, you're just asserting that people with whom you disagree are wrong and blameworthy. That's why you don't like the hypos: your assertions never stand up to any logical scrutiny.

I’ll add it’s possible to believe Gaza is The Most Important Issue in the Entire History of Ever, and yet still conclude that overall, Harris would be better than Trump on Gaza. They didn’t automatically have to call for a boycott of the election, just because she rejected their demand. Sawant clearly said part of their intent was to “punish” Harris, not merely express disagreement over a policy issue. Bullying should always be rejected as immoral.

@76: “That's why you don't like the hypos…”

I clearly gave the reason I did not like that particular hypo’: it’s a version of the big lie about “no difference between the two parties,” and I’ll here add, you insulted readers here by asking us to take it seriously.

Again, you’re completely free to examine the morality of persons who were happy to encourage or aid a Trump victory, explain to us just how gosh darned wonderful such morality is, and tell how we should accept — or even admire! — it. Good luck with that.

@74, If you don't call 41% more, "far more," than I guess you are write. Last time I checked, 41% was a statistically and materially significant difference.

@65: You really might want to limit your exposure to blatant hate propaganda, especially of the type Johnstone reliably cranks out. I'm guessing she completely failed to mention the Israeli hostages Hamas took and held? Or did you carefully avoid her mention of that as simply too much truth for you?

Either way, I'm wondering what behavior you'd expect of any country whose citizens (and even children) had been kidnapped out of their own homes, and dragged into illegal imprisonment across an international border.

Fuck off
Wormtongue
you ugly purveyor
of lies half-truths mis-
dis- and malinformation.

@80: Well, that didn’t take long. It normally requires a few more comments before you finally hit your ever-predictable ending.

Oodles!

https://www.thestranger.com/users/25419161/kristofarian

it's
Your
demise
we're all
praying for
Wormtongue.

bugger off

@82: And there’s the British variant! Right on time.

(You might find wishing for the death of another person falls outside the bounds of acceptable discourse here, though.)

@83 -- when Liars choose
that which is to be our
'Acceptable' dis-
course.

here's a wee
ditty for ya
wormmy it
Could Be
bluesy or
Rock or
w/Ev

(it's
Your
choice!):

good ole
Wormtongue
ever the Dramaqueen
cherry-picking its way thru its
‘right’ wing narrative where Might
Makes – ah, well, y’all know the rest

from the Cambridge:

demise: the end
of something that was pre-
viously considered to be powerful.

like I said:
bugger Off
Wormtongue:

your
leader's
calling. go

@84: The Stranger's moderators decide what is acceptable discourse at the Stranger.

Either you can describe when I was "considered to be powerful," or you were using the more common meaning of "demise," which means "death." That you're now actually claiming to care about the real definitions of words suggests you know you stepped over the line, and are now trying to distract from your transgression.

You really should stop consuming Johnstone's hate propaganda. Wishing for the death of someone, merely for disagreeing with you, is not healthy -- for you.

@85
tl;dr

btw
omg
I'd LOVE
to see your
insidious and
Ineffectual pleas
for tS's mods to pls Please
PLEASE DELETE my comments
calling you Out for the pos you are

actually,
no I Wouldn't.

they prolly all got
the ptsd's just from
quickly scanning, then
scrapping your utterly Pathetic
Drivel tho no doubt considered Masterpieces

by their composer.

bugger
off wormmy

your incessant trolling
makes you look like
a Very Small
persona

which
Reminds
me -- whatever
happened to ol' Tentsores?

you toss it on-
to the Scrapheap
where you belong?

that's what we call
a Rhetorical question
but Please don't let that Stop
ya from another 1,000 or so words.

@76

thanks for Your
takedown of the
Wormtongue. not
very Popular here is he:

"... like everything
you write there's no
principle to this, you're
just asserting that people
with whom you disagree are
wrong and blameworthy. That's
why you don't like the hypos: your ass-
ertions never stand up to any logical scrutiny."

thanks,
thirteen 12!
Nailed it, yet again.

@86: "whatever
happened to ol' Tentsores?"

Apparently, the huge stretch of imagination required to produce that clever name utterly exhausted your creativity for name-calling, so ever since, you have cravenly stolen IP from a dead man.

"not
very Popular here is he"

Being popular is more important
than being right, eh?
Of course it is.
To you.

@76 Thirteen 12: For the WIN!!!

@86 & @87 kristofarian: teenieweenie is pretty pathetic, isn't he, for all spew and nothing to say.

bingo
auntie Gee
and Very well said.

back to wormmy
& speaking of
‘Imagination’:

imagine a world un-
burduned by The Terrifieds’
Need for a 'Strong Daddy’ type,
one who always Punishes instead
of Encouraging where one's self-per-
ceived Might does not fucking MAKE THEM
RIGHT, a world that Encourages the Humanity in
OURSELVES --unlike the currrent one, which YOU Fought

so Desperately Hard for, cheerleading bibi's Keep outta
Prison campaign at Every Opportunity, knowing fool-
well it'd Elect thedjt and the Repression could con-
tinue, Unabated, whilst Denigrating everything
Progressive as childishly Unattainable and
Did in fact Elect our current toddler tyrant

mayhaps it’s
merely your brain
Wormtongue. nyt:

Ideology
May Not Be What
You Think but How You’re Wired

“Ideologies numb our direct experience of the world,” Leor Zmigrod, a political neuroscientist at Cambridge University, said. “Ideologies are rarely, if ever, good.”

In her new book, “The Ideological Brain,” the neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod outlines what makes some people prone to rigid thinking.
---by Matt Richtel; April 8, 2025

getchyur Oodles right here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/science/ideology-neuroscience-politics-zmigord.html

[Cont’d from above]

Q. What is ideology?

It’s a narrative about how the world works and how it should work. This potentially could be the social world or the natural world.

But it’s not just a story: It has really rigid prescriptions for how we should think, how we should act, how we should interact with other people.

An ideology condemns any deviation from its prescribed rules.

Q: In the book, you describe research showing that ideological thinkers can be less reliable narrators. Can you explain?

Remarkably, we can observe this effect in children. In the 1940s, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, interviewed hundreds of children and tested their levels of prejudice and authoritarianism, like whether they championed conformity and obedience or play and imagination.

When children were told a story about new pupils at a fictional school and asked to recount the story later, there were significant differences in what the most prejudiced children remembered, as opposed to the most liberal children.

Liberal children tended to recall more accurately the ratio of desirable and undesirable traits in the characters of the story; their memories possessed greater fidelity to the story as it was originally told.

In contrast, children who scored highly on prejudice strayed from the story; they highlighted or invented undesirable traits for the characters from ethnic minority backgrounds.

[Gazans DESERVE IT!
Right, wormy?]

So, the memories of the most ideologically-minded children incorporated fictions that confirmed their pre-existing biases. At the same time, there was also a tendency to occasionally parrot single phrases and details, rigidly mimicking the storyteller.

Like I said, above: Oodles more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/science/ideology-neuroscience-politics-zmigord.html

oooh!
lookit You
wormmy, using
Your Imagination!

"Being popular is more important
than being right, eh?
Of course it is.
To you.

tensorna on April 8, 2025 at 8:13 PM"

can
Redemption
be far behind?

@80: Your snarling refusal to consider any of the questions I'd asked about Johnstone's latest hate-fest strongly suggested my questions may have found something. So I took very deep breath, firmly clamped my nose shut, and waded into it over there. Sure enough, she mentioned both Hamas and 10/7, and very approvingly, too:

"That is the problem they [Hamas] were trying to address with their actions on October 7."

"You can disagree with the decisions Hamas made on that day. You can say they should have used other means to pursue justice. You can denounce them, hate them, do the whole public ritual necessary for mainstream acceptance in western society."

Yes, slaughtering unarmed civilians by the hundredfold, killing children in front of their parents (and vice versa), mass rape, dragging hundreds of persons off into captivity -- all of it was a "means to pursue justice," and no one should get upset about it, to the point where anyone who dares to express anger at such atrocities merely mouths empty words, and only because of craven capitulation to peer pressure. (Puts her whole, "If you resist us, we’ll kill your babies" thing nicely in perspective, doesn't it?)

That's the morality you're proclaiming when you quote Johnstone -- and in quite a cowardly manner, too, when you carefully walk around what she clearly says. Good luck with your whole, "I'm not pro-Hamas!!1!" schtick. We all know you and Johnstone for what you really are.

"Being popular is more important
than being right, eh?
Of course it is.
To you.

tensorna on April 8, 2025 at 8:13 PM"

there you go
projecting again!

@92

tl;dr.

now
where'd
wormmy
get off to?

his rebuttals
typically like
Clockwork're
getting a little
slower every day

perhaps it's a
brainworm?

@92: 'That's the morality you're proclaiming when you quote Johnstone -- and in quite a cowardly manner, too, when you carefully walk around what she clearly says. Good luck with your whole, "I'm not pro-Hamas!!1!" schtick. We all know you and Johnstone for what you really are.

'tensorna on April 9, 2025 at 10:11 AM'

@94: "...getting a little
slower every day...

"kristofarian on April 10, 2025 at 4:31 AM"

Over eighteen hours? Even you're not that slow.

You read @92. You just have no rebuttal, and you know it. You're every bit the Hamas sympathizer you've loudly claimed not to be. I've warned you that reading Johnstone was a bad idea, but you wouldn't listen. Now here you are.

(What's better: that your pathetically feeble attempt at a dodge proved even weaker than your previously weak attempts at dodges, or how your claim to total ignorance of your subject matter now lacks credibility? If we must choose, I'll pick the latter, just for the sheer novelty of it.)

“Imitation
is the homage
that dullness pays to wit.”

--@Oscar Wilde*

"Being popular is more important
than being right, eh?
Of course it is.
To you.”

--@Wormtongue,
Proving to be
Quite UN-
Popular,
presen-
tly. sad

see:
https://post.thestranger.com/slog-am/2025/04/09/80004940/slog-am-trump-continues-tariffs-terrorism-the-white-house-hates-pronouns-and-the-j-pod-has-a-new-baby-orca/post-comment

*so you, Too,
may Understand,
wormmy: ‘Imitation is
thee Highest form of Flattery.’

hope
this Helps!

@95
tl;dr.

gosh.
I guess
that makes
This comment

@100. whoa!