Vivian McCall: "Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the pollsters who are wrong. Everything sucks, so President Donald Trump’s approval rating is sliding like an unattended, drunk baby down a black diamond slope."

There was that New York Times poll last week where I think 66% of respondents used the word "chaotic" to describe the Trump administration and 42% of people used the word "exciting" to describe it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/trump-poll-approval.html

I agree with that 42%. These first 100 days have definitely been exciting, sort of in the way the Titanic and the Hindenburg were exciting. The remarkable thing to me about the polls is how, even as he has the worst approval ratings in modern polling history for a first 100 days presidency, the polling isn't even worse. I mean, the Trump administration is like Mel Brooks's "The Producers" where it always looks like they're actually TRYING to fail.

I swear, if you took a poll and asked a cross-section of Americans if they approved of Trump disappearing their own mothers, 38% of respondents would say, "Yes. Oh, and Biden did the same thing."

'Sen. Patty Murray and Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro released a new tracker showing the $430 billion in federal funds that President Donald Trump has frozen, cancelled, illegally impounded and “slow-walked” in the last 100 days.'

I do hope Senator Murray starts tracking the huge piles of money we're going to wind up shoveling to folks like Sergio Cerdio Gomez and Cliona Ward, after they kick the Trump Maladministration's ass in court for these abuses.

"When local leaders demonize law enforcement and impose legal and political handcuffs that make aggressively enforcing the law impossible, crime thrives and innocent citizens and small business owners suffer."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/strengthening-and-unleashing-americas-law-enforcement-to-pursue-criminals-and-protect-innocent-citizens/

This sounds almost exactly like Saka's recent performative Council resolution. Many of this site's frequent commenters, for example tensorna, must be so pleased with Trump for taking this action to undo the "harm caused by the Defund movement" as they'd put it.

Nice to see Vivian is over her obsession with Denny Blaine Park.

Either that or The Stranger doesn't have a consistent philosophy guiding its reporting.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/denny-blaine-residents-sue-seattle-over-management-of-nude-beach/

Nice lead that the Pike Place Market isn't kicking out the Virginia Inn yet... but the biggest story at the Pike Place Market, and in all Seattle, is Pike Place Market is flipping more awesome than ever now they stopped the cars going down the middle of the cobblestones! I went Saturday and returned Sunday with kids it was so damn good. And safe. Kudos to Pike Place Market for limiting entrance to emergency vehicles and delivery trucks as God intended! We saw a fire truck easily navigated through with no sirens or horns whereas a week ago that same fire truck would have been stuck pointlessly blowing its horn in an eternal backup with all the damn cars in the way. Pike Place is Great Again!

Unleash the full force of the awesome liberating fully- constitutional ICEholes to promote traditional American values of racial purity now!!!

@3: "This sounds almost exactly like Saka's recent performative Council resolution."

How so? You haven't provided a quote from CM Saka's resolution, and (spoiler alert!) the Stranger's coverage repeatedly made false statements about it, so you might not want to rely on the Stranger's version when you quote CM Saka's resolution.

'..."harm caused by the Defund movement" as they'd put it.'

Why would anyone need Trump for that? The "harm caused by the Defund movement" has been extensively well-documented, as this headline and story from The Wall Street Journal shows:

"A Hippie-Cop Alliance Reformed Crisis Response. ‘Defund the Police’ Brought It Down."

'Cahoots became a rallying cry in Eugene. A petition called to defund the police and redirect the money to Cahoots. A “defund the police bake sale” featured Cahoots speakers and its signature blue-and-white vans.'

(https://www.wsj.com/us-news/oregon-cahoots-police-mental-health-7573cd61?mod=Searchresults_pos4&page=1)

I wrote @1: "I mean, the Trump administration is like Mel Brooks's 'The Producers' where it always looks like they're actually TRYING to fail."

I suppose that's not the most apt analogy. It's not that the Trump administration is trying to fail; it's that they appear to be taking their marching orders from America's worst enemy. Like, how can we go about dismantling America's economy, making Americans poorer, and marginalizing American influence around the world?

At the rate we're going, the only two industries left where we'll still be global leaders are fossil fuels and Internet trolls.

If WPATH doesn't like the Trump systematic literature review, well then they can release their own systematic review that they commissioned John Hopkin's to do a couple of years ago. But WPATH has to date only released 2 of the 9 sections of the review. We of course don't know what the results are of those 9 sections but since WPATH has been reluctant to release them the suspicion is that the result are fairly similar to all the other systematic reviews. There is only so much literature out there and reviews designed to be as objective as possible are going to have similar results even though there can be legitimate critiques of methodology. There was also quiet the disagreement between WPATH and John Hopkin's about the level of control WPATH wanted over the review that John Hopkin's considered unacceptable for a systematic review, as in it wouldn't have been acceptable for any systematic review of a subject that they would be asked to do.

"ridding this world of DEI (can’t spell Devil without it)."
Ha! Good one.

Trump bashed Amazon this morning when it said it would put the price increases due to tariffs on each product page. Amazon quickly walked this back.

State legislatures should pass laws mandating this tariff price transparency on all product offerings and advertising in their states. If New York or California pass such a law, retailers will comply nationwide. This is guaranteed to make Trump very angry and there is nothing he can do about it.

@7 section 6 of the resolution. In any event, do you not agree 100% with the quoted language from the executive order?

Ka-CHING! We hit the Tensorna jackpot today. Their post is probably just a grift for centro-fascist rag WSJ, since you can't read it without buying an entire cash-wasting subscription, but a brief look around the web reveals the following:

There was never a "hippie-cop" alliance. That is a ridiculous mischaracterization. There was an alternative to the police in Eugene OR, not managed by the police, which was overseen by qualified mental health professionals. But I guess if you're an establishment cuck these days, MHPs are by definition counterculture.
This program (CAHOOTS) is closing due to the city's budget shortfalls and the CAHOOTS' White Bird Treatment Center inability to keep full staffing. In case anyone doesn't know, under capitalism, governmental budgets can't support social programs and social and humans services can't sufficiently recruit - it's an old, old, OLD story. Without having read the WSJ prop piece, I think it's pretty safe to say that the defund the police bake sale was not really involved.

To summarize: Eugene's alternative to policing, CAHOOTS, is closing after 30 years because it could no longer operate in the face of capitalist pressure, moving on to a graveyard where thousands of social programs have already been interred. Predictably, it was right-wing economics and ideologies that killed it. In the meantime, the president of the Seattle Police Officer's Guild continues to make public statements that J6 was a false flag operation of BLM & Antifa - now that's someone a sane person should be afraid of.

Someday someone should compile a book of Tense & Ornery's humdingers, it would make very entertaining reading....

@12, That association is entirely in your head. Activists are not necessarily party affiliates and don’t necessarily have electoral outcomes in mind, they just speak out about issues that concern them. Not to say that these associations aren’t made in people’s minds anyway, but to my knowledge, former prosecutor “Copmala” never supported any defund movements, nor have any major democratic representatives outside of the handful in the squad.

Meanwhile, Trump literally called upon his followers to attack the US capitol and its police force, resulting in multiple police injuries and fatalities. And yet voters still see him as a “law and order” candidate, I guess because voters are dumb and incapable of thinking beyond the associations their media spoon-feeds them.

But I would assume based on polling that it was economic issues like the cost of groceries and immigration that voters had in mind, not an activist slogan from 4 years prior. Again, despite decades of experience with Republicans destroying the economy for democrats to clean up, voters still believe republicans are the party of economic discipline because that is their brand. Obama and Biden also deported more undocumented criminals than Trump or Bush before him, but voters don’t know/believe this because the brand is so strong. In short, propaganda works.

Damn, am I the only one who was disappointed that the linked text “sliding like an unattended, drunk baby down a black diamond slope” went to some boring poll story and not an amazing news story about a drunk baby skiing? I wanted to see the video!!!

@9 skiesofblue is yet another of the resident transphobic rightwing nut-jobs that The Stranger platforms in their comment section. They gorge on rightwing news, going around the internet spewing disinformation on a topic they so clearly know absolutely nothing about. If you google what skiesofblue is referring to, you'll find all the sources are all rightwing media sources trafficking in rumors and conspiracy theories.

But really the aim of their comments is to frame the rights and dignity of transpeople as something that can be "proved" or "disproved" in a clinical study that is inherently limited in trying to reduce the human condition to statistical analysis. Anyone that wants "proof" that gender-affirming care "works" is to hear from the 99% of trans people (including minors) who will in no uncertain terms say their life is better for it.

Skiesofblue doesn't care about children, doesn't care about women, and obviously doesn't care about the welfare of trans people.

@8: "...the only two industries left where we'll still be global leaders are fossil fuels and Internet trolls." Can we presume that you pay the bills by working in the latter?

"Irish Woman with Green Card Held by ICE in Tacoma"
Guillotine for the Aristos!! Guillotine for the Aristos!!!
@1, Now that last.....THAT'S funny!
On the TV news just now, regarding the possibility that a US citizen might get deported by accident, Trump said, "Nothing's perfect in this world." That's exactly what I said about the sights on Thomas Matthew Crooks' rifle.

There's more behind the Virginia Inn story, as there was last round. The owner is once again spinning the facts. Stay tuned.

@12 Kamala (and Biden) were explicitly pro-law enforcement.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/08/tprosecutor-vs-felon-kamala-harris-donald-trump-democratic-national-convention/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/31/us/biden-police-budget-increase/index.html

To the extent Presidential elections can be seen as referendums on local criminal justice policy, given Dems won in 2020 during the height of "Defund" and lost when they ran "a prosecutor vs. a criminal," the lesson would seem to be they should lean harder into abolishing police and prisons.

Libretto68 @17: "Can we presume that you pay the bills by working in the latter?"

Libretto68, I can understand you'd take umbrage at my trashing Trump.

@21: wtf?? Sorry, we can now presume that you earn your living through psych disability bennies.

@16: Can't you address the specifics in comment @9?

Why is your premise always so angry? Why does just one comment on a highly complex and emotional matter give you the bullhorn to cry foul and project that they don't care about trans, women, children, etc when you know that's so incredibly disingenuous on your part. It also gets very old.

Calm down and have a productive back and forth with your fellow Sloggers instead. After all, you probably have some very interesting opinions that don't rise to the surface otherwise.

Take care.

@22

Psych!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/29/israel-security-agency-extremist-government-war

Libretto68 @22: "@21: wtf?? Sorry, we can now presume that you earn your living through psych disability bennies."

Let's see. I try to make a sane person's callout of just how insane the Trump agenda is. As a result I'm accused of being crazy. Is this not the very definition of gaslighting?

Well, I guess this is what one should expect for trying to go after MAGA in a way that cannot be readily discredited and caricatured.

Anyway, this will have to be it for me on this thread. I've said my piece. The rest is just a diss track.

@11: Ok, I see the problem here. You don't know what the word "quote" means. What you attempted would have been called a "reference," had you actually provided a URL to CM Saka's resolution. (And again, to the resolution itself, not to the Stranger's failed attempts to cover it.) Once you learn what a "quote" is, and provide one (with URL!) to CM Saka's resolution, then you can actually try to make the case you utterly failed to make @3.

@13: "...WSJ, since you can't read it without buying an entire cash-wasting subscription..."

Any resident of Seattle can read the WSJ, by obtaining a free Seattle Public Library card, and following the instructions on the Library's website:

"Read The Wall Street Journal for free online. Start by creating an account or logging in using the link above to get 3 days of free access. After 3 days, log in again using this link with your username and password to get additional access." (https://www.spl.org/online-resources/magazines-and-newspapers)

"...brief look around the web reveals the following..."

For none of which you've provided a quote or URL. Which explains part of how you got the story so hilariously wrong.

The part you somehow got right was that Cahoots worked with ("in cahoots with," get it?) the local police, until Defund activists started using Cahoots' publicly-supplied resources to advocate for Defund. (This wasn't the only internal mismanagement of Cahoots' resources, but it was the one that initially got the most negative attention.) As neither Defund activists could ever possibly have predicted beforehand, nor you can understand afterwards, Cahoots' openly attacking their partnering organization somehow resulted in less-effective partnership. Eugene eventually moved Cahoots into partnership with the Fire Department, but Cahoots' internal mismanagement then caused fatal problems.

Your fantasy about this all being the fault of "capitalist pressure," and "right-wing economics and ideologies," leading to insufficient public funding, shows just how little valid information you actually found in your unspecified web-trolling. As the Journal explains, Cahoots had achieved national acclaim for success, to the point where Oregon's Sen. Wyden obtained federal funding for similar programs nationwide.

"centro-fascist rag WSJ,"

"WSJ prop piece,"

You do understand that the WSJ isn't the one who suffers from slinging such risible nonsense, right?

"Someday someone should compile a book of Tense & Ornery's humdingers,"

We already have an entire Slog comment section, full of your howls of impotent outrage at each and every fact introduced. (And it makes for very good reading, indeed.)

@4,

Or maybe the central issue here isn't a journalistic scandal reflecting a shift in The Stranger's philosophical ideology, but rather the fact that they're a staff of like five reporters covering a huge city with an incomprehensibly large number of stories happening at any given time, and so they've had to de-prioritize the Every Story That Neale Frothinghamm Demands We Cover Every Development In beat. And don't get me wrong, I can understand how this would be a bummer for the Neale Frothinghamm's of the world! This is why I've suggested you start your own news blog. Be the change you're calling for Neale, the Neale Frothinghamm's of the world implore you!

@28: The Stranger recently made a cause out of Denny Blaine Park, constantly pretending the issue neighbors had was with nudity or LGBTQ+ persons, when the Stranger's own prior reporting had specifically mentioned disgusting behaviors -- which had nothing to do with either. Now the neighbors have sued, clarifying it was the disgusting behaviors, and so the Stranger seems to have dropped Denny Blaine Park entirely. Can't let mere facts get in the way of a good story!

Ah, Tensorna...if only you would go back to college. You might learn just how liable to other interpretations your "facts" happen to be.

I don't need to quote any other sources. That CAHOOTS fell due to capitalism is the null hypothesis; social service agencies fail due to capitalism on a daily basis in this country. To claim that a motherfucking bake sale managed to cause what capitalism has caused over and over again is an extraordinary claim - the burden of proof is on you. And you haven't provided it (see preceding paragraph). Since the WSJ took it upon itself to sling blame at innocent parties in order to advance to their pro-police state agenda - at least according to you, since, as I've said, there's no need for me to waste my time reading it - that's what makes it a prop piece. "Prop" is short for "propaganda", in case you didn't realize.

Anyway, you can look it up yourself - there are already articles out there stating the real reasons for the end of CAHOOTS. Google it, like you should have done before you blasted that risible WSJ prop piece on a public forum. I don't need to hold your hand while you do it.

With all of your whoppers spread out over years of delirious posting, they need to be collected into a single volume for convenient perusal. And you shouldn't speak harshly about the members of your fan club, tsk, tsk!

@29: Or, a staff writer hasn't gotten around to writing about it. What we see as lack of action could be simply lower prioritization or procrastination.

@26 Sorry to see you go, Cressie. I was hoping you could explain how someone who has never voted GOP in their lives and made financial contributions to Ms. Sawant's reelection bids could be a MAGA.

BTW, I'm sorry I questioned your mental health status. ;)

@30: "I don't need to quote any other sources."

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

"That CAHOOTS fell due to capitalism is the null hypothesis..."

(Tell us you don't know what "null hypothesis" actually means...) Yes, Cahoots fell from the "capitalist pressure," and "right-wing economics and ideologies," which have always famously ruled the well-known ultra-reactionary Galt's Gulch of -- wait for it! -- Eugene, Oregon.

"To claim that a motherfucking bake sale managed to cause what capitalism has caused over and over again is an extraordinary claim..."

Which is why the WSJ didn't actually make that claim, but as you've already stated you hadn't read the WSJ article, you could not possibly have known that, now could you?

What you're hilariously missing here, as I noted @27, is the public perception which resulted from Cahoots' holding a bake sale, NOT to fund their lifesaving work in partnership with the police, but to fund their attempt to Defund the police. It was the severe contrast between the rank amateurism of their "motherfucking bake sale," and their dead earnestness about defunding their partner agency. (Because, obviously, destroying their successful partnership would produce better results, correct?)

As the rest of your embittered rant -- aside from the tedium of your drearily predictable ad hominem attacks -- consists of an ever-more-desperate series of attempts to dismiss the actual facts, and substitute your fictional alternates, I needn't bother myself with it. You just keep on imagining you actually did beat something with nothing.

"The WSJ took it upon itself to sling blame at innocent parties in order to advance to their pro-police state agenda..."

You really need to understand the WSJ's reputation isn't the one taking severe damage from your attacks here.

'"Prop" is short for "propaganda", in case you didn't realize.'

Hahahahahaha -- ooh, you're such a clever one! (Just ask you!)

Good night.

@10 Swiftress: I'm all for pissing off Mu$k's Mein Trumpf.
I'd love to see DJT's ugly, swelled orange head turn purple until the monster explodes like an enormous, disgusting zit. And please, please, pretty please, may this be captured on film, and that it goes viral. The world will cheer.

80 years ago today Adolf Hitler committed suicide, and WWII was over--just like that.
Will sordid world history repeats itself?

Nice to see a Slog from you Vivian!! Enjoy your take on the world.