Serve, protect, mechanize: The FAA granted the Redmond Police Department a waiver that allows them to deploy drones without a second officer to watch the airspace. As long as there’s one pilot-certified officer to fly, the department can deploy drones to any call they want. Redmond is the second department on the West Coast to receive the waiver. While police say drones allow them to monitor dangerous situations without risking human life, there are immense privacy implications to expanding unchecked, warrantless aerial surveillance.
Get your shots: Public health experts say COVID, flu, and RSV vaccination rates are low ahead of the holidays and all the travel that comes with it. Vaccination is safe, and protects you and everyone around you.
ICYMI: I wrote you a permission slip to spend the holidays how you want. It doesn’t expire, and is for anyone who could use it.
Fix it, Joe! Steve Marose, a former Air Force Lieutenant from Renton, was court-martialed in 1990 for having gay sex. He spent 18 months in prison for this “crime.” Since then, the “crimes” have lived on his permanent record. While Joe Biden announced a pardon for similarly court-martialed queer veterans this June, only eight including Marose, have applied because of the narrow limitations and a cumbersome application. The pardon could change lives, restore access to Veterans Affairs benefits, travel to some countries, and the right to vote in many states. We have no clue if Trump will end or sideline the process, so the government should hurry up.
Heard about the “People’s Budget” in Seattle, but the process seemed confusing? Oh, it was, but Hannah has you covered on how the Council fumbled your housing and infrastructure needs in service of the police and the rich.
Council Member Maritza Rivera called the recently passed 2025-2026 budget “The People’s Budget.” I totally agree —- if she’s going for a Citzens United, Corporations Are People thing.https://t.co/FZiEVwcgfV
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) November 26, 2024
Mystery solved? In 1971, D.B. Cooper boarded a Boeing plane in Portland, hijacked it with the threat of a bomb, demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes upon landing in Seattle, directed the pilots to take off for Mexico City, and leapt into the air above Ariel, Washington, never to be seen, or heard from, again. Or, was he killed in a police shootout following a similar heist over Utah? According to Cowboy State Daily, Richard McCoy II may be D.B. Cooper. The FBI had suspected McCoy, but closed the case in 2016, unless someone found the parachutes or money. McCoy’s kids and Dan Gryder, a skydiving YouTuber, provided just that: a modified military surplus parachute McCoy had carefully stashed in a storage unit. Last year, the FBI took the chute into evidence, along with McCoy’s skydiving logbook, which aligned with both crimes.
Hezbollah strikes a ceasefire deal with Israel: Thousands in packed cars are returning home to Southern Lebanon. International aid groups worry about the aftershocks of the war in Lebanon, which displaced 1.2 million and destroyed 100,000 homes. Half of the population now lives below the poverty line.
The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants starts after nearly 14 months of fighting. Follow AP’s live updates. https://t.co/sKcwtTtl4j
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 27, 2024
No ceasefire for Gaza: An Israeli strike on a school in Gaza City this morning killed at least 12 people. Palestinians who spoke to Al Jazeera hope the ceasefire in Lebanon could lead to one in Gaza. Hamas says it wants an agreement to stop the war, free Israeli hostages in Gaza, and free Palestinians from Israeli jails. More than 44,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza.
Now that he’s picked his team, Donald Trump signs a transition deal: They now can meet with outgoing staff and federal agencies, but won’t get any classified information because they’re not allowing the FBI to run security clearances. A smooth, peaceful transition of power ensures stability, but don’t worry, Trump’s Chief of Staff, Susan Wiles, says the transition team didn’t sign the agreement at first because it already had security and information protections built in, meaning they didn’t “require additional government and bureaucratic oversight.” We’re so glad you think so!
Make it stop: Trump named gay billionaire Scott Bessent as his pick for Secretary of the Treasury, proving once and for all that democratic governments rapidly deteriorating into kleptocratic autocracies can slay, queen.
Speaking of the economy: Can Trump actually impose 60 percent tariffs on China and 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico by executive order, which is sort of like pressing a giant red button marked “inflation” over and over and over and over and over until avocado toast does make the difference between buying a house or not? Yes, probably. Trump’s tariffs would violate existing trade agreements, but presidents have plenty of authority on tariffs. Whether that’d be overreach without congressional approval is an open question.
Shh! He speaks for Jesus: Speaker of the House and noted anti-gay bigot Mike Johnson told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “This Week on the Hill” that when Delaware elected Sarah McBride to congress, Republicans had to speak with moral clarity and compression on the issue, so he firmly supports banning trans people like her from using the bathrooms and other single-sex spaces at the Capitol. “I ask myself every day, ‘What would Jesus do? I think he would hold, obviously, to the principles we believe in,”’ Johnson said. Buddy, nail down your tables. Jesus is gonna flip ’em if he’s coming back any time soon.
https://youtu.be/EJ55q9K9TVE?feature=shared
Starlink is only the beginning.
Ceasefire in Lebanon! After fourteen months of fighting, something like 3,800 people in Lebanon have been killed, inclusive of Hizbollah’s casualties.
AverageBob, you anticipated Lebanese casualties would be in the “millions.” Now that the war has proved to be literally one thousand times less lethal than you expected, do you find yourself reassessing any other exaggerated ideas you may have about war in the Middle East? 😉
“Hamas says it wants an agreement to stop the war, free Israeli hostages in Gaza, and free Palestinians from Israeli jails.”
Bit of a simplification, that.
The agreement in Lebanon is a 60-day ceasefire that hopefully leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities. In Gaza, Hamas has consistently refused to agree to a temporary ceasefire and insists on a permanent Israeli withdrawal (that leaves them in power).
@2 Liar. The article that I linked to mentioned that millions of lives were at risk as shown by the fact that 1.5 million people had to flee for their lives. Reading comprehension is key but you have already abundantly shown that you are blinded by your anti-Arab ideology.
@3 Netanyahu and his extremist governmental coalition want to annex Northern Gaza so a ceasefire is very unlikely.
bibi goes to Jail
on Day One when
bibi’s War on Palestine
ends. wanna End his ‘War’?
either
Depose
bibi or pardon
his War Criminal ass.
If Jesus existed (an idea that I’m willing to entertain, although in a non-divine sense – i.e., he was just another SJW), I think he would be mystified by 1) Modern bathrooms and 2) The pearl-clutching about trans people using them. Trans people have been around as long as humanity has been around and in Jesus’ time – as in our time – there’s a lot more to worry about than where they relieve themselves. But Johnson is a bible-addled nitwit with a porn “addiction” and is also something of a reluctant onanist who depends on his son to control his urges, according to the man himself. God know what’s really going on there.
Why insult the new treasury secretary just because he’s gay? On thing for sure, Donald is not homophobic.
“warrantless aerial surveillance,” is something The Stranger should support based on their desire for less cops.
Vivian, it has always been the law of the land that you have no expectation of privacy in public. It has always been the case that you can be surveilled by anyone, including the government, for any reason, or no reason at all.
If you want less police staffing, isn’t automating as much police work as we can, to reduce the need for police labor, a good thing?
@4, Judging by the low number of actual deaths, it would appear that the millions of lives were never at risk, so as to create the need to flee.
@5, Spot on. The horror for Gaza will end when the IDF, Gazans, or both depose Hamas.
Someone losing, not international court rulings, is what ends the slaughter of non-combatants in a war zone.
@7 — it’s a distraction
from their burning
down of the USA
but it helps keep
The Base at bay
Armageddon’s been burning a hole
in ‘christian’ nationalists’ wish list
for 2,000 years. they’ll happily
Fry the rest of Humanity for
a shot at Holy Glory ~ for
the lucky 20,000 and
Speaker Johnson
likely feels he’s
On The List.
(isn’t there a nearby Comet
they might visit instead of
Nukular Conflagration or
Whatever the fuck for
the Rest of Us?)
“International aid groups worry about the aftershocks of the war in Lebanon, which displaced 1.2 million and destroyed 100,000 homes. Half of the population now lives below the poverty line.”
So, this means Hezbollah should obey UN Security Council Resolution 1701, by withdrawing from southern Lebanon? That would be a start to allowing the Lebanese to have their own working government, rather than the failed state Hezbollah and Iran now nonconsensually impose upon Lebanon (and have for a long time).
@5: that may be a goal of the fanatical Israeli right, but that hasn’t been the sticking point in Gaza negotiations for the last year.
it’s consistently been temporary (ceasefire) versus permanent (armistice). at least when there were negotiations; I don’t think there have been any since Sinwar was killed.
The entire conservative movement that Donald Trump represents is aggressively homophobic but I hear he has gay friends so who cares about our civil rights or personal safety
10 adding risk to the endless list of basic concepts you do not understand
@14: Donald is not and was never a conservative. He’s a deranged populist of some sort, but never acted on conservative principles. William F. Buckley would be appalled.
@4: Ha ha ha, that’s our Average Bob! Even when he’s wrong, he’s never wrong! 😂
You and your article absolutely anticipated “a million dead brown people” (verbatim quote) from a ground invasion of Lebanon and scoffed at everyone who was saying, as wise Professor Thumpus was, that the actual lethality of the fighting would be a tiny fraction of that. 😉 At one point, you got pissy and sarcastically downgraded your estimate to “hundreds of thousands” of lives, which is still an error of two orders of magnitude. 🤪 Now, please sit and enjoy the sight of my victory lap. 😆
It seems like they’re putting somewhat “normal” republicans in the financial positions (evil and greedy, like all Republicans, but not crazy).
Phoebe dear, trump is now the Standard Bearer for American Conservatism. Buckley is dead and there’s no one with the moral courage to take his place.
16, That’s a nice story you’re telling yourself but the movement that is commonly referred to as “conservative” is aggressively reactionary and hostile to the rights of women, immigrants and minorities, and it is currently headed by a populist who is very well-liked by people who self-identify as conservative. You can make the case that it’s not technically conservative but that doesn’t change the nature of the movement that bears its name or the values of people who consider themselves conservative.
@18: Buckley would have made his peace with Donald Trump, just like 99.9 percent of Republicans. Principle always took a back seat to power with Buckley. He’d have tried to salvage his honor by hiding behind some kind of anti-anti-Trump fig leaf, but it would only have been an excuse.
@18: Not really. Typically we associate Republicans with conservatism and Democrats with liberalism but that’s a shallow view of America’s current politics.
@17 Clown thumpus wants others to join him in the mud pit where he wallows while laughing at his own, not funny posturing
@10 The main purpose of international law and its institutions is to end your ‘might is right’ world. It’ll succeed for we have no alternatives.
We associate republicans with deregulation, regressive taxation, and policies that scapegoat women, immigrants, and lgbtq people. Focusing on the technical definition of the adjectives we use to describe those values are immaterial to our politics. It’s just a shell game for people who are experiencing cognitive dissonance about their support for this movement to compartmentalize their regret without having to own up to it.
@19: There’s the MAGA movement, but there’s no conservative movement. The word conservative is only an adjective to describe those who happen to right of center on any given issue. It’s too malleable to describe a movement.
For example, how would you describe the New Yorkers who voted for AOC but also for Trump? Are they conservatives?
@13 There is rhetoric for public consumption and there are the objectives of the Israeli government that are best understood by noting its actions on the ground: ethnic cleansing by any means available.
Don’t try to wriggle out of it, Phoebe Dear. I’m old enough to remember when we had liberal Republicans, but that ended in 1980, and whatever was left was destroyed by Gingrich. They hitched their wagon to the baby fetishists, scamvangelists, and lowest-common-denominator social garbage, and never looked back.
Trump’s convictions, such as they are, extend mainly to raiding the treasury, bilking his stupid supporters, and staying out of jail. But, as the undisputed leader of the GOP, he is the leader of what passes for conservatism these days, at least in the US.
Thumpus dear, I confess to not knowing much about Buckley, but my impression of him was that he wouldn’t be able to tolerate the whole hee-haw aspect of the GOP.
@23: Shell game, cognitive dissonance, and compartmentalize all in just one sentence. I’m impressed.
“While police say drones allow them to monitor dangerous situations without risking human life, there are immense privacy implications to expanding unchecked, warrantless aerial surveillance.”
how long till
Drones replace
our $200K Po-pos?
Israel’s already
got ‘em shooting
at Anything that Moves
LOOK — HAMAS! Boom yur Dead.
and when A I*
replaces drone pilots
in their comfy easy chairs
and human beings declared
Superfluous we can All rest easy:
in Peace.
@14
first they’ll come
for the Trade Unionists
*like wormmy’s
lil’ Sockpuppet
Would you call Reagan conservative? GWB? President Donald Trump would not exist if they had not paved his way. The only thing that’s different about Trump is that his bigotry is explicit and not couched in concern for “welfare queens” or “the sanctity of marriage.” Now it’s just “queer people are pedophiles” and “immigrants are rapists who eat dogs” and conservative voters could not be happier. Same hateful garbage covering for the same destructive economic policies, slightly more offensive language.
@24: lol, precisely no one has been or will be “ethnically cleansed” from Gaza. This is just more of your “MILLIONS OF LIVES” wrongness. 😄
@24: again, the aspirations of Smotrich and Ben Gvir are not relevant to ceasefire negotiations.
if the IDF is using “any means necessary” to ethnically cleanse Gaza, they’re doing a shit job of it. 98% of the population is still alive and in place, albeit maimed, traumatized, and homeless.
Israel has means they haven’t used, but maybe now, without the Genocide Joe admin constantly nagging them, they’ll step it up.
Vivian, why do you continue to support the cesspool that was Twitter – literally your post from Hannah and the AP could have been source elsewhere (example, asssociatedpress.bsky.social). For a group of writers that claim you’re con most things Musk, I would think you would stop putting money into his Billionaire pockets. And if you need inspiration, look no further than your brethren at the Mercury – they have successfully made the leap (give them a ring if you need help). Fuck X
@14, The movement you refer to got him elected, and now he doesn’t need them anymore. He throws everyone and anyone under the bus once he doesn’t need them anymore.
He has no principles. He just wants to be affirmed a winner.
@22, And international justice institutions can’t end “might is right” in the world, without their own “might” to enforce their edicts. Ironic.
@28: You said “You can make the case that it’s not technically conservative” (@19) but that’s the only route for a sensible discussion.
No political party can practically implement an ideologically pure governance at either side of the spectrum as all the sociological disruptions come into play. Nevertheless, Donald Trump is clearly not a conservative given any attempt of a classical definition of the word – despite his rhetoric or his power. Rather, as well all know, he’s only a sociopathic narcissist only interested in transactional politics to service his greed and rage.
Giving him any political classification is rather moot. But I choose “populist” rather than “conservative”. I accept that you and Catalina disagree.
“[the donold]
throws everyone
and anyone under
the bus once he does-
n’t need them anymore.”
–@32
pity them
poor Drivers
bereft of sight
‘bump, bump’ goes
The Bus out In-
to the nite
Debating the technical definitions of words is a distraction from what matters. It’s a way for people who support policies they can’t defend on their merits to avoid engaging with their consequences.
If you want to say the modern republican party is not conservative but a populist reactionary movement that demagogues minorities to consolidate power and wealth I don’t disagree. But this didn’t start with Trump, it’s been true of every republican president in my lifetime, including your “conservative” idol Ronald Reagan. The only difference is that Trump has dispensed with the dog whistle, but the policies are all the same. Deregulation, militarism, lower taxes for rich people, weakening the social safety net, and blaming poor people and minorities for society’s problems.
However you define conservative, this has always been the word we’ve used to describe the mainstream right wing, and right now the standard bearer for that movement is Donald Trump. He may not be a literal conservative but that’s how most Americans describe him and his politics.
32 i’m sure trans people and women of childbearing age will rest well knowing he threw their rights out the window just to get elected even though he doesn’t actually believe in any of it
@36: Okay, I accept that you accept that we disagree.
@37: Yes, Donald is consistent in being unprincipled on multiple populations he’s leaving high and dry – which is neither conservative nor liberal.
@22: “The main purpose of international law and its institutions is to end your ‘might is right’ world.”
After you blew right past mention (@12) of Hezbollah’s illegal occupation of southern Lebanon.
Priceless.
@32:
And stay out of jail for as long as possible. I seriously believe that was his primary objective in running; everything else took second place.
38, That may be true but the overwhelming majority of americans will continue to call him and his policies “conservative” because he is the head of the republican party, just as they did with every republican president who preceded him on the same regressive platform, only with more folksy and agreeable personalities. Leaving women and minorities high and dry has been the mainstay of republican politics for the last 4-5 decades if not longer.
@41, Now leaving women and minorities high and dry has become the mainstay of Democrats as well. Bi-partisanship at last.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-mexico-democratic-stronghold-battling-poverty-fentanyl-backs-trump-2024-11-21/
You’re telling me when republicans lie to voters who have nothing left to lose some of them will actually believe it
@8 Are you nuts? Look how he is attacking transgender people.
@24- let’s just agree on “fucking morons” for the AOC/Trump voters.
44 – Are not homophobia and transphobia two separate things? Although one can be both, that’s not necessarily the case with people.
45 – But she needs their vote to win again.
https://youtu.be/1t2kgl6BnPI?feature=shared
Lmao
@30 I don’t see any reasons to think these aren’t the aspirations of the government or that this coalition government isn’t hostage to its extremists.
I assume you don’t have a reputable cite as to 98% of the terrorized North Gaza population being still alive and in place
The ICC is not done with these war criminals so we will see how much more of the little international goodwill left Israel is willing to throw away.
@33 the international community didn’t use military might to force apartheid South Africa to cry uncle
@39 resuming a) a century of colonial conflict including a ~55 year illegal occupation of the West bank and multiple invasions of Lebanon to b) Hezbollah failure to comply to the previous international agreement is not serious but you do you, I guess