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.
@49: Really proud of the current condition of South Africa, are we? I think the U.S. and international community should be a bit more circumspect about intervening in other countries’ internal affairs. “Liberating” people into chronic misery under a one-party (failed) state doesn’t really make a good advertisement for our brand of freedom.
“… we will see how much more of the little international goodwill left Israel is willing to throw away.”
Yeah, when fighting terrorists who want to wipe their country from the map, Israelis will spend a lot of time caring about what you think. Get over yourself.
“… Hezbollah failure to comply to the previous international agreement…”
UN Security Council Resolution 1701 remains very much in effect, and Hezbollah continues to violate it, keeping Lebanon a failed state. No amount of your whataboutism will change that. You don’t actually care about international law, and you’re not fooling anyone into believing you do.
@49: “a century of colonial conflict”
Ha ha ha, except no, because Jews aren’t “colonizers” in Israel. 😄 Not unless you erase 3,000 years of continuous Jewish national history in Israel, but what kind of person would do that? 😉
@50 You have made abundantly clear that getting rid of apartheid isn’t your “brand of freedom”. Not a good look but again: you do you.
@51 Knowledgeable antiracists know that a) many Palestinians have continuously occupied Palestine for 1000’s of years and b) almost all Israeli Jews are issued from colonialist immigration that started ~100 years ago. What kind of person would deny that? An anti-Arab racist
“almost all Israeli Jews are issued from colonialist immigration that started ~100 years ago”
Careful, Bob, your anti-semitism is sticking out again! 🤣 Jews aren’t just a random collection of individuals who happen to like Israel, they are a nation whose indigenous land is Israel. That nation never abandoned its land, contrary to your anti-semitic fantasies! 😉 You’re not an anti-racist, Bob, you’re just a regular racist, ha ha ha!
@52: I never said we should not have opposed apartheid; I said we should look at the results of what we did. (TBF, I can understand your reflexive and complete opposition to any evaluation of any results from any course of action you’ve ever advocated, though.)
@53: averagebob occasionally stops spouting third-hand settler-colonialist theory long enough to wax poetically his deep gratitude for the positive effects millennia of explicitly anti-Jewish foreign Imperial policies had upon Palestine. 🙂
@54: He is still agonizing over the “Jewish Question!” 😂
Zionists didn’t use to shy away from saying they were taking land away from Palestinians (need a citation? just ask), but since that time anti-colonial revolutions have stigmatized colonialism as a racist enterprise so now Zionists claim that stating the colonial nature of Israel is anti-semitism. May be some day they’ll actually demonstrate how stating historical facts amounts to “hating Jews” but don’t hold your breath because they can’t demonstrate it so they won’t. Anyway, these continual claim about antisemitism are nothing short of authoritarian attempts at stifling freedom of expression. Once a thug, always a thug and an anti-Arab racist.
can’t wait for the Resort Hotels
erected over the buried remains
of 10,000 dead Palestinians when
They host their Thanksgiving Holidays
Christmas
oughtta be
pretty Fun too.
@56: lol, it was never Palestinian land cause there was never a Palestinian state! There woulda been one, but instead the Arabs chose war in ‘48. That war worked out for the Arabs the way Arab wars always do, just ask a Gazawi! 😉
@49, One success amongst how many thousands of failures?
BTW how are sanctions modifying Russia’s behavior, or Iran’s? There is always private parties and nations that benefit by smuggling.
South Africa is the exception that proves the rule.
Every court in the world that is successful, uses coercive force to make its mandates stick. I.e. You can comply with the court voluntarily or we will send people with guns to you. You can then comply with them or resist them and be shot. Either way, the courts mandate will be accomplished.
@56: You can drop your pretense of caring about Arabs, too. Hamas and Hezbollah (the latter funded by a decidedly non-Arabic Iran) have chronically used Palestinians and Lebanese as human shields with complete impunity — and with not a peep of protest from you, either.
@57: Sawant wanted it that way. Are you suddenly going to start questioning her?
happy
thanksgiving
Wormtongue. bibi
Appreciates you. will
you be Christmassing on
all those dead Palestinians?
you’ve certainly
Earned it.
@61: Don’t be so pessimistic. Christmas is still a month away. That’s plenty of time for Hamas to release the hostages, disarm, and step down from government. 😉
@62
Always looking
on the Bright
Side of gen-
ocide, eh,
🛴?
@63: Keep it up, and I’m gonna tell Bernie about your abuse of the word, “genocide.”
Love,
Berntongue
@63: lol, ain’t no genocide. There are more Gazawiyn alive today than there were when they attacked Israel 14 months ago! 😆
@46 So, you are nuts. Pity. I had hoped that you were not.
Et tu, raindrop?
@66: Then tell me where I’m wrong. It’s a Venn Diagram from multiple perspectives.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/29/israel-knesset-benjamin-netanyahu-peace
@trumpus, please don’t make the population argument when trying to deny the ongoing horror in Gaza. If one follows that logic, your logic, then the genocide of the jews during the Nazi years is no longer a genocide because the number of jews is greater now than it was after the holocaust. It doesn’t work that way.
But now you will call me an anti-semite because I don’t think you should claim population recovery is a metric that should be used to deny a genocide. And you unfortunately, will have given actual anti -emites a really dumb talking point.
@56: As you didn’t provide the citations you claim to have (a real shocker, that), here’s one you will like. Despite trying very, very hard to support your point about Zionists “taking” land from Palestinian Arabs, this document finally has to admit the Zionist Jews bought land in British Mandatory Palestine (from absentee Arab owners, no less!), and the major acquisition came later, during and from the 1948 war. The Ottoman Imperial policy against Jews owning land is of course not mentioned (just as you like it), the Palestinian Arabs defying the UN by choosing war is also not explicitly mentioned (again, as you like it), and the illegal invasion of Palestine by Arab countries is, of course, not mentioned (ditto). And still, throughout all of that, Jews bought land in Mandatory Palestine; they didn’t take it unjustly or by force.
(https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-208638/)
Great quote: “It has been estimated that by about June 1947, the Jewish minority in Palestine had taken over 1,850,000 dunams** out of a total of 13 million dunams, mainly as a result of transactions between the above-mentioned Jewish institutions and the big Arab landowners of Palestine.” Note “… taken over … as a result of transactions,” is the closest the document can get to simply admitting, “bought.” And yet, there it is: the Zionist Jews bought land in Palestine, from Arabs, who sold it freely to them.
good ole
gentrification
the ultimate tool
of vulture capitalists
in their War on the Poor
tho not nearly
as Efficient as a
little Genocide-lite
& a Fleet of Bulldozers.
@72: The Gaza Strip exists because of Egypt’s illegal invasion of Palestine in 1948, and was administered by Egypt thereafter:
“The Gaza Strip was under Egyptian military rule from 1949 to 1956 and again from 1957 to 1967. From the beginning, the area’s chief economic and social problem was the presence of large numbers of Palestinian Arab refugees living in extreme poverty in squalid camps. The Egyptian government did not consider the area part of Egypt and did not allow the refugees to become Egyptian citizens or to migrate to Egypt or to other Arab countries where they might be integrated into the population.” (https://www.britannica.com/place/Gaza-Strip)
The area has a great beachfront climate, and were it not for politics (neither Egypt nor Israel will allow Gaza autonomy) would likely be a quietly prosperous vacation spot for wealthy Arabs and Europeans. The temptation to make it into such a place exists now, and with incoming President Trump (thanks, Kshama!!) may become a reality.
(That would certainly put all of your whining about “Genocide Joe” nicely into perspective, now wouldn’t it?)
@70: lol, Holocaust comparison!
@52, “b) almost all Israeli Jews are issued from colonialist immigration that started ~100 years ago.”
You mean RETURN (not immigration) from when Jews were previously deported by Syrians, Babylonian, Persians, and among others. You mean RETURNED after being displaced and disbursed by Arabs, Ottomans, and so many others in the thousands of years prior to 100 years ago.
So Averagebob,
Please explain how the U.N. achieving its will in South Africa, without imposing it by military force, is normative, and not an exception that proves a rule.
Your silence is deafening.
Please name all the courts, in all the societies across the planet that implement their orders without a police force.
We will wait.
@75: Averagebob rejects the idea of Jewish nationhood. He is willing to tolerate Jews as individuals (so long as they keep their mouths shut about Israel, lol), but the idea of Jews as a nation is abhorrent to him.
For this reason, Averagebob repeatedly returns to the European ancestry of some Jews. He mainly conceives of Jews as confused European individuals, not a nation with an indigenous homeland in Israel. If only all those white people had stayed home in Europe where they belong! 😆
Averagebob has no such qualms about Arab nationhood in general or Palestinian nationhood in particular. Unlike Jews, who deserve no state at all in Averagebob’s conception, the Arabs deserve dozens of states, in fact more states every day! 😄 In Averagebob’s conception, a Jewish state in the Middle East is an intolerable European colonialist ethno-state, while the dozens of Arab states in the Middle East are simply the natural and proper order of things. Averagebob’s anti-Zionism, of which he is so proud, is anti-semitism for which he ought to be ashamed. 😃
@73: The Palestine Riviera would at least be a peaceful aftermath.
@78
sure.
long as
Palestinians
don’t harbor ill
Feelings towards
their Genociders. or
is That too Much to ask?
68, The venn diagram for transphobia and homophobia is a near perfect circle, with the only exception being a tiny fraction of the dumbest gays on earth who think they’ll be spared if they throw trans people under the bus. But to everyone else in their circle, gay and trans people are the exact same problem.
@80: No, people are complex and don’t fit into political narratives as easily as you postulate. You are amusing, I’ll give you that.
@81, Everything I said is completely accurate. The rights of gay and trans people are some of the most important political issues to me and I have been paying close attention to how they travel together and the kinds of people who push harmful narratives about queer people.
There is a massive movement of far-right, mostly Christian, mostly white people who think society has gone too far on social issues re queer people. Along side them are a small number of gay people who are anti-trans and seem to believe they are in company with people who will spare the gays because the focus is currently on trans people. Like I said, the dumbest gays on earth.
It’s abundantly clear you fit somewhere in the transphobic circle because you’ve already had at least one profile banned for transphobia and can’t help yourself from concern-trolling trans people with your “nice lady” persona. So you have zero credibility on this issue and your defense of anti-lgbt bigots rings hollow.
@70: I agree intent (and identity of the victims) makes the genocide, not the numbers. But if you want to complain about genocide as a numbers game, please take that to the Stranger (and supportive commenters here). Thumpus arrived very, very late to that party.
@75: As I mentioned @54, averagebob has absolutely no problem with anti-Jewish policies imposed upon territories by foreign empires. Hilariously, he also sees no contradiction between his loving support of (long-dead) imperiums, and his accusations of settler-colonialist victimizations of Arabs by modern Jews.
@81, etc.: Expanding on @82, these bigots now focus on trans’ persons, and especially trans’ youth, because of all the prior “culture wars” these bigots have declared, fought, and lost. There’s something especially vile about attacking a small, misunderstood, and traditionally-powerless group, and especially the minors within that group, who cannot legally defend themselves. Anyone who has ever attended an American high school knows what a horrible place it could be for anyone who didn’t conform to the norms of the day. I’ve always identified as the cis-het male I was identified as at birth, and I was repeatedly called hateful names in school, because I refused to join in the bullies’ bigoted expressions of hatred against what we now call LGBTQ+ persons. I can’t even imagine what might have happened had I questioned my own sexuality, but I doubt any of the current anti-trans bigots would have helped me, to put it mildly.
Even making a distinction between “homophobia” and “transphobia” plays to the advantage of these bigots, because the bigots themselves see absolutely no distinction between LGB Q+ and T. Anyone in the LGBQ+ community needs to understand that by making such a distinction, they are feeding the fire over which the bigots want to roast everyone — gay, straight, trans, or whatever — who disagree with such bigotry.
@82: Maybe if you break down aggregate terms into specifics there would be an opportunity for a meaningful discussion on this. Also avoid bloviating on race and religion.
@85: At no time in the history of the United States has any statement of the form, “There is a a massive movement of far-right, mostly Christian, mostly white people who think society has gone too far on social issues…” been false. They always exist, they always oppose social justice and change, and they always take every opportunity they get to hurt as many of their fellow Americans as possible. The identity of their preferred victims may change, from blacks to women to gays to Muslims to trans’, but their hatred and bigotry always remain. Identifying this persistent reality is not “bloviating on race and religion,” it’s accurately describing the problem.
@85, I don’t care what a dumb bigot thinks is a “meaningful discussion” about their own bigotry. Your refusal to see the role of race and religion in not only anti-lgbtq issues but American politics in general only underscores how useless it would be.
@86: But women and gays fare much better under Islam? They don’t. So there goes your Christian attack. And social justice and change has been occurring. You just refuse to see it. Americans are remarkably tolerant and accepting. LGBT acceptance has always been on an upward trajectory.
@87: That’s your problem, you don’t care.
@86+@87: These comments epitomize how the identity politics rage lost the 2024 election for the democrats.
@84/86, missed these comments the first time around but needless to say I agree with all of it. Every election cycle they put a different minority in the crosshairs because scapegoating vulnerable and misunderstood people is an easy way to distract voters from their own pillaging.
@88
Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) himself accepted men known as Mukhannath as companions, or feminine men who dressed differently, who we might in today’s time period view as trans or gay.
88, You’re right, I don’t care what a hateful dumbass has to say, and if you believe civil rights only move in one direction you haven’t been paying attention. They’ve already dialed back women’s reproductive rights at the national level and multiple states have passed legislation curbing trans rights, banning books, and stifling teachers’ free speech. They achieve all of this by appealing to the prejudices of mostly white Christian Americans with hateful ignorance about vulnerable minorities. I don’t need to hear a word from you to know that you’re gullible enough to buy in to all of it.
88, Also this isn’t a defense of american christian nationalism, it’s a weak attempt at a distraction. It’s entirely possible for women and gays to be treated like shit by any number of retrograde theocratic movements.
@90: Interesting footnote. But that doesn’t mean that Islam is accepting of women and sexual minorities in the present era.
@93. Kinda like Russia, which the far right in this country is embracing wholeheartedly in its Project 2025.
Even more like Jesus palling around with hookers and telling people to love thy neighbor when contemporary american christianity is all about hate, judgement, and discrimination.
@90: Mukhannathun are explicitly men. They have nothing in common with the trans women of today, who see themselves as women.
Also, if you want to claim the Sunnah counsels “acceptance” of mukhannathun in anything remotely resembling the acceptance that the trans women of today want for themselves, then you’re gonna need some pretty beefy ahadith or else one hell of a fatwa! 🤪
@95: That’s a really wide group of people you just disparaged; hatefully in tone, made judgements against them, and would probably discriminate against them — if it were legal to do so.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
@97. Reread 97. Then reread 93.
It’s an accurate description of the religious movement behind Trump, really the last 4 decades of republican politics. There are plenty of practicing christians who are very fine people — some of my best friends, etc — but the political movement that operates in their name is an insidious, hateful blight on our country.
Also we’re not talking about “sin” (not a real thing btw) but people weaponizing the state against minorities and taking away our hard-earned rights in the name of their favorite fairy tales. If you’re not hating/judging fascists, you’re choosing their side.