Slog AM: Mass Layoffs at Everett Herald, Pride Flag Flies over Newcastle, Louisiana Mandates Display of Ten Commandments in Public Schools

1. “(Y)ou’re co-opting an anti-genocide movement with antisemitic nonsense.”

   Well, what do you expect when rooting out a terrorist organization that uses civilians as human shields is routinely exaggerated as ‘genocide’ to the point of hyperbole?

2. My God it is a gorgeous day!

3. Yeah! Quit exaggerating about the murder of 10,000’s of innocent women, children and men. Goddammit! and quit exaggerating about the deliberate starving of millions. All of it is necessary! Bloody hell snowflakes!

4. Great Slog AM, cheers

5. “…not sending weapons to Israel, a country currently slaughtering en masse people it has caged in an open-air prison for years.”

   Yet, just yesterday, Netanyahu accused the US of NOT sending them weapons. Which is it, journalists?

6. “Red Lady”? “Beware of the Blob” was right there.

7. Headline, Real or Onion?

   “Alt-Weekly Stops Screaming ‘Genocide in Gaza’ at Israel Just Long Enough to Scream at Vandals Who Tagged Jewish Center with ‘Genocide in Gaza’ Graffiti.”

   Also, was it DSA or Socialist Alternative who took over 43rd District Dems awhile back? Sounds like they’re still in charge there.

8. @6 sounds like Netanyahu is already making up excuses for his failure to deliver an impossible task: eradicate Hamas while expanding Israel’s borders, as well as feeding talking points to Trump because we know who Netanyahu would prefer in the White House

   Meanwhile, at IDF headquarters: “To say that we are going to make Hamas disappear is to throw sand in people’s eyes. If we don’t provide an alternative, in the end, we will have Hamas,” Rear Adm Daniel Hagari told Israel’s Channel 13 broadcaster.

9. Which version of the 10 commandments will they require in Louisiana? Or is any ol’ version ok? Could I make up my own version and donate posters with that? Do they have experts who can ascertain if this version or that version is sufficiently pious and edifying?

10. @9 The 43rd District Dems left the Dem party long ago. This is the group that changed their endorsement process to endorse non dems in 2019 so they could endorse Shaun Scott and Sawant. The current chair spends most of his time trying to tear down actual Dems in the city. I don’t give any weight to anything they say or do.

11. @12 given that you appear to be somewhere to the right of Gengis Khan, it is doubtful that’ll agree with progressive Democrats, like the 43rd

12. ” In another ruling, the clerics ” Supreme Court Justices are not Clerics in a real sense of the word unless you are suggesting that they are there to install a religious order, which is not clear.
    
    They have clerks they aren’t clerks either.

13. @13 my politics notwithstanding for a Democratic group to change their policies to endorse people who aren’t part of the party seems like a big warning flag that actual Dems should feel free to ignore anything they have to say.

14. @15 I cannot see any good reason why it should be the case, thus millions of Democrats wanted to see Sanders president because he represented them much better than Clinton or Biden even though he is not a member of the Democratic party. In spite of your denial, I’d wager that your political views have much to do with your perspective that choosing a camp is most important, political platform and ethics be damned.

15. @15 that probably says more about your politics than it does mine. Last I checked Bernie doesn’t go around trying to undermine and sabotage his fellow Democrats the way Scott/Sawant and the 43rd D’s do. The SA and DSA members in the area know they have little hope of winning running under that banner so they hide out amongst Dems as Shaun Scott is doing this cycle and co-opt the district groups like they have with the 43rd and 34th (they endorsed both NTK and Oliver in 2021). If you don’t want to support the platform of the Democratic Party and its candidates than don’t be a Democrat, it really is that simple.

16. @18 is obviously for @16

17. “Quit
    
    fucking tagging
    
    Jewish institutions;
    
    you’re co-opting an anti-genocide
    
    movement with antisemitic nonsense.”

    thank you
    
    Rich nevermind
    
    our pro-Genociders*
    
    denying it’s Genocide
    
    their Facts never getting
    
    in the way of their Humanity

    *soon to have their
    
    Bloodlust re-sa-
    
    red [for Now]:

    ever-
    
    More retaliation
    
    escalation you hit
    
    ME first. No. YOU did
    
    Ad infinitium

    So:
    
    whom
    
    do we
    
    Thank for our
    
    nukular Annihilation?

18. @10: Sounds like we need demonstrations worldwide, in major cities and universities, demanding governments work with Israel to destroy Hamas. Given Hamas is a violently misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, jihadi organization, funded by the women-beating regime in Iran, and climate-destroying petrodollars from Qatar, rousing the citizens of western democracies to protest Hamas would seem like a pretty easy ask, right?

    Right?

    (Crickets…)

19. @16 Sanders officially joined the Democratic Party in 2015 in order to run for its nomination in 2016, 2018, and again in 2019 in order to be eligible to run for Democratic nominations and use DNC resources.

20. @20 correction:

    *soon to have their
    
    Bloodlust re-sa-
    
    Ted [for Now]:

    [wow.
    
    the “[”
    
    Moves
    
    all by its-
    
    Self. cool!]

21. @22: “It’s really a shame many of Bernie’s supporters couldn’t accept their defeat to rally around the party’s chosen candidate.”

    Or accept his subsequent endorsement of her. Their belief in his good judgement and leadership ended abruptly right there, apparently.

22. it’s More of a Shame
    
    that Hills didn’t heed
    
    Bernie’s Call for a more
    
    Egalitarian society — fucking
    
    Eltrumpfster DID & when Hills
    
    didn’t fucking even fucking BOTHER
    
    to campaign in … one of those too-close
    
    to-call Lake States and BERNIE campaigned
    
    harder for Hills than She fucking did. but yeah

    blame it on the one
    
    whose Platform
    
    is Endorsed
    
    by MOST
    
    fucking
    
    Amer-
    
    icans

    maybe
    
    even
    
    You

    she wouldda
    
    fucking WON.

    but – good
    
    Talking Point!

    and Remember:
    
    NEVER Blame
    
    the “D”NC*

    *LLC,
    
    Bitches!

23. @2 C Dizzle (Garb Garblar?): +1 It surely was, and is again today! My beloved VW and I took a little drive with the top down. Hooray for longer days of daylight, warmth, and sunshine. Happy Summer Solstice at long last! 😉

    WTF is WRONG with legislators and public school administrators in the Deep Fried Southern States of MAGAt confusion?? 10 Commandments, my ass. All the rabid RWNJs want to “teach” is hatred, hypocrisy, neofascism, corruption, fear, stupidity, ignorance, misogyny, violent chaos, and systematic racism.

24. it’s More of a Shame
    
    that Hills didn’t heed
    
    Bernie’s Call for a more
    
    Egalitarian society — fucking
    
    Eltrumpfster DID — but on Day One he
    
    ‘forgot’ and then he Never mentioned it again

    tho did Promise US an
    
    Infrastructure Week
    
    but promptly for-
    
    got about That
    
    too and Here
    
    yet again
    
    we Are.

25. @25 kristofarian: I just can’t handle a reenactment of the Orange Turd stolen election year 2016! 2024 threatens to be exponentially WORSE, nationally and globally. Why the fuck ISN’T the Orange Turd rotting in prison??
    
    If the dystopian nightmare of Turd 2025 happens, I predict that all foreign countries who were our allies during WWII will just say ‘fuck it’ and aim all nuclear warheads this time at the Deeply Divided States as the world burns.
    
    We have been warned.

26. @27 kristofarian: Just imagine what a utopian universe we COULD have had if Al Gore had gained executive control of the White House in 2001, and if Hillary Clinton had rightfully made history as the first woman President of the United States in 2017.

27. @18 errrr, the idea is that Democratic party members decide the platform, not the other way around. What does it say about me? simple, that I am a Democrat for democracy because I want the party to represent its constituents.

    @21a I see, more of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sorry logic. According to you, to get rid of Hamas, a profoundly regressive organization that practices terror, I should enable Israel’s colonial project that involves systemic discrimination, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Your proposition is not only quite immoral but it is also dead wrong because the only policy that will get rid of terror in Palestine is a compromise like two states or one secular state where all religions coexist.

    @21b You got me there, although Sanders still calls himself an independent.

28. Almost 90% of Bernie’s voters supported Clinton in the general. By contrast, 25% of Clinton’s primary voters in 2008 ended up voting for McCain.

    https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds

29. What is the point of Newcastle even being independent? They outsource their school management to Renton and Issaquah, they already outsource their fire department to Bellevue, etc. Bellevue or Renton should just annex them and be done with it.

30. Oh please give us more neoliberals in office, can’t get enough, it’s the only viable option! Yum yum neoliberalism for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, can’t get enough!

31. @22 Do you have a comprehensive reference to support your statement regarding “many Sanders supporters not voting for Clinton”. It’s a fact that Clinton lost the electoral college in the rust belt where workers got screwed by outsourcing and where she didn’t bother to campaign. Are you saying there are many Sanders supporters in the rust belt?

32. @30 yes, Democratic party members decide the platform but when that platform is decided and one group decides they don’t really like it and want to do their own thing, endorse candidates who not only don’t support said platform but campaign against it and undermine other candidates who do support said platform then I don’t really think they should be considered part of the party anymore. They are free to create their own platform and their own party. AOC had a great quote a few years ago when asked if she would support Biden should he win the White House stating “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party” and she’s right. She’s not a Democrat and the only reason she runs as one is because its the only way she can win.

33. @30: ‘I see, more of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sorry logic.’

    So, you’re saying the anti-colonialist and thoroughly capitalist United States should NOT have allied with the British Empire and Soviet Russia to defeat Nazi Germany? We should have demanded Britain first divest from Empire, and the Soviet Union completely shut down their gulags, before we’d ally with them? Is that a correct interpretation of your political purity position?

    “According to you, to get rid of Hamas, a profoundly regressive organization that practices terror, I should enable Israel’s colonial project…”

    Or, you could take advantage of Israel attacking Hamas to organize against Hamas, demanding governments worldwide stop the flow of arms, men, and money to it. I guess your opposition to violently misogynistic jihad just isn’t that strong, eh?

34. @17 Calling District13Refugee a moderate Democrat tells me you have fallen so far down the MAGA rabbit hole that you think Tea Party conservative Republicans are Democrats, and everyone to the left of Biden (a centrist) is a communist. All you right wing nut jobs have accomplished is to make actual Marxists like Charles look like competent economic theorists.

35. @39 the fact you think the 43rd Dems endorsing anti Dem socialist Marxist candidates is somehow mainstream demonstrates how completely untethered from reality you are. Come out of your ideological bubble and maybe talk to people who aren’t in socialist alternative for a change.

36. An Ann Davison supporter worrying about whether candidates are real Democrats is cute

37. @37 Mercutio: I was only a small child at the time of LBJ’s presidency. What I found most disturbing in the late 1960s and early 1970s was that the Conflict in Vietnam was the first U.S. involved war to be televised.
    
    I never trusted Richard Nixon. Nixon won his second term by a landslide over George McGovern in 1972.
    
    My 3rd grade class had a “mock” election that year. Our teacher explained that while we were then too young to vote, which candidate would be best suited as President of the United States–Nixon, the incumbent, or his Democratic challenger, McGovern?
    
    Thinking like their parents, the overwhelming majority of us, except for me and another classmate–chose Nixon.
    
    Kids in my class gave me weird looks, asking why I had picked McGovern. I responded that I didn’t trust Nixon’s face.
    
    Fast forward to September 1974 when I entered the 5th grade. My same classmates were shellshocked by Nixon’s publicized resignation the previous month. Many asked me what I knew. I just remembered having a gut feeling back then.

38. neolibs
    
    & centrists
    
    have dragged
    
    the ‘democratic’
    
    party – in order to
    
    keep up with far right
    
    -from the left to where
    
    even Nixon looks like a
    
    fucking Socialist. fucking
    
    ‘Citizens United’ revolution-
    
    ized America to hand it all over

    to the wealth hoarders
    
    monopolies profiteers
    
    & neolibs’re happily
    
    riding the wave of
    
    fascism lite. for
    
    now

39. @42 thinking there was any choice between Davison and NTK is another sign you are immersed in an idealogical bubble. Please do come outside.

40. @45 wait now I’m confused, is it sometimes ok for Democrats to support non-Democrats, or not? Or is it just that it’s ok for YOU to support a non-Democrat but not for people with whom you disagree to do so?

41. @36 It’s rather farfetched to claim that not cheer-leading for genocide amounts to “political purity”. It’s a pretty low bar that you are unable to clear unfortunately.

    Israel is not fighting Hamas (and mass murders Palestinians) because it is a regressive organization that commits acts of terror but because it opposes their attempts at seizing the whole of Palestine away from its original inhabitants. Opponents of Israel’s expansionism end up in jail or worse whether they are violent or not like Rachel Corrie or the many individuals (including children, journalists and healthcare personnel) killed or maimed by snipers. Needless to say that Zionists themselves have had and continue to have their share of regressives and terrorists so what makes Hamas the object of demonization is hardly exceptional. You’d be hard pressed to name a single anti-colonial movement that didn’t commit acts of terror during wars of independence for example.

    The allies didn’t fight the Nazis to seize and colonize but to eliminate a scourge that murdered masses of people, which we knew at the very least in 1941 (and likely before). It’s a very poor comparison and the war that even pacifists usually say couldn’t be avoided.

42. @46 People can vote for whoever they think is the best candidate. In the case of Davison and NTK neither was a democrat but Davison was much closer despite TS trying to tie her to the MAGA label. That is irrelevant. The topic of discussion was should local political party groups who endorse candidates and platforms that conflict with the national party (and in the case of the 43rd undermine the party platform and campaign against its candidates) have any credibility with voters of that party. I still think no.

43. @48 so your opinion is that a local party group should not, in a nonpartisan race, endorse a candidate who nonetheless identifies with that party but whose platform is insufficiently deferential to the national party committee? This isn’t the USSR

44. @41, I understand that you have probably never even made it to a Democratic precinct caucus, much less one at the legislative district level, and this is one of those times I strongly suspect you don’t even live near Seattle. City council races are non-partisan. More importantly, most Democratic folks who are active in the party in Seattle tend to be far more focused on progressive policies than party loyalty. Any real progressive Democrat will always prefer someone from the Socialist Alternative like Kshama Sawant than a ConservaDem like a Joe Manchin. So we will always support the outsider who will caucus with us and advance progressive legislation than a ConservaDem who while caucusing with the Democrats, votes against the party more than with.

45. @50: “Any real progressive Democrat…”

    The phrase you wanted there was, “No True Scotsman.”

    “… someone from the Socialist Alternative like Kshama Sawant…”

    Someone who constantly hectored Democrats as sellouts and corporate whores? Someone whose organization explicitly wanted to replace the Democrats in Seattle? That’s who they preferred?

    CM Sawant limped impotently out of office, after one of the most liberal constituencies in the entire country almost recalled her; she staved them off only by using gobs of out-of-city money to pay for a vote-harvesting operation. This is the type of person who gets support from “real progressive Democrats”? How many of those are there in all of Seattle, then — twelve? A hundred?

46. @51 many (most?) Democrat pols are sellouts and corporate whores. And I think what you meant to write was Sawant left office at the time of her own choosing after successfully defeating multiple out-of-district funded challengers and a recall effort. Apparently there are a good amount of “real progressive Democrats” in Seattle, possibly because many of the sellouts and corporate whores followed your example and moved elsewhere.

47. @52: “many (most?) Democrat pols are sellouts and corporate whores”

    No doubt they prefer you, for having told them that. (Just ask Bob.)

    “And I think what you meant to write was…”

    You think wrong. What I meant to write was, “she limped impotently out of office, after one of the most liberal constituencies in the entire country almost recalled her; she staved them off only by using gobs of out-of-city money to pay for a vote-harvesting operation.”

    I could add she recognized (or was told) constantly fighting ever-larger numbers of District 3’s voters meant she would lose sooner rather than later, so she quit ahead of being fired. She almost lost when she didn’t even have an opponent, so sticking around for the inevitable strong challenger made no sense.

48. @47: First, back to the point you made @30, where you equated opposing Hamas to helping Israel: “…to get rid of Hamas, a profoundly regressive organization that practices terror, I should enable Israel’s colonial project that involves systemic discrimination, ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

    So, to get rid of Nazi Germany, the United States allied with the British Empire and the Soviet Union, two countries whose policies (imperial colonialism and expansionist totalitarianism, respectively) we found abhorrent. According to your logic, our alliances were “quite immoral,” and we should not have partaken in them.

    Helping the British Empire meant helping history’s greatest colonialist enterprise ever. Helping the Soviet Union meant supporting both the gulag, and the NKVD execution squads. Yet those are ok in your book?

    Destroying Hamas is something every person who holds Western values should enthusiastically endorse, no matter whom they kidnap, rape, and slaughter; yet, you refuse, on the flimsy claim that Israel is the greater evil. You even make excuses for Hamas’ terrorism, by insulting freedom fighters worldwide over centuries:

    “You’d be hard pressed to name a single anti-colonial movement that didn’t commit acts of terror during wars of independence for example.”

    Sure, tell us all about the loyalist American colonists who were raped and murdered by Patriots, during the American War of Independence. Ditto the conservative Irishwomen who were raped and murdered by the original IRA, during the Irish War of Independence, 1916-1922. And then about the high-ranking British colonists and local allies who were raped and murdered during Ghandi and Nehru’s policy of non-cooperation in India, during WWII. You want to talk “genocide”? Hamas raped and murdered Jews, for being Jews, on land Hamas has declared it will make free of Jews. That’s the very definition of “genocide,” and yet you won’t oppose it. If you’re trying to make some case for your superior moral judgment, you’re not doing a very good job.

    Finally, let’s have a laugh at your ludicrous attempts at historical knowledge:

    “The allies didn’t fight the Nazis to seize and colonize but to eliminate a scourge that murdered masses of people, which we knew at the very least in 1941 (and likely before).”

    The first known admission of mass murder by the Nazi regime came in Himmler’s Posen Addresses of October 1943, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posen_speeches . If you have information showing the Nazi program of mass murders were widely known and believed outside of Germany “the very least in 1941 (and likely before),” then please cite your source(s).

    Britain did not declare war upon Germany over the Holocaust, but over the German invasion of Poland. The United States declared war upon Germany only after Hitler declared war upon the United States; even after Pearl Harbor, FDR thought Congress would declare war only upon Japan, but Hitler saved FDR the trouble of asking.

    “…the war that even pacifists usually say couldn’t be avoided.”

    The United States successfully avoided it for years, and one Member of Congress voted against declaring war on Japan: “The House adopted the war resolution against Germany by a vote of 393-0. Moments later, it voted, 399-0, to declare war on Italy. On both tallies, Rep. Jeannette Rankin (R-Mont.), a lifelong pacifist who had previously voted against declaring war on Japan, voted present.” (https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/11/congress-declares-war-on-nazi-germany-and-italy-dec-11-1941-282980#:~:text=The%20House%20adopted%20the%20war,war%20on%20Japan%2C%20voted%20present.)

49. @53 that’s an interesting way to spin her never losing an election during a decade-long career. A for effort

50. @55: Do tell us how much of her program she achieved, during that decade of ever-narrower margins of victory. Please feel free to start with rent control.

51. @55 Tensor has a very special hatred of Sawant whose reelections proved him and his corporate overlords wrong on several occasions. Spitefully, he has always tried to spin her leaving office on her own terms as if she were defeated.

52. @54 Your constant cherry picking is tiresome but it’s all you can do so you’ll keep doing it, right? Anyhow your overly long comment is not really worth a response because it contains so much falsehood. Nevertheless, I’ll be kind and give you the shorter and succinct version (which you’ll ignore anyway to construct another strawman argument)

    Palestine:
    
    Israel only claims to want to destroy Hamas because it’s an excuse to proceed with ethnic cleansing like they have always done during periods of generalized warfare. Even the command of IDF agrees that getting rid of Hamas isn’t possible. However, TERRORizing Palestinians off their land then deny them the right of return has repeatedly worked in the past, so rinse and repeat.

    America:
    
    American colonists were anti-colonial? funny, are you even conscious when you write? Anyhow, yes American patriots killed loyalists in great numbers: “there was a lot of bloodshed, and particularly in the South. And gangs of revolutionaries, gangs of loyalists, would attack each other, go to each other’s plantations. In fact, some of the big battles in the South happened after the surrender at Yorktown. So, what all of this means is that there was a climate of violence and a climate of fear for many loyalists.”
    
    https://www.npr.org/2015/07/03/419824333/what-happened-to-british-loyalists-after-the-revolutionary-war

    In other words, in modern parlance, Patriots, Loyalists committed war crimes and acts of terror.

    Unfortunately rape is quite common during warfare, and not only, and I’ll leave you to ponder whether some of those gangs of patriots also committed rape but I wouldn’t surprised if they did.

    India: ” It began with violence in the late afternoon of May 10 in Meerut with the sepoys destroying government buildings — the jail, record room, kachehri, telegraph office — and going on to destroy the bungalows in which the firangi lived.

    The peasants of the surrounding villages participated in the destruction. What accompanied the destruction was the killing of the White population of Meerut, irrespective of gender and age.”
    
    https://www.rediff.com/news/special/the-forgotten-brutality-of-the-1857-mutiny/20170814.htm

    I won’t bother answer the rest as I don’t want to spend more time but be sure that it is riddled with non-truth as well.

53. @54 I forgot to say: let me know when you need another history lesson

54. @58: In response to your attempted dismissal of Hamas’ terrorism, I generously gave you three actual anti-colonialist conflicts. You managed to use exactly none of them. To get anywhere close to the terrorist brutality Hamas showed just last year, you had to cite a conflict from the days of slavery and serfdom. Even there, you didn’t cite a single example of rape or kidnapping. That alone should tell you just how badly your apologia for Hamas’ terrorism has failed.

    The only documented ethnic cleansing Israel ever committed in Gaza was when it removed Jewish settlers. You’re free to tell us just how well Israel’s anti-settler activity helped bring lasting peace to Gaza. Please, show us your keen understanding of that colonialist history.

55. @61 “The only documented ethnic cleansing Israel ever committed in Gaza was when it removed Jewish settlers”

    Your nonsense knows no bounds

    https://jacobin.com/2024/05/ethnic-cleansing-palestine-israel-nakba

56. @61 the citations I gave you demonstrated without a doubt that according to modern understanding war crime/terrorism was used during these wars of independence (again, calling American colonists “anti-colonialist” must be a joke that only you don’t get). These examples didn’t specifically discuss “rape and kidnapping”, but a) I am not sure why you make it a litmus test of terror as if murdering folk didn’t qualify, and b) it is very likely that if bands of people went around killing and burning, rape was also likely committed.

    You are usually fond of claiming that wars have consequences to justify Israel’s multiple land grabs, but now you also claim that Israel didn’t commit ethnic cleansing? so, which is it? Talking with you is a fucking waste of time.

57. WA State Dems just called for cessation of military aid to Israel and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Now that the Party has spoken everyone here is going to adopt these positions right?

    https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-dems-call-for-cease-fire-in-gaza-war-end-to-military-aid-to-israel/

58. @63. I tried to warn you. It is just a fap session for tensor getting off on your attention.

59. Hello Rich! Hadn’t seen an article by you for a while, it’s nice to know the stranger’s token white male is still around. Take care and keep your head down…

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