Weather people are predicting that today might be the hottest one of the year. The sun, which will face no opposition from clouds, is set to grill Seattle with temperatures that surpass 90. Yesterday was supposed to be as bad, but, mercifully, it never went beyond the mid-80s. Also the city enjoyed bursts of breezes on Tuesday and Monday (Sunday was just the worst). These breezes were the real deal. Each, though brief, had the power to substantially cool a sweaty body. One such breeze I encountered around 3 pm shook the leaves around me in a way that recalled a famous scene in Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece The Mirror. Breezes of this kind have something of the supernatural about them. They come and go like a presence or visit from the other side of this our phenomenal world.
A 4-year-old boy Lynnwood got a hold of his father’s glock and shot his mother in the arm, while his father was asleep on the couch. The mother went to Harborview Medical Center with an injury that wasn’t life-threatening. The boy had minor injuries, but didn’t need to be taken to the hopsital. Leaving a gun unsecured and allowing a child to get their hands on it is a felony in Washington. The father was arrested and put behind bars for negligence. The spokesperson for Snohomish County sheriff’s office claimed that the father also owned other guns that were “unsecured in the residence.”
With the world on fire as it is, you’d think Seattle didn’t have the bandwidth to worry about something as innocuous as graffiti. But such is not the case. Our Seattle City Council, which seems to have “world enough and time” like nobody’s business, voted to add more penalties in a pointless war against something that’s as old as the city itself: graffiti. Council Member Bob Kettle had this to say from on high: “Mitigating graffiti is one of the pillars on which we can build a safer, stronger public safety foundation.” What we have here is a politician who’s too thick to “look out any window.”
Speaking of fire, a volcano in Iceland erupted today. It won’t threaten any people or property, so it’s just a seismic show. I miss you so much right now Iceland. And think yourself lucky to be dealing with the flames and smoke of this and that volcano rather than our hardhearted ICE.
A volcano erupted in Iceland early Wednesday, marking the 12th time in four years for a volcanic system near Reykjavik that has been increasingly active.
Read more: https://trib.al/oCBVoVb
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) July 16, 2025 at 6:25 AM
LA dogs are not feeling ICE right now. One day, everything is all “bow-wow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yay”; the next, a bunch of masked characters show up, deport their dear companion and meal ticket, and throw them into an animal shelter where they face a humane death because no one wants you when you are big and grown. All you can do is howl: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I [yelp] by day, but you do not answer, and [yelp] by night, but I find no rest.”
Feds Arrest ICE Protesters in Spokane: It was only a matter of time before Trump started arresting US citizens for doing nothing more than expressing their rights as citizens. The Seattle Times reports that Federal agents arrested and searched the homes of a number people in Spokane who, on June 11, protested ICE’s brazen disregard of the law. Former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart was one of the protesters picked up and locked up by the feds.
There are some who claim that ICE thugs are in it for the money, but, as far as I can tell, the money is not something to write home about. We can then assume that many of these kidnappers are in it because they believe they are providing a social good, like firefighters. They are catching lawbreakers, they are are making Americans safe again. But to think in this way is nothing but madness. Indeed, it recalls a scene in a 5th century BCE play by Sophocles, Ajax.
The scene in Ajax: After losing a competition to Odysseus, Ajax turns murderous and starts tying up and butchering Menelaus, Agamemnon, and other leaders of the Greek army. But Ajax, who (SPOILER ALERT) has been made mad by Athena, is ignorant of the fact that he is just butchering sheep. When Odysseus overhears Ajax boast that he is about to kill him, when in reality he is about to kill a bleating sheep tied to a pole, Odysseus says the strangest and saddest thing: “Yet, I pity Ajax’s wretchedness, though he is my enemy, for the terrible blindness that is upon him. I think of him, yet also of myself, for I see the true state of us that live. We are dim shades and weightless shadows.” Doesn’t this scene describe the predicament of many ICE thugs perfectly? Are they not as bewitched as Ajax? They think they’re slaying villains; we, instead, see them kidnapping ordinary members of our society.
Boeing Troubles Don’t Stop: Now it’s a Sun Country Airlines Boeing 737. It’s engine burst into flames not long after lifting from a Los Angeles International Airport runway. The Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport-bound plane was forced to return to the safety of the ground. Yes, Boeing lost its way when its focus became stock prices and not engineering excellence. But the golden period of the company, even with its ups and downs, is the reason why Seattle became a global tech hub. Our city enjoyed an unusually high concentration of scientifically minded people.
Now, I want you to consider the history of Boeing and its economic consequences for Seattle when examining the amount of money Trump is presently pouring into ICE. It’s a whopping $28 billion a year, which means that department “has a budget larger than the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), U.S. Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons combined.” Yes, this is an investment, and what drives capitalism is nothing but investments; but this kind of investment, which can be called carceral Keynesianism, has shallow multiplier effects. The money you give to an ICE thug does not go far beyond them, in space and time. And ICE, as a whole, provides an institutional memory that’s impoverished. Giving money to engineers is a completely different story. Seattle is evidence of this fact. The guards at the detention centers and concentration camps are a dead end. You can’t sing: “We built this city on ICE.” And yet this is all Trump’s economy has to offer the future.
If you want to see the future of capitalist culture, turn to India and Nigeria. China is already old hat. And when these future forces merge, as with this superb new tune (Bollywood meets afrobeats), you know, in the words of the late Craig Mack, there’s “a brand new sheriff that’s in town.”
““force and threats” against federal agents to “impede” the transport of federal detainees to their immigration hearings in Tacoma and to “coerce the release” of the detainees.” – Seattle Times
If proven, that is not 1A protest, but a crime. Protesting is merely expressing dislike for something while allowing others and the government to do what they do unimpeded. Your 1A rights end, where they interfere with other’s, and the government’s, rights to free association under the 1A, and going about their business.
On the broader question of immigration, I don’t agree with the laws as they are now. The solution is not to ignore enforcement of them, but to reform them. Until that reform, the existing laws, which I deeply disagree with, should be enforced constitutionally and legally, and enforcement should not be interfered with. The courts are open, and being used, to challenge unconstitutional and unlawful enforcement.
Aw Charles…. (Heart) your literary intellect is amazing. I love the allusion to Ajax, so inspiring. Too bad the ICE thuggies (in huggies?) don’t have the intellect to figure out the relevance and find it inspiring to change their ways. Cheers to you, stay cooly now…
re Boeing; Boeing doesn’t make the engines, better talk to GE about that one. Or, could be a maintanance issue?
Sounds like ICE is just doing the job they should have been doing the last 30 years or so. Reform the laws then enforce them. The US used to have quotas for immagration, once reached that’s it for the year. We can’t take an unlimited number of the worlds downtroden, most European countries are finally coming to realize that!
Charles, you forgot to mention these goons also get to bust a few heads with impunity; a big selling point when recruiting ex-military, failed cop-wannabees who can’t hack the entrance tests, and generally racist thugs who get off on LARPing as hyper-masculine, gun-toting vigilantes, ala Frank Castle (IYKYK).
Wow slow comment day. No rhyming kids books for people to cry over today?
E is for Epstein and the names on his list.
F is for Presidents who fuck little kids…
Maybe something like that?
It’s a shame that dogs have been abandoned by their illegal immigrant owners. Still, the same thing would occur if these people were arrested for any other purpose. I hope the good CITIZENS step up to adopt these dogs so they don’t have to be euthanized. But as for their former owners, they need to git gone.
The protesters in Spokane were NOT doing “nothing more than expressing their rights”. They were obstructing an ICE vehicle and one of the protesters threw a tear gas grenade at the Officers. So the protesters were arrested for violence, not for exercising free speech. Their criminal charges were voted upon by a grand jury. This is exactly what I voted for.
When a city has as much tagging (as opposed to graffiti) it’s a shithole city because the shithole gangs are in control. Have you seen the big Vancouver B.C. arrow sign at Olive Way to Northbound I5? Can barely make out the words it’s tagged so much.
Seattle is a shithole city, most sorry to say.
Definitely a good time to focus on the the tagging and people whacking off in the bushes at the nude beach instead of on the homeless people and drug addicts and the crazy opioid epidemic littering every single street in the city. And before anyone says they can focus on all of it… no… they clearly can’t.
Tagging is not art – it’s the equivalent of dogs pissing on the neighborhood fire hydrant. The days of the graffiti code are gone (examples being you don’t tag private property, you don’t tag public murals, etc.) – all that’s left is a bunch of antisocial assholes. Forcing these assholes to pay more in fines is just (should go along with community service to cleanup in need public places).
Three whole paragraphs whining about ICE, still (deliberately) absolutely no mention of the Antifa attack on the ICE facility in Alvarado Texas on July 4th, where an Alvarado police officer was shot in the neck by an Antifa turd with an AR rifle. Benjamin Song, one of the shooters, was finally captured in Dallas yesterday. At least 4 of his at least 10 co-conspirators are “trans” and they are just as ugly and stupid-looking as you would expect, and they are all charged with attempted murder of a Federal officer and face up to 10 years minimum in Federal prison.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/benjamin-song-arrested-alvarado-ice-attack
Also, two other ugly-ass antifa loser freaks were arrested for hindering the arrest of Benjamin Song:
https://www.fox4news.com/news/2-accused-hindering-arrest-fbi-most-wanted-suspect-alvarado-ice-attack
You’re welcome, Charles, you fucking dumbass.
Ancient Grumpy Fucker here: I despise the tagging and the trash littered highways. In my earlier years I travelled to many third world / emerging economy countries. Trash and tagging abound. They are fascinating, but I have no interest in joining their ranks. Aside perhaps from the hot rats at Cal Anderson, I find most of the tagging to be no different that smearing ones shit on a wall.
@4, Trump has deported far fewer people than biden and obama, who focused their efforts on criminals instead of grandmas and green card holders, and did so within the law. This ICE spectacle is just Trump’s way of dazzling his followers with images of masked goons brutalizing brown people in the streets as a distraction while he strips us of our civil rights. If they can send an alleged “illegal” to a foreign labor camp without proving it in court they can do it to anyone.
@4 forgot to mention that despite being far less efficient we’re somehow spending a shit ton more money on deportation and concentration camps now, and the cuts they made to medicaid to fund it all will result in hospital closures and less accessible/more expensive health care for everyone
Boeing doesn’t manufacture the engines on the aircraft it sells. And compressor stalls are not uncommon. The flight crew handled it by the book, and everybody walked off the plane in the end.
Antifa? I thought they were Maoists.
@1 one common form of protest is breaking the law to draw attention to injustice and it has nothing to do with the first amendment
“Mitigating graffiti is one of the pillars on which we can build a safer, stronger public safety foundation.”
This is a deeply unserious quote. What’s crazy is the people who think this makes any sense are the same people who not too long ago were mocking the idea that social workers have any role in public safety response. Helping connect people to behavioral services before they become violent? Nah. Spending significant money and time painting industrial gray splotches all over the city? Yeah!
17: A city can and should do multiple things at the same time.
@11. Are you in crisis?
Barth, friend, you are clueless. Obama got his deportation numbers from counting every person turned back at the border as a deportation. Not because he was going after “criminals” and sparing innocent “brown” people.
There are very few people being caught attempting to cross the border now that it is secure. So Trump can’t use those “freebie” deportations to boost his numbers.
But as far as deporting people who have resided in the US for some period of time, Trump definitely will have bigger numbers than Obama. And that’s a good thing. Those people take jobs from Americans and depress the wages of those who can find work. Even Bernie Sanders agrees!
@20 no
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/comparing-trump-and-obamas-deportation-priorities/
But also…
https://elpasomatters.org/2025/02/13/gigafact-fact-brief-most-deportations-obama-trump-removals/
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG-116-GO00-20200109-SD007.pdf
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna217752
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/06/13/why-obamas-immigration-enforcement-policy-was-better-than-trumps/
https://www.axios.com/2019/06/21/immigration-ice-deportation-trump-obama
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not
….these are the non-paywalled hits from the first page or 2 from my google search and all of them echo exactly what i said. I would suggest that perhaps the guy who lies constantly to everyone is also lying to you.
Kodos to Charles, the only person who could get Snoop Dogg and Psalm 22 in adjacent sentences.
And as to our resident trolls, if I’m going to give up my civil liberties for Orange Jesus, I want someone at least as handsome as a JFK equivalent. I’d rather not have to look at a portrait of Diaper-Soiling Hitler or Stephen Miller. You can supply the names of gorgeous (male of course) leaders for our Unified Reich now in effect ! Heil!
Hottest day of the year SO FAR
@16, Then The Stranger, others, and those arrested should not complain about being arrested for going outside of 1st Amendment boundaries.
Civil disobedience, if you are consciously, and willingly going to submit to arrest and adjudication is fine. It has a long, storied tradition, and at times, has been an effective agent of change.
Trying to have it both ways, the civil disobedience and whining or avoiding the consequence, is unprincipled.
@21, But did the people crossing illegally at the border slow to a trickle under Obama? Nope. They still kept coming, given Obama low-hanging fruit to arrest.
I despise the way that Trump has, and is, going about enforcing immigration law; however, it is having the intended effect, unlike under Biden, of drying up the numbers of those trying to come in without advanced, lawful permission.
Even unlawful immigrants have 5th, 14th, and 8th Amendment rights once they hit U.S. soil. Those aren’t being observed and courts that say that get a big F.U. from Trump’s government.
24, people can complain about whatever the fuck they want to but regardless no one is “going outside of first amendment boundaries” by interfering with the police, dumbass. The bill of rights protects you from the government, not being harmed or inconvenienced by your fellow citizens. You would know this if you had taken civics in high school.
@21 I’m not reading all your references but the first one confirms exactly what I wrote in my previous comment. Obama didn’t get millions of deportations out of approximately 65,000 interior removals each year. Those millions of deportations came from apprehending people who had just crossed into the country.
There are far fewer people crossing into the country under Trump, therefore far fewer recent arrivals to be deported.
Again, thanks for confirming the accuracy and validity of my comment #20 with your first reference.
@25, Remove border crossings from the numbers and you’re left with a system that prioritizes criminals and national security threats, vs a system with no clear priorities deporting the “low hanging fruit” of lawful residents with minor traffic offenses. Obama’s policies are still more effective and efficient, without building a single concentration camp or fucking with our civil rights.
Graffiti is a property crime and in libertarian* Seattle, property crimes are always going to get establishment attention.
And “antifa? ” What does antifa mean again? Oh, right…anti-fascist. So if you drag that name into the discussion what does that make you? Hint: the opposite of anti is pro.
when property rights outweigh human rights, when land speculation is one of your key economic drivers in the midst of persistent housing affordability and homelessness, you are in a libertarian city. No “progressive” city would accept this.
Woah there Barth. You didn’t forget that it was Obama who built the camps and the cages, did you?
I remember that very well but i also know the difference between housing legal asylum seekers and imprisoning people without charge
@11 Nobody cares what happened in Texas, asshole. Get over it, homeslice.
Curse that hard-right conservative Seattle City Council. How dare they address something like graffiti when there’s climate change and global inequality?
As I have said, and will continue to say until my final breath, probably 90% of the city’s residents, across the racial, social, and economic spectrum, are irritated by the tagging of both private property and public facilities. (yes, I understand that there is a difference between “graffiti” and just spaypaining things on any available surface – i.e. tagging – but not everyone understands nuance, especially when it comes to things like this)
But I do want to say a sincere thank you to Our Dear Charles for what really is a thoughtful post about Boeing’s relationship with the Puget Sound region, and its sad decline.
@18 absolutely, but not everything a city does is a “pillar” of its “public safety foundation.” For example nobody would claim the street tree program is an important component of the public safety plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUptYr_L9-g
@11, it wasn’t an AntiFA attackon an ICE facility. There was a peaceful protestant against against an ICE concentration camp where some Patriotic Americans exercised their 2A rights against some criminal thugs who hid their identities and used excessive fource against members of the community. America is either a country where the Consitiution and the Rule of Law matters, or it is not the time for all good Americans to come to the defense of their country.
@7 When we depose the Trump regime, we need to inter MATAs like you. Without any outside access, and fed the worst food any of the folks in Trump’s concentration camps, regardless of their location. Sin
ce you don’t call it a war crime now, I’m sure you will quietly accept such treatment.
Our Dear WereBackBaby is such a good German.
Greenwood Bob is an elderly dipshit
@38: Don’t say that. Why disparage present day Germans? Indulge in the N word if you must.
But the graffiti is not all innocuous some of it is offensive, racist, gang related and just downright ugly. Most has no artistic merit to it at all. It is the work of those with too much time on their hands and apparently money to burn on paint, sharpies etc… It is also a blight on our city that makes people not want to come back here. As if the fetty people bent over blocking the sidewalks at 3rd and Pike were not enough.
@39: Greenwood Bob has spent a fair amount of his recent time here openly fantasizing about illegally imprisoning, then torturing, anyone who dares to disagree with him. He seems to believe publicly indulging in such luridly violent fantasies represents a better use of his time than, say, inquiry into why voters in ultra-liberal Seattle have now spent years rejecting his preferred candidates and policies.