Thank you, rain and clouds. We do not need another scorching summer. Charles Mudede

Comments

2

“Why is the homeless crisis still around, despite the fact it can be erased by pressing a few buttons on a keyboard?”

Really? Enlighten us on these magical buttons.

3

So, Mike Lee might have SEEN "Minority Report," but he sure didn't GET "Minority Report." Not surprising. Mike Lee is a neo-maxi jerk-moron.

But the film is one of my favorites. Spielberg visualizing one of Philip Dick's fever dreams. And there are scenes in that movie that still impress the hell out of me. The film didn't do so well at the box office, but I said at the time, "Give it ten years and enthusiasts will call it one of Spielberg's best." Still waiting for that to happen. I remain a huge fan.

Poor Beebs. You don't often hear of people that young getting shingles, Seems to be mostly a middle-aged thing. I know several who have experienced an outbreak, and have wanted to throw themselves off a building. Very painful. Like a very bad burn that didn't destroy the nerve endings. Not really a follower. I'm way out of his target audience range, but I wish him a full and speedy recovery.

5

You need to rewatch Bladerunner. The rain was incessant.

6

I love Minority Report - not as a fan of Tom Cruise - but as a portrayal of predestination.
Our nation has become Calvinist- the rich were predestined to be rich as a sign of Gid's favor, and the poor were predestined to poverty as a sign of their damnation.

7

Landlords don't want a class warfare between themselves and their renters if they want to fill all their rentals. By what other contorted reasoning would Charles think that homelessness increases business profit? Quite the opposite is glaringly true, as, for example, what shop owners including those in Little Saigon have been facing when customers are scared off.

8

You're thinking of 2020 for the most recent smokepocalypse. Summer 2021 broke all the heat records, but at least the air quality wasn't bad. Inevitably, of course, we'll have a summer with both smoke and three-digit temperatures, which will likely kill us all, but it hasn't happened yet. (2017, 2018 and 2020 were smoky but temperate; 2019 was pleasant on both counts -- the only year this has happened since before Trump was elected.)

9

@4 You're sort of right, but it's a little more nuanced than that. The ONLY explicit prohibition on homosexuality in the entire Bible is in the Leviticus holiness code, with death as the penalty. (Although some scholars believe the prohibition against lying with a man "as with a woman" means only the top, i.e., the one who did the penetrating, was subject to execution. Lesbianism is not mentioned at all.)

Most conservative Christians today (not the extreme fundamentalists, but most evangelicals) acknowledge that most of the holiness code, except those parts that Jesus reaffirmed, applied only to the ancient Hebrews and thus they do not use Leviticus to argue for putting gays to death (or avoiding shellfish, etc.). Instead they point to the letters of Paul in the New Testament, the most explicit of which describes how God "gave up" unbelievers to their homoerotic passions, as the basis for opposing same-sex relations. The alleged "sin" of homosexuality is imputed from those writings. But that passage reads to me that Paul is describing same-sex desire as a ~punishment~ for sin, not as sin itself. This would be consistent with Paul's general self-loathing, as when he describes a "thorn in his flesh" which was very likely his own homoerotic yearnings. So there is plenty of room for doubt as to whether the Bible condemns homosexuality in the Christian era at all, which is why many churches do support consensual, committed same-sex relationships.

10

Thank you Mayor Harrell. That was the stupidest law yet in a long string of stupid landlord-tenant laws. No one has been able to give me any reason whatsoever that this would help tenants, even a little bit. Just more stupid class warfare posing by sophomoric idiots on the council.

14

Why not require renters to declare the rent they are paying.

15

Hate to be the bearer of more bad tidings, but all it takes is about two months of unremitting heat and dry to turn those June rains and depleting snowpacks into combustible fuel loads.

16

& in other News:

Dozens
of White Supremacists Arrested
in Idaho Had Planned to Riot, Authorities Say

Members of the right-wing group Patriot Front who were charged on Saturday were preparing to disrupt a nearby Pride event, according to the police.

The members arrested had come to Idaho from several states, the police said, including Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and Virginia. At least one of the members lived in Idaho, the authorities said.

by Daniel Walters; June 12, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/us/idaho-pride-white-supremacists-arrested.html

'Fascists'?

WHAT 'fascists'?
musta been
Socialists
in Dis-
guise.

and however 'Gay'
they may BE
they're
Still

comin' for YOU.

17

for more News
on Fascists
storming
USOFA
see:

Congress's
1/6/21 Hearing
this Monday at 6PM

[but weren't they
truly Antifa*
for fuck's
sake?!]

*as heard
on FOX!

see FOX for all
your latest Fascists

18

@1, @2, @13: I can see the humor value inherent to Trustafarian dilettante Charles' breezy assertion that real jobs, which provide real value, are as easy as his unproductive sinecure. (For someone so utterly unpracticed in the art of introspection, his unwitting admission of his chronic position here as nothing more than "...pressing a few buttons on a keyboard" is truly amazing.)

Also wonderful is his use of that well-known weasel technique, the passive voice:

"On the political side, the crisis was maintained because it resulted in the city electing a very business-friendly mayor on the Compassion Seattle/Safe Seattle/Seattle Is Dying ticket. On the economic side (the real meat of the matter), landlords score a significant victory in the ongoing class war between themselves and renters. This is the political economy of homelessness."

As noted @1, Charles, "the crisis was maintained," because persons with YOUR political beliefs were given power. That is why their policy failed, and that is why it resulted "in the city electing a very business-friendly mayor on the Compassion Seattle/Safe Seattle/Seattle Is Dying ticket." Or, in plainer language, after years of frustrating failure of YOUR homelessness policy, Seattle's voters overwhelmingly rejected the Stranger's candidates in November's elections. Progressive policy failure is also your failure, and your resorting to weasel words will fool no one.

19

perhaps tentsy if
you Asked nicely
Chas might Oblige

if not here then
you have his email
or challenge him thru tS

unlock that door

nyt's having their writers
respond to readers'
comments so
why not
Here?

20

of course tS's
Union'd Demand
proper compensation

21

Why does homelessness need to have a function? It’s the outcome of market failure, not an input to some greater order.

22

having a million Homeless
is but a gentle reminder
that we Must mind our
peas and cues or else
it's gonna be US out
there done in by a
Heartless soulless
Corporation cuz
You got too sick
for them to Fix
you and Profit
and make a
Killing too

a third world country
with a First Rate
Economy but
ONLY for a
very Few.

relax.
it's just
Capitalism.

23

Minority Report & Gattaca were both ahead of their time, and maybe still are. Sneakers is another.

24

the Fascist insurrectionists
Hearing is slated for 7am
Pacific time watch what's
in store for our home-
grown terrorists and
the Totally Fake
'prez' who Re-
fused to step
the fuck
Down

the USOFA survived the Fascist Takeover
this time will we be so Lucky the next?

prolly Not with a more-competent
Fascist atop the greedy olde
patriarchy's ticket

good Luck
America!
&
stay
Tuned.

25

@21: "Why does homelessness need to have a function?"

For the reason @1 noted. To Charles, CM Sawant, and other Marxists, the one problem to be solved is capitalism. Rid the world of capitalism, and all other problems will magically be solved (or at least easier to solve, although from Marx' day to this day, Marxists are REALLY vague on those details). As Everything Bad Is The Fault of Capitalism, therefore, homelessness simply must serve some evil function in the evil capitalist scheme of life. (Charles neither has another explanation nor any interest in finding one, so it's not like he's going to look any further than this.)

@19: Are you imagining that Charles has not responded to my comments? From almost four years ago, Charles responding (not particularly helpfully) to comments from myself and others: https://www.thestranger.com/housing/2018/07/05/28734309/the-city-of-seattle-appears-to-dislike-the-atlantic-story-on-our-citys-homeless-crisis-and-anti-homeless-app/comments

Please do try to keep up.

26

@1, @2 et al. I think what Charles is suggesting is adding a few zeroes to the current federal housing budget. Three would probably suffice. Tap, tap, tap, done.

27

@26: "@1, @2 et al. I think what Charles is suggesting is adding a few zeroes to the current federal housing budget. Three would probably suffice. Tap, tap, tap, done."

Assuming that's what he meant, by itself it still wouldn't get the job done. (And, as he edged toward conspiracy theory, he implied "the crisis was maintained" for local reasons.) As Seattle swept the Woodland Park encampment, we learned one inhabitant had left her apartment in Bellevue to camp in Woodland Park, and was asking to be left camping there. Travis Berge lived unhoused in Pike-Pine for five years prior to his death, persistently ignoring his mother's invitations to live with her, in her home in Texas. Lisa Vach had an apartment in Tacoma, but chose to keep camping in Seattle's Cal Anderson Park, until she was murdered there by Berge.

Economic conditions do not drive homelessness in Seattle, and therefore they do not have a purely economic fix. More intervention is required.

28

Please, please!! Which Cixin Liu short story - in which collection?

Mulready


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.