Comments

2
Good enough for Fox News! Let's run with it!
3
It's somewhat misleading to link the Lakewood mayor here. If I understand correctly, his concern was people at crossings being struck by trains, not on trains derailing. In other words, he wanted more money being spent on crossings.

Here is the law regarding train testing. Pre-revenue testing means sending the crew and the train through the system on the regular schedule for several weeks before carrying passengers. Tests the tracks, the switches, the cars, and familiarizes the crew with the route.

It's interesting that this train must have run through this section of rail at speed for several weeks, only to derail on the very first day carrying passengers. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/…
4
When one self-identifies as an "anarchist," it seems like being the first suspect in any sort of catastrophe goes with the territory. (And yes, yes, there's a whole codified set of beliefs when one is a "true" anarchist that you can find if you go to the right place - no no, not that site, those people are kooks, this here is the true set of tenets - don't expect that level of nuance to make it to the press when the root word of your group is "anarchy.")
5
Hey all, Atifa supersoldier here! We were planning on derailing that train but the check George Soros sent didn't clear in time and nobody wanted to front the cost of the cement and we tried to apply for a Home Depot card we all got declined because nobody has a work history. So I guess getting baked and sleeping till noon worked out after all. Cheers.
6
I mis-pasted the link above. Obviously, it was supposed to go right after "here is the law", and not hang at the very end without context.....
7
Have you ever heard the expression "don't feed the trolls?" I swear the Stranger hasn't met a piece of obvious liberal-baiting nonsense it didn't bite into with reckless enthusiasm.
8
Can we please stop spreading the misleading claim that Don Anderson somehow prophetically predicted this accident? His concerns were specifically about trains hitting pedestrians when they traveled through Lakewood, which is 8 miles from the crash site. He didn't have concerns about the integrity of the track or the likelihood of derailments. The safety improvements he wanted would have done absolute nothing to prevent this crash, and to suggest that these things are somehow related is really irresponsible journalism.

National media outlets picked up this misleading narrative from KOMO and ran with it, and it's infuriating. The track complied with every applicable safety standard and passed every test before it opened. This happened at a curve at the end of a long straight section and its last reported speed was twice the limit at that area, which means it was almost certainly human error or train malfunction. Please stop giving Don Anderson credit.
9
The words of the Lakewood mayor are being brought up in just about every news article about the Amtrak tragedy as if his statements are relevant and even prescient in the news today. Seattle Times even has the unforgivably misleading headline "Lakewood mayor had predicted new Amtrak rail line would lead to fatalities". For reference, the mayor recently said of the new Amtrak route: "Come back when there is that accident, and try to justify not putting in those safety enhancements, or you can go back now and advocate for the money to do it." Taken out of context, it is a wonderful sound bite, and all the reporters have bitten. But his complaints were about the number of at-grade road crossings through Lakewood. His words of concern were not related to keeping the train on the tracks, but rather to keeping crossing cars and pedestrians safe from the train. He said crossing pedestrians would be killed crossing at-grade roads in populated areas; Amtrak derailed this morning on an elevated section in a rural area -- a place with exactly the type of infrastructure that the Lakewood mayor was actually advocating for. The news media shouldn't be posting this quote out of context, because it makes it sound like he foresaw and warned against today's tragedy. But today's tragedy is not "that accident".
10
Well, I suppose at least now we're dispensing with the polite fiction that 'antifa' is some new emerging political group, instead of the same old anarcho-whateverists with a bit of half-hearted rebranding.
11
"They are trying to make anti-fascists the boogie man," the anonymous activist told The Stranger. "They take any sort of tragedy that involves the American public, be it be mass shooting or train derailments, and connect it to popular movements like Black Lives Matter or anti-fascists because they want to associate these movements with everyday Americans being injured and killed. They pin it on the left by producing and spreading conspiracy theories, especially at the beginning, when there is little information out there. The only people celebrating what happened today are people on the right who use it as an opportunity to spread their snake oil."

First, they demonize. Then they beat up/arrest those their far-right-wing wholly-corps-owned Mass Media deem 'responsible.' For them it's never about accountability. It's about seizing power. All heil Mein Trumpfy.

At least we're not wasting a whole lot of precious money on Infrastructure, when we can be giving Billionaires and cash-flush multinational corps a giant $1,500,000,000.00 tax break. Oops.
12
While Anderson was wrong in the specifics do you really think you can reasonably argue he was wrong saying that Amtrak did not give safety sufficient consideration?
13
#10: What are you talking about? Antifa has been around for decades, and they've always been associated with anarchism and other anti-capitalist activists (though actual "membership" varies). Did someone actually say they were new?
14
Oops indeed -- not nearly enough zeros in that one point five BILLION dollar tax cut.
$1,500,000,000,000.00 for the Billionaires and corps. Thanks R's!

When that Deficit horrorshow re-rears its ugly head (soon as the Dems come back), there goes that social safety net. A hundred-plus million un- and underinsured -- Citizens -- R's're gonna be Bragging. Bring out your dead.

This absolute Adoration/sacrifice for the Top .05 % has me baffled....
15
@12 Yes. For two reasons. One. Because the specifics are everything in this case. The specifics are that Anderson wanted separation of rail from road crossings in his city. He wanted expenditures that exceeded best-practice, arguably because he saw dollar signs when a big infrastructure project was to work its way through his city. The accident occurred in a section where the specifics (no crossings, no development, elevated) were just as he himself requested in order to be ā€œsafeā€. And if you really want to jump the gun and start blaming, which you have by blaming Amtrak for ā€œnot giving safety sufficient considerationā€, then we come to Two: you missed that Sound Transit managed the track upgrade (with some degree of WSDOT involvement), not Amtrak. But if (and here continues the jumping of the blame gun) speed was to blame for the crash, that would be Amtrak. So no matter how you break it down, Andersonā€™s concerns about [not Amtrakā€™s] safety considerations have no relevance to what happened.
16
@12: There are real consequences when we ignore the truth in cases like this. If we ignore the facts and give into the (out of context) soundbite, and allow the narrative that Anderson warned us about safety failures and was then silenced and railroaded (his terrible phrase) for speaking up to the big evil transit organization, then guess what? It then appears to people like this tragedy occurred because that evil transit org does evil deeds. Public opinion turns against transit organization, votes turn against transit, and that is a real possible outcome from this, all based on a falsehood. And to reiterate from earlier, Anderson never argued that Amtrak didnā€™t give safety sufficient consideration, he argued that Sound Transit and WSDOT didnā€™t give safety sufficient consideration. And his concerns had *no* relevance to the tragedy today. To argue otherwise is in bad faith.
17
@13

See, that's exactly why I call the rebranding effort half-hearted.

I'm sure I'm not the only one thoroughly amused at anarchists' reluctance to let go of their flags.
18
@1 Urgutha Forka and @14 kristofarian: I'm just as shocked and baffled by this senseless tragedy as you both are.
@7 Keenan C: I hear you about "don't feed the trolls" and alas, admit to being just as guilty.
19
Do any of you for a single second stop to consider that this was an accident and not a political pawn to move on your "Us, Vs.Them" Chessboard?
20
A few insane Twitter cranks is not "The Media," regardless of its wings.



21
@19 (and @20): Indeed. It would be really nice if political posturing could wait for another day. About every news article is throwing rail under the bus, unfortunately, by disparaging this new line (and major investment) as something that was poisoned from the start, and the everyday American reading about this tragedy is walking away feeling like we are making bad, dangerous rail investments that lead directly to tragedies like this -- when really it was an accident, as you point out. The one take-away regarding safety should be that we probably need positive train control, not that a mayor warned about "safety" just before the crash and that he was "ignored" [Chicago Daily Herald: "Amtrak train derailed on new, faster route that drew concern"; CBS: "Amtrak derailment: Mayor had urged for improved safety along route"; Fortune: "Fatal Amtrak Derailment: Mayor Had Warned Of Danger"; Seattle Times: "Lakewood mayor had predicted new Amtrak rail line would lead to fatalities"; Daily Mail: "Washington mayor warned 'it is inevitable that someone is going to get killed' on new Amtrak line just weeks before"; Mirror: "Local mayor warned of fatal accident on new high speed Amtrak route days before tragic crash 'kills three people"; And local news headlines, which is where more people get their news, are full of headlines like: "Amtrak train derailed on new, faster route that drew concern". These are all just headlines -- the articles with more reasonable headlines are still pushing the narrative.]
22
Jack Prilosec hasn't had a sincere fucking thought in his adult life.
23
Leftist nutcases media blame it on lack of spending. It appears to be caused by simply disregarding the speed limit.

Fake news is everywhere.

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.