Comments

1

Bezos running schools for" child consumers"? Classroom to cubicle pipeline....

2

Wait a sec – the guy was in the back of the truck WITH THE GOATS? With nothing soft on the tips of their serious-injury-or-sudden-death-looking horns?

A pissed-off, WILD fucking goat might be able to do some pretty quick damage – say, that reminds me -- is it anywhere near the Rutting season?

Do they drug these animals?

(Do they drug test the wranglers?)
(I’d probably want High-Test
for an operation that delicate)

I do hope these newly-exiled usta-be-Illegal Immigrants don‘t believe
they can now fly


3

Oh -- Good Evening!

4

Nathalie - why don't even do the slightest bit of investigation of the things you post? If you go to the Fox 4 news story, from a local news station, the headline is actually:

Lawyers "disgusted" by release of search warrant showing marijuana found in Botham Jean's apartment

So it's actual reporting on significant developments.

Relying on Twitter makes you a twit.

http://www.fox4news.com/news/search-warrant-marijuana-found-in-botham-jeans-apartment-after-deadly-shooting

6

@4

No need to report marijuana, as there is no reason to consider it relevant at this point.

7

@6: uh, yeah... The release of the information is unfortunately public, to the outrage of Jean's family and lawyers. THAT's the story. Blame the cops, not the media.

9

Mountain goats are awfully picturesque (Remember the Great Northern Railroad?) but they aren't the brightest in the Animal Kingdom. The ones in the North Cascades National Park tend to fall off the sides of cliffs or venture into slide areas. I'm glad they're getting some additions to the gene pool.

10

@8: CBS and the Dallas Morning News also reported it. If they're also racist, then wow, you got me - these things work fast.

11

@9: They are magnificent. With horns as tall as your hair.

12

@1: Well, current cubicle-dwellers are making plenty of money, so I’m sure there are children in poverty who’ll eagerly join that pipeline.

Children in school are indeed consumers of the most valuable product ever created: the basic knowledge of civilization. They should be treated with all of the dignified respect a good company treats the consumers of it’s own products and/or services. “Product delivery” should be carefully tailored to each and every one of them.

(Oh, and Stranger? Amazon’s patronage of Mary’s Place is old news — to anyone not stuck in a self-constructed anti-Amazon echo chamber. You ought to try it sometime.)

13

“Search warrant: Marijuana found in Botham Jean’s apartment
after deadly shooting.” –FOX

Thanks, FOX! So, are you guys saying lady Cop went in there
to Steal drugs? Or to BUY some?

Cops’d NEVER Plant shit like that, would they? Not even if another Cop’s Life was on the Line? ‘Cause I’m sure the Temptation to pull a stunt like that’d be there
.

How long till his gun or kitchen knfe or
cell-phone-that-looked-like-a-weapon! turn up?

It must be just like a (reverse) Treasue Hunt!
How fun!

14

Ah now, our massuh, he’s a kind massuh. Why, he made the school and everything, to teach the yung’uns how tuh read so they can work in the fields and be useful. When I hear people complainin’, now I wonder why they so upset. Ain’tchyou got a roof over your head? Ain’tchyou got three square meals a day? Others don’t have it so good. That’s why I sho am grateful to massuh for all he does. He is so good to us. He don’t have to be, no sir.

16

Please recover, Scarlet (J50), and southern resident orcas!
RepubliKKKans are the species that should go extinct.
@9 Catalina Vel-DuRay and @11 raindrop: Mountain goats are indeed, amazing creatures---I just wouldn't want one or more coming after me. Here's hoping they have safe landings in the Cascades. The folks in Concrete, Mount Sauk, and Marblemount ought to start a Goat Fest to go with their annual winter Bald Eagle Festival along the Upper Skagit.

17

Goats are the GOAT. Also, "actual water" was hilarious, well done Nathalie.

18

@4: yes, Natalie should have clarified, but the Fox station appears to have dishonestly mischaracterized their own article in their tweet. The tweet by itself seems like a fair target for criticism, regardless of what a subset of the audience gets when they click on the link.

19

Regarding Bezos, many do not fully understand how rich he truly is.

He is richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined. His gift of 2 billion is like a household taking in $90,000 a year giving away about $1,200 to charity every year.

It's nice, but it is not like we throw a parade for those people.

Warren Buffett has given away 30 billion just in the last five years or so, Zuckerberg has donated about 45 billion in that time.

Both of these men and Bill Gates have signed a pledge promising to give away the majority of their wealth to charitable causes. Bezos refuses to sign this pledge.

Furthemore Bezos actively takes wealth from workers with his poverty wages, union busting, and strong arming local governments into tax giveaways.

I am not ever going to fault a man for giving to charity. But let's put it into perspective. He ain't some hero.

20

@4 "Relying on Twitter makes you a twit."

Relying on Fox makes you a racist fuckwit.

21

@19 - Even Buffett and Gates aren’t altruists - they’re benefactors. Their philanthropy is for their own aggrandizement. It doesn’t structurally improve the human condition.

The uber-wealthy have accumulated their massive estates because of an imbalanced tax code, a political system that biases towards monied interests, and an economic system that maximizes the price of everything (namely: education, medicine, housing) and induces all of us to participate in high-volume economic turnover. The moment one of them starts using their money to fix any of that - instead of telling us how to educate our children or claiming credit for curing such-and-such disease - is the moment I’ll applaud.

What Bezos is doing now is an improvement from his original position: “I’m so rich, I guess I have to go to space. What else is there to do with. So. Much. Money?”

23

@22 We don't want charity, we want him to pay taxes.

24

@23: He does, as prescribed by law.

25

@23 because the Government knows best. They never waste a dime.

26

@24 - We want him to pay an historically normal amount of taxes, circa 1975. Heck, we would probably settle for 1985 or 1995 after so many years of confiscatory fiscal policy.

27

@22 as you know The Stranger has donated far more time and money than Bezos could ever possibly donate. Right?

28

@24 is your Fox addled brain trying to argue that he is paying enough? or that said law wasn't set by the G.O.Plutocracy?
@25 I don't see any sign that he thinks that he is not paying enough taxes and we don't need more billionaire schemes to privatize education your straw man about big bad Gov notwithstanding. He can donate to public schools that are grossly underfunded.

29

@26: "We want him..." - really? Our constitution prescribes equal protection under the law in its 14th amendment. Tax laws are not garnered for individuals. If you want more tax revenue, send your request to Congress or our Legislature.

32

wait, Sherlock @29 is now suggesting we have to take congress, in spite of him, first.

33

@29 - I want the general levels of taxation returned to levels seen 20, 30, 40 years ago, plus a special tax levied on overly literal fuckwads who troll comment boards. The latter are not a protected class.

34

@30 - Water and medicine provided to populations mired in long-term structural poverty do not improve the underlying problem, which is - get this - structural poverty.

36

@30 - To be clear, I’m not saying medicine or water is bad, but that folks like Bezos and Gates and Buffett can be more strategic with their funds. Fund a school, and the population is beholden to you. Help the community establish a school system, and you let them stand on their own. From what I’ve seen of the Gates program, it assumes that the Gates Foundation is the savior. That sells the Gates’ philanthropy and the populations it serves short.

37

@33: You can't cry "troll" when your own argument trips you up:

In 26 you say: "We want him to pay an historically normal amount of taxes, circa 1975. Heck, we would probably settle for 1985 or 1995 after so many years of confiscatory fiscal policy."

In 33, you say: "I want the general levels of taxation returned to levels seen 20, 30, 40 years ago."

That said, I did earlier overlook that your premise is about the "imbalanced tax code" - so my bad on that.

38

@37 - Thanks for checking my work, sport. Glad your careful review uncovered...what exactly? Consistency? You parsed too fine on the middle comment, because you’re kind of a dick.

@36 - Oops, thought you wanted a serious debate. My bad. I have to get back to the day job, bruh, but maybe next time I’ll get it right by ignoring you from the start, just like I did the previous times you’ve tried to engage.

39

I assume the NPS has considered this, but I worry those goats won't have time to learn the terrain and food sources before winter sets in - a month from now.

40

@36: Ahem. Now that I've caught my breath. Bill Gates has been funding schools and education for decades, much in reverence to his beloved mother, Mary Gates. (Not to be confused with Mimi, his ditzy stepmother.)

Yes, we have to check your work, sport!

43

It was M. Peter McPhereson, first corporate President of a Big 11 university, who said:
"Students are consumers of eduction."

Education is not "consumed". Students are not "consumers". They are students, who are learning.

CITIZENS are not "consumers". Has anyone else noticed that we aren't "citizens" anymore? We are always referred to as "consumers". Just an unrecognizable mass of humanity, with big, gaping, all-consuming mouths. We are all "consumers", and everything is (therefore?) "consumable".

Now Bezos, with apparently no linguistic finesse at all sez:
'Will the children just be glorified guinea pigs? No, Bezos says they'll be "the consumer."'

Paging Dave Segal...

44

@40 - In honor of his mom? Oh, how sweet! How folksy! Problem is - the Gates Foundation’s education agenda looks, feels, and sounds a lot like the right’s blame-the-teachers, bleed-the-public-system-dry approach. “Innovation.” Charter schools. When there’s a simple, but less egocentric option for someone with the means of Mary’s son: campaign to raise public teacher pay and reduce class sizes. Of course, they don’t let you stamp your name on a tex levy, so that’s no fun.

45

A great example of what would be most useful is Bill Gates Sr. and his campaign for a state income tax on very high incomes. That would have been a systemic, public solution that would have lessened iniquities. More of that kind of civic activism by the wealthy would be a greater positive than private philanthropy.

46

@45: Yeah, I can agree with that.

(Mimi probably had nothing to do with it.)

49

@14: "...to teach the yung’uns how tuh read so they can work in the fields..."

Yeah, teaching field hands to read always made great economic sense.

You're so goddamned ignorant of American history, you can't even succeed at accusing your targets of racism. That's almost an accomplishment.

50

@49 - Hahahahahahaha! I love that you thought I was accusing anyone here of racism. God, subtelty doesn’t just elude you - it flips you the bird, while peeling out on a motorcycle, with your girlfriend on the back.

I was suggesting that the super-wealthy are to us normal folks today as owners once were to slaves. And some of us have developed a subservient attitude towards our masters.

The fairer tack to take (see me making your arguments for you?) would have been: whoa, that’s a bit extreme, isn’t it (not to mention unfair to prior generations of actual slaves)? People today can choose whether and where to work. We are free!!

Not really. Imagine a young person today. Has to have a bachelors degree - earning potential is a lot lower withou it. So you have to go to school. Your parents don’t have savings, so chances are, you’re going into debt. Now you graduate. Pretty much you have to work, because otherwise good luck getting health insurance. You go into tech, because you want to afford a house someday, any day. You also need to save for retirement, because pensions don’t exist anymore and social security is one more recession away from being the only source of economic stimulus since the country has already borrowed so much to afford the latest tax cut (gift to the rich).

You’ll put up with almost anything. Crying at your desk after 60 hours of work in a week? That’s table stakes.

And that’s a middle class white kid with some options. A person of color or anyone with just a high school diploma can work a dead-end job and not make enough to cover the cost of their own life.

And the ones sitting at the top of this little structure are folks like Bezos, Ballmer, Dimon, Gates, Schulz, Koch. Especially Koch - those fuckers actively pushed the policies and faux populism that have pushed us to this state.

Yes, yes, I know - someone can work hard, do everything right and get ahead, but those folks are the exception that proves the rule. The deck is stacked against them more than it has been at any point since - I don’t know, 1910?

Be glad you’re in youd 40’s. Be glad you own a place. Do you have a well funded 401K? Then you probably love the way the system works right now. Portfolio never looked better than it does after a decade-long bull market.

So no, I wasn’t accusing anyone of racism, but I do, yet again, accuse you of piss-poor reading comprehenaion to go along with the general unconstructive, better-than-thou rudeness with which you treat the gentler people who comment here.

51

I should add - I don’t hate Bezos. He is not an enemy. He works hard. He deserves to be rich. How rich, though? Is founding a retailer that delivers stuff in as little as an hour worth $100 billion? Is it worth infinitely more than the average worker’s activity?

And do I think we should be happy he can fund his own charity to the tune of $2 billion without even blinking? Should we be grateful? Should we view him as a hero and savior?

No to all those questions. There is a public good that goes well beyond the value of entrepreneurialism. We overvalue the latter at the expense of the former all the time, and it is why someone like a Bezos or a Walton or a Musk can amass such staggering wealth.

52

@51

if you think that's all Amazon does and its only revenue source, I have some beachfront property in New Mexico to sell you.

53

@52 - Unnecessary convenience and low prices are at the heart of Amazon’s monopolistic ambitions. Everything else follows.

54

@50: "I love that you thought I was accusing anyone here of racism."

You've groundlessly accused me of racism in the past. Your witless attempt at satire, invoking the experience of African-American slaves, feeds into that false accusation you've already made.

"I was suggesting that the super-wealthy are to us normal folks today as owners once were to slaves. And some of us have developed a subservient attitude towards our masters."

And since you were blatantly and obviously wrong on both counts, the idea that you were making yet another false accusation of racism fills the void left by your failures.

"The fairer tack to take..."

Getting called on your obvious bullshit is so completely unfair. Cry us a river. (Oh, wait -- you did already blubber on for three whole comments, didn't you?)

"...but I do, yet again, accuse you of piss-poor reading comprehenaion..."

HAHAHAHAHA! Priceless!

55

@54 - I didn’t accuse you of racism. I pointed out that you have a distinct pattern of sympathy that extends to precisely one type of figure: white and male. I invited you to prove me wrong.

Still waiting for the quotes, ol’ buddy. Funny how he who always has a quote and link at the ready doesn’t have a selection from his own oeuvre at the ready to shut me up. I would be happy, for your sake, to be wrong.

You sure do crow loudly about me being “proven” wrong anyway. How exactly and by whom? Are you my judge and jury? I want a jury of my peers. You aren’t qualified.

Go back to the kiddie table. Maybe Nickelodeon has a nice comment board where you can whine about homeless people, Mr. Seattle Has Only Gotten Better (Except When It’s a Cesspool of Needlez and Excrement).

56

@55: "I pointed out that you have a distinct pattern of sympathy that extends to precisely one type of figure: white and male."

And your "evidence" consisted of noting that I had criticized Charles Mudede. I pointed out that many other commenters had called him on his logical fallacies.

Speaking of which:

"Still waiting for the quotes, ol’ buddy."

It's not actually possible to prove a negative.

"Funny how he who always has a quote and link at the ready doesn’t have a selection from his own oeuvre at the ready to shut me up."

You claimed that Hep' A wasn't fatal. I linked for you the statistics that it was. You just kept right on attacking me for being a fear-monger, evidence be damned. For example:

'You sure do crow loudly about me being “proven” wrong anyway. How exactly and by whom?'

By medical reality. Get over it.

"Mr. Seattle Has Only Gotten Better (Except When It’s a Cesspool of Needlez and Excrement)."

It was a lot worse when I first arrived. (And we're cleaning up the needles and excrement, no thanks to you.)

57

@56 - God, you’re tiresome. Maybe toss in five more quotes while you’re at it, you mental midget.

I invited you to share any comment wherein you agreed with a female writer or person of color.

That’s a positive, genius, not a negative. God, what a dumbfuck.

Good luck working for 24 hours on your next comeback.

58

@56 - I’m bored (in life, not just today), so I decided to write up your rebuttal and save you some time. Enjoy your Sunday off, clown. Troll? Clown troll?

“The ailing orca is missing. The lead whale researcher on her pod says J50 is most likely dead.”

You lost. I won. So sad. Boo hoo.

“About 700 goats will be relocated. The rest. Uh. Well. The rest will be killed. It’s do or die.”

Arguments without evidence will be rejected without evidence.

https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/pathwayshome/BPA.pdf

“He’s going to be backing Mary’s Place, the shelter that houses homeless families in Seattle.”

Mary’s Place was founded by Mary, as you should know with a little research. Get your facts straight, Stranger!!

“Turns out Michael Bay has a stake in the nation’s weather.”

You played the race card. Yes, you did! And no, the race card isn’t just a thing racists made up to shut down people who just insist on mentioning longstanding racial iniquities.

Just sayin’. Meh.

59

@53

U B clueless.

60

@59 - Very persuasive point. U B an asshole.

61

@25: If you truly believe that, I've got oceanfront property in Nebraska I'd love to sell ya.
@59 & @60: Get a room, already. Jesus.


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