Comments

1

"Our last drone strike in Afghanistan killed only innocent people, seven of them kids"

A fitting end to a pointless war.

3

Yo, NTK, I am not a white supremacist. I'm a liberal / leftist who has voted a straight-D ticket my entire life (except when voting for Ralph and Bernie). And I've sent my democracy vouchers to Davis and Nelson. In the last several years my work truck and bicycle have been stolen (as well as the battery out of my car). My home in the U-District has been hit by burglars repeatedly. Do the poor, fine souls who have done these things deserve to arrested and prosecuted. Absolutely. When asked by NPR who would take care of neighborhood crime if the police were abolished, Nikkita Oliver responded that "her aunties" would do a better job. Still waiting, Nikkita. Have your aunties found my bike yet?

4

Australia going after nuclear power submarines is a legit and respectable power move. People underestimate them from a militaristic perspective, as the continent only yields three armies for capture, but as the only landmass with a single point of entry, it's value is huge. I'd not want to risk having them become a threat.

7

Great article from former Stranger writer Erica Barnett about how Rich’s favorite pol, council member Sawant, is meddling in the carpenter union strike

https://publicola.com/2021/09/16/misogynistic-attacks-accusations-of-interference-by-sawant-as-carpenters-union-strikes/

I guess all thar misogony is ok if it’s part of the movement.

As for NKT turns out that Teen Vogue article was written by a member of Prism Washington, NKTs political consultants so it’s more akin to a sponsored ad than some sort of thought provoking piece of journalism.

It’s only Sept 17th and the bullshit is running deep for this election. Look forward to continuing to debunk this crap and call out the blatant propaganda over the next few weeks.

9

To all the Ann Davison supporters, you know it’s bad news when Tucker’s boosting Ann Davison on his show. Nothing says dangerous weirdo to 80% of Seattle like appearing on Fox with Tucker. Your NTK critiques are ... well ... at least she’s not a Fox weirdo. As you were saying about NTK ... wait, whose the weirdo with Tucker, oh it’s Ann Davison. Anyway, as you were saying about NTK, ... I mean she’s not a Fox News anti-mask, nuke the protesters, right? Anyway, just remember Ann Davison equals Tucker.

11

Up in this suburban city, Bothell, there is a group of progressives running for city council. Their opponents are pushing the line that they want to turn the city into Seattle. It may well cost them votes.

13

@9 you’re right. AD being mentioned on Fox News must make her a dangerous weirdo. So glad NKT is on point with fun tweets like these

July 2020 - YAY! Thank you to the heroes that set the Children's Jail on fire.

Aug 2020 - Property destruction is a moral imperative

Sept 2020 - I have not taken any of this anti bias training but i for sure hate this country.

Def the kinds of views we need in our city atty! So glad we figured out who the dangerous weirdo is early in this race.

14

@9,

More people move from the US to Mexico than from Mexico to the US.

15

@8, not 9

16

As a hater of all things FOX News, it pains me to read a slam of how they "get things wrong" and then the author states " Seattle only has one AG, and that's living chess legend and heartthrob Bob Ferg." Assuming the "Ferg" is just a cutesy nickname for Bob Ferguson, the author still errs - Mr. Ferguson is the Attorney General of Washington State, not (just) Seattle! Seattle City Attorney (not titled AG) is of course Pete Holmes. If you're going to slam Fox for bad reporting, it doesn't help to do prove it with an erroneous correction! But please keep attacking Fox, the deserve to go to hell.

18

If you've got Fox News scared you must be doing something right. Like, ethically and factually right. They hate that.

20

@16 Slow down and take a deep breath. I think what Rich was trying to do was point out Carlson's error that there is no Seattle Attorney General position, and since Bob Ferguson is the Attorney General of Washington state, to the people of Seattle he is OUR Attorney General.

@17 Eli Sanders won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his piece on the South Park murder. It was a feature writing award and not strictly investigative reporting, but if you can do better feel free to start your own weekly.

https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/eli-sanders

21

This "jackay" character is excellent! Bang-on caricature of an irate 24-hour Fox News watcher. Whoever did this, keep it up! Makes me nostalgic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Anger

22

Jeez Rich, I hate to pile on but you most likely found out what happen with the people canned (no pun intended) at Fremont Brewery. Like many businesses, they used a business slowdown as an excuse to get rid of some employees they didn't want. You mentioned this in your article, but you won't mention what your own reporting found.

25

@24: The woman is more deranged than Donald Trump.

30

I've never voted for an R before in my life. I'm not pro AD, just anti NTK. It's the same as with Trump. I'd have voted for a burnt potato chip over Trump, and I'd vote for a moldy banana over NTK. It's not even because of the ideology; NTK is just a moron who has no grasp on the transitional damage that can be done (and is currently being done). People actually capable of effecting positive change don't shitpost on Twitter.

31

Huh, Friday night and our regular peanut gallery of resident right-wing trolls have nothing better to do that come onto SLOG and clamber all over each other to see who can get to the soap box. Seriously, do you-all really have nothing better to do with your lives?

35

@31 do you all have nothing better to do?
says the one who comments all day, throughout the day, every day and thinks that everyone with a different opinion than theirs is a nazi maga trumpite.
oof

37

@36 -- see also

FOX.

38

@37: More accurately: FNC

39

ok dewey
but it's ALL
Rupert 'Uncle
Snoopy' Murdoch's

which is what Happens
when you give People the
chance to make more Money
than GOD -- they tend to shape
the only known habitable Planet in
the Known Universe into their Very Own
Image. omg have you Seen Uncle Snoopy?

40

@23 Sir Toby II and @34 molewacka: Eli Sanders says he is going to UW law school. https://wildwest.substack.com/p/legal-leap
The list of articles under his byline on that Wild West blog is impressive.

41

Rich and CDC: What is the status on COVID vaccine boosters for those of us over 50 who have gotten our jabs? There are currently far too many unmasked anti-vaxxing dumbfucks out loose for comfort.

@32 through @36 and @38: Oh, look, folks--it's the 40-going-on-14 Club! Isn't it about time for weenies and tater tots before your afternoon naps, boys?

42

@20 Mr. Friendly: Thank you.

43

As usual, Rich Smith (our local version of Sean Hannity) is a big fucking liar.

Nobody in that Fox News clip supported Ann Davison. They don't even mention her. Fox is not "supporting" Davison. Nor was it much of an "assault" on NTK.

You know what I saw in that clip? I saw Fox News building up a profile for NTK, trying to make her a character their viewers will recognize. Want to know why? It's because she's so insane, so awful, so wretched in every way imaginable that if Seattle does end up electing her, Fox will be able to run clips of her literally every night. She's like a godsend for them. She's the hen that will lay golden eggs for years to come. They'll be able to point to her and say "that's what Democrats want." They'll try to make her the face of our party. And it'll work, because she takes pride in her awfulness and celebrates the fact that sane people hate her. And no matter what, she'll have jerks like Rich Smith to prop her up no matter what.

NTK is completely insane. It's not too late to avoid this fate. All you have to do is vote for Ann Davison, who was a Democrat basically her entire life until crazy local leftist loons like NTK and Rich Smith drove her out of the local party.

44

From NTK's Twitter page she links to the Marshall Project which has an article by Ruth Wilson "The Case for Abolition". I thought great, I'm all for learning. But no, it's a condescending and deflecting waffle. Excepts:

"While we value philosophy, we have also grown weary of worn-out debates over the feasibility of a world without prisons and whether we would like to abolish prison for Dylann Roof. We prefer to talk about what we do.

Ultimately, abolition is a practical program of change rooted in how people sustain and improve their lives, cobbling together insights and strategies from disparate, connected struggles. We know we won’t bulldoze prisons and jails tomorrow, but as long as they continue to be advanced as the solution, all of the inequalities displaced to crime and punishment will persist. We’re in a long game."

The rest is elusive babble, and ends with:

"Abolitionists have brought to the struggle against what came to be called “mass incarceration” an array of experiences in which we learned how to fight on many fronts at once: how to organize, promote ideas and bargain in the political arena. In other words, we work the entire ecology of precarious existence that shapes, but is not bounded by, the aggrandizing “criminal justice system,” including housing, jobs, education, income, faith, environment, status. Far from being starry-eyed idealists, we are specialists in the daily grind of the deliberate, patient and persistent work necessary for what we want–freedom and justice."

I see, so once again do abolitionists want to free Dylann Roof? If answering a clear cut question about their philosophy is beneath them, I have to ask whether this ilk has any humanity or morals whatsoever.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/06/19/the-case-for-abolition

45

I have never seen a left-of-center publication do such an effective job as The Stranger does as turning people on the left against the left.

I can't help but think of Princess Leia's line from Star Wars - "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

The Stranger is a total hate-read at this point - the entertainment of seeing what dumb-ass hot-takes MB, CM, RS, et al. will make next... and the comments that follow.

46

@45: Spot-on. The Stranger has completely adopted CM Sawant's shtick as standard operating procedure: constantly pose, posture, and proclaim yourself as being to the left of everyone else, and then condemn everyone to your right (which, by your own definition, is now absolutely everyone else) as corporate whores, fascists, MAGA-hatted Trump supporters, or whatever sounds even worse. It's a never-ending downward spiral of constantly attacking one's fellow citizens for not being "woke" enough, then yelling their subsequent refusal to toil for one's pet causes is proof they are corporate whores, etc.

"The Stranger is a total hate-read at this point - the entertainment of seeing what dumb-ass hot-takes MB, CM, RS, et al. will make next... and the comments that follow."

Exactly right. The Stranger's writers keep trying to do away with the comments, but the comments provide the only real value, as there is absolutely no debate or dissent tolerated within the headline posts, or by the headline posters.

47

5 nails it for me.

NTK is very publicly and unambiguously saying: Elect me & I won't do the job.

Harasssed in a park? too bad, imagine what its like to be outside!
Car prowled/window smashed? too bad, you're privileged, you can afford to replace the window.
Etc...

I could entirely be misreading the city electorate--maybe this will be 2019 redux.
But... I really don't think so. Tents everywhere, parks unusable, sidewalks blocked with tents, rebar and rocks being tossed onto I-90 on-ramps, school board members stepping forward to protect encampments rather than the kids who actually go to the schools and would like recess outside on their playground because they're first graders?

If Ann Davison getting 33% of the primary vote wasn't a huge warning bell, I think maybe you're listening a bit too much to the choir.

50

Despite the boost Tucker is giving to NTK, I think it could be an uphill battle to win the election. Her critique about petty crime is excellent though. It’s interesting how many comments contain the embedded assumption that we can incarcerate our way to a brighter future. It’s pure projection, like how they would react if they were jailed for a week. We’re over forty years into the experiment of punishing poverty, which is linked to tax and financial policies that cause ballooning inequality. So, the tent cities are here to stay. The only answer that Ann Davison gives is more punishment. It’s not a sane answer if forty years has produced the current nightmare, but your answer is to give it another four years.

It’s true that NTK has a message that’s shocking for some. Modern discourse demands that left-of-center discourse be sanitized, non-threatening and weak, while the right talks about all manner of violence. So, a lefty who delivers a strong message is anathema. It breaks brains, especially of mainstream news consumers, who vote. People have decades of conditioning to break through.

For example, you won’t see Ann Davison explain what happens to people after they’ve been in jail for a week and the City throws away a couple grand on adding another line to the criminal record. If you asked where this all leads she’d sound like a serious weirdo, but she’s on the right so she really doesn’t have to explain herself. Honestly, after forty years of putting more cops on the beat, tax cuts, three strikes, minimum sentencing, untaxed billionaires, private prisons, the world’s largest prison population, monopolies, Citizens United, offshore tax havens, etc. Shouldn’t Ann Davison have to be the one answering for her insanity?

51

@50, "It’s interesting how many comments contain the embedded assumption that we can incarcerate our way to a brighter future."
Is this along the lines of your comment @9, where you're full of shit?

52

@51: He has to put words into his opponents' mouths, because arguing on actual facts leads to his swift and ignominious defeat. The obvious 'tell' here is his talk about Seattle's homeless crisis, without the slightest mention of Substance Abuse Disorder or resultant addictions. Admitting that level of reality simply is not an option for him. So he bashes the usual straw men, claiming that any effort to use laws to get addicts off the streets and into treatment is "criminalizing poverty."

"So, the tent cities are here to stay. The only answer that Ann Davison gives is more punishment."

Enforcing laws against camping, petty theft, and the low-level drug trade could get rid of the tent cities, and if Ann Davison gives that answer, it could win her the election.

"It’s true that NTK has a message that’s shocking for some."

Yes, the message, "I fully intend to take the paychecks, but without doing much of the work" is indeed shocking to those of us who actually do our jobs, but once the shock value is gone, showing such an applicant the door comes easily. Hopefully the voters in Seattle will soon do just that.

Why voters would even need to hire NTK to try out her 'ideas' remains a mystery. For the past few years, Seattle has tried not enforcing laws against camping, vagrancy, theft, assault, and drug use, and the result has been an unmitigated disaster. Even domestic violence (in the case of Travis Berge) went unpunished, and the result was murder.

53

@51 You got me. In my earlier comment, I’m joking that Fox and Tucker are big turn offs for Seattle voters. It’s true that I didn’t watch the video. I got caught. Shame on me. I still think Tucker is unpopular in Seattle and that could be a liability for Ann Davison.

Also, you don’t have anything substantive to say about Ann Davison, do you?

54

@52 Remind me of the work Ann Davison has done for people in poverty.

55

@54: Remind me of why Seattle needs to try out NKT's "message" when we already have followed her non-enforcement policy concerning the homeless.

56

I nixed a response to @54 as I thought tensor would do a better job, and sure enough @55 did.

58

Eli Sanders was a deputy communications director for Mayor Tim Burgess? Who was mayor for 71 days? That's what Eli did after he wrote his book, for which he got a Pulitzer? Ye gods, talk about falling down a rabbit hole.

Also, are Seattle residents (who are presumably voting for someone to be Seattle City Attorney) ever going to learn that the City Attorney does not prosecute felonies, and that the main job of said official is to represent the City when it does something stupid and is sued? No, apparently not.

61

@60 is correct on that one. A lot of misinformation about how the law works around here, and why only rich white people get a pass.

62

@60, Tell NTK then to remove 'defund the police" off her website then as one of her goals she will work for if elected...

64

@60, @63: You are the only commenter here who claims NTK wants to "abolish the police." She, her allies, and everyone here recognize she wants to end prosecutions for most misdemeanors, an idea NTK, The Stranger, and her other supporters wrongly characterize as an "abolitionist" stance. As @62 noted, her demand to "Defund the Police" comes straight from her campaign's web site, so she does want the SPD de-funded. Your error @60 is yours alone.

"And the threat of cutting funding is the only stick we have."

Wrong. The City could seek de-certification of SPOG (and perhaps the other unions who represent SPD officers) for the violation of employment contract SPD officers committed, when they abandoned the East Precinct to the murderous anarchy of the CHAZ/CHOP/CHUMP. The threat of having no union representation when their behavior is already under scrutiny should be a very potent thread indeed. (That such a threat would originate in their own actions gives it additional potency.)


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