If you want to see quality graffiti, go to Lisbon. 95% of the stuff in Seattle is shit.

sticker patrol is hardly the same as the shitty black spray paint that is all up and down I-5 for miles, for example. just an observation. I mean, I never seen jasmine up in the highway tunnels looking at the "art".

Delaying the Long Term Care tax was the right call. Now they need to cancel it all together. The whole thing was bad policy.

Btw the council also passed a rule that they can abstain from voting on resolutions unrelated to Seattle. So there are a couple of Sawant rules on the books now lol

Walking around Seattle without the stickers and other unsanctioned art would be objectively less interesting and I-5 is butt ugly even when it's sparkling clean.

Before someone does, please don't engage with him. If you feel the need to respond, simply report him and move on.

(I was of course referring to #7, but Dale got in between)

@8 Dale, and you guys wonder how we ended up with Harrell and Davison.

@7 If ~you~ follow science (or even just a reality-based news source) you should know that:

1) Hospitals are already overburdened in a large part of the country, especially the Northeast and Midwest. They most likely will be slammed here as well, before winter is over.

2) Although Omicron is, yes, much more transmissible than Delta or Covid Classic, vaccines still greatly reduce your chances of becoming part of problem (1). Get your booster and thank whatever gods there be that you live in a part of the world where it's available.

@12 ycsu, his snark is uncalled for, but he has a valid point - those are nice 6 figure salaries, but not outrageous by any stretch.

What's the reading comprehension issue?

It seems like TS and a lot of the commenters here have this attitude that if you make more than 5 figures, you're part of the problem. Again, the constant purity tests and circular firing squad is unbelievably counterproductive and tiring. Let's focus on more people making more money, and paying people for donations, rather than bringing down those that are doing well for themselves. And those salaries are a drop in the bucket for billion dollar budgets.

I agree that the FDA mandated homophobic stance to appease the dumbfucks is repulsive and a huge deterrent to a significant segment of society that would probably be more open to giving blood than most. I just checked the Red Cross Eligibility Criteria, and they don't openly mention that sexually active gay men are not eligible on the main eligibility page. In fact, they don't list they're ineligible under the full index. You have to select HIV/AIDS specifically, to see that that they're ineligible. They want to hide that they're enforcing FDA mandated homophobic policies while perpetuating homophobic stereotypes in the process. The intention may be to avoid openly stigmatizing gay men, but I'm not sure which is worse.

There were "over five threats of violence"? What an odd turn of phrase. Does this mean six threats? Five and a half?

@11 I figured it was older landowning liberal and 'moderate' voters being duped by their fearmongering about the more experienced abolitionist and housing first candidates combined with dogwhistle phrases for reducing the visibility of/criminalising the poor? At least partially.

The homophobic and ridiculous law that men who have sex with men/people who have sex with men who have sex with men should be stricken down. No more talk, it needs to go 20 years ago.

Implying donating blood is a straights only activity really erases huge sections of the queer community and kind of sucks. Says the pansexual, demiflux AFAB.

@17 ycsu, I don't think I mischaracterized what you said. You continue to focus on feeling that people who make more than $200K are making too much money. Or that people who work for non-profits are making too much money. That they're "greedy".

That they're a non-profit doesn't mean the people who operate the non-profit should make less money than their counterparts in for-profit. Would you rather Bloodworks be for-profit to justify their salaries? I'm guessing not. No, you just want certain people to make less money. And not just billionaires like Jeff Bezos, but some doctor making $400K. They shouldn't make $400K either, right?

BloodbankNW isn't just some hippies driving around in school busses collecting blood and handing out cookies. They have nearly a thousand employees, with a hundred staff in medical research, and are responsible for blood distribution to all the hospitals throughout the NW.

Paying for blood is something that has been considered, but it is more complicated than "greed". The main issue is that if people are donating blood for money, they are more likely to lie about their risk factors, and the result is the risk of bad blood goes up significantly. Blood that has been paid for is separated out from other blood donations, and hospitals won't accept blood money, so it's not of much help. Could all of this be changed, and safeguards put in place. I can imagine so, but it doesn't have anything to do with whether the chief medical officer of a major non-profit is making $400K or $200K.

There is a blood shortage. There has been for years. It's not like they're just making it up. Correlating a blood shortage with the salaries of officers running the non-profit is nonsensical.

@19 A family member had a medical emergency the day after Thanksgiving. She could not be moved from the ER to a hospital bed because none were available. Hospital capacit is a problem here.

@18 Dale, you figured wrong. You're regurgitating disingenuous left-wing talking points just like the right-wing does.

Do you even hear yourself? You demonize the "landowning liberals" as though every liberal who owns a home is the enemy. And you wonder how Harrell and Davison got elected.

Gang-related graffiti, which makes up the vast majority of graffiti, is not art. It's the defacement of public and private property, and it's a crime, and an indicator of more serious crime. It's not the criminalization of poor people. It's the criminalization of criminals.

You can keep denying that there's a crime problem, and you can keep helping people like Harrell and Davison get elected.

You can keep denying that it's impossible for Seattle to solve the homeless problem by providing an endless amount of social services, and you can keep helping people like Harrell and Davison get elected.

Neither Harrell or Davison are going to fix Seattle's problems, but they are what happens when the problems are denied and Seattle voters are fed continuous propaganda bullshit from the far left.

@15

You (Pretty in Pink) seem to have missed the point, just like Sir Toby.

The original comment was fairly simple. Pay people to give blood (instead of constantly begging them) since the people in charge are being paid quite well, and thus can afford it. This is a rather simple message, but as was put really well, Sir Toby is not good at reading comprehension. He probably just skipped to the salaries, and immediately thought this was some sort of criticism of their salaries, even though there is not one line that states that.

At most you can say this was a general criticism of capitalism, and the irony is, Sir Toby joins in the criticism without actually knowing it. He was attacking an argument that wasn't made (that management is paid too much) while bolstering an argument he probably doesn't agree with. After merely listing the salaries and suggesting they could afford a minor pay cut to pay people to give blood, Sir Toby comes back with "Yeah, but everyone in that position gets paid a lot. You should have gone to school, and made it your goal to make more money, unlike whatever you are doing now, because as we all know, money is a perfect representation of value; just ask those teachers in South Dakota".

@25 Ross, per OP...

"Here's a solution... Maybe only take a $200k annual salary and pay your workers more and the people donating." [followed by a list of salaries]

"So, for this "non-profit", people that profess to be that concerned should put aside their greed and pay people to donate blood. One can live quite comfortably on a $200K annual salary, don't you think?"

I don't know Ross, it seems like they're saying they're paid too much to me. I don't see how I'm reading into things.

If they're trying to point out the hypocrisy, there is no hypocrisy. If their primary concern was paying blood donation workers more money, then focus on that regardless of management salaries. If their primary concern was paying people to donate blood, again, discuss that issue. What does the salaries of management have to do with that? Unless you think management is making too much money.

They fill up a comment with a long list of salaries that are a drop in the bucket compared to the money involved in paying for blood donations, and make multiple comments about how they're greedy, and then wonder why people read it the "wrong" way?

I greatly respect you Ross, but I think you called this one wrong.

@27 ycsu, if you want to say that your only intended point was that maybe we could pay for blood donations, and everything else you wrote was off-point, I sincerely accept that.

But to suggest that I intentionally misconstrued your comments is utter bullshit. I didn't cherry pick one little thing - I responded to what made up the majority of your comments. You did a piss poor job of making your point, and then doubled-down on it.

I agree with @13, troll or not. Two shot vaccine doesn’t protect against this variant. Hence the call to get another shot.
We have just opened borders to only vaccinated travellers. Can’t cross state lines unless vaccinated. And here is this variant moving around the community, and it’s occurring via vaccinated people. And it’s much more contagious though it appears less potent.

Pay people to give blood? No. Selling kidneys next.
And are gay men still not allowed to give blood? Crazy.

@19 The information you asked for is easily found online. I could cite any number of reputable sources but I know you'd find a reason not to trust them (one of their execs once worked for George Soros's best friend's third cousin's son-in-law, or something along those lines).

Sorry, but I know exactly how this game works. It's the same one that climate change deniers have been playing for decades.

At this point there is only one thing to do: wait for COVID to kill all of the unvaccinated.

Currently, 98 to 99 percent of the people dying from COVID in hospitals are unvaccinated. Medicare and all other health insurance providers have chosen to no longer pay for hospital bills of hospitalized COVID patients, so the smartest thing to do would be to refuse all unvaccinated by choice (and the only people unvaccinated NOT by choice are children under 5) admittance to any hospital or to receive any medical care.

For two years now people who require medical care not related to COVID have been denied that care because of hospitals being filled to the brim with unvaccinated patients dying of COVID. It makes no sense that those adamantly against vaccination, digging deep in their refusal to acknowledge COVID reality crowd suddenly finds faith in medical science when they become sick and are dying.

They want their freedumb, let them have it. There is no right to spread disease. And in this country there is no right to health care (our government has made that crystal clear). So let's get down to the nitty gritty. You want your freedumb? You can die at home or in the streets. Take that freedumb to your grave. The sooner you all die, the sooner the rest of us can move forward.

@31 ycsu, Apparently you aren't admitting that you did a piss poor job, because you're still blaming me.

The original full quote of what I edited:
"Here's a solution, if you all really care about the blood supply, PAY PEOPLE! to donate blood. Maybe only take a $200k annual salary and pay your workers more and the people donating."

Here's what I quoted:
"Here's a solution... Maybe only take a $200k annual salary and pay your workers more and the people donating."

The words I removed for brevity were redundant - they add no additional context to what I left in the quote. What I took out suggested paying for blood, and the quote I included still suggests paying for blood... and further, it was irrelevant to my comment to Ross.

I didn't miss your point about paying for blood, and I thought it was an interesting one, so I did some actual research (unlike you) and wrote an entire paragraph about it in my @21 comment.

@32 ycsu,
You write:
"you stating that the things in the quotations were the majority of my comments is also false, a quick estimate of word count and points made and context provided, those quotes made less than 25% of my comments. So that's another willful lie."

Here's what I actually wrote:
"But to suggest that I intentionally misconstrued your comments is utter bullshit. I didn't cherry pick one little thing - I responded to what made up the majority of your comments."

I clearly never wrote that the “quotes" made up the majority of your comments. I didn’t even include quotes until my reply to Ross, which was about my original comments @15 & @21. If you want to do a word count on words spent related to executive salaries and their greed, you'll find that they make up a majority of the written words in your first two comments, which is what this is all about.

A tiny fraction of the vandalism adorning Seattle's walls, signs, streets and freeways is graffiti and the rest is depraved tagging by vulgar, violent, vicious, and vile thugs and gangbangers.

Thank God Bruce Harrell, bless his heart, will try and clean it up.

@46 he should go out and do a parody video of that snl sketch from back when Rudy g wasn't insane. they went around the graffiti in NYC and wrote "sucks" after the tag. mild buuuuuurrrrrrrnnnnn. lol

@39 ycsu, "And as for the ethical issue of bribing people to donate, they already do that. It's just ridiculous stuff like a $20 Amazon gift card or a chance to win a Honda CRV, are the hospitals throwing out that "I'm doing this for the Peloton" blood, too?"

I personally wouldn't frame it as an "ethical" issue, though as ST2 pointed out there are ethical concerns. The reason they do sometimes "bribe" people with gift cards and not cash is because people don't tend to lie as much about their eligibility to get a gift card, as they do for cold hard cash. There have been studies on this. You would know this if you did some research on this subject that you're so passionate about.

The thing is, I'm not your enemy.

@40: Per your request:

https://komonews.com/news/local/washington-senator-doug-ericksen-dies-at-52

My condolences to any pets Erickson might have been nice to.

Another Xmas going to not feeling very Christmas like.
If blood gets sold then it opens for other body parts to be sold. This already happens in some countries. So unless you want to wake up after being drugged, with a kidney missing, then keep blood donations free.

Great present, Chase.
Graffiti is Art, not sure who gave this new mayor the powers to decide what art is.

Art is self expression & this issue should be the least of a new mayor’s concerns.

@58 ycsu, "They are still sickeningly overpaying themselves for working at a supposed "non-profit".

LOL, after all your accusations of cherry-picking, lying, and generally playing the victim game, you're right back to the executive salaries - exactly what ST2 originally commented on, and I had the apparent audacity to agree with him.

No one is lying or misrepresenting what you're saying. You are literally writing the words over and over again.

@57 LavaGirl, "Graffiti is Art, not sure who gave this new mayor the powers to decide what art is."

"Graffiti Art" is art, but this is not about Banksy-type street art, graffiti art murals, or stickers. That's not what Harrell is referring to, and The Stranger knows it. This is about gangs. And when you wake up one morning to find gang tag graffiti spray-painted on your home yard fence, or the side of your building, then you can decide whether it's art or not.

I know you've spent a lot of time at Savage Love that you think of as part of "The Stranger", but that's a separate entity. The thing you have to realize about the current incarnation of The Stranger is that it has the credibility of Fox News. They're in the business of hot-takes that will generate clicks and comments. The Stranger writers intentionally misconstrue reality to fit their narrative. And their current narrative is that Harrell represents all that is wrong in Seattle.

If you want to see all the "awful" things he has in mind as mayor, check out his "issues" web page:
https://www.bruceforseattle.com/issues/

(FTR, I am not a supporter of Harrell, but I'm willing to see how he does before deciding what I think of him as mayor)

@42 If you absolutely must have "raw data," the person to ask is your doctor. She or he has access to medical journals, conference papers, etc. that the lay public doesn't. But I doubt that raw data will do you any good if you don't have the training to interpret and draw the right conclusions from it. That's why most rational adults defer to professionals on matters that require a high level of specialized education and clinical experience, such as health care. If you don't want to end up like Sen. Erickson, you would be well advised to do the same.

@65: Oh really? Next time you run a fever I guarantee you'll be also sweating bullets.

Resident troll how about you attend a catch COVID party and prove us all wrong.

https://7news.com.au/news/world/austrian-anti-vaxxer-55-dies-after-attending-italian-covid-party-to-catch-virus-c-4690330

Don't worry, if you tell us who you are, we'll make sure you're featured in the subreddit list of asshole antivaxxers who spent the last days of their lives mocking everything about the pandemic only to die from COVID.

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/

@76 "Rational". LOL. Hurry up with the live free and die... Free up some space. MAGA!