"$7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects."

and 15.2 Billions
for a Genocidal War
on an Entrapped peoples.

yeah
this Planet's
not Pissed at its
stupid Inhabitants

Mother Nature
ALWAYS bats
Last. fools
we are

nice Pic btw.

Bird won the endorsement for governor from the state GOP. The state convention doesn't nominate candidates like a national party convention nominates a presidential candidate. Bird still has to get through the primary later this year.

In theory, this means that Reichert won't get any support from the state party during the primary campaign. How that plays out remains to be seen. If Bird and Reichert split the GOP vote more or less down the middle, it will leave an opening for Mullet to edge them both out and end with a D-only governor's race. That might have an impact on voter turnout for the initiatives this fall.

@2: The Stranger loves to use that image, even though winters in Seattle are mild, snow is a rarity, and far more homeless persons in King County die of overdoses than of exposure.

From a comment in a thread from one of the previous runs of that image:

“I'm still trying to figure out why Hannah elected to use her snowy tent photo, because with the possible exception of Mr. Toolan (cause pending), not one of these poor souls died from exposure or hypothermia.”

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2022/06/09/74853880/slog-am-17-unhoused-people-died-since-april-in-king-county-the-county-proposes-gun-return-and-jan-6-hearings-start-today/comments/30)

"Work hard, take care of your job, pay your bills, and be nice.”

Nathalie calls that capitalist propaganda - but the same applies to communist societies as they have jobs too - but with extremely low pay and you MUST be nice.

And Jonathan Choe is telling the truth.

@5: Also she's basically saying if you fall behind on your payments you'll die! But she's saying it nicely.

In a just world, Nathalie Graham would be given a column in the Seattle Times. Easily one of the best writers in the city.

The “which I find rude” bit is just brilliant, and has made my (admittedly Monday) morning.

“I love to work. As old as I am, I still love to work, if I could get on my hands and knees,” Tina Gerlack said.

Exactly what work is Tina doing, anyway?

@7 Agreed!

@literally
it don't gotta Be
a notorized photog
it's the Epitome of why
we cannot Afford Billionaires

get it now?

@7, 9, natty

YES!

@7 Nathalie already writes for the Seattle Times!

https://www.seattletimes.com/author/nathalie-graham/

I will say however, that we are not killing the planet. Earth will be still be here for 5 billion years after we kill ourselves off.

@7: I concur. Nathalie consistently enjoys putting together Friday and Monday Slog AM and it shows. Some of the newer staffers just seem to want to get it over with.

@4:

Well, if only a few people die of exposure because of our mild winters, I guess that makes it okay then. I mean, why do we even need cold weather shelters? It's like the fucking banana belt around here compared to most places, so them homeless freeloaders can just lounge around outside in the brisk, balmy weather - oh, but wait, living outside should be against the law, because even having to see the unhoused makes people like you vaguely uncomfortable.

@tensor - Nathalie did not mention Seattle homeless or death or weather. She can use whatever picture she has available. The story was the SCOTUS taking up a case "about whether banning people from sleeping outside when there is insufficient shelter space is considered cruel and unusual punishment."

Speaking of the homeless @4 and @14, our non-profit, low-income housing providers, and government housing authorities, want to evict more of their tenants.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/unpaid-rent-in-low-income-housing-skyrocketed-evictions-may-be-next/

As for the "security event" at SeaTac - nobody there even mentioned it when we arrived late last evening, although the impact was obvious: after we'd landed our plane was delayed about 15 minutes getting to our gate because they were still trying to deal with the backlog of departures; bags were getting sent to the wrong carousels - or whomever lists where bags are going was scrambling to keep up; and by the time we got out to the Taxi/Ride Share area there were well over a thousand people massed together or in lines. Not surprisingly I guess, Lyft and Uber were invoking "congestion pricing" at midnight, which essentially doubled the cost; if I hadn't opted to stand in the flat-rate taxi line instead, I could easily have spent over $200 to get from the airport to home. Always trust Capitalism to take advantage of a public emergency to fleece consumers!

What a bunch of pasty fucks in that GOP video. Except for the dude in the foreground wearing a "Make America Chingon Again" hat.

"a former Richland school board member who was recalled for flouting masking mandates deep in the early pandemic."

Really makes you wish that Inslee had actually been a king or dictator during covid. People like this would've been disappeared.

@14, @15:

My point was, the Stranger repeatedly uses this wildly unrepresentative image to illustrate stories of this type. On one of the previous occasions, they used it in conjunction with some misleading text, to imply large numbers of homeless persons were dying merely from living outdoors, when many of the deaths were from overdoses or violence (some of which happened indoors).

"UNRWA neutrality must be strengthened, independent review finds."

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-04-22-24/index.html

@5- have you been to a Communist country lately? It seems to mean (generalizing from the PRC) you have no obligation at all to be nice.

Many of you should stop and consider what if Trump had the authority you think President Biden has. Remember the first Trump impeachment? It was in part for withholding Congressionally appropriated funds. What do you want now? For Biden to withhold Congressionally appropriate funds for Israel. Student loans? He was stopped by the courts. You want Trump unencumbered by the courts?

Cool, edge-lord stuff dunking on a 106 year old. Btw, what's wrong with capitalism? It was good enough to make Mudede morbidly obese.

It looks like the conservative Supreme Court is going to save progressive cities from themselves by throwing out the 9th’s circuit’s absurdly ass-backward position on drug encampments. This was never about criminalizing sleeping outdoors. Rather it was about curtailing the juridicial over-reach that essentially created a right to set up a giant encampment in a public space with drugs, garbage, stolen bikes and human waste everywhere. That is not a human right. The stupidity of progressives and the 9th circuit has killed thousands of people and ruined left coast cities. A change in direction that has some common sense is long overdue. It will be years before I will trust progressives to lead this city again.

@21 And yet Israel still hasn't provided any evidence to back up their claim that UNRWA staff were involved in the 10/7 attacks. You would think that would be in their interest. I mean, they do want Hamas rooted out of UNRWA, right? So why don't they share the intel?

Per your own statements about war crimes, Israel has the burden of proof here. They've made the accusation but don't seem particularly interested in backing it up. Maybe the evidence isn't as ironclad as previously described?

@23 There are other laws preventing the US from sending weapons to countries that use them for war crimes. That gives Biden the authority to stop the weapons should he choose.

@tenny

It has snowed in Seattle at least once almost every year for the past 15. Additionally our temperature regularly dips to freezing or below through the winter even if there is no snow. Lastly exposure and hypothermia do not require temperatures to be freezing either. If you are sleeping outside without adequate protection and warmth in the winter here (and the spring and fall for that matter) you have a large risk of at the very least becoming ill, with little resources to get help.

But that’s okay we all know you are an awful person. Go jerk off to some videos of the IDF launching missiles or something.

@26, The interest in protecting the sources and methods used in obtaining intelligence, so that they may be used again in the future to obtain intel, often outweighs other interests.

Also UNRWA itself found enough evidence that UNRWA staff were involved, to fire some staff. They would presumably have an interest in denying their staff were involved, unless the evidence made their involvement undeniable, and the damage control of firing them, outweighed acknowledging hiring and retaining people involved in the 10/7 attacks under UNRWA's banner.

@28: boatgeek's chronic inability to understand when rules of evidence apply, and when they do not, reliably provides great amusement. Israel has no need to provide evidence sufficient to stand up in any court, because Israel's audience is not a court of law, but policy-makers in Washington and Europe, who provide almost all of UNRWA's funding. (No amount of oil-rich Gulf states' crying foul at perfidious Zion ever seems to direct many of their climate-destroying petrodollars to relief of civilians in Gaza -- although some of those states have lavishly funded Hamas.) Israel recently gave everyone a lesson in just how easily it can thus threaten UNRWA's very financial existence, and so (as you noted), revealing their sources of intelligence was completely unnecessary. (Hint to @26: there's no need for Israel to "root" Hamas out of UNRWA if Israel can simply cause UNRWA's funding to go away. Your proposal would make for a temporary solution, when Israel already has a permanent one at hand.)

@27: 'Way back up @4, I provided the url to the evidence showing how the Stranger has used this image misleadingly. Your wordy restatement of my succinct description of Seattle's climate, while in equal parts tedious and unnecessary, also ignored the most important information in the image. At the risk of blowing right past the upper limit of your syllable : word ratio, the focus of the image is called a "tent," which in wet climates (like Seattle's) typically gets used by humans to prevent their exposure to elements which could cause hypothermia. A look at the snow piled up around and on this tent shows it appears to be doing a great job of that, because the snow has neither visibly melted, nor entered the tent, meaning anyone inside the tent should stay warm and dry.

@3 boatgeek: The state GOP endorsed Semi Bird for the RepubliKKKan Governor candidate? Good. Former King County Sheriff Dave "Look, look! I nabbed the Green River Killer!" Reichert is a misogynist MAGA-Nazi neofascist pig, and would run our state into the ground, sending us backwards 233 years to pre-Civil War 1791, and before Washington reached statehood (Officially on November 11, 1889).
I wouldn't mind a D-only Washington Governor's (and President's!) race. It would further prove our record for being the saner Washington than D.C., despite the clown car shitshow we have in the state GOP. Thank heavens Cathy McMorris-Rodgers is finally retiring and the late 42nd District MAGA-turd Doug the Thug Ericksen is forever roasting in hell. No great loss.
Now if only the Orange Turd and its batshit loyalists, including Reichert and loony Loren Culp, could all drop dead before November. They claim to love their guns and worship the 2nd Amendment. Wouldn't it be something if their rabid sense of entitled lawlessness finally caught up with them, and they wound up shooting each other in a game of Russian roulette at the RNC? I'd bring the red wine and popcorn.

"A look
at the snow
piled up around
and on this tent shows
it appears to be doing a
great job of that, because
the snow has neither visibly
melted, nor entered the tent,
meaning anyone inside the tent
should stay warm and dry." [omg.]

--@Wormtongue

plus they oughtta
be Thankful they still
even HAVE a Tent. and a
Bicycle! they probably even
Have (and here's the Shocker:)

A CELL PHONE.

Jesus H. Christ.

it may not be the
Lap of Luxury
but for an

Ever-Increasing
number of Americans
it's Home Sweet Home.

why, they Oughtta be GRATEFUL!
in Some places, they don't
even Have TENTS!*

thanks,
Tentsores,
for keeping us
so damn well-Perspectivized.

let the Billionaires
Be FREE! they've
Earned it! like
El trumpfster,
for example.

*like in Gaza, eg.

@31: You’re welcome. Perhaps the Stranger should not illustrate the hazards of exposure with an image of someone well-prepared for those hazards?

“…and a
Bicycle!”

Seeing a bicycle at a homeless encampment (if that is even what this image depicts, and not, say, just a backpacker passing through) would not be unusual. Seeing an INTACT bicycle — now that would be an extremely unusual sight at a Seattle homeless encampment (further fodder for speculation of this image not showing a homeless encampment).

“let the Billionaires
Be FREE!”

Yes, no doubt that in your mind, every person currently residing in a homeless encampment arrived there directly via eviction from a rooftop penthouse by some heartless billionaire.

@28 And you probably also believe that Colin Powell was holding a vial of anthrax in his UN Security council presentation. Oh, and you may have missed it, but the UNRWA fired staff based on Israeli accusations alone. There was no evidence to back it up. If Israel refuses to provide information, there's a decent chance the UNRWA's investigation will find no wrongdoing and the staffers will be reinstated without compensation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/09/head-of-unwra-says-he-followed-reverse-due-process-in-sacking-accused-gaza-staff

@29 You and Ahab consistently want to have it both ways. Anyone accusing a Palestinian of anything is to be believed in an instant, no matter the evidence or lack thereof. But when anyone says that an Israeli commits a war crime? Like, say, to influence their funders and public opinion? Why you can't do that without a full and complete investigation, with a 200-page report and appendices. Even then, if the Israeli didn't wave a banner saying "I meant to do it!" then Ahab will bleat on about mens rea and how that exonerates everyone regardless of circumstances.

Tell us you've never camped in the cold without telling us you've never camped in the cold. First of all, either the tent in question is well enough ventilated that it's nearly the same temperature inside and outside or it's absolutely soaked in condensation on the inside. Second, the instant someone enters that tent from the outside, the snow they bring in on their shoes will make everything wet. You opine most definitely that snow has not entered the tent. How do you do that if you can't see the inside?

@30 I don't think that Reichert is a neofascist, but that's not a good thing. He's a stuffed shirt with no spine, and will sign anything the actual neofascists put in front of him. He has no opinions of his own, which is why he says one thing in public and contradictory things in private. He just says what others want to hear. Fortunately, he will either lose in the primary or in November. I'm also not sure that an all-D general would be a good thing. I think there's a decent chance that Mullet could attract enough R and I votes to win the governorship. Given that he killed a bill to outlaw guns in parks this last legislative session because it would have cost $60K for new signs, he'd be a step backwards.

our Dear wormmy:
truly A Man of
The People!

and
Spokesperson
for the point oh oh one
percentage clubbers of America,

LLC, bitches.

Now:
stop Whining
bend Over and
Grab them Bootstraps
America: you're About to be

Lessoned.

@33: Again, you’re completely missing the point about UNRWA and Israel. Israel recently demonstrated it can get UNRWA effectively shut down if it so desires. Your statement, “UNRWA fired staff based on Israeli accusations alone. There was no evidence to back it up”, reinforces just how much power Israel has over UNRWA. Whether this or that staffer, or all of them, get reinstated, simply doesn’t have the relevance you desperately believe it should have.

Israel made it very clear: if UNRWA allows itself to be used as a front for Hamas (or any other terrorist group), Israel can end UNRWA. That’s a very powerful message, and one likely to have a more beneficial effect (from Israel’s point of view) upon UNRWA than any promised stack of bureaucratic procedures the UN might someday impose upon UNRWA.

And, once more, you really need to understand the difference between accusations of criminal behavior (e.g. South Africa against Israel at the ICJ) and accusations of mere wrongdoing (Israel against UNRWA). The former requires presentation of evidence in a court of law, following stringent rules of evidence; the latter merely requires a plausible story, delivered convincingly, to the correct audience.

(On that last point, what might the chances be of Israel getting US funding to UNWRA terminated by Congress, after Iran’s recent display of belligerent ineptitude towards Israel? I’d be willing to bet UNRWA does not want to risk learning that the hard way.)

@35 Again, you're missing the point with an extra bonus of putting words in my mouth. I'm not talking about war crimes trials. I'm talking about discussions of US (and other nations') gifts and arms sales to Israel. When someone says that Israel is committing war crimes and the US should stop funding/supplying them, you and Ahab say that nothing has been proven. When Israel says that the UNRWA should be defunded, you and Ahab agree, despite it being exactly the same level of required proof (funders making a political decision) and far, far less evidence presented by Israel.

At least have the decency to admit you have a double standard.

@36: Use of words goes better if you occasionally stop to read them, too:

“I'm not talking about war crimes trials. … When someone says that Israel is committing war crimes and the US should stop funding/supplying them, you and Ahab say that nothing has been proven.”

So, you’re angry that your readers take your allegations of “war crimes” seriously enough to ask for the actual evidence required to prove them? Should we, absent proof, simply ignore your allegations? Would that make you happier?

I’m guessing you want your mere allegations of war crimes by Israel, without your providing evidence sufficient to prove such a charge in court, to suffice for getting funding to Israel stopped, and you’re angry politics doesn’t work that way.

Again, nobody accused UNWRA itself of terrorism. Israel’s accusation was that UNWRA wasn’t enforcing neutrality upon UNWRA employees. In other words, an HR matter, not one for criminal courts. (Please tell us you understand that much, at least.) Therefore, the standard of evidence required is different (and far lower) from that invoked by alleging war crimes.

If you believe current US support of Israel is bad policy from the point of view of US political interests, then make that argument. The factual standard you’ll need to meet will be far lower than if you say US support of Israel should change because Israel is committing war crimes.

@37 As if nobody ever provided evidence that Israel is committing war crimes. That evidence has been provided over and over and over again. And you wave it away every single time because it hasn't yet been proven in a criminal court. Meanwhile you hold UNRWA to the standard of defunding over HR matters.

If the IDF were defunded over HR matters, they'd have been defunded over the WCK strike (failure to follow procedures), over shooting the escaped hostages (local IDF had been given rules of engagement of shooting anyone approaching an IDF position even though that wasn't the standard IDF ROE), over shooting unarmed grandmothers following announced evacuation routes (same issue as the escaped hostages), etc. etc. etc.

I have made the argument over and over that the US support of Israel while Israel commits war crimes with impunity is bad policy. And every time you've said that we don't have enough evidence to believe that Israel has committed war crimes. All the while holding the UNRWA to a completely different standard of evidence.

Just admit that you have a double standard. It'll be easier than tying yourself in knots trying to justify your position.

@38: “And you wave it away every single time because it hasn't yet been proven in a criminal court.”

Because it’s an allegation of a crime, yes. And that requires evidence, per the legal definition of that word. Go ahead, walk into any courtroom in session in the United States, and announce you have evidence relevant to the criminal case they are trying. Then wave some YouTube video in front of the bench. I assure you the response you receive from Officers of that Court will, by comparison, make the responses I’ve given you here look warmly accommodating indeed.

“I have made the argument over and over that the US support of Israel while Israel commits war crimes with impunity is bad policy.”

And, therefore, you have, by implication, invoked the evidentiary standards of a court of competent jurisdiction for those war crimes. Evidentiary standards you have not even come close to meeting with regards to a verdict. (You may have met the standards to warrant further investigation, but your YouTube example may not even reach that far.)

“All the while holding the UNRWA to a completely different standard of evidence.”

Because no one accused the UNWRA, as an organization, of committing any crime. Therefore, the standard of evidence is — and should be — “completely different”.

You’re the one tying yourself into angry knots, trying to have it both ways, because you want to use the term, “war crimes,” as a rhetorical club with which to compel the rest of us to agree with you. It’s no different than the Stranger constantly pointing at Israel and yelling “genocide!” The only difference is in the latter case, the “tell” is different: the Stranger refuses even to consider whether Hamas committed genocide in Israel on 10/7.

@39 You keep talking about criminal court for Israel and the court of public opinion for UNRWA. Double standard. As usual. But OK, I'll stop using "war crime" and try again. Or maybe the willful ignorance will win out. Hard to tell, but the smart money's on willful ignorance.

IDF soldiers shot and killed escaped hostages after being told to ignore public agency standards of conduct, substituting another standard that was in contradiction to the published standard. Later, IDF soldiers bombed the WCK convoy after not following public agency standards of conduct, resulting in deaths of innocent people. Both of these incidents caused a great deal of bad publicity for the IDF and the latter strained relations with allies. This is obviously very bad. Much like members of the UNRWA purportedly not following public agency neutrality guidelines.

There are two differences though. The IDF has released evidence publicly saying that they did exactly what was said above, and acknowledging that this led to the deaths of innocent people. There is no evidence that breaking the neutrality guidelines by the UNRWA led to anyone's deaths, mainly because Israel has not released whatever evidence they used to make the accusations that UNRWA staff were involved in 10/7. Furthermore, UNRWA fired people merely on suspicion. Israel acknowledged the failure to follow public agency guidelines in the escaped hostages case and laid down no discipline.

Therefore if the UNRWA should be defunded, the IDF be defunded as well since their conduct was both worse (innocent people were killed) and unpunished. Or you can just apply a double standard. Like usual. And before you go on about the relative scale of the WCK and escaped hostages cases vs. 10/7, remember that these are a small subset of the times when the IDF has willfully and clearly violated public agency standards of conduct.

my Gawd
the Drama
on This one

"You’re
the one
tying your-
self into angry knots"

(wot? he's as
calm as a
Cuke).

you couldda been
a Brilliant pro-
Jectionist

not that you're
not Trying.

kudo.

@tensorna

Tents don’t provide warmth. They provide a barrier from elements and create a small microclimate but do not provide warmth and people die of exposure and hypothermia while in tents all the time.

Still doesnt change that you’re a fucking awful person.

Cheers

@42*

it's just Math:

giftedish logician +
horrible person =
let's get Into
that abyss
asap.

Salud.

*'42'?

isn't That
the Answer
to Everything?

@40: "The IDF has released evidence publicly saying that they did exactly what was said above, and acknowledging that this led to the deaths of innocent people."

(Oh, I thought this was another instance of you finding YouTube videos on the internet and calling them "evidence." It's not, right?) Ok, if all of that happened (url?) then the persons who did the shooting, and who gave the orders, need to be tried. I've never said otherwise.

You're still confusing your declaration of "war crimes" with an actual court's verdict; what you're really saying here is, "Israel doesn't try suspected war criminals fast enough for me," which, while true, seems rather unlikely to become a criterion for Congress to decide whether Israel gets funding or not. (I'm guessing Iran recently attacking Israel counts for more with Congress than your opinions on how fast justice systems should work in Israel.)

Likewise, Congress can fund, or not fund, the UNRWA for any reason(s) it chooses. If they want to tie funding to suspicion of UNRWA providing cover to terrorists, Congress can do that. You have the same right as any other voter or citizen to try to influence Congress on this. Or on funding of Israel.

@42: "Tents don’t provide warmth."

No, they do not. Which is why I did not claim they do.

Still doesn't change your reading comprehension, though.

@40- it’s only a matter of time until Semi Bird pulls off the Scooby-Doo rubber mask to reveal Loren Culp.

@45 dvs99: Further proof that RepubliKKKans are indeed, horrible excuses for people.
The recent GOP shitshow in Spokane revealed [See Danny Westneat, "The State GOP: We Don't Want to be More Democratic", The Seattle Times, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, Northwest, pages A-8 and A-10] that the GOP MAGAt Party of the Orange Turd is SO batshit rabid, they're lobbying to do entirely away with mail in ballots, insisting that Washington voters should have only one hour leeway on one day only in-person voting. Most likely there will be armed Proud Boys at every ballot box ensuring everyone is coerced into voting neofascist blood red or risk getting shot.
It's as if the RepubliKKKan Party of Turd is hellbent on igniting a Civil War II. These shitwipes don't give a rat's ass who they hurt--especially women and girls, non-whites, and the poor. The GOP is now so extreme they don't want anyone to say democracy, but republic. They're that hellbent on dividing, conquering and owning everyone and everything. Earth's remaining life forms and precious resources be damned!
Don't these MAGA dumbfucks see how vulnerable this makes the U.S. to WWIII in addition to civil unrest?
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un would love to nuke the U.S. If they do everyone and everything along the West Coast will be the first to go.
In a recent Op.Ed. in The Seattle Times, New York Times economist Paul Krugman warned that if the Orange Turd reclaims the White House in 2025---however illegally--we can officially kiss the Affordable Care Act, the crowning achievement of the Obama-Biden Administration that passed in 2010 goodbye. The ACA, that has helped millions of U.S. citizens acquire sustainable healthcare so many otherwise could not afford (ERs are the most expensive providers of healthcare) will most likely be completely and heartlessly gutted by 2026.
The GOP has shown its Trump's butt-ugly face. RepubliKKKans are the AmeriKKKan Taliban.

We have been warned. Anyone who isn't outraged isn't paying attention.
Be sure to vote wisely this Roevember. Our every last shred of democracy depends on it.

@33 boatgeek: Dave Reichert says publicly what he thinks people want to hear but acts on what he and his MAGA neofascists believe in private. This is further proof that Dave Reichert, like the Orange Turd, is pure evil. He has openly said that if elected governor he'll outlaw abortions! Both Reichert and Mark Mullet would definitely be a quantum leap backwards into the Civil War years (April 12, 1861--May 26, 1865).
Washington AG SuperBob Ferguson for Governor 2024 is our only hope.

@34 kristofarian: What about those millions among us who no longer have bootstraps to grab?
Will these individuals be the "lucky ones" who died first before the Nuclear Holocaust?
Just sayin'.