When 143 countries out of 195 countries in the world recognize Palestine, why do the ones who oppose have so much power? It is absolutely sick that we are headed toward the 9th month of the slaughter, starvation, displacement of Palestinians and total and complete destruction of Gaza. (you now, plus 75 years or more)

And it is all bought and paid for by the world's white supremacists. But please do try to continue to convince us that it's all the fault of the Arabs that this has happened and is happening and will continue to happen. The denial of the colonization of the world and all of the death and destruction and evil that had entailed would be incomprehensible if it weren't for the source.

Meanwhile, Project 2025 is openly and proudly paraded around congress and elsewhere by the
American fascists who simply cannot wait to continue destroying THIS country. Cop City? Forget cop city! Project 2025 wants to trot out the military to rule over the people of the United States like we're fucking North Korea.

This country is so fucking fucked it is truly unfuckingbelievable. As the primary numbers come in for Genocide Joe and Traitor Trump, the numbers are pathetic. In my state alone, with over three million registered voters, both of them got less than 300,000 votes each. Our democracy is at stake we're being told. Our democracy is long dead and this is its rotting corpse is more accurate.

It's Free Free Palestine until Palestine is FREE.

As for The United States of America, stick a fork in it and have Donald Trump douse it in ketchup because it is over (though the true death is going to be long, drawn out, painful, and ugly).

"(H)e's accused of directing his former attorney to pay a former porn star hush money to bury the story of their sexual encounter at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006."

No, actually, that's not what he's accused of, because that's not even necessarily illegal. What he's accused of is having those payments, allegedly made to benefit a political campaign, disguised as a personal business expense, which is a violation of campaign laws. Please do keep up.

Not noted in the blurb about the axe murderer is the details that he had known mental and drug addiction issues and a violent criminal past. He was previously arrested for stabbing someone and was placed in a diversion program which as happens all to often he did not complete. Despite this he was moved from Northbend to Capital Hill and placed in an "affordable" Plymouth Housing project (yes the same Plymouth that was recently rejected in Kenmore that riled up TS) with no guardrails or supervision. So as a result of our "housing first" policies and continued use of restorative justice with no consequences two more people are dead. I think the residents of Kenmore were right to reject a similar project in their community.

@1:

Nice try, but you deliberately neglect to include the 5,704 murders committed using a firearm of indeterminate type, which most certainly includes a fair number of long-guns. In addition, we know, based on reporting, that semi-automatic rifles have become the most common type of firearm used in mass-shootings, because of their ability to spray bullets at an alarming rate, particularly when combined with high-capacity magazines.

But I guess those facts don't fit your narrative, which is why you didn't mention them, eh?

Recognition of Palestine will "WEAKEN AN ALREADY DYSFUNCTIONAL PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY,” says the government that has just cut off the P.A.'s tax funding. What do they expect that will do?

Israel insists, loudly and often, that it does not "occupy" or claim sovereignty over Gaza or the West Bank. Therefore, what any other country says about those territories is none of Israel's business.

Guardrails and supervision are key tenets of the housing first model but I’m not convinced that the community would be any safer with this person living on the streets.

The Times article makes no mention of restorative justice, which is a specific approach to crime resolution and not just letting people off the hook. It says he pleaded down one felony charge in mental health court and has a history of threatening his family.

He clearly has a diagnosis that makes him a menace to public safety, as well as his own. Perhaps he should be in an institution, potentially a prison, but if the failure can be placed anywhere it would be the prosecutors that let him walk, or the US healthcare system and its failure to address mental illness.

Vivian, Exactly how many hillbillies do you know? I am guessing you watched the movie "Deliverance" and decided that made you an expert on hillbillies!

@6, @9- the axe murderer should have been in prison. Maybe a psych wing, but when you commit one assault, get a second chance via a diversion program, and blow that off, you have demonstrated that you’re not a candidate for “restorative justice.” The housing v. living on the street issue is irrelevant.

This case has fuckall to do with housing first or restorative justice.

The article does not specify the felony he pleaded down. He has an undisclosed mental illness and if he committed a crime that is worthy of a prison term, locking him up would be one option, but a better solution might be treating his mental illness seriously and proactively, potentially in an institution or assisted living facility, instead of waiting for him to harm someone.

Another thing the Irish people understand is having a resistance movement transform into a criminal enterprise / protection racket that sets itself up to profit from conflict.

Liam allegedly had an axe
Allegedly gave them 40 whacks

It's lovely to declare statehood for Palestine as an out of theater entity, but it accomplishes nothing.

As a matter of international law UN Resolution 181 still stands as a framework. Abbas made a rare admission (for any Palestinian leader) that rejection of 181 was a grave mistake.

Anyone today, looking back at that moment, looking at the map, would be hard pressed not accept that deal. Sadly decades of periodic wars to wipe away Israel. Then losing. And when one dares war, the consequences are dire. The real Nakba was attitudinal. The hubris with which the Arab states defied 181 was only matched with bellicose threats to drive the Jews into the sea.

And here we are in Seattle, in 2024, and the hubris continues, students posturing as if it were late November 1947 as Hamas paragliders charge once more into the breach. And once again, Iron Swords comes crushing down.

Mother of God, mention a knife and get a Fax to Support Your Point NRA manifesto.

@11/12 agree with those points. So the question is why was a person who had issues with mental illness / addiction taken out of environment he was familiar with and placed in the middle of Capital Hill with little to no supervision? This is exactly why communities don't want these supportive housing units in their community. In this case we have a literal axe murderer roaming the streets all in the name "housing first".

@3 xina: If the Orange Turd and its enablers illegally reseize KKKontrol of the White Palace, I hope my beloved VW, and I and our musical / technical family are long gone before January 20, 2025.
I can't believe you actually want this dystopian nightmare to happen.

@2 The very existence of the State of Israel is a scar of British Colonialism. It was British guilt over their exclusion of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, as well as Irgun terrorism, that led to the creation of Israel in the British Mandate for Palestine. Britain could have created a Palestinian state at that time, but instead let the locals sort it out, with the assumption that a pro-western Israel would dominate the region. Unfortunately for the Brits, they didn't realize that the blossoming Cold War would lead to the Soviet Union aiding the Palestinian cause, and turning that conflict into a proxy battle.

@3 Here Xena sums up her mental illness perfectly. She see's the threat Trump poses to everyone who isn't a white, Christian, heterosexual, male, who votes Republican, and yet still beats her moronic "Genocide Joe" drum because despite being to first American president to ever tell Israel "no" on anything, he does not support her unreasonable, extreme position. She is literally saying that every one of us who is going to vote for Biden to stop Trump deserves to suffer under Trump, because she didn't get her way. She looks at this issue exclusively through the lens of ideology, and never though compassion.

This is why I have nothing but contempt for folks on the Loony Left like Xena. She actually doesn't care how many Palestinian babies actually die, so long as their deaths serve her ideological goals.

@20 I don't. It's already happened. SCOTUS and the judiciary have taken the rights of women, Black people, gay people, anyone and everyone trying to create equality (let alone equity) in this country already UNDER BIDEN'S WATCH.

I fully expect Biden to win. You believe it will make a difference. I do not. The USPS continues to be destroyed - Biden has done nothing to stop it. Israel is committing genocide and Biden is ALL IN ON THE SLAUGHTER, STARVATION, AND DESTRUCTION. The Biden Administration's decision to do LITERALLY NOTHING, NOT ONE THING about SCOTUS, about Trump, about voter disenfranchisement, and about the Constitution being destroyed bit by bit has gotten us here.

This is where we are. 10 year old pregnant rape victims are expected to give birth, 14 year olds are dying on slaughterhouse kill floors, Black women presidents of major universities are being fired, anyone exercising their First Amendment Rights is being doxxed, fired, even murdered. The list of incomprehensible atrocities (to white people) is endless.

You keep telling me what I WANT and I keep telling you, IT'S ALREADY HAPPENED. HAPPENING. WILL CONTINUE TO HAPPEN.

The Democrats have shown their true faces. In doing nothing to stop Trump or any of the shit that has happened since Biden took office, the Democrats have shown they are no lesser evil, they are just evil and they are choosing to point and blame Trump and the Republicans and use fearmongering to hold onto their power in the same exact ways they blame the Republicans for doing.

We are already living in a dystopian nightmare and everything that is going to get worse is going to get worse with Biden in the White House and Trump dead and thrown in the fucking dump. And long after Biden's dead, too. Until everyone is dead. Guaranteed. 100%

The ONLY thing BOTH SIDES care about is POWER AND WEALTH. The powerful and the wealthy have already won and they will destroy everyone and everything in this country, in this world, if not the entire planet itself as well. It's already happening. It's been happening. It will continue to happen. They have done nothing to stop it. They do not care.

And you and I and they will all be long dead when it is finally over. I pity anyone young, especially children under the age of 18 (even more so those under the age of 2), because what their lives are going to be like is too horrific for me to even begin to comprehend.

People keep acting like Biden is Jesus Christ and Donald Trump is the Anti-Christ. They are both arrogant sick old men who are punch drunk on power and the belief that they alone can save the world. It's fucking psychotic and every single person who insists on perpetuating this myth is also psychotic. I am not psychotic. I see what is happening and I refuse to pretend I do not see.

@23 xina: I do know what is happening. I'm not oblivious. Again, with heartfelt feeling, I am NOT telling you or anyone else commenting what to do.
I only know one thing: If the Orange Turd and its thugs and bitches illegally reseize the White Palace that it's the end of the world and all co-inhabitants. Period.

@24: Go eat your paste before you really start to crack up, raindrop dear.

@23 I get the Biden hate. Seriously, I do. I can hardly stand the sight of him anymore myself and the sound of his voice as he mumbles and stumbles his way through even prepared remarks makes me physically ill. He is indeed, as you put it, an "arrogant, sick old [man] punch drunk on power" who has no business running for a second term. I continue to hope against all odds that he will see the writing on the wall before the convention and step aside -- or at least release his delegates and let them decide for themselves if he really is the best choice in view of present circumstances (e.g., the Gaza war) rather than force them to obediently ratify a long-ago predetermined outcome. If you voted uncommitted in the primary, you did the right thing.

But your critique of the Democrats, on point as much of it is, leaves out some big, inescapable truths. A Republican-controlled government will (among other things) viciously attack the right to organize, dismantle the administrative state that (barely) restrains corporate destruction of the environment and severely cut or eliminate federal programs that assist the poor, disabled, and aged, while seating judges who will make an already terrible situation for women even worse. Democrats, even those who do little or nothing FOR these groups, at least don't punch down at them the way Republicans do. If you feel any solidarity whatsoever with the feminist movement, the labor movement, the environmental movement, or the economically disadvantaged, you absolutely must vote for Biden if he emerges from the convention as the Democratic nominee. Voting for people you rightly detest is an unfortunate but essential part of being a responsible adult in a country with a two-party, winner-take-all system. I'm truly sorry this is still the reality we live in.

@17,

He's such a colossal fucking ass. You could pit him, armed with a dozen of the fanciest and most sophisticated knives ever manufactured, in a duel against my 10 year-old niece, armed with nothing but a 50 year old pistol, and I'd bet a trillion dollars on my niece walking away unscathed simply because guns are so much more lethal and efficient as weapons. He's lost this argument literally hundreds of times over the years here, though those losing arguments of his are all lost to the ether as he won't consistently argue in good faith so as to prevent his profiles being banned.

If he was taken from stable housing to be placed elsewhere I agree that’s not wise but “housing first” — if that’s even applicable here — implies he was unhoused.

Would the community be any safer with a mentally ill person living on the streets instead of housing? Would he be more or less likely to access the treatment and supervision he needed if he were living in a tent on the sidewalk? It’s very easy to lay blame after the fact, but in a society where institutionalization is not an option, these are the only alternatives for someone in his condition. No one would have been any safer with him sleeping on the street.

@25 Xina is clearly lost in her own nihilism - no point in engaging (hopefully her fucked up world view doesn’t spill over to real world violence)

@26,

"I continue to hope against all odds that he will see the writing on the wall before the convention and step aside"

Thanks for that. I too, somehow still, sincerely and probably utterly irrationally, hope that Joe steps aside sometime in the next month or two. I swear he both looks and sounds more and more feeble every time I see him. Also, did you all see him read the word "Pause!" aloud during a recent campaign event when the teleprompter was calling for him to pause for a chant? Ugh, it was so freaking avoidably dumb and embarrassing. These two debates have at least the potential for devastating catastrophe. Pause.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-EPhkbSY_E

Were he to step aside in favor of [insert random name here] I'm not even convinced it'd be in the top 3 biggest stories related to Presidential elections in the last quarter century. Numbers 1 and 2 would have to be the recent attempt to overthrow the United States government, and the first election of a non-white dude in the country's long, vile racist history. And then I'd think #3 would probably be the election of an overtly racist game show host who was caught on camera bragging about sexual assault.

Biden stepping aside at the end of his term despite having secured the nomination would be huge news and dominate headlines for probably the better part of a week. Then the media would get to work vetting and digging up dirt on whoever it was that stepped up in his stead. Last time I talked about this I was prompted for a name to fill this role and I threw Cory Booker out there, but much as I like him, that's entirely dismissable. The DNC has a near literally unlimited amount of money at their disposal to work this process. And the candidate pool is every registered Democrat born in America over the age of 35. Surely one of us has to be up for the challenge! I'm not a great public speaker and also kind of a drunk, so would probably politely decline any overture and withdrawal my name early on, but I bet there's someone out there who'd be both up for it, and an undeniably better candidate than ol' JB. Whom I actually genuinely like, FWIW.

Again, I'm fully aware of how absurd this is as a proposition, but I'm just not convinced it's any more so than the alternative.

@28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQKrmDLvijo

By the time the Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland began, the Book of Kells was already hundreds of years old, St. Patrick had been dead for most of a millennium, and “The Cattle Raid of Cooley” had been ‘the Iliad of Ireland’ for many, many generations.

There has never been an Arab country called ‘Palestine.’

The analogy goes downhill from there.

@36,

If the dude is intent on physically harming her, why wouldn't he also be using a ridiculously easy to access gun? Of course there forever would/will be hypothetical situations in which a more lethal weapon could be available to a potential victim. But limiting the manufacture and access to the most lethal weapons will always be the most logically simplistic means by which to prevent their falling into the hands of those intent on using them for nefarious purposes (and one of the central tenets of the science that you claim to abide by is that the simplest solution is generally the best solution. But you've proven here time and time again, that your abiding by basic and universally understood tenets is entirely dependent upon their adhering to your narrative.)

You're a fucking idiot.

And I'll just note here that I'm well aware that there are already hundreds of millions of unregistered and otherwise unaccounted for firearms floating around the American populace and the hopes that they'll be kept out of criminal hands is laughably naive. And the reason for that is entirely on the Neale Frothinghams (aka ahab) and other shitty-ass people who've advocated against simple reform measures for the past couple of decades. But our grandchildren and their grandchildren deserve better, and simple steps toward enabling that betterment are well within our reach.

@21: “…It was British guilt over their exclusion of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, as well as Irgun terrorism, that led to the creation of Israel…”

The British were talking about a modern state of Israel before their Mandate for Palestine even existed:

‘The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The text of the declaration was published in the press on 9 November 1917.’

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration)

@28 - You are seriously proposing arming 10-year-olds? JFC.

@42: Stacking the legal system to only favor the Orange Turd is illegal as fuck. DJT KNOWS this, and is NOT above the law. Gerrymandering, redistricting, barring people's Constitutional voting rights, and federally banning abortions should never be legalized. The only way RepubliKKKans "win" is by solidified corruption and neofascism. No crime is too heinous for the GOP. I wouldn't gloat about it.
Before you mail your SSI check to pay off the Orange Turd's lawyers, be aware that DJT is laughing its evil ass off at you and all MAGAts suckered into its latest Ponzi scheme.
Now go eat your paste before you really start to crack up, raindrop dear.