Metro is yanking bus lines this Fall, but still throwing money down the streetcar black hole. Thanks Greg Nickels. And FUCK YOU for not fighting to keep the Sonics. You are the worst mayor Seattle has ever had.

Yeah that trolley had crazy low ridership, right? Just don’t bother fixing this thing and let ‘er die her inevitable death. And stop with the vanity trolleys already, why was this ever a thing.

Not at all sorry that South Lake Union’s streetcars are shut down indefinitely… permanently would be even better. With an average ridership of just 494 people per week, it’s probably the single worst transit investment in Seattle.

Olympia Decriminalizes Shrooms

good. now I can chat up
God whenever it's
Necessary.

Well-Played,
Olympians!

now make Alcohol
by-prescription-
Only. it is thee
Most Danger-
ous Drug.*

*along with
Fentanyl
& Meth

There's a lot here, but the thing I'll point out is that the Stranger now has three (3!) white girls paid to dunk on the east Asian American councilmember from the CID. It's giving implicit bias, gorg!!

"In a statement,
the State Department
affirmed the US’s commit-
ment to the security of Israel."

right.
because
giving that
nutnyahoo
evermore WMDs
will make Israel (and
Jews planetwide) safer.

Who tf
Decides
this shit?

BTW haven't heard from the stranger's token white male for a while, hope all is well...

Do you really think "advanced air-to-air missiles and Boeing fighter jets, to be delivered in installments between 2026 and 2029" is relevant to the ongoing conflict in Gaza? The US has never NOT armed Israel.

The token *straight white male posted the news yesterday. Very normal thing to care about.

1 Don't forget killing the Monorail. We would've had rail transit to West Seattle and Ballard for, what, 20 years now? America's Greenest Mayor indeed.

WHOA
Time'smoney

those're some
PRETTY B I G WORDS!

wot's your
Secret!!!?

nevermind
they've
shrun-
ken.

I've long thought it's quite silly (at best!) that mass transit in Seattle/King County includes buses, light rail, street cars and the monorail. Each with its own set of maintenance facilities, parts and workers. Pick one, or maybe two. But four??

“The squad lives on” only because Ilhan Omar is the ‘control’ in the AIPAC ‘experiment’ to see how effective their campaign contributions are.

By The Stranger’s own accounting: “Other members of the squad, Rep. Jamaal Brown of New York and Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, lost their primaries this summer after pro-Israel groups dumped millions on their races so they’d lose. Unlike those contests, Omar's race did not see much spending from outside the district.”

It’s hard to credibly claim “The Squad Lives On” when every targeted member gets taken out.

years ago, when Boeing couldn't get a part(s) they had skills to make those parts and continue on.
Why can't KCMetro?

@13 “Pick one [mode of transit] or maybe two. But four??”

It’s more than four when you add in ferries, water-taxis, etc.

Most of these serve a legitimate transit need, aside from the Monorail which is a legacy tourist amenity.

Streetcars, meanwhile, are a complete waste of resources: clunky, outlandishly expensive on a cost-per-passenger basis, inflexible, and routes that are duplicative of existing bus service (SLUT) or take an incredibly roundabout route (First Hill Streetcar).

The SLUT route virtually parallels a longer, faster RapidRide route, and each end of the SLUT route terminates near stops on Metro Bus Route 70. And either bus runs more frequently and is faster than the SLUT.

You’d have a hard time inventing a better way to waste transit resources than the SLUT, and the same is true of streetcars in general.

@15, good point. The Swiss company that built the Monorail disappeared decades ago, and the Monorail has been fabricating its spares for years.

@6: “Who tf
Decides
this shit?”

Congress, primarily via a law requiring the US to maintain Israel’s military advantage in the region. (https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts)

So, in the spirit of that law, the more attacks adversaries make upon Israel, the more military aid the US will tend to provide.

(You might have wanted to consider that, before you praised a group which had loudly celebrated Hamas’ rape and slaughter in Israel as “necessary.”)

Why don't we just finish the monorail and connect it to the bleedin link

@16. Couldn't get through that with a straight face, and it's such a crap joke.

@14 I think the fact that she represents the congressional district with one of the largest concentrations of Muslims in America was why they didn't bother with her. Just as they targeted Pramila Jayapal's sister in Oregon, and not her, because targeting Pramila would have just been a waste of money.

I'm glad the Zionists lost their 3rd attempt at unseating someone in the Congress of the United States. Why is Israel allowed to spend shit tons of money to buy our elected officials, but they need hundreds of billions of dollars from us to slaughter and starve people in Palestine and other areas on the Middle East?

If Israel is so fucking moral and so fucking righteous and chosen by god they should be able to conduct a genocide on their own, with no money from the only people paying taxes in THIS country (and it's not the wealthy) all of whom are suffering in so many ways - struggling to keep a roof over their heads, struggling to raise families, struggling to pay all of the bills, struggling with health care needs (mental and physical).

I mean if god has chosen them then shouldn't god fucking provide Israel with everything it needs to murder millions of people so they can build houses on top of the rubble? Fuck Israel.

If Israel gets bombed by Iran and wiped off of the face of the earth, the United States is solely to blame. HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS , AMERICAN TAXPAYER DOLLARS , GIVEN TO ZIONISTS.

And all out war in the Middle East because no one stopped Israel from committing genocide? ALL ON THE UNITED STATES. Some fucking leader we are in this world. More like DEATH incarnate.

Bowman and Bush both had other liabilities that put them at risk and they were both new to their districts. Bowman was already behind in the polls before AIPAC started spending against him. AOC, Omar, and Tlaib are established in their districts and they know there is no point in wasting money trying to take them out.

@23: You know, you're not really helping the "shadowy cabal of Jewish moneyed interests are trying to control us" angle which the Stranger, and others, have been trying to make out of AIPAC. What are you, some kind of political realist? ;-)

@24. Straw man. Are you saying the millions poured into the recent elections by AIPAC and CUFI are less effective and influential than money from other PACs and causes? Why is that?

fucking APAIC
spent $25 MILLION
to 'win' that fucking Primary.

money
WE fucking
GAVE TO THEM.

so
not only
are WE SUPPORTING
A FUCKING GENOCIDE
WE'RE PAYING TO DEFEAT
OUR OWN REPRESENTATIVES.

Justify
That One
for us wouldja
please Wormtongue

you who're
so Good with
the Justifications

@26 AIPAC is not Israel - it’s made up of Americans who are passionate about supporting the state of Israel (whether we agree with them or not). I always get a little worried when minority groups are called out as being un-American or foreign simply because they support something we have issues with.

@18 "(You might have wanted to consider that, before you praised a group which had loudly celebrated Hamas’ rape and slaughter in Israel as “necessary.”)"

On the other hand, maybe you'd reconsider your support of Israel now that at least two sitting ministers in the government have said that Israel shouldn't investigate allegations of sexual assault against it's own soldiers? I mean, you're ideologically consistent, right? If a government supports rapists, it's bad right?

Ben-Gvir: "Our warriors deserve full support."

And this delightful exchange on the floor of the Knesset:
"Is inserting a rod into a person's rectum legitimate?" A lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party answered, "Yes, if he's in the elite Hamas Nukhba force, everything is legitimate to do to him."

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/08/nx-s1-5057410/israel-detains-soldiers-on-allegations-of-sexual-assault-of-a-detainee-from-gaza

Just another day in the life of the Most Moral Government in the World (tm). At least in this case the IDF is actually doing something, despite the Israeli right wing's best efforts.

@22: "HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS , AMERICAN TAXPAYER DOLLARS , GIVEN TO ZIONISTS."

You're surprisingly correct; US aid is about 310 billion total, but there's no way to give aid to Israel without giving it to a Zionist.

I don’t understand why the anti-Israel progressives are using the right wing trope that if we simply cut-off foreign aid all of America’s social ills would be solved (that simply couldn’t be farther from the truth).

Take 2022 (as it’s the last year of full financial reporting - and reflects increased spending on Ukraine), all foreign aid spending totaled $70.4 billion (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/countries-that-receive-the-most-foreign-aid-from-the-u-s).

For this same time period, spending on Medicare was $944.3 billion in 2022 / spending on Medicaid was $805.7 billion in 2022 - out of a total healthcare spend of $4.5 trillion in 2022 (https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/national-health-expenditures-2022-highlights).

And although $70.4 B isn’t chump change, it represents a fraction of just healthcare spending (let alone things like housing, education, etc.).

from the Chris Hedges Report:

The Arab Jew Experience
Exposes the Myths of
Middle Eastern
Antisemitism

A significant justification for Israel’s existence relies on the narrative that, because of the alleged inherent and rabid antisemitism of Arabs and Islam, the Jews of the Middle East never had a home.

Without Israel, it is said, these Jews would be left on the fringes of Middle Eastern societies, marginalized for an irrational prejudice against their religion and ethnicity by Muslims.

Historian and author Avi Shlaim details in his book, “Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab Jew,” through personal experience and historical analysis the lies that this narrative is constructed upon.

“There was no history of antisemitism in the Arab world. Antisemitism is a European disease,” Shlaim tells Chris Hedges. “In the 1930s, antisemitism was exported from Europe to Iraq in particular, and it's striking that there was no antisemitic literature in Arabic. So antisemitic literature had to be translated from European languages into Arabic…”

Shlaim was born in Iraq, where a thriving, educated and economically diverse society existed for Jews during his childhood. He describes how “It took Europe much longer than it took the Arab world to accept the Jews as equal citizens,” and how “[Jews] were very much part of the fabric of Iraqi society.

We [were] not a foreign body. There were thriving Jewish communities throughout the Arab world, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Egypt, throughout North Africa, but the Jewish community in Iraq was the most successful, the most prosperous, and also the best integrated of all the Jewish communities.”

It was Israel, according to Shlaim, that brought the divide and plight of the Jews in the Middle East. Shlaim mourns a time where his family experienced peaceful coexistence: “Muslim [and] Jewish coexistence was not an abstract idea. It wasn't a distant dream. It was the everyday reality.”

Shlaim’s accounts also utilize his skills as a historian, diving into the incontrovertible evidence he discovered that reveals false flag atrocities committed by the Israelis against Iraqi Jews themselves.

These attacks fomented a fear of antisemitism amongst Arab Jews, correlating with a significant spike in Iraqi Jewish emigration, and ultimately, coercively reinforced the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

“[T]his false flag operation,” Shlaim said, referring to the 1950 and 1951 Israeli bombings of Iraqi Jews, “is a terrible indictment of the State of Israel, because Israel was created to provide a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution.

Israel was not established in order to destabilize and frighten and create insecurity for the Jews of the diaspora.”

It was Israel that brought the divide and
plight of the Jews in the Middle East.

--by Chris Hedges; Aug 14, 2024

This interview is also available on Rumble and podcast platforms.

the full interview and more:
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-arab-jew-experience-exposes-the

@32 I guess Chris Hedges has never heard of events like the Damascus affair (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair)

@25 Bush had been heavily criticized in her district for voting against Biden’s infrastructure bill when she represents a distressed district that would have benefited greatly from it and for being too focused on the latest progressive cause celebrés when her own district has some of the worst poverty, child hunger, and educational attainment in the country. Bowman represented a district inclusive of some of the wealthy Jewish suburban voters in the country in Westchester county and nearly 100K people living in Jewish households, his Gaza position was way out of line with his district’s with or without AIPAC’s involvement.

@28, @31: The answer to both is “Horseshoe Theory,” which the hard left here pretty much exists to demonstrate. Hence their nativism, and loathing of foreign aid, both on full display.

@29: Good to see you’ve returned! I figured the IDF investigating their own would silence you on the topic of Israel for a while, but you’ve finally managed to find something —anything — to try and cast doubt upon it.

As a citizen of the country which elected Donald J. Trump to the highest office in the land (and may yet do so again!), you know just how well the statements of elected leaders represent the views of absolutely everyone in their electorate. But you, in your beneficent wisdom, extend those views to persons halfway around the world, even to persons not eligible to vote for those leaders. Bravo, sir! That is a stretch worthy of any Olympic athlete.

Sadly, your brilliance in modern political geography does not extend to historical knowledge, so I’ll do you the favor of informing you that right-wingers in every country have long lamented handicapping ‘our’ police and ‘our’ soldiers with silly concerns about human rights at home, and human lives abroad. If only we would stop ‘tying their hands’ or ‘stabbing them in the back,’ we could then simply clean up everything, both at home, and abroad.

I’m not exactly sure what this has to do with kristo’s lavish praise of an eliminationist hate group — I guess he’ll just have to explain that himself, in his own unique manner — but in that vein, the President of Columbia University resigned today. Apparently, allowing protesters to chant eliminationist slogans, and to tell American Jews to “go back to Poland,” went beyond the Pale* with Columbia’s community.

*See what I did there?

@28 if there was a PAC financed by Americans strongly supportive of Russia, who spent millions in primaries to defeat members of Congress critical of Russia's actions in Ukraine, would that concern you at all?

"kristo’s
lavish praise
of an eliminationist hate group"?

utter
nonsense
wormmy but
your blank check
for Israeli atrocities's
gonna bite us in the ass
if/when the terrorists arrive

you & bibi're
making our Planet
Unsafe for Jews everywhere
and all just to keep a nutnyahoo

the fuck outta Prison.
very poorly-played
even for you.

@36 there are exactly zero parallels in your analogy. You might want to try that again. fwiw though we not only have PACs in the US that are anti US we elect politicians who openly call for our own destruction.

@37 so now we are inviting terrorism to the US by supporting Israel? As if terrorists really needed further reasons to attack us. Don't worry thought at least we have a solid border to screen them out....oh wait. I'm pretty sure its fundamentalist extremists making the planet unsafe for both Jews and Americans but don't let that stop you.

@35 Sadly, I was away working, so I had less time to point out your blatant hypocrisy.

So let's simplify this a little bit. When Hamas soldiers commit rape, all of Gaza must suffer. When some Hamas leaders justify rape by some Hamas soldiers, all of Gaza must suffer. Because Hamas is an evil organization. I won't even argue with you there.

When Israel commits rape, it's just an isolated incident. When some Israeli leaders justify rape by some Israeli soldiers, it's just the right wing doing what the right wing does. Boys will be boys, amirite? By the way, you did notice that Ben Gvir was one of the people justifying Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian detainees. Point me to a time when an American cabinet member came out in favor of the abusers at Abu Ghraib.

At least try to have some ideological consistency. If senior members of the government supporting rape by the government's soldiers is wrong for Hamas (and it is!), isn't it also wrong for Israel?

Next you'll tell us that Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian detainee in an Israeli detention camp far from the combat zone is all Hamas' fault. Those poor Israeli soldiers were just forced to critically injure a detainee because Hamas made them!

@39: “When Hamas soldiers commit rape, all of Gaza must suffer.”

You left out the part where Hamas’ rapists and killers fled into Gaza and hid there, taking hundreds of their kidnap victims as hostages, thus ensuring the IDF would follow. If Hamas had instead stood and fought in Israel, the IDF could have killed or captured them without any loss of life in Gaza. All of that remains true, no matter how many times you omit it. Could you please tell us why you’ve repeatedly ignored Hamas’ culpability in getting Gazans killed? And why you keep expecting it to work? There’s very little point in yelling about possible Israeli war crimes whilst you continue to ignore Hamas’ wholesale violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and Hamas’ leader openly hoping for more civilian casualties in Gaza.

@37: “utter
nonsense”

So, either you’re trying to lie your way out of it, or even you just can’t be bothered to recall the blather you endlessly post here. So, either way, here’s the thread in question. My demonstration of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) being an eliminationist hate group is at comment #61. After that follows your lavish praise of SJP, your uncritical quotations of their smears against another group, and your comical demands I quote the material I’d already quoted.

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2024/05/16/79516640/slog-am-more-than-16000-homeless-in-king-county-anonymous-donor-against-nude-beach-revealed-and-uw-admin-gave-pro-palestine-protesters-fuc/comments)

@36 we have all kinds of shitty PACs that support Russia and Putin (not to mention a large faction of a political party) - these people suck, but we don’t question their donations based on where they came from (that’s McCarthy territory). Another example, Musk sucks not because he’s a South African immigrant but because he supports shitty people and ideas. We can disagree / argue / callout without resorting to long standing racist tropes.

@40 And if the IDF had stayed in Gaza in 2005, there would have been no need for Hamas to go into Israel. What's your point?

Israel bears responsibility for its crimes. No matter how many times you try to disclaim that by blaming Hamas, it's still there. No matter what else Hamas has done, Israel has repeatedly taken aim at civilians and pulled the trigger. Why do you want to sweep that under the carpet?

I've repeatedly said that Hamas is a terrible group of people. It seems that you can't condemn Israel for the war crimes that they commit. You blame Hamas every time for what Israel does.

perhaps
the worm's
left his tongue
& migrated up the hill

Stranger
things've
Happened.

@40

"Lavish Praise"?
more Utter
nonsense

@42: WTF? Hamas invaded Israel to rape, kill, and kidnap Israeli civilians. They fled from the IDF when it arrived. Why would leaving the IDF as an occupying force in Gaza from 2005 onwards have changed any of this?

“Israel bears responsibility for its crimes.”

And I’ve never said otherwise, your tedious implications otherwise notwithstanding.

“No matter how many times you try to disclaim that by blaming Hamas, it's still there.”

What part of, “If Hamas had instead stood and fought in Israel, the IDF could have killed or captured them without any loss of life in Gaza,” do you not understand, or with which you do not agree? That’s a serious question.

“You blame Hamas every time for what Israel does.”

Because Hamas has done everything it possibly could to create this situation. Do you know Hamas’ now-leader, Sinwar, has told his organization more civilian casualties in Gaza hurts Israel? Or have you just crammed that fact down your personal Memory Hole? Because if I want a contrafactual argument, I can go to kristo’ or twelve13.

@41 AIPAC is a fund solely devoted to advancing Israel's interests that spends big money to electorally defeat politicians insufficiently deferential to Israel. Many people tend not to like when single issue PACs overtly buy elections, especially if that issue is unflinching support for a country they believe to be committing war crimes. To claim people don't like AIPAC buying elections because of "long standing racist tropes" is a transparent strawman.

@46: “AIPAC is a fund solely devoted to advancing Israel's interests that spends big money to electorally defeat politicians insufficiently deferential to Israel.”

Yeah, why, that sounds like a really good reason to call it the “American Israel Public Affairs Committee.” Because it’s run by Americans who support Israel. And since it’s run by Americans, casting aspersions on the (assumed) origins of the donors is a cheap political smear tactic — the point @41 made.

“Many people tend not to like when single issue PACs overtly buy elections,”

And many people in Seattle didn’t like it when Socialist Alternative repurchased ‘their’ District 3 seat, using gobs and gobs of out-of-city and out-of-state money in 2021. The Stranger yawned — and then jumped right back into bitterly castigating the long-residing citizens of Seattle whose signatures made that election happen.

“Sinister foreign influence,” and “shadowy cabal of Jewish money,” are two of the oldest and sleaziest of political smears, and far too many persons are far too eager to believe them. Encouraging such bigotries does our democracy no good.

(Try reading @23 and @34, above, before giving AIPAC too much credit for election outcomes.)

@47 "casting aspersions on the (assumed) origins of the donors is a cheap political smear tactic — the point @41 made."

Which nobody's doing, so that's a strawman--the point I made. And it's not a "shadowy cabal of Jewish money" it's a very open and honest cache of pro-Israel (not synonymous with Jewish) money. It's cynical to the point of being offensive to suggest that people opposed to Israel's current Gaza policy and the influence of big money on elections are actually just base antisemites, and resorting to such tactic makes clear your stance is intellectually bankrupt. Totally standard for you of course, but disappointing from Buddhamat.

@48: And again, Buddhamat's point was we can criticize AIPAC -- or anyone else -- without claiming the money they're using has a foreign source. If you follow the conversation trail back, you can see @26 falsely claiming AIPAC's money comes from Israel.

As an example of this false claim happened right here, in this very thread, why do you claim "nobody's doing" it?

@49 ok upon rereading 26 you might be right. The point about labeling those who disagree with AIPAC (or Israel) as antisemites stands though

@50: So long as the Supreme Court claims that money is speech (unlike the rest of us, who know it is property), we're stuck with the one-dollar, one-vote system of AIPAC (and every other PAC), and there's plenty to criticize there. You won't get any argument out of me on that.

IIRC, I've not described Pro-Palestinian commenters here as anti-Semitic. I do worry that as the Pro-Palestinian side continues to lose, they'll turn to statements such as @26, which either is, or can lead to, the political smears I mentioned. Sadly, both conspiracy theories and scapegoating bogeymen have long traditions in American politics, and I really don't want us going down those roads again. Just as it's possible to describe the current situation in Gaza as a humanitarian disaster without saying it's also genocide, it's possible to have strong disagreements without resorting to dark insinuations.

@44: Here's what you wrote about the SJP-organized campus protests:

"...it maybe
News to you but there's
More Than ONE fucking Protest
more than One fucking Encampment

"it's gaining
Steam and you
cannot do Anything
about it other than argue
obfuscate deny and chastise"

That's not "lavish praise" for the protestors? Especially considering the only thing the UW protestors actually got was a promise of more scholarships. (Among other things, they'd demanded political censorship of UW professors, and discriminatory hiring practices against anyone who dared to hold the 'wrong' political beliefs.)

Please do tell us what the campus protests nationwide did with all of that 'Steam' they gained.

omg
Wormtongue
it's no more "lavish
praise" than pointing out
that you are an asshole. is
That lavish praise? apparently
in Your little book of "Proofs" it IS.

bugger off.

oh
and
we'll
just Hafta
see what Happens
in Chicago. you may
as well call That an Endorsement
for any upcoming Violence at the DNC

it'd be
hypocritical
of you Not to.

bugger off
some more.

putting
the worm
in Wormtongue.

@53: "The lady doth protest too much."

You enthusiastically repeated the boastful claims of an eliminationist hate group. You also copy pasted their smears against the Anti-Defamation League, after the latter had reported about the eliminationist graffiti on the UW campus, during and after the eliminationists' protest there. All the while, you're never shy about throwing extremely harsh (and usually unjustified) criticisms at anyone you happen not to like (e.g. any doubt as to whether Israel commits "genocide" in Gaza means you'll name-call the expresser of said doubt a "Pro-Genocider"). So, in context of your chronic inability to disagree without becoming disagreeable, your slobbering all over the eliminationist SJP's knob comes across as "lavish praise." Deal with it.

ok
wormmy.