They propose a rent increase far far below the rate of inflation and people are ready to riot?

Rep. Zooey Zephyr: It's really very simple on how you can return to the House floor and make this all a win-win situation:

1 - Apologize for your macabre remark that your fellow legislators and others found offensive.
2 - Recognize that being a good legislator requires working well with your colleagues and being there for all your constituents, even if they take adversarial positions.
3 - Keep championing for the causes you believe in, but be a good listener.

@2
1. No apology needed. She was 100% correct.
2. True, especially for Republicans.
3. True

It's really simple on how Republicans can make this a win-win situation. Stop the war on transgender people.

@3 you're an objectively horrible person

sorry, @2 I meant.

@3: I can concur that an apology isn't needed. But it's the politically most expedient way to get back in the game. The most successful politicians recognize the virtues of humility.

Re: Texas shooting:

I've got to hand it to the Sheriff though:

"I don’t care if [victim Daniel Enrique Laso-Guzman] was here legally. I don’t care if he was here illegally. He was in my county,” Capers said. “Five people died in my county, and that is where my heart is – in my county, protecting my people to the best of our ability." https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/01/us/cleveland-texas-neighbor-shooting-monday/index.html

If we all thought like this the world would be a better place.

Re: Zephyr ruling

I'm not sure what to make of this. Obviously she deserves to be allowed back on the floor, even if I accept all of her opponent's arguments being offensive is no justification for preventing her from performing her duties. There are many people in Congress who make extremely offensive remarks about the queer community, immigrant communities, bipoc communities, etc and I want them voted out of office (barring larger change) but I don't want Murray to find some administrative excuse to remove them from the floor. There is a tendency in our society - in government and business alike - to decide what you want to do, come through the rules that have been written to find a justification for what you want to do, then use that justification regardless of whether or not it has any connection to your real motivation. This is evil. It is not a grand dramatic evil, it is a banal evil, which is what we are most vulnerable to.

What I'm really unsure of is the judge's decision in particular. I do think that judicial restraint is a virtue in principle, while admitting that some people will use ideals of restraint tactically to advance their own goals (see the previous paragraph). I don't know enough about what laws and precedents apply here to properly consider this specific decision, and I'm not particularly interested in spending hours reading up on Montana's legal code.

*comb through the rules

@3 She is being overly melodramatic as are you. The MT law bans hormone therapy and gender surgeries for someone under the age of 18. Once they are of age they can do whatever they want. I hardly call that a war on trans people nor see how they will have "blood on their hands" from such legislation.

"There is a tendency in our society - in government and business alike - to decide what you want to do, com[b] through the rules that have been written to find a justification for what you want to do, then use that justification regardless of whether or not it has any connection to your real motivation. This is evil. It is not a grand dramatic evil, it is a banal evil, which is what we are most vulnerable to." --@ss, above

like the infamous Comma
in the 2nd Amendment
weaponizing 'militias'
through extreme
Parsing flooding
the USOFA with
massive WMDs
killing more
Kids than
Anything
Else.

WTFF

(reminding me of
a USSC clerk making
soulless Corporations
"People" too -- Friendo)

another wonderful
Comment saffronsnail

thanks!

@1: Rent control, New York City style, has long created a feudal class of privileged tenants, who, like proper feudal lords, have no scruples at all about using any amount of violence to protect their unearned privilege.

@9 - Maybe, but as @7 pointed out, other politicians use outrageous hyperbole on pretty much a daily basis, yet they don't get tossed out of their duly elected seats. I guarantee if she were straight birth gender and said the same about some LGBT issue, she would sitting all nice, comfy and secure in her seat in the legislature. I suspect you know that, too. Besides, there are plenty of sanctions short of physical removal; they simply wanted her gone. Most probably always have. It IS Montana.

I live 20 miles from the border, am there from time to time and am stunned Montana even HAS a TG Legislator, but the fact that they do (from the college town of Missoula) is appalling to all the RWNJ's there.

I will not sit in judgement of people who responsibly enjoy taking drugs. I cannot. That would be hypocritical, kinda, since I’m a child of the 60s and 70s, and there was no drug, save heroin, that I didn’t at some point partake in (until they started getting dangerous). Wait, I take that back. Someone at a party I once attended, post-disco, laced some snort with heroin. But that was the only time. And I didn’t like it. Probably because I hadn’t given my consent, and that made me more pissed than high.

I never wanted to explore heroin because I knew of its long, tragic history of broken lives. I’m sure I probably would have loved my first spike. That kept me from it, too, but really, can you even put the words heroin and success in the same sentence?

Now there’s fentanyl. If heroin is Satan, fentanyl is its engineered, super-Mephistophelean, younger brother here to rob people of dreams and desires and life. I don’t want to pontificate on the benefits of safe injection sites or something I still have trouble believing will help – government-supplied drug purity. Here’s the debate I want to hear: Why do so many choose to jump down that hopeless hole instead of trying to deal with what most certainly must be a far-less-than-perfect reality? Nanny State trying to keep people off this poison? Yeah, maybe. But I asked a bartender once why bars close at 0200 (and they do in Los Angeles). “Bauhaus,” he responded, “if we didn’t close at some point, some people would never go home.”

And speaking of high, did the builders of the West Seattle Bridge use papier-mâché? I know it’s more than 30 years old now, but is this usual for a large engineering project to fall apart after 30 years of…what…neglect? I remember what a marvel I thought that swinging Spokane Street Bridge was when it opened. I biked home to the Admiral District from my evening job downtown and frequently had to wait for boats to pass. I was so impressed. And the West Seattle Bridge, for good and for bad, opened up West Seattle to people who heretofor never really went there because it was so out of the way. A hinterland, really, other than to the people needing to catch the Fauntleroy ferry. But with the bridge came the yuppie homebuyers and speculators (who ruin everything) and prices, which had been pretty affordable until then, sky-rocketed catching up with the rest of the city. Post-WWII four-room cracker boxes that enjoyed a gorgeous, picture window view of Puget Sound previously selling for $40K-$70K went to almost half-a-mil in no time.

And yet another case for Uncle Bauhaus’s Magical Electric Spa! This time a real mean one. After he arrives from Texas, it will be our job to help him see that wiping out an innocent life or lives just isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be - something that will instill in him the terror of his victims. Maybe an elephant disguise in our Hi-Voltage Safari Room.

Zooey, honey, you’re just going to have to move to where you are considered human just like so many of us had to do the day after high school or college graduation. Again, cue up “Smalltown Boy.”

No matter how great a movie is or how wonderful a performance may be, there are no words coming out of the mouths of actors without writers. All support! I saw an interview this morning here on the sidewalk in front of Netflix which is one of several picketing sites. The gentleman said that during the last negotiations (2007) producers were saying streaming was a very iffy business and therefore they couldn’t meet the writers’ demand for compensation from that medium. Now, it's no longer iffy. It’s billions of dollars, and CEO are getting $40M salaries. The writer said he made more money 20 years ago as a senior editor on a show than he now makes as a writer/executive producer. So, this isn’t about a bunch of cry-babies bitching about not being able to afford $70 Wagu burgers. This is a call for a living wage and decent compensation. I guess under the old contract writers got next to nothing for streaming residuals. Writers here in Hollywood don’t enjoy the success of previous generations of writers to be sure.

Not to sound bitchy, but speaking of iffy, a gay bar in SoDo? Lots of gay people in SoDo now?

'Uncle Bauhaus’s Magical Electric Spa!'
sounds quite Relaxing and I spose
at the End of the Day it truly Is.

Bauhaus
tell me you
Haven't got one
down in the Basement

LOVE your Posts!

so re Death Penalty:
for Retribution
Justice or just
as a fried
Example?

lock 'em up
hang a Do NOT Disturp
Sign on the door feed 'em
and Never Ever let them OUT.

whilst the Sacklers
roam Freely the
Death Penalty
can NOT Be
Just.

now if you were pondering
maybe some Pro Bono
sidework, to where
might I send any
Donations?

;) !

and OMG the Writers!
when A I kicks in
they'll be selling
Buggy Whips at
street corners
in Hollywood

I sincerely Hope
Quarintino
takes it on

be Nice! to
Win one
Once in
a while.

Quarantino!

@12 I don't disagree. She should not have been tossed and her seat should be restored. What the MT legislature did was wrong. My remark was targeted at the notion her remarks were 100% correct. They were over exaggerated speech to make a point nothing more.

relax.
it's merely
Later Stage
Capitalism cum
"Republican" Utopia

& death to all
LGBTQs right after
they make them ALL Illegal

but we're SAFE af Here!
no NEED to get Excited!
the Thief he kindly Spoke:

"the Patriarchy"'s
merely a Joke!
a Corps ARE
PEEPS TOO

Friendo.

@22:

"& death to all
LGBTQs right after
they make them ALL Illegal"

But now that gender theory exposes that gender is thought of as a spectrum and genital attraction can be learned and unlearned, sexual orientation is now longer an immutable characteristic. No need for death camps as AI robots will periodically make adjustments to our bodies and minds to conform to an WHO approved model.

@19.
nah. "Repubs"
gotta have their
Wedgie Issues so
Rationality's got No-
where to get a Toehold

Fascists don't
GAF about
no Stupid
'theories'

to them
Bullets are
Cheaper than
Re-Education camps

and there's No fucking
Room for other's
Humanity /
"flaws."

Fascists are
Nothing if not
horrifically Efficient.

I commented on The Comeback's FB page that I hoped eventually we got the whole story, since no business shuts down that quickly because the owner want to "step away."

I was blocked in less than a minute.

@7 saffronsnail and @13 Bauhaus I: +2 I so love your consistently spot on comments. So well said and summarized.
@13 Bauhaus I: Keep on rocking the house--and zapping RepubliKKKans in Uncle Bauhaus's Magical Electrical Spa.

@10, @14, @15, @18, and @20 kristofarian: BINGO.

Hopefully Governor Jay Inslee can get the special legislative session moving on the fetanyl / meth issue.
If we can pass laws to ban assault weapons in Washington State, dangerous recreational drugs that have killed more people than the COVID-19 virus should be banned, too.