Comments

1

Update on the fundie Christian outrage at the LA Dodger Pride fest featuring a flamboyant drag troupe. Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are back on the bill following a counter protest/boycott on the part of several other prominent pride groups.

https://defector.com/dodgers-reverse-course-apologize-for-taking-marco-rubio-seriously

3

@2.....You might want to add to your list roving gangs who ride on transit seeking out victims to rob or harass.

4

By and large, the homeless dudes slumped over in the back row of the train are harmless - they want a safe place to sleep. As long as they aren't smoking fentanyl or shitting in the elevator, that's life in the big city.

That doesn't mean ST doesn't need security, FFS.

5

So, riding Sound Transit while disheveled invites persecution?
One powerful means of mass transit is now denied a segment
of our population because some feelings were hurt? Grow up.

Framing it as fare enforcement might have been a smarter idea.
Couching it as behavior mitigation? Sure, I can see that.
Making riding safer? I can disassociate enough for that fiction.

Admitting it is due to homelessness? At ~$40M per annum?
Pure fucking stupidity if you ask me, and I know you didn't.

6

Labor activity = “skip day?” How unserious, ouch!

7

@5: “So, riding Sound Transit while disheveled invites persecution?”

Please, tell us you haven’t ridden Sound Transit in years, without explicitly admitting you haven’t ridden Sound Transit in years!

See @2, @3, and @4 for an informed view of this situation.

8

Ms. Ashley...
For music suggestions, I've been lately listening to Gil Evans "Rhythm a Ning", and "Who Are You" by, well, you can guess. That whole album is about the pain in the ass about trying to write music. I can relate.

The other one on my turntable is Tchaikovsky's 2nd Symphony "Little Russian". Google it, written in 1878, but it has kinda described the course of events of this war. They are in the third movement now at the moment, hopefully heading for the 4th.

Also "Stop Making Sense" and "Dogma" are complete on the U thingy.

9

And, adding to what I wrote @7, the homeless drug users weren’t even all of the problem. When I rode RapidRide to my office in Renton, I used to silently rejoice when the Sound Transit Fare Enforcement team boarded. Anywhere up to half of the riders would immediately leap from the bus, leaving us commuters to a ride which was suddenly safer, quieter, more pleasant — and much, much faster.

10

I am uncomfortable with riding on transit with far-right religious extremists.

Can we kick them off too?

11

@4
“That’s life in the big city”
It doesn’t have to be, but that’s what people tell themselves when they’ve let the problem get so out of control there is little if anything they can do to fix it.
A new CFO at a factory where I worked in Tukwila said it best when he told the company, “You’ve gotten used to sucking.”

12

If this is what music videos have become/degenerated into, I am content never to see them again.

13

@10.....As long as the religionists are not openly doing drugs or harassing you then no, you can't kick them off.

14

@12...
Can you be a little more specific?

Inquiring minds can't read yours.

15

So we're putting scare-quotes around the word "homeless" now? Gotta love the new Progressivism -- when you encounter a problem and you have no idea how to solve it, distract everybody by demanding new words to refer to it.

18

This is probably the tenth time or so that a snarky Slog staffer trolled their readership with patronizing the homeless vs. those heartless Seattle Transit commuters.

19

@17
Love my trees.
I’ve got 4.5 acres with 10 different kinds of fruit bearing trees.
The deer get more than I do, but I don’t mind sharing. I’m

20

@10: How could you tell unless you had a conversation?

21

@13 obviously they are. I mean seriously, talking in tongues, shouting, holding up objects as if they're weapons, they have to be on drugs. Let's ban all far-right religious extremists from transit, then

22

@16 Oh, there are plenty of "fundie" Catholics -- they call themselves "traditionalist" or "sedevacantist" rather than evangelical or born-again, but it's the exact same mindset. My extended family is full of them. (As for the claim that the Sisters are making a mockery of Catholicism, I'd say that in light of the past few decades it's surely the other way around.)

26

@21: If your fictional fundies are emitting fentanyl smoke, at risk of striking other riders with their “objects,” and not paying their fares, sure.

(But since they’re entirely fictional because you’re obviously just trolling this thread with your straw man, the real answer is no.)

Also, RECALL DURKAN!

27

@23: it will disappear because more insane shit will happen, like it always does. even if it fit "the narrative" (which is "Rightists are Terrorists", correct?) it would disappear because it was incompetent, and no one died.

I do hope for Kandula's sake that his Swastika spins the good way.

28

@21.....Keep a copy of "Dianetics" handy and place it on the seat next to you when you ride the bus; you'll be sure to be left alone by doing that. Another method would be to have some AmWay literature as well.

29

@28. Lol, that's actually pretty good (and funny) advice.

31

@28
Excellent idea! “Would you like a free personality test?”
Better yet, have the conservative Catholics sprinkle holy water on the drug-smoking homeless and see what happens!

32

@23, from the photo Reuters took of the flag before the cops bagged it as evidence, it was the ol' A. Hitler autograph model.

34

Christ. The trolls here will contort into any rhetorical yoga to justify why some nazi rightwing shitbag is not really a nazi rightwing shitbag.

You know the traditional Hindu swastika is markedly different, right? The Nazi swastika has the arms turned to 45 degrees giving a slant to the symbol, whereas the swastikas of Hinduism are presented with the base arm lying flat.

Wanna guess which one this was, dipshits?

36

It's not that homeless people can't be annoying on transit, it's that comparing "I'm annoyed during my commute" to the hardships they face makes it seem so petty. If you want to solve the problem, ensure shelter for all, don't waste resources hurting them further. This is barbaric.

38

@36: Amongst the homeless are housed and unhoused criminals, so the venting is well taken. Seattle citizens are risking attack, theft, or even their lives on a daily basis just by riding Sound Transit. A woman was stabbed at the Roosevelt station a few weeks ago.

40

We're up to 40 comments and nobody is as concerned as I am with RepubliKKKans playing Ru$$ian roulette with the Federal Treasury over the current debt ceiling crisis?
I have a solution for what to put on the federal chopping block. Let's cut the salaries of self serving RepubliKKKan senators, misrepresentative Congress members in the House, and neofascists in the Extreme Court to $7.25 per hour, with no benefits, unpaid triple overtime, and "Right to Work" requirements. Those bastards would raise the debt ceiling within minutes, no questions asked.

41

Sorry to the folks I mean mugged today and if I got in your face.

42

@41: Love means never having to say you're sorry.

43

@36: Smoke from meth’ or fentanyl is dangerous. Persons going into crisis in a cramped train car or bus can be very dangerous. Trivializing the very real dangers faced on Link and Metro does nothing to solve the problem. Merely providing shelter does nothing for persons with drug or mental health issues; see the old Red Lion in Renton, now damaged and vacant after one of the homeless persons given shelter there intentionally set fire to it.

Letting such persons wander around, self-medicating with drugs they must steal to get, is far crueler and more barbaric than anything else Seattle has done, or has proposed doing.

44

@38 raindrop The homeless people are citizens too.

@43 tensorna The point is that if they had shelter then enforcement actions on transit would be justifiable. But they don't. Enforcing now is putting the cart before the horse.

45

@44.....So the alternative is to let the homeless drug abusers have the transit system for them to ride around in all day enjoying the view and drifting off into a euphoric haze. The rest of us will have no choice but to return to our cars and go back to the rat race. It's no wonder that people who work don't want to return to the downtown area.

46

@44: “The point is that if they had shelter…”

… then they’d burn it down. Again. Or complain it’s not good enough, and return to trains or camping. Do you not understand that what you are advocating has been tried, and failed?

Meanwhile, where’s the tender concern for the safety of other riders? Why does that count literally for nothing in your consideration of this situation?

47

@44: Point well taken. But that doesn't negate my comment.

@40: It's driving me crazy too, auntie.

48

@42. Wat

49

@48: Obviously a joke, based on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-4jKZ3X1zQ

50

@10: Will in Seattle for the WIN!

@47: I share your frustrations, raindrop. Do the idiots hellbent on blocking the raising of our federal debt ceiling and defaulting for the first time in the history of the United States, have any idea just how catastrophic the financial consequences would be for the majority of U.S. citizens as well as the global economy? That they obviously don't care is criminally insane.
I'm not looking forward to June 1, 2023.

51

@36, @44: Seattle’s tolerance of illegal encampments was enabling on a grand and chronic scale, and the predictable results are now fully underway:

“As of May 17, 20% of the county’s 530 overdose deaths this year — 104 people — were those living in shelter or in vehicles, encampments and outside — a rate on track to break last year’s record as the deadliest for overdoses in King County’s homeless population.”

(https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/fentanyl-has-devastated-king-countys-homeless-population-and-the-toll-is-getting-worse/?amp=1)

This is where treating Seattle’s homelessness crisis as one of housing affordability, of a mere need for shelter, has brought us. It was drugs all along, even though the City Council — fully supported in this denial by the Stranger — refused to mention it. Denial kills.


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