Comments

2

@1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hfox-QfA0w

4

Of course Durkan is going with repair rather than replace: it's the quick, cheap solution and she's up for re-election in less than a year.

5

@1 You should just call it God's judgement and call measures to slow the spread sacrilege.

460 years later, John Calvin is still driving people to madness.

6

Everybody is a sick fuck. No exceptions.

7

@4, I agree that she probably chose repair rather than replace because it is the cheaper, most expedient option, and kicks the can down the road to figure out how to pay for a replacement.

But I'm very skeptical of her chances of re-election. I haven't seen any actual polling on her, but she's had a steady stream of bad press almost all year, fights with the city council, poorly handled response to BLM protests, a recall campaign, and several different organizations calling for her to resign. I'd guess it would be a steep uphill climb for her to get re-elected.

9

Yeah, but those ~80 million of us that voted for Diamond Joe and Auntie Kamala aren’t Real AmeriKKKans and our ballots are ILLEGAL. Even the loathsome New York Times parrots this idiotic, self-destructive nonsense, because BOTH SIDES, and white trash supremacy is the one true foundation of our racist kleptocracy.

And as we learned so painfully in 2000 and 2016, even winning the most votes doesn’t matter thanks to the anti-democratic (s)Electoral College and Senate. First runner-up in a presidential contest is still the world’s biggest LOSER, and they and their voters are to be steam-rolled and obliterated, unless the LOSERS are Republinazi white trash, in which case we’re absolutely required to listen to their psychotic, screaming, racist ranting and give them every nation-ruining thing that they want! We’ll just fuck ourselves over, thank you may we have another.

Everyone got that? Good.

10

@7
Seattle does have a thing for one term mayors.
The days of a mayor with placid rule over Seattle are gone(e.g. Norm Rice). To your point, in the absence of Durkan I don't see things getting better.
Oh where are the Beady Eyes of Ed Murray when you need them ?

11

@ 10, Every election is a new episode of Come Meet Your Future Ex-Mayor.

12

They need to upload Utubes and FaceFuck streams of all the raging MAGAts hurling obscenities at the hospital staff and screaming dumFux Nooz-Tr666p lies about the HOAX, until a futile breathing tube gets shoved down their throats but they croak anyway cause it’s too late.

“It’s like a fucking horror movie that never ends. There’s no credits that roll. You just go back and do it all over again.”

Maybe then the asshole-morons will finally Get It.

13

Get down with the sickness ooowahahahah ♪

14

@9: no, the NYT does not "parrot" it. they ripped Trump's lawsuits apart just today, pages A20 to A23. they have even started calling lies lies.

have some herbal tea or something.

15

Obviously we need to cut the SPD budget by $50 million to pay for this bridge repair.

Otherwise, HOW WILL WE PAY FOR THIS FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDY for polluting single occupancy cars and trucks THAT WILL DESTROY THE BRIDGE AS CLIMATE CHANGE increases the water levels, winds, and storm intensities.

Remember: Climate Change is NOW. You could have fixed this a few decades ago, but excuses don't do anything, so now it's HERE.

16

@14 -- nyt callled him a Liar on their Front Page a couple weeks ago, although cronology isn't my strong suit lately, WTF TOOK THEM SO FUCKING L O N G???

and when FOX called AZ for Biden
it was pretty much all over
without wholly-corporate-
Owned msm, you're
pretty much
Fucked.

also
"Lawsuit alleges that managers at a Tyson pork plant in Iowa made bets on how many workers would get COVID-19: The managerial staff ignored pleas to temporarily shut down the plant and incentivized sick employees to come into work... "

if this doesn't scream
CAPITALISM MUST DIE
(or be De-funded*) to you
then you must be a Republican.

thnx for the trumpf
(who ain't quite Gone as of yet).

*like po-po

17

Do the evolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI

18

@ 14,

Glad that you find the NYT’s daily entries in the False Equivalency Olympics so reassuring : )

19

@16: Just to pee on capitalism, you assume all management everywhere is just like Tyson?

20

I mean, we’ve got tens of millions of people with no jobs, no money, no way to feed their families, and no prospects for the future, combined with a depraved ruling class of sociopathic oligarchs like Moscow Mitch McCONjob that smugly smile and proclaim over their triple chins “Let them eat Twits!”

There’s never been a more volatile recipe for a revolution historically.

The greedy, sadistic, self-obsessed French “nobility” never saw it coming either.

22

Speaking of the NYTimes, gotta love their current headline in the online edition-
"Trump Asks Michigan Lawmakers to White House in Bid to Subvert Election"
Subvert is a good word, and accurate- "undermine the power and authority of (an established system or institution)."
Here is another good word that seems to accurately characterize this Administrations behavior-
sedition
"conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch."

23

@1 - the problem is that evolution works by reducing reproductive fitness. The places/groups that vote for Trump and refuse to wear masks tend to have their kids at a young age, so that their predictable deaths from COVID denial come too late to weed their genes out of the next generation. See: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-birth-age-gap.html

25

@20: Madam DeFarge would be proud of you. But really, a revolution isn't necessary with a new administration who will usher in an American renaissance.

26

Gotta love how those meat plant supervisors think people getting sick and dying on their watch is a betting game. Sure does make me want to eat some of that meat. MMMM MMMMMMM TAINTED MEAT! The story about allowing an employee to continue working after she vomited while working and then making her come back to work the next day, SO FUCKING HILARIOUS. I wonder who won the jackpots? I mean these guys are right up there with the Governor of North Dakota telling doctors and nurses with COVID to keep on working!!!

How every single person responsible for forcing people to work and refusing to do anything about the spread of this deadly virus (from Trump down) is not being prosecuted for depraved indifference to life and flat out fucking murder is totally beyond me.

27

@7 Ted Wheeler got re-elected after the shit show and bad press that has been Portland for the past 7 months, so not unlikely Durkan could be as well.
Now that the mayor has come out in favor of repair, I suspect the council will all say "replace!" because they do the opposite of what the mayor suggests...because spiteful children.

29

@20 - Unfortunately, revolution will never happen here, or if it does, it will take far, far more desperation than is currently out there. Those days are over. In past revolutions, such as the French in 1789, people had literally nothing to lose but their hovels and their lives.

People in the US today have far, far more to lose. Even most of the poor have effective shelter, minimal income from somewhere and some creature comforts, like TV's and phones. And the vast majority of people have more than that, or that to a much more comfortable extent.

So, combine one of the most well-off populaces (even with huge income inequality) in history with one of the most heavily armed states in history, and the chances for effective revolution are quite slim.

Why jeopardize one's relatively cozy existence, jeopardize it all, when one can throw plastic water bottles at the cops on weekends with impunity and rage on the internet during the day?

30

@15 Visit South Park, White Center, or Burien using Metro. That will help you understand why the West Seattle bridge needs to be replaced.

31

@29 - why do you think it is "unfortunate" that a revolution will not happen here? Based on the track record of revolutions generally do you really think the odds of an outcome better than what we have now are all that good?

33

That's a pretty good list Professor, count me in.
you expend so much energy being bilious I wasn't sure what your action agenda might look like and it all seems surprisingly... realistic.

34

@31 - Why? Probably because I don't see any of the change we would like to see without one, or at least something akin to one. Incrementalism will not get us there anytime soon. As far as loss of life, well, we're on track to lose nearly a half-million people in a year due mostly to government incompetence and callousness as things are now. The lack of universal health care will kill how many each year? 35,000? 65,000? Year-in and year-out. That's also where we are now.

That said, maybe revolution wasn't exactly the right word to attach to "unfortunately." What I actually favor is something that isn't revolution exactly but is revolutionary. That's separation. I've been saying since well into the Obama years that the best thing that could happen to this country is for it to split into two or three smaller countries each more ideologically homogenous than this current single and increasingly ungovernable country.

Such a split may be violent in nature, but it doesn't have to be. World history is replete with examples of contraction and division, sometimes peaceful. I mean, to put it in the simplest of terms, the forces of progressive liberal democracy do not want the forces of autocratic Trumpism, and they do not want us. Why would one of those sides actually fight to keep the other in their fold?

Our divisions are only going to get worse, not better. Public discourse will become more rancorous and toxic, not less. Political violence is going to increase, not decrease. We're well on the road to routine and widespread sectarian violence in this country that won't rise anywhere near organized revolution but will be more along the lines of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Biden's election will not meaningfully change that trajectory.

A negotiated separation would, tho.

35

@ 29, 31, 32,

I agree completely. Revolutions have never turned out well, the American revolution included. We’d have been far better off with the Founding Fuckers hanged for treason and eventually a negotiated independence from England that would’ve led to slavery ending decades earlier, no century of Jim Crow barbarity, and far better democratic outcomes like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, whom we’re now half a century behind in social development.

I am saying that we have the political dysfunction and destructive system of government similar to a bankrupt Eastern European kleptocracy on the verge of collapse. Only our incompetent rulers and national stupidity apparatus appear oblivious to that fact.

@ 25, That’s certainly some woolly thinking. And what happens when the Republinazis hold the Senate and Moscow Mitch treasonously refuses to confirm any of Biden’s cabinet nominations, while $hitler continues working down Putin’s shopping list by destroying the country from the inside for ca$h?

36

@32 - Yes, it led to those things, but you're omitting some of the more beneficial things that it led to. It also led to the Rights of Man, the rule of law as still practiced to this day, the abolition of slavery, the advent of state secularism, the values of Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite, an end to feudalism that eventually spread throughout Europe. I seem to remember something about expanded elementary and secondary education also. I'm sure there's more.

37

@35: Just a dollop of Pollyanna on your Doomsday Spice latte.

38

@ 34,

I’m not really concerned about living in the Pacific States of America, the breakaway states of California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington that’re violently despised by the middle and southern sections of our former country. FSM knows our gays could design some much better looking currency than the fugly ass US bank notes, jeezus.

We’d even welcome Arizona, so that Colorado and New Mexico could join us : ) Arizona would have to vow to take their medication though. Trust but verify.

I’m not even particularly worried about our share of the debt, since we’d instantly become the world’s fourth wealthiest nation.

I am freaked out over all the nukes. I mean, Texass would totally nuke California because someone had a gay marriage.

“PARTY OF LIFE PUSH THE BUTTON!!!”

Do you think those of us on the Left Coast will have to fly over Canada in order to avoid getting shot down while crossing Tr666pistani airspace when we visit our allies in the Atlantic States of America?

39

I would point out that were the United States to split into smaller more ideologically homogeneous entities that we remember exactly in which regions the bulk of our nuclear missiles currently reside. Kansas could become a SERIOUS threat to it's neighbors for example.

40

@38 beat me to it!

42

This is truly the stupidest of all possible outcomes. Like, for all the good and reasonable discussion we had at the beginning of this year, the fact that we're all in this situation is just breathtaking to behold. The degree of dumbassery on display and how the government refuses to enforce the most basic common sense is so incredibly asinine and fucked, I am left with no other conclusion to draw than the government is actively trying to kill us and it no longer gives a shit about serving its people. What a goddamn travesty, what a shits show, what the flying fuck! I don't want to live on this planet anymore, maybe Bezos has it right. Fuck these chumps, I'm going to space.

43

@41 and yet so many other countries have figured it out, but for this country (that constantly boasts about being the greatest country in the world and stomps around the world demanding the world be like us) it's just such a head scratcher! you fucking use taxes to fund universal health care. you no longer allow it to be a for-profit business. it's not hard. we could do it, easily. we simply refuse to do it. that's it. this country wants people to keep the shitty, fucked up, ineffective system it has so that some people can still make obscene amounts of money while others are forced to suffer with illness (or just flat out die) because they don't have the money to pay for health care. and if you do happen to survive whatever horrific health problem you may be unlucky enough to experience and you don't have any money, well you'll be forced into unparalleled poverty and probably die anyway.

44

@1 -- Yeah, right. There is no free will. Got it. Pretty clear, once you think about it.

So I guess you were destined to bring that up, as others were destined to call you an idiot.

Thus ends our foray into philosophy for today. Next up: Why is there something rather than nothing?

45

@38 - I've actually thought about all that. The Pacific States of America would have to hang on to ballistic missile submarines in their Pacific pens. Each one has over 200 nuclear warheads, so it would only take a few to provide a more than credible MAD deterrence to Dumbfuckistan in the middle of the continent. The new country of New England would have to do the same.

As to air travel, there were air routes over the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, so we could probably manage some over Dumbfuckistan in exchange for them having them over the PSA and New England. Easy-peasey.

47

@46 - When I said it led to those things, I did not mean instantaneously, like the following day. I also did not disagree with your post; I added to it. The French Revolution was the trigger that eventually led to the French being better off after the revolution than before it. And of course the tenets of Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite were almost entirely aspirational...but ya gotta start somewhere.

It also triggered, or inspired, other similar revolutions later throughout Europe. Perhaps it's best to ask where would France, and Europe, have been in, say, 1839, had there been no French Revolution? 1889?

As a Professor of Hiztory (are you?), you know historical events are not a zero-sum games of binary good and bad. Right? There's always a mix of the two. You pointed out the worst of the French Revolution, and I simply added a reminder of some of the best...or eventual best. Perspective.

48

and yet, Morty,
Mutually Assured Destruction
prolly sounds like Instant Payback
for those willing to remove their noses
to spite their damn faces. when (even their
own) Lives are at stake, regressive Repressives
Always Vote against themselves. so, NO Nukes for
the 'heartland.' well, perhaps pocket nukes. but that's IT.

51

Idaknow, it's not a bad beat, I could dance to it! Although when it comes to our current circumstances in this country, I prefer some of Tammy Wynette's "Divorce."

And France is also my favorite nation, and were it not for commitments here, I'd likely be living there. I am an unrepentant Francophile. And I agree that Napoleon was great complex, multi-dimensional fellow.


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