Comments

3

"A bearded Mike O'Brien endorses Lorena Gonzalez for mayor: The former city council member spends the two minutes in this video dispelling hearsay that labor unions might stand in the way of green policy. The beard looks good, Mike!"

God, the beard is just such a cliché for an ex-politician. Of course, I would expect nothing less from the utterly unimaginative Mike O'Brien. At least his Sierra Club buddy Mike McGinn had the decency to display his scruffiness while he was an active politician. I just wonder how long after she steps away before Jenny Durkan is going full Rutherford B. Hayes.

Oh, and I just want to give my appreciation for the twice-on-weekdays reminder of the world's decline into a dystopian hellscape that Slog AM/PM has become. Good on Slog for sharing that reality. Bad on humanity for that reality.

4

I wonder how many of the anti-mask crowd are going to refuse to wear masks during wildfire season. I mean, if they're not going to be convinced to wear a mask to protect themselves and others from invisible - possibly fictional (in their pea-brains) - microorganisms, why would they give up their freedumbs to mask up in the face of high levels of toxic smoke particulates? I mean, their god will surely protect them from this latest non-existent islamo/communist/librul threat as well, yes?

5

Why do you follow "antizionism is good" on Twitter Nathalie?

6

@4 - Considering that most masks worn by the US general population over the last 12 months were not N95, and certainly not respirators, there is no reason for anyone to wear one. Those garbage homemade masks will have absolutely ZERO effect on smoke inhalation. Yes, they were good to stop some spittle from hitting you, but they are useless against smoke.

Limiting physical activity and trying to stay inside is your best bet. And for goodness sake, don't light any damn camp fires or fireworks.

8

@4 We've been doing this for what feels like decades now and yet we still haven't internalized the pretty simple fact that the masks we've been wearing aren't effective in protecting us from breathing in the stuff in the air around us, they're effective in keeping the stuff in our own bodies out of the air around us.

Nobody wore cloth or polypro masks to deal with wildfire smoke before the pandemic, because they just don't help much. N95 masks would do some good, but even after the disposable kn95 supply eased up, less than half of us switched to them. And for smoke we'd want masks that protect our eyes as well, which means we're most likely looking at designs with a valve, which is exactly what we don't want for preventing the spread of airborne disease.

9

There are a few good takeaways from the NY Mayor's race. Eric Adams ran on a strong public safety, pro-police campaign and won in largely minority neighborhoods with a strong blue collar base. The rich white liberals in Manhattan went to Garcia and the progressives flocked to Wiley with AOC's backing but even AOC's stamp of approval was no match for Adams's message. Adams was first on an overwhelming number of ballots and the debacle of ranked choice voting is the only thing that kept the race close as it allowed Garcia to pick up Wiley's 2nd place votes. The defund the police campaign has been a disaster for progressives and I can only hope we see similar results here in Aug. On a secondary note the KCC is proposing moving to ranked choice voting in the future. Based on how it went down in NY I see no reason to pursue that. It was a complete clusterfuck.

10

@6 beat me to it.

13

11 - Painting it as apartheid is left-wing propaganda. Hard to claim apartheid when Hamas, Jordon, and going back to Arafat never really wanted a separate Palestinian state as they blew so many opportunities do have it.

14

I like the comment @6. I'm thinking now, when wildfire season rolls around... One moment. I have to stop myself just to acknowledge that as a Seattleite I'm talking about there being a wildfire season and it being a matter of when not if. And I'm talking about it affecting me in Seattle. Ah, welcome to our new hellscape, and I'm one of the lucky ones.

Anyway, when wildfire season does roll around, to the extent I have to go outside, I suppose I will be wearing my trusty N95 mask. Will I be covering my eyes as @8 suggests I should? No, but I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to my own health.

And this gets to why there's a totally different dynamic around masks and wildfires than there is with masks and the pandemic, and this wildfire dynamic doesn't lend itself so well to our culture wars, such as @4 wants to wade into, because there's not the same personal moral element. Maybe I'm missing something, but with wildfires, it's just about protecting OUR OWN health, not protecting our fellow humans' health. But that gets to a point @8 was making that I do agree with.

15

@ 9,

New York has a thoroughly documented history of electing self-destructive shitty mayors since forever. What happens there has zero implications for Seattle politics.

16

@9
And if the Dens are smart, they will go with more law and order candidates like Val Demings (running for Senate in FL).

18

@13 You don't have to ask Arafat's ghost. Look at the law that just barely failed to get renewed in the Knesset: https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-religion-business-government-and-politics-f99c3aff0368bde00eef634ef42fde7d

That explicitly set different rules for Jews and Arabs for immigration of spouses of citizens. It was enacted in 2003 and only failed to be renewed because Likud (Netanyahu's party) sabotaged it to try to bring down the ruling coalition.

There are plenty more examples too, like that Israelis engaged in religious study at Jewish institutions are exempt from military service while no other religions get that exemption.

Any state that has different rules for its citizens based on religion or ethnicity can be fairly called an apartheid state.

19

@12 You don't have to believe in raking the forests to be at least puzzled by all the physical evidence that tells us wildfires were larger and more prevalent across most of the US prior to European invasion of the Americas than they are today. And you don't have to be a global warming denialist to think there's a credible case that other factors are presently stronger drivers of wildfires than the CO2 we keep pumping into the atmosphere knowing full well that it's fucked us and will exponentially fuck our grandkids.

What you can't do, I've found, is say any of this without carrying water for the chuds, or at least being castigated for it. I'll take my lumps though, I know damned well I'm lying down with dogs here.

21

@18 And on top of all that, most of the Arabs in the Occupied Territories aren't even second-class citizens; they haven't been granted citizenship at all. It would be a very different state if they were allowed to vote in Israel's elections.

22

It's better to stick to the issues, but I just want to clarify for folks my interpretation of the last 1.5 years. Science was unequivocally clear that wearing a mask IN DOORS reduced your risk of transmitting COVID-19. Because of that, I wore my mask diligently. It was easy and benefitted the greater good ... No brainer!

Science was more skeptical about the value of wearing masks outdoors when greater than 6' away from someone. Because of that, I chose not to wear a mask outdoors when it was not required. In other words, if I was skiing at a resort and it was required, I wore the mask. If I was going to hang out with someone for more than a few minutes talking outdoors, I wore the mask. If I was hiking up a trail in the cascades, I did not wear the mask because science was very clear that there is no way in hell you are getting sick from passing someone on a trail in less than 1 second. If that qualifies me as FREEDUMB, so be it.

23

@20 and yet NY is a progressive stronghold like other cities, you had several candidates running on strong defund police messages and one blessed with the backing of AOC and they couldn't seal the deal. What I think is interesting is how minorities completely rejected that message. Beyond that can you honestly say we have a better track record of mayors? That's laughable.

24

@19 - Glad you responded with those points. In addition, N95 masks are uncomfortable to wear for an extended period of time - so I doubt the prof's forecast of a massive uptick in N95 sales.

@18/17 - good points

25

@24 Kinda feel like I was doing better there without your help, chum. But then I did sorta say I expected it, didn't I.

27

I think all we really need to do to dispense with the claim that New Yorkers today really prefer Republicans is to kick back and wait for the general.

In the meantime, if people want to tell themselves bedtime stories about a local machine politician who won a local machine party primary, well, maybe they'll fall asleep a little sooner if we don't interrupt them.

28

Honestly, why do we need police unions? You guys shriek about defunding the police to the greater detriment of achieving real reform. Most people dont want to entirely remove the police which is what "defund" sounds like to most people. How about an "end the police UNION" movement? The police are supposed to work for the citizen taxpayer. We should be able to vote to end their union. Unions are only responsible for their members; they have no further goals of helping society at large. Even the NEA recently voted down making "improving education" their stated mission. I can see where private sector unions/mfc unions have had a net positive impact on wages and conditions at the beginning of the industrial revolution but what role does a PUBLIC sector union have in modern society?

29

@25: Not to worry, my polishing is complementary.

30

Five hundred down, six hundred to go.

Including the SPD 6.

The FBI will prosecute and a badge and a gun won't save you.

32

Adams won in the famously pro-police city of New York by less than 1%. Given the history of pro-policing politics in New York City, people should be asking why he won by such a narrow margin.

On the other side of the State in Buffalo they elected their first socialist mayor on a promise of police rerorm. DA Krasner in Philly easily won his primary against the police union candidate. In Portland DA Schmidt replaced drug warrior DA Wheeler. Even in New Orleans Parish, the sadistic and corrupt DA Cannizzaro was replaced by DA Jason Williams on a promise to reform the police. Sure, keep clinging to your New York Mayor victory into convince yourself it's still 1980's for policing in Seattle.

@28: The effort to reform the Seattle Police Union goes back at least a decade before talk of defunding started in 2014 and it has given us Michael Solan as SPOG president/ Meanwhile, we are now having a serious conversation about moving services and funding out of the SPOG and into more appropriate services in the future. Which looks like more progress to you?

As far as reforming the police union, it's like Raindrop has pointed out about qualified immunity. If we do not have powerful institutions to shield police from criminal conduct, no young person will want to join the SPD.

Six SPD officers showed up for the DC riot and Union President Solan later blamed it all on Antifa. Do you really thing these 6 officers and their mentally unstable union president don't have wide spread support within SPOG and SPD?

35

@13. Like when after signing the Oslo Accords with Yarafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by right wing Israeli extremist Yigal Amir. Totally on Arafat, sure.

37

@32 the margin was so close because of the shit show that is ranked choice voting. In the initial results Adams was ahead by more than 10 pts. It was only after the ranked choice voting was factored in did the margin narrow as basically the Garcia/Wiley voters had them listed 1-2 so they were a combined block. It's actually somewhat amazing that Adams won given the fact Garcia received Wiley's votes as well. Adams carried every borough but Manhattan. What is lost in the ranked choice numbers though is that 14% of ballets were "disqualified" because the voter did not use all five options so it was set aside in later rounds. So you ended up having the third place candidate almost win and disenfranchised 14% of the voters. Great system. I can see why the progressives on the KCC want to institute it here.

38

@33 Oh fuck, yeah, I knew what I was getting into all right.

Yes, global warming is a factor in increasing wildfire incidence and intensity. It's well-established. The degree of that influence, however, is not currently well-established, and the claim that global warming is the primary factor in wildfire increase is not scientific consensus. At all. Not even close.

The more interesting question to me isn't "what's causing the increase in wildfires today?" but rather "what caused the unprecedented decline in wildfires in the first half of the 20th century?"

Deforestation can't be it, because it had already peaked-- US forest coverage was increasing during the historic wildfire decline.

One theory says the decrease is just a data-collection illusion, and while I would never count out the incompetence of the US Forest Service, there's also physical evidence (lakebed deposits and what have you) that show the decline in fires.

Another idea is that the decline was due to a change in government policy to "fire exclusion" -- aggressive suppression of wildfire. This change is well-documented, and considerable resources were thrown into it, but it's kind of hard to determine how effective that work was, absent controlled experiment or counterexample.

And then there's the 1905-1922 pluvial period, the same wet climate event that led the Bureau of Land management to overestimate the annual flow of the Colorado river and build dams that are looking increasingly useless today. Note, though, that the wildfire decline continued for several decades after this period ended.

Either of these last two, or rather reversion to mean from them, might be the primary factor in the rebound of wildfire frequency and intensity that we're seeing today. Or it might be something else-- a side-effect of monoculture tree farming, land-use changes, global warming, fire deficit for some reason other than the past century of management, or one of the hypotheses that seem less likely, e.g. increased anthropogenic ignition (cigarette butts, sparks, space lasers).

Whatever the primary cause might be, it seems unlikely that it could be the only cause, and my guess would be that there are like half a dozen main things and a bunch of smaller ones contributing to the wildfire increase, all varying with geography and over time. One of 'em in there is going to be global warming, definitely. I'd guess -- and yes, it's only a guess -- that no one factor will have caused more than like ~30% of the change.

For context, here's a peer-reviewed paper summarizing the physical record going back 3000 years, including periods of both notably higher and notably lower fire frequency in North America both before and after European colonization. It makes no strong claims about causes of recent variation.

39

@37 Or maybe ranked-choice voting is actually fine, and chuds are desperately trying to spin it as a "disaster" half out of reflexive hatred of cities and Democrats, and half because they're shitting their pants realizing what it would do to GOP minority rule if it took off.

Maybe voters aren't going to cast a RCV ballot the same way they're going to cast a WTA ballot (that's the point, isn't it?). Maybe a primary with 13 candidates and no strong favorite is going to be close no matter what voting system you use?

40

RCV thus far has only been used in urban, progressive strongholds so if anyone is trying to use it to freeze out the minority it's the progressive side of the democrats who want to use it to upend the traditional dems they can't stand. RCV or not no conservative is going to win a city race but I can see it being used to upend moderate dems by creating progressive super voting blocs. I don't see how that is good for the system. Besides that, in San Fran they routinely see upwards of 10% of the votes thrown out and now in NY it was 14%. If you think disenfranchising that many people is a feature and not a bug that says a lot about your priorities.

41

Only you can prevent wildfires.
I have had to tell people to put out their fires many times because, no thanks, I'd rather not burn to death overnight in the North Cascades.
Or, just recently on forest service land in Oregon after the 4th, I come across a huge dumping of spent fireworks in a small clearing. Hooray for stupid people.

42

@36: I'm aware. I was not giving the definition of qualified immunity, I was giving Raindrops moronic interpretation of qualified immunity.

Although your own definition needs so work and leaves much to be desired as well. Your correct in so far as it shields all public officials and employees from personal liability in a civil lawsuit, but it also shields government agencies such as police officers and their employers from being held civility liable for violations of Constitutional Rights under 1983 claims since it is next to impossible to hold police criminally liable for their behavior (the reason 1983 claims were included in the civil rights act of 1871 after the civil war to protect the rights of recently released slaves from Clan led police departments to violate their rights).

https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4494&context=uclrev
"Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 creates a federal cause
of action against state officials who deprive private citizens of their
constitutional rights.1 Increasingly, courts have attempted to define the circumstances under which a state may be held liable for
its failure to act to prevent a particular deprivation.2 Holding a
state liable for its inaction in effect imposes upon it an affirmative
duty of protection. Recognizing this, most courts have not imposed
affirmative duties on the states; they view the Constitution as,
principally, a "charter of negative liberties" 3 designed to prohibit
certain state actions rather than mandating them."

Qualified immunity was invented out of thin air by judges wanting to protect police departments and city employees along with their employers from civil liability when they violate the Constitutional Rights of citizens. In practice qualified immunity has translated to absolute impunity for police officers who violate the Constitutional Rights of Citizens.

Just one of many egregious local example sof how absolute impunity is used to protect the right of the police to violate our Constitutional Rights:

https://theappeal.org/the-lab/explainers/qualified-immunity-explained/

"On the morning of Nov. 23, 2004, Malaika Brooks was driving her 11-year-old son to school when Seattle police pulled her over for speeding. When the officers gave her a ticket and asked her to sign it, Brooks refused, believing that she had been wrongly pulled over and thinking, mistakenly, that her signature would be an admission of guilt. The officers threatened to throw her in jail, and when Brooks still declined to sign, a sergeant ordered her arrest.

To push Brooks to step out of her car, one of the officers pulled out a Taser and asked her if she knew what it was. She didn’t, but told the officer she was seven months pregnant. The officers chatted in front of her, casually discussing which part of her body they would tase: “Well, don’t do it in her stomach,” one of them said, “do it in her thigh.” The officers twisted Brooks’s arm behind her back and tased her three separate times—first on her thigh, then in the arm, and then in the neck—before dragging her into the street, laying her face down, and cuffing her.

Brooks sued the officers to hold them accountable for their conduct. Six federal judges agreed that the officers’ use of severe force absent any threat to their safety violated the U.S. Constitution. But those same judges dismissed her case, relying on a legal doctrine called “qualified immunity."

If you want a good primer on the ridiculous claims of those who defend qualified immunity, here ya go:

https://www.cato.org/blog/most-common-defenses-qualified-immunity-why-theyre-wrong

43

@37 It takes a really special leap of logic to say that 14% of voters were disenfranchised by RCV. Yes, 14% of ballots were exhausted, meaning that every one of the (up to) 5 candidates the voter listed were nonviable. But let's just say for the moment that the election ended in the first round. The top two candidates together took in 52% of the vote. By your logic that would mean that 48% had been disenfranchised.

The success story of RCV is that an extra 34% of the electorate got to weigh in on the top two. That's 34% of the electorate who could choose candidate(s) that they thought would be best for the job without feeling like they were throwing their vote away because they had a backup who was viable in the final matchup.

44

@42: Being a liar is far more moronic. We discussed qualified immunity, but I never tied it to shielding police from criminal conduct as that's what it's not designed to do in the first place.

45

But of course Casino you've painted the default position of any constable involved in a shooting as criminal, and hence extrapolated my mere support of it as "shielding police from criminal conduct".

Still a lie, but I accept your apology in advance.

46

@44: It's used to make police immune from the type of civil claims you and I would face if we criminally violated the rights of another person.

You have argued consistently that without qualified immunity it would make it difficult to hire new police officers. As I showed with the Seattle pregnant victim of criminal police abuse above, qualified immunity was and is used to protect police committing Constitutional Violations of our rights from civil action against them and their employer.

You're welcome to call a horse tail a leg and then claim a horse has 5 legs, but it's still 4 legs and a tail no matter what you choose to call it.

47

Can anyone tell me why last year's illegal wildcat strike by SPOG Members against the East Precinct has not been used by the City to decertify SPOG? SPOG had a contract, to supply labor sufficient to staff the East Precinct, and yet officers represented by SPOG first abandoned the station, then refused to return. SPOG did not satisfy the contract it held with the City. Why no action by the City against SPOG?

49

If reforestation, what you call tree farms, doesn't meet the purity test for you @48 - such criterion doesn't add credence to your pathetic argument.

50

@47: It's an interesting observation.

If I had to hazard a guess based on previous experience, contracts are enforced by judges and judges are not in the business of enforcing laws against the police. It's why the police hold their orders in contempt.

51

@43 you need to relook at the definition of disenfranchisement. Under a one vote scenario every vote is counted so even though your candidate lost your vote was counted. Under RCV 14% of ballots were not counted at all. They were basically tossed in the trash as if they never happened. That is not a better outcome.

52

@51 You know that every vote counted in the first round, right? So in round 2, some people whose candidates were eliminated were able to have their vote count for someone else. The 14% that you claim weren’t counted at all had the option to have their vote count 5 times for different people as their preferred candidates were eliminated.

Sure sounds like more counting, not less.

53

@51,

They weren't disenfranchised, they chose not to vote at all.

Disenfranchisement means "denied the right to vote." They were not denied that right.

If election day comes and I look at the people on the ballot and decide I don't like anyone and so I'm not going to vote at all, that's not disenfranchisement, that's apathy.

54

@36: Here's Trump and other congressman who incited the riot on Jan. 6 claiming the "Absolute" immunity for inciting the riot the way prosecutors do when they openly violate the law with impunity:

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/rep-mo-brooks-says-he-cant-be-sued-for-inciting-capitol-riot-because-he-is-a-federal-employee/
"In his filing Friday, Brooks invoked a 1988 law that protects federal employees from personal liability while acting within the scope of their office or employment. He argued that his speech, tweets and related conduct “were indisputably made in the context of and preparation for” a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to confirm the results of the presidential election.

Trump has asked the judge to dismiss the case on similar grounds, claiming that as president he has absolute immunity from lawsuits over his official actions, and was free to urge Congress to take actions favorable to him in its electoral count.

“Brooks represented the interests of his constituency when Brooks challenged the Electoral College vote submittals of states whose election processes were less than reliable in the judgment of Brooks,” Brooks said in the filing. “It makes no difference whether Brooks was right or wrong.”

Mehta gave Swalwell’s office and the Justice Department until July 27 to respond."

Like Trump said earlier, he could go out and literally shoot someone in broad daylight in front of the White House and there's nothing anyone could do about it. You can literally incite a riot against a sitting government without consequence.

Ain't qualified and absolute immunity grand!

55

@54: Donald J. Trump declaring, "X is true," is, almost in and of itself, definitive proof that X is absolutely, unconditionally, and obviously false.

The FBI has arrested hundreds of persons in connection with the attack on our Capitol. As the stated purpose of the attack was to disrupt a legal function of our federal government (Congressional certification of the presidential election result), we can reasonably expect federal prosecutors to file charges of "Rebellion or Insurrection" (18 U.S. Code § 2383) against some of the persons who invaded our Capitol. From this, it follows these persons, and anyone who advocated they invade the Capitol, could be charged with Seditious Conspiracy (18 U.S. Code § 2384). As each of these federal felonies can carry lengthy prison terms, lawyers for Brooks and Trump should start preparing defenses against Seditious Conspiracy. It appears they are testing some arguments for those defenses.

I would expect some serious laughter from the federal judge when this attempt by Brooks is dismissed.

56

@55: I'm not sure I see the connection between the FBI arresting those who do not have a claim to absolute immunity as government and those government officials who do, or how absolute immunity does not shield a government official from Insurrection and rebellion the same as it would a series of other crimes. but I hope you're right.

I seem to recall we had a disagreement about the second impeachment hearing as well. I argued they intentionally chose weaker charges against president Trump to let him off the hook and you argued they had a strong case for impeachment. Let's hope your correct on this one.

Regardless of the outcome, don't expect qualified and absolute impunity to end anytime soon.

57

@56: The difference is in the crime committed. Trump and Brooks didn't assault our Capitol, therefore they cannot be charged with "Rebellion or Insurrection." If they advocated for assault on our Capitol, they can be charged with Seditious Conspiracy, which is an equally-serious federal felony with equally-serious jail time. It's for that they'd seek impunity, which is incredibly silly, as it's obvious receiving a federal paycheck doesn't shield the recipient from being charged with a federal crime. (If anything, an officeholder who has sworn an oath to defend our Constitution would be in greater legal difficulty if associated with an attack upon our government.)

While I'm not responsible for your vague recollections of what I might have written, what I do know now is Republicans in our Senate would not have voted to remove Trump, no matter what the charge or evidence for it, so chances of Trump's removal were slim to none. I'm still proud for Rep. Jayapal's vote for Impeachment, though. (BTW, there was only one "charge," or Article of Impeachment.)

58

@57: One charge, but two impeachments, thus "second impeachment."

There was no way enough Republican's would impeach, but I believe they intentionally structured the impeachment in a way that made it easier for Republicans to defend back home. I pointed this out at the time. If I recall, you disagreed.

All elephants hate elephant hunters. That and I've seem some pretty egregious acts excused by absolute immunity in the past. As I said, I hope you're right.

59

@58: Again, your hazy and unsupported claims as to what I may or may not have written do not concern me. At least to this observer, in retrospect it's obvious that Trump could've explicitly told his "Stop the Steal!" crowd to go kill Republican senators and no GOP senator would have voted to remove him, no matter what language the House chose to use in the article of impeachment. GOP senators are no better than members of a totalitarian Party of the past century, dutifully lining up behind their Dear Great Beloved Maximum Leader no matter who he just violently purged.


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