– The best way to make sure McCleary is enforced is to make sure that there are no penalties on anyone.
– Tim Eyman said that the biggest lie of his life was when he paid himself when he told people he was campaigning out of the goodness of his heart. But I think the idea that there’s any traction, even statewide, to repeal Seattle’s $15 minimum wage is a bigger lie of his lifetime.
– More Than ‘Just Women’s Issues’ in Moral Week of Action
– I like the idea of time limits on Sunday parking.
– Probably was cited for something more serious than parking in the bike lane.
You think they have bike lanes in Spokane ? I think the solid white edge lines are probably markings related to snow removal.
Property Rights? What Property Rights?
In the libertarian paradise of Flordia, where freedom reigns supreme, you can be forced to sell your condo home to developers against your will so they can turn it into a rental apartment.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101951641
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Of course there are property rights in Florida. You just have to understand how they work, that’s all: Developers have them, you don’t.
@1 Looks like it fell off a car transporter. It has a new-vehicle sticker on the side window.
A member of the “Cops” TV filming crew has been killed by police shooting at a robber during taping of the show.
Correction: A member of the “Cops” TV filming crew has been killed by police shooting toward a robber during taping of the show.
Correction of correction: A member of the “Cops” TV filming crew has been killed by police spraying bullets in the general direction of a robber during taping of the show. Ah, screw it! You know what I mean.
Republicans force women to have babies, but refuse to help pay for raising them. And if you can’t afford to raise your baby it’s because you’re “lazy”:
“The average cost to raise a child, over the course of 18 years, is around $241,000 for a middle-income couple, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”
http://www.dailyfinance.com/20.....ing-costs/
Then, after you’ve invested $241k in your baby, they grab him for cannon fodder. Why does anyone vote for Republicans? I don’t get it.
@7: Fear-mongering, and lots of it! Cause nothing scares old, rich, white people like everything.
Russia Invading Ukraine
What appears to be unfolding in eastern Europe this morning is a continuation of a slow-motion Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine.
After being hit with a worldwide storm of criticism and Western sanctions for his blatant seizure of Crimea and its important military (especially naval) bases, Putin is not backpedaling but rather resorting to stealth to take over the rest of eastern Ukraine (and perhaps, ultimately, all of Ukraine).
Historically, Ukraine bore the brunt of Stalin’s and Hitler’s savagery, being twice-ravaged by Stalin’s genocide-by-starvation of millions of Ukrainians and then by a brutal Nazi invasion. Of the people trapped in what author/historian Timothy Snyder calls “the bloodlands,” 14 million died at the hands of two of history’s most murderous tyrants. In his book “Bloodlands,” Snyder described a starving Ukrainian boy eating his own flesh while still alive as his friends joined in. Ukraine lies at the very heart of that blood-soaked region.
It’s no secret what Putin is up to. He doesn’t want Ukraine cozying up to the West because then he might end up with NATO on his front porch. In addition, eastern Ukraine holds a big chunk of the former USSR’s most vital heavy industry, and needless to say Putin covets it.
Putin probably calculates he can’t get away with a slam-bang military seizure of Ukraine, at least not without paying a price in terms of world reaction that he’s unwilling to pay if he can avoid it. So he has opted for a slower, less obvious, military operation that infiltrates fighting troops under his command, weapons and military equipment (including tanks and jet aircraft), and supplies into the combat zone with the intent of overwhelming the Ukrainian defense forces with Russian forces disguised as pro-Russian separatists. It takes longer, but he’s in no hurry, and it works just as well.
The world should not forget it was a Russian missile that shot down a Malaysian airliner full of innocent foreigners, including helpless babies. The people who fired that missile were either pro-Russian separatists, or possibly even Russian troops disguised as Ukrainian separatists.
Now, Russia is overtly invading eastern Ukraine. Most Western analysts thought all along he would, it was just a question of when, and now that question has been answered.
The remaining question is, What is the West going to do about it?
http://crooksandliars.com/2014.....-aired-cnn
Wow. The tape indicates Officer Darren Wilson fired eleven shots into the unarmed Michael Brown.
The Stranger is doing a bang-up job of covering police abuses at Seattle PD, and is highlighting the role of the Seattle Police Guild in perpetuating the abuses:
“A Seattle Police Department investigation that began last month into an officer who wrote most of the city’s marijuana tickets … serves as a test—not of pot tickets, so much, but of the city’s ability to investigate a persistent scourge of officials covering up misconduct and protecting officers from punishment.
“News of the investigation first broke on July 30, when the chief announced that one cop—Officer Randy Jokela—wrote nearly 80 percent of all the city’s citations for public pot smoking, and she promised to take Jokela off the streets until an investigation was complete. Most of Jokela’s pot tickets were issued to people of color and many of the tickets he wrote included messages about his political motivations ….’I have ensured this officer will not be performing patrol duties during the course of this investigation,’ [Chief] O’Toole said unequivocally in an e-mail to city employees that same day. …
But after the police union protested the reassignment … O’Toole returned the officer to bicycle patrol last week. … She insisted the influential police union, which has a history of arm-twisting advocacy to protect officers from punishment, did not influence her decision. …
“The rest of the investigation has a wider scope. ‘There are two named employees at this time in the particular case,’ confirms Pierce Murphy, director of the SPD’s Office of Professional Accountability. He would not name the second officer due to confidentiality clauses in officer contracts ….
“In this case, supervisors at the SPD must have known that one cop wrote most of these tickets …. But the rot of misconduct is so thick that officers apparently tried to hide information right under the chief’s nose. This gets to the most critical problem of the SPD: supervisors and politicians protecting cops accused of misconduct.”
The article continues, but you probably get my drift of where it’s going. You can read the whole article here:
http://slog.thestranger.com/sl.....misconduct
Roger Rabbit Commentary: When new mayor Ed Murray appointed an interim chief, he chose a former Guild official, whose first act was to reverse half a dozen disciplinary actions against cops accused of abusive treatment of citizens. That was bad enough. Then we see the new hand-picked permanent chief, who came to Seattle from Boston with a supposedly good reputation, caving in to the Guild by returning a cop accused of abusively singling out minorities for ticketing for petty pot-smoking infractions to the street. Who runs Seattle’s police department, anyway? Not Mayor Murray. Not Chief O’Toole. That much is now clear. The Guild runs it — that couldn’t be clearer. And it runs it in a way to give bad cops a free hand to abuse citizens. All of this has to change. If the mayor won’t take control of the city’s police force, then citizens need to dis-elect him and elect someone who will. (Kshame Sawant?) If Chief O’Toole won’t control her force, then the next mayor (or the current one, if he ever grows some balls) needs to replace her with someone who will.
Something I’ve seen mentioned (maybe once) in the media, but hasn’t been discussed here yet, is this.
Conservatives claim blacks are unemployed because they’re lazy, don’t work in school, aren’t serious about getting jobs. Not quite.
Many blacks can’t get jobs because they’ve been saddled with records by racist cops out to get blacks. A ticket for smoking pot in public may not sound like much but it’s enough to bar a person from employment at many companies. Same with jaywalking tickets and other tickets that cops hand out in inordinate numbers.
In other words, minorities are being targeted for disqualification from employment.
That, too, has to stop.
Seattle cops are suing for a right to beat, club, tase, pepper-spray, and kill:
“In an open revolt, more than 100 Seattle police officers [are] suing to block new use-of-force polices … the new complaint accuses the federal monitor tracking the reforms, Merrick Bobb, of carrying out a ‘zealous agenda’ to restrict the ability of officers to use force and make reasonable, split-second decisions ….
“The complaint also lambastes U.S. District Judge James Robart, who is overseeing the reforms and found the policies to be constitutional, for approving the changes ….
“The officers challenging the policies … brought their suit without an attorney or the support of their union, the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild. In seeking dismissal of the lawsuit, city attorneys wrote that it is filled with ‘speculation and opinion’ … [t]he suit’s assertion that the policies require ‘officers to be hurt or killed … is an irresponsible misrepresentation,’ the attorneys wrote.”
http://seattletimes.com/html/l.....ntxml.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This is a DIY lawsuit, and looks like it. First of all, judges can’t be sued over their decisions; appealing it is the only legal avenue for challenging a judge’s decision. So the lawsuit against the judge is certain to be dismissed. And if no attorney would touch this, that tells me it’s so lacking in merit as to be frivolous, which would subject any attorney filing it to sanctions (including paying the defendants’ attorney fees). So this lawsuit isn’t going anywhere. It’s just a bunch of disgruntled cops, representing less than 10% of the police force, blowing off steam. This lawsuit will have a short half-life.
The real problem is that while the lawsuit may go away, the chip on these cops’ shoulders won’t. In all likelihood, they’ll continue doing things their way instead of per training manual, department policy, and supervisors’ instructions. If so, that sort of insubordination should be punished by dismissal. No one has a right to be a cop. Everyone (I mean citizens) has a right to be safe from rogue cops. And if you won’t do the job the way you’re ordered to, you’re a rogue cop. So, goodbye, and don’t let the door hit your butt on your way out. Maybe you can get a job in St. Louis. The powers that be like your kind there, even if the citizens don’t.
Chauvinist Day In The U.S. Senate
Some Senators still think the Senate is a locker room. Sen. Kirsten Gillebrand (D-NY) described in an upcoming book what she had to endure from colleagues after being elected to the Senate in 2008:
“Good thing you’re working out, because you wouldn’t want to get porky!” (Gillibrand reportedly responded, “Thanks, asshole.”)
Another Senator allegedly grabbed her stomach and said, “Don’t lose too much weight now. I like my girls chubby!”
Gillebrand didn’t identify the offenders except they were “men who were well into their 60s, 70s or 80s [who] had no clue that those are inappropriate things to say to a pregnant woman or a woman who just had a baby or to women in general.” Gillebrand struggled with weight after giving birth to her sons in 2003 and 2008.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po.....colleague/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I can’t visualize a Democrat treating a colleague like that, but I’ll bet lots of Republicans would — the usual crowd of dirty old men used to bullying people and dumber than bricks.
Why Corporations Should Pay U.S. Taxes On Overseas Earnings
“The logic of our system is straightforward: U.S. corporate citizens enjoy benefits that aren’t cabined inside our borders. The U.S. Navy secures shipping lanes needed to transport goods from Chinese factories to ports around the world. The American legal system protects corporate patents and other intellectual property worldwide. U.S. taxpayers fund the R&D that makes many of these corporations profitable in the first place.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/po.....z3BniYkhKT
Dishonest businesses are caught lying to us again:
“People may be consuming more trans fat than they think, as a result of misleading food labels, according to a study from the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Researchers examined 4,340 top-selling packaged foods and found that 9 percent contained partially hydrogenated oils, the main source of trans fat. But of those foods, 84 percent claimed on their packaging to have ‘0 grams’ of trans fat.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/co.....rans-fats/
Why the so-called “social conservatives” will always lose the educated women voting bloc.
They really cannot understand the problems with their message. They just don’t have the intellectual capacity or the morality.
This is what a steady diet of Twinkies, white bread, fast food, soda pop, lead paint, alcohol and 8 hours of television gets you after two or three generations. I’m thinking that maybe we should start checking people for brain lesions or other neurological problems.
The problem with bribing Republicans is they don’t stay bought:
“This week a former Iowa state senator, Kent Sorenson, pleaded guilty in federal court to accepting payment from [Ron] Paul’s campaign in exchange for supporting the former Texas congressman ahead of the Iowa GOP presidential caucuses in January 2012. … Sorenson had previously been a supporter of rival Rep. Michele Bachmann’s campaign – from whom he also accepted money ….”
http://politicalticker.blogs.c.....?hpt=hp_t2
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Sounds to me like Bachmann is owed a refund.
Let the lawsuits begin:
“[A] $40 million federal lawsuit … alleges that police officers from Ferguson and St. Louis County used unnecessary force and made unjustified arrests as they cracked down on protests after the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown earlier this month. …
“Tracey White was about to buy an ice cream sundae at McDonald’s when officers … entered and ordered her to leave …. She was told to shut up, thrown to the ground and handcuffed after criticizing officers for the way they were treating her son ….
“Dewayne Matthews was walking to his mother’s house when a group of officers … shot rubber bullets at him …. He fell into a creek or sewer … where officers ‘pounced on him, slammed his face into the concrete, and pushed his head into the water to the point that he felt he was going to be drowned.’
“Kerry White was shooting footage and holding his camera out his car window when an officer snatched his camera, ‘took out his memory card and threw it to the ground’ ….
“Damon Coleman and Theophilus Green were peacefully protesting … when police in riot gear fired tear gas and what appeared to be stun grenades in their direction, then ‘hurled racial epithets at them, while punching and kicking them the entire time.'”
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/28/.....?hpt=hp_t2
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Let’s take another look at that last one: “Hurled racial epithets.” Can anyone doubt these cops are racists who single out blacks for mistreatment? What needs to happen is Ferguson will get slammed so hard by legal verdicts the city will be bankrupted and cease to exist. Then let that be the first step toward eliminating St. Louis County’s racially-motivated balkanization, whereby the county was broken up into dozens of municipalities to enforce Jim Crow after the end of legally-sanctioned segregation. Black repression is the only reason the city of Ferguson and the Ferguson PD exist.
Rep. Peter King (R-Moran) sharply criticized President Obama today for wearing a tan suit. Really. Seriously. I’m not kidding.
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/.....t.cnn.html
Food Banks Feeding Rick Perry’s Border Troops
“National Guard troops deployed to the border in Texas are visiting a food bank because they can’t afford food … a Rio Grande Valley food bank had been contacted about 50 Texas National Guard troops who needed assistance. … State Rep. René O. Oliveira … called the situation ‘heartbreaking,’ and offered to buy meals for troops …. ‘These brave men and women have apparently been sent on a mission without accommodating for their most basic needs,’ he said in a statement. ‘We need to find immediate solutions for these hungry soldiers.’ Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced in July that he was deploying up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the southern border, which has borne the brunt of a recent influx of unaccompanied minors. Texas officials said at the time that the project, dubbed Operation Strong Safety, would cost about $12 million per month, which they plan to bill to the federal government.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/....._hp_ref=tw
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This is classic Rick Perry. A couple years ago, he eviscerated Texas’ firefighting budget to give tax breaks to businesses, then when his state caught fire he crawled to President Obama for $50 million of federal assistance.
Now let’s suppose Perry somehow becomes president in 2016, and then, with the help of a GOP Congress, eviscerates the federal budget. Who will President Perry ask for help when the shit hits the fan (as it inevitably does in every administration)? UNESCO? France? China?
Face it, Republicans can’t govern. They don’t know how. The only thing they’re good at is manufacturing vicious propaganda that tears down the responsible people. Why does anyone vote for these asswipes? If you vote Republican, you’re an asswipe yourself.