Tag: Seattle

Seattle: Then, and Now

 

I was born and raised in Seattle.  Born in 1949, I spent my first years in a gray stucco house on a dead-end street in the Montlake neighborhood.  In our little neighborhood, there were a bunch of kids my own age, and we went to preschool at the Montlake playfield, which was right on the “Montlake Cut”, a waterway connecting Lake Washington with Lake Union.  I have fond memories of riding my tricycle around the playfield, attending fun classes in the community center, and getting dirty.  At the end of our street was a vacant lot called “Dahlialand” where my friends and I played in the dirt, made forts, played hide-and-seek, and chased each other around.  I was a bit of a tomboy, and loved playing with blocks and trains.  We kicked our ball around in the street, and yelled at each other to avoid the home of the mean Mrs. Witt.

We all walked to Montlake Elementary School every day, which involved a long concrete staircase from our street up to the main arterial street.  We walked in all weathers, and no one walked alone.  We never worried about our safety, and no one ever threatened us.  Our school was an older brick building, with about ten “portables” in the yard.  The lunchroom was in a portable, and there was no hot lunch.  Everyone brought their own lunch, and you could buy milk.  There were no “free” lunches in those days, since everyone’s parents packed their lunch.  The playground was concrete, and there was no padding under the swings or the monkey bars.  One day, I fell off the monkey bars, right on my face.  I broke a tooth, and to this day that tooth is dead, under its cap.  No one sued the school for not having padding under the monkey bars, and we paid for my dental work.

San Francisco Is Pure Hell

 

It is a bit of a cliché to say that San Francisco is a hellhole.

I remember reading in conservative blogs back in the mid-2000s about gay pride parades in the Castro district in which men would masturbate out of windows and on to passersby as part of the procession. When I moved down there in 2008 and worked for the Business section of the San Francisco Examiner, I remember walking through Van Ness and seeing a big, thick, and unmistakably human turd right there on the sidewalk.

Join Jim and Greg as they welcome the news that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan will not run for re-election next year following her disastrous handling of the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and the city slashing funding to police. They also cringe as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan releases a video before inauguration day showing he has plans to run for president in 2024. And they have a lot to say about the anti-gun mall Santa who told a small boy he couldn’t bring him a Nerf gun.

Dispatch from Seattle, Homelessness and Crime Edition

 

Recently, the Seattle City Council voted to override the mayor’s veto of a budget that drastically cut funds for the Seattle Police Department, and stopped funding the city’s “Navigation Team,” which did outreach to the increasing number of unsheltered people in the city. The Navigation Team’s effectiveness was hampered by its requirement that the homeless who were offered shelter could accept, or reject that shelter. Most rejected.

Today, we see some of the results of the city council’s actions, even before the budget is effective: Seattle’s Denny Park is riddled with crime, drugs, and homelessness.

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The Democratic talking point that the riots are happening in “Trump’s America,” isn’t going to be laughable forever. It’s laughable now because it’s obvious that Democratic mayors and governors are allowing it to happen and refusing help from the President. Add to that what they are doing to their own police. Preview Open

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Can the mayors and governors that openly refused to do anything about the rioting be charged as accessories to the crimes committed?  Given these officials’ public statements, it would be hard for their defense teams to introduce reasonable doubt. (I think.) Preview Open

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Uber and Lyft Drivers to Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle: We Don’t Want Your Stinkin’ Wage Standard!

 

It seems that, in her efforts to improve the lives of poor, overworked, and underpaid ride-share drivers, Mayor Durkan has proposed “wage standards” that the companies will be required to pay all their gig-economy drivers.  She reasons that those drivers are probably not earning enough, and are incurring many extra expenses brought on by (government-mandated) Coronavirus protective equipment and procedures, so their employers (See California AB5) must be mandated to pay them more.

Well, in response to that, a group of drivers called Drive Forward (called a rideshare coalition) had this to say:

Dispatch from Seattle…Ruining Society Every Day

 

The so-called “Public Health” “Authorities” and the so-called “Press” (scare quotes fully intended) seem to be in collusion with the state government to ruin society. If Society means people interacting with each other for mutual benefit, Society is being ruined, decimated by the reactions of government to the spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus. The lockdowns that started in March, and are continuing in various forms six months later, are having deleterious effects on every aspect of Society. Here are some stories from today’s KOMO Seattle website. [Please note that the actions of the Seattle City Council and mayor might have taken place anyway, but are amplified due to the abrupt halt in revenue from sales taxes curtailed by business shutdowns.]

Nearly 600 Layoffs as Boeing Supplier to Close Plant in Kent

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Faced with fresh competition from Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum for the wide-open Democratic Vice Presidential race when Rosenblum filed suit to suppress federal law enforcement from enforcing the law. It was a masterstroke, stealing the headlines and sparking a moribund campaign for Mayor Jenny Durkan in Seattle to renew itself with a revitalized Sunday […]

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Join Jim and Greg as they welcome the leftist radicals in Seattle trying to recall Mayor Jenny Durkan for handling of the “autonomous zone” in the city. They also cringe as Anthony Fauci inexplicably praises Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio for their handling of the coronavirus and the Trump administration starts pointing out all the things Fauci got wrong as the pandemic unfolded. And they discuss why the Washington Redskins are really “retiring” their team name now.

Mayor Durkan Meets Karma

 
Mayor Jenny Durkan

Cheering those CHOPers

The woman who let 30,000 residents suffer the robbery, assault, rape, and murder of CHOP is now outraged. That a lefty councilwoman led CHOPers to the mayor’s house with its double plus secret address (she was a US attorney) to share with her a fraction of the torment and abuse that she pronounced as “the Summer of Love”. From the Blaze:

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Steven Crowder’s crew went into CHAZ/CHOP a few days ago. Turns out the warlord Raz has an apartment listed as an Air B&B, so the Crowder team rented it out and gave the warlord a tiny taste of his own medicine. Childish? Yep. Do I care about that? No.  Crowder’s team also convinced some squatters […]

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