mikerol

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Seattle: more than ever a poetry center

Posted Wed, Apr 4, 11:35 a.m.

Quantity of any kind does not translate into quality, except in Hegelian Marxism, although all Mallards, both male and female, are marvels of natural beauty. As are Herons. Kascha fails to name a single poet whose work is significant to her and I find this very odd.

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'Hard, scary, sad': life at a highway rest stop

Posted Tue, Apr 3, 8:48 a.m.

Certainly more and more people are living in their cars in Seattle, too.

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Head in the sand: Beckett play warns against blissful ignorance

Posted Tue, Mar 13, 4:33 p.m.

Beckett once described the human mind as being encased in a small flower pot, that is in soil, from there it is but a hop skip and jump to put a woman up to the waist in a pile of sand. Khazanian is one of the premier directors of plays ...

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Midday Scan: Tacoma scores Seattle's port business; could 'Hawks score Peyton?

Posted Tue, Mar 13, 7:31 a.m.

It would be best, as several commissioners feel, too, if there was something like a Puget Sound Port Authority which would allocate and bargian as one unit. Perhaps eventually even a state port authority so that the Pacific ports get their fair share too.

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Norm Dicks and 'The Great Consensus'

Posted Tue, Mar 6, 9:58 p.m.

Fascinating piece for someone who had a good handle on NY City politics after 25 years, but has mere inklings here where the bodies are buried; and fascinating comments as well. As very much of an anti-imperialist I nonetheless appreciate some of its boons, such as the excellence of the ...

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America's sadly ambiguous role in prosecuting war crimes

Posted Thu, Mar 1, 8:58 p.m.

If you contemplate the extraordinary crimes against humanity of which various US regimes became guilty as of the US successor to the European imperialist impulse - the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953, the Vietnam war, the support of Suharto's Indonesian mass murders, the destabilization of Afghanistan under Carter/ Brzezinski in ...

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'Spring Awakening': A boldly passionate bourgeois critique at Balagan

Posted Mon, Jan 16, 2:10 p.m.

Well, my second comment then is the second comment altogether, but what if not on the same that I made the above comment I don't see a reviw of a musical based on MISS JULIE! Another 1890s play, this one by Strindberg! Set in the Appallachians! In the New York ...

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'Spring Awakening': A boldly passionate bourgeois critique at Balagan

Posted Fri, Jan 13, 7:27 p.m.

It is a curious phenomenon that a late 19th century play by Wedekind, that arose in the context of the gradual break-down of middle class repression, and whose technique exerted great influence on the early Brecht, is turned into a musical in the United States one hundred years later and ...

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Best of 2011: Why does Seattle have so many bleak public spaces?

Posted Thu, Dec 22, 3:03 p.m.

I recall thinking and then writing on coming to Seattle 15 years ago that it was a city without an eye. Along the waterfront, then, there was a single "vista point", and it was marked as such, a kind of bower, not too far from the Ferry Terminal. From higher ...

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Seattle spiritual leader releases account of alleged police brutality

Posted Sun, Dec 18, 10:55 a.m.

and here is an account by one group that belongs to the OCCUPY movement that describes the events, again in THE STRANGER, the Reverend appears to have been caught up in the melee at Terminal 18. I'd want to see a few others to get an idea of what transpired. ...

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Seattle spiritual leader releases account of alleged police brutality

Posted Sun, Dec 18, 10:05 a.m.

The only halfway decent account of the Terminal 18 [Harbor Island/SSA Marine] terminal happens to be in THE STRANGER: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/where-do-they-go-now/Content?oid=11075802 indeed there were a few violent acts by a number of protesters who claim that this constitutes STAGE 2 of the Occupy Movement. Maybe it means the end, since these ...

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Seattle spiritual leader releases account of alleged police brutality

Posted Sat, Dec 17, 7:51 a.m.

Here the link to the Department of Justice view of the SPD http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017034543_dojfindings17m.html This report mentions use of excessive force, too quick on the draw, but perhaps it is confined to a set of relatively few officers? And here a link to a NY Times story about OCCUPY in Frankfurt ...

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Seattle spiritual leader releases account of alleged police brutality

Posted Fri, Dec 16, 10:20 a.m.

It is finally loading, although at such a slow rate, here is a statement from SPD, indicating that this demonstration differed from the other Occupy ones: they clip has out-takes of a few of the objects the SPD says were thrown at them. Remains to be determined who started the ...

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Seattle spiritual leader releases account of alleged police brutality

Posted Fri, Dec 16, 10:07 a.m.

http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2011/12/12/pier-18-demonstration/ i have tried to load this SPD video several times.... it never gets beyond the revolving circle that indicate that it is loading. if there was violence on the demonstrators' part, this is entirely against the original ethos of the "occupy" movement, which is entirely non-violent Ghandi and ML ...

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Seattle spiritual leader releases account of alleged police brutality

Posted Thu, Dec 15, 11:33 a.m.

here a link to the forthcoming Occupy Control robot: http://animalnewyork.com/2011/12/the-occubot/ and to Greg Mitchell's Occupy blog, which has a lot of instances of over-the-top cop reaction, getting to look like the way the intial 'Nam protests were greeted. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/greg-mitchell

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Seattle spiritual leader releases account of alleged police brutality

Posted Thu, Dec 15, 11:25 a.m.

I just checked with Port Commissioner John Creighton if he knew what went down, but he doesn't, and was glad that it wasn't the Port's own Police that were involved. From the Reverend's account it would appear that no traffic was being blocked, and that he himself tried best he ...

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Green Acre Radio: Plastic bag ban heats up in Seattle

Posted Sun, Dec 11, 6:48 a.m.

AS to plastic and plastic bags: 1]plastic is a by-product of oil extraction, which can have devastating consequences for the environment, e.g. in the Niger Delta; just Google it. 2] there are huge vortices of plastic drifting around the oceans, also in the Pacific. 3] scarcely a drop of sea ...

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Midday Scan: The Boeing-Machinist marriage; Obama's no Teddy; Special session blues

Posted Fri, Dec 9, 7:21 a.m.

Damn good thing, too, that Obama, despite his Afghan surge and being the drone master of the world, is not the second great US imperialist! The very one who drove the extension of manifest destiny into the Pacific... on secon thought, what with the US new "China Containment" policy, maybe ...

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Midweek Tech Scan: can Google help save Seattle's indie bookstores?

Posted Thu, Dec 8, 7:56 a.m.

here is agent andrew ross on the amazon app that can put local book stores ouf of business in no time! http://andyrossagency.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/is-your-local-bookstore-an-amazon-showroom/ Today’s uproar de jour in book publishing is the news story that Amazon.com is giving a $5.00 discount on items that a customer scans using the Amazon “Price ...

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Local theater company seeks to curb child sexual abuse

Posted Thu, Dec 8, 7:48 a.m.

this has nothing whatsoever to do with theater but with the american forever witch hunt.

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Wars' painful legacies, from Pearl Harbor to Afghanistan

Posted Tue, Dec 6, 7:44 a.m.

Japan and the U.S. were headed for a confrontation in Asia long before Pearl Harbor. FDR was shipping Boeing bombers to the far east well ahead of that date. The eery similarity between Pearl Harbor and 9/11 is stunning, the lack of preparedness in the face of the knowledge that ...

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Forget Sasquatch: The elusive Cascade Grizzly

Posted Mon, Nov 21, 11:24 a.m.

I myself can't wait for my pet Grizzly to come and walk with me through Pioneer Square! It's a fine piece, so was the original!

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Forget Sasquatch: The elusive Cascade Grizzly

Posted Mon, Nov 21, 8:57 a.m.

This story originated in the High Country New on November 14 http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.19/the-forgotten-north-cascades-grizzly-bear http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.19/the-forgotten-north-cascades-grizzly-bear/how-to-snag-a-grizzly and I http://crosscut.com/clicker-suggest/ it to Crosscut. Funny to see it reappear in this fashion!

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Eastwood's 'J. Edgar' misses the point: an evil reign at FBI

Posted Mon, Nov 14, 5:53 p.m.

First time that I see you as a live writer, Mr. Van Dyk. I agree entirely with your assessment of Hoover the person [but ought not the cowardly presidents and all those who allowed themselves to be threatened be part of this hideous story?]; but not having seen the film, ...

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Mixed feelings about the new Husky stadium

Posted Tue, Nov 8, 10:02 a.m.

A ludicrous sum of money, and what will happen to the track? And the athletes that use it? Also the huge sums spent on gutting and rebuilding the HUB. Priorities are all wrong - and for what? Six times a year there is traffic gridlock in the University District. Meatheads ...

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Bow down to Husky Stadium

Posted Mon, Nov 7, 7:47 a.m.

Why does the damn place need a 250 Million Dollar overhaul when the State is cutting the UW budget by 80 Million. Throw in the multi-million dollar overhaul of the Hub, that was as inessential as the renovation of the Husky Stadium, and you don't need to go begging to ...

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A deliciously dark thriller at ACT

Posted Tue, Nov 1, 2:38 p.m.

This seems to be where I came in about 15 years ago when I did a bit of reviewing to acquaint myself with theater in Seattle, A.C.T. had a who-done-it, and the audience was in a froth and running around, what these shows have to do with theater is beyond ...

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Big Coal meets Cherry Point's tiny herring

Posted Mon, Oct 31, 2:15 p.m.

SSA MARINE, the 800 pound Gorilla of Puget Sound, and backer of the likes of Port Commissioner Bill Bryant, is part of a far bigger monkey business http://www.carrix.com/

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Occupy Seattle: How a crowd is forming a reasonable agenda

Posted Thu, Oct 27, 9:40 a.m.

Here is a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the Intellectual Roots of the "Occupy" movement: http://chronicle.com/article/Intellectual-Roots-of-Wall/129428/?sid=at&utm;_source=at&utm;_medium=en Here are Senator Leahy's "Six Demands" http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/12-6 Here is the link to Adbusters which initiated the movement: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine Matt Taibbi's five demands: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/my-advice-to-the-occupy-wall-street-protesters-20111012 1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too ...

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Jonathan Raban's lonely journeys

Posted Wed, Oct 26, 9:29 a.m.

D'accord the praise for Raban's work. I not only liked PASSAGE TO JUNEAU, but for an odd digression about Mr. Raban's father, but his BADLANDS, which helped explain a lot about why cheap runs so deep in Seattle; and I wish his ARABIA had been published in the early seventies ...

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Seattle elections: still too much bland leading the bland

Posted Tue, Oct 25, 3:38 p.m.

I notice that Mr. van Dyk admits to not attending all that many school board meetings, and so I wonder how many Seattle Port Commissioner meetings he attends to be able to endorse the re-election of Bill Bryant and Tarleton with a set of generic platitudes, the pure pablum of ...

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Seattle elections: still too much bland leading the bland

Posted Mon, Oct 24, 4:15 p.m.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2011/10/24/the-campaign-ad-you-wont-see-on-tv/ campaign ad targeting Port Commission president Bill Bryant was deemed a little too risqué for Comcast, so you won’t see it on TV. But no matter, because the video is making its way on the Internet. It purports to show people dropping the F-bomb — and getting bleeped — ...

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Seattle elections: still too much bland leading the bland

Posted Mon, Oct 24, 12:34 p.m.

You must be nuts to vote for Bill Bryant, a sleaze bag if ever there was one. He ran as a reformer and defeated the best commissioner Alec Fisken, and instantly became like Pat Davis, in cahoots with management and the nepotism that is deeply rooted there; look at his ...

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'It Can't Happen Here' happens here again

Posted Sat, Oct 22, 5:08 p.m.

d'accord GaryP. The military industrial complex, the integration of it in every congressional district, the choice, nationally, between bumblewee and bumblewoe, an utterly befuddled sheeples who will buy hope dope by the gazillions is the surest indication of thouroughly entrenched fascism, as is the jingoism whenever there's call for war! ...

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Mormons for the White House: comfortable with that?

Posted Thu, Oct 20, 7:51 a.m.

Well, the only man I like among the pooplikans is John Huntsman. Oddly, ex-Marmots are sort of like the sons of Protestant ministers once were - they have well-developed consciences and are imaginative. I can't tell whether this quality derives from Mormonism, which I regard as just another joke, or ...

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McGinn is handling Occupy Seattle dilemma well

Posted Wed, Oct 12, 11:42 a.m.

Sensible piece it strikes me, as does the Mayor's way of dealing with the protest. I wonder a bit whether West Lake Center or the Gates Foundation HQ are the best symbolic spaces to occupy in Seattle?

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If earplugs don't work, try phone sex

Posted Wed, Sep 28, 7:32 a.m.

Now there's a great and complicated if not mindblowing excuse if you are caught masturbating! xx m.r

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The 100-year-old model for the Port of Seattle still makes good political sense

Posted Sat, Sep 24, 7:06 a.m.

I gather that Captain Moore of the Crosscut piece on the Port Commission works for the the now behemoth, SSA Marine, Carrix Corporation, a major US defense contractor, and it is in SSA Mrine's interest to have a weak commission and a port executive over whom they have some sway. ...

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Joel Connelly: The curious 27-year span since the last Republican governor

Posted Sat, Sep 24, 5:49 a.m.

Inslee is a first rate congressman. however how much time has he spent thinking about the state and getting around in it? gregoire seemed to have been a good a.g., mckenna is an a.g. too. that kind of mentality is not well suited really for governing, any thoughts on that ...

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Why is Seattle so hostile to its bicyclists?

Posted Sun, Sep 18, 7:27 a.m.

The Stranger, too, weighed in, mightily, on the issue this week: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/okay-fine-its-war/Content?oid=9937449 As entirely pedestrian for the past ten years, but when I take the bus, the only untoward behavior I have noticed on the part of bicyclists - and thi has improved considerably over the years - is their ...

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The 100-year-old model for the Port of Seattle still makes good political sense

Posted Fri, Sep 16, 8:20 p.m.

In and of itself a five person commission,part time, understaffed and underfunded where a few stand for election every few years is no guarantee of anything, except nepotistic arrangements with the over-funded port executive which is in far to close relationship with the major terminal operator SS A Marine http://www.ssamarine.com/ ...

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Remembering 9-11, and its two kinds of fear

Posted Thu, Sep 8, 8:16 a.m.

> My 9/11 commemoration begins with the commemoration of the destabilization of Afghanistan by Carter/ Brzezinski in 1979 to get the Russian Bear to enter to be bloodied by the CIA - Reagan Casey - organized counter-insurgency by the world wide Mujahedin. > > Imagine a nation of 25 million ...

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Long live Seattle's other boondoggle!

Posted Mon, Aug 22, 8:08 p.m.

Just blow it up, bring back the ferry service to Madison Park!

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Northwest may never see another Republican like Hatfield

Posted Tue, Aug 9, 9:53 a.m.

I am old enough to recall another maverick from Oregon, Senator Morse! and the first US Senator I met in person, he came to Oakwood School, outside Poughkeepsie, in 1954. A Quaker School, we also had Eleanor Roosevelt as our graduation speaker, Pete Seeger came to shake the rafters, and ...

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'Dear old, irascible Bagley Wright'

Posted Tue, Jul 26, 7:09 p.m.

A shame that I didn't meet him, we could have talked theater. New York, where I spent 25 years in publishing, however, is a village of a different kind, provincialism peculiar to it, one of which is to leave too few traces. Bagley Wright left probably at a good enough ...

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A private bower of wildness in Seattle

Posted Thu, Jul 21, 7:27 a.m.

Let me say that I felt that David Brewster's editing made this piece of mine far more suitable than it had been for the general reader. Michael Roloff http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

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Rupert Murdoch has tainted journalism here, too

Posted Mon, Jul 11, 8 a.m.

let me add the link to a wonderful piece by jack shafer at slate "Murdoch Pulls the Ultimate "Reverse Ferret" The real meaning of the News of the World closure." http://www.slate.com/id/2298691/

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Rupert Murdoch has tainted journalism here, too

Posted Mon, Jul 11, 7:50 a.m.

Let me add my encounter with a Murdoch henchman here: "i would just like to recount briefly an encounter with one of rupert's u.s. henchmen, the very one who wrote the "son of sam" stories for the n.y. post, steve donleavy, a kiwi ex rugby player who it turned out ...

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The environmentalists' case for the waterfront tunnel

Posted Thu, Jul 7, 8 a.m.

i myself happen to like working ports; that is, i am a waterfront rat and don't care for promenades or the one pictured here. as to the air being improved - perhaps in the immediate length, however, the air needs to be vented at both ends and inbetween the two ...

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Summertime, and the whining is easy. Right, newcomers?

Posted Tue, Jul 5, 1:28 p.m.

My book of poems STEEPED IN SEATTLE which is just about to be published, aside a set devoted to my feathered friends, also has a set devoted to the weather, of one of which I will quote. However, let me say, Seattle has the best summers, when there is a ...

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When crows become eagles

Posted Thu, Jun 30, 7:59 a.m.

True enough. Crows will also gang up on Red Hawks. However, eagles manage to evade them by letting the up-draft take them higher than the crows like to go. True also that you can't say the wrong thing to them - whatever that might be - my first 4th of ...

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A confounding story of American opportunity

Posted Wed, Jun 29, 7:41 a.m.

Looks like another brilliant choice by ACT's artistic director Kurt Beattie - with all the great contemporary plays that do not get done in Seattle!

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Climate change menaces the future of lynx

Posted Mon, Jun 13, 7:53 a.m.

lynx do well of all kinds of rabbits, prefer life without snow!

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Auditor Sonntag's fights for accountability irk fellow Democrats

Posted Mon, Jun 13, 7:52 a.m.

without tim eyemann getting sontag to check on the port of seattle mic dinsmore and ms. davis would still be living high off the hog. tip not of the ice berg but off the pig fat.

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Will the last family leaving Seattle please turn out the lights?

Posted Thu, Jun 9, 7 a.m.

Go to University Village in the mornings and you see no end of young mothers their kids and dogs in tow, they sure are proliferating there, and they are well to do to be able to shop for hours! Those statistics are extremely stupid and the way conclusions are extrapolated ...

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The Dog House lives

Posted Wed, May 11, 11:39 a.m.

aurora avenue used to have some interestingly grim places but i haven't visited them in about ten years, and only happened on them in company of some fairly unsavory characters while doing my book WRITE SOME NUMB'S, BITCH! that acquainted me with a deeply ingrained seedy side of Seattle. "Chicquita ...

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Lost civilization along West Coast? New evidence says yes

Posted Wed, May 11, 11:33 a.m.

fascinating piece. -- "Chicquita abracas a todos" > MICHAEL ROLOFF > > http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

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The Dog House lives

Posted Tue, May 10, 8:40 a.m.

the burgermaster's in u-village definitely will give you nice feel for a certain kind of Seattle old-timer on weekdend mornings, their prices have stiffened, but they do not talk about their 'dawgs" as the old timers at the throckmorton diner in throckmorton the cow capital of the world [west texas] ...

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Fear of Mormons and the new U.W. president

Posted Tue, May 10, 7:50 a.m.

i gather from a close ex-mormon/ now marmot friend who teaches at a university in utah that any fears about young being a mormon and republican line are unfounded. young as a repluplican did a splendid job, also in finding productive compromises. what joel connelly might say about anything, forget ...

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Osama bin Laden's dead. Why so glum?

Posted Tue, May 3, 9:13 a.m.

"Osama bin Laden was a deeply reactionary figure, whose outlook was steeped in anticommunism and religious fanaticism. His ideology made bin Laden a valuable asset of the C.I.A in the catastrophic war that Washington instigated against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan beginning in... http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/pers-m03.shtml

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Explaining Donald Trump

Posted Fri, Apr 29, 12:08 p.m.

kilgoretrout evidently is living up to his name where a trout and a sturgeon look the same. that "promise breaker", that "moderate republican" Barrack Obama inspires not much admiration in me, but he does not appear to be thinskinned or preening or petulant, and he's pretty much of a pro, ...

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Explaining Donald Trump

Posted Fri, Apr 29, 8:46 a.m.

what "the donald" lacks is the driven nature of the marketer who sticks fistfulls of 100 dollar bills in front of his sales persons' noses, dicks them with his dick, and screams "write some numb's, bitch." nor does "the donald" have the driven quality of "what makes sammy run" - ...

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Best of 2010: Why J.D. Salinger's 'Catcher in the Rye' still provokes book bans

Posted Fri, Dec 31, 10:01 a.m.

oh dear Jesus is all i can say about these people who want to ban where and whenever they come on something that rubs them the wrong way. a hopeless country, a hopeless culture, but a nice piece

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Best of 2010: Is Seattle's writing curriculum too regimented?

Posted Tue, Dec 28, 10:15 a.m.

What I miss in this fine account is whether, aside writing, reading is taught - and what kinds of books the teachers provide for the kids to read. Creative writing has come a long way since the mid-fifties - creative and critical reading has not, best as I can tell. ...

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Best of 2010: David Brooks is go-to guy for bringing theology into today's public sphere

Posted Mon, Dec 27, 10:06 p.m.

well, if you look at reinhold niebuhr's homelies i imagine david brooks belongs in that league. bromides for tired brains, for david brewster's i imagine. no end of borax will clean out the verbal streams of pundits of that kind, i'm afraid.

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Can the independents get organized?

Posted Fri, Nov 26, 3:06 p.m.

"pragmatic"??? was it "pragmatic" to become the successor empire to the European ones? ... I happened to become acquainted with Port Commissioner Bryant during his campaign in which he vanquished Alec Fisken. Bryant was then a Cheney/ Bush backer and fundraiser, and he made a most unfavorable impression on me, ...

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Brave new book banning

Posted Tue, Nov 23, 8:38 a.m.

if a student objected to the characterization of native americans as savages i would have that student study the ways of these natives prior to being put on reses by far more efficient and deadlier European savages. that way we'd be speaking a bit of truth and addressing the subject ...

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Election message: We may be heading way back

Posted Tue, Nov 16, 1:06 p.m.

prisons are big business, however you might simply wall off wall street, say at fulton street in downtown manhattan, and only allow the secretaries and house cleaners in and out, and declare the wall street distric one big prison, marital visits allowed, and the country might just cheer! http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

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Devastated D's should ask: What would Reagan do?

Posted Wed, Nov 3, 8:14 a.m.

Reagan's "principles" were well articulated when he and CIA Casey created the world wide Muchahadim to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, who were sucked in by Carter/Brzezinski's destabilization of its government - welcome to the wages of such nefarious principles, ditto for the "contras" in Nicaragua; ditto for de-regulation which ...

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Is this the killer goat?

Posted Tue, Oct 19, 3:11 p.m.

yup i would keep my distance of anyone looking that fierce and not throw anything at it. respect is the word! http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name !

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Death by mountain goat

Posted Mon, Oct 18, 9:06 a.m.

snoqualman: i believe the mountain goats were introduced to replace goats that the likes of you wiped out when you got to these parts. mountain goats can be found the length of the west coast mountains. in instances of animal versus human, i always cheer for the animal!http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

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The making of a religious 'None'

Posted Sun, Oct 10, 7:18 p.m.

NOT just Jimmy Smith but Aretha and company! Prespyterian milketoast! This piece ought to have had the headline "a religious education of the kind i received can be a really bad thing" - and not all you might have expected. i imagine even the druids from my childhood village would ...

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Words shaken and stirred: Poets at the bar and on the page

Posted Thu, Sep 23, 8:50 p.m.

Let's see now. I would say that the Gansevoort Meat District, a once Les Halles to be, is near entirely gentrified. I recall that this began when ATT moved its lab to New Jersey and their huge lab was converted to small studios, they had those wavy ceilings that I ...

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A sweaty-palmed night with Jonathan Franzen

Posted Tue, Sep 21, 2:23 p.m.

i thought i'd share this fine review of the Franzen books with you: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/10/smaller-than-life/8212/

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Will the mayor give Nickelsville's homeless a permanent site?

Posted Tue, Sep 21, 1:45 p.m.

I suggest "kwakium prairie", the area between the Boathouse/Hec-ed + the stadium and the Horticultural Center on the north-east corner of the University of Washington grounds, presently occuppied by a few coyotes packs, lots of pheasants and a bunch of raccoons and beavers and some feral cats. Lare enough - ...

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Small critters should land in more of Seattle's ethical meals

Posted Fri, Sep 17, 9:42 a.m.

As to squab: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squab_%28food%29 For other uses, see Squab. Squab breast served at a French restaurant In culinary terminology, squab (probably of Scandinavian descent; skvabb, meaning "loose, fat flesh")[1] is the meat from a young domestic pigeon. The word squab was formerly used to describe young birds from several species, ...

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Small critters should land in more of Seattle's ethical meals

Posted Fri, Sep 17, 9:40 a.m.

I have a great recipe for "Banana Slugs" - if you call them "Seattle Escargot"...http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

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Seattle should invite the world (again)

Posted Thu, Sep 16, 11:48 a.m.

You might think from some of my postings that I detest Seattle, and you would be wrong. Compared to NY where nothing lasts except its museums and the constant infusion of culture appears to have no effect on the city's being, Seattle and the Northwest's politics at least is not ...

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A sweaty-palmed night with Jonathan Franzen

Posted Thu, Sep 16, 11:19 a.m.

I thought Baxter's piece in the NYRB http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/sep/30/his-glory-and-his-curse/ did a sensible job of assessing him as a writer. i have no interest in his subject, yet another upwardly mobile set of Amurricans, one of the banes of Seattle that will assure its staying as provincial as ever, although he does ...

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Seattle should invite the world (again)

Posted Wed, Sep 15, 8:15 a.m.

It it wasn't apparent from your "Babyboomer" piece and Crosscut's desperate call for ideas from outside its gerontologist's shop, I am glad to note the honest of today's cris de coeur, Knute! Short of slaughtering about 50 thousand what I call the "old women of Seattle", both male and female, ...

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If you hate Baby Boomers, this is the article for you

Posted Tue, Sep 14, 7:55 a.m.

What a marvelous piece by Mossback! Just what the world needed, another discussion on those fathered by the G.I.s returning from WW II. Hot diggety, no wonder that anyone or a site so bereft of interesting ideas then seeks to enlist its readers to provide it with ideas, to do ...

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Building a springboard to the Next Seattle

Posted Sun, Aug 29, 6:44 a.m.

It is your verbiage, David, that assures that Seattle will remain the same philistine burg it has always been, the white part anyhow. I was talking to some friends about Seattle philistinism, Jack Jolley brought up the name of Mic Dinsmore, who I once got to interview at great length. ...

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Why progressives should be fiscal conservatives

Posted Thu, Aug 26, 8:24 a.m.

moss seems not to do well under prolonged sunlight. let me water it a bit. e.g. the "war budget" of 750 billion plus 250 billion of supplementals and the black holes for the 25 national "security" agencies of which the CIA is the best known one... that one trillion generates ...

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Obama's liberal critics: Carrying hope too far

Posted Mon, Aug 23, 9:05 a.m.

Herb: here is the Wikipedia definition of "progressivism" ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism in Mexico this is called "desarrollo" "http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desarrollo it is an attitude that you can achieve social democracy via reform rather than revolution, a compromise formation going back to at least the 30s. it posits a tamed Capitalism instead of the ...

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Obama's liberal critics: Carrying hope too far

Posted Fri, Aug 20, 9:07 p.m.

and to: "fgruben" Bush I was George Herbert Walker 1988-1992, ended in the Keating Five and Savings and Loan debacle which cost the tax payers I forgot how many hundred billion. Bush II started with the Halliburton scandal, his chief backer, and ended with the near end of US capitalism, ...

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Obama's liberal critics: Carrying hope too far

Posted Fri, Aug 20, 9 p.m.

to: "NickBob" re Ike. He and the Dulles brothers were the one who deposed Mossadegh, installed the Shah which led to the Ayatollahs in Iran - their utter disgust with what Western Modernism had brought them, starting with the French and the Brits. Ike also destroyed Guatemalan Democracy. Now I ...

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Obama's liberal critics: Carrying hope too far

Posted Thu, Aug 19, 8:14 a.m.

When I read the world "realistic" from Mossback I reach for my hair clippers the way a German expressionist poet did for a gun he heard the word "kultur": Obama IS Bush III. He took over the entire national military industrial complex lock stock and barrel; there isn't a Rubinesque ...

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Seattle is big for new media initiatives

Posted Mon, Aug 16, 7:42 a.m.

i am not sure what any of these project have to do with journalism. most of them are infrastructural resource initiatives, and there is nothing wrong with them, except the "happiness index", which is ludicrous. What Seattle needs is a good critical arts weekly that takes on architecture, the civic ...

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Space Needle: Tower of power

Posted Mon, Aug 16, 7:25 a.m.

mossback certainly pulls out all the stops... to me it looks the same as the first time i beheld it fifteen years ago: an over-sized ridiculously proportioned silly Chinese umbrella... an Eiffel Tower it will never be, or an Empire State Building...Mossback even uses the Needle to defend Seattle Process...

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Humor: No fighting the trend toward college nickname changes

Posted Mon, Jul 12, 9:30 a.m.

Bichon Frises I really like. There's got to some team where "Maltese" fits - stupidest lapdogs ever. How about "Philistines" for the U.W., since that prognosticates what the great majority will become; vide David Brewster, president of the local chapter if ever there was one! Nice work, you might do ...

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Updated: A 'Wise' decision at the helm of the U.W.

Posted Fri, Jul 9, 11:18 a.m.

No opinion on Wise, except it is wondrous strange to find her, with her past in Science, on the Nike board. She does not appear to know that her [and others like her] being on that board is very useful to such an exploiter of ultra low wages, and thus ...

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Report details major errors by NOAA in moving ships from Seattle

Posted Fri, Jul 2, 8:44 a.m.

Sure look like the fix was in from Oregon! What utter madness! It would be nice for someone to check with the local NOAA folks what they think of all this, no??? http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

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More ideas for a downtown arts district

Posted Thu, May 20, 1:19 p.m.

I was very much of an urban pioneer once in Tribeca [Triangle-Below-Canal Street in Manhattan] in the middle of the 70s, and as a publisher commissioned the fellow who did the electricity for my loft, an ex-UPI writer, to write a book called PIONEERING IN THE URBAN WILDERNESS. Later, not ...

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Humor: America after the Gallic coup

Posted Mon, May 3, 3:44 p.m.

i am sorry but Chinglish beats this any day: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/03/world/asia/20100503_CHINGLISH

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Remnick's 'most intelligent' interview

Posted Sat, Apr 24, 3:43 p.m.

I don't know: Obama is a brand, but unlike a brand which must deliver on its promises, he's broken nine out of ten. His best friend is Jamie of Morgan, and Betsy Pritzker was his campaign fiancée chair person, but knew she couldn't sever in his administration. There doesn't seem ...

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Saving Pioneer Square by teaching it some old tricks

Posted Thu, Apr 22, 6:03 p.m.

Yup, I too felt I had heard it all before, and from Knute at that!

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Things finally break McGinn's way

Posted Tue, Apr 20, 8:28 a.m.

" politically experienced by a novice at City Hall, " means what? Is there really that much drama in this issue as Mr. Brewster describes in his mind-numbingly boring prose? What was interesting was to read the commentaries posted at the Seattle Times stories: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011546286_panhandling08m.html http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011649850_panhandling20m.html I must say I ...

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A deli that is all about authentic New York

Posted Fri, Apr 16, 7:44 a.m.

This region doesn't just need more sprightly and tasty Jewish food, which basically is central European peasant fare - central Europe stretches from the Urals all the way to the Rhine, and includes the Baltic brine and their herring, it needs a lot more Jews and Mexicans to get some ...

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Will economic jitters spawn another Ross Perot?

Posted Tue, Mar 30, 8:17 a.m.

Basically this country is bankrupt with its 15 trillion debt, it lives on by the grace of China, this the biggest Ponzi scheme of all could easily go belly up, not only is it economically bankrupt, so it is morally and intellectually. The inequality of its wealth indicates that the ...

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Health care done, get ready for financial reform

Posted Thu, Mar 25, 7:21 p.m.

Mr. van Dyke is regurgitating a story that has been running in then news for weeks, all the major papers, he and the readers of Crosscut would be better served if they looked at a close analysis of the consequences of the bill and why the insurance industry and big ...

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In defense of Tea Bag protesters

Posted Wed, Mar 24, 9:06 a.m.

"Hurling abuse is not only All-American" - I want to ask what "Amurrican" then means in this and all such contexts? Isn't it but an all-too human recourse to entirely irrational self-righteousness, as in the once "House Un-Amurrican committee." Yes, let us defend the tea-baggers, by all means, all the ...

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Throwing stones at Chihuly's glass house?

Posted Sat, Mar 13, 7:27 a.m.

MJH appears to think that Mossback has a sub-text and that his submarine's query is the famous "what is art." I wouldnt presume to knowing a subtext in this instance where the question is not even a question in the declaration of Chihuly as pure schlock, a word that derives ...

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Throwing stones at Chihuly's glass house?

Posted Thu, Mar 11, 6:44 p.m.

I happen to hate Chihuly's work, the colors, the shapes, and don't much care for the medium of glass except when the light comes through in churches, yet I can't but appreciate the sheer technical ability in producing a stylistic agglomeration such as the Glass Bridge in Tacoma, which fits ...

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Did Democrats make health care harder than necessary?

Posted Wed, Mar 10, 7:44 a.m.

indeed, back then nixon and reagan had not yet turned the reactionary democrats in the south into the reactionary fascists republicans of the present. so what do the labels demorat or pooplikan actually stand for? and why this piece months into the debate when far sharper pieces and better analyses ...

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Deliver us from evil, and its denial

Posted Mon, Mar 8, 2:34 p.m.

I agree with the two above comments that Pastor Robinson's piece is entirely off base. What use is there in evilizing what is a profound narcissistic injury venting itself in vengeful murder. That the perpetrator had dissociated the act immediately afterwards is typical of this syndrome, too. She has the ...

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Darwin on an earlier Chile earthquake

Posted Mon, Mar 1, 10:05 a.m.

crosscut sure needs writers like darwin or maybe heinrich von kleist: The story begins with the lead character, Jeronimo Rugera, preparing to hang himself in prison in Santiago, Chile, in 1647. Rugera had been a tutor at the house of Don Asteron, but Don Asteron dismissed him upon Asteron's discovery ...

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The Rep's fine 'Glengarry' rumbles past like a dirty L train

Posted Tue, Feb 16, 4:08 p.m.

yes, for once a nicely done review, with differentiation, as compared to the piece on the galagag or whatever its name production of another mamet play. keep it up david brewster! no more seattle ra ra!

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Humor: What country should we invade next?

Posted Mon, Feb 15, 9:34 a.m.

Texas needs invading, lots and lots of oil!

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Our low-snow winter means local economic problems

Posted Fri, Feb 12, 7:24 a.m.

What do you mean dry? It's as wet as usual, if not more so, however it is milder, so there is less of a snow pack at lower elevations. Lsst week LA finally got its second dowsing, but if there wasn't a spur of rain from it shooting up from ...

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Oregon envy: Can a Seattleite turn green wishing to be there?

Posted Wed, Feb 3, 8:18 a.m.

Very nice piece, tend to agree. No surprise that a boom town like Bend would get them during a recession.

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Artistic guts in tough times

Posted Tue, Feb 2, 3:25 p.m.

You make pleasant noises, David, but don't tell, so far, why Pinter's plays are significant to you or what impression they make. I happen to have liked his politics better than his plays, finding his egnimatistic procedures inferior to Samuel Beckett's. MICHAEL ROLOFF http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/ http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/ http://handke-discussion.blogspot.com/ http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name Member Seattle Psychoanalytic ...

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The Massachusetts message to Obama

Posted Wed, Jan 20, 8:23 a.m.

what do you mean change course? the guy has broken every promise he made, except to surge in Afghanistan. this is bush III, and with a vengeance. we now have supplementals coming, which he promised not to have. a trillion dollar defense budget, more than the rest of the world ...

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Seattle arts are in trouble

Posted Wed, Jan 13, 4:02 p.m.

yup after 15 years of seeing the damned blue angels scare the hell out of the birds in seattle and the ridiculous seafare pirates i can see seattle also without the huskies and maybe some great theater instead in the stadium for the knuckle heads to enjoy. only then will ...

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Seattle arts are in trouble

Posted Tue, Jan 12, 11:58 a.m.

there is this to be said for Seattle arts, except for the Northwest Ballet they really cannot leave town and show their face at any metropolitan area, can they? might it not be better to have one great equity theater instead of three mediocre ones? the "seafare pirates" somehow belongs ...

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In defense of two pariahs

Posted Fri, Jan 8, 8:40 a.m.

what might tim eyman and joe lieberman have in common except that the last syllable of their surname and that both have their detractors to be mentioned together so speciously? liebermann is the senator from the insurance industry, hartford, conn. and is entirely beholden to several other interest groups. eyman ...

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Rethinking the rain

Posted Thu, Jan 7, 8:24 a.m.

As to what I call God's nasal spray a weather poem in a few moments. However, this ain't much of an el nino year, when the wet is supposed to go to California, but instead has been going north of here when it hasn't been on top of us. If ...

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A sense of wonderment

Posted Mon, Jan 4, 9:28 a.m.

"We are the market place. We are the world. We are in power. We write the history. We are the language.... " and you get to take a bath in Ted van Dyke's tepid soup of warmed up generalities! and if you do it long enoug t'will will ruin your ...

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Seven steps for 'saving' Pioneer Square

Posted Mon, Dec 21, 4:57 p.m.

I hate what I have to say: but I don't believe anything but gentrification of the area will save it. Knock down the gross viaduct - how did it get built in the first place? Blocking off the view of the bay? Well, since the end of the Victorian age, ...

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Czech buses: The key to Kafka?

Posted Fri, Dec 18, 11:06 a.m.

Why didnt you ask the ticked clerk to be more specific? And you would have avoided running around like the typical American chick without a head?

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Come together: Lennon's death, radio, and us

Posted Tue, Dec 8, 1:47 p.m.

I happened to be on St. Simons Island off the Georgia coast that day, and knew the Dakota and its couryard where Lennon was killed. The first news had it that the killer was a Georgia fellow, and it was astounding to hear the locals instantly claim that it had ...

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Nita gets the last word

Posted Thu, Dec 3, 8:58 a.m.

Chesapeake Bay Retrievers appear to be Chocolate Labs!

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The dim prospects for success in Obama's strategy

Posted Thu, Dec 3, 8:28 a.m.

Here's fine take on the policy and its origins: :Obama’s speech on Afghanistan: A compendium of lies 3 December 2009 In his December 1 speech at West Point announcing the deployment of 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan, President Barack Obama attempted to justify a major escalation of a deeply ...

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Obama: that cornered feeling

Posted Sat, Nov 21, 7:54 a.m.

Obambi kept Bush's military policies in place, ditto for the economic team, so there is not much change is there, better coloring, smoother talk, wouldn't mind chatting with the guy unless he talked the rhetoric also in person, more than I can say for criminals like Cheney/ Bush. What can ...

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A bad election for moderates

Posted Fri, Nov 20, 8:08 a.m.

Pragmatism is, e.g, the Dred-Scott decion, most infamously. It is when the right long term decision is not made, or not putting in the right rails in the tunnel here in Seattle, it is invariably more costly than what is saved. Here, in Seattle, I have noticed during the 15 ...

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A bad election for moderates

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 9:10 a.m.

Sarah: "Pragmatic" is the voodoo concept one [or a group] invokes when one [a group] decides to do what it wants to do anyway, and usually, as in the cases that I cited, pragmatic is the easiest the laziest of "solutions" ; pragmatism is THE all-American ideology. To give a ...

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A bad election for moderates

Posted Wed, Nov 18, 9:17 a.m.

Perhaps the concept of "interest" will get us beyond these now meaningless terms "conservative", "liberal", moderate. To reply to the immediately preceding comment by Sean: the extreme wing of the Pooplikan party, Limbaugh, Rove and now Palin: it is an outgrowth of what was once known as the Republican Southern ...

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Telling the truth about torture

Posted Tue, Nov 17, noon

Yes, people like McGovern are fine. First rate. And it's nice to see that a Jesuit educated man has not become two-faced. I was a kind of pet of the predecessor to the CIA, the OSS, in Bremen, first rate guys all the way, who however, by the start of ...

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A bad election for moderates

Posted Mon, Nov 16, 9:06 a.m.

Anyone who has terms like moderate center sloshing around his noggin is just another David Brooks who is in fact an insidious and clever Neo-Con, otherwise of course he'd have been out on his ass at Auntie's rag a long time ago. David is a poor man's David Brooks which ...

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My picks for the general election ballot

Posted Thu, Oct 22, 9:01 a.m.

Whatever credence I may have put in van Dyke's judgment up to this point is forever gone with his voting for a pretty galleon figure like Hutchinson!

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In praise of the infamous 'Seattle Process'

Posted Fri, Oct 9, 9:11 a.m.

Seattle submitted to the siren song of the car industry and abandoned its trolley cars after ww II as did all u.s. cities... the consequences being all around us... it used lake washington around husky stadium for its dumping ground....and eventually had to cover the area over.... the tiles that ...

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Business-as-usual is back in the saddle

Posted Tue, Sep 15, 9:19 a.m.

HERE IS A FINE PIECE ON WHAT'S KNOWN AS "MINSKYISM" http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/13/why_capitalism_fails/?page=full i am quite willing to forego my inveterate Trotkyism for "Minskyism" which proposes from the bottom up bail out, full employment at minimum wage should prime the pump so that the useless no good except for themselves rich masters ...

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Obama's speech: So long, public option

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 8:38 a.m.

Tax the hell out of the obese! I've been in Seattle 15 years and the populace I would guesstimate has increased it's average weight by a pound a year, not this forever bantam however. For every pound overweight, you pay one per cent extra on your income tax!

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Utopia: Are we there yet?

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 8:33 a.m.

For once I really like something by Mossback, who has extended himself! I'd say the "Eco Man" piece lacks just one item to be perfect, a mountain bike!

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The fate of Obama's presidency

Posted Fri, Sep 4, 8:31 a.m.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175109/david_swanson_the_more_things_change http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/02-3 The Obamacy is "Bush 3", the sheeples are fooled again, what shows the utter confusion of the sheep is that there are people who think that the man who was elected by Goldman/ Sachs is a socialist! You were sold a brand and since you are brand buyers...

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Greg, we hardly knew ye

Posted Wed, Aug 26, 8:16 a.m.

grouch that i am i was not especially grouchy with mayor nickels and am surprised to note that the nice people of seattle are even grouchier than i. these are the same people that see snow all year round and are surprised when there's a once in a decade itsy ...

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Dick Cheney: Bush critic

Posted Fri, Aug 14, 11:17 a.m.

I happen to think that Cheney, Rumsfeld et al belong to be put before a Nuremberg type tribunal, which would surely condemn them to the gallows.

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Obama's second 100 days' report card. Not good.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 8:55 a.m.

and here is chris hedges on obambi http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/10-2 also look at an enumeration of where he's switched from his campaign promises and stayed precisely the same as bush/ cheney http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

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Obama's second 100 days' report card. Not good.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 7:46 a.m.

Look, this is the Goldman Sachs presidency, who gave the largest amount - appr. 1 million bucks to the Obambi campaign, just as the previous presidency was the Enron one. People are so desperate that they foist hope on a presidential candidate who has a better tan and speaks in ...

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Seattle Mayor: a bad career move

Posted Fri, Aug 7, 8:04 a.m.

a dull city a dull mayor deserves!

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'Kennewick Man,' 13 years later

Posted Wed, Jul 29, 8:52 a.m.

It's nice to see Roger Downey back if only on this hoary subject, I hope that Crosscut will avail itself of his badly needed talents as a reviewer of plays. As to the topic in question, it struck me as entirely insane when it became news these many years ago. ...

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Light rail at last: What took us forever?

Posted Wed, Jul 22, 6:03 a.m.

seattle seems to have had a fine streetcar network, then it submitted to the automobile, rubber and cement industry, at least the overhead wires for left to electric buses to hook up to... as to planning for the future, look how the hegemon is planning in 40 year increments, and ...

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Light rail at last: What took us forever?

Posted Tue, Jul 21, 7:59 a.m.

I expect one could get more quickly to downtown seattle from five miles off during the horse and buggy days than do the slugs now as they ooze along the hi and biways. as to the overlapping interests and authorities, they are actually worse on the east coast, e.g. new ...

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Light rail does not a 'grown-up' city make

Posted Mon, Jul 20, 8:17 a.m.

seeing seattle from madison park is like seeing california from carmel-by-the-sea! only high class pooches are taken for a walk by the beach there. no ghettos? where has mossback been? mossback needs to take his weight for a walk down south seattle all the way to georgetown. right now of ...

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Intiman imports a celebrated 'Othello'

Posted Fri, Jul 17, 8:19 a.m.

Well, Thomas May, as far as I am concerned, ought to stop writing about the arts altogether, and learn to justify his adjectives, that means to understand his taste. The only actor who was able to project his voice, the only Shakespearean actor in the lot is John Campion. Nothing ...

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Tim Eyman and the California malaise

Posted Fri, Jul 17, 7:53 a.m.

the government consist of and for and is by the people. if a people cannot govern themselves it/ they ought to dissolve itself, and reform or not, into a rat pack, into a swarm of crows!? californiae definitely ruined itself starting with proposition 13 way back at the beginning of ...

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Most livable cities aren't in U.S.

Posted Wed, Jul 15, 11:37 a.m.

well seattle certainly does not belong with some of its hideous stretches, some other stretches of course do. but overall, seattle will never make it. the disappearance of portland is a surprise. munich? you gotta be kidding. ditto, hamburg! agree with vancouver! how about durban, south africa. but perhaps it ...

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Jim Lynch: the next hot Northwest novelist

Posted Fri, Jul 10, 6:47 a.m.

How about a good long quote from Mr. Lynch's prose? So that we could make up our own mind's? Instead of relying on the reviewer's puff platitudes???

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Best of 2009: Greg Nickels: giving toughness a bad name

Posted Fri, Jun 19, 9:11 a.m.

The fine comments on LBJ need to be amended by the unfortunate truth that the fellow who had no problem picking a dog up by its long ears was afraid to be known as being a mr. softee on commies, which other-directedness, which cowardice, then ruined all his best laid ...

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Best of 2009: Six things you cannot say in Seattle

Posted Thu, Jun 11, 8:26 a.m.

ah the days, the 100 years of it that seattelites could dump all their crap into lake washington... look at it from dale carnegie's point of view: it made great landfill between husky stadium and university village shopping emporium, then the city capped all the stuff with dirt, sowed some ...

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Tough choices about a jumpers' bridge

Posted Tue, Jun 9, 10:13 a.m.

"Kingneptune" makes me rethink my idea of "let them jump" ... since the jumping ought not to pose a danger to those below. one could chain off those parts that are over land... if someone feels they want a watery death... be my guest, no? on the other hand "hacknflack" ...

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Mahler's elusive farewell

Posted Mon, Jun 8, 7:55 a.m.

gerald schwartz is to mahler as a two stroke engine is to a v-8... .............................as a cripple is to jessy owen..... .............................as a lame duck is to a blue heron as the provinces are to new york...

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Aurora Bridge will get suicide barriers

Posted Mon, Jun 8, 7:47 a.m.

" ... emotional well-being of office workers, walkers, cyclists, and and boaters who often witness suicide jumpers landing in the Lake Washington Ship Canal, nearby parking lots and on the Burke-Gilman trail..." Out of sight out of mind, eh?

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Hello, Poppy? Obama here. Need some advice.

Posted Fri, Jun 5, 8:32 a.m.

ah yes, gone are the days when cheney could dismiss a trillion here and a trillion there as fiddlesticks! the populace will pay through every orifice for the criminal irresponsibility of its elite money wolves!

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Tough choices about a jumpers' bridge

Posted Mon, Jun 1, 7:14 a.m.

oh good god let them jump put in an observation platform bring in some sharks to feed on the bodies and let's build a memorial to the mossback for the time that he wasn't out of gas instead of being a balloon with nothing interesting to write about

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Don't write off the Republicans

Posted Fri, May 8, 11:08 a.m.

"In other (not so new) news, Dick Cheney knew about torture all along and is proud of it: In an interview with a radio host, he said Obama and Democrats were ending interrogation policies "to appeal to the far-left in their party." He went on to offer some advice that, ...

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Don't write off the Republicans

Posted Fri, May 8, 7:30 a.m.

write off the pooplikans? what need is there for them with a president who's owned by goldmann sachs and whose war policies are just like bush/ cheney's? fiddlesticks.

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Torture, Nixon, Obama

Posted Wed, May 6, 8:38 a.m.

To bring those who had nothing but torture on their mind after they fell asleep at the wheel without an inkling of historical consequences that every empire [every huge crime maker] will suffer would mean not just a tribunal for Bush and Cheney [and the hangman's noose at Nuremberg] but ...

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Running King County, Microsoft-style

Posted Mon, May 4, 11:05 a.m.

so how much green was injected for the moss might stretch himself a bit for this endorsement?... who knows he might be right... but from comfy Sims to Microsoft manager??

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A Mark Morris masterwork comes to the Paramount

Posted Sat, Apr 25, 9:37 a.m.

orgulous indeed!

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Is it finally Spring?

Posted Fri, Apr 17, 7:54 a.m.

Spring begins when the Robins return, no? Spring Poem the robins are in good voice at 4:30 a.m. again yes the robins are back in the mating game and the mating game is on starbucks t.v. playing 'what lola wants' lola wants good coffee and to be well well, well ...

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Cliff Mass, what was that slop outside?

Posted Thu, Apr 16, 7:59 a.m.

i don't know, with all this "weather" hereabouts folks ought to write about it more interestingly than Mossback does. Here's one of a series of mine on the topic, from my forthcoming "Steeped in Seattle [better than in Old Tea Bag anyhow]" "Weather Poem # 2 Puget Sound regarded as ...

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Cliff Mass, what was that slop outside?

Posted Wed, Apr 15, 7:56 a.m.

here are my weather sites, a combination of [1] the navy military site; and [2] the SF based jet stream + forecast I am batting .750 as compared to the Seattle Times .500, and I am being generous. # 3 probast of the U. of W. is pretty good too. ...

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Best of 2009: Peter Donnelly and the Seattle way of arts

Posted Fri, Apr 3, 11:15 a.m.

Looks like a fine thoughtful piece. "fickle folks sitting in those seats and wanting reliable, easily digestible entertainment before heading back out to the suburbs to get to bed by 11." would seem to hit the nail of philistinism Seattle style on the head! those who applaud sets! who giggle ...

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Save the planet: Get rid of your cat

Posted Thu, Apr 2, 12:45 p.m.

GOOD GAWD! WHAT'S NEXT? MOSBACKS ARE BAD FOR YOUR BRAIN???

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Peter Donnelly: he gave unconditionally to the arts

Posted Tue, Mar 31, 1:43 p.m.

So with all that, why is Seattle such a swamp of philistines?

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Politics: The snow storm that won't end

Posted Tue, Mar 24, 8:13 a.m.

the person who mentioned that snow hereabouts is extra wet may have a point. this past sunday there was a brief snow fall with flakes the size of sparrows, or a baby's hand which of course melted in no time. i was surprised that not even those vaunted old times ...

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Obama's banking plan: a turning point?

Posted Tue, Mar 24, 8:06 a.m.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/big-fat-story/2009-03-24/money-men-analyze-geithners-plan/ here is a far better discussion of the newest geithner version of bush's plan to save goldman sachs. what an opportunity is being wasted to finally tame capitalism!

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Humor: You too can comprehend the AIG bailout

Posted Mon, Mar 9, 8:58 a.m.

very nice steve, you made me laugh! now let's put the 6 billion folks in the world into the trenches to make up what a.i.g. squandered. but the money's gotta be somewhere??? it can't all just have gone poof??

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Seattle's 'niceness' problem

Posted Wed, Mar 4, 10:46 a.m.

What a lively discussion! I was particularly impressed by Ted Van Dyk's and lindacs's observations since they are old timers who then returned. Some features that seem to prove annoying to old timers and new comers can be found in just about any city. There will be a clique in ...

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Seattle's 'niceness' problem

Posted Tue, Mar 3, 9:03 a.m.

Mossback is quite right that the region's niceness or not makes for a topic of perennial narcissistic interest. Before doing a numeral by numeral comment, a couple of observations: Seattle must have by far the nicest and talkative bus drivers in the nation, no doubt they are trained to be ...

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How big a change can Obama produce?

Posted Mon, Mar 2, 8:20 a.m.

well, as far as I can tell, what CAN you do when the house of cards is collapsing into the quicksand? 1] ctd. bases in Iraq until kingdom come. 2] getting even more mired in A'stan. 3] the attempt to save capitalism for the capitalists. 4] and do the reforms??? ...

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Is Seattle's growth unstoppable?

Posted Mon, Feb 23, 3:20 p.m.

so boring, once again, isn't it amazin how often a mossback can get mileage out of a beaten old dog like this story!

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Treasury Secretary Geithner needs a rescue plan, for himself

Posted Fri, Feb 13, 8:59 a.m.

what did you expect from a group of folks best described as "Clinton III" - Obambi never had any steam, just some empty phrases, a pleasant personality better skin color.

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Treasury Secretary Geithner needs a rescue plan, for himself

Posted Thu, Feb 12, 7:46 a.m.

I see, it's just an "image thing"??? I would say it's a matter of substance when one of the very men who helped pull last fall's bail out scam for Goldman Sachs and companies [letting competitor Lehmann go down the drain] tries to pull another huge fast one for his ...

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Best of 2009: Enough about Seattle. What do you think of Seattle?

Posted Fri, Feb 6, 9:05 a.m.

The first thing to remember is that Seattle is an American city and that it will have the pluses and minuses of all of them, the first feature perhaps being self-absorption; the second being that if you live long enough in Manhattan you will realize that, as London, it too, ...

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Why so many stumbles for Obama?

Posted Fri, Feb 6, 8:37 a.m.

Since hope is not my drug of choice, I cannot be disappointed. Yes, Clinton retreads, the same guys who created the forty trillion dollars toxicities that have ruined the whole world's economy are now supposed to detoxify? First of all for their own ruling class. Coming next week the second ...

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Rich jerk update

Posted Fri, Jan 30, 4:13 p.m.

VERY WEIRD. ROAD RAGE AMONG THE SUPER RICH I SUPPOSE.

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Wanted: a local prosecutor to try President Bush for murder

Posted Wed, Jan 28, 7:44 a.m.

It's silly to try Bush/Cheney/ Rumsfeld for murder of U.S. soldiers. The attack and conquest of Iraq on trumped up charges is quite enough to get you the gallows at Nuremberg, to wit: Hitler's trumped up attack on Poland. For that matter, LBJ's Tomkin Bay... the men who become responsible ...

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Does Mt. Rainier need a better name?

Posted Tue, Jan 27, 8:08 p.m.

"el capitan " is the name for no end of mountains that jut their chins out over highways in the southwest and that finally resurface out of my weather beaten mind...

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Does Mt. Rainier need a better name?

Posted Tue, Jan 27, 2:10 p.m.

by all means rename it Tahoma, better than calling it "old baldy", or "sierra blanca"... perhaps Mt. Fiji East??? Or introduce an "y" so that it would become "Mt. Rainy"??? Right now I forget the name that no end of western mountains are called that stick out their heads like ...

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A process that needs to progress: decision-making in Seattle

Posted Wed, Jan 14, 8:13 a.m.

mr. kammerer starts off bemoaning the seattle molasses way of reaching decisions and ends up asking for even more molasses, and in some of the dreariest, most ill edited prose [and that is saying something!] to appear in the dull Crosscut.

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Let it snow!

Posted Fri, Jan 9, 9:01 a.m.

100 inches of snow?? would mean a lot of frozen puppies no doubt, especially if it is followed by a spell of deep freeze.

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The shocking loss of Nat Hentoff

Posted Fri, Jan 2, 8:59 a.m.

Totally agree. And though pro-choice myself, I have the deepest respect for those, especially physicians, who oppose abortions on moral grounds. What is especially noxious in this controversial issue is that such a majority of anti-abortionists are then Christian warriors of the worst kind! e.g. the "Crawford Kid."

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Seattle snow, a new topic for gibes from New York City

Posted Fri, Jan 2, 8:52 a.m.

I would like to know how folks used to cope with snow when it used to regularly during the Winter. It has snowed twice in Seattle during the 15 years I have been here, in sufficiency to disable street traffic. Old Times tell me that you used to be able ...

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2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear. Essay 2

Posted Mon, Dec 29, 7:50 a.m.

As to snow: this seems to have been the second time in the 15 years I have been here that it has. The other, around 1996/97 it was about six inches in two inch increments with several frozen rain crusts inbetween, tough to walk through, and I gathered that the ...

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How to build a Northwest conservatism

Posted Fri, Dec 26, 12:14 p.m.

Mr. Vance the pragmatist! Whatever works works is what gets you where we are at!

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How to build a Northwest conservatism

Posted Fri, Dec 26, 10:18 a.m.

puyallup, thanks for the reply. 1] strong communities - i noticed during my 15 years here the explosion of building that occurred in south king county, as no doubt have you. that kind of cookie cutter architecture has occurred at other times too: look at how quickly the "craftsman" style ...

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How to build a Northwest conservatism

Posted Fri, Dec 26, 8:45 a.m.

here is a fine paul krugmann piece on "goo-goo-government" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1&ref;=opinion that addresses some of these matters:" F.D.R. managed to navigate these treacherous political waters safely, greatly improving government’s reputation even as he vastly expanded it. As a study recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research puts it, “Before ...

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How to build a Northwest conservatism

Posted Fri, Dec 26, 8:17 a.m.

This is just the usual set of platitudes, not even warmed over. From the Claremont right wing think tank indeed that hasn't had an original thought or formulation or concept in years. Best as I can tell, the folks who flocked to these parts turned Puget Sound into one huge ...

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Can writers get a federal bailout too?

Posted Fri, Dec 19, 8:55 a.m.

mossback's piece and the above comment make me wonder about the reaction in the thirties to the various w.p.a. projects: did they draw the kind of predictable venom that is sure to be showered on anything of the same kind now. an updating, neighborhood by neighborhood, of the city and ...

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The suburban road for reviving local Republicans

Posted Wed, Dec 17, 8:28 a.m.

Yes, this is at least the second time around of the piece, Chris. What good, what need is there of a Republican party - except that it is better to have two parties instead of one; two parties can keep each other honest, the reward is power. The Obama administration ...

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The "N" word at Lakeside

Posted Tue, Dec 16, 8:51 a.m.

both schools ought to read the wonderful insults at the end of Handke's OFFENDING THE AUDIENCE... and direct them at each other. then they will be cured for life. http://www.handketrans.scriptmania.com

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Northwest fiction rooted in the region

Posted Wed, Dec 10, 7:47 a.m.

well, raban has written two other books that have a fine take on the northwest: passage to juneau & badlands; the latter helped explain to me where these folks came from, anyhow a lot of them, and why they still are that way in so many ways. guterson of course. ...

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Bush/Nixon and the battle for the bottom

Posted Wed, Dec 10, 7:40 a.m.

I notice that Jimmy Carter appears on some lists. Well, Carter/ Brzezinski and Casey/Reagan brought us the destabilization of a country of 25 million and the creation of the Mujahadeem! That certainly qualifies a world historical crime of which Brzezinski contnues to be proud, because he avers that it helped ...

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Bush/Nixon and the battle for the bottom

Posted Tue, Dec 9, 7:50 a.m.

I think anyone whose name has become synonymous with Bankruptcy, let's call it Bushruptcy from now on, is not just possibly the worst U.S. President, but must take the cake among that legion of South American, Carribean and Italian prime ministers for being one of the worst ever. Tricky Dick, ...

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The real reason Dino Rossi lost

Posted Wed, Dec 3, 7:54 a.m.

Well yes, has there ever been an administration in recent memory except possibly in Argentina in the 80s that ruined a country in a few short years as Bush/Cheney did since 2001!? The Iraq fiasco, Katrina and now the comeuppance on greed and out of control national debt gone wild! ...

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Obama is booting a chance for reform in agriculture

Posted Mon, Dec 1, 8:31 a.m.

"change you can believe in" = "the same old same old cold warriors" + "the same old goldman sachs and citicorp faces that brought you the fiasco!" of course agribiz will call the tune! hope is the worst of all dopes.

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What to watch for in Secretary Clinton

Posted Mon, Dec 1, 8:19 a.m.

"change you can believe in" = "the same old same old cold warriors" + "the same old goldman sachs and citicorp faces that brought you the fiasco!" Brain dead Van Dyk.

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A rarity: an urban President

Posted Tue, Nov 25, 9:03 p.m.

f.d.r. seemed pretty cosmopolitan, no? Truman was from Kansas city and grew in the job. Ike was cosmopolitan in a grand army way. bush seemed to need to play the hick though his father was comfortable on the grand stage. Chicago, Chicago Chicago means a lot of corruption both high ...

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The Washington GOP: RIP?

Posted Wed, Nov 19, 8:48 a.m.

an utterly mindless piece, carlson might as well be talking about two different brands of cola or a football rivalry. so conceivably the republican party might keep the democrats honest in this form of competition in a two party competiton. not that it wouldn't do seattle some good to have ...

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For Husky fans, even booing Rick Neuheisel is no fun

Posted Mon, Nov 17, 5:50 p.m.

Neuheisel won his suit because the university lied. N. was a winner and had winning teams, the UW and Seattle are a bunch of hypocritical losers!

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A word of support for Tyrone Willingham

Posted Tue, Nov 4, 9:47 a.m.

Why not abandon the whole damn program? Six times a year all traffic becomes gridlock around Husky stadium as 25 thousand cars and buses a 75 k purple morons stream to and back and burn up a small oil field! Get a different mascot than something as primitive and moronic ...

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A drinking historical society

Posted Fri, Oct 17, 1:58 p.m.

what endless sentimental nonsense from mossback, doc maynard was one of the original thieves while the u.s. army was string up yakima indians.

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Circular behavior

Posted Wed, Oct 15, 8:05 a.m.

Mossback discussed the Singaporization of Seattle already back during his Weekly days. I take his word for having been in Singapore itself, I myself have no inclinations to visit that city. However, a visit to a big dirty port such as Calcutta where "schoolgirls" meet eager young sailors is another ...

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The WaMu sale: worst possible way for Seattle

Posted Mon, Sep 29, 10:40 a.m.

WELL, IF WAMU IS NO LONGER AROUND: to support the arts... maybe the better at least for the seattle rep. the kind of drivel that comes out of the mouth of jane zalutzky demonstrates that the rep needs a new board if she is the president of platitudes, as bankupt ...

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A city of memory

Posted Fri, Sep 26, 5:20 p.m.

A sponge full of memories all right: but not one clear drop when you squeeze it, murk murk murk and the mist of sentimentality.

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Why vote for Palin when you can vote for real fiction?

Posted Mon, Sep 22, 9:05 a.m.

since ACT: over all did such crappy gutless theater fiction though it may have been i meself look forward to the palinsky a genuine female demagogue with ambitions who's successful to boot oh how the know-nothings love her oh how they deserve her! http://palin-presidency-comedy.blogspot.com/

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A crash course

Posted Mon, Sep 22, 8:55 a.m.

Oh let me count the ways....: Oh let me count the ways I love thee Bailout! How loverly your eyes, the future beckons. I wagered in Vegas, I went broke, I cheated everyone, including the house, now the City of Vegas is bailing me out, I'm running straight back to ...

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Financial fallout and the coming election

Posted Fri, Sep 19, 10:06 a.m.

here's the crux of it: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ article/the-end-of-american-capitalism here's the crucible of it http://www.cjr.org/essay/boiler_room.php i happen to know that that is the case since i also checked out mortgage boiler rooms in seattle as part of a book called "write some numb's, bitch!' which focuses on what is known as "badge ...

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Spokane: what Seattle used to be

Posted Fri, Sep 19, 10:01 a.m.

whichever way you cut it, the mossback: had his head stuck in the ground like a true seattlelite then and now...VOTE WHITE-VAN AUKEN FOR REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/elec-s13.shtml

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Now, every governor is a 'commander'

Posted Tue, Sep 9, 8:46 a.m.

a fine piece by the not so sleepy mossback: well, the m/i complex has won, hasn't it? oh me god they're shutting down this military base or that. we're not getting this or that military ear mark tanker deal. the genius of the u.s. m/i complex is that it has ...

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If you haven't been vetted yet, there's something wrong with you

Posted Tue, Sep 9, 8:28 a.m.

not bad as seattle humor goes...: except of course that it doesn't get into the nitty gritty of what "vetting" politically means. having your trash examined, having an elephant with you in the bedroom sniffing under the sheets, checking for affiliation to grrists and grizzlies, whether you wet your pants ...

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Heart attack on McCain

Posted Mon, Sep 8, 11:04 a.m.

is that all that grows on the mossback?: regarding the campaign?? the music played at conventions, being annoyed at fink liebermann?? http://www.usvetdsp.com/ jan08/mccain_military_record.htm http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/ 1999-03-25/news/is-john-mccain-a-war-hero/2 and look at all of the phoenixnewtimes stories on mccain... that alternative sure beats anything in seattle and the one that mossback and brewester ran ...

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Sarah Palin: the liberal voter's worst nightmare

Posted Fri, Sep 5, 3:32 p.m.

REAGAN WOULD NEVER BE SO IRRESPONSIBLE AS TO NOMINAT PALIN!: O.K. I'LL CONFINE MYSELF TO TWO LINKS THE FIRST IS TO ALASKA NEWSPAPER RECEPTION OF MCCAIN'S CHOICE THE SECOND IS TO JOHN DEAN'S PIECE ON WHY PALIN WOULD NEVER PASS MUSTER CONSTITUTIONALLY: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ greg-mitchell/2-top-alaska-newspapers-q_b_122625.html http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/dean/20080904.html

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A decent speech by a decent man

Posted Fri, Sep 5, 10:53 a.m.

I don't know what's "decent" about McCain: as far as I am concerned he is a war criminal. He bombed Hanoi, what had any Vietnamese ever done to the US. Ho Chi Minh helped the U.S. defeat the Japanese, the US [truman, small town hero truman] allowed the French back ...

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Sarah Palin: the liberal voter's worst nightmare

Posted Fri, Sep 5, 10:42 a.m.

# 4 of 4: Palin then segued into one of many anti-Obama barbs, declaring, "in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns ...

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Sarah Palin: the liberal voter's worst nightmare

Posted Fri, Sep 5, 10:41 a.m.

part III of IV omments: After controlling the White House for all but eight out of the last 28 years, boasting a majority in the House of Representatives for 12 out of the last 14 years and in the Senate for more than eight out of the last 12, as ...

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Sarah Palin: the liberal voter's worst nightmare

Posted Fri, Sep 5, 10:32 a.m.

ctd from previous post, one more reply to come: ctd And former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the multi-millionaire son of a governor, complained, "For decades, the Washington sun has been rising in the east–Washington has been looking to the eastern elites, to the editorial pages of the Times and the ...

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Sarah Palin: the liberal voter's worst nightmare

Posted Fri, Sep 5, 10:26 a.m.

Let's see, Palin as Reagan, and now how much lower can the stick go??: Well, let's see, Sarah Palin went to five different schools, chiefly two year community colleges, to get her degree in six years, in journalism. She is vengeful as a mayor, now as a governor. she's in ...

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A classic evisceration speech by the running mate

Posted Thu, Sep 4, 9:16 a.m.

Oh boy, van Dyck.: Doesn't it say "eviscerate" in the headline to your piece? Where's mention of a single scalpel? Also, you assume that the chick wrote that speech herself! Give at least one quote. Still, we have something to look forward to push the 300 million sheeples over the ...

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The case for Sarah Palin

Posted Wed, Sep 3, 12:48 p.m.

Written like a true Paleo-Palinite right wing hack: , Scott! McCain has an aneurysm and then what: governance by committee {let's pray, since for once that will be all you can do} ; baby sitting the baby sitting proliferating grandma when she's not in the bed room, Sarah, who we ...

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The high price of Sarah Palin's candidacy

Posted Tue, Sep 2, 9:31 a.m.

so the palins are foxes just look at this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4iCDBIAde8&feature=email what do you and the amurrican people thunk folks do up in alaska when the sun's not shining? they screw and screw and screw and then they drink some beer and whisky and then they screw some more maybe ...

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The making of an effective arts board

Posted Fri, Aug 29, 7:26 p.m.

paddy, a billion bucks wouldnt improve: theater in seattle. you could eliminate it altogether and it would make no difference except to the eateries. it's not essential to the intellectual life, whet there is of it, in the city. or any other aspect of the city's being. so all this ...

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The making of an effective arts board

Posted Fri, Aug 29, 9:08 a.m.

Trapnell's are a bunch of tired platitudes: the likes of which are typical for Seattle and a theater scene which produces nothing of national note, nothing leaves Seattle, except some artistic directors who come here, take a sniff ,and depart as quickly as is feasible. Trapnell's is the kind of ...

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A newsstand's last stand

Posted Wed, Aug 13, 8:04 a.m.

so it takes the l.a. times: to alert the sleeping nordic hounds in seattle that there last news stand is shut down. wow. wow. wow. bow wow.

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Why Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has lost traction

Posted Wed, Aug 6, 9:25 a.m.

here's a good roundup of critiques of obambi: http://www.truthdig.com/ report/item/20080722_obama_on_the_brink/ "To ask whether this paean to Reagan was merely political calculation begs the question. Obama is largely made up of political calculation. To inquire as to where his weighing up the advantages of this or that position ends and his ...

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As PONCHO regroups, Seattle arts struggle

Posted Sat, Jul 26, 7:16 p.m.

Ms. Trapnell make the arts sound like a forest!: old growth replanting how about a little weeding? music education in Seattle high schools once produced noteworthy jazz musicians. but do the young musicians then have local venues? not really. rock and punk and hip-hop have inherint limitations which not even ...

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Fixing our big flat tire

Posted Tue, Jul 22, 8:59 a.m.

Even minor bottle necks seem not to get unplugged: In Seattle for fifteen years now, 13 in the U-District, I have observed that the intersection of 15th Ave NE and 45th Street, where most of the bus traffic going north must make a left, is a huge mess every afternoon ...

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The founder of ArtsJournal talks about arts and new media

Posted Wed, Jul 16, 10:38 a.m.

too square for this boy arts journal is: i subscribe to artsjournal, but scarcely ever follow up the square stories to which it links. the problem is that mclennan's p.o.v. , his taste, do not show, come through, it's a compendium, average, it looks to me as though he spent ...

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In the garden: mean girls

Posted Tue, Jul 15, 11:12 a.m.

bhuddist are re-born as tadpoles: i read somewhere. and god is a big green frogl

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This Streetcar rides a little too smoothly

Posted Tue, Jul 15, 7:55 a.m.

Nicely nuanced review: showing a fine understanding of the play and its demands. surpris surpris..

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Our cultural amnesia

Posted Tue, Jul 15, 5:25 a.m.

There he goes again!: THERE HE GOES AGAIN! Ye ole mite drenched Mossback! Introducing us to ye old Seattle! What a team he and the Brewmaster make! The Master came to my attention when he wanted the then theater reviewer of the Weekly, founded by him, not to review shows ...

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The Sonics decision that wasn't

Posted Thu, Jul 3, 11:44 a.m.

Name for a new team, locally grown,: ought to be "The Seattle Slugs".... The Sonics actually were quite a snazzy team 15 years ago... who were then neglected... Seattle has not improved in the last decade or so... Five good small theaters have shut down...The Seattle Rep invited me to ...

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Seven premonitions you can take to the bank

Posted Mon, Jun 30, 6:28 p.m.

re COMMISSIONER PAT DAVIS: pat davis enjoys also the whole hearted support of SSA Marine whose sweetheart deals with the Port have had her unstinting approval. take a look at who made contributions to her campaign, the smell of corruption has been coming from the foxy lady for years. she ...

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Is Obama something of a conservative?

Posted Thu, Jun 12, 5:01 p.m.

OBAMA IS A NEO-LIBERAL: and the difference between a neo-liberal and a neo con is that a neo-liberal is a smoother operator. follow these links, folks, and see how you've been conned already once again. all those obambi links to big money crooks in chicago and washington from which "i ...

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Locals in an Obama administration

Posted Wed, Jun 11, 4:32 p.m.

please check out these links to stories about obama: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080608_the_iran_trap/ that is christ hedges talking http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/09/9508/ here is obama's position on south america and groveling in front of the miami cubans just as he did in front of aipac where he had an opportunity to do something to avert the ...

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Unsustainable Seattle

Posted Tue, Jun 10, 1:21 p.m.

took from 1861 about 100 years to turn lake washington: let's see now. it took the settlers from 1861 about 100 years to turn lake washington into the kind of toilet where Sticklebacks lost their armor because no trout could see them; the Duwamish and many other areas into super ...

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Landlords mobilize as City Hall considers rental-housing inspections

Posted Sun, Jun 8, 7:07 a.m.

dickensian condition in the u.w. district and surround..: Coming to Seattle in the mid 90s and becoming a visiting scholar at the u.w. - divorced, kids grown, needing to live frugally for the sake of several unfunded long term projects - i thought all i needed was a single room. ...

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Unearthing baby giant earthworms

Posted Tue, Jun 3, 7:06 p.m.

Tom Englehart of TomDispatch fame thinks.... http://www.tomdispatch.com/: or fantasizes in his labors that the earthworm would be great for catching' great white sharks. http://www.tomdispatch.com/ now i can think of quite a few human sharks i would force to eat it, in lieu of other punishment tom won't even be able ...

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George Nethercutt: Republicans need to rally around John McCain

Posted Fri, May 23, 10:11 a.m.

will cross cut also permit campaign speeches: for kucinich, mike gravel, etc.?? yes i think the u.s. ought to elect the man who will become known as the "lion of waziristan:" and who is honest enough to say up front"bomb bomb bomb iran" and "100 years in Iraq." what the ...

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Endangered species: Oregon Republicans

Posted Wed, May 21, 9:42 a.m.

there are rattlers in Wisconsin!: wow!!!

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Getting ready for the Big One

Posted Tue, May 20, 9:33 a.m.

the liquefication: that will occur in SoDo and other landfill areas [U-Village, to Lake Washington] might be emphasized. I happened to experience the Northridge earthquake [4 AM I recall] while living appr. 12 crow miles off in Venice, CA. in 1994; Venice is built on landfill which would have liquefied. ...

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A bold plan to turn UW into a Stanford died a quiet death

Posted Tue, May 20, 9:01 a.m.

in the humanities indeed leagues away from stanford: or from a u.c.l.a. or berkeley. but also, in the medical school, all one needs do is compare the u.c.l.a med library with the one at the u.w. this is an extremely provincial university perforce of the city and the state it ...

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Fred Bassetti and 'warmed-up modernism' in architecture

Posted Mon, Apr 14, 2:03 p.m.

No photos of Bassetti's buildings unfortunately: but the ones of his fellow architects work at the Hilltop community on the Eastside are certainly attractive. As to needing to live until one is sixty before one designs a house: age 6 suffices if you happen to be lucky to be born, ...

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How great corporate power shadows Gregoire on coal shipments

Posted Thu, Apr 10, 7:08 a.m.

nice story, pleasantly written: aside staa baa as the japs call it, there seem to have been a few other things brewing in the city of chief sealth that did not turn out well or were that well grounded. this couldn't be the time that mossback and other nostalgikers hereabouts ...

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Jean Godden on Seattle: My, how you've changed!

Posted Fri, Mar 28, 6:41 p.m.

one more comment on the godden: it is a very north of Jackson Street piece, south of Jackson it would be incomprehensible.

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Jean Godden on Seattle: My, how you've changed!

Posted Thu, Mar 27, 7:45 a.m.

just a few points on a piece i mind a lot less: than most of what I read of Ms.Godden's work as a columnist. Edelstein said harsh things about Seattle audiences, and I could say equally harsh things about E. as an artistic director: but Seattle audiences APPLAUD THE SET ...

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Washington's GOP ain't dead yet

Posted Fri, Mar 14, 8:10 a.m.

ST. CLAIR THE AIR HEAD IS AT IT AGAIN!: I REALIZED ON READING ST CLAIR ON THE FASCISTICALLY INCLINED SUPER-SNOB BUCKLEY [IN MANY WAYS A MAN MUCH NICER THAN HIS PROVOCATIVE IDEOLOGY] THAT ST. CLAIR WAS AN AIRHEAD FROM WAY BACK [AS MUCH AS THE WWU AIRHEADS HE STARTED REACTING ...

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How I became an Obama girl

Posted Sat, Feb 16, 8 p.m.

two faces LAST AND THIRD PART: No doubt, they believe Obama, who would be America's first African-American president, is best suited to confront the dangers posed by continuing economic crisis and rising social tensions. Who better to demand even greater sacrifices from the working class, all in the name of ...

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How I became an Obama girl

Posted Sat, Feb 16, 7:55 p.m.

two faces of obambi part 2: Thus, BusinessWeek noted, last Sunday, after learning of his victory in the Maine Democratic caucuses, Obama sat down at his computer to exchange emails with Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS America, one of his major Wall Street "bundlers," responsible for bringing in millions in ...

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How I became an Obama girl

Posted Sat, Feb 16, 7:53 p.m.

The two faces of Barack Obama [part i]: The two faces of Barack Obama By Bill Van Auken 14 February 2008 Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author Appearing before a packed auditorium at the University of Wisconsin Tuesday on the night ...

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Why Obama's mantra of change has a short half-life

Posted Fri, Feb 15, 10:37 a.m.

it's a lot worse mantra than: "a kinder gentler nation" "it's the economy you morons" "compassionate conservatism" or whatever hoola hoop the idiots fall for every four years. obama has brzisnky as his foreign policy advisor, aint goin' to be no change with the lion of a'stan in your den. ...

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Orca recovery effort: more of the same

Posted Fri, Feb 15, 10:17 a.m.

whag is this fetish you seattle girly men have with killer wales: who'll devour a school of porpoises just for the soft underside of their bellies. why not idolize a pet that is appropriate, say, what, a spayed dog? a moon calf?

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Taking the long view, the Muni League investigates the Port of Seattle

Posted Thu, Feb 14, 8:48 a.m.

AN INTERESTING COMMENT FROM RICHARD POPE: on this subject appeared in the PI http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/ seattlepolitics/archives/131649.asp Posted by Richard Pope at 2/11/08 4:21 p.m. I think the Municipal League should dissolve in response to the Port of Seattle scandals. The Municipal League was established in 1910 for the express purpose of ...

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The rock star of hope

Posted Mon, Feb 11, 9:37 a.m.

hope is a lot of hooey, its just another mindless drug: i recall that in 2004 the brilliant mr. berger was taken in by the castrato john kerry. obama's slogan "hope" is vacuous. moreover, hope is just another drug. obama's foreign policy adviser is ziggy Brzezinski of afghan destabilization fame; ...

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Tim Eyman's great year

Posted Tue, Jan 22, 9:01 p.m.

all for tim eyman: i caught him for the first time at the port commission meeting on the occasion of the state audit report. however, he's a fool in thinking that by eliminating the commission - annual cost 6,000 per commissioner, some travel expenses - will solve the problem by ...

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Advocating death with dignity – for the human race

Posted Tue, Jan 15, 9:31 a.m.

before we leave...: we might give a different monkey or animal, perhaps a donkey , a chance at the succession! something with only the most minimal of death instincts.

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How to fix the Port of Seattle: Splitsville

Posted Sat, Jan 12, 7:05 a.m.

splitsville is not a solution in and of itself, not relevant: other port authorities in the country manage both sea ports and airports. however, i agree with fletch that at least a regional authority that addressed both the seaports in pudgy sound and the airports as one and rationalized them ...

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The Pike Place Market as cultural refuge

Posted Thu, Jan 3, 1:50 p.m.

first place the only real hippie i ever met: a fellow i stayed with in a big loft opposite the p.i. building took me when i came to seattle at summer solstice 1994 was the market and i've been going ever since chiefly for some fruit and steamed scallops and ...

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2007 in review: Mossback hunts down the wildest animal stories of the year

Posted Wed, Dec 26, 8:41 a.m.

let me add a brief poem from my bird poem collection, second sometimes: first thing in the morning i feed PARTYING WITH SPARROWS Sitting among a mass of non-harmless Handke's favorite harmless feathered friends on the roofed veranda-way - General Giap, the vacuumer, the gruff Asian, has expelled us from ...

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Port in a storm of its own making

Posted Fri, Dec 21, 7:21 a.m.

quite so: alec fisken has been replaced by "son of pat": mic dinsmore told commissioner fisken that he'd work to have him replaced. why? can a c.e.o actually do that in a situation such as this? mic dinsomore makes for a fine character in a 19th century novel, as does ...

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Stormwater runoff: an impermeable problem

Posted Fri, Dec 7, 7:57 a.m.

porous material = pumice: i found out at my club last nite that the u.w. tennis courts used to consist of pumice, to allow for absorbency! however, the california teams objected to this surfacing, because it fluffed up the tennis balls and slowed the game down, so that the cal ...

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Stormwater runoff: an impermeable problem

Posted Wed, Dec 5, 7:28 a.m.

ABSORBING RUN OFF: THE CITY OF CHICAGO IS REPAVING ITS - I THINK 20 K ALLEYS! - WITH POROUS MATERIAL THAT WILL ALLOW RAINWATER TO GO INTO THE AQUIFER AND NOT INTO THE LAKE. THE SAME I SUSPECT MIGHT BE FEASIBLE FOR MORE HEAVILY TRAVELED SURFACES IF THE RIGHT MATERIAL ...

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On returning to an unrecognizable home state

Posted Fri, Nov 30, 7:17 p.m.

i noticed during the last election: that port of seattle commissioner elect bryant, of whom i think as "son of pat" [no "son of sam" god forbid] managed to beat the upstanding civil servant alec fisken by a carp's whisker with a last minute radio ad campaign, and with 130,000 ...

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What does one name streetcars when the line is called SLUT?

Posted Thu, Nov 8, 9:55 a.m.

further suggestions and some comments: some comments on prior suggestions: 1] coyote is a wonderful animal, many packs reside within the city limits, in contemporary terms it is a smuggler guide across the long border to the south; 2] there something nicely intriguing about palmer's suggestion of "gracie hansen"... even ...

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No, really, this is a watershed election

Posted Mon, Nov 5, 7:08 a.m.

CONSENSI / AE/ SUSES ??: A 150 years or so ago it was the pragmatic consensus to string up Indians to show them who was boss.... Then it became the pragmatic consensus to break the treaties with them, which could a street such as Stevens Way get named after you...

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Renovate Husky Stadium? Banish them to Qwest Field

Posted Mon, Oct 29, 10:56 a.m.

move the stadium somewhere else: each game ties up traffic and the air for 6 hours with 75 k purple dogs ruining the environment.

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Fat in Seattle – and the suburbs

Posted Sat, Sep 1, 6:44 a.m.

well, since i spent half my living life at the u.w. medical: center, i have noticed that Seattlelites have gotten appr. 1 % fatter per annum, not that I noticed it each year the way you do the diminution or increase in the reflecting part of the moon, but I ...

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A dissenting take on sordid toe-tapping in the toilet room

Posted Sat, Sep 1, 6:28 a.m.

find myself in agreement with casey corr...: the entrapment aspect is troubling. so is the newsp paper's bothering to keep track of a politician's private life. if only the media were that assiduous in tracking the monstrous crimes committed in international politics for "national interest" reasons. i couldn't care less ...

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A class act hopes to avoid tragedy

Posted Thu, Aug 30, 6:39 a.m.

commenting on some of the above comments...: 1] "lynch" whom i think i know as the person who has to do the marketing knows the score. he points to the problem if theater is regarded as one among many other diversions. Why go to the theater if you can watch ...

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A class act hopes to avoid tragedy

Posted Wed, Aug 29, 8:33 a.m.

Seattle is not nor was ever a great theater town and won't: be until there are genuine critics. How can you have theater with reviewers like Joe Adcock or Mirsha Bernson or Longenbaugh? I well recall David Brewster's attempt to silence Roger Downey from writing reviews of ACT productions toward ...

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Deja vu in the wilderness

Posted Sun, Aug 26, 5:16 a.m.

this is a nice piece, however: "deja vue" used to mean, in the Freudian usage in which it entered the language, the "return of the uncanny" - an uncanniness successfully negotiated. It took Yogi Berra to give us "its deja vue all over again" - i.e. a pure memorialization of ...

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Some significant signs in a little-noticed election

Posted Sun, Aug 26, 5:03 a.m.

re bryant and tarleton: David, Bryant isnt just a republican, he's given 25 k, and $ 500 to pat davis two years ago, it wasMic Dinsmore and the "Foxy Lady" who enlisted him and are raising funds for him to defeat Alec, who got under Mic's skin. I spent a ...

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Some significant signs in a little-noticed election

Posted Sun, Aug 26, 5:02 a.m.

a different view of the port of seattle commission..: I became involved in Port of Seattle matters during the 2005 election as supporter of a candidate whom his firm then forced to withdraw when it prohibited all employees from holding public office. Meanwhile, I've made pleasant and more or less ...

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Mossback updates: Poet Roethke, surveillance, and more obesity

Posted Fri, Aug 24, 9 a.m.

"self-sacrificing act of self abnegation" eh? what's left of after those two: double negatives, those two platitudes collide? agony unfortunately guarantees nothing. not even further agony. bi-polarity, like suffering the wages of syphilis, keeps shaking up the platitutinous mind, though roethke a world class poet was not. but as a ...

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When we push out the down-and-out, what kind of city are we?

Posted Thu, Aug 16, 8:24 a.m.

one other factor mr. kammerer: does not take into account are the deals the city makes with towing companies hereabouts!!! The cut they get from what they tow in. And the parking enforcement ladies [mostly] are some of the nastiest in the nation, perhaps on some kind of incentive too, ...

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Growth is not a force of nature

Posted Mon, Aug 6, 8:28 p.m.

Knute Berger is bad faith as such.: There he writes for Seattle Mag, funded by real estate and upwamob ads that foster upscale expansion and outward suburban growth. I guess his time was appr. 1970, he's a seed pod from that area which will be encapsulated with other seeds, if ...

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The Mic Dinsmore flap reveals deep differences at the Port of Seattle

Posted Thu, Jul 12, 8:21 p.m.

HI DAVID [part 2],: As a muckraking journalist, I would have pursued the make-up of the PAC that supported the foxy lady, first choice of Carrix too, and now backs Alec's opponent: why? What's really in it for them??? Was that attempted payoff a tit for tit? PACs for Port ...

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The Mic Dinsmore flap reveals deep differences at the Port of Seattle

Posted Thu, Jul 12, 8:16 p.m.

HI DAVID [part I],: Your Crosscut piece on The Port of Seattle: _ **The Mic Dinsmore flap reveals deep PART I **I must say that your piece appears to be chiefly based on quite a bit of stale bread from the other local publications. I see little if any attempt ...

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Just another metropolis

Posted Mon, Jul 9, 9:18 a.m.

interesting discussion... here some further thoughts..: i well, i'm not bothered by cypresses instead of red cedar, though i wish folks would still wear the bark in winter, and i miss juniper trees! mr. raban disavows the significance of crushing and tossing his cigar on the ballard docks. o.k. but ...

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Just another metropolis

Posted Fri, Jul 6, 9:54 p.m.

I found Mr. Raban's BADLANDS & PASSAGE TO JUNEAU important: in locating me when I came to Seattle in 1994 after a long stints in publishing in New York, some years of back to school in L.A., etc. BADLANDS helped explain why cheap runs so deep in Seattle. Judging by ...

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The poem that explains Dick Cheney

Posted Tue, Jul 3, 8:35 a.m.

a good link to a sharp analysis of the commutation: below a different take on the commutation than Gay Stolberg in Auntie's paper: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/washington/03bush.html I myself would say that Bush's action calls for a somewhat more skeptical analysis than Stolberg and others provide, under the circumstances of the kind of ...

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The poem that explains Dick Cheney

Posted Tue, Jul 3, 8:28 a.m.

here is my poli-poem take on cheney/ bush: Come the day… COME THE DAY > That the government indicts itself under the RICO statutes, the corrupt practices act that is used to corral an ongoing criminal conspiracy that has committed an unending series of criminal acts. > Both the President ...

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Northwest cities have an identity crisis, because metaphors are the new similes

Posted Mon, Jul 2, 8:21 a.m.

"metaphors are the new similes" ?? In god's name what is a metaphor but a simile?? oxies and morons: and kirkland has houseboats?? well, seattle since its beginnings has sought to adorn itself ... the territorial governor stevens who welched on the treaty with the duwamish desperately sought to bring ...

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Middle class workers of the Pacific Northwest, unite!

Posted Thu, Jun 21, 9:25 a.m.

last but not least i too weigh in on this weighty shibboleth..: seattle bus driver and grocery story workers are some of the nicest. they have little choice. they constitute the lower lower middle class, earning about $ 20.00 per hour driving a bus, about $ 17 checking you out. ...

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The Seattle-area transportation proposals: a vast waste of money

Posted Wed, Jun 20, 7:46 a.m.

gave away my car five years ago...: am my own mule, far less need of health clubs, you see so much more walking, process your thoughts more thoroughly, good for fantasizing, working through, about five miles a day on the average. bus service is adequate, but obviously is inadequate in ...

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Theodore Roethke lives through David Wagoner

Posted Sun, Jun 17, 3:44 p.m.

Roethke is a fine German nature poet in American,: and he certainly fits the No' West. However, he only spent the last years of a fairly short life in these parts. His appropriation by the locals is yet another instance - August Wilson is a more recent example - of ...

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The new boss at the Port of Seattle is wasting no time

Posted Sat, Jun 16, 7:36 p.m.

i have a slightly different take: maybe mr. corr ought to have checked with some folks in what passes as "the city" hereabouts to check what kind of good old boy Tay Yoshitani really is. a list of prior jobs does not really do the trick as probing reporting goes. ...

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A study of Seattle media obsession with studies

Posted Thu, Jun 7, 8:18 a.m.

Undeniably, theater subsidies benefit the eateries near the theaters. and the fare: at the eateries is far more adventurous than what regional theaters dare offer. there's a lag here. Subsidizing the theaters - to focus on the one area where have intimate und unhappy experience in the Seattle area - ...

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ACT's new play: caterwauling transformed into art

Posted Tue, Jun 5, 12:35 p.m.

another way of staging, of modernizing the play: would be to set it in a Karaoke bar, whose performers frequently have the same over powering confidence to push through whatever their critical ear might hear.

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Bears gone wild

Posted Wed, May 30, 7:47 a.m.

coyotes: i meself love me three coyote packs that commute 'tween windemere estates, snatching babies as they yelp and laugh their way to points west.

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They shoot mid-sized theaters around these parts

Posted Wed, May 9, 4:03 a.m.

let me add to the above comment: A CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTION: all these people who shed crocodile tears for the demise of that once great promise of theater in seattle, THE EMPTY SPACE... Kurt Beattie, Misha Bernson, Brendan Kiley... What if the three majors here in Seattle had sponsored just three ...

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For just $20, you can be Big Brother, too!

Posted Tue, May 8, 7:28 a.m.

well, it's possible to disable cookies on your computer, by choice: so one disabling cookie placed in the monkey tag might do the trick. i meself am not all that troubled by being targeted by grrists of mass distraction via the occasional chimp; and my guess is that mr. berger ...

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They shoot mid-sized theaters around these parts

Posted Mon, May 7, 11:07 p.m.

My friend Arne a true man of the theater,: commentary in entirety can be accessed at: http://www.artscritic.blogspot.com by May 9th. My friend Arne a true man of the theater, alerted me to his piece in Crosscut, but I was going to respond anyhoo. Arne does a bit of the usual ...

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For whom the road tolls

Posted Fri, May 4, 9:50 a.m.

as a former master canoeist...: i canoe across lake washington during rush hour... and my mexican mule durango is in quarantine san ysidro on its way to join me... horse and buggy was far faster way of getting downtown during rush hour a hundred years ago. during my near 14 ...

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Our world's fair never ended, and that's a good thing

Posted Tue, May 1, 9:19 a.m.

here's an idea,: Turning Seattle Center into Central Park? When was the last time that Mr. Berger was in N.Y. Central Park runs from 59th to 110th street, that's 50 blocks, 2 1/2 miles; and from 8th Avenue [central park west] to Fifth Avenue, three Avenue blocks in NY is ...

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Who, What, and I Don't Know

Posted Wed, Apr 25, 7:43 a.m.

best analysis i saw was at tomdipatch, link below: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=188110 what i find objectionable is gonzales having been graced with the complimentary title "consiglieri"... a mafia bosses "c" man was smart. gonzales character more fits that of a mexican sycophant, as befifts a border state immigrant. bush's "c" man is ...

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Viaduct redux

Posted Sun, Apr 22, 8:58 p.m.

How about something halfway imaginative..: 1] The freight will not go away since Seattle is a harbor city with a rail system that is as screwed up as the vehicular traffic. 2] However, since it is again faster to canoe across Lake Washington at certain hours than it is to ...

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It isn't racism that's oppressing Seattle Public Schools students, it's inflexibility

Posted Wed, Apr 4, 6:40 p.m.

racism is alive and well in seattle: RACISM IS ALIVE AND WELL IN SEATTLE Not long ago was accosted by a gang of black 12-to 14 year old Afro-Americans girls from Washington Middle School, at the intersection of 23rd Ave and S. Jackson, at something of the hub of the ...

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