Niketas Choniates, Chases Eagles and other Puget Sounders, much has been discussed recently on the decline and fall of Seattle. How bad is it actually? Are the outer burbs where you reside affected? What is the feeling inside Seattle itself? Is it possible to turn the decline around? I look at the past mayors and the present makeup of the City Council and come away with not much hope for a turnaround. It is dispiriting that destructive radicals get voted into office. It is a sad fact of life that in Seattle a person with traditional American values has absolutely no chance to be elected to any position of power in Seattle. In fact, I believe that such a person running for public office would find life to be very difficult and would be forced to leave. I have some experiences with that myself.
A very different place from when I was a Seattle resident from 1975 to 1993. It was then a golden age of growth, vitality and prosperity. The fishermen. lumbermen and machinists whose labor made the city prosperous in earlier times would cry in sorrow if they could return today to see what it has become
And thank you Rob Arnott for this simple reminder of how and why capitalism works so well.
Fauci refused to answer any questions this morning at his Senate hearing. While he has immunity for any federal offenses committed before the pardon date, he may be worried about state charges.
We don’t taste like “Chicken of the sea?”
His Otto Penn pardon is invalid. Affixing a facsimile of Biden’s signature by a forgery device operated by persons unknown is pure quackery. Gutless courts.
@Xylourgous:Niketas Choniates, Chases Eagles and other Puget Sounders, much has been discussed recently on the decline and fall of Seattle. How bad is it actually?
Not quite as bad as right-leaning media makes out, because the badness is geographically confined, though worse than it was. I go into downtown Seattle from time to time, maybe every three to six months. The places where I need to be are not worse and some are nice. The places that are really bad were bad before and have been for a long time and places I tried to stay out of anyway.
Are the outer burbs where you reside affected?
This would be “burb” dependent. Bellevue (across Lake Washington from Seattle) for example has never been friendly to panhandlers and I rarely see them there. Bellevue has been building up, no doubt because Seattle’s got worse, and even Everett is getting some of it. People are moving much farther out because of how increasingly unaffordable things are, so all of our house prices are going up, even more. The buses though will take people where they want to go so to the extent that Seattle attracts bad people, we will see them if they have the patience to ride the bus long enough (they got nothing but time).
The house prices are an indicator that it’s not Mad Max here yet. For the most part the trend has been up, with some noise, for the last five years. Certainly people have been leaving but they get replaced by other people priced out of California or wherever.
My own town specifically sees homeless problems more like in the woods in and around town. There’s a forested park where you can tell that people are sleeping rough and you probably should stay away when it’s dark, and people camp out by the river. One day walking down a residential street near my house I found an abandoned, unused dose of Narcan.
What is the feeling inside Seattle itself?
‘I never thought leopards would eat my face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party
Is it possible to turn the decline around?
Anything’s possible. The orcas might develop opposable thumbs and clear all the humans out, and I’m sure their Seattle will be quite decent except maybe for the harbor seals who won’t like it much.
I worry more about Seattle and King County taking over more areas and screwing them up. I live near King County but not actually in it and so have a sort of insulation from it, but more people who think like commenters here are leaving for Eastern Washington or Idaho or Texas and letting the progressives have it. So we’ll see.
The new Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, is delivering his first post-meeting public remarks right now. Nothing earth shattering, but it is definitely a bit different take on Fed and market/public relations compared to previously. Overall, the new trend is less interaction between Fed actions and markets. In both directions. That is, markets influencing the Fed and alternatively, the Fed trying to jawbone and push the markets around.
Some thought there would be an interest rate hike to help further tame inflation. But no. They stood pat with rates.
Kate: Yes, it is amazing how a guy who has been granted immunity pleads the Fifth so often. The BBC states that he is refusing to answer because he fears that they may charge him with perjury.
Either way, I do hope this gives more people food for thought in the future when the government tries something again like the COVID shutdown.
I, at the time and to this day, had wished more people had stood up and spoken out; but the government was too Draconian against those who did. I fear too many people will not learn from history and the next time will go along with whatever the government tells them to do.
Thank you, Neo. That video was quite interesting. Of course, for the orcas it is probably a good thing that they don’t, for whatever reason, view humans as a prey species. If humans regarded orcas as a serious threat orcas would soon become an endangered species.
As Kipling put in his poem “The Law of the Jungle” (1895):
“Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!”
Senator Rand Paul is working on a plan to bypass the Senate floor vote and instead go directly to the DOJ to charge Fauci with prosecution for lying to Congress under oath.
@John F. McMichael:for the orcas it is probably a good thing that they don’t, for whatever reason, view humans as a prey species.
I don’t know if the video covers this, but orcas prey on moose, deer, and pigs, often enough that we’ve caught them doing it.
If you’re lucky enough to live in a place that has whales and other cetaceans you can see them doing some surprising things.
I’m not in the right kind of water to see orcas unless I bought a ticket for whale-watching, but I do see a lot of harbor seals and sea lions, and some of the things they do are kind of funny. For example when they haul out and you go by them they will sometimes assign one of their number to follow you until you’re some distance away. Or how they’ll nap, but only half their brain sleeps and so they can react really quickly. I once disturbed one I couldn’t see that was resting on the bottom in very shallow water, just its nose sticking out.
Fauci could have easily avoided perjury charges by testifying truthfully. That was too much for his ego.
Our local Orca feed on salmon. Visiting Orca feed on seals mostly.
I don’t understand how you can plead the Fifth on something like the day of the week or the color of a tie. The Fifth Amendment only covers what could incriminate you. Anything Fauci was pardoned for is not covered unless he is refusing his pardon. I imagine we have not heard the last here.
Burdick involved a pardon issued by President Woodrow Wilson to George Burdick, an editor at the New York Tribune, for any federal offenses he “may have committed” in connection with the publication of an article regarding alleged customs fraud, despite the fact that Burdick had not been charged with any crime at the time of the pardon. The apparent motivation for the pardon was that Burdick had refused to testify before a grand jury investigating the involvement of Treasury Department officials in leaks concerning the wrongdoing, asserting his Fifth Amendment right not to provide testimony that would tend to incriminate him. Despite President Wilson’s issuance of the pardon, Burdick “refused to accept” it and continued to refuse to answer certain questions put to him before the grand jury. The Supreme Court in Burdick assumed that the pardon was within the President’s power to issue and concluded that “it was Burdick’s right to refuse it” and stand on his Fifth Amendment objection.
I think I’ve seen, in previous Senate hearings, commentary to the effect that if the witness answers ANY question he can then not choose which ones to answer. Doesn’t sound right to me, but Fauci’s lawyers seemed to think so.
TIL that Orca females undergo menopause and grandmothers are important. The females live 20-40 years longer than the males, but stop reproducing at about 40 while living up to 80.
China’s Foreign Ministry denied the report, calling it “completely groundless” and saying Beijing had consistently worked to promote peace and end the conflict.
Kate; Niketas:
That’s what I’ve heard about taking the Fifth – that it’s all or nothing. Once you take the Fifth – and Fauci did it right after his little speech about Rand Paul, I think – once you do that, you don’t answer any more questions. Asking him about the color of his tie was a stunt.
Thanks for your comments Niketas. I was referring more to the demoralization caused by so many iconic Seattle businesses packing up and leaving Wa State. The office vacancy rate for Seattle is the highest in the country and continues to rise. Many jobs are on the chopping block. The tax base is rapidly shrinking leaving individuals to cover the shortfall. I would imagine the mood is very gloomy.
Many years ago I was on a grand jury and a Mafia thug appeared before us. He wasn’t allowed an attorney in the Jury Room. After each question, he would say he needed to speak to his attorney, go out, come back, and take the Fifth. IIRC, he even did this when the prosecutor asked him what his name was.
Behind paywall at Daily Mail – by “ALAN DERSHOWITZ FOR THE DAILY MAIL” (Note: I used archive.today webpage capture for link)
• The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution protects the innocent and the guilty alike. Dr Anthony Fauci not only had the right to plead the Fifth before the Senate Homeland Security committee on Wednesday, but he was also probably right to do so.
• Committees of this sort are not seeking the facts. They seek partisan advantage. (ME: sounds familiar)
• Whether you like Fauci or not, whether you believe he served honorably as the leading member of President Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force or not, you should care about one’s right to refuse to incriminate themselves in such a setting.
• ‘You don’t have any rights under the Fifth Amendment, because you’ve been pardoned, as you very well know,’ said Senator Josh Hawley … Senator Hawley is wrong – as he very well may know … Fauci surely had the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment as to any potentially incriminating information that could be used for a prosecution for post-pardoned crimes. Additionally, to refuse to answer is not to acknowledge guilt; it’s to acknowledge that prosecutors can indict innocent defendants using evidence obtained in congressional hearings.
• Fauci almost certainly has useful information that would help in this process. The best thing for our nation and for the world, would be to give Fauci total immunity and question him about everything he knows without giving him the right to refuse to answer questions on the ground that his answers might tend to incriminate him.
I predict Congress won’t do that. They seem more interested in Fauci’s blood than in his truthful testimony.
With respect for Dershowitz, there are possible state charges, certainly state investigations, and possible civil suits facing Fauci. His attorney(s) gave him the advice most likely to protect himself. Even “total immunity” from Congress would not avoid the state and civil liabilities.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is jumping into the midterms with a huge investment in a plan to boost Republican voter turnout
@Xylourgos: I was referring more to the demoralization caused by so many iconic Seattle businesses packing up and leaving Wa State.
For this I can only speak to people I know personally, but the progressives who voted for this stuff blame the businesses for leaving. I don’t think people in general are demoralized if they are not personally affected by it. I certainly am not. Those “iconic Seattle businesses” were largely part of the problem. They are leaving because the leopards ate their faces after they helped the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party achieve and maintain dominance.
That long ramble about Orcas and humans is a lot more speculation than information. And I didn’t see any references to the recent outburst of orcas attacking sailboat rudders and disabling, sometimes sinking the boats.
It included a discussion about the sailboats being attacked/modified/vandalized near Spain.
@Xylourgos – Today’s one-party Seattle has ‘progressed’ its way from a very attractive place to one much closer to an authoritarian governance of the left. So far, it hasn’t evolved into subjection to a Great Leader, but it’s doing its utmost to replace free-market capitalism with ‘democratic Socialism’. Those homeowners who’ve put homes up for rent have discovered, after being regarded by the Council as criminals convicted without trial, that misbehaving tenants have all the power – including the support of lawyers on the City payroll.
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Niketas Choniates, Chases Eagles and other Puget Sounders, much has been discussed recently on the decline and fall of Seattle. How bad is it actually? Are the outer burbs where you reside affected? What is the feeling inside Seattle itself? Is it possible to turn the decline around? I look at the past mayors and the present makeup of the City Council and come away with not much hope for a turnaround. It is dispiriting that destructive radicals get voted into office. It is a sad fact of life that in Seattle a person with traditional American values has absolutely no chance to be elected to any position of power in Seattle. In fact, I believe that such a person running for public office would find life to be very difficult and would be forced to leave. I have some experiences with that myself.
A very different place from when I was a Seattle resident from 1975 to 1993. It was then a golden age of growth, vitality and prosperity. The fishermen. lumbermen and machinists whose labor made the city prosperous in earlier times would cry in sorrow if they could return today to see what it has become
And thank you Rob Arnott for this simple reminder of how and why capitalism works so well.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/thank-you-for-your-success-he-said-807b1b0c?st=sZsCUD
Get. Out!
A Surprising Portion of Rent-Stabilized Apartments Go to NYC’s Wealthiest Renters
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/the-wealthy-renters-living-in-rent-stabilized-nyc-apartments-c19f717e?st=8ikFY4
Fauci refused to answer any questions this morning at his Senate hearing. While he has immunity for any federal offenses committed before the pardon date, he may be worried about state charges.
We don’t taste like “Chicken of the sea?”
His Otto Penn pardon is invalid. Affixing a facsimile of Biden’s signature by a forgery device operated by persons unknown is pure quackery. Gutless courts.
@Xylourgous:Niketas Choniates, Chases Eagles and other Puget Sounders, much has been discussed recently on the decline and fall of Seattle. How bad is it actually?
Not quite as bad as right-leaning media makes out, because the badness is geographically confined, though worse than it was. I go into downtown Seattle from time to time, maybe every three to six months. The places where I need to be are not worse and some are nice. The places that are really bad were bad before and have been for a long time and places I tried to stay out of anyway.
Are the outer burbs where you reside affected?
This would be “burb” dependent. Bellevue (across Lake Washington from Seattle) for example has never been friendly to panhandlers and I rarely see them there. Bellevue has been building up, no doubt because Seattle’s got worse, and even Everett is getting some of it. People are moving much farther out because of how increasingly unaffordable things are, so all of our house prices are going up, even more. The buses though will take people where they want to go so to the extent that Seattle attracts bad people, we will see them if they have the patience to ride the bus long enough (they got nothing but time).
The house prices are an indicator that it’s not Mad Max here yet. For the most part the trend has been up, with some noise, for the last five years. Certainly people have been leaving but they get replaced by other people priced out of California or wherever.
My own town specifically sees homeless problems more like in the woods in and around town. There’s a forested park where you can tell that people are sleeping rough and you probably should stay away when it’s dark, and people camp out by the river. One day walking down a residential street near my house I found an abandoned, unused dose of Narcan.
What is the feeling inside Seattle itself?
Is it possible to turn the decline around?
Anything’s possible. The orcas might develop opposable thumbs and clear all the humans out, and I’m sure their Seattle will be quite decent except maybe for the harbor seals who won’t like it much.
I worry more about Seattle and King County taking over more areas and screwing them up. I live near King County but not actually in it and so have a sort of insulation from it, but more people who think like commenters here are leaving for Eastern Washington or Idaho or Texas and letting the progressives have it. So we’ll see.
The new Fed chairman, Kevin Warsh, is delivering his first post-meeting public remarks right now. Nothing earth shattering, but it is definitely a bit different take on Fed and market/public relations compared to previously. Overall, the new trend is less interaction between Fed actions and markets. In both directions. That is, markets influencing the Fed and alternatively, the Fed trying to jawbone and push the markets around.
Some thought there would be an interest rate hike to help further tame inflation. But no. They stood pat with rates.
Kate: Yes, it is amazing how a guy who has been granted immunity pleads the Fifth so often. The BBC states that he is refusing to answer because he fears that they may charge him with perjury.
Either way, I do hope this gives more people food for thought in the future when the government tries something again like the COVID shutdown.
I, at the time and to this day, had wished more people had stood up and spoken out; but the government was too Draconian against those who did. I fear too many people will not learn from history and the next time will go along with whatever the government tells them to do.
Thank you, Neo. That video was quite interesting. Of course, for the orcas it is probably a good thing that they don’t, for whatever reason, view humans as a prey species. If humans regarded orcas as a serious threat orcas would soon become an endangered species.
As Kipling put in his poem “The Law of the Jungle” (1895):
“Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!”
Senator Rand Paul is working on a plan to bypass the Senate floor vote and instead go directly to the DOJ to charge Fauci with prosecution for lying to Congress under oath.
Nick Sorter reports and reposts, sharing a fresh half-minute Fox News clip with Rand Paul: https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2082562933486236064
@John F. McMichael:for the orcas it is probably a good thing that they don’t, for whatever reason, view humans as a prey species.
I don’t know if the video covers this, but orcas prey on moose, deer, and pigs, often enough that we’ve caught them doing it.
If you’re lucky enough to live in a place that has whales and other cetaceans you can see them doing some surprising things.
I’m not in the right kind of water to see orcas unless I bought a ticket for whale-watching, but I do see a lot of harbor seals and sea lions, and some of the things they do are kind of funny. For example when they haul out and you go by them they will sometimes assign one of their number to follow you until you’re some distance away. Or how they’ll nap, but only half their brain sleeps and so they can react really quickly. I once disturbed one I couldn’t see that was resting on the bottom in very shallow water, just its nose sticking out.
Fauci could have easily avoided perjury charges by testifying truthfully. That was too much for his ego.
Our local Orca feed on salmon. Visiting Orca feed on seals mostly.
I don’t understand how you can plead the Fifth on something like the day of the week or the color of a tie. The Fifth Amendment only covers what could incriminate you. Anything Fauci was pardoned for is not covered unless he is refusing his pardon. I imagine we have not heard the last here.
I think I’ve seen, in previous Senate hearings, commentary to the effect that if the witness answers ANY question he can then not choose which ones to answer. Doesn’t sound right to me, but Fauci’s lawyers seemed to think so.
TIL that Orca females undergo menopause and grandmothers are important. The females live 20-40 years longer than the males, but stop reproducing at about 40 while living up to 80.
CRINK — what a group!
Iran set to receive up to 400 Chinese shoulder-fired air-defense systems within weeks
Kate; Niketas:
That’s what I’ve heard about taking the Fifth – that it’s all or nothing. Once you take the Fifth – and Fauci did it right after his little speech about Rand Paul, I think – once you do that, you don’t answer any more questions. Asking him about the color of his tie was a stunt.
Thanks for your comments Niketas. I was referring more to the demoralization caused by so many iconic Seattle businesses packing up and leaving Wa State. The office vacancy rate for Seattle is the highest in the country and continues to rise. Many jobs are on the chopping block. The tax base is rapidly shrinking leaving individuals to cover the shortfall. I would imagine the mood is very gloomy.
Many years ago I was on a grand jury and a Mafia thug appeared before us. He wasn’t allowed an attorney in the Jury Room. After each question, he would say he needed to speak to his attorney, go out, come back, and take the Fifth. IIRC, he even did this when the prosecutor asked him what his name was.
Behind paywall at Daily Mail – by “ALAN DERSHOWITZ FOR THE DAILY MAIL” (Note: I used archive.today webpage capture for link)
The REAL reason Anthony Fauci refused to answer any of the Senate’s questions… and why the doctor may be headed for indictment – Snippets:
With respect for Dershowitz, there are possible state charges, certainly state investigations, and possible civil suits facing Fauci. His attorney(s) gave him the advice most likely to protect himself. Even “total immunity” from Congress would not avoid the state and civil liabilities.
Musk plans massive push for GOP in midterms
@Xylourgos: I was referring more to the demoralization caused by so many iconic Seattle businesses packing up and leaving Wa State.
For this I can only speak to people I know personally, but the progressives who voted for this stuff blame the businesses for leaving. I don’t think people in general are demoralized if they are not personally affected by it. I certainly am not. Those “iconic Seattle businesses” were largely part of the problem. They are leaving because the leopards ate their faces after they helped the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party achieve and maintain dominance.
That long ramble about Orcas and humans is a lot more speculation than information. And I didn’t see any references to the recent outburst of orcas attacking sailboat rudders and disabling, sometimes sinking the boats.
It included a discussion about the sailboats being attacked/modified/vandalized near Spain.
@Xylourgos – Today’s one-party Seattle has ‘progressed’ its way from a very attractive place to one much closer to an authoritarian governance of the left. So far, it hasn’t evolved into subjection to a Great Leader, but it’s doing its utmost to replace free-market capitalism with ‘democratic Socialism’. Those homeowners who’ve put homes up for rent have discovered, after being regarded by the Council as criminals convicted without trial, that misbehaving tenants have all the power – including the support of lawyers on the City payroll.