Would it be to Ukraine's advantage to have their armed forces in Crimea blow up the military bases and the ships they can't take with them as they evacuate?

Also, an appeals court has stopped gay marriage in Michigan.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/michig…

How much of that mud slide was the result of deforestation and bad land use?

Regarding "the poor": that sort of thinking creeps into the Yesler Terrace discussion frequently, and on both sides.

When SHA and KCHA demolished other housing projects, no one thought much of it, mostly because they were in remote neighborhoods, that were neither as valuable nor "picturesque" as Yesler. But once the new housing went in, there was a weird undercurrent of talk about how the residents now had dishwashers and air-conditioning, as if those were things they didn't deserve, and were getting at the expense of other poor people.

With Yesler, there is the valid concern that residents will be losing their garden space. On the other hand, they'll have greatly improved living space, both in terms of comfort and convenience and energy efficiency (which is a big deal because subsidized housing is not eligible for the utility discount program). And we'll doubtless hear people grumbling about how "those people" now have modern appliances.

Ansel, the "reporting on the overseas poor" link has two URLs jammed together and should begin with 'mediahacker.org'.

re: Malaysian 777 ... havetheyfoundmh370yet.com

@1 Like Churchill did to the French? No, Russia has all the ships it needs and Ukraine can't in anyway defend itself.

"...authorities have organized an evacuation to avoid further casualties amid heavy rains."

That is not correct. The evacuation has been ordered because of unstable river blockage. It has nothing to do with heavy rains because, you know, it isn't raining.

@6
I don't know about Churchill and the French, so I don't know if you're teasing me there.

But no, I'm not proposing it as a war strategy, because Ukraine doesn't have the ability to oppose Russia. It would really be more of something to do out of spite, assuming the troops can do it safely. Russian troops are attacking and taking over military bases already, and I think I read the other day that they had seized three Ukrainian warships. What if Ukraine had just abandoned ship after putting it on auto-destruct?

How dangerous would it be to do that? Would it be the excuse Russia is looking for to invade the rest of Ukraine? Does it even matter if it would be the excuse, since they would invade if it suits them?

It's a six-MONTH old baby, not a 6-year old child, hurt in the mud slide.

To be fair, I don't think this is solely journalists' fault—I haven't seen the unions do much to put these workers' voices at the forefront.

1. Unions speak most loudly for union members. Allow the working poor to form unions and unions will speak for the working poor.

2. AFAIK, the King County Labor Council and almost all other organized labor groups in Western Washington support 15Now!

3. Professionals are more likely to succeed when they half-way master their trade before lobbing poor complaints toward other tradesmen. Journalists are the forefront, and their bother-hood does far more damage to the working person's cause than "the unions" ever did.

@8, destroying a ship on the way out might seem like a grand F-you gesture, but scuttling a modern warship at the dock is not something that could be done safely, and might trigger a war that everybody (except Russia) seems to be trying to avoid.

Warships are compartmentalized, specifically to avoid easy sinking. If you blow a hole in one place, it will flood that compartment with water, but not the entire ship. To actually sink the ship, you'd have to either blow a massive hole, or multiple holes, either of which would require a LOT of explosives. Setting off enough explosives to sink a ship would likely endanger a lot of people in the area.

Google USS Cole, for example. A suicide attack blew a massive hole in the hull, right at the waterline, while at a dock, killing a bunch of sailors onboard. Yet it didn't sink. It was in fact repaired and back at sea a little more than a year later.

@phoebe: probably very little of it. This area is basically one big ancient landslide complex, and probably remobilized with little human help. However, I'm sure that humans had some contribution to destabilizing the slope.

@4 and @9: Thank you, fixed.

@2, that's a good question. In this case it's probably naturally loose and unconsolidated soils—if you look at the satellite view above Rollins Creek (an image captured well before yesterday's landslide), you'll see white scarring of exposed dirt to the left of the red dart that I believe dates to an earlier, far less catastrophic slump circa 2006.

If you go back and forth between the above link and the map view, you'll see that the still-earlier-mapped bend in the river was flattened (pushed southward) by the 2006 slump.

Finally, zooming out a little and switching to the topographic view, you can get an appreciation for the height of the promontory above the river at that point which contributed to yesterday's landslide.

The upper edge of the scarp shown in the KOMO story looks to be covered with fairly good-sized trees; however, there's evidence of past clearcuts on the flattish top of the promontory to the northwest. That might have had some effect on how quickly the ground became saturated, but basically I think it comes down to the nature of the soil in the area.

...and from my comment in yesterday's Morning News, here's an overview showing where the slide occurred along SR 530.

I pressed play. I do not feel enriched in any way.

I wish Ukraine could blow up some installations or hardware on the way out. I don't know if it can be done safely. I feel so much pity for the Crimean Tartars, who are about to go through another ethnic cleansing.
I do like that Ukrainian government is trying to ensure the safety of its military personnel and prevent unnecessary casualties.
The Russian way would have been to kill everybody, including its own people, to avoid looking weak. Just look what happened with the Russian sailors on the Kursk submarine (all died because the Russians could not save them themselves and did not ask for help in time), the hostages at the St Petersburg theatre in 2002 (the Russians pumped in gas that killed half the hostages), in Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004 again half the hostages (380, mostly children) died during the "rescue" operation.

Enter the 36 Chambers!

@13: You're welcome. My, what a handsome young man you are!

@rob! - Thanks for rounding that up.

@6: What did Churchill do to the French?

@20 Mers El Kebir.

@19, it was fun, for want of a better word in the face of an appalling disaster. According to new press reports, at least 18 people thought to be in the area are still unaccounted for. But I'm trying to improve my facility with Google Maps for work reasons.

In retrospect, the location of E. Steelhead Dr. on the south riverbank directly in the path of the slide was a very bad idea, as there were wordless warnings of what could happen. The lawyers will be happy, if no one else.

If Ukraine just wanted to be dicks about the whole thing--and maybe they should--grenading all the toilets on sea and land as they withdrew would certainly inconvenience Russia.

Some comments in a fishing forum on the 2006 landslide at Rollins Creek:

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/forum…

...and a state report of some kind on the geology of the area (unfortunately scanned to .pdf as images, so not searchable by text string, but it's readable and fairly short):

https://fortress.wa.gov/dnr/forestpracti…

Zoomed-in map of Steelhead Drive showing lots platted UNDER the current riverbed (click the Satellite box to show present reality).

By the way, don't forget we lost the great Fred Phelps this week. One national paper has an especially touching tribute.

TOPEKA, KS—Fred Phelps Sr., the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church and the man who is widely credited with forever ending the gay rights movement in America, died today at age 84.

According to biographers and historians, many of the facets of modern-day society that we now take for granted—such as the ban on gay marriage in all 50 states and the inability of homosexuals to serve in the military—can be traced back to Phelps’ vocal public crusades against the unholy practice of homosexuality, which he began in 1991 and which quickly succeeded in bringing efforts to expand LGBT rights to a spectacular and abrupt halt.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/fred-ph…

So I'm no Wu-Tang scholar but but isn't that RZA verse recycled entirely from some other piece? And someone else in there who isn't GZA was biting a GZA line "the dumb are intrigued only by the drum". What is this Triumph track about?

Wouldn't it be possible to place a "real news" button on SLOG so we don't have to plow through 15 music/food posts until we get something that might be actually interesting? You know, like what's on Stranger. Or does SLOG now just equate to music/food?

Wait — Slog has real news?

@29

Maybe someone will get a hint from all the posts with zero comments. Meanwhile, here's a website that covers local issues.

horsesass.org