Ladies, Check Your Sources Please :) in Everyday Ramblings

So far I guess I am allowed to have a welcome mat out in the hall. This one makes me smile every time I see it plus it helps get pollen off my shoes before I come in.

Sort of the opposite of a welcome mat is the bus stop where I picked up the bus home from the grocery yesterday midday. There was food trash; typical even though there is a public garbage can on the edge of the concrete slab the stop is on. But what did shock me were the 8 or so hypodermic needles on the ground, some with the caps off.

I took a photo and was trying to decide whom to contact when a man came up to wait for the bus. He couldn’t stop staring at them and said it was a biohazard. I don’t even want to think about dog paws.

The bus came a minute later and the awesome driver called it in and thanked me for reporting it when I got off the bus.

This brings me to the news special that a friend of Mrs. Sherlock’s insisted she watch, which she did called “Seattle is Dying”. She mentioned it a number of times and encouraged me to watch it.

I finally did in bits last week. It is not anything I don’t see on a regular basis out and about. People with cars just don’t get the immersive experience of being on our streets these days.

Right away I felt like the program had a point of view and it bothered me a lot. The program was trying to make things as bleak as possible and engaged in blatant fear mongering. Not that anything they were saying wasn’t true but the spin was not compassionate even though they tried to make it sound like they were the sensible adult in the room. Or the city.

The platform I watched it on had commercials and what shocked me more than anything in the show was the NRA commercial. I had heard about them but never seen one. OMG. It is straight out political propaganda of the worst kind.

I looked into who broadcast the special (do check your sources please) and it was Sinclair Broadcasting, which is very conservative and well…Trumpian.

At the end they go to Rhode Island of all places to talk about a treatment program they have in the jails there that involve anti-addiction drugs.

The last thing they show is a disused building complex on an island in Puget Sound and the recommendation is to incarcerate all the homeless, which they say are pretty much exclusively drug addicted and mentally ill and given drugs (and maybe treatment).

They are doing some really interesting things in Denver with a private public bond offering that I think has real promise for the same problem and population. The Urban Institute is doing great scientific research on these programs to give us some data on what works.

We have to do something. Those syringes were profoundly disturbing.

Mrs. Sherlock was basically convinced by the program and so was surprised when I told her that it was right wing propaganda.

I have noticed the nicer places in my neighborhood are coming onto the market in this last month, condos and houses. I have no doubt it is because the neighborhood is more and more full of people with problems that they are not keeping at home.

I’ll stay for now but it does make one think…

Last updated May 17, 2019