– Are y’all digging yourselves out of the snow? I’m not generally a fan of Art Thiel, but I think this piece on Seattle snow driving is mostly right. But there are still some idiots who don’t know how to drive in snow.
– 6 years of tax returns seems like a plan for Mitt.
– Looks like we’re going to have a plastic bag ban for really. Get your canvas bags by July.
– This was my favorite SOPA protest (no offense to us).
– Dana Milbank gets it wrong on abortion and when the great recession started.
– Whoopsadoodle, Seattle Times.
– Emmett has a cautionary tale about the Hotel Olympia.
Thiel makes some good points.
In general, folks living in the Puget Sound would do themselves and their neighbors a favor by not getting behind the wheel when we get one of these infrequent dumps.
And why any knucklehead thinks their 4 wheel drive vehicle is any match for freezing rain and ice amazes me.
The worst appears to be over, but dangerous conditions exist. It’s a winter wonderland. Put on your boots, your hat, your gloves and take a walk in it. It’ll do you good.
IMO Thiel overstates his case.
There are plenty of other cities with snow and hills (I’ve been to them, just as Thiel has), and in some cities (Pittsburgh comes to mind) they’re unavoidable. Before the hills have been plowed people generally have the good sense not to drive on them.
When I first moved to Seattle in winter of 91 we immediately got an unexpected once-in-five-years snow dump, and I was publishing a national newsletter that had to get out. I drove ten miles, very carefully picking the flattest route, and had no problem. (And when I got there the post office was closed anyway.) Meanwhile, I was passing reticulated buses that had jackknifed trying to go up steep hills.
These days, I live on a street steeper than Queen Anne. Know what? If I had to get around, I’d park a few blocks away, where it’s flat, and I’d be fine. As it is, I can sit tight for a few days, which is fine with me. But we don’t dare park on our street cuz people, guaranteed, will play bumper car on our hill with their mighty SUVs. The per capita percentage of people on the roads here who don’t know how to handle (and aren’t prepared for) snow is pretty high, whether Art admits it or not.
The response of those of us familiar with cold climates, completely opposite to what Thiel says, is to not pick fights with nature you can’t win. But that hardly describes all travel in this area in winter conditions. The way this city shuts down at even the hint of snow is still comical. But I like the quiet.
@2 Pete,
the quiet is another good reason to walk. :-)
I’ve been enjoying the snow and everything I need is within walking distance so I’ve enjoyed some snowy walks. I tried out my mountain bike in the snow and could cruise along just fine, but snow biking is quite a workout so I decided to walk.
The most ridiculous thing I’ve seen is people getting bundled up and hopping in their 4 wheel drives to drive to the Y and workout inside. Just go for a walk.
I’m loving the quiet.
Santorum is going to explode over this.
It’s a beautiful Hood Canal postcard everywhere you look around here. The house is well stocked with all the comforts…musical toys, the internet’s working and I don’t have to go anywhere but outside to play with the dog.
I’s eerily peaceful (even for 15 miles from anywhere) here. The dog loves the snow.
Just helped dig the neighbors car out. She tried to go up our hill and wound up going down it backwards instead and getting stuck half in the road and half out. Oops.
I <3 GIS data.
http://www.spokanegis.org/snowplowmap/default.htm
Remember the old joke, “How can you tell a Republican is lying?” Answer: “His lips are moving.”
Well, in last night’s debate, the Newt claimed that “under Jimmy Carter we went to 10.8 percent unemployment.”
He was lying. Unemployment never exceeded 7.8% under Carter. We went to 10.8% unemployment under Saint Ronnie.
http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.c.....can-debate
The Catholic Bishops are being ridiculous. There’s nothing in theology that says you have to open a hospital or pickup a state contract to provide care for the developmentally disabled. People who work in secular roles for church, and especially people who’s paychecks come from government contracts and things like Medicare and Medicaid, shouldn’t have religious doctrine deciding what’s covered in their health insurance.
I thought it was funny the way the Grinch bitched about anyone mentioning the Grinch wanting a 3-way with his wife and
future wifegirlfriend. I think he doth protest too much.@5 The Catholic Church is an undemocratic institution. It has no right to impose its dogma on non-Catholics. I’m not about to let the unelected hierarchy of a church I don’t belong to tell me how to live my life.
Beneath the headlines of Greece’s debt woes lies a simple fact: Massive tax evasion by rich Greeks is at the heart of Greece’s debt crisis.
http://tinyurl.com/6vmhhf8
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Rich people are the same everywhere. They loot a country, then make the poor sweep up the pieces.
The next time some Republican candidate tries to tell you the U.S. is becoming another Greece, remind him that Greece got where it is because the rich evaded taxes. Then ask him what he’s going to do to enforce America’s tax laws. Then watch him try to blame Greece’s problem on unemployed people and those forced to live on food stamps.
@13,14
Of the 126 or so nations with rated debt, Greece ranks 126th. The good old USA is always right up at the top of the ratings. At worst we could become The Czech Republic. I’m hoping that if we become The Czech Republic we’ll get charming cities with light rail, yummy pastries, and beautiful women with large breasts- just like the The Czech Republic as well.
“The Catholic Church is an undemocratic institution.”
The Catholic Church is an anachronism. Eventually it will just fade away due to its irrelevance.
RR @ 14: The Republican response is that the way to eliminate tax evasion is to eliminate taxes on the rich. Which sounds to me like another version of the Laffler theory.
Romney didn’t want to release his tax returns until, he said, the most recent one was completed in April. Why wait until April to release the previous years’ returns? Some possibilities:
* Romney wants to have the nomination sewn up before releasing the returns.
* Romney only wants to answer questions about his tax returns only once. He then plans to evade the questions, and then in subseqent questioning he plans to claim he’s already answered the question (a favorite tactic of Newt Gingrich).
* Romney is still trying to clean up his affairs from 2011, to remove or disguise the potentially embarrasing parts.
* Romney’s income from 2011 will be substantially less than in prior years, primarily because he has fewer paid speaking engagements while he was on the campaign trail. He wants his handlers to argue that the most recent year is the only one which the news media should discuss.
Speaking as a recovering Yankee who can drive in the snow… It don’t do you a wit of good if nobody ELSE can.
That’s kinda what I figure. No point in going out and getting creamed by someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing.
@1-4, 20. We managed to drive for groceries before it got crazy. On Wed. I rode my mtb on the trails in St Edward State Park; traction on the trails was much better than on my street!
I grew up in East Tennessee. It has a lot of similarities to here, in that there are lots of hills, the snow is sloppy, and the frequency of snowstorms is about the same. Residents and local governments there do just about as well with roads and driving as the residents do here.
The main difference between them is latitude. You might get a snowstorm which closes everything down for a day, but the temperature seldom stays low for long. You don’t have the several days of melting and re-freezing which keeps the roads icy for several days at a time. I can recall only one instance in the 22 years I lived there where the temperature stayed below freezing for the better part of a week (it was during Christmas break, and I had the flu so I couldn’t go out and play, and I was completely miserable the whole time).
I used to drive a 180-mile nightly courier route in worse conditions than this when I lived in Reno, driving at elevations from 4,300′ to 7,250′. The funny thing is that the only cars I ever saw spun out, in the ditch, etc., were luxury cars – rich Californicators driving like idiots around their vacation homes up at Lake Tahoe. Once, I even saw a Lamborghini getting picked up by a wrecker one snowy night. Anyone who would drive a Lamborghini in a snowstorm ought to have their license permanently revoked.
That said, I did pull a truly impressive 720 one night on a mercifully empty stretch of US-50….
Speaking of crappy newspapers, this editor wrote assassinating President Obama should be one of Israel’s options:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....d=webmail3