Life and Life Only

Snow (in the larger sense)

December 19, 2009
by Celeste Fremon
36 Comments

DC-Snowstorm-2


It seems D.C. is in the midst of a snowpocalypse. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. The metro’s not running in D.C., the air flights are grounded, but the Congress is still in session, blowing snow with abandon. When all is said and done, the snow is expected to be the heaviest in our nation’s capitol in 70 88 years.

This is the view out my D.C. friend Mark Bruzonsky’s window on Van Ness, looking toward the Chinese Embassy and Intelstat.

PS: You’ll find the reasonably amusing Twitter stream “#snowpocalypse” to your right.

36 Comments

  • I heard a report on NPR Fri where some bigmouth Senator who felt they may be deadlocked and have to hammer out the Health Care bill’s details through Christmas was going to have his Christmas tree flown out from Conn.

    Could anyone be more out of touch with reality? Has this guy heard of carbon footprints or is he so full of himself that he actually thinks his statement was funny? What’s the irony factor if this guy’s jet collides with Santa and his reindeer? The horror.

  • The rich, rich irony of the comment above about the not funny comment from a certain “bigmouth Senator” and the so called joke about carbon footprints doesn’t even come close to mentioning the carbon footprints made by all the people flying to Copenhagen. Depends on whose ox is being gored I guess.

  • Mea Culpa for my soft-pawed referral to the Copenhagen conference, GM. I read your latest blog entry/ found it highly informative. I live in a neighbor State to Ben Nelson’s. Christmas I’ll be sitting at table with his constituents. They’ll laud his “voice in DC” but I’ll bite my tongue being the polite guest. It’s tough to putdown a voice who condemns abortion in all forms when you’re surrounded by kids of all ages, so I won’t.

  • GM’s blog is basically just a repository for incoherent conservative complaints. Nothing is too crazy or false as long as it’s critical of liberals. Just in the top three posts you can learn about some major conspiracies including climate change (it’s a BIG conspiracy to bring down America or capitalism or something), the Fed (it’s apparently trying secretly increase inflation and is the source of all our problems, we are told), and that the health care bill that’s been debated for the past six months is actually secret and nobody has seen it (yet we can say with certainty that it’s dangerous and terrible!). And that’s not even getting into the manifold factual inaccuracies. GM is a friendly guy, but he is totally willing to promote outright falsehoods in the cause of promoting Republican governance. It’s not very nice, but it needs to be said.

  • Politics completely aside, I really like the silent monks on GMs site. I’d been sent the link multiple times this week, but it was a delight to see it again. Any distraction from politics is welcome.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFCeJTEzNU&feature=related

    I see from the twitter feeds that people are going over to the snow-covered lawn in front of the Capitol building to have a snowball fight while the Senate does whatever the f*ck it’s going to do. (I thought we had a policy of not giving into into demands by terrorists because of the precedent it…oh, never mind. I swore I wouldn’t get started on this.)

    Arianna Huffington is right. Congressional lobbyists should be the Time person of the year. In terms of influence over our lives, Ben Bernanke doesn’t come close.

    Okay, back to reading student papers (which are terrific) and listening to Christmas music.

    Bah, humbug.

  • I clicked on GM’s blog to look for monks and found this at the very top:

    “Palin is effectively galvanizing and rebranding the Conservative movement and making it her own. Who better to lead it then she. The GOP will ultimately adopt her brand and her as leader.”

    Roper deserves the loony bin he’s constructed for himself. That he’s not embarrassed by this is remarkable, even to me, who has always considered him a fool.

  • For some reason, the snow makes me think of Charles “Roc” Dutton singing the blues in The Piano Lesson.

  • It serves Detective B-A-Y-L-O-R right for driving a gas-guzzling Hummer, and shame on those folks for frolicking in the snow. Det. Baylor displays a good example of proactive law enforcement albeit reeking of paranoid delusions. Could this be a trend?

    Kudos to Gustavo for “taking words out of Rob Thomas’ mouth. Gus deserves a public service medal.

  • “It’s tough to putdown a voice who condemns abortion in all forms when you’re surrounded by kids of all ages, so I won’t.”

    That makes absolutely zero sense. WTF are you even talking about? How about a voice who condemns abortion when you’re surrounded by women? Would you find that tough to put down, or would you weakly bite your tongue?

  • #12 – apparently you’ve never been to Neb. where when you enter the state from any direction at the border there are signs proclaiming Abortion as murder and atrocious in the eyes of God. Yes I’d bite my tongue because I’m not inclined to debate Roe v.Wade at a holiday table of “true believers”. It’s called picking your fights, and exercising prudent diplomacy. So sue me.

  • Gava Joe, ok. We get it. Why do you seem to be in all of the arguments at this blog? I think Gustavo put it best. “Wow. You guys sure like to argue”. But such is the nature of politics.

  • When is Santiago, Hiroshi, Dacalicious, SNS, Mrs. Salazar, Wally, Marty, Jim, Conchita, and all the others going to join in the snow-ball fight?

  • Anyhow, I’m off to google articles about criminal aliens committing crimes. I’ll even post ones that are months old, hoping people won’t read the dates.

  • Thanks to my alter multiple personality ego for the suggestion.

    I found this news article about more illegal aliens commiting crimes, the West Covina Police had to shot and kill an armed illegal alien, drug dealing cholo, who pulled a gun on the cop.

    ********************************

    http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_14031360?source=rss_viewed

    Federal, local police already investigating man fatally killed by West Covina officer

    By James Wagner, Staff Writer

    Posted: 12/19/2009 12:34:07 AM PST

    Emmanuel Alvarez, 27, was wearing a bulletproof vest and had a five pounds of methamphetamine in his car when two West Covina police officers stopped him on Azusa Avenue, just north of Merced Avenue, at about 3 p.m. Thursday, West Covina police Chief Frank Wills said.

    Police said Alvarez was shot to death after he reached for a semiautomatic handgun.

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at the request of West Covina police, were conducting a joint investigation into Alvarez and the two other men riding in the car, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman with ICE.

  • Great now we’re spending tax dollars to support cartels. We need to implement the death penalty like we used to in this country. One trial, one appeal, within a week of losing the appeal you’re hanging by a tree. I don’t care if we take out 1,000,000 of these characters. They offer our society nothing but trouble of the wost kind. Send them to God for the judgement. Orale.

  • “Palin is effectively galvanizing and rebranding the Conservative movement and making it her own. Who better to lead it then she. The GOP will ultimately adopt her brand and her as leader.”

    Well clearly what the GOP needs is a pathological liar:

    Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.

    “Death panels.”

    The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn’t made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.

    Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, “Death panels? Really?”

    The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times, have chosen it as our inaugural “Lie of the Year.”

    and serial fabulist:

    Former Gov. Sarah Palin, who has had a rocky relationship with the state’s capital city, says in her book there were some ugly threats made against her daughters while they were attending Juneau schools.

    Those threats reportedly caused daughter Willow Palin to be removed from the Juneau School District.

    Palin said it ended the “honeymoon” for her kids in their new role as children of the state’s governor, though she admitted the honeymoon had already ended for her.

    […]

    In “Going Rogue” Palin wrote:

    “In that first year, I was alerted to threats against Willow by students at her Juneau school, one particularly disturbing. Someone posted a note on an Internet site threatening to gang-rape her at school. I never felt safe for her after that. Later, the same thing happened to Bristol.”

    Willow Palin attended Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School, while Bristol Palin attended Juneau-Douglas High School.

    Palin provided no details about where the Internet site was, how seriously she took the threats, how she knew it was posted by students, or what steps she’d taken to ensure her family’s safety.

    Former Juneau School District Superintendent Peggy Cowan was superintendent during the period in question and said she never heard of such concerns.

    “That was never reported to my office,” she said. “I am completely confident that I never heard that.”

    […]

    Juneau Police Chief Greg Browning similarly said his department has no record of ever being alerted to such threats.

    His department’s school resource officers are in Juneau schools daily, and would likely have been alerted to such threats, had they been made, he said.

    The Alaska State Troopers provide a security detail for Palin, but trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said the first they heard about the allegation was from Palin’s book.

    “AST has no record of a report like that being made to our agency,” Peters said. “Additionally, we have no way of determining if a report of that nature was made to another agency.”

    Please make her the face of the GOP.

  • As part of the “re-branding” of conservatism in the era of Palin, the John Birch Society is making a come-back to co-sponsor the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference. I’m sure Sarah will be there selling her books…uh, I mean offering her leadership. My kind of fun.

  • She splits the conservative vote. Too far to the right to get the independents that Bush was able to get. Not necessarily with here positions (get your minds out of the gutter, guys), but with the delivery of her message. Bush at least ran as a compassionate conservative, even though he obviously wasn’t one. Palin will run as a right wing bull dog. Independents won’t go near her. Not too mention her utter stupidity is a big turnoff for independents.

  • Palin’s Tweeting on Climate Change:

    “Arrogant&Naive2say man overpwers nature. Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl chng,”

    Well, I guess that’s settled.

  • “apparently you’ve never been to Neb”

    I live in central Illinois, dipshit, home of a million churches per square mile. Abortion signs up the yin-yang. So what? If others around you are going to casually toss around their beliefs that abortion should be illegal, there’s nothing stopping you from having the cojones to do the same. My wife’s family is full of anti-choice folks, and we don’t muzzle ourselves any more than they do. And why the hell would anyone? Dialogue doesn’t get advanced through cowardice.

  • Dipshit back at ya, Craig. What I was describing was a form of civility that apparently you’re not aquainted with. This isn’t an open forum, it’s a gathering of folks who’ve invited me to their home. I’m not going to pontificate my views in their realm. I’m pro-choice, but so also I don’t force my stance down other’s throats. If you can’t empathize with my position then you obviously need to work on your people skills.

  • “it’s a gathering of folks who’ve invited me to their home”

    And your arrival is greeted with a muzzle? Also, who said anything about pontificating? Unless you’re running for office, or trying to hit someone up for charity, I really don’t see how it’s so incredibly daring to just speak your mind when someone else also speaks his or her mind. If it’s a no-politics environment, fine. But if someone starts taking a political position and expects everyone else to fall in line, I see no reason to sit quietly and pretend I agree. If you do, that’s your prerogative.

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