Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

The willow is too close to the house.

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Reader Interactions

110Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    They say we might get some come Saturday. I’ll settle for below freezing temps for 24 straight hours.

  2. 2.

    Professor Bigfoot

    We have no snow here in the Hall of Fame City; and I personally *am not complaining.*

    I cold stand this weather through the entire winter.  I can’t be that lucky though.

    [ed:  also, the coveted number two spot? Must be my night!]

  3. 3.

    VeniceRiley

    My sister keeps sending pictures of what has been happening since the day I left Utah. Shovel, shovel, toil and trouble!

  4. 4.

    Roger Moore

    Is this complaints?

    I’m sorry, this is abuse. You want room 12A, down the hall.​
     
    ETA: We don’t have snow, either, but we weren’t expecting any in Southern California. We have had plenty of rain, though.

  5. 5.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I read San Diego may possibly get some snow. Worried for Tbogg and his diogies. Will they survive flurries which will melt within the day?

  11. 11.

    Achrachno

    I can’t understand the desire for snow. I lived in a snowy place for a couple of years and I still vividly remember the shoveling, though it was 40 years ago. Besides, snow is really hard on the orange trees.

  12. 12.

    Gin & Tonic

    As some wag said on Twitter, they seem to have more gravity in Russia than there is elsewhere in the world.

    Yegor Prosvirnin, founder of the notorious Russian nationalist publication “Sputnik and Pogrom” is dead at the age of 35 after a fall from a window at the Armenia store in Moscow. Telegram channel 112 sayshe was high on drugs and neighbors heard shouting t.co/I9fXUOC4cM pic.twitter.com/FX8KdCKXd8
    — The Interpreter (@Interpreter_Mag) December 27, 2021

    [Emphasis added]

     

  13. 13.

    Dan B

    Looks pretty there, no argument. As for being snowbound in a city where people don’t know how to drive in the snow….
    I grew up in serious snow country. Alas it is no more according to SAB who owns a rental house in my hometown.

  14. 14.

    burnspbesq

    I have a complaint: I was planning a full evening of watching cricket, and England didn’t even last an hour.

    Australia retains the Ashes, on the back of one of the most dominant displays of bowling you will ever see.

  15. 15.

    frosty

    1/2” or so in PA east of the Allegheny Tunnel, along with ice on the trees in the mountains. Looked nice except for the grey clouds.

    First dusting this year. It’ll be gone tomorrow; temps in the 40s.

  17. 17.

    Mary G

    1. Wished hard for rain until this week and as usual there is a chance every day this week until Saturday when it goes down to 3% chance with sun, so if they’re having the Rose Bowl game and/or parade this year, SoCal’s clear skies and sun will be the envy of the world.
  22. 22.

    Leto

    Had a few hours of flurries here, outside Philly. Nothing that stuck, but it was pretty. I think the high today was about 35F. Next six days highs will be from high 40s to low 50s. Just pick a temp and stick with it, please.

  23. 23.

    Sure Lurkalot

    While I like snow, I hate driving on icy roads and blinding storms.

    That said, Xmas in the mountains west of Boulder (not ski country except for the small Eldora resort) had the least snow I’ve ever seen up there. Even though it flurried every day, there was little to no accumulation and the trails were clear with just a coating in the woods. Frankly a bit scary though the high mountain ranges are getting some decent storms.

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    We had another day of steady rain here in Southern California. And it is also a bit cold.

    I suppose we need the rain, but still, it has been a bit of a pain.

    I guess I should not complain.

     

    ETA: Monty Python anticipated an aspect of the Internet.

    I was reading some comments connected to a video clip of a fairly innocuous game show. Sure enough after about 4 comments, someone had to start an argument containing a heap of invective.

  26. 26.

    Carol Van Natta

    We’ve had nearly zero, zip, nada, zilch* in the snow department in Fort Collins, CO, about 70 miles north of Denver. We usually have a total of about 12 inches by this time, so we’re WAY behind.

    However, as much as neither I nor the cats are fans of snow and cold, I am equally not a fan of dragging around my hoses and sprinklers to save the new xeriscape plantings because the automatic drip system has been shut down for the winter.
    ______________
    *The weather service said we had 0.4 inch on Nov. 1. It melted in 4 hours.

  28. 28.

    dmsilev

    @burnspbesq: Yeah, looks like we’re getting off to a good start with regards to water this year. Now, we just need like five or ten such years strung together…

  29. 29.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    There were a few flakes this afternoon, but none of them stuck around..

    If there’s going to be a “serious” snowfall here in Philly, as in requiring actual shoveling, it usually seems to be late in the winter, like Feb or March.

    Being a nutcase from the Frozen North, I usually try to get out there and do a snow sculpture when the conditions are right (enough snow and of a consistency to allow sculpting). Half the winters we never have a single day where conditions are right.

  30. 30.

    FelonyGovt

    Seems boorish to complain about rain in Southern California, so I won’t. Not like I’m going anywhere anyway…

  31. 31.

    mali muso

    My kiddo shares this complaint. According to her, Christmas is supposed to have snow. Here in VA, we had 60-something degree weather. For her sake, I hope we get at least one good snowfall this season.

  33. 33.

    worn

    So Watergirl, we have all your snow hoarded where I am currently – up in the Sierras at Lake Tahoe, where there is a good 4-5 feet on the ground. My girlfriend & I set out from Portland on Xmas day, driving in turn from Ashland to Reno yesterday via the woodsy track just south of Mt Shasta. I will just say that for this Georgia expat it was quite the intense driving experience – 130 miles or so of driving thru the forest on a 2 lane deeply-snowEd track, followed by about the same distance buffeted by gale force winds south from Susanville, with conditions of zero visibility cropping up at random moments. Somehow we managed to just squeak by the road closure being set up on the road out of Susanville; phone map routed us around it on a surface road beside the airport. The police had to move their barriers a mile or so down the road to plug the cheat route. Highway 395 is still closed 24 hours later. I am so glad we made it out of there and that I was able to shuttle those of my family who managed to make it to Reno up the mountain.

    Oh wait, this is the complaints department.

    Well in that case, I’d like to complain that my brother & his wife are currently stuck in Sacramento. We will see tomorrow if they open any of the roads from the east so that they have a chance of joining us. Currently it’s a no-go situation. Also, too: my youngest sister, who had managed to avoid contracting Covid, had her company bought by another & they immediately required upper management to come into the office rather than the remote work all had been doing. End result, the entire team got infected. And so my she & her partner had to cancel joining us here. Yeah, I can fucking complain about those fucking fuckers (insert EFG quote here)…

    To everyone else here, hope your holidays have been & will continue to be wonderful!

  35. 35.

    scav

    Snowing here in the upper left and after losing power at least four times starting late on the 25th, today we had frozen pipes (all successfully dealt with). The power outage today was just a fuse.  I’m always out of sync with the cool kids.

  36. 36.

    JAFD

    “Wintery Mix” falleth on Gotham City and environs tonight

    I and friends have noticed that warm wet autumn hath produced plentiful allergens – mold, pollen, ???  Been dosing myself with generic Cetirizine Hydrochloride, which seems to have reduced some symptoms.

    Am hunkering down until this <bleep> Omicron <bleep> mess clears up.

    Hoping that all you jackals have a merry New Year’s and a healthy, happy, peaceful and prosperous 2022 !

  38. 38.

    Grumpy Old Railroader

    Went from fire season directly to mudslide season here in Northern California. For giggles you can look at the I80 web cams over Donner Pass here:

    newtoreno.com/ca-i80-webcams-donner-summit.htm

    All the highways over the Sierra are closed except CA70 which follows the Feather River at a lower elevation. But that will be closed when the normal winter mudslide/rockslide closes that route. One of my most favorite jobs on the railroad was working a snow flanger keeping the tracks open in big snow storms.

  39. 39.

    worn

    @burnspbesq: Damn, really?

    It’s a little nuts at Tahoe…4-5 ft of snow on the ground near as I can tell. Glad I won’t be behind the wheel for a few days. Driving down from OR yesterday was quite enough.

  41. 41.

    Jackie

    @Dan B: To be fair, steep hills – which the Seattle area has many – isn’t easy driving on snow and icy conditions.

    But, yeah, Western NW drivers panic on the freeways at 1/2” of snow.

  43. 43.

    dmsilev

    Speaking of snow, the LA Times’s story about the wet weather has this lovely correction attached:

    For the record:
    12:56 p.m. Dec. 27, 2021An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated California’s new snowfall record for December was 193.7 feet of snow, measured by the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab and breaking the previous record of 179 feet of snow from 1970. Those measurements are in inches, not feet.

  44. 44.

    worn

    @Grumpy Old Railroader: Are you sure 70 is open? Map currently showed it as closed almost all the way across the Sierras. I went & took a gander because I’m trying to find a route to get my brother & his wife across the mountains. It ain’t pretty out there.

  45. 45.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @worn: I’ve had a few of those harrowing drives not only in snow, but rain and fog. I drowned a car in a torrential rainstorm in a city that gets 15” of precipitation per year. The scary shit can happen anywhere.

  47. 47.

    Leto

    @raven: my parents sent me pics from the beach where they were hanging out for the day. Also 72 in Charleston. We were only about 40 degrees lower… =/

  48. 48.

    FelonyGovt

    I posted this in the COVID thread this AM after it was about dead. We have tickets to a hockey game on Thursday and are really hoping the NHL postpones it, as so many players and coaches are in the COVID protocol. Although they check vax status at the door, mask compliance was poor at the last game we attended. If they don’t postpone we have a decision to make, but probably won’t go.

  50. 50.

    worn

    @Sure Lurkalot: The mercurial aspect of the weather on the east side here has been fascinating. You can go from bright & sunny to zero visibility in a couple of miles. Never seen anything like these winds before, that’s for sure.

  52. 52.

    prostratedragon

    With folks complaining about the lack of snow around Chicagoland. A dusting due tonight, but nothing much on the horizon. Proper winter temps, borderline parka weather, are due (mostly) to set in after New Year’s, though.

  53. 53.

    HumboldtBlue

    Coastal Humboldt is in one of those “you literally can’t get there from here” phases that happens every now and then during winter storms. The weather has been simply dreadful. Cold, wind, lotsa hail and rain and a lot of snow 1500 and up.

    Lots of trees and limbs down, power lines as well and driving conditions are terrible.

    Elsewhere — interesting read about the tentacles of the drug war, this time on 90s TV.

    Put another way: If you’re curious why there were so many corny and ham-fisted anti-drug plot lines in your favorite shows growing up, they didn’t emerge from some organic social contagion about combating drug abuse. Instead, they were well-compensated, unattributed, and undisclosed commercials paid by the federal government that helped them sustain the requisite moral panic around its $50 billion a year “war on drugs”

  54. 54.

    Dan B

    @Jackie: I sent a pic to Watergirl of the arterial at the end of our block – a steep 120’+ hill with two cars jack knifed midway.  What nuts drive down a snow covered steep hill?  Oh, Seattle drivers in snow!

  55. 55.

    Dan B

    @dmsilev: Two locations in WA Cascades have regular snowfall in feet.  M. Baker at 95′ or so one winter and Paradise at Mt. Rainier at 90’+ one year.  The snow plows are nuts blasting the snow straight up 100′.

  56. 56.

    Suzanne

    @frosty: Fo’ realz? It is like 45 degrees here in PGH. Spawn the Elder is visiting from AZ and he is really hoping for some snow before he leaves. We had a very light dusting a couple of weeks ago, but nothing that has required any shoveling.

  57. 57.

    Dan B

    @Leto: The erratic weather Europe is having seems to be the weakening and increasingly wavy Jet Stream that is a consequence of the Arctic warming very rapidly.  The Jet Stream is fastest when the temperature difference between the subtopics and Arctic is greatest.  A slow and weak Jet Stream allows for giant meanders like the slow Mississippi south of the confluence with the Ohio.  These ‘eddys’ allow Arctic air like we have in the PNW and, when the incursion comes from the south, heat domes like this summer that brought 100° – 115° heatwave.

    It was interesting that England is growing fine wine and has avoided the extremes.  The Gulf Stream may be providing protection.

  58. 58.

    Darren

    Here in Vancouver BC it’s a dozen below (Celsius as it’s the modern world up here) snow on the ground (a few centimetres. I already told you why) and I’m right down by the water (elevation of a few meters. You’re catching on) where this shit never happens. We already had floods and fires and pestilence this year. Expecting frogs next year and hoping boils hold off at least for a  while.

    And many worse things are already baked in for billions of people who bear far less blame for this than we do.

  59. 59.

    Jackie

    @Dan B: Almost anytime Seattle gets snow, there’s bloopers showing cars sliding down Queen Anne. Or trying to go up. In slo-mo.

  60. 60.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @WaterGirl: If you really want snow…. Donner Pass has gotten almost 15 feet of snow this month. One of the nearby ski resorts got more than six feet in the last 48 hours, with more on the way.

    Easy to see how the Donner Party got trapped after a single snow storm.

  61. 61.

    The Pale Scot

    Does anyone know how to short circuit a tv purposely without that being obvious?

    Asking for a friend

  63. 63.

    Kayla Rudbek

    Complaints: I can’t get any more rapid at-home Covid tests, and Mr. Rudbek and I had to use the one box we had today (we saw some of his family on the 20th and three days later one of them tested positive).  Both of us tested negative so at least that is good news.

  64. 64.

    Geoduck

    As noted, we here in western Washington State have gotten a dose this week. Only three or four inches here in the state capital, but any amount is a pain for those of us who are life’s pedestrians. Roads at least get plowed. Sidewalks? Ha!

  66. 66.

    Dan B

    @Geoduck: My brother attended McGill in Montreal.  They had sidewalk plows.

    So… They bkw the snow toward the street.  The street plows pushed it back towards the sidewalk.  Rinse, repeat.  There developed ridges with icy sides between sidewalk and street.  To cross the icy street you had to ascend the icy ridge and hope you could do the same on the far side of the road.

    Careful what you wish for.  The difference in Montreal was snow for at least three months.  The build up was substantial.

  68. 68.

    Leto

    @Dan B:

    It was interesting that England is growing fine wine and has avoided the extremes.

    They’re not really avoiding it. Their summers have warmed a good bit. When we lived there (2013-2017) they were having hotter summers, high 80s and up into the 90s. As well as the corresponding milder winters. They’re also having issues with flooding and sea level rise.

    It’s definitely weird to think of the UK as a potential good wine maker. As we were leaving it was becoming more of a thing; more advertising involved, more word of mouth stuff. I guess we’ll see how it pans out.

  70. 70.

    Dan B

    @Leto: Last time I was in London (1987?) it hit 86°.  The heated towel bars in the hotel room were still on.

    I thought that one of the Brits on 60 Minutes said England had avoided the frosts and extreme weather that had plagued France and Italy.  80’s and 90’s is sort of extreme for England but wine growing regions in the PNW, Australia, and South America hit the hundreds every year.

  73. 73.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    We’re back to our usual fall-winter monsoon weather here on the south Oregon coast but colder than usual. A bit of snow fell this am but did not stick around. More is expected tonight but still not expected to stick around. Most of Oregon is covered in snow, even the east desert. That fuckhead the failed cop, Jared Schmuck… I mean Schmeck… Schmuck-Schmeck, same thing… lives in Central Point and supposedly commutes the hour and forty-five+ minutes to Klamath Falls (and back) to work for his felon daddy at his religious electric company. One of the roads he would use is closed and the other is not recommended after dark as there is minimal road maintenance at night.

    I wonder if he ‘works’ for daddy for COVID relief loan purposes…

  74. 74.

    Jay

    @Dan B:

    when I was a kid in the Maritimes, the mountains of snow between the sidewalks and the street were perfect for snow forts, tunnels, parapets, so we we would have snowball “wars” with across the street.

    they got pretty intense and complex.

    I think we were the only neighbourhood kids in the world with catapults and siege ladders.

  75. 75.

    dnfree

    This is infuriating.  The other officers were telling the officer who killed the teenager to slow down.

    LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Police Department released an array of video footage and audio recordings Monday that captured the chaotic moments before and after an officer opened fire with a long rifle inside a Burlington store two days before Christmas, killing a 14-year-old girl and an assault suspect.

    The videos and audio, showing everything from the suspect’s erratic movements in the store and his attacks on multiple customers to the moments an officer opened fire with a long rifle, show police didn’t give any commands to the suspect, who was shot down the aisle from the bloodied assault victim.

    The lone officer who opened fire, however, was told to “slow down” more than a dozen times by other responding officers before shots were fired. He has been placed on administrative leave, the department confirmed to USA TODAY, and not yet publicly identified.

  79. 79.

    The Pale Scot

    @Jay: You have a diagram?? Maybe a microwave magnetron would do it?

     

    @debbie: No fuse, LED, I have Soldering Certs so it has to be with a light touch so as to remain blameless

  90. 90.

    Betsy

    @The Pale Scot: I feel you.  No Tv in almost 40 years. Can’t stand hotel lobbies at breakfast time.  Now all the doctors have them in their waiting rooms, too.  Nasty, distracting, crazy-making stuff!

  91. 91.

    The Pale Scot

    I appreciate the help, the is a Floridian open floor plan house. One floor all rooms exit to the middle of house. It’s just the tv in the living room (middle of the house) I’m hating. If all the tv’s went down it wouldn’t work. The McGuffin is my flight attendant sister, whose husband recently died of cancer and her dog has cancer. She said she would work from here and my father and could watch the wee dog, I have a broken foot and dad has COPD, one month? OK. She comes back from a work trip and plants herself in front of the TV from 5am to 9-10pm, there’s no place to truly get away from it. Now the timeline is extending apparently.

     

    She’s had a really rough year, with COVID and my foot I can’t get away. I wouldn’t leave the dog alone with dad anyway. Before COVID I lived alone for 30 years. Not having any solitude  (except in the middle of the the night), It’s affecting my ability to plan and make decisions.

    If I can just fry the living room TV….

  94. 94.

    The Pale Scot

    @Jay:

    Loosing the remote would only give me a day or two, and constant demands for me to fix it. TV dies, I offer eventual solutions that don’t pan out. set up a ROKU TV in her bedroom

  97. 97.

    frosty

    @Suzanne: Yep, fo’realz. Snow stuck all the way home to the Maryland line. An odd one were Western PA got less than the Susquehanna Valley. You’ll get your share, sorry Spawn the Elder missed it.

    ETA: warming up on Tuesday here, sounds like you’re on the leading edge in the west. Or “west” LOL since you’re from Arizona.

  98. 98.

    frosty

    @The Pale Scot: Earplugs. Then tell her your hearing aids failed. What? You don’t have hearing aids? Point to the earplugs and tell her it was recent, you’ll email the details later.

  100. 100.

    L&DinSLT

    @worn: Six feet on the ground at our house at 6270′ elevation near the Y in South Lake Tahoe. Seriously would just like a BIT of sun and a couple days of no snow. Our ideal is 1-2 feet every week. The lake, at least, should be up to it’s natural rim – if we have a good robust melt! This is one for the record books. Seriously, at the Central Sierra Snow Lab up on Donner, the new record for December is 197 – something inches vs the record from, I think, 1970 of 170 something. Recently 2016-2017 was also epic, and we got the bumper sticker for that one! Hearty mountain people. The newer arrivals, work from home mostly Bay Area transplants, are less sanguine. “But my Tesla is AWD!!!!” They’ll learn, soon we hope!

  102. 102.

    worn

    @L&DinSLT:I think I’ve lived too long in Oregon. Sun? Is that that fickle yellow thing in sky that regularly disappears for months on end?

    I’ll get out tomorrow and figure out how much is on the ground here (we are on the lake just a wee bit N of the state line). Today I shuttled my Dad up here from Reno, unloaded the luggage, immediately drove back, and then shuttled up the remainder of the family. Took all day to get that done. Those new snow tires I bought last week may very well be my best decision of the year; my rig has been a real champ thru this mess!

  103. 103.

    Chris T.

    @Darren: I’m just a bit south of you, just east of I-5, and we got a fricking FOOT of snow (ok, about 30 cm). Which I shoveled using the snow shovel I last used in Utah a decade ago. It is not supposed to do this here. I was supposed to be done shoveling that much snow.

  104. 104.

    MagdaInBlack

    Shall I assume the Illinois folks missing snow don’t have a 2 hour round trip commute in Chicago traffic? Or do you all just enjoy the challenge?  I do not miss it.

  105. 105.

    dyspeptic

    Not a flake in Chicago – I mean someone said they saw some a couple of weeks ago but nothing that stuck. Normally we’ve had at least one significant snow event by now and Xmas is regularly white. Nothing good about this.

  108. 108.

    Carol Van Natta

    @Betsy: ​
    Le point:   The hoses and sprinklers, when connected to the outdoor faucet, bring much needed water to my grass, plants, and shrubberies. But they require me schlepping them from area to area to accomplish said watering.

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