Areas that get too much snow also produce people with too much time on their hands. I thought this picture was one of the cuter snow sculptures that has hit the internet.
Are we just about finished with snow for the season? I seriously doubt it. Even though today is the last day of February and I have daffodils trying to come up in my front yard, I don’t think we have seen the last of Old Man Winter.
For the record, next Sunday, March 8, marks the beginning of Day Light Saving Time. Let my winter depression life! More day light!
Reminder. The open thread is for topics not covered in other posts that you, the reader and contributor, want to talk about.
It’s just a good place to plant what ever is on your mind.
I change posts whenever I get tired of looking at the picture or whenever it hits around 100 comments, which ever comes first.
I have WordPress set to shut off comments after 2 weeks. Sometimes that happens on Open thread and I don’t notice. Usually Cargo emails me. Sometimes he forgets so call or email if comments close. You might ask why? I don’t want strangers going in and planting stuff on old posts and for me to overlook something that needs to come down. It has happened before.
Now I am chief cook and bottle washer here, I will need your eyes and ears to help out. I don’t check [email protected] as often as I should so if I don’t answer, leave me a note here to check my email. If you know my real email address, please use it. If you don’t hear back from me, email again or call. It probably means I have croaked. If you don’t know the real daily email address, ask me for it. I will send it to you privately. I just don’t post it out in the open.
One of those creations that came in a big heap to me, I assume. 🙂
I feel cheated in that we haven’t had nearly enough snow. It has been cold, but so was last winter. In terms of actual snowfall, however, not much to talk about. The Potomac is frozen over more or less solid, something that doesn’t happen all that often. From looking at the 7-day forecast, it appears that that will soon end, as every day starting tomorrow is projected to be above freezing. Today might be the best day for those of you who want to try walking across on the ice. Let us know how you did.
@Scout
You can have ALL of my snow…..
More snow tomorrow. 2-3 inches of snow, then likely ice because the ground is so cold.
Cargo — Hah! Better hold onto your snow. It may become a valuable trading commodity when global warming arrives. Got a big freezer?
Up in northern Wisconsin, when the big lakes freeze over, the locals build a big replica of Stonehenge made completely out of ice blocks They call it “Icehenge”
@punchak
Absolutely. Thank you Punchak.
Are those rabbits or cats or both?
GOP infighting in Va. may harm party’s White House bid in 2016
Feuding within Virginia’s state GOP is alarming prominent national Republicans who think the infighting in a crucial swing state threatens the party’s quest to recapture the White House in 2016.
The rift pits centrist conservatives against tea party and Libertarian activists, and it is playing out in divisive primaries and causing wrangling for control of the party’s state organization.
A bitter source of the conflict — one almost certain to ignite renewed debate as 2016 approaches — is whether the state GOP will select a presidential candidate in a primary or at a convention, a process likely to influence whether the winner is a centrist or a right-wing Republican.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/gop-strife-in-virginia-may-hinder-partys-bid-for-white-house-in-2016/2015/02/15/3a5d4738-abca-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html?tid=HP_more?tid=HP_more
Another winter storm warning for Tuesday. Somebody please make it stop!!
I wish we could, Wolve.
At least we aren’t Boston.
Did everyone read about the sex offender in Manassas? Selfies with his dog?
If convicted, will he go on the sex offenders list?
Manassas was not keeping it classy, that’s for sure.
Ya’ll – Inside NOVA reports that a public meeting between BOS and schools devolved to bickering over a flyer sent home With the students. Supervisor C is probably furious that the schools reached over 100,000 citizens in a single afternoon. Schoolteachers are just smart that way.
He said he was mortified that they had gotten to that point. Now that’s just funny. He’s the one driving this disaster. Seems like once he gets what he asked for he doesn’t like it.
He’s getting noticed alright. My neighborhood, full of school aged children, is really talking about this. Good luck BOS.
BOS, the schools pounded you.
I hope Virginia repugs hold a convention to select their nominee instead of popular elections. That way they will nominate some cool with no chance of winning
for Scout:
http://potomaclocal.com/2015/03/03/folk-performer-peter-yarrow-coming-hylton-center-apr-12/
This week, Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be the true rightful heir to The Executive. Her sense of self sacrifice to run her own private email server for ALL of her official email while she was Secretary of State shows her desire to do what she thinks is right and not be bogged down with a bunch of nit-picky laws or regulations. Who better to continue the legacy of The Executive?
To think that John Kerry was almost President. I mean, he’s a man so tied down by legalese that he follows a silly old law from 2009 about using official email accounts while he is Secretary of State. I mean how silly is that?
Although, I must confess to a grievous error on my part. I made the argument against The Executive’s immigration degree by saying it would set a precedent for some crazy extremist to use it to set tax policy. Now that we know that The Executive is “very interested” in raising taxes through executive action, I realize how racist I was to have made that argument.
I also see that an FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch has resulted in the recovery of emails from the Department of State operations center to the Secretary’s office on the night of Benghazi. Those emails reportedly show that the 7th floor was informed immediately that, per the Regional Security Officer in Tripoli, Benghazi was a terrorist attack and within two hours that the claiming perp was the al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia.
Is it just me or does our state department need a wakeup call when it comes to security?
@Furby McPhee
Let’s hope this jump starts the ‘run Liz run!’ machine! The Dem bench jus pretty weak. They have jackass Joe, transparent Hillary, and…. well. That’s about it. Maybe they can dust off Al Gore for a run.
Let’s not forget that the media matters crowd will argue that other secretary of states have done the same thing and they are correct. What they leave out is that she is the only one that exclusively used a personal account. On a server hosted IN HER HOME.
I bet it turns up about as much as the Whitewater investigation did. No news here.
That is a serious thing. Back in 1996, it was discovered that CIA Director John Deutch, a Clinton appointee, had taken very sensitive classified CIA material home, placed it on his personal laptops, and marked it as unclassified. The CIA began an investigation in 1997, after Deutch had been relieved of his post by Clinton over differences on foreign policy issues. The case was referred to the DOJ, but Janet Reno declined to prosecute. On his last day in office, Clinton pardoned Deutch. I don’t recall anyone raising serious counterespionage issues with regard to Deutch. More like a very serious breach of security which made classified information vulnerable to espionage.
Sad news. Sweet Briar College is closing down for good at the end of the academic year. Too many financial problems, they say. After more than 100 years.
Part me thinks that it is sad and the other part of me doesn’t. My father always wanted me to go to Sweet Briar. I would have rather been beaten with a chain than to go there. Talk about going to school in Bum-F***, Virginia. Shudder.
The school should have changed to meet the times. They could have admitted men for starters. They could have changed their academic programs to attract a more diverse student population. When I was coming along it was a school for little rich girls. I could have never afforded to go, regardless of what my father said. It was definitely a pipe dream of his.
Thursdays quiz:
Name the 3 remaining single sex colleges in Virginia.
There used to be many. Not so many nowadays. My alma mater used to be one.
Hollins. Mary Baldwin. Can’t think of the third one without peeking. Hollins has already offered to take an unspecified number of Sweet Briar undergrads on transfer.
You are right about Sweet Briar. That place is waaaaay out in the boonies. You can’t even see the college from the entrance gate on the highway. Nevertheless, the students and alums are really upset.
I think Sweet Briar has a long tradition of thinking they are better than everyone else. That’s ok. It was always harder to get into Hollins and Randy Mac than it was Sweet Briar. MEOW. Seriously, that is a serious upset for the alumni and more importantly, for those still in attendance. Its also quite an investment.
Hint for the answer: its a male only college.
My grandmother begged me to live with them and go to mary Baldwin. I would have rather been locked away in solitary than live with my grandparents and go to college. She offered to pay for it. Sneaky thing is, she never told my parents of her offer. I said no and she ever forgave me.
Virginia’s GOP moves further away from democracy
THE FIX was in from the start when Virginia Republicans picked their ticket for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in 2013.
Hard-line conservatives who control the state party apparatus decreed that the nominations would be determined not by primaries but by a convention, a mechanism well suited to limit the number of participants.
In the event, just 8,000 of the Republican faithful showed up — representing perhaps half of 1 percent of the party’s sympathizers in the state — and the right-wing ticket they picked was swept in the fall by the Democrats, who held much more widely attended nominating primaries.
The defeats were part of a GOP losing streak in Virginia’s statewide elections. Despite being evenly divided between the two major parties, Virginia has not elected a Republican to any statewide position since 2009, nor has it elected one to the U.S. Senate since 2002.
That string of losses has coincided with venomous internecine divisions in the Republican ranks, in which hard-liners generally have prevailed by forcing nominating conventions, most of which have yielded hard-line candidates. A notable exception was the GOP convention that nominated Ed Gillespie , a pragmatic candidate for the U.S. Senate last year; he was defeated by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the incumbent, but narrowly.
Rather than rethinking that losing strategy, Virginia’s conservative activists now seem inclined to double down on it. They are pressing for the GOP to hold a convention rather than a state-run primary to choose a presidential nominee in 2016.
That move would be designed to favor more ideological candidates, such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, and handicap more moderate candidates, such as former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
In addition to giving more extreme candidates a leg up, the effect would be undemocratic. Tens of thousands of moderate Republicans — the sort of voters who might go to the polls for a primary but are unlikely to travel dozens or hundreds of miles to a convention — would be excluded.
Tens of millions of Americans might not be committed to one party or the other, but surely most would favor more participatory elections and more moderate candidates. By pressing for a process that would produce neither, hard-line Republicans are pursuing a losing strategy — not just for themselves but also for voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/to-the-right/2015/03/05/5136d03c-c367-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html?hpid=z4
If I were a Virginia republican, I would feel pretty irate being shut out of the primaries.
According to Greg, Steve Chapman is back and running for supervisor over in Woodbridge.
Chapman, some might remember, challenged delegate Harry Parrish in the most ugliest of ways, telling lies right and left about Harry.
Greg spells out, in great detail, some pretty sordid information about the guy’s personal life. Well, that’s neither here nor there. Chapman is not truthful. That’s all I need. I don’t need to bask in gossip to bring up the fact that Chapman just isn’t ethical enough for me. I base all this on lies from a decade ago, when he recruited a young man at church to rent a room from so he would be in district. The problem was, he never lived at that room, not even for a night. Chapman, when things heated up, tried to throw the young man and his family under the proverbial bus.
The Republicans are ethically challenged if they even let this toad run on their ticket, in my humble opinion.
Republicans are not shut out of the “primaries.”
Any Republican can volunteer to be a delegate. There are always positions open.
I was once one. Very nice. The politicians were forced to pay attention to you.
I got to sit Cantor down and force him to explain his support for some programs…..
He used doublespeak, which I expected.
My disdain for him was quite obvious when I told him to go away.
Wow. Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times today. She went after Bill and Hillary with some very sharp nails.
She’s vicious like that.
Starry – this is just a continuation of the Virginia GOP death cult. The trend lines are definitely describing a political organization increasingly interested in self-pleasuring a very narrow inner group and increasingly afraid of the electorate. Many of us who were active in the party years ago watch now only in little anguished peeks between our fingers. It is completely self-defeating. A perfect model of dysfunctionality in a political context.
@ Moon – thanks for the tip on the concert. I may even bestir myself for the trek from Fairfax. It would be great if Yarrow’s daughter, Bethany, were on the bill. She is a force. I would definitely make the trip to see her.
I would say that GOP dysfunctionality is quite visible on the Hill in the persons of Boehner and McConnell. They foolishly try to dismiss and exclude a considerable section of the population that is crucial to their own chances at political power and risk condemning themselves to permanent second place. But, then, perhaps that is where they feel most comfortable, since they do not seem to have the capability to lead. But they do appear to have a knack for telling lies to the people while campaigning. Future “Whigs” most likely.
Do you really think the extremes are the answer? I don’t think they have ever been successful for long.
What on earth is going on in the City of Manassas in Point of Woods? I almost got run over about 7 times by Manassas’s finest racing to a call. Blue lights all over the place.
I rolled down the window to snoop but couldn’t determine much although I did hear someone hollering. I got out of Dodge because I didn’t want to be next.
@Moon-howler
Upholding the Constitution is an extreme these days? Well, maybe it is in the current political climate. I imagine Franklin would remark that we seem to be on the way to losing the Republic, just as he warned at the start.
Most unusual situation which I cannot recall having seen in my long life in Washington. The House and Senate are being controlled by the respective minority leaders because the Speaker and Majority Leader flat out lied to the voters, assumed the power given to them by those voters, and promptly tried to shaft many of those who brought them to the dance. It took both of them less than two months to ignore the electoral promises and create party dissension instead of pursuing a golden opportunity. Total lack of leadership, but not all that unexpected with that crowd. They lack the ability to communicate with their own troops and they are scared silly of the media. They seem unable to figure out why many of the troops refuse to go over the lip of the trench when they blow their feeble whistle. And the boogey man behind their curtain is named Rove, the “architect” of the Bush II fiasco which led to two terms of Obama.
Hamden-Sydney
@Moon-howler
A) Define “extremes.”
B) When the bus is rolling towards a cliff, and the driver AND most of the passengers want to merely slow down…. pulling him out of the seat and stomping the brakes can be seen as extreme.
@ Wolve – I was referring to the Virginia GOP organization, but if you want to toss uninspired leadership at the national level on the pile, I’ll help you set the thing on fire. I’m not sure my gripes with Boehner and McConnell are the same as yours, but I share your negative views of these suits.
The ice break-up on the Potomac was a marvel to watch Sunday.
I am sorry I missed it. I assume it is totally over?
@Scout
I used to love to watch that. The cracking and noise was always awesome as well.
It’s pretty much over. Mrs. Scout and I walked along the river between Roosevelt Island and the Three Sisters yesterday and the ice was piling up. Further down the river, below Memorial Bridge, it was also pretty, but not as dramatic. Today I went into Washington City and most of the ice was gone. I told my wife that we might never see that much ice on the river again. It was very solid for at least a couple of weeks and I think it would have supported a human adult.
In 1977, my roommate and I walked across the Potomac (on the ice, to be clear) on the day of Jimmy Carter’s inauguration.
Why Scout! You youngster!
I guess today melted any remaining ice that was there.
How did you know when to go watch and listen?
I see it every day on my way to work so I have been monitoring the ice cover for some weeks. This past weekend it was clear that the ice cover, which was pretty much total, would be reduced by high temperatures. I’m sure that the C&O Canal, which is more or less stagnant, developed a thicker ice cover and there probably is a good bit of ice on it even now. The Potomac, by contrast, has very strong flow all the way down to Key Bridge and is tidal up to Chain Bridge. So there is a lot of surface movement that makes the extent of the ice cover this year even more remarkable.