History, politics, people of Oly WA

Category: other blogs (Page 4 of 7)

Don’t worry, Goldy doesn’t remember Seattle in 1990

Hey, that’s not the Great Lake out there, its the northern Pacific Ocean.

Goldy’s whining over the last couple of days about the no-snow-snow-closures in Seattle reminds me how odd it is for the state’s most popular liberal blogger (can anyone tell me that he isn’t) to not really get the region he’s writing about.

No matter how easy it would be understand how different Seattle and many Puget Sound cities are from most east coast cities both in terms of climate and topography, he just seems to gripe that we don’t react to snow storms the way those hardened east coasters do.

We remember when we don’t take these things seriously because:

Our kindergardener daughter was stuck at Kimball all day, and had to eat Fruit Loops, a great topic of subsequent conversation. Her school bus dropped her off on 19th at 10 PM. Fortunately she found her way home (we’d been alerted by phone to await her a block away!).

And:

In 1990, I was living in the north end and working in Ballard. I left work when the snow began to stick (not a good tactic) and made it to about a mile from my mother’s house, got stuck on a hill, got help from helpful people to get my car safely parked without hitting any other vehicles, then walked the rest of the way to pick up my four-month-old.

We stayed at my mom’s until the power went out, and then we bundled up the baby and walked 10 blocks to my house. My husband was driving home from the Eastside and arrived at two in the morning.

Since we don’t get wall to wall snow, we don’t prepare for big storms. We just let them happen and assume the few days at home won’t hurt us too much. But, we’re also more cautious about going out, since we know we’re not prepared.

The stories of the 1990 storm reminded me of another snow related incident a year earlier. The late King County prosecutor’s, Norm Maleng, daughter was killed in 1989 in a sledding accident.

Those kinds of accidents are not uncommon, but going from the a notorious snow death in 1989 to kids being stuck in schools in 1990, probably keeps decision makers more trigger happy to keep kids indoors.

Guzzo’s reaction to election day: ethnic cleansing

Grumpy old Lou goes over the deep end:

Is the “American Dream” quickly being transformed into the “American Nightmare” by the hordes of newcomers, legal and illegal, who are coming into the U.S. far and beyond the immigration quotas that were once ordered by Congress? It would certainly seem that way to judge by the most recent alarming statistics — and Tuesday’s election.

It was no surprise to note that several states, including Texas and California, “have already reached the point where members of minorities are in the majority. Finally, in the words of a Brookings Institution demographer, “by the 2028 presidential election, racial and ethnic minorities will constitute a majority of adults between 18 and 29 for the first time.”

Our forefathers never conceived of what the great nation of America would become. Should we put a stop to these severe ethnic and racial changes?

This week in grumpy old bloggers (don’t vote an damn kids!)

Ken doesn’t want you to vote:

For all practical purposes the election is already over and your vote will do nothing to change the outcome one way or the other. And, if you just guess at the other names on the ballot, you’re making a decision based on ignorance and an ignorant ballot is more dangerous than not voting at all.

If you haven’t already sent in your ballot – don’t.

Hey Ken, if you’re trying to be sarcastic, that particular device doesn’t work in print.

Crazy old man Lou trying to take the joy away from children:

Halloween has careened out of control.

Anyone know what’s going on up at Cascadia near Orting

Inspired by this.

Cascadia is a mega-planned development near Orting, that as far as I can tell, has hit a big road bump. I haven’t been able to find anything newsy on whether construction on the project has halted or not, but evidence is mounting.

Their news page
has been silent since April and totally dead since July.

As far as I can tell, the three builders (Bennett, Centex, and Shea) that have bought into the project (one for $12 million) aren’t selling homes there.

Has the largest planned community in Washington fallen to the axe of the housing bubble?

Son of Roland, what say you?

Either way, I’m up there every so often for work, so I’m thinking of driving by just to take a look.

Fact checking Ken Balsley on “Chris” Gregoire

Ken this morning:

When did Christine Gregoire become Chris Gregoire? When her political handlers decided she needed to become more friendly and approachable. In her first run for governor she ran as Christine Gregoire, in an effort to appear professional and in charge. This time around, she wants to be seen as just one of the girls.

This is a nice little myth that the governor has tried to repackage herself as a kinder, gentler version of herself. Convenient for a subset of folks that think a strong female leader should be “kinder and gentler.”

Poor Ken though, these internets sure are tricky for him, because he’s 100 percent wrong (from Internet Archive circa September 2004):

Chris Gregoire was raised in Auburn by her mom, who made a living as a short-order cook. She worked her way through college with a job at a print shop and earned a teaching certificate before attending law school. Chris shares our views and values. She’ll lead Washington in the right direction.

I guess in 2004 she wasn’t interested in packaging herself as “professional and in charge.”

OH NOES, he’s steeling our content!

OH NO! I HAVE LET GO!
more animals

Yeah, really he’s not.

Olympia Online RSS is a sweet idea.

A bit… uh… janky, but it does the job ok. Its basically a feed aggregator for a handful of blogs in Olympia, a lot like feedtacoma.com, but that website is less on the janky side.

The arrival of Olympia Online RSS is hilarious because of Jason (enpen)’s reaction to a similar effort by Rick over at Olyblog. Read here.

S6 over at Olyforum does a really good job at not really getting it here as well.

The whole thing drives off the RSS course very quickly into Rick and Jason’s personal issues with each other, but Jason’s initial point of “using my rss feed on your site is wrong” is very wrong on its own.

It is not stealing content. There are spam blogs out there that blatantly copy content from rss feeds, but neither what Rick is doing at Olyblog nor Olympia Online RSS are doing that. They’re linking. Automatically linking, but linking in any form is good.

From cluetrain:

Thesis 7: Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy

The ability of the internet to link to additional information – information which might exist beyond the formal hierarchy of organizational structure or published material from such an organization – acts as a means of subverting, or bypassing, formal hierarchies.

R. Scott’s “Romero cost the county $1.5 million” falls flat on its face

The Olympian follows up on R. Scott’s lead and has a pretty thorough, if not exciting, report:

“I think Thurston County is in better shape now, after the revisions,” McCormick said. “They certainly got a plan that is more congruent with the GMA.”

Turns out it was failed political leadership, and not a challenge from a Thurston County resident, that cost the county all that money to comply with the Growth Management Act. R. Scott has tried and tried to pin it on commission candidate Sandra Romero, but the piece this morning just seems to point out that the lawsuit helped Thurston County revise its plan into a much better version.

Also, it seems like R. Scott’s fakey LTE did actually tip the Olympian to follow up on the how-much-the-lawsuit-cost-the-county storyline. Its just too bad that the actual story was sooo different than what R. Scott would have wanted.

Drats!

Gawd, not “another woman on the bench”

You know, emotionally, I have a lot of sympathy for the “dads rights” folks. I don’t want my children ever taken away from me.

But, if you want to be taken seriously, I’d hope the guys over at the Thurston County Family Court Reporter blog stop being sexist jerks:

Well, Ms. Murphy, I hope you prove me wrong. Every woman I have talked to about women on the bench has agreed that women rule by emotion first and foremost despite what the facts of record are. Additionally, the women judges tend to rule like a Monarchist and can’t seem to treat it like a job. People who are employed by the people are public servants not “officials” or royalty. Anyone that has witnessed Pomeroy, Schaller and Casey on the bench knows exactly what I am talking about. Power corrupts.

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