Shortly after Senator Brown #2 abandoned his much-advertised pickup truck for the plush chauffered limos of DeeCee, there was a five-alarm tire fire back in his home town. Shortly after Scotty was sworn in, gleeful weatherpersons started predicting up to 24 inches of snow in the nation’s capital… and maybe an inch, or so, in the southern half of Massachusetts.
Assuming the forecasters are correct, we Massholes definitely got the better end of this particular deal with Pat Robertson’s devil. We have both firefighters and snow removal equipment here in New England.
beltane
The stock market has been doing rather poorly since Brown was elected as well. Perhaps Ted Kennedy’s ghost is not pleased with the current state of affairs.
Funny how in Vermont it is a beautiful sunny day with hardly any snow on the ground and none forecast for this weekend.
aimai
Annie Laurie,
Can I just say how depressed I am about Brown? I think I feel about his ascension to power the way centrist, educated, Republicans must have felt about Palin. Its kind of a “wtf?” moment for me about my beloved Commonwealth. Its not that I didn’t know there were lots of independents and, generally speaking, stupid voters of all stripes. I work my local elections as a clerk. I’ve doorknocked. Hell, I’ve been a delegate to the state level conventions. I know *how* and *why* Brown got the nod. But its hugely embarrassing and awful, nonetheless.
aimai
El Cid
I’m guessing you haven’t learned the lesson of Colorado Springs, that this should all be volunteer work and paid for with penny ante donations instead of soshulist snow blowers.
valdivia
Thanks Scott Brown. Seems I just moved to DC to enjoy the freaking storm of the century. And the assholes of Virginia claiming this is proof that there is no global warming. Shoot me now.
Zifnab
@aimai: Kennedy did his job too well. He kept winning, even in a state that had a strong streak of red buried under the surface. Massachusetts isn’t so much bluer than Rhode Island or New Hampshire, but the Kennedys were and Massachusetts loved the Kennedys.
Scott Brown would have been slaughtered by Ted, but then Ted would have run a campaign rather than sitting back and letting the state knight him one more time.
chopper
@valdivia:
the one last december was pretty bad in DC. it was about 2 feet where i was. shit, i had to shovel all that stuff. my back is pissed just thinking about it.
valdivia
@chopper:
You have my sympathies. Are you here as well?
I was at the gym about an hour or so ago and every channel was weather. They are saying it will be the same or worse then the one in Dec. Yay! If the cats don’t eat me after spending the whole time cooped up with them I will consider myself lucky!
eemom
@aimai:
is it fair to blame Martha Coakley? Cuz I do.
I live here in the land of Brown snow.
J.W. Hamner
@eemom:
I blame Dems for not voting in the primary. It took 5 minutes to see she was terrible… granted, I thought she was inevitable regardless said terribleness, but still…
ajr22
In regards to the last post, I couldn’t agree more with the idea “stop calling them teabaggers” line. The republicans are just trying to hide from the name of their own party. In IL all the adds their people ran have all said, Vote for random asshole X he’s a conservative that will balance the budget. No mention of Republican. They are afraid of their own party name, so they try to hide behind the words conservative and tea party. How can the media not see it, when Republicans warn the baggers not to BREAK OFF from the Republican party.
Sentient Puddle
I’ve got friends who bitch and whine about how there’s no global warming too. Friends who should know better because they went to my (tech) college and had to take at least a few courses on this shit.
They may not be friends much longer. I do not appreciate having to put up with willful stupidity.
DBrown
This will be our SECOND two footer this winter (Balt-Wash area), not counting the half foot we got a few days ago – this is what climate change (aka GW) is all about. Not only does the AVERAGE yearly temp get higher but lows can be worse AND snow/reain amounts can increase. Damn AO’s. It is really coming down now – hopefully, they are wrong … .
burnspbesq
@eemom:
I finally have a good reason to hate Scott Brown.
His daughter plays on the Boston College women’s basketball team, which beat Duke last night.
Yeah, my disdain just turned into white-hot hatred.
geg6
Damn it, Anne Laurie, what did we Pennsylvanians do to deserve this blizzard that’s about to descend? Hell, we have the one Repuke who actually turned his back on these assholes and came over to the sane side of the aisle where he has been one of the most reliable votes for our Kenyan overlord.
It’s not fair, damn it.
de stijl
Was this Massachusetts tire tire in Springfield?
dr. bloor
@geg6:
Ed Rendell, perhaps?
valdivia
It’s really falling hard now. Being a tropical girl and all I still feel utter wonder when I look at the snow falling, and the truth is that as long as I am inside it is kind of strikingly beautiful (when I was out a while ago it was not, more along the lines of miserable).
asiangrrlMN
Wait, if snow is the wrath of god against stupidity or some such, then why the hell don’t WE have more of it? We have the Queen of Batshitcrazy right here! Michele Bachmann. Granted, we also have Al Franken, Keith Ellison, and my rep, Betty McCollum, but still.
We are getting a measly two-three inches. Bah.
@valdivia: Love the snow. Go outside and breath in the wonderful winter air that comes along with it. Make snow angels. Go sledding. It’s marvelous!
And, all the snow on the East Coast is convincing me that I am definitely an East Coast grrl and not a West Coast one.
geg6
@dr. bloor:
Fast Eddie is okay. I’m not a fan of ANY pol from Philadelphia, but he’s not bad. And he, unlike most of our Dems in Congress, is perfectly willing to fight back.
The Grand Panjandrum
I blame all this on the gummint extending Daylight Saving Time for another month a few years back. That extra hour of light sure has messed things up, hasn’t it? It’s all a big plot by the liberals to get us to recycle.
jeffreyw
Made a dish from a recipe a friend sent this morning, she called it “chicken and tomatoes” which, though correct, isn’t sexy enough a name to suit Mrs J’s notion of what a name for such a great tasting dish ought to be. Any better ideas? Fancy French name perhaps?
I think a better name is the missing ingredient
valdivia
@jeffreyw:
mm. looks amazing. I don’t know changing the name will do anything cause it looks great already.
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: Saucy Seduction. I put it in a comment there. You just get better and better.
binzinerator
As long as we’re talking about snow and assholes…looks like the Snowbilly Grifter’s First Dude was a shadow co-governor.
Then this caught my eye:
About nine months before, eh?
O the irony: While Bible Spice and First Dude are watching, with their family values pinned to their lapels, a movie about someone else’s knocked-up teenage daughter, their own teenage daughter, with her ankles pinned to her ears, is getting herself knocked up.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
R-Jud
@The Grand Panjandrum: On the up side, it makes it harder for the UN to put bar codes on the stop signs under cover of darkness.
This is awesome: How to report the news, by Charlie Brooker.
eemom
@jeffreyw:
we can haz recipe plz?
General Winfield Stuck
Sorry. But it’s Massachusetts turn to wear the political Dunce Cap.
jeffreyw
@eemom:
Yes Ma’am, here ya go-a link to the post I put up at BHF’s place.
geg6
OT, but Fallows has a nice little historical/political lesson for us all from the inimitable Harry Truman:
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2010/02/turnip_day.php
eemom
@jeffreyw:
thank you! looks yummy. I love tomatoey stuff.
valdivia
The Shelby story keeps getting dirtier and dirtier! Via Plum Line.
catclub
jeffrey’s recipe:
The chicken dish we do like that is ‘Chicken legs puttanesca’
One or two t’s in puttanesca?
The whore’s chicken. But sounds better in Italian.
Remember “A Fish Called Wanda”?
Sundried tomatoes, capers, black olives, regular tomatoes.
Tasty!
aimai
Hey eemom,
Sure, I blame Coakley. I blame the national democrats for failing to grasp that individual campaigners, like Coakley, aren’t necessarily going to understand how to run a campaign. I mean, that was obvious from the get go. The National Democratic party and Obama stayed out of the local primary and left the local self nominating candidates to slug it out. The democratic voters who voted in the primary,and those who didn’t, assumed that the winner of the democratic primary would win the general in a walk. Its always been that way before. No one seriously evaluated the three potential dems for their “electability” because it wasn’t even considered an issue. I was a capuano voter because I thought Coakley was wrong for the Senate seat, but no on I know even knew that Brown existed. Let alone that he’d make a serious run for the position.
That was Coakley and the national Democrat’s error. They needed to be running as though their lives (and ours) depended on it. Because it was true. And because it was the only way that Democratic/liberal voters could be whipped into action. We lost the election because young obama voters and non white obama voters didn’t turn out. They thought the party had it in the bag and didn’t bother to work. Then the “independents” and the republicans who had so long resented democratic dominance got jazzed by the thought of the wholly spurious and destructive role their “41st” vote could play. They saw it as a passion play about national politics. Our local voters didn’t grasp the importance of the loss of the seat at all. They could have, but they didn’t. Because Coakely was a really bad candidate and the national party didn’t step in to help her market herself (or force her to market herself) aggressively.
aimai
jeffreyw
@catclub: I’ll pass on that name, lest my friend deem it a reflection on her. LOL Your recipe does sound nice!
twiffer
i can’t stand idiots who think climate change means “summer in winter”. no, dumbfucks. do people honestly not understand the significance of an average winter temperature changing from, say 32°F to 33°F? or that a slightly warmer winter can mean more snow, because temperature sets the upper bound on the saturation level for water in the atmosphere? cold = dry.
meanwhile, another storm looks to pass just south of CT, so no snow for me. it is winter. i like snow in winter. particularly when it’s a friday night and i can spend it sitting in front of the fire with my wife while it gently blankets the world outside. and then spend saturday try to teach my 2.5 yr old how to make and throw (not eat!) a snowball.
but no. instead, brown grass and slightly frozen ruts in the mud left over from that week in jan when it flirted with 60°F for a few days. meh.
geg6
@twiffer:
I’ll be happy to send all we have gotten just in the last two hours right on up to you in CT. Just sayin’.
geg6
Once again, we have to look to our female Speaker to show who among the Dem leadership has cojones:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/dems-to-force-gop-vote-on-anti-social-security-privatization-resolution.php?ref=fpa
inkadu
Apropos of nothing, I was thinking about the push for “science and math” education, and was trying to square it with the large number of unemployed engineers, programmers, and biologists.
Is the idea to have a large pool of inexpensive competent people to do the grunt work required, which would attract R&D investment? The pool of highly qualified, highly educated scientists here might not be what the economy requires. If this is the case, the obvious thing to do is lower the cost of education through massive public underwriting, not throwing a few bones to public schools.
And it’s not really going to snow too much here. I’m just north of the Heavy Shit line.
eemom
@aimai:
a fine, though tragic, exegesis.
that really captures the spirit of the so-called “indepedents” and tea baggers. That is why it drives me crazy to hear them dignified as a “movement.” They’re not a fucking movement. They have no ideology. They’re against shit they don’t even understand. They’re united by nothing but hatred and ignorance.
valdivia
@geg6:
yep. I love me some Nancy.
Mario Piperni
It didn’t take long for Brown to get into full disgusting Repub mode. Ten minutes.
inkadu
I’m also pleased that Hulu is running all the SuperBowl ads, so you don’t have to watch football if you don’t want to; not that there’s anything wrong with watching football, of course. I appreciate all public displays of homoerotica.
eemom
@geg6:
she has the only pair in the entire Democratic party.
valdivia
Unfortunate Name Dept for the lolz.
CalD
I believe this is would be an example of what they call “cold comfort.”
aimai
Tragic exegesis? eemom something tells me that if you, Anne Laurie and I were to get together we’d have a rip roaring time of it.
aimai
merl
Sunny and warm in Seattle.
asiangrrlMN
@geg6: Love it. More of this, please, Madame Speaker. And Reid? Could you take a few notes?
soonergrunt
And you got Scott Brown out of Massachussetts. It looks like you win three ways.
GReynoldsCT00
@jeffreyw:
I want…
General Winfield Stuck
@aimai: OH, I don’t know about that. All of the polls for likely voters showed Brown was going to win by about what he won by. That makes a case that as a whole, Mass didn’t want Coakley, or wanted Brown, or both. Pinning it on Obama voters doesn’t wash, as you could easily find enough repubs and independents that didn’t turn out either to counter that argument.
And the national dems staying out of a states primary is an equally dubious causation. Mass voters are smart enough to figure out who they want to vote for, and outside pressure to choose one dem over another often causes backlash for meddling in local politics. Coakley and Mass dems and voters are what caused this, not outside forces. And I would lay most of that on Coakley for simply not campaigning for 4 weeks of a six week campaign period, with the further bad optics of jetting off to the tropics with hubris voters everywhere do not like.
twiffer
@geg6: i’ll take it. just wait till i get home from work.
jeffreyw
He’s back. And this time he brought a friend along.
GReynoldsCT00
@twiffer:
I like it when we have snowstorm and then it stays cold enough to keep it from melting. The less the roads are screwed up the better IMO.
GReynoldsCT00
@jeffreyw:
I noticed that when I was drooling over the poulet dish…
inkadu
@jeffreyw: What are those? I can’t recognize hawks unless they’re flying overhead.
Anne Laurie
@eemom:
They’re called a ‘movement’ because they’re taking a public dump on logic, reason, and the Reality-Based Community. They’re the new face of the Adult Diaper Republicans, aka Movement Conservatives.
inkadu
@Anne Laurie: Activia Activism.
jeffreyw
@inkadu: I’m not sure, but I think they are immature Cooper’s Hawks. Maybe a pair of siblings from last year’s hatch. Further back in my photostream there are more pictures of the one.
Anne Laurie
@jeffreyw: I think it should be coming up on raptor mating (nesting) season. Since you’ve opened a hawk buffet bar, you may have — to use the Repub idiom — encouraged the stray animals to hang around and breed. I’m looking forward to future photos!
Karen
Everything is already covered with snow here in Silver Spring, MD. I’m inside so I can look at the pretty snow.
inkadu
@jeffreyw: That reminds me. There’s an eagle-watching train near here — takes you up near an island where they breed. Strangely, I find bald eagles kind of boring. Maybe it’s because I’m a liberal.
Your hawks look good. Telephoto or digital zoom?
valdivia
@inkadu:
FTFW. Really a thing of beauty. I am stealing that Activia Activism.
jeffreyw
@inkadu: I’m using the Nikon “prosumer” class 70-300 vr auto focus. Had it for a month or so now, a score from E-Bay. The real pro glass is dear, indeed.
binzinerator
@aimai:
Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to ask why there was a really bad candidate in the race? Was a turd the best they could do? If so, why?
To me it says something’s fucked up at a very elemental level if the explanation of Coakley’s loss is because no one thought to polish the turd.
inkadu
@jeffreyw: Sounds fancy! My girlfriend’s a photographer; she has all Nikon equipment but dreams Canon. All I know is how much my forearms hurt after using those cameras. Maybe I should send her out to E-bay to troll for equipment. She really needs a good tripod…
@valdivia: Activia Activist stage Proctological Protest featuring Scat Singing and Coprolite Flinging.
valdivia
@inkadu:
you Sir, are killing me. well played.
twiffer
@GReynoldsCT00: agreed. this, “hey it just snowed, dial it up to 45° for the day, then back to 15° overnight” shit has to stop. i live on a hill and like it when my driveway is not a luge run.
jeffreyw
@inkadu: I suppose the Canon-Nikon thing is akin to the Ford-Chevy fanboy battle, but I don’t know enough about either to have an informed opinion on the relative merits. Best I can tell is that it’s a seesaw battle.
inkadu
@jeffreyw: My girlfriend’s only complaint is the Nikon is not as sensitive to flesh tones as the Canon. But, yeah, they’re both probably perfectly awesome cameras. But it’s impractical to have a canon and a nikon, because you’d need to buy an extra set of lenses… so those little differences become emotionally important, since they have to justify the kit they have.
aimai
General,
The whole point of the term “likely voter” was that it excluded the unlikely Obama voters who had turned out for Obama previously but were not regular voters. I definitely fault the national democratic party, and coakley, for being unable to excite those voters. I’m sorry if this conflicts with your totally pointless conviction that there is nothing that the national democratic party, or obama, could have done to turn this around. I am not arguing that they could have taken this election away from Brown. I’m arguing that given that they, and Coakley, didn’t try hard enough they didn’t have a chance.
To recap the reality of the race: usually republicans/independents don’t turn out for our senatorial races at all. Usually the republican senatorial candidate vanishes in a cloud of incompetence before he can even get to the polling booth. Often the election is a pro forma event that takes place while people are going to the polls to vote for other important events. Kennedy was popular. All of those things describe previous MA senatorial races. None of those things describe this one. None of those things described this one from the moment that Brown threw his hat in the ring. Only Coakley and the national democratic party seemed unaware of these facts. That’s too bad–because it was their job to try to win under these circumstances. Not under some other circumstances.
aimai
Steeplejack
Just got home from work about half an hour ago here in the Virginia suburbs of D.C. We got about 4″ of snow today—very wet, very slippery—but right about now (sundown) it’s supposed to really start coming down, and keep coming down tonight and all through tomorrow, with accumulations up to 20–30″. ¡Caramba! That would be worse than the big storm we had back in December. Actually, the TV news is saying that this could be the biggest blizzard ever recorded in this area. Even bigger than the Knickerbocker storm of 1922.
Hope I don’t have to work tomorrow. The store manager said they will decide in the morning, but I am 90 percent certain that the snowpocalypse will be in full swing and they won’t be able to open. They already have announced that the earliest the store would open is 11:00 a.m.
As per usual, there was a riot in progress at the grocery store when I passed it on the way home. What was unusual is that down a side street I saw a group of saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths doing stretches and getting limbered up for Ice Age action.
General Winfield Stuck
@jeffreyw: Since the only DSLR I have ever owned is the Canon Rebel xt, I don’t have a point of comparison from experience. I will say that I am triple pleased with my Canon, and would be hard pressed, dollar for dollar, believing any Camera would match up.
jeffreyw
@General Winfield Stuck: Nyah nyah-yer Canon sucks balls. Nikon Rulez! LOL
Steeplejack
@Sentient Puddle:
I have tried to erase “global warming” from my vocabulary and refer to “climate change” instead. With decidely mixed results, because teh stoopid is strong.
Mike G
We have both firefighters and snow removal equipment here in New England.
Good thing it doesn’t snow in Colorado Springs where they now don’t have much of either. Pray hard to Jesus to save your property values, Rapture Assholes.
General Winfield Stuck
@aimai:
Then if you aren’t arguing the national democratic party could have turned this race around, why mention it as a causative factor in the first place. You are getting more clever in efforts to pin this on Obama, and his record thus far, as being a bigger problem than it is, but it still is wanting for facts. It is my job as an Obot to point that fact out when necessary. And I will continue to do so on an as needed basis.
Folks in Mass like Obama just fine, but he wasn’t running for senate in that state, and as Tip O’neill said all politics is local. That isn’t always completely true, and maybe Obama and the national dems could have done more, but choosing the candidate for Mass citizens, and changing their minds about Coakley and Brown isn’t among them. Obama campaigned for her, when she finally decided to show up two weeks before the election, what was he supposed to do before that, campaign for her while she soaked up rays on some sunny southern beach.
Massachusetts and other NE states sometimes elect republicans that seem moderate, especially when they don’t like the dem candidate that doesn’t show up to campaign. This time they did. How about we chalk it up to that and move on.
binzinerator
@Anne Laurie:
I think of ’em as ‘shit-in-yer-own-hat’ conservatives. “Haw-haw-haw libtards! That steaming load is for you! Look at this, moonbats. I’m gonna wipe my ass on the brim!” They seem to have no clue that they and their kids are going to end up wearing that same hat.
And I swear to fucking christ when these dumbasses finally find themselves floundering in the pile of warm shit they insisted on making they’re gonna blame everyone else for the stink and flies. Hell, it’s what they’re doing now. That’s what their teabagging parties are all about.
elaine
In DC the snow has stopped, momentarily. It feel weird, like there should be a commercial about now.
In any case, the snow is this wet, heavy stuff, which is a pain to shovel and worse, melts in sunlight and turns to ice at night.
I’m not looking forward to figuring out how to shovel off the roof if 2 feet really falls. (Flat roof and the point of access is from the attic…)
LuciaMia
Le Poulet au Rouge?
Here in northern NJ, the snowfall prediction changes by they hour. As of this moment-maybe 3-5 inches. Our local news guys seem almost teary that they can’t get more apocalyptic.
eemom
@Steeplejack:
I’m in NoVA too and I have never seen the grocery stores like this. People have literally lost their minds.
geg6
aimai, Stuck will never admit to a fault in Obama or the DNC. Ever. They are helpless victims who can never do anything to change anything and it’s everybody else’s fault. Now I’m not saying everything Obama does sucks because it doesn’t and I continue to support him. But the idea that the president and the national party apparatus never saw this coming and they’ve even admitted to being caught flat footed is appallingly bad political planning and decision making. It’s not like there weren’t numerous reports of her horrible candidacy and political apparatus weeks and weeks before the special election. Would an intervention have helped? Perhaps, but no one ever tried.
General Winfield Stuck
@geg6:
You lie!
General Winfield Stuck
LOL, I guess Obama could have sent the men in white coats down to the Caribbean and brought Ms. Coakley home to campaign. That would have been insane, but might have worked.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
I usually walk to and from work, so I have gotten in the habit of “European” grocery shopping–stopping in the store almost every day or every other day to pick up fresh stuff, getting other stuff–durable and/or non-perishable–as needed. I gave the grocery a miss last night because there was a pre-snow riot in progress, but I stopped in about 8:00 a.m. this morning on my way to work, because I needed some things to get me through the weekend, if we are going to be snowed in. It was still busier than usual at that hour, and it was interesting to see (a) what people were getting and (b) what had been completely stripped from the shelves, as if a plague of locusts had passed through.
I guess my main question is this: what atavistic, Cro-Magnon thought process convinces you that, because you might be cooped up at home for a few days, you absolutely must buy eight gallons of milk, three dozen eggs, a five-pound pot roast and a twenty-four-roll pack of toilet paper? Not to mention many two-liter bottles of soft drinks, cookies, candy, etc.
It really did look like people were stocking their backyard fallout shelters.
eemom
@Steeplejack:
even weirder, people were stocking up on ONIONS. There wasn’t a single non-red onion to be found at Whole Foods last night, and when I stopped in this afternoon it was only by dumb luck that I managed to score the very last yellow one. It had managed to hide itself under a shelf.
Y’see, I GOTTA have homemade pasta sauce if I’m gonna survive this thing.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
Don’t get me started. This morning I thought, Well, I’m going to be cocooning for the weekend, I’ll get the fixin’s to treat myself to a big steak dinner. No dice. The meat shelves had been ransacked, and there was not a single baking potato to be found in the produce department. WTF?!
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack:
That would be the “If the power goes out, we can grill steaks / bake potatoes in the fireplace” idea around here. Don’t know how your neighborhood is fixed for fireplaces, and frankly I suspect actually trying this would bring nothing but a spate of house fires anyway.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
Yeah. What would probably be more realistic is if they decimated the grocery of Hot Pockets and luncheon meats.
bob from new jersey
Brown looks shallow and none-too-bright to me. Hard to believe he will not be vulnerable in 2012. Why doesn’t Fancy Ford move to Boston and try taking him on?