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flatdawgs

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by flatdawgs

  1. Exactly where I was standing when the cyclist came by!
  2. I was up at the border (Blaine, WA) Tuesday for my Nexus card interview with CBSA (Canadian border agency), and wandered over to Peace Arch State Park afterwards. This park literally extends to the actual US-Canada border, which is a little ditch with a Canadian street on the other side, suburban houses on the other side of that. No fence, nothing but a sign telling you to report to the border station if you walk across. It has always been that way; BC and WA have interacted over this border since it was created (sports exchanges, shopping, friends/families on both sides). Seattle and Vancouver are two great cities to be in, and only around 2 hours apart. BC residents when polled say they have more in common with WA than with anywhere in Canada, by a wide margin, and if they polled WA residents we'd say the same about them compared to most of the USA. Now, they're not coming over as much. Seattle is expecting 27% fewer Canadian visitors than last year. Whatcom County - the border county - is getting hammered because Canadians aren't coming over to shop. I wish they would - we voted for no leopards (Whatcom is D +20; Seattle is D +80) - but we're part of this country too and will have to take our medicine along with everyone else. Still pisses me off to no end, and likely pisses off the Canadians that, like us, used to cross the border with barely a thought. Anyway, while I was walking along the border, a cyclist on the Canadian side said "Welcome to Fortress America!" "I'm truly sorry" I replied (I speak fluent Canadian, eh? Sorry.). He responded "Stupid," shook his head and rode off. There was nothing else to say.
  3. What does this have to do with Eskimo Hut?
  4. I'd take a bullet to immediately end this regime. So... wait, let me think about this one a bit more. I'll, uh - I'll get back to you....
  5. Ah, it reminds me of the always-elevated "terrorism alert level" post-9/11, which never seemed to change color except prior to elections. Hell, here in WA the state ferry terminals still have signs at the docks saying "Current security level: MARSEC 1" even though nobody remembers (or ever knew) what that even means any longer.
  6. Oh, they're not even playing around with that any longer. The IDF claims al-Sharif was the head of a terrorist cell, claiming evidence that the BBC finds "unconvincing". To date, 186 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel's military offensive.
  7. The major difference is that 10 out of the 12 million people in the two states live in those areas that are definitively not like the south; and in WA a big part of the eastern part of the state is ag, so it's more like Kansas or Iowa than the Confederacy. You get into ranching and mining areas, then yeah. (Having lived in both the PNW and the south, it's not by a long shot "worse" but it is different. Different people to hate/fear and all that.) Deschutes County (Bend) went Harris +10. Not Seattle - my district was +80 - but also not South Carolina or Oklahoma.
  8. That game was quite CONCACAFy. Fortunately, for a competition of this magnitude, they got the very best officials from (checks notes) Jamaica and Trinidad for this match. Still enjoyed attending. (I actually always enjoy the international matchups, and the Sounders have a decent record against Liga MX sides.)
  9. haha no, they're too smart for that. Mom actually looked into in many years ago and even she didn't qualify. Pity, though - I love Denmark.
  10. Birthright citizenship hasn't always been sacrosanct - it's been taken away from various out groups at various times. In doing some genealogical research I came across a naturalization certificate for my great-grandmother. The hell? I knew her; knew she had been born in Dundee, Illinois to American parents; knew she probably had never even left the country in her lifetime. It turns out that, due to the Expatriation Act of 1907, if an American woman married a foreign national she had to take his citizenship and forfeit her American citizenship (and no, of course it didn't work the other way). At the time there was no dual citizenship and there was a backlash against immigrants, which is somewhat of an American pastime. My great-grandfather was a Danish citizen who had not yet naturalized as an American, so she became a subject of the King of Denmark (apparently in his Spokanish Realm) and no longer an American. It wasn't until the 1930s that she was allowed to become an American citizen again - but only after having to go through the naturalization process. All that to say there is precedent for revoking birthright citizenship, and although Congress actually passed a law in that case, this SCOTUS seems to have no particular care for that sort of thing when it suits them.
  11. (partially cross-posted from 'quake thread) I was 30 miles from Mt St Helens the day it blew; everyone knew it was going to, it was just a matter of when. Dad took us down to see it one last time (it was a gorgeous, Fuji-like cone) and we camped with a tall ridge between us and it. The next morning when it blew, everyone on the other side of the ridge, the ridge that marked the exclusion zone, died. All we got was a lot of really warm ash, of which I still have a little jar. Those lahars and pyroclastic flows are scary as shit. There were 2 or 3 smaller but ashy eruptions after the big one; a town called Ritzville (narrator: it isn't that, at all) about an hour west of Spokane got 10+ inches of the stuff. Later that summer I went to stay with my older brother, fresh out of the Army and living in Lewiston, ID working as an air traffic controller, and the ash was still piled up in drifts across Eastern Washington when I rode the grey dog over to visit.
  12. Yep and yep - in Seattle and a lahar is much less frightening than Nicole near a lake (of which we have a few here). OTOH, I'd hate to be a bad host to out-of-town guests. I've had a good run.... (correct about a lahar; it'll never come anywhere near where I am. Humongous earthquakes are much more, uh, interesting to me.) I was 30 miles from Mt St Helens the day it blew; everyone knew it was going to, it was just a matter of when. Dad took us down to see it one last time (it was a gorgeous, Fuji-like cone) and we camped with a tall ridge between us and it. The next morning when it blew, everyone on the other side of the ridge, the ridge that marked the exclusion zone, died. All we got was a lot of really warm ash. Those lahars and pyroclastic flows are scary as shit. /csb
  13. And here I thought it was all y'all who lived in the middle of nowhere... 😉 (this very large lake next to me, where there has been a paucity of bodies found over the years, has a large underwater forest that was dumped into it by the 1700 mega quake. So, ya know, we're just waiting. Warn everyone. Most of my friends here nowadays already seem to be Texans.)
  14. Jeez, Nicole, I'm right here. Stop scaring me. And anyway, there's a big ass lake just down the street from me, miles closer than Mt Rainier, so... oh shit....
  15. Vai pro caralho, laranjão safado! Foda-se essa merda.
  16. I don't disagree with you; I want to see the rot within the system completely and utterly excised. I personally don't believe that can happen through reconciliation but will take some hard lessons being learned. American history does not show that we will do anything other than "forgive and forget" however, and right now I see no signs that will change. My hope otherwise is in the youth of the party. We shall see. Regarding your first point - this all has happened before. Many, many lawful Hispanic residents - including no small number of citizens - were driven out of the US in the 1930s (the "Mexican Repatriation"); estimates are anywhere between 200,000 and 3 million people. Loss of birthright citizenship? Oh yeah, we've done that too. My great-grandmother, born in Illinois to American citizens and who probably never left the country in her life, lost her US citizenship because she married a foreign national who had not (yet) naturalized. Yep, that was the law in the 1920s if you were a woman. She had to go through the naturalization process later, same as any alien; I have her naturalization papers. What is happening today feels different to us because in our lifetimes nothing like this has ever happened, but in the long, often ugly and usually xenophobic history of the USA we've always managed to be complete and total shitbags to some part of the population (and no, we're certainly not alone there, then or now). Stephen Miller and his ilk - why, they can eat a giant bag of muledicks. I hear the mini-mart down at the Esso station might have some, if they hang around long enough.
  17. Deserved or no, highly unlikely. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission is probably the most that can be hoped for, and even that's probably not in the cards. Americans, sometimes for better, often for worse, are a forgiving people who (as you know as well as anyone) tend neither to look to the past nor to learn any lessons from it.
  18. Saw that IRL yesterday. It's on one of the monorail support pillars in downtown Seattle.
  19. Yes, and closed nearly all of them in 1935 as they had served their re-education purpose; i.e. putting fear into the hearts of the opposition that still remained. ("Moorsoldaten"/"Peat Bog Soldiers" is a song by and about those held there then). They ramped them up again a couple of years later for other even more evil purposes, later building the death camps as well. (so yes, things can become a very steep and slippery slope.)
  20. It also ends in Rwanda, the Khmer killing fields, and a bunch of other heinous shit. Dealer's choice.
  21. The bigger issue is the continued use of the bug/vermin metaphor, particularly coming from those in power. That sort of thing traditionally ends in very, very dark places.
  22. I don't wish harm or death to anybody. However, there are a lot of obituaries that I devoutly wish to live long enough to read.
  23. Sandpoint's a nice town, beautiful surroundings. Buddy grew up and has a lake house about 45 minutes away, on the WA side of the border (headed over there in a couple of weeks). Priest River and up towards Priest Lake is where you'll find a lot more of the white supremacist crowd (and Bonners Ferry, as you mentioned). Oddly enough, Pend Oreille county on the WA side is certainly very conservative but not quite the same vibe as across the river; I've enjoyed visits to the tiny county fair and other community events there. It's probably because it's close enough to Spokane to get the weekender lake house people. (If you’re ever in Usk, you owe it to yourself to stop by Mellany's for a shockingly good meal made by the kindest people you'll ever meet.)
  24. And Oregon (Bundy/Malheur), and California, and... well, pretty much everywhere in the country, particularly those places where there is actually wilderness left to hide in/around.
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