So Mr. Obama thinks he so tough, coming from Chicago. Tough enough to make fun of Washingtonians today because his little girls’ private school was closed because of snow followed by ice."When it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things … My children's school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice? …. As my children pointed out, in Chicago school is never canceled.”
He said he would have to “instill some flinty Chicago toughness” to D.C. residents.
Instill this, cowboy:
--- It gets really cold and snows a lot in Chicago, therefore plans are made and money is spent to keep roads open and clear. It does not snow nearly as much – in fact this is the latest snowfall in D.C. history in a generation, and it hardly snowed at all the past few years. (Global warming, anyone?) When Obama gets done spending $875 billion dollars on economic stimulus, maybe he could get some economic advice from the mayor of Washington, his good friend and long-time supporter. The advice is: You don’t spend a ton of money to prepare for a low-risk event.
--- You get big cold. We get big heat and tropical storms. We don’t lose many people to heat waves, but Chicago lost 600 in 1995.
--- The leaders of all the Democratic-led outlying jurisdictions might tell you that road conditions vary in different parts of the counties, and counties run the schools and the buses, so passable conditions in one part of a county may not reflect impassability a few miles to the north or west.
--- The roads, of course, as more jammed with commuters than anyplace east of Los Angeles, and where do they go to work? For the government, mostly. Therefore, if you want your girls to go to school, shut the government down so the schools can safely remain open by ridding the streets of cars. It isn’t that D.C. kids couldn’t get to their neighborhood schools, but you are complaining about the closing of Sidwell Friends, the elite of the elite, whose students come from the entire metropolitan area.
--- Maybe, Mr. Lunkhead, you could get your own U.S. Geographical Survey to point out how Chicago is flatter than the economy – not a single hill west of Cleveland and east of Kansas – and the D.C. area, being along the Fall Line separating the coastal plain from the piedmont has hills. Not great for motoring, or walking, when covered with ice. (You want to know what ice does? It took me 45 minutes to clear a short path from front door to the car and get the ice off the car, breaking the rear window in the process.)
Two final questions, Silly Face: How far do your girls walk to their limousine? How far do you have to drive to work?
The other day while I was listening to school closings, I heard that one of the private Maryland schools was closed, but on “schedule C - cyber-class to be held.” I noted that was quite
ReplyDeleteinteresting and ingenious. Apparently, each student was then expected to log onto the school’s
Internet site to obtain their day’s class assignments.
As for Mr. Obama complaining about the closing of the elite Sidwell Friends school, which his daughters attend, perhaps he should ask why they did not have a Plan B in place, using the
technology available to them. I am sure that the students that attend that school all have
computer and Internet access at home. Hopefully, the school is teaching their students the
ingenuity that they, themsleves, should have applied to this situation.
I hope that the newly inaugurated president does not make a habit of judging and condemning
situations, without looking at the full rational and then the feasibility of his alternatives. He was asking us to solve a predicament in a way that would have required the use of costly resources that we would rarely need or use. Should he not have wondered why those, in whom he is
entrusting the molding of his daughters’ minds, did not use the resources that they had quite
available to them?