According to the Seattle Times, the Spirit of Washington Dinner Train has run its course…

TACOMA — After less than three months, a planned 10-month experiment with a dinner train transplanted from Renton to Tacoma has ended with the shutdown of Spirit of Washington Dinner Train service.

…

The last run was Sunday.

This saddens me. My wife and I really enjoyed that train, and we were looking forward to riding it once again when it moved to Tacoma. Now it looks like that opportunity has passed us by.

I’m going to miss that little piece of the Pacific Northwest.

Yep, that's right.  22 schools have a 40% drop out rate, including all the conventional Public High Schools in Tacoma.

22 Washington high schools labeled 'dropout factories'

 In about 7.6 percent of Washington's 290 high schools, 40 percent of the students enrolled as freshmen don't make it to their senior year.

The 22 schools in Washington that researchers call "dropout factories" are spread throughout the state, but are found mostly in poor rural and urban school districts. Every comprehensive high school in Tacoma made the list, but none in Seattle or Spokane did.

Now granted, without access to their statistics and methodology it is impossible to figure out if the numbers are slanted or falsely represented, but the fact remains that dropouts are concerning.

In Tacoma, where every comprehensive high school had a dropout rate of more than 40 percent, district officials did not respond to repeated requests for information from The Associated Press.

Yet another in a continuing series of things I love about the Pacific Northwest.

Imagine my shock and horror this morning, when I began to go about the normal Sunday morning routine, and discovered that it was 60 minutes later than we thought it was.

It took about 240 seconds for me to realize what had happened:  My alarm clock (which we both use, as it has two alarm settings) had, thinking the old DST rules were still in effect, fell back one hour last night.

As my wife said, hurrying out the door, as she was now running very late, “time for a new alarm clock”.

This is particularly annoying as the changeover to the new DST was very disrtruptive to my industry, having a large cost in software upgrades and manhours to patch and update older systems, whose programmers had no inkling that COngress, in a fit of trying to show the people that they were trying to DO something about Energy Conservation, cost the economy a huge some of money.

Here is yet another reason to like Fred! Thompson:  His Immigration plan.

While I might differ on the odd point or two, overall his plan actually makes sense.  It treats the problem as a whole, and attacks it from all angles, not just from the Border fence as many others.

Border Security and Immigration Reform Plan

In the post-9/11 world, immigration is much more of a national security issue. A government that cannot secure its borders and determine who may enter and who may not, fails in a fundamental responsibility. As we take steps to secure our borders and enforce our laws, we must also ensure that our immigration laws and policies advance our national interests in a variety of areas, and that the immigration process itself is as fair, efficient, and effective as possible.

 

Securing the Border and Enforcing the Law

According to the State of Washington, voter registration fraud is a felony with severe penalties.

If you knowingly provide false information on this voter registration form or knowingly make a false declaration about your qualifications for voter registration you will have committed a class C felony that is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years, or by a fine of up to ten thousand dollars or both imprisonment and fine. (RCW 29A.08.210)

However, if you commit voter registration fraud in Seattle, here’s what happens, according to the AP (via Northwest Cable News).

SEATTLE - A man who submitted phony voter registration forms in Seattle pleaded guilty in King County Superior Court to providing false information and was sentenced to 30 days of detention.

Thirty days of "detention". Does that mean he has to stay after school with the bullies and the kids caught smoking in the boy’s room?

"It’s Bush’s fault." That’s what we were hearing this week about the California wildfires. They were exacerbated due to global warming, which wouldn’t be happening if President Bush made us implement the Kyoto Protocol we were told. The disaster response wasn’t fast enough. California’s national guard troops were all over in Iraq. California’s national guard equipment was over in Iraq.

We now know that global warming had little or nothing to do with the wildfires that seem to happen every year in southern California. We now know that the Santa Ana winds that helped to spread the wildfires happen every year, and that there’s nothing unusual about how dry those winds were.

Federal relief efforts began within a day of the disaster. California has 20,000 active national guard troops and only 2,000 of them are overseas. The other 18,000 are still in California. Not only that but California actually has more equipment than they can use, both their own, and that supplied by the federal government and from other states.

911 Truthers are the poster children of deranged conspiracy theory fools. 

They love to confront anyone to forward their insanity, like when Bill Maher turkey walked them off of his live show last week (strong language warning).

This week they tangled with former President Clinton, who was also in no mood for it.

Here are clips from both and as a bonus, the last clip is Bill's opinion of the Truthers from his New Rules segment.

I admit I give many liberals a bad time for their ideology, but in this case it goes to show that even liberals have their limits on irrationality.  Maybe there is some hope.

(I am having video issues here for some reason, so please see the videos at my blog)

Working on the video problem…..

As you're planning your holiday shopping in the coming weeks, I'd like to suggest that you check out the Hunger Site .  Their shop has a variety of items: cards and stationary, apparel and jewelry, as well as housewares and folk wares from around the world.  If you have a greenie or altruistic young people on your shopping list you may find just the thing, as they have many items from communities who make their stuff in an environmentally sensitive and sustainable fashion and that benefit their local economy.  When you buy from their online shop it goes to a variety of charities, including Doctors Without Borders.  The purchase price of an item funds 25 cups of food or the purchase of a book for a literacy program in Nepal (pictured), Afghanistan, or Africa, or the purchase of a low fuel high output, locally made stove for Darfur refugees, to name just a few.  I like the idea of underwriting the education for two girls for a year in Afghanistan for only $20.  You can also donate the monthly salary of a teacher there, or a bit more pricey, pay to heat an Afghani school.  For the price of a sweater at K-Mart or a Coffee Maker at Fred Meyer you can purchase a pair of goats to increase a poor family's health and wealth, or enough seeds to put in a season's garden that will feed a whole family. Give it a peek if you shop online.    

Continuing with more things worth seeing in the Pacific Northwest, here are a few shots of the area North of Enumclaw, WA on SR 169.

Photos Copyright ©2007 by Perri Nelson. All rights reserved.