Tuesday morning link drop

Today will be busy, so rather than keeping a bunch of browser windows open, I'm spiking them here:

• Brian Beutler praises the legislators who will boycott tonight's SOTU. (I will watch so you don't have to.)
• Glenn Kessler has a fun SOTU Bingo card so you can play at home!
• Matt Ford wonders what Justice Clarence Thomas (R) was smoking when he wrote his god-awful dissent in the tariffs case last week.
• Paul Krugman rolls his eyes at the "zombie tariffs" that have eaten Republicans' brains.
• Steve Inskeep looks at the US military buildup in the Persian Gulf from Iran's perspective.
• US Air Force lieutenant colonel (ret.) and former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) looks back on four years of Ukraine beating the snot out of the Russian Army: "Ukraine was supposed to fall. Instead, it rewrote modern warfare."
• My US Representative, Mike Quigley (D-IL), secured $850,000 in federal funding for the Weber Spur bike trail a few kilometers northwest of here. I've been on several unimproved sections of the trail with Cassie and with my Brews & Choos buddy, so this will be very nice when it's done.
• Cranky Flier digs into plans to radically contract St Louis International Airport 25 years after TWA merged with American and pulled out of the city.
• All the planets will be lined up on this side of the sun going into this weekend. Let's hope for clear skies to the west at dusk!

Finally, everything from New Jersey to Maine has gotten covered in snow by a truly epic Nor'easter. Providence, R.I., got almost a meter of snowfall (963 mm), completely obliterating the previous record set in February 1978 (726 mm).

Back in 2003, I got stranded in Washington during the Presidents Day Blizzard trying to get back to my project site in Richmond, Va., from New York. The Metroliner I caught in Penn Station fought its way to Washington Union Station through blinding snow, but the railroads in Virginia shut down entirely for almost a week. After two (free!) nights at the Hyatt, and walking around in my sneakers for two days, I finally rented a car and drove my ass to Richmond. Here's what it looked like down Delaware Ave. NE from Union Station: