Good thoughts — and a few unspoken "glad I don't live there"s go out to all the folks who are about to be impacted by one helluva winter storm. I wish our government didn't expend so many resources on pointless wars and finding ways to shovel tax money to Wall Street, and instead did more to prepare for and mop up after things like this.
And just remember that when you hear some Senator or prominent figure say, as at least one will, "Well, so much for that Global Warming lie," you're hearing someone who doesn't have a third-grader's understanding of what Global Warming was always expected to do to this planet. I still want to believe that it is, as some right-wingers stubbornly insist, the Hoax of the Century. But they're not saying it because of any real understanding of the science. All they know is that they don't like the people saying it's so and that they don't like the sacrifices that must be made to deal with it.
So good luck to those in the affected states. On behalf of California, I'll say that I wish there was some way we could borrow a few inches of that precipitation or otherwise take it off your hands.